Gifts that tell good stories

Geoffrey Miller has written an extraordinary book, Spent, that challenges us to recognize that our ubiquitous efforts to decorate ourselves and others with goods and services are primarily to project image and status. (and see here and here) "Many products are signals first and material objects second." The result is that we often engage in a vast orgy of spending mostly to look good in the eyes of others. What does this have to do with Christmas? We humans are also creatures who are always looking for shortcuts. Many of us have deliberately chosen to work long hours as part of "career" choices in order to make more money. Most of us who have who have made extra money as a result of those long hours at the office would much rather burn off some of that money at a store than to spend our severely limited amounts of time creating goods or providing services. We'd like to believe that our gift-giving is a display of our good intentions and of who we are, but as Miller points out, the store-bought gifts so many of us buy serve only to display only a narrow range of qualities regarding who we are:

Buying new, real, branded, premium products at full price from chain-store retailers is the last refuge of the unimaginative consumer, and it should be your last option. It offers low narrative value--no stories to tell about interesting people, places, and events associated with the product' design, provenance, acquisition, or use. It reveals nothing about you except your spending capacity and your gullibility, conformism, and unconsciousness as a consumer. It grows no physical, social or cultural roots into your local environment. It does not promote trust, reciprocity, or social capital. It does not expand your circle of friends and acquaintances. It does not lead you to learn more about the convention, manufacture, operation, or maintenance of the things around you. Retail spending reveals such a narrow range of traits: the capacities to earn, steal, marry, or inherit wealth, and the perceptual memory and media access required to spend the wealth on whatever is advertised most avidly now.
(p. 271 ff). Those who procure gifts with a moment's thought or two, and with the help of credit cards, often fail in their attempts to impress. Retail spending pointedly fails:
[a]s a costly, reliable signal of one's dedication to a particular person (in the case of gifts), or to a particular acquisition (in the case of things bought for self display).
Miller reminds us that creating something yourself speaks much more loudly than a premade thing purchased at retail. The proof is that gifts which require personal time and creativity make much better "stories" to tell to family and friends. I largely agree with Miller, though I think that retail spending can make a compelling story in some circumstances. For instance, what if someone has limited financial means, yet digs deeply in order to purchase a nonfrivolous gift that another person truly needs (e.g., assume that someone of limited means provided a student with books that were desperately needed for a coming semester). During the Christmas season, however, Miller's version of retail spending is a common occurrence. Most of us patronize retail stores in order to send out ready-made gifts. This much is not disputed. What can be disputed in an interesting way, is why . Many people would claim that we give gifts to each other because we "care about" or "love" each other. Miller's writings dig several levels deeper, recognizing that we are human animals who have come equipped with deeply felt needs to display our traits to each other, and that we resort to retails gift giving to serve these deep urges. In other words, Miller resource to biology rather than folk psychology:

Biology offers an answer. Humans evolved in small social groups in which image and status were all important, not only for survival, but for attracting mates, impressing friends, and rearing children.

(p. 1). During this Christmas season, and at all other times of the year, it is fascinating to re-frame the widespread displays of gift-giving as anciently-honed and deeply-rooted biological impulses geared to ensure survival. For more, consider this post, entitled "Shopping for Sex" and this post on The Church of Stop Shopping.

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Improbable Christmas

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, or should I say, snow on anyone's parade. The Christmas season can be a terrific opportunity to hear extraordinary music and to catch up with the people we care about. But there is something I'd like to discuss that perplexes me, especially at this time of the year. Those who read this blog know that I am a skeptic and that I don't believe that a divine man named Jesus saved the world. Nor do I think most people who say they believe these things actually believe them, based upon the fact that most people who say they believe in the divinity of Jesus spend very little time learning about the origin of the Bible. Almost none of them take the time to learn Hebrew or Greek, the language used by the earliest manuscripts of writings that they claim to be the direct word of God. Almost none of them pride themselves on being highly informed about the content of what they claim to be the most important book in the world. In short, the behavior of most Believers suggests that they don't deeply believe the things they say they believe about the alleged existence and importance of the man they call Jesus. I don't want to sound too harsh, because this is the Christmas season, and I am well aware that numerous people find inspiration in their religious beliefs and they are motivated by those beliefs to do impressive acts of kindness. Nonetheless, I am on the outside looking in with regard to Christian religious beliefs. From my viewpoint, it is difficult to understand how anyone could claim to believe that a man who was actually God was born at all. One reason I have such trouble is that I don't see the Christmas story as a single belief. Rather, I see "it" as a nested hierarchy of highly improbable events. In order to believe the Christmas story, one must actually believe a long series of events that depend upon each other in order for the entire story to be true. Let's start at the beginning. Did the universe always exist (perhaps as a pulsing series of big bangs or as a huge mostly invisible network of multi-dimensional strings that occasionally bud in the form of individual universi)? Or was there a first clause of the universe, a prime mover? I find the first option to be much more likely, but I'll admit that it's possible that there could have been a first cause, some sort of entity that created the universe such that before the creation, there was no universe at all. What are the odds that there was some sort of entity that created the universe? I would think it highly unlikely, about as unlikely as the Norse claim that four dwarves held up Ymir's skull to create the heavens, or any of the creation myths of any of the other religions of the world. Nonetheless, let's assume that it's 60% likely that the universe had a first cause. We're still a long way from locking down the entire Christmas story. The next step is considering the likelihood that the creator of the universe is sentient (conscious), as opposed to the insentient "God" of Einstein. [more . . . ]

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Rape Amendment Passes

Al Franken's amendment to the new DoD appropriations bill has passed. Obama has signed it into law. This is the now infamous anti-rape amendment, which opens up and begins to hold accountable contractor abuse in cases involving sexual assault. The vote was 68-30, which is not exactly close. The thirty votes against? Republicans: Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS) Most of these people have not explained themselves, but have carped loudly afterward at their "characterization" as somehow pro-rape. An accusation Franken did not make. (Part of the heat around this has been generated by Franken's acrimonious row with Senator's Corker and Alexander, who co-wrote an op-ed piece condemning the amendment.) Senator Cornyn has been quoted in the after math thus:

Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing.

Any embarrassment seems, however, to have been self-acquired in this case. Senator Sessions complaint about the amendment curiously misses the point of it while sounding a standard Republican note:

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U.S. House approves funding to maintain the empire

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order. ---Chalmers Johnson
It is with the context provided by that quotation from historian Chalmers Johnson that one must understand today's news that the House of Representatives has approved funding today for defense maintaining the empire. The level of spending has been approved at $636.3 billion dollars-- nearly two-thirds of a trillion dollars(see related post on how much a trillion really is) to maintain our network of more than 800 military facilities in more than 140 countries around the world. That spending includes $128.3 billion for fighting our current wars, although Afghanistan is expected to require an additional $30 billion to fund the most recent troop increase.

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Border Incident

You may have heard about this by now. Biologist and science fiction writer Peter Watts was stopped on his way back into Canada by border guards. He'd been helping a friend in the United States move and he was returning. He was flagged to the side and the guards fell on his vehicle. He stepped out to ask what was going on, was told to get back in his vehicle, and when he asked again for the reason for the search, he was pepper sprayed, beaten, thrown in a lock-up overnight, and the next day sent into a winter storm on foot in shirtsleeves, all his personal property confiscated pending arraignment on charges of assaulting a federal officer. In his own words:

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

Here is a post on his behalf. A legal defense fund is being built by the writing community as you read this. The first thing, I admit, that occurred to me when I heard about it was a kind of reflexive "well, he must've said something," the kind of self apology for representatives of my government that springs automatically to mind. Because none of us want to believe that thugs and bullies work for us. I dismissed that idea. Watts is the least likely individual to provoke such a response. [more . . . ]

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