On Beauty

There's a very moving (and beautifully written) post over at Hoyden about the Beauty Myth and what happens to women's self identity as they age and are no longer noticed/praised for being desirable. Although the thread sometimes degenerates there are several comments as insightful and revelatory as the original.

I'm particularly cautious of thread derailment on feminist topics so I thought I'd post over here and just link there.

I'm interested in the other side of the coin - how to avoid perpetuating and reinforcing the message. For a long time I'd almost never comment on a woman's appearance at all, lest it be reinforcing of the idea that this was what matters. More recently I've slipped into sometimes telling a woman how attractive she looks, and it struck me the other day that I've said nice things about one particular friend's looks more often than her intellect/academic success. (Since she's well into a PhD in a hot area of science the latter is considerable, but she's not entirely confident of her abilities, so its not like such comments would be superfluous)

I realised that as a society we're so conditioned to talk about women in terms of their appearance that it takes a fair amount of effort not to. Certainly such effort is pretty minor compared to the efforts women have to go to in order to block out the messages that their worth is measured in milli-Helens[1], but I'm pondering how important this is, and if any comments are too many. May post in more depth later.


[1] In case this is not self-explanatory, the milli-Helen was a measure of beauty proposed at one point on the basis that if Helen of Troy had "the face that could launch a thousand ships" beauty could be measured on the scale of how many ships would be launched to rescue/recapture an individual. I'm not sure how tongue in cheek the idea was, but besides the sexist (and hetrosexist) assumptions, it is does reveal that in a society where cultural notions of beauty are strongly reinforced such a scale is much less use than one in which diverse visions of beauty are encouraged.

Sigh

When I started this blog I never expected it to top the readership charts, or draw so many page views I could run advertising that would make me rich. But I rather hoped someone would read it. Thus my excitement when anyone comments.

After a failed attempt to put a tracker on some time ago I made another effort two weeks ago. This time it seems to have worked, and I've been emailed two weekly records of all the visits to the site in that time.

And the figure is....drumroll....none.

Yes, no one at all has visited this site in that time according to the tracking device. No pageviews at all. Either it is filtering out my own visits, or its not working.

It really doesn't do a lot for my efforts to convince myself I can get a book published.

The Year To End All Wars

Mark 2068 in your diaries. It’s the year humanity will achieve its crowning glory – an end to war.

OK, I’m not actually serious with that. The date is based on a calculation so rough it barely deserves the name, but I’m trying to make a serious point. Unlikely as it may seem, we are on target to end perhaps the greatest blight on human happiness in history, and in the life time of some people alive today.

I suspect that most people, off the cuff, would say that war is getting more common in the world today, and scoff at the idea we are on a trajectory towards ending it. But this perception is false, based on three factors:

• We have a general tendency to think bad news is increasing, even when it is not
• Wars are now more reported than ever before, so we hear about atrocities in far off lands of which we know little.
• The wars that are occurring may well be becoming more bloody – at least in absolute terms – which creates a perception there are more of them.

There is no doubt new technology is allowing killing on a greater scale than ever before, and as the world’s population grows it is to be expected that death tolls will rise.

But the happier side of the coin is that the number of wars in the world is on the decline, and has been for quite a while. My very rough estimate is that every three years two wars are ended and one new one starts. A slightly less rough assessment is that there are 20 wars in the world today. On this basis it will take 60 years to end war entirely, thus the date above.

Now there are many, many things one can quibble over in these figures. The definition of war is not that easy, as is defining when many conflicts start and finish.. I’m sure I’ve also left out a few wars from the table below, and would be grateful for corrections (although of course I’d prefer that there are no more horrors to confront) I’ve put my definitions at the bottom. Feel freed to disagree with them, but I’m fairly confident that on almost any consistent definition you can use my broad conclusion is robust – the number of wars in the world is in long term decline.

The obvious fly in this ointment is that environmental degradation increases conflict and will lead to more wars. Already the Dafur conflict may well have been caused, at least in part, by desertification of the Sahel.

But against this there is the fact that wars tend to breed more wars, and peace breeds more peace. Conflicts on a nation’s borders lead to destabilisation, most clearly seen in the way civil war in Liberia engulfed surrounding nations. On the other hand, the more countries there are that are free of wars the more support there is for the humanitarian and peace-keeping missions, as well as the trade sanctions and moral pressure which collectively have contributed to ending quite a few of the world’s conflicts.

I think we’re in a race, to get the number of wars in the world down to the point where virtuous circles take over and war is put behind us like smallpox before global warming fans the embers of an unstoppable number of blazes.

I’m far from certain we’ll win this race, but there is a much better chance than most people realise that we might.


Nation’s experiencing wars[1] begun since 1993 (5)
DRC
Dafur
South Ossetia/Abkhazia[2]
Iraq
Ivory Coast

Nations whose experience of war stopped since 1993 (12)
Aceh
Algeria
Angola
Bosnia
Bougainville
Djibouti
East Timor
Guatemala
Liberia
Northern Ireland
Peru
Sierra Leone

Nations experiencing continuing wars (15)
Afghanistan
Burma
Casmance
Chad
Columbia
Eritrea
Israel/Palestine
Kurdish Turkey
Lebanon
Mindanao
Niger Delta
Somalia
Sri Lanka
Uganda
West Papua

Wars that started and ended between 1993 and 2008 (7)
Burundi
Chechnya
Guinea-Bissau
Kosovo/Servbia
Nagorno-Karabakh
Nepal
Rwanda


I’ve chosen 1993 as the starting point because it gives us as long a timeline as possible while still avoiding the events surrounding the ending of the Cold War, which stopped quite a few conflicts, while starting several others. If you take the starting period back to 1983 you’ll find the ratio of wars ended to wars begun is even more promising.

There are also a couple of wars I’ve found difficult to classify. Officially the war in South Sudan is over, but I’m not confident enough to put it in the second column. I’m also not sure whether Pakistan belongs in the first or the third column or should not be listed at all since it is more a powderkeg than an active war. The South Thailand insurgency is another puzzle – it started well before the era, but has spiked since 2004.

On these numbers we’re actually doing slightly better than my estimate, but several of the wars that have been brought to a close were quite small, so I’ll round down.

If I’m right, by 2023 we should have ended around ten of the current wars, although five new ones will have started. This doesn’t strike me as incredible at all. Certainly some of the wars listed in columns 1 and 3 look intractable (it’d be a braver blogger than I who predicted the end to the Israel/Palestine conflict, or peace in Somalia). However, many of these look like they could come to an end a good deal earlier. The peace treaty for Mindanao was defeated on an 8-7 vote. The Columbian FARQ and the LRA in Uganda look close to collapse and I’m pretty confident South Ossetia and Abkhazia will end up as peaceful independent states. It’s quite likely historians will judge that war already over.

It’s true three of the new wars are a whole lot bloodier than the ones that have come to an end, but if we can get the number of active conflicts in the world into single figures I think we’ll see fresh enthusiasm for positive global intervention.

And just think – if we could cut the number of wars in the world by a fifth in a period where George W Bush was president, imagine what’s possible when we actually have a president desirous of peace.


[1]I use the term “Nation’s experiencing war” to refer to situations where a political conflict is killing more than 1 person per hundred thousand per year. I think its important to look at the actual costs, rather than whether war has been officially declared. Of course the cost of war is measured in injuries and economic damage as well, but deaths per head of population are easier to measure and seem a pretty good starting point. The rate of 1/100,000 is completely arbitrary. However, as I have said I think the general conclusion stands up whether you use a higher or lower rate as long as one is consistent.

I have excluded from this definition cases such as Zimbabwe where a government is killing large numbers of its people, but the killing pretty much all goes one way. Whatever this should be called, I don’t think it is war. It’s pretty easy to demonstrate however, that atrocities of this form are also in long term decline – another reason for optimism.

A more difficult exclusion is conflicts that are not based on national or religious feeling, or political ideology, cf the Mexican battles over control of the drug trade. I’ve left these out because they’re harder to track, but also because, horrific as they may be, the death rate is usually lower than “proper” wars.

[2]The conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia are so linked in cause and likely outcome I am counting them as one. Even combined, the death toll is still one of the lowest on the list.

Good News From Switzerland

In Switzerland, over two-thirds of voters supported heroin provision to heavily addicted people. This is good news for those with a heroin problem, as the program saves lives, and it is also good news for the Swiss burghers who won't have their houses burgled as a result.

More importantly, it's good news for people in equivalent situations in a whole lot of countries. The overwhelming nature of the vote will send a message to jelly-backed politicians elsewhere. It is regrettable that a bill for legalization of cannabis went down at the same time, but in the long run I suspect the success will count for more than the defeat.

This is also very good news for the Greens. Personally I don't believe our policies are the major bar to electoral success. Lack of money and an absence of experience in government are bigger problems. Where our policies do get in the way its usually because they are badly written and need to be rethought.

However, there are some policies that do hurt our chances, and drugs and law and order are chief amongst them. The problem is that our policies here are basically right (give or take a bit of tweaking). They would save lives, cut crime and save money. We can't abandon them without selling our soul. Electorally they are a burden we have to bear, although of course writing them more clearly would reduce the damage.

So Switzerland's vote is very good news. For one thing it proves these are not policies the population will never accept. For another it gives us something to point to. Most people won't listen, but for a few, the fact that 68% of a developed nation backed something might make them question their knee-jerk opposition.

More to the point, this is a tide that will be very hard to hold back. Several other nations are considering adopting something similar. In a globalised world it will get harder and harder to scaremonger about a policy that not only exists in many comparable countries, but is demonstrably saving lives.

Are They Really That Dumb?

Today I received two emails about Steve Conroy's mandatory ISP filtering plan. One of them from someone I have a massive crush on, which usually helps when trying to get petitions signed, no? But I just can't get excited about signing the petition (although of course I sign a lot of petitions that make me depressed rather than excited).

Because this idea is so dumb I kind of hope they do it. I imagine at the moment there is a fair level of support for the idea - I mean filtering out child prOn or stopping kids seeing ordinary p0rn sounds like a good idea huh? But the consequences will be so disastrous, and so ineffective, that any government that does it is going to take some serious heat. And not just from a small minority of libertarians and techno geeks who're currently worried. No if they actually do this thing everyone who uses the web will hate them. Which is a lot of voters.

Ok the heat will be shared because the Coalition will have voted for it too, but the government will still get the blame, and the Greens in particular will stand to benefit.

So what is going on? Well one possibility is that they are so stupid they don't realise what a disaster it will be, despite every technical person warning them. Well it is Stephen Conroy we're talking about here, but its still a bit hard to believe.

Next option is that they can see the train wreck coming, but are so stubborn they just won't let go. Ahh, here's the part where the Steve Conroy bit starts to make sense. Still, surely there are more senior ministers who aren't willing to throw away 5% of the vote and the country's economic competitiveness to satisfy one man's obsession.

Which leaves us with option three. They know it is a dog, but for the moment a popular dog. So what they want is to be seen pushing it as much as possible, and then have it sunk by someone else. They can say "we tried, we really tried" to all the people who think it is a good idea until they have to use it, and blame its failure on someone else. Since the Liberals and Greens are both currently opposing the idea that works well. It probably won't hurt the Greens - they'll lose a few votes, but gain a roughly equal number.

On the other hand the Libs will probably be hurt whichever way they go. Vote against it and they will be tarred with supporting kiddie fiddlers or something. Vote for it and they will be part of the problem that put the country into the computer stone age. But if they let it through they'll be a small part of the problem, with Labor getting most of the blame.

So the whole thing becomes a giant game of chicken, watching to see whether the Libs lose their nerve and wave it through.

The country may have changed a year ago, but wedge politics didn't die.

Victory

It's probably impossible to make any genuinely original contribution to one of the biggest stories of all time. So I'll leave it at this short note on one point I haven't seen made explicitly before or after the election:

Besides all the other reasons to celebrate, its worth noting that one of the hardest jobs in the world right now must be being an Al Queda recruiting agent, particularly in Africa. That has to be good for almost everyone.

The Poor Will Not Be With You Always

Apparently it is Global Blog Action Day today, or something like that, and the theme for this year is poverty. So...

I doubt we will ever remove relative poverty. Certainly all attempts to create a sufficiently egalitarian society for this to be realistic have failed. But I think we can aspire to end absolute poverty. And since that would rank with ending war in the greatest human achievements of all time, it seems to me a pretty worthy goal.

And clearly this is achievable. Human productivity has risen so much over the last couple of centuries that there now certainly is enough for everyone to have adequate food, clean water, decent if spartan housing and basic medical cover. Yes all that and still enough for large sections of the world to live in unimaginable luxury.

Global Warming will make things much, much tougher, but science isn't going to stop. The productivity of the world, from an economic point of view, will slow, but its unlikely to go much backwards, even per head.

So ending poverty is all about willpower. We haven't done it because, collectively speaking, we simply don't care enough. The developed world giving 1% of its wealth to the poor would do it, just as the UN agreed on it back in 1970. (Note the agreed figure is 0.7% government aid, the rest is to come from private individuals. Indeed, the target is a lot easier to reach these days than it was back then. A goodly chunk of the rich world is now in China and India. The money doesn't even have to flow across national boundaries. The traditionally rich world needs to look after Africa and substantial sections of Asia and Latin America, but it no longer has to worry about the whole rest of the world.

It's true that local wars mean that some regions are resistant to anything the wealthy world can do, but that's actually a pretty small proportion of global poverty. The main thing that is needed now is good aid (not the stuff that ends up with the military and in politicians' pockets) and fair trade. And one of the main things stopping that from happening is the lack of belief that it can work. It really is a case of "nothing to fear but fear itself".

I think the most important thing to do is to keep the pressure on governments to increase aid, or at least not cut it in the face of the credit crunch. But private giving is important as well, and the wonders of the Internet mean you can do that without costing anything but your time.

Most famously. But one can do even better with the search engines that send their profits to charity rather than shareholders. Here or here. You can even feed the world by playing games online. It's true these online measures are a bit of a drop in the ocean. And in some cases the sponsors are other aid organisations, so in a sense the money is just going round in circles, unless they succeed in getting you to actually donate (or buy from their online stores). Which is why its important not to lose site of the main game of putting pressure on the politicians. But these websites do make a powerful point. The rich world is now so rich, credit crisis not withstanding, that it only takes a little of that wealth slopping over the sides to end absolute poverty. So little of the wealth in fact, that we wouldn't even miss it if it was gone.