“ethics”
60 posts under this tag.
But the strongest outrage was reserved for the film’s final scene, in which Gallo’s character finally meets up with his ex-lover (Chloë Sevigny), and she performs unsimulated fellatio upon him.. Sevigny, already known for taking on controversial roles, had been a real-life girlfriend of Gallo’s. Notably, after the film’s release, the William Morris Agency dropped her as a client, claiming the scene made her unmarketable; she quickly signed with another agency and has continued her acting career despite fears to the contrary.
The quiet last line of this paragraph is a pearl of capitalist freedom that could so easily pass unnoticed, taken-for-granted. If Chloë was able to do what she did was only because she wasn’t tied to prude William Morris, one of the largest talent agencies in the world; it was only because there were other agencies more than willing to take her in.
Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy.
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
What a wonderful world to live in, isn’t it? One in which puritans can be self-righteous while we enjoy watching a purdy gal blow her ex-boy.
This blog had been gone for quite a while, a while in which I never stopped writing, it’s just that I saved it to a local text file. You see, I wanted (and want) something quite different from this blog than what it is now and I was experimenting with new formats. I was close to figuring out what I wanted but then this whole wonderful Imagery media blitz got a hold of me and I’m focusing all my energies on it. So the new blog will be another while coming and I thought that it was pointless (and rude of my part) to not publish anything in the mean time.
Most of what I’ve been doing this past month or so has been reading my ass off. Oh boy, have I good taste or what:
He is my namesake and in many other ways my electronic soulmate but nothing that Eliezer Yudkowsky has written has left a deeper impression in me than his goodbye to his death brother I read this morning.
We shall, indeed, have to work faster (and smarter).
I don’t know what made me cry when I read this brief account by Heberto Castillo some years ago. Perhaps I saw in him—a young, talented, penniless, just-married, idealistic civil engineer—my father, perhaps I saw myself in his unabashed naiveté.
Here’s my hand-typed transcription of the story, which appeared in his 1988 book Si Te Agarran Te Van a Matar:
Storage space and computing power are dirt cheap; our task isn’t to “use them efficiently,” it’s to “squander them creatively.”
Or I could tell you about the time Apple released an unbelievably cool, unbelievably wasteful, 3d-rotating user-switching. The best description I read, and it still reads on the feature page: “Because we can.”
“Once long ago, when Japan was still struggling to enter the modern age, we let ourselves be ruled by our military. Soldiers were our masters, and they led us into an evil war, to conquer nations that had done us no wrong.”
“We paid for our crimes when atomic bombs fell on our islands.”
“Paid?” cried Aimaina. “What is to pay or not to pay? Are we suddenly Christians, who pay for sins? No. The Yamato way is not to pay for error, but to learn from it.”
Children of the Mind, Orson Scott Card
I’m hungry for Japan.
Btw, Children of the Mind is the 4th book in Orson Scott Card’s Ender Saga. Card noticeably risks a whole lot more than in previous books, too much at times and he often fails, but at others, he really shines.
I really don’t know what led me to spin this whole tale from the vaguest of memories when I read this post but it did. (The teacher, btw, is almost surely Dorothy, my Mexican History teacher… or perhaps that cool Spanish teacher whose name I’m forgetting now.) Parece que tengo futuro como redactor de comerciales de Aplijsa.
I remember a high school teacher used to
tell us a story about a young prince of a faraway kingdom. His father, the king, had gifted him on the day he came of age a fine ring of pure gold with only the engraving “This will pass” on its surface. “You will live through hard times,” said the old king with a sad smile, “when everything around you will seem to fall apart, when you’ll be powerless, when you’ll be hopeless. That is the lot of man.”
“But,” and the monarch looked at his son in the eye as he put the ring on his finger, ”’they will pass’, and that wisdom is my gift to you.” The prince nodded gravely and yet distant, blithely enveloped in the abstractness of youth.
“Wait,” said the king, as his son was leaving his royal chamber, “there’s one more thing. Perhaps the day will come to you, as it came to me, when not even these words will be enough. There’s a hidden message on the back of this ring, therein lies the rest of my wisdom. It shall give you hope, as it gave it to me. You must not read it until then.” And with that, he sent his son away to enjoy his day.
Time passed. The king died a few years later and our prince succeeded him, proving himself a king as noble and wise as his father. He was very successful but he was not without his share of tragedy; the ring was his companion at those times, and indeed it gave him hope when there was none.
But soon after his 40th birthday, terror stroke his kingdom, a plague with no parallel even in legends devoured his entire country. It took her wife and his two children away, and so it did to almost half of his subjects. His kingdom was crumbling, reverting to a state of chaos, and there was generalized despair. His people turned to him for guidance but he found none within himself. But just when he entertained thoughts on his own death he remembered his father’s ring. He took it away slowly and, after some hesitation, read the hidden message. He cried happy tears at the sight of those four letters; he had found his hope.
In clear-cut white letters, the back of the ring read only: “This, too, shall pass.”
Being childfree myself —well, I’m somewhat young to claim that title for myself but that’s the lifestyle I want to live and I’ve already considered sterilization— it was a nice surprise to find The rise of the ‘childfree’ in Reddit’s1 homepage today. It was interesting to find out about Mariah, a Swedish girl who was sterilized at age 25; to read somewhere mainstream (The BBC) how much of a taboo the subject is; and to discover that there are actually groups lobbying for equality for people without children2 (Kidding Aside is the name of one!). That said, the article itself is quite irregular, too short, and too focused on women (though I may as well be reflecting my own biases).
And I don’t quite agree with most of the reasons put forth in the article (specially not with “I can’t believe the amount of waste that children produce.”). My personal reason for shunning child-rearing is that it is usually a cop-out to the existence question. It’s an usually unthinking way to give meaning to your life, to feel like you’ve “done something”, to achieve transcendence. I respect if you consciously want your children to give meaning to your life and you want them to be your life’s achievement —me, I’d like to explore different answers. (That said, life span is so long these days that one may try to juggle several answers that were of yore mutually exclusive.)
1 It’s interesting how snugly Reddit fits my demographics, some days ago they also had an article I found most interesting: ‘Grups’: Why do so many 40-year-olds still have 22-year-old lifestyles these days?.
2 That’s one group of neurons I never thought would fire…
I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.
I have got to read Nietzsche one of these days.
Movie Director: How was it?
Major Motoko Kusanagi: I certainly wouldn’t say it was a bad movie.
But no matter what kind of entertainment it is… it should be temporary. With no beginning or ending, the audience is bewitched into not letting go of a movie like this.
I don’t think there’s anything wonderful about that. In fact, it’s rather harmful.
Director: Oh, harsh. You’re trying to say that we should return to reality, right?
Major: That’s right.
Director: There are people in this audience who have unhappy things waiting for them if they return. If you take away the audience’s dreams, will you also take on their responsibilities?
Major: No, I won’t. Dreams only have meaning because we struggle in the waking world. Just projecting yourself into other people’s dreams is the same as being dead.
Director: A realist, eh?
Major: If you call someone who runs away from reality a romantic.
Director: Such a strong girl. Call me when you’ve made your beliefs reality. We’ll come out of this theater when that time comes.
I don’t think it needs much context but this conversation takes place inside some sort of virtual reality where dozens of people are voluntary trapped watching an endless film. A favorite quote of mine. I had to transcribe it myself because it’s nowhere to be found around the web. Weird, that.
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