Goths and Gender and Censorship and other issues

Well it's been quite a busy week for me. Lots of socialising and a lot of good and interesting conversation.

One of the things I've been impressed with is that Goths are even more acepting of TG these days than I'd realised. This week I came out to some new goth friends and met a heap for the first time while at a party 'out'. I also met some non-Goths at the party.

Many though not all were teens, mostly about 15, though the full range was somewhere near 11 to 40's. Utter, instant, unquestioning, unconditional acceptance.

Discussing gender issues with the teens I learned some interesting things. For one in the 'norm' or non-goth non-emo population their age the gender 'colour code' of pink=girls and blue=boys is reversing as so many teen boys are wearing pink the girls are now going for blue. And man-skirts are becoming trendy with plenty of 'norm' boys wearing them on casual days.

And all this in rural New South Wales Australia.

I remember when I was the only goth in the village lol. Except for the brief period when it was suddenly a popular trend when The Crow came out. It was interesting hearing similar views from these teen goths as they discussed the surge of interest in vampires due to the Twilight books and movie and it's wonderful to see the growth development and spread of Goth culture accross so many decades as we had people from their early teens, late teens, 20's 30's and 40's.

I also discoved just how bad I am at singstar lol!

Through the many conversations i've had with several social groups this week the following notions were particularly interesting ones.

How philosophy, especially ethics, as well as politics and the law can handle coming to terms with implications of cognitive neuroscience such as the evidence that we are far less concious than we think with most decisions post-rationalised by the conscious brain after the decision has been made... how can anyone be held responsible for actions if this data is correct and the 'person' is but a passenger and not actually in command?

And it was great to hear the views about Toxoplasmosis Gondii (the rat-behaviour and possibly human behaviour-altering brain parasite) of someone who actually definately is a host to that parasite!

How should we handle things like car-insurance and drivers licences for people whose brain-parasites effect their reactions in emergencies? And what is societies responsibilities to it's citizens rgarding transport and infrastructure let alone what are the ethics issues involving someone with a brain parasite? Should a treatment exist should they be forced to undergo it? What allowances should be made for those with it when there is no treatment or for those who may refuse such treatment.

Sex work, sex-positivity and pornography were also discussed at length from several different viewpoints with intersting notions raised.

For example it was suggested that pornography with GLBT content, especially that made for the 'mainstream' audience should have a moral and perhaps ethical obligation to include some education content or carry political messages. The comment "If they are good enough to (masturbate) to then how about voting on their issues. no-one else need ever know who you vote for any more than what genre your getting off on".

There was also some discussion of how the industry apeared to be largely failing to address the changing audience when 1/3rd of the pornography audience and growing is female.

Issues of pornography as well as video games and censorship were interesting and it seems clear that the 'community values' used to determine a lot of things have nothing to do with the actual values of the actual community unless all the polls on the subject can be dissmissed.

It was also interesting that pretty much everyone in the discussion agreed that from an ethical viewpoint the BDSM community with it's emphasis on informed consent and safety is generally far better than the standard vanilla community where sex while drunk and/or stoned and therefore unable to give truly informed consent because of impaired cognition is in fact the primary sexual circumstance.

And my Le Chevalier D'Eon anime boxed set arrived and a friend has the Hellsing series set so as well as social fun and a host more roleplaying gaming I've got some fun stuff to watch.

Are 'friends' electric?

Somethings are worth knowing thrice.

Well may they say that any nation is just three missed meals away from revolution, and sometimes they'd be right and sometimes assuredly wrong.

But no matter how old you live you may still find yourself up at 2:22AM listening to Gary Numan and both wanting and not wanting to go to sleep.

So I will try and get some sleep soon because I will be running a game of the roleplaying game Conspiracy X tomorrow. What truth will I impart in allegory to my more 'normal' friends tomorrow? What of this sound can I convey in words, though the truth is not in the sound... no music is more nor less than a set of triggers. Echo's of the past. We play on our own instincts. We speak in a forgotton language to a sleeping ear to stir the dreams of our own inner gods.

And no matter how old i get there will be a season for this sort of place, this particular room of the mind. Only it's shifted back to Gary Numan from Curve, Sisters of Mercy, Shriekback and various other musics that have occupied it.

If I was less tired I'd be impelled to write some more of my novel or work on my last unfinished sculpture.

And the words echo my loneliness but the synth feels strangely warm and strong and energetic.

And I remember the future, as it once was dreamed.

Sometimes the best things get forgotten and the worst are remembered.

Sometimes we let idiocy go unchallenged for expediencies sake.

Sometimes we need something to fight against, but all too often we fight for what we should fight against and against what we should fight for.

And here i write, casting out my zombie wisdom of my hypnopompic mind in it's somnambulant housing.

Floating in my state of half-awareness. Illness imposed, free of any drug-taint but trapped in that strange state between microcosm and mesocosm. My creativity wasted.

For i am weighted down, by a curse like that of sysiphus and prometheus. Struggling to talk in human languages when the natural language is sinesthetic.

I recall a day, as a very small child, before I could speak, thinking without langauge by thinking in memories of sensations. I wondered what i would be eating soon by replaying tastes and smells in my mouth and nose.

Sure i'm weird. From language in sensation-memory to complex sentences, reading at a young age. Is it any wonder I struggle with thinking down to so many people, yet up to others. for intelligence isn't stacked in neat hierarchies but on variable planes. More like different 2d forms in a 3d world occupying the same coordinates but creating very different intersections which themselves create different shapes, thede shapes being new forms of intelligence which exist only, in the 4th dimesnion of temporality as our conversations, bubbles that form by our interaction and burst, notions partially cipied like rna copying faulty dna stacked with plate-shift molecules.

And only I really understand how much I have gained by this greater access to unconcious cognitin, only I can understand how much i have lost by not having access to what I used to have perpetually at my disposal. Oh mathematics, oh reliable recall, I miss you so.

16 years ago i wrote by memory in the darkness, unable to see the pencil marks on the page but confidant in my writings legibility. I sat on my bed in meditative contemplation, mind pouring, gushing, bursting in imagery. Even then the shroud was falling, like a current of aether in my mind.

So hear I am again, Gary Numen and the rain on the roof. Late, cold. Holding in my mind notions that human words cannot quite express. Knowing that my potential to contribute to society, to my own success is minimised.

A classmate whose name I can't recall once suggested god made me ill to avoid competition.

It makes my inner megalomaniac beam. But the fact is though that I will never get the chance to fully realise my potential. I will be lucky to get any novels finished let alone published let alone more widely read than my short stories are so they can reach an effective audience. and writing down to communicate to the right common denominator is painful.

And an army of the strange, while beautiful, while the lifeblood of culture and of our advancement as a species will not effect change, just shine and burn and be remembered only by their own kind.

But what else can I do? How can I find a way to show to others what is so simple, so clear, to my strange eyes?

It is the burden. Atlas is misidentified, it holds not a globe on it's shoulders, but a head in it's hands and must whisper endlessly to the dead brain via the dead ear that some little wisdom might pass beyond.

The creative minds pass through the populace, tainting the masses with meaining and being revered and reviled on the same account.

But these storm tossed Mimir's are anchored and weighted by their own half-humanity. That which allows them to communicate just that little shred to those around them. It also blights them though with the very flaws within that smite them from without.

....

That's the trouble with stream of conciousness writing, it's honesty to the self makes it so personal that it loses most of it's meaning for others. We communicate through blurry shared allegories and nebulous guesses of meanings. Green to me is similar to green to you, but never the same. No two people speak exactly the same language. To communicate we need to try and speak to the shared understandings.

But to really evoke, to communicate at the deepest levels we need to trigger our ancient language receptors, often speaking more loudly but to fewer. Because for most of us those are sleeping ears.

It's time, for a time, to sleep but briefly.
Perhaps to dream of futures past, futures forgotten, futures half-remembered.

To wonder at the beauty unseen.