Bossily Banned

OK, so I'm and old guy. Been an atheist, agnostic (I know, same thing) and theist at one time or another. Pascal's wager aside, I don't think people score points one way or another based on their belief system. Prior to the midpoint of the 20th century most great scientists were believers in some form of God I suspect. But now in some circles if you believe in any form of God you are considered stupid (talking to your pets, your plants and even trees is still OK though, as is keeping a display case of poorly assembled plastic ships well into your 30’s).

There was a time when being an atheist took guts. Those days are over. Now in some circles saying you believe in God takes guts. It’s a good thing lions haven't been made extinct yet, we may need them again.

So much for religious tribalism.

When I was married, my wife was a feminist. I know that now (I recently asked her just to be sure) but I didn’t know it then. There were a lot of things going on in what came to be known as the “war between the sexes” but not all of them got assigned labels right away.

I remember us arguing over the “Equal Rights Amendment”. She was always going on about it and I was always saying that when these old documents said “men” or “man” any rational modern person should know that it applied to both men and women. She never saw it that way.  Long after we went our separate ways, I see that she was right.

Not one to be afraid of taking both sides of the same argument, when the debate came up about letting gays get “married” I said that the word “married” had a very specific meaning and we shouldn’t go cramming all sorts of other things into that meaning. After all, we didn’t end racism by simply calling “black” people “white” did we? (I actually thought this was a pretty good argument, but only in the sense of winning arguments, not in the sense of being right about the issue).

What it comes down to though is that no amount of changing the definition of words, or not changing the definition of words, or banning them for that matter, will change what (as we used to say) “is in the human heart”.  That takes time. And since some people are never capable of changing their minds about anything, sometimes it just takes a whole generation or three to die off for things to really change so that they can be noticed in our daily lives. We are certainly in such times now.

When I was young, using the N-word (note how I didn’t actually use the word there) was commonplace. Most people using it didn’t even consider it a pejorative term. Back then it was either the N-word, or “negro”, or “colored person”.  Only later were “African American” and “black” invented, and for a while there seemed to be some jockeying around for the category of prefered word.

Our federal government (and others) trying their best to make sure that we weren't racist any more introduced language into every document an American has to fill out trying to ascertain what race they are a member of.  I still haven’t figured that strategy out.

In fact, I find that the best way to avoid problems with all generic forms of tribalism is just to not acknowledge that the various “tribes” exist.  I wouldn’t go up to someone and say “Aren’t you that Mexican plumber that Mrs. Williamson used?”  Throughout the year I run into people of all shapes sizes colors and nationalities and it is almost never necessary to refer to them as anything other than their name, or if you don’t know their name, “sir”, “ma’am”, or “hey you”. Problem solved I would say.

But wait! You might be thinking that I could clean up my language entirely and still be a racist! I don’t have to acknowledge race, sex, religion, or national origin to discriminate against someone. And you’d be right.

Furthermore, if I wanted to impose my prejudices on a very young person I wouldn’t have to use any special terminology at all. The “hints” of racism, sexism, homophobia and all the other phobias and “isms” are all around us, in advertising, TV shows, magazines, and of course the Internet. We are so surrounded by these things that we can’t see the forest for the trees so to speak.

Or to use another corny metaphor, we literally swim in a sea of prejudice, so pervasive that we can’t look away from it. By encouraging a child to watch certain TV shows, play certain games and avoid others, we are sending all sorts of subliminal messages to them. Can anyone say with certainty that they haven’t introduced their child or someone else's to concepts that will hold them back in later life?

All that said, it may surprise anyone who has read this far for me to say I have no problem whatsoever with this “Ban Bossy” campaign. Let me add that this is so even though I have little regard for Sheryl Sandberg, a person who didn’t exactly rise from the worst of circumstances as (according to Wikipedia):  the daughter of a father who was an “ophthalmologist, and her mother has a PhD”. She was able to attend Harvard, and anybody who knows anything knows that the importance of a Harvard degree is about 20% what you know and 80% who you know when you come out. She got to be rich at Google and richer still at Facebook. Her reputation at both places includes that other word that starts with the letter “b”, not just “bossy”.  Her job at Google was marketing related and while she got a nice promotion at Facebook, the one thing you have to admit at this point is that she remembered her marketing skills and still knows how to get people’s attention!

The notion of banning a word (which unlike the N-word has too many generic uses for us to do without) is nothing but a marketing gimmick, and judging from the outrage, a very successful one. We will long since have forgotten the controversy over the word and lingering in many minds will be the notion that maybe, just maybe, we are nudging young children in one direction or another based on an outmoded worldview.

Rest assured, you will still be able to use the word “bossy” in ten years without people giving you dirty looks. It might be good though, if you are a parent or an aunt, uncle or grandparent to not use that word or other pejorative words like it on any of the young people you care for. Can we not all agree on that?

And now for some other, mostly failed, attempts to ban words…

New World, New Paradigm, the Cure for Egalitarianism and a Few Other Things

In spite of my fairly good (I think) vocabulary, this is one of those words I have to look up every time I come across it just to be sure. Like the phrase "that begs the question" that 99.9 percent of the time is used incorrectly, "egalitarianism" is a word that most people use a bit too freely since either they (the user) doesn't know what it means and/or their audience doesn't. Problem is the word just sounds good, even though the image of "eagles" tends to come to mind for me and that only confuses me more when I'm trying to remember the definition. So basically it is a word I can respond to, but not a word I feel comfortable with introducing into a conversation.

Add to that the well worn fact that it can mean at least two different things: "equality of opportunity" or "equality of results" and it becomes even more problematic.

The version that expresses "equality of results" might be considered the shortest possible description of Marxism. Basically everyone shares everything with everyone else, and without complaint.

Of course it has never been achieved, and even Marx/Engels admitted the difficulty in ever achieving it. Their solution which was assembled in haste might have well read like: "Assemble all the requisite components for a strongly state-run economic system (and then a miracle happens) and everyone learns to love one another without reservation and the state dissolves." Um, yeah, pull the other one.

Sounds a bit like a religion that was once more popular than it is now. Not only has it not worked for large countries, it hasn't work for small communes either.

The problem is that each person thinks that they have been short-changed somehow and the people who have to arbitrate this always think they deserve a little bigger piece of the pie for being in that position. In the communes of the 60's there was always at least one "digger" who had to go out into the world and get a real job while the rest could stay home and listen to The Grateful Dead and get stoned.

The other form of egalitarianism "equality of opportunity" is often used to define capitalism. Again, this has never been successfully and completely implemented. This form of capitalism is often called "Darwinian" and you'd think that would at least win some people over. The grand irony is that most people who think that Darwinism was a great way to cause single celled organisms to "evolve" into mankind don't seem to think it's still a good way for mankind to evolve further. At what point did Darwinism fail to operate properly you think (I have only a hunch)?

As Femitheist wisely points out what is the point of defining an ideal that has never been achieved, and more likely can never be achieved? Setting our sights high is one thing, setting them on the impossible is folly. Endlessly (it seams) arguing two diametrically opposed forms of "Perfection" would then seem to be folly squared!

As they say: "The Perfect can become the enemy of the Good."

What we need is a new way to look at things and we need someone who has shown that they can think outside the box to come up with it, or at least point us in the right direction.

I have hope that that person has been located.

Want better returns? Give your money to a woman

This was the title of an NBC article as sourced from Reauters. But variations have shown up all over the place with different slants on the original research. (See links, PDF and selected graphics below).

The women managers didn't just squeak by the overall average for hedge funds, but bested it by almost 60%.

The article goes on to say that for the past six years women run funds returned 6 percent while the overall HFRX average lost 1.1 percent and the Standard and Poors 500 (an average more established funds) only did 4.2 percent.

Rothstein Kass has been producing this report for three years with data going back six years. The latest report continues the story of successful investment strategies managed by women, but also points out that growth in woman managed funds is still slow, but steady.

Unlike the legal profession where women's participation was going asymptotic a few years ago, this is a new field for high level women to enter. With results like this there is little reason to doubt there will eventually be similar rapid gains.  In endeavors where testosterone does not provide an advantage (and as this study indicates may actually provide a disadvantage) there is no reason not to expect a steady rise for the first few years followed by a more rapid rise as these results get more media (and importantly investor) attention.

Can you think of any reason to invest your money where it doesn't produce the best results?  I can't.

I can still remember a time when the primary area for women doctors was in gynecology where women patients felt more comfortable with a woman than a man doing their examinations. But with the advent of HMOs and similar group practices where you do not have an assigned doctor at all times it has become more common for doctors of all kinds to consist of a significant percentage of women. As men become more accustomed to the idea of trusting a female doctor, dentist, tax professional, lawyer or investment adviser it is not unreasonable to expect a "pole reversal" effect where customers of these services, both women and men gravitate to the professionals that they view as most likely to produce the best outcomes for them. Such preferences may be no more rational on a case by case basis than selection criteria of the past, on the other hand consumers like to take shortcuts since they don't have the time to investigate every single provider and furthermore the professions don't always make it easy to view individual results of such providers.

As this momentum builds, young women will see these fields as naturals for their talents while young men may just chose to go elsewhere and those elsewhere jobs may involve an increasing degree of manual labor: construction work, trucking, assembly lines, etc.

Anyone who objects to these societal shifts should keep in mind that there is nothing forced about them. Customers will continue to gravitate to providers where they get the best results, students will gravitate to careers that offer them the best opportunities. The world will go on and each generation will see ahead of them just what they expected to see based on what is happening "now".

For more of what the future holds stay tuned to Fethez and Femitheist resources linked here.

The future starts now.

Resources:

Graphics:

Original NBC Article:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/female-hedge-fund-managers-do-it-better-survey-2D11929573

CNBC:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101337906

Original Reuters Story:

http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USL2N0KO1XR20140115

Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hujsoMtswU

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000236100

Full reports (PDF):

For 2012:

http://www.rkco.com/getattachment/1ca72e70-3f74-4f8e-97f3-165d95738614/Women-in-Alternative-Investments-Building-Momentum

For 2013:

http://www.rkco.com/getattachment/428e7040-4f34-449f-826a-e0305b1970b6/Women-in-Alternative-Investments-A-Marathon-Not-a

Marketwatch Blog:

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/01/16/once-again-women-hedge-fund-managers-beat-the-industry/

On God's Existence, Religion, Science and Current Online Debates About Such

At the risk of total destruction I'm just going to take a few minutes from my house-cleaning to agree with the first poster on Femitheist's blog (here) that this analysis is good, as far as it goes. But also that it needn't go any farther, unless it finds itself wanting to be a life's-work.

I am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes from a long time ago and there was one particular "scene" that impressed me greatly. I had been meaning to look up the whole thing and quote it somewhere but instead, for now, I'll use Google results and point to an otherwise unrelated web page for the gist of it (quoted text in itallics):

Despite being brilliant, the great Sherlock Holmes is an ignoramus when it comes to the astronomical workings of the planets and stars. In the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, he accosts Watson on the subject: "What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."1 Holmes likens his mind to an attic, one he can only fill with the rights kinds of "furniture" necessary for his occupation as the world's first consulting detective. But even if Holmes does get an "F" in astronomy, there's no denying his influence on the genre of science fiction. - See more at:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/britt_11_10/#sthash.TCpZXKBH.dpuf

So, basically, science is useful... when it is useful. At other times, for anyone not making their living doing science it is as much a time waster as religion is, or maybe even more so.  Please do look up the story though to get the full gist of it. I’ll have more to say on it later I think.

I find it so amusing that in all the debates among amateurs lately there is no discussion of the fact that most of the great minds on which our current basic understanding of science (such as laws of thermodynamics etc.) are based were in fact religious people, in many cases very much so.

I may decide to write further on this (and with better attributions) on the on this blog which Femitheist has been kind enough to let me run into the ground so far. I've let it more than languish and it needs either to be awakened or killed.  Maybe in the next week or two (after the holidays). Update: I posted this here for length reasons, but I'll try and do a longer update in the time-frame mentioned.

Suffice it to say that for the average person today (almost) nothing I can think of in our modern life hinges around whether the universe was created by a sentient being or just popped into existence or (as some non-religious scientists once thought) has been around literally forever.  The Big Bang theory in my opinion did more to fan the flames of science vs religion than it did to quell them.

I put the "(almost)" in there because I know that the science of the transistor and all its follow-ons was based on quantum theory and a better understanding of the basic particles that make up our universe will almost certainly find their way into useful devices for us. Bear in mind that I see little in various religious thought that says “don’t do science, it’s dangerous!”  Of the religious people I know very few of them would take any note of the debate of divine creation versus evolution.  Most are quite happy to relegate the first few chapters of the Bible to a mythology which fit the times and minds of the people it was written for (the early Jews).

Personally, I’d find it more meaningful to debate whether life originated on Earth at all, versus came here on an asteroid or some such natural conveyance, or maybe it came here on a spaceship. If,as most scientists and many of not most religious people believe there is life elsewhere in the universe, what makes us think that they have not solved problems we are still working on such as interstellar travel?  There are so many possibilities such as that and I see them all ignored in favor of a 200+ year old debate in which there seems to be “nothing new under the sun”.

But in spite of the fact that Evolution is taught in all American schools, all European schools, and maybe with the exception of Islamic areas, all schools everywhere else as well, we don't really have much to show for it. I would be impressed if we could say that as a results of that teaching we have more scientists or better scientists, but I don't see that.  In fact what I see is that much of science has stalled since last century and in my experience the average "joe" is dumber than he/she has ever been as regarding scientific principles.

When I was in college science fiction authors who are known for accurately predicting the future had posted that we would engage in manned trips to Jupiter's moons by when?  By 13 years ago that’s when.  And by three years ago we were to have gone back to Jupiter with even more impressive equipment, including sentient computers that we are nowhere near developing in the real world.

In the later part of the 20th century our imaginations finally passed a point where our actions could ever (seemingly) catch up.  To put it another way, our reach has finally exceeded our grasp. The question might be asked “is this just a fact of life/science, or is there a sociological explanation for this state of affairs?”  Personally, I think it is the latter.  But the explanation for that is more than I have time for and I think it is much related to Femitheist’s mission, and she is probably far more suited to taking the work there than I could ever be.

I think Femitheist would agree that the current "debates" on the Internet between almost all parties engaging in them is shallow and meaningless. There is nothing being said that wasn't said by far greater minds in the 17th and 18th centuries.  To do it right, you first have to review ALL of that so that you are not just re-covering old ground.  Point me to one or more of the current flock of elevator-gurus who have done that.

Shouldn't we devote more of our time and mental energies to matters pertaining to the future rather than to esoteric arguments of the past?

I think so, and I hope we (as humanity) will get busy with that soon.

Is Patriarchy Dead?

I found this article titled Shocking Women Everywhere, Hanna Rosin Declares Patriarchy Dead interesting. First reaction for many, including me is to say “hell no”!

But then you have to think in terms of other “isms” and “archies” at what point are any of them dead? What unit of measurement do we use? What metric has to drop to zero before something is dead? We've yet to resolve at what exact point humans are dead, or at what point they come alive. The measures we pick are somewhat arbitrary.

If a single practitioner of patriarchy still exists should we say that patriarchy still lives? What if it can be shown that at some point in the future no such people will exist? Can we not say that for all practical purposes it is dead?

Racism has been dying in America for many years. It seem inconceivable that we would backtrack on those changes. But at what point beyond “irreversible” can we all sort of relax and let the rest happen “organically”.

I ask this because I notice that in all social movements there is an almost inevitable backlash. The nature of the backlash is that the more you push against it, the more it tries to push back. Furthermore, as the backlash grows weaker at some point unpleasant things can happen. The group still practicing the what the majority considers to be “undesirable” behavior feels marginalized and may grow ever more violent in their opposition while the new majority point of view may denigrate the minority to an almost subhuman status. We've seen this over and over in history with defeated opposition groups sent to institutions to be “reformed”, “re-programmed”, just left to rot, or killed.

From the general back to the specific, some say that the push to get women into the workforce was a ploy by the Soviets, or by the far left generally to break down the family unit in the United States. Some also say that the very very rich (substitute Illuminati, what have you) want every able bodied person in the workforce as a way to maintain slave wages. I find elements of truth to both of these theories, even though they are at odds with one another. Both can be true to a certain extent (as can other explanations) because the world is a complex place and every issue we have to deal with can be tugged in multiple different directions at once.

To me, if you isolate our considerations to the developed nations of “the west” the genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting “Her” back. But what about the rest of the world where patriarchy clearly is as prevalent as ever?

We live in a time where civilizations are clashing in ways that they never have before. Having filled the earth there is no place for renegade ways of thinking to escape to (at least until major advances in space travel take place). So for the foreseeable future, civilizations with moribund patriarchies are going to rub elbows with civilizations where women are considered property. Because those other civilizations are relatively unchanged from thousands of years ago, while we in the west are still transforming ourselves, we could be at a major disadvantage.

I can see a few ways that this might play out. But I’m not confident in any of my own forecasts. And wishing doesn't make it so.

It seems obvious to me as it must to many feminists that women have been artificially confined to secondary roles for most of human history. In a system where every single individual has complete freedom of action (with physical force taken out of play) women will achieve (and in fact already have) a far more equitable status. Their ascension may in fact continue to the point where they have some degree of supremacy. Trends don’t always continue apace however. Women’s achievements may slow to a halt at the exact position of total equality or may shoot past such a state or may swing in a pendulum fashion never reaching full equilibrium. We just don’t know, and I suspect we can’t know.

I do though think they if we put the emphasis on individual freedom of action foremost in our goals a lot of infighting can be avoided. If women in 2050 are the vast majority of college graduates and corporate managers and there is no law or externality that forces that to be the case, why should anyone now care? If on the other hand, there is systematic discrimination against any group of people for any reason then why shouldn't we all care?

First Off-Topic Post - The Raising of "Good" Citzens

The following has nothing to do with Fethez (or does it)?

As both a man, and a new follower I have to walk a fine line.  The following might be illustrative or it might be provocative.  Does the movement of our current social structure(s) described below by Alexis de Tocqueville represent something that we as Fethez should be alarmed about or is it simply a description of the path toward New Society?   I can see bits of both.  Both matriarchy and patriarchy imply a parental relationship between citizens and society.  Is the debate more about loss of freedom, or is it more the case that loss of freedom is inevitable and one must seek to lose it to those more worthy than others.  I struggle with this.  (Please don't be sidetracked by the anachronistic terminology "manhood", "man", "men", etc.  If stated today I am sure other words would have been used.)

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

On this blog we will be discussing (among other things) the ramifications for men of the Fethez philosophy.

We will dispel the mythology surrounding early formulations and talk about how this plan will play out in the future as well as how it is playing out at this very moment.

Make no mistake about it, this future is inevitable if we don't want the world to self-destruct.  Men should embrace this inevitability as the benefits accrue to both men and women of the future.  And that is the key, to build a viable future, rather than the one we face now of ever deepening despair.