Analogy for why I didn't convert to another xian denomination

In the past, people have suggested that my leaving catholicism for atheism was rash and closed-minded, and that I should have tried other denominations of xianity first.

As I've blogged about before, I view catholicism as an abusive ex. I view the other denominations of xianity as his brothers. Now we all know that siblings don't always have a lot in common. We all know that's it's very possible for one sibling to be a complete asshole while all the others are perfectly nice guys. And there is room for the possibility that your abusive ex's brother might be a perfect match for you. However, that doesn't mean that your first step should by default be to date your ex's brother. Most people would agree that the reasonable step at this point would be to spend some time being single, or to date someone who is completely unlike your ex. Even in a Jane Austen matchmaking-über-alles world, it is by no means closed-minded or judgemental or indiligent to move on to someone completely else rather than systematically trying out every brother.

If you don't see the fallacy of this xiancentric approach, look at it from the other perspective. Suppose you have a real asshole of a brother who is abusive to his spouse. His spouse finally leaves him. Do you expect the spouse to start dating you? Do you feel personally dissed if they don't automatically start dating you to see if you're a better match than your brother?

Childfree for Dummies: Part III

Think about porcupines. They're cool and interesting and can be cute, especially when they're little. If you're walking down the street and you see one, you totally give it a second look and maybe even stop to interact, and as long as nothing goes egregiously wrong it's a pleasant experience that makes a good story to tell when asked how your day was.

However, you don't particularly want one of your own. If you found one, it would never occur to you to keep it. If one popped up in your house one day, you'd probably get rid of it. And you certainly don't feel at all deprived for not owning a porcupine.

How you feel about porcupines here is the same as how I feel about children.

Analogy for why Canada needs to help Omar Khadr

Suppose you have underage nieces/nephews. Due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, their parents (i.e. your siblings) are unable to provide them with some necessity - food, shoes, education, dental work, something that children should reasonably be able to expect their guardians to provide. You are able to provide this necessity to these kids, and the amount of sacrifice required to do so is well within acceptable parameters. So you totally do it, unhesitatingly. There is no question.

Now suppose, instead of being due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, the inability to provide is a direct result of your siblings' actions. They've been total dickheads, done stuff that you think is not only idiotic but morally wrong and reflects poorly on all of you, completely fucked up so badly their reputation will never recover, and they've brought their kids into it and gotten them thinking these reprehensible actions are not only normal but laudable. And as a result of these actions, their children are lacking this necessity.

You still totally have to help the children. There's no question. Yeah, you might get a bit cranky about having to spend your hard-earned money just because your asshat sibling fucked up. Yeah, it's frustrating when the kids start spouting their parents' propoganda. But you have to at least give it a try, maybe use your influence to introduce the kids to other points of view and ways of life. You can always cut them off later if they prove as incorrigible as their parents. You certainly don't just ignore the fact that they're doing without school supplies just because you don't like their parents.

Similarly, we shouldn't be refusing to help Omar Khadr just because we don't like his parents or because he was in a situation that he was forced into by his parents.

Half-formed analogy

This one's not perfectly formed yet, but I think it might be productive so I'm posting it.

Yesterday I was kind of drained from all the xmas, plus my muscles were achy and I didn't have much of an appetite. So I spent the day alone with no interpersonal contact whatsoever, ate ridiculously little food, and went to bed way early to sleep myself better.

No one would ever dispute that it was entirely my right to spend the day that way.

However, I'm sure everyone would agree that I in no way have the right to make other people spend the day without human contact, eat no more than half a meal during the entire day, and go to bed way earlier than they usually do. It would also be exceeding my authority if I were to pressure other people into implying that they were going to spend the day this way, or set up situations where their presence or not-rocking-the-boat would imply that they were planning to spend the day this way and they'd have to make a Big Hairy Deal to ensure that people don't interpret their actions that way.

Some people say that atheists are trying to stop xians from enjoying xmas, but that's not what we're doing. We just don't want to do xmas ourselves, and don't appreciate our actions or quiet cooperation being considered part of xmas.

You don't care that I spent my day like I did, but you probably wouldn't want to spend your day the same way. You'd probably also be a little irked if every time in the two months before boxing day, if you walk past the store without buying food, people assume that this means you plan to not eat very much on boxing day.

Separatist vs. souverainiste: an analysis

I've been trying to wrap my brain around the meaningfulness of separatist vs. souverainiste. My problem is that I was trying to think this through from a position of hegemony. I was assuming that my English was standard, and I was thinking in terms of "What was their reasoning in referring to the separatists as sovereigntists?"

I've been thinking and doing some research, and I've discovered the problem is that the meaning of "separatist" and "sovereigntist" in my English is skewed, and the real question to be asking is "What was their reasoning in referring to the people in question as separatists?"

Forget everything you know about Quebec for a second. In the world at large and in the English language in general, "separatist" is negative and "sovereigntist" is positive.

Separatists want to break away from something to which they belong, to destroy an existing union, The connotations are usually a bit extremist and a bit irrational (think Basque separatists, white separatists, black separatists, Tamil separatists, etc. etc.)

"Sovereignty," on the other hand, is a good thing. One's sovereignty over one's own body. Canada's sovereignty over its northern waters. Sovereigntists want to preserve their existing rights and freedoms.

They are two separate concepts. They are separate concepts in most parts of the English-speaking world, and they are separate concepts in cognate languages, including French.

(Now you can remember everything you know about Quebec again.)

However, we Anglo-Canadians are so used to hearing the word sovereignty used to describe Quebec separation (which, rightfully or wrongfully, we do perceive as a threat) that we tend to forget its positive connotations and immediately equate it with this perceived threat. It's like the words "life" and "choice" when discussing abortion. If abortion is the topic of discussion and one of those words comes up, it is not going to be taken neutrally.

So because we equate this positive word "sovereignty" with Quebec separation, we don't always distinguish between "separatist" and "sovereigntist". Certainly both words can be used very deliberately and advisedly in our English, but they can also be used mindlessly and interchangeably. Again, think about about the terms "pro-life" and "anti-abortion". Sometimes (depending on speaker, audience, situation, context) the choice of one or the other is meaningful and politicized. But sometimes it's just the word the speaker happens to land on.

Analogy: "sovereigntist" is like "potato chips". "Separatist" is like "junk food." They can be used to describe the same concept and they can both be used positively, negatively or neutrally depending on speaker/audience/situation/context, but the second one is generally more negative.

So what does this mean for Stephen Harper's speeches? I can't tell you. Why? Because I don't know how mindfully he chose the word "separatists" instead of "sovereigntists" in English. He (or his speechwriters) might have just grabbed the first word that came to mind. They might have chosen it to demonize the Bloc as much as possible. They might have chosen it because the people in question tend to refer to themselves as souverainistes and they don't want their base to view them as sympathetic. I have no way of knowing.

So how did the French end up being souverainistes? At some point someone changed it. Was this cunning and manipulative? There is, of course, room for it to have been, but it was not necessarily. It is a perfectly normal part of the French translator's job to make minor stylistic tweaks, and to be the one to realize "That line may play in Canmore, but not in Baie-Comeau" and edit it to something that will get the desired reaction from the Francophone audience. That's why you want mother-tongue translators. From a translational perspective, changing separatists to souverainistes is morally equivalent to altering a line that is a political catchphrase in the target language but politically neutral in the source language, or changing an abbreviation so it isn't a dirty word in the target language. Whenever it's in question, you always err on the side of not making people look like dickheads.

Was the PM aware of the different connotations? I have no way of knowing. I know that any sensible person does review their translated speeches before delivering them. I know that souverainiste is harder for an Anglophone to pronounce than séparatiste (sometimes this is a factor in word choices for speeches, sometimes not - I have no idea if it is for Mr. Harper). I know that Mr. Harper is coming from the same English as I am, so he may well not immediately recognize that separatist and souverainiste are in fact different concepts (I never thought about it before this speech happened).

So the take-away:

sovereigntist = potato chips
separatist = junk food

There is room for the difference in word choices to be calculating and manipulative, and there is room for it to be perfectly innocent. It all depends not on why they decided to refer to the junk food as potato chips, but on how mindful they were in choosing to call it junk food in the first place.

And regardless of any motives or lack thereof in word choice, the impact of the use of separatist and souverainiste is negligible when compared with the impact of all Mr. Harper's other comments on the Bloc's alignment with the coalition.

Analogy for how my atheism works

This analogy may not apply to everyone in the world's atheism, and it obviously won't work with everyone's gender identity. But I'm putting it out there because it might help explain the concept to a lot of people.

I am atheist the same way I am female. I just am. I can't be anything else. I could perhaps pretend to be something else if I wanted to, but that wouldn't actually make me something else.

Some people try to talk me out of my atheism because they perceive there to be a god. But no matter how strongly they believe there is a god, that isn't going to make me capable of the same faith. (Believe me, I've tried.) This is just like how no matter how strongly other people believe themselves to be male, it isn't going to make me male.

Some people try to convince me that I will one day find religious faith on the basis that they themselves used to be atheist and then found religious faith. However, the fact that they found this faith doesn't mean that I will. There are people with female bodies like mine who have come to the realization that they are actually male, but that doesn't mean that I will one day come to the same realization.

Some people tell me that it's irrational to be atheist because one has no way of knowing for certain that there is in fact no god. I could respond to this by citing empirical evidence, but ultimately the fact that it cannot be proven for certain is irrelevant. I simply cannot be anything else because I am incapable of religious faith. Similarly, I can't prove or justify my gender. I could point to empirical evidence of my physiological sex, but I have no way of proving that I do actually identify as female. But I simply cannot be anything else.

Childfree for Dummies

Suppose I was standing before you with a pregnant belly, or with three preschoolers like my grandmother had at my age, or with my 10-year-old daughter like someone I went to high school with has right now. Wielding my sprog, I announce "I know what's best for my children!" A critical mass of humanity immediately rallies behind me, don't they?

That's exactly what I'm doing now. I do know what's best for my children, and that's that I don't have any children.

Suppose I have a child, and I put arbitrary limitations on this child in order to protect them. They have to be in bed by 8:00. They can only go trickertreating on these two streets and they have to be back by 7. They can't go to a friend's house unless I've met that friend's parents. Even if these limitations might seem overprotective or potentially hinder their fun, it's still being a good parent, isn't it? After all, I'm the grownup, I know more about what the world is like than they do, and it's my job to calculate the risk. I only want what's best.

That's exactly what I'm doing now. Knowing what the world is like, I've made the decision to keep my ova inside my ovaries. It is true that there is more potential for fun outside the ovaries, but I'm the grownup, I've calculated the risk, and they're staying inside my ovaries. I only want what's best.

Of all the people in the world, I'm the one who knows the most about my genetics, my personality, my strengths and weaknesses, and everything else about my reality. After all, I live inside it every day, while everyone else is just looking in from the outside. I am the most qualified person to decide whether this is a situation worth subjecting an innocent child to.

And if for whatever reason you think my judgement is so bad that I can't evaluate my reality nearly as well as you can, why on earth would you want an innocent child completely at the mercy of my judgement for at least nine months, with repercussions that would last their entire lifetime?

Analogy for opting out of Pascal's Wager

Previously I blogged about how the flaw with Pascal's Wager is that the best a person without faith can do is go through the motions of having faith, which is utter hypocrisy and not about to fool the deity anyway (and isn't it terribly disrespectful to the deity to presume to fool it just by putting on an act?)

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

Suppose you have a military in a society that values being a big brave strong soldier. There are also some pacifists in this society. Some of the pacifists opt out of joining the military, claiming conscientious objector status, and simply go about their everyday lives as usual even if it does attract scorn from society. However, other pacifists still want the societal respect that comes with being a big brave strong soldier, so they join the military. However, they don't care about achieving the military's goals or getting the job done, they just care about appearances. So they do the absolute minimum they can get away with and only when someone is looking. They use any excuse to get out of doing their duty. They don't care about the cause, they don't care about their buddies, they just care that people will look at them and go "Look, a big brave strong soldier!"

Now it's true that in some cases these closeted pacifist soldiers might still be helpful - sometimes you just need manpower - but mostly they're detrimental to your military's mission and reputation. And even if you don't agree with their pacifism, isn't what the conscientious objectors are doing more honourable?

Open letter to religious people trying to say nice things to atheists

Telling an atheist that you're sure they'll find god soon is a dis. I know it doesn't sound that way to you. I know you think you're saying "This great and wonderful thing that changed my life will happen to you soon!" But to an atheist whose atheism came from careful thought (and I don't know any whose didn't, although I'd imagine it could also be the result of growing up in a household without religion), it sounds like anything from "Soon you'll see that I'm right and you're wrong!" to "Soon you'll come to realize what a wonderful man your abusive ex is and go crawling back to him!" Just...don't say it.

Edited to add the most obvious analogy in human history: religious people, how would you feel if smiling and enthusiastically told you that I'm sure you'll lose your religion soon?

Analogy for the anti-circumvention clause

Making it illegal to circumvent technological anti-copying measures is like making it illegal to pick locks. Yes, a person could pick a lock as part of breaking into a house. But they could also pick a lock when they've accidentally locked themselves out of their own house. The breaking and entering is the actual problem (and is already illegal), the lock-picking isn't a problem in and of itself even though it can be (and most often is) used as part of an illegal act. Making lock-picking illegal would just make innocent and harmless activities illegal for no good reason. It would be more effective to increase the punishment for or enforcement of breaking and entering rather than adding an additional lock-picking charge.

The fine for circumventing technological controls is $20,000, which is 40 times the fine for simple piracy for personal use ($500). With our lock-picking analogy, that would be like if you walk into someone else's unlocked house and steal something, you go to jail for a year. But if you pick a lock - any lock, even on your own house - you go to jail for 40 years.

Now suppose you've locked yourself out of your car one cold winter's morning. But your next-door neighbour left their car warming up in their driveway, engine running and doors unlocked. And your across-the-street neighbour is a nosy cop and you can see him looking out the window. You'd go to jail for 40 years for picking a lock, but only 1 year for stealing a car. So do you try to break into your own car, or do you take next-door's car?

Half-mast

Half-masting the flag on Remembrance Day only is like going to church on xmas and easter only.
Half-masting the flag as needed every time there's a significant death is like humbly praying to your god every time you genuinely feel the need for guidance.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only is like buying your partner a dozen red roses on Valentine's Day and never doing anything romantic for them the rest of the year.
Half-masting as needed is like buying your partner a bouquet of these really cool-looking blue flowers you saw, just because you were thinking today at work how wonderful it is to have such an awesome partner.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only is like calling your mother because it's Mother's Day.
Half-masting as needed is like calling your mother because you thought she'd enjoy your story about the funny thing that happened on the way home from work.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only is like buying your friend a gift certificate to Indigo for their birthday.
Half-masting as needed is like noticing when your friend mentions "Oh, there was this book I had as a kid that I really liked, I forget what it was called but there were blue people in it, and a monkey and a dog," then googling madly and asking reference librarians and finally finding the title and going through three ebay bidding wars to get it for them for their birthday.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only is like telling your kid you're proud of them on their graduation.
Half-masting as needed is like telling your kid you're proud of them when you caught them doing something innocuous yet surprisingly mature when they didn't know you were watching.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only will not make it more meaningful; quite the contrary. Removing all thought from something, making it nothing more than a clockwork ritual, can only take away from its meaning.

Analogy for profanity

Swear words are like hammers. They vary in size and quality - "hell" is one of those little hammers (mallets?) your doctor hits your knee with, while "cunt" is a sledgehammer. Obviously it's unhelpful to go around hitting things with hammers when they need to be tightened with a screwdriver or cut with a saw, but this doesn't mean no one should ever use a hammer ever.

Half-formed idea: a fetus is a positive physical attribute

So I've been thinking about this Bill C-484 thing. I see what they're trying to do, so I've been trying to think of another way to define the fetus that would satisfy the perfectly understandable desire to see people who hurt unborn babies punished, without creating legislative definitions. Yeah, because I'm SO qualified to think of tenuous legal language like that.

Anyway, the idea I'm currently mulling over is that a fetus should be thought of as a positive physical attribute.

We all have a few positive physical attributes. For example, I have a beautiful smile, spectacular breasts, and long silky hair. (And a surfeit of humility). Now most people in the world think these are positive things. There are one or two family members who I suspect aren't too thrilled with the breasts but are too polite to say anything, and my grandmother has said outright that she thinks the length of my hair is disgraceful (ironically, this rather closely mirrors what the reaction would be if I were pregnant), but the vast majority of people see these things a positive, or at least can understand why I like them.

However, I have every right to destroy them if I want. I could pull out all my teeth, get a preventive masectomy, and shave my head. And that is absolutely without question my right, and in no world would it be illegal for me to do any of those things. Futhermore, it is absolutly without question legal for my dentist, doctor, and hairdresser respectively to do those things for me at my request. Some people may question getting these things done electively, some individual practitioners may refuse to help me, but once I can find someone to do it there is no question that they were behaving legally.

But if some other person pulled out my teeth, cut off my breasts, and shaved my head without my consent, that would be bizarre and weird and creepy and clearly illegal.

And if someone attacked me, and as a side-effect of their attack I lost my teeth, breasts, and hair, that would surely make their crime come across as worse. Again, I don't the exact legal terms, but it would be a big part of the victim impact. Any decent prosecuting attorney would show the jury a picture of me posing like a movie star to show off my figure to its best advantage, a veela smile on my face and the ends of my hair grazing my hips, then have them compare it with the bald, toothless, flat-chested woman on the witness stand. And that would surely make the crime look worse than if I had come out looking exactly the same.

Now you're thinking "You shallow bitch, a baby is FAR more important than your hair!" Which is perfectly true, and which is why these things would be evaluated in a matter of degrees rather than as a true or false question. If my attacker had simply shaved my head or pulled out my hair, that wouldn't be judged as nearly as bad as if he had knocked out my teeth. You wouldn't assume that the attacker would be punished the same for pulling out my hair as for knocking out my teeth, nor would he be punished the same for killing my unborn child. Same concept, different degree.

Analogy for why I am not a musician

In Grade 12, my English teacher made us memorize the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet, which was a perfectly normal assignment. On the test, we had to write out the soliloquy. Perfectly reasonable, right? Except that he was also marking us on whether we had memorized the exact punctuation! This was really surprising, since he also taught Drama, so I figured he would appreciate that the punctuation is not that relevant. As long as you know the words and understand their meaning and emotional arc, it doesn't matter if there's a period or a comma or a semi-colon or a colon or a dash between "To be or not to be" and "that is the question".

I stopped music when I came to the realization that I was never expressing myself artistically or creatively through that medium. I know other people do, but it doesn't work that way for me. When I worked on music - and I did have to practice and work extremely hard just to be competent - it was like memorizing the punctuation in Shakespeare. The more I worked the more I knew about music, the more familiar I was with the mechanics of the piece, the better I could play the piece, the more it became something my fingers could do automatically without involving my brain, but it was never artistic or creative. It never had soul, just like memorizing the punctuation in Shakespeare isn't going to give your performance soul.

Now I'm quite good at learning new things. I can pick up a book and learn fingerings and/or embouchure, then pick up an instrument and practice relentlessly, and with hard work I will eventually be able to play all the notes as written. But that doesn't make me a musician any more than a voice synthesizer reciting Shakespeare is an actor. I can learn knowledge and technical skills, but I can't fake having soul. I had to leave the church for that reason, and I also had to stop being a musician for that reason.

This always reminds me of this commercial. She wanted to be a gymnast, she was too tall, so she ended up being a pole vaulter. So impossible is nothing? No...being a gymnast was impossible because she was too tall. You can't set out to do one thing, fail, end up doing a completely different thing, and declare success on that basis. I can't go around saying "I always wanted to be a musician but I don't have the soul for it, so I ended up being a translator. See, you can do anything you put your mind to!" Not that people should be castigated when their original plans don't work out so they switch directions to something more suitable, but you can't use that situation to illustrate the idea that impossible is nothing.

Another belated analogy

I previously blogged about the concept of ad-hominem self-righteousness.

It occured to me today that the real problem is that people who practise ad-hominem self-rightousness then get grumpy when other people aren't on their side. If you want to go it alone, be as "I'm right because I'm me!" as you want. But if you want other people on-side, you have to give them something more to convince them.

It's like if I were trying to convince y'all of something, and I said "I'm clearly right here, because I'm the smartest person in this conversation." The only people who would agree with me are the people who already believe that I'm the smartest person in this conversation. If I want to convince people who don't believe that I'm smarter than them, I have to give them some other reason why I'm right. Otherwise, it's just as convincing as saying "We must remove all troops from Afghanistan because the sky is maroon."

Belated analogy

A long time ago, I proposed that we should expect the impossible from our political leaders.

I now have an analogy. Imagine you have a health problem where you have no idea what it is or how to fix it. Despite the fact that you don't have the specific knowledge of how to do so, you expect the doctor to be able to figure out what it is and how to fix it. That's what she went to all the medical school for, and why she gets to be a doctor. It is perfectly reasonable to ask her to fix a medical problem you have no idea how to fix, and it is perfectly reasonable to ask her to do so in a way that minimizes the impact on your golf game because golf is one of your priorities in life.

Similarly, it should be considered perfectly reasonable to demand that our political leaders fix problems in a way that is consistent with our priorities, even if we, personally, can't figure out a way to do so ourselves.

What it's like to hate sports

Every time I blog about how being forced to do sports just makes you hate it (like I did below), I inevitably get backlash from people who love sports. There's a key miscommunication here: people who love sports simply cannot conceptualize what it's like to hate sports. They have this idea that sports are fun, and they don't seem able to see the other side. This is a problem because all the expert-consultant-type people on trying to make society more active are all phys. ed. teacher/kineseology student types, all of whom enjoy sports, because if they didn't enjoy sports they would ahve picked another profession.

So here are some truths you need to understand for us to have a reasonable dialogue about physical activity:

- Physical activity is not fun. If I happen to be having fun doing some sport or active game, it's despite the fact that it involves physical activity, not because of it.
- If you increase the physical exertion or competitiveness involved in something I enjoy, I will enjoy it less.
- If I am bored, doing physical activity will not make me less bored. In fact, it will probably make me more bored, because part of my brain has to focus on the physicality of the activity, which reduces my ability to think my own thoughts.
- If you said to me "Hurry up, you have to do [insert sport here] right now, this is your last chance ever in your life to do [insert sport here]!" I wouldn't be motivated to change my plans. There is no sport or physical activity in the world that I care about or enjoy enough that I'd even blink if I never had the chance to do it again. With many sports, I'd rejoice in the fact that I never have to do it again.
- If you said to me "Hurry up, this is your last chance to do any sports at all ever again!", I still wouldn't be motivated to change my plans for the same reason listed above. Again, I'd probably rejoice.
- For me, physical activity is a chore. It's like doing the dishes or taking out the recycling. If you gave me a choice between the dishes doing themselves for the rest of my life or never having to do physical activity for the rest of my life, I would pick no physical activity, without hesitation.
- For me, physical activity is undignified. Sweating, running after a ball, stretching - they aren't the sort of thing I want people to see me doing. Putting me in a situation where other people can see me doing physical activity is as humiliating to me as having those people watch me take a dump or getting a pap smear or drooling in the dentist's chair.

At this point, all you sports-lovers out there are saying "But that's not true!" But this is my point: even if these statements aren't true for you, they are true for me, just like for me olives and cantaloupe are yucky. If you want to cook a dish I'll enjoy, you have to take as a given that olives and cantaloupe are yucky; if you want to create a physical activity scheme that will work for me, you have to take as a given that these statements are true and plan accordingly.

***

ETA: Same thing, but in analogy form.

You've never been too fond of scrubbing the floor. You've been exposed to it your whole life as your parents exposed you to most aspects of everyday life, but you've never really liked it. If you could choose anything to do in the whole wide world, you would never choose to scrub the floor.

However, they recently did some studies that found that the nation's floors are perilously dirty, so they added floor-scrubbing to the school curriculum.

Floor-scrubbing classes made you start to actively hate scrubbing the floor. You had to wear this ugly floor-scrubbing apron and use this grungy industrial sponge that everyone else in the school has used for the past who-knows-how-many years. Your teacher would stand over you and yell at you whenever you missed a spot, even if it was just that you hadn't gotten to that spot yet. Your knees always hurt if you kneel a long time, but if you don't stay on your hands and knees you lose marks for poor technique; this results in a grade that's significantly lower than all your other marks, and brings down your overall average. Plus, your classmates have always tormented you at the slightest opportunities, and floor-scrubbing class gives them a lot of fodder. They mock you for being in the undignified hands-and-knees position, they poke at your bum (and the teacher deducts marks for poor technique if you use a position that protects your bum), they throw dirty water at you when the teacher's back is turned, they deliberately walk on your section of floor with their dirty shoes...

So when you've completed your final mandatory floor-scrubbing class, you're ecstatic.

From then on, you do everything possible to avoid scrubbing the floor. You take on other chores instead, leaving the floor-scrubbing for your roommates. Once you move into your own apartment, you vacuum and mop and spot-clean, avoiding scrubbing unless absolutely necessary. Your floor is clean enough for your purposes - there's certainly nothing unsanitary about it - but it will never be as clean as the floors of those people who love scrubbing the floor, and scrub it on their hands and knees every day. And you're fine with that, you don't need it to be surgically clean. (In fact, secretly and to yourself, you kind of think that people who keep their floors surgically clean must be rather dull individuals, and you have no desire to meet or socialize with such people.)

Then one day you see a newspaper article about the shameful state of the nation's floors. Some floor-scrubbing experts - the kind of people who love floor-scrubbing so much they studied it at a post-secondary level - are recommending that floor-scrubbing be manadatory year-round throughout students' entire educational careers. It's also offering parents tax credits for enrolling their kids in after-school floor-scrubbing classes - but only for the kind of floor-scrubbing that's on your hands and knees with a sponge. If the kids prefer mopping - or if they prefer to learn how to cook or garden instead - the parents don't get any tax credits.

Do you really think these additional measures are going to help? Or do they just strike you as cruel humiliations that will just make those kids hate scrubbing the floor as adults?

Why introverts find social interaction draining

When I was googling information on introversion recently, I found a number of comments from extroverts who simply could not fathom how introverts can find social interaction draining. I've been mulling this over, and I think I can explain. However, it requires a triple analogy. Please note that this is for casual acquaintances and strangers only - the dynamic is somewhat different for intimates, as I'll explain after I've presented the analogies.

Picture how you'd feel in each of these situations:

1. You're not at all hungry, but you're in a situation where you're being offered food and it would be rude to refuse.
2. You're a performer in a musical theatre extravaganza, but you've only seen your own lines, score, and choreography, and haven't rehearsed at all.
3. You're engaging in a sex act that will give your partner an orgasm, but cannot possibly give you an orgasm.

Imagine experiencing all these feeling simultaneously, and you've got how an introvert feels when interacting socially with casual acquaintances and strangers.

I will elaborate:

1. Being offered food when you're not hungry

Maybe you're just standard "not hungry", maybe you've just finished a big meal and you're trying to figure out how to discreetly loosen your pants. At any rate, if you were left to your own devices it certainly wouldn't occur to you to seek out food, and if there were a plate of food in front of you, you'd have no particular need to take a nibble. However, you're in a delicate social situation where it would be rude to refuse, so you take some food. Maybe it's really good, maybe it's mediocre, maybe it's disgusting. Maybe you have a bite and you feel okay you didn't particularly need it, maybe it's just too much and the thought of taking more nauseates you, maybe it's surprisingly good and you wouldn't mind having more when you're hungry, but you're really kind of full now. Eating the food may be more enjoyable than you thought, or nauseatingly difficult, or just meh, but the fact is that you didn't need it, and if you hadn't been offered any food you wouldn't be missing it.

The food is social interaction. Introverts very rarely need social interaction. Personally, I don't start wishing for social interaction until I've gone about five days without any human contact, and then an hour on ICQ with a close friend will take the edge off so I can function. When I do have social interaction it may be good, bad, or neutral, and I may have the energy to handle it just fine or I may be absolutely exhausted and desperately looking for an out. If it's exceptionally good, I might come out feeling better, but if it's bad or neutral I'll come out feeling worse. Whatever the result, I didn't go into the situation needing or wanting social interaction, and if there had been no social interaction I wouldn't miss it.

2. You're on stage and you've only seen your part of the script

You've only seen your own lines, and don't know what your cues are going to be. You have the sheet music for your own songs, but you don't know if it's a solo or if you're in the chorus. You have your own choreography and stage directions, but you don't know who or what else is going to be on the stage. Oh, and the pages of all this material are not numbered, so you're not sure if you have it in the right order. You've never rehearsed - you don't even know what the plot is or who your character is - and then you're thrust on stage and you have to improvise.

Casual social interaction does not come naturally to introverts. Because I don't need it, I can't just apply "Do unto others," as my golden rule instincts are telling me that social interaction would be unwelcome. So, to produce the requisite small-talk, it's constant improvisation, constant self-monitoring, constant thinking on my feet. I have a small corpus to work with, but I have to stay on my toes and consciously decide how the material I have fits into my current situation. For example, here's my background train of thought as I ride the elevator with a colleague:

"The back of my bra is riding up - will anyone see if I pull it back down? What's she saying? Oh, she's mentioned that she moved. An appropriate follow-up question would be to ask her where she moved to. Oops, now I'm in the very front of the elevator and the people behind me will need to get off first. How can I tell who wants to get off first? Which way should I step? She moved to Brampton? Why would anyone move there? What do I say in response to that? Oops, sorry lady, didn't mean to stand right in front of you, I wasn't sure which way I was supposed to step. Brampton, no, I've never actually been to Brampton. What can I say now? What's Brampton like? Okay, if I stand over here in the corner and let her off the elevator first, then I can pull the back of my bra down before I leave the elevator."

And it's like this all the time, whenever I'm doing any social interaction. I can't just talk mindlessly, (I've heard that extroverts can - is that true?) I have to work at it.

3. You're doing a sex act that cannot possibly give you an orgasm

Maybe you enjoy giving your partner pleasure but you don't particularly care for the act itself, maybe you're doing it out of duty, maybe it's kind of fun although certainly not orgasmic. At any rate, your partner is going to have an orgasm, but you're not. It simply does not stimulate the areas that need to be stimulated to give you an orgasm. And, because of the complexity of the act, there is no way for you to apply a little bit of friction to help yourself along without neglecting your partner.

Social interaction gives extroverts what Marti Olsen Laney calls "Hap Hits" - brain chemical reaction thingies that make you feel good. (There's a far more grownup explanation in her book, but I never took psych or biology, so my understanding of the science falls just short of being able to explain it to others. It is somehow related to dopamine.) Introverts don't get this. Maybe I'm doing my social interaction out of duty, maybe I'm glad it's entertaining the other people, maybe it's even fun, but it is not going to give me Hap Hits. I get my Hap Hits from being alone, without too much stimulation, and just being able to think. I get into a sort of calm and happy place, and then I can mull things over and think of new ideas and spontaneously solve translation problems that are sitting on my desk at work. (If you've been reading a while, you've probably noticed my Things They Should Invent - they come from this happy introvert place. So did this intricate analogy.) However, I can't do this while engaging in social interaction, and I can rarely do it while out in public (unless I'm in a situation where I'm sitting quietly and am not required to interact with or be observed by others). Just talking to others or determining whether I need to talk to others or walking down a busy street without getting in anyone's way stimulates too much of my brain, and I can't get to my happy place because there's too much else going on. While social interaction gives extroverts their Hap Hits, it actually prevents me from getting mine. Which is fine, (after all, you can't be having an orgasm every minute of the day) but it's never actually going to be stimulating.

Added bonus analogy: Let's go back to the sex act that gives your partner an orgasm but cannot give you one:

Partner: Hey, you know what? You should have an orgasm while we're going this! It's a lot more fun that way!

You: I can't, this doesn't stimulate the right parts of my body. If we do something else I can have an orgasm, but not while we're going this.

Partner: Come on, you just need to make an effort! Anyone can have an orgasm while doing this if they only put their mind to it!

You: No, actually it's physically impossible for me to have an orgasm while we're doing this. See the how my body is positioned? See how your body is positioned? See how all the parts of both our bodies that could possibly stimulate me, as well as the bedposts and the sex toys and the various other bedroom accoutrements are all fully occupied with stimulating you, and cannot possibly be reassigned to stimulate me in a way that would lead to orgasm without ceasing to stimulate you and completely changing the nature of this surprisingly intricate sex act.

Partner: No, if I can have an orgasm while engaging in this specific sex act, anyone can, including you! It's all your fault that you're not - if you were less stubborn and more open-mined, you'd be having an orgasm to! In fact, how dare you not have an orgasm for the sole purpose of spiting me!

This is what it's like when extroverts try to convince introverts that they need to work at becoming more extroverted.

So, in summary: Under most circumstances, introverts have no particular need for social interaction, it's hard work that requires constant effort and doesn't allow us to let our guard down for a minute, and it doesn't give us Hap Hits and prevents us from doing things that do give us Hap Hits. Even if it is a pleasant social interaction, the net effect is still draining.

So how's it different for close friends?

1. I'm still not hungry, but my close friends are the food that I have cravings for. The closer the friend, the stronger the craving. If I'm on my period and I've had a rough day, I'm probably craving Lays Salt & Vinegar Chips, and I'll eat any available unless I'm painfully full. You're probably sitting there saying "But I'm good food too!" You may well be. Maybe you're the best sushi in the world. But I'm not craving sushi, I'm craving Salt & Vinegar. Maybe if I eat some sushi I'll start developing cravings for it, but most likely I won't since I have all the craveable foods I need, as I have all the friends I need. So as it stands, I'm full, so I don't want to eat your sushi - not even the best sushi in the world - because then I won't have any room for Salt & Vinegar (i.e. I'll be too tired and cranky to be civil company for mi cielito.)

2. I still don't know the plot of the play, but my close friends are very good at doing improv with me. We've performed together before and gotten quite used to each others styles. They know how to cue me without breaking character. If I mess up, they use their l33t impr0v sk1llz to smoothly incorporate my gaffes into the performance. You're probably sitting there saying "But I know how to improv too!" and I'm sure you do - I always depend on everyone else's improv skills to get me through the performance - but my friends and I have worked together longer and it's much easier for me to work with them.

3. I'm still not going to have an orgasm doing this, but mi cielito knows how to make me feel good. He knows certain ways to touch me that aren't orgasmic, but are still rather happy and tingly. He knows my secret fantasy scenarios. He knows that if we do this one thing before and this other thing after, I'll enjoy the nonorgasmic sex act a lot more. Similarly, my close friends know how to keep me from getting overwhelmed, they're used to my sense of humour and the way I think so I can just blurt out anything that comes to mind without having to worry about whether it's appropriate small talk, and I can back off or zone out as needed without having to worry that they'll get offended or start thinking something's wrong with me. You're probably sitting there saying "But I want to help make the social experience good for you too!" I'm sure you do, but you don't know how. Your intentions may well be good, you may well have had experience with other introverts, but you aren't used to me. Just as there's going to be a bit of fumbling around the first few times you have sex with a new lover, even the most well-intentioned interlocutor is not going to make the experience as pleasant for me as a good friend.

Most interaction with close friends is still draining, but they know how to make it pleasant enough that it's worth being drained. On very rare occasions, it can be not draining - that's why when I say "Being with mi cielito is just like being alone," it is the highest compliment - it means that he can overcome the most basic aspects of my neurology and make what is normally a draining experience into a stimulating experience.

Analogy for natalist culture

Suppose you're in decent, functional, serviceable physical condition. You have full use of both your arms and both your legs, and your body does what you need it to do in everyday life. However, you don't particularly enjoy pushing yourself physically. Sure, you don't mind the occasional casual swim or bike ride, but you have no interest in working out every day - you'd much rather be at home with a good book or enjoying the bounties of the internet.

But everyone in the world assumes that you're going to do a triathlon one day.

Sure, you think triathlon is a decent sporting event. You'll watch it when the Olympics are on TV and you appreciate the athleticism involved, but you have no interest in doing it yourself.

However, elderly relatives and nosey acquaintances keep asking you when you're going to do a triathlon, and when you say you're not, they smile smugly and mutter knowingly among themselves that it's just a phase - soon you'll grow up and start doing a triathlon every couple of years.

Random people that who run into, who know nothing about your physical condition - even people you've met in passing on the internet who have know way of knowing if you even have legs - tell you that you should totally do a triathlon because you would make SUCH a good triathlete!

Even though you have mentioned at work that you have no interest in doing a triathlon, your boss's long term HR planning takes into account that you'll need some time off to train for a triathlon or two within the next five or ten years.

While your doctor is quite willing to treat you in a way that allows you to sit at home with a good book or spend time on the computer right now, she insists upon a long-term treatment plan that will ensure that you are in prime condition to do a triathlon any time you want to. When you undergo a minor medical procedures that requires that you don't exert yourself, she keeps emphasizing to you that it's VERY VERY IMPORTANT that you don't do any triathlons within the next month, completely disregarding the fact that you have told her you don't want to do any at all ever, and the fact that you've already decided that if you ever happen to wander into a triathlon course, you would just leave the area rather than completing the race.

Wouldn't that get annoying after a while? Well, that's how I feel when people assume that I'm going to be a mother some day.

Crossing the floor analogy

My MP's weekly chat touched on whether a by-election should be required after an MP crosses the floor. One participant proposed that having a by-election every time someone crossed the floor is like requiring a referendum on every single issue. His logic was that you choose the individual to represent you, and they should represent their constitutents no matter what. Moments after the chat ended, I thought of a mostly-apt analogy to counter this point. It's a bit weak in places, but it communicates the general point.

Affiliation with a political party is giving a pre-arranged set of positions on issues. When a candidate is affiliated with a particular party, you don't have to find out their position on every issue on an ad-hoc basis - you can just look at their party platform. For some people, the individual representative may be more important, but others consider this set of positions on issues to be more important.

Think of a cable TV company. The party's position is like a channel bundle. It shows you the kind of messages you can expect to receive. Obviously you don't know the exact shows you'll get because TV lineups are changing all the time, but it gives you a general idea. The TV company also offers regular and high-definition broadcasting.* The type of broadcasting is like the individual you vote for. It is the medium through which the message is communicated.

Now imagine you call up your TV company.

"I would like to subscribe to the News and Documentary bundle, so I can get all the latest current events, and documentaries on all kinds of interesting subjects," you say. "And I just got a brand new high-definition TV, so I would like to get a high-definition signal, so I can see terrorist attacks and lions eating zebras in vivid detail."

The TV company says, "Yes, that's perfectly fine, we can do that. You will have the News and Documentary bundle in high definition."

Then, a few days later, you turn on the TV and your news and documentary channels are gone. In there place, you have all kinds of sports channels. You call up your cable company and ask what's up.
"Oh, we decided to switch you to the Sports bundle. It's far more popular," they tell you.

"But I specifically requested the News and Documentary bundle!" you say.

"I know," they say, "But with the Sports bundle you can get all the hockey and baseball games, plus World Cup soccer and even cricket matches from India!"

"But I don't want to watch those things, I want to watch news and documentaries!"

"But the Sports bundle will make much better use you for HDTV. More sports are broadcast in HDTV, so you can enjoy the colour and clarity of your brand new set. After all, you watch TV for its technical quality, not for its content."

Now I know some people do prioritize technical quality over content, but you can at least see why content is important. Similarly, while some people do vote for an individual, you should be able to see why party platform is important, and it's disrespectful to the voters for their elected representatives to go switching on them, as though party affiliation is negligible.

*(I know broadcasting isn't the correct word for distribution of high-definition TV signals, but I forget the correct term and it's really beside the point. Feel free to give me the correct term in comments)