Koyaanisqatsi

I try to be careful in my statistics. It is so very easy to pull numbers out of the air and make them sound official, but I am trying to learn, not to argue one side of an issue: so what would be the point? Whenever possible, I try to go back to the original study. Where there is none, I try at least to verify from two or three distinct sources. There is no such thing as truly objective -- everything has a frame -- so I try at least for opposite biases which are willing to take enough of a step back to analytically consider the same material.

For too many things, this is becoming nearly impossible.

Check any ten sources, and odds are good that they will quote each other verbatim or even be absolutely identical. Read a hundred competing newspapers, and nearly all pull from one or another of the major news agencies such as AP or Reuters. For the current project, I just finished searching through over a thousand different Internet sites, looking for a single statistic I loosely remembered from nine years ago. Virtually every site that was on-topic had exactly the same information, word for word: while also glossing over the specific point for which I was seeking.

The choice increasingly seems to be only which content to carry. If a story is not selected, it does not run. If a story is selected, it runs in exactly the same manner regardless of the specific medium. One version of the story will sweep the conservative blogosphere, another the liberal blogosphere: but in each sphere the stories will be essentially the same, as will the counterarguments.

If a statistic or other fact is originally cited incorrectly, it is repeated so often that its original form becomes part of the common knowledge long before the mistake is caught, let alone apologised for and corrected. Thereafter that same inaccuracy will continue to rear its head again and again. Each and every time, the very fact that it was repeated by someone accepted as authority will be held as proof of its truth.

What is happening to our ability to analyse for ourselves? Are we become nothing more than parrots?

I hope it has to do with your talent and the performance that you give and the package that you have. It's not about religion and all that kind of stuff. It's about music. That's really important to keep in mind.
- Adam Lambert

I suppose I anticipated the American Idol upset yesterday, when I wrote about how a tie in the judge's scores unveiled a percentage of the American voting public which votes by image and associations, completely independent of talent. Never having seen the show, I can't speak to the relative talent of Kris Allen and Adam Lambert in American Idol. However, the image each projects ties directly into the patterns identified in the previous post, complete with the elimination of one contestant whose votes were much more likely to go to one finalist over the other for reasons that have nothing to do with talent.

In dancing, image -- but not candidate association outside the performance -- is part of the talent package. In music, however: if it were only about the music, why focus so much on the presentation?

Many years ago when I was still in university, I first discovered strategy games. I already knew how to play chess, I have known how since around the same time I discovered how to read, which places it before true memory: and so I took to the new discovery like a duck to water.

It took me somewhat longer to discover that my gaming group had a three-person in-group, a few hangers-on (number dependent on the particular night), and me. Over time, it became very clear to me that I would never be part of the in-group. That was a shrug, even then.

More interestingly, I also slowly discovered that I also was not counted among the hangers-on. Unlike them, I had an aptitude with strategy games from the beginning: enough to make me a threat. Again and again and again, the in-group united as a bloc against me. Most players will not take positions that individually leave them open to attack: but when you can be certain your back is covered, you can take risks no individual player can. In games such as Diplomacy and Machiavelli, everything hangs on the alliances you can make, alliances which shift at a moment's notice with self interest. Long before I did, the hangers-on noticed that at least one alliance always quickly formed and never broke: and that I was always the primary target of that alliance, excepting only incidental targets of convenience.

The in-group never noticed. By the time our time together was drawing to an end, a few of the hangers-on decided to bring it into the open. One and all, the in-group was completely surprised and could not believe it. They pointed out that they went after each other in the games with absolutely no holds barred. And so they did: after I was eliminated and no other threats existed. But this was something they would never be able to see.

By the time I really noticed, I was also winning more than half our games. Somewhere along the way, my skills had improved to meet the increased challenge and balance out the bias.

So what is in a game?

Another season of Dancing With The Stars has come to an end. I agree with the judges -- and the studio audience -- that this has easily been the most stunningly jaw-dropping season I have yet seen. Every single participant had gone into the challenge willing to try the new thing to the limits of their ability. Every single participant's ability had increased exponentially as a result. (Yes, even Steve Wozniak's!) When the final three danced their last dances this night, every one of them earned perfect 30s, and deserved them fully. There were no losers in this season of Dancing With The Stars.

Still, people vote, numbers are tabulated, contestants are dropped every week. It is the formula for this kind of show. I am starting to see the particular focus each individual judge brings to this show, to the point where I can see their scoring as objective. I have not their years of trained observation, but I can see what Len Goodman means by footwork, or Carrie Ann Inaba by emotive quality, or Bruno Tonioli by intensity. And because I have learned to see it through their eyes, more often than not I can anticipate each judge's score.

More interestingly, I think I am starting to understand the public's voting patterns.

There were no losers, I wrote and still believe. I would not take anything away from any one of them. And yet this post will: not through my own doing, but by bringing something which usually remains hidden into the open.

It is the surprises which draw what is hidden into the light. The surprise elimination of Lil' Kim in favour of Ty Murray tells us something that has nothing to do with talent, should we wish to see it. The surprise win of Shawn Johnson over Gilles Marini, by less than 1% (all of it from the voting audience), tells us exactly the same thing.

To see it, we must first appreciate the importance of one factor: relative to mainstream America, both Lil' Kim and Gilles are outsiders -- and not just outsiders, but outsiders who happen to be representative of a fear and a threat. Lil' Kim is a rapper who has been to prison. Gilles ... is French. Unabashedly French. Suavely French. Sexily French, in a way that suggests the possibility even though he is already married with a family and should be unavailable.

Both are the kinds of people parents might think twice about before letting their children date them. Both are the kinds of people who would attract those children. And both also happen to be extremely gifted dancers (who are also extremely hard workers, but that element tends to get lost in this equation).

At the same time, both Ty and Shawn are as representative of core American values as it gets. Shawn is the 17-year-old girl next door who has done her country proud, managing to earn Olympic gymnastics gold in spite of everything China could do: another Jesse Owens moment. Ty is all-American gumption and heartland patriotic, the dogged underdog who has never hesitated to display his flag and who has negotiated dance choreography to end with small romantic gestures to his wife Jewel. Neither is a naturally gifted dancer, each struggles with elements of competitive dancing which are alien to their natural gifts, but both understand the value of hard work.

At lower levels, it never shows. The standard deviation around average has a broad base. Some days the coin toss goes to one side of average, some days the other. Against that built-in randomness, who can spot a tiny percentage shift that has other sources?

At the highest levels, it is a different story.

If you are not part of the in-group and you want to remain in competition, you must do it better than adequate, better even than good. You must come as close to perfect as humanly possible, and you must do it again and again and again. Slip even once, as Lil' Kim slipped that one week, and at once you will discover that a crucial percentage of the voting public has no forgiveness for you.

This final of Dancing With The Stars painted it even more starkly. Gilles and Shawn went into the voting absolutely tied in the judge's scores -- but only because Gilles did not fully live up to his potential in the free dance. Such is his talent that the judges have started measuring his performances against a professional yardstick: which gave him a crucial 28/30 in the free dance and brought him closer to Shawn's level, even though he still was the only one of the contestants to score perfect marks in the group paso doble. At the same time, Shawn has been doing better and better in the past three weeks, as she started to understand how what competitive dancing expects is different from what competitive gymnastics expects. At the end of it, she did exceptionally well in her free dance, earning the 30/30 that brought her completely to Gilles' level in raw judges' scores, even though her group paso doble was only 28/30.

Because of the tie, any deviation has to come from the voting public. If they voted parallel to the judges, it would still be a dead tie -- but it was not. By a difference of nearly 1%, the voting public opted for Shawn over Gilles, even though Gilles has repeatedly and consistently been the bettter dancer. The single slip cost him the title.

Go one step further, and consider the four semifinalists before this final vote. Every voter is given a certain number of votes they can enter from telephone and email. While this number can obviously be manipulated, there is no reason to believe that the total numbers from any such manipulation would be particularly greater during the final than throughout most of the show. Whatever the manipulation, the numbers of potential votes are constant. When each candidate is eliminated, those votes are freed up to go elsewhere during the next vote, should the voter wish to cast their ballots anew.

The votes Ty had drawn were freed with his elimination. From one icon of Americana, many of them went straight to the other icon of Americana. Some might have gone to Melissa Rycroft: but Melissa had already had her second chance, that week when the judges' scores had to be lower, scoring her on her dress rehearsal because of her cracked rib. Her, the voting public could forgive for having slipped through a fault entirely not her own, and that voting public was determined to give her a second chance. This time, going into the final vote, Melissa was a crucial two points behind the two leaders.

It might not have mattered, Ty has overcome greater barriers, but Melissa is not strongly symbolic of either extreme. This particular polemic contrasts innocence and patriotism with an exotic foreign sensuality. (In fact, Gilles was scored down by the judges in part because his free dance did not draw on that known strength, instead focusing on the "Wind Beneath My Wings" supporting strength.) Unfortunately for her, Melissa has elements of both. The early sympathy factor was obviously no longer needed, she can dance well on her own merits: but removing the sympathy factor also lays bare all the other things that The Bachelor represents. Call it the third party dilemma in a system accustomed to being given two valid choices, and figure voting pattern accordingly.

Few of Ty's freed votes, if any, would have gone to the Frenchman Gilles. It has nothing to do with talent or ability. After all, those same votes had already brought Ty into the semifinals at the expense of the far better dancer Lil' Kim.

I would not take anything away from any one of the finalists, but a percentage of the voting public already has.

Now that you know, can you ever look again at winning without wondering: did I truly win this entirely on my own merits and my own skills? Did I win this on a level playing field? Could I win this on a level playing field?

Now that you know: will it matter to you? Or will you follow the comfortable road, choosing to dismiss all that I have just written as anti-Americanism, choosing to forget all else against the dazzling light of the winner's trophy?

There once lived a young king who was beloved by his subjects for his dedication, his care, and his wisdom. He valued knowledge, but it seemed sad to him that all the discovered truths of previous ages should be inaccessible to all but a few erudite students. So he directed that texts should be gathered together from all the corners of the earth, to be housed in a great library. From these texts, he hoped to create a compilation which would be accessible to the least of his subjects, and which would also show him how to become a good ruler of his people. He knew his own skills and time were inadequate to the task, so he also brought together the learned people of his kingdom to take charge of the precious manuscripts, to arrange them in orderly fashion, and to fashion from them a history of man.

Obediently the scholars set out on the task. After ten years of intense labour, they had brought together all the known works in the world. After another ten, they had managed to sort and filtre all those works to what could be transported by a caravan. Another ten years, and they had succeeded finally in condensing the substance of the great library to what could be carried on the back of a single camel.

But time had not forgotten the king, who had not been young now for some years. His eyesight had started to fail, and even a single camel load of books was now beyond him. There would be others in his kingdom too, for whom the task of reading even so few books would be impossible. So he handsomely rewarded the men of learning who had given their lives to the task and set them as advisors to the new generation of scholars, whose job it would be to reduce all that had gone before into a single volume.

They managed it. But by the time they finally succeeded, 20 years later, the king had become very old, and now he could barely walk. He passed his ancient hands over the slim volume, but they lacked the strength to hold it. "Please," he whispered, his voice cracking with age, "Tell me what is in it."

The leader of the scholars bent down over the bed and said quietly, "Man is born, he suffers, and he dies."

And with a smile on his face, the king breathed his last.

Mrs. Higgins: You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll.
- Pygmalion

It is sometimes said that a storyteller only ever has one great story of his own to tell, and that all his creations reach toward that single goal.

Joss Whedon's creative independence began with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the story of a girl who exists to protect humanity against the forces of evil. To have family and friends at all is to expose them to the same danger she faces every day. Her own death is the greatest gift she can give those friends: and even then there can be no guarantees. There never are. Could she be granted but a single wish for her life, it would be that she might have the freedom to live.

In her constant, lonely fight, she is guided and supported by a British Watcher, representative of an organisation that has protected and preserved knowledge toward the saving of the world. He is the one person she must trust, and through him the authority he represents. Yet that authority betrays her again and again, as will later societal authorities: her teachers, the city, the military, the federal government. At the same time, others she has defended have abandoned all social responsibility in the pursuit of comfort and personal entertainment, which in a few becomes a world-killing despair.

It is not power itself which corrupts, but power without greater purpose or empathy. Shortcuts pursue only personal convenience, always at the expense of others: which is why Whedon distrusts the easy solutions. The price of liberty is constant vigilance: but the greatest threat to liberty are the very institutions we trust to protect us, and the apathy which allows hidden cancers to grow.

With the social changes after 9/11, telling this story became more urgent. The second year of Angel became correspondingly darker, and toward the end of it more desperate. No longer is Angel content to fight the good fight just one person at a time. As he gradually abandons those whose own empathy cannot accept his own abandonment of individual persons, including the one sent to him to be his guide, Angel increasingly seeks the shortcuts, the easy solutions, the power of the large organisations which he allows himself to become seduced into believing can still have individual and societal good as their primary objective. In the end, this fallen Angel signs away his own hope for the future, abandoning a difficult path with a too-distant promise in order to tear down his enemies here and now, though it mean tearing down the world as well and opening the gates into hell:

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

Yet even as Whedon increasingly set aside light humour as being obviously inadequate to bring his points across, the greater part of his audience also ceased to find his work lightly entertaining and escapist, and many even found it uncomfortable and disturbing. Some found no redeeming societal value whatsoever, and even some fans wondered whether Whedon had simply lost interest. The excuse was found. The network cancelled.

In the new and 'unrelated' series Firefly, once again the large majority of Whedon fans sought and thought they had found simply light entertainment and escapism. Clear now of Buffy and Angel, the new series did seem on the surface to return to the lightness of early Buffy which some reviewers were able to compare to such shows as Pushing Daisies and Reaper, simply by overlooking everything except that surface, even to look so far as human motivation.

But how long could its viewers continue to delude themselves that this was all Firefly was? Once again we find the lonely defender, this time already forged in the crucible and having come to a personal peace with himself that will not permit his becoming part of something uncaring of the individual. Once again we find personal judgement as the last vigilant bulwark against the greater institution which fought and won the right to define shelter for its citizens at the expense of their liberty, and sometimes to betray and even to sacrifice some of those citizens toward what it called the greater good. Once again, the human bait of convenience and an easy life had been seen for what they really are. Once again, the choices and actions of a single, fallible, vulnerable human being had been lifted to the level of myth.

And once again, some of Serenity's reviewers were unable to see anything but the stereotype; while others, uncomfortable or suspecting a subversive message they could not fully read, deliberately sabotaged it.

It took three years before Whedon was able to return to the small screen. We will probably never entirely know the true reasons: although public release of the new Dollhouse coincides almost exactly with a change in the American administration, even as the growing darkness of Angel and Buffy coincided with key choices by a different administration.

Both Buffy and Angel had been set in the here and now, with a fantastical twist. For Firefly, Whedon harkened back to the analogy of the American War between the States: which also just happened to be the catalyst consolidating modern corporate entities from the great railroad empires to Eli Lilly. For Dollhouse, Whedon looked to a not too distant future and built it solidly upon that paeon to the sunset of British empire, George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, later remade into the musical My Fair Lady. Once again, the almost-now is grounded firmly in the tradition of the Pinkertons, the great railroad empires, a careless and childish technology wielding an even more careless power over being itself, and a corporate power hand-in-glove with the government.

(Recent economic events have revived the spectre of eminent domain and loss of individual freedoms by raising a curious question: in a state where some corporations cannot be allowed to fail, is there any essential difference from corporate fascism?)

Eliza Dushku was always planned to be the primary character for this project, a 'doll' whose name was once Caroline but who now goes by Echo, a letter of the phonetic alphabet. Not coincidentally, she shares a name with the flower girl being sculpted, Liza Doolittle, which My Fair Lady alters to 'Eliza'. The sculptor himself, Professor Henry Higgins, is an authority on another type of phonetic alphabet, one which charts those it targets so precisely that their past is completely laid open to him the moment they open their mouths.

The life given to the dolls between their assignments is in its essence both a wageslave ideal and a corporate ideal. Given that some kind of work must exist for those who are not part of the idle rich, indenturing people into dolls with an on/off switch is the ultimate shortcut; and at the same time, for the organisation, it is the ultimate convenience. There is work: and then there is nothing but relaxation in a completely stress-free environment. As valuable resources, the dolls are protected from all stress and all danger to the greatest ability of the organisation. At the same time, when not working, there is absolutely no requirement for the dolls to have to think. Is that not what our actions suggest we desire?

Higgins: Why have you begun going on like this? May I ask whether you complain of your treatment here?
Liza: No.
Higgins: Has anybody behaved badly to you? Colonel Pickering? Mrs. Pearce? Any of the servants?
Liza: No.
Higgins: I presume you don't pretend that I have treated you badly.
Liza: No.
Higgins: I am glad to hear it. Perhaps you're tired after the strain of the day. Will you have a glass of champagne?
Liza: No. ... Thank you.
Higgins: This has been coming on you for some days. I suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party. But that's all over now. There's nothing more to worry about.
Liza: No. Nothing more for you to worry about. ... Oh God! I wish I was dead.

The doll has come alive and awake: but why should she have any reason to object to her treatment? She has been given dresses, tutorage, comforts, worlds she would never have known had it not been for her agreement with Higgins. Before, she had been common as dirt, scrabbling for the necessities of life at the feet of rich folk. Now, she interacts with them as easily as breathing -- but what is left of her? and where does she go from here? And what of a structure, corporate or societal, which can do this to people so uncaringly?

Higgins: You might marry, you know. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you're not bad-looking; it's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes -- not now, of course, because you're crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when you're all right and quite yourself, you're what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you won't feel so cheap. [as a genial afterthought] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well --
Liza: We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
Higgins: What do you mean?
Liza: I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you found me.
Higgins: Tosh, Eliza. Don't you insult human relations by dragging all this cant about buying and selling into it.

Where empathy is forgotten, all that can remain is the resource value of the human being. Whether it be the marriage bond, slavery, a human resources slot or Echo's own indenture, drain away the empathy and all that remains is a corporate monetary interaction.

So loyal is this nod to My Fair Lady that even the essential layout of Higgins' house is preserved in the dollhouse, excepting only the library of books which could evoke an unwanted urge to think. (For the purpose of this post, I leave aside the even more obvious nod and grounding in Ibsen's A Doll's House.)

But it is the modern fashion to dismiss as trivia anything which does not fit exactly within the existing preconceived image, to limit one's gaze carefully only to what clearly lies on the surface of a narrow specialised interest, and to never once look at the things which maybe should be there, but are not. Dollhouse has been marketed as a science fiction drama thriller, and so a science fiction drama thriller it must remain. Does it really make such a difference if that determined blinkered focus happens to be marketing, or manga, or the science of personality, or all things phonetic? Are we all so determined to become otaku in all aspects of our lives?

Dollhouses notwithstanding, life cannot be compartmentalised out of all contextuality, nor does it come with annotations. In sharp contrast to the helpfully annotated Lost (lest we accidentally come to the wrong conclusions), Whedon has always written for an audience which understands this. And so it should come as no surprise that from the beginning Dollhouse has constantly received mediocre reviews, and is now on the brink of cancellation.

How dare we have the hubris to complain about the quality of our television viewing: when the networks have only ever given us exactly what we want?

Warning! Independent thought alarm!

The true independents of society are few and far between. It takes a certain callousness to be able to weigh what is seen without automatically fitting it into prior constraints, be they of societal norms or of how we wish to be seen in the eyes of others or even of self-image.

Hardest of all, that last. Once we have come to see in a certain way, we will bend reality around that way of seeing rather than accept any other possibility. For those in a position of authority it is even harder: for others will be all too willing to reinforce our image of ourselves and consequently of reality. There is something deeply engrained in the human psyche which begs others to make sense of the world for them.

Considering how very much we want not to have to think, we work amazingly hard to keep fitting new evidence into existing pigeonholes.

When we most believe we are rationally considering an issue, what we are usually doing instead is either identifying how it fits into our self-perception or explaining it away. Often this will require repackaging what is actually seen into something completely different, something that can safely be accepted or rejected based on what we have defined it to be, rather than on any objective analysis of what it actually is. If we view ourselves as patient, it is much easier to explain away the thing that persistently does not fit as being unreasonable and not amenable to reason, than to consider that perhaps the reason we are patient is because whenever an alien piece of evidence might threaten our serenity, we simply don't let ourselves think about it. In this way, we never permit our worldview to be truly challenged, and so we never grow as individuals.

(If we are patient with others, what feeds our patience? Are we patient out of charity, or empathy, or apathy? Is our patience born of power or powerlessness? Does our patience come out of the security of knowing we will have the last word? Are we able to be patient while hearing and thinking about what the other is saying, or is the nature of our patience simply tuning them out to preserve our Zen? Can we be patient only so long as those in our inner circle support us? Will our patience hold if we find ourselves alone against the world? Are we willing to let others take all the time in the world to agree with us, knowing all along that we can cut them off at any moment if they prove intractable? And if once we know the reason in one case, does it follow that the same reason holds true in another?)

If we are willing to risk seeing ourselves clearly in the mirror, our own actions can show us patterns of behaviour where we have stopped thinking for ourselves and substituted mental algorithms instead. Reactions to change or proposed change are particularly telling, as are reactions strong in one case but not in others which seem on the surface similar, because difference always requires us to make an effort, whether to embrace or resist, while to continue as we are is effortless. The more personally threatening the change, the more likely we are to reject it, even if such rejection requires us to redefine the proposed change into terms we can feel comfortable with rejecting. At the extreme, we will shut down any external sensory stimulus that refuses to be redefined – and if that does not work, we will shut our eyes and ears instead.

If we find that we consistently shut down a particular type of change, no matter how or where it is encountered: our personal judgement can no longer be considered reliable with respect to that type of change. What is more: we will be absolutely convinced, each and every time, that we have given rational arguments against that type of change ... right up until we take a hard look at the pattern of our actions and discover that no argument, no evidence, could ever convince us differently. Once we start substituting mental algorithms for our own judgement in some things, it becomes increasingly easy to substitute related mental shortcuts in other things, until we cease to have free will in any meaningful way.

Of course, all of this only matters if independent thought is considered of value. If it is more important that thought fit easily into an existing belief structure, all of this is moot.

According to Christian teachings, Christ is male, and His Church, female. Priests are the worldly representatives of that divine marriage: representatives of the church.

Once priests were also forbidden to marry: what kind of culture did they think this was going to create?