Long Links #2

On my subreddit I put up links to individual videos, websites, or blog posts, etc. Any of these things can be "consumed" (paid attention to) in one sitting (generally speaking). Those are "short links". But "long links" take more than one sitting and to me seem to not belong in the same context as short links.

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I read Maxine Bédat's Unraveled.

Subtitle: "The Life and Death of a Garment" (from farm, to fabric-making, to cut-and-sew, to retailer and consumer, to disposal and secondhand sale). A long time ago I got into fair trade clothing consuming: buying fair trade and thrift store clothes more. I wanted to see if this still made sense, so I took the opportunity to pick up this book from a "little library".

I am pretty sure it makes sense to buy from thrift stores. I had been concerned that I was taking affordable clothes away from people who had less money than me by buying from thrift stores. I remembered that there were situations where bales of clothes were dumped in developing countries' clothes markets which was bad for their attempts to start their own textile industries. Was this still true? It seems like as of 2021 (date of publication), yes. So I can take one garment at a time out of that stream. Maybe I'm taking good clothes away from consumers in developing countries? Possibly.

The book makes it seem like overproduction of clothes is a bad thing. Certainly it's costly environmentally (clothes become trash, resources are consumed to make extra clothes). But (my thought) then there's an abundance of clothes in developing countries.

In terms of fair trade (manufacturing clothing with a fair wage), I think the situation is that some are caught in Molochian races to the bottom (developing countries, factory owners, maybe the brands to some extent), but some people stand outside the struggle to survive and can make unforced errors (the brands, perhaps; certainly their CEOs who could give up some compensation to pay workers more; consumers) or more positively put, can just decide to make things better. Fair trade is a way for consumers to signal that they want things to be better, and make things marginally better. But maybe unions, regulation, are more effective? (One semi-self-regulation described is something called the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, mentioned in ch. 4 on p. 111 (hardback first ed.) and following) Maybe if a brand saw the PR gain of selling to consumers who have already signalled their desire to pay for clothes that are made with better wages (maybe signalled through fair trade purchases), they would pay workers more / push for better working conditions so as to make the other brands look bad by comparison? *** *** (An) EA perspective: take care of extreme poverty so that no one will work at bad factories and thus they have pressure to get better. On the other hand, pricing in fair wages into clothes could get people to "donate" there who wouldn't think to donate to extreme poverty charities. I feel like the comparison of all these ideas is beyond me, but I would be interested in seeing a collaboration (an adversarial collaboration?) between Bédat and an EA to see what they would come up with. I feel like Bédat is a non-EA who might interface OK with EAs (does research, acknowledges complexities). She has her own think tank ("think and do tank"), New Standard Institute.

The book advances a racial, feminist, and anti-elite narrative, as well as an anti-neoliberalism narrative.

The book has a chapter on psychological manipulation of consumers and the psychological costs of materialism. My thought: from the book it looks like there's a "non-mindfulness" (a differently loaded term than "mindlessness") in people's consumption. Perhaps the enemy to consumers making better choices is a kind of innocence (a non-mindfulness of "I'm just doing what one does" as a small person). Do we dare shatter (or even less-violently reform) that innocence? Sometimes it feels like it just "should not be done" for some reason, like people should be left in the dark. That's interesting.

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For some reason I felt like re-reading Calvin and Hobbes (comic strip series by Bill Watterson). So I read a collection, Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons. I think the last time I read more than a few strips of Calvin and Hobbes was back... in high school? in elementary school? So I had a different perspective reading it now.

I liked the comic strip when I was a kid. I followed Calvin's lead in both good and bad ways, because of the power of the visuals and writing. Reading it now, there is a way that it "sings", there is life in it.

Here's what I think after reading that one collection:

I see Calvin as being the most real character out of all of them. He seems to be the most passionate.

Calvin is the most likely to someday really love God in this life. The others are too cool (Hobbes), too normal and nice (Susie), or too far along in their path of life (Calvin's parents).

I was surprised by my feelings toward Calvin and Hobbes. When I was a kid, I guess I thought they were kids doing kid things, just like I did. Calvin and Hobbes was an adventure comic, showing the adventures of a boy and his tiger friend. But now I see Calvin as a (tragically) heroic figure in a world of fakeness (and, in the long run, insanity), and Hobbes I now dislike, a clever pragmatist who sits outside of Calvin's passions, plays along, but knows better the whole time. Calvin meets Hobbes in brotherhood, but Hobbes offers brotherhood with an asterisk on it. Hobbes thinks Calvin is cute and immature -- disrespects him -- and Calvin does not suspect it.

Calvin and Hobbes bears some resemblance to Don Quixote. A lone madman lives in his delusions in a real world that is somewhat unforgiving of him. But who is the real fool in quixotic books? Is it the delusional loner? Or is it all the people around him? From a secular perspective (a practically-atheistic one), obviously it's Don Quixote and Calvin. Everyone's going to die at age 80 and so you should do what's popular, pro-social, socially supported, "consensusly real", in the short run -- there is no afterlife in which to fulfill the fantasies fed you by comic books or chivalrous romances, or to imagine that you can stand outside the social order, live in your own world, as Calvin (and maybe Don Quixote?) effectively does when he daydreams.

Perhaps many theists would side with the secular people, but my theism causes me to say that it's the normal, mainstream, functional people who are fools for not seeking true excellence. While Calvin himself isn't exactly seeking excellence of any sort at this point in his life, he is still clean from the fake-spiritedness of (it seems) everyone around him. He is unwise in many ways, but still not a fool in the fatal way that is most successful in this world. Satan could tempt you with the promise of a slushball to the back of a girl's head, or he could tempt you with an easy life, the approval of others, the sense that you're doing what you're supposed to according to society. Calvin's temptations are ones he is fairly likely to grow out of (certainly he will receive plenty of negative feedback on them). But the temptations of the other characters are ones they may succumb to semiconsciously, never truly confronting them. They may slide toward a state where there is a 1% of ungodliness in them that they never want to get rid of, hardening them. Calvin's sinfulness is accessible and blatant, but theirs does not stand out, and they are acceptable in their community.

My theory of the worldview of Calvin and Hobbes is that Calvin is a daydreamer but also in touch with the world of spirits. Hobbes being the main proof, a "friend" who knows better than Calvin.

Is it possible that Calvin's subconscious is more mature than Calvin and can create Hobbes? What is the subconscious self? Is it really you? If you're a materialist (like Freud?) and you have to stuff all phenomena that does not come from the material world surrounding a person into the operations of a person's material brain, there being no other place to locate it, and for some reason you have to say that "the mind is what the brain does" and somehow that the self is identical to the mind, I guess you're forced to say that. But as a philosophical idealist, I don't think that's a very natural way of looking at phenomena like Hobbes. I think the subconscious self is "not you", something other than you, unless you adopt it as your own. If the subconscious self is wiser than you, is on another level, then there is a wiser spirit (wise like God, or wise like Satan) operating in your life. For Calvin this spirit is visible to him in the imaginal world.

Why is Hobbes in Calvin's life? Perhaps Hobbes, like most things, is a negotiation between God and Satan. God wants Calvin, the world's most alone person, to have a friend to comfort him. Calvin, like Job, is a thorn in Satan's side, someone who has not yet confirmed one of Satan's theories about human nature. Satan then exacts a concession from God: this friend will have to disrespect Calvin behind his back, and feed Calvin society's wine of fakeness through his nagging hints that Calvin is a fool, in such a way that Calvin doesn't realize what's going on. (Hobbes is sensible, moderate, wise, and in favor of romance -- exactly the sorts of things that will win a young man praise from his society.) Because of the power of Satan in Job-like situations, God makes the concession, and a spirit is chosen to do the job, a spirit to be called "Hobbes".

Ending Moloch

Epistemic status: this is not as developed as its title calls for.

Moloch is the tendency for competitors to sacrifice delicate values so they can compete more effectively. It's a drift of uncoordinated beings. Competition naturally escalates to the point where there is nothing but Dominance.

Can there ever be an end to Moloch? An easy way would be through a one-world government. But these are dangerous because they can become totalitarian, and then also throw away delicate values.

Is there some way to tame international competition while putting up roadblocks to totalitarianism?

Maybe through "friendship". The US and Mexico are friendly nations. They don't want to go to war with each other. So they don't. As long as that prevails, they don't have to compete. Instead, they can cooperate. (Maybe I have an overly rosy view of the US and Mexico in this post, but I think it's at least directionally true.) They don't have to be one government, because they can work together while being separate political entities.

It would be easy for the governments of the US and Mexico to work together to benefit the people of either or both nations. But it would be hard (ideally) for the US to do anything to affect who was in charge in Mexico, and vice versa. But importantly, the US generally wouldn't even want to interfere with Mexican government. Just like, if you are good friends with someone, you don't want to interfere with their self-trust, agency (ability to secure their decision-making ability), or that they govern themselves. You trust them, and are trustworthy to them, and vice versa.

Maybe two countries can only be friends under certain circumstances. Then, we should try to have those circumstances obtain. If a friend gets addicted to a powerful drug, maybe in some ways I can't trust them like I used to. Maybe there is an analogue with countries. How do we prevent addictions, or treat them (and the equivalents internationally)?

Governments already have too much on their hands to do some of the really important work. Governments are also the wielders of coercion and threats. They have blood on their hands. But the "regular people" of a country can take the initiative to engage in cultural exchanges, not only with "rival" countries, but within their borders, across class divides. The elites who run the country may still be accessible to people within the country, and even people in other countries. If the elites find the "rival" elites trustworthy, then "friendship" may ensue.

The process of cultural exchange will be very difficult sometimes. When people don't want to listen, they resist hearing, and the really interesting work is to talk to the people who don't want to listen, so that they may listen. Perhaps what I have in mind is a cross between Jesus (in a humanly-repeatable sense -- an altruist with the personality of Jesus, who had to die for his altruism) and some of the sensibility or methods of Buber.

We have protests, where the people wield their own coercion and threats, but the comparative advantage of the people ("regular people") is their relative weakness, naivety, and freedom from agendas, strategies, etc. (It's easier to trust a weak, naive, agendaless, strategy-less person, and easier for such people to dare to seek reconciliation between established warring camps.)

Some people are partway between "regular people" and "elites" and can enter into elite circles, while still being in some sense virtuously weak, naive, and agenda-free. Other "regular people" can lay groundwork of friendship between them and the "regular people" of other countries. Elites may absorb values from "regular people" sometimes, and may wish to stay on the good side of their own "regular people" for both real human reasons (a friendship of its own) or for strategic-political reasons (fear of the people).

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(The division between coercive-threat-wielding government and weak, naive, agenda-free people connects to how I would handle the liberalism / post-liberalism question. There should be many checks and balances and liberties imposed on and exacted from coercive-threatening governments of all sorts, preserving liberalism in that sphere, while the people counteract the corrosive cultural effects of liberalism in the world of the social order and voluntary behavior. All it takes is for it to become an indigenized and decentralized value for regular people to promote religion, develop non-violent national identities (and "friendship" alongside them), fill in the relational gaps that the government can't fill with welfare (and perhaps replace government welfare or prevent people from needing to apply for it). So, maybe for short: "top-level liberalism, bottom-up post-liberalism".)

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Once all the countries are friendly, they can relax their drive to compete, and Moloch is ended. Or, it can be, and if friendliness then sufficiently pervades all levels of society, there may be no more threatening competition left, and no one needs to sacrifice anything because of that threat.

But this state of friendliness could be threatened by people who don't believe in it, individuals taking power over nations and organizations. To some extent, we can filter out people like that already, but to some extent, we can't. We would need better ways to keep those people out of power, to keep Moloch from restarting, and that mechanism itself would have to not be abusive. So, this idea is not complete.

Some Biblical Reasons to Think Sex was not Original to / Ideal in Creation

This post goes along with Omnisubjective Sexuality and will make more sense if you read that one.

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Do we have any Biblical reason to think that the sex act might not have been part of God's original design? (These are some quick thoughts. As usual, the real answer to a question like this is to read the whole Bible with these questions in mind, and as usual, I like that thought. I am not planning to make sexuality a foregrounded theme in my Bible commentary, but I expect to maybe capture more of the Biblical picture about sexuality there, than I do here.)

The Genesis accounts of creation and Fall (ch. 1 - 3) are a natural place to look. Adam and Eve aren't mentioned as having had sex until after leaving the garden of Eden (ch. 4). No proof that they didn't in the garden, but nothing that overturns the hypothesis that they didn't.

It does seem like God always intended women to bear children. But maybe no sex act would have been required for it. Maybe that sounds like a raw deal hedonically but apparently originally God didn't want childbirth to hurt as badly. (A poll: "Women: would you prefer A) childbirth that doesn't hurt very much but nobody has sex or B) the way things are now?". Or ask men if they would give up sex so that women had only mild pain in childbirth.) Maybe initiating the process of bringing new life has to be addictive and intensely pleasurable if childbirth hurts really badly (and if life becomes so bad that sometimes you'd rather not do all the work of populating the earth).

Some more verses that easily come to mind are the ones where Jesus is talking to the Sadducees about marriage in the Resurrection. Matthew 22:

23 On that day Sadducees (those who say that there is no resurrection) came to him. They asked him, 24 saying, "Teacher, Moses said, 'If a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.' 25 Now there were with us seven brothers. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. 26 In the same way, the second also, and the third, to the seventh. 27 After them all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection therefore, whose wife will she be of the seven? For they all had her."

29 But Jesus answered them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like God's angels in heaven. 31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, haven't you read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?' God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."

A careful (or adversarial) Bible student would try to figure out exactly what Jesus means by "not knowing the Scriptures" and "the power of God". My guess is that he could be saying "look in Isaiah and other passages in the Scriptures that talk about the Resurrection" and "of course God could raise people from the dead, and also, of course he could figure out a way to make the Mosaic Law work with his overall plan of salvation". This seems like kind of an obvious and basic way to read this, but I can imagine someone finding some kind of other way to read the passage, based on other intepretations of "not knowing the Scriptures" and "the power of God".

(I think some Christians think of the Resurrection as being the same as heaven, but the New Wine/MSLN understanding is that it is the same as the Millennium.)

Jesus' solution to the problem of multiple marriages in the Resurrection is to say that in the Resurrection, people don't marry, nor are given in marriage, because they are like the angels. There is more to investigate here: any clues from the Old Testament? Or from Second Temple Judaism? But, absent a rigorous search, just looking at this passage, it looks like there is something about angels that makes them different from humans. Humans will be changed into a different form that works differently from what we we are now. Perhaps we will have bodies of a new kind, unlike those we have on earth. It seems likely that angels have different bodies than humans. So, those bodies may not be capable of marriage.

Is marriage a bodily thing? (Or a lustful thing?) To the extent that it is not, isn't it, at it's most intense, a warm and familial friendship? (Or a particularly true one?) Do we think of such relations as "sexual"? The Biblical understanding seems to to have been that marriage is an automatic consequence of having sex, or even that having sex is the physical act which begins a marriage ("the two become one flesh"). So that serial casual sex is a string of jarringly brief marriages, accompanied by adultery and/or divorce. Does it seem like that to us? Not to many of us, but maybe that's how it feels to God. But then, it would be strange to think of marriage as only being the union of flesh.

So maybe there are two kinds of marriage: the exclusive, fleshly marriage which it may seem from the Bible is shared between (in the phrase used as a slogan or resoundingly, in politics) "one man and one woman", and the not-necessarily-exclusive, spiritual marriage which is indistinguishable from a warm, familial, true friendship? Perhaps given the limitations of time on earth, many of us could only have a maximally warm, familial, and true friendship with one person, but in the Resurrection, or in heaven, there might be time to develop multiple such friendships to their full, if that is impossible on earth. And also there may only be a few people with whom one can completely scale (and thus escape) the hierarchy of betrayal, (something which the non-fleshly aspect of marriage seems to aspire to, which overlaps a lot with having a maximally warm, familial, and true friendship) due to some people being compatible with you on more levels than others. But in the Resurrection, or in heaven, there may be more time to find the ones that exist.

(I seem to remember that in the Resurrection (in the Old Testament), there is reference to children being born. So I suppose, in keeping with the above, that women could bear children in the Resurrection without having had sex. (Or men could as well?) Does this mean that angels can have children, or do have children? What would angelic/Resurrection childbirth look like? Some interesting thoughts.)