Authentic Bodies and the Problem of Epistemological Reflexivity

I begin with a meme, which unfortunately I can't figure out how to post directly here, so I link you here.

If you are too lazy, it is the college liberal girl saying, "If you feel trapped in the wrong body you have a right to change that." Followed by "If you want to get a nose job you are fake and shallow, learn to love the body you were born with."

The logic that makes these two statements compatible is obvious. 'Liberals' believe that standards of beauty are socially constructed, and that people who undergo surgery to conform to them are being manipulated or coerced by these constructed standards. Gender identity, on the other hand, appears to be more immune to these accusations of constructedness.

But should they be? We often talk about gender as a constructed thing. We know that women do not, by their nature, wear high heels and red lipstick. Yet those things are recognized as feminine. I can remember, for example, someone I knew who was trans. They chose to display as feminine, and the way they did this was by wearing high heels, fake breasts, and lipstick.

If you were born with male genitalia, but identify as a woman, why does dressing like a woman help you feel more like a woman? Especially knowing that those standards of femininity are socially constructed?

The college liberal meme is actually quite insightful in this insistence. Why is it acceptable to modify your body to fit socially constructed standards when you belong to a minority group (of trans people), but shallow and wrong to do it to when you belong to a majority group (a woman who wants a nose job, etc.).

I can't unravel the logic right now. It is too complex of a problem.

Something ain't right here.

It may have something to do with fighting for equality. Those who seek gender reassignment, for example, are a persecuted group. They defy normative standards, and a push for equality is then conceptualized in terms of physical augmentation. While something like a nose job is not something that is a push for equality, per say. It is a push for conformity. But gender reassignment has traces of that same push for conformity.

Can the solution to these problems really be found in physical augmentation and conformity?

Or is there another solution?

I'm wondering if the solution has to do with humanity's unique relationship with language.

I am referring to what is called the 'reflexivity of human knowledge'. This argument has been most powerfully made by Roger Smith in Being Human, but finds its antecedents in Foucault, and German Romantic philosophy (which I'm less familiar with).

The argument is this: Human's cannot say what they are without changing what they are. We exist in a social world that is built of language, and when we go about classifying people, we also help people become those things. A colloquial phrase puts the point succinctly: Be careful what you claim you are, what you claim has a way of coming back and claiming you.

This point becomes clearer when we examine the difference between classification in the natural sciences and the human sciences. In the natural sciences, we don't need to worry that our classifications will in turn effect nature. Nature is out there and exists as it is, and we will not change it simply by talking about it. The human world, on the other hand, is not only out there, it is also in our minds. So when we classify the human world, we need to take into account the fact that our classification will feed back into and change our reality. Thus knowledge of humans is reflexive, the process of knowing ourselves changes ourselves.

Are gender/sexual classifications not illuminated by this insight? Is there a way to take into account the fact that by labeling people fems, butch dykes, lipstick lesbians, so on, actually helps create those people? By labeling the behavior we provide a focal point for it, and actually end up reinforcing the behavior.

Does the problem of elective surgery need to be resolved by allowing everyone to modify their body based on what they think it ought to be? Or do we need to do mental work to see that our bodies are okay as they are?

Are we to tell those who desire plastic surgery that they need to learn to love their bodies, regardless of whether they want a nose job or sexual reassignment?

What to do?

The problem of the reflexivity of knowledge, which really breaks down into the problem of human self-creation, is the biggest philosophical problem I see, and one that is implicated most seriously in the philosophy of history and politics.

If you've read this, please let me know if this makes any sense.

A (Healthy?) Dose of Horror

I'm reading Steve Erickson's The Sea Came in At Midnight. I'm finding it exhilarating.

It is creating in me lots of emotions. Lots of odd facial expressions. Lots of pain. Lots of feelings.

The story is this shocking mixture of surreal sexuality, fleeting moments of violence, and eruptions of vulnerability and the desire to be loved.

I don't often write in fiction books. Sometimes I do. I like to underline this or that passage or whatever.

So far I've only underlined a single sentence. One of the main characters is Japanese. While describing the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Japan, and the Emperor's confession that he is in fact not a god, he writes:  "Now there was no god, only a new sun in God's place. In annihilation there had been honor, in God's disownment there was the void."

It reminds me of Heidegger's essay 'What Are Poets For?' There he claims that our age is defined by the default of God, by God's failure to appear. What we truly lack, he argues, is "the unconcealedness of the nature of pain, death, and love" (in Poetry, Language, Thought, 95). We are in a position of staring into the void, he says. Our task, he says, is to turn away from the void, to find a way to understand pain, death, and love.

Sure enough, Erickson's book is loaded with the word 'nihilism', with references to the void and the apocalypse.

How odd it all is.

I watched a video of Richard Dawkins earlier:

I agree with Dawkins in this video. We don't need an absolute morality, we need an intelligent  rational morality. One that operates through conversation, consensus, and reason. 

Yet the difficulties of our age, the unconcealedness Heidegger discusses, emerges out of our commitment to reason. Nihilism emerges out of our unhealthy relationship with science and materialism.

Because while reason allows us to think clearly about things, it also encourages us to objectify things. To reduce them to usefulness.

I am very emotionally stirred by all these problems.

I don't wish to think clearly about them right now because that would be too much work.

I prefer to just feel the feelings that these thoughts are causing me.

I'll leave you with a quotation I read on the internet. I'm paraphrasing.

'People are meant to be loved and things are meant to be used. The world is in trouble right now because people are being used and things are being loved.'

This use of people and love of things, I believe, has something to do with the culture that emerged out of scientific materialism and rational inquiry (i.e. The Enlightenment).

Of Permanence

Lol what are you talking about, bro?

The Autonomy of History and Epistemological Bullying

A friend has an anthropology degree. She aspires to be an anthropologist some day (maybe).

I, Riley Paterson, on the other hand, aspire to be a historian some day (maybe).

Tonight we had a conversation that I've tried to have before.

What is the difference between history and the natural sciences?

Why does history need to establish itself as methodologically distinct?

All of it boils down to a personal question for me.

Why am I so hostile to the natural sciences and, in particular, attempts to apply natural scientific methods to the study of human life?

I have some deep seated conviction that human life needs to be analyzed in its own terms, and cannot be reduced to biological process.

Well then why can't I just declare the autonomy of history and leave it at that? Why does the vindication of human/historical modes of thought have to come along with hostility towards the methods of the natural sciences?

The position of the natural sciences is one of such privilege that I don't think historical methods can be successfully vindicated merely by championing them.

They need to be freed from the clutches of the natural sciences.

The natural sciences, unfortunately, are like an epistemological bully.

How would most people respond to the assertion: 'The natural scientific method is the only reliable way to arrive at truth.' I'm not sure. You tell me.

But I imagine a lot of people might agree, and even if they didn't, could they explain to you how there were other ways of arriving at truth?

This is probably the biggest issue that I'd love to tackle.

This is the issue that I am most passionate about it.

Lying

It was my words
That got the best of me.

I was always my best
When I existed in
A restricted world.

I was strongest when following
My actions and affections.

The Curfew

Last night I finished reading Jesse Ball's The Curfew.

I really liked it.

It really moved me.

It read quickly and was a lot of fun.

During the last 30 pages I was constantly frowning.

:(

It was enormously satisfying.

I wish I had more faith in fiction to do this to me.

Language, Mindfulness, and Homeopathy

I can't get outside my own head. I think too much.

I'm very verbal, and I constantly render everything into narratives. Sometimes highly distorted narratives. I do it so quickly and effortlessly that I lose touch with reality and I find myself living in a narrative rather than being in the moment.

My tendency to narrate threatens my ability to be mindful.

Yet I find myself trying to use language to overcome my addiction to language.

I seem to be turning towards the poison in the hope that it will suddenly become the cure.

Then I remembered how homeopathy supposedly works, or how vaccinations work, perhaps.

Maybe this is a metaphor that can help me conceptualize the way I want to use language.

Maybe I can find a way to use to language to leave language behind.

Seems like a pipe dream.

I gotta try meditating.

The Currency of Reflection

Tonight I experienced another round of an ongoing conversation.

A friend and I sometimes talk about evolution and history.

I typically insiste that human life demands consideration in its own terms.

They think that reflection on human life can benefit from knowledge of the natural world and human evolution

To put it simply, we disagree about how heavily we are to favor culture or evolution.

I want to ask, How does one go about actually reflecting on their life?

Because this is the problem: Self-knowledge and action.

How do we go about using what we know about ourselves to decide what we want to become?

The most practical form of self-knowledge, I believe, is a personal, cultural, historical understanding, and not a scientific or evolutionary understanding.

Science tends to generalize. History tends to particularize.

Reflection is about particularity.

I'm not sure what I'm saying.

But this is a problem.

And I still think the question is one of reflection.

What do we think about when we think clearly about our lives?

What do we think about when we see our own lives clearly?

I think we think particular thoughts about our particular time place and situation.

When I reflect on my life, I never reflect on hunter gatherer tribes or the evolutionary psychology of attraction.

I think of the communities that really exist around me and the beautiful women I actually see.

Yesssssssssss

Jens Lekman yesssssssssssss.

I saw him live tonight and it was fantastic.

Yesssssssss.

Also, my new essay is starting to make total sense in my mind.

Yesssssssssssssssssssssss.

Also, I don't trust this feeling of things making sense.

Yessssssssssssssssss.

I'm trying to remain curious. To avoid things making too much sense. To resist familiarity.

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

Tonight I had a thought pertaining to my emergent essay.

I thought to myself, 'Artists aren't great because they make great plans. Artists are great because they feel deeply, they understand deeply.'

Yesssssssssss.

The essay has a simple thesis:

Understanding should take precedence over planning.

This follows from another simple thesis:

Plans emerge organically from understanding, but understanding does not emerge organically from planning.

Boom.

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

I held the s for so long that I had time to sip my beer.

Yessssssssssss.