I’m sure everyone has heard of the scandal / sexual crime[ref]The way the story is labeled is a story unto itself. I prefer crime to scandal for obvious reasons: the victims didn’t do anything wrong.[/ref] in which hackers grabbed nude photos of celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton and then posted them online. What isn’t being reported, but is being covered by Wired, is that a key tool used in the hack is actually a piece of software designed for use by law enforcement agencies.
On the web forum Anon-IB, one of the most popular anonymous image boards for posting stolen nude selfies, hackers openly discuss using a piece of software called EPPB or Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker to download their victims’ data from iCloud backups. That software is sold by Moscow-based forensics firm Elcomsoft and intended for government agency customers. In combination with iCloud credentials obtained with iBrute, the password-cracking software for iCloud released on Github over the weekend, EPPB lets anyone impersonate a victim’s iPhone and download its full backup rather than the more limited data accessible on iCloud.com. And as of Tuesday, it was still being used to steal revealing photos and post them on Anon-IB’s forum.
There isn’t any suggestion that it’s actually law enforcement officers who are doing the hacking, of course, because it turns out the software is just not that hard to come by:
Elcomsoft’s program doesn’t require proof of law enforcement or other government credentials. It costs as much as $399, but bootleg copies are freely available on bittorrent sites. And the software’s marketing language sounds practically tailor-made for Anon-IB’s rippers.
“All that’s needed to access online backups stored in the cloud service are the original user’s credentials including Apple ID…accompanied with the corresponding password,” the company’s website reads. “Data can be accessed without the consent of knowledge of the device owner, making Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker an ideal solution for law enforcement and intelligence organizations.”
So obviously the main take away is that your data isn’t safe. Unless you’re going to invest the time to become a full-time computer expert, you may as well just assume it’s not safe. This has all kinds of implications for the conversation about rape culture and sexual violence in our society: do we tell women it’s a bad idea to have nude photos of themselves (supply side) and pass laws against “revenge porn” (demand side)? Or is addressing the supply side at all a form of victim-blaming? I’m not going to debate that here.
Instead, here’s something totally different: this story shows one of the subtle but profound ways in which future society is going to be markedly different from past societies. One of the defining characteristics of modernity is the supremacy of formal institutions and of those formal institutions the most powerful is the nation-state. The reason for this supremacy is the wide power-differential between formal institutions (like governments) and informal instutions (like a mob of angry citizens). As recently as the 18th century, a bunch of angry colonials[ref]That would be us Americans[/ref] could stand against a global empire or a bunch of angry Parisians could topple their own government. In the centuries since then, the level of power available to a group of citizens (informal institution) vs. a state (formal institution) has diminished drastically. Governments have fighter jets and aircraft carriers. Insurgents can make car bombs, sure, but there’s a reason this kind of warfare is known as asymetric: only governments have the resources to field military-grade hardware these days. That is a big part of why we see formal institutions as being so dominant in our society. But it’s changing.
The software put out by Elcomsoft is government-grade, but it’s easily available to consumers and, for that matter, Elcomsoft is not exactly Boeing or Lockheed-Martin. Meaning that small companies and even individuals can put together top-flight software. Another example is TrueCrypt, an open-source harddrive encryption utility whose future is in jeopardy today, some believe, precisely because despite being free and open-source it was military-grade encryption for the every man.
In a lot of ways, we’re returning to the era when a bunch of farmers and their muskets were at least in the same ballpark as professional armies: all they needed was to steal a few canons to make a war of it. Or, going back farther, to the days when peasants and farming or hunting implements quite literally were an army in terms of training and hardware. A world where informal institutions like organized crime, militias, political movements, and the like can actually pose a threat to nation-states is not a world we’ve never seen before. But it might be a world we never thought we’d see again, at least not in the developed parts of the globe. But the power of formal institutions is on the wane.
A friend of mine (in real life and on Facebook) issued me one of those Facebook challenges, in this case to list the top 10 books that had been most influential on me. I usually ignore those kinds of things, but I knew this one would be a ton of fun, so I decided to do it and to make a blog post out of it.
First, I have to say that as a writer there’s just no way I can limit my selection to only 10. To play within the rules, however, I picked the top 10 and then put the rest in an “honorable mention” category. Secondly, I thought it was fun to divide the books into three categories: childhood (up through the end of middle school), high school, and adulthood. I’m going to list the books in the order I read them to the best of my memory.
And yeah, I get that it’s a little unusual to claim that books I’ve read in the last few years are among the most influential in my life. How can I really be sure? Of course I can’t. There’s some guess-work involved, but the idea that I’m going to be significantly changing as a person no matter how old I am is important to me. Maybe it’s more of an aspiration than a fact, but I’d like to think I’ll never know what the most influential books will be, ’cause it could be the one I’m reading today, or even one that I’m going to read 10 or 20 or more years in the future. So, with those notes, let’s get started.
Childhood
The Old Testament (1986)
No, I wasn’t reading the Old Testament in 1986, which was before I started school. I couldn’t even read. But I was listening to them on audiobook. My family was very poor back in those days, and a hand-me down collection of Old Testament audio cassettes was one of the few things with which I could entertain myself. We had a pair of headphones with a really, really long extension cord so even before I could read I would just sit quietly playing with my toy cars and listening to stories about God telling Abraham to sacrifice his soon Isaac. Take that, Baby Einstein.
Truth be told, I’m sure it was probably a sanitized version of the Old Testament. I can’t remember any details. It did make enough of an impression that, one day at dinner, I solemnly told my dad not to marry any Canaanite women. Sure, I knew he wasn’t exactly in the marriage market, but it seemed really important so I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
I can’t rightly say exactly what influence all this fire-and-brimstone had on a young and impressionable Nathaniel. I think most of the violence went right over my head. What stuck with me, more than anything else, was just this overriding sense that words matter. That the things written down in books could be a big deal. Because I had picture books and learn-to-read books and all that kind of stuff, but I also had the Old Testament. I didn’t really understand it, but I could tell this was a weighty text. So I knew, right at the start, that books could be more than cute and frivolous.
Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire by Victor Appleton (1989)
Most of the books I read as a young kid were mysteries. I read dozens and dozens of Hardy Boys and several British series like the Fabulous Five. But the books that stand out the most in my memory are from the Tom Swift, Jr. series.[ref]This series, started in the patriotic 1950’s, was a continuation of the original Tom Swift stories dating back to 1910.[/ref] The first influence is obvious: Tom Swift, Jr. launched my life-long love of science fiction. After thousands of pages of contemporary mystery, the breathtaking scope of these novels filled me with wonder. They also had a really, really strange prose style, however, like “Tom Swifties.” This refers to the way the authors (writing under the name Victor Appleton) went to great lengths to avoid using the plain word “said” in dialogue. Either other phrases were used, or “said” was dressed up in some way: “We must hurry,” said Tom Swiftly. Get it? ‘Cause his name is “Swift”? I could get that, even when I was 8 years old. So in addition to introducing me to sci-fi, the books also taught me that writing wasn’t just a method of conveying meaning. It was itself something you could play with.
The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher – 1992
These books blew my young mind. Post-apocalyptic, alien-resistance, teenage freedom fighters? Yes, please. Think the orignial Red Dawn meets The War of the Worlds and you’ve got a good notion of the plot and tone of these stories.
There are still so many scenes from these books[ref]The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire[/ref] that I can vividly recall today. Here’s just one: a city that would give criminals sentenced to death a horse and set them free. If they managed to outrun the tripods (giant, three-legged robots controlled by the aliens) then good for them. But, as the young protagonists watched in horror, even the bravest and most skilled horsemen were going to be caught–impaled on one of the metal tentacles of the towering tripods–and left to die in the fields in front of the town. There were so many awesome themes in this book, and such great sci-fi world-building, but what hit hardest of all was the final sacrifice of one of the main characters in the closing pages of the last book. It was the first time I cried reading a book, and so I learned something new. I learned how deeply a book could make you feel.
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien – 1993
I can still remember exactly where I was when I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time: in my family’s pop-up camper in a campground in north-eastern Tennessee called Warrior’s Path. And, as I’ve recently written about, the scene that stood out the most to me at the time was the relatively inconsequential passage where Frodo and The Fellowship sail past the Argonath, only scant pages before Boromir’s betrayal and the breaking of the Fellowship. I don’t know why my memory of The Two Towers is so much stronger than my memories of The Fellowship of the Ring or The Return of the King, but it is. There was the Argonath, and then of course there was the sound of Boromir’s horn, defiant to the end, as he died a hero despite his faults. I read The Lord of the Rings several more times over the years, and my dad even read the entire trilogy out loud to me when I was a teenager just because it was something fun for us to do together. So LotR influenced me in a lot of ways but, already an aspiring writer by that time, Tolkien mostly taught me about the sacred art of world-building. When a writer really pours himself into creating his world, he creates something real. I know I haven’t lived up to that in my own writing, but it’s always been my guiding star, and I still hope to be a worthy disciple of sub-creation.
Honorable Mention
I read a lot of books as a kid. Here are some others that I can’t bear to not mention at all:
Redwall by Brian Jacques (1991)
I really loved this children’s classic, and I even met Brian Jacques when he came to a public library for a book signing. I still have my signed copy, even though it’s a falling-apart paperback at this point. Meeting an author in the flesh was a big moment for me, even though I failed to prevent two bullies from butting in front of my sister in the book signing line. Mr. Jacques scolded them and sent them to the back of the line and then gave me a look to let me know I’d failed as a big brother.
The Deptford Mice Trilogy by Robin Jarvis (1991)
These were the darkest books I’d read to that date, but also incredibly engrossing. I’ve thought about the limits of darkness in fiction ever since then.
Watership Down by Richard Adams (1992)
It’s impossible to tell someone who hasn’t read Watership Down how good a book about rabbits can be, and–I was surprised to learn–if you tell them that there’s a Simon and Garfunkel song based on the book it doesn’t help.[ref]The song is “Bright Eyes,” by the way, and it’s a Garfunkel sans Simon song. It was really written, by Mike Batt, for the animated adaptation of the book (which I haven’t seen). Listen here. Read more about it here.[/ref]
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (1993)
Definitely one of the most immersive and defining series of my childhood. Also kicked off a Celtic-fantasy binge that lasted for a couple of years.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1994)
I”m only fully appreciating L’Engle’s gifts as an adult. The older I get, the more I think it is female authors–L’Engle, Bujold, Cherryh, and Le Guin–who are the truest masters of sci-fi.
High School
Dune by Frank Herbert (1995)
I have never, ever forgotten the lesson of the Gom Jabbar: we human beings are not rational creatures. Our rational minds contend with our animal natures and, more often than not, it is the animal that wins. In recent years this has become well-known with all kind of research on cognitive biases and with Jonathan Haidt’s example of the elephant and the rider, but the truth of it hit me hardest when I read the test that young Paul Atreides faced: one hand in a box that created the sensation of unbearable pain while a needle was poised at his neck, ready to deliver a fatal toxin if he withdrew his hand from the box. Frank Herbert’s masterpiece was also the defining example of the lesson that there is a place for religion-as a personal motivation, as a social force, as a part of the setting–in fiction.
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (1996)
I’ve seen Ender’s Game make the list for a lot of people, and there is no doubt that I liked Ender’s Game more as a kid. I reread it several times, and I didn’t reread Speaker for the Dead until after I was 30. But it has always been Orson Scott Card’s horrific inversion of the crucifixion that has haunted me, delving into the most painful and the most tender aspects of Christianity in general and of Mormonism in particular. Speaker for the Dead is not a fun book, but it is a masterpiece, and it showed me another way in which religion can have a place in fiction: as spiritual meditation, as an exercise of strained faith, as worship.
The Book of Mormon (1997)
I sort of roll my eyes when people put works of scripture on these lists. Yes, we get it, you’re religious. And here I am with two. That’s ’cause I decided my reaction was just me being too cool for my own God. Which isn’t cool. And the reality is that the Book of Mormon has probably been the single most influential book of my life. I certainly hope it has, in any case. I may have read the Book of Mormon before 1997, but this is the first read-through that I can remember. It’s the read through when I actually decided that I had to know, for myself, if it was true. If I was going to be a Mormon. So I did the Mormon thing: I read the Book of Mormon and then I prayed to know if it was true. I didn’t get an immediate answer or an obvious answer. But I got something, and it was enough to keep my going. My faith has changed a lot over the years, and other things have become more important to my faith than the Book of Mormon[ref]Foremost among them: prayer and a personal relationship with God[/ref], but that was the summer where I set off on my own faith journey, trying to find spiritual independence from my parents for the first time. I’m lucky and grateful that the independence didn’t entail a separation. We don’t see eye-to-eye on every issue, but I’m proud of the work they both do, and deeply grateful that we share a common faith. It’s a faith we couldn’t share if it weren’t for the fact that each of us is willing to abandon it if we don’t believe it to be true.
Honorable Mention
The Kestrel by Lloyd Alexander (1995)
The second in Lloyd Alexander’s series that started with The Beggar Queen, this book was a stark departure from his usual light-hearted fare. The anti-hero has become trend to the point of cliche in entertainment these days, but this was my first experience with anything like it, and it made me think. It was my introduction to ethics and political philosophy in fiction, I suppose.
The Damned Trilogy by Alan Dean Foster (1996)
If Tom Swift was my first experience with sci-fi, this trilogy has become my personal paragon of sci-fi. It’s fun, exciting space opera that tries to ask big questions and tell a real story about real people. I’ve read more sophisticated and better-written fiction since then, but this will always have a special place in my heart as my re-introduction to the genre and perhaps my first introduction to space opera.
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (1997)
Douglas Adams’ Hithchiker’s Guide series is funny, but the kind of hilarious writing will always be Terry Pratchett for me. Small Gods was the first book I read by him, and is still the funniest. I laughed so hard that I physically couldn’t hold the book several times. Not all of his works are that funny, and I’m not sure how the humor will hold up now that I’m older, but I’ll also mention two other greats from this time period: Soul Music and Reaper Man. I need to give them a fresh look soon.
Nobody’s Son by Sean Stewart (1999)
I’ve never heard anyone else talk about this book or seen it in any list, but of all the honorable mentions, this one is the closest to making the cut. I’ve seen lots of “subverting the fairy tale” stories since, but none that impressed me the way this one did. It’s a story about what happens after the plucky farm boy slays the evil what’s-it and wins the princess’ hand. How dreams that come true stop being dreams, and what we can do in the after math. I need to re-read this one, too.
Adulthood
Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling (2007)
Does this one really need an explanation? My mum started reading the books to the family when I was still in high school. Then I went on a mission, came home, got married, and the last book came out. Harry Potter spans the end of my childhood and the beginning of my life as an adult. I have no idea how many times I’ve listened to Jim Dale’s rendition of the books on audio, but it’s a lot. I’ve learned an incredible amount about writing and about world-building, but more than anything else, J. K. Rowling reminded me of the visceral emotional reality of reading in a way that I hadn’t felt since I was a young child. These books are truly magical.
Changes by Jim Butcher (2010)
This book represents the entire Dresden Files series. As anyone who follows me on Facebook knows, I love this series with a passion that might not be entirely healthy. I don’t think they are the best-written books. The obsession with sex and with over-explaining both grate, but despite this the books speak to me on a deep, visceral level about the things that matter most. “He died doing the right thing,” is the inscription an evil vampire puts on the protagonists tombstone, and it sort of defines the entire series. That and little old cliches like loyalty, and friendship, and forgiveness, and trust, and family. This book has, without doubt, the best battle scene I’ve ever read. It also has, without doubt, the most tragic death scene I’ve ever read. One is fun, the other left me in tears.
On Killing by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman (2013)
This is the first non-literary book to make it on my list.[ref]Scripture counts as literature.[/ref] In reality, however, I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction in the last few years. From various Great Courses to really great non-fiction books that you’ll see in my Honorable Mention section, I have come to enjoy great non-fiction almost as much as I love great fiction. But, of all the non-fiction I’ve read, this has been the one that’s had the greatest impact on me for it’s presentation of some deep and important elements of human psychology. You can see the kinds of thoughts it inspired me in a Times And Seasons post I wrote called: Mormonism and Embodiment: Learning from Killing.
Honorable Mention
By the Hand of Mormon by Terryl Givens (2002)
I read my father’s study of the Book of Mormon and its role in Mormon theology and culture while I was still on my mission. I was in the office, so I was able to set aside my real duties for a day and finish the entire book in basically one setting. My dad is my hero, and this book is one reason why.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (2003)
I read Graham Greene’s incredible novel as required reading in an undergrad class at the University of Richmond. It had a profound impact on the way I think about theology and the Mormon Church which, in many ways, bears close resemblance to the Roman Catholic Church.
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (2009)
The ending of this book really made me think about my role as a believer and as an artist (hopefully).
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2011)
This was a great example of the fusion of sci-fi and literature.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick (2014)
I got around to Philip K. Dick a little late in life, considering how much sci-fi I read, and it blew my mind. If there was just one writer I could be like, he would be very high on the list of potential paragons.
The Upside of Down by Megan McArdle (in progress)
I’ve only been listening to the audio version of Megan McArdle’s book for the last few days, but I like it that much. Seriously. It’s giving me hope after a long, long series of failures in my life that–whether or not I find success-the failures themselves don’t mean I’m a failure. And might be worth something to me in and of themselves.
So there you’ve got it: the most influential books on me thus far in my life, as best I can reckon. Feel free to share you own list in the comments!
Criticizing porn is not popular, but it’s important. It’s important because pornography does a lot of damage to men, women, to relationships, and to families. Often it’s religious individuals and groups who lead the charge on this topic, so I thought this TEDx talk was particularly interesting because it comes from a man who is not religious (as far as I can tell) and who doesn’t embrace the religious ideals of chastity, monogamy, and waiting for marriage to have sex. His reasons for removing porn from his life, therefore, are kind of the lowest-common denominator, most generic, most widely relatable. The short version: porn kills love.
It’s an insightful and humorous talk, however, and definitely worth the listen. Be forewarned, however, that it does veer into some frank description of sex and pornography. It’s never salacious or disrespectful, but some of his argument for what is wrong with porn involves describing what specifically takes place in porn that is very different from the kind of sex real people have with the ones they love in real life. As a side note, I think being able to talk frankly and directly about sex is an important skill for a social conservative to have. We can’t articulate our views on healthy sexuality in the public sphere if we’re afraid to raise the topic at all. And we can’t articulate these views to our own children if we’re silent, either. Sex is sacred, as the saying goes, but it needn’t be secret.
Email subscribers will have to go to the site to watch the video because videos don’t embed in the email versions of the post for some reason. I’ll try to figure that out.
I said a while back that I would link to my posts at The Slow Hunch given its slightly new direction. But for whatever reason, I’ve totally forgotten to link to the past several posts.
So, instead of blowing up DR with multiple posts simply linking to another blog, I’ll provide the links below with a brief description of the post. That way, all 3 readers of my blog can catch up if they’ve fallen behind:
“The Church of Starbucks” — Churches tend to teach things pertaining to character and self-control. Similarly, Starbucks’ business model focuses on developing its employees’ willpower by providing proper training and autonomy. Drawn largely from Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and featuring a brief video presentation by the same author.
“Freedom to Flourish” — The Institute of Faith, Work, and Economics is think tank that researches the intersection of the three subjects in its name. For July 4, I posted their excellent and, for me, moving video titled “Freedom to Flourish.” As the video’s narrator begins, “Our lives are not divided into two halves with one part being sacred and another part secular. Worship is not reserved only for Sunday morning, but for Monday morning as well.”
“Do What You Love” — Using an article in the leftist magazine Jacobin as a springboard, I talk about how the work mantra “do what you love” robs individuals of the potential to make their labors meaningful and to experience “worship through corporeality”: the sacred in the mundane. Plus, I contrast Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech with that of David Foster Wallace.
“Don Bradley & the Sanctification of Progress” — Mormon historian Don Bradley presented a paper at the 2014 Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association titled “Mormonism: The Sanctification of Human Progress.” The full video is provided in the post along with some of my favorite quotations from it. It has a lot of overlap with my own paper (written and presented by fellow DR blogger Allen Hansen) on worship through corporeality.
“Alain de Botton on Work” — Author Alain de Botton has a book written about everyday work (one I haven’t read yet). The brief post features a clip of de Botton discussing work and its connection to the human quest for meaning.
“Meeting Core Needs” — A NYT piece discussed the benefits of meeting employees’ four core needs: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Ways of meeting them included consistent physical renewal, the feeling of being valued, the chance to focus on one task at a time, and a sense of purpose. Research like this helps remind us that corporations are in fact people and should therefore be managed as such.
“Management Lessons from Dr. Who: Robert Sutton Edition” — Season 8 of the Doctor Who reboot began this August, starring Peter Capaldi as the new face of the Doctor. In this post, I weave together management insights from Stanford’s Robert Sutton with the outlook of Capaldi’s Doctor in the season premiere “Deep Breath.” Managers/leaders can’t just take a top-down, big picture stance. They must embrace a bottom-up, detail-oriented approach as well.
It seems that whenever I post a particularly controversial topic I end up getting compared to Matt Walsh by people who don’t like what I’m writing. I can see the comparison: Matt Walsh is a social conservative who tackles controversial issues head-on. His approach is more combative than mine and I don’t always agree with that or with his arguments, but as a general rule I admire his writing. And I’d like to show you why. In a typical incendiary post called I will not teach my kids about safe sex because there is no such thing he includes this, I think, moving and beautiful account of human sexuality.
[N]o sex is safe. Sex is not supposed to be safe. Sex isn’t supposed to be physically perilous… but it is supposed to be an act of great depth and consequence. Sex is meant to be open and exposed. It’s meant to bring out scary and mysterious feelings of desire and devotion. Call that whatever you like, but you can’t call it safe.
Sex itself isn’t safe. On the other hand, committed relationships, fortified by the vows of marriage and reaffirmed daily by both spouses, are safe — and it is only in this context that the inherent vulnerability of sex can be made secure and comfortable.
I’ve done some chopping (not the brackets and ellipses) to remove some of the partisan barbs and get to the essence of his point.[ref]Read the original at his site. Tell me what you think of the difference if you like. I’m curious.[/ref]
So two things. One, as I said, I really do like this model of human sexuality where sex is viewed with something like awe and committed relationships become the safe environment for the raw and mysterious experience. Second thing: I think it’s always best to try and be charitable when reading folks who might have an ax to grind. I once had a professor (philosophy) who taught us that we should always read everything twice. Once, with maximum skepticism to refute everything wrong. And a second time, with maximum charity, to glean every drop of wisdom we could from it. I like that, and I think it’s something we can all strive for.
I came across this a few days ago and thought it was worth sharing, Wikipedia has a list composed of lists that are themselves lists. Here it is.
To try and conceptualize this[ref]Because obviously that is a thing worth spending time and effort on![/ref] we can start at the lowest level. Here is Wikipedia’s list of accounting journals. That list is itself one item in Wikipedia’s lists of academic journals. So the lists of academic journals is a list of lists, and one of those lists is the list of accounting journals. With me so far? Great. So the list of lists of academic journals is, itself, one of the entries in the list of lists of lists.
Mostly this is amusing, but it’s also seriously interesting to me. I often wonder about meta-ness.[ref]It’s a word. Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?[/ref] As in: how meta can you go? It seems like there isn’t any genuine reason why you’d need to have a list of lists of lists of lists, right? I feel like there’s something about three that makes it complete. Random other example, I’ve done research on learning in the past, and we talked about: learning, learning-to-learn, and learning-to-learn-to-learn. Again: the first two are pretty straightforward. You can learn math. You can also get better at learning math, which is learning-to-learn. And you can sort of think of abstract methods of getting better at refining your study techniques, which is learning-to-learn-to-learn. But surely there isn’t a fourth level, is there?
I can’t tell if three levels is enough in some objective sense, or if humans just give up at three levels ’cause it’s hard to keep track of anything past that in a concrete sense. The way you can instantly recognize the difference between the quantity three and the quantity four just by sight, but bigger numbers like 15 vs. 16 require some abstraction to work with.
Then again: maybe this is just a limitation of human experience. Ever wonder what it would be like for extra-terrestrials to be smarter than humans? It’s a sci-fi concept we talk about a lot, but what would a super-smart alien intelligence really look like? A lot of the time we depict it (in books or movies) as either rapid calculation and logical inference, like a computer (think of the mentats[ref]Not aliens, I know. Close enough.[/ref] in Dune) and other times it just gets mystic and weird (like the new movie, Lucy). But maybe what it would look like is a group of people who could talk about learning-to-learn-to-learn-to-learn with total ease, as though the concept made perfect intuitive sense. And maybe they would have a list of lists of lists of lists and think it was as ordinary as a grocery list.
I don’t agree with everything from this article at the Guardian, but I like the main point. Which is as follows:
The chart above is not a valid definition of feminism. As the article says:
The test is fun, to the point, inclusive: it gets people on board and gets more men calling themselves feminists. Allies – huzzah! But it’s also kind of lying. You need to believe some other important things in order to be a feminist…
Then we get a more complicated chart:
I could nitpick the chart (all the reasons for being “Not a feminist” are pretty lame), but the article is a bit more nuanced:
There are plenty of ways to be awesome without working towards equal rights for women. For example, if you answered “Who do you think is more disadvantaged by gender inequality?” with “Women, but I’m still more interested in talking about men,” that’s fine. Maybe, like Tom Matlack, who founded the Good Men Project, you are a pro-feminist: that is, someone who supports the goals and objectives of the movement for equal women’s rights, but who is actively working on male issues. Gender initiatives like the Good Men Project move us towards a more equal society, which benefits women in many ways, just like feminist initiatives benefit men in many ways.
So the point ends up being that you have to be pro-feminist in order to be a decent human being, but you don’t actually have to be feminist. I like this because it’s honest about the fact that feminism means more than “I support equal rights for women.” In doing so, it defuses the main use of the term feminism these days, which is to browbeat social conservatives into silence. Here’s how that works:
Feminism means equal rights for women.
Feminism also means being (for example) pro-choice.
What, you’re pro-life? Then you must not be a feminist (by #2).
And if you’re not a feminist, then you must hate women (by #1).
See how that works? It’s nonsensical, but it is effective. But if, like the author of this piece, you’re honest enough to admit that there’s more going on with feminism then just equal rights for women, the tactic mostly falls apart. Which, in the long run, is good for everyone. What ever feminism means (opinions vary widely), making it something other than a subset of left-wing ideology is probably good for everyone.
According to the Independent, some prominent clerics based in the UK have jointly issued a fatwa condemning ISIS and specifically condemning British men who run off to join the militant group. On the one hand, this isn’t really big news. Al Qaeda has called ISIS extreme, after all. Still, it’s encouraging to see a prominent example of Islamic religious authority being used to counter Islamic terrorism.
The Brookings Institution has a brand new study on those living on $2 a day in the U.S. One of the most interesting findings is how the estimates depend on the data source. These estimates range from 4% (12 million) to zero:
In response to questions about their study, the authors explain the range of estimates:
First, a significant portion of $2 poverty appears to be temporary, as evidenced by the lower poverty rates recorded when we extend the duration over which individuals’ welfare is assessed. Such spells may be accounted for by life events such as moving between jobs that are not necessarily indications of diminished welfare. Second, social protection programs play a critical role in the welfare of many of America’s poorest households. Programs such as food stamps (SNAP) and the Earned Income Tax Credit mean the difference between living above the $2 threshold or below it for millions of people according to some estimates. Third, a significant share of consumption for the $2 poor likely occurs out of resources that don’t count as income: savings and assets, borrowing, and in-kind government assistance. Poverty estimates based on income (money earned) and consumption (money spent) differ widely. This discrepancy is in keeping with the higher variability of income from month to month.
Furthermore, the authors explain, “If we used the exact same criteria to measure poverty in the U.S. as is used by the World Bank to obtain official poverty estimates for the developing world, we would conclude that no-one in the U.S. falls under the $2 threshold. Part of the reason for this is that even the poorest people surveyed in America appear to find a way to meet their most basic material needs (valued above $2 a day) even if their reported income is zero or close to zero. Furthermore, the poor in America have access to public goods—public education, criminal justice and infrastructure—that would be the envy of the poor in the developing world.”
Finally, the authors point out that “the methodology by which the World Bank compiles official global poverty estimates has recently changed. Whereas in the past the estimate was in practice just a measure of poverty in the developing world, the new method incorporates the populations of rich countries. For now, the entire population of these countries is assumed to not be poor.”
Understanding data sources is important. Consumption is likely a more accurate way to assess the poor’s material well-being, as I think is demonstrated in the range of estimates above. On top of this, one must take into consideration the intangible assets of one’s country. These assets, according to the World Bank, refer to the nation’s human and social capital (i.e. worker skills and trust) and the quality of its formal and informal institutions (e.g. efficient judicial system, property rights). These make up most of a nation’s total wealth.[ref]The magazine Reason has a nice write-up on intangible assets.[/ref] In 2005 (the latest data from the World Bank), the U.S. had $734,195 total wealth per capita, with $627,246 (over 85%) of that wealth being intangible.
One of those studies that should both remind those in developed countries how lucky they are and how much work there is still left to do.
Myth: Rape is caused by lust or uncontrollable sexual urges and the need for sexual gratification.
Fact: Rape is an act of physical violence and domination that is not motivated by sexual gratification. (Counseling Center at Roger Williams University)
The idea that rape is about power, and not about sex, is one of those facts that everyone knows. Sort of like everyone knows that humans only use 10% of their brain capacity. In other words: it’s totally and completely wrong but people keep saying it anyway.
The urban legend about folks using only 10% of their brain may be annoying[ref]And it might lead to Scarlett Johansen starring in a really bad movie.[/ref], but as a general rule it doesn’t get anyone hurt. Misdiagnosing the cause of rape can lead to bad policies, confusion, and more rape, however. It’s not just an annoyance. It’s serious and worth getting right. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, politics gets in the way.
The original source of the idea that sexual assault is about violence and power instead of sex or lust doesn’t come from a scientist or an academic study.[ref]UPDATE: I am arguing against the common argument that rape is only about power. I am not arguing that it is only about sex. Rape is a coercive act, so by definition it is about power. It is not only about power, however, and role of sex/lust is important to understanding rape.[/ref] It comes from a feminist writer named Susan Brownmiller who invented the theory pretty much from scratch for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape.
According to Brownmiller, rape is “a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” There is some validity to the idea that the consequence of widespread rape and sexual assault is a ubiquitous power imbalance between men and women in society, and that in that sense even men who never sexually assault women might be said to benefit from rape, but the contention that men consciously engage in rape for the purpose of control (to the exclusion of sexual gratification) never made much sense at all.
In a sane world, Brownmiller’s theory would have been very short lived. This is because an actual scientist stepped in with a direct rebuttal just four years later, in 1979. The book was called The Evolution of Human Sexuality and it was written by the anthropologist Donald Symons. It is no coincidence that Symons wrote from a scientific rather than a political perspective, and his book was widely heralded by some of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century, including Richard Posner, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Steven Pinker.[ref]I do not mean to denigrate theoretical work as a category. Theory matters, but only to the extent that it makes use of available data, which the theory from Against Our Will does not.[/ref]Symons’ thesis was very simple and aligned with common sense: he saw rape as being primarily about the satisfaction of sexual lust.[ref]That contradicts the second half of the opening quote. The first half—that it is uncontrollable—really is bunk.[/ref] In particular, he used evidence to document that:
Victims, as a class, were most likely to be young physically attractive women (as opposed to older, more successful career women). On the other hand, convicted rapists were disproportionately young disadvantaged men whose low social status made them undesirable as dating partners, or husbands. (Summary from Psychology Today)
The nature of sex and sexual violence in society has changed significantly since the 1970s, but continuing research cements Symons’ central claim that rape is a way for men to get access to sex that they can’t get in other ways.
For example, I recently came across another stark confirmation of this in the paper Decriminalizing Indoor Prostitution: Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health. In it, researchers Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah found a simple and direct correlation between legalized prostitution and rape in Rhode Island. The state unintentionally legalized prostitution in 2003 an then recriminalized it in 2009.[ref]The fact that the legalization was accidental is actually quite important because it creates a natural experiment.[/ref] After prostitution was legalized, the sex market increased in size and rape (overall, across the entire state) declined by 31%. When prostitution was criminalized again in 2009, the incidence of rape went back up. As Jason Kerwin summarizes:
Cunningham and Shah are very careful to say that they cannot conclude exactly why decriminalizing prostitution reduces cases of rape. They consider a number of potential mechanisms, and conclude that the most likely one is that, for some men, rape and prostitution are substitutes. That is, men commit rape in part due to sexual desire, which can be satisfied in other ways.
Kerwin goes on to point out that:
While Cunningham and Shah’s paper cannot demonstrate this for sure, their finding is consistent with other research by Todd Kendall that finds that the rollout of the internet, and the attendant increase in the accessibility or pornography, appears to have driven a decrease in cases of rape.
I’m well aware of the difference between causation and correlation, but taken together the research of Symons, Cunningham & Shah, and Kendall paint a stark picture in which men—driven by a more powerful sex drive—see rape as one among a series of competing sources of sexual gratification, the others being consensual sex, pornography, and prostitution.
Women have always born more of the risks and costs of sexual activity because it is women who get pregnant. In the 1960s and 1970s, this created incentives for women to wait until marriage to have sex or, more realistically, to at least keep sex within the confines of social courtship rituals. Men with high social capital, because they made good potential mates, therefore had reasonably high access to sex both through marriage and through the courtship that led to marriage. Men with low social capital who had much worse prospects in courtship committed the majority of rapes for that reason: they had less access to sex through courtship and marriage.
Since that time, society has changed dramatically, and the costs of sex—in terms of risks of unwanted children or sexually transmitted infections—have gone down dramatically. However, this has primarily benefitted men rather than women. This is because the prevalence of elective abortion has changed societal attitudes about pregnancy to make it basically a woman’s problem. Since a woman can get an abortion, if she does not society is more likely to see it as her choice alone. This diminishes the social responsibility men feel towards their own offspring and means that women are guaranteed to bear the costs of unplanned pregnancy—whether it’s the aftermath of an abortion or single parenthood—alone. So the costs of sex outside of marriage or courtship rituals have gone down, but the inequality between men and women has actually increased.
For men with low social capital this means that the need to rely on rape may be somewhat diminished because casual sex might be more accessible to them then expensive courtship rituals. The old idea that a man had to have a stable job and be ready to provide for a family before marrying and having sex is dead. It’s possible that men with low social capital are still seen as less desirable mates, but even in that case the ready availability of cheap and abundant porn is a safer outlet (from their perspective) than violent rape.
Men with high social capital have the same considerations, but more so. The kind of man with high social capital is likely to be the kind of man who goes to college. Not only does this create a ready abundance of opportunities for casual sex and porn consumption, but the hookup culture also creates the perfect opportunity for date rape. Date rape is much, much lower risk (for men) than violent rape because there is often no physical evidence and so it becomes a matter of he-said, she-said that our justice system cannot hope to successfully prosecute as a general rule.
Because the political theory that rape is a systematic form of oppression completely misapprehends the actual motivating factors behind rape, it cannot offer reliable policy guidance to address rape. It persists only because the alternative, seeing rape as a about sexual gratification, requires a politically unpalatable recognition of fundamental differences between the sexes.[ref]Primarily the controversial but obvious twin assertions that men are more motivated by sex and that women pay a higher cost for sex.[/ref] Denial of these unpalatable realities blinds us to the reality that sexual liberalization is virtually always beneficial for men at the expense of women and children.
Another big blind spot that comes from the theory of rape-as-power is the tendency to underestimate the connection between rape, pornography (which often includes depictions of violence, and so is basically simulated rape) and prostitution (which often involves sex slavery and coercion of minors[ref]UPDATE: The original link here was wrong. The new link goes to a study from Shared Hope International that identifies demand for pornography as a major factor in domestic (US) trafficking of minors. This is just one example of the connection between prostitution, porn, and sexual violence.[/ref], and so is basically outsourced rape). Consequently, the idea that prostitution and pornography can ease sexual violence in society has merit only to the extent that we recognize we’re regulating sexual violence as opposed to avoiding it. Since it’s difficult to see formalized, lethal dueling being proposed as an answer to murder, it’s hard for me to see pornography and prostitution as solutions to sexual violence against women
Acknowledging the real nature of rape does not lead directly to any silver bullets that will eliminate sexual violence from our world. It is a deep and disastrous dysfunction, much like murder, that will never be entirely eliminated from society. There is hope, however, that correctly recognizing the causes can lead to better policies to make sexual violence less prevalent.
UPDATE: I knew this would be a controversial post, but some of the push back was more than I expected. This is an important issue, both to me personally and also for society at large, and so I want to say thank to the folks who contributed and brought in new perspectives and resources, especially Cynthia L. and Kevin L. I’ll be giving the issue more thought–and more research–and will probably return to it again with a follow-up post.
