Notes

[0] That “100%” number can be reduced all the way down to 51%, and it will tend to be rounded back up to 100% when it comes time to causal attribution and solution-finding. But it can even be reduced to 10%, or 1%!, and so long as an individual’s environment bears some responsibility for their outcomes, everything else that I describe later in the essay still holds. A 1% reduction in global “bad” outcomes, 1% reduced global suffering, is a hard thing to argue against.

[1] The self-satisfied smirk and playful adoption of “helplessness” in the photo/video of course hint at the knowledge that deficient environments absolve individuals of responsibility — ever an attractive option for “scoundrels”

[2] Since all human-related outcomes are a product of each individual’s environment, and “society” is the name we give to the sum of all human-related outcomes, society is a function of itself. Meaningful change can therefore only be “kickstarted” by an outside entity of tremendous power. Whether or not that outside entity also counts as “society” — given that it participates in shaping human-related outcomes and makes choices based on societal demands — is a topic to be discussed only after substances have been consumed (I recommend tea & chocolate)

[3] Those who consider themselves “Blank-Slate-Lite” might push back here, saying something like “not all natural deficits can be overcome by society, no matter how earnest the intervention. Consider a child born blind — should we expect them to become a successful photographer? A child born with deficient legs to become a pro football player? Yes, people are Blank Slates to some degree, but not entirely!”

But these objections are weak in the face of aspirational Blank Slate Absolutism. We spend $26.2 billion dollars a year taking care of premature babies, according to a 12 year old study (note: costs are up since then). That money comes largely from insurance premiums, which distribute the cost across the entire insurance-premium-paying base. We all subsidize those costs — and quite reasonably so.

That our Technology — our Culture — currently lacks the ability to correct the state of nature and give all babies an equal biological starting point in life should surely be an indictment of medical Technology, not an excuse to stop trying, not an excuse to compromise on values, certainly not a justification for the status quo!

[4] I’m not sure most born-and-raised Americans quite realize how anomalous this is, especially given that American cultural values tend to be intensely homogenous within quasi-geographic-demographic-education-level-industry-based enclaves, such that most Americans never interact for more than 5 unpleasant minutes with someone from a different geo-demo-edu-industrial background.

[5] “There was a lesson to be learned from the Holocaust. ‘Never forget’ — we’re always reminded that. ‘We’ve learned our lesson!’. Okay, fair enough man. What was the lesson? That’s the question. And the lesson is: you’re the Nazi…and oh god, that’s a terrible lesson. But I don’t see another lesson. It’s you! And no one wants to learn that. If you were there, that would’ve been you. You think: ‘Well, I’d be Oscar Schindler, I’d be rescuing the Jews.’ No, I’m afraid not. You’d at least not be saying anything. You might also be actively participating…”

[6] I.e. reserved as an “aesthetic’ choice for overly-edgy disaffected teens with inflated senses of self-importance who wear lots of black and spend too much time on the internet owing to a chronic & acute lack of socialization

[7] These individual perpetrators are often also victims of tragic upbringings and mental illness/instability, but their choice of target, demographic of victim (always seen as representatives of a tribe and stripped of individual value — revealing an anti-democratic anti-liberal worldview), and the ultimate manner of attack are undeniably influenced by content consumed online.

[8] Unrelated, and I can’t do this justice in a footnote, but you can apply this line of reasoning to many other thorny cultural topics for more interesting analysis. As an almost-totally-assimilated immigrant I continue to be shocked/amused by America’s intense geographic split in its view of the proper way for society to handle “mistreatment-of-women-that-skirts-legal-borders-but-is-nonetheless-objectionable”.

The “Coastal Elite” (forgive the self-bucketing, this is a footnote) view schools, educators, workplace training, media thinkpieces, and corporate advertising as the appropriate place to fight the battle, and as a Blank Slatist at heart, I’m a reasonably big fan of these strategies. But they are all very much institutional solutions — top-down “rewiring” of Blank Slates.

In the other part of the country, the “Rural Riffraff” like to sing a lot of songs about how their Daddy / Girlfriend’s father has a shotgun. Seriously, there’s way too many of these songs. I consider this a somewhat more “bottoms-up” approach (ha, pun).

Part of the disconnect is that both groups think the other isn’t doing anything about the problem because their chosen methods are intentionally invisible to “polite” society: