Parties, clubs, games and ramblings
Diary: Week of 17/08: Dungeon, House party and Games
In some desperate attempt to make use of my free time between jobs I headed down Dungeon to join people on Wednesday. That would have probably been okay if the music stayed as it was at the very start of the night but it quickly descended into some rather awful music, meanwhile the club was largely empty.
I'm sure I remember the club being full of people I recognised and the music being better when I was at college. Given that Wednesday nights used to be the top floor only I guess that's a mixture of being more easily amused, nostalgia and perhaps just knowing more people though. :oP
On Friday Lacuna_Raze arrived but sadly had to disappear in the morning to head off to London. Fortunately, I wasn't left with nothing to do because, once she was on the train to London, I got on a train to St. Deny's and went to Halluciphy and Mudgetheotter's house party :o)
I quickly decided that it was best that I took control of the music situation and thus put the television on to the Magic/'Guys we used to fancy in the 80s' channel and subsequently hid the remote *nods*. Unfortunately, the remote was later found but the channel managed to find its way back to Magic anyway and people ended up watching '80s girls' night in' :oD
Did eventually leave before everyone had fallen asleep/gone home just because I'd gotten quite tired myself, although this time I'd only just started by third bottle of wine rather than the half dozen I tend to drink at house parties :oP Got myself a taxi back home and slept lots :o)
On Sunday I visited LittleCyberAlex, along with _Phoenixrising, to play games. Reacquainted ourselves with ;Gother Than Thou; (which I seem to have forgotten to bring back with me) although it took a few tries to remember how to play it correctly :oP Played another card game based around bands and gigs, which was good, before playing Choas Maureders. Ended up going to sleep on Thepussykat and LittleCyberAlex's couch for the night :o)
Diary: Week of 24/07: Kays, Geeking and Clubbing
Mother was at work so I had no lift back from LittleCyberAlex's, so I made up my mind to walk home, figured it would do me some good. Unfortunately, mother seemed to have changed her mind about picking me up and arrived at LittleCyberAlex's house just as I'd arrived in Portswood. After talking on the phone, I was under the impression that she was off to work now that had failed, and made it as far as Bevois Valley before she pulled up next to me :oP Dropped me off at Woolston to finish my way back to Weston. Walk probably a little intermittent to have full health benefits :oP
Lacuna_Raze had some time off work from Tuesday onwards so she came to visit me. We both visited Metalshez and peeps the day after on Wednesday, although I was sent off on the v.important mission of getting us chips, and then we all went down to Dungeon, which was quiet (like the week before) but was okay :o)
On Friday, Lacuna_Raze headed up to Birmingham so I went to visit my brother and friends and spent the evening playing Starcraft and planning to play Diablo II through together. No one wanted to play Risk (bastards!) but I did convince people to play Settlers of Catan in the morning :oD (I didn't win though, sucks!).
Dungeon again in the evening to celebrate damnu2hell's birthday, which was more active, and Lacuna_Raze came to join us despite being quite tired :o) Much better due to more peoples and more better music *nods* :o)
Thoughts: On enjoying other people's suffering
On Facebook I was doing one of the top-five choices for the category of 'The World Would be a Better Place Without....'
When doing it I thought of a particular kind of person that I've met and who isn't at all like me.
I'm actually a lot more averse to other people's suffering than is probably evident most of the time. In that aversion I include physical pain, but mostly I'm thinking of emotional upset. I've always found it hard to understand people who lack that aversion because if I see someone upset then it upsets me.
I like to think the obvious examples are shared by most people; everything from Seeing a toddler cry after dropping his/her ice cream on the floor up to the victims of harsh and brutal abuse. It's the sort of situation that would make me sad and upset to think about and I like it when other people feel the same.
But, for me, it extends beyond that. One of the reasons why I found classic portrayals of hell so hard to accept was the idea of anyone being sentenced to an eternity of suffering no matter how bad a person they were. As much as I might hate someone, I could not bear the idea of them being subjected to eternal torture. It wouldn't matter whether it was a historical figure like Hitler or someone who had hurt me severely in the past. Being aware of their suffering would still be an unpleasant experience that I'd be averse to.
But not everyone is like me. From a young age I was aware of people enjoying the suffering of others.
I understand that there can be a very bitter unsavoury pleasure to someone who deserves suffering receiving it. I can admit to having felt and understood that but what I would say is that the pleasure is usually in the resolution of wrongs and the ending of an unpleasant situation. It's definitely not a situation I'd want to seek out.
I can also understand the allure of power and control. It's not surprising that people like to feel powerful. Some people take that to extremes and like to be in charge in most situations. It's definitely something that I think can be taken to unhealthy and unpleasant extremes but I think it's perfectly healthy in moderation.
I assume this is a major component in such criminals that like to attack people violently for the thrill and fun of it, perhaps combined with the adrenaline rush that might come with it. It's not something I could ever enjoy myself because my aversion renders the whole thing repulsive to me. In extreme cases I can ruin my mood just by the thought of other people doing these things, never mind taking part.
It was definitely repulsive enough that I wanted it on my list; people who enjoy inflicting that kind of suffering.
The word that I wanted to use was 'sadism'. Of course, I couldn't just type 'sadism' due to the existence of consensual sadism in people's sex lives. Damn. How to proceed without being offensive and inadvertantly insulting people's sex lives...
I ended up putting 'Sadism [non-consensual]', but I can't help feeling I copped out. The distinction certainly is a huge improvement but didn't really hit the nail on the head. Whilst I believe that consensual sex acts should always be legal, I don't believe they are always moral as I believe it's till possible to take advantage of someone and abuse them even with their consent. Even if someone gives consent it might still be the 'right thing to do' to turn them down if their motivation is not because they will enjoy it, but because they're willing to do anything to please you or some other inappropriate reason like wanting to impress you or be accepted by people who think of it as 'cool'.
I attempted a better distinction in my comments on the entry, suggesting that I was referring to enjoying 'suffering' rather than 'physical pain', the intention to be to distinguish between emotional pain and physical pain.
Even without being into BDSM myself I find myself able to understand how causing physical pain might not be bad. I can understand that pain during pleasant experiences might be overshadowed. I can understand that physical pain may cause chemical responses that are actually pleasurable. I can even understand that actual physical pain experiences as pain may be emotionally rewarding for people depending on how they are psychologically wired.
The basic issue being that a person may enjoy and find something emotionally pleasant despite experience physical pain. This means I can rationalise a sexual 'sadist' as not enjoying causing pain but enjoying causing enjoyment.
That's not something I could ever do because my emotional reaction to causing pain is too immediate and I'd feel bad but I wouldn't criticise someone for having a more rational approach to the matter. The end result is that I can justify my acceptance of sexual 'sadists' because I can tell myself it's not the actual -suffering- that they enjoy. It gets harder to comprehend with people who enjoy definitively negative emotions like humiliation, but presuming that it triggers a positive experience (sexual enjoyment) then a similar rationale can be applied.
I suppose that even if they're enjoying the illusion of suffering then no harm is done as long as they keep fantasy and reality separate, although I still think that reveals an unsavoury part of the human psyche (one that, overall, we'd be better off without). It is definitely good for people who have such desires to find consensual means of expressing them but I can't say I'm fond of the desire being there. That presumably would be equivalent to people who like to play violent video games because they enjoy the simulated violence (as opposed to other reasons) but who have enough grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality to not act it out in real life.
Of course, if we're just talking about sadism that is the enjoyment of human suffering in a very direct and unrestricted sense (as seems to appear in the segments of writing by Marquis De Sade I've read) then that definitely seems something I'd be glad to see humanity have rid of.
I think I've discussed three approaches to 'sadism':
(a) People who perform 'sadistic' actions because they enjoy the pleasure it causes to the recipient.
(b) People who perform 'sadistic' actions because they enjoy the illusion of pain and control, but who feel morally constrained to only do this with recipients who enjoy it
(c) People who perform 'sadistic' actions and don't care whether the recipient enjoys it or not
I have no moral objection to (a) and (b) whilst I find (c) deplorable.
(b) and (c), however, both reveal desires that I find unpleasant and think that the world would be better off without, the difference being that the people involved in (b) have found a healthy and moral way to express those drives.
Thoughts: Why I'm not fussed by complaints of 'reverse discrimination'
First of all, I'd like to note that my comments refer to people in the United Kingdom or nations with similar relevant cultural attitudes.
One of the first problems with these complaints is that they're not what they pretend to be. They pretend to suggest that (for example) racism against any group should be taken equally seriously. However, the people making the claim often go on to suggest that things have 'gone the other way' and that white people are the most discriminated against ethnic group in the UK. This actually leads them to be very dismissive towards discussions of racism when it's against anyone who isn't white.
So the complaints are not genuine. It's just white privilege causing people to deny that minority ethnic groups suffer racism at all.
But let's suggest that the complaint has been raised in a less ignorant way. It's acknowledged that it's non-white people, LGBT people, disabled people, etc, that suffer the vast majority of the problems. Having said that, they still think it's unfair not to treat them equally.
In a specific sense, I can agree with that.
For instance, I don't subscribe to the 'ism = power + prejudice' definition. I also think that isolated cases of prejudice against privileged groups can be very serious and severe. I definitely think they should be treated the same way legally, and the same hate crime legislation should be applied.
The issue isn't that the isolated issues aren't as serious as one another. The issue is that when we stop looking at isolated issues and look at the big picture what we see are social problems that are not comparable.
The biggest issue is extent.
I've met a few homosexual people that have expressed bigoted and offensive things about heterosexuals. I did and do find that stupid and annoying. That being said, I care only on principle and not for practical reasons. Somebody insulting me for being heterosexual is stupid but it doesn't affect my life. It's not going to affect my job prospects or make me feel unsafe for kissing my partner in public.
Even in the situation that someone physically assaults me for being white, heterosexual or able-bodied, it's going to be a very isolated case. Yeah, it sucks to go through... but it's not something I'm likely to go through more than once and for most people it will never happen.
The thing about prejudice against minority groups is that it's not about isolated incidents. It's a wide-spread social problem. That means it's going to be more of a serious talking point than an isolated incident even if the isolated incident is more severe.
For example, I'd wager that more time and money is spent by the police force on drunken brawls than serial murderers. Serial murder may be a more serious crime than a drunken brawl, but the latter is a significant social issue that happens all the time whilst serial murder isn't.
In the same way, discussion groups tackling prejudice are going to be more inclined to discuss large social problems rather than isolated incidents. My experience is that the people discussing the big issues do also disapprove of the isolated incidents as well, it's just they're more interested in addressing the incidents that reflect wider social problems. Trying to insist that they spend equal time talking about less significant social issues just to create a sense of balance and fairness is counter-productive.
The other issue is that some of those isolated incidents will be reactionary. If there is a woman who is genuinely a man-hater, it's likely that's a reaction to culturally established patriarchy. If a black person does genuinely hate and mistrust white people, that's likely a reaction to reoccurring experiences with racism. Tackling sexism against women and racism against ethnic minorities does help address these cases.
None of this is to say that anyone should stop disapproving of prejudice against privileged groups, or not complain and call it out when it happens, but don't expect everyone to feel as sensitively about it as prejudice against marginalised groups and certainly don't pretend it's a bigger problem.
Link: Dear Peta: Everyone is tired of your bullshit - linky
Link: Why do people still take the Daily Mail seriously? - linky
Link: Gatefail 2009 (or, A Primer on Stories that Scream) - linky
Link: Many girls abused by boyfriends - linky
Link: WWII: Intense Propaganda Posters - linky
Link: Daily Mail Watch - linky
In some desperate attempt to make use of my free time between jobs I headed down Dungeon to join people on Wednesday. That would have probably been okay if the music stayed as it was at the very start of the night but it quickly descended into some rather awful music, meanwhile the club was largely empty.
I'm sure I remember the club being full of people I recognised and the music being better when I was at college. Given that Wednesday nights used to be the top floor only I guess that's a mixture of being more easily amused, nostalgia and perhaps just knowing more people though. :oP
On Friday Lacuna_Raze arrived but sadly had to disappear in the morning to head off to London. Fortunately, I wasn't left with nothing to do because, once she was on the train to London, I got on a train to St. Deny's and went to Halluciphy and Mudgetheotter's house party :o)
I quickly decided that it was best that I took control of the music situation and thus put the television on to the Magic/'Guys we used to fancy in the 80s' channel and subsequently hid the remote *nods*. Unfortunately, the remote was later found but the channel managed to find its way back to Magic anyway and people ended up watching '80s girls' night in' :oD
Did eventually leave before everyone had fallen asleep/gone home just because I'd gotten quite tired myself, although this time I'd only just started by third bottle of wine rather than the half dozen I tend to drink at house parties :oP Got myself a taxi back home and slept lots :o)
On Sunday I visited LittleCyberAlex, along with _Phoenixrising, to play games. Reacquainted ourselves with ;Gother Than Thou; (which I seem to have forgotten to bring back with me) although it took a few tries to remember how to play it correctly :oP Played another card game based around bands and gigs, which was good, before playing Choas Maureders. Ended up going to sleep on Thepussykat and LittleCyberAlex's couch for the night :o)
Diary: Week of 24/07: Kays, Geeking and Clubbing
Mother was at work so I had no lift back from LittleCyberAlex's, so I made up my mind to walk home, figured it would do me some good. Unfortunately, mother seemed to have changed her mind about picking me up and arrived at LittleCyberAlex's house just as I'd arrived in Portswood. After talking on the phone, I was under the impression that she was off to work now that had failed, and made it as far as Bevois Valley before she pulled up next to me :oP Dropped me off at Woolston to finish my way back to Weston. Walk probably a little intermittent to have full health benefits :oP
Lacuna_Raze had some time off work from Tuesday onwards so she came to visit me. We both visited Metalshez and peeps the day after on Wednesday, although I was sent off on the v.important mission of getting us chips, and then we all went down to Dungeon, which was quiet (like the week before) but was okay :o)
On Friday, Lacuna_Raze headed up to Birmingham so I went to visit my brother and friends and spent the evening playing Starcraft and planning to play Diablo II through together. No one wanted to play Risk (bastards!) but I did convince people to play Settlers of Catan in the morning :oD (I didn't win though, sucks!).
Dungeon again in the evening to celebrate damnu2hell's birthday, which was more active, and Lacuna_Raze came to join us despite being quite tired :o) Much better due to more peoples and more better music *nods* :o)
Thoughts: On enjoying other people's suffering
On Facebook I was doing one of the top-five choices for the category of 'The World Would be a Better Place Without....'
When doing it I thought of a particular kind of person that I've met and who isn't at all like me.
I'm actually a lot more averse to other people's suffering than is probably evident most of the time. In that aversion I include physical pain, but mostly I'm thinking of emotional upset. I've always found it hard to understand people who lack that aversion because if I see someone upset then it upsets me.
I like to think the obvious examples are shared by most people; everything from Seeing a toddler cry after dropping his/her ice cream on the floor up to the victims of harsh and brutal abuse. It's the sort of situation that would make me sad and upset to think about and I like it when other people feel the same.
But, for me, it extends beyond that. One of the reasons why I found classic portrayals of hell so hard to accept was the idea of anyone being sentenced to an eternity of suffering no matter how bad a person they were. As much as I might hate someone, I could not bear the idea of them being subjected to eternal torture. It wouldn't matter whether it was a historical figure like Hitler or someone who had hurt me severely in the past. Being aware of their suffering would still be an unpleasant experience that I'd be averse to.
But not everyone is like me. From a young age I was aware of people enjoying the suffering of others.
I understand that there can be a very bitter unsavoury pleasure to someone who deserves suffering receiving it. I can admit to having felt and understood that but what I would say is that the pleasure is usually in the resolution of wrongs and the ending of an unpleasant situation. It's definitely not a situation I'd want to seek out.
I can also understand the allure of power and control. It's not surprising that people like to feel powerful. Some people take that to extremes and like to be in charge in most situations. It's definitely something that I think can be taken to unhealthy and unpleasant extremes but I think it's perfectly healthy in moderation.
I assume this is a major component in such criminals that like to attack people violently for the thrill and fun of it, perhaps combined with the adrenaline rush that might come with it. It's not something I could ever enjoy myself because my aversion renders the whole thing repulsive to me. In extreme cases I can ruin my mood just by the thought of other people doing these things, never mind taking part.
It was definitely repulsive enough that I wanted it on my list; people who enjoy inflicting that kind of suffering.
The word that I wanted to use was 'sadism'. Of course, I couldn't just type 'sadism' due to the existence of consensual sadism in people's sex lives. Damn. How to proceed without being offensive and inadvertantly insulting people's sex lives...
I ended up putting 'Sadism [non-consensual]', but I can't help feeling I copped out. The distinction certainly is a huge improvement but didn't really hit the nail on the head. Whilst I believe that consensual sex acts should always be legal, I don't believe they are always moral as I believe it's till possible to take advantage of someone and abuse them even with their consent. Even if someone gives consent it might still be the 'right thing to do' to turn them down if their motivation is not because they will enjoy it, but because they're willing to do anything to please you or some other inappropriate reason like wanting to impress you or be accepted by people who think of it as 'cool'.
I attempted a better distinction in my comments on the entry, suggesting that I was referring to enjoying 'suffering' rather than 'physical pain', the intention to be to distinguish between emotional pain and physical pain.
Even without being into BDSM myself I find myself able to understand how causing physical pain might not be bad. I can understand that pain during pleasant experiences might be overshadowed. I can understand that physical pain may cause chemical responses that are actually pleasurable. I can even understand that actual physical pain experiences as pain may be emotionally rewarding for people depending on how they are psychologically wired.
The basic issue being that a person may enjoy and find something emotionally pleasant despite experience physical pain. This means I can rationalise a sexual 'sadist' as not enjoying causing pain but enjoying causing enjoyment.
That's not something I could ever do because my emotional reaction to causing pain is too immediate and I'd feel bad but I wouldn't criticise someone for having a more rational approach to the matter. The end result is that I can justify my acceptance of sexual 'sadists' because I can tell myself it's not the actual -suffering- that they enjoy. It gets harder to comprehend with people who enjoy definitively negative emotions like humiliation, but presuming that it triggers a positive experience (sexual enjoyment) then a similar rationale can be applied.
I suppose that even if they're enjoying the illusion of suffering then no harm is done as long as they keep fantasy and reality separate, although I still think that reveals an unsavoury part of the human psyche (one that, overall, we'd be better off without). It is definitely good for people who have such desires to find consensual means of expressing them but I can't say I'm fond of the desire being there. That presumably would be equivalent to people who like to play violent video games because they enjoy the simulated violence (as opposed to other reasons) but who have enough grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality to not act it out in real life.
Of course, if we're just talking about sadism that is the enjoyment of human suffering in a very direct and unrestricted sense (as seems to appear in the segments of writing by Marquis De Sade I've read) then that definitely seems something I'd be glad to see humanity have rid of.
I think I've discussed three approaches to 'sadism':
(a) People who perform 'sadistic' actions because they enjoy the pleasure it causes to the recipient.
(b) People who perform 'sadistic' actions because they enjoy the illusion of pain and control, but who feel morally constrained to only do this with recipients who enjoy it
(c) People who perform 'sadistic' actions and don't care whether the recipient enjoys it or not
I have no moral objection to (a) and (b) whilst I find (c) deplorable.
(b) and (c), however, both reveal desires that I find unpleasant and think that the world would be better off without, the difference being that the people involved in (b) have found a healthy and moral way to express those drives.
Thoughts: Why I'm not fussed by complaints of 'reverse discrimination'
First of all, I'd like to note that my comments refer to people in the United Kingdom or nations with similar relevant cultural attitudes.
One of the first problems with these complaints is that they're not what they pretend to be. They pretend to suggest that (for example) racism against any group should be taken equally seriously. However, the people making the claim often go on to suggest that things have 'gone the other way' and that white people are the most discriminated against ethnic group in the UK. This actually leads them to be very dismissive towards discussions of racism when it's against anyone who isn't white.
So the complaints are not genuine. It's just white privilege causing people to deny that minority ethnic groups suffer racism at all.
But let's suggest that the complaint has been raised in a less ignorant way. It's acknowledged that it's non-white people, LGBT people, disabled people, etc, that suffer the vast majority of the problems. Having said that, they still think it's unfair not to treat them equally.
In a specific sense, I can agree with that.
For instance, I don't subscribe to the 'ism = power + prejudice' definition. I also think that isolated cases of prejudice against privileged groups can be very serious and severe. I definitely think they should be treated the same way legally, and the same hate crime legislation should be applied.
The issue isn't that the isolated issues aren't as serious as one another. The issue is that when we stop looking at isolated issues and look at the big picture what we see are social problems that are not comparable.
The biggest issue is extent.
I've met a few homosexual people that have expressed bigoted and offensive things about heterosexuals. I did and do find that stupid and annoying. That being said, I care only on principle and not for practical reasons. Somebody insulting me for being heterosexual is stupid but it doesn't affect my life. It's not going to affect my job prospects or make me feel unsafe for kissing my partner in public.
Even in the situation that someone physically assaults me for being white, heterosexual or able-bodied, it's going to be a very isolated case. Yeah, it sucks to go through... but it's not something I'm likely to go through more than once and for most people it will never happen.
The thing about prejudice against minority groups is that it's not about isolated incidents. It's a wide-spread social problem. That means it's going to be more of a serious talking point than an isolated incident even if the isolated incident is more severe.
For example, I'd wager that more time and money is spent by the police force on drunken brawls than serial murderers. Serial murder may be a more serious crime than a drunken brawl, but the latter is a significant social issue that happens all the time whilst serial murder isn't.
In the same way, discussion groups tackling prejudice are going to be more inclined to discuss large social problems rather than isolated incidents. My experience is that the people discussing the big issues do also disapprove of the isolated incidents as well, it's just they're more interested in addressing the incidents that reflect wider social problems. Trying to insist that they spend equal time talking about less significant social issues just to create a sense of balance and fairness is counter-productive.
The other issue is that some of those isolated incidents will be reactionary. If there is a woman who is genuinely a man-hater, it's likely that's a reaction to culturally established patriarchy. If a black person does genuinely hate and mistrust white people, that's likely a reaction to reoccurring experiences with racism. Tackling sexism against women and racism against ethnic minorities does help address these cases.
None of this is to say that anyone should stop disapproving of prejudice against privileged groups, or not complain and call it out when it happens, but don't expect everyone to feel as sensitively about it as prejudice against marginalised groups and certainly don't pretend it's a bigger problem.
Link: Dear Peta: Everyone is tired of your bullshit - linky
Link: Why do people still take the Daily Mail seriously? - linky
Link: Gatefail 2009 (or, A Primer on Stories that Scream) - linky
Link: Many girls abused by boyfriends - linky
Link: WWII: Intense Propaganda Posters - linky
Link: Daily Mail Watch - linky