How to avoid graduating - a guide for PhD students

Introduction

Not graduating is relatively easy in the early days of one's education. The student union provides a host of alternative activities which effectively crowds out all attempts at studies. At the PhD level, things become more difficult. The doctoral student will quickly discover that it is no longer socially acceptable to spend evenings at the union pub. He/she has to find other strategies for avoiding reaching the end point of student life, strategies which are both socially acceptable and compatible with his/her conscience. Fortunately, there are a number of such strategies which have been empirically proven to be very effective with regards to avoiding graduating and attaining the title of Dr. The purpose of this writ is to provide examples which can stimulate doctoral students' creativity with regards to self-directed activities in the fascinating field of graduation avoidance.

The safest strategy to avoid graduating is, of course, to ensure that the dissertation work never gets off the ground. Many doctoral students have adopted this strategy with great success. The effectiveness of this strategy depends primarily on how well you choose the alternative activity which will motivate not working on the dissertation. Since education at the PhD level contains a course section, an obvious course of action is to focus extensively on said courses, but given that this section can only be extended so far, it is imperative to not burn through it too quickly. Here, lessons learned from the early days of university life will come in handy.

In order to write a dissertation, a topic has to be chosen. This fact lies at the core of an excellent strategy for postponing graduation. When asked how the dissertation is coming along, the answer "I am currently in the process of choosing a topic" will provide extended cover from further uncomfortable lines of questioning. Much time can be devoted to interviewing different people in the selection process. Every and all suggestions should be carefully considered at great length, before finally (inevitably) being found lacking for this or that reason.

Another effective strategy for avoiding progress is the strategy of "but this is not a suitable thing to include in a dissertation". In short, this strategy consists of consistently refusing to accept that the thing keeping you busy at the moment is of sufficient interest or significance to warrant inclusion into the dissertation. This strategy is especially useful for doctoral students who have happened to be included in a research project. By letting the work pertaining to said project be entirely unrelated from the dissertation work, further progress can be postponed with impunity until the project has run its course.

The Penelope strategy

In the Odyssey, Odysseus' wife Penelope was besieged by a large number of suitors during his absence. She deftly avoided giving an answer one way or another by employing the following strategy. She promised to pick one of the suitors once she had completed the weave she was working on. Since she every night tore up the progress she had made to said weave during the day, she managed to never get closer to finishing it. The doctoral student seeking to avoid graduating have ample reason to see Penelope as a role model. Many of the strategies described below can be seen as variations upon Penelope's original strategy.

Of course, this strategy is difficult to apply literally in the context of a dissertation. To habitually burn the pages written during the day each evening would arouse suspicion. But remember:

No dissertation chapter is so good that it cannot withstand an extensive revision!

In other words, there is great potential for extending the dissertation writing process by constantly revising chapters. Additionally, this strategy can be varied: experiments can be redone (there will always be methodological flaws), and if the dissertation is based on gathered data there is always room for suddenly discovered it has to be replaced with different data, and so on.

Another variant is the "just a little bit more" strategy. That is, to suddenly discover that the dissertation requires just a little more material, a few more experiments, an additional literature review, and so on. This strategy has the distinct disadvantage of becoming less convincing over time.

Live dangerously!

As previously stated, literally burning the pages written during the day is an unconvincing approach. But a doctoral student can, by applying carefully considered systematic carelessness, significantly increase the chances of unfortunate incidents substantially slowing down their dissertation progress. For instance:

A time-honored method (cf the Wonderful Adventures of Nils) is to place the dissertation manuscript near an open window, especially during windy days. With luck, the manuscript can be distributed over a great geographical area using this method.

Briefcases and other bags which include dissertation manuscripts should be brought along everywhere to increase to probability of being lost or stolen.

A comprehensively implemented system of loose sheets significantly increases the chances of important chapters being lost, at least temporarily. Avoid putting labels on binders and floppy disks. This simple step can ensure important texts becomes inaccessible for years and years.

Another important rule, which applies to all above strategies, is to avoid keeping safety copies of the dissertation. This is especially effective when using a computer. A crashed and non-backuped hard drive can delay graduating for several years. If diskettes are used, the older, soft kind is recommended, especially in combination with bad disk readers and copious consumption of coffee.

How to avoid working on your dissertation

One category of strategies has the common trait of avoiding graduating by simply avoiding working on the dissertation altogether.  This category can be divided into two subcategories: manic and depressive strategies. Manic strategies consist of doing as much as possible which is completely unrelated to the dissertation. Depressive strategies consist of doing as little as possible overall. The two kinds of strategies suit different personalities to varying degrees, but there is nothing preventing you to mix and match. Correctly applied, they both amount to the same thing.

Manic strategies, or "Work promotes health and prosperity, and prevents many opportunities for research"

There are, in fact, many alternative activities a doctoral student can engage in to avoid working on the dissertation. These activities can be divided into academic and non-academic.

The academic activities are primarily all forms of institutional work. The major advantage of this kind of work is that engaging in it is highly socially accepted, and in many cases actually ends up being more appreciated than working on the dissertation. This includes teaching low-level courses and taking on various administrative tasks, which tend to be highly prioritized by the powers that be, and often have the additional quality of being in need of doing with brisk swiftness.

Activities relating to the student union and its various social functions (party committees and so forth) are other examples of excellent things to do to prevent dissertation progress. Helping your fellow doctoral students with their dissertations is an excellent activity with high graduation-postponing potential (for the helper, that is). (Conversely, one should of course avoid accepting too much help from other doctoral students, as this might inadvertently lead to making progress, or worse, graduating.)

In the non-academic world, we also find suitable activities: having a job (motivated by the student's economic situation), engagement in civil society, sports, evening courses, and so on. There is also the big Dissertation Delayer, particularly for women, known as the Family. This requires its own section, which is why we won't discuss it further at this point. Instead, we want to highlight romantic affairs as an activity with great potential to delay any and all dissertation-related progress.

Depressive strategies

Here, too, we can find a literary role model: the protagonist of the 19th century Russian author Goncharov's novel Oblomov. Oblomov spent most of his life in bed, meditating over all the nice things he would do once he managed to summon the energy to get up. With this role model in mind, you will surely find much inspiration in your efforts.

A depressive strategy worth its salt should not only prevent dissertation progress under the time it is deployed (if this is the correct term for doing nothing), but also contribute to the doctoral student's general discomfort and overall lack of capacity to perform. Physically moving as little as possible is an excellent principle with a high return on energy invested. (Note the manic corollary to this strategy: do all the sports! Everything that works, works!)

A drawback of going full Oblomov is that it is difficult to combine with having a clear conscience. Therefore, a modified depressive strategy is recommended. This consists of filling your time as inefficiently as possible. Here, there is no end to the possibilities:

Running errands at the bank, post office or other government institution are perfectly socially acceptable activities, which can gobble up a lot of time and effort, and have the additional benefit of having to be performed during office hours - i.e. the time usually spent working on the dissertation. Good planning can increase efficiency significantly. For instance, avoid running more than one errand at a time.

Things in need of repair can fill a lot of time which otherwise would have gone to writing. Especially effective is to employ plumbers or construction workers who do not arrive at the appointed hour.

Appointments to doctors or dentists (not to mention therapists, or better yet psychoanalysts) are excellent opportunities for making zero progress. The ideal is of course to pick practices that lie quite a distance away, scheduling mid-day appointments, so as to maximize the working time spent moving to and fro.

Family

As mentioned above, the Family is an especially important potential dissertation delayer, especially for women. Here are some handy tips for exploiting this opportunity to its fullest extent.

• The kids should be well-planned and well spaced, such that there will always be two or three toddlers in the house during the critical dissertation years.
• Daycare centers and other such rational options should be avoided. If it can not be avoided, pick a daycare center committed to radical parental participation and community cooperation. If possible, pick two different daycare centers spaced far apart to increase time in transit. Also keep in mind that kids do not fare well by being more than six hours a day at the daycare! By carefully following this rule, it is possible to reduce efficient working ours per day to about five (or four, with sufficiently long transit times). (Alternatively, it is also possible to break this rule and instead spend the work hours nurturing feeling of guilt about this state of things, which is also an efficient way of reducing productivity). The ideal strategy, though, is to employ the good old play schools, whose three hour schedule make impossible any rational activity on the part of the responsible adult.
• The non-dissertation writing parent should pick a job where being absent for even a single day is strictly impossible, combined with working hours which make dropping off and picking up of kids wholly the responsibility of the writing parent.
• Plan your apartment such that secluded work spaces are avoided. The children should have access to as much of the apartment as possible. Placing the dissertation works pace in the shared bedroom is an efficient way of preventing work during night time, which otherwise holds the inherent potential of boosting the making of progress.
• Pick a partner with little or no understanding of research and the conditions under which it is conducted. A hostile attitude towards research has a very significant potential for dissertation delayage, especially if it is combined with general dudebro machoism. Naturally, the kids too can be taught to hamper progress at every turn.
• The strategy of living dangerously (see above) can be effectively applied at home too. Small children are particularly effective at destroying manuscripts and diskettes, if given the opportunity. Pets are viable substitutes for children. A cat, for instance, has a high probability of acting out on a strategically places manuscript pile.

How to best manage your adviser

The adviser is many times an obstacle facing a doctoral student wanting to avoid graduating. A lot is won by choosing the "correct" adviser (although this is sometimes as difficult as choosing correct parents). By "correct" we mean an adviser who either (i) leave the student alone, or (ii) participates, but whose input is sufficiently destructive to not accidentally contribute too much to the process.

To have the biggest chance to get an advisor of type (i), the following traits should be sought out: (a) senile, (b) alcoholic, (c) ignorant of the dissertation topic (if applicable, see above), and (d) disinterested in general. Fortunately, many universities boast a hearty supply of such persons.

Choosing an adviser of type (ii) is risky, since their destructive capacity sometimes affect the student in unpredictable ways. Properly handled, however, a type (ii) adviser can be efficiently employed in the dissertation delaying efforts. Especially if he (it's usually a he) can be used to cultivate a low sense of self-esteem (more on this later).

In the unfortunate case of getting an ambitious adviser with a constructive attitude towards dissertation writing, all hope is not lost: there is a wide range of strategies to employ to get around this. We will detail them below.

Defensive strategies: how to avoid your adviser

In order to satisfy the demands of the social setting and conscience, a doctoral student should seek out their adviser at least once per semester. Generally, dates which are not immediately connected to the deadline for student grant applications should be chosen, to avoid giving off the wrong (correct) impression. However: seeking out your adviser is not the same as actually meeting them. A careful study of their habits makes it possible to strategically pick times to call or knock when they are not available. Upon subsequent questioning of why you haven't talked to them, you can with a clear conscience refer back to your frequent failed attempts at communication - "I've been trying to get a hold of you all week, but you're never here". Another strategy is to refer to how busy they are, and how you didn't want to be a bother or intrude. A slightly ruder variant is to claim that you've previously made a deal that they would initiate contact.

It is of course sometimes necessary to avoid the general campus area, if the risk of bumping into them is too large. Upon chance encounters, it is advisable to have some other reason to be there, which can be used to deflect the question of how the dissertation is going.

If you have made an appointment, it is usually a good tactic to be there at exactly the appointed hour. Should the adviser be ever so slightly late, you can with a clear conscience claim to have been there (preferable leaving right after having placed a passive-aggressive post-it note on their door).

Offensive strategies: a good offense is the best defense

Some of the strategies in the previous section contained aspects of being on the offense, but it is always possible to go all in. The core principle of an offensive strategy is to disarm your adviser by placing them in a morally disadvantageous position, normally by instilling within them feelings of guilt. Here are some handy phrases to use when your adviser expresses displeasure at your rate of progress with the dissertation:

• But you never read what I write anyway.
• You only had bad things to say about the last draft.
• When was the last time you wrote an article?
• You are only going to use my results for your own ends.
• Why haven't I received my funding?
• There is no point in graduating, there are no jobs to be had anyway.

A strategy that is hard to counter is the upbeat strategy. It consists of happily denying any and all problems. Here are some variations:

•  Sure thing, you will have the draft by tomorrow!
• Yeah, it's been slow going, but now I'm really getting into it!
• I suppose I could send in the chapter now, but I have so many great ideas, so I have to write them out as well!

A simultaneously offensive and divertive strategy might be called a social strategy. By, for instance, asking your adviser out to dinner just as they are about to launch into a serious discussion about your progress, you can get them off balance to such an extent that things do not progress further than that. More advanced variants of this strategy are left to the reader's imagination.

"Not today, but soon...": some ways of justifying why you have not finished the promised dissertation chapter

My ink ribbon snapped
(slightly more modern variant: my printer toner expired)
My mother in law turned 70
My son had a math test
My cat had kittens
I have to get the car to the repair shop
The metro is on strike
I'm waiting for an article from overseas
I'm waiting for a printout from the computer central
I'm waiting for comments from [insert name here]
I found a math error, so now I have to redo everything
I haven't been inspired
I'm in love
I have a cold
Was I really supposed to hand it in today?
I forgot the manuscript at home
My husband promised to post the manuscript, haven't you received it?

How to handle your extended social situation

Your adviser is not the only obstacle you will face in your effort to prolong your studies. Any long-term dissertation delaying stratagem has to include ways of deflecting questions and attacks from your extended social situation. Relatives, friends, acquaintances, and (lest we forget) colleagues and other doctoral students often tend to show a non-zero amount of interest in how you're doing and when you plan on graduating. You can, of course, employ the same strategies as have been outlined above. You also have the option of blaming your setbacks ("setbacks") on the incompetence or malignancy of your adviser (see the section on "Strategic paranoia" below). When it comes to non-academic relatives, the opportunities to strategically bamboozle abound, since they often do not know the specifics of what writing a dissertation actually entails.

The possibly most difficult proposition is to keep your fellow doctoral students out of the loop. They know the specifics of what writing a dissertation actually entails! But the experienced dissertation delayer knows no fear, and finds solutions to every situation. For instance, the Chutzpah-strategy can usually be gainfully employed, but requires having the personality to back it up. It simply consists of, at every possible opportune moment, declaring that the dissertation is almost 100% complete and that you're ready to defend it this very instant, would it be possible. Which it won't, because reasons, possible adviser-related. A slightly milder variant is the general boasting strategy, where you namedrop the prestigious persons who have read your manuscript and glimpsed the bright future to come.

Oftentimes, even simpler strategies can be successfully employed. Younger doctoral students will often find themselves distracted should you ask them a sufficiently specific question about this or that author.

"Get married, get divorced, join a club or something"

The heading is a quote from an old Hasse&Tage skit which makes fun of the kinds of vapid relationship advice put on offer in tabloids. It just so happens that these very same vapid pieces of advice work marvelously as strategies for delaying your dissertation. The basic principle is that any and all life changes draw time and energy away from the dissertation, and thus fulfill the objective of delaying it. The general strategy can be formulated as "Change", where the thing to be changed can be chosen arbitrarily. For instance:

• Change partner
• Change place of residence
• Change job
• Change car
• Change adviser
• Change computer
• Change word processor

That last change is particularly effective. It takes a lot of time to learn the new program, and even more time to convert all the old files to the new format. The biggest, most classic change you can pull is

• Change dissertation topic

It is very possible to apply this strategy iteratively (which is to say, several times). Over time it tends to lose effectiveness and become a source of annoyance among your peers in general, and with your adviser in general. Your chances of success increase if you can back it up with reference to someone else already doing what you were doing, or better yet if someone else has already done it.

How to cultivate low self-esteem

A genuinely abysmal self-esteem is an invaluable resource for a disputation delayer. The challenge is to cultivate it in the desired direction, without accidentally allowing constructive input from your peers to hamper the process.

The core of the bad self-esteem is a hypothesis about reality, specifically that you as a person is insufficient. In this context, it can be formulated thusly:

• I will never be able to complete this dissertation

The philosophers of science tell us that hypotheses can be "immunized" against falsification. This is an important strategic moment for doctoral students. They have to learn to deal with any and all information contradicting the big hypothesis and find smaller, supporting hypotheses that help explain it all away. For instance: if your adviser praises a dissertation chapter, you can make one of the following assumptions which remove the validity of the positive information:

• They're just saying that to make me not drop out
• They haven't read it correctly
• They don't understand any of this anyway
• (if applicable) They probably just want to seduce me

Another strategy is of course to completely avoid situations wherein one might be exposed to positive information. For instance by avoiding to hand in your manuscript for evaluation. It is also important to avoid giving seminars and other presentations, especially at conferences, where you might (woe betide) become famous outside your own university.

Strategic paranoia

A paranoid outlook on life can also be an asset for an intrepid dissertation delayer. One advantage is that it removes the necessity of a negative self-image (which can be quite painful to carry around with you), by placing the blame for one's failures to the (supposedly) hostile situation at large. The core principle for the paranoid explanatory model is that "it won't even matter if I try, since everyone is going to actively try to undermine my efforts, due to p", where p is a proposition about the world at large. We will now exemplify some possible values for p.

Discrimination

• I am an immigrant
• I am a woman (or, of applicable, a man)
• I am working class (or, if applicable, upper class)

Sexual harassment

• My adviser wants to get revenge on me because I rejected their advances

Jealousy

• My adviser is jealous because I am smarter than them

Wrong paradigm

• Everyone at this university follows the X school of thought, while I follow the Y school 

Creative paralysis

 A true dissertation delayer have to master the subtle art of placing themselves in a state of creative paralysis. This state can be achieved in a multitude of ways. A primary set of strategies consists of making further progress contingent on some factor or event outside your direct control. You might, for instance, ask the most busy, least cooperative technician at the shop to come fix your computer. Whilst awaiting said computer to be fixed (whilst also not being too hasty in reminding said technician to come fix it), it simply is not possible to continue working. Similarly, it is fair game to await a colleague's response to the current draft, to await a statistician to double-check the data, and so on and so forth.

Another variant is to have some problem which one really ought to tackle, but which for some reason or other is too much effort to do right this instant. Bibliographical references is an excellent example. You find a reference in a bibliography to a book that is not in your local library, and then spend several depressive weeks gathering energy to go to the one other nearby library where you know for sure the book awaits. (To be sure, there are interlibrary loans, but those take a long time. Also, where even are the forms to fill out for such loans anyway?) Even better is of course to have a reference to a work which 100% most certainly contains information absolutely essential to the dissertation, but which can not be sought out. Such a state of things can delay progress for years on end.

Shorter bursts of creative paralysis can be of use, too. "There is too little time left to do anything meaningful anyway" is a particularly effective method in this context.

Let us conclude this summary of useful avoidance strategies by reminding you, dear reader, of a number of distractions which can be employed to interrupt of delay a working session:

• Computer games
• Beautiful weather outside
• Major sporting events on TV
• Phone calls
• Cleaning your desk
• Water the flowers
• Visit the loo
• Check your mail

 

Appendix: schedule for two typical days of a doctoral student 

The following work schedules are representative cases based on empirical studies which will be presented in my upcoming dissertation (Ask, forthcoming). The most important finding of these investigations is that the effective working time per day for doctoral students of all personality types trends asymptotically towards a period of time which I refer to as Ask's constant, which equals to exactly 29 minutes.

1. Typical workday for depressive doctoral student
10.00 Wakes up
10.00-10.30 Meditates over the perils and hardships of being a doctoral student
10.30-10.45 Gets dressed
10.45-11.30 Eats breakfast and reads the newspaper
11.30-12.00 Looks for a lost article
12.00 Leaves home
12.10 Misses the bus; the next bus arrives in half an hour
12.10-12.40 Awaits the next bus
12.40-13.00 In transit to university
13.00-13.15 Discusses the perils and hardships of being a doctoral student with a peer
13.15-14.10 Lunch
14.10 Finds all reading spots in the library already taken; goes to cafeteria
14.40 Returns to library; finds reading spot; claims it
14.45-14.55 Queues to retrieve a book
14.55-14.59 Sharpens pencil
14.59-15.04 Visits the loo
15.05-15.34 WORKS ON DISSERTATION
15.35-15.50 Smoke break
15.51 Returns to reading spot
15.52 Realizes that today is the last day to pay the rent, and that the bank closes half past four
15.53 Leaves the reading spot
15.54-17.30 Miscellaneous errands
17.30 Returns home; tired to the bone
17.30-18.00 Reads the evening news
18.00-18.30 Prepares an evening meal
18.30-19.15 Eats the evening meal
19.15-19.30 Does the dishes
19.30-20.00 Watches the national news on television
20.00-22.00 Really ought to do more dissertation work, but gets stuck watching a movie on TV
22.00 Falls into bed, exhausted
Effective dissertation work time: 29 minutes. (=Ask's constant)

2. Typical workday for manic doctoral student
07.00 Wakes up, immediately arises and gets dressed
07.10-07-40 Morning gymnastics
07.40-07.50 Breakfast, reads the news
07.50-08.10 Bikes to campus
08.10-09.00 Prepares for teaching
09.00-10.30 Teaches
10.30-10.40 Drinks coffee
10.40-10.59 WORKS ON DISSERTATION
11.00-11.55 Meeting with student union
11.55-12.30 Lunch
12.30-14.00 Substitutes for sick guidance counsellor
14.00-14.45 Meeting with the faculty work group for increasing graduation rates among doctoral students
14.45-15.45 Plays badminton
15.45-15.50 Drinks coffee
15.50-16.00 WORKS ON DISSERTATION
16.00-17.00 Listens to guest lecture
17.00-18.00 Prepares post-lecture seminar (buys wine)
18.00-21.00 Participates in post-lecture seminar, engages in conversation with the guest speaker 
21.00-21.20 Bikes home
21.20-22.00 Grades essays
22.00 Falls into bed, exhausted
Effective dissertation work time: 29 minutes. (=Ask's constant)

Translator's note

This is a translation of Sam Ask's seminal work. The version upon which this translation is based can be found here. Some things have been changed to make sense to an international audience; others have been left intentionally inexplicable, as reminders of a time when things were different.

You love the Left

It is so tremendously handy. If anything stupid is ever uttered, someone from the Left uttered it. If something stupid happens, someone on the Left thought it a good idea. If something ever goes wrong, there is always some specter of the Left causing it.

This state of things solves the ever so tricky problem of finding someone to blame. It is after all something of a hassle to analyze the situation, understand the historical context and identify the motives of all the relevant moving parts. It is an even bigger hassle to admit that things are complex and more often than not ended up the way are without anyone actually wanting them that way.

Blaming the Left is so much easier. Whatever it is, whatever has happened, whatever the situation. It was always the Left.

The only thing left is to admit it. You love the Left.

The alternative is, as you already know, an uncomfortable hassle.

Originally published May 26, 2015

Free speech, but as a public good

The core of free speech is that words have meaning. This is a point so obvious that it goes without saying, and it is thus all the more confounding that it seemingly has to be said. Not least in these perilous times, when the only thing keeping pace with the frequency of meaningless statements is their volume.

I need not remind that one of the most frequent loudmouths has a fifty/fifty shot of becoming the next US president.

The classical arguments for free speech had very little to do with individual expression. They did not primarily expound the right and virtue of being an asshat in public. Rather, these classical arguments were primarily concerned with the positive effects of not having public debate limited by the public institutions that were the object of debate. Primary among such institutions were monarchies with varying degrees of absolute authority.

One of the positive effects of free speech is that the public, by partaking of the public debate, would have a reliable source of information to base their opinions on. After having read the arguments to and fro, for and against, the public would stand at the ready to mobilize their own rational faculties in their day-to-day democratic activities. Thus, the public is informed on the issues, understand who the actors are and what is at stake, and can get to work utilizing the best knowledge available to them. Whatever the king sovereign might opine on the matter.

The hidden premise here is of course that the public debate is conducted properly and in good faith. Those participating are expected to bring clear understanding to bear on the issues of the day, and inform the reading public about what is at stake. The function of public debate is to educate and mobilize the public with regards to the issues of the day. If this function is not fulfilled, things go awry. The public bases its decisions and deliberations on poorer information than it ought, and the democratic decision-making processes suffers because of this.

This is a radically different notion of free speech than the nihilistic freedom to unabashedly shout one stupidity after another in public. While some might feel good by roaring "RETARD!" at the top of their lungs on the town square, such roars do not contribute anything constructive to the public debate. Such antics do not create or convey an understanding of current issues, and it goes without saying that there are more interesting avenues of speech to explore.

The same goes for self-identified nazis. The issue as stake is not that the public has not heard what they have to say, and would be convinced if they but took the time to absorb more refined versions of nazi rhetoric. Quite the opposite: the arguments have already been presented, both in general and in their most specific implementation. Adding more speech will not further anyone's understanding of what is at stake. History has already rendered judgement on these matters, and there is little left to add.

With this in mind, it is hard to take self-proclaimed free speech provocateurs seriously. They are either disingenuous or know not of what they speak. In either case, nothing is gained by helping them spread their unrelenting ululations.

We know better know. It would be to insult generations of free speech advocacy to not have learnt these things by now.

Originally published August 10, 2016

Performing critiques of religion

The honorable Rothstein recently wrote a debate article, which was given the title "Religion does not contribute to a better society". Which to be sure is the main thesis of the article, and the main argument for this thesis is that it can be shown using statistics. The argument ends there, without going into specifics, but we have to be understanding of the limited space afforded by such articles.

The honorable Bengtson wrote a reply to this article, given the title "Religion does not exist in general!". The main thesis is that the concept of "religion" is about as wide as the Atlantic Ocean, and that it follows from this that it's hard to draw conclusions about it. That is not to say that it cannot be done, but the concept has to be used in a more specific and explicit manner before embarking on such conclusionary endeavors.

To use an analogy: both football and Starcraft are sports. There are similarities between them. There are also differences, and these differences are of a nature that those things that apply to Starcraft do not automagically also apply to football, and vice versa. It is possible to pontificate on sports in general, but it helps everyone involved to specify whether the discoursing is related to Starcraft, football or some other sport. Just to keep everyone on the same page, as it were.

Before things get heated, I want to apologize to any potential readers with strong religious feelings about sports. Just in case.

We live in a time where many are engaged in criticism of religion. Or, rather, what they think is criticism of religion. Specifically against Islam, which for reasons inexplicable is deemed more in need of criticism than other religions. "It must be allowed to criticize Islam!" they bellow repeatedly, and it's hard to deny that the feelings surrounding this issue are both strong and upset.

But. Do they understand what they mean when they use the words "criticism of religion"?

As stated above, "religion" as a concept is both unspecific and unwieldy. The same goes for the concept of "critique" - even more so since it's one of the least understood concepts of our time.

To simply bellow "ISLAM IS A SHITTY RELIGION THAT DOES NOT BELONG HERE" is not to perform critique. It's just uncouth, inarticulate and headless. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of people who refer to such bellowing when they say they have to be allowed to criticize Islam. While it would be far from me to imply that these people are uncouth, inarticulate and headless, they are indeed wrong.

Critique is something that takes time. And space. Literally. To critique something is to analyze this something (preferably in detail), to relate this something to something else (which preferably also is analyzed in detail), and to then proceed to describe the similarities, differences and points of contact between the two. All the while keeping the readers informed of the steps taken by the analysis, with the aim of having conveyed an understanding of both the analysis and the things analyzed. The purpose of critique is not to find faults and flaws, but to convey an understanding of the thing critiqued - an understanding that includes such faults and flaws.

Which, as you might imagine, requires many words to perform properly. Critiques and understandings are not done in a hurry.

Those who want to critique Islam has a formidable challenge ahead of them. First, they have to grok Islam, its contexts, its core values and its everyday practices. Then they have to build a framework to relate and compare this understanding to. Then begins the hard work of comparing, relating and contrasting, all the while presenting these efforts in such a way that one's understanding of Islam, the framework and eventual conclusions are made explicit to the reader.

It would not be unfair to propose that those who energetically claim their right to criticize Islam does not have this in mind. They do not have criticism in mind at all. They have a completely different verb in mind.

But, if you ever meet someone who energetically claims such a right, point them towards this post. To give them a sportsmanlike chance to say what they actually mean. -

Originally published March 3, 2015

How the Holocaust could happen again

The scariest thing about the Holocaust is not that millions of people were killed in it. Which, to be sure, is a scary thing in and of itself - anything that kills millions is scary - but even scarier is the weapon used to kill all these people. And the brutal industrial efficiency with which this weapon was applied.

It should be pointed out that the Holocaust was not a sudden impulse amongst a few maniacs with supercharged ambitions. Such impulses and such ambitions can be found in abundance in more people than they really ought to, but most of these people never get around to act on it. And those who do only kill comparatively few in comparison - although every death is a tragedy, even the most ruthlessly efficient mass shooter can only shoot so many before running out of bullets. No matter how megalomaniac a crazed individual gets, it is physically impossible for them to shoot millions of people.

The Nazis began their holocausting using guns. Line up the Jews and shoot them. Bang. One bullet, one dead Jew. Easy mathematics. After a while, though, they found that this brought along unexpected difficulties - bad publicity and poor working conditions. It's hard to keep a populace sedate when parts of it are visibly marched to a nearby field and shot, and the logistics of dead bodies is not a problem to be underestimated, especially when it comes to optics. Worse is the logistics of those who have to execute these policies - they break psychologically, and have to be replaced with new bodies. Seeing mass death is devastating in the extraordinary circumstances of the front lines, and even worse on the home front. If the final solution were to be sustainable, it had to utilize more efficient means.

They found more efficient means. They used them systematically and with comprehensive documentation. They mobilized enormous resources in order to find even more efficient means of utilizing these means, and then set to work using them, with the implacable pace of a looming Monday morning.

They weaponized the ordinary working day, and the workers who tried to live their ordinary workaday lives.

It's incredibly difficult to give a civilian a weapon and ask them to shoot another unarmed person who's incapable of defending themselves. Most people have an inbuilt instinct that screams that such an act is the most wrong they could possibly do, and even soldiers have to undergo hard training to suppress this instinct - even when it comes to shooting at enemy soldiers who are shooting at them. The instinct not to kill is a fundamental part of the human psyche, and those who want to exterminate a large number of humans have to take this into account. A more rational division of labor was needed to get the job done.

With this in mind, the Nazis separated their victims from the societies they were to be eradicated from. First in the form of ghettos, and then in the form of concentration camps. When the victims were removed from the ordinary lives of ordinary people, they could be processed with brutal efficiency without causing either public relations disasters or workplace hazards. The old expression "out of sight, out of mind" becomes somewhat morbid when what's not seen is the routinized killing of millions.

Routine was the main component of the Holocaust. It takes time to read millions of names (if you begin now, you'll be done in a week or so, depending on if you need to sleep or not), and it takes even longer to put these names out of existence. It cannot be improvised, and has to be carefully planned. It has to be administered. Trains must be kept rolling, employee registers updated, budgets balanced. It requires a whole range of boring activities that in and of themselves are neither interesting nor deadly.

The Nazis mobilized large parts of the civilian workforce to make the Holocaust happen, one small task at a time. Repairing and maintaining trains might seem a morally neutral job in and of itself, but not when these trains have destination Auschwitz. Sitting in a gray office and administering employee paperwork might seem like the least bloodthirsty thing imaginable, but even SS troops had to be paid. Budgets are among the most boring things in existence, yet the notion of being bored to death becomes terrifying when one reads the planned expenditures on concentration camps.

These are but three examples of tasks that needed to be performed to keep the Holocaust going. Most of these tasks didn't demand more than that they were fulfilled with a modicum of enthusiasm and with modest efficiency. They didn't demand any particular ideological conviction, and as long as they were done, the killing could continue. As long as ordinary people kept going to their ordinary jobs under ordinary working conditions, the Holocaust could add another working day to its balance sheets. Production is proceeding on schedule and within budget.

Under these conditions, the mass killings could continue out of sight, all the while the civilians continued to try to eke out their lives in the shadow of the war. Ordinary people could continue to go to work, catch movies at the cinema and live to the best of their abilities, most of the time without even thinking about Jews (except when mentioned in the propaganda). They had other things to do, and when they after the end of the war said they didn't know what was going on, this was more often than not because they actually did not know. It was not a part of their lived experience, and those things that are out of sight are also out of mind.

The scariest thing about the Holocaust is not that millions died in it. The scariest thing is that a whole society was re-focused to mass-producing death on industrial scales, and that the means of producing these deaths was the accumulated efforts of millions of ordinary citizen's daily labor. Its infrastructure was the boring routine 9-5 workday, writ large.

It becomes even scarier when we remember that "an honest day's work" is still regarded as a positive thing. Going to work, performing one's duty and earning one's keep are positively charged phrases. There are many governments in the world with the explicit aims of putting more people to work. Arbeit macht frei.

When it is said that the Holocaust could happen again, this should not be understood in terms of the continued hatred against Jews and other groups. It should be understood in terms of ordinary, honest people being put to work in the infrastructural and administrative sections of another industrial mass killing, and that this can be done without them noticing. Worse, that the inevitable whistleblowers exposing these killings will be lost among the absurd amounts of other terrible things happening in the world. What's one more hard-to-confirm rumor when there's a deadline to meet?

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is ordinary people not doing anything in particular. One workday at a time.

Your alienation begins now.

Originally published January 30, 2016

Why is school a traumatic experience?

We've all gone to school. It doesn't matter which class we happen to belong to - working class, upper class, struggling remnants of what used to be the middle class. We all went there.

And we all have stories to tell therefrom. Good, bad, indifferent.

The biggest argument in favor of public schooling is that society needs a common fount of shared experience to cohere. Which, in a sense, is true. But it does point towards the question of what these poor pupils really get to learn during these experiences - especially as the notion of them getting their own personal experiences is frowned upon during the process. Johnny can't read, and thus he's not allowed to do anything else until he can.

You learn things in school, and not only those who are specified in the curriculum. Even more effectively, you learn things that are not in the books, by the very design of the school as an institution. Things such as the inevitable ordinariness of rising and shining in the early morn to be punctual and on time yet another ordinary day.

Now, there's nothing in the act of educating children that demands that things begin in the morning hours. The school day could just as well begin at noon without loss of utilized learning potential. But it simply would not do to have a generation of kids who weren't disciplined to rise in time for business hours.

The kids also have to get used to other things. Such as constantly being interrupted. Most brutally through the schedule, where the day is segmented into predetermined blocks of arbitrary content. As soon as one activity is initiated, the bell rings and it is time to go to the next block, which may or may not have any relation to those previous. Which hampers the learning of those interested and uninterested both - those interested are interrupted in their learning, and those uninterested won't have enough time to become interested.

They learn to ramble aimlessly between arbitrary activities, and to indifferently obey the arbitrary instructions given. Without any note of their interests.

Moreover, they learn to be constantly surveilled. Not only by their teachers, whose stated functions are to be present and vigilant, but also by virtue of the records. Everyone present is noted, those not present are sanctioned. Thus they learn to constantly monitor their relationship to the system - no one gets away, even when they get away. Those who do are swiftly punished.

Especially for younger pupils, whose attendance is measured down to the last minute. What is taught by such constant combination of documentation and surveillance?

The definition of being disciplined is the preparedness to be watched. In a strictly controlled environment such as a school, being watched is the default mode. Not just in relation to the teachers and the ever present schedule, but also in relation to other pupils. There are very few private spaces in a school where it's possible to breathe and look less than presentable. They will be seen and noted.

Speaking of other pupils - one of the most repeated lessons is that cooperation and mutual effort is a sin. The words used to describe such behavior tend to be synonymous with "cheating" and "plagiarism". And punished as such. In order to judge and discipline the pupils properly, they need to be taught to do things on their own, and woe betide those who dare to improve their learning capabilities by mobilizing available social resources.

So. What are we teaching kids these days?

To wake early, to arrive on time, to tolerate constant interruptions, to move from one arbitrary boring activity to another, to be constantly watched, to be constantly judged, that cooperation is cheating, and that there is no escape.

If this sounds eerily familiar to being imprisoned - well, Foucault did say that schools, prisons, factories and military bases operate on similar principles. Discipline and punish.

Is it really that strange that many think school was (and still is) a traumatic experience? And is it really necessary to systematically perpetuate these experiences in the name of social cohesion?

There's no lack of those who'd answer yes.

Originally published November 15, 2011

Writing as selfgenerating competence

Reading and writing are central skills in our society. Our school systems spend an almost worryingly large portion of its resources (and of the pupils' time) on making sure these skills are acquired. When the metamorphosis from pupil to student takes place, the most common realization is that it takes even more reading and writing to get along in the world of the university. Not to mention worklife with its more or less sensical demands. If you're a broken human being should you not have a cell phone, you've almost broken your bond to the human species should you not be able to read and write.

Learning to handle the text medium - both as a consumer and a producer - is therefore of central importance. While it might not be necessary to turn everyone into a Marcel Proust, who successfully wrote 600 interesting pages of fiction where the protagonist doesn't really do anything but lie on their bed wondering whether they should do something interesting or not, some level of proficiency is required in this society of ours. Achieving minimal levels of literacy doesn't take too many years, admittedly, and some would say that this level is usually achieved at around ten years of age, but the fact that there is a minimal level says more than the contingent fact of where it happens to be.

Reading and writing are linked, but not identical. It is possible to be a phenomenal reader whilst at the same time a terrible writer; and, conversely, it is possible to not be able to read the backside of a milk carton whilst being able to formulate the most delicate of poetry. (Blame postmodernism.) In general, though, it goes that the more one reads, the more proficient one becomes in both reading and writing. And the same goes for writing, mutatis mutandis. Practice is skill in this case too.

One thing that separates reading/writing from other skills, such as cooking, biking or gardening, is that it's hard to argue that there's an upper limit to it. Cooking might be a difficult art, but you will eventually learn the perfect ways to cook a noodle. The perfect way of making a text, however, is forever out of reach. James Joyce was on to something in his more peculiar works, but just as there are just about as many interpretations of Finnegans Wake as there are readers, there are no doubts that it could have been written better. Not better as in more comprehensible - Joyce's texts are not to be understood, as it were - but rather more interesting. The fact that you can parse a ridiculous amount from the shifts and interplays between the mutually exclusive yet juxtapositionally present interpretations is one thing, but that does not say that any of that is as interesting as it could be.

For those of you who haven't read Joyce (and who have the good notion of not doing it any time soon), it helps to know that good ol' James systematically used misspelling, puns, convoluted sentencing, unclear subjects, annoying moves and at times pure busywork (such as, say, not doing punctuation for fifty pages or so) to create literary effects. Rules for good languaging and virtuous habits in text production are seen as helpful suggestions, to be ignored at will. It's not that he didn't know what he was doing - he knew exactly what he was doing, and did it anyway.

Fortunately enough, we don't always have to know what we are doing when we do writing. Most of the time, all we need to know is how things are usually done, and then do this until it becomes a habit. Many good authors claim to not know what they do when they do what they do, yet are still able to continue doing good texts with the same goodness that made them good authors. Those writing shorter texts - such as, say, filling out requisition forms in their workplace capacities - don't even have to know they are doing writing. They are filling out a form, after all, which is a whole other thing than performing a text, and all the pretension that goes with it.

Likewise, we don't really need to know what we're doing when we're reading. Most of the time, we don't even need to remember the names of the protagonists to get something out of reading - even when we're not reading Joyce. It's not necessary to consciously note that this particular text does thing other texts don't do, and you can usually get away with doing a standard reading. They are words on a page - why making things harder than it needs to be by noting all these tiny details?

If you only remember one thing from reading this, I hope it's something along the lines that texts - and their reading and writing - are far more complicated than they seem. Not to mention the relationship between reading and writing. One could of course, learn the basics and declare oneself done with it, just as there are many who learn arithmetic and declare themselves done with mathematics. It cannot be denied, however, that there are many exciting things one can do with the more elaborate forms of algebra. As soon as one's relationship to texts reach a sufficiently complex point, everything changes - literally everything.

The basics of any notion of text production is that there is something to be said, and that this is to be said in an effective way. There are - evidently - certain ways of doing a text that are more effective than others at performing that which is to be performed (and said). The more artful you become at this, the more intuitive and immediate it becomes to find the how that goes with each what. How should this particular text behave in order to do what I want it to do?

This something that ought to be said is sometimes also something that must be said. When transcending the basics, we stumble upon the realization that what must be said is not always congruous with that which can be said, and that we cannot say some things we must say due to things we are forced to say that exclude these things from the realms of possibility. To be brutal about it: in conditions where it is mandatory to prefix everything with "heil Hitler", it is a hard sell to proceed with the words "thus the democratic revolution begins, comrades!". The one excludes the other, and that which must be said has precedence over that which can be said; when the former has been uttered, it has brought along a whole arsenal of thoughts and ideological positions from which it is hard to backtrack. Which goes without saying.

This critical perspective (any perspective that can see that things do not have to be the way they are is automatically critical) eventually leads to the realization that this exclusion of certain possible utterances in practice amounts to the exclusion of certain possible subjects - possible ways of thinking and being. When that which has to be said includes certain fundamental assumptions about the world, it becomes that much harder to be someone who does not share there assumptions. And somewhere about here, the title of this post starts to make sense: writing as selfgenerating competence.

Text is not only about that which is said, or how it is said, or if it is allowed to be said, but also about who is saying that which is said. The text generates the subject, with words, and being able to write becomes (literally) a self-generating process. Being able to write is not only about writing a text that works in the specific context one happens to find oneself in, but also about constructing a subject in general. Mainly one's own, but also, increasingly, the reader's.

You of course see where this is headed. -

Originally published February 26, 2010

Time

Time is a central part of our lives. In fact, it's so central that it's usually used as the prime definer or descriptor of what life is - our time here on earth, the time at our disposal, the times of our lives. Whatever we do, we do it within the allotted time frame; our works might live on through the millennia, but we only live through the decades. We are while there is still time; should time suddenly stop, so also would we.

It's easy to talk about time in terms of calendar time. Time usually occurs to us in terms of hours, days, weeks, months; usually with an implicit telos in mind. Now is now, deadline is then, and if I am to do all that there is to be done between now and then, I'd better begin now. Deadline is added to deadline, weeks to months, and before we know it a whole year has passed unnoticed. We run through the calendar, run through time; hopefully not towards the deadline.

Merely stating that time is identical with what the calendar has to say won't do, though. Calendars change over time, after all, and such changing foundations are not suitable for further eternities. One could argue that we - meaning "we who happen to be here and now when this discussion takes place" - should kickstart (pick your meaning) our own calendar to measure time, just because we can. I won't go into different calendar systems or details such as whether one should base it on the sun or the moon or the seasons, but merely mention them so as to encourage you to find your own time.

I want to repeat again that time and calendars are not identical. Calendars change over time, but time can't be said to do the same. We can reasonably assume that it is the same as it's always been, that is to say tautologically itself. That is to say, persist. We could say it's a kind of objective time - time in and of itself, the raw stuff of the universe to do with as we see fit. Time comes, time goes, and in either case it does not care about us or what we do; our lives, dreams thoughts, friendships, loves - everything disappears in the end, one at a time.

We all know that time doesn't always move at the same speed. Depending on mood, situation and circumstances, it can either fly or crawl. We've all been in situations where time seems to be off the clock and occasionally even move backwards, where syrup becomes the paradigmatic image of fastflowing progression. Conversely, we've all been in the opposite situation, where a day lasted but an instant of immense joy. There's, in other words, also a subjective time, moving in some sort of relation to its objective counterpart.

This relation is often expressed in clock time. If four hours passed by like an bullet train, they went by fast; if five minutes managed to encompass the entire rise and fall of the Roman Empire, they went slow. Clock time is the closest representation we have of objective time - the clock has no measure of care for what we do with our lives. The clock does its thing, second by second, whether you live or die; time passes, moment by moment, caring little for what transpires.

Clock time is not always a reliable basis for planning one's life. Instead, it might be better to plan according to biological time - that is to say, the time since you last slept, ate, took a dump, exerted ourselves, rested, etc. As physical and biological beings, there are certain things we have to do, and that we have to do with a certain regularity. Not necessarily with the regularity of a clock, but regularly enough that we ignore it at our own peril.

When confronted with the vastness and real age of the world, neither clock time nor biological time manages to grasp just how vast this vastness is. Thus, we grasp for geological time, where a life is but an instant and the gradual shifting of the landscape moves along to the tune of millions of years. The paradoxical thing about here is that there's both very much and very little going on at the same time. The moon as we know it today, for example, came forth during the passing of geological time, but most of it wasn't what we would consider action-packed. What we can see today came out of continual asteroid strikes shaping and reshaping the landscape; while violent, the process is such that between these strikes, there's a whole lot of nothing in particular going on. You can't live geological time in an interesting way, but you can summarize it ever more vividly.

Speaking of summarizing, media time is its own special form of time. Some news stories have a running time and longevity that go beyond what anyone would have ever suspected, while other news explodes into being and fades just as quickly. Trying to find a unit of measurement for media time is a tricky proposition, even though some have attempted a geographical route by measuring the kilometers of published text on a subject. Media time exist in a sublime space, such as that feeling present moments before the sub breaks the horizon a summer morn. Hard to define, but definitely there. There are times when everyone knows about something, and can refer to it without having to specify further, but at some point this knowledge passes from zeitgeist to past tense.

Many experience work time, and the many derivations thereof: full time, part time, flex time, overtime. (There's even the strange condition of zero-hour work time.) Work time consists of those hours where work is to be done, and can only be conceived in relation to free time, whence leisure shall commence. You can't have one without the other, by definition. If you only have free time and no work time, you're apparently not simply free, but unemployed. If you, conversely, have no free time but only work time, you're either in slavery or the kind of person who live solely through your work; in either case, work lasts for a lifetime.

Corporations - especially the larger ones - have their own perception of time. They have, through some accident of history, adopted a viewpoint that time progresses in a steady tri-monthly beat, where the most important thing is to have a bigger number than the last time around. Bigger is better, but no matter how big, next time needs to be even bigger. The restlessness expressed in the quarterly report time is profound, to be sure.

The political time is similar to the media time, but has more formal constraints, such as laws and constitutions and deep-rooted traditions. Depending on the form of government, these times can either be longer or shorter. Absolute monarchy defines political time in terms of generations (and in terms of biological time, such as when the health of the kingdom is synonymous with the health of the body of the monarch). Representative democracies, on the other hand, count in terms of election cycles. Political time not only defines how long someone holds the reins of power, but also how long certain questions are up for debate. Certain questions can stick around for the longest time, while others fade with quickness; some rulers stick around for years and years, while others are quickly dethroned. Just as with media time, these things are hard to predict.

Rhetoricians use a term for the most appropriate time - kairos. Kairos is that perfect moment when one can deliver the perfect answer, when the punchline is at its peak punch. Usually, we only realize what this line would be long after the moment has passed, and subsequently express the sentiment that - if only we'd said that instead! We now know the best of all possible answers, but alas, the moment has passed. But, have faith. There will be more perfect moments, and if you keep your eyes open you'll see them coming.

Speaking of appropriate times, this seems to be a good time to end. Whether I succeeded in my standing ambition to keep my posts interesting, entertaining and educative is an open question, and as the poets affirm, something only time will tell. -

Originally published February 18, 2010

War and not-quite peace

War is something most of us have been forced to realize is something huge and hard to grasp. Not least due to the plethora of movies to be found on the subject. Some of them try to depict war as something glorious and heroic, making heroes of young men, giving even the scrappiest of lads a chance to perform great feats in the name of the State or the Nation (or Virtue, or whatever). Other movies give a different account, less optimistic and more realistic: open wounds, maggots, death, decay, psychic trauma, extreme stress, exhaustion, uncertainty with regards to as to whether there will be a tomorrow, the constant presence of very lethal and very mobile things with every intent on closing the distance, and, worst of all, bad food.

If I had such a bent, I'd quip about this second image being unnervingly close to everyday life. However, that would be making light of the topic, and that simply would not do.

Even everyday life is described in different ways, in movies and in other mediums. Just as in the depiction of war, there are cheerful rosy accounts insisting that there is goodness and beauty to be found even in the smallest of God's creations, should we just keep our eyes open. And, conversely, the opposite: the depiction of the relentlessly grey Monday mornings with their brutal disdifferentiation of past, present and future into a brutal-eternal now, where the prospects of anything ever changing are engineered out of the realm of possibility. (That is, until the protagonist meets a manic pixie dream girl who changes everything. But still.)

If I at this point would say that there is an inherent similarity between war and everyday life, I'd be somewhat disingenuous. The fact that both war and everyday life have been depicted in similar ways at different times doesn't say anything about either war or everyday life, and to compare these discourses is more of a discourse analysis than a comparison proper.

There are thinkers who have endeavored to connect war and everyday life in a more concrete way. Paul Virilio writes in War and cinema about how the ways we use to communicate with each other - radio, cell phones, internet, the works - were invented by the military for military use in wartime. Which might seem a simple restatement that war is the mother of all invention, and that when inventions have been invented it's hard to uninvent them, and that they might as well be put to use by those who need them. Which, to be sure, isn't much to phone home or tweet about. Virilio's twist on this is that the military paradigms that these inventions were first used in - the paradigms of war - slowly but surely are bleeding over to everyday life and civil society, along with the inventions themselves.

Before we continue this line of thinking, let's turn to Clausewitz. In his monumental book On war, he discusses just about everything there is to discuss about war. He gives us the rather counterintuitive definition of war as the continuation of politics through other means. This might seem odd, but think about wars happen. It's not because two people hate each other - the hate tends to be a product of the war, rather than the other way around. Rather, war happens when a state sees something it wants in/of another state, and use the military to procure these things. Politics through other means, as it were.

He then continues to differentiate between two types of objectives, present in every war. The first kind is the political objective, which is to say what the government of the attacking country (and the defending country, to be sure) wants to achieve, whatever it might be. The second is the military objective, which is what the military needs to conquer in order to secure the political goal (fortifications, strategic locations, transport networks, supply lines etc). If these objectives coincide, as when the objective is the annexation of territory, then achieving the one achieves the other. If the political goal is more diffuse, then the relation between political and military objectives is less clear. In either case, the projection of military force is a means to an end rather than an end unto itself.

The overall military objective, in any war, is to destroy the enemy. Or, rather, to destroy their capacity to enact and project resistance. If the enemy has been effectively and totally incapacitated (ponder this word), then they have lost. By definition, there is nothing they can do. When this happens, the only option is to surrender and give in to the political demands, whatever those might be.

We see here how politics and resistance are intrinsically linked to war as such. Politics is to want something, and if this want is to procure something someone else has, then this someone else can either mobilize a resistance to this will, or give in to it. There is no third option.

Returning to Virilio. The military inventions, first used in wars and related situations, have ever so slowly found their way into civil society. And along with them, the paradigm that necessitated and facilitated their use. The military has an endemic interest in keeping its troops ready to either attack or defend, to either overcome resistance or mobilize it. The ability to quickly and effectively organize large numbers of people has always been a key military interest, and is a critical component of every hostile situation.

As these military technologies become civil, military thinking has as well. We all carry cell phones, and we have grown accustomed to changing our plans whilst out in the field. Or out on the town. We do it more or less automatically these days, and feel strangely incapacitated whenever we - for any reason - can't do it. When our phone runs out of battery, it's not just our phone that's lacking in functionality. A part of who we see ourselves as is no longer operational. Which, incidentally, is how we see people who for whatever reason choose to live outside our infotechnobubble - nonfunctional people.

The thought of organizing ourselves in collective and efficient resistances (plural) became manifest in the wake of Gategate. [A Swedish 2010 event concerning two policemen demanding that a recording of them acting objectionably be deleted. The recording was subsequently recovered and spread far and wide through social media. The name denotes the fact that this took place near the gates to the Stockholm subway, which is to say a literal gate.] Before this, the possibility of quickly organize a response to government abuse was latent, dormant; after, it became something of a civic duty to document and signal boost these whenever they occurred. Whilst it is not always clear what these resistances attack or defend, it still weighs heavily upon us as an imperative in our daily lives.

Now, this is not to say that this is necessarily a negative thing. Being able to resist the inherent totalitarian tendencies of the state is a prerequisite for a functioning democracy. Being able to quickly organize a meeting on short notice in order to discuss what is to be done in a crisis situation can save lives. But it is worth pondering that while it is true that this country [Sweden] hasn't been in a formal state of war for over two hundred years, there is still a constant presence of war in our everyday lives. Not as a heroic adventure or a sudden onset of post-traumatic panic, but as an ambivalent gray something which is neither this nor that. It's in the air, but it's not something we usually think about. It's just there, waiting, a latent possibility inherent in being. The constant readiness to mobilize. At a moment's notice.

It is sometimes said that these new communication technologies have changed our lives beyond recognition. I think we've barely even begun to scratch the surface of this statement. Or even begun to suspect how many kilometers this surface extends. Old virtues become incommensurate with new realities; old imperatives subsumed by new ones. "Be a good person", they used to say. "Be able to resist", we now say. But resist whom, in whose name? What new objectives are posited by our politically mobilized selves and communities?

What even is this new everyday life we are suddenly living?

Originally published February 23, 2010

You don't like muslims

There are one and a half billion Muslims in the world. Plus/minus. That's roughly a fifth of all humans. One in five things that humans do is done by a Muslim. Every fifth thing humanity does, a Muslim does.

This means that there's a large sample of humans, activities and human activities to choose from whenever one wants to say something about Islam. In fact, the sample is large enough that you can say just about anything, and there will (by virtue of statistical necessity) be Muslims who have done this very thing. Which has very little to do with Islam, and everything to do with statistical methodology and sample sizes.

This is a boon for those who wish to rail against Islam. They only have to come up with something that is both humanly possible and unsympathetic, and there will automagically be some Muslim somewhere who has done that very thing. A fifth of everything that is humanly possible is, statistically speaking, done by a Muslim, and it is humanly possible to do many unsympathetic things.

A propaganda machine could not wish for better conditions even in its wildest dreams.

Translated from the Propaganda Machine
Mars 17, 2015

Virtuous troll management

The ancient Greeks spared no efforts when it came to answering the question about the good life. What is it, how do we attain it, when is it time to eat? Important questions that resonate even today.

Since they were ancient Greeks, the answer most of the time turned out to be synonymous with what ancient Greeks did anyway. That is to say, philosophizing, cultivating their virtues and in general being free spirits.

This raises an important obvious question: what to do with those who do not live the good life? And, moreover, what to do with those who don't even attempt the effort to live it?

The ancient Greeks answered this by putting their women and slaves to work, so that the free spirits could have more time to cultivate their virtues. Which simply won't do for us modern people, leaving us with this ancient unanswered question:

What to do with stupid people?

Or, to use a slightly more modern terminology: what is the proper way do deal with aggressive trolls, who beyond any reasonable doubt have communicated that they never will see reason, never enter into a dialogue, and in general intentionally act as if they are bereft of anything that is not stupid?

We could try to be understanding and meet them halfway. Be friendly cospirits in a common search for the good life. Which is a good solid ambition to have in any kind of human interaction. But, alas, it requires that the other meets us halfway, and any collaborative effort needs some measure of cooperation to succeed. Which is not forthcoming in this case, and thus leaves us with the question: how to preserve dignity in the face of unreason?

We could attack them head on. That is after all their main method of communication, and there's an old saying about being in Rome. If nothing else, they should be able to understand themselves, right? Which, indeed, they should. However, this too fails due to the fact that they intentionally act as if they were bereft of reason. That which is bad when one person does it seldom becomes good when two persons do it, and you have nothing to gain by acting stupid when you clearly are not.

We could ask them to see reason. Remind them that the Enlightenment has been a thing for a couple of centuries, and that there are plenty of self-help texts on the subject. However, once again, seeing reason is the one thing they explicitly will not do, so this won't work by definition.

We could see them the same way as we see the weather, that is to say something that happens regardless of anyone wanting it to happen or not, and talk about them should it fit the social situation. Which, admittedly, strips them of their status as human subjects, and is slightly morally problematic if you ask Kant. But seeing as they intentionally act as if this is already the case, there really is no reason not to do it. Moreover, there is no reason to see their speech acts are anything more meaningful than changes in the weather - things that can be talked about when all other subjects fall short.

There is not much we can do with regards to people actively renouncing the good life and its virtues. Sadly enough. But we can at least avoid doing it ourselves. Retain some dignity in the face of unreason.

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

Originally published June 1, 2015

Read this, and then you'll know better

One of the most difficult things about being ethical is knowing what you are doing, and then proceeding to do it anyway. It is one thing to not know what you're doing; there's divine forgiveness for such things. But knowing what you're doing is another thing altogether. Especially in cases where you know better.

There are three ways to read a text. They are as follow:

A neutral reading. The reading begins at the start all through to the end, and the reader tries to take the text for what it is.

Benevolent reading. The reader tries to understand what the text wants to say, and forgives those cases when the argument is weaker than it ought to be. If there are passages that can be interpreted in different ways, the most charitable interpretation is chosen.

Hostile reading. The reader begins with an intent to find flaws and weaknesses. If anything is less than 100% irrefutable, it will be refuted. If there are passages that can be interpreted in different ways, the least charitable interpretation is chosen.

It goes without saying that a text changes depending on how it is read. That which according to a benevolent reading is a minor mistake, is an active act of ill intent according to a hostile reading. The reader provides as much information as the text itself, and depending on how the reader reads, the text can be either this or that. The fact that we can choose which reading to employ does not change this.

Thus. There are three ways to read a text, and we can choose which reading to employ.

Remember that first paragraph? The one about ethical dimensions in knowing what you are doing, and the inescapable ethical weight of knowing what you are doing yet proceeding to do it anyway?

From this point on, you will always know if you choose to read something in a particular fashion. Especially if you choose to read someone in particular in a hostile fashion. You will never again be able to claim that you do not know what you're doing, because you from now on explicitly know exactly what you are doing. Because you are choosing to do it.

Welcome to your new, more ethical life.

Originally published April 23, 2015

Build your own filter bubble in eight easy steps

1. Build your own social reality. Minimize contact between the bubble inhabitants and the rest of the world. Do it in such a way that the primary (preferably only) social contact happens within the bubble. Encourage the creation of a shared jargon and worldview. Encourage shared practices and rituals. The more distinct and self-contained, the better.

2. Create an ingroup and an outgroup. Remind the inhabitants that they possess a very specific form of knowledge, and that this obliges them to act in certain ways. Create strong norms that excludes those who do not act in these ways, and thus also strongly encourages conformity. Present dissidents and outsiders as ignorant and less worthy. Take every opportunity to remind the inhabitants about the virtue of the ingroup and the vices of the outgroup.

3. Successively raise the stakes of participation. Begin with small acts of participation, and slowly but surely increase what is expected. Most people are willing to help out with small tasks, and once it is done it's easy to happen upon doing it again. And again. And again. And each time, a little more. One thing leads to another, and before long, the accumulation of small things is a significant portion of one's life. Once invested (in terms of time, energy, and eventually money) it's hard to leave.

4. Create a mythology surrounding the leadership. Make it known that those who matter within the bubble matter for a reason. Tell legends of their virtues, accomplishments and past experiences. Solidify their significance and legitimacy. Encourage the inhabitants to tell these stories and legends to each other, and subtly inspire them to add more reverence with each telling.

5. Send out the initiated on proselytizing missions. Let them preach the virtues and worldviews of the ingroup to the masses. Let them suffer the scorn and ridicule of these same masses. Strengthen the bubble through repeated and continuous negative experiences with the outside world. Strengthen the group bonds by enacting and encouraging supportive practices after these experiences. Make the ingroup into a support group (in all things). It's the group against the world. The stronger the negative reactions become, the stronger the group becomes. Unity in the face of adversity.

6. Distract the initiated from unwanted thoughts. Keep them busy with constant activities, constant conflicts, constant constants. By continually keeping the buzz abuzz, the news anew, and the further reading ever so slightly further, distraction is assured. Unwanted thoughts and criticisms are drowned in the now. The bubble becomes a constant now, where every next thing is a natural continuation of the preceding thing.

7. Constantly invoke a bright future. Everything will be better, but not yet. It is within reach, but we have to keep working. The revolution is around the corner, we just have to get there. The singularity awaits. All we need is a slightly bigger bubble, a little more money, just one more turn. We can do it if we want to. Forward!

8. Constantly invoke a dark future. Everything can take a turn for the worse. The threat is ever present. It is looming just over the horizon, and it is heading this way. Only the specific knowledge possessed by the group can turn the tide, and only by putting this knowledge to use can we be saved. We must, therefore we can! We can, therefore we must! Keep going!

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It's not hard to construct a filter bubble. It is also, the current hype notwithstanding, not a new phenomenon. The text you've just read is based on a book published in 1992, which in turn is based on material from decades and literal millennia ago. The thing presently called "filter bubbles" used to go under other names back in the days.

The book in question is Age of propaganda, authored by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aaronson. The chapter this text is based on is titled How to become a cult leader.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Originally published March 17, 2015