Who are nerds

This is a very fascinating bit on this guy that lives not too far from me. In fact I may end up going to see him in the near future if the desires strikes me.

Other than the fact that he's an example of a "white guy with too much expendable income". I don't have anything against him. He seems like your typical geek that has a hobby. To be honest, I've been inconsolably jealous of anyone with a lot of money lately. I don't even know why. I saw a site with several pictures of Dubai and suddenly had this fit of rage over how much freaking money is pouring into this city.

So the question is this, is being a nerd merely an extension of the culture of consumerism, or is there something more. Are you still a nerd if you don't have a lot of "stuff"? Does this stuff define you as a nerd? Are you a bigger nerd if you have more stuff? I'd like to think not. I'd like to think that being a nerd merely means interests in things, and not the collecting of things. I knew this guy who specializes in selling rare and highly sought after comic books. He was telling me that he was selling "Amazing Fantasy 15" to an NFL team owner. I know nothing about this guy, and I'm sure he is quite a fan of Spider-man and all, but the question is, does it make him a nerd?

I consider myself a big nerd. I know that there are two Dr. McCoys, (Dr. Hank McCoy, and Dr. Leonard McCoy) I read Gizmodo and Kotaku almost on a daily basis, and learned Japanese to be able to read manga in Japanese. I own a fair amount of nerdy things including a boxed copy of Final Fantasy 1, a Wii, a 9 inch figure of symbiote suit Spider-man, and a Principality of Zeon flag. But I have this nagging feeling that there is more to it. A more central reason to why I do all these things, and these things are merely products of that.

Psychology

Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade has written one of the bravest bits on personal psychology that I have read in a long time. Seriously, of all the things that I have personally read about psychology and have experienced personally, this perhaps one of the astondingly reflective and honest discription of what's it like to deal with a psychological problem.

It was almost impossible to go get help though because the very nature of the illness prevents you from getting it. So I worry alot, I know that. So I start to think maybe I worry too much. Maybe I have a real problem. Then I think, "no I'm just worrying too much". This is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. It's fucking inescapable like some kind of brain trap. So I have to write off this fear that I might actually be sick as another example of my needless worrying. Add to that the fact that I worry that if I do go to a doctor he'll tell me I have some kind of brain disease or I'm not treatable or maybe just as bad that there's nothing wrong with me. All this shit piles up and the result is that I'm 30 and I've never gone to the doctor about it until yesterday.

I started crying a bit a this part here. It cut very close to how I feel about myself and the way I am. I have often credited Penny-Arcade for it's quality work, but this is the first time I have wanted to send a strong message to Mike Krahulik that I am simply humbled by him.

Psychological problems are all too often linked to nerd culture. This could be simple depictions of nerds in the media as socially awkward individuals (see: Steve Urkel, Brian Johnson) or the litany of various claims that video games, comic books, and television would lead to psychological disorders. The Japanese have historically drawn much of their presuppositions on nerds from Akio Nakamori's "Mの時代"(The age of M). This was a case study of Tsutomu Miyazaki a famous serial killer. Since Miyazaki was also an otaku, the connection was commonly held that otaku may also harbor psychotic tendencies. (Similar distinctions have been made of both the Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Seung-Hui Cho.)

I personally find it difficult to rationalize this in my mind. The only thing I could say is this. Perhaps there could be an attraction phenomenon. Reduced down, the promise of nerd culture could be said to be the promise of escapism. To be free from our physical and social restraints, of only in our minds and play with "what ifs" that would otherwise couldn't be. This could become a very attractive solution to people who are dissatisfied with their own reality. I take as an example Spider-man. If you're a kid living in a poor Jewish Romanian immigrant family in New York city, what better dream than to have someone who selflessly protects the people of the city. Even Peter Parker himself was a role model for me. When things in my life didn't work out very well and I felt like a failure, it made me feel a little better to know that even being a failure made me bit more like Peter Parker. In a time in which secular thinking is held at a pedestal, and we are no longer soaked in a culture of religious fervor, perhaps nerd culture acts as the non-spiritual solace which those who need it, seek it.

Modern Man (response)

Many different journalist of better writing ability have responded in similar dismay to Hymowitz' article on the child-men problem.

Mighty Bargain Hunter, has a short piece basically saying that ideas of what it means to grow up are not as uniform as some my think it to be. I especially like the bit at the end.

If you grow up earlier than you should, life is “thrust upon you” and you’ll feel cheated. If you grow up later than you should, you’ll know it, and others will tell you once they get tired enough of your behavior. If you grow up at the right speed, you know what you’re leaving behind, and you know that where you’re going has a good chance of being better. After nearly six years of marriage I hardly remember what it was like not to be married, and when I think about what it was like, I don’t miss it that much. But I was ready to “grow up” and get married. There’s more responsibility being a grown-up, but it’s also more rewarding and more fulfilling. That’s where the payoff is, but it’s a payoff that you have to want.

I've found after teaching in Japan, that your average Japanese 20something is rather immature compared to your average 20something in America. Being that I taught elementary and junior high school kids, I have a personal theory. The Japanese kids are raised to uphold an unreasonable amount of responsibility. Although it's always good to teach responsibility at a young age, there is a point in which it becomes harmful. After growing up with it, the reason for having responsibility becomes meaningless and a mental rejection of adulthood occurs. In many ways forcing a child to act grown up, stunts their ability to actually grow up. I've found that growing up requires learning first hand those mistakes of youth, saying ouch, and then moving on.

Another article by Amanda Marcotte writes extensively tearing down the argument that because of "feminism" men have fallen behind in becoming adults. She writes sarcastically

of course women are to blame for men who are unwilling to take responsibility. Specifically the secret, all-powerful cadre called The Feminists. We all know the argument—men aren’t motivated to grow up and do icky girl stuff like get married and have children and hold down a full-time job on their own. No, they have to be bribed into it. You ladies have to sweeten the deal by offering dependence and submission. But never fear, men are like vending machines. You put submission and dependence in, ladies, and you’ll get devotion and responsibility back. So really, it’s all on you to “make” men be responsible.

Where the Xbox is concerned, is that men are spending their time and money on childish things like video games instead of growing up and appreciating how independent and career driven their wives are. Marcotte wrote that not only is this inaccurate, it implies that most women are now independent and career driven and wouldn't touch a video game controller for fear of getting cooties.

The idea that men are always playing around with women and games is an old story that predates both the Xbox and yuppies. (see: Guys and Dolls "I'm playing craps", Pride and Prejudice "You tricked me with your womanly ways", The Odyssey "So, heres the reason it took me so long to get home.")

The Modern Man

Kay Hymowitz from The Dallas Morning News wrote an interesting opinion article about his opinions of the modern man. For him all men seem to be behind in being able to grow up.

Now meet the 21st-century you, also 26. You've finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes, have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face – and then it's off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?

I wish my life was like that. (I actually happen to be 26 right now.) Who even has a life like that? I tend to be pretty hard on affluent white people. I've been known to snicker at the silly things that honkies do. However, what I'm interested in here is the writer himself. Mr. Hymowitz has a few issues with the modern world and his generalizations tell more about what concerns him, than what is happening in America.

With women, you could argue that adulthood is in fact emergent. Single women in their 20s and early 30s are joining an international New Girl Order, hyper-achieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling and dining with friends. Single young males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3 and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it's receding.

What is this NGO? I know quite a few "jet-set" women and none of them have told me of any such NGO. On top of that most American women have never left the country and don't plan to go father than the time share resorts. The rest of the article is mostly alot of pseudo-psychology about why men aren't becoming adults and that it's the media's fault.

It seems to me that this is less of a commentary of the modern man, but casting nerd culture as an affront to male adulthood. Somehow a "real" adult is meant to have cast aside silly things like Halo 3 and iTunes and get in the real world with a real job working with heavy machines and responsibilities.

The problem I see is that the roles that are presented to us in the media, and the roles that men are able to fill now has changed dramatically over the years. We have not settled on what it means to be an adult in the modern age. (Frankly it's something we figure out in hindsight.) We are constantly being told that we need to get a "good" education, (like at least a masters) and then a steady job with a steady paycheck. In actuality there really is no set model. Some of the most influential people of the past and present hardly can be considered to have lived a normal progression of adult stages.

Technology

Somehow the lady's message reminds me of this little scene from Johnny Mnemonic.

Johnny Mnemonic: Yeah, the Black Shakes. What causes it?
Spider: What causes it?
[points to various pieces of equipment throughout the room]
Spider: This causes it! This causes it! This causes it! Information overload! All the electronics around you poisoning the airwaves. Technological fucking civilization. But we still have all this shit, because we can't live without it. Let me do my work.

One of the interesting thing here is the overlap of two different ways to bring more power to the iPhone than it really deserves. The lady is blaming the iPhone as the harbinger of mind numbing technology, and the juveniles off camera are ensnared by the promises of new gadgets to make their lives better. Neither group understands each other's culture, the lady can't understand her own arbitrary cutoff point between good technology and bad technology , and the juveniles can't understand how far seduced they are by consumerism.

This brings up two interesting parts of the argument. The lady is pleading for a return to a natural state of humanness. However, is shown to be hypocritical through her patronage of sprint cellphones. (why is that open in her hands anyway?) The fact is our human bodies are far past any return to a "natural" state. We live far beyond the time of maturation of our offsprings surviving through a cocktail of vaccines and antibiotics. There is no "natural" state for humans, and even if there was such a person at this state, civilized society rejects them instantly with no remorse.

However, the juveniles are arguing that technology is at the aid of human potential. Through access to the internet, this serves as a collective unconscious of all information that one would desire. This is part of the salvation story of technology and science, that there will be some "thing" if perfected that will save us all from ignorance. (see OLPC) Marketing agencies play into this desire and use elaborate ads that promise us salvation but really are merely asking for our money.

As the hierarchy of class/age/sex/race/nation divisions stay solid while information sharing continues to lure us into being numb to these divisions, we will see more and more of these conflicts between people and cultures.

Mass (Media) Effect

(Thank you Matt Ian for the art, I hope you don't mind my vandalism)

So I've been playing Mass Effect on my friend's Xbox 360 for a while. (I don't own one myself, I can't afford it.) I really like the game. It's every SciFi novel I ever read as a kid all rolled into one really fun game to play. However recently, it's gotten some poorly researched attacks by people who really don't know what they're talking about.

The first bit is from Cathy Ruse.

The game is "clearly marketed to minors," Cathy Ruse, a lawyer and senior fellow for legal studies at the Family Research Council, told Cybercast News Service.

"There are cultural implications for feeding porn to kids in this way," and "when you do this, you're teaching them a distorted lesson about human sexuality and human dignity. These are lessons that they will take with them into adulthood and ultimately society," Ruse said.

First of all, apparently a game that is rated M for mature is clearly marketed to minors. Even if we were to buy the argument that unless it's sold next to the porn, ratings will mean nothing to stop minors from buying them. The game box art doesn't look anything like something that is marketed for minors, the color scheme is too dark, and no one is smiling. Companies are usually pretty obvious when they market something to minors, and when they're not.

Secondly, to call the minute amount of sexual scenes in the game a "distorted lesson about human sexuality and human dignity" Is more than unfair. You play the game and there is a build up of a dialog between consenting adults who struggle with horrific terrors and at the same time challenge ideas of human loyalty, extra-special racism, and deep ideas of intimacy. It's not Shakespeare, but we don't live in a polarity that everything is either fine art or trash.

The second one that has gotten the most press was this commentary by Kevin McCullough.

And because of the digital chip age in which we live - "Mass Effect" can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes.

I've been playing this game for a while, and I really don't have that many choices of who to have sex with, it actually ends up being a choice between two people, Kaidan a hopeless romantic with psychokinesis, or Liara a bookish scientist with psychokinesis. While Kaidan is cute and all, I have a certain penchant for bookish types. That's it, in fact as you go through the game, each character starts getting more upset if you try to "play the field" and makes you choose. All the while my good friend is asking if I can have sex with the Krogan, (who looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a turtle, and has the manners of a steam roller. Go figure, she has adventurous taste.)

Although McCullough has since apologized, (twice) for some of the more outright lies in his article, he hardly seems to seem any more reasonable. The problem is that many of these pundits are making entire opinions without playing the game or knowing anything about the game. Even McCullough based his opinions entirely on stuff he saw on YouTube.

I'm all for protecting smut from getting to minors, and reducing unfavorable depictions of women in the media. And I think we as a society has progressed quite a bit in the last few decades. Mass Effect is in many ways the product of how far we've come in progress. We have here real depictions of men women aliens and humans in an in depth story in which shows people with true strength of character and human realities of emotion, loyalty, duty, and even faith. (Ashley Williams is a quite religious) If the ideas that violent video games are "killing simulators" are in any way true, then could there also be "socialization simulators"? We live in a time when we can't trust our neighbors, coworkers, or fellow bus riders. We live secluded and separated from our fellow people and have rare moments to ever be comfortable with getting to know anyone. That's a hard life, and it causes more psychological pain than any video game can muster. We are social animals, to keep us away from human contact is like denying a plant light. We need to figure out a way to understand how to interact with each other, and learn that human interactions are about love,consequences, pain, and forgiveness.

Japanese border security

Apparently collecting fingerprints and photos of all "foreigners" coming into Japan hasn't been enough to quell neocon reactionist in Japan. Now it looks like Japan will consider making knowing Japanese a requirement to obtaining a long-term work visa.

Personally, I feel like I know enough Japanese to be able to pass whatever requirement that they would set up, so I'm personally not too concerned. Besides many of the jobs that I'd be interested in would require passing JLPT 2 anyway. In fact this may favor me because now if I were to work for a company that needs to send a guy to Japan, I'd be moved up to the shortlist of the employees that know Japanese. They couldn't just send anybody, they'd be required to send someone that knows Japanese.

To be honest the reason for this is to keep various people from entering Japan and taking up resources, space, and pension money. This is mostly those from South America, Philippines, Guam and other members of the working poor in Japan. However, the reaction from nerds on the internet is mostly "Oh noes, now I'll never get to work in a manga shop in Tokyo" I've gotta say that honestly in the grand scheme of things, this is hardly the case. I find this particular bit interesting.

"Japanese language ability is important to increase the quality of foreigners' own lifestyles, and is also important for Japanese society," he said. "It will be a very good thing if this builds momentum for people to say, 'I'm going to study Japanese in order to go to Japan.'"

Japan is far from being an international language. The only way one would need Japanese is if anyone is doing business with the Japanese. Languages like Spanish, Chinese, and French are far more useful for general worldwide appeal, also there are far more "obscure niche" languages to delve into, and Japanese is not one of them. (But Vietnamese is!) So this is really a way for Japan to increase the value of the Japanese language. Perfectly reasonable actions for a language that is already in linguistic decline. (ie: being slowly replaced by foreign words.)

I mostly wonder how this will affect jobs like JET and Nova. JET doesn't have a Japanese language requirement to be able to do the job, this has been their greatest recruiting tool for those fresh out of college. This also has widened the type of people that apply for JET giving them a large diversity of applicants to chose from. If JET must comply to these new language requirements, this will narrow down the applicant pool to only East Asian Studies majors and those that just happen to have learned Japanese.

In the end this will restrict the number of incoming workers in Japan and possibly even tourism. (Many tourist come to Japan because they know a friend who lives in Japan, if there are less foreigners living in Japan, then there will be less of those connections to incite tourism.) By no means does this stop anyone from getting their Japanese wife fantasy. Although actual life in Japan is quite different from perceived life in Japan.