neurotypical privilege

i've always had trouble with people giving me complicated sequences of verbal instructions. early on, i started carrying paper & pen so i could write it down & refer to it (for, the way my mind works, either the later part of the instructions will erase the earlier part, or some new thought of my own will cause me to forget part or all of it), and now, even though i seldom have the same need, i still write a lot of things down that i think most NTs would count on being able to remember.

there has never been a job i've worked at, that did not favor verbal instructions over written. (sometimes they even associate having to read something written down, as punitive.)

--this is just a tiny example--

i won't even go into the massive inequality experienced in school where socialization is mostly not given via explicit instruction, at a time when acceptance is compulsively withheld for infinitesimal departures from the norm. what's weird is how little this situation gets described here in terms of privilege, instead of as a "struggle to fit in" (skin-lightening potions, anyone?). privilege is political, it's politics you can't change the channel from. it's barbed wire & attack dogs.

being naturally adept at lying & negotiating a swarm of variously-sincere statements is like being born with a swimming instinct; then some kid who doesn't know how (doesn't even guess that he doesn't know how) is thrown into the pool to sink or swim--a pool he will remain in for the rest of his life. the seeming adaptation of learning to conceal one's true feelings & opinions is at best a stricture, & at worst a kind of self-deception (they can see right through you, nine times out of ten).

--but the cruellest form of NT privilege is political theater. they use the language of ideas as if they mean something; it's all about tribes & belonging & rivalry, & anyone who wants to actually examine cause & effect in public affairs (look at Dennis Kucinich's presidental bid) is ridiculed & ignored by the media--just like the treatment in junior high.

The Right Word

As Confucius says (Analects 58): "If terms are incorrect, language will be incongruous; and if language be incongruous, deeds will be imperfect... Hence, a man of superior mind, certain of his terms, is fitted to speak; and being certain of what he says can proceed upon it."

Awhile back i encountered the German term Verschlimmbesserung--an "improvement" that makes things worse (via BetterThanEnglish dot com). This seems very much of our times, when tamper monkeys not only have seized control of the means of production, they also seem infected with a restlessness entirely disconnected from any awareness of the consequence of their actions.

I thought about finding an easier to remember word. Clearly, abprovement & deprovement (rather than simply mux up et al) retain the turn of wit upon the original. As it happens, the latter has already occurred, as well as the slightly more clumsy disimprovement...--Nor unprovement, nor antiprovement.

Investigating the roots brings us to the antonym ameliorate (from Latin ad + melior) & thus, the rare pejorate. A word that survives only in a adjective pejorative--& a meaning not quite what i was thinking of. (Besides, i can't imagine using pejoration in a colloquy!)

Too, some of the same territory is covered by exacerbate (the word i would use in a formal essay), as well as the old meaning of aggravate, before it started dissolving into "irritate"... Alas, you can't really distinguish the noun of the thing-improved from the act of improving, with either of these.

The need is felt. Unless Vulcan or Lojban (malxauzmagau isn't right, though something could be done with the attitudinals .ianai or je'unai; nardragau seems closer still) can come to our aid (okay, in Esperanto you can say plibonigacxo), we may just have to settle for disimprovement.

(Update.) As a thing to symbolize it, the CD (or as i call it, "disco compacto") fits the bill. And most of the real Verschlimmbesserungen we see come as memos, so maybe that will come to be their new meaning... Then, going back to the original idea, we do have bungle & misrepair (too much like disrepair). Better: MISFIX.

"Imagine a country. A royal command is issued to all the office-bearers and subjects, in short, to the whole population. A remarkable change comes over them all: they all become interpreters, the office-bearers become authors, every blessed day there comes out an interpretation more learned than the last, more acute, more elegant, more profound, more ingenious, more wonderful, more charming, and more wonderfully charming. Criticism which ought to survey the whole can hardly attain survey of this prodigious literature, indeed criticism itself has become a literature so prolix that it is impossible to attain a survey of the criticism. Everything became interpretation—but no one read the royal command with a view to acting in accordance with it. And it was not only that everything became interpretation, but at the same time the point of view for determining what seriousness is was altered, and to be busy about interpretation became real seriousness. Suppose that this king was not a human king—for though a human king would understand well enough that they were making a fool of him by giving the affair this turn, yet as a human king he is dependent, especially when he encounters the united front of office-bearers and subjects, and so would be compelled to put the best face on a bad game, to let it seem as if all this were a matter of course, so that the most elegant interpreter would be rewarded by elevation to the peerage, the most acute would be knighted, &c.—Suppose that this king was almighty, one therefore who is not put to embarrassment though all the office-bearers and all the subjects play him false. What do you suppose this almighty king would think about such a thing? Surely he would say, 'The fact that they do not comply with the commandment, even that I might forgive; moreover, if they united in a petition that I might have patience with them, or perhaps relieve them entirely of this commandment which seemed to them too hard—that I could forgive them. But this I cannot forgive, that they entirely alter the point of view for determining what seriousness is.' " --Kierkegaard, “For Self-Examination,” qtd in: Parables of Kierkegaard (1978)

CO2 reaches 400 ppm

the problem is not so much that life on earth won't adjust, as that our civilization, its agriculture, & its permanent habitations are all based on a climate that is already becoming a thing of the past.

we haven't given a thought to what we could do with our highly concentrated coastal populations that will become environmental refugees, or the substitution of heat- & drought-resistant crops for the ones that will be subject to failure in a different regime.

i'm not even going to bring up the worst possibilities such as buried clathrates or a runaway greenhouse effect: the fact is, our 25 years of inaction have already condemned our descendants to some harsh forced choices when we could have made some smart, gentle ones--but that's politics.

it's a wonderful luxury to be able to ignore what is happening. doubtless, those to come will be too busy scrambling to stay alive, to ever give a thought to our infinite, stupid selfishness. even the image of apocalypse itself is only another tiny glowing screen to rivet our eyes.

lucky us.

Hungry Private Investigators, Yet,

what do NTs want?

the group mind uses all sorts of masks to conceal its motivations. some of them are images; some, emotions. "power" implies there is a non-reciprocal relation between controllers & controlled. however, no one is more in the grip of control than the one in charge.

unfortunately, there is no privileged vantage from which to observe. those who are by nature excluded, are not subject to the same forces. they only feel a lack of meaning to what occurs around them. interrogation of one isolated member of the group mind, can only produce the usual formulas of absolution.

but what happens when you oppose the group interaction is worth analyzing. there is, on one hand, the stereotyping of ingroup/outgroup features--to whatever degree the initial commotion provokes, like antibodies, ranging from "malcontent" to "homicidal maniac." on the other hand, to the degree that intimacy exists in regard to any separate member, the group mind retreats & can be talked about reasonably.

as long as you don't try to argue that the group mind is "wrong". it can't be wrong. it is simply one of the forces on this planet, just as gravity is.

The Game

In the front of the paperback i picked up of Gregory Benford's Across the Sea of Suns is a map of the local star system, & one near the bottom says "Epsilon Ludi"--which is not a real star or constellation. In that place, i realized, the star epsilon Indi must have originally been marked, perhaps imperfectly legibly, hence the alteration of the three upward strokes (one tall, two short) into what, coincidentally, does make an actual Latin genitive: the pseudo-constellation of The Game. This is like a ghost word, but even more, it reminded me--instantly--of a name mystery i once solved: that of Uuchathon, also a matter of verticals saved but horizontals transposed. (It should be Michathon.) --That grimoire, alas, i have just had to sell.

There are places that only existed on maps for a short while (Tannu Touva, 1921-1944), & exoplanets that turned out to be duds (Lalande 21185 b, 1951-1974). I place these with the 60 to 80 lost plays of Aeschylus. And perhaps, now Issue 1 (i have a copy on my hard drive.) "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" They are all gone, gone to epsilon Ludi.

3 ways snoring reveals

"Centuries before, an army of Huns had camped here against Buddhist Khotan, whose king, with a small contingent, confronted them in despair. But on the eve of battle he dreamt that the King of the Rats promised him help, and when the Buddhists attacked next dawn the Huns found that in the night their harness and bow-strings had been gnawed through by a rodent army, and they were routed headlong. Thereafter, the rats were worshipped. The king built them a temple, and passers-by would descend from their chariots to offer them propitiatory gifts of clothes, flowers and meat." --Colin Thubron, Shadow of the Silk Road (2007)