Are we getting New Years Resolutions wrong?

New Years resolutions chronically don't work. They're essentially wishes we make each year. At the beginning it's fun to pretend we'll keep them up until the reality kicks in a few days/weeks later--there were reasons we'd never X-ed before. Whether X is quitting smoking, going on that diet you've been thinking about since your last one failed, or learning something new like a language, it's all the same story.

Meanwhile, people can actually have a lot of success setting goals and achieving them during other days of the year. So where do New Year resolutions go so wrong?

They're normally always things that (a) one doesn't really want but just feels some pressure to attain (smoking/dieting/new language can all fall into this category). Or (b) one does want but has substantial reason why they've not already achieved it, which they've not really thought about enough to resolve. Overeating can be symptomatic of some larger emotional or mental health issue, for instance, and when this is the case dieting becomes the easy part. But even things like 'being too lazy' to go to your new class to learn X can really be about other, larger problems.

But there is something symbolic about a 'new year'. A fresh start, if you will. So perhaps News Years Resolutions themselves shouldn't be thrown out with the bath water. In this case the 'bath water' being: how terrible we are at making them. Because maybe that's the point. The ones we make are made badly, and that's why we can't do better at keeping them.

This year I'm trying out a new approach. I've set myself a New Year resolution for something I have evidence that I want, have spent a lot of time thinking about why I haven't done, and have realised (and this is the crucial bit) that it's mostly fear that stops me. In this case that thing is: to learn to draw bold and competent pieces from my imagination. I know that I'd like to do this, because I do draw a lot (so it's clearly something I'm serious about). But I always sketch portraits from photos and my biggest frustration with it is that, although I can try to communicate a lot about the person in how I draw them, that's a very limited form of creative expression. Meanwhile I can often see in my head drawings I'd love to put down, but I lack the skills. So that's my evidence that I want to do it, but I'm also aware that the reason I haven't already is fear, fear, fear.

The mean, self-hating part of my brain tells me how for some magical reason I'm the one person in the world who'll just never understand how to learn this, and even if I did they'd all be crap because I have some creativity clamp in my brain that stops me from having better drawing ideas. But aside from that delusion, it's also just hard to go back to being bad at drawing, having got my sketches to a place I'm reasonably proud of. You have to face frustrations you've long forgotten. And it might be a while before you have anything you'd be proud to show people.

The nice thing about fear being the obstacle, though, is you can face fears in a way that you can't easily 'face', for example, emotional and mental health problems. The latter takes time and often some professional help. The former can slide away by just ramping yourself up to believe you can do it, and finding a nice manageable step to start you off. And is it just me or is the New Year the perfect time to feel 'ramped up'. You look back on your year, you look forward to a new one, and you find yourself feeling like 'is this holding-back fear really worth it?' When the answer is no, it's the perfect opportunity to get started on this old goal. Enjoying the easy measurement of a calender year to note your progress.

I'll have to see over the year if this approach works, but I'm liking it theoretically. And a week in, I'm enjoying learning about drawing. I'd share one hear, but for the time being, they don't look much better than this little guy:

So you think you can Learn

Learning how to learn is probably one of the most vital yet most underestimated skills there is.

Learning is the gateway through which all progress can come to us, and yet one of the most commonly assumed learning philosophies is not only dangerously misunderstood, but seems to be based on nothing more than an equivocation between two uses of the word 'focus'. I'll explain what I mean.

Some learning really is just about muscle memory or other forms of automated responses. If you're learning to play the piano, at some point you'll just be practicing the fingering till it's comfortable for your body to do without thinking about it. Or say you were an actor learning a script of dialogue, you might go over and over it till you memorise the words.

But this kind of 'focus' is not good for any kind of learning (most kinds) that involve creativity on your part, which includes anything you need to understand to learn, or problem solve to get better at.

For this kind of learning the two things that matter most are fun and confidence.

Fun and confidence are like anchors for creativity. Nothing can guarantee creativity, its unpredictable by definition, but fun (of all its types) is a good way to encourage it. (What I mean by confidence is more complicated and I'll get back to it later.)

The problem is, most people think that focus trumps fun when it comes to learning. Take school for
example. All distractions should be eliminated, not even drinks or frequent bathroom breaks are allowed. Fun is ok, of course, as long as it is the direct result of learning and not caused by anything else, like socialising or playing.

But what's really happening in that classroom is that those kids are being under stimulated, they're in literally the worst position to creatively engage with their lessons... Say instead they were allowed to have problems they cared about, and then were just allowed to do whatever they want. They would end up getting inspired, and figuring out possible solutions to their problems, simply because their brain would still be working on the problem but would also be getting the stimuli it actually craves, not some preordained idea of what'll help a kid figure something out. 

And that's true no matter what they do. Its true whether the fun thing they do is go read a lot of books on the subject of their problem, or whether they go and do something seemingly unrelated like play or watch TV. What's important isn't actually the focus on solving the problem, what's much more important is the genuineness of the interest in the problem and the interest in the thing you're doing when you have your light bulb moment. Creativity is funny like that.

The problem is, its not just school.

People often approach work like this too. Or university revision, where the emphasis is to spending months memorizing in agony rather than trusting their ability to understand the material in their own way if the interest in genuine. 

But the example that maybe most interests me is that there seems to be this trend of typically nerdy people who fetishise learning and see fun and socialising as sort of sinful. Some seem to like it but feel ashamed of it because its undignified in their mind, others seem to not like it at all and, much like the teacher in a classroom, see it as a distraction to learning.

The equivocation I think is that to 'focus in on learning', a person needs to literally focus. But what they really need is to be motivated, inspired and left free enough for spontaneous, unpredictable moments of insight.

These nerds, therefore, tend to be really stuck. They struggle to think for themselves and have to learn most things by memorising and mimicking some authority or another. They also get terribly stuck on their personal problems, not making progress for years at a time, because they can't learn their way out of the situation. Yet meanwhile they're patting themselves on the back, and feeling superior to the people having fun, because they perceive themselves as more serious than them, not realising the tragic irony that a bit more fun and socialising might be exactly what they need to expose themselves to new ideas, inspirations, and insights to throw interesting curve balls into their thinking, stop being so stagnant, and start actually evolving in an upward direction.

But wait a minute, what about all those people who seem to spend all their time partying and socializing, but who also seem stuck and to not really learn very much?  The real question here is about whether or not you can over indulge in things that aren't related to what you're trying to learn and thus get distracted. But this is really a matter of values. If doing what you actually want to do takes you away from what you thought you wanted to achieve, it's very bad to feel ashamed of that and insist you be more disciplined. Some real conflict is going on there where you don't want what you think you want.

This brings us back to confidence. Really confidence is another word for optimism. It's the attitude that you can do this and you can do it your way, not just by following preordained ideas of what and how you should learn. It's being secure in not yet knowing the answers. And it's being secure that you can find answers. You will struggle to learn without creative and intellectual confidence. If you can't carve out your own path of what interests you and how you're going to approach it, you will unfortunately get stuck.

Recap. What things can one actually do to improve their ability to learn:

• Don't be too disciplined, have enough freedom that spontaneous, unpredictable insights can emerge. 
• Gear towards what you actually want to do, no matter whether or not it looks like a distraction.
• Don't treat focus as more important than fun.
• Don't fetishise direct, focused learning as the only kind of fun worth having
• Appreciate that the more a distraction something seems to be, like socializing, the more likely it is to throw useful curve balls into your thinking.
• Get rid of your authority figures. No really. Whatever justifications you have for why that person is a good authority figure, you're wrong.
• Stay clear of preordained ideas of how you're going to learn something and be open to surprise.
• Gain more confidence in the process described.
• If you're having fun but not learning what you thought you would, maybe you weren't genuinely motivated to solve the problems you thought you were.   
• Know that you can increase your interest in problems, if you want to... that sometimes you're just not motivated because you're afraid. You can't micromanage creativity, but you can improve how you learn by improving your knowledge of what problems you have and why to care about them.
• But don't feel pressured to care about problem you don't... there'll always be problems you actually care about. 

Oops I Did it Again: Is it really that hard not to rape someone?

How do people get consent during sex? What does consent look like? What does it not look like?

Here's what Scarleteen.com advises young men:

Sometimes, someone being raped will clearly say no and will NOT clearly say yes. They might say no verbally, with words, they might say no by crying, they might say no by physically trying to push away the other person or get away from them. They might try and change the subject from sex to something else, and some might try and make a deal with a rapist agreeing to a kind of sex they still don't want, but feel might be less traumatic...They may also be saying no by nonparticipating in sex, by being passive or dissociating (mentally going somewhere else in their heads so they don’t have to be fully present during their rape). 

Rape might seem like a heinous crime we're all on board with being wrong, but there's actually a surprising amount of disagreement in convention about what is or isn't rape. Here are some common views that would disagree with the above.

-Girls are more passive and shame-filled re sex. It's normal for them to be conflicted about it. It can't be counted as rape just because the guy has to encourage her agreement.
-It's the girls responsibility to say no clearly, the guy can't be expected to guess or mind read.
-If she agrees to do it for a reason that's not about her wanting to, but some other thing, that's still consent.
-As long as you stop if she makes you stop, it's OK to pursue her in any way, even if it's forceful or she's asleep--girls are submissive and they like that sort of thing.
-If she's not saying 'no' she's given consent by omission.

The difference in perception seems to centre around three issues:

Getting permission, her responsibility, and rape fantasy.

What exactly is consent?

Generally, 'consent' gets defined as 'giving permission'. What's confusing for some people, I think, is that sexual consent gets defined (both in law and in life) with a slightly different connotation.

Imagine getting consent to use someone's garden for a party. The most we can infer is that in some sense the owner doesn't mind this. They may actually find it kind of annoying in certain ways, but they've decided for whatever reason to agree to it anyway. Maybe they owe you a favour, or are trying to be a good sport.

Sexual consent, however, has a normative quality, it's not enough to give permission for someone to use your body for sexual pleasure, you have to want them to in order for it to be 'consensual sex'.

If a guy is only after a girls permission, rape is limited to violent rapes in which the girl makes her 'no' very clear but is being overpowered. But this outlook underestimates the use of coercion, intimidation, or vulnerable targets to get 'permission' against the girls will. Permission is easier to argue. She didn't not say yes. She agreed to do X if I didn't make her do Y. And so on and so forth. But if one is actually looking out for signs that she wants to give her permission, this becomes an entirely different set of things to look out for.

Is she active in the process of making this happen? Does she seem excited by it? Is she engaged in the activity? Does she stiffen up and push away? What's her body language like? Is she relaxed and full of anticipation, or does she seem scared, or sad?

The girl has to be the one to make it clear

Having to look out for signs that she *wants* to give her permission, instantly puts this additional responsibility onto a guy. He has to read her body language, examine the context, empathise with her position, and have thought outside this situation some about what sort of pressures there are for a person re sex and how they might come about. Is this fair? Or is it her responsibility to make matters clear to him. After all, he's not a mind reader.

This belief that it is the girl's responsibility is in some sense predicated on the idea that it is hard, if not impossible, to really determine if a girl wants to or not. But none of this is actually true. Enthusiasm and terror look fairly different in people. This is not to say sex is not a breeding ground for mixed signals--there are many good and bad reasons why a person might be nervous or feeling shy--but the appropriate reaction to getting mixed signals would be to check with her. While asking might itself be pressuring a simple 'we don't have to if you don't want to' or any other number of things gives her a much easier out. And if still in doubt, it is always OK to opt to not go through with it. It's only sex afterall.

Of course it's true that it would always be better for both party's if the girl made it clear, but if it were always possible for her to fearlessly make her 'no' clear, there'd be no such thing as coercive sex in the first place. The fact is she may be scared and trying not to upset the guy in case it makes things worse. Or she may be in a vulnerable state of mind, where she is easy to guilt into it, or to use any number of social pressures on.

What is not the case is that her hesitancy in saying 'no' can readily be assumed to be consent by omission. 

"But maybe she wants me to force myself on her"

Finally we get down to the real pressure of why some guys might feel weird about checking with the girl that she wants to, and that's, that it'll 'kill the mood.'

It's important to understand that this is not necessarily the case. Without wanting to sound like a cliche, clear communication and trust are assets not cripples to a good sex life. But there will of course be some girls who, aside from enjoying rape fantasy, need the line between reality and fantasy to actually be blurred for them to enjoy themselves--In their minds they're consenting, but they want to make it genuinely confusing whether or not they are.

But this is inappropriate for them to expect. As Louie CK jokes, you can't rape a girl on the off chance she's into it.

Wanting something does not make it right. Rape itself is contingent on this principle.

What's Going on with the Assisted Dying Bill?

Yesterday I went to my very first proper protest. Proper in the sense that it wasn't an art installation, but a good old fashioned placard-holding and slogan shouting event. Actually I'd gone in many ways sceptical, assuming protests did nothing very useful. I was there more to support my colleagues than my cause. As usual I found myself to be wrong.

Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill had it's second reading in the House of Lords in what would become quite an intense day. 10 hours of debate. 130 peers requested to speak. And there we were outside, fenced off from the pro-side--protesting by our side in logistics alone. (Yes, I was against the Bill)

The pro-side were interesting because it was made up of a lot more people my age, I'd guess students more interested in it as an academic issue. So they thinned out pretty early, while we stayed strong all day. But the thinning out meant I could quite easily hop the fence, so to speak, and go see about giving some leaflets to the opposition.

The reasons the pro-side were there were all admirable. They had known people who had suffered immensely and were deprived the choice to die, and they cared enough to do something about it. Or they were simply, and rightfully, aware of the importance of fighting for autonomy of choice, and dignity in dying. Of course I knew this before meeting them, but it was still very moving to meet them.

They had less idea why I was there. Actually, they had no idea.

This of course is often framed as a religious issue, and indeed there is a strong religious presence on the anti-side. It's also very much a disability issue, with both sides of the debate having a strong call to certain disabled people. Those afraid that as a disabled person they represent a very vulnerable group in society for abuse of the law, if the law were to change. And those afraid that as a disabled person they represent a group of people who need that choice for themselves.

So as an atheist, libertarian (ish) able bodied person, it seemed a little like I'd accidentally picked up the wrong placard.

And in a sense I had. Because as an atheist, libertarian (ish) and the many other relevant things I am, I'd have liked to be protesting on the other side.

You see, while in principle I don't have anything against people having a right to choose, my stance is that our culture is not ready yet. We will abuse the law, just as other countries have, and just as we abuse the system as it currently stands. And while I have great sympathy for those who are suffering and want to die and should have that right, it sadly doesn't justify the wrongful loss of lives that will come from it.

And this is what this debate really come down to: will it be abused?

There is too much support for the bill for either the Christian or disabled person perceptive to be relevant to whether or not it gets passed. That's the reality, and why we started the day expecting a vote.

However, during the House of Lord's debate, there was a surprising amount of mind changing. This is where naive me realised that protesting, as well as the many other things that happen in the lead up, are all important ways of focusing an issue on certain key arguments over other arguments.  The ignorant, negative interpretations get blown away, and the more important things shine through. This is what happened yesterday in the House of Lords; minds were being changed as more of them become aware of the risk of abuse. As such, in the end there was a shock no vote.

Of course it remains popular with the public, and this is because, I believe, these criticism haven't properly spread out yet. When/if it does, I am optimistic it will change a great many peoples minds

Pessimism about choices

Pessimism about choices can be a very destructive thing, often causing people to get trapped in an area of their lives, be it work, school, relationships, or whatever else. 

What the phenomena feels like is something like this: for some reason the world around you is broken, such that you know how you'd like it to be (i), but you also know that for X, Y and Z reasons it will never be like that, and so to avoid the worse case scenario (ii), you must accept a painful middle group (iii). 

(i) how you want it to be.
(ii) the thing to avoid
(iii) the painful middle ground that lets you avoid (ii)

For example: a person who feels trapped in a bad job (iii) might know they want to do some fun thing with their life instead, like be an artist (i), but not seeing how that'll be possible for them, accept (iii) as a way of avoiding the unpleasantness of having no financial security and maybe even risking homelessness (ii). 

(i) doing something fun for work.
(ii) no financial security
(iii) trapped in a bad job to avoid (ii)

The trouble is this way of thinking about it is biased towards pessimism. The three options are coloured: 'can' or 'can't'. (i) is 'can't' because of these X, Y and Z reasons. (ii) Is 'can't' because it's so terrible that it has to be avoided. And (iii) is the only 'can'. All the pressure is then naturally on accepting (iii) simply because it's being presented as the only option. 


But not everyone who faces this kind of 'bad job' situation falls into the pessimism trap. There is another more pragmatic and optimistic mindset to be had.

It looks something like this: you want to make a choice between two options, (a) staying in your bad job for financial security or (b) doing X thing you find fun for financial security. You see that you prefer option (a), but the problem is you only know how to make option (b) happen.

(a) staying in your bad job for financial security
(b) doing X thing you find fun for financial security.

This creates an unsolved situation in which one is tasked with getting their knowledge of creating (b) on par with their knowledge of creating (a). And it only has to be 'on par', not 'better than', because knowledge level is the only advantage (a) holds over (b).

We can see here that although the rationale has been changed only slightly, we are now under a very different pressure than before. Rather than the pressure to accept (iii), we have the pressure to learn more and accept (a)/(i). What has changed?

The first change is in how (ii) is handled. Both (a) and (b) are assumed to resolve the problem that only (iii) is assumed to solve previously. This is a mistake in how the pessimist presents the three options. This is important because it removes all appeal to (iii)/(b). When looking at (a) and (b) it is immediately obvious that (b) has no advantage over (a), while when looking at (i), (ii) and (iii) it falsely appears as if (iii) is some kind of 'golden mean'.

The second change is that, free from the mess of thinking there might be a sense in which (b)/(iii) is better than (a)/(i), one can focus solely on the real problem. The problem is not one of preference and compromise, but one of information, namely how to get more on it (a)/(i). 

Why it's hard to think for yourself

Why is it so hard to think for yourself? Some might say it's laziness, or attribute it vaguely to a lack of appropriate education. But I think the pressure not to is more of a social concern.

To shed some light on why it is so hard to think for yourself, it is worth asking a different question: why do other people want you to think like them?

People want you to adopt their perceptive because it makes them feel more comfortable and secure. Their reasons are selfish. For some people, what's at stake is their sense of "good-person-hood". These people have beliefs that make it easy for them to feel like a good person, and by challenging them, you are making them feel personally challenged.

Other people just want to be seen as authorities. When they say something it's to be trusted. It's not necessarily out of power hungriness, though it can be, it may just be that they need to trust what they say, and questioning it to them is equal to 'self-doubt'--an unpleasant feeling of unworthiness or uncertainty to act. Therefore, they take it personally if you 'shake the boat'.

It's difficult to work and live with such people, but such people are not rare. Of course, with enough inner reserve, one can treat these social problem as exactly that, problems--as a thing that can be solved (there are other ways to make such people feel comfortable and secure without risking your integrity. And completely irrational people can be ignored). But how many people have this inner reserve? It is not laziness that is the issue, then, I don't think, not predominantly, rather I think it's a matter of guilt and/or not wanting to burn bridges with people.

The challenge at hand, namely dealing with these social problems, requires a good deal of intellectual confidence, something that is culturally not encouraged. The difficulty with thinking for yourself is that you can't very easily take a half measure. If you think for yourself, but in conflicts you pretend not to and play along with someone else's world-view  you'll be miserable. However, if you are going to try and fight your corner and live by your principles, you have to have more integrity than the average person does.

Of course, in having this integrity, it all becomes easier. You commit to finding ways of dealing with people in conflicts so you don't hurt them and feel guilty, if feeling guilty is a problem for you. Or you learn to dislike the idea of having friends who wouldn't bully you for living according to your own values.

He-man, she-woman: how to think about the feminist debate.

When feminism comes up, you frequently hear reasonable, open-minded people suddenly burst into little snippets of aggressive language. "Who gives a f**k what feminists think?"  "Feminists are man-haters and unhygienic." "Feminists drive me bat-shit insane." "Feminists are just ugly little women with big round owl glasses and too much orange lipstick" (Taken from real people).

Of course, the reality is, Feminism is an umbrella term for many different movements and ideologies centred around the issue of equal social rights for women. 'How' and 'why' differ between the schools of thought, as do theories on what the differences between men and women are, and whether or not politics, economics or media are relevant to the debate. Particularly in terms of whether we should be politically active in stopping things, or work through improving cultural ideas.

This actually makes feminism a little hard to stereotype. For every Gail Dines, there's a Joss Whedon. For every Gloria Steinem, there's a Shira Tarrant. Nevertheless a highly unflattering stereotype does prevail. And like many images that prevail in the social subconscious, one has to ask where it really comes from and how many people have actually thought it through.

Certainly in my own experience, I had a very negative view of feminism, which I somewhat thought through in that I then met some feminists who I found to have an unpleasant world-view that they were quite forceful in presenting to me. But this wasn't really 'thinking it through'. I had a presupposition, and then found confirmation for this presupposition. Any good epistomologist will tell you that one can always come by confirmations for presuppositions. In this case my specific mistakes were that a) my presupposition coloured my interpretation of these feminists b) it created a sense that I'd given more investigation than I had (I'd still only met a handful of feminists and never read on the subject) and c) it caused me to skew the relevance of 'the evidence'. Truth is you'll always be able to find people who seem naive and ignorant, but are forceful/anti-rational about their position, no matter what movement we're discussing. Including all the good beliefs you and I both hold, reader.

I would take a guess that these anti-feminists memes have their roots in sexism, even if the people who now hold them aren't particular sexist. By 'sexism' I here mean, old fashioned, non-subtle sexism. 'Women shouldn't work', 'women should be feminine', 'women should know their place' type sexism. I can't do much to argue this point, since memes are so hard to trace, but this would seem to fit. It would fit with both the historical facts of feminism and also what the memes imply. These slogans of feminist-hatred tend to: assume the hypothetical feminism is a woman, criticise her for not looking feminine, and treat her position as one aggressive towards the male interest.

When I thought back to where my anti-feminism presupposition came from, I eventually remembered. I'd overheard two people mocking feminists in my church kitchen as a child. I'd learnt from that conversation both what the word meant and how to think about it. It was the presupposition I carried with me from then on.

All this said, there are some common feminist ideas that seem misguided (there are also plenty that most people think are misguided, but I personally believe, after looking at the issue, are on-point). One is signified by the picture above. Does the feminism underestimate how pervasive and dangerous many gender memes are, for BOTH men or women? Does there need to be more of a focus on making gender memes truly a choice, and not a pressure or a trap?

The He-Man thing is a little silly, since we consider those two cultural icons in terms of the effect they seem to have had. There is a problem of more and more young girls becoming anorexic. There isn't a problem of young boys trying to look muscle-y.  But there is a problem with: male aggression, men attaching a sense of self-worth to being strong, feeling pressured to not have personal problems, and pressure to be dominant and get people to comply with them.

The real crux of this thing is that there's no room for one side to lack empathy with the other if progress is to be made.

Take the example of dating, where everyone loses by the same bad ideas. For instance, there are schools of pick up artistry that speak of women as guided by these irrationalities that need her to be controlled and dominated in certain ways, which are available to learn through a formula. You first get through her 'bitch shield', then you use playful insults and other techniques for her to develop this dependence on your approval and attraction, such that when you go for the 'close' she won't reject you. Now, unfortunately I can't take for granted that this is obviously not very nice for anyone, because it plays into quite common ideas and fears people have about courting. Some girls really do need to be played in this way to consent to sex, and that's unfortunate for her as it doesn't give her much control over her own happiness and pleasure in that area. But should we take advantage of such peoples insecurities for our own ends, or is that fairly mean-spirited? And how common are such girls? Well, truthfully it's a small group, and constantly stinking as sex attitudes improve. This view mostly just works against the majority of women who feel bullied by non-consented to sexual domination, and wish to communicate to the opposite sex as the regular people that they in fact are.

And the often over looked victim here are the men, who are force fed this cynical view of the world where there aren't good women they can go out, meet, have a fun interaction with, and it lead to a sexual attraction. That the odds are so stacked against them they have to behave as to hack women to get sex. The fact that it also won't work except in specific cases, will also disadvantage such men from having enjoyable dating experiences.

Of course, no one can get into these more specific and important ideas to have interesting and meaningful discussions about them so long as anything that sounds a bit feminism invokes a huge meta conversation where feminists will be unfairly stereotyped and talked about in hideously personal ways, from the very people who might be able to offer more insight into male-disadvantages.