More words: Fail (and win), Protectionism, Humanism

Let’s talk about some words that have come up lately. Normally I write a piece every so often about a new word that comes into the public consciousness or is part of that series of tubes (that in itself is a reference that only a select number will get) known as the internet. I shall address three words today. Fail, an internet term that has gained so much notoreity it has become very difficult for me to understand. Antoher word is one that has come up in the news, I pinpoint the date roughly around the first day after it was announced that some Italian workers were being employed for a building project, and sparked a national discussion about foreign workers (the word foreign itself should have an article on it, I note).

The final word is an old word that has new meaning for people, some old European customs have been forgotten in such a way that the people who rediscover it think its new, like atheism.

Fail/win, the epic new words of the day

Internet culture has its fashions, and this one is going to be around for a little while (unlike the Christian Bale tirade). The concept of fail, I think, unifies internet phenomena into a single and possibly user-friendly concept. Some older internet citizens may remember the phenomenon of Engrish, which involves laughing at horribly translated English by (usually) Japanese translators on public signs and posts etc. The notion of the fail builds on the singular phenomenon of Engrish and also combines it with embarrassing videos of the kind you might see on ebaumsworld, bizarre news stories, and recently, user-submitted footage used to explicitly exploit or embarrass (often for righteous causes) others. Let me give three examples of a fail:

Exhibit 1: Product placement

This is a piece that shows very poor product placement, to suggest very strongly that this is the worst possible name for a product that you could give. Another example of this is a fish bone remover which involved the product name of boner.

Exhibit 2: Humiliation

This involves a slightly sinister (excuse the pun) enjoyment of someone’s misfortune, often this involves physical pranks, trying to impress people but ending up (usually) head first in the concrete (toboggan fail for instance).

Exhibit 3: Win

This is where the concept of a fail comes to confuse me. A win, I suppose is the opposite of a fail, but there are so many ways that a win is realised, a win can involve pointing out a fail, pre-empting failed product placement, or is actually simultaneous win and fail. There ones are generally funnier and rarer than a fail, it is, if you will, a superfail, (or you might say, epic win).

Now on to the other terms at hand.

Protectionism

I hate ‘isms’ people throw them about in such a way that they don’t know what it involves (relativism and postmodernism especially) such that it ruined the original meaning of the word, which, whether you agree with it or not, actually had something important to discuss. In the example I noted, they are even seen as simultaneous.

Protectionism is, one of those words, that seem to me made up to just be an ism, and not a doctrine; for instance, relativism is a philosophical doctrine, perfectionism is an ism. There are notably ambiguous cases of -isms; stocism in the normal non-philosophical usage, scientism and rationalism are terms which are often abused. In some respects the putative term of rationalism is so redundant it is more a normative epistemic imperative than a doctrine concerning reason. Reason again is another word that is abused. But it is not so clear that protectionism is a wood cooked up by journalists and fed into the meat grinder (ie. newspaper press). It sounds as if it’s a genuine doctrine and term, although if anyone is an economist let me know if there is a literature on this issue.

What is protectionism? I suppose the two big factors about defining it are:

1. There is a major economic recession and oncoming national unemployment (okay, so three factors)
2. It has the word ‘protect’ on it.

National fears of unemployment + the word ‘protect’ = Protectionism. It seems to be the notion that there is a desiderative imbued in the employer’s preference set to recruit people who are in the local area (oh, and are skilled and competitive, people forget to mention or acknowledge that part).

There are some legitimate issues about the discussion of this ‘protectionism’. One thing is that it is polarising and polemicising the issue of unemployment to look like an issue about foreigners taking local people’s jobs away. Dress it up as you may, but this is a foil for racism and xenophobia. On the other hand it is, and I gasp as I say this, a serious issue that major political parties aren’t fully addressing. The serious issue is that economic deprivation leads to wider social problems.

Humanism

This is a word that, during the early to mid naughties, I heard many people say that Humanism was a post-war phenomenon and since the late seventies it became as empty as Church of England masses (I’ve also heard from the same person that Anglican was a synonym for being an atheist). This same person, who has many coinable phrases, also used to say that humanism was atheism+ churchgoing.

I’ve found that lately with the mobilisation of the New Atheists, and the increased records of student grassroots initiatives for secularist causes; we find that it’s not a bad time to come out as an atheist. The notion of freedom of speech had been discussed over the past two weeks with the whole Geert Wilders insident, and the anniversary of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. It would be nice to cite lovely enlightenment period quotes but you have heard enough of that from Michael.

Although I am discerning about the reduncancy of the label Atheist (especially when it seems to imply that you have to have a PhD in a science/engineering subject and or philosophy to be part of it), and the fact that so many people are just default atheists without feeling any need to identify with anything). Humanism seems to be a thing I welcome, especially for Michael and Sinistre* as they mentioned that there is a new ‘non-religious’ ‘thought for the day’ podcast by the Scottish Humanist society and they can hear their favourite philosophers Anthony Grayling and Julian Baggini [!].

Antisophie

25 things about you

I have noticed a few dozen people in my facebook network to be taking part in this ‘25 things about you’ craze.

It goes something like this:

tag 25 people in a note,
say 25 things about yourself
those 25 people (if they are fuckwits) will say something about themselves

It’s kind of a self-indulgence thing, or only interesting if you want to bone the other person, or tell someone you want to bone something about you.

Michael was going to write an article on this, but actually say 25 things about himself, I suitably chastised him, and am putting this article in its place

Antisophie (edited by last laugh Michael)

Fuck fuck shit Kelly Clarkson (on the recent interest in offensive language)

A note about the title

Okay, two notes here. The first ‘Kelly Clarkson’ remark is a reference to The 40 year old virgin (in the male chest waxing scene, as it was said as an expletive). The second thing was that I decidedly did not put any racist or homophobic language in the title, as I thought the title might be too offputting for readers to actually read the article (so I’m putting in this video instead to highlight what my piece today is about):

A list of gaffes

I have found a lot of interest in offensive language and gestures, the notion of offense and political correctness lately. Here’s a list of stories I’ve found:

1. Prince Harry’s use of the word Paki (yeah I said it!)
2. Prince Charles’ use of the word Sooty as a noun for a friend
3. Carol Thatcher (Journalist, Broadcaster and daughter of former PM) and her offstage use of the word golliwog
4. Miley Cyrus’ slant-eyed gesture
5. Jeremy Clarkson being himself, see also this, and also this

I can find more if I really wanted to, oh yes, there is the all-famous Christian Bale incident, where the BBC had broadcast it uncensored.

Clearly, all of these incidents have unique features to them (Miley Cyrus, for instance, has a desire to want to be contraversial (such as wearing that Iron Maiden shirt the other day; Jeremy Clarkson is just being Jeremy Clarkson, and the Royals and Thatcher seem to represent an upper class of the political elite (at least, of their families, anyway.

Howeverr, there is a general moral panic about offensiveness and political correctness. Anyone Tsar or Romanov in broadcasting and media should be shitting themselves, cos the villagers could be burning their homes any time now. Question is, why is it happening now? I think it’s the economy, this seems to be a referred pain of social ills, like in the film Children of Men, when the extinction of humanity reminds the British about the ills of….terrorism and illegal immigration?

Antisophie (source material provided by Michael)

Expectations in film

We never expect someone to make a slipup or cough in a film, except if there is some underlying purpose or cause or plot significance. Making slipups and coughing is just what we do in ordinary life. When the film is about an hour and a half in, we expect to see that the good guy wins, or some kind of typical hollywood ending; although what is fashionable these days (ironically) is the surprise. Think of how many marvel films you have seen made in the past decade that have a ’surprise’ in them such that they allow for either another sequel or someone to have a shocked response, we almost are in the futility of it, demanding the surprise, horror is an instance of that.

It is thus, good to see more innovative notions being used in film, such as the unreliability of the narrator and the achronological structure, where the beginning isn’t in the beginning and the end isn’t necessarily at the end, and the middle may not be anything distinctly definable. Defining expectation both sullies what we make, but yet, feeds our demand for more film.

Antisophie.

Are slashdot secretly democrats?

I’ve seen a great many stories on slashdot about how amazing Obama is:

1. Obama loves his blackberry
2. Obama seems to be quite open about open source technologies
3. Obama has many advisors who are ‘academics’, Appiah once said of him in a recently documentary “he’s one of us”.

I have also seen on some men’s fashion blogs a critical analysis of his clothing style, some very penetrating thoughts on his sense of dress. Quite in line with the modern well-to-do male. Although, I wouldn’t know anything about that

Antisophie

Excuse me for being confused

Why is a song named “Wish I was a Punk Rocker” a twee (sic) poppy acoustic song. Surely a song that is genre referential would be self-referential, right? Okay, so maybe there are interesting exceptions to this; maybe it is parodical. But the lyric “…with flowers in my hair” mystifies me even more. Is a punk rocker some kind of hippy? furthermore, is a twee pop song concerning the countercultural movement of punk suggestive that it bears similarity with the almost diametrically opposed hippy movement, or even that they conflate into one? (think, leather mixed with free love, fucking the system vs. removing the system; spitting vs hugging; harsh dissonance vs. basic primary chord harmony consonance).

Maybe I’m missing the point, that there is some kind of irony, or horrible parodic statement about the futility of affiliating youth cultural movements and their sociogenic features with musical styles. Surely a conformist song would not point to something countercultural without in osme way neutralising or undermining its seriousness? Self-referential or genre-referential music can have this effect. Examples I can immediately think of include how Tenacious D seem to always self-affirm how they are part of some ‘rock’ dynasty; or how power metal bands overly use the word ‘metal’ in a way that obviously is genre-referring and yet gives the very poor veneer that it is not genre-referring.

Antisophie (and Michael)

Spoonfeeding

Google is an amazing tool to use; there are many instances when you want to know those varied and random things like what are the chemical constituents of paper, or how many films has Christopher Walken appeared in. There are, however, many people who have started to speak out against the ’spoon-feeding’ of information.

There is nothing inherently wrong with having instant access to search engines and large databases (if anything its pretty good); but, like libraries, the real skill is knowing how to use it properly. Know that internet sources are always sketchy and up for scrutiny. Even major journals are subject to hurrendous articles: consider for example, an article in The Lancet, whereby a link between Autism and the MMR vaccine was made.

Sometimes if you say something enough times, people might believe you. Sometimes, if someone you trust says something, or someone older, someone perceived as wider, or someone who says something convincingly, we may be prone to believing it. Be warned of a philistine ‘video’ generation. I am quite tired of people who are not willing to mine hard for their information. Then again, I suppose, when you think that all the information is on the first result of a search engine, you may feel that it is not worth or even conceivable that hard work is necessary anymore.

There is a sense in which people should learn how to be internet-savvy, more cynical, more critical, and most importantly, less lazy and more vigilant about their information.

Antisophie

Philistinism

I would quite dislike a world ruled by philistines:

i. Where a non-philosopher would teach arguments for the existence of God
ii. Where someone without a sense of history would be a politician
iii. Where an artist or writer cannot look to the past, or the present, or even the future, for a source of influence, but be stuck in a moment of a style, which may or may not have passed a long time ago
iv. Where targets are a priority over concern and human interpersonal contact.
v. Where skill is seen as a threat, and not a virtue
vi. Where the best orator wins, and personal attacks are currency
vii. Where training is a distraction
viii. Where the closed-minded and unimaginative cannot see the potential for creativity or connection in the pursuit of the non-task. It is in the serf that the Romantics reintroduced folk culture; it is in the proletariat’s tragedy of war that the most sophisticated of composers found inspiration in the early 20thC; it is in nature where those greatest natural scientists found divinity; it is in the seemingly irrelevant that we can find the most eloquent and succinct exploration of our most relevant concerns and interests.

All too often I hope for the Nietzschean superman to find rule, in disdain and disgust of the very flock they object. It is, the one who is entirely delved in the most fundamental of skills and arts, I think, who would be the one that pushes those who appeal to their position rather than their inner skill, to challenge their very existence.

Antisophie (and Destre)

1. The line between the will of the masses, and democratic justice, is made when the democratic body opposes the mass.

2. Sudden changes, when it comes to our governance, economies, and social systems, lead to instable societies, governments and economies. Institutional features ought to cope with changes by slow change…(of course there may be exception)

3. A talent show is not a popularity contest. For if the former becomes the latter, genuine ability is stained by the desire of the masses

4. No one should care what your opinion is, or whether you are entitled to it. Unless you are right, or give me reason to reconsider or evaluate one’s own considerations, our views do not meet

5. The paradox of being inclusive is that we must accept the intolerant with open arms, lest we ourselves be closed minded.

Antisophie

Does it stain his work?

This story that came out today I find particularly provocative. I happen to think that some of Gary Glitter’s songs are classics of their era, definitive of glam rock and used very often in hockey games and the like as intro music. From that, that does not infer that I approve of what he has been convicted of. You’d need some very odd inferential scheme to infer that.

Does his criminal behaviour undermine this?

The examining board thinks so.

Antisophie