Just some things

"Hail The Returning Dragon, Clothed In New Fire"

An essay about AIDS in 1996 by David Foster Wallace

This has been what's "bad" about casual sex from the beginning: sex is never bad, but it's also never casual.

Our sexual recognition of what is can start with the conscientious use of protection as a gesture of love toward ourselves and our partners. But a deeper, far braver recognition of just what kind of dragon we're facing is now starting to take hold, and— far from Armageddon— is doing much to increase the erotic voltage of contemporary life. Deep down, we all know that the real allure of sexuality has about as much to do with copulation as the appeal of food does with metabolic combustion. Trite though it (used to) sound, real sexuality is about our struggles to connect with one another, to erect bridges across the chasm s that separate selves. Sexuality is, finally, about imagination. Thank s to brave people's recognition of AIDS as a fact of life, we are beginning to realize that highly charged sex can take place in all sorts of ways we'd forgotten or neglected—in a conversational nuance; in a body's posture, a certain pressure in a held hand. Sex can be everywhere we are, all the time.


From an old letter to an editor that winds up being both a defense of literary theory, and a good example of a worthwhile letter to the editor. My own hometown, Chico, CA, has a section in the newspaper called, "Tell it to the ER" in which people can call and rant about school districts, the president, or the raccoon population and be assured that their "thoughts" (charitably used) will be published.

David Foster Wallace

I enjoyed Jacques Barzun's essay "A Little M atter of Sense" (June 21). Doubtless the inflate d jargon of some contemporary criticism perpetrates a kind of double fraud: a critic trying to sound smarter than h e is ;a critical piece w hose demands on readers' patience and dictionaries are out of all proportion to reward. But there are serious problems in M r. Barzun's position—one w hose common-sense surface barely covers a reactionary and kind of reductive approach to the issue of "sense" in technical esthetics.

Literary criticism is itself an artistic endeavor, and w ill naturally sometimes sacrifice transparency for creative richness; literary theory, on the other hand, is a branch of esthetics, which is essentially philosopy, and is often engaged in honest efforts at such rarefied heights that things are going to get unavoidably abstract and technical; literary criticism and theory, by their natures, operate in dialogue with art, with each other, and with themselves; such a tangle of reference and referents cannot but lead to some occlusion and prolixity. It’s the price of admission.


So, I also came across this interesting study that links lower intelligence with racism (something that nearly everyone can get behind as generally bad)
This is one of the few cases where my external linking is really key to making reading further worthwhile, but I'll try my best to mediate. The study also concludes that right wing ideologies help to contribute okay I'll just excerpt

"Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models."

Well, this is awkward. Now we've got this larger model, conservative, which we don't all agree is a bad thing set up as a bit of a boogeyman. It seems to me that, "cognitive ability" is a bit of a slippery slope and was used by imperialists to justify all sorts of atrocities, so I'm loathe to conclude, even if it's study supported, that conservatives are actually less intelligent. I'm more interested in the study's conclusion that these people participate in less out groups and that they lack abstract thinking abilities. My own life experience tells me that being in a group of people who challenge your beliefs is a fantastic way to expand your horizons. I'm not ready to conclude that people who believe differently than I do on a political spectrum are stupid. However, I am willing to conclude that life experience is a hell of a teacher, and that one of the things I'd institute if the country every woke up and made me right wing authoritarian ruler is a mandatory semester overseas during everyone's junior year of high school, a massive foreign exchange program. It's fair to say that people do need to be woken up to different ideas, sexuality, cultures, etc. in order to foster a more tolerant world. Okay, so that's all I'll say, because I'm lazy. The whole thing deserves a thorough going over. The gist, more variety=good, naming large swaths of people with whom you disagree unintelligent=dodgy.