Category: blog

Sophie’s World

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 3 minutes]

(This post is one in a series about the best books ever written. The first post in the series is here.)

This is the book that I always answer with when someone asks me what I think is, without question, the best book in the history of literature. I have a few reasons for that but perhaps the most significant of them is that it is, of all literature, the book that I most would love to have written. If I had only ever written one book in my life and it was this, I would be far beyond satisfied. Sadly, it was already written before I published my first book and it’s one of those things that, once it’s done well, and in this case exceptionally well, it really doesn’t need to be done again. It’s inspired a lot of my writing both stylistally and thematically and I suspect it has had that impact on a whole generation of young authors.

Sophie is a fourteen-year-old girl who lives in suburban Norway. But she’s every fourteen-year-old girl in every place. Not to mention she’s also the embodiment of knowledge growing up. So it’s a coming-of-age story with the protagonist being Sofia, the goddess of wisdom. As the book opens, she is coming home from school, bored by its useless and meaningless rote learning and irrelevance to life, to find a letter from a philosopher who changes her whole understanding of the world. Through the book she reads and hears the history of western thought (and some eastern thought, although not enough for me but we have to remember it was written at a time when western knowledge of eastern thoughts was far less developed and there was no Wikipedia to fall back on) and experiences the questions of reality and existence on a deep and metaphysical level. Without getting overwhelmed by them and confusing everyone.

It’s a history book and a novel. Actually, it’s a novel with a novel inside it and that makes the whole thing far more interesting. As for the style, the language is relatively simple. It’s not particularly written for young adults but it’s perfectly accessible to even young teens. But the poetic descriptions and the use of striking images and harsh contrasts for people, for concepts and for the floating and fluctuating experience of life, reality and time, not to mention an exploration of the nature of gods and fate, all come together to be the literary equivalent of the perfect cup of hot chocolate on a winter night in front of a fire (which I believe might have been my reality when I first read this, having been given a copy from its first English-language version the Christmas it was released).

The entire book is an exploration of ethics and morality. Is controling someone ever justified? What about if they’re just in your imagination? And once someone else has imagined them, too, are they still just your creation or do they take on a life of their own? What is life? What is the relationship between fate and expectation and self-fulfilling prophecies? Is western knowledge correct and, given that it’s obviously not, to what degree are we required to explore the world outside our own history? Do we really exist? How can we know one way or the other or does it even matter? These are just the beginning, of course, but it is a whirlwind ride through existential introspection without getting mired in self-wallowing and self-denial (which can be beautiful, just ask Camus, but is not quite so pleasant as approaching the topic with the energy of young life exploring the world).

As for practical world knowledge, the book functions as a textbook on the history of western thought and a critique, at times a very harsh one, of being focused on generalized thought to the point of forgetting the world around us or having too narrow a vision — not understanding the other side of questions like immigration, racial prejudice, religious freedom or even things as apparently simple as what’s beautiful or what’s for dinner. In the first ten pages, you will likely experience more new knowledge than in most of the courses you’ve taken in your life.

There you have it. My favorite book, one I read probably once or twice every year since I first encountered it. But beyond being my favorite, it’s a tour-de-force of literary exploration. It’s an existentialist romp through history, a philosophical debate between thoughts inside a mind that doesn’t know whether it exists and a story of a girl waking up to adulthood only to discover that childhood might have just been an illusion to begin with. If you’re going to read one book, just one, for the rest of your life, this is the book. The other works that I discuss here are often things that are generally suggested to think about. This one, though? It will change the way you think about the world and about what literature can do.

[Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder on Amazon]

Snow Country

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 4 minutes]

(This post is one in a series about the best books ever written. The first post in the series is here.)

There are many books by Yasunari Kawabata floating around in discussions of “best books” over the last few decades but I would suggest that this, probably his best-known work, is the most stellar example of contemporary self-exploratory fiction out there. I will actually begin with the plot for this one because, much like the type of books I read for enjoyment, there isn’t much of one and that’s quite significant. The story is about a man from the city who escapes his life from time to time by heading into the mountains of the north and enjoying the services of entertaining women (no, in this case that doesn’t necessarily mean prostitutes). He gradually reveals a character that simply wants to be removed from experience of the everyday world. He loves dance but becomes an expert in traditional forms and when people start to interact with him about it, he shifts his focus to western dance so he can be in touch with it without ever having to be present. His life is a reflection of that same target. He escapes his real life in the city by visiting a world locked in the past in the mountains but when he starts to experience more depth of feeling for a woman and gets closer and closer to her there, he tries various tactics to remove himself from his own life, most of which obviously fail. There’s drinking and singing and even a fire but the point is that the plot is somewhat insignificant compared to the internal investigation. There’s also a beautiful scene on a train that I’m not going to describe here because only the poetic language of self-reflection and looking through other people’s transparent eyes does it justice.

Now we get to my three criteria for books on this list, the three lessons. I have already aluded to the first, the language. This book is not quite prose and definitely not poetry but the poetic language floats in and out as we are taken through the protagonist’s thoughts (his name is Shimamura but that’s rather irrelevant to anything). The opening scene is mesmerizing and that kind of self-reflective quality is present throughout this book (and, you may find, in most of Kawabata’s others). I would suggest that this is the first work of fiction that takes this middle ground between self-examination and self-detachment and turns that into the whole definition of the character. But it goes beyond that and makes detachment and poetic reflection the whole style of the narration and I think that’s absolutely beautiful both as an idea and in its application here. The second lesson is actually in two pieces. There’s an ethical lesson about using people and a moral lesson about escape (and likely one about division and separation, too). The first, the ethical lesson, comes from a simple question. Is he using the services of a woman who has devoted her life to performance and pleasure or is she using him as a conduit out of that life, into one perhaps of marriage and family or even just to get to the city and fulfill other dreams? The question has various ambiuous answers that get explored through the work and the fact that there’s no simple one — especially not one that can be discovered by either of them or the bystanders in the town — is a definite nod to the complexity of the ethical dilemma they both face and gradually realize is there.

The moral issue of escape is probably the dominant theme. He is leaving his “city family” and feels like it’s his right but there’s no perspective from outside his mind on how the city life he’s leaving behind reflects on whether they need him, want him, rely on him or anything else. It’s left to the reader to wonder and decide what his frequent escapes from a life that he’s obviously chosen to build for himself mean for everyone around him. Then he looks to escape from himself, from the town in the mountain, from his responsibilities and then to escape from the pleasure and connection that he feels to everything he experiences. It’s not simply a book about escapism. It’s an investigation of the nature of escaping from escapism and whether that means returning to real life (hint, it’s not but he feels like trying it anyway).

There’s a moral dimension that explores the nature of separation, too. Does distance make the heart grow fonder or is that just obsession? Are we separate from our actions or their consequences? Can we truly ever escape ourselves and is there anything else worth running from? These are all explored in some depth but the real issue of separation is one of presence of mind compared to presence of body. He’s always present in mind, obsessively so, compulsively repeating the same things over, over and over again. His patterns are unchanging and he tries to escape them and falls into the same patterns with different people, returning to the problems he was running away from in the first place but pretending not to understand it’s a Sisyphian dilemma. Is he separate from himself or his past? Is she? Is the town? Does the past even exist if we forget it and does that matter, since we can’t ever forget the past, especially when it is staring us in the face with every ritualized repetitive action we undertake and pretend is a choice?

The third criteria for me is a lesson about the world. Where this book shines is in making the assumption that we already know what’s going on even if we are far outside the culture. We are immersed in the very ritualized and specific actions of a small town in the north where traditions have been sculpted over centuries and there is a history to everything. We’re not explicitly educated about it but we are given a demonstration of how daily life (and visiting life) works in such a society, not judgmentally or from an orientalist perspective but simply and matter-of-factly. We’re given a gimpse into the art of the geisha outside the pleasure quarters of major cities, the nature of complex relationships in a place where secrecy isn’t even pretended to exist and how tenuous survival is in a place where the world has mostly passed by but comes to visit sometimes.

So it’s a simple story with beautiful poetic language but the depth of character exploration and the nature of questions about escape and separation and relationships make this a revolutionary combination of styles and an unmatched work of self-reflective fiction.

[Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata on Amazon]

Divergent

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 3 minutes]

(This post is one in a series about the best books ever written. The first post in the series is here.)

Divergent, the first of the series by the same name from Veronica Roth, is a clear demonstration not only of what youth-focused literature can be but what it should be. Really, most of the other writers in this genre should simply be ashamed of what they’ve been producing all this time. This is a continuation of my assertion that to be a good book it has to teach three different lessons — one about language and how it can be used to shape and create and be creative, one about morality, ethics, spirituality and the like and one about humanity, the world around us, our existence. And this book comes through with absolute flying colors.

The book boldly teaches us a language lesson that books written for young people and in language that is not all that complex can be beautiful expressions of language, not simply everyday words but insightful ways of creating characters out of meaningful patterns of them strung together like music.

I shall be completely clear on this. I believe that this book (and its series) is the best piece of young-adult-focused literature yet produced in any language, be it fiction or non-fiction, prose or poetry.

So, as to the lessons it teaches, the first is moral. It clearly demonstrates that those who are different are not to be feared and those who are at the top of the existing structure may not indeed deserve to be seen as better than those at the bottom, that outsiders are the future of society and that integration is the only way to save us.

It then goes on to teach us a historical and educational lesson about the importance of not straying from a coherent and comprehensive view of reality, that when you focus too hard on only one interpretation of the truth, you lose your humanity.

Plot? Again, not really my area of interest but it’s a story split over three volumes that describes the coming of age of a girl who lives in a society that is segregated not on racial or cultural lines but a decision as to the important moral viewpoint — honesty vs intellectual potential, bravery vs compassion. She is quickly seen to be outside the norm of these divided ideas and must hide that fact to be safe from persecution as an outsider, someone who doesn’t fit the mold of cultural stereotype. The rest of the story is simply an exploration of her hiding, self-discovery and eventual coming to terms with the fact that we are all far more complex, except those who are broken and obsessed with only one perspective — in other words, conservatives.

So it’s a revolutionary book, one about standing out not simply because it’s what young people want to do but because it’s right to fight against a system that is hurting people and putting traditional values and conservative adherence to the status quo ahead of actual progress and development and, in many ways, ahead of caring for other people.

It’s an interesting lesson to talk about with a class or friends. And it’s a beautiful work to read, stylistically, linguistically. Not to mention it’s been turned into movies and they’re not at all bad representations of the books in the series. Hopefully we can all put aside the silly notion that young people can’t have deep thoughts on serious moral and ethical issues or on society and read this, keeping in mind that educated adults are born out of thoughtful and open-minded young people.

[Divergent by Veronica Roth on Amazon]

Angels and Demons

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 5 minutes]

(This post is one in a series about the best books ever written. The first post in the series is here.)

I did indeed like Angels and Demons enough to put it on my list of best books ever written. And that may shock some people — actually, that does shock a lot of people and I have heard that particular question many times. Usually a book is either good or popular. And that’s not an unusual differentiation to make about things. Popular music is rarely well written. Popular fiction is usually mindless drivel written by people who are looking for sensational reactions rather than depth of understanding. Popular art is usually something that makes people cringe rather than sit and stare at it. But there are exceptions and those exceptions, things that are able to be both popular and inspirational in a thoughtful sense are worthy of an even higher level of praise.

Truly good books need to teach us a lesson about language, a lesson about ethics, morality and spirituality and a lesson about the world. I’ve talked about this a little in the first post of this series but it’s useful to review sometimes.

Angels and Demons, the first of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series — realistically, popular thrillers set in contemporary time and mostly about an exploration of humanity and history. I should probably mention here that when I talk about a book that is in a series, I’m going to talk about the first book as something you should read and teach and hopefully you’ll enjoy it (and your students will, too) enough to follow that up with others in the series. That’s pretty much something that can be said for most authors’ work but it’s important when there is a continuation from book to book that we not jump into the middle of a set meant to be read in series and just confuse everyone because, perhaps, the fourth book is the best one and we’ve read them all anyway so nothing about it seems to come out of nowhere for us. Our students won’t have read the others already and neither will the friends who suddenly think we’re crazy because we like this particular book that happens to assume myriad pieces of knowledge that have been picked up through hundreds of pages in other volumes.

This book teaches us that you can make everyday language beautiful, make it tell a story that isn’t focused on the everyday and meaningless but a real story, that you can read and taste the beauty of without tripping over arcane words but without sacrificing anything of the experience.

It teaches us a moral and ethical lesson about the importance of balancing faith with understanding but that if you go too far in either direction you lose your humanity. And it teaches us a historical lesson that it is a horrible mistake to forget our past and pretend that dark tragedy is something that is only in the distant history or in other countries.

Of course, we have to be very careful about choosing a work of popular fiction when we are discussing academic literature. Why? Simply because most popular fiction is not written to be literature. It’s not written to be any good. It’s written to be easy to read, easy to understand, to appeal to a mass audience that, not to put too fine a point on it, is pretty stupid. And there is certainly a niche for that — a damned massive one, in fact. And I cannot in any way (nor should you) criticize people for writing for that demand.

There’s something to be said for trying to fix the mediocre education system and cultural degradation that has led to mass-market consumables, not just literature. But that’s a whole other discussion and we’re certainly not going to fix the problem by refusing to read or write books for people who can’t understand depth and symbolism and poetic language.

This book, though, manages to have inherently deep messages as I have said about humanity and its impact on itself, its ability to forget its past and pretend that culture is safe and tradition is good. But it does all of that without sacrificing the plot, the story, the desirability of the book itself for the kind of audience that is browsing airport bookshops. It doesn’t alienate the general public and doesn’t pander to a desire to have nothing but plot and mindless action (or even worse mindless day-to-day experience).

So on all counts, being a spectacular discussion of human nature, of history, of the future, of morality and ethics, not to mention continuing the story into several other books, which I shall likely discuss at another point, without losing either momentum or quality of ideas, this book more than merits a place on my short list of the best books ever written.

I would highly recommend you use this book if you are teaching a class in contemporary fiction, popular fiction or realistically any introductory or creative-writing-study course in literature.

It also has the benefit of being originally written in English, which isn’t necessarily the case for a lot of the other books that I’ve put on my list. Since many departments and schools are rather against books in translation existing outside books-in-translation courses, this is definitely a plus for Angels and Demons. By the way, I have no problem with segregating books based on their original language of composition but I have a massive problem with allowing people to only take courses of books that are originally in English as if books in all other languages are not worth studying unless you’re a foreign-lit specialist. That goes for you, too, high schools who have only English-original texts (sometimes supplemented by ancient Greek silliness that doesn’t deserve to be on anyone’s curriculum) in their courses.

Oh, right, the story. I tend not be nearly as interested in giving a plot summary as other book reviewers but I guess it’s useful in determining whether you or your students might find it sufficiently stimulating in the plot department. I should probably come clean and tell you that I have realistically no concern for plot when I’m reading. If the language is interesting, I’m hooked. But here’s the story.

Robert Langdon, the protagonist, is a liberal arts professor whose interest is in signs and symbols (realistically, in history but they never come out and say it as such). So he’s a scholar (woo!) and a scientist (great) and someone who thinks about things. Which is a great combination and excellent material to start any sort of discussion with students about why such people have a tendency of being seen as less-than in modern society. That aside, the book begins with a murder and a theft of, to leave out all the scientific details, something that will explode — and likely take out a good portion of the city. Not to mention this is all taking place in the Vatican between the death of the Pope and the election of a new one. In addition, the same person has kidnapped a group of the cardinals who are likely to become Pope and there are some obscure and historical symbolic references.

Langdon is tasked with figuring out who is behind all of this and help find the kidnapped cardinals. And yes, indeed, this is quite a task for an academic but that’s the premise of the book. I won’t go into the details of how the solution presents itself so you can read that for yourself (or look it up on Wikipedia) but the story is internally consistent, scientifically somewhat viable (far more than most popular fiction, honestly) and there are sufficiently many misleading trails to turn this into more of a mystery than a book of investigation and action.

There you have it. A story fit for cinema (which it was adapted for rather quickly) in language that is creative and intriguing enough to keep an educated person hoping the book is longer than it really is and with enough thoughts on human progress, history and ethics to make it a worthwhile read. Enjoy.

[Angels and Demons by Dan Brown on Amazon]

Writing a Future?

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 5 minutes]

As many of you are no doubt aware, I teach creative writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels, sometimes to high school students, too. I believe that there is a far too significant break between the study of literature and that of writing. We often are forced to pretend that there is reading and there is writing and that these two are only loosely connected. Some of this comes from the ridiculous concentration in literature study on historic rather than contemporary literature. We force students to read books that are both outdated and not all that well-written by modern standards and I have truly no idea why. I have often campaigned against the use of “classic literature” or “the greats” in education but I have had little impact even in my own institutions.

What this comes down to, though, is that I see the teaching of creative writing as something that must be done by example. Taking the best possible contemporary literature and using it as a mirror for students who are trying to become the next generation of writers. We write in a community, in a culture, in a time and place and if we are not aware of that time and place, we can never connect with it in our writing and that makes it pointless to put words on screens and text in the mouths of our characters. In trying to update my existing course materials and create some new ones for the year ahead (yes, the 2020 academic year is closer than we would like to imagine at this point and books need to be ordered, classes scheduled and the like), I have been asking many of the people whose views I respect a simple question.

If you were to select the ten most important books to read, regardless of how they are seen by others, what would they be?

Of course this doesn’t really mean they should restrict themselves to ten or that they need to give me a ranking of those books. But I am deeply interested in their lists. I may not always agree with what they pick but there are some surprising results on those lists. Sometimes something really interesting pops up but what I have noticed is that the same books appear again and again on them from people who live in different places, different cultures and many with no connection at all with the world of creative writing or even literary study in an academic sense. These are all highly-educated people but they vary in discipline from people like me who are professional writers and educators to those who study in science and medicine or liberal arts and humanities.

I believe that all worthwhile literature (and poetry) must do three things. If they don’t do all three well, I would say it’s neither literature nor worth the paper or pixels it’s printed on and shouldn’t be bothered with as someone who has better choices as to what to consume. Those three things are that it must be beautiful, it must be pleasurable and it must be educational. That may sound like a tall order or perhaps a confusing one.

To be beautiful means something is art. If it is not beautiful, it is not art. A painting can be poorly executed but truly beautiful to look at. It can be of an incredibly dark subject, say the crucifixion of Jesus or the slaughter of American native tribes, and still be a beautiful representation. This is not a silly notion of turning the world into something that has no sadness, no pain, no suffering. It is a statement that art must strive to be a beautiful representation of emotion, action, human experience. There is a difference between a display of beauty and a display of happiness. In a similar manner, writing must be beautiful to be worth reading. If it does not relish its playfulness with the language, does not strive to go beyond the everyday meaningless drivel that comes out of the mouths of people as they whine about the weather and talk about lunch plans, there is no reason for it to be considered literature. Literature is something that goes beyond speech and base thought and takes language to a place where it is, in a word, beautiful. The experience of language can be transcendent, an escape from the mundane reality. If it is, it is literature. If it is not, it is nothing more than a shopping list or instruction booklet for the latest in assembly-required furniture.

Pleasurable again is an interesting concept. That doesn’t mean in any way that it must be full of joy, although that’s always a nice experience. It can be pleasurable to wake up to the suffering of others, to be made aware of the darkness in humanity and the experiences of the past and the present. A book of holocaust poetry or a novel told from the prespective of an escaped slave can be a pleasant experience to read because we feel like we have understood the souls of others, touched their essence and breathed through their mouths for just a moment. We have experienced the unsurpassable pleasure of empathy. If we do not feel the pleasure of inhabiting the author’s mind for awhile, they have failed and it is not literature. It is simply a story that has not succeeded in its most basic requirement.

The most important of these three criteria, however, is the last one — to be literature worth experiencing, it must be educational. It must teach us something. That doesn’t mean it has to be about the surface of the moon or a detailed description of the subatomic world. It can teach us something about human experience or how emotions work. It can teach us about our past or our potential for the future. It can teach us about words and language. The best of these teach us about three things at the same time and this is the measuring stick against which I have judged my possible list of “the best books”. First, they must teach us something about language. They must be using language in a creative and beautiful way, not necessarily something novel or even different from what is expected but it must be a pleasure to experience the language, quite apart from the story told. Second, they must teach us something about humanity — an ethical lesson, a moral truth, a spiritual understanding. Finally, they must teach us something about the world, whether that is reality or scientific understanding or history. These three would be nice to see in all books but of course that doesn’t really apply to many varieties of literature and it would be far too harsh to say that something must do more than simply teach a lesson but teach all three types of lesson. However, I would say that the best books do all three of them and only those that qualify on that count make it onto my list.

I believe this will surprise many of you. This is my list and I will, over the next few months, write about why each of them has made its way onto the list, why you should read it and why you should, if you are also a teacher of literature or creative writing, teach it to your students.

And please remember that these are not in any particular order. My vote for the three best books ever written, by the way, goes to “Invisible Cities”, “Sophie’s World” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”. By the way, the fact that many of these are actually part of series, I have always selected the first book in the series so it is possible that there are actually “better” books later in the collection but I would suggest beginning at the beginning and if you are to read only one, read the first.

And so, without further delay…

  • Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
  • The Looking Glass War by John Le Carré
  • Remembrance Day by Henry Porter
  • Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
  • The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva
  • Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
  • The Ghost by Robert Harris
  • The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  • Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
  • Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
  • Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
  • Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
  • Malice by Keigo Higashino
  • Murder In Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie
  • Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
  • Coraline by Neil Gaiman
  • Notes On A Scandal by Zoë Heller
  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • Divergent by Veronica Roth
  • Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden
  • Frontier by Can Xue
  • The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
  • The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
  • Tomorrow, When The War Began by John Marsden
  • The Interpreter by Suki Kim
  • Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama
  • Iq84 by Haruki Murakami
  • Strange Weather In Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
  • Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Shocked yet? I thought you might be.

Riding the Moment

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 3 minutes]

I see a woman riding a horse through the village. She has incredible concentration as the horse gallops down the narrow street. I can’t help thinking how impressive it is to have such direction, such focus to get to a destination rather than being prepared to get there someday, eventually, at some point in the future. I turn my horse and follow and call out to her.

Sister, where are you going?

She laughs and looks over her shoulder and calls back to me as she pulls into the distance and I cannot keep up.

I have no idea but it must be a wonderful place. You’d have to ask the horse.

Some days we are in awe of the people around us who are so driven. Other days we are propelled by life and can only just barely hang on to the reigns. And some days we are the horse, who remembers and is focused so thoroughly on the destination that we run and take our riders along with us. But we forget in our attention to being one of these things that we are always embodying them all, all at the same time.

I have overwhelming focus. I am obsessed. I can’t stop paying attention to this one thing, something I think so so unbelievably important. My friends are tired of hearing about my new project. Or I just need one new thing before I am happy. One final experience before my summer vacation is complete. One last piece of the puzzle before I feel like I can be happy.

I am experiencing life in panic. I am holding on as my days are not my own choice but I go to work, go to school, fulfill my responsibilities and fall into bed late at night without a single moment left of energy to keep my eyes open even to read a few pages before I fall asleep. I am running the maze that I’ve made for myself or, perhaps even more frighteningly, that I’ve let society dictate for me without questioning it. I follow the goals and the dreams toward a partner, children, a bigger house, a new car, fancy purses and shoes and hats. I forget to question it and I don’t even ask where the path is leading. I’m just holding on.

And I am the curious bystander in my own life, wondering what the rush is and what wonderful place my horse-self is taking my rider-self to with such concentration and I hold onto the reigns for dear life with a sense of abandon mixed with dread and submission mixed with fatalism. And I do the one thing I had forgotten to do all along. I ask where I’m going. Where the other me is headed. And I ask why.

But there’s a me missing. Where is the me who stops and breathes before taking off in the same old direction looking for the goal to ask, isn’t it the path and not the destination that is important? If I’m going to live this life and the end result is already known for my body, that it’s going to stop being mine and return to the earth, it can’t be the destination that matters, can it? So why am I so focused on getting there to the point that I miss the scenery as I gallop into the distance, leaving myself grabbing on or falling behind? Where is the me who calmly asks why I’m on the horse in the first place instead of sitting under that beautiful sun and looking at the flower just out of reach of my hand? What am I doing being dragged along without even asking where I’m headed or why? I’m following blindly and it is ridiculous but I never thought to get off. And where is the me who tells my curious self the answers are obvious, don’t be in awe of the one who runs blindly though life, who abandons the moment and focuses only on the future, especially a future that I’m not even trying to create, just to follow wherever someone else is leading?

I may be all of these things all the time but unless I ask the questions, I will be lost to the moment. I will be living the dreams of the past as the horse gallops into memory and obsession. I will be blind to the experience of my body and life in the present as I hold on and get dragged through my days by the environment and the culture around me. And I will be shocked and consumed by the drive and focus and abandon of those around me and forget that I am living right now, making choices and I don’t have to follow the runaway horse and rider, I am on a path of my own and walking it is my life.

Stand By Our Troops?

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 3 minutes]

I am a revolutionary pacifist. I believe in the absolute and unmitigated wrongness of conflict and violence and that it should be completely eliminated and dismissed from human society, that it is a thing best left as a reminder of barbaric times in the distant past, not a reflection of the modern world. I am well aware that this is not in keeping with the rise of tribalism, nationalism and force as determiner of right that have become systemic diseases of the contemporary world.

But what comes to mind frequently is this notion of military glory and respect. I am consistently accused of lumping in soldiers, sailors and air crews with criminals and that I don’t support the brave people of the national (or even the United Nations) military forces. I promise you, though, that while the first is in many ways true, the second is far from the case.

In many ways, a soldier is performing the same task as a murderer but, as with all things in our existence, it is not that simple. It is just as reprehensible that there is violence and death and just as necessary that it be ended regardless of who is perpetrating the act. But the motivation is quite different. A murderer may be an irrational person or completely cold of emotion but they are acting out of a desire to kill. A solider, however, is generally not motivated by that particular personal desire but another one — a desire to serve. And that is certainly an honorable, respectable goal. In the case of someone in the military, it is not their personal motivation that is typically at fault — it is their government that is leading them down a path of violence, hatred and death.

I have absolute respect for those who are prepared to sacrifice themselves in the service of those who cannot defend themselves but there is a serious problem with this. If you fight, someone else is likely to fight back. And then you have a continuing circle of violence. We must end the cycle. If we are ever to be the peaceful people that we are meant to be, we cannot continue to perpetrate violence against others, be them human or otherwise.

So while I certainly stand by the soldiers in national armies and the sailors of national navies, I have nothing but disdain for the governments that use them. You believe that you are supporting your military when you fight for the delusional and misplaced tribal identity but you are not. You wish them to fight and expect them to die for no purpose other than violence. I, however, wish them to live. To put down their weapons and walk away.

I seek their lives as respected people, sacrosanct entities in nature who deserve to live. You seek their actions that are likely to lead to their deaths. Who is supporting the troops more, you who encourages them to die or me who encourages them to have a long and free life in an age of peaceful resistance to all violence?

So the next time you feel proud of your military, think for a moment how many young people you are condeming to yet another round on the wheel of conflict, violence and death. If you don’t want to see violence on your playgrounds, in your streets, between your children and others, set an example that violence of any sort is unacceptable, that it is a thing of the past that we will no longer allow in our vision of humanity.

We can end human suffering if we walk away from violence and accept each other as equals, with equal rights of safety, of movement, of access to food and water and healthcare. If we don’t seek profit and ownership but instead serve others rather than fighting them, we will be the example we wish our children would follow into the future.

Stand by our troops, certainly. But don’t stand by them to fight. Violence is always a lost cause. The only way to win is not to fight. Stand by them as they walk away from violence and say no. Respect them enough to help them live, not condemn them to die.

A Culture of Fists

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 8 minutes]

Throughout the ages, we have been confronted with human nature being called sinful, something that we must fight against and confess and be absolved of by supernatural beings or, at other points in history, our leaders, our peers and even our children. We all make mistakes without exception. If ever you find a human who has done no wrong, I propose you have not found a human. Learning from our mistakes is one of the most deeply human traits that I could imagine. Plants evolve through their mistakes. Animals develop new reflexes from theirs. Humans, though, we can think about what we have done wrong and create whole new futures for ourselves as a result. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

We have developed a problem, though. This is a tried and true method of human development and the progress of a society is based firmly on its foundations — the mistakes of others are also the building blocks for our thoughts and learning so not everyone has to make the same mistakes. On the shoulders of giants we stand and the like. The problem, then? We’ve forgotten what behaviors are problematic. We accept so many things that are bad in our culture, knowing them to be so, which is a massive problem in itself but we have neglected the more obvious issue — we have forgotten, as western society, how to differentiate what is good behavior from what is bad, damaging, often intensely destructive to us as a whole. Where has that come from? Actually, that part is quite simple. We have learned over many generations that the most important person in the world is us. It’s individualism that’s at the root of all this. And being unique, loving and caring for yourself, is a necessary step and a wonderful development in the modern world. But we have become obsessive about it. Pleasure, desire, lust, indulging in our feelings. It’s become a new creed, the way that honor and respect used to be. Of course, you are well aware that in ancient times when honor and respect were the ideals, the reality of the situation was far from an actual application of those things. It was, however, an appreciation of what we should be doing compared to what we were actually doing.

So what are we doing that is so wrong? I could give you a list but that would be unhelpful. And I am in no position to cast judgment. Some of the bad behavior I have in mind are things I would never do but many of them are things that I have had huge difficulty expunging from my life. There is a saying about glass houses and I do indeed live in one. It is, after all, truly human to make frequent mistakes. What’s inhuman is not to recognize them. Instead of sermons and lists, though, I propose to talk about one error that our modern culture is indulging itself with to an absolutely incredible degree of late, in a way that even historical humans were hesitant to do, at least for long periods of time. Fighting.

I know what you’re going to say, it’s natural to fight. And you’d be absolutely correct. Monkeys and apes do it. Dogs and cats do it. Birds and fish do it. Plants, well, they do it but on a wholly different time scale — evolutionary fighting is certainly a thing but it’s a bit hard to turn into a spectator sport when you’re living on human time. It’s also natural for males to conduct sexual intercourse as nothing more than rape. It’s natural for females to eat their partners after sex. It’s natural to seek out weak animals and kill them when they are separated from their parents. These are all frequently-observed natural phenomena from the animal kingdom that are absolutely, perfectly acceptable in their species. Does that make them in any way correct for socially-educated humans? If, at this point, you have not answered the question with a resounding no, my argument is not for you and you may return to whatever you were doing before.

If, however, you agree that these things are impermissible for the modern human, I would propose further that we have an absolute social duty to our species of pacifism. We must not simply defend ourselves or talk about turning the other cheek. We must go farther and ensure that there is no violence, no aggression, no fighting, not once and not ever.

You have heard the phrase boys will be boys. It has had a huge amount of popularity among pig-headed conservatives trying to justify rape as being out of character the last few years. I would suggest on this topic that rape is something that most males of all species desire to do and that social norms have gradually made it less acceptable among humans but that this has only increased its secret likelihood and desirability — that the only thing that stops the vast majority of males and a not inconsiderable number of females from regularly forcing themselves sexually on other members of their species is the social danger of such an action, which is far from likely to actually come down on their heads and that most people appear to accept it as a part of life. We are, in many ways, an absolutely disgusting species. That aside, though, a topic for another day, this phrase has a somewhat less sexual beginning. It is usually referring to young boys fighting each other, on the street or playground, even in classrooms at school. It is a symbol of acceptance of physical (and sometimes verbal or written) violence, bullying and control, domination and subversion. We are, realistically, saying that it is perfectly acceptable for young people to fight and that this natural impulse to commit violent acts is normal within human culture, also.

As this is trained into the minds of young people, predominantly males but females are often at least somewhat indoctrinated in this acceptability of violence, too, it is repeated and taught to be how conflict is resolved. Have you ever been in a bar when a fight has broken out? I promise you it’s not because the people were drinking. It’s because the people feel that it is acceptable to use violence as a way to solve problems. If this wasn’t an acceptable part of our social discourse, it wouldn’t matter if the person were drunk, high or having an out of body experience. They’d never come up with that as an answer to what was happening in the moment. But we’ve programmed it in and just as surely as pushing the keys on your keyboard make letters appear on the screen, pushing those buttons of anger and conflict within someone who has lost some of their social control and interpersonal inhibitions results in the default from their childhood training rearing its ugly head and then you have smashed glasses and bottles, bodies tossed over tables and split lips, black eyes and broken bones. You have, in other words, a battlefield in miniature.

Which is where the problem truly resides. On the battlefield.

We see war as an acceptable solution to problems. Sure, some people talk about it being the last resort and say that they would only ever go to war to defend their inalienable rights and freedoms or to defend their children from fascism and totalitarianism, some foreign conqueror. They’d only go to war to stop another Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin. And that’s exactly the issue. People believe that there is a point at which it’s acceptable to fight, where it’s right to stand up and hit someone — or, realistically, shoot someone, blow someone up or engage in some other act that will reduce them to a smoking pile of fleshy rubble. Nonsense. It’s nothing more than unmitigated silliness and self-righteous idealistic justification.

I promise you, there is no good side to violent action. None.

It was wrong to fight Hitler. It was wrong to fight the Mongols. And it was wrong to fight the Crusaders. It was wrong to fight anyone, at any point. Always and without exception.

The history of human technological and scientific development has been both punctuated and stimulated by warfare and destroyed by it. The invention of nuclear energy coincided with the development of the atomic bomb but the use and fear of that bomb destroyed decades of peaceful nuclear science and continues to be the stigma that nuclear research of all forms labor under to this day. Centuries of development of firearms led to the creation of chemical industries and organizational systems that were never before possible but the specter of school shootings and rampage killers floods our daily news programs and Twitter feeds. Military aircraft dominated the skies long before passenger craft became the norm but the limitations of our contemporary travel in the skies have long ago been dictated by the needs of the air forces of the world who lead development and they’re not interested in environmental improvement, for example, so we have continued to assume the use of petroleum as the only functional fuel for air travel, a disaster in far too many ways to name. Our technology is the technology of war and works within the limitations of our war-obsessed culture.

Is war always wrong? I can say with categorical certainty that it is. Can you? Do you truly believe in your heart and soul and mind that there is no situation in which fighting is ever justified?

This is where we end up with the real problem. It’s a problem of being peaceful and accepting. That doesn’t mean we invite whatever someone wants to do to us. But it is about society solving problems rather than taking them into our own hands. Let’s start with the basics and return to our playground situation. If you are a six-year-old boy on a playground and another similar individual comes up to you and punches you, you have two choices. You can either punch them back or you can not. If you do it, it will degenerate into a fight. If you don’t, it may end there or it may degenerate into a one-sided beating. And while I believe that it is a human imperative to, in this situation, take the beating and do nothing other than try to walk away, there is a third possibility that people often forget. If the other people on the playground do not accept the premise of the scenario, if they decide that the instigator will not be accepted within their microcosm of human society if they continue to act violently and make that clear, in nearly all cases this will stop. It is only the acceptability of that behavior that allows it to continue. If you can punch someone and still be a part of peaceful human society when it’s over, you have nothing to lose. If you will be absolutely and without exception excluded from society by your peers if you ever commit such an action, you will not take that risk.

Why is playground fighting so important? Because it’s the learning ground in the school of future behavior. We accept in our culture the existence of a military. There is only one purpose of a military, to fight. Some will say that its purpose is to defend or to threaten, to overwhelm or to intimidate. But realistically what we’re talking about is the preparation to fight and its eventual potential execution. We have a culture based on accepting people who are not simply going to fight because it’s their nature, which is bad enough, but because it’s their job.

How can you tell your child that it is categorically unacceptable to hit another child on the playground or tell your friend that hitting someone in a bar is not allowed if they know full well that some of the most frequently respected people in our society are respected and praised exactly because they have trained to fight and executed that task at some point? We must raise our voices and not our fists to speak as one voice that we will no longer accept violence under any circumstance. That as a group, a human group, we will not allow membership in our society to anyone who participates in violent acts of any sort. The playground fighting is unacceptable. The bars and streets and boardrooms of fighting are unacceptable.

And, above all, military service is unacceptable.

We have a right to peace. All humans have a right to peace. If no-one accepts a single excuse for violent action, if we as an entire species exclude those who perpetrate violent acts from membership in humanity, it will take no time at all for violence to be a memory of past ages, as it should long ago have been. We debate whether terrorism is justified. We debate whether wars of defense or conquest are justified. We debate whether to send soldiers to stand up for the rights of the oppressed. We forget that we have the power of the voice of humanity to speak as one against the crimes of hatred and violence with a resounding stop.

While a single person is accepted by the many as having a right to raise their hands and weapons against another, this legacy will continue. If we decide as humans that we have an absolute and unyielding right to live on a planet of peace, it will be the end of conflict and the beginning of a pacifist reality. The power is in your hands if you stand together. Recognize what is wrong with our present.

We glorify and respect violence. Change your mind and wash your hands of this culture of combat. Extend your hand in peace.

(Avi Sato, 2019.11.23)

SheSays Include Us

by aviin blog

[estimated reading time 4 minutes]

Last night people from all walks of life (mostly of the female persuasion but not, in a word, exclusively so) gathered in Manchester for the latest SheSaysManchester [@shesaysmcr] event, this time on the theme of inclusion. In a time where governments are weaponizing hatred and other forms of nationalism and the us-vs-them approach to a new exclusionary culture throughout the western world, inclusion is a word that strikes fear into the heart of those in power. Not to mention that those who see themselves as normal, average and, above all, white-British, have been conditioned to understand inclusion as the problem with modern society and that it means the end to life as they know it. It may, indeed, spell the end of the traditional racist, misogynistic, Christian-culture-motivated lifestyle that is understood to be stereotypically British, European or working-class-American but one truly must ask the question, who truly benefits from that life. Given that it applies hatred to anyone from another culture (a huge section of society even in the farthest outreaches of the contemporary western world), to those who are not cisgender, not heterosexual, not male and not white. It does appear, on reflection, not to be a majority of the population, only the majority of the government. And that, indeed, is where much of the talk, much of the incitement and much of the hatred begins.

It was against this backdrop of standing up and being counted as people who are inclusive that three speakers began their reflections on this warm northern evening. Emilia Kolbjørnsen [@itsameliakoko], Marketing and Events Manager and Community Manager of Manchester Girl [@manchestgirl] started the evening, telling the story of a life where inclusion is the ultimate desire and concern but where it was withheld. From the cliquish school community of Norway (not unlike that of the British multi-strand education system where different uniforms give way to street brawls and aggression and football allegiance is enough for playground violence to mirror that of the parents) to the overtly-inclusive but secretly-exclusive Spanish culture where she, obviously different in background and looks, fought to be a part of an accepting group. Without success, though. From there, she speaks of a heartbreaking return to her home only to be seen as an outsider by those who had never been inclusion-minded in their early childhood and worsened from there, culminating in time seeking a place within the middle-east and, finally, a hope for a turnaround in Manchester’s community, a group that is regarded within England as accepting and open but that certainly has vast distance to travel before that is the truth. Her vision of inclusion being implemented by the community here in the north is touching and, after fighting for inclusion throughout her life, it is remarkable. Against this history, it would be natural to feel nothing short of black depression as sectarian tribalism raises its head and the nationalist rhetoric of exclusion, pride and a disregard for thought and education screams the same notes as prewar Germany or the rhetoric of both sides before the Sino-Japanese war – the politics of racial hatred, cultural exclusion and blatant lies. One must hope her optimism describes a better future.

Chisom Emecheta, a doctor specializing in women’s health, then took the stage to speak of an applied logic approach to inclusion. The message was strong and clear, that acceptance, that kindness, that inclusion is beneficial to everyone, those who are included and those who include. After a brief discussion of distribution, it would have been difficult to miss the essential truth – without outliers, there is no progress. Life doesn’t get better for anyone, especially not the majority, without change that is motivated by and often put into practice by a minority group. Whether that is a minority that lacks power, lacks influence, even that lacks visibility or obvious difference from the cultural norm (how can one easily tell if a person is gay or comes from an immigrant family?), all improvement in standards of living come at the cost of change, of being unsettled from the status quo. Not each change brings improvement but, realistically, without the change from the minority evolution is impossible and humans would not have progressed from hunter-gatherer societies, would never have spread out and populated the world and certainly would have had no chance at developing modern technology. She spoke of the importance of meeting needs and even those things not quite needed but mutually desired. If you are starving, physically, socially, culturally or even emotionally you are unlikely to listen to another, to include them, to even see them as another human. Proposing this as a basic issue in the modern case, she put forward a strong argument – the majority of those who make decisions in this country are afraid they are about to lose their only means of earning a living and have been told that it is us, the minority, who is to blame. It is no wonder that in an atmosphere of fear, both of the unknown and of the painfully-known, where having enough to feed your children is by no means an assumption and immigrant, minority, disabled, even visually-different others are portrayed as an enemy has exactly the expected result. Overt exclusion, thinly-veiled and government-sanctioned persecution and a society hopelessly divided.

The final speaker, Emma Preston [@emmajanepreston], inspirational speaker and bestselling author concluded the night with a discussion of her journey of fighting a society painfully transphobic and male-privilege-obsessed. Her story was one of loss but of strength in the face of opposition from all fronts, leading to the publication of a bestselling personal narrative book and a resounding victory over the darkness of depression and self-hiding. Highly inspirational, her words were those not of a hopelessness for society, although that may be brutally true of late, but those of personal strength that is within everyone, each member of the excluded minority to stand up and expect no longer to have to fight for inclusion but live within a society that has no choice but to accept its diversity.

In all, the night was one of highs and lows of emotion, happiness and sadness with the empathy that is always present among such audiences. Questions focused on personal approach, how to apply peaceful resistance to a society that is all too happy to fight acceptance with violence and love with hate on the streets, in the boardroom and in the hallowed halls of government. It was an experience none will likely soon forget and a motivation that was doubtless felt by all present.

on abortion

by aviin blog
[estimated reading time 9 minutes]

there is no shortage of writing on the subject of reproductive rights of late and given my genderless status, i have a rather unusual position on many issues of mating in general and reproduction in particular. i do think, though, that in the spirit of openness that i believe we are all entitled to exercise, it is helpful if those from all positions contribute to the discussion.

let us begin then with thoughts on humanity. if you are reading this, you are a human. if you are simply staring at the page with no concept of its meaning, you may also be a human but, given literacy rates, it is quite likely that you are, in fact, a dog or cat, staring past your human oppressor’s body as they internalize these thoughts. that is rather sad as you are probably more in line with my thinking on many of these issues than most humans. what makes a human different from other animals? two things, really. we are a species. that means that we are genetically distinct in a measurable way. reproduction is possible between humans while it is impossible with other species. simple. there’s another difference, though, and this one is far more important. we have a capacity for symbolic, representative thought. this is what gives humans the possibility for language. we have conceptual understanding of the world around us, something other animals simply do not possess. and this is the defining nature of being a human — the human experience, if you prefer. the human experience of the world is self-referential and thought-oriented. it is language spoken behind our eyes and between our ears. it is communication with the self and a sensory understanding rather than direct sensory reaction — we think between input and reaction, something that is distinctly human.

when we take these starting points for a definition of humanity, it gives us some very powerful answers to the meaning of human life. but there is another piece that is missing. life begins somewhere. where does my life start? there are only two possibilities, realistically. one is that it begins as soon as there is a component of me, the other that i begins when i become capable of experiencing life through a human lens. neither of these points is either conception or birth. conception is simply a joining of several potential components of me with each other. but they already exist. so if i am to begin at a point of potentiality, this is at the time of creation of the egg and sperm from which i will eventually be born. their adhesion is irrelevant. either i begin when the entities are formed or i am not. i would propose that i did not become human when my mother was born and eggs created or my father and sperm. i would suggest that this, in fact, is a relatively silly proposition. so we move on to the performative, experiential definition of the beginning of humanity — human existence. i cannot think symbolically at birth. conceptual communication means nothing at that point. it comes rather later, with the application of language and induction into the world of human communication. it is at that point that i become a human, not simply in species but in a cultural and social reality. this is not at a specific age but it is, in many cases, months or even years after birth when not simply noise but actual bidirectional communication, not necessarily speech but usually so, begins. the same would, of course, hold for non-auditory languages including sign languages. this is not a hyperbolic argument. i would legitimately propose that these are the only two legitimate perspectives on when human life begins — either the creation of sexual elements, the birth of the parents, or the beginning of human (linguistic) experience of the world.

from this point forward, i assume that life begins at the start of the human experience. if you would prefer the other option, there are vast consequences of that viewpoint. it would suggest that masturbation is willful manslaughter or, potentially, murder. it would suggest that mensuration is approximating infanticide. these definitions, while absolutely factual, are beyond unrealistic and meaningless. i shall dismiss them as non-options. but please keep in mind that these are the alternative. remember that conception is not a sensible perspective on the beginning of life for one simple reason — the genetic material is just as potentially viable for the creation of a child before conception as after; the rest is just a matter of timing, in exactly the same manner as sex with a young person being considered statutory rape but a short period of time later may be consensual. if you argue that time is irrelevant in matters of procreation, please understand that timing, truly, is everything in this and many other examples.

with this in mind, we may proceed to the more relevant component of the issue at hand — sexual choice. while many people argue that this is a question of control, i would suggest that the larger issue at hand is opportunity and equality.

i do not have a right to do whatever i want with my body. i live in a society and i have a duty to protect it from harm. if i wish to kill myself, i am not free so to do. if i wish to harm myself, i am not free to do this. society will intervene. those who are arguing that abortion is about a freedom to choose what i do with my body are walking a very tenuous track. if i acquire an infectious disease, it is prohibited that i communicate that disease to others. if i wish to put toxic substances in my body, tobacco for example, i am not permitted to do so in a way that potentially harms others — hence restrictions on smoking. i simply do not have those freedoms, nor should i. i, as a human, have a duty of care to others. i must keep others safe to the extent possible and any failure to do so is, realistically, forfeiting my humanity and my right to continue to live freely in even a restricted manner. i accept this, as do we all, to live in a cohesive society.

however, and this is crucial, i have a right to decide my actions where those actions are not potentially harmful to other living beings. actually, in our current social context, i have a right beyond that — in fact, i have, in most parts of the world, the right to harm, kill and consume other living beings without another thought on the matter. i would strongly propose that if i act in such a way as to harm another living being (a cow or pig, for example) in any way, when i could have prevented such harm from happening (perhaps by eating a salad or vegetable soup?), i am also giving up my humanity. but this right is legally guaranteed at the moment and that is not the topic up for thought here.

so the current state of my rights is fairly clearly defined. i am free to do what i like as long as it does not infringe on the freedom of other humans (we simply don’t care enough about other lives to have guaranteed their similar freedom, something i have spoken at length on but shall resist the temptation to expand on here). i may go for a walk or not. i may choose what to eat for lunch. i may go on a date or not, as i happen to desire. these are within my rights. i may not choose to hit another person. i may not kill another person. i may not poison another person. i don’t want to do any of these things but even if i had such a desire, at this p point or any other, i would not be free so to do. this doesn’t make me feel less free. if it makes you feel less free, i would suggest this is because you are a violent, hateful person and should seriously examine your life. and you would be free to ignore me, as is your right. seriously, though, please stop wanting to hurt people. it’s bad for them — and for you.

but we accept these limitations on freedom because, and this is vital, they make the world a livable place for all humans. the limitations on my freedom make it possible for all others to live in peace and the limitations on their freedoms make it possible for me to live in peace. it is a simple give and take that comes with being social beings. this is all well and good until we stop seeing the value of others’ peace and safety as being as good as our own.

i have the right to choose, without pressure or expectation, if, when and how i mate with another human within a certain framework — the limitation on this is exactly the same as what we have already discussed. my rights are limited by those of my potential partner. if we both wish to have the same sexual contact at the same moment, we are free so to do (or, to put it another way, we are free to do each other). if there is a mismatch, no contact occurs. this is the goal, of course. anything else would be coercive coupling, otherwise known as rape. this happens constantly and has been used as a weapon (mostly by men against women, although not exclusively so) since social human contact began. sex, we must be very clear, is not a right. the right is to express sexual desire and inquire as to the status of its reciprocity and then, only then, and within very specific parameters of cohesive, partnered thought, act on those desires while another is acting on theirs.

let us, however, assume that we have already made the leap of cohesive sexual thought between consenting adults and coupling occurs. i would propose that this is far rarer than one might think and that much sexual action in the western world in particular is at least somewhat coercive but i leave that to your imagination and future thoughts. in the case where this is consensual (as in, when this is not rape), the outcome is intended to be physical pleasure and, potentially, procreation. i am not aware of a situation where sex is sought only for procreative purposes without physical pleasure being present but this is, certainly, possible in theory, at least, if not in practice. so let’s take a look at the procedure here. i have a right to say yes to sex and a right to say no. why? because neither choice is harmful to the other person — or to anyone, realistically.

the after effects, however, are quite different. if i possess a penis, the only significant negative outcome that may arise from sexual activity is physical infirmity. i may acquire a sexually-transmitted infection. this is bad. i could become unwell or die. very bad, as i said. however, if i possess a more procreativity-endowed body, the after effects may be dramatically worse. i may develop a growth, a parasite, inside myself that will last for a period of nearly a year wherein it will deprive me of energy and strip me of large portions of my health, cause increasing pain and culminate in a removal process lasting often hours within which excruciating agony is the norm and surgical assistance is frequently required. we put soft and gentle words on this (pregnancy, usually) and talk about this as natural but it is, generally speaking, a painful experience of suffering and health difficulties, leading in many cases to physical damage and death. if this appears contradictory to you, i invite you to read any report on statistics on death and long-term health effects of pregnancy and you may, indeed, be surprised to discover just how harmful pregnancy tends to be for those unlucky enough to encounter it. still, there are humans willing to undergo this situation to continue our species. i am not one of them but we must give honor and thanks to those who are prepared to suffer for our benefit. we usually call them mothers and i am certain we all have one of these to thank for this, among many other things. their sacrifice has given us life.

but in many ways it is far worse than this. typically, we pride ourselves on being above torture. i would like to think that we are all against torture, at least in principle. we may not all agree on the notion of torture as it pertains to those who commit violent crimes of hatred and terrorism. but i would certainly hope that we are all against the torture of those people who we see as innocent. but we are most certainly not acting that way. we are, as a culture, imposing on many people every day the sentence of torture, long-term suffering and significant risk of death. through the lack of available birth control to prevent the occurrence of internal contamination by parasitic infection during intercourse (pregnancy), we are sentencing huge numbers of people to months or years of severe and protracted torture. by limiting access to abortion in any way, including at any point until the beginning of human life, we are not allowing those who encounter such an experience with torture to end it. we let criminals who are showed to be innocent walk away from prison sentences and treat them as humans again — if we restrict access to abortion, we are simply saying to those who have become pregnant that we do not see them as worth having the right to walk away from physical and emotional torture, often for the rest of their lives. if i select to undergo this for the benefit of a future generation, that is a perfectly acceptable decision. being forced to be tortured is not in keeping with our ideals as humans.

why are we condoning this torture? because it is against women and it is those who have no potential to be tortured by pregnancy but every possibility of being on the other side of the equation — the torturer who uses their penis as a weapon of hatred and domination — who makes the laws.

there is another issue, of course, that comes up. we are living in an age of dramatic overpopulation. there are too many people already. anything we can do to reduce the number of people on this planet would be helpful in ensuring that our environment does not completely collapse. while killing already-living people is not a sensible proposition, limiting the number of people born is certainly something that desperately screams out for consideration as we approach at exponential rates our own destruction. if there are those who do not wish to contribute to making this problem worse by having children, we should applaud that choice and encourage more people to stop having children, reducing earth’s population in the future and ensuring our collective survival. this is not what we are doing but it is something that one must question in its lack of presence — why are we so bent on destroying ourselves through overpopulation? is it simply because we will have more people potentially to control and force into torture in the future or is there an even more sinister reason?

these, of course, are only some thoughts on the issue. but we are sentencing many innocent people to torture every day through hatred. this is not a religious issue or one of tradition. it is one of control and domination. we wish to be as free as we can be, without hurting others. let’s act like it, please.

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