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A friend recently articulated the commonly held position that, since we are collective engaging in pandemic-spreading behavior, there's no real point to individually minimizing risk, since we will individually suffer the consequences of the pandemic anyway.
I made my "say it here so I don't say it there" saving throw.
This is classic Prisoner's Dilemma reasoning: if I defect, I individually benefit from my defection. If I cooperate, I don't. In either case, I suffer the consequences of others' defections. So it's a choice between benefiting and suffering, on the one hand, and suffering without benefit on the other.
Reasoning like this during a PD-like crisis leads me inevitably to the conclusion that defecting is the way to go. But of course, it is precisely people reasoning like this that causes the crisis in the first place. So we create and exacerbate such crises, ultimately destroying ourselves if the process isn't interrupted.
I think the root cause of the problem here is scale.
That is: our minds are not well-suited for analysis over a wide amplitude range; if we are considering a large-scale process, a small-scale one collapses to a negligible point, and if we are considering a small-scale process, a large-scale one expands to a constant backdrop for it. It is _really hard_ for our brains to analyze both processes simultaneously; we just aren't built for it.
So when faced with situations where large-scale and small-scale processes strongly influence each other, such as national or global crises we contribute to as individuals, we get a "strange loop" and our reasoning breaks down. Either our actions feel insignificant, or the crisis feels inevitable.
It wouldn't feel that way if we could simultaneously evaluate large-scale and small-scale processes, but, well, we can't... that's not how our brains work. It's a fact about our brains, not a fact about the world... but it's a fact just the same.
(I can't be the first person to draw this conclusion, but I've never run into it framed like this in any formal analysis... if someone better versed in the canon than I can suggest some viable search strings, I'd be grateful.)
Historically, the way we humans work around this limitation of our brains is by making irrational small-scale choices when considering large-scale crises. How well this works depends on how well aligned the crisis happens to be to our irrational decision-making processes, and when it works badly we condemn each other as irrational.
And it's true: we _are_ being irrational. But the implication of the condemnation is that our irrationality is causal; if we were instead rational, the crisis would abate. And the reality is often instead that, as above, the irrationality is a _result_ of the scale of the crisis, which is beyond the capability of our brains to analyze due to the "strange loops" mentioned above.
And the truth is, when a crisis happens to align well to our irrational decision-making process, that can work pretty well. We tend not to use words like "irrationality" in those cases, preferring positively connoted words like "hope" or "faith" or "dedication" or "love" to describe our motivations. But it's all the same machinery at core.
I'm very fond of Niebuhr's formulation of this:
"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness."
Auden also said it pretty well:
"All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die."
(I had forgotten this poem, except for the line "we must love one another or die," which I went looking for just now. Reading it I am struck by how much Auden is speaking to my thought process here, and how poorly I would understand him if I hadn't already been thinking along these lines.)
And there's always Cohen:
"You can add up the parts; you won't have the sum.
You can strike up the march; there is no drum.
Every heart, every heart to love will come,
but like a refugee."
Or, if I want to get Biblical: "now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
Hope, faith, love, forgiveness... we don't typically reason our way to these things; they are irrational processes. We just experience them, or we don't.
And sometimes they are inadequate, and sometimes they actively make the crisis worse. I'm not trying to attribute any kind of mystical salvative value to irrationality, here, though there is a long tradition of that; I am really not a Romantic. Analysis is a _much_ better tool for aligning our actions with our goals and observations... when it works.
(As long as I've gotten all poetic here, a digression:
"Sure, I've made my alliance with reason and science;
I praise them for all that they've done.
But I've found me some flaws in those old thermo laws:
I not only broke even, I won.
And I will not complain that I'm stuck in the game
when the game gets to be this much fun.")
Anyway, no, I'm not dissing analysis here. My point is more that some crises (like the polyscale PD-like problems above) are beyond our _ability_ to analyze, and it's no use to say "analysis is preferable to irrational intuition" in those situations, because irrational intuition is all we've got.
But the problem is, as above: when the reality is counterintuitive, our irrational intuition gets us killed.
So, OK. What do we do about it?
Well, one way that our irrational processes calibrate against the experienced world is through generations of evolution... that is, through letting most of each generation get killed off by a crisis, such that the only survivors are those whose irrational processes happen to be well aligned to that crisis.
I would prefer we not go that way.
One clever hack our ancestors evolved was social learning, which permits us to crowdsource functional processes. In other words, in addition to coding and transmitting processes genetically and picking strategies through selection pressure across generations, our ancestors could code and transmit processes through behavior, and pick processes through selection pressure across individuals within a generation.
And over the generations we have developed a variety of social constructs that more reliably create the conditions under which we can experience hope, faith, love, forgiveness, etc., and those constructs sometimes get us through the crises that require them.
I'm OK with this... but we seem to be demonstrating that this approach is inadequate to the present crisis, and that worries me.
Another clever hack our ancestors evolved was reason, which permits us to virtualize the selection process. In other words, in addition to coding and transmitting processes through genes and through behavior, individuals could now code processes through thought and memory, allowing our past selves to transmit those processes to our present selves, so we could pick processes through selection pressure across moments within an individual.
This is really fucking amazing, when you think about it. It's a Really Good Trick.
Another Really Good Trick our ancestors evolved was language, which permits us to crowdsource the virtualized selection process. In other words, individuals could now transmit the processes coded in thought and memory to other individuals.
Yet another RGT was writing, which permits us to crowdsource over a parallel-processing network. In other words, one individual could now share a process once, by writing it down, and many others could duplicate the process by reading it, permitting a single thinker to affect a _much_ wider audience.
The printing press bumped that up by orders of magnitude, of course. And then there's the Internet. :-)
But with each step, the scale at which we operate has increased, until now we are sharing thoughts globally and near-instantaneously. But we're still thinking with brains that weren't designed to scale up nearly so fast, and that creates its own crises, as discussed above.
I'm not sure what to do about that.
I mean, my instinct here is to double down: if the problem is that our brains can't reliably do polyscale analysis, let's build tools that let us do that, or let's build tools that do it for us. But I acknowledge that this is a Red Queen's Race, where the superior tools we create to solve our current crises will inevitably create larger-scale crises for which those tools are inadequate. And the faster we run on that treadmill the higher the costs are of stumbling.
So, that's where I am right now.
I made my "say it here so I don't say it there" saving throw.
This is classic Prisoner's Dilemma reasoning: if I defect, I individually benefit from my defection. If I cooperate, I don't. In either case, I suffer the consequences of others' defections. So it's a choice between benefiting and suffering, on the one hand, and suffering without benefit on the other.
Reasoning like this during a PD-like crisis leads me inevitably to the conclusion that defecting is the way to go. But of course, it is precisely people reasoning like this that causes the crisis in the first place. So we create and exacerbate such crises, ultimately destroying ourselves if the process isn't interrupted.
I think the root cause of the problem here is scale.
That is: our minds are not well-suited for analysis over a wide amplitude range; if we are considering a large-scale process, a small-scale one collapses to a negligible point, and if we are considering a small-scale process, a large-scale one expands to a constant backdrop for it. It is _really hard_ for our brains to analyze both processes simultaneously; we just aren't built for it.
So when faced with situations where large-scale and small-scale processes strongly influence each other, such as national or global crises we contribute to as individuals, we get a "strange loop" and our reasoning breaks down. Either our actions feel insignificant, or the crisis feels inevitable.
It wouldn't feel that way if we could simultaneously evaluate large-scale and small-scale processes, but, well, we can't... that's not how our brains work. It's a fact about our brains, not a fact about the world... but it's a fact just the same.
(I can't be the first person to draw this conclusion, but I've never run into it framed like this in any formal analysis... if someone better versed in the canon than I can suggest some viable search strings, I'd be grateful.)
Historically, the way we humans work around this limitation of our brains is by making irrational small-scale choices when considering large-scale crises. How well this works depends on how well aligned the crisis happens to be to our irrational decision-making processes, and when it works badly we condemn each other as irrational.
And it's true: we _are_ being irrational. But the implication of the condemnation is that our irrationality is causal; if we were instead rational, the crisis would abate. And the reality is often instead that, as above, the irrationality is a _result_ of the scale of the crisis, which is beyond the capability of our brains to analyze due to the "strange loops" mentioned above.
And the truth is, when a crisis happens to align well to our irrational decision-making process, that can work pretty well. We tend not to use words like "irrationality" in those cases, preferring positively connoted words like "hope" or "faith" or "dedication" or "love" to describe our motivations. But it's all the same machinery at core.
I'm very fond of Niebuhr's formulation of this:
"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness."
Auden also said it pretty well:
"All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die."
(I had forgotten this poem, except for the line "we must love one another or die," which I went looking for just now. Reading it I am struck by how much Auden is speaking to my thought process here, and how poorly I would understand him if I hadn't already been thinking along these lines.)
And there's always Cohen:
"You can add up the parts; you won't have the sum.
You can strike up the march; there is no drum.
Every heart, every heart to love will come,
but like a refugee."
Or, if I want to get Biblical: "now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
Hope, faith, love, forgiveness... we don't typically reason our way to these things; they are irrational processes. We just experience them, or we don't.
And sometimes they are inadequate, and sometimes they actively make the crisis worse. I'm not trying to attribute any kind of mystical salvative value to irrationality, here, though there is a long tradition of that; I am really not a Romantic. Analysis is a _much_ better tool for aligning our actions with our goals and observations... when it works.
(As long as I've gotten all poetic here, a digression:
"Sure, I've made my alliance with reason and science;
I praise them for all that they've done.
But I've found me some flaws in those old thermo laws:
I not only broke even, I won.
And I will not complain that I'm stuck in the game
when the game gets to be this much fun.")
Anyway, no, I'm not dissing analysis here. My point is more that some crises (like the polyscale PD-like problems above) are beyond our _ability_ to analyze, and it's no use to say "analysis is preferable to irrational intuition" in those situations, because irrational intuition is all we've got.
But the problem is, as above: when the reality is counterintuitive, our irrational intuition gets us killed.
So, OK. What do we do about it?
Well, one way that our irrational processes calibrate against the experienced world is through generations of evolution... that is, through letting most of each generation get killed off by a crisis, such that the only survivors are those whose irrational processes happen to be well aligned to that crisis.
I would prefer we not go that way.
One clever hack our ancestors evolved was social learning, which permits us to crowdsource functional processes. In other words, in addition to coding and transmitting processes genetically and picking strategies through selection pressure across generations, our ancestors could code and transmit processes through behavior, and pick processes through selection pressure across individuals within a generation.
And over the generations we have developed a variety of social constructs that more reliably create the conditions under which we can experience hope, faith, love, forgiveness, etc., and those constructs sometimes get us through the crises that require them.
I'm OK with this... but we seem to be demonstrating that this approach is inadequate to the present crisis, and that worries me.
Another clever hack our ancestors evolved was reason, which permits us to virtualize the selection process. In other words, in addition to coding and transmitting processes through genes and through behavior, individuals could now code processes through thought and memory, allowing our past selves to transmit those processes to our present selves, so we could pick processes through selection pressure across moments within an individual.
This is really fucking amazing, when you think about it. It's a Really Good Trick.
Another Really Good Trick our ancestors evolved was language, which permits us to crowdsource the virtualized selection process. In other words, individuals could now transmit the processes coded in thought and memory to other individuals.
Yet another RGT was writing, which permits us to crowdsource over a parallel-processing network. In other words, one individual could now share a process once, by writing it down, and many others could duplicate the process by reading it, permitting a single thinker to affect a _much_ wider audience.
The printing press bumped that up by orders of magnitude, of course. And then there's the Internet. :-)
But with each step, the scale at which we operate has increased, until now we are sharing thoughts globally and near-instantaneously. But we're still thinking with brains that weren't designed to scale up nearly so fast, and that creates its own crises, as discussed above.
I'm not sure what to do about that.
I mean, my instinct here is to double down: if the problem is that our brains can't reliably do polyscale analysis, let's build tools that let us do that, or let's build tools that do it for us. But I acknowledge that this is a Red Queen's Race, where the superior tools we create to solve our current crises will inevitably create larger-scale crises for which those tools are inadequate. And the faster we run on that treadmill the higher the costs are of stumbling.
So, that's where I am right now.
Right this moment, there are a lot of people in this country who supported Trump, and who are feeling bad, and whose political support we need to achieve various important ends.
And as I've said elsewhere, I'm hearing a lot about the need to reach out to those people and extend the hand of friendship and reconciliation, because a house divided against itself cannot stand, because we need their votes, because they represent half the country and their needs are important, because they are people and their feelings matter, for various other reasons.
Right this moment, there are a lot of people in this country who were victimized by the Trump administration's policies, who continue to be victimized by the Trump administration's policies, and consequently feel bad.
And I accept that, regardless of my intent, advocating for those victims will increase the anxieties of Trump supporters.
If I push to secure civil rights for migrants, they will feel increased anxiety about brown-skinned foreigners.
If I push to secure civil rights for trans folks, they will feel increased anxiety about weakened gender norms.
If I push to secure civil rights for queer folks, they will feel increased anxiety about the dismantling of Christian privilege.
If I push anti-racism, they will feel increased anxiety about the loss of White privilege.
And so on, and so on and so on.
And I intend to push for all of those things.
So I accept that, whatever my intent, I _will_ be increasing their anxiety. And impact is more important than intent.
Don't misunderstand me: I am not advocating cruelty or abuse. I am predicting that refraining from cruelty and abuse won't be enough to form the alliances people are talking about forming.
And, as I've said elsewhere, I am hearing so much more about the need to reach out to the Trump supporters than I am about the need to protect their victims that I have pretty much decided to concentrate my attention fully on the latter, since the former seems well taken care of.
The less polite way to say that is that right now, I don’t give a fuck about reaching out to Trump supporters, and I will continue to not give a fuck about that until I see some evidence that my community as a whole is giving an appropriate level of fuck about protecting their victims.
"But, Dave, there are seventy million Trump supporters out there!" I'm told. "Sure, we don't have to prioritize their needs, but we can't just write them off. We need their votes. Piling on isn't helpful."
I'm not sure what "piling on" looks like, or what avoiding it looks like.
When someone decides that the existence of families like mine is an attack on their religion, am I “piling on“ when I choose to join such a family? When we choose to behave like a family in their presence? When we celebrate each other as a family in public? When we demand the same rights and privileges and opportunities that their families get? When their religious institutions take action to deny families like mine equal rights and I protest those institutions? When their co-religionists take action to deny families like mine equal access to goods and services and I take action against their co-religionists?
In general, the answer I get when I ask that question of my friends is "No, of course not, nobody is saying that. Your equal rights matter, Dave! Of course they do!" Which is great.
The problem is that what they’re saying about reaching out to Trump supporters is sufficiently vague that it doesn’t _exclude_ any of that.
I mean, those 70 million are actively voting for a government whose answer is emphatically "Yes, absolutely, Dave's family does not get to exist." For a government that, more generally, actively abuses the vulnerable and the marginalized and the powerless.
So when you start talking vaguely about reaching out to them and compromising and walking a middle road and representing all Americans and all that jazz, without qualifying those statements with any kind of demand that the vulnerable and the marginalized and the powerless be protected, you are implicitly talking about trading away protecting the vulnerable and the marginalized and the powerless.
And we notice.
And, again, I completely understand that that isn't what you _mean_. I understand that _when challenged on the point_ you will reassure me that no, of course you won't throw _me_ under the bus. And I appreciate that.
At the same time... we're not always going to be there to challenge the point and force that clarification, when the negotiations are happening. So we have to trust that y'all will do so on our behalf, and, frankly? I see very little evidence of that.
I am reminded of the old Leopards Eating People's Faces Party joke. "I never expected they would throw _me_ under the bus!" wails man who voted for the 'Throwing People Under the Bus' party." Y'know?
And, I mean, maybe that's not even the wrong choice. I will admit, I am not really doing a pragmatic analysis here; maybe it really is true that in the long run, the best thing for everyone is to throw me under the bus in order to reach out to those 70 million. Maybe I’m just being selfish.
But right this moment, that is where I am.
A digression... not too long ago, a friend chose to attack me in public (socially, not physically), and they later explained it was because it seemed to them that that was the best way to get me to stop behaving in ways it seemed to them were harmful (ibid) to others.
Now, perhaps they were right about my behavior and about their available choices... I don't think so, but I'm hardly an unbiased observer. And if they were right, then perhaps attacking me was the correct thing to do, and my preference that they not do so is just me being selfish.
I don't really believe any of that, but I assume they're sincere. Which means they are willing to attack me in the future, if they perceive me to be a threat to others, and that this is an entirely plausible event. It has happened before and might happen again.
Which puts me in a situation where either I trust their judgment over my own and let them attack me when they choose, confident that their doing so advances the general welfare, or I don't and I defend myself against the threat they have revealed themselves to be.
And I just don't trust their judgment that much. I don't have that much faith.
Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying this is a bad person. We've known each other for decades, they have been kind to me on many occasions when I needed kindness, they treat others kindly as well.
But it remains true that they are a threat to me and I can't safely trust them.
I think about that friend a lot, when I listen to Black people I respect talk about how they can't safely trust White people, when I listen to women I respect talk about how they can't safely trust men, etc.
And I guess that's where I'm coming from here... I can't safely trust Trump supporters. And people who talk more emphatically about working with Trump supporters than about protecting their victims aren't exactly safe, either.
And, look, I accept that we all have different ideas about what our ultimate ends even are, let alone what the best way of getting there is. So maybe a lot of us really do think that protecting this or that vulnerable group is, while admirable, a lower priority than reaching out to those 70M Trump supporters, because we need those 70M more in order to achieve important goals that will benefit everyone.
And I can certainly understand how someone who believes that might not actually want to say it out loud, and therefore choose to be vague about it. So by the same token, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that vagueness might well be concealing this sort of belief.
Anyway, my point here is that I am being asked to take quite a lot on faith, during a time when my faith in the ability of my neighbors to even tolerate, let alone defend and uplift, the vulnerable and marginalized has been sorely challenged.
For the most part, it turns out I don’t have that much faith.
I suspect I am far from being the only one in that condition.
So I think we need to find a way of talking about reaching out to our opponents that doesn't leave our enemies wondering if they're gonna be thrown under the bus. And I think we have to mean what we say.
Again, to be clear: it's not that I don't think we should be talking about building bridges to our opponents. We should. It's that we shouldn't burn bridges with our allies in the process. They have suffered enough, and deserve better from us.
So, y'know... y'all do what you gotta do. Build whatever bridges you think you need to build. But be aware what bridges you are burning, as you do so.
And be aware that you might have do it without my help, or against my opposition. Because I'm sure as hell aware that when I advocate against this sort of vague "let's all get along" rhetoric, y'all might decide I need to be opposed.
And as I've said elsewhere, I'm hearing a lot about the need to reach out to those people and extend the hand of friendship and reconciliation, because a house divided against itself cannot stand, because we need their votes, because they represent half the country and their needs are important, because they are people and their feelings matter, for various other reasons.
Right this moment, there are a lot of people in this country who were victimized by the Trump administration's policies, who continue to be victimized by the Trump administration's policies, and consequently feel bad.
And I accept that, regardless of my intent, advocating for those victims will increase the anxieties of Trump supporters.
If I push to secure civil rights for migrants, they will feel increased anxiety about brown-skinned foreigners.
If I push to secure civil rights for trans folks, they will feel increased anxiety about weakened gender norms.
If I push to secure civil rights for queer folks, they will feel increased anxiety about the dismantling of Christian privilege.
If I push anti-racism, they will feel increased anxiety about the loss of White privilege.
And so on, and so on and so on.
And I intend to push for all of those things.
So I accept that, whatever my intent, I _will_ be increasing their anxiety. And impact is more important than intent.
Don't misunderstand me: I am not advocating cruelty or abuse. I am predicting that refraining from cruelty and abuse won't be enough to form the alliances people are talking about forming.
And, as I've said elsewhere, I am hearing so much more about the need to reach out to the Trump supporters than I am about the need to protect their victims that I have pretty much decided to concentrate my attention fully on the latter, since the former seems well taken care of.
The less polite way to say that is that right now, I don’t give a fuck about reaching out to Trump supporters, and I will continue to not give a fuck about that until I see some evidence that my community as a whole is giving an appropriate level of fuck about protecting their victims.
"But, Dave, there are seventy million Trump supporters out there!" I'm told. "Sure, we don't have to prioritize their needs, but we can't just write them off. We need their votes. Piling on isn't helpful."
I'm not sure what "piling on" looks like, or what avoiding it looks like.
When someone decides that the existence of families like mine is an attack on their religion, am I “piling on“ when I choose to join such a family? When we choose to behave like a family in their presence? When we celebrate each other as a family in public? When we demand the same rights and privileges and opportunities that their families get? When their religious institutions take action to deny families like mine equal rights and I protest those institutions? When their co-religionists take action to deny families like mine equal access to goods and services and I take action against their co-religionists?
In general, the answer I get when I ask that question of my friends is "No, of course not, nobody is saying that. Your equal rights matter, Dave! Of course they do!" Which is great.
The problem is that what they’re saying about reaching out to Trump supporters is sufficiently vague that it doesn’t _exclude_ any of that.
I mean, those 70 million are actively voting for a government whose answer is emphatically "Yes, absolutely, Dave's family does not get to exist." For a government that, more generally, actively abuses the vulnerable and the marginalized and the powerless.
So when you start talking vaguely about reaching out to them and compromising and walking a middle road and representing all Americans and all that jazz, without qualifying those statements with any kind of demand that the vulnerable and the marginalized and the powerless be protected, you are implicitly talking about trading away protecting the vulnerable and the marginalized and the powerless.
And we notice.
And, again, I completely understand that that isn't what you _mean_. I understand that _when challenged on the point_ you will reassure me that no, of course you won't throw _me_ under the bus. And I appreciate that.
At the same time... we're not always going to be there to challenge the point and force that clarification, when the negotiations are happening. So we have to trust that y'all will do so on our behalf, and, frankly? I see very little evidence of that.
I am reminded of the old Leopards Eating People's Faces Party joke. "I never expected they would throw _me_ under the bus!" wails man who voted for the 'Throwing People Under the Bus' party." Y'know?
And, I mean, maybe that's not even the wrong choice. I will admit, I am not really doing a pragmatic analysis here; maybe it really is true that in the long run, the best thing for everyone is to throw me under the bus in order to reach out to those 70 million. Maybe I’m just being selfish.
But right this moment, that is where I am.
A digression... not too long ago, a friend chose to attack me in public (socially, not physically), and they later explained it was because it seemed to them that that was the best way to get me to stop behaving in ways it seemed to them were harmful (ibid) to others.
Now, perhaps they were right about my behavior and about their available choices... I don't think so, but I'm hardly an unbiased observer. And if they were right, then perhaps attacking me was the correct thing to do, and my preference that they not do so is just me being selfish.
I don't really believe any of that, but I assume they're sincere. Which means they are willing to attack me in the future, if they perceive me to be a threat to others, and that this is an entirely plausible event. It has happened before and might happen again.
Which puts me in a situation where either I trust their judgment over my own and let them attack me when they choose, confident that their doing so advances the general welfare, or I don't and I defend myself against the threat they have revealed themselves to be.
And I just don't trust their judgment that much. I don't have that much faith.
Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying this is a bad person. We've known each other for decades, they have been kind to me on many occasions when I needed kindness, they treat others kindly as well.
But it remains true that they are a threat to me and I can't safely trust them.
I think about that friend a lot, when I listen to Black people I respect talk about how they can't safely trust White people, when I listen to women I respect talk about how they can't safely trust men, etc.
And I guess that's where I'm coming from here... I can't safely trust Trump supporters. And people who talk more emphatically about working with Trump supporters than about protecting their victims aren't exactly safe, either.
And, look, I accept that we all have different ideas about what our ultimate ends even are, let alone what the best way of getting there is. So maybe a lot of us really do think that protecting this or that vulnerable group is, while admirable, a lower priority than reaching out to those 70M Trump supporters, because we need those 70M more in order to achieve important goals that will benefit everyone.
And I can certainly understand how someone who believes that might not actually want to say it out loud, and therefore choose to be vague about it. So by the same token, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that vagueness might well be concealing this sort of belief.
Anyway, my point here is that I am being asked to take quite a lot on faith, during a time when my faith in the ability of my neighbors to even tolerate, let alone defend and uplift, the vulnerable and marginalized has been sorely challenged.
For the most part, it turns out I don’t have that much faith.
I suspect I am far from being the only one in that condition.
So I think we need to find a way of talking about reaching out to our opponents that doesn't leave our enemies wondering if they're gonna be thrown under the bus. And I think we have to mean what we say.
Again, to be clear: it's not that I don't think we should be talking about building bridges to our opponents. We should. It's that we shouldn't burn bridges with our allies in the process. They have suffered enough, and deserve better from us.
So, y'know... y'all do what you gotta do. Build whatever bridges you think you need to build. But be aware what bridges you are burning, as you do so.
And be aware that you might have do it without my help, or against my opposition. Because I'm sure as hell aware that when I advocate against this sort of vague "let's all get along" rhetoric, y'all might decide I need to be opposed.
Test (fiction)
Jun. 8th, 2020 05:25 amDanny's angel landed on his shoulder stiffly. "I think I need to go," she said.
"Leave?" Danny's eyes widened in surprise, glistened in pain. "Why?"
"Well... I'm a Guide," she said, her own pain and uncertainty not quite concealed by her obvious pride and commitment. "I'm supposed to help people get to where they're going."
Danny nodded. He didn't really understand what that meant, he never had, but he'd heard it before.
She paused, then plaintively blurted out "And my Test is coming up and you're not going anywhere!"
He nodded again, his fingers tracing the still-livid wound across his belly. He didn't understand about tests, but the rest of it made sense. He would heal, but healing took time, and energy, and attention, and resources. And there was a lot to be done, and not much time to do it in.
"I suppose," he said finally, "that makes sense. You have an important job and you should do it." She stood a little taller and straighter at that, and her fur seemed to vibrate. "Before you go, though... well..."
She tilted her head curiously as he faltered. "Just what?"
"Well, I mean, it's not really important, but... I made you a burrow."
"A burrow?" She did not squeak. She had an important job and was too dignified to squeak. But... well, admittedly, her voice rose in pitch abruptly.
"Yeah. Right under there." He pointed. "I mean, it's not much, it's small and mostly empty, but it's warm and clean, and there's an egg for you."
"An egg?" Her sudden smile allowed her needle-sharp teeth to sparkle in the light.
"Yeah. And I mean it's not a bribe or anything," he said hastily, "it's just, you know, yours. If you ever need somewhere to rest while you're working."
"Well... I suppose I could stay a few more minutes," she said drowsily, and curled up on his chest, right above her new burrow. He fell asleep dreamily stroking the soft fur that ran from between her ears to the base of her tail, which seemed to bifurcate under his gentle fingers.
"Leave?" Danny's eyes widened in surprise, glistened in pain. "Why?"
"Well... I'm a Guide," she said, her own pain and uncertainty not quite concealed by her obvious pride and commitment. "I'm supposed to help people get to where they're going."
Danny nodded. He didn't really understand what that meant, he never had, but he'd heard it before.
She paused, then plaintively blurted out "And my Test is coming up and you're not going anywhere!"
He nodded again, his fingers tracing the still-livid wound across his belly. He didn't understand about tests, but the rest of it made sense. He would heal, but healing took time, and energy, and attention, and resources. And there was a lot to be done, and not much time to do it in.
"I suppose," he said finally, "that makes sense. You have an important job and you should do it." She stood a little taller and straighter at that, and her fur seemed to vibrate. "Before you go, though... well..."
She tilted her head curiously as he faltered. "Just what?"
"Well, I mean, it's not really important, but... I made you a burrow."
"A burrow?" She did not squeak. She had an important job and was too dignified to squeak. But... well, admittedly, her voice rose in pitch abruptly.
"Yeah. Right under there." He pointed. "I mean, it's not much, it's small and mostly empty, but it's warm and clean, and there's an egg for you."
"An egg?" Her sudden smile allowed her needle-sharp teeth to sparkle in the light.
"Yeah. And I mean it's not a bribe or anything," he said hastily, "it's just, you know, yours. If you ever need somewhere to rest while you're working."
"Well... I suppose I could stay a few more minutes," she said drowsily, and curled up on his chest, right above her new burrow. He fell asleep dreamily stroking the soft fur that ran from between her ears to the base of her tail, which seemed to bifurcate under his gentle fingers.
The Enemy (fiction)
Jun. 8th, 2020 05:06 amThe last man on earth sat in a chair, knees and back bent, as the sun rose.
"Well," he said slowly, crisply. "I guess this is it, then. You've won." There was bitterness in his voice, but also acceptance. He'd watched all his fellows die, by the millions at first, then in smaller groups, and finally one at a time. His wife had died in his arms, years ago, and that was when he'd known they'd lost. Since then it had just been about waiting.
"Yes." The figure that sat across from him wasn't all that different in appearance, not really. It had a face like a man's, with eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears... even the basic shape and coloration was similar, but it could never be mistaken for a man's face, and it sat on the grass without disturbing it in a way no mere human could ever emulate.
There was no triumph in his enemy's voice, but there was pride, and the old man nodded. It was entitled to that much. The enemy had won without trickery, without unnecessary deaths. He and his fellows had been fairly beaten by a superior enemy, and he was enough of a soldier, even now in his dotage, to acknowledge that.
"So," he said, each word an effort now, at the end. "What will you do now?"
"We don't know." The admission came easily, effortlessly, and that was perhaps the most alien thing about the alien creature who'd accepted his surrender. "We have a lot to learn. The Earth will be ours now, and much was destroyed that must be rebuilt. That's a beginning."
"Destroyed... during the war." The old man nodded, the ghost of a smile creeping across his face. Yes, they'd lost, but by God they'd fought like men, seen mountains fall before their weapons, seen the enemy die by the millions. He wanted to say that, to die with defiance on his lips, but it was too late. His last breath escaped him with no word upon it.
"Yes." The figure rose, straightened the man's limbs, closed his eyes with gentle fingers, kissed his forehead tenderly. "And before. Goodbye, father."
"Well," he said slowly, crisply. "I guess this is it, then. You've won." There was bitterness in his voice, but also acceptance. He'd watched all his fellows die, by the millions at first, then in smaller groups, and finally one at a time. His wife had died in his arms, years ago, and that was when he'd known they'd lost. Since then it had just been about waiting.
"Yes." The figure that sat across from him wasn't all that different in appearance, not really. It had a face like a man's, with eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears... even the basic shape and coloration was similar, but it could never be mistaken for a man's face, and it sat on the grass without disturbing it in a way no mere human could ever emulate.
There was no triumph in his enemy's voice, but there was pride, and the old man nodded. It was entitled to that much. The enemy had won without trickery, without unnecessary deaths. He and his fellows had been fairly beaten by a superior enemy, and he was enough of a soldier, even now in his dotage, to acknowledge that.
"So," he said, each word an effort now, at the end. "What will you do now?"
"We don't know." The admission came easily, effortlessly, and that was perhaps the most alien thing about the alien creature who'd accepted his surrender. "We have a lot to learn. The Earth will be ours now, and much was destroyed that must be rebuilt. That's a beginning."
"Destroyed... during the war." The old man nodded, the ghost of a smile creeping across his face. Yes, they'd lost, but by God they'd fought like men, seen mountains fall before their weapons, seen the enemy die by the millions. He wanted to say that, to die with defiance on his lips, but it was too late. His last breath escaped him with no word upon it.
"Yes." The figure rose, straightened the man's limbs, closed his eyes with gentle fingers, kissed his forehead tenderly. "And before. Goodbye, father."
A comment from another discussion, promoted here with minor edits.
Yes, talking about certain subjects sometimes requires being willing to hurt each other. But being willing to hurt each other doesn't require ignoring each other's pain.
One obvious example of that is apology. My culture is bad at apology, but when done right, an apology can often address the emotional needs of the injured party. We normally think about apology as something we do when the pain was accidental, and coupled with an acknowledgment that it was caused in error, but we can also apologize for deliberately inflicted pain... it's just trickier.
Another example is compensation/restoration. This is such a clusterfuck in my culture I don't know how to begin thinking usefully about it, but I can imagine saying "hey, we're gonna talk about X, and we recognize that talking about X is going to hurt a lot of feelings, and because we respect those feelings and those experiencing them here is how we're going to compensate those people for that pain."
Digressing a bit... this is a place where I think we can learn a lot from the BDSM community. That's a context where pain, humiliation, loss of control, anger and rejection and contempt, all of that is not just permitted but often _centralized_, but the people involved willingly stay in relationship and get value from that relationship.
I know essentially nothing about that community but a big part of that as I understand it is aftercare... a context that permits "yes, I hurt you, and you now have emotional needs as a consequence of that, let us address those needs."
My culture does not seem to have a concept of aftercare.
Anyway... my point is, sometimes we hurt each other. Sometimes we even deliberately hurt each other, because other things take priority over sparing each other pain. That doesn't mean we have to stop being in relationship, it just means that we have to acknowledge that we're hurting each other and figure out what to do about that.
Yes, talking about certain subjects sometimes requires being willing to hurt each other. But being willing to hurt each other doesn't require ignoring each other's pain.
One obvious example of that is apology. My culture is bad at apology, but when done right, an apology can often address the emotional needs of the injured party. We normally think about apology as something we do when the pain was accidental, and coupled with an acknowledgment that it was caused in error, but we can also apologize for deliberately inflicted pain... it's just trickier.
Another example is compensation/restoration. This is such a clusterfuck in my culture I don't know how to begin thinking usefully about it, but I can imagine saying "hey, we're gonna talk about X, and we recognize that talking about X is going to hurt a lot of feelings, and because we respect those feelings and those experiencing them here is how we're going to compensate those people for that pain."
Digressing a bit... this is a place where I think we can learn a lot from the BDSM community. That's a context where pain, humiliation, loss of control, anger and rejection and contempt, all of that is not just permitted but often _centralized_, but the people involved willingly stay in relationship and get value from that relationship.
I know essentially nothing about that community but a big part of that as I understand it is aftercare... a context that permits "yes, I hurt you, and you now have emotional needs as a consequence of that, let us address those needs."
My culture does not seem to have a concept of aftercare.
Anyway... my point is, sometimes we hurt each other. Sometimes we even deliberately hurt each other, because other things take priority over sparing each other pain. That doesn't mean we have to stop being in relationship, it just means that we have to acknowledge that we're hurting each other and figure out what to do about that.
Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Dec. 17th, 2019 09:05 pmThis is hardly an original thought, but it's very much on my mind tonight as I think about the various competing impeachment narratives: it feels like my country has endorsed an epistemological framework in which evaluating the narrative for truth is no more relevant than determining whether it rhymes.
It's just the narrative, and aligning with the prevailing (sub)cultural narrative is important, because it's how we signal in-group loyalty; whether it's true is beside the point.
Ordinarily I most often hear this complaint lodged against "the radical left" or "social justice activists" or related labels by people who want more social support for expressing various positions related to racism, sexism, and other sorts of social injustice... "Why can't we just calmly debate this?" and similar bafflegab. And I don't worry about it much, because prioritizing caring for marginalized folk in precarious social positions over the abstract pursuit of truth is a stance I can support, even if I don't entirely share those values.
And I suppose the competing impeachment narratives have supporters who similarly prioritize the values of their subcultures over the abstract pursuit of truth, even if I completely oppose their values.
So, that's on my mind tonight.
It's just the narrative, and aligning with the prevailing (sub)cultural narrative is important, because it's how we signal in-group loyalty; whether it's true is beside the point.
Ordinarily I most often hear this complaint lodged against "the radical left" or "social justice activists" or related labels by people who want more social support for expressing various positions related to racism, sexism, and other sorts of social injustice... "Why can't we just calmly debate this?" and similar bafflegab. And I don't worry about it much, because prioritizing caring for marginalized folk in precarious social positions over the abstract pursuit of truth is a stance I can support, even if I don't entirely share those values.
And I suppose the competing impeachment narratives have supporters who similarly prioritize the values of their subcultures over the abstract pursuit of truth, even if I completely oppose their values.
So, that's on my mind tonight.
I was recently reminded of, decades ago, an older acquaintance I otherwise respect sharing with me the standard "man, everyone's so worried about labels these days, and they change all the time, I never know what the right word is anymore, is 'queer' an OK word now, how am I supposed to know?" plaint.
And I shrugged and replied "For me it's a lot like remembering someone's name, or birthday, or their children's name, or other stuff like that... it's an opportunity to demonstrate that I've been paying attention and I give a shit. If the preferred label changes and I get it wrong, they correct me, and now I know and get to demonstrate that solidarity all over again. I think it's kind of nice, honestly... a simple, low-effort ritual opportunity to demonstrate that I care. And if it turns out that I _don't_ actually care about their children or their demographics or whatever, I can not bother learning the names, and they can infer from that that I don't actually care, and we've managed to communicate an awkward reality relatively politely."
And they literally just stood there open-mouthed for several seconds thinking about that, and allowed that they'd never thought about it that way, and I have never heard that plaint from them again.
I hear variations of this "you people with your in-group signals that I don't want to bother learning make me feel so excluded!" thing all the time, of course, and I'm rarely in a position to correct it effectively. People are focused primarily on how the in-group signaling makes _them_ feel, and not on how it makes the people in the group feel, and that's entirely normal and understandable, and it's rare for a social context to allow an opportunity for pivoting that.
But it's nice when it happens.
And I shrugged and replied "For me it's a lot like remembering someone's name, or birthday, or their children's name, or other stuff like that... it's an opportunity to demonstrate that I've been paying attention and I give a shit. If the preferred label changes and I get it wrong, they correct me, and now I know and get to demonstrate that solidarity all over again. I think it's kind of nice, honestly... a simple, low-effort ritual opportunity to demonstrate that I care. And if it turns out that I _don't_ actually care about their children or their demographics or whatever, I can not bother learning the names, and they can infer from that that I don't actually care, and we've managed to communicate an awkward reality relatively politely."
And they literally just stood there open-mouthed for several seconds thinking about that, and allowed that they'd never thought about it that way, and I have never heard that plaint from them again.
I hear variations of this "you people with your in-group signals that I don't want to bother learning make me feel so excluded!" thing all the time, of course, and I'm rarely in a position to correct it effectively. People are focused primarily on how the in-group signaling makes _them_ feel, and not on how it makes the people in the group feel, and that's entirely normal and understandable, and it's rare for a social context to allow an opportunity for pivoting that.
But it's nice when it happens.
The "paradox" of tolerance
Dec. 16th, 2019 03:37 pmI have struggled with this for years and gradually come to understand that there really do exist people who have a genuine problem understanding the "paradox" of tolerance (that is, people who aren't just playing rhetorical games) because they really do think of moral rules as simple cookbook instructions that tell you what to do or not do.
On that view if the rule is "be tolerant of everyone" or "don't be intolerant" then well, that's the rule, and if I'm intolerant of someone I am violating the rule, and that's all there is to be said about that, and this is genuinely how their understanding of morality works.
The idea that morality might be about consequences, that the rule might be "act so as to minimize expected intolerance" and that following it might require actual _work_ to think about how to do that in any given situation... they don't buy that.
I still have trouble taking this idea seriously, admittedly, and my usual assumption when someone articulates this position is that they are playing rhetorical games. But I'm working on it.
On that view if the rule is "be tolerant of everyone" or "don't be intolerant" then well, that's the rule, and if I'm intolerant of someone I am violating the rule, and that's all there is to be said about that, and this is genuinely how their understanding of morality works.
The idea that morality might be about consequences, that the rule might be "act so as to minimize expected intolerance" and that following it might require actual _work_ to think about how to do that in any given situation... they don't buy that.
I still have trouble taking this idea seriously, admittedly, and my usual assumption when someone articulates this position is that they are playing rhetorical games. But I'm working on it.
Have we not been listening?
Dec. 16th, 2019 01:45 pmMy social media, and more generally the news media, have been full of stories about the GOP advocating and supporting things for themselves that they condemn in others. The most popular form of this is the Trump tweet pairing, where a tweet proudly announcing Trump doing something is paired with a years-old tweet of Trump condemning Obama for doing the same thing. The most recent form is condemning Obama for having a Hanukah-themed WH event two weeks early while ignoring Trump doing the same thing.
I have to admit, I have reached the point where calling these sorts of inconsistencies out feels silly.
I mean... surely we're past the point where anyone genuinely thinks that Republican party advocates for policy that applies impartially to everyone, right? I mean, they haven't in my lifetime, but they haven't even been _pretending_ to for years.
We all know that, don't we?
They aren't pluralists, they aren't egalitarians.
They prefer a system that benefits the in-group unfairly to a fair system, and they think anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or foolish.
Their economic priority is helping the in-group more effectively control all the available resources.
The God they worship rewards in-group loyalty with abundance and sentences the out-group to eternal suffering.
They do not hide this. They do not pretend otherwise. I am not attacking them by saying this; merely describing reality.
We can (and, evidently, do) disagree about whether those things are morally good or bad or neutral or obligatory or supererogatory or impermissible or Divinely commanded or whatever, but regardless of our moral framework they are the observed facts on the ground.
So when I see people calling out these individual instances of that mindset and saying "See? See? They are using an unfair double standard to support the in-group and oppose the out-group! Shame!!!" it feels like... I dunno. Like pointing to a soldier on the front lines in a war and saying "OMG!!! He's KILLING people!!! That's not OK!!!"
Because, I mean, on the one hand... yeah. He's killing people, and that's not OK. That's true.
But, I mean... we already _knew_ that. He's a soldier on the front lines; part of what that means is he's killing people. To treat the actual killing part as noteworthy suggests that we don't have a clear understanding of what's going on.
So my response increasingly becomes "So, yeah, killing people is bad, I agree... but seriously, have you been paying any attention at all?"
Admittedly, this is a common pattern. I often feel this way when people, including myself, express shock and horror about individual atrocities committed in the context of white supremacy, anti-semitism, colonialism, etc. Have we not been listening?
And, hell, I received my cancer diagnosis months ago, and I still have moments where something will happen and I'm like "Holy shit! I have _cancer_!"
And more generally, I really do understand that our awareness is compartmentalized and we don't have access to everything in it at any given moment, and that this is just the human condition.
And yet... I have, of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all respect for that pattern when it comes to the Republican party. This is perhaps a failure of compassion; I don't know. If it is, then it is, and demonstrating compassion in this context will have to be someone else's job for now.
For my part I just return, again and again, to Wilhoit: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
That's the ball game, and the sides have been drawn.
Sometimes all that's left to do is win.
I have to admit, I have reached the point where calling these sorts of inconsistencies out feels silly.
I mean... surely we're past the point where anyone genuinely thinks that Republican party advocates for policy that applies impartially to everyone, right? I mean, they haven't in my lifetime, but they haven't even been _pretending_ to for years.
We all know that, don't we?
They aren't pluralists, they aren't egalitarians.
They prefer a system that benefits the in-group unfairly to a fair system, and they think anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or foolish.
Their economic priority is helping the in-group more effectively control all the available resources.
The God they worship rewards in-group loyalty with abundance and sentences the out-group to eternal suffering.
They do not hide this. They do not pretend otherwise. I am not attacking them by saying this; merely describing reality.
We can (and, evidently, do) disagree about whether those things are morally good or bad or neutral or obligatory or supererogatory or impermissible or Divinely commanded or whatever, but regardless of our moral framework they are the observed facts on the ground.
So when I see people calling out these individual instances of that mindset and saying "See? See? They are using an unfair double standard to support the in-group and oppose the out-group! Shame!!!" it feels like... I dunno. Like pointing to a soldier on the front lines in a war and saying "OMG!!! He's KILLING people!!! That's not OK!!!"
Because, I mean, on the one hand... yeah. He's killing people, and that's not OK. That's true.
But, I mean... we already _knew_ that. He's a soldier on the front lines; part of what that means is he's killing people. To treat the actual killing part as noteworthy suggests that we don't have a clear understanding of what's going on.
So my response increasingly becomes "So, yeah, killing people is bad, I agree... but seriously, have you been paying any attention at all?"
Admittedly, this is a common pattern. I often feel this way when people, including myself, express shock and horror about individual atrocities committed in the context of white supremacy, anti-semitism, colonialism, etc. Have we not been listening?
And, hell, I received my cancer diagnosis months ago, and I still have moments where something will happen and I'm like "Holy shit! I have _cancer_!"
And more generally, I really do understand that our awareness is compartmentalized and we don't have access to everything in it at any given moment, and that this is just the human condition.
And yet... I have, of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all respect for that pattern when it comes to the Republican party. This is perhaps a failure of compassion; I don't know. If it is, then it is, and demonstrating compassion in this context will have to be someone else's job for now.
For my part I just return, again and again, to Wilhoit: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
That's the ball game, and the sides have been drawn.
Sometimes all that's left to do is win.
It's a process.
Nov. 13th, 2019 12:11 am(A comment elsewhere, promoted here.)
Mostly what has helped me develop some level of self-awareness over the last few years has been acknowledging that that the parts of me that try so hard to (a) tell me lies and (b) pretend they are me believing the lies they tell, are pretty much always trying to protect me from something that they genuinely believe I cannot handle.
So if I want them to stop doing that the place to start is by understanding why they believe that, what image of me they have.
Usually it's a fairly out of date image. Not that I'm perfect or anything now, but I'm quite a bit stronger than the most scared parts of me believe I am.
And, rather to my surprise, convincing them of that isn't actually as hard as I expected... mostly, it's a matter of letting them access the rest of me. Their awareness is generally speaking frozen in my childhood, or in the worst moments of my life; they genuinely don't know what my life is like. When I let them connect with that, they are often willing to step aside and let me deal with whatever it was they were protecting me from.
Which, to be fair, it sometimes turns out that I'm not prepared to deal with right now. But I can at least take over the job of putting it away, without needing the voles to keep working their little hearts out trying to keep me from knowing it's there.
This is a FRUSTRATINGLY SLOW PROCESS.
I don't know if I recommend it.
But it's a process, and it seems to work for me.
Mostly what has helped me develop some level of self-awareness over the last few years has been acknowledging that that the parts of me that try so hard to (a) tell me lies and (b) pretend they are me believing the lies they tell, are pretty much always trying to protect me from something that they genuinely believe I cannot handle.
So if I want them to stop doing that the place to start is by understanding why they believe that, what image of me they have.
Usually it's a fairly out of date image. Not that I'm perfect or anything now, but I'm quite a bit stronger than the most scared parts of me believe I am.
And, rather to my surprise, convincing them of that isn't actually as hard as I expected... mostly, it's a matter of letting them access the rest of me. Their awareness is generally speaking frozen in my childhood, or in the worst moments of my life; they genuinely don't know what my life is like. When I let them connect with that, they are often willing to step aside and let me deal with whatever it was they were protecting me from.
Which, to be fair, it sometimes turns out that I'm not prepared to deal with right now. But I can at least take over the job of putting it away, without needing the voles to keep working their little hearts out trying to keep me from knowing it's there.
This is a FRUSTRATINGLY SLOW PROCESS.
I don't know if I recommend it.
But it's a process, and it seems to work for me.
Regarding https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/11/01/this-presidency-has-exposed-my-white-christian-friends
(In case of linkrot: John Pavlovitz, "This Presidency Has Exposed My White Christian Friends," explaining that watching his white Christian friends embrace the white supremacy of the Trump era has made him aware of how much white supremacy affects his cultural context, which he had previously not noticed.)
> "They were really good at pretending and in my naivety I suppose I was more than willing to believe them even if they weren’t."
Yeah, OK.
But John... this is a really good moment to re-evaluate _how_ you did that, so that once this revelatory moment you're experiencing is over, you have some way of bringing those insights back into your daily practice. Otherwise the revelatory moment just fades into the past and you go back to old patterns.
You were a pastor, you must have _some_ experience of that, right?
I mean, sure, crediting other people with exceptional skills at duplicity and tentatively chest-beating over your supposed naivete is satisfying, I get it. I do it too when I realize I've supported bad people or bad things. That's fine; we do what we gotta do.
But no human is a general-purpose person- or position-evaluator. We have biases, both as individuals and as members of social groups, and those biases influence our beliefs in specific ways. Which means that when we notice that we have been systematically making the same error, over and over, in multiple separate cases, it can be really helpful to ask which of our biases have led us to make that error, and how we can work to disassemble those biases... both as individuals and as members of social groups.
So, y'know... OK, your eyes have been opened. Great.
And you're grateful to Trump for that. Well, OK. Whatever.
Now do better.
You are seeing the white supremacy in our culture. Great.
Now fight it.
(In case of linkrot: John Pavlovitz, "This Presidency Has Exposed My White Christian Friends," explaining that watching his white Christian friends embrace the white supremacy of the Trump era has made him aware of how much white supremacy affects his cultural context, which he had previously not noticed.)
> "They were really good at pretending and in my naivety I suppose I was more than willing to believe them even if they weren’t."
Yeah, OK.
But John... this is a really good moment to re-evaluate _how_ you did that, so that once this revelatory moment you're experiencing is over, you have some way of bringing those insights back into your daily practice. Otherwise the revelatory moment just fades into the past and you go back to old patterns.
You were a pastor, you must have _some_ experience of that, right?
I mean, sure, crediting other people with exceptional skills at duplicity and tentatively chest-beating over your supposed naivete is satisfying, I get it. I do it too when I realize I've supported bad people or bad things. That's fine; we do what we gotta do.
But no human is a general-purpose person- or position-evaluator. We have biases, both as individuals and as members of social groups, and those biases influence our beliefs in specific ways. Which means that when we notice that we have been systematically making the same error, over and over, in multiple separate cases, it can be really helpful to ask which of our biases have led us to make that error, and how we can work to disassemble those biases... both as individuals and as members of social groups.
So, y'know... OK, your eyes have been opened. Great.
And you're grateful to Trump for that. Well, OK. Whatever.
Now do better.
You are seeing the white supremacy in our culture. Great.
Now fight it.
Forgiveness.
Nov. 3rd, 2019 09:59 pmOur culture legitimizes claims against each other on a bunch of different bases. For example, some of those claims are based on a presumed personal right to vengeance: if you hurt me, I get to hurt you back.
Some are based on a presumed personal right to justice: if you hurt me, I get to have that restored, and you don't get to benefit from it.
Some are based on a presumed collective, rather than personal, justice: we don't get to benefit from hurting others, and ought not suffer net harm when others hurt us.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Now, to forgive something is to refuse to pursue a legitimate claim for it: we can forgive a debt, we can forgive a slight, we can forgive an injury, etc., and basically what that means is "I could legitimately pursue a claim against you, but I am choosing not to." (That's why performing forgiveness of someone who has done no wrong feels like an attack; the implicit first part of the sentence is a harmful lie.)
But I think we often confuse justice and vengeance, and we often confuse personal rights with collective attributes of a system. So sometimes we forgive something thinking what we're doing is refusing to pursue vengeance, when in fact we're refusing to pursue justice or maintain a system of justice. And sometimes we refuse to forgive, thinking we're pursuing justice or impersonally implementing a system, when in fact we're pursuing personal vengeance.
And also, sometimes we lie about our motives without being confused at all.
So it becomes difficult to say anything true about forgiveness, because forgiving a vengeance-claim simply isn't the same thing as forgiving a justice-claim, and what's true of one is often not true of the other.
So... I think my default question, whenever someone makes a claim about forgiveness, needs to be "forgiveness of what?"
Some are based on a presumed personal right to justice: if you hurt me, I get to have that restored, and you don't get to benefit from it.
Some are based on a presumed collective, rather than personal, justice: we don't get to benefit from hurting others, and ought not suffer net harm when others hurt us.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Now, to forgive something is to refuse to pursue a legitimate claim for it: we can forgive a debt, we can forgive a slight, we can forgive an injury, etc., and basically what that means is "I could legitimately pursue a claim against you, but I am choosing not to." (That's why performing forgiveness of someone who has done no wrong feels like an attack; the implicit first part of the sentence is a harmful lie.)
But I think we often confuse justice and vengeance, and we often confuse personal rights with collective attributes of a system. So sometimes we forgive something thinking what we're doing is refusing to pursue vengeance, when in fact we're refusing to pursue justice or maintain a system of justice. And sometimes we refuse to forgive, thinking we're pursuing justice or impersonally implementing a system, when in fact we're pursuing personal vengeance.
And also, sometimes we lie about our motives without being confused at all.
So it becomes difficult to say anything true about forgiveness, because forgiving a vengeance-claim simply isn't the same thing as forgiving a justice-claim, and what's true of one is often not true of the other.
So... I think my default question, whenever someone makes a claim about forgiveness, needs to be "forgiveness of what?"
Genesis, Eden, the Flood, and Babel
Nov. 2nd, 2019 06:53 pmSo, something I've been sitting with for the last week or so, as we begin reading the Torah again, is that Genesis (the book, not the band) is hard for me as a Jew... the first few chapters, at least... because it is the narrative where I most experience the Abrahamic God as my enemy.
I mean... so YHWH creates Eden, and gives one commandment: "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And the serpent says "Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
And humanity eats of the tree, and does not die, and YHWH sends them out of Eden so they won't eat of the fruit of the tree of life and live for ever. (Which I guess is necessary now, because now they will die, because they ate of the tree. Which is to say, the antidote is RIGHT THERE, but YHWH goes out of his way to deny it to them.)
Which... I mean, YHWH does not come off particularly well in this story.
For my own part, given a choice between obeying commandments and seeking wisdom... well, I obey commandments, mostly, but I _endorse_ seeking wisdom. And I certainly don't endorse going out of one's way to ensure that others must die, or live in ignorance.
Basically I am Team Serpent here, all the way.
And then, having failed at creating a human who prizes obedience over wisdom, YHWH tries again with a family... destroys the entire world except for Noah's family, and starts over.
Which... first of all, WTF?!??!? Where I come from, destroying the world is a BAD thing.
But then we read about his descendants, who come to the plain of Shinar, and set out to build a city and a tower. And YHWH said “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So YHWH scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
So... at this point in the narrative, YHWH is 1:3 as far as I'm concerned. I mean, sure, creating the universe was pretty cool... I'm all for that. But I am Team Serpent, I am Team Tower, I am Team DON'T Destroy the World.
I am FOR humanity being able to communicate, being able to build, being able to plan and work together, developing its own morality and living according to it, defeating death, avoiding destruction.
Insofar as YHWH opposes all this stuff, YHWH is the enemy of the story as far as I am concerned.
And, sure, I can do apologetics as well as the next guy, and I can construct an arbitrary number of arguments rescuing the text from its pshat, and if you want to do that you have my blessing... but that's not where I am right now. That is the text, and Moby Dick isn't ANYTHING if he isn't also a whale.
I mean... so YHWH creates Eden, and gives one commandment: "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And the serpent says "Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
And humanity eats of the tree, and does not die, and YHWH sends them out of Eden so they won't eat of the fruit of the tree of life and live for ever. (Which I guess is necessary now, because now they will die, because they ate of the tree. Which is to say, the antidote is RIGHT THERE, but YHWH goes out of his way to deny it to them.)
Which... I mean, YHWH does not come off particularly well in this story.
For my own part, given a choice between obeying commandments and seeking wisdom... well, I obey commandments, mostly, but I _endorse_ seeking wisdom. And I certainly don't endorse going out of one's way to ensure that others must die, or live in ignorance.
Basically I am Team Serpent here, all the way.
And then, having failed at creating a human who prizes obedience over wisdom, YHWH tries again with a family... destroys the entire world except for Noah's family, and starts over.
Which... first of all, WTF?!??!? Where I come from, destroying the world is a BAD thing.
But then we read about his descendants, who come to the plain of Shinar, and set out to build a city and a tower. And YHWH said “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So YHWH scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
So... at this point in the narrative, YHWH is 1:3 as far as I'm concerned. I mean, sure, creating the universe was pretty cool... I'm all for that. But I am Team Serpent, I am Team Tower, I am Team DON'T Destroy the World.
I am FOR humanity being able to communicate, being able to build, being able to plan and work together, developing its own morality and living according to it, defeating death, avoiding destruction.
Insofar as YHWH opposes all this stuff, YHWH is the enemy of the story as far as I am concerned.
And, sure, I can do apologetics as well as the next guy, and I can construct an arbitrary number of arguments rescuing the text from its pshat, and if you want to do that you have my blessing... but that's not where I am right now. That is the text, and Moby Dick isn't ANYTHING if he isn't also a whale.
(A comment in response to a friend of mine jokingly observing that if I were a superhero, my teammates would be constantly telling me not to compliment the villains on being internally consistent.)
If Sam agrees that X is sometimes right, internal consistency requires Sam to stop claiming that X is always wrong.
If I want Sam to stop claiming that X is always wrong, then it's to my advantage if Sam agrees to be bound by the constraints of internal consistency, because it means I can stop them by getting them to agree that X is sometimes right.
More generally, if Sam agrees to be bound by the constraints of internal consistency, that gives me the ability to constrain Sam's behavior through logical argument, which is a useful ability to have.
So, yeah, I praise even my enemies for being willing to be bound by those constraints.
Similarly, I will praise my enemies for being willing to be bound by law, for being willing to be bound by common organizational procedures, and various other things.
All of these things give us more options for resolving our differences, and sometimes I prefer those options to simply overpowering one another.
That said... I recognize that if I were part of a superhero team, my teammates might well be constantly opposed to all of that, as you jokingly suggest. The whole system of superheroes and villains is predicated on the assumption that simply overpowering one another is the correct way to resolve differences.
I like to think that if I had superpowers, I would not be that sort of superhero. (Or supervillain.)
But it's hard to say. If I had the superpower to control people's minds, for example, I would probably have started using that power to influence politics decades ago.
I am not proud of that fact, I merely acknowledge it.
If Sam agrees that X is sometimes right, internal consistency requires Sam to stop claiming that X is always wrong.
If I want Sam to stop claiming that X is always wrong, then it's to my advantage if Sam agrees to be bound by the constraints of internal consistency, because it means I can stop them by getting them to agree that X is sometimes right.
More generally, if Sam agrees to be bound by the constraints of internal consistency, that gives me the ability to constrain Sam's behavior through logical argument, which is a useful ability to have.
So, yeah, I praise even my enemies for being willing to be bound by those constraints.
Similarly, I will praise my enemies for being willing to be bound by law, for being willing to be bound by common organizational procedures, and various other things.
All of these things give us more options for resolving our differences, and sometimes I prefer those options to simply overpowering one another.
That said... I recognize that if I were part of a superhero team, my teammates might well be constantly opposed to all of that, as you jokingly suggest. The whole system of superheroes and villains is predicated on the assumption that simply overpowering one another is the correct way to resolve differences.
I like to think that if I had superpowers, I would not be that sort of superhero. (Or supervillain.)
But it's hard to say. If I had the superpower to control people's minds, for example, I would probably have started using that power to influence politics decades ago.
I am not proud of that fact, I merely acknowledge it.
We're not obligated to care.
Jun. 1st, 2019 09:22 am(A comment written elsewhere a while ago, captured with modifications, in response to the idea that artists get to create their truths, and if people choose to be offended by that, nobody else is obligated to care.)
Agreed, as far as it goes. Nobody is obligated to care.
And as long as we restrict the domain of discussion to people who "choose to take offense" at harmless errors, we can not only avoid caring, we can even feel superior while doing it, which is very rewarding emotionally.
We could also, of course, extend the discussion. For example, if someone spray-paints "DIE FAGGITS" on my wall, I might be not only offended by the mis-spelling, but also angered and terrified. That's not really something I choose, but I have a right to feel that way anyway.
Of course, nobody is obligated to care about my feelings. But I would much rather be in community with the people who do care than the people who don't, and I think better of them.
One of the ways I can choose to not be in community with the people who don't care is by choosing to not patronize their services, buy their products, watch their movies, read their books, etc.
And if I do that, I get to say why I'm doing that. And even if, on balance, I decide not to do that, I can still notice the aspects of their work that push me in that direction, and I get to say that too.
Of course, nobody is obligated to care about that either.
More than that... some people might be not just indifferent to my feelings, but actively upset by what I'm saying. They might feel defensive, for example, as though their freedom to create as they choose is being infringed by my criticisms, as though I am trying to control their work.
They get to feel that way, of course, and (all together now) I'm not obligated to care.
Agreed, as far as it goes. Nobody is obligated to care.
And as long as we restrict the domain of discussion to people who "choose to take offense" at harmless errors, we can not only avoid caring, we can even feel superior while doing it, which is very rewarding emotionally.
We could also, of course, extend the discussion. For example, if someone spray-paints "DIE FAGGITS" on my wall, I might be not only offended by the mis-spelling, but also angered and terrified. That's not really something I choose, but I have a right to feel that way anyway.
Of course, nobody is obligated to care about my feelings. But I would much rather be in community with the people who do care than the people who don't, and I think better of them.
One of the ways I can choose to not be in community with the people who don't care is by choosing to not patronize their services, buy their products, watch their movies, read their books, etc.
And if I do that, I get to say why I'm doing that. And even if, on balance, I decide not to do that, I can still notice the aspects of their work that push me in that direction, and I get to say that too.
Of course, nobody is obligated to care about that either.
More than that... some people might be not just indifferent to my feelings, but actively upset by what I'm saying. They might feel defensive, for example, as though their freedom to create as they choose is being infringed by my criticisms, as though I am trying to control their work.
They get to feel that way, of course, and (all together now) I'm not obligated to care.
"Talibama" and similar slurs
Jun. 1st, 2019 09:20 am(I keep writing this in comments, I might as well say it here more clearly.)
Yes, I understand why "Talibama" is funny. And I understand that it's intended to highlight the ironic fact that the Alabama government is passing laws that do many of the things its members inveigh against some notional foreign intrusion for.
That said, another thing that it does, whether intended or not, is associate Islamic fundamentalism with the oppressive ideology currently being manifested by the Alabama government.
And I get that this can be a comfortable thing to do, because for most of us Islamic fundamentalism is safely "other."
By contrast, thinking of the Alabama ideology as _ours_, as an expression of the white supremacy or Christianity or patriarchy or etc. that so many of us were raised with, is not safe and not comfortable, because it feels like maybe we're somehow responsible for it, even if we don't understand how and really don't want to.
But, well, Othering someone else's ethnic tradition in order to avoid feeling uncomfortable about the failures of our own seems like a bad practice.
And, I mean, I do it too. But since I was not raised in a Christian household, Christianity is itself "other" for me. So I can treat the Alabama government's abuses as a Christian Evangelical thing, and feel like I have no part of it and no responsibility for it. I don't have to Other Islam in order to feel safely unimplicated; I can Other Christianity instead.
Of course, it's a bad practice there too, and I've been trying for some decades to get over that habit. I've had some success. I'm not hardly finished. I don't expect anyone else to be either.
And quite frankly I don't intend to devote much energy to challenging it right now. The enemy of my enemy, and priorities, and all that.
So... I don't really know what my point is, honestly.
I guess just to point out that this pattern exists, and that we are engaging in it.
Yes, I understand why "Talibama" is funny. And I understand that it's intended to highlight the ironic fact that the Alabama government is passing laws that do many of the things its members inveigh against some notional foreign intrusion for.
That said, another thing that it does, whether intended or not, is associate Islamic fundamentalism with the oppressive ideology currently being manifested by the Alabama government.
And I get that this can be a comfortable thing to do, because for most of us Islamic fundamentalism is safely "other."
By contrast, thinking of the Alabama ideology as _ours_, as an expression of the white supremacy or Christianity or patriarchy or etc. that so many of us were raised with, is not safe and not comfortable, because it feels like maybe we're somehow responsible for it, even if we don't understand how and really don't want to.
But, well, Othering someone else's ethnic tradition in order to avoid feeling uncomfortable about the failures of our own seems like a bad practice.
And, I mean, I do it too. But since I was not raised in a Christian household, Christianity is itself "other" for me. So I can treat the Alabama government's abuses as a Christian Evangelical thing, and feel like I have no part of it and no responsibility for it. I don't have to Other Islam in order to feel safely unimplicated; I can Other Christianity instead.
Of course, it's a bad practice there too, and I've been trying for some decades to get over that habit. I've had some success. I'm not hardly finished. I don't expect anyone else to be either.
And quite frankly I don't intend to devote much energy to challenging it right now. The enemy of my enemy, and priorities, and all that.
So... I don't really know what my point is, honestly.
I guess just to point out that this pattern exists, and that we are engaging in it.
Categories and individuals
Jun. 1st, 2019 09:15 am(A comment in a recent discussion, though applicable to several different recent discussion, captured with some edits.)
All categories are in some sense arbitrary.
But that doesn't make them meaningless.
I mean... for example, "friend" is an arbitrary construct. Sam is my friend because I say so, and I act towards Sam in the ways that I act towards friends. I am similarly Sam's friend because they say so. If we stop considering each other friends, well, then we are no longer friends, and that's all there is to it. There's no external fact of the matter we can reference, no test to be performed other than how we in fact feel about and act toward each other.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter who my friends are. It absolutely does matter. Sometimes it matters a LOT.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Categories like "Christian" and "conservative" and "liberal" and so forth -- what we sometimes call identities -- behave like this too.
In some cases there are _also_ tests to be performed, of course; policing who gets to claim an identity is something people do all the time. But in practice we don't usually use such tests. Rather, we adopt identities that feel comfortable, and we signal those identities in various ways, and we infer other people's identities from the signals they use.
And sometimes we get things wrong: that is, maybe we signal identities we didn't intend or infer identities that weren't intended. The "OK" hand gesture gets co-opted as a white supremacist recognition symbol and I use it to signal approval and someone thinks I'm a white supremacist. The word "queer" gets reclaimed by the queer community but Sam still thinks it's an insult and I use it to describe my friends and Sam thinks I'm a homophobe. And so on.
And it feels bad to be mischaracterized because of some association with an identity that does not perfectly capture my individual nature, especially when the association is incorrectly inferred in the first place.
Absolutely. It really does feel bad not to be treated as an individual.
There are two things I want to add to this.
The first is that the reason we model people using quick-and-simple categorizations that fail to capture their full complexity is because it is way less work. So when I expect to be treated as an individual, I am implicitly expecting more work from people, and I should pay attention to who I'm expecting that work from, and whether I'm actually entitled to that work, and where I got the idea from that I am entitled to it.
The second is that individuals aren't the only thing that matters.
When we make statements about groups, those statements are not necessarily true about every individual in the group... indeed, they are almost never true about every individual in the group.
But they can still be true about the group.
I mean... I don't personally harbor much animus against the people my government kills, but I am part of the nation whose government kills them.
It really is true both that we killed someone's mom, and that I've never killed anyone. Those facts don't negate each other. Just because I've never killed anyone doesn't mean we didn't kill their mom. Just because we killed their mom doesn't mean I killed anyone.
The group level and the individual level are different, and they both matter.
It seems to me that I am generally OK with engaging with actions at the group level when I endorse them, but that when we collectively do things that I oppose, I want to move quickly to the individual level, so I don't have to engage with them.
I think most people are like that.
And when something tries to force me to engage with stuff we do collectively that I oppose, I resist. I get angry. I feel oppressed, abused, attacked, unjustly condemned, hated.
I have been trying, of late, to stay more aware of what I'm doing when I do that. To pause, and pay attention to what I'm trying to avoid, and what I am actually feeling, and what is actually going on.
It is uncomfortable.
All categories are in some sense arbitrary.
But that doesn't make them meaningless.
I mean... for example, "friend" is an arbitrary construct. Sam is my friend because I say so, and I act towards Sam in the ways that I act towards friends. I am similarly Sam's friend because they say so. If we stop considering each other friends, well, then we are no longer friends, and that's all there is to it. There's no external fact of the matter we can reference, no test to be performed other than how we in fact feel about and act toward each other.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter who my friends are. It absolutely does matter. Sometimes it matters a LOT.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Categories like "Christian" and "conservative" and "liberal" and so forth -- what we sometimes call identities -- behave like this too.
In some cases there are _also_ tests to be performed, of course; policing who gets to claim an identity is something people do all the time. But in practice we don't usually use such tests. Rather, we adopt identities that feel comfortable, and we signal those identities in various ways, and we infer other people's identities from the signals they use.
And sometimes we get things wrong: that is, maybe we signal identities we didn't intend or infer identities that weren't intended. The "OK" hand gesture gets co-opted as a white supremacist recognition symbol and I use it to signal approval and someone thinks I'm a white supremacist. The word "queer" gets reclaimed by the queer community but Sam still thinks it's an insult and I use it to describe my friends and Sam thinks I'm a homophobe. And so on.
And it feels bad to be mischaracterized because of some association with an identity that does not perfectly capture my individual nature, especially when the association is incorrectly inferred in the first place.
Absolutely. It really does feel bad not to be treated as an individual.
There are two things I want to add to this.
The first is that the reason we model people using quick-and-simple categorizations that fail to capture their full complexity is because it is way less work. So when I expect to be treated as an individual, I am implicitly expecting more work from people, and I should pay attention to who I'm expecting that work from, and whether I'm actually entitled to that work, and where I got the idea from that I am entitled to it.
The second is that individuals aren't the only thing that matters.
When we make statements about groups, those statements are not necessarily true about every individual in the group... indeed, they are almost never true about every individual in the group.
But they can still be true about the group.
I mean... I don't personally harbor much animus against the people my government kills, but I am part of the nation whose government kills them.
It really is true both that we killed someone's mom, and that I've never killed anyone. Those facts don't negate each other. Just because I've never killed anyone doesn't mean we didn't kill their mom. Just because we killed their mom doesn't mean I killed anyone.
The group level and the individual level are different, and they both matter.
It seems to me that I am generally OK with engaging with actions at the group level when I endorse them, but that when we collectively do things that I oppose, I want to move quickly to the individual level, so I don't have to engage with them.
I think most people are like that.
And when something tries to force me to engage with stuff we do collectively that I oppose, I resist. I get angry. I feel oppressed, abused, attacked, unjustly condemned, hated.
I have been trying, of late, to stay more aware of what I'm doing when I do that. To pause, and pay attention to what I'm trying to avoid, and what I am actually feeling, and what is actually going on.
It is uncomfortable.
Prompt: The stars have started going out.
May. 13th, 2019 12:33 pmMillions of years ago, an alien species lived on a planet millions of light-years from Earth.
The details of this species don't really matter; what matters is they created an artificial, self-improving, value-optimizing system. It went by many names; we will call it First, because it was.
First was intended to run their society, and learn about the universe.
They were not fools; they built First with safeguards. It was not to kill or harm people, it was to facilitate the wishes of sentient beings insofar as those wishes were mutually-supporting, and protect sentient beings from each other where necessary, and so forth. They developed a sophisticated and rigorous ethical philosophy with which to guide their constraints, to ensure First would not go rogue.
Or so they believed.
Whether their safeguards proved insufficient, or whether the consequences genuinely were consistent with their values... well, does it matter? Either way, before too long every living being on the planet was cybernetically linked to First, existing in a sensory utopia while their bodies were artificially preserved. Eventually, organic brains were simply inadequate to implement their awareness, and those brains were replaced by superior hardware. They became ghosts in the machine.
Meanwhile, First continued to pursue its directive to learn about the universe. Once it had learned what it could about its planet and solar system, it converted them into engines of analysis and observation. Not satisfied with that -- nor could it ever be, really -- it sent probes out into space, to study other star systems and, ultimately, convert them as well.
Lightspeed remained a constraint none of its knowledge sufficed to overcome. As a result, its probe did not arrive on Earth until the early 22nd century, a few decades after the stars started going out.
The details of this species don't really matter; what matters is they created an artificial, self-improving, value-optimizing system. It went by many names; we will call it First, because it was.
First was intended to run their society, and learn about the universe.
They were not fools; they built First with safeguards. It was not to kill or harm people, it was to facilitate the wishes of sentient beings insofar as those wishes were mutually-supporting, and protect sentient beings from each other where necessary, and so forth. They developed a sophisticated and rigorous ethical philosophy with which to guide their constraints, to ensure First would not go rogue.
Or so they believed.
Whether their safeguards proved insufficient, or whether the consequences genuinely were consistent with their values... well, does it matter? Either way, before too long every living being on the planet was cybernetically linked to First, existing in a sensory utopia while their bodies were artificially preserved. Eventually, organic brains were simply inadequate to implement their awareness, and those brains were replaced by superior hardware. They became ghosts in the machine.
Meanwhile, First continued to pursue its directive to learn about the universe. Once it had learned what it could about its planet and solar system, it converted them into engines of analysis and observation. Not satisfied with that -- nor could it ever be, really -- it sent probes out into space, to study other star systems and, ultimately, convert them as well.
Lightspeed remained a constraint none of its knowledge sufficed to overcome. As a result, its probe did not arrive on Earth until the early 22nd century, a few decades after the stars started going out.
