Category: Pondering Infinity

A Taste of my mind. Anything from Sociopolitics to Religion to Philosophy in general goes.

A sobering look at the status (and future) of the USA

Db03 Comments

The Great American Delusion of Grandeur

From reddit I was linked to this post in ClubOrlov about the Grim Truth of America written by a US immigrant. Go and read it, and then check the comments in all thee links. Some interesting thoughts. Some choice quotes:

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

And

The fact is, they work you like dogs in the United States. This should come as no surprise: the United States never got away from the plantation/sweat shop labor model and any real labor movement was brutally suppressed. Unless you happen to be a member of the ownership class, your options are pretty much limited to barely surviving on service-sector wages or playing musical chairs for a spot in a cubicle (a spot that will be outsourced to India next week anyway).

And

If the people cannot make a change, how about the media? Not a chance. From Fox News to the New York Times, the mass media in the United States is nothing but the public relations wing of the corporatocracy, primarily the military industrial complex. At least the citizens of the former Soviet Union knew that their news was bullshit

And finally

Once the shit really hits the fan, do you really think you’ll just be able to jump into the old station wagon, drive across the Canadian border and spend the rest of your days fishing and drinking Molson? No, the government is going to lock the place down. They don’t want their tax base escaping. They don’t want their “recruits” escaping. They don’t want YOU escaping.

One hopes such articles would be enough to jar U.S. Americans out of their blissful delusion, but somehow I doubt it.

Ah, I loves me some insidious sexism.

Db018 Comments

Mainsteam publications misuing science? Noooooo…

A commenter pointed out to me an “scientific” article claiming the bold title “Scientists say genetic variations show that men think differently“. They used this as “scientific” proof of how women are naturally more passive and cooperative than males, which of course has the implication that some jobs are better suited for females and that the traditional role of the woman in the house taking care of the children is not so out of place.

This kind of thing annoys me immensely, especially since when I actually took the time to read that article, it quickly became apparent that Science proves no such thing. In fact, the best the article could point out was that

While the two sexes have the same basic genes, many of these are more active in the brains of only one sex. These gender-specific patterns of gene expression could affect many aspects of behaviour, the researchers said.

That’s it. That’s the great evidence of what “Scientists say”. A mild discovery and a weak correlation.

However, since most people will barely bother to read more than the title of the headline, the idea of what “Scientists say” will stay in their brain, and they may link others to the same dubious claims as proof of how feminists are going against female nature or some other nonsense.

Why does mainstream media do this? More importantly, why have they not been taken to task for this nonsense? How can such a misleading article stay online? It’s like reading an article which boldly claims that Scientists say that “Skin colour affects intelligence”. How come insidious sexism gets a free pass while people have wizened up enough to counter insidious racism?

Of course for me, further annoyment was caused when I linked this article to reddit, assuming that people in /r/feminisms can see the obvious, and immediately I was asked to explain what’s wrong with it. When I did that and pointed out that it’s annoying I had to do it, I am then told that I’m being rude. FFS people! We are allowed to be annoyed when we’re asked to explain the obvious again and again and again. Being annoyed at it gives out a clear signal that people should start using their own head for once, instead of asking for Cliff’s Notes.

Do we need traffic lights or rules of the road?

Db01 Comment

Empirical Evidence once more points to the naturalness of Anarchy.

In a new installment of Things About “Human Nature” That Are Counter-Intuitive, we now see that far from avoiding chaos, accidents, delays, and congestion, traffic lights and other handed-down-from-above rules are actually facilitating them. This video in two parts gives you the rundown Read more “Do we need traffic lights or rules of the road?”

How should anarchists deal with unwelcome elements in an online community?

Db07 Comments

To ban or not to ban.

A recent controversy has exploded in /r/anarchism where the issue of how to deal with white-nationalists, misogynists and other assorted scum has been raised, and particularly, if banning is an appropriate reaction. This is a question that has been asked a few times before but the can of worms was ultimately opened when one of the mods went ahead and banned one of the latest and most egregious samples of bottom-feeding scum.

The reaction was immediate, both from those congratulating the act, and those condemning it. At the start I expressed my cautious criticism as I have always been against bannination from fora and even from my own site and thus I didn’t like this turn of events which happened all of a sudden, but I was willing to let this direct action stand until I knew how the community at large felt. Of course I continued to post on my perspective on why this banning is unnecessary and/or harmful.

The subsequent figurative shitstorm allowed a lot of opportunity to discuss the issue. So I’m going to put forth some of the arguments for and against it as plainly as possible, provide my own perspective and hopefully we can discover some interesting insights and solutions.

  1. For now, lets consider /r/anarchism as a community (although there are many perspectives under which this is not the case). Lets also further consider that it’s a community for anarchists and similar minded people (again, perspectives diverge on this. More on this later)
  2. Now as a community for anarchists, it is to be expected that it should be an area where anarchists feel welcome and not assaulted for their beliefs.
    1. Point 2 can be reached organically, by making sure that discussion stays on the topic of anarchism, which is naturally libertarian socialist for everyone but a small and vocal minority on the internets. This means that the area is going to attract anarchists who are going to speak about and defend anarchism, as well as its cousin tactics of feminism, anti-racism and anti-fascism.
      1. The organic way runs always the danger of being abused by having a lot of non-anarchist “anarchists” (i.e. national “anarchists” or “anarcho”-capitalists) join the area and try to takeover with their version of it, by driving all the anarchists away.
    2. Point 2 can also be reached via a top-down method where anarchists have control of the moderator duties of the community and make sure that such unwelcome elements stay away through banning them, deleting their comments and posts etc.
      1. This assumes that it is indeed anarchists at the helm and it opens the possibility that their ranks will be infiltrated by non-anarchists using the correct rhetoric and then using their power to  to push forth a different perspective
        1. This can be countered by the ones in the moderator list making sure that the ones with power are “true anarchists”, which starts to have serious overhead issues as infighting starts to occur as accusations of leniency, weakness, betrayal and so on start to be flung around. For how extreme such a “solution” can get, I can only point out to the Russian Revolution and how many purges within their leadership they had, in increasing brutality.
        2. The above can also be countered by having the selection of the mod happen via democratic means, such as that even if quite a bit of, say, national “anarchists” managed to sneak into power, they would be able to move the theme of the community to white nationalism as the community would reject it
          1. Of course, this again encounters the flaws of 2.1.1 above, where the community might be already having a large percentage of non-anarchists who will support such a change of paradigm.
      2. This also creates the issue of an unaccountable oligarchy at the top. It is simply the case of the ones on the top being responsible for selecting which ones join them. It doesn’t matter how good intentions they have, or how pure they consider themselves, we already know that power corrupts so what will happen is that the oligarchy at the top, will slowly evolve more and more authoritarian, trusting on it (flawed) judgement to “protect the community” while being certain it’s always on the right. This can be further inflamed as more liberal members of the oligarchy are slowly driven away, either in disgust (as has started happening already in /r/anarchism) or by accusations of being soft on oppressors or providing a “platform for fascists”.
        1. The above can be countered by adding democratic accountability to the selection of the mods. This in turns opens up the issue 2.1.1
        2. The above can be countered by mods making sure each other walks the straight and narrow path of anarchism. That their fellow mods do not violate their principles.
        3. The above can also be countered by having some kind of policies or “constitution” which defines what actions the mods can take.
          1. One problem with this, is that this policy in turn needs to be decided by someone. If this someone is only the mod oligarchy, then it will not necessarily avoid the issue if the mods already have an authoritarian trend.
          2. If the ones deciding on the policy are the whole community instead, then this again falls into the problem in 2.1.1
          3. Another issue to consider is on whether this policy will be open to changes in the future, or it it will be set in stone. If it’s open to changes, then at any point in the future it can be affected by 2.1.1 or 2.2.2.2
  3. As a community, we have some bottom-up moderation tools made available by the platform we use: Reddit. Namely downvoting comments and posts. This has two significant effects. When a comment is downvoted enough (a total -5 cumulative vote), then it gets “burried”, which means it’s not shown by default unless it is expanded explicitly. A person who’s comments are consistently downvoted, starts having timing restrictions in posting. They cannot post more than once per 10 minutes. From personal experience I can explain that this can be very frustrating when you’re having an argument.
    1. The possible problem is that the voting system can be played. In a healthy anarchistic community, a sexist comment would be downvoted to oblivion and a consistent sexist would find it hard to keep posting or gain any visibility. However, given the way reddit functions, anyone registered in reddit can come to /r/anarchism and upvote any comment. This means that a sexist could theoretically call in a so called “upvote brigade” (say from /r/mensrights) which will proceed to upvote his comments to visibility
      1. The issue with this tactic is that it’s not efficient. One can only call for such upvote brigades when there’s some significance to their comments or some outrage to be caused. Fortunately, even the people in /r/mensrights do not want to be someone personal army and one can only ask for this favour so many times before they are ignored. This means that it’s unlikely that more than a few comments can gain visibility through this method and eventually the anti-sexist sentiments from the community will return them to minus
      2. It is possible to consider that someone will find a persistent “personal army”, or perhaps an invasion” will be attempted (as has been called for in the past by both national “anarchists” and by “anarcho”-capitalists). However they are unlikely to succeed as anarchists are already entrenched and all we need to do is weather a short-term influx of non-anarchists. Once no visible success is achieved, such “invasions” simply lose wind, especially given how little one can gain from taking over a community such as /r/anarchism.
        1. Perhaps one can consider that if /r/anarchism grows to sufficient size (and I consider our >10k subscribers and number of comments/posts we have have quite succesful) it will attract the attention of such organized elements, which will then attempt to take it over for propaganda purposes, much like it has happened with the Tea Party movement. However the fact that we have grown large by being a community of anarchists until then and managed to avoid such takeovers, means that it’s unlikely that we’ll be more vulnerable when we’re an even bigger society of anarchists.
    2. Another issue is that it’s possible that community moderation might not be enough to hide the most egregiously abusive comments and posts. Comments which might alienate oppressed people we would like to attract to anarchism, such as women, PoC etc. After all, they wouldn’t want to be in a community where white power apologists, holocaust deniers, misogynists and so on are seen to be accepted member and/or posters. This is because non-anarchists lurkers and even non-subscribers can vote comments up or down.
      1. One counter-argument is that people should understand the nature of this website and how voting works. An upvoted post in a deep thread does not necessarily mean that such an opinion is supported by the community. One needs to get a thicker skin and be able to ignore outright trollish comments, meant explicitly to alienate them
        1. On the other hand oppressed people shouldn’t be forced to tolerate abuse and they have every right to claim that a community where they are expected to swallow their anger is not worth it.
          1. The above argument is caused by a misunderstanding. When a “thicker skin” is mentioned, it is not a call for silence. This is not akin to saying “can’t you take a joke woman?”. Someone abused in such way has every right to be outraged and answer back in anger and/or act accordingly and they will find support in the other members of the reddit who will do the same. Rather, the thick skin refers to the idea that one should not give up on the community because the occasional troll make a nasty comment. Figuratively skewer it and move on.

I hope you’re still with me after all those numbers and indents.The reason I chose this format is just so that I can refer to specific arguments and counter arguments by their number. The above are, from my understanding, the core arguments having to do with the reasons for banning.

Proponents of banning as a legitimate tactic commonly seem to reject democratic or crowdsourced solutions. We are very often informed that democracy does not work, that lurkers shouldn’t count, that there’s only a few anarchists in /r/anarchism and so on. I find such arguments disheartening and wrong. The reason is that open online communities such as a subreddit can easily serve as a “petri dish” for the ideas of anarchism. If we can’t stick to our principles here, how can we ever convince others that we can stick to our principles in a real life scenario?

Consider a possible revolutionary situation. Your real life community is not going to be comprised 100% of anarchists. not even close. In fact, it’s very likely that there’s going to be very few conscious anarchists while the vast majority of people follow anarchistic principles (direct action and mutual aid)to some extent. Even if you collectively start progressing to an anarchist society, there’s always going to be elements advocating a return to the old ways or to something worse, like fascism. What are you going to do with someone suggesting that a strong leader takes control? What about free markets? Are you going to silence them or exile them and how? Will you declare that since this is an anarchist revolution, only anarchist deserve to be in the democratic decision making? Or will you request the leadership in order to guide society on the right path.

People online love to sarcastically point out how little an online forum has to do with reality but fail to understand the impression they give to anyone outside looking in. The first thing they see anarchists doing, is fall back to the same old methods. Use central power to control. Sure you may think that they don’t count, but how the hell else are we even going to convince others that we have a superior solution to what they already do? If your solution for an Internet forum is to use central mod power to ban racism, sexism and fascism, then why shouldn’t a statist believe that the central power of the state can do likewise?

Yes, the Internet does put limits on the actions we can follow, which is why it’s even more important that we stick to decentralized, bottom-up solutions when possible. If we can do it on the internet, imagine how well it will work in the real world, where accountability and peer pressure exists.

A recent controversy has exploded in /r/anarchism where the issue of how to deal with white-nationalists, misogynists and other assorted scum has been raised, and particularly, if banning is an appropriate reaction. This is a question that has been asked a few times before but the can of worms was ultimately opened when one of the mods went ahead and banned one of the latest and most egregious samples of bottom-feeding scum.

The reaction was immediate, both from those congragulating the act, and those condemning it. At the start I expressed my cautious criticism as I have always been against bannination from fora and even from my own site and thus I didn’t like this turn of events which happened all of a sudden, but I was willing to let this direct action stand until I knew how the community at large felt. Of course I continued to post on my perspective on why this banning is unnecessary and/or harmful.

The subsequent figurative shitstorm allowed a lot of opportunity to discuss the issue. So I’m going to put forth some of the arguments for and against it as plainly as possible, provide my own perspective and hopefully we can discover some interesting insights and solutions.

  1. For now, lets consider /r/anarchism as a community (although there are many perspectives under which this is not the case). Lets also further consider that it’s a community for anarchists and similar minded people (again, perspectives diverge on this. More on this later)
  2. Now as a community for anarchists, it is to be expected that it should be an area where anarchists feel welcome and not assaulted for their beliefs.
    1. Point 2 can be reached organically, by making sure that discussion stays on the topic of anarchism, which is naturally libertarian socialist for everyone but a small and vocal minority on the internets. This means that the area is going to attract anarchists who are going to speak about and defend anarchism, as well as its cousin tactics of feminism, anti-racism and anti-fascism.
      1. The organic way runs always the danger of being abused by having a lot of non-anarchist “anarchists” (i.e. national “anarchists” or “anarcho”-capitalists) join the area and try to takeover with their version of it, by driving all the anarchists away.
    2. Point 2 can also be reached via a top-down method where anarchists have control of the moderator duties of the community and make sure that such unwelcome elements stay away through banning them, deleting their comments and posts etc.
      1. This assumes that it is indeed anarchists at the helm and it opens the possibility that their ranks will be infiltrated by non-anarchists using the correct rhetoric and then using their power to  to push forth a different perspective
        1. This can be countered by the ones in the moderator list making sure that the ones with power are “true anarchists”, which starts to have serious overhead issues as infighting starts to occur as accusations of leniency, weakness, betrayal and so on start to be flinged around. For how extreme such a “solution” can get, I can only point out to the Russian Revolution and how many purges within their leadership they had, in increasing brutality.
        2. The above can also be countered by having the selection of the mod happen via democratic means, such as that even if quite a bit of, say, national “anarchists” managed to sneak into power, they would be able to move the theme of the community to white nationalism as the community would reject it
          1. Of course, this again encounters the flaws of 2.1.1 above, where the community might be already having a large percentage of non-anarchists who will support such a change of paradigm.
      2. This also creates the issue of an unaccountable oligarchy at the top. It is simply the case of the ones on the top being responsible for selecting which ones join them. It doesn’t matter how good intentions they have, or how pure they consider themselves, we already know that power corrupts so what will happen is that the oligarchy at the top, will slowly evolve more and more authoritarian, trusting on it (flawed) judgement to “protect the community” while being certain it’s always on the right. This can be further inflamed as more liberal members of the oligarchy are slowly driven away, either in disgust (as has started happening already in /r/anarchism) or by accusations of being soft on oppressors or providing a “platform for fascists”.
        1. The above can be countered by adding democratic accountability to the selection of the mods. This in turns opens up the issue 2.1.1
        2. The above can be countered by mods making sure each other walks the straight and narrow path of anarchism. That their fellow mods do not violate their principles.
        3. The above can also be countered by having some kind of policies or “constitution” which defines what actions the mods can take.
          1. One problem with this, is that this policy in turn needs to be decided by someone. If this someone is only the mod oligarchy, then it will not necessarily avoid the issue if the mods already have an authoritarian trend.
          2. If the ones deciding on the policy are the whole community instead, then this again falls into the problem in 2.1.1
          3. Another issue to consider is on whether this policy will be open to changes in the future, or it it will be set in stone. If it’s open to changes, then at any point in the future it can be affected by 2.1.1 or 2.2.2.2
  3. As a community, we have some bottom-up moderation tools made available by the platform we use: Reddit. Namely downvoting comments and posts. This has two significant effects. When a comment is downvoted enough (a total -5 cumulative vote), then it gets “burried”, which means it’s not shown by default unless it is expanded explicitly. A person who’s comments are consistently downvoted, starts having timing restrictions in posting. They cannot post more than once per 10 minutes. From personal experience I can explain that this can be very frustrating when you’re having an argument.
    1. The possible problem is that the voting system can be played. In a healthy anarchistic community, a sexist comment would be downvoted to oblivion and a consistent sexist would find it hard to keep posting or gain any visibility. However, given the way reddit functions, anyone registered in reddit can come to /r/anarchism and upvote any comment. This means that a sexist could theoretically call in a so called “upvote brigade” (say from /r/mensrights) which will proceed to upvote his comments to visibility
      1. The issue with this tactic is that it’s not efficient. One can only call for such upvote brigades when there’s some significance to their comments or some outrage to be caused. Fortunately, even the people in /r/mensrights do not want to be someone personal army and one can only ask for this favour so many times before they are ignored. This means that it’s unlikely that more than a few comments can gain visibility through this method and eventually the anti-sexist sentiments from the community will return them to minus
      2. It is possible to consider that someone will find a persistent “personal army”, or perhaps an invasion” will be attempted (as has been called for in the past by both national “anarchists” and by “anarcho”-capitalists). However they are unlikely to succeed as anarchists are already entrenched and all we need to do is weather a short-term influx of non-anarchists. Once no visible success is achieved, such “invasions” simply lose wind, especially given how little one can gain from taking over a community such as /r/anarchism.
        1. Perhaps one can consider that if /r/anarchism grows to sufficient size (and I consider our 10k subscribers and

Insurgency – what and how? A reply.

Db0

Someone responds to my call against questionable tactics but I fail to see the main point.

It seems someone wrote a reply to my post about anarchists using questionable tactics in stuggle, but reading through it, I fail to see the actual argument or even refutation of the points I made. Instead I see some general declaration of what states do in order to control, and how fascism has not gone away.

What I do not see is any counter to my point that using tactics compatible with fascism, will not bring about anarchism, that fighting fire with fire, in short, does not work. Then is the suggestion for this “insurgency”.

The second effective tactic is insurgency. This is perhaps the only option available to us. While from an idealist perspective, I applaud devZero’s essay as well-reasoned, from the realist perspective I must choose insurgency as more practical. As capitalism continues to crumble, something most assuredly will take its place. For the first time in history, and the globalists are correct on this point, virtually all of mankind is following the same playbook — capitalistic, economic progress. AKA “growing economies” at any cost, human or environmental. A paradigm shift is coming, whether we like it or not.

Yeah, ok, a paradigm shift is coming, but what is this insurgency you’re talking about supposed to work? You can’t just throw the word out and assume that everyone knows what you’re talking about. How does this counter at all my suggestion not to use the tactics of fascists?

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here. Perhaps jamon assumed that I was suggesting some kind of Ghandian pacifist resistance and my call against questionable tactics was a call against all forms violence. This is not true. I am not a pacifist and nor do I believe that it was Ghandi’s or MLK’s movement by itself the cause for change. What I do say is that there’s some ways violence is warranted (eg self-defence) and some ways it isn’t (eg murdering politicians).

This of course means that insurrection is a valid tactic, as long of course as we even know what “insurgency” is. Just saying the word is meaningless. And it’s the tactics that will bring about this insurgency that need to be judged according to the ethical guideline I proposed.

Is Management Consulting useless? A Reply to the Baseline Scenario

Db04 Comments

A former management consultants tries to refute the “management consultancy fraud”. But he completely misses the point.

The Top-Down Approach
Image by Sanctu via Flickr

Someone informed me of the recent semi-apologetical post by James Kwak on Management Consultants where he comments on the same article I wrote about a few days ago. Within, he explains that while downsizing was something Management Consultancy firms do sometimes, it’s by far not the most common reason they are employed. He then proceeds to explain what the most common tasks they are called to consult on are and how it all works together due to the restraints of the situation.

Needless to say, I’m not convinced.

The basic argument Kwak is making is that Management Consultants are usually called to advise on a specific question, rather than the all encompassing “How can we improve business/make more money”. They are tasked to find out stuff like whether it’s worth going into a new market and so on. And because the people who are hired for such management consultancy are usually the sharpest sticks in the bunch, they are qualified in figuring out the answers.

But his makes no sense. No matter how smart one is, they can’t just answer such questions without having lived and experienced the job they’re advising on. We’re led to believe that these bright-but-unskilled people can somehow do this by filling in some excel charts and studying a lot of business books and whatnot. Well, excuse me but this sounds to me as effective as a court magician claiming that his recommendations are accurate because he’s thrown the bones and read the stars very very hard. I challenge the basic premise that one can make accurate business decisions based on some skills learned on MBA courses, not to mention 2-week seminars on “Management Consultancy”.

It doesn’t matter that the people doing this job are bright. It doesn’t matter if they have more time than the management they are consulting (who are surprisingly being paid to do this but “don’t have enough time”). What matters is that there is no handbook on how to make such decisions that can ever apply to every kind of market in the same way, and yet management and their consultants keep weaving this lie that one can possibly make decisions on every kind of business given enough time and spreadsheets.

It’s nonsense. A scam. A fraud on a criminal scale perpetuated by the new nobility and their lackeys who get to make the big bucks by pulling decisions out of their arse. They are the ones who think of the (proprietary) algorithms and write the management books that the rest buy anyway. It’s a close circuit with little to no relation on the real world and sustained by little else than cognitive biases and marketing.

James Kwak attempts to skirt around the unchallenged premises by pointing out that Management Consultants are “really really smart” and are hired because the paid managers are too “busy” to do what they are supposed to. This even fails to accurately refute the article it was criticizing which was pointing out that when such Management Consultancy firms are hired to do the generic “improve business” consultancy, they usually end up suggesting to downsize. This is simply the most succinct representation of the MC fraud which points that they don’t really know what they’re doing, and when they do, their own management is so incompetent in turn, that it suggests the opposite. There’s no reason to expect that when MC firms are hired to do some other kind of consultancy (i.e. analyze new markets), they are any more competent at it.

Yes, Management Consultants can be smart. Yes they can be hard-working. Yes they can be perfectionist. But none of these will help unless they have any idea what they’re doing in the first place. This is why the MC firms which can best obfuscate the fact that they do not know what they are doing are the most successful. The dynamics of the situation – the “evolutionary” competition between firms – ensures that only the ones who are conscious of their ignorance and can best cover it up with fake confidence and pure marketing are the ones who will take the best and most expensive contracts in a world where nobody at the top knows what the hell they’re doing.

Follow up on Japanese Sexism

Db04 Comments

A commenter expands on the subject of Japanese Sexism.

japanese white rabbit…
Image by colodio via Flickr

On my post about Sexism in Japanese culture, one commenter left a reply that I thought was far to interesting to let it delve in obscurity. So I’m posting it here to give you perhaps a deeper understanding on what goes on there.

Having lived in Japan for a while and having married a Japanese woman, I’d say that’s you’re fairly correct in your assumptions. In general, the progressive image of Japan comes under a lot of heat in many areas when viewed from the inside-out.

Japan has never truly had a woman’s revolution. I visit corporate clients on a daily basis and find that the majority of women are still used in a 1960s-ish ‘coffee secretary’ role. I’ve been told directly by more than a few clients that they tend to hire women solely for having them around the office to meet male workers, marry them, get pregnant, and leave the workplace so they can get new, younger women in the office.

The idea behind this is that it helps Japanese male employees meet women (which they’re fairly near utterly incapable of doing on their own sometimes) and don’t have the free time to usually pursue because of long work hours. In this way, it keeps Japan from extinction.

On the other hand, sexual harassment is the norm, and there doesn’t exist much currently to combat such things. I’ve seen female employees treated like complete garbage by men who have never had to confront the word ‘equality.’

So has the oppressing hand of man kept women down and successfully prevented a woman’s revolution?

Not Exactly….

In Japan, the workplace is traditionally the domain of men and the home is the domain of women. While men puff out their chests in public and can show dominance over their spouses there, they are normally completely at a loss to control ANY home issues.

The woman handles all money and the man readily gives her his monthly paychecks. She normally doles out a pittance to the man to buy a bit of lunch, and dictates all monetary issues.

I know many a man that I can deflate upon asking why they can’t come out for a drink.

“My wife only allows me 500 yen (5 dollars) a day for lunch.”

In this way, there’s a bit more under the carpet than can be easily seen.

I’d argue that a woman’s revolution has never occurred because the majority of Japanese woman are quite happy with the status quo and don’t feel the need for work when they can dream of being a house wife that holds out her hand to collect her husband’s money.

I liken it to some people on welfare in America/Australia that don’t bother getting jobs because life’s already basically paid for, but many Japanese woman seem quite comfortable with the arrangement. Perhaps they don’t know better, or perhaps it just IS better (I often wonder what life would be like if I could just collect a spouses money and maintain the house all day)

Of course, there are a minority of woman who want to achieve a life where they can manage companies and advance in their line of work/careers, and these women truly get the shaft and have to endure a barrage of men trying to put them back in their place.

I often get angry at it, but Japan is a place where you accept roles and stick to those roles. It’s not going to change overnight.

It IS changing slowly, extremely slowly. Men today seem to have lost a bit of their old ways and are slowly emerging in home life. Some would argue that women’s control has actually increased due to a weaker man.

I loved your post, totally agree, would love to see change, but am cognizant of the fact that I’m viewing the whole situation from a different cultural standpoint and perhaps could be wrong.

-Craig

EDIT: Just to make it clear since the comment above can be taken to apologize for the rampart patriarchy of Japan (Although I do not think that was Craig’s intention) when it says stuff like:

So has the oppressing hand of man kept women down and successfully prevented a woman’s revolution?

Not Exactly….

I believe it has been absolutely the oppressive hand of man that kept women down. I do not see the role of the woman in such a society as having any power but rather as having internalized their oppression and trying to use the position decided for them by the patriarchy to its full extent. As Sitakali wrote in the comments (and I agree wholeheartedly):

I find excuses like the one presented here to be good examples of why cultural relativism can be dangerous. Just as Sharia Law is not acceptable, regardless of the cultural history of Islamic nations, so is this separation of “duties” along gender lines unacceptable and unfair.

PS: This is the reason why I like blogging my thoughts on things like this, even if they’re not so well educated. So often will you find people that are able to provide a thoughtful and new perspective on something you’re thinking of, correct your preconceptions and generally ecpand your understanding.

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Management Consultants or Court Magicians?

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If Managers are the new nobility, Management Consultants are their Court Magicians.

Japanese-born American poet and critic Sadakic...
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I just read this very interesting opinion piece from The Independent where it is shown how Management Consultancy is the largest legal scal of the 20th century. In the piece, the author is quite surprised how time after time various big firms will fall for the same scam with disastrous results and how come the bad reputation of such Consultancy firms has not yet caught up to them.

This immediately made sense to me, for the truth is that the Management are absolutely incapable of telling what is a good or bad result, since they themselves are more likely than not, as incompetent in management as the consultants they are hiring. In the past, I’ve likened the Management and the paths they use to achieve such positions, to the Nobility of old and this latest article nicely allows me to extend this analogy.

If Management is the new nobility, then the Management Consultants are the Court Magicians.

Much like a court magician, they do not have any knowledge or skill in making decisions for other people, not to mention whole organizations. In the past, those court magicians used cantrips, displays of mysticism, cold and hot reading and simply psychology, to make the Nobles believe that they had powers of foresight and Intuition. Management Consultants instead use complex excel sheets, alchemical algorithms, free market drivel and orthodoxy and raw bluff.

Court Magicians were used as advisors to Kings and Lords in important decisions. Their advise, when not simply reinforcing the opinion of the ruler as a form of sycophancy, were nothing but random. Much like current management, Court Magicians relied on the fact that a King or Lord had no more an idea on how to rule other humans and were gunning for that 50% of random chance success, while and padding it up with the cognitive biases of the nobility. Management Consultancy can’t even get a 50% success rate but they rely on the fact that current Management is so desperate in times of crisis that they would be even willing to believe in astrology or alchemy if it promised a way out.  Of course, those two disciplines have been severely discredited by actual sciences while in the field of business, marketing is king. And Management Consultancy firms can afford a lot of Marketing.

In fact, I think that if Management firms hired actual court magicians, they might actually have better success, since at least they wouldn’t be mired in the orthodoxy of  “Cut 30% of Staff no matter the circumstances”.

The more one looks at this insane system we’re living in, it truly starts to resemble some kind of neo-feudalism more and more. The incompetent are born into their positions of power, and are then advised by the more cunning incompetent on how to rule everyone else.

Now I just need to figure who the court jester is…