Changing Color

If we could easily and safely alter the melanin levels in our skin--which we might one day be able to do by taking genetically engineered retrovirus shots just as people take flu shots today--it may allow us to better adapt by latitude. If you live closer to the equator, darker skin would be preferable--to protect from too much UV light penetrating the epidermis. If you live closer to the poles, lighter skin would be preferable--to allow for enough UV light penetrating the epidermis so you can produce enough vitamin D. You could change your skin color whenever you move or go on vacations to other latitudes, and maybe even based on season and how much time you spend outside.

"Jablonski and Chaplin plotted the skin tone (W) of indigenous peoples who have stayed in the same geographical area for the last 500 years versus the annual UV available for skin exposure (AUV) for over 200 indigenous persons and found that skin tone lightness W is related to the annual UV available for skin exposure AUV according to^[14]

where the skin tone lightness W is measured as the percentage of light reflected from the upper inner arm at which location on humans there should be minimal tanning of human skin due to personal exposure to the sun; a lighter skinned human would reflect more light and would have a higher W number."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color#Environmental_factors

This could also theoretically be used to change one's skin, hair, and eye color based on mood and aesthetic preference--just as people dye their hair or wear cosmetic contact lenses today.

With everyone changing colors whenever they please, think how much more difficult it would be to be a racist!

Psychologists, Physicians, Massage Therapists, and Prostitutes

Why would anyone want to be a psychologist? Perhaps because it's a way of being intimate without really being intimate. You get to really get inside someone, without yourself in any way being exposed. Not unlike a doctor. Or a massage therapist. Or a prostitute.

A prostitute is probably the most interesting, and perhaps the least obvious, corollary. In a sense, it's the most equitable, because unlike doctors or massage therapists who have access to your body while themselves remaining clothed, prostitutes physically give themselves to their clients. But the same intimacy structure is preserved psychologically--like with the psychologist--in that the prostitute's needs, desires, fantasies, etc., are not at issue in the interaction. The prostitute becomes a blank slate and then enters the psyche of the client--reflecting the clients desires.

This is related to the pattern of vicarious living--the production of a false, social self--in that the practitioners of these four professions are able to gain intimacy/homonomy by repressing their genuine desires/thoughts/feelings/reactions/etc. Yet the pattern of vicarious living contains the seed of the pattern of non-commitment in that the one-way nature of these interactions allows the practitioners to remain closed-off to their clients--and thus the autonomy of their bodies and/or psyches remain unviolated as they pick through the bodies and/or psyches of their clients.

Semen, Steroids, and Papua New Guinea

The article "Crying Over Spilled Semen" explores the findings of Gordon G. Gallup, Ph.D., that women who have sex without condoms are less likely to be depressed or commit suicide than women who use condoms or don't have sex. A chemical reason is suggested for this:

"Semen contains hormones including testosterone, estrogen, prolactin, luteinizing hormone and prostaglandins, and some of these are absorbed through the walls of the vagina and are known to elevate mood."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200210/crying-over-spilled-semen

This took me back to anthropology class. I remember hearing about a tribe that asserted quite specifically that women need sex on a regular basis and otherwise will become grouchy--this as opposed to other cultures, such as our own, that traditionally view men as being the more active and women as being the more passive when it comes to sexual desire.

It also reminded me of discussions of such Papua New Guinea tribes as the Etoro and Sambia. Such groups believe that for boys to become proper warrior-men, they need to fellate their elders and ingest their semen on a regular basis. When asked what this does, they describe it as, among other things, causing one's muscles to grow bigger.

If hormones in semen can be absorbed through the vaginal wall and result in altered moods, is it possible that the boys in these cultures, by fellating their elders enough, might be obtaining the equivalent of a low-dose steroid by absorbing the hormones in the semen through the mucous membrane of the mouth? Could this be the "masculine life force" they see themselves obtaining from their elders? If so, this might explain why this practice developed in these cultures to begin with. Social stressors might have lead to a desire to produce men with more warrior-like characteristics, and this lead, through trial and error, to systems that were more effective at producing such characteristics in men. These cultures also tend to segregate men and women--due to a fear that women will be polluting of men. Perhaps men in some way absorb hormones from women just as women are potentially able to absorb testosterone, etc., from men.

That being said, I'm not committed to this chemical explanation for these practices--they may have resulted from purely symbolic associations that have nothing to do with the actual efficacy of the practices to produce the desired results. After all, the idea of eating something to obtain its power is a fairly common symbol. I just think this is an interesting possibility, and thus a hypothesis worth considering.

Justice Recap

Here's a review of different concepts of justice I've explored:

1. Reciprocal: "We distinguish between justice and injustice, and we say we prefer justice to injustice, but perfect justice would be the end of life. For an organism to survive, it has to decide that it considers itself to be more important than anything that might get in the way of its functioning. Were we to take harm proportionate to everything that we harm, we would not live at all. When we say we are interested in justice, we seem to mean an alliance among those forces we want to preserve against things that would threaten them."
--"On Duality"

Some have suggested that when we die, we experience everything that we have caused others to experience. This may be considered perfect justice in the reciprocal sense. Although, if true, most of us will probably experience the equivalent of the Holocaust, given how animals are used for food, experiments, product testing, etc., for our benefit.

2. Structural: "Justice, for example, means little more than 'setting things right.' If what we think of as just lead to the destruction of a society and what we think of as unjust lead to the long term prosperity and expansion of a society, we would call the former injustice and the latter justice."
--"Topsy Turvy"

3. Democratic: "Then again, in a sense everything is perfectly just. The Universe is a democracy in which every degree of power gets a vote (and thus more powerful units and aspects of existence get more votes). Also, all actions have natural consequences. Confusion occurs when you think that consequences are in error simply because they do not match up with your values. It is your belief that your values are objective that is in error, however, not reality. If you want things a certain way, you alone are the justification and means for it. Kant declared that the ultimate goal of morality was to create a just society—in which happiness for each individual was in direct proportion to that individual’s acting morally. But, my dear Kant, in a sense that is already the case, and always is, necessarily (at least probabilistically). And the main reason you think it to be anything else is because you are confused about the nature of morality."
--"On Duality"

4. Ideal: "Justice in the ideal sense always involves taking antagonistic parties and moving them from a zero-sum to a win-win situation. Anything less than this may be an approximation of justice, but it isn't complete justice. It's up to us to bring about ideal conditions, because there's no one else to do it. But the Abrahamic God doesn't seem to serve ideal justice at all. The Jewish God (as portrayed in the "Old Testament" or Jewish Bible) seems only interested in advancing the interests of the Jews against all other peoples. Whereas the Christian and Muslim God is infinitely worse—damning individuals to hell for all eternity!"
--"On the Death of God"

Paranormal Activity (Film)

I thought this was an enjoyable movie, although it didn't at all live up to its hype. It wasn't particularly scary. From the sorts of sounds people in the theater were making, I think some were under the impression that this was footage from an actual haunting instead of a movie--e.g., a Ouija planchette moving on its own is impressive if it actually is, but not if it's a special effect. I think most of the kids in the audience were too young to appreciate The Blair Witch Project.

I was surprised by the rather conservative spiritual message the movie seemed to be asserting--i.e., don't investigate paranormal activity or things will end badly. I wonder if horror movies in general have a tendency to support such conservative messages and thus act as a cultural propaganda to keep people from exploring such matters.

The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Quarantine (based on REC), and now Paranormal Activity all seem to be a part of this relatively new movie genre of horror mocumentary, made possible largely in part by the invention of the digital camcorder. Each of these movies has certain stylistic similarities. They all seem to have a distinct "get to know you" period for the exposition that involves the protagonists being introduced through the process of doing fun activities largely unrelated to the horror situation they are about to be thrust into. This serves to endear these characters to the audience and strengthen the emotional impact once things begin to go awry. Then we have: the mounting tension as things begin to go bad, followed by escalating violence and losses, then some hold out of hope that the characters might escape/survive, a reveal very close to the end that gives the audience greater insight into the nature of the horror that the characters have been encountering, and then a final severing of hope as the last character(s) fall--usually the very last scene of the movie. In a sense, there's no hope in this genre, as the protagonists always end up losing. But this may serve to produce a tragic feeling--strengthening the desires to embrace life and survive in the audience, by means of withholding this outcome onscreen.

Of the above examples, The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity are more similar to one another, and Cloverfield and Quarantine are more similar to one another. The former deal with "supernatural" entities and are advertised to audiences more as if they were recordings of actual events, whereas the latter deal with organic physical monsters and make no pretense of being encounters that actually occured.

Ricky Gervais's The Invention of Lying (Film)

Spoiler Alert: I'm going to discuss specific things from the movie. I avoided doing this post earlier in part because I wanted to give more people the chance to see the movie first. I think you'll enjoy both the movie and this post more if you see the movie first and then read the below. Thanks.

I found this movie a fascinating thought experiment.

Did you notice:

They don't have a word for lying or truth-telling--since the former doesn't exist and thus they never have to distinguish it from the latter or the latter from it.

The only movies we see presented in this world are people reading from historical records. Why? Because presenting a story that didn't actually happen would be a form of lying. Even depicting historical events with actors would be lying--because those people wouldn't really be the people they were presenting themselves as. Presumably they would still have nature documentaries--though documentaries like those by Michael Moore wouldn't exist, as there are no liars to expose. They could still have game shows--though if they employ any sort of quizzing element, they would have to deal with it carefully. Otherwise, there would be nothing to prevent anyone--even the host asking the question--from simply giving the answer away. Then again, the entire idea of quizzing may not occur to / be possible for such a people--as it always involves one person withholding information from another. They could still do physical challenges, though. They could still have talk shows--though would they, in a world where everyone talks openly about everything anyway? And what about "reality tv"? Well, they wouldn't call it "reality tv"--since in the absence of fantasy or illusion they'd have no word or concept for reality as a distinct phenomenon. It would probably be "more real" than what we call reality tv, however, as everyone would truly be speaking their mind in whatever situation they found themselves in and there would be no scripting.

They only have public email accounts--remember when Tina Fey's character tells Ricky Gervais's character that lots of people had read the email Jennifer Garner's character had sent him?--since hiding any conversation you had with someone else would be lying. The people of this world don't just follow a minimalist truthtelling formula--in which not answering is a way to avoid saying a non-truth--but a maximalist truthtelling formula--a la that suggested by the Radical Honesty movement, in which you are supposed to say whatever comes to your mind.

Even nice people, such as Jennifer Garner's character, have a certain shallowness to them. After all, in a world without lies, what incentive does anyone really have to look below the surface of things? The fact that we encounter lies trains us to question whether any given thing is what it appears--but they would have much less of a need to do so in order to function in their world.

There's no religion, until Ricky Gervais's character introduces it. Consider how much of a formulated lie the invention of religion was in the movie, and how similar this formulaic invention was to the religious views most people actually espouse. And did religion make things better, or worse, in the last respect? It certainly made people happier in some senses--but it also lead to people waiting around and not working to make their lives better in the here and now because they had an out.

Organisms vs. Creatures

Creatures are created (constructed).

Organisms are orgasmed (grown).