The Myth of the Context-Neutral Objective Rationalist And Other Political Tropes (Things Crypto-Elitists Say That Make Me Cringe, Part 2)

I don’t like blogging.

I don’t like attention.

I like being part of a conversation. I don’t like being the conversation.

I'm exhausted from working a long and emotionally punishing day right now and don't particularly want to be writing a blog post. But people keep insisting that their biases are true, and as long as people are going to do that, it's going to rub me the wrong way, and since I got roped into having a blog anyway as a way of finding and engaging the kind of reader who wants to read the kind of science fiction I am writing, I guess this is one of many annoying obligations today. I am hoping it will help me process some of the things that are frustrating me, because I keep hearing them, especially from people who should know better.

A lot of the things I am about to say will probably be rejected at face value and not further critically assessed by most people who read this who are not already anarchists. If I were as susceptible as most other people to guilt or shaming, that alone would be enough to put a dent in my armor. But I think what I have to say in this post is correct. These are my opinions, but they are opinions informed by practice and a deep understanding of history.

Liberals, centrists and conservatives tend to dismiss my social critiques as “Raven’s anarchist beliefs” without considering that they gleaned from formative experiences before I considered myself an “Anarchist.” It’s a disingenuous mode of argumentation, but then, as I explained in my previous post, most people do not engage about politics in good faith or with a genuine desire to critically evaluate the other side’s propositions. I benefit from an extraordinary degree of privilege in my life in that I have had access to quality mental health services and a high level of professional training as a mental health provider and social services agent. But no one, despite the wishful thinking or obstinate insistence of my liberal friends, exists outside of their own social context. There is no “objectivity” outside of math and science, and scientific theories about biology don’t explain all of human behavior. Sociology, anthropology, and the so-called “soft” sciences do, but they don’t do it by an appeal to “rationalism” or “objective knowledge.” These theories admit social context and historical context because they have a left-wing origin. The left wing invented sociology and that it was conservatives hate it and centrists and liberals cherry pick from it selectively or disregard it when it doesn’t validate their biased assumptions.

I am willing to call this, if not a “fact,” then an “observation.”

I have a scientific background. I’m the furthest person you can find from an anti-science dogmatist. I was trained to think critically, and I don’t think I’m that mythical rationalist either. No one is. No one who claims to have that objective knowledge is being honest, not with other people, or at least, not with themselves.

But it seems, as a myth, that it has a lot of power, because people persist in believing it. Or in some ideal approximation of objectivity. People who support some form of capitalism (whether regulated or unregulated) are making an appeal, whether they know it or not, that approximation of objectivity, in terms of reconciling merit and achievement and disparity and oppression. I will broadly refers to those in that set who support a regulated form of capitalism as “the center-left,” I.E. what in the United States we confusingly call “liberals.” I will address conservative ideology in a separate post because I think these are very different political cultures. But not as different from each other as these tribes would like to believe, nor are they all that different from the tribe of self-proclaimed “moderates” (who are not actually so much a tribe, like conservatives and liberals, but more a statistical abstraction).

The difference, I think, is how much cognitive dissonance they experience with regard to the political sphere. I think liberals experience more cognitive dissonance than conservatives because as bad as conservative ideology is, at least conservative (Republican) leadership tells its right-wing base what they want to hear. But Democratic party leadership speaks down to its progressive base, which for this analysis we can call “left-liberals.”

I agree a little more with left-liberal politics than with conservative politics, but only barely. Many left-liberals believe they are some kind of socialist. They might join organizations like Democratic Socialists of America (which for reasons I will get into is really more liberal in practice than anti-capitalist) but they generally stay Democratic Party voters because they have internalized certain tropes like “lesser of two evils,” and a lot of other familiar bullshit I don’t care to deconstruct piece by piece at the moment, as it would generate a distracting tangent. A lot of “progressives” think they are opposed to capitalism, and maybe some of them are, in theory, but they defend the capitalist system much as other liberals do, in practice. And because cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, a lot of them don’t stick with more “actually leftist” (I.E. anti-capitalist) politics if they do get involved because participation in these communities demands more self-criticism than they are comfortable with. So, they become reactionaries. They moderate their views to reduce the pain of cognitive dissonance, so that they don’t have to feel like they are part of the problem.

But they are part of the problem.

Some people are willing to take on the hard work of deconstructing their own biases and assumptions. These people become anti-capitalists. They first become socialists, but when they see the exploitative and abusive practices they hate about capitalism and party politics being reproduced in more moderate, sectarian and authoritarian socialist organizations, they tend to find their way to “Libertarian Socialism” or “Anarchism,” because these tendencies practice, for the most part, what they preach, and they don’t have to shoulder the burden of using disingenuous and reactionary ideology to distance themselves from cognitive dissonance.

And people like this tend to agree with my skepticism of “social objectivity” the myth of the person who can somehow exist outside of their own social context.

My friends who have been told by Bourgeois Society that they are part of a “creative class” (what an awful concept- creativity is not a class phenomenon!) have internalized these myths in varying degrees. So do people in Academia, including on the “Academic Left.” And we shouldn’t be surprised by this because Academia, like the so-called “creative class,” is a Bourgeois institution that can’t fully critique itself. So, the “Academic Leftists” tend to argue with each other because in Academia, you either public or perish, and it’s easier to shit on someone else’s thesis than come up with a novel thesis that actually merits attention. I know how Academia works, I’ve been sucked in by it, and I don’t like the narcissistic intellectual I become in that social context. This means I’m particularly good at picking up when someone else is operating from that context. My job requires me to have good people skills, to be able to read a room and get at the truth behind what people say or do. I am good at what I do, but as with my life as an anti-capitalist Leftist, I never assume the work is done. I refuse to satisfy myself smugly like less critical people do that I have done the hard work and deprogrammed myself and can no longer enable or act out supremacist constructs. I very much can, and I probably do on a daily basis without realizing it. But at least I’m honest with myself, and my readership about that.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with science fiction.

The Science Fiction Literary Establishment is, like all Literary Establishments, a Bourgeois institution. It requires a certain level of comfort with participation in the system, specifically, with copyright law, Intellectual Property, marketing, and ideological compromise for money. I write science fiction that opposes these things. I, myself oppose these things. As I make inroads into the community that exists around the literary establishment, I am seeing all the familiar red flags: Patronizing Boomer condescension, internalized oppression, faux-woke “progressivism” that replicates the mechanisms of capitalism, and the myth of the person/space/time to whom social context does not apply. That last one is a specific hallmark of Bourgeois institutions, it’s inseparable from the technocratic/meritocratic mindset of “specialists” and sympathizers who insist that “some deserve more than others” is a reasonable social proposition.

There is absolutely nothing “logical” or “rational” about this because it is one group’s ideal of an objective approximation that necessarily, under the assumption of scarcity, leaves a lot of people out who are thought to be “less deserving.”

I don’t want to live on a planet where this is a considered a legitimate social policy question. If you’re looking for dystopia, look there. That’s my definition of dystopia. Sure, “some animals are more equal than others.” But if that’s your takeaway from “Animal Farm,” I question if you actually read the book. The Pigs were depicted as villainous in that novel not because they represented a communist ideal; Orwell himself was a somewhat moderate socialist. He was writing about how, under Stalinism, the worst traits of capitalists could also be found in the new Soviet leadership. Orwell wasn’t making an argument against anti-capitalism; he was warning anti-capitalists not to become like the ruling class we organize against.

And the most damning thing about it is, a lot of science fiction readers will be the first ones to assert their “ideal” of a post-scarcity society, but when asked to do the hard work of deconstructing their own biases and assumptions, they often dig themselves deeper into a reactionary stance because the cognitive dissonance hurts their egos. This relates to my previous post about trauma.

The thing is, their politics are not consistent, because they are operating with a wounded ego they are desperately trying to protect from more cognitive dissonance. Theirs is an emotional reaction, but they often refuse to acknowledge the emotional component and insist, often, that they are being “rational.” But these will always to my ears be tired old tropes that I’ve heard before and can’t take seriously. And it’s obvious because after they tell you what they supposedly believe, they always say “But” and explain why it’s not the right time, or we don’t have the right technology, or why we, or they, or some group or other, just needs to wait, or work harder, or moderate its criticism… it goes on, ad nauseum.

We must do the hard work yourselves. We can’t wait around for the world to change. We must change the way we relate to other people. Be less judgmental. Just, be less judgmental. Find ways to argue against our own most cherished beliefs in our private moments so we don’t hurt other people unintentionally when we meet them in the world.

If more people did that, we would have something closer to that ideal, and there wouldn’t be room for “buts.”

And if you don’t like hearing this, you are free to dismiss it as a “belief” and persist in the power-masking trend of insisting everything is “just a belief,” but there is still a huge difference between being critical power and being judgmental toward other people who for one reason or another you convince yourself are less deserving of the good things which you, yourself, deserve. And to ascribe equalizing terms between these trends is disingenuous. One belief is positive and affirming, and actionable; the other, while also actionable, is abusive and harmful. Both are equally “realistic,” from a practical perspective since some people act on the former belief and others on the latter.

As anarchists say, “Don’t be a dick.”

 

What is it like to work with Actual, Real Life Rentkids? (Sex Trafficking as Metaphor)

I have two young people on my caseload who were commercially exploited for sex.

But honestly, working with them is like working with any distressed teenager.

Right now, most of my clients who reside in foster care are teens, and the overwhelming majority of them are girls.

Most of these girls were sexually abused at some point in their lives.

I wrote a novel about child prostitution. Please note that I don't particularly like the word "prostitute." I use it in my (first person) novel because the speaker's culture is not quite as politically correct as ours. I prefer the term "sex worker..." for adults. Because sex work is work. It's no more or less legitimate than any other service job, in a capitalist system. I don't support capitalism... I also don't support the State telling adults what to do or not do with their reproductive organs. If the sex is safe and consensual, it's not my business.

These kids are "survivors." They were not engaged in a voluntary exchange of services for a fee. They were exploited, and for the ones who were trafficked, they were conditioned... what we call, in the field, grooming.

I say "kids." If you've read my blog, you probably figure (rightly) that anyone under 25 is basically a kid to me. I define adolescence in terms of neurological maturity instead of social or legal customs that don't correspond to emotional maturity. That's not to say all adults are emotionally mature. They are not. But I don't expect people under 25 to be mature. I expect them to make rash and impulsive decisions. I think they need to develop their autonomy as they grow and experience more of the world to get toward that point in their life where they can effectively prioritize their own needs with their social obligations.

Legally speaking though, in this society, a child under 18 years of age cannot consent to sex with an adult. So it is not consensual, and therefore unsafe. While I understand that a young person may think of it as consensual and even enjoy the experience, my job is to protect kids from exploiters and abusers and yes, sometimes from themselves. I was sexually exploited when I was 16 (I was not trafficked, this was one event in my life, it affected me greatly, and I am still, as an adult, processing and confronting the trauma). When I was 16, I thought I had all the power in that relationship. And, in my experience, many children who were trafficked or exploited also believe this. That is one of the objectives of the "grooming" process.

One of my clients was recruited some time prior to my assignment to the case. The team's suspicions congealed on her 18th birthday. She left her placement, a juvenile residential treatment center, on the night of her birthday, spent it in a hotel with a pimp and a john, and returned at 2 AM. This was a pattern, and we, the team, recognized it too late. Because this happened on the night of her 18th  birthday, even though she is on board extension with child welfare until age 21, Childline would not take the report.

I, a white man, was the one who had to break it to a black 18 year old woman, that as of her birthday, the law would no longer see her as a victim if she was caught. We have a safe harbor policy in Philadelphia. But the cutoff is age 18, even if a person was recruited by a trafficker prior to their 18th birthday, as this person was.

The client in question has some pretty serious mental health issues that undermine her connection to reality. I do not believe sex work should be illegal. But that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea for my very young and mentally ill client to be a sex worker.

There are a lot of things I don't think are good ideas. I think in the absence of the State and the capitalist system, most people, at least the majority who are not predisposed to anti-social behaviors, would not harm each other or steal from each other. I think structural poverty and limited access to high quality mental health services by people in poverty is a big part of the problem. The research supports me. You need only look at the evidence proffered by the ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) studies to know that capitalism is not working for kids. And of course, that means most kids, not just the ones who were sexually exploited or trafficked by predatory adults.

In my line of work, I am supposed to know how predators think. Honestly, it's like Frank Black's "faculty" in Millennium. I know how to adopt their POVs. I can see the world through their eyes. I see the cracks in the system they live in and exploit. I know how they operate and I see deep and disturbing parallels between them and the broader system of wage labor exploitation.

The honest truth about MOST "bad behavior" is that it is maladaptive coping. But some things go beyond that.

I am uncomfortable with the term "evil." I think it is too often applied to individuals to write them off as morally corrupt human beings, when the truth is that abuse, including bullying, perpetuates itself. It is a cycle and escaping that cycle should not be shouldered by any one individual. After all, it is society that too often fails survivors of abuse. Maybe these systems are "evil" (if that word is meaningful to you). I prefer to describe things in terms of consequences. "Evil" as a word has a lot of moral and religious baggage that doesn't align with my philosophical materialist, humanistic, and skeptical sensibilities. 

I do believe some things are unforgivable. Forgiveness is not a right. It's an ideal.

But I can forgive the man who exploited me, stole my money and abandoned me, terrified, in a crackhouse. It is my choice to forgive. He was an addict without a support system. Society failed him, too.

In a different incident, when I was 18, I was attacked. I fought off my attacker and fled the scene. I didn't talk about this for ten years, not with my parents, or other family, or my friends. Eventually, in "Rentkids," I wrote about this, too. Do I forgive him? Not yet. Is it possible? Sure, why not? It's not what I think about when my mind drifts back to that night. I don't think "I hope he is hurting," I think "I am glad I am alive." Or the other night. I still blame myself, in a way I would never project on any of the kids I work with.

There is one man I cannot forgive, a Human Resources Executive who wielded significant power over me when I was at my most vulnerable and desperate. This was when I was severely injured, on the job, attempted to return to the job (and an unpaid internship through work that was necessary to complete my MSW). I was still affected by the injury (physically and emotionally) in ways that, due to Workers' Comp insurance policies, made it impossible for me to perform my job and also do 4 unpaid hours per day. I sought accommodations, I was not given any. So I looked up the relevant employment law and resigned due to a "medical quit." This HR executive chose to personally ensure I was denied unemployment compensation. Eventually I did get my UE. This was after months of terrifying, deep depression and multiple suicide attempts and police encounters during a time when I was in mental distress.

It wasn't the first time mental illness affected my job. I've had to work my way back up from the bottom, twice. The first time was because I couldn't manage my work/life balance or my countertransference and boundaries, and I became emotionally enmeshed with a client. I regret this. I was unemployed for about a year and then I could only get direct service work, so I was on the bottom of the hierarchy again. It hurt my ego. It wounded me. Working helped me get out of the depression, and eventually, I became a Case Manager again. Because I love the work but hated the pay, I went back to school. I went into more debt than I will probably ever be able to repay in order so I could make $13,000 more per year as a Case Manager II then I made as a Case Manager I.

I never want to be a boss. I never want to be in a position where I would have to terminate another worker's employment.

When I think about that HR executive, my blood boils. I think about his smug smile, his condescending tone and words ("buck up, kid"), his upper middle class background, his paternalistic attitude, and I HATE everything about him. But people like this aren't the problem. A system where they rise to the top is. 

Will I ever forgive him? Will I ever not hate him? I don't know. I only know that today, I am not ready to let go of that. I cannot blame the system for him. He used the system. But there were things he did in the process that were unnecessary and cruel. He pursued the denial of my UE benefits with aplomb, like he was putting me in my place. I despise HR as an institution. But most HR staff I know are good people who are trying to do the right thing. It's the people at the top who are rotten. There is more to this story, here, than unresolved trauma.

As a social worker I believe in the dignity and validity of human relationships. But not all relationships are healthy, and not all relationships are consensual.

Libertarians, conservatives, and increasingly more centrists and liberals think of contracts between employee and employer as contracts between equal parties, but they are not. They are asymmetrical, unequal social and economic relationships. Some bosses are good neighbors, good parents, and try to undo the damage the system has caused, as much as possible, but they have the ultimate veto power if positive change effects their profits.  And as the militants say in the world of my novel, "A boss is a boss is a boss."

What does this have to do with sex trafficking? I'm glad you asked.

Everything. Because sex work is work and like all work, it is inherently not consensual or based on equal relationships. A worker must eat. A worker must have shelter and clothing, not just as a worker, but as a person. But the employer is not dependent on that one person's access to material security. The worker is replaceable. Even under regulated capitalism, it is in the design of the system that structural poverty is maintained, if necessary by a social safety net, and because of means testing and an often insurmountable welfare/employment gap, the safety net of the regulated liberal-capitalist welfare state keeps most people poor rather than lifting them out of poverty. Capitalism cannot sustain full employment because it would cease to function without a competitive and brutal labor market. It depends on a surplus army of disposable un-employed and under-employed people. These people are more likely than those at the top to have had the adverse childhood experiences the above study looks at. They are more likely to struggle with mental health challenges or substance abuse. And they are more likely to be written off by our society as failed human beings, collateral damage, than the utter parasites on the top. So, in essence, we are all "prostitutes" under capitalism. In my moments of despair in 2018, when I was forced to become a very unhappy Uber driver after graduating with a Masters' in Social Work, I wrote, with permanent marker, on my chest, in all capital letters: "WHORE."

Because this system made me feel like a failure, hopeless and helpless, and that is the last way I want anybody to feel.

And that commitment to an "ideal" about how to treat other people extends even to this hated man.

I only ask that after the Revolution, I be kept far, far away from him, and if necessary, I would rather be exiled than take a life. Even a life spent abusing and exploiting. I cannot write individuals off, no matter what they have done. That is what capitalism, even regulated capitalism, does. It is wrong, more wrong than my hating one man.

So this man, who I hate, I will never call him (as some anarchists would) a "garbage human being." I might think that. But to say it, to expect agreement, is not something I am prepared to do.

People think anti-capitalists are angry, and we are. But do they ask why we are angry? It is an anger born of compassion.

I am an exploited worker. It is not a consensual or equal relationship.

So I wrote a novel where sex trafficking is a metaphor for all capitalism.

What is it like to work wit Actual, Real Life Rentkids?

Why even ask that question?

It's like working with any distressed kid.  Kids are kids. They tantrum and blow up my phone and apologize 20 minutes later hoping I'm not mad at them. They test my patience and my resolve. They make bad decisions and the adults in their lives react to them. Seriously, they're still kids. What happened to them didn't make them something other than kids.

They are searching for connections in a scary and hostile world.

I am much better at managing countertransference and boundaries than I was when I started. So, I do less harm, because I learned a better way. That better way led me to embrace Anarchism, rather than the vaguely left-liberal market socialism I considered ideal when I was younger. I thought I was a radical then. But in ten years, I unlearned a lot of things, and learned many better, more equitable, transformative and healing things.

I am a better social worker and a better human being now. I could not have done this kind of work when I started in case management.

It takes a big heart full of steel, steel forged in the fire of compassion and cooled by cold fury.

Yes, I am full of rage, but I have outlets that are constructive.

We are building the new society within the dying husk of the old.

Do I Believe in UFOs?

 "I believe in UFOs

"Baldheaded men with goldfish bowls

"Tied securely round their waists

"Observing us from outer space."

- Screeching Weasel

"And she bore him a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, 'I have been a stranger in a strange land.'"

- Exodus 2:22

I believe people see things they want to see. I believe that the desire to believe in something bigger than oneself is strong within us. I think that is why many people (though not all) believe in deities. And I think for a lot of people, that may account for wanting to believe in visitors from outer space coming to Earth and interacting with us.

There are many aspects of UFO and Alien Abduction lore that are functionally identical to a religious mythos surrounding a higher power. In this case, the high power is extraterrestrial. And many religions have their own mythos surrounding unidentified objects in the sky. The mythos has inspired New Religious Movements. And it has inspired artists and writers.

Do I believe in other intelligent life in the universe? Probably. It's a strong possibility. But as a Darwinian, I know evolution is not teleological (unless you're Nagel, but I still demand proof of things purportedly outside of nature). So I think it's a strong likelihood that life exists and that if it is common than perhaps intelligence has evolved elsewhere, but I caution that intelligence in the animal kingdom is a spectrum.

There are aspects of Alien Abduction lore that remind me uncomfortably of sexual abuse. I think for some people the trauma of abuse is so strong that they internalize an alternative narrative to cope. The stories of "multiple abductees" and their often brutal and sexually oriented experiences with "aliens" sound a lot like grooming a person from childhood. I don't think this explains all accounts; sleep paralysis is also a likelihood. But it concerns me that this narrative and the subculture around it maybe in the way of dealing with the trauma of abuse.

I have written about abuse in my novel "Rentkids." I deal with abuse and its effects as a social worker in child welfare. If I was to profile these purported alien abductors, I would describe them as predatory personalities, kidnappers, compulsive sexual abusers, and pedophiles/ephebophiles. The stories of the presentation of children onboard the visitors' ships also seem like a common form of gaslighting and possibly also related to sexual trauma as well.

"Rentkids" is a crime novel, a work of political satire, and a space opera, but there are no aliens. It is about human abuse. I wonder if people in the future will still believe in extraterrestrial visitors, or if the apocalyptic UFO mythos will fade when aliens (who, if they exist and are intelligent, maybe too removed from us in space or time period to make contact) fail to materialize and either invade and subjugate or solve the spiritual crises of modernity and make us less alien to each other.

We have to that ourselves, all us "aliens."

For who among us has never been a stranger in a strange land?