Ix's Essays

[My pseudonym is Ix]

So, this is a thing.

Those of you who know my forum habits reasonably well should know I am a fan of the longform response- of writing a wall of text where others might write a sentence. This is partly a result of me attempting to present a reasonably complete picture of the task at hand, and partly because I find it a very useful way of clarifying my own thoughts. By writing these things down, I am forced to present them in such a way as to make them make sense, and to interrogate my own feelings in order to help myself act with at least a degree of logical consistency.

I also just like writing essays.

In the past I've indulged these tendencies through blogging, but I've struggled to stick to any kind of schedule with it- thanks to both leading a busy life and simply not coming across enough that I want to write about. So instead, I thought I might start this thread as a vehicle for publishing my thoughts regarding... just about anything that I find interesting. I make no promises that I will publish with any kind of regularity or consistency, or that my quality of writing will be anything exceptional, but I will do my best to be a) impartial, b) analytical and c) fair. Anyone else who wishes to post something along similar lines may do so if they wish, and I'd welcome anyone who wants to add their thoughts to any discussion.

After all, we're all here for fun.

-Ix

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Democracy

[This post primarily uses examples from and deals in the area of British politics, but is broadly applicable to most major western democratic governments. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of others from around the globe]

Following the recent vote in which the British government decreed that it was going to bomb Syria, there have been many outpourings along the theme that the government have circumvented democracy by ignoring the will of the people and their constituents. This is not a new pattern; the same thing happened when Bush and Blair invaded Iraq, and to a lesser extent in 1914 on the verge of the First World War (the 'lesser extent' in this case referring to the fact that there was also a sizeable force parading to applaud the government's choice to end a century of European peace). In a non-military context, the cry of 'circumventing democracy' was uttered by many conservatives around the world as various countries legalised gay and (particularly) interracial marriage throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, and it has become something of a rallying cry around which opposers of any contentious legal decisions tend to flock.

Fact is, this is nothing more or less than a fundamental flaw, or at least facet, of the nature of democracy. Quite apart from the question of whether the views of us, our friends and our peers are in fact representative of the view of the country at large (a practically unknowable phenomenon due to the wonders of statistical bias), it is a sad truth that democracy frequently does not represent the collective views of a nation through the case of simple practicality. When one votes for their MP, they are attempting to choose between a discrete list of candidates, none of whom will ever perfectly align to an individual's entire worldview or political opinions (by way of an example, do you and the person you last voted for share an opinion regarding videogames? What about prostitution? Arts funding? The need for reform of the education system?). Beyond this, we must also evaluate how well we feel the individual will fight to represent us, how capable they are as a politician or simply how likely their various proposals are to get in; thus, we end up with a compromise government, where nobody entirely pleases anyone else and entire governments can find themselves the victims of vitriol within their own party. The abuse David Cameron received from members of the conservative right during the introduction of gay marriage legalisation in the UK was an obvious example.

Even if presented with a near-perfect candidate, that is still no guarantee that said candidate would be able to vote in a manner that could be described as 'on our behalf', or that it would even be wise for him to do so. The first of these issues is essentially technological; it is simply not possible for an MP to know what his constituents actually want in any kind of representative way. The opinions an MP receives are only ever going to be from those with strong enough opinions to wish to voice them, and with the time to be able to do so. This is of course the cause behind the classic phenomena of a supposed 'debate' between reasonable parties ending up as the most violently angry members of each parties shouting vitriol as one another. Thus, an MP must estimate the views of the 'silent majority' as best as they are able, and act accordingly. And then we come to the issue of the wisdom of the masses; democracy purports to the idea that the best people to govern people are the people themselves, but this is frequently not the case. We see this constantly on a micro-scale (how pervasive a cultural trope is the intervention by friends "for your own good"?) and it applies on the macro-scale as well- how is any Chancellor ever supposed to balance the books in accordance with the masses' demands for lower taxes, more public spending and less debt? Put bluntly, individuals are not usually blessed with the wisdom, intelligence and information required to make informed decisions about what is good for them and the country at large. Besides, running in the face of what the public 'wants' has frequently allowed the world to take huge strides in liberalism and progress. The fact that more than 50% of the British public would like to reinstate the death penalty, and that less than a quarter of Americans were in favour of interracial marriage when it was fully legalised in the 1960s, are powerful indicators of this fact from a liberal's standpoint.

It is easy to argue that all these are not problems with democracy per se, but rather with our current political system; those who take this view will sometimes point to the model of Athenian democracy, wherein each citizen has not only a vote but a voice to stand and state their opinion. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this system will invariably end up as a talking shop with various parties doing nothing but shout and disagree with one another, a problem that is only exacerbated as the numbers concerned go up, so a more practical approach might be to increase the amount of referenda and public consultations undergone for important political decisions. And in this vein the issue of political apathy rears its ugly head; at the last UK general election, a decision that would seismically shape the country for the next half decade, some 30% (ish) of the voting population chose not to do so. And the vast majority of that portion was not deliberate abstention, but people who had become so sick or otherwise indifferent towards politics that they chose not to execute their right to vote. This is even more apparent during smaller elections; less than 50% of the voting population (if memory serves) voted in the Alternative Vote referendum, whilst numbers for local and council elections frequently fall below a third. Politics can be a very exhausting field to engage in, particularly for those of us in full-time employment, and attempting to care about everything is practically impossible. By way of an example, I only became aware that the vote regarding bombing in Syria had occurred several hours after it had taken place and Facebook had chosen to vent its vitriol. When I get home from a long day at work, I prefer the idea of chilling and playing Mass Effect to engaging in major decisions about the actions of our country's armed forces. And so we arise at our current system, in which we effectively employ people (in MPs) to care about politics day in, day out on our behalf.

TL;DR Democracy is a colossally imperfect system, and in many ways it's a wonder it works at all- but work, after a fashion, it does, and it might pay not to be so quick to leap on the bandwagon of "UNDEMOCRATIC!!!!!" following a contentious decision. As Winston Churchill once put it: "Democracy is the worst form of government- except for everything else that has been tried"

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Loneliness

Moving in geeky circles such as we do, it is very easy to come across people who struggle (or have struggled) to make friends. Different people, or the same people at different times in their lives, cope with this in different ways; some retreat into their shells, others bury themselves in work or some other activity, whilst still others take to hiding behind the shield of separation and anonymity provided by the internet. I've done every one from time to time. And whichever one you move in, if you listen closely enough the little echoes of sadness and loneliness are there, and you hear the same, very simple question: how do I make friends?

This is, obviously, a very large question. Much though our teenage selves in particular might have liked it otherwise, there is no 'one weird trick' to becoming popular, or even suddenly gaining a stable and loving friendship circle. It's a long, slow and tortured process, and for the most part the advice people end up giving covers only a part of it. Well-meaning folk might, for example, advise you to "indulge your interests" (a valid suggestion if ever there was one), but miss out the part where you have to a) indulge it in such a way that involves interacting with people and b) actually pluck up the courage to go talk to people. And then there's the utter minefield of the conversation itself, when you rehearse a hundred routes a conversation could take before plucking up the courage to start it- and promptly cacking it when it inevitably follows the hundred-and-first.

And all that... it's exhausting. It's frustrating. About the best strategy I can recommend to people is to throw yourself into every social situation that presents itself to you, and learn not to give a crap when you say something stupid and end up embarrassing yourself (it's genuinely amazing how easy people find it to ignore these kinds of things). But for somebody who feels like there's nobody in the world who could ever love or care for them, that's a fucking drudge. You are being asked to throw yourself on the judgement of others, with whom you may be fundamentally incompatible (oh yeah, that's the other tip- figure out the kind of people you actually want to spend time around), and with no guarantee it'll result in any sense of social satisfaction or enjoyment. In fact, it's practically guaranteed that, during your first few interactions with a new person or group, you won't experience anything like that- for natural extroverts, it can be hard to get the idea that interacting with people, even close friends, can actually sap a person's energy and make them physically exhausted, but such is the way for the naturally introverted. And pushing through that barrier of tiredness and uncomfortableness for potentially no reward... that's a tough sell.

And then, even if you do manage to attract a solid circle of people, after all that- you might still feel awfully, terrifyingly alone. In my life now, I am surrounded by wonderful, caring people who I am privileged to call my friends, and yet I still come across, daily, things I feel like I can't talk to people about: "X isn't that kind of friend, Y is never around to talk to, Z just doesn't know how to help and I've been bugging W for a week already". And I think everyone has moments like that, when they feel like this or that problem has to be their own for one reason or another, and that nobody can help you. It can be terrifying, being alone like that, and different people cope with it in different ways. But it's never gone forever. Even popular people can feel lonely.

But, perhaps, this provides us with a hint about the nature of loneliness- that it is not just about having friends. Maybe the question of 'how do I make friends?' is based on nothing more than a failure of understanding what friendship ultimately is. When you get down to it, the very idea of 'popular' is something of a lie in and of itself- there is no storybook ending to life, no riding off into the sunset, and no point in anyone's life when you're so universally popular as to be top of the tree with your life devoid of all sense of lonesome suffering. There is only ever life, that mad, nebulous, chaotic journey of shifting events and people made liveable through those moments of shining joy that define it. And maybe the endgame of making friends is to, after a while, stop looking forward and realising that the transient collection of weirdos you see cluttering up the nooks and crannies of your life- those are your friends. You've got there. There isn't anything beyond that. Sorry, but they can't fix everything.

And, even then, that's still so worth it.

[Hmm. Writing style is inconsistent. Needs work.]

[Darkflame]

Liquid democracy seems like a fairly good idea to me;
https://medium.com/@DomSchiener/liquid- ... .8qoxb6qrc

But the devil would be in the details.

As for the British government. Of course its all democratic. Its just my countrymen are idiots

" The fact that more than 50% of the British public would like to reinstate the death penalty, "

I wouldn't trust any statistics on that stuff. Tends to be from the most passionate people only, and thus you get extreams.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Pickup

For as long as there has been society, there has been pickup. Throughout history, its practitioners (real and fictitious) have been known by many names - Lothario, Casanova, James Bond - but their identity remains the same. They are the flirts, the womanisers, the incorrigible, the cads, those who revel in being able to walk out of a room having 'won' the girl hanging off their arm, whose identity is built around their 'here today, gone tomorrow' attitude towards love and sex. And it's easy to see why- the desirability of sex is hardwired into our DNA, and from there it's a fairly simple step for the desirability of lots of it to be hardwired into our cultural imagery.

Pickup, as a concept, describes nothing more than the process of approaching a social situation or individual with the specific goal of trying to get laid. Nothing conceptually dodgy about this you might think- however, in recent years the concept has become ever-more contentious. The liberal feminist and Pick Up Artist (PUA) communities have been engaged in a war of ever-growing magnitudes, with the most extreme elements of each faction accusing the other of being (respectively) prissy & sexless, or pathetic walking genitals. The intensity and poignancy of this argument has only risen since 2014, when PUA offshoot Elliot Rodger committed his infamous 2014 shooting spree at a University of California sorority house.

The arguments against the PUA community are many; they identify sex as a goal and a scoresheet, women (for their membership is invariably made up of straight young men) as sex objects rather than people and their terminology is hyper-masculine to the point of abusive. Their tactics vary from the simply unpleasant to downright harassment and at no point are the desires of women given any consideration beyond a tactical perspective, all in all breeding a relationship with the fairer sex that hovers somewhere between unhealthy and toxic. From my perspective as both a liberal and a feminist, therefore, it is easy to deride PUAs as idiot teenagers or 'f***boys', but here's the thing- PUAs aren't wrong, and the principle of their activity of choice is sound enough.

Let's be honest- the social rules surrounding sex, relationships and the like form a confused, interconnected web more complex than any physical entity, and navigating its ever-shifting waste has baffled the minds of men and women since the dawn of our species. In recent decades, this has only become more complex: the increasing liberation and mobility of society (and in particular the role of women within it) has allowed members of all genders to be increasingly picky about their partners, whilst simultaneously societal attitudes toward casual sex have become ever more lenient (not least thanks to the meteoric rise in the availability of contraception). This is in part caused by the increasing sexualisation of mainstream society, with the porn industry exploding in terms of size and exposure and sexual material appearing in more and more TV and popular culture. So we are presented with a world in which casual sex is clearly an option and where the idea of sex is easy to fill one's brain with- but where actually having sex involves navigating a complex minefield of social rules and personal preferences. And so we arrive at pickup, whose apparent aim is to help navigate this web; and if we start from the idea that casual sex between consenting adults is, in principle, no bad thing, then that's a laudable enough goal.

Not only that- but PUA tactics work. The basic tenets of PUA behaviour are simple and effective dating concepts- be confident, be cool, be active in your pursuit and be prepared to make the first move (because the other party is usually just as scared as you are to initiate things). Any pro-feminist dating coach will tell you much the same thing, albeit in different words. It works when we dig deeper too the PUA approach is to frame the act of pickup in terms of progressive goals, pursued using simple tricks and strategies- in effect, gamifying the pursuit of sex. It has long been recognised that human beings respond particularly well to learning presented in the format of a game- small wonder, therefore, that the PUA Bible is a dating guide literally called "The Game", or that this approach is so popular.

But, wails my inner feminist, it's not that that's the problem- it's their use of such aggressive and unpleasant strategies within such a framework. Well guess what- those tactics work too. Take, for example, negging, perhaps the biggest target within the PUA handbook for feminist vitriol. For those who are unaware, "negging" means to subtly insult the object of your apparent affection, in order that she will be put at a conversational disadvantage and thus seek your approval (ultimately making her more willing to 'put out'). Exploitative, unkind, unhealthy- and provably effective too. It is a known psychological habit that we do seek approval if put down in such a way in conversation, to prove ourselves to the group at large, and delivered correctly there is evidence to suggest it can be used to facilitate pickup. I wish it wasn't, but the evidence is there.

The PUA community in its current form is not a sex-positive or pro-feminist entity, and neither are many of their tactics- but its adherents did not become so because they wanted to be either of those things. They affiliate with PUAs because they are frustrated and confused and want to get laid. Having recently graduated from being a teenage boy, I can sympathise. And if you find the PUA attitude aggravating... well, try to understand it from their view. Surrounded by a sexualised society that frustrates their clumsy advances at every turn, they are suddenly presented by a tactic that not only promises success, but in many cases delivers it too. To turn such people away from such an enticing prospect requires more than violent arguments about sex-negativity; it requires compassion and intelligence to deal with a frustrated young man in a confusing world. Weird though it seems, PUAs are people too.

[AdmiralMemo]

So are PUAs essentially like Magneto and other Well-Intentioned Extremists, in your opinion? Their goal is fine, but their methods are wrong?

[My pseudonym is Ix]

So are PUAs essentially like Magneto and other Well-Intentioned Extremists, in your opinion? Their goal is fine, but their methods are wrong?

That's actually an excellent analogy, thanks. I was essentially writing that from the perspective of someone who sees a lot of (entirely justified) hatred for the PUA movement going around, and I thought it would be a useful temper. Or at least an interesting writing/thought exercise

[AdmiralMemo]

I have a gift of analogies. I can "translate" concepts into easier-to-understand bits.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Anger

There are few, if any, emotions that demonstrate our 'uncivilised' origins more than anger. From evolution's perspective, anger makes a lot of sense- it's essentially our body's way of turning on beserker-mode. It makes us focused on the immediate job at hand, offers us seemingly increased strength and pain resistance, makes us willing to undergo great personal risk or pain in order to achieve our goals, and in doing so makes us more frightening to our enemies. To see a person in the deepest throes of uncontrolled anger is to see their animal origins surface- which can be both a fascinating and deeply humanising spectacle.

Assuming it's not you they're angry at, that is.

Nowadays, however, anger is almost a biological anachronism. It just simply isn't that useful to us any more. Soldiers of today do not gain victory through incandescent rage and aggression, but through discipline, tactics and training, and the release of mass pent-up anger and frustration has been cited as a cause behind pretty much every significant riot of the last century. Popular culture reflects this too; whilst temptation to anger is frequently displayed amongst the heroes of our media (the "STAND DOWN, SOLDIER" trope) in order to provide a humanising connection, giving in to or actively embracing it is a trait reserved for the likes of Darth Vader. Anger leads to people getting hurt and killed, and today we don't need any more of that.

But, of course, simply saying something is unnecessary doesn't mean it's going to go away. The capacity for anger is hardwired into our DNA, and due to our equally hardwired tendency to find strength and power sexy it's probably going to stay that way for a while yet. We cannot simply be rid of anger; instead, we must learn to control it, both in ourselves and in those around us. Unfortunately, anger is also a very seductive emotion- the reason we still indulge in it so readily is because it simply feels good. Anger gets blood pumping in our veins and can makes us feel so profoundly alive. To land a punch sends a kick of dopamine to our receptors, gives us a feeling of power and dominance, and even to receive one simply gets the adrenaline flowing faster. Through this chemical cocktail of fight-or-flight, there is produced this strange sense of rightness, that this state of affairs is how the world should be, and this is only ever compounded if vengeance is the cause of our anger. It can be a seductive, beguiling feeling, and one subtle enough that many of us will not notice it even coming on. To control such an emotion, therefore, requires either a strong moral code to the contrary, or the foresight to cut the symptoms off before the strange joy of anger is able to get a foothold.

But maybe we have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to anger and controlling it. We have talked thus far about anger as a violent, savage emotion, but what we and our culture has much less to say about is what might be considered 'everyday anger'. This is the anger that manifests itself as a little voice in our ear, telling us to hate and dislike, to seek revenge and retribution. It's the subtle, sirenic, sibilant snake in our head that drives us to road rage, that tells us he's lazy rather than stressed, that tells us "she's a bitch" rather than "we need to communicate". The evolutionary advantage of this kind of anger is less clear (and indeed it is most likely a hodgepodge of other psychological tendencies and biases), but in its own way it is more destructive than any act of pure rage. For one thing, it breeds the kind of smouldering intolerance and resentment at the root of so much of our everyday unhappiness- for another, these frustrations can in turn act as a great enabler for more violent manifestations of anger. So maybe it is this everyday anger that lies at the heart of any ability to control anger in a more general form, as controlling everyday anger allows us to simply be happier at the world around us.

So... how do we control this everyday anger? In short- I don't know. Hell, if I did then I'd probably have a few psychology professors wanting to have a word. And given my own well-documented history of anger issues and unhealthy relationship with my subconscious, I'm probably not the best person to provide an answer. But that does not mean it is impossible, and indeed I believe that fighting the instincts of everyday anger is what makes us good people rather than vindictive and animalistic. The danger of everyday anger is its willingness to bring forth the counterproductive ideas of payback and self-righteousness that do nothing but hold us back, as people and as a species. Nobody said fighting these instincts was easy- but that does not mean it isn't worthy.

[fantôme]

My two cents on anger:

We all started out in the universe from the same point, now collapsed into all these infinitely varied individuals - but still inalienably connected. Everything that influences what we do and think is dependant on the state of our world as defined by what other humans do and think. I don't mean this as some sort of higher ideal, I'm not a religious or spiritual person at all - but I believe that in a way I am a part of everybody else, and everybody else is a part of me. And you wouldn't be angry at your own finger if you accidentally poked yourself in the eye.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On History

History is a strange thing; indeed, one of the most intriguing changing social dynamics of recent history has been the development of the approach to historical education itself. In days past, history has been presented (much like every other subject in the classical education system) in a very factual, dry manner- a matter of learning dates, names, kings, battles, key events and so forth by rote. The more modern approach, at least within the British educational system, is American in origin; it presents history more in terms of the themes and ideas at play during a particular snapshot of time. For reasons best known to whoever decides these things, these snapshots tend to be longer periods of largely pre-medieval time for younger students (Romans, Saxons, Vikings), and become both more recent and shorter (the French Revolution, the World Wars, the Great Depression etc.) as we progress towards A-Level and HE students. Presumably it's thought that there are more readily available sources for them to cite.

To my mind, both of these systems are rather flawed as ways of presenting history. The former approach presents history, in the immortal words of Russell Tovey in The History Boys, as little more than "one ****ing thing after another"; an endless string of wars, battles and Significant Events, empires rising and falling as if by some divine life cycle. It also has a great tendency towards "great man" history, the approach (nowadays held in some disdain by more liberal historians) where history is portrayed as being primarily influenced by powerful individuals whose choices and personalities forged the world in their image. This gives it a great tendency to miss things; for one, it tends to present the succession of historical events as somewhat immutable Facts that just Happened, rather than the result of the subtle complexities of all that have gone before. It also ignores the effects of such things as societal attitudes, as well as all those bit part players in history who are dismissed as insufficiently Great to make up the important narrative. It's like claiming Steve Jobs built the Apple II with no help from Steve Wozniack.

The modern theme-based approach is at least an improvement. It does a better job of incorporating societal and economic effects into the story of history, and tends to better consider the wider causes and impacts of the events it describes. However, its focus on considering periods rather than long strings of events has the effect of compartmentalising the historical story it tries to tell. The story of the American Revolution, for example, might be told between the years 1770-1790 to give the immediate background and consequences of the revolution its proper due- but this ignores the background of colonial European infighting that bred the attitudes of the day between colonists and Europeans, and in turn the impact that the ideals of the revolution had on the Napoleonic European political landscape. And by focusing on distinct periods in this way, without a lot of the date memorisation common to the older historical teaching style, there is a tendency for history to turn into a series of distinct lumps that exist in isolation, without really having a place on a wider world timeline.

These two approaches are, of course, only the ones typically used in schools. How different books (and, more recently, documentaries & YouTube series') have approached history over the years is an even more varied tale- some have, for example, focused on telling small stories of very specific events, whilst others have focused on singular themes (such as agriculture) and tracked their progress throughout history. But really, once the debate of 'how to teach history' has run its course, it really boils down to one simple question: why do we study history?

This is a question that has been subject to a lot of glib answers and responses over the years; a personal favourite is Randall Munroe's "They say to study history or find yourself repeating it/But all that it prepares you for is forty years of teaching it". And even as someone who enjoys studying and learning history, it's a bit of a tricky question to nail down. In many respects, it is the multifaceted nature of history that makes it so fascinating; dramatic military manoeuvres, great generals playing their wits and resources against each other, present their own compelling narrative, but so too do smaller dramas- how did the Industrial Revolution affect the lives of women? What impact did Venetian glass have on the enlightenment attitudes towards science? How have generations throughout the ages found ways to feed their families and scrape out a life between the cut and thrust of politics? And beyond these stories, there is of course the attraction placed by the abstraction of history; of seeing events from long past through modern eyes, and attempting to place oneself in the shoes of anyone from nobleman to peasant as they see history unfold about them.

To me, there are two fundamental reasons to study history. The former is rather artistic in nature; quite simply, history is a wonderful source of stories. From great military campaigns to the changing lives of peasantry, history provides us with a compelling narrative of the human landscape of the planet changing, sometimes beyond recognition- and then, every so often, one is captured by the awe-inspiring idea that, holy hell, all this was REAL. It actually happened- once upon a time, this WAS somebody's life. That discovery can be both a deeply empowering and humbling experience; the kind of thing to let a story transcend the page of a book, and step off into one's imagination as real as the page itself.

The other reason to study history is to learn. Not to learn about events and battles and Things- that learning acts merely as a vehicle to the true learning of history, the kind of learning that enables us to ask (and sometimes answer) questions not directly related to the history we find ourselves looking at. Sometimes these questions are relatively simple and practical; how to construct a house and clothes out of only what you can hunt and gather, how long does it ACTUALLY take to build a cathedral, how to win a battle against a numerically superior foe. These questions, to me at least, appeal to my inner geekiness, fun little puzzles of what and how to entice and intrigue.

And sometimes these questions are more philosophical. Take, for instance, Julius Caesar; a supremely skilled politician and general, he was elected consul multiple times during the late days of the Roman republic, before taking the mantle of dictator to become the most powerful man in Rome and paving the way for the office of Emperor. Caesar, in essence, subverted Roman democracy in favour of a government organised behind a single, powerful figurehead, and under that system Rome grew to its greatest and most powerful extent. But, ultimately, a system that restricted social mobility and cut off the people from the government, allowing the Empire to slowly slide into infighting, rebellion and, ultimately, the pages of history. So this begs the question: is a dynamic government led by a powerful leader a better path to success than an indecisive one based around legislature, or does human nature doom it to failure? The Roman Republic tried to counter this by using the office of Dictator in emergencies to make bold decisions - but is such a system always doomed to end in the rise of a Caesar? Or is it even worth worrying about such far-off political changes, when even the longest-lived of history's civilisations have all disappeared in time?

These kinds of questions never cease, and a lot of them don't have answers. In our modern, enlightened age of relative peace and prosperity, perhaps one is of particular significance; looking back across all history, of all the ebbs and flows of great empires as men attempt "to become momentary masters of some fraction of this pale blue dot", let us consider the human cost. Let us think of all who have died in service to a King of Kings, all those sacrificed to a Supreme Leader, now centuries dead. Let us think of those lives passed away in slavery or bondage, dismissed even as human for the simple accident of their birth. And let us think- how do we in fact learn from all this, in order that we might avoid any more repeats of all that pain and suffering?

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Information, Opinions, Bias and Arseholes*

I want to begin this by playing a small game. If you are willing to indulge me, pause what you're doing for a moment and follow this YouTube link, showing the 'Ride of the Rohirrim' scene from the Lord Of The Rings: Return of the King extended cut

Watch it, it's a great scene.

When you're done, I'm going to ask you do something that is normally a very, very bad idea: look at the comments section. Specifically, I want you to open up the comment thread from user "tim bow"'s original comment regarding the authenticity of the Rohirrim's cavalry charge into the massed orcish infantry. For a YouTube comment thread, it's actually argued with a pretty reasonable degree of politeness and decorum. It is also an argument about what is, to me at least, a genuinely interesting point, and the fact that a sizeable portion of those partaking in the argument are doing so based on little more than guesswork is neither here nor there

Now, let us imagine taking this argument a little further, and bringing some evidence into the equation. Imagine you are a participant in this debate, and in order to argue your point you pull up an article you've found written by somebody on this very subject that agrees with your opinion. Satisfied, you hit 'send'... and are dismayed, shortly afterwards, to find your adversary has responded with an article of his own, this one a step-by-step takedown of yours written by another amateur historian. However, help is at hand- another commenter, drawn to your side, posts his own response, pulling from a number of different references to form his own argument supporting yours. These in turn cite a number of primary and secondary sources of varying quality, one of which is picked up on for particular dissection by a member of the opposing camp. The argument wages on, toing and froing as both sides throw conflicting evidence at each other, until (to a casual observer) it seems impossible to tell who is actually right. I'm sure this is a drama you have all seen played out in comment thread after commend thread across the web.

And herein we find both the great boon and danger inherent in the 21st century's ready access to such vast reserves of information- that limitless information is antithetical to agreement and consensus. The sheer quantity of information available to us is so vast, it is not difficult to construct a hugely convincing argument based on information that is factually incorrect, but of which there is so much as to generate a false consensus. Arguments have the potential to flow back and forth and back and forth for ages at a time, neither side running out of supporting information to their cause until either side is wrapped up in their own confirmation bias and any neutral observers are left baffled as a seemingly simple problem has developed a controversy. This is made most obvious by the continued existence of conspiracy theorists, whose entire existent is reliant on there being sufficient evidence outside the popular consensus from which to form an argument.

This is only compounded when we come to the twin issues of information presentation and academic publishing. Human beings aren't great at absorbing raw information and generally find it much easier when parts of the arguing are done for us. This is why you'll find more people linking to journalistic articles and Wikipedia pages than giant spreadsheets, as other writers have (in theory) done a lot of the legwork for you in terms of picking out information and presenting it in a readable format. However, in doing this we are putting ourselves at the mercy of these other writers and their journalistic integrity: is the number that editor have quoted taken from a peer-reviewed meta-analysis published in a respected academic journal, or is it from a small case study cherry-picked against the scientific consensus? Not only is checking in this way time-consuming and dull in a way that is not conducive to a good debate (particularly when others are just waiting to jump in and argue the point badly on your behalf), it is also frequently difficult and expensive to access scientific literature due to the academic publishing model. This in turn leads to people being seemingly authoritative on a subject based on nothing but secondary evidence, which is the kind of thing that doesn't seem like a problem until the carpet gets swept out from under your argument. Be honest; how many of you who have a strong opinion on, say, homeopathy have ever checked a peer-reviewed academic paper on the subject for its scientific merits, rather than listening to the words of another who claims to have done the analysis themselves? And yet how many of you have derided homeopaths for not doing the same, telling them to just 'look at the evidence'?

And then we come to bias. In the information age, we find ourselves in the strange situation where it is both easier than ever to avoid bias in our consumption of information, and also harder than ever to escape it. Information from all sides of an issue is available to us to a scale hitherto unimaginable in human history, and as such we have the option available to find as close to a truly objective opinion as is possible- but that is only based on the assumption that it is equally easy to find information on both sides of the argument. And that is not a very human behaviour- we tend to surround ourselves with like-minded people who share similar opinions (which is why I felt confident siding against homeopaths in the last paragraph), and this means we are far more frequently exposed to information that we agree with than we disagree with. This is only compounded by the algorithms built into the likes of Facebook and Google, which are deliberately pruned to show us exactly what we want to see based on our previous behaviour. All of this helps build our own opinion of accepted consensus based on what we think we already know, giving us an idea of what 'true' is that may be almost totally counter to the objective fact of the matter.

Anthropogenic global warming is an obvious example of all these effects both at work and being deliberately exploited. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the planet is in fact warming and humans are to blame, a fact agreed by NASA, the IPCC and some 97% or more of climate scientists. However, that 3% still represents a large body of data- no matter whether it has been funded by the Koch brothers, hasn't been published in a peer reviewed journal or has cherry-picked all its data. It still looks impressive when referenced in a brochure by a conservative think-tank, and the authors of said brochure know perfectly well that barely one reader in a thousand will go to check the paper's scientific merits themselves. That 3% is still a lot of data for the arguers to throw at their detractors, and other than memorising the entire body of scientific literature there is little these detractors can do to answer back in a timely fashion. All of this creates public perception of conflict regarding climate change, that the issue is still 'controversial' rather than an almost universally accepted fact, and in that controversy there are still a few more billion dollars' worth of oil money to be made. This is a deliberate tactic, and it is, sadly, working.

The end result of all this is to leave the concept of 'truth' a considerably more vague target than what it was before, and one that ultimately is founded quite deeply on our trust for our fellow man. Many of those reading this would doubtless like to think of yourselves as cynics, questioning 'the man' and forming your own opinions- but really, there's little you can do in the way of forming a truly unique opinion beyond doing all the experiments yourself. And that simply isn't practical. Instead, we choose to take a leap of faith, and trust those deliverers of information to do so truthfully, despite the knowledge they may never be audited and could be, for all we know, plucking every word out of thin air. The best we can do to be sure is to trust to consensus- trust that, liars and deceivers though there may be in this world, the majority of those delivering us information are doing so in nothing but the best of faith, endeavouring to live up to the ideals of science and truth as best they can. It's not perfect, but it is frankly the best any of us can do.

I feel there is no better to end this particular ramble than with a quote from Tim Minchin's frankly excellent keynote given at the UWA graduation ceremony a couple of years ago:

"A famous bon mot asserts that opinions are like arseholes, in that everyone has one. There is great wisdom in this, but I would add that opinions differ significantly from arseholes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined. We must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and beat them with a cricket bat. Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privilege."

*See, I told you there would be arseholes.

[AdmiralMemo]

Specifically, I want you to open up the comment thread from user "tim bow"'s original comment regarding the authenticity of the Rohirrim's cavalry charge into the massed orcish infantry.

I've clicked "Show More" on the comments at least 30 times and have not found this comment thread you refer to. Can you click the "[x] months ago" link and share that? That should pop it to the top of the comments below the video for us.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Link updated so the comment thread in question should be at the top I only picked that example because I was having the exact same debate just a few weeks ago with a member of my re-enactment society, who was able to offer a more authoritative opinion.

Which, for the record, is that horses simply cannot be made to charge through a solid, well-formed line of infantry that they know will kill them. Unless the horse in question is utterly brutalised. Charges into the flanks of an enemy line, or into disorganised infantry, can however be highly destructive, and I can personally attest that facing down a cavalry charge, the ground shuddering beneath your feet as hooves gallop towards you, is genuinely terrifying.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

DISCLAIMER: This one is a little different, as it's about something that is quite personal to me. So if you're interested in learning about (one of) the things that makes me tick, this might be the essay for you:

On Jealousy

To many, "jealous" is a dirty word. It is a word that implies pride and arrogance, a word associated with a sense of entitlement to that which one has frequently not earned or is simply unsuited for, a word that we associate with our villains both comedic and dramatic. It is not an emotion, it is a stereotype, not a feeling but a character definition- how often in popular culture and media do we see a character's jealousy played as sympathetic rather than antithetical, as an emotion to be treated rather than proved wrong?

So, with all that cultural baggage in hand, it's time for me to make a confession: I am a very jealous person. I'm jealous of workmates and their seeming ability to see the ideal, obvious solution with nary a second thought, while I'm wrapping my head around concepts of idiotic complexity and non-functionality. I'm jealous of friends in all social contexts who seem as if they belong, who can trust and love those around them- people who have and are best friends. I'm jealous of friends and colleagues alike who seem unendingly capable to just do things right, time after time, who have found the little niche in the world that they can carve out as their own- those who have a place, and who in that place are their own masters. I'm jealous, almost incalculably so, of all my friends who are in relationships, who know what it is to love and be loved and to feel that deep, intimate connection with another human- and I am not too proud to admit that this jealousy is amplified more pronouncedly in those relationships featuring women for whom I have harboured my own feelings.

But here's the rub- those jealous feelings are independent of the other emotions I feel towards those people. The people I am jealous of are invariably those I at least respect very much, if not care deeply for. I am jealous of some of my closest friends, some people who I consider to be great personal inspirations, and some who would probably laugh at the idea of being held as an object of jealous desire. This kind of trend, of jealousy being born from those who are otherwise close, is depicted time and again in even negative descriptions of jealousy in popular culture; Marvel's Loki is jealous of the position of birthright given to his adopted brother Thor, Shakespeare's Don John smoulders in his bastardy compared to his heroic brother Don Pedro, and even Ron Weasley goes through his jealous phase in Goblet of Fire. And this leads us into something quite interesting about jealousy, which is that is an emotion most frequently borne between to figures who would otherwise get along very well- after all, if I do not think them worthy then what would I have to be jealous of?

Interesting- but also, very dangerous to the health of a relationship. The 'classic' way, at least according to popular culture, to respond to envious feeling is simply to pretend it isn't jealousy, and to rationalise one's feelings of distaste and anger. This is both an incredibly easy and seductive idea, and is the classic example of the negative 'jealous villain' trope- a character with paper-thin justifications for their stance, but emotionally backed up by a smouldering core of envy that they will not admit to or deal with. Adopting this stance rarely ends well, as left unchecked the jealousy will only fester and grow until its object is removed from sight- frequently meaning the loss of a close friend. A sad state of affairs for all concerned.

A more positive approach is to rationalise with the jealousy, and essentially to out-argue it, to say to oneself "well hang on, this person is actually pretty cool" or "they are entitled to do X thing and if you were in that position, you would too". It's a mature and adult angle, at least on the surface, and I can attest to its usefulness at keeping things from turning into a mud-slinging contest- but unfortunately, it only fights half the battle. Under this method, the jealousy is ignored and buried, but not dealt with- it remains, festering, beneath the desperate veneer of civility and friendliness. If the source of the jealousy is ultimately dealt with by this kind of civil interaction, then all well and good, but for more deep-seated and long term issues this kind of internal emotional conflict can tear a person to pieces. Given time to grow, unloved and untreated in the dark casket of one's mind, envy grows in violent power and the sparks start to fly, what one thinks and what one feels fighting it out in an unceasing battle to which there is no winner. It's an improvement, and you turn out less like a cinematic villain, but... I've spent a lot of time there, and it is very not fun.

The problem that both of these approaches has concerns the fact that jealousy is considered a negative. Through centuries of accumulated popular culture, the idea that jealousy is Wrong And Bad is ingrained into us at a near-fundamental level. And so it is buried; we don't get jealous, we're cool and mature adults, jealousy is for those stuck up bastards over there, with their fancy car and promotion that should be mine by rights... But this view on jealousy is not only unhealthy, it is simply wrong.

Jealousy isn't good or bad. Jealousy is just another emotion, a natural, psycho-biological response to the concept of desire. What is so wrong and broken about wanting something, even if it is something that another person has? Jealousy has been one of the greatest driving forces in human history, encouraging us to compete and better ourselves at an almost primal level as we struggle to win and claim superiority over our contemporaries. The wanting part of envy is no sin, and it only becomes so when we lie and twist and steal from others for it- all of which becomes far more likely if we leave the emotion to boil and bubble and affect our behaviour from the core of our being.

I am a jealous person. And that can be OK.

[abyssalCompiler]

The essay on loneliness really spoke to me on a personal level, in terms of the difference between what I expected from friendship and what I've actually gotten from it.

I really dig longform stuff in general because I find it easier to communicate my thoughts and explore concepts when I have ample space to do so, and I can appreciate when others do so as well.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Being Right

In a previous one of these essays, I talked about opinions, and how easy it can be to convince yourself that yours is the Right one. Trying to steel ourselves against our bias is a difficult task, and not a particularly pleasant one, so it is small wonder we find it so comfortable to sit in a fog of our own smug self-assurance. And, with arguments once again rocking the internet in the wake of the Orlando shooting and the ever-mounting hysteria surrounding Britain's EU referendum, I thought it a prescient time to revisit the world of arguing.

If you will indulge me: picture someone you disagree with. It can be anyone- a political rival, a personal foe, a friend with whom you have a disagreement, any will do. Take sight of a particularly juicy opinion, and lay it out before you- really consider Ted Cruz's stance on gun control, or Your Mate Dave's thoughts on Brexit. Consider it, for a moment, and collect your thoughts. Take some time to consider everything about their claim, their view, that you disagree with. Indulge yourself in your own opinions, your reasons, every facet of why you consider yourself to be correct in this scenario. And now take all that feeling, and slam it face first into the brick wall of the following idea:

You Are Wrong.

Uncomfortable, isn't it?

Human beings do not like being told that we are wrong. It carries with it implications that we are stupid, or incompetent, not worthy of further consideration. Those aren't traits we associate with ourselves- that's for those ****ing idiots who think we should leave the EU, or that we should be bombing Syria more heavily. We aren't like them- we've thought about our arguments, we've considered all sides, we're so right it's practically self-evident. Right?

Well, consider this- the other side probably think exactly the same as you. Weird as it may seem, the most strongly opinionated of those you agree with have almost certainly exerted at least as much of their brainpower to the issue at hand as you have, and there is rarely much in the way of evidence to suggest they are somehow inherently stupider than you are. Go on, cite me a source- I'll wait. The idea that people you disagree with are stupid, or that they haven't really thought this through, or that they're just hiding from the truth, is in most cases, nothing more than a little lie we tell ourselves to prevent us from having to confront the idea that we might be in the wrong. It's just another form of internalised bias. Although, if it makes you feel any better, the other side probably do the same thing too.

Unfortunately, once we get beyond mathematical identities, 'right' ceases to become an objective phenomenon; and whilst we might be aware of this logically, we frequently seem to have something of a blind spot when we come to apply it to ourselves. In the real world, rightness is a subjective and highly fluid phenomenon, dependent on a bizarre cocktail of our own motivations and prejudices. Take the upcoming EU referendum as an example: although many impassioned economic arguments have been thrown back and forth, the economic consequences of leaving the EU are fundamentally uncertain guesswork. Economics is not a brilliantly predictive field. It takes relatively little digging to unearth the fact that, for most people, one's opinion regarding the EU is dependent less on your particular interpretation of economics than it is on your sense of national identity, your opinions regarding bureaucracy, and simply how much you like travelling in Europe. And no opinion regarding that can really be considered 'wrong' with any kind of consistency- who are you to argue that someone is an idiot because they prefer spending time in Melrose than Milan? Or because they value certain pieces of big legislation over small bureaucracy? Weighting certain factors over another is not inherently right or wrong- it's just having different priorities.

This same rule applies even to more extreme opinions, to those almost objectively incorrect. Most of the people reading this will, particularly after the events of the past weekend, find the idea that armed guards will make American schools safer to be vaguely abhorrent. However, this opinion is held by large swathes of the US population, most notably the governance of the National Rifle Association, and having this opinion doesn't mean that all these people are dangerous psychopaths with no grip on reality. The people who hold this kind of opinion tend to be those who have had a very positive relationship with guns for a long period of time, and consider guns to be a crucial part of their personal identity. Their every experience has taught them that guns can be a force for good, and based on that context their opinion seems to be the right one. To them, gun control presents a dangerous prospect- the prospect of stealing something fundamental to their sense of being and identity, akin to a metalhead being told they're trying to ban moshing. To some of you, that might seem stupid, but consider this- are your own opinions so devoid of the context of your upbringing that you'd hold the same opinions on God had you been born 300 years ago?

From one perspective or another, every opinion is wrong. Yours might seem less wrong than others, but that is all ultimately just a factor of seeing things through your own lens of perspective and bias. And although this is no reason for you to not have your own opinions, I feel that the knowledge of your own wrongness is a profoundly humbling sensation- a reminder of the value of treating people with kindness despite your differences, for they are only as wrong as you are. And remember: just because you have thought of something wrong with their argument, does not mean that you are right. And just because you disagree with their rebuttal, does not mean that they are wrong.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Knowledge, Learning and Stupid People

How many times have you heard others say, or have you yourself said, that "most people are stupid?". It's a remarkably common phrase nowadays, heightened by the ability of the internet to expose for us the very dregs of humanity's written and verbal output- devoid of thought, class and nuance and published before the author has particularly thought what they're saying. And yet, on planet earth today the broad standard of public education is better than in any previous era (or, at least, pushing close), so... what gives?

Well, leaving aside the usual questions about the misleading impressions offered by the internet, the nature of intelligence or the difficulty in conducting accurate comparisons between educational era, I am of the opinion that this opinion is borne largely of failed perspective. Hear me out, I am getting at something.

It is incredibly easy, if one is not paying much attention, to tacitly assume that everyone knows almost exactly as much about the world as you do. This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rarely the case. The slightly more advanced form of this is to assume that you know the boundaries of the knowledge another party has available to them, but this is wrong about as frequently. Case in point: when in school, I was witness to a debating competition in which one side confidently mentioned a major study conducted whose conclusion, so they said, supported their argument. Confident that this name-drop had been successful, they sat down triumphant- only to see the opposition speaker pull the very document in question and spend the next two minutes quoting excerpts that directly contradicted this 'conclusion'. His side, predictably enough, won.

As this story evidences, this imbalance between the assumed and actual information available to others most frequently makes itself known in the fields of debate and argument. However, it is not merely restricted to people who one is directly debating with- this assumption of information balance is perhaps most dangerous, not to mention subtle, when applied to those not present at time of saying. And not just because they can't argue back. To return to the question we started with- how many times have you heard others say, or have you yourself said, that "most people are stupid?". This idea, that the majority of the rest of the world's population are idiots, stems from a single assumption; namely, that other people have access to at least broadly the same array of knowledge and experience as you do, but somehow their brains are so addled as to be unable to come to the logical conclusions you are based on this. When laid out like that, this is clearly bogus- we are all exposed to new influences every day, changing our opinions, views and knowledge bases in ways we often don't consciously notice. Randall Munroe, of xkcd fame, noted that for every fact that 'everybody knows' by the time they're 30, there must be at least 10,000 people learning it for the first time every day. But because this assumption is hidden behind a few layers of logical processing we often miss it in our (rather understandable) rush for a sense of moral and intellectual superiority- which is why a stoner philosophy undergrad can read about an idea on Monday and consider it to be entirely self-evident to any functional human being by Friday afternoon.

And in any case, the statement "most people are stupid" is factually incorrect. To borrow again from Randall Munroe, most people are, pretty tautologically, of AVERAGE intelligence, and if you find yourself noticeably above that marker- well then, good for you. Fundamentally, very few people are actually stupid. What we all are is learning.

With the possible exception of storytelling, the capacity for learning is perhaps the defining feature of the human race. It's hardwired into our DNA- human beings spend, relatively speaking, more than twice as long in the infant and adolescent phases of our development than our closest living relatives, and if we aged the same way as most prey animals we'd be sexually mature before entering primary school. And the reason for all that slow growing? To give our giant brains time to learn. We don't just learn during our early years, either- throughout our lives, we never stop learning one way or the other. We are constantly exposed to new information, new environments, new people, new behaviours, new biases; hell, a couple of weirdos even read a textbook or two in the meantime. And yet this constant learning process is so rarely given cognisance in any kind of debate- anyone arguing with "incomplete" information is derided and disregarded as an idiot rather than being talked to, reasoned with, in any kind of productive manner.

But... why is this important? Well, in addition to the laudable goal of making arguing about anything a less toxic experience, recognition that others should be allowed to learn is a vital step along the road to social justice. Those whose areas of employment or interest relate to racism, sexism, feminism or the LGBT movement will spend vast swathes of their lives frustrated at the need to repeat the same information over and over again, whilst those receiving this information will often be similarly frustrated that 'the same old advice' is being trooped out. But here's the thing- you will NEVER run out of ignorant white folks with no exposure to racial prejudice, or people who've never met a trans person before and don't know what any of these new words mean. Over time, these lessons get more and more ingrained into culture to the point where they become a part of our 'default' childhood learning, but this process is incredibly slow to roll out across a whole population and the fight against racial and sexual prejudices will doubtless extend beyond my lifetime. But it is so easy to forget this, so easy to dismiss those coming to one's door for making throwaway homophobic slurs as buffoons, particularly if you yourself spend a lot of time in a very accepting, tolerant environment. Not everyone is so lucky- and when we forget that, battle lines start to be drawn, and we as a culture take a backward step.

It is both easy and dangerous to assume that everyone else knows the same as you do. Put that assumption away, and we might all learn something.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Americans, Games and Guns

Back in mid-June, I wrote a post about how fickle our notion of 'right' can be. The fact that this was published within two days of the Orlando school shooting was not a coincidence; the incident had (predictably and justifiably enough) triggered a wave of angry self-justification from the LGBT community and its allies, and revived the ever-present US gun control debate with renewed vigour. I tend to not go in for such tactics, and my accompanying essay was a deliberate response to the rhetoric surrounding both this and the UK 'Brexit' debate.

So I'll leave it up to you to guess why I'm writing this less than 24 hours after the Dallas shooting. Anyway.

Attempting to classify and discuss the question of US gun crime and control is affected by a number of things, perhaps chief among which concerns which statistics you use. So, in the interests of full disclosure and to minimise the amount of confusion regarding the statistical validity of my subsequent claims, here is what I'm working with:

[Oh, and before I go any further: I do not write this as an expert on US gun culture. I'm not American, have never spent more than a week in the United States, and have only ever held two firearms more powerful than an air rifle (both in shooting ranges). However, I do write as somebody who likes statistics and sanity, so here goes...]

The US has the highest rate of gun ownership of anywhere in the world, being the only country to contain more guns than people (around 112 guns per 100 people, although only 31% of US households own a gun). The data on rates of gun crime worldwide is patchy, with statistics usually cobbled together from multiple different years as the published datasets allow, but we can generally speaking conclude that the US also has among the highest* rate of deaths involving a firearm (10.5 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014), of which approximately one third (3.4 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014) are homicides. As with all 'developed' countries, by far the highest death rate in the US relating to guns is suicide (6.69 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014).

[*For those wondering, Wikipedia (which in turn draws its numbers from
the apparently well-sourced gunpolicy.org) lists the US as having the thirteenth highest rate of deaths involving a firearm. This list, however, EXCLUDES a large number of middle Eastern and North African countries, for which data is not available- as is perhaps to be expected for areas with an incredibly turbulent political situation of late. The countries with higher firearm-related death rates are Mexico, Uruguay, Panama, Brazil, South Africa, Colombia, Guatemala, Swaziland, Jamaica, Venezuela, El Salvador and Honduras- in ascending order. Guatemala's rate is threefold that of the US, and Honduras' is six times the US rate.]

Let's play with some more statistics, this time concerning the US's gun death rates compared to other countries. This leads me on to the excellent graphs produced by the kdnuggets blog, which did some very good data-gathering on international gun crime comparisons:



As we can see, there is something of a split in gun crime numbers between countries with large economies those with smaller economies. There is little obvious ownership/death rate or GDP/death rate trend visible amongst the latter group, but it is worth noting the following: those countries with the highest gun death rates tend to be small economies with low suicide rates and very high homicide rates, which makes sense given how many of these countries are to be found in Latin America (with its colossal drugs trade and gang violence problems). Amongst nations with larger economies, there is a strong positive proportional relationship between gun ownership and overall gun death rate:



However, you will notice that the US's blotch on that graph is a rather paler shade of red than many other countries shown, indicating a lower proportion of suicides among those statistics. This leads us on to the final graph I shall use, indicating a much weaker positive proportional relationship between gun ownership and gun homicide rate:



And then we come to the year 1993. As anyone who remembers Freakonomics will know, the year 1993 represented a peak of a violent crime epidemic sweeping the United States, and this includes gun crime. Since that peak, more than two decades of concerted effort by the US government to tackle violent crime (and, according to Freakonomics, wider access to abortion) have sent the crime rate plummeting. In the firearms field, the gun homicide rate has almost halved and the total incidence of firearm violence has fallen by between two thirds and three quarters (according to statistics published by the Bureau of Justie Statistics- who, for the record, could do with putting all their data in one place every once in a while). This makes performing long-term time comparisons of gun crime rates tricky; for one thing, 1993 crime statistics tend to be used as the baseline for most claims made about gun crime, and for another there isn't actually much information available prior to 1993. Whether it would be of any use anyway is something of a moot point. Most importantly however, a LOT of things have happened concerning gun crime since 1993. The US police force has undergone numerous changes in structure and tactics, the makeup of society and its collective attitudes has changed, the number of police deployed in various parts of the US has changed, the number of background checks performed on gun buyers has more than doubled... and, perhaps most notably, the rate of gun ownership has also increased by around a third. It is very difficult to assess to statistical significance of this, and as such it is not clear whether this increase in gun ownership has made the US a more or less safe place than it otherwise would have been.

OK, that's a lot of numbers. Let's take a pause for a moment and distil a few key points about guns in the US:

- The USA owns considerably more guns per capita than anyone else.
- The USA has the highest rates of gun death per capita of any country with a GDP per capita in excess of $20k USD.
- Amongst nations with with a GDP per capita in excess of $20k USD, there is a strong positive proportional relationship between gun ownership and overall gun death rate. However, this is heavily influenced by high suicide rates in these richer countries.
- Amongst nations with with a GDP per capita in excess of $20k USD, there is a weak positive proportional relationship between gun ownership and gun homicide rate.
- 1993 was just the worst.
- The US gun crime rate has fallen significantly since 1993.
- The US gun ownership rate has risen since 1993.
- A lot of other things have changed since 1993, and are different between different countries, and assessing the statistical significance of all of these things are bloody difficult

First and foremost, we cans see that the question of gun control is at least partially dependent on how libertarian you are- or, in other words, how much you feel others have a right to 'do their own thing' so long as it doesn't directly affect you. I'm talking, of course about gun suicides- for those who feel the gun control question should be about minimising ALL gun deaths, including suicides, then one is concerned with a different set of statistics to those who are primarily concerned with the homicide rate and those who would use guns to do harm to others. This is not a question to which there is a right answer, but making it clear which is your priority and why is vital if attempting to formulate a clear opinion on gun crime. Indeed many gun advocates state that inclusion of suicide rates in gun death statistics is deliberately misleading on behalf of those who do so, whereas in actuality it may simply be that only one half of the argument in question considers gun suicides to be within scope.

Regardless of your view in this regard, two facts jumps out from the statistics- the data is mixed and gun control is, to use the proper statistical term, weird. How can having more guns and gun crime than any other developed nation sit with the equally valid statistic of gun ownership rising whilst gun crime rate is falling? Hell, before even that- why do Americans feel the need to have so many more guns than everyone else ANYWAY? The answer is simple, yet maddeningly complex: culture.

The US relationship with the gun is unlike that of every other nation on earth. For almost all of human history the only people with guns in most of the world were the military- during the colonial era they pacified the locals, put down the wildlife and pushed forward settlement of the untamed wilderness. The exception is the US- despite the US Independence movement being heavily fuelled by the French military, it was supported by the use of local militia; ordinary men who took up arms and joined the ranks. Hell, that part is enshrined into the US constitution. And thus began the great US tradition of the gun in the hand of the common man, of the gun as a tool for the expansion of freedom. During the rush to tame the Wild West, it wasn't the US Army who controlled the wastes for settlers- the settlers took their guns and fought for it themselves, the gun being a literal tool of 'rugged individualism'. And just look at how popular culture from the US has developed since the turn of the twentieth century, heroes like Ellen Ripley, John Rambo, John McClane- all heroes who keep on running away for only as long as they don't have a gun in their hands. And with that in mind, now we have to talk about videogames.

No, not because videogames cause violent behaviour- there are dozens of studies disproving that idea already. What we want to talk about here is gaming history, and the role the US and guns have to play in it.

Up until the late 1980s, gaming fidelity wasn't really detailed enough to show things like guns and weapons, and as such there isn't much we can draw from such a technologically restricted era. However, after the American gaming market crash of 1983 dominance of the gaming sphere had gone east to Japan, a country with one of the lowest rates of gun ownership and crime in the world. This era of Japanese-centric gaming saw the creation of many iconic franchises and characters- the Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, Final Fantasy and (later), the likes of Mega Man. And as these franchises developed with time, one thing common to all these franchises- a mix of armed and non-armed characters. Take Final Fantasy for example- mages stand by swordfighters, with the swords in question being so impractically huge as to not particularly helpful to the proceedings. The sword is not the tool with which the participant defends themselves, but rather is a visual image of their abilities as a character- it doesn't get changed out and upgraded as in many Western RPGs, it is part of the character, an extension of the self. This is most apparent with Japanese characters such as Mega Man, itself directly derived from Astro Boy- characters whose weaponry is literally part of their body, literally an extension of the self. A stereotypical Japanese videogame character would never pick up a gun- they'd either have it from the start, or not at all.

And what has the US given us? Answer: the first person shooter. In games of this type, we don't even see the character; the gun we are presented with is a literal, physical barrier between us and the bad guys. When your gun is out of ammo in a game like Doom (released in, you guessed it, 1993), you're dead meat in minutes; without one, you don't stand a chance. And this is a reflection of the attitudes created by US gun culture- that the gun is somewhere between a tool and a statement of being. Having a gun in your hands means there is something to protect you, means you are able not only to defend yourself but achieve the objectives laid out before you. This is the American 'ideal' of the gun- the gun as an instrument of personal empowerment, a notion second to breathing to every gun-possession advocate.

However, over the last sixty years or so this view has been challenged heavily- first by a succession of unproductive wars leaving a chain of broken veterans in its wake, and more recently by the rise of mass-media coverage focusing on high profile mass shootings. This has created a contrasting cultural view- that such a high number of guns in the hands of the general populace is just a powderkeg waiting to go off- that making a gun so easy to get hold of is making crime or violence just too easy for it to NOT occur. This movement has grown in size and vocality as media focus on mass shootings has increased (and the events themselves have become more common)

Which side is right? Short answer, neither. There are enough arguments and evidence going each way for the subject to be genuinely controversial, and unfortunately this is one of those cases where if either side would stop shouting buzzwords for five minutes... it STILL wouldn't solve the problem, because there is a fundamental difference of opinion at play. Whether they are or not, some people have had the idea instilled into them to feel safer with a gun at their hip, knowing they are able to defend themselves and be responsible for themselves. Others feel that they are safer putting away the guns and encouraging others to do the same, and one cannot hope to simply 'convince' members of the other side by throwing numbers back and forth. As ever, the most productive and long lasting ways of addressing the problem are culturally in nature- for gun control advocates, an example might be advocating physical empowerment through martial arts or similar, whilst right to bear advocates stay relevant through the huge number of people given positive, empowering exposure to gun culture (through target shoots, gun clubs, hunting and so on). Arguing without this kind of positive cultural association is not only exhausting, it's genuinely counterproductive- rates of US gun manufacturing have soared in recent years, more than trebling since an early-noughties low of just over 3 million per year, and gun shops across the US say that their sales jump after every renewal of the gun control argument. The more people talk about words that sound to gun owners like 'take away my guns', the more their demand rises as gun advocates become more possessive, more worried at the idea that the tools they try to keep themselves safe will be taken away from them.

I've been rambling here for far too long without coming anywhere near a conclusion, but there is one more thing I want to make note of. In 2013, there were a total of 33,636 deaths due to "injury by firearms" in the USA (including suicides). In that same year, there were more than 600,000 deaths from heart disease, more than 550,000 deaths from cancer and around 100,000 deaths from cars. Mass shootings such as the type that receive mass media coverage contribute less than 1% of the total gun crime death rate, and the people are no less dead one way or the other.

Liberals often say that the risks posed by terrorism are massively exaggerated by politicians as an easy buzzword, and rightly so. So why don't they say the same thing about guns?

[AdmiralMemo]

Regarding culture aspect, I recommend The Myth of the Gun episode of Extra Credits.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Regarding culture aspect, I recommend The Myth of the Gun episode of Extra Credits.

That was one of my first sources on the idea, back when it was published. Why do you think I used games as my comparison media?

[My pseudonym is Ix]

NOTE: I appear to have developed a habit of writing shorter essays when I've got an emotional investment in the topic beyond a simple desire for rationalism. Hmm.

On Cynicism

Despite its Greek name and origins (as an early forerunner to Greek stoicism), cynicism is a relatively new idea. The term 'cynicism' came into its modern meaning during the 19th century, as a way of describing the various anti-industrial, rejectionist groups that grew up throughout the Victorian era (the name being inspired by the anti-establishment morals of the early Greek cynics). And for a while, that was kinda all cynicism was thought to be- the distrustful grumblings of Luddites and country folk who couldn't keep up with the great new industrial way of living.

And then came the First World War. In just a few short years, this vast, brutal, mechanised conflict changed the way the entire western world thought about its government. Gone were jingoistic ideas about the glory of war, the cheering parades on the streets of London that heralded the start of the conflict- in their wake lay millions of dead, crippled and insane. A whole generation had seen everything they knew about right and wrong, about the right of serving one's country and the pride of defending it, torn to pieces and thrown in their face- poetry from the conflict is frequently characterised by making a cold, mocking irony of such ideas. And from this cauldron of betrayal and distrust did modern cynicism find its new champions, those bitter souls convinced of the fundamental selfishness and lying nature of man. We would never trust so much again.

Since then, the battlegrounds of cynical thought have moved and diversified, and cynics can be found everywhere; journalism, music, business and, of course, online. Indeed, cynicism as a movement has taken full advantage of the opportunities provided by social media, with this generation's disaffected youth (not to mention their parents) frequently voicing their distaste through medium of meme and snark. Messages of bile and distaste fly back and forth across the web, directed not merely at the establishment, but at the entire 'ruling classes' of western capitalism; the moneyed, the so-called 1%, the political class and so on. In the world where everyone's opinion is lain out for all to see, distrust is perhaps the only common theme; the liberals think the conservatives are all snobbish, out-of-touch morons, the conservatives think the liberals are dangerous buffoons with no idea what they're doing, and everyone else is merely a greedy Smaug looking to wring the world of its last scraps of goodness before letting it tear itself to pieces in the coming apocalypse.

Of course, it is worth bearing in mind that getting angry about the establishment, be that in the form of the government, police or capitalist, is not a new trend; from the interwar communist demonstrations to the 1980s miner's strikes, someone is always being accused of exploiting someone. Similarly, there is no doubt that skepticism is a healthy and necessary safety net through which to view the world- there are undoubtedly plenty of con men in the world willing and ready to bleed it for all they can.

But it strikes me that to bury one's head in the idea that humans are untrustworthy, heartless monsters is only going to bring that world into being all the more readily. By sowing the seeds of baseless distrust in others, we breed insularity and tribalism, breed a culture where the world is divided into "us and them", where "they" are to be hounded and punished at all costs. We see it all the time in politics today; people so convinced of their particular political leaning that they turn their opponents into vicious savages in their heads, not willing to acknowledge even the smallest of good ideas or intentions as they simply assume deliberate intent to mislead and twist and punish. Yes, ours is an imperfect world and heaven knows it's frequently cruel and heartless and full of pain and suffering... but if ever we stand a chance of making it better, it's not going to be by sitting around saying it and all the people in it are rotten to the core. It is often called a terrible thing that the human being of today's world is fundamentally the same as the man with the club hiding from the lions millennia ago- but the truth is that we are, and somehow those men with clubs have built a whole new world together. Somehow, through all the wars and the chaos, the men with clubs are now having deep conversations about freedom of identity expression and how best to live this fabulously luxuriant life that five thousand years of civilisation and technological development have lead us to. The man with the club has come an awfully long way. Please don't let us pretend that this has all been some kind of accident.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On King Arthur

The legends of King Arthur are undoubtedly the greatest and most famous in English mythology- which is perhaps odd, given the tales are Welsh in origin and most of the subsequent embellishment was done by Frenchmen. Indeed, this fact was said to so frustrate JRR Tolkein (in comparison with the many richly preserved mythological histories of continental Europe) that it inspired his interest in mythological world-building and ultimately the creation of the tales of Middle Earth. His are the iconic tales of chivalry, of the knightly ideals of honour, integrity and bravery

The telling and developments of the Arthurian legend spans an awfully long period of history, making consideration of Arthur as an actual historical figure incredibly difficult. The 'definitive' version of what we now think of as the Arthurian legends is Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, published in 1485, and is generally considered to be the culmination of the 'romantic' Arthurian period. From around the 12th century, a variety of predominantly French authors and poets had been writing their own Arthurian tales to embellish the legend, mostly drawing on the chivalric ideas and storytelling tropes of their own time. It is during this 'romance' period that we see the invention of such characters as Lancelot, Galahad, Percival and the castle of Camelot, and wherein we get such dashing tales as the Green Knight and Lancelot's affair with Guinevere. It is also, incidentally, where the legend of the Holy Grail arises, which has managed to transcend the mere mythological sphere and become a prominent image of Christian iconography (at least according to Dan Brown). It is generally agreed that these tales have no basis in history, even folk history, but they are undoubtedly useful sources for considering the ideological, cultural and literary traditions of the period they were written in.

The instigating incident for the romantic embellishment of the Arthurian legends during the high and late medieval period was a Welshman named Geoffrey of Monmouth, who published probably the single most significant document concerning the Arthurian legend in around 1138- the Historia Regum Britanniae (or, History of the Kings of Britain). Although Geoffrey claimed to be basing his work on an ancient British text, the fact that he doesn't say what it is (and thanks a couple of other notable lords for assisting in writing his tale) suggests this may have just been a tactic to lend his tale some legitimacy. In any case, the work is now generally disregarded as a history- partly because of the factual inaccuracies of such events as the Roman conquest, but mostly because of the numerous mentions of magic and dragons. However, more importantly for our purposes, Geoffrey dedicates five of the twelve books of his history to the first cohesive account of Arthur's life and origin (including his father Uther seducing Igerna of Cornwall through Merlin's transformative magic), and another to a selection of dubiously relevant prophecies ascribed to Merlin. It is impossible to tell using current sources how much of Geoffrey's history he made up to fill the gaps, and how much was based on an existing storytelling tradition of Arthur, but regardless it tells us little about who a real Arthur may have been. For those of a Shakespearean inclination, Geoffrey's work is also the first written source for the legend of King Lear, who he said was a British king of around the 8th century BC.

However, Geoffrey of Monmouth was not the first person to write about Arthur (although he was the first to do so in so much detail). Between the 6th and 10th centuries (dating these sources is notoriously tricky), a variety of mostly poetic sources make reference to Arthur as a semi-mythological figure, either referenced in hushed tones as some kind of paragon of martial brilliance, or telling of his deeds in slaying both Saxons and otherworldly monsters. Two sources, however, paint him in a more historical light (albeit briefly)- the 9th century Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) describes him as a military warlord and lists twelve battles that he is said to have fought, whilst the 10th century Annales Cambriae (Annals of Wales) gives two of them (the Battle of Badon and Strife of Camlann) dates in the early 6th century AD. This dating is supported by the 6th century De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain), which although it doesn't mention Arthur, also references a British victory at the Battle of Mons Badonnicus (Badon Hill). Both Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae refer to Arthur as if the source is well-known, suggesting an active oral tradition regarding him had built up by the time of their writing (some 300-400 years after he would have lived).

It is at this point that we must pause and consider the political situation of 6th century Britain. The Romans had abandoned the province of Britannia in the year 410AD, leaving the Britons without organised government, military assistance or a hope in hell. Frustratingly for future historians, this also left nobody to keep good records of the political situation of the time, and what records there were vulnerable to raiders coming over and burning them. Britain in this period was ruled and populated by the so-called Romano-British, or Sub-Roman Britons, and it is unclear whether the province remained for a while as a cohesive (but vulnerable) single kingdom, or collapsed into a series of smaller self-ruling districts and kingdoms. In any case, the people of this period still very much saw themselves as a continuation of Roman Britannia, as evidenced by the continuous use of the title Rex Britannorum (King of the Britons). In any case, the post-Roman political instability left Britain the target of frequent raiding by the Picts and Scots (who by this point were still an Irish tribe, just to make things confusing), and one king, Vortigern*, hired a pair of Germanic mercenaries, Hengist and Horsa, to help defend his lands from the raids in 449. Apparently they found the land to their liking, and it wasn't long before they rebelled, and ultimately settled in Kent and East Anglia.

*Vortigern is generally considered to be a real historical figure, and according to the tales he was Arthur's grandfather (which would fit the timeline quite well).

From there, more Germanic peoples came to bolster the kingdom that would later become known as Anglo-Saxon, and the Saxons in turn fought war after war against the Romano-British. Ultimately the Romano-Britons would be forced back to Wales, Cornwall and Britanny, before fading away to form much of those regions' distinct cultural identity that survives to this day, but in the 6th century the picture was much more uncertain. The Britons and Saxons alternated between war and uneasy truce, and there are several major British names are said to have lead battles against Saxon uprisings, including Vortigern and Ambrosius Aurelianus (the so-called "Last of the Romans"). Ultimately, of course, this leads us to the Battle of Badon Hill- supposedly a great victory against a major Saxon invasion, pushing them back to their old Eastern territories, and where Historia Brittonum tells us that Arthur slew 960 men alone on his flank. After that, records are again absent, until 20 years later when the Annales Cambriae state Arthur and Mordred both fell at the Strife of Annales Camlann (although it doesn't say whether they were on the same side or not, or indeed who Mordred was). After that, the Britons continued to be pushed back, until Anglo-Saxon dominance became complete during the mid-to-late 7th centuries (although they never quite managed to work the last scraps of distinct culture out of Wales and Cornwall).

So, who then was Arthur?

Well, whether or not a warlord named Arthur actually fought with distinction at Badon Hill (reasonably likely), slew 960 men single-handedly (very unlikely) and/or went on to become yet another adoptee of the title Rex Britannorum (unknowable but fairly unlikely) is impossible to discern with any kind of accuracy given our current knowledge of 6th century politics. We don't know if he had any advisor called Myrddin, or if Mordred was a real figure connected to him, or even if he was any kind of virtuous paragon- and regardless of who he was, it's fairly certain he didn't have a lasting impact on the British political landscape; for the purposes of political history, therefore, he can be fairly safely passed over. However, regardless of who he was in life, the readiness and brevity with which he is referenced in later sources suggests that in death he became something more than he ever was- a great folk hero of the receding Britons. It is undoubtedly significant that most of our sources regarding Arthur are Welsh, describe him being born in Cornwall and name him King of Britain (rather than England or Wales), deliberately harking back to the golden age of Romano-Britain. As the Britons slowly retreated from England into the hilly, wild lands to the west, Arthur's legend survived as a story of rebellion and glory- of a hero first to throw back the encroaching Saxons and return Britannia to her glory days, and later as one who protected his chosen people against threats both Saxon and supernatural. In an era where the Britons were bullied into submission by barbarians, those who had never been Roman, Arthur stood as a symbol of virtuousness and valour, piloting a chivalric idea that even all the later romantic embellishment couldn't quite take away from the core story.

And maybe that is real enough.

PS: If anyone is interested of this version of Arthur as a simple warlord with a legend built around him, I can recommend Philip Reeve's Here Lies Arthur. It's not a traditional Arthurian tale, and wanders away from its core subject matter quite frequently, but that in turn makes it possibly the most believable Arthurian fiction I've encountered. A worthwhile read.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Finance

The world's financial institutions are one of the biggest class divisors in the western world. Those in power frequently talk of their necessity and importance, whilst those of us lower down the political ladder frequently find this talk both deeply abstract and mind-numbingly boring. Indeed, there is a strong tendency for those without direct exposure to the finance markets to think that the whole thing a) doesn't affect them, b) has no real impact on the actual economy, and c) is essentially just one giant casino, full of playboy gamblers and not much else. I should know- I'm one of them. Of course, it's not actually quite so simple to dismiss- but before we delve into the wheres and hows, it's worth having a solid understanding of exactly what the financial world actually does all day, and for that we need to go back to a little macroeconomics 101.

(For anyone who actually knows about economics- I apologise in advance for the butchering of your field, and I welcome anyone to point out where I've gone wrong)

The most basic tenet of capitalism is the exchange of goods and services- in most cases, the exchange of money for some other good or service (defining exactly what constitutes a good or service gets rapidly confusing, but the easiest way to think about it in economic terms is something people are willing to spend money on). This much we're all fairly familiar with. Most of the time, the things that we spend money on in our daily lives are things with a fairly short-term payoff: a cup of coffee, an hour in a swimming pool, an inflatable pink unicorn, etc. We buy them, we consume them, the transaction is over and done with- simple stuff.

And that would quite possibly be all there is to capitalism, were it not for the fact that humans have this strange desire to make more and more money in order to acquire more and more goods and services. And so we seized upon this wonderful idea of spending money on certain goods and services in order to produce a good or service that other people are willing to spend MORE money on- everything from buying wood to make a bench with, to buying the labour of dubiously skilled teenagers to make cups of coffee with. But once you've got a reasonably large economy with lots of these activities occurring, you begin to realise that the exchange of goods and services is fundamentally volatile, with the price of these things relative to a nation's coinage rarely staying constant. And so we arrive at possibly the single most important idea in economics: the law of supply and demand. Or, to put it more succinctly, the more people want something, the more the price goes up (as those with more money 'price out' others), and vice-versa.

And this idea of commodities being able to almost arbitrarily vary in price is interesting, because it immediately introduces the possibility of making money buying and selling things whilst not actually processing the commodity (by turning it into engines or paper or stuffed toys) to make it more valuable. This idea is in many ways the defining trait of mercantile capitalism- buy something in one place, cart it a few hundred or even thousand miles down the road and sell it somewhere else for more. At this point, economists and businessmen no longer think of the transaction of buying, say, a cartload of silk, as a simple transaction- it becomes an investment in the business of silk trading, with an expectation for payoff at the other end.

(Note that this is a subtley different transaction than the modern shipping industry, in which the shipping company is generally paid for the service of transporting goods rather than itself buying and selling the goods it carries. It's lower risk that way.)

However, at some point along the line it was realised that with the correct agreements in place you don't even need a physical commodity to trade with. Imagine you want to set up a silk-trading business, but you don't actually own any silk yet. Or a camel. Or a cart. You have two choices. If you want, you can start small, work another job to raise some money, and then set out completely on your own dime- which is great so long as you've got the skills, time and patience to do all that for the five, ten maybe even twenty years it'll take to get you into that position. Or, you can go and ask somebody richer than you for the money to get started, and have your successful silk operation set up and ready to go in a month or two. Obviously the nice rich person isn't just going to give you the money, so you're going to have to give them something in return- either you can agree to pay them a little money each month or year for as long as you owe them cash (paying interest on the loan they've given you), or you can simply agree that in return for their investment they get a cut of your revenue. This latter case is the really interesting one, because in this case you're essentially treating a portion of your business's revenue (which, I will remind you, doesn't actually EXIST yet) like a tradeable commodity. When this kind of deal is done with parts of small start-up businesses, it's called venture capital investment, but not every business is small. Sometimes, when a business is big, it wants to buy and sell parts of itself too, as a way for the business to raise money for its operations. And if it wants to do so really quickly, the easiest way is to not bother with sitting down in a boardroom thrashing out deals with potential investors every day- instead, they simply put up the sellable portions of the business's revenue for general sale and trade. And this is what we call the stock market.

At this point it's worthwhile pausing for a second to note something important- all of this trading of commodities has a direct bearing on the real, day-to-day operations of businesses. Businesses don't buy and sell their stock on the stock market just for the fun of it- they do so because this allows the laws of supply and demand to work at maximum speed. When a company is doing well, its shares each make more money for whoever owns them, which means the share is more valuable and the price goes up- and all of a sudden, the company gets a massive injection of cash from people buying its expensive shares. The supposedly money in the stock market, so frequently derided as being 'fake money', has suddenly become real. The truth of the matter is that companies do make massive, massive amounts of money in this way, as the trading back and forth of commodities essentially provides them with a neverending source of investment, and in this way the finance industry does contribute significantly to a nation's economy and GDP. Although leftist scaremongers like to claim that our politicians are all 'in bed' with major stockbrokers and as such are resistant to major reform, the real truth is that most politicians believe that the value of free, fast trade of stocks & shares is a positive influence on the economy and that onerous government restrictions on stock market activities are only going to restrict the abilities of these institutions to stimulate the wider economy. After all, it was this kind of thing that won the Cold War, and would you like to have to go home and cross-check half a dozen different bank balances before buying a new car?

However, there are four main problems with this system:
1) It is inherently risky- despite massive investment in prediction algorithms over the past few decades, there is still very little certainty regarding how the market will behave in response to certain stimuli, so there is no way of knowing whether an investment will make or lose you money over a given time frame. Indeed, there are actual laws in place to prevent investors making decisions based on their own information, in order to discourage industrial espionage. On a small enough scale, this is OK, so long as investors show sufficient restraint with which stable and risky stocks to invest in- which, most of the time, they do (for their own necks if nothing else). And in any case, this is practically unavoidable in any system that permits investment.
2) The people trading stocks and carrying out investments frequently do not have direct investment in either the money or the stocks they are dealing with. The main sources of cash in the stock market are investment funds, which pool the money from a number of different sources and give them to a bunch of ostensibly smart economists in order to make more money with it. In a lot of cases, these sources of cash are specifically earmarked for the purpose by people who expect to draw direct profit from the process, as in hedge funds and credit unions. However, another main source of money floating around the stock market comes from investment banks and pension funds, whose capital comes from the money people have given to them for safekeeping- it's how banks make money when, from your perspective, they are paying you to keep your money safe. Again, in most cases this is a broadly speaking good idea, as the goals of the stockbrokers and investors generally align- make money, don't take too many risks. It also helps ensure banks are profitable enough to be safe repositories for the everyman. However, because it's not their money they are playing with, if something goes wrong then it means the stockbrokers are rarely the ones taking the biggest fall- a stockbroker only lives from one commission to the next.
3) The whole thing is huge, that makes it bloody confusing. So far the only 'security' (financial, non-physical, tradeable asset) we have talked about are stocks and shares, but there are so many others that keeping track of what they all are and how they relate to one another is nigh-on impossible. There are government bonds, underwritten bonds, mortgage backed securities, perpetuities, currency swaps, credit default swaps, commodity futures- all investments in one outcome hoping that it will become profitable again in future. And once again, mostly this isn't a problem- lots of highly interactive systems are by their nature complex, and this one is constantly being exploited by bright-eyed investors looking for new ways to make money. However, it does mean that accurately keeping track of and control over the financial sector is like trying to herd flies with a tennis racket, and it's very easy for a few dodgy practitioners to cream off what they can and escaping before the entire system can collapse about them.
4) The amount of money tied up in all this stuff is absolutely insane. In the UK, the financial services sector contributes around £86 billion to the economy, whilst the annual income for the US financial services income is estimated at around $1.2 trillion. Annually. Hell, forget all the usual complaints about the economy favouring the 1%, the rich getting richer and creating a frankly depressing class divide between haves and have-nots, that makes the whole financial sector simply too big to fail- and if it does, it'll drag pretty much everyone down with it.

For as long as the stock market has remained broadly tied to the 'real' economy, supporting through investment companies dealing in good old fashioned goods and services, none of these facts are a problem. The economy will remain healthy, the banks will make money, and all's hunky dory. However, no banker wants to tell their boss that they made a million dollars' profit this year when they could have made five million, so invariably people start pushing the boat out. They make a few riskier investments, start packaging up some slightly weaker investments with the solid gold ones. So much investment gets packaged up into old safeguards that nobody pays much attention to whether or not these institutions are as safe today as once they were- and hey, everyone's making money right? That means everything's still going alright, right? And it is alright- until one day, the market starts selling a little more than it buys, and people start to cash in. And suddenly everyone realises that the whole thing is built on an outright lie, on corruption and falsehoods buried with optimism and a few smarmy pricks creaming off all they could at the expense of the wider economy. Without ties to real things, real goods and services that people actually want to buy, the bottom drops out- prices plummet, and the bubble may be described as burst.

Except... well, does it really work that way?

The idea that risk-taking stockbrokers and banks are fundamentally to blame for all economic woes is an incredibly seductive narrative, an idea that all of us not currently rolling in the moolah can get behind. It plays on our desire to nonspecifically blame the rich and powerful, to accuse them of being false and broken, and of deliberately and callously ruining our world at the expense of normal, honest, hard-working folk. We want to believe that the morons in the stock market are the arbiters of all economic failure, that honest small business owners and the like are the bedrock of true economic success, that the stock market needs either abolition or massive, massive regulation in order to prevent it from being populated by such gung-ho characters as depicted in The Wolf Of Wall Street. That's the narrative we want to believe, the narrative that feels most true.

Unfortunately, it's a narrative without much empirical evidence to give it solid backing. During the late 1980s, with the advent of greatly increasing computing power, a number of computational economic models were develop that showed this 'boom and bust' cycle developing even in simple systems, even in systems where investors were given clear and unambiguous data regarding the costs and benefits of various commodities. The main driving force identified behind these cycles wasn't any deliberate manipulation, only the tendency for the free market and the thousands of investors that make it up to broadly follow the trend, even when that trend did not match up to the fundamental value of what they were trading. According to mathematical economic theory, bubbles aren't the work of monkeys running a get-rich-quick scheme. They're just what markets do when people follow the rumours and the patterns and stick to what's "safe".

And, in addition, let's take a look at this graph showing the variation in GDP of the United States from 1871 to 2009:



Since the Great Depression of the 1930s (probably the largest economic bubble in history, wherein the US economy shrunk by more than a quarter from 1929-32), the USA has experienced 13 periods of recession (where GDP shrinks rather thank grows over time). This is not a particularly good thing- but, up until the housing bubble and resulting recession of 2007-9, none had exceeded an overall economic shrinkage (as measured by reduction in GDP) of 4% since the 'recession' caused by reduced public spending following the conclusion of the second world war (the 2007-9 recession peaked at 5.1% shrinkage). And in the mean time, the trend of overall exponential economic growth has been almost terrifyingly consistent- and if we're so convinced the troughs are to blame on the stock market, why is it so hard to think the growth might be down to its influence too?

But perhaps most critically, to blame 'the stock market' for literally anything concerning economic performance is to rather misunderstand what exactly the stock market is. The nebulous collection of entities trading in financial securities that we call 'the stock market' is not some otherworldly entity sitting above the global economy like some great oligarch; if we draw nothing from our earlier dissections of its nature and origins, it should be that the stock market and, indeed, entire financial sector is little more than an extension of the economy whose influences touches every aspect of the rest of it. No publically or privately traded business, no self-employed man or woman who's benefited from taking out a loan, no supporter of a government that borrows privately to stimulate its economy, almost nobody at all in fact, can claim to be independent of the financial sector, can fairly claim it to be an evil and nefarious agent of doom.

What we hate about the stock market isn't based on a rational fact that it is a bringer of destruction, but because it represents to us a way of thinking about money that most of us find so alien as to be repugnant. Stock market traders deal with hundreds of millions of pounds in tradeable commodities daily, have the power to make or break the lives of thousands of people. Traders don't seem to us to be 'normal' folk, working an honest day's labour to take home for dinner; they are somehow abstract entities, living it large on what popular culture assures us is a wave of champagne and strip clubs, and the stakes available mean that those who are successful make more money than many of us can conceive of earning- and all whilst doing what a lot of people would not consider to be work. By that point, the question of their economic value becomes almost secondary- at heart, the concept of so much money doing so much for so little activity frequently seems fundamentally wrong to us.

Is it wrong? Honestly, I don't know. If I'm quite frank, the only thing I'm feel I 'know' as a result of researching and writing this is that I'm no economist, and that the economic vortex is massively complex in its sheer size. Based on what I've read over the course of researching it, I'm coming down tentatively behind the idea that, for so long as we believe GDP to be a valuable metric in determining the general wellbeing of a nation's economy and people, a free trading stock market is an generally good thing for an economy. But as for whether there is some better alternative, as for the extent to which the stock market can take credit or blame for all that has happened to the economies it touches, as for whether the rift in society that the sheer scale of international finance creates is worth its apparent benefits... these are questions I'm not sure can ever be properly answered.

And if we don't believe that about GDP... well, figuring that one out can be an essay for another time.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

On Intrinsics and Extrinsics
Or, How To Make People Do Something.

"Persuading someone to do something" is a problem the human race has engaged with pretty heavily during the last five thousand years or so of civilisation, but our collective track record has often been less than successful. Crime epidemics, religious and civil strife, even many instances mismanagement and sporting failure- all are essentially borne from significant numbers of people not behaving as their organisational superiors wish them to. The costs from such behaviour are often unacceptably high.

However, all that accumulated evidence has given us a lot of information regarding the two main methods one may use to influence the actions of another. The first is to directly apply force- give strict, prescriptive orders with physical enforcement where necessary. This method is effective, but is extremely demanding on one's time and resources, meaning it lacks long-term sustainability, and raises a number of ethical concerns. The other approach has much more wide-scale potential, but requires manipulation of one of the most ephemeral aspects of interpersonal relations- motivation.

Modern-day motivational theory holds that there are two types of motivational factors that a person can experience. Extrinsic motivational factors are, as the name suggests, external factors that (generally speaking) offer consequences as a result of one's actions. These consequences may be positive (rewards for doing a 'good' thing) or negative (punishments for doing a 'bad' thing), but extrinsic motivation is generally at its most effective when both positive and negative consequences are both present and applied in a straightforward fashion. This is often referred to as the 'carrot and stick' approach. By contrast, intrinsic motivational factors come from within an individual and are usually very personal to them- things like a person's moral code, their innate desire for victory or their sense of identity. And here is the key point- in general, intrinsic motivation is a much more powerful force than extrinsic motivation, and is incredibly difficult to override the former with the latter with any success.

Some people, who generally make good managers, find that this is entirely self-evident. For the rest of us, once one is cognizant of this fact, it paints a huge amount of human behaviour in something of a new light. People break the law because their intrinsic desire for wealth, to fit in with a particular social group or to simply get something done is greater than the extrinsic forces imposed by law- particularly if law enforcement is weak enough for the extrinsic motivation to be weak. More law-abiding citizens are simply those people who lack these rebellious intrinsic influences, or have public-spirited intrinsic motivations of their own- but even these people may break different laws for the same reasons. Great leaders throughout history have been driven to their successes by their intrinsic dreams of glory, but the difficulty they or their successors may have had holding onto their gains may be attributed to the populace's intrinsic dislike of foreign occupation. It is an established economic trend that, although more police are provably effective at stopping crime, areas with lots of police tend to still have the high crime rates that prompted this recruitment- because police enforcement is an extrinsic discouragement to crime, whilst criminal culture and the associated sense of belonging can form an intrinsic encouragement.

So, if this is a known effect, why do we bother with extrinsic motivation at all? Why does any of the above stuff happen? Well, discounting the various instances where the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction has not occurred to the decision-makers involved, the simple fact is that intrinsic motivation is much more difficult to influence. From a position of power, it is easy to change the extrinsic influences at play- introduce laws, change pay scales, offer trophies or recruit more police. It'll usually cost something, but it's quick, easy, looks good for those in public office and is usually effective against those with little intrinsic compunction to the contrary. Changing a person's intrinsic motivation, however, inherently requires a degree of re-education, and even if a person is receptive to this (which is the first, often-overlooked challenge in and of itself) education is a difficult and hard-to-quantify business. In small scales it can be more practical- a coach can sometimes afford to spend some 1-on-1 time with a troublesome team member to unlock their full potential, but if the recipient is unreceptive then the process is becomes necessarily slow and drawn-out as the resisting barriers are gently taken down without provoking the recipient into throwing up more in the face of your aggressive attempts to alter what they might see as a core truth. Any teacher who's ever tried to get teenagers enthused about particle chemistry knows how difficult this process of removing barriers can be. On a larger scale, it gets even harder- imagine trying to alter the intrinsic values of a large population through legislature and educational opportunities alone.

And even if the recipient is receptive, getting intrinsic motivation right can be an absolute minefield. Dating is the most obvious example of an area where intrinsic motivation is pretty much the exclusive area of interest- just try offering a reward for sex next time you're on a date and see how well that goes down. And it's a good situation for it too- two people on a date together are pretty much by definition at least receptive to the idea of forming a relationship with the other. But the fact that so many people (especially men, since they usually find themselves the convincing rather than receiving party) find dating so difficult to understand or confusing is testament to how hard it can be to navigate the maze of another person's intrinsic motivations. Even identifying the intrinsic values at play is hard enough, as intrinsic motivations are highly personal to the individual concerned and can vary wildly even within demographics- and efforts to affect one person's intrinsics can have a negative impact on those of another. Businesspeople will be familiar with the idea of corporate training policy alienating those within the business to which it is a hindrance or simply seems like common sense. And just to make things even more complicated, intrinsic motivations are also highly situational and, despite best intentions, can rise and fall wildly if the situation is unfavourable. This is one of the reasons why losing weight can be so difficult- it can seem so easy during the early days when dreams of a thinner, fitter you are flush in the memory, but it can be hard to recall these feelings when you're supposed to go running on a wet Thursday in November. And you've got a cold.

So, attempting to influence intrinsic motivations is a difficult re-education challenge; but it is a massively worthwhile one. Intelligent, careful use of extrinsic motivational factors is a valuable skill, but it cannot get you everywhere and can frequently backfire if large sectors of the intrinsically-opposed populace see the manipulation of extrinsics as a personal attack. Mismanagement of extrinsic factors only exacerbates this problem. Sometimes, attempting to directly influence the intrinsic factors at play is the only option- and if done right, it is so much more effective. Intrinsically motivated people, united behind a single goal or philosophy will weather the toughest storms to batter your cause and will often police themselves with no external enforcement. It's the difference between having an army of conscripts kept in check by military police, and having an army of inspired warriors to fight your corner. And I know which I would have at my back any day.

Motivation isn't everything, and I've only considered here the balance of intrinsic vs. extrinsic. I have not given consideration to the (often unintentional) effect that extrinsic factors can have on long-term intrinsic behaviours, or the challenges posed by competing extrinsic motivations. But get the motivation right, and a person can often do what you want without even asking them, and sometimes without their even noticing. In many ways, intrinsic motivation is the endgame of negotiation. To once again indulge in an overused cliche, I'll end with a quote, this time from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: "If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."