Asylury

follow me

2009-03-02T03:34:00.001-08:00

...to wordpress, which is cooler, and which now hosts my blog.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

like rainbows

2008-12-18T09:23:00.000-08:00

Like rainbows, like shadows in glass, the crows gather in the world, a murder in the dull light. I'm like two people whose telephone line just cut, their communion shut off, returned to themselves. Golden light over the fields; blue sky and blue-grey and grey clouds, a cold dusk in the late afternoon. Clouds like cream, like Rose's skin, holding the light over dark rows of trees. Four days go by, the clocks go back and it's winter and dark. Turbines turn against the rainy gloom and the glow of dust and sky on the horizon in the East. In the West the clouds' scars burn gold and mauve and the sky is pale cyan; pylons move at the edge of the world. We lack the language to understand the mystery, or even to frame it. I'm the only one gazing at the bright golden sunset and the crumpled clouds lit up like curtains in the distance. The trees are copper, fields are malt, slim trunks shine white, flowers lie like snow. Trees stand as sentinels to the cold forests.

It's all come together and we can do little more than bow our heads in wonder. This mystery is thick, I don't want this feeling, but there's only to accept it: a headache, the babble play of sounds and the slide of the city and the land. To sleep and wake up safe, warm, untroubled.

Poetry and controversy

2008-11-07T04:17:00.001-08:00

Having transcribed these scribbles into an email to a friend, I've decided to blog them here...

Post-apocalypse

all its strivings came to this:

fallen spires returned to rubble,
palisades of broken walls,
deserted fountains, empty of laughter and noise.

Spreading trees standing amid the black,
the cold gloom, mossy cobblestones and rats
remaking the decay.

Unfelt winds, unseen sunlight moving
over empty floors, the consequence of
anything.

----

By contrast, a small hut on a hillside
vanishes in three seasons. The roof
falls in, the walls collapse and bake
away to stones and dust, a circle
in the earth remains,
a scar of ash and order, eventually
healed by the rain.

Or the way her blonde hair changes
and returns with her skin, her flesh
to the air and the earth, white bones
crumble in the loam, crushed by roots
seeking a hold. She is dissipated
in the tree, in the worm, in the hills.

----

fragments of thought falling through my awareness
like a waterfall of broken glass, shards blinking
to catch the eye, then vanishing, replaced by the next,
or followed to their end in the pool of the familiar.
One roaring stream.

----

An elegant Japanese in black boots and trenchcoat, long hair, thin moustache and glasses with plum-tinted lenses. "Come and blend in," coaxes a poster in a standard cursive. The flatness of this country perhaps dooms it to mediocrity. Bus passengers gather at a railing in the car park where the bus has parked. They all face the same direction, faces grim with the pensiveness of long-haul road travel. Watching them, I turn to look at their view: a small parking lot, a convenience shopping centre. Cigarettes only are smoked; near at hand a cardboard sign's bound to a traffic signal, a voice in the subtle chorus of consent, from the police: "We're closer than you think!"

Departure time approaches. Pale, aborted butts are flicked into a puddle. The smoking gaggle extinguish and file in. A solitary woman sucks her cigarette down avidly, defiantly from behind small, round frames, then chucks it away half-finished. The wind rolls it into the water.

----

'Economic growth' should never do to a country what it has down to England, parts of Europe and, I suspect, large portions of America: rendered the entire population and every mile of land subservient to the daily grind, to making ends of perpetual means, to small, intermediate, homogenous lives, to a crushed and packaged human spirit, to nationwide mediocrity and the manufactured simulation of greatness. To flatness, allotments, municipal authorities and the perpetual incitement of commerce.

What began as a promise and misguided pursuit of utility, convenience and luxury (read: ease, laziness) has become a monstrous monotony and dullness. Even the poverty and privation of South Africa's poorest areas is not worth exchanging for this featureless gruel. We must find different ways to address our sufferings, not to seek their avoidance (for which mediocrity is a goal and a likely end) but to understand, cherish and transform them into delights. 'Economic growth' does not suffice as a measure of this project but leads to the bland morass of mediocrity.

bus trip back

2008-10-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

keep my distance and these green flat fields and ivied walls, silver clouds exploding in the afternoon and church spires trying to prick the sky. Tractor-scar brown gouged through meadows, healthy scars of mud. I lifted my head too late to the window: now the fields are turned to factories. Open lands with Mercedes-Benz turbines turning on the horizon, microwave towers, steaming chimneys and hedgerowed quadrangles of land in the muted sunlight. A chaos of hedge raised beside the motorway to quiet it, one tree in every thousand a miracle of crimson or yellow. Promiseless red berries.

We curve and turn towards Newcastle, its sameness spread over the land like a colony of mold. Over the broad, quiet river Tyne and into the littered Sunday street, the tops of spires painted the green of rusted copper, a fake tan of antiquity. Two boys sit on a bench beneath a placard for McDonalds. Chlorophyll is leaking from the leaves of the roadside trees, back down the trunk and into the earth, escaping the town through the hole cut out of the tar. Like the tiny spider on my arm (abseiled from my fringe) which finds itself inside a coach, far from the trees it needs to spin its webs; children in the city, constricted and detained.

We stop and the bus fills up. My spider returns to a roadside garden.

Letter to America

2008-10-03T11:04:00.000-07:00

Dear America,

This letter is addressed to you, America, and it is crucial to be clear on that fact. I do not address 'Americans', who are people -- individual, sentient, concrete -- but America; a meme, vague, conglomerate and imagined.

You exist in the minds of people; loved, admired, feared, derided, hated. Your identity is historical, your actions are the frenzied consequences of human political expedience, the shortsighted and self-interested agenda of beings beholden to an ignorant, passionate multitude. You are the object of their allegiance, which they have made, and you are the agent of their will. You are as constructed and ephemeral as a circus tent: whatever efforts are made, a day will come when America is no more.

Your behaviour has been like that of a frightened child; jealous of rivals, desirous of resources, inwardly convinced of your sovereignty. Your friends are contingent, temporary allies in the playground of the Earth. Your overlords are underlings: they remain enchanted by the imagined notion to which they pronounce their allegiance, in whose empty name they act. They are creatures of passion and delusion, they see themselves in you and forget themselves.

There is no need for the fear that motivates your most destructive acts. The nations you see as your rivals in glory and wealth are no less ephemeral than you yourself, and your destinies are interlinked and identical. You will achieve greatness and longevity only if your citizens realise the true nature of their idols, their flag and their anthem, set them aside and treat the world as it is: empty of borders and separations, empty of nation-states, an ecology of individuals who depend on each other and share a common imperative.

You are blinded by a fictional self-interest; your true self-interest requires you to see things as they are. America is not great in itself and will never be great nor glorious while others are poor and downtrodden. America can be great alongside the greatness of others, in a community where others' welfare is known to be essential for one's own.

May you realise your true nature, which is empty and imagined. May you renounce selfishness at the expense of others, and be a true light for the welfare of all of humankind.

With love and compassion,

Patrick

Sympathy for Paedophiles

2008-09-26T03:49:00.000-07:00

On with the freak show! After my controversial post about the legalities of zoophilia (specifically sex with sheep), here is the post on paedophilia at which I hinted in that article.

I'd been considering this for a while, but a catalyst has finally appeared... who'd have thought it would be the Polish Prime Minister?

Sex and Sensibility

Michael Trapido writes on Thought Leader that Poland is considering chemical castration (the compulsory administration of libido-lowering drugs that greatly reduce testosterone) for paedophiles in the wake of the very distressing Fritzl case.

To doctors' and liberals' concerns regarding human rights, Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, responded: "I don't think you can call such individuals — such creatures — human beings. I don't think you can talk about human rights in such a case." 84% of Poles approve of the proposed bill.

This event occurs within a current moral climate of hysteria surrounding paedophilia and sexual morality, with which my sheep article was tangentially concerned. Recent news corroborates: a quarter of the UK's adult population are required to undergo testing for paedophilia; the controversial practice of "naming and shaming" convicted paedophiles continues; a paediatrician's home was 'bricked' by vigilantes who thought her job title meant she was a paedophile; and adults walking alone in a Shropshire park can now be stopped and questioned on suspicion of paedophilic intent. In the UK this attitude is fomented by unapologetically sensationalist press headlines (such as "Child Sex Beast").

This hysteria gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. So it's time for another dive into the phenomena of this weird moral climate.

Mummy, Where Do Paedophiles Come From?

That's an excellent question, my darling. Where do paedophiles come from? Are they, in fact, human beings? Or is it better to follow the Polish Prime Minister's example and not think of them that way?

How does paedophilia arise? According to Wikipedia, citing the American Academy of Pediatrics:

"sexual orientation probably is not determined by any one factor but by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences."

What is almost certainly true is that an individual's sexual orientation is not chosen by that individual, but rather is formed during childhood entirely without the individual's knowledge or consent. Whether someone is attracted to men, women, children, animals or plants is not a choice.

Therefore, people may not be held morally accountable for their preferences; only for their actions. An inclination to paedophilia is not abhorrent, nor should it be a crime. A hatred of paedophiles is the moral equivalent of a hatred of homosexuals, just more fashionable.

But What About The Children?

Today's moral climate sees children as vulnerable beings, in need of protection and sees child sexuality as latent and inactive. Thus we may speak of "male sex" and "female sex", but "child sex" strikes a strange chord, for the latter is assumed not to exist. It is also assumed that t'were always thus, that today's paternalistic attitude towards children is absolutely appropriate; a true and eternal good.

But this is far from the case. In many cultures, in many places and many times, children are and have been seen as beings capable of a wide range of sexual behaviours and emotions. They have partaken in sexual acts and rituals without harm or distress. This has not been a moral wrong; no evidence of degeneracy or other unfavourable result is seen to have arisen from these practices.

For example, in the Sambia tribe of New Guinea, boys performed fellatio on older men as a cultural ritual that was understood to be the method whereby they gained semen of their own and became fully developed men. It's an unstigmatised, healthy ritual. Researcher Gilbert Herdt argues that "the sexual behavior of the Sambia shows how profoundly Sambia sexual desires -- and thus, by implication, sexual desires in any culture -- are conditioned by historical and cultural influences."

And that's the crucial point: today's sexual moral climate is contingent, conditioned, a product of its time and other forces in today's culture (religious moral norms, for instance). It is by no means absolute, right or true in and of itself.

Protecting Children From Themselves

Our moral culture also sees children as being incapable of consent. In fact, it goes further: a child's consent or lack thereof is seen as irrelevant. Judge Atherton of the Manchester Crown Court recently ruled that a child's consent was irrelevant to the underage sex sentence he meted out, saying that the child's willingness in engaging in sex acts with the defendant "did not meet the essential fact that the law ... was also designed to protect children from themselves."

In contrast to the blunt view of the law, it is not a given that children are incapable of consent; in fact it is very much debatable. As easy as it is to see today's moral attitude as protecting children (doubtless the law's express motivation) it is also easy to see it in another light: disempowering them.

Consider: would we ever question whether a child can actively "not-consent"? It's quite clear that children can and, infuriatingly, often do the opposite of consent: they refuse, resolutely and often loudly. We would not think of denying them the right to refuse, for this would entail forcing something upon them. Why, then, does our law deny them the right actively to consent? This amounts to denying them something they rightly desire. (In anthropological discourse, children are often spoken of as the last remaining colonised people; a subclass.)

This aspect of disempowerment becomes clearer in the light of Judge Atherton's ruling above. He, and the law, in convicting and sentencing the defendant, explicitly disregarded the child's wish to be sexual, following the sentiment that children are incapable of understanding sex or of acting 'rightly' upon their sexual feelings. This is an attitude of paternalism, myopia and condescension towards children.

Sexual Children

The law may not agree, but in natural fact children are highly sexual. In the family I lived with in London, the children would regularly play games with obvious sexual elements. Other events from my own childhood and those of my friends (games of "doctor, doctor" and "kiss catch") serve as examples that children are highly curious about sex. There is no question of consent in these games; the children merely get on with it.

In Paedophilia - The Radical Case (a truly amazing read for anyone who is interested), written in the first person by a paedophile, the author describes:

At other times, boys of no more than nine or ten have flaunted erect little penises at me in the changing rooms, introduced the subject of masturbation into the conversation, asked questions about homo-sexuality, requested me to take photographs of them urinating, and invited me to inspect 'operation' scars in private places – in all cases with a positive disinclination on my part to introduce what I thought for them might be a distasteful or frightening subject. Such incidents might happen to any adult who likes children enough to spend a lot of time in their company, and who is able to gain their confidence.

Children are obviously enthusiastic to experiment sexually with themselves and with each other, and this behaviour is normal, healthy and innocent. So, what changes to make sex acts abnormal, unhealthy, even criminal when an adult is involved?

Apparently, the problem lies not with the child but with the adult, even though the adult behaves just the same with the child as the children do with one another. Partly, to be sure, the problem is one of an uneven power relationship, although this too is an aesthetic judgment and not by any means an a priori wrong: power dynamics in some adult relationships are far more skewed than in some relationships between adults and children, and power is almost never equally allocated in any relationship.

But more than this, I believe it is not so much the adult nor the child in an adult-child sexual relationship that makes it a problem. Rather, it is the adult who comes after the fact, the morally judging adult who problematises an act that, but for this problematisation, would otherwise be as harmless as sex play between two children or sex between consenting adults. It is a self-created problem of taboo, fear and guilt surrounding sex, fuelled by mistaken assumptions regarding children's sexuality and capacity to consent and by prejudice regarding the nature and motivation of the paedophile.

And it is the idea and pervasive culture of sex-as-taboo-and-perversion, which adult culture and media have created, that fosters the atmosphere of hysteria, paranoia and suspicion surrounding paedophilia and children's sexuality. In brief, it is a moral hangover.

Clearing The Moral Hangover

An adult who performs sexual acts with a girl has no necessary intention to hurt that girl. It would be as ridiculous to assume as much as it would be to assume that an adult has harmful intentions when having sex with another adult. The sinister atmosphere that attends to the imaginary scenario of man-and-girl is the result of an irrational moral hangover. In essence, there need be nothing harmful or sinister about it whatsoever. In natural fact it is as pure and innocent as sex within a homosexual couple.

It is society's own, prejudiced and irrational condemnation of sexual acts between children and adults, and not something intrinsic to such acts themselves, that creates the self-loathing and psychological problems that often (and not always) arise in child and adult participants after sex acts.

Paedophilia is just as natural a phenomenon as homosexuality (as heterosexuality for that matter!); children are highly sexual beings; and sexual acts between adults and children do not necessarily involve harm to either party; yet the prejudice against it has now progressed to the point where people are seriously considering that paedophiles are sub-human.

To witness the extent of the prejudice you have only to open a newspaper in the UK, look at the comments following an online article that reports a paedophile's incarceration, or look at the number of people favouring chemical castration of paedophiles in Poland. But the problem is not a new one or a shallow one.

Have Your PIE And Eat It

A direct quote from Wikipedia:

The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was a UK pro-pedophile activist group, founded in October 1974. It officially disbanded in 1984 though it was not until many years later that the Paedophile Unit finally arrested the last of its members on child pornography charges, with activist David Joy warned by his sentencing judge that his beliefs may preclude his release ever from jail.

PIE and its associated movements have been disbanded and pushed underground by the weight and hostility of popular moral prejudice. Their attempts to create a meaningful dialogue, to foster genuine and mutual understanding of the natural phenomenon they exemplify, have met with prejudice and rejection. It is little wonder that paedophilia today is a shadowy and sinister world about which very little is known and so much is feared, for the man whose nature inclines him to love boys is considered a freak, sub-human, deserving isolation at least and punishment at best.

Paedophiles are People

Nevertheless, the fact remains that paedophiles are people. It is not a stretch to consider that they live, love, suffer, laugh and die in the same way as the rest of us. They are humans in every respect, including their sexuality. They deserve the same respect, the same compassion, and the same rights that the rest of us would like for ourselves.

The present attitude of condemnation, hatred and prejudice towards paedophiles is an outrage - to say nothing of a bill that proposes chemical castration as a suitable punishment for adults who engage in sex acts with children.

Electronicas

2008-08-27T03:33:00.001-07:00

These two songs have kept my head bobbing for more than six months. That's at least 5 months and 20 days more than the average, three-minute, four-chord FM filler of today's crap-saturated airwaves is likely to spend on any thinking person's playlist.

Beautiful Life (9:29, by Gui Boratto) starts in happy street and marches along on a journey of nine minutes of ceaseless positive affect without a trace of the corny or the contrived. Proceeding via Spreading Smile Crescent and Peace-and-Love Boulevard, it takes an extended sojourn in Euphoria Road before heading home along Optimism Avenue. The composer's wife sings ("what a beautiful life / what a beautiful life / what a beautiful world") and sounds rather blissed out herself. It's a masterclass in joy.

By contrast, I'll Lick Your Spine (6:29, by Let's Go Outside) evokes a sweaty club basement full of beautiful people, including one particularly edgy, assertive and sexy female. It's all steel and glass: everyone's wearing sunglasses, water sprays from sprinklers on the ceiling, tops cling to bodies and the listener is on quite excellent drugs. A three-note minor hook slides in and out of the track as the aforementioned girl whispers into your ear a seduction that won't be refused.

I ~~would love to share these with you~~ respect music copyright laws, so you ~~can tell me what you think~~ had better not ask. If you do ask, I'll ~~direct you to a download link~~ have to refuse you.

Cows point north

2008-08-27T02:41:00.000-07:00

As if we needed any more motivation to praise and adulate the bovine Herd...

Cows are loved by artists, aesthetics, Hindus, for they are beautiful and peaceful. They are loved by musicians, scatologists, hippies, psychedelic enthusiasts and Xhosas, for their pats sound uniquely wet and slappy as they hit the ground; magic mushrooms grow out of them; and they make superior filling for the floors of huts. They are loved by peaceniks and contemplatives for they are the essence of contentment and nonviolence. They are loved by nose-strokers and bunny-huggers for their soft, hairy muzzles. They are loved by alternative energy specialists for their methane output. They are loved by vegetarians for obvious reasons.

But now, to the Herd's traditional troupe of devotees, we have reason to add Navigators. Cows are loved by Navigators because cows point north.

Um, wat?

Moo.

Positive psychology

2008-08-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

The discipline of psychology has traditionally been concerned with curing mental disorders, from depression to schizophrenia, from neurosis to psychosis. It's made good progress: a taxonomy of mental conditions has been developed, some of these are treatable, and some are even curable! That's great... but positive psychology wants to go further. Quite rightly.

Dr Martin Seligman is one of the world's foremost experts in this field, and his TED talk on positive psychology is an excellent introduction to it. Positive psychology concerns the recent efforts of the discipline of psychology to help ordinary people feel happier, rather than its traditional concern with helping miserable people to feel less miserable.

Brilliant stuff. Check out the TED talk. While you're at it, check out most of the TED talks. Matthieu Ricard, who I mentioned in the last post as the author of Happiness, is also among the speakers.

Like everyone else, I want to be happy; my interest in this may be mostly selfish (but that's an excellent reason to do it)! But, I'd also like to help other people to be happy. Fortunately, helping other people to be happy and being happy oneself go together rather well...

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I went to Authentic Happiness and did a few of their tests (in which I suspect I underestimated and underindicated my own level of happiness). Then I signed up to participate in a research programme. and this is where things are going to get really interesting.

I'm going to do an exercise (before bed, every night) that may have a positive impact on one's happiness; then report back so the men with white coats and clipboards can see what's happened. I could tell you what it is, but ~~I'd have to kill you~~ that might be bad for the study, or for your ability to participate. I'll tell you in a week when this phase is done.

Participate if you're interested (I'll even give you ten points) and please let me know how it goes. Like I say, I'm also interested in this -- perhaps not as scientifically as these researchers, but it definitely sparks my neurons.

desire to live

2008-08-05T13:07:00.001-07:00

I got home from work at 6:30 this evening. On the bus I finished Matthieu Ricard's Happiness, sitting at the back of the upper storey, emanating waves of love to my fellow passengers. A total happiness high. Can't recommend that book enough.

Then I went for a run. It was cloudy today, and it is still cloudy, but it's night-time (so the clouds are hiding but you can still feel their warmth). I'd been reading about flow and about the awareness of death. Running is an excellent conduit for flow, and I appreciated the movement of my body and the present passing in a remarkably clear way. It could have been my very last run, my very last step, but I was running and breathing and the sky was grey and the air was warm and people were running on the common and I was not worrying about the future or anything else; things were quite simple and I felt an enthusiasm for living such as I can't recall feeling on any occasion in the past.

Remarkably, never having run into acquaintances of any sort on a previous run, on this one run I met not one but two acquaintances from UCT. I was surprised at first when I ran into Nick, in a suit and tie, heading up the road near my own road. I was astonished when I later met Kirsten, in sports gear, heading in the opposite direction to the one in which she said she was staying. Moderately amazing, and not a little delightful.

I was immediately inclined to solipsistic musings about manifestation. Coincidences seem always to be just short of truly remarkable, tantalisingly curious and charming -- but perhaps not quite miraculous. Frustratingly, no theses could be confirmed about the nature of the universe. Perhaps there's something to that.

A minute after wishing Kirsten well I might well have met untimely termination at the beak of a low-flying, high-velocity, radar-impaired pigeon as it followed its fellows, but it missed me, just, and I ooked excitedly as it fluttered suddenly past my forehead. One might think pigeons unlikely harbingers of death; but that would be a flight of fancy. They can indeed kill, and one never knows when death will occur.

I got home, took off my shoes and stretched my legs. Standing on one leg to stretch a quadricep, eyes fixed on a spot in the lawn, I saw a leaf shake minutely in the clover as a tiny invisible animal travelled the soil. Minutiae: the patterns of grass; my breath; the feeling of the ground under my bare feet; my thoughts; the feeling in my legs; my breath; the desire to live.

Note to Self

2008-07-29T14:15:00.000-07:00

Brother, don't be fooled. Conventional success is the greatest irrelevance. Reclaim everything. There are patches of ground in the Eastern Cape, fields for food year in and year out, a life on the earth and alongside the ocean. There are boxes of brick in cities, keyboards tapped for credit in the commute.

You are radically free: do what makes you happy. Take a very long walk -- very, very long. Walk by train with open doors and walk by bus with chickens. Go somewhere completely new, take a camera. Impale anonymous photographs on corkboards in cafes. Bring back tales for unlistening crowds. The crowd, as ever, is without you.

Be post-apocalyptic: there will never be a future. Be tiny: people know what they think.

Watch water drops condense on a window: the same stuff as sixty percent of you collecting on cold glass. Condense all of it; worlds refracting in the million drops, mere appearances. Close your eyes and parse the sense data. Smell the air. Hold a leaf to your face. Hear the undifferentiated hubbub. There are no opinions in your breath. Do not imagine. Feel and see.

On a lighter note

2008-07-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

Some artistic brilliance.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Mood swing

2008-07-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

That I prefer the scratched haywire on the metal of the escalator to the adverts in the walls of the tunnel; the patternless tar of the pavement to the names of shops and newspaper headlines; that I am in mute rebellion against this world of incitement.

The London Metro is more valuable for the pattern of abandoned copies in the carriage of the tube -- commuters' daily performance art -- than for its content. Londoners live in this homogeneous hell of imperative, an aimless urgency as vast and unceasing as the tracts of paved ground they walk.

Sirens twice daily, hair and beauty, rent and paycheck, food and wine. Collars, shiny shoes and backpacks: but surely you are too old for this pretence, this draining show? All space is filled, even the grass is jigsawed into squares. The storeys rise, the buses run, the people keep their eyes to the floor in this regulated, makeshift world.

The energy is bubbling up through the manholes, spraying the walls. The cameras watch it creep and recede, up from the pavement, claiming a building with a tag. Defacing the eyesores, offending the rich.

Why is it illegal to shuck a feep in the UK?

2008-07-23T03:56:00.001-07:00

News indicating the UK's present moral zeitgeist with respect to animals and children rarely fails to astound me, especially when this concerns sexual mores. But the topic of paedophilia should be dealt with separately from the topic of bestiality, so I'll put it aside for the time being and concentrate on sheep.

Feep Shucker Arrested

My sudden interest in this topic was inspired by this story, whose title (hold your mouse over it) goes some way towards indicating the nature of the outrage involved. A less obviously biased report appears in the Bromley Times. In short, a man was spotted having sex with a sheep in the field. He ran away on being spotted, but witnesses called the police. He is believed to be connected to five previous instances of what is properly termed zoosexuality: sex with animals. A suspect has been arrested on suspicion of having sex with a sheep.

The official line is that penetration of (or by) animals is illegal in the UK, carrying a sentence of up to two years' imprisonment. (Under the new Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, possession of material depicting bestiality will be punishable by up to three years.)

The incident has been described as "outrageous" and "disgusting". Quite correctly, of course: many people are disgusted and outraged by this sort of thing. Personally, I'm amused -- by the outrage and disgust.

Why is Illegal to Shuck a Feep in the UK?

As far as I can see, there are three possible reasons for it being illegal to fuck a sheep. Firstly, it might be illegal because it causes distress or harm to the animal. Secondly, it might be illegal because it causes harm to the individual. Thirdly, it might be illegal because God (or insert Dogmatic Moral Authority here) says it's immoral (and, probably, outrageous and disgusting to boot).

The first reason is almost certainly the most sensible, and the most commonly voiced (mostly, statistically speaking, by people who wouldn't think twice about cutting a sheep's throat and eating it for dinner). But I disagree with it. I went to Ireland recently and had the good fortune to meet some sheep first-hand. I was so impressed by their docility and stupidity that I honestly, and in good faith doubt very much whether they would experience any distress if sexually penetrated by a man. But don't take my word for it -- here's an expert.

Sheep Like It

Wikipedia (always helpful) discusses emotion in animals with respect to zoophilia, citing R.E.L. Masters Ph.D, who says:

"Where sadism is not present, there is considerable room for doubt as to whether there is any cruelty. It has always been noted in fact, by ancient historians and up through Kinsey in our own time, that animals tend to become affectionately attached (not only physically) to humans who have sex relations with them, and sometimes have even been known to forsake intercourse with their own kind in testimony to their preference for relations with humans. Whatever one may think of bestiality, this does not sound as if it were an act of cruelty so far as the animal is concerned."

Masters ultimately speculated that:

"One seems forced to conclude, the animal derives a considerable psychical^[15] and/or emotional pleasure from sexual contact with a being of a higher nervous, emotional, and intellectual organization, who is somehow able to provide the animal with non-material rewards which another animal is not able to offer."

This is corroborated by Kinsey, who according to the same author, "accepts as factual that animals may develop great fondness for humans who have sexual relations with them".
----

Holy shit, dude. Sheep like it! You've just got to treat the sheep gently, like you would any casual lover. Well, I guess we can scratch the first reason. Sex with a sheep is not illegal because it harms the sheep. Sex with a sheep doesn't necessarily harm the sheep. In fact, if you do it right, sheep like it.

The second reason (that sex with a sheep is illegal because it might harm the human) is useless. Firstly, it's almost certainly not the case. Secondly, if people want to harm themselves, they should be allowed to.

The third reason (that sex with a sheep is illegal because a Dogmatic Moral Authority says it's bad) is the only reason we're left with. Well, excuse me, but... hell, I won't even start.

Moral Hangover

It seems to me that what the UK is dealing with is a law with its only justification in kneejerk aesthetics, a relic of biblical legislature supported by widespread, uninformed prejudice. In effect, the tyranny of a moral majority. Since human-sheep intercourse harms neither the person nor the sheep, it should not be illegal.

Comments, criticism, applause, denigration, hilarity: welcome, as always.

What he says

2008-07-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

"All in all, do authority and money really regulate how lovers kiss or the taste for wine, or your dreams, or the smell of thyme on a mountainside, since they govem what they cost? If it is and they do, then the world is upside down, and I want to set it right. "

-- The Book of Pleasures

Please click the link and read.

An Aphasic Proposition

2008-07-19T02:47:00.001-07:00

This article was first published at the Mail & Guardian's Thought Leader blog. As the author, I thought I would post it here, too...

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“One may lie with the mouth, but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.” - Nietzsche

It seems the order of the day to accept that politicians, like lawyers, lie or obscure the truth as a matter of course. We hardly decry this anymore. The sound of the lament, which should be a clamour, against power's perennial dishonesty is actually so idle and exhausted that it long ago joined hands with apathy.

That Presidents – that politicians in general – lie, with horrendous consequences, seems to be an unfortunate truism in the political arena, but it seems so difficult to do anything about it that it's hardly worth trying. Public apathy on this matter is especially notable when compared to the ardour that accompanies other questions, mostly more nebulous and less fundamental issues than the question of whether our leaders speak truths, lies, half-truths or bullshit.

Perhaps – and someone surely must have considered this – perhaps untruths tactically delivered to the populace are even necessary for the delivery of good government. And “good government” is the old ideal of service: that which most effectively secures the rights of the people and the fruits of their labour, promotes their happiness and does their will.

Could a people be well served by a government of tactical liars? That misanthropic question is for a later session, because if we let it lie that our leaders lie then we tacitly answer in the affirmative, and in the same breath deny the possibility of functional democracy. So far, we may have let it lie only because we lack a means for determining the veracity of a Presidential proposition at the moment of its utterance - and because, after that, it's usually too late to warrant the effort of investigation.

But what if we had the means?

This is where aphasia comes in. Aphasia is a mental condition caused by specialised damage to the left hemisphere of the brain. It results in the loss of the ability to produce or to comprehend language, so aphasics cannot evaluate or comprehend the meanings of words, but it has no effect on intelligence. One might think that this would demolish the possibility of communication or understanding, but in fact that is not the case. The majority of aphasics continue to understand well what is said to them. They compensate for the loss of language parsing by paying attention only to the much larger proportion of communication that is non-verbal, and more or less involuntary. In this way they can usually understand the messages people intend for them.

Aphasics' focus on the more or less involuntary, nonverbal aspect of communication gives them extraordinary sensitivity in determining whether someone is communicating authentically – whether their speech is genuine, sincere and well intended. Although they hear only sounds and no words in speech, they are preternaturally sensitive to any falsity or impropriety in appearance, posture, facial and vocal nuance: tone, rhythm, cadence and inflection – all the aspects of speech that imbue speech with the quality of authenticity, or which indicate its inauthenticity or equivocal nature.

In his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks describes a group of aphasics watching the President of the USA give a speech on television. They could not understand the linguistic content of the speech, so he was surprised to find that the aphasics were a picture of uproarious laughter, bewilderment and outrage where the neurologically normal listeners were unmoved. Where the normals were fooled by the president, paying so much attention to words that they'd lost their instinct for determining ingenuousness, the aphasics saw a man whose speech was so saturated with absurd inauthenticity they were reduced to gales of laughter. The President, of course, was lying.

In summary: aphasics do not lose their intelligence. They are by no means incapable of understanding communication, nor of communicating nonverbally; on the contrary, they are in many ways more capable of understanding than the rest of us. They have an incredible sense for picking up anything ingenuine, equivocal or false.

A government, as we know, should serve its people. If we consider that authentic, trustworthy speech is a prerequisite for good government, we should not fail to adopt a measure by which inauthentic, equivocal, false or malicious speech would be highlighted immediately, as it would if a group of aphasic individuals could sit in Parliaments and listen to important, persuasive speeches?

Perhaps I'm overlooking an obvious obstacle. I'm no expert on aphasia, and there ma be a range of ethical issues – some genuine, some fudge, all debatable – to discuss, along with issues that could be raised purely to smoke the screen and quash this potentially useful proposition. Of course, we'll be interested only in the genuine problems with this proposal; the rest are just the kind of sham we're trying to uproot.

What if it was possible, and aphasics could help us to know whether a politician was less than genuine? Would we even want to? Might an aphasic person suffer damaging emotional stress under the sheer mass of disingenuousness and sham in parliament? Unfortunately, it's conceivable.

But aphasic people exist. They are intelligent, they can make decisions and they have an incredible ear for genuine or ungenuine communication. The possibility of a parliamentary aphasic monitoring bench could be investigated. The test of political will, a test of the efficacy of democracy, consists in observing whether we investigate the possibility, or whether we let it lie, and continue to accept the likelihood of being lied to.

The opposite of rhetorical

2008-07-17T02:25:00.001-07:00

Richard kindly pointed out to me this morning that apodictic is not actually an opposite of rhetorical -- at least, not when one's talking about questions. So, ten points to the first person who can come up with a good antonym for rhetorical that will fit into the phrase:

"Questions both rhetorical and [antonym for rhetorical]..."

Another ten points to the first person to come up with a satisfactory opposite for a sausage (as in "a herring"). Satisfactoriness to be determined by popular opinion as moderated by yours truly.

Now, I think it's time for a mindfuck.

--mindfuck alert--

Just to reaffirm your grip on reality, point up to the ceiling. You can do it just with your mouse finger if you want to avoid attracting undue attention. Then point down to the floor. Up and down, as you can tell, are not just figments of the imagination. The ceiling is up there. The floor is down there. Check it out.

Up and down, of course, are opposites. But they're more than opposites: they need each other. (Just like you and me, baby.) You couldn't have up on its own. Up needs down and vice versa.

In fact, up and down have no nature other than their opposition. And it's equally clear -- in fact it's an inescapable corrolary -- that neither one can come before the other. So: where do up and down come from?

--here ends the mindfuck--

Those twenty points are up for grabs.

First posts

2008-07-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

Brothers and sisters

Introducing a new blog under an old name... minus its definite article.

Because there are no definite articles here. That's for sure. Musings and scribblings and questions both rhetorical and apodictic (which, I learn, is the opposite of rhetorical), posed to the blogosphere and to the mute world. The practice of a writing arm.

If this was a mechanistic world, first posts might portend future posts. Instead, what you get today you may not get tomorrow - and that's for the best.

Here's an apt joke...

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A man hears a knock at his door. He opens the door, but there's no-one there. He looks around and still can't see anyone. As he's about to go back inside he sees a little brown snail sitting on his doormat.

He picks up the snail and throws it across the field.

Ten years later he hears a knock at his door. He opens the door, but there's no-one there. Then he sees the little brown snail sitting on his doormat. The snail says:

"What the heck was that all about?!"