May 31, 2013

I think good cops need help getting rid of bad ones.

Workplaces can be very isolating.

Cultures develop around the loudest people, not the best or the most useful or the nicest. The person generating the most output gets all the attention and steers the story towards themselves.

We'll all worked, some of us will have worked in environments with large numbers of employees and I wouldn't be at all surprised if many of us have worked in environments where one loud, idiotic asshole constantly fucked everything up and ruined everything for everyone else. I've had numerous experiences in workplaces where there's a bully at the top stuffing the air with offensive crap, ruining the culture of the entitre place with obnoxious, egotistical garbage. I wouldn't be at all surprised if most police officers were just *itching* to get rid of the jerks in their ranks.

There is a way to get rid of such people, but it's counterintuitive. The emotional response of someone who wants things to be fair and otherwise minds their own business is to localise, the offending behaviour clams them up and the story in their head becomes a confrontational one between them personally and the offender, and THAT's what prevents the offender being ousted.

Actually what needs to happen is the good guys need to recognise the problem, talk about it openly, band together and face it collectively. It can be really hard to do, particularly if you're not from a background that would make you familiar with such processes. It can be seen as a "witchhunt" or "scapegoating".

The most difficult thing is, in order to get it to work, you have to actually play fair with the bully, otherwise you leave them with "ammunition" against you.

All of the difficulties in taking on something like what I've described above are going to be very powerfully compounded by the other eccentricities surrounding pollice work...

May 9, 2013

Do you believe masculinity is a social construct?

If so, I have another question.

Do you believe that homosexuality is innate? Predicated by genes?

If you believe believe both, how did my genes mold my personality into something that was sexually attracted to something artificially constructed by other people?

May 4, 2013

There won't be a revolution.

Firstly, revolutions are dangerous. People get killed, injured, buildings get damaged. Not playing nice. Most ordinary people prefer to play nice.

Secondly, the circumstances under which a revolution would take place are not there, in other words, actual death through actual starvation and a clear narrative path through which the populace can hear such stories and develop an appropriate societal response, which response would never be forthcoming in current western society anyway, because...

Thirdly, the underclass must in some sense be unified by an at least similar set of moral tenets for the revolutionary fevrour to be widely legitimised. A nation entranced by opinions and disagreement at every level will not congeal into a revolutionary force.

Fourthly, there needs to be a socially established vision of a replacement for whatever the revolution is going to kick out of the way. There isn't.

Fifthly, well, you know, it's a lot of hassle.

The right wing twits who think armed revolution is going to fix anything are going to be in for a nasty surprise if they pick any kind of fight witht he US gov. Starbucks + co have paid a lot of money for that gov.

The rest of us... well. Deep down we all know that revolutions don't really work.