STILL ON PATROL

Shenanigans at Mount Olympus

What happens once you kill yourself? Because I'm ready to go.

You wanna know what happens once you kill yourself? Your mother comes home from work and finds her baby dead and she screams and runs over to you and tries to get you to wake up but you won’t and she keeps screaming and shaking you and her tears are dripping onto your face and your dad hears all the screaming and runs into the room and he can’t even speak because the child that he loved and the child that he watched grow up is gone forever and finally your little sister runs into the room to see what all the fuss is about and she sees you dead. The person she looked up to and loved. The person she bragged about to  her friends, the person she wanted to be just like when she grew up, the person that made her feel safe. But she’s never really going to get to grow up and smile and laugh and love because she’ll always be consumed with this feeling of missing you. And now there’s something missing from your family and they can barely look at each other anymore because everything reminds them of you but you’re gone and hurts more than anything. and you think that your mom never cared because she was always busy and yelling at you to finish your homework and clean your room and forgot to say I love you sometimes but really, she loved you more than anything and she doesn’t leave the house anymore, she can’t even get out of bed and she’s getting thinner and thinner because it’s too hard to eat. Your father had to quit his job and he doesn’t sleep anymore, every time he closes his eyes he sees his baby dead, and the image never goes away no matter how much alcohol he drinks. And at school your best friend sees that your seat is empty and she gets this sick feeling in her stomach and that’s when she hears the announcement. You killed yourself. And suddenly she’s screaming and crying in the middle of class and no one even bothers comforting because they’re all  busy sitting there staring at your empty seat with tears dripping down their cheeks and all she wants is for you to hug her and tell her it’s gonna be okay like you always did, but this time, you’re not there to do it, everything is dark now that you’re gone and her grades are slipping, she barely goes to school anymore and she ended up in hospital after taking too many pills because she wanted to see you again. the girls who used to make fun of the way you dressed feel their throats get tight, they don’t talk to each other anymore, they don’t talk to anyone, they’re all in therapy trying so hard not to blame themselves but nothing works. and your teacher who always gave you a hard time stares blankly at the wall, she quits her job a few days later. And then your boyfriend hears the news and he can’t breathe, he still calls you a lot just to hear your voice and he talks to you on facebook but you never message him back, he can’t fall in love again because every girl he meets reminds him of you, he’s never going to get over you, he loved you and he cries himself to sleep every night, hating himself and slicing his skin because he couldn’t save you and he’s never going to hold you in his arms or hear you laugh again. Now everyone who knew you, whether they were a big part of your life or someone you passed in the hallway a few times a week, they carry this aching feeling around inside them because you’re gone, and they miss you, and they don’t know why you left but it must’ve been their fault and they should’ve stopped you and they should’ve told you they loved you more and that feeling is never going to go away. And so you killed yourself

but you killed everyone else around you too. 

okay so i’m probably 7856454 years late to this realization but …i guess the reason straight people don’t really think our identities matter that much to us is because theirs don’t to them? like, i think about how not straight i am all the time but they don’t do that, do they? they don’t walk around thinking ‘i’m soooo straight’, right? so they don’t think it’s a big deal to other people maybe that’s it and maybe it’s not but i mean it’s something to think about for me

So.

Androids are my special interest so i’ve been following discussion about them and development of them for almost ten years and I’m stupid passionate about it. If anyone is wondering where we are at in our ethical discussion of robot development, this is whats going on.

Most of the discussion seems to be between these 5 fields:

Robot makers of all kinds (from animatronics all the way to industrial robotics) Psychologists Sociologists Lawyers/Lawmakers Ethicists

The general consensus has been:

All: Humanity clearly wants these robots and are getting blisteringly close to being able to build them to Chobits level, but not Blade Runner level, so while we have some free time between those phases lets talk about potential outcomes.

Psychologists: hem hem. we are concerned about what happens to the way we develop relationships. Humans imprint on things hardcore and because of this we are concerned.

Sociologists: I mean… yeah thats a concern, but its not nearly as concerning as what introducing an entire class of humanoid beings without rights to a society where real living people dont have rights

Lawyers: speaking of rights, what happens if you kill one. Like. do we call it “kill” or is it “break?” can you kill something that’s technically not alive??? what if you rape it?? Can you rape a robot? I feel lawsuits coming and its making me itchy.

Robot Makers:  Everyone calm down. They’re just objects, they’re toys. Its chill.. See, we’ll make something like it and see what hap–they broke it. they fuckin destroyed it. They destroyed it in a creepy way too….We are now also concerned.

Psychologists: Maybe we should be less concerned about people falling in love with robots and more concerned about what all this might do to their understanding of the disposability of concent and personhood.

Sociologists: YEAH MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE, PSYCHOLOGIST.

Ethicist: While you were all talking I’ve been thinking about what Lawyer said about raping a robot. While technically it wouldn’t be “rape” by our laws, would the robot perceive it that way? Do robots have concepts of justice?

Robot Makers: They don’t if we don’t program it into them. See I’ll just make this prototype and–wow. it can comprehend fairness and concern. I only taught it the difference between a safe and unsafe situation under the circumstances of it rolling off a table or not. huh. uh. ok…thats. hm. 

Lawyers: If it can be concerned for its well being, does that give it personhood? Becuase if its got personhood, its gotta have rights. And if it needs rights, we gotta make laws.

Ethicist: The question is not whether we think it has personhood, but more whether IT considers ITSELF to have personhood. Because historically, people have decided other groups of people dont have personhood regardless of the opinon of individuals within that group and it was bad. Like… real bad.

Sociologist: Does anyone remember what i said 20 years ago about being concerned about introducing an entire class of humanoid beings without rights to a society where real living people don’t have rights? Can we be concerned about that now?

All, chagrined: Yes.

Sociologist: Cool, lets move on. Ethicist brought up an interesting point about personhood and Lawyer brought up an interesting threat about personhood and Robot Maker is having an existential crisis about what it means to become God. So let’s condense our viewpoints and overview potential consequences:

1. we agree that society frames the use and consequences of all products/entities developed in it.

2. personhood is self-defined, and thanks to Robot Maker we now know that adding components to a robot that seem benign can have the added effect of them developing aspects of personhood.

Robot Maker, interrupting: And I think that the more complex the android, the more immediate and complex their understanding of personhood would develop–

Sociologist: Yes, we get that. This is a review. Anyway, 3. When they develop that personhood, they should be eligible for rights??

Lawyer: Get back to us on that, we’re trying to figure out whether this is going to make us a lot of money or just be a giant red-tape headache and you know how much we hate those. But also, if we give them rights they might not kill us all later, so we’re taking that into consideration. 

Sociologist: Noted. 4. when they develop personhood, denying them rights is unethical????

Ethicist: Technically yes, but that’s dependant on the definition of personhood within our legal systems ethics. You see Kant believes–

Sociologist: 

Psychologist: 

Robot Maker: while you guys were talking I made a robot that has opinions, can understand the nuances of humor, can teach itself to walk, and also doesn’t like humans much apparently so can you tALK FASTER PLEASE

And that’s where we’re at now. That was 35-ish years of intracommunity discussion condensed. 

So, my university does a lot of outreach Classics work, trying to make it less of an elitist subject and more accessible to children, and as part of that, I went to give a talk to a class of 6 and 7 year olds a few months back.

And here’s the thing. Classics is really often portrayed as the last bastion of academic privilege, a subject that is only taught to rich white kids so that they can brag about knowing Latin and get jobs as Tory MPs. But these kids were OBSESSED. They had already done some stuff on myths, and they were so excited to talk about it. They knew all the stories, all the heroes, the gods, the monsters. I have never seen such an excitable group of kids as these 6 year olds shouting about Odysseus.

For the lesson, I asked them to think of their favourite myth and to consider it from the point of view of the monster rather than the hero. The end goal was to show that often the monsters and heroes are quite similar. We decided to do Polyphemus (the Cyclops) in the Odyssey, and so I asked them why they thought Polyphemus might have been so angry at Odysseus that he killed some of his men.

Because he came home and found lots of strange men in his house, eating his food, said the kids.

So, I asked them, do you think that was a good reason to kill people?

No, they said, but he was very cross, and he didn’t do it because it was fun.

And then this KID, this SIX YEAR OLD CHILD, put her hand up and said “well, it was very bad of him, but if we’re cross with him then we have to be cross with Odysseus too, because when he came home from his adventure and found lots of men in his house, trying to marry his wife, he killed them, and that’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

AND LET ME TELL YOU

I am a published Classicist! A PhD student! And I have never made that connection before! Not once! And this child was six years old! And she made the link! By herself!

And so I tried not to show how gobsmacked I was, and we talked more about other monsters, including Medusa, and at the end of the lesson a lot of them said that they thought the monsters were not as evil as we usually think, and then I went home.

But I honestly haven’t got over how excited and engaged those kids were, in a totally regular primary school. Classics, in that classroom, was not elitist or inaccessible. It was something they understood, could really get their teeth into and use to think of new ideas of good and bad, of why we demonise different people for doing the same things. And that’s how I like to think about Classics. Not a series of dry texts in ancient languages, but as living stories that you actually can’t help but love, just a bit.

If you are so committed to being perfectly lawful that you cannot see the value of breaking a law to defend yourself or others, you’re not good, you’re obedient.

A Tasting Menu of Female Representation:

The Bechdel:

two or more women talking to each other about something other than a man

The Mako Mori:

at least one female character with her own narrative arc that is not about supporting a man’s story

The Sexy Lamp:

a female character that cannot be removed from the plot and replaced with a sexy lamp without destroying the story.

Chef’s Specials:

The Anti-Freeze:

no woman assaulted, injured or killed to further the story of another character.

The “Strength is Relative”:

complex women defined by solid characterization rather than a handful of underdeveloped masculine-coded stereotypes.

okay, so I’ve seen multiple posts just today that were basically like “haha who ever said adulthood was having your life together and everything figured out, I’m 28 and real life is drowning me as much as it ever was”

and like…the answer to that is…adults. adults said that. generation after generation, the narrative from adults to young people has been, “you are a dumb kid who doesn’t know the world or yourself but I am a Grownup with Life Experience™, and that’s why you’re supposed to do what I tell you, that’s why I don’t need to listen to your thoughts and feelings, that’s why society imagines me as a full human being and you as something that’s going to grow into a full human being.”

there’s a great book all about this that I’ve had a lot of my students read - Childhood and Society, by a sociologist named Nick Lee. Lee argues that the child/adult binary is a socially constructed one, based, like any other such binary, on an imagined idea of clearly oppositional characteristics. specifically, he says that children are imagined as incomplete, unstable (as in their lives and experiences are constantly changing, not as in mentally unstable), and dependent, and adults as complete, stable, and independent. those characteristics don’t match up to reality if you think about them too hard for even a moment - no one is truly independent, adults’ lives aren’t stable, what does judging a human being’s “completeness” even mean - but it doesn’t matter, because our culture is so obsessed with believing in them.

and adults being forced to pretend they’re complete and independent and living stable lives is one of the toxic ways all this plays on people of all ages.

I really hope that seeing my generation talk like this - just flat-out admit that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing any better than we did ten years ago - means we have the potential to break this cycle. but honestly, entering my 30s and having seen so many people my age turn into those adults who act like they have life so well figured out compared to those dumb kids, it doesn’t seem likely. we might be a little better than we could’ve been, but too many of us are going down that tired old road of transitioning from talking about how much smarter we are than our parents to talking about how much smarter we are than our kids, just like every generation does when it hits this age.

I guess what I’m saying is, please, young 20-somethings of today, be better ten years from now than we are.

let’s be honest though, millennial hate is totally a thing rich folks started because they’re pissed that we have really unpredictable consumer habits and it isn’t as easy to get us to buy into stuff, so they’re mad we aren’t just money giving/traditional economy supporting machines like they expected us to be

like look at how much millennial hate articles are things like “millennials aren’t eating cereal and it’s hurting the cereal industry” or “millennials aren’t buying houses and that’s bad” or “millennials #1 utmost priority isn’t trying to make as much money as possible” and rich folks are mad about it, so just posturing our unpredictability/nontraditional values as “laziness” gets everyone else on board the hate train in some weird attempt to collectively subdue us