Considering the Jade Emperor

I mentioned recently that I am reading an abridged version of Journey to the West (the one by Anthony C Yu), and even though I am a quarter of the way through, the actual journey hasn't even started yet!   (It's all been Monkey's back story, thus far.)

So a lot of the story so far involves Chinese heaven and its mixed bag of residents, which in true Chinese syncretic religious style involves Daoist, Buddhist and other Chinese gods and beings, all headed by the Jade Emperor.  

I don't know about the Jade Emperor as a mythological being, so I guess this Wikipedia entry is a good enough start as any.  I didn't know this snippet:

Early Catholic missionaries to China wrote often about the Jade Emperor. They noticed that, "The stories of Jesus and the Jade Sovereign are, in certain aspects, quite similar. In both cases it is claimed that a god incarnated as a human being." On the other hand, they denounced the cult of the Jade Emperor as "superstitious," and compared unfavorably the "legends" about the Jade Emperor with what they claimed was a solid historical record documenting the existence and life of Jesus.^[19]

But the thing that I thought interesting from the book was his harshness.  Remember Sandy (officially, Sha Wujing), the fishy monster spirit who is one of the three companions of the young monk Tripitaka?   His origin story is this:  

Like Zhu Bajie, Wujing was originally a general in Heaven, more specifically a Curtain-Lifting General (卷帘大将 juǎnlián dàjiàng). His fall from grace happens when he broke a valuable Jade or Crystal vase or goblet, during a Heavenly Peach Festival; some sources say that he had done this in a fit of rage while other sources say that he had done this unintentionally, and it was an accident. Either way, he was punished by the Jade Emperor, who had him struck 800 times with a rod and exiled to earth,^[1] where he was to be reincarnated as a terrible man-eating sandman, orc, ogre, troll, oni, demon, monster, or hulk.^[2] There, he lived in the Liúshā-hé (流沙河, "flowing-sand river", or "quicksand-river").^[3] Each day, seven flying swords sent from Heaven would stab him in the chest and then return. He had to live in the river full-time to avoid the punishment.

In the abridged version I'm reading, the dropped goblet sounds like it was only an accident - making the punishment exceptionally harsh.

Googling how he is in the novel, I see that someone on Reddit had noted that he (the Jade Emperor) is not portrayed all that favourably, and also appears a pretty weak character, in terms of all the trouble he has with getting Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) subdued:

In Journey to the West, the Jade Emperor frequently is unable to think of solutions by himself, is quick to jump to the death penalty on no less than Wukong, Pigsy, Sandy, and the white dragon horse. In things like the TV/movie adaptations he's shown as pretty helpless against Wukong's havoc in Heaven.

Is this usually how the Jade Emperor is portrayed in other myths about him? Perhaps he's competent in others, but I do recall a myth where he reincarnates a dragon as a Jin Dynasty prince of sorts to wage war on the Song Dynasty for miswriting the Jade Emperor's name, though that seems to be a Buddhist myth as well.

Is this perhaps a result of Buddhism wanting to portray the Daoist pantheon as more fallible or cruel?

The first answer sounds pretty convincing to me:

That's a complex question. I can't speak for the author's intent, as I don't have a good understanding of Ming-Dynasty political culture, but I can give you my personal interpretation.

On the one hand, yes, I think the book has a vested interest in portraying Buddhism as being superior to Daoism, as it's full of evil Daoist immortals being defeated by virtuous Buddhist bodhisattvas. But I think, in the case of the Jade Emperor, it's a little more complex. In traditional Chinese thinking, the Heavenly political order mirrors the Earthly political order, with a divinely-appointed emperor sitting at the center of a vast political machine of ministers and bureaucrats. As Confucius says, ""He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it" (Analects 2.1). The ideal Confucian emperor does not rule through absolute autocracy, violently enforcing his will upon the people; he cultivates a government of the wisest and most virtuous men of the land, and relies on their advice when making important decisions. In this sense, the ideal emperor lies at the center of politics, but also transcends it; he wields absolute authority, but uses it with restraint and discrimination. So, when the Jade Emperor is asking his ministers what to do, it's not because he's an incompetent idiot; it's to show that he is a wise ruler who recognizes the value of his ministers' wisdom and input.

However, you're right when you say that the Celestial Court is largely helpless against Sun Wukong's onslaught, so the point where no one less than the Buddha Himself must come in and stop the rebel. I think that this is meant to show the relationship between political and religious authority. While the Confucian/Daoist political machine is necessary for maintaining an orderly state, Buddhism is represented as a higher moral/religious authority which transcends the mere politics of the court, to which the government must bow. Throughout Chinese history, dynasties have risen and fallen, but each has had to justify itself by claiming the Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule which is divinely appointed by Heaven in response to the dynasty's moral integrity. If the Jade Emperor represents the temporal will of the government, the Buddha represents the eternal will of Heaven itself, which transcends and outlasts any mere political machine. And it's only when when these two will work together, the political and the religious (or, as Walter Bagehot put it, the "Efficient" and the "Dignified"), that a nation can prosper.

TLDR; I think the Jade Emperor is meant to be a good emperor, but his inability to defeat Sun Wukong is meant to show how the temporal, earthly authority of Confucianism and Daoism are subordinate (or, perhaps, supplementary) to the eternal, divine authority of Buddhism.

Again, I can't speak for the place of Jade Emperor in the wider history of Chinese mythology, or the particular political/philosophical theories of the time the book was written. This is merely my personal interpretation. But I hope you found it interesting!

Other people agree:

The author of Journey to the west was Buddhist and his portrayal of the Jade Emperor as well as that of taoism was largely made in bad faith. 

Oddly, searching the very large Journey to the West research site, I haven't spotted yet an article just about the Jade Emperor.  Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. 

Update:   I just realised that there is a small Taoist temple in Singapore that I haven't seen which is dedicated to the Jade Emperor.   I know the city so well that I can tell from the map that, while I have been all around that area, I haven't walked down that particular street where it is.   I think this is a good enough reason to return again soon.  :)

 

Way to be popular

 

 And it's Scoot! The most basic of airlines. (No screens, nothing.)

Memory jogged

I bet I'm not the only over 60 year old who was prompted to remember a certain Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch by this story at the Guardian today: 

Bruce Lehrmann unemployable and may need to go on OnlyFans ‘or something silly like that’ to make money, lawyer tells court

 

 Mind you, now that I am way, way older than when that sketch came out, the problem is more how young most judges look, rather than how old and dithery they are.

Am still rather busy atm...but a few notes, including on ghost marriages

*    On the weekend, I found myself watching (for a little while) a livestream of a Australian Asian vlogger fishing at night somewhere in Sydney.   Of course, he was catching fish.  Is my impression correct that all Asian people are naturally good at fishing, or is that an equivalent to thinking they are all great at maths? 

Anyway, watching Youtube videos of people like him who catch stuff easily makes me feel very inadequate as a occasional fisherperson.  Of course, if it's a video that's been editted, they may have gone an hour or more with nothing, but here I was watching a livestream, and he was still catching fish. Yet, this guy just seems an enthusiatic and pleasant (doesn't swear a bit) - and possibly lonely? - bloke who enjoys talking to a camera, so it was hard to be too offended.

*  I am contemplating a trip early next year to Indonesia, specifically to visit Yogyakarta, mostly famous for its ancient temples, including Borobudur.   I think I might have overdone watching Youtube travel vloggers who have been there, though, because while it's good to get information about a place you haven't been to before, watching too many can start to make it feel as if I have seen so much that I don't need to see it in person after all!   It's a bit like the way I blame David Attenborough and his ilk for making so many documentaries about African wildlife over the decades that I feel very disinterested in ever actually visiting the continent.   (I can also blame modern technology, as good looking video is so easy to make now - including with drones - that even the worst vlogger can give you a very clear idea of what a particular site looks like.) 

* Continuing an Asian theme for today, I watched the Taiwanese gay themed comedy/action film Marry my Dead Body on Netflix.   I knew nothing about it, but was just looking for a decent international film to watch, and as this one involved the matter of ghost marriage, it seemed intriguing enough.

I thought it a bit too long, but generally, pretty witty and watchable, and interesting in terms of a reflection on attitudes to gay relationships in Taiwan, which (for some reason I don't really understand*), was the first Asian country to go all in for gay marriage.   (It was also pretty frank about sex generally for a Chinese culture film, not that it featured any sex scenes, but male butt nudity was played for laughs quite a bit.)  I guess you could say it was a little like a gay twist on Ghost, with the addition of some Asian style comedy and action.   I liked that it turned out some family conflict was actually based on a misunderstanding, not actual ill will.   I have a soft spot for conflict stories that are resolved that way - everyone can forgive everyone else, and on we go. 

I read after watching it that it was a big hit in Taiwan, and I'm not surprised.

Anyway, back to the ghost marriage element, which was key to the film.  I couldn't remember having read about it before, but then by coincidence while watching a Chinese vlogger from Singapore the next night, I was reminded that there is a small Taoist temple in Tanjong Pagar, and the signage outside of it features an article explaining that it was known for hosting ghost marriages.  In fact, looking at my phone, I took a photo of this on Christmas Day in 2018, probably intending to read it all later:

 

More information about Chinese ghost marriage can be found at Wikipedia, including this detail that featured in the movie:

In some occasions, the family of a deceased person may choose to use a priest as a matchmaker.^[5] In other occasions, the family may choose to leave out a red envelope with gifts, believing that the deceased person's spouse would eventually reveal themselves.^[6]

The lesson seems to be, if you are of very eligible marriage age in Taiwan or China, don't go picking up random red envelopes found lying around.   (Cleverly, the movie gave a particular reason for the protagonist to be picking one up.)  

I don't know how often ghost marriages still happen in Taiwan - it would seem it is something left to specific temples, I think.   This article from 2017 in Taipei gives an example of an unusual case, but it would appear they still sometimes are pursued.

*  I see there is a very detailed Wikipedia entry about the path the country took on this.  It was ultimately the courts that said the constitution required it, but it seems there was an active political movement towards it before that decision anyway.

Am rather busy atm...

Corny

We went for a drive Saturday, around the Mulgowie/Forest Hill/Lowood/Marburg area. 

 I'm not sure if its the sweet corn capital of Australia, but there was a lot planted in the ground.  (We also bought some fresh cobs from the farmer's market - and I don't know if there is a more delicious vegetable when so fresh, and lightly steamed, with butter and pepper.)

We also found a house at Marburg that sells honey at the road front for a good price, and we were told it comes from her own hives behind the house.  Sweet - literally.

I know that this last winter has been pretty cold, and pretty wet, for South East Queensland, but I didn't realise until driving around that all farm dams would be full.   In fact, Lake Dyer, just outside of Laidley, is really the fullest I have ever seen it, going back several years.   It seems a lot more rain has fallen than I had realised.   (Yes, now that I check, the dams around SE Qld are nearly all at 80 to 90% full - and this is at the end of our normally dryer season.) 

I had also never stopped in Marburg before.  The pub is old (1881) and nothing too fancy inside.  (The bar downstairs is remarkably small - most of the floor space is taken up with a dining room and dining deck.)  But the exterior is in good condition.  I wonder what's upstairs?

Anyway, a nice drive on a nice day.  (The dog came with us too).

Update:  And to round off a long weekend:

Yay!  They Might Be Giants played The Tivoli, and they're still witty and such fun to see.  I'm always surprised at how many people don't know who they are, contrasted with the warm reception they get from audiences with an age range from about 18 to 70.  Seemed to be more females than I expected, too.  

I'm guessing they still have a couple of good albums in them yet...

History corner

 It seems he was a very healthy guy for his age too, since he is said to have been giving cogent interviews last year:

He explained last year in an interview with Jason Morgan, an associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, for the English-language website Japan Forward, “I’m ashamed that I’m the only one who survived and lived such a long life.”

Asked in that interview if ever thought of visiting Pearl Harbor, he at first replied, “I wouldn’t know what to say.” He then added: “If I could go, I would like to, I would like to visit the graves of the men who died. I would like to pay them my deepest respect.”

 And here he is, from 2023:

 

Put me in the skeptic column

So, some guy has put up a video about his a-mazing discovery that looking at a laser the right way while high on DMT (the hallucinogen with a reputation for causing "machine elves" or other alien-ish entities to turn up as part of the trip) causes people to be able to see the code behind our reality.  Yes, like the Matrix movie:

  

 

I would be a bit less skeptical if he wasn't running a GoFundMe page to finish the documentary he says he's making about it.

I also don't know if there is any particular reason why a drug that is known for producing one particular trip fairly often (the visiting machine elves ones) should not also have a quirk of making people see numbers when the illumination is right.   I mean, that it should produce a numbers illusion is perhaps less odd than it making it feel like intelligent beings are coming to commune with you.  I think.

Anyway, let's see where this goes.  Hopefully, not just a case of money into this guy's pocket with nothing further.

Depravity corner

It's a topic I don't even like to think about, but it's so astounding to me that people can develop get some sort of seriously perverse pleasure out of this, it seems worth noting.   On the BBC website, this:

One of the ringleaders of a global monkey torture network exposed by the BBC has been sentenced to three years and four months in prison.

Mike Macartney, 50, who used the alias ‘The Torture King’, pleaded guilty in the US state of Virginia to conspiracy to create and distribute animal crushing videos.

Macartney was one of three key distributors identified by the BBC Eye team in a year-long investigation into sadistic monkey torture groups.

The BBC’s reporting led to a nationwide criminal investigation in the US by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

A former motorcycle gang member who previously spent time in prison, Macartney ran several of the most high-profile torture groups, based on the encrypted message app Telegram.

Sadists around the world used Telegram groups to share ideas for specific methods of torture. Those requests were then sent, along with payments, to video makers in Indonesia, who carried them out on baby long-tailed macaques.

Though Macartney collected funds and distributed videos, he was able to show that he had never sent money directly to an Indonesian video maker.

This comes not long after the equally bizarre story of the zoologist guy in the Northern Territory who had a side line in sexually defiling dogs and then torturing them to death for a video fan club.  At least he got 10 years in jail (and, hopefully, the loss of all family contact, forever.)  

I really have no understanding of how men can respond to such material - or not recognize that it is indeed a serious problem to get pleasure that way, and not seek counselling or treatment to stop getting off on it.

 

 

The only Frank Lloyd Wright skyscraper

Well, it's pretty short as far as skyscrapers go, but I didn't know it existed at all.   It has seen better days, though, as this well illustrated NYT article explains.

Bad trips, and Buddhism re-visited

So, last weekend this video, called We Finally Know Why Causes Bad Trips, was recommended to me by the All Knowing Google (YouTube arm):  

 

I have thoughts: 

a.   Even allowing for the algorithmic need for an eye-catching thumbnail, I really don't like this one, as (despite the content in the video itself), it really seems to encouraging people to not take "bad trips" very seriously.   

b.   It does mention ecstasy amongst the list of hallucinogens, which was news to me.   

c.   The video talks about how one of the features of a bad trip can be ego dissolution (or ego death), and that this sensation alone can have lasting negative effects after the drug has worn off.

d.   As usual with any internet content in which someone presents a cautionary note on the use of any recreational drug, it immediately attracts defenders of their habit in comments.   But the range of views in this thread are pretty interesting, mainly because of the two camps - those who say they went through the ego dissolution but found it peaceful or calming (or insightful), and those who said it was a very negative sensation for them which, for some, took months or years to get over.   (You also get the odd person who says they know someone who never was the same again from use of LSD or whatever, and not in a good way.)

Lots of people in comments go on about the basic idea that you should never use a hallucinogen if not in the "right" mood for it, and without being in a safe place with supportive people, etc.   But I still get the feeling that this is no guarantee of a positive trip.

The video explains that some MRI scanning indicates that people undergoing a bad trip (well, it actually mentions ego dissolution) were more likely to have glutamate active in the medial prefrontal cortex.   How useful this knowledge is seemingly anyone's guess - it certainly doesn't indicate any possibility of prediction of a bad trip 

e.   Anyway, the general discussion of ego dissolution got me thinking about Buddhism and its core idea of Anatta, or no self.   It's difficult not to draw a connection there, and while I have mentioned before the possible inspirational role of hallucinogens to Buddhist and Hindu imagery, I'm not sure that it had occurred to me before as inspiring Anatta.   

Anyway, in a broader sense, it is a little hard to understand why the sensation of experiencing loss of self or ego under drugs (or intense meditation, I suppose) should be unpleasant for some, but give a sense of peace to others.

Mind you, as I noted before, Mahayana Buddhism pushes back on the idea of extinction of self in favour of the core of a person being a process that, once enlightened enough, can decide how to manifest in various forms - which I suppose is consistent with reincarnation, it just disagrees about nirvana being an form of extinction.  This was all explained better in this post.   

Once again, though, it brings me back to my old dissatisfaction with the apparent contradiction in Buddhism as a philosophy - how compassion is meant to work in any motivational sense if you're walking around firmly of the view that not only your own life is a barely held together group of sensations, but that's all that is at the core of every one around you as well.  

Google can point me to the response:

By exposing the transparency of self, one opens up to the relational nature of identity, and thereby creates the ground for empathy and engagement.

From the same link (by Stephen Batchelor):

The Mahayana takes the concept of anatta and extends that to the development of compassion for all things, since there really is no separation between self and other. An image that conveys this most beautifully is Shantideva’s concept of the entire world being comparable to a single organism, a body. He says that just as when the foot is in pain, the hand will spontaneously reach out to assuage the pain of the foot, in the same way—if you are no longer inhibited by self-centeredness—you will spontaneously reach out to assuage the pain of others. That metaphor beautifully conveys the central insight of Mahayana Buddhism: Once the self is seen through, it does not just mean liberation, but also that your spontaneous response to others becomes that of a profound empathy. You recognize that who you are is not because of some kind of metaphysical substance or essence that is tucked away inside you somewhere, but rather is determined by the unrepeatable matrix of relationships that constitute your own history.

I kind of get that on one level - and the whole "we are all one" has an appeal in the way it aligns (metaphorically, at least) with quantum entanglement.   But it doesn't seem to me that it makes sense to say that the compassion is a "spontaneous response" in the way alleged.

One day I'll get it - or not!

Oh, and I suppose I should end in the somewhat rambling entry on ego death, and its connection with religions and hallucinogens, at Wikipedia.  It does end on this note:

Scholars have also criticized Leary and Alpert's attempt to tie ego-death and psychedelics with Tibetan Buddhism. John Myrdhin Reynolds, has disputed Leary and Jung's use of the Evans-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, arguing that it introduces a number of misunderstandings about Dzogchen.^[89] Reynolds argues that Evans-Wentz's was not familiar with Tibetan Buddhism,^[89] and that his view of Tibetan Buddhism was "fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, but Theosophical and Vedantist".^[90] Nonetheless, Reynolds confirms that the nonsubstantiality of the ego is the ultimate goal of the Hinayana system.^[91]

  

The malleable world of psychiatric diagnosis

Hey, a decent and interesting article at Slate about an issue I hadn't really been aware of:

Today there are about 3.3 million Americans with a bipolar disorder diagnosis. Many experts think that this figure is an undercount of the true number of people living with the condition. As with any disorder, some diagnosable people are never seen by a clinician. And many patients who wind up with the label of bipolar disorder are initially misdiagnosed with unipolar depression.

But some psychiatrists think that the bipolar diagnosis has actually gone too far—that there is a large contingent of patients who have been slapped with a trendy label, the definition of bipolar having drifted far beyond its original meaning. Research indicates that false positives for bipolar disorder may be alarmingly common. In a landmark study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in 2008, more than half of bipolar patients who were reevaluated were determined to have been misdiagnosed. It’s possible that misdiagnosis and underdiagnosis are widespread issues—but the field continues to be divided on whether misdiagnosis is an issue at all.

Perhaps no topic in 21^st-century adolescent psychiatry has been more controversial than pediatric bipolar, a diagnosis that can be applied to kids as young as 5 who have severe problems with emotional control. Critics say the label pathologizes normal but challenging parts of growing up. Proponents say it’s a needed intervention for kids not helped by other means.

No matter their age, when a patient receives the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, they are usually routed toward prescription drugs and can be blocked off from other diagnoses—and therefore other avenues of treatment. Borderline personality disorder, neurodivergence, and ADHD can all be misdiagnosed as bipolar but have vastly different treatment regimens. The first two are often treated without meds.

The rest of the article, about how bipolar diagnoses really had a huge growth phase, but is now getting some pushback, is very interesting.   I hope it doesn't go behind a paywall...

 

 

This and that

*  I can see from my emails (where comments also appear) that for some reason, some comments seem to be being made but are not appearing on the blog.  I have no idea why this is happening intermittently, sorry.

*  I agree with some comments on Twitter, that the devastating floods in parts of the USA at the moment are not attracting quite the attention in the US mainstream press as one might expect.   (I don't know if it's true, but one Youtube video this morning suggested that 1,000 people are still unaccounted for, which likely means the death toll is going to keep climbing.)   Someone else on Twitter said that it seems that as more flash floods are happening everywhere, they seem to be getting less media coverage, and someone else commented it's a bit like school shootings in the US - they don't attract the same length of attention that they used to.  It's the "new normal".  Which is a worry...

* I had no idea until last week's Foreign Correspondent that stealing copper (for sale on an international copper recycling black market) was a gigantic problem in South African cities.  

*  Not that I have ever paid much attention to him, but Gordon Ramsay's "easy" version of how to do chicken cacciatore gives good results.  (I usually add capsicum too.)  He doesn't even swear in the video.

*  Listening to an hour of William Dalrymple talking about the successful trading millennium or so of India was quite interesting.    

*  Speaking of ancient history, this fiction author (Robert Harris) seems well known and popular, but I hadn't noticed him before.   Sounds like his Roman trilogy is well regarded, as someone in comments says Mary Beard recommended them.

*  Everyone is expecting another of those wild swings that Queensland is well known for in its elections.  To an extraordinarily high degree, I reckon, youth crime is an important issue, and to an extent, the matter of indigenous policy.   It will be interesting to see if a "tough on crime" response can be made to work quickly.

Maybe they should just stop trying to make AR glasses a thing?

Did you see some of the videos in the last couple of days showing Zuckerberg trying on the new AR glasses prototype, and showing it being used for some really pathetic uses.  Check out this video:  the game of virtual ping pong looks as lame as lame can be:

 

 

The other use mentioned here - the glasses taking you to a recipe using ingredients that it sees on a counter - this is a case of expensive and somewhat clumsy technology saving all of - what? 20 seconds? - to type in "give me a recipe for a main meal using X, Y & Z"

Apart from some highly specialised industrial uses (say, using AR to help an engine mechanic apprentice find their way around a complicated task), I just see no compelling reason why AR is ever going to be more than a novelty for the home user that quickly wears off.     

Why can't Zuckerberg and his pals see that too?   

Youtube's fiddling with the "recommended" again

I'm guessing that other people may have noticed this:   in the last couple of weeks I have noticed that when I watch a video from a channel I haven't watched before from Youtube's "recommended" list, and then go back to the recommended list, there will immediately be another 3, 4 or 5 videos from the same channel near the start of the list.  Well, perhaps in the first half of the list, anyway.

I find this annoying, because if I find a video particularly engaging, my normal practice is to go to the channel to check out what its usual content is like, and decide whether I should subscribe.   I don't need Youtube recommending that I should watch another video from there immediately - I'm big enough to work out if I should check out the channel's content myself.

First world problem, sure.   And maybe content creators actually like this tactic?   But I find it irritating.

 

 

A certain country's reputation for a mature and relaxed attitude to sex takes a hit

I've been meaning to post about the extraordinary rape case in France, in which a husband of mature age set up a scheme in which his wife would be heavily sedated, and then men invited online to have sex with her.

What seems particularly unbelievable is the number of men willing to participate (83 potential participants, of whom 50 are being tried for rape.)   I mean, France is supposed to be the country where people fall in love and have sex at the drop of a hat, and affairs are (more-or-less) common, with mature couples and friends being prepared to "look the other way" as long as it is discreet and doesn't interfere with family life.   A reputation for what might be called a relaxed, or mature (well, that's debatable, I know), attitude towards sex - and hence a country where happy consensual sex is easy to find.

Not the country of scores of desperate and hard up men online looking for invitations to have sex with a sleeping wife!   I mean, what's the appeal of sex with an inactive partner anyway?  

I had wondered whether some of the accused would claim that they thought she was just acting and part of the "game" when she was sleepy or groggy during sex, and it would seem from the report I have linked to, some are trying it on.    Yet it seems the husband himself has pleaded guilty, so I don't know that his take on what happened is going to help anyone.

Meanwhile, in Queensland we've just had the law changed to put a positive obligation to know there is consent to sex.   The government website gives these illustrations of when there will be a problem:

The new consent laws outline some of the circumstances where there will be no consent. These include where someone…

• did not say or do anything to communicate consent;
• does not have the cognitive capacity to consent;
• is so affected by alcohol or another drug they are incapable of consenting or withdrawing consent;
• is unconscious or asleep;
• participates in the act because of force, a fear of force, harm of any type or a fear of harm of any type, whether to the person or another person, animal or property, and regardless of whether it was a single incident or part of a pattern of behaviour;
• participates in the act because of coercion, blackmail or intimidation, regardless of when it occurs or whether it is a single incident or part of an ongoing pattern;
• participates in the act because the person or another person is unlawfully confined, detained or otherwise deprived or their personal liberty;
• participates in the act because the person is overborne by the abuse of a relationship of authority, trust or dependence;
• participates in the act because of a false or fraudulent representation about the nature or purpose of the act, including about whether the act is for health, hygienic or cosmetic purposes;
• participates in the act with another person because the person is mistaken about the identity of the other person  or participates in the act with another person because the person is mistaken they are married to the other person;
• is a sex worker and participates in the act because of a false or fraudulent representation that the person will be paid or receive some reward for the act;
• participates in the act with another person on the basis that a condom is used for the act and the other person does any of the following things before or during the act: does not use a condom; tampers with the condom; removes the condom; or becomes aware that the condom is no longer effective but continues with the sexual act (‘stealthing’).

I can imagine that this will cause some difficult cases in future, if the law survives a change of government. 

A very, very comedy career

Apropos of nothing, have a look at this obituary in The Guardian about a British comedy writer, director and occasional performer who worked on an extraordinary number of shows since the 1960's with an extraordinary range of comedians.   

I think it must be fairly rare to find someone who can work with so many different types of comedian?

Given the current state of British comedy, which I think has been pretty dire for quite a long time (with only rare exception), we need more like him. 

Musing about the American election

It seems to me that this is surely one of the most difficult Presidential election to predict with any great certainty because of so many factors pulling in different directions:

*   national polling and enthusiastic rallies indicate high motivation for Democrat supporters to get out and vote - particularly for women, for whom the gap between support for Trump and Harris is so wide;

*  on the other hand, the US papers are full of stories of different Republican states cutting out large numbers of registered voters off the voter enrolments,  and it seems very hard to know how many of those were "legitimate" (deceased people, for example), and how many are real acts of disenfranchisement that might have a disproportionate effect on Democrats;

*  on the third hand, it's hard to see a Trump/Vance campaign tactic that is working for them - I think we can safely say that the attack on Haitians has not gone well, given the amount of mocking on line it has generated, not to mention the Republican Governor of Ohio saying he's "saddened" by it in a column in the New York Times!   It's clear they don't want Trump coming to town to stir up more trouble unnecessarily, and I expect it won't happen;

*  there are also very odd things like Georgia saying every vote has to be counted by hand, with likely delays in declaring the winner and that providing time for dubious legal challenges, and other states reducing dramatically the number of voting places.   Again, you would have to suspect that these work against Democrat voters, who are more likely to be younger workers who need the most convenient time and place to voter due to their working hours.   Older Americans, who are more likely to vote for Trump, can more easily waste time getting to a voting booth.   But how big an effect can this have?

I think everyone can agree - this American system of leaving voting arrangements up to each individual state is just a crazy mess.   If they can't bring themselves to have a national electoral commission to run elections uniformly across the nation, can they at least do something that seems so obvious to Australians watching:   mandate nationally that voting day is a Saturday, where working hours and time to access a polling station is much less likely to be a problem for most people?  

Update:  One other thing I forgot to mention - the Democrats apparently have a heap more money to spend on advertising, and we've been reading for months about the Republicans being poorly organised in many states.  But as I just don't understand the complicated system there (the parties seem to have to do so much work just to get people registered to vote and then to vote) I don't know how important these factors are.

Should I go to the Ninth?

I see that the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is putting on Beethoven's 9th Symphony in November.  It seems to me that it is pretty rarely performed these days, and I suspect the orchestra knows that putting on the infrequently played big classics attracts an audience, as they have 3 performances for sale - on two evenings and a Saturday afternoon.   Actually, I see now that they are not doing a Christmas performance of The Messiah this year (they did it at Easter instead), so they are probably seeing if the semi-religious reputation of this piece is a successful replacement.   Still, they would only do The Messiah once at Christmas, so running the 9th for 3 performances is still pretty surprising to me.

Should I go?   I'm not at all familiar with it, apart from having heard the orchestral version of the "Ode to Joy" final movement a couple of times.   (Even then it was probably only on TV.  I remember watching it with my late father, probably as a teenager, and both of us being a bit disappointed that it's not really much like the sped up 3 minute pop versions that have been popular over the years.)

The question is therefore what are the other three movements like, and should I listen to them before the concert, as I did when I had years - due to Covid - to get ready for the Ring Cycle.  

I see from Googling the topic that not everyone enjoys it - there is a Medium essay about a person who complained about 100 years ago that its popularity is undeserved (although by the end, it sounds like it was a bit of a troll too):

On July 21st, 1927, an anonymous person going under the name “J.M.C.” sent a scathing review of a recent performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by the New York Philharmonic into the newspaper The World. In this review, JMC begins by describing how bored the audience looked while the piece was being performed, with many members supposedly whispering, looking around, and reading through the programs. JMC’s claims don’t end here, as they then assert that the piece is simply one that “everybody praises and nobody likes” and that it is only famous because people see it as profound because of its religious themes, especially given that he did not believe that Beethoven was not particularly religious otherwise. They maintain that people only go to concerts because of a feeling of religious obligation and the idea that they must conform to those around them. They end, quite exaggeratedly and obviously satirically, with the statement “I move you that a law be passed making performances of the Ninth Symphony illegal. It is an affront to the memory of Beethoven to keep playing it over year after year”.

On the other hand, someone on Reddit writes:

The Ninth embodies the best of Beethoven's work. It's a musical journey that enraptures you. I first listened to it when I was 12 and just beginning to explore "classical" music. At the time, I thought the Ninth Symphony was just the Ode to Joy melody. To my surprise, when I popped the CD in and started listening to the first movement, I heard something altogether different. It was one of those pieces that forced me to sit down and listen intently, partly because I was looking for the melody I had originally wanted to hear, and partly because I was so intrigued by the music and its twists and turns as it developed and recapitulated themes throughout in ways that still surprise me when I listen now.

 I think I should probably go see it....

The blogger then wrote this

There's a somewhat interesting article at the Washington Post about intellectual humility, and how it's generally a good thing.

But this paragraph is what prompted the post title:

Step outside yourself. In a 2021 study, Grossmann and his colleagues assessed 149 adults who wrote diary entries about the most significant thing that happened that day for a month. But some participants wrote in the third person, from a less egocentric perspective, while the control group subjects wrote in the first person.

After the month-long experiment, those who wrote in the third person had more growth in wise reasoning, including intellectual humility and open-mindedness, compared with pre-diary assessments.

And they were later less likely to report negative feelings about the people who they felt transgressed against them, Grossmann said.