#zA's Pompous Moralizing

[zenosanalytic]

Something I don't think we talk about enough is the absolute poison capitalism has been for morality and ethics.

Like: when "profit" becomes THE organizing principle for action, anything can be justified. If you take as your fundamental rule "anything which might create profit or capital is Good, and likely Necessary", then what limits are there to your behavior? Literally ANYTHING can be SAID to POTENTIALLY create profit, or increase the number of workers in-hock to your capital and thus fair-game to wage-theft, so ANYTHING can be done. A moral system which allows anything to be done is, by definition, no moral system at all: it's License; it's Self-indulgence; it's Amorality and the Death of Virtue. To become a capitalist is to throw away your soul.

for the mario movie???? the mario bros movie?? the actors can't know the plot of the mario movie??? they're scared of plot leaks for mario the movie?? the movie mario???? we're getting not just chris pratt but chris pratt acting BLIND????????

[zenosanalytic]

Any society that celebrates and rewards "Ambition" is necessarily going to have endemic Abuse problems because it grants powers to those who most want to wield it against others.

[zenosanalytic]

Just watched Jacob Gellar's New Video Essay on Pinnochio(I watched the nebula vers but that's to the youtube one), and as part of his summation he says, in passing about Geppetto in Del Toro's Pinocchio, something important enough to be The Point of a video essay all on its own:

"...Humanity isn't awarded a single time for good behavior, but maintained through a continuous examination of The Self."

What better definition for Humanity --for Decency, Benevolence, Ethics-- than this?

[zenosanalytic]

Yes! And I'd actually go further, like:

The whole idea of applying redemption to morality is deeply fucked up. "Redemption" is a financial term, specifically it's a "Buying Back": you Redeem debts, tokens, money, title, property. These are inherently amoral commercial concepts having to do with Money and Commodities, and we should really stop conflating them with morality. The things you do, Cannot be undone. There is no "going back" and God, even if it existed, would not have the power to unmake the past, and would be too moral, too respectful of hurt and agency, to ever do something that invalidates them for one person to benefit another.

But YOU have the power to change. YOU have the power to be different. YOU have the power to look at what you did and say "That was Fucked Up, and I was WRONG, and when I Thought that it was an OK Thing to do I was WRONG, and I'm never going to do or think that ever again," and then LIVE That. You have the massive power to recognize a mistake, and Apologize, and Remake Yourself, whenever you choose.

People can choose to forgive you or not, that's the power THEY Have and you have NO power to force it from them, nor the right to demand it. You live with the consequences of what you've done, and you stop being the person who did it, but the choice of Forgiving or Not is THEIRS to make. And, not really on this topic but an important related one, THAT is what Grace actually is. Not divine, not of God, not even Moral, but fundamentally and inherently Mortal; Imperfect, Changing, an inextricable contradiction, a bond made of people acknowledging Hurt, one choosing to lay it down, and another choosing to let themselves be forgiven; something so small and so huge that it feels like Magic.

the concept and idea of “you can always start trying to be a better person” is extremely important to me both in media and irl and i continue to be deeply deeply disturbed by the trend on this site pushing that these ideas in media are bad writing or even morally reprehensible

because theyd rather someone stay terrible or just straight up die than become a better person 

from a compassionate point of view it’s deeply distressing and from a pragmatic point of view it’s outright frustrating

it’s fucked up. 

[zenosanalytic]

#this is what every fucking Longevity Tech news story sounds like. to me.(via @sashayed)

[zenosanalytic]

This is wrong actually; the whole point of the studies was that comfort is, in itself, 'substance' in the philosophical sense of 'fulfilling' and 'meaningful' in which it is used here. Form the Wiki Article and emphasis mine:

To investigate the debate, Harlow created inanimate surrogate mothers for the rhesus infants from wire and wood.[14] Each infant became attached to its particular mother, recognizing its unique face and preferring it above all others. Harlow next chose to investigate if the infants had a preference for bare-wire mothers or cloth-covered mothers. For this experiment, he presented the infants with a clothed mother and a wire mother under two conditions. In one situation, the wire mother held a bottle with food, and the cloth mother held no food. In the other situation, the cloth mother held the bottle, and the wire mother had nothing.[14]

Overwhelmingly, the infant macaques preferred spending their time clinging to the cloth mother.[14] Even when only the wire mother could provide nourishment, the monkeys visited her only to feed. Harlow concluded that there was much more to the mother–infant relationship than milk, and that this "contact comfort" was essential to the psychological development and health of infant monkeys and children.

Comfort is "a necessary substance" to your psychological well-being, and continued health. It isn't frivolous, it isn't lacking, it isn't unimportant or "a waste of time."

okay. listen. I try not to be pedantic about this sort of thing but it’s starting to get on my nerves. the wire mother offers milk but not comfort. the cloth mother offers comfort but not milk. if something is comforting, fun, or otherwise compelling, but lacks substance, that is the cloth mother. if something is boring or unpleasant but has substance, that is the wire mother.

[zenosanalytic]

Yeah, and we should really think about WHY, from a Watsonian perspective, he is 1)a queer maori who grew up in poverty and 2)explicitly tumblr-leftist.

Like: it isn't an accident that the cast of TLT are, essentially, the likely fanbase of the books. And it isn't just that those are the sort of stories Muir wants to write and the sort of people she wants to write For. Not too long enough, less than a decade, Muir was STILL here, posting right beside us. Taz has read all the posts you have; shares most of your politics and moral convictions. She explicitly created a society where the oppressed in our society -- the queer and the colonized -- had all the power, and she explicitly wrote that as Not Fixing Things. and Yeah, allot of it is Funny(this is Taz, afterall); it's literally a Queer Goth Clownshow of a society(because WE are a Queer Goth Clownshow of a website :p); but the point is that even with all the power-dynamics flipped the patterns of exploitation don't stop. Exploitation isn't a story of villains and victims; it's a story of social institutions.

Morality is not an inherent quality; it's a constant choosing, and thus always vulnerable to the contingencies and context of choice. John(and, it should be said, Cristobel/C-- as a lesbian Catholic Nun and thus probably the MOST politically aware and active and anticapitalist/antifascist of the whole group) didn't do the wrong things because he was "The Wrong" person to have power; he did the wrong things because he was in an impossible situation, with nothing to guide him but a lifetime of trauma at capitalism's hands, No Time Left, and All the Power in the World. And THEN, acutely aware of each one of the only people he loved in the world dying violently and pitifully around him, he had killed Everyone on Earth and eaten the souls of The Entire Solar System.

If you had the power to bring the people you love back from the dead, to take the pain of death away from them, and to make them forget you made a mistake so huge it literally killed everything they know, can you honestly say you wouldn't?

What does that sort of power DO to someone??

I think what bothers me most about how John is talked about in the fandom is the implication that a different (implied: better) person would've done things differently and somehow more right than he did.

When the text goes to lengths to explore how suddenly coming into an incredible amount of power in a fatally constrained situation cannot lead to a good outcome.

If you're putting John in dialogue with the concept of the "magical girl", which Muir has said he is (a little tongue in cheek, but)--these are young, often profoundly unready people, who often get taken advantage of by the people who give them their powers. And like, yes, John is not a teenager, but I think that's part of the point, is that at no point is a person really prepared to become as powerful as he did--even before he merged with Alecto. Even when he was fully in control of his powers, even when they were given with honest intent and trust, even when he used them with the best of intentions and tried to do the right thing, there was no way for him to be prepared, especially given the situation he was in.

And it's funny to talk about how bad John must be in bed, but also, this isn't a scenario where John is some self-deluding Elon Musk-like villain or loser. He is genuinely trying to do the right thing, in terms of rescuing the Earth's population, rescuing the Earth Herself, and doing it ethically (see: M--'s insistence that they perfect the cryo containers until they could transport pregnant women).

I really do think this is something people are blocking out, because it is one of the uncomfortable parts of Muir's message with the series. But ESPECIALLY because the people "critiquing" him as an embodiment of patriarchy and empire are failing to see that part of Muir's critique is of human vulnerability to power: That is, that power corrupts.

And this even has echoes with Gideon & Harrow's story! Harrow begins the series in a deeply unequal dynamic with Gideon! And she does horrible things, not just because she is traumatized, but because she is traumatized and has the power to act her desires out on Gideon. She might have the motive (trauma), but that's not enough without the means (power).

And, yeah, I do have a semi-salty angle on this because people are frequently loath to think critically not just about axes of oppression but individual relationships of power when it applies to them and to people they like. ESPECIALLY when there is a very vocal segment of the fandom that is enthusiastically pro-harassment. It's very convenient to villainize John and actively dis-identify with him, because otherwise, you'd have to face the question of whether you'd do any better in his place. But the thing is, the mission of revenge he embarks on is a lot closer to many peoples' hearts than they'd like to consider.

That's the whole point.

[zenosanalytic]

Ok I know this is a shitpost but its so hilarious cuz I saw this thing on Twitter today that is EXACTLY this.

Some guy was trying to hype adobe's new ~AI~ ~Art~ program by being like "oh, this thing can expand on paintings for you. Here's the background to the Mona Lisa not included in the Mona Lisa!" and like

Bitch: That's YOUR job! YOU are supposed to look at that damn painting, and have Thoughts, and then go out and paint or draw or write something beautiful out of your own wonderful brain inspired by that! Why the HELL are you burning hundreds of gallons of water and billions of watts of electricity to have some equation simulate fun for you instead of going out and having it yourself????

sending the door dasher to gym to run on the treadmill for you

[zenosanalytic]

Yeah, and I think unpacking that helps clarify the issue, because who exactly is going to be doing the plagiarizing? Like: as with everything, people with more resources and a higher social position can and will do more plagiarizing, simply because they have more chances to do it and are less likely to be punished for it. As hbomb points out repeatedly in the video they're ALREADY the people who do most of it; ltrl the first anecdote he covers, that of ABC ripping off Ellison's Brillo story, is an example of this. Plagiarism, like almost anything, is a systemic problem.

And, when your society is a hierarchical one like ours where Fame(Credit for doing a thing) grants Success and Success grants Authority, tolerating it makes everything in your society shittier. Again, as hbomb repeatedly shows, it's much easier to steal someone's work than to do similar work so, in a society where plagiarism isn't considered a big deal(or is seen as proof of one's laudable Cleverness/Ruthlessness), you're going to naturally see less interested, less ethical, less careful, less attentive, and less exacting people rise to the top through their plagiarism(and the personal and class abuse it fundamentally is since higher status people steal from lower status ones), which is in itself going to cause problems. They'll be less able to handle the responsibilities they've gained; they'll be less able to actually do the job and more prone to fucking it up; they'll be more likely to abuse those they've been given authority over because they fundamentally do not care about being ethical people. A person who cares more about wealth and status than doing a good job will be bad at their job. In professions like journalism and academia you might see fabricated and inaccurate information passed off as the truth(again, something hbomb shows these plagiarists repeatedly doing), which just basically negates their purpose. In professions like law and politics, the opportunities for misrule open to unethical people are even more destructive. The social convention against plagiarism(and it really must be understood that this IS a Social Convention; plagiarism needs to rise to the level of copyright theft before courts will even touch it and they'll rarely punish anyone even then as hbomb notes at the beginning of the video) acts as a stopgap; to incompetents breaking something that hurts THOUSANDS, and to abusers gaining the authority to commit worse abuses.

But the thing is: even WITH that social convention, we ALREADY SEE Examples of these problems because too many people with a say in how our institutions are staffed and managed care MORE about hierarchy and nepotism(rewarding their friends and punishing people they dislike) than they do honesty, fairness, competence, and justice. Full Professors leveraging the precarity of their grad students' situation to extort their work from them was an open secret in USian academia through the 90s and 00s(probably still IS given the academic jobs situation has worsened since then), and particularly bad with "Celebrity" academics(ie: profs who are also tv talking heads). Male bosses stealing the work of their female secretaries(and white bosses stealing the work of their non-white employees) was so common it was a running joke in US society from the 50s to the 00s, as was their leveraging of it to extort wages, work, and sex. Plagiarism, fundamentally, is a gamble of power; a roll of the dice that your theft won't be noticed or punished because the ones you steal from are too lowly or obscure for anyone to know or care about. To plagiarize is to say "the person who did this doesn't matter as much as me" and, no surprise, a society built on the idea that some people matter more than others like ours implicitly encourages it. Is that something we shouldn't care about?

And I guess that really gets to the heart of it because, fundamentally, the question of plagiarism is a question of justice. To say you don't care about plagiarism is to say you don't care about justice, or fairness, or honesty; to say that injustice doesn't bother you, nor does being lied to by authorities. And if that's how you feel Fine, but just know that ALLOT of people aren't going to trust you after that.

I truly cannot get that worked up about plagiarism. Like you need rules and norms against it for basic incentive reasons but its such a minor crime. Maybe if I was more invested in the notion of the Artist

[zenosanalytic]

I’d make a different argument: that revering the dead REQUIRES destroying its place as a nationalistic ritual. Why the hell are we flying flags on Sept 11th? Why are we holding patriotic rallies? Why do we talk so much about it’s impact upon “America” and so little about those who died, those who lost, and what it meant to THEM? Why do we encourage so many to personalize an event that only touched them through a television screen?

This should be a day of mourning and remembrance; it should be a day of empathy for those who lost their people. Claiming a hurt that isn’t ours; Making it into a celebration of The State, The Military and, even worse, the “Fatherland/Patria”: that is morally grotesque. Their Lives and Deaths are more important than our pride!

should be clear, 9/11 as an event sucked n shit & like. a bunch of people dying is fucked up. but there's no way to talk about it in america without it also having a certain symbolic meaning as a nationalistic rallying point and the start of a new era of american imperialism. basically, it's more advantageous for us to destroy its social gravity and value as a symbol than to revere the dead by observing those same nationalistic rituals