Sunday 8 September 2024

Qizilbash & Sen's 'adaptation problem'

 Evolution isn't really about survival. It is about reproduction. Utility isn't about hedonic pleasure or the maintenance of 'conatus' (i.e. inertial existence). It is about what is useful for whatever purposes a person may have. But that purpose includes 'discovery'- i.e. trying novel things- and may involve not utility maximization by regret minimization- more particularly if there is Knightian Uncertainty. Discovery is related to adaptation. Indeed, it is a two way street. 

We often have reasons to compare two different states of the world. Suppose you are offered a well paid job in an Islamic country with strict laws on alcohol, adultery and so forth. Your alternative is low pay in a 'decadent' Western country. It might initially be difficult for you to adapt to a pious, teetotal, lifestyle. But maybe it would be good for you. Moreover, you could save up money and have a better standard of living if you decide to return to the West after a few years. Of course, if you are a hopeless alcoholic or a compulsive adulterer, it may not be safe to make the move. You have to decide whether you can or can't adapt.

Countries too need to decide what they can or can't adapt to. This matters because if you choose the wrong 'mimetic target' or economic plan, you may end up worse than before. Still, these are decisions which we all must make throughout our lives. At a fundamental level, they are ideographic, not nomothetic. No a priori 'norms' or calculus can be applied.

Some twenty years ago Mozaffar Qizilbash published a paper titled-

The Adaptation Problem, Evolution and Normative Economics 
 Abstract: Amartya Sen has advanced a number of distinct arguments against utilitarianism and ‘utility’-based views more generally.

Nobody knows what utility or capability really is. This means there can be no argument against the thing because it isn't whatever strawman you are belaboring.   

One of these invokes various ways in which underdogs can ‘adapt’ and learn to live with their situations.

This is like the Income and Substitution effect of a price change. Would people pay more money not to have to 'adapt'? Measuring this involves no very severe problem. True, a 'Laspeyres' type approach may magnify the negative income effect whereas a Paasche type approach would do the reverse. Still, we could look at other evidence to see how much people would pay not to have to change their behavior- i.e. adapt.

Sen’s argument is related to Jon Elster’s discussion of ‘adaptive preferences’

which is like 'managing the news'. But this does not change the fact that some people may be paying money, or enduring inconvenience, not to have to do so. Examine that and you get an idea about what has happened to aggregate welfare. A good example is looking at entry and exit. If people are running away from the Socialist Paradise, chances are the Human Development indices the regime puts out are shit. Either that or 'class enemies' are simply too far gone in decadence to adapt to a pure and healthy way of life. 

but is distinct in part because Sen cites the need for underdogs to survive.

Surviving as opposed to topping yourself requires you to stop weeping bitter tears because you didn't get selected for Julia Roberts' role in 'Pretty Woman'. I console myself that I achieved fame as Beyonce.  

When read in combination with his discussion of Darwinism, Sen’s discussion of adaptation is relevant to recent work in normative economics which is influenced by evolutionary biology.

that 'work' is shit. 

It poses a problem for Richard Layard’s book on happiness, particularly its policy conclusions.

Don't try to raise people's incomes. They will just spend the money on booze and thus become more and more unhappy.  

It also poses a problem for Ken Binmore’s account of justice because the empathetic preferences in terms of which interpersonal comparisons are made in Binmore’s account are formed through social evolution.

Binmore hadn't noticed that highly inegalitarian societies had taken territory from egalitarian ones. Social evolution hasn't turned us all into peaceful foragers.  

 Introduction One of Amartya Sen’s arguments against utilitarianism, and ‘utility’-based views more generally, involves the idea that certain underdogs may ‘adapt’ to, or learn to live with, their living conditions in a variety of ways – such as by suppressing suffering, cutting back their desires or finding pleasure in small mercies.

This is also true of top-dogs. Everybody has to adapt to the fact that as they grow older it becomes difficult to pleasure more than five super-models a night.  

It they do so, the calculus of ‘utility’ might be a misleading guide to a person’s quality of life or advantage in the evaluation of normative claims.

But that calculus is wholly notional. Nobody knows what will turn out to be really useful. You can have expectations and there is 'revealed preference' re. what you buy with your money. That's good enough for any practical purpose.  

This argument goes by a variety of names. In earlier work (Qizilbash, 2006a, p. 83), I have referred to the difficulty it poses for some accounts of well-being as the ‘adaptation problem’.

This is lie the difficulty posed to accounts of Superman by the fact that the guy can fly faster than light  and thus can go back into the past to prevent bad shit from happening. 

 The use of the term ‘adaptive preferences’ to refer to Sen’s claims about adaptation is misleading, because he usually makes no claim about preferences in the relevant discussions.

Sen got it into his head that very poor people in Bihar reported less morbidity than very rich people in Beverly Hills. This wasn't true. Asked the right questions, they would have reported much higher morbidity.  

In this paper, I argue that one difference between Elster’s and Sen’s discussions - which has received little or no attention - is that Sen is often concerned that underdogs adapt with a view to survival.

Everyone either wants to survive or is ready to top herself. Why speak only of underdogs? 

His related work on the Darwinian view of progress and evolution, helps to make more sense of some of his concerns about adaptation and survival. This paper goes on to address the following questions: is the adaptation problem relevant to recent contributions in normative economics - notably on happiness and justice?

No. Both are stupid shit. 

and do these contributions have any plausible response to the adaptation problem? I take Richard Layard’s work to be an example of recent work on happiness, which has been influential at the policy level and Ken Binmore’s writings as a contemporary account of justice. Both Layard and Binmore are influenced by evolutionary biology.

In which case they should be focused on reproduction. The surprise is that greater affluence may mean much lower reproduction and thus demographic replacement one way or another.  

The scope and claims of the paper are thus limited to examining whether the adaptation problem arises for these authors, rather than the work of all those working on happiness and accounts of justice which build on evolutionary biology in economics.

The adaptation problem in Econ has to do with the substitution and income effect. If there is a perfect substitute, there is no income effect and thus no impact on Welfare. The question is whether substituting consumption for having babies makes people happier. In some cases, yes. In others, no. You will be miserable in your old age unless you get busy with the booze and drugs. On the other hand, watching your kids starve to death mightn't be a barrel of laughs.  

Jon Elster’s discussion of adaptive preferences dedicates considerable space to distinguishing adaptive preferences from those formed in other ways. Indeed, for Elster,  adaptive preferences are closely identified with a specific phenomenon: ‘sour grapes’. The fox and grapes example highlights the way in which preferences may not be independent of the set of feasible options.

But we can find out if foxes like grapes by offering them some. There may be a market for fox-food like the market for dog-food. Add grapes to the mix and you make a lot of money.  

Indeed, while Elster’s discussion is aimed primarily at utilitarianism, it is relevant more generally for preference based accounts of rational choice, including social choice ).

Which just boils down to 'peeps prefer to buy stuff they prefer. They don't prefer to buy shite they fucking hate.'  

So he asks: ‘why should the choice between feasible options only take account of individual preference, if people tend to adjust their aspirations to their possibilities?’ (Elster, 1983, p. 109).

Also should people be identified as occupying specific bodies? I aspire to be both Beyonce and the Andromeda galaxy. Why are Neo-Liberal economists refusing to fulfil my aspirations? Is it coz I iz bleck?  

As regards many modern forms of utilitarianism – which rank outcomes, rules or dispositions in terms of the average or sum of welfare they produce, and conceptualise welfare in terms of the satisfaction of desires or preferences – the implication is also clear.

Fuck utility. Just focus on what people would be willing to pay. Utility or ophelimity was just a way of avoiding saying 'money'. Only vulgar peeps talk about money.  

As Elster puts it: ‘there would be no welfare loss if the fox were excluded from the consumption of the grapes, since he thought them sour anyway’ (Elster, 1983, p. 109).

Not if we gave the fox some grapes and it devoured them happily. If you care about foxes and observe a fox slinking away from juicy grapes, you might improve its welfare by chucking a bunch of grapes in its direction. 

Put another way, if the fox preferred starving to eating the grapes, preference-based utilitarianism would have no basis for claiming that the fox was worse off starving.

Only if it was as stupid as shit.  

Elster discusses a wide range of related phenomena which include: ‘counteradaptive preferences’; manipulation; ‘character planning’; addiction; and preference change through learning. By distinguishing these phenomena from that of  adaptive preference formation, he hopes to explain why adaptive preferences are problematic.

They may indeed be so. That's why we have a big Advertising and Consumer Finance industry which assures us that even ordinary folk like ourselves can and should buy nice things. Educators in state schools may have to work hard to convince working class kids that they can and should enjoy classical literature or advanced calculus. 

His ultimate charge against utilitarianism is that it would not distinguish between adaptive preferences and preferences formed in other ways and would thus not begin to address the problem he isolates.

But utilitarianism can distinguish 'sour grapes' expectations easily enough. Offer the fox the grapes. If it likes them, you know how to raise welfare. As a matter of fact, enterprises do spend money on finding out if their customers like a new product line. 

To clarify this point, I explain these different phenomena. In his conceptual map, ‘counteradaptive preferences’ refer to the ‘opposite’ phenomenon to sour grapes, i.e. that ‘forbidden fruit is sweet’.

Adam ate an apple. That is why he and Eve were booted out of paradise.  

Here, as in the case of adaptive preferences, preferences are shaped by the feasible set. However, in counteradaptive preferences, the preference is for unattainable, rather than attainable, options.

The apple was attainable. We may try things which are forbidden because we are curious. This is part of 'discovery' and is easily accommodated by Utilitarianism of a 'regret minimizing' kind.  

As regards, preference formation through learning, Elster notes that choices depend on tastes, which in turn depend on past choices . Someone reared in the country may prefer a country lifestyle to an urban one while someone with experience of only an urban lifestyle might then prefer that to a country lifestyle. On the other hand, someone who has experience of both lifestyles may be better informed – and have learnt from experience. The informed person’s preferences are then not simply reversed by changing the set of feasible options, as would be the case if preferences were adaptive.

Preferences are epistemic and thus have no stable extension. Once you understand that Social Choice theory was constructed on an intensional fallacy, you can still do rough and ready Welfare econ or make smart marketing or other such decisions. The fault here is a sort of mathsy 'akreibia'- i.e. a seeking for greater precision than the subject matter can bear.  

Elster also distinguishes sour grapes from the case of addiction where ‘people get hooked on certain goods, which they then consume compulsively’. He thinks that adaptive and addictive preferences have a certain amount in common because, in both, preferences are ‘induced by the choice situation rather than given independently of it’.

In both cases there is an element of impredicativity. But this always exists when it comes to Preferences. They simply don't have a well ordered extension. They aren't sets and can't give rise to mathematical functions. 

However, he suggests that these phenomena differ in both the consequences of withdrawal and in the fact that in the case of addiction  the object of addiction plays an important role, whereas in adaptation it is the feasible set which is crucial.

Addiction is a real thing. 'Adaptation' isn't. 'Sour grapes' is just a comic expression. It so happens that I like grapes but, like the fox, am unable to pluck them myself. Since I have money, I find that the local supermarket has taken account of my preference and so I can purchase as many as I like.  

Elster crucially also distinguishes adaptive preferences from ‘character planning’. In the phenomenon of ‘sour grapes’, the process of adaptation occurs – on Elster’s account - ‘behind the back’ of the person and is not the outcome of deliberation.

Nope. The fox is generally presented as a cunning creature. It's remark was the product of deliberation.  

If it were a person’s choice to alter her preferences in the light of the actual possibilities she faces, for Elster, that makes her free, in a way that she is not in the case of adaptive preferences.

A galley slave may alter his preferences. This does not make him free. Even if I 'manage the news' such that I think that every time Beyonce gets an award, it is actually me who is being lauded, this does not alter the fact that I would prefer to be a beautiful African-American woman who enjoys great wealth.  

In the case of adaptive preferences, the process of preference formation is purely causal and to some degree undermines the person’s autonomy.

The fox was autonomous enough. The galley slave wasn't.  

Adaptive preferences are also distinct from ‘manipulation’ on Elster’s view. In the case of manipulation, the process of preference formation is driven by the fact that it benefits people other than those whose preferences are being shaped. In the case of sour grapes, however, the process is driven by the fact that it is (apparently) good for – and presumably can be seen as improving the welfare of - those who adapt while undermining their freedom or autonomy.

Saying 'Beyonce can't dance or sing. The only reason she is famous is because she is the father of Benjamin Netanyahu' doesn't undermine shite. Anyone can say anything. The fact remains- as you can see from my TikTok videos, I think I can twerk just like Beyonce. I'd love to swap my life for hers.  

Elster’s discussion of sour grapes thus focuses on the potential conflict between autonomy and welfare in evaluating the effects of adaptation. This is especially clear when he discusses the possibility of release from adaptive preferences which occurs when people raise their (previously dampened) hopes or expectations when new possibilities open up.

Market Researchers can gather evidence that a specific section of the population would be happy to try some new product.  

His own further analysis of such release – which continues in his discussion of the evaluation of the effects of the Industrial Revolution – focuses on the fact that social changes which lead to such a release can involve both ‘inducement of frustration and creation of autonomous persons’ .

Getting rid of serfdom certainly helped.  

This point is clearly important for the evaluation of progress or development which is a central theme in Sen’s writings.

Because he was from India and had to pretend to care about poor people.  

. Sen on Adaptation, Capability and Evolution While there is a significant overlap between Sen’s discussions of adaptation and Elster’s, there are also significant differences. In Sen’s writings, claims about adaptation are put to (at least) two distinct uses. The argument is used: (1) to undermine confidence in ‘utility’ – understood as desire satisfaction, pleasure or happiness – as a reliable measure of wellbeing or the quality of life;

it is unknowable. We may have expectations regarding usefulness or pleasure derivable from a purchase and that information could be useful to Market Research companies.  

and (2) to signal significant worries about any view of justice which focuses on ‘utility’ as a metric for interpersonal comparisons of advantage.

Money is a good enough proxy for utility. Courts make judgments of this sort all the time. Suppose both I and an 18 year old suffer life-altering injuries in an accident. The younger person should get more by way of compensation. I don't have that much longer to live.  

Indeed, it in part motivates Sen’s own well-known views of the quality of life and justice which are in part constituted by his ‘capability approach’ which is concerned with makes what a person can do or be .

Which nobody can know. By contrast we can get good enough information about whether a particular group of people will buy a particular product at a particular price.  

In more precise terms, the relevant things a person can do or be, her ‘doings’ and ‘beings’, are called ‘functionings’ and her capability refers to ‘the alternative combinations of functionings the person can achieve, and from which he or she can choose one collection’ .

Nobody can do so. Sen could have followed his father's footsteps and chosen to study something useful at University. The poor chap may have thought what mathematical Econ would be useful for India. It wasn't.  

A person’s capability thus ‘reflects her freedom to lead different types of life’ 

No it doesn't. A highly capable person may be in prison. A useless tosser like me may be as free as a bird. 

and, in this sense, the opportunities open to her. On the capability approach, the quality of life, egalitarian claims and development can be evaluated in terms of what people are able to do or be,

which affects their utility or at least what sorts of things they can buy with their income 

not just in terms of what their ‘utility’ is or in terms of their income or resources.

Money is measurable. Utility is just a fancy word for money. Capabilities means potential productivity in different occupations. It is certainly worth investing in raising that both for employers and the Government because there is a virtuous circle between raised productivity and increased revenue.  

 In On Ethics and Economics he writes that: A person who has had a life of misfortune, with very limited opportunities, and rather little hope, may be easily reconciled to deprivations than others reared in more fortunate and affluent circumstances.

In other words, such a person is likely to spend less on seeking a way to escape. Thus, suppose you are in the business of smuggling people out of shitholes to affluent countries. Don't bother trying to sell your services to a tranquil beggar. Find a guy who was used to having a better standard of living or one who feels sure he will make a lot of money in a new country. This is the case even if you mean to kill such people once you get their money.  

The metric of happiness

which does not exist. Governments spend a little money finding out about Income levels so as to set tax rates. They don't measure happiness- unless, like Bhutan, they have just ethnically cleansed a racial minority and thus are feeling very happy indeed. 

may, therefore, distort the extent of deprivation, in a specific and biased way. The hopeless beggar, the precarious landless labourer, the dominated housewife, the hardened unemployed or the overexhausted coolie

or the sodomized Mathematical Economist 

may all take pleasures in small mercies, and manage to suppress intense suffering for the necessity of continued survival, but it would be ethically deeply mistaken to attach a correspondingly small value to the loss of their well-being because of this survival strategy.

Who was actually doing so? The answer, of course, is Manmohan Singh. Did you know he used to  rudely force his way into the shacks of starving peasants and say 'are you happy you disgusting pieces of shit?'. The peasants would say 'Sardarji, we are very happy. God bless you.' Manmohan would then steal all their food and kick them in the balls. He was a very evil man.  Sen used to point this out repeatedly. 

(The related notions of adaptation with a view to survival and of a strategy undertaken in the face of adversity with a view to merely continuing to live can be found in many of Sen’s texts from his earlier, to later, statements of the capability approach .

They were premised on the notion that other economists kept going around measuring utility in the manner of Manmohan Singh.  

The cases Sen cites in this particular quotation to exemplify the phenomenon of adaptation – the hopeless beggar, the precarious landless labourer etc. – are very specific and are, as we will see, both, in one sense broader, and in another narrower, than those which exemplify Elster’s notion of ‘adaptive preferences’.

Sen was Bengali. He believed that if people are poor, some rich dude- perhaps a Punjabi or Marwari- must have stolen all their money. Yet those evil Punjabi or Marwaris are constantly measuring the utility of their victims and saying 'they are very happy! Their utility is very high!' Sen, in his polite way, protested against this. Yet India has not made Sen PM whereas Mohammad Yunus, who only has Nobel Piss Prize, is now running Bangladesh! How is that fair?  

On the one hand, if an affluent but rejected lover who faces many opportunities in life decides that the object of his affection is not as beautiful as he earlier thought she was, and that someone he previously thought less attractive but who is more likely to respond positively to his overtures is to be preferred, this is no doubt a case of adaptive preferences in Elster’s terms since it is a form of sour grapes (because the affluent lover’s preferences are reversed in the light of a contraction in the feasible set).

No. It is quite usual to feel more and more affection, more and more admiration, more and more love, for the person you marry.  

It clearly may not, however, be the sort of phenomenon Sen has in mind. The affluent but fickle lover has a wide range of opportunities in life while the underdogs in Sen’s examples typically do not.

But the underdogs may reproduce faster than the top-dogs. That way they win the evolutionary race.  

In this sense, Sen’s examples are narrower than Elster’s cases of adaptive preferences since Sen focuses on cases of significant deprivation or inequality. However, Sen’s examples are less restrictive than Elster’s in another way. Consider the case of the dominated housewife who learns to live with her situation by

shutting the fuck up not 

accepting ideological claims which are put forward with a view to advancing the interests of men at the expense of women.

Why not the case of the husband whose wife keeps telling him he has a tiny todger?  

In this context, Sen tells us that Simone de Beauvoir’s work illuminated for him how ‘women readily accept the pro-inequality apologia as a true description of reality’.

French women didn't get the vote till 1945. Some women in India had the vote by 1919. Ceylon got universal adult suffrage in 1931. 

The case of gender inequality is one of a range of cases where Sen invokes how people might adjust to the inequitable conditions in which they find themselves.

A person who moves from a very unequal to an egalitarian society would have to make many adjustments. But people born in a particular society don't have to adapt to it though they may have suppress certain inclinations they may have- e.g. the impulse to copulate with a police horse when of strong drink taken.            

While he mentions such cases primarily in questioning the use of ‘utility’-based views in the context of justice rather  than well-being, they fall squarely within the category of examples he mentions in discussing adaptation, though in Elster’s terms they would not be cases of adaptive preferences if those who gain because of adaptation are men rather than women. In Elster’s terms these would rather be cases of manipulation.

Why bother manipulating those without power or money? It really isn't the case that the boss tries to brainwash you into accepting him as your superior. He just sacks you if you ride a police horse into your place of work and proceed to have sex with it. 

It is worth here mentioning another phenomenon which Elster distinguishes from adaptive preferences: ‘rationalization’. Here the situation a person finds herself in shapes – indeed distorts - her perception rather than her evaluations. Elster  readily accepts that this situation is often hard to disentangle from one of adaptive preferences. In the case of the spurned lover, for example, both phenomena are arguably at work. The lover both changes his beliefs about the beauty of the woman who rejects him and alters his evaluation of the merits of different women.

Unless the fellow is a professional Judge of beauty pageants, his behavior is in accordance with the evolutionary theory of how the sense of beauty came to be what it is.  

By contrast, Sen’s discussion of adaptation often invokes what he terms ‘objective illusion’ (notably Sen, 1993b and 2002, pp. 473-4) – which relates, roughly speaking, to distortions in perception - and the Marxian notion of ‘false consciousness’ in relation to such illusion.

So, the thing is subjective. Big whoop. Just say preferences, utility, capability, happiness, beauty etc. are all epistemic and thus don't have a well defined extension and you are spared all this low IQ reinvention of the wheel.  

In spite of these differences between Elster and Sen, there are numerous overlaps between their discussions which sometimes obscure the differences. Just as in Sen’s examples the underdog often reconciles herself to, or reduces her hopes or aspirations in the light of, her situation, so also in Elster’s writings the phenomenon of adaptive preferences is usually described in terms of resignation or adjusted aspirations .

These may be psychologically necessary but they are not required by economics. This is because there is no 'scarcity' when it comes to what you choose to believe or what illusions you choose to indulge yourself in. Thus I can believe I am Beyonce and also the Andromeda galaxy without having to pay extra for that privilege. 

In both, also, people adjust to limited freedom in the range of choice open to them.

Everyone has only limited freedom. We can't choose to be immortal.  

Furthermore, both clearly see adaptation as a problem for utilitarianism. Sen’s reference to a ‘survival strategy’ in the quotation from On Ethics and Economics cited above can be seen as related to what he sees as the limits of Darwinian analysis in the social sciences.

Sen never got to grips with John Maynard Smith. He didn't know what contemporary 'Darwinian analysis' was like.  

Sen (2002, p. 485) has no worries about Darwinian analysis as an approach to how evolution takes place. Rather his concerns have to do with what he calls the ‘Darwinian view of progress’ – which relates to what constitutes progress and to the way in which evolution brings about progress.

He was attacking a straw man.  

Sen sees the Darwinian criterion of progress as involving two steps, one of which is more direct than the other. The first judges progress directly in terms of the quality of the species produced .

That isn't Darwinian. Eugenics is a separate subject though some Darwinians were into a century ago.  

Sen himself distinguishes this ‘quality-of-species’ approach from a ‘quality-of-life’ approach which focuses on individual lives rather than species

in which case it is part of Social Science. Darwin was a Natural Scientist.  

and he sees his own capability approach as an instance of the latter type of approach to the evaluation of progress .

Why evaluate progress? It isn't as though progress will become depressed if you give it a 'C' grade or that it will suck you off in return for an 'A'. 

The second step involves judging the excellence of the species in terms of reproductive success – ‘the power to survive and multiply and thus, collectively, to outnumber and outlive competing groups’ .

The evolutionarily stable strategy is one impermeable to invasion by mutant strains unless the fitness landscape changes.  

It is in the context of this second step in the evaluation of progress that Sen returns to the notion of adaptation. He writes: We recognize many virtues and achievements that do not help survival but that we do have reason to value; and on the other side there are many correlates of successful survival that we find deeply objectionable. For example, if a species of vassals – some variant of homo sapiens – is kept in inhuman conditions by some tribe and that species adapts and evolves into being super-rapid reproducers, must we accept that development as a sign of progress? An exact analogue of this is, of course, imposed on those animals on which we feed. But such an arrangement would hardly seem acceptable for human beings, and it is not at all clear … that it should be acceptable in the case of animals either. (Sen, 2002, p. 494)

Why stop there? Why not say 'We recognize that pineapples can be tasty but should we find it acceptable for pineapples to be thrust up the rectums of disabled women in the Global South? Is this what you call 'Progress'? No doubt, if you are Manmohan Singh, you may think this increases 'utility' but what about the capability of disabled women to store other items in their rectums?  

Here adaptation is explicitly linked to survival and evolution and Sen finds the inhuman conditions which lead to it objectionable even if it promotes reproductive success.

Very true. Disabled women with valuable pineapples up their rectums may be seen to have higher net worth but has their welfare really improved? 

There are at least two points that are central to Sen’s argument: (1) that survival is not the only thing we have reason to value;

we have no reason to value having reasons to value. Otherwise we'd also have reasons to value having reasons to value having reasons to value and so forth.  

and (2) if evolutionary pressures lead us to adapt to inhuman conditions and be ‘super-rapid’ reproducers, the ‘quality-of-species’ judged in terms of reproductive success is completely unconnected to the quality of life of individual members of the species.

Yet, those with lower 'quality of life'- e.g. agricultural communities as opposed to happy-go-lucky foragers- might end up taking over the territory and killing off the indigenous people.  

The first point suggests that we should be concerned with a multiplicity of things we have reason to value – and that is entirely compatible with Sen’s capability approach which is ‘inescapably pluralist’ at a number of levels

No. It is unknowable. One may as well have a 'counting imaginary fairies' approach.  

and allows for a variety of different valuable functionings of which merely surviving can be seen as the most basic.

Sadly, that is one 'functioning' everybody will lose sooner or later.  

The second point underlines what Sen sees as the limitations of the quality-of-species as compared to the ‘quality-of-life’ view.

There is no relationship whatsoever between them. A genetically superior being who is being kept in solitary confinement by a Secret Agency so Evil Scientists can perform experiments upon him, has shitty 'quality of life'. A pet Vietnamese pot-bellied pig may have very high quality of life while others of his species are factory farmed. 

Sen also expresses a worry that ‘the Darwinian perspective, seen as a general view of progress suggests concentration on adapting the species rather than adjusting the environment in which the species lead their lives’ .

No it doesn't. Darwin was aware that human beings had changed their environment- e.g. by building nice warm houses for themselves. But beavers were changing their environment just as well.  

Adapting the species could involve either lending a ‘helping hand to nature’ through genetic improvement or ‘trusting to nature’ to weed out unfit genes.

Sen didn't understand that co-evolutionary processes, not the fitness landscapes (i.e. Nature), which do the heavy lifting.  

Neither approach, Sen thinks, suggests that we should adjust or reform the environment with a view to improving the quality of life.

If so, Sen is a cretin. He doesn't think we should avoid mating with our own sisters.  Also, why modify the environment by building a house? Just find a nice hole in the ground and make that your residence. 

While Sen’s claims here do not distinguish between different views of the quality of life, his claim that we should not in general see adaptation of the species as a solution without seriously considering the possibility of adapting the environment to improve people’s lives and make progress is relevant to modern views, especially views of happiness.

This would be a sensible comment only if, currently, the Government was genetically modifying us so that, in winter, we would not feel the cold and thus would not need houses or central heating while reversing that modification in summer. The fact is our species hasn't changed very much over the last fifty thousand years. Our environment has- because of our efforts.  

 Richard Layard’s recent book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science reports on, and draws out lessons for policy, from the large recent literature on happiness across many disciplines including economics.

The lesson for policy makers was that a guy who advocates a tax based Incomes Policy should be ignored. completely.  

Layard defines ‘happiness’ to mean ‘feeling good – enjoying life and wanting the feeling to continue’

That isn't happiness. You may be happy when feeling very poorly- e.g. hearing your daughter has been elected to high office though you are dying painfully of cancer.  

and by ‘unhappiness’ he means ‘feeling bad – and wishing things were different’

I may feel bad because I've just undergone painful surgery. I don't wish that surgery hadn't take place because I don't want to be dead.  

. He also explicitly defends utilitarianism

because Libertarianism was trying to rape it 

in something like the original form that it took in Jeremy Bentham’s statement of it.

 i.e. 'sum of pleasures and pains'. Sadly, they are incommensurable. Bentham was stooooopid. 

On Layard’s account, it is the view that ‘the right action is the one which produces the greatest overall happiness’ .

Both 'rightness' and 'happiness' are epistemic- they change as the knowledge base changes. Thus they are intensions without well defined extensions. Furthermore, they may be impredicative. Sometimes the right thing is what makes you happy. But as your knowledge base expands, you may see that it is wrong. This makes you unhappy more particularly if it ought to make you unhappy but doesn't at all. Any way, whichever way you slice or dice it, what you have here is the 'intensional fallacy'. You can't assume Liebniz's law of identity. Neither deontic logic nor mathematics have any purchase.

The definition of adaptation which underlies the recent applied psychology literature on happiness, which Layard cites a great deal, runs as follows: ‘adaptation … refers to any action, process, or mechanism that reduces the effects (perceptual, physiological, attentional, motivational, hedonic and so on) of a constant or repeated stimulus’ while ‘[h]edonic adaptation is adaptation to stimuli that is affectively relevant’ (Frederick and Loewenstein. It should be clear that this definition of ‘adaptation’ is quite distinct from those operating in the writings of Elster and Sen.

Indeed. Psychology is different from Economics or Moral Philosophy. Still, if Psychologists come up something useful, then a price can be put to it and it becomes part of Economics. Moral Philosophy too can get involved if what the service the Psychologists are providing involves sex with miners. Mrs. Thatcher banned sex with miners. She was a very mean lady. 

Nonetheless, this definition encompasses the notion of adaptation used in the well-known claim that people increase their aspirations in line with rising incomes thus dampening any extra satisfaction derived from increases in income.

Which is why HR departments come up with various perks which have the information theoretical quality of 'surprisal'. Thus, you are expecting a big raise and feel a bit blase when you get it, but then the MD takes you aside and gives you the key to the executive toilet. Shitting never felt so good. You feel lifted up into a higher sphere of life. 

As people’s income repeatedly increases, any mechanism, action or process - such as an  adjustment of aspirations - which reduces the effects of such increases on levels of satisfaction or happiness can be seen as ‘adaptation’.

Which is why its good to mix things up a little when it comes to incentives or tasty treats or drugs, sex and rock & roll. Psychology isn't a real high IQ discipline but surely it gets this.

Unlike Elster’s concept of adaptive preferences this notion is not restricted to ‘sour grapes’;

which is a false example of it 

in contrast to Sen’s examples, it is not necessarily about the way in which underdogs adjust.

Why the fuck are these nutters getting their knickers in a twist over poor people who stop whining about being poor because they find better ways to pass the time? 

As we saw earlier, one key respect in which Elster’s and Sen’s discussions are similar is that adaptation or adjustment of attitudes – desires, preferences or aspirations - occurs in response to some limit in freedom, whether it be some limit in what is feasible (in Elster’s case), or in a person’s opportunities which makes her an underdog (in Sen’s case).

Why isn't everybody utterly miserable that they didn't get to talk and write utter bollocks so as to get a Nobel Prize for being a brown monkey from a starving shithole? Don't they understand their freedoms and capabilities and functionings have been negatively impacted by their inability to savor yummy yummy dog turds the way Amartya Sen's multiple identities do?  

By contrast, in the happiness literature adaptation can occur in response to expansions in what is feasible or attainable.

Who didn't know that if you win the lottery, you can happily adapt to a millionaire lifestyle?  

Layard’s discussion of the fact that people ‘adapt’ to higher levels of income by raising their aspirations.

is shit. People with aspirations get higher levels of income till they start aspiring to fuck the boss's wife.  

He starts from an utilitarian assumption that happiness is the only ultimate end or value. Adaptation is then a good or bad depending on whether it does, or does not, promote happiness. In the case of adaptation to higher levels of material prosperity, it dampens happiness and is bad.

Very true. If a starving beggar gets a job as a CEO, he should express surprise and delight everytime he is offered a potato chip or piece of bread. If he gets to his new affluence, then some stupid cunt named Layard would say, he has become unhappy and that is bad. He should go back to being a beggar.  

Indeed, the moral that Layard draws from empirical research is that ‘income is addictive!’

Fuck you Income! Fuck you very much! Why did 'Dagenham Man' not express surprise and delight at only getting to eat a potato from time to time in return for participating in Layard's super-duper Tax based Incomes Policy?' 

He goes on to add that ‘[s]ince most people do not foresee the addictive effects of income and spending, taxation has a useful role, just as it has with other forms of addiction like smoking’ .

Tobacco damages your health. It is a 'demerit' good. Money isn't. Layard truly was as thick as shit.  

Layard’s conclusion is prefigured in Elster’s discussion of the addictive pursuit of material prosperity.

Why do they not discuss their own addictive pursuit of stupidity? 

The relevance of Sen’s writings for Layard’s work emerges starkly when one considers the conclusions Layard draws from the empirical literature on happiness in the context of physical and mental impairments. Sen clearly sees the disabled as potentially falling under the category of underdogs who might learn to be happy with or cheerfully accept, their situation.

If you see a disabled person, you should pat it on its head and offer it a cookie. It won't beat the shit out of you. Trust me.  

On this point, the psychological literature on adaptation suggests that Sen is right to be concerned and indeed there is strong evidence of ‘adaptation’ in as much as some people who have become seriously impaired (e.g. become paraplegic or quadriplegic as a result of an accident) report surprisingly high levels of happiness .

Not when seeking damages. 

Sen’s key argument is that the metric of happiness

which does not exist 

may provide a flawed measure of the quality of life

because it does not exist 

in this sort of case and can be misleading in evaluating the quality of life and egalitarian claims.

Nope. Something which does not and can not exist can't mislead even stupid shitheads who teach nonsense.  

He would suggest that we should be concerned with what people can do or be,

we don't know what we ourselves can do or be. Why be concerned with something unknowable? 

and consider adapting the environment

Sen is Superman. He can use his super-breath to cool down the ambient temperature if people are feeling too hot.  

or in other ways increasing the opportunities open to them.

Mohammad Yunus leant out some of his own money to poor women in his country so they could take advantage of opportunities. That's why he is now running Bangladesh.  

So, in the case of the disabled, we should be concerned with the extent to which the social environment allows the disabled to do or be certain things, such as access public spaces, or find work.

No. We should be concerned that we continue to have access to such things whether or not we become disabled. It isn't the case that disabled people are very different from able-bodied people. It is in everybody's interest to show prudence and foresight in ordering public affairs, or in delegating that responsibility to particular agencies. 

To see the relevance of Sen’s arguments, consider Layard’s discussion of disability and mental illness. Layard writes that: ‘we ought to be specially concerned about those misfortunes to which it is difficult to adapt. For example, persistent mental illness is impossible to adapt to’ .

It is something that can happen to anyone at any time. By ensuring that such people get decent treatment and that crazy psychiatrists aren't allowed to fuck with the mentally ill, we are acting with self-regarding prudence.  

He also thinks that one reason health ‘never comes through as the top determinant of happiness’ ... ‘may be partly because people have a considerable ability to adapt to physical limitations.’ 

A guy who is used to raping and beating people may find it very difficult to adapt to a situation where it is he who keeps getting beaten and raped. Tough titty. There is no reason for us to worry about the 'adaptation problem'. It is enough to make prudent, self-regarding, provision for a contingency which might befall our selves and some near and dear to us. 

This can be done in a rough and ready manner. If some stupid Professor wants to prolong the discussion by talking bollocks why not offer that Professor some tasty dog turds to eat? True,  they may have adapted themselves to a diet less repugnant to others. Indeed, they may claim to detest dog turds and to relish only French haute cuisine. But, this is only because in their despair at remedying their lot, they have accepted an 'objective illusion' or developed a 'false consciousness' such that they refuse to eat dog turds. It is our duty to force such food down their throats till they overcome their 'adaptation'.


Friday 6 September 2024

Jason Stanley on Bangladesh

Italian Universities welcomed Mussolini's Fascist party's takeover of the Government. He returned the favor by appointing Prof. Gentile as Minister of Education. Higher Education received much more funding.

Just as many academics had paved the path to Mussolini's takeover, so too, in Germany, did many Professors promote Nazi ideas. After Hitler came to power, Universities became a great pillar of support for the regime.

Jason Stanley ignores this historical truth. He writes in the Guardian


Why fascists hate universities
Jason Stanley

Authoritarians and would-be authoritarians are only too aware that universities are primary sites of critique and dissent

No. In totalitarian countries, they were and are primary sites of conformism, careerism, and full throated support of the regime.  In Democracies, some students may get involved in politics. Most don't bother though if their own interests are threatened- e.g. if they may be shipped off to Vietnam- they can be just as vocal as any other group. 

In Bangladesh, something remarkable has happened.

An elected leader from a traditionally Secular Socialist party was chased into exile after the economy tanked. It is likely that the country will move in a more radically Islamist direction (though this was already happening. Mohammad Yunus, the interim leader of the country, was accused by the Awami League of promoting homosexuality and usury- both illegal under Sharia law). 

I should mention that Sheikh Hasina's father had created a one-party Socialist state before his assassination. It was a military dictatorship which first put the country on the path to rising per capita Income and relative (to Pakistan) prosperity. Going further back, the most popular Bengali leader was Shubas Chandra Bose who allied with Hitler and Tojo and would have been installed by the Japanese as the Dictator of India had they defeated the Allies. In other words, there is little evidence that the people of Bangladesh want Democracy. West Bengal remained under Communist rule for 34 years. Their cadres beat the shit out of the opposition. They fell when they tried to grab land from peasants. Now the woman who fought them in the streets is the Chief Minister. Her thugs have kept her in power for 13 years. Mamta may remain in power for another fifteen years and even hand over power to her nephew. However, her thugs- like Sheikh Hasina's thugs or the Left Front's thugs- may suddenly face a popular uprising which, no doubt, will yield another populist who will quickly establish a reign of terror.

Initially in response to a quota system that reserved the majority of government jobs for specific groups, university students initiated large-scale non-violent protests.

Because the Bench reimposed a particular quota which Sheikh Hasina had abolished in 2018. Dr. Shahidul Alam (his PhD was in Chemistry from London University) the great photographer whose arrest in 2018 sparked massive protests, thinks that if Hasina had apologized after the first student demonstrators were killed, she would have been forgiven. Perhaps her sycophants told her that the muscle-men of her own party would easily deal with the rabble. If they had done so, Hasina's position would have been more even more secure.

Bangladesh’s increasingly autocratic prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, responded essentially with “let them eat cake.”

Her mistake was to refer to 'Razakars'- i.e. those who sided with the Pakistani Army in 1971. This made her sound senile and out of touch. She thought her goons on campus would soon beat the protestors into submission. But they proved cowardly. However, it was when the Army too showed the white feather that she had to flee. Incidentally, her niece is a junior Minister in London. But the Brits don't want her.  

Instead of calming the protests down, Hasina’s response made the protests grow nationwide.

Hasina's goons weren't as good as the opposition's goons. Mamta does not currently face that problem. 

In mid-July, the government responded with extreme violence, with police gunning down hundreds of students and shutting down the internet across the country.

The police mistakenly thought the Army would stay loyal. When this didn't happen, they went on strike till the students assured them there would be no reprisals against them for 'just following orders'.  

It must be said, the students showed great civic sense by taking over some of the functions of the police- e.g. directing traffic- when they abandoned their posts.

Scenes of extreme police brutality flooded social media.

not during the five day internet shutdown. 

By the end of July, the protests had grown into a nationwide pro-democracy movement. Eventually, the military joined the students,

No. The Army Chief said he thought the troops might refuse shoot-to-kill orders.  

and Hasina fled the country. A nationwide student-led democracy movement successfully challenged a violent autocratic leader, and, at least for now, appears to have won.

Instead of an elected government, there is an unelected government. The Chief Justice has been forced to resign.  Will elections be held anytime soon? Perhaps. Will they be free and fair? Who can say?

Bangladesh’s non-violent student movement has not gone unnoticed in neighboring countries.

India? Myanmar? Those are its neighbors.  

In Pakistan, the popular former prime minister and leader of the opposition party, Imran Khan, was jailed a year ago, an act dictated by Pakistan’s military.

Imran and Hasina say their removal was dictated by Biden. 

Media companies were instructed not to mention his name, quote his words, or show his picture. Members of his opposition party were imprisoned. But something astonishing has begun there.

Nope. It is business as usual.  

Motivated by the success of the student-led pro-democracy movement in Bangladesh, the Pakistan Students Federation

This was misreported. It is the Insaf Students Federation- i.e. the youth wing of Imran Khan's party.

declared an ultimatum for the government: free Khan by 30 August or face nationwide student protests.

He is still in jail. The Pakistan Army kicks ass. The Bangladesh army- not so much.  

What has happened in Bangladesh and now could happen in Pakistan is the nightmare of every autocratic regime.

Not if it is really autocratic. Chairman Xi isn't losing any sleep over kids in Collidge. 

Authoritarians and would-be authoritarians are only too aware that universities are primary sites of critique and dissent.

Not in an autocracy which is pro-active in killing people.  

Attacks on universities are the canary in the coalmine of fascism.

Not in Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany. Students are easy to kill. Professors tend to run away before that can happen. 

Narendra Modi, India’s autocratic Hindu nationalist prime minister, has ruled the country since 2014. Attacking India’s elite universities as “anti-India” is a hallmark of his government.

Indira Gandhi beat the shit out of JNU students. Modi knows that anti-national nutters cause the public to react by voting for the BJP.  Why beat those who help you win elections?

Similarly, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán, started a political campaign with an attack on Central European University in Budapest,

funded by Soros. Arthur Finkelstein advised Orban to find an enemy and focus on him. Soros fit the bill. He is a gift which has kept giving- at least to Orban (to whom Soros had given a scholarship)  

with demagogic rhetoric directed against its supposed spreading of “gender ideology”. With the use of legislation, Orbán’s government went so far as to drive the university out of the country.

It has gone to Vienna where private universities are looked down upon. Its new rector is an Indian origin lady nobody has heard off. Soros's mistake was not to set up a STEM subject Institution with a kick ass Financial Engineering Dept. The Hungarians wouldn't have wanted to get rid of it. 

The situation is structurally the same in the United States – would-be authoritarians and one-party states centrally target universities with the aim of restricting dissent.

No. They whine about woke Professors because this gets them votes. Everybody thinks non-STEM subjects are shite.  

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, is an aspiring autocrat who has

killed his opponents and set up gas chambers for Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Democrats etc.  

used the myth of widespread voter fraud to severely restrict minority voting. (Voter fraud practically never happens in the United States; rigorous investigation estimated it as between 0.0003 and 0.0025%.) DeSantis also created an office of election crimes and security, to pursue supposed cases of voter fraud.

Also he isn't too keen on homosexual rapists entering the country illegal. Homophobia is a Fascist trait.  

Besides minority voting populations, DeSantis has focused on public and higher education as central targets.

Sheikh Hasina had students shot. DeSantis personally rapes them to death.  

According to an AAUP report by the special committee on political interference and academic freedom in Florida’s public education system in May 2023, “academic freedom, tenure and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history.”

Coz McCarthyism was about inviting Communist professors to tea and then sucking them off if they mentioned that Engels had always provided this service to Marx.  

The committee’s final report reveals an atmosphere of intimidation and indeed terror,

many Professors have shat themselves from fear.  

as the administrative threat to public university professors has been shown to be very real.

Also they are shitting themselves to death. This is because Neo-Liberalism is very evil. 


Even more so than Florida, Tennessee is a one-party state,

 No. There are two main parties. 

with a Republican governor and a Republican supermajority in the legislature. The Tennessee house and senate passed a resolution to honor the Danube Institute; on the floor of the Tennessee house, the state representative Justin Jones

who does not belong to the ruling Party. This proves Tennessee isn't a one-party state.  

questioned why the state was honoring the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán’s thinktank.

Also, why did the Governor not invite undocumented people to rape him repeatedly while burning the American flag?  

Tennessee has a state ban on the teaching of “divisive concepts”,

No it doesn't. It merely protects students or employees of public institutions from having to be indoctrinated in that shite. Private colleges can be as woke as they please.  

one that includes public universities.

No. It only applies to public educational institutions. 

To report a professor for teaching such a concept (such as intersectionality), Tennessee provides an online form.

Thus discriminating against illiterate Professors.  

Attacks on voting, and democratic systems generally, almost invariably center on universities, and vice versa.

No. Universities don't matter. It is the Legislature and the Judiciary which you need to target.  

The Yale Law School graduate and current Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has claimed that the 2020 election should not have been certified because of suspicion of voter fraud. In a speech to the National Conservatism Conference, Vance also proclaimed, echoing Richard Nixon: “The professors are the enemy.”

Why? It is because the public has a low opinion of non-STEM subject professors.  

In the fall of 2023, in response to Israel’s brutal retaliation in Gaza for Hamas’s terrorist attack, anti-genocide protests erupted in American universities, with the active participation of a significant number of Jewish students.

Sadly, they weren't raped or decapitated. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Collidge boys are all sissies.  

These anti-genocide protests were labeled as pro-Hamas and used as a basis to attack elite universities, their students, their professors and their administrations, verbally, politically and physically.

Harvard was burned to the ground by members of the Ku Klux Klan. 

It is not implausible to take the goal to have been, at least largely, a preliminary show of police power to university students.

Nor is it implausible to suggest that Trump will personally fuck them all to death if he gets elected.  


In the United States, the Republican party has long been aware of the democratic potential of student movements.

Which is why, when Trump was POTUS, he personally raped to death ten trillion University students. 

As it lurches closer and closer to authoritarianism, it will, like all rightwing authoritarian movements worldwide, seek to crush dissent, starting with university students and faculty.

Also, they will set up gas-chambers for all those who are too ugly for Trump to rape to death. 

With great courage and determination, the students in Bangladesh have shown that this strategy can be made to backfire.

But those students have ensured that the country will follow an increasingly Islamist path. The big problem facing Yunus is how to manage a shake-out of 'bad banks' and ensure a new round of cronyism does not replace the cronyism of the last administration.  

Why did Hasina's regime collapse? I think the answer is that her two children didn't want to spend much time in Bangladesh while her sister wasn't that much younger to her and thus not a credible replacement. Thus there was no clear line of succession and charismatic younger faces to appeal to the students. Her son was supposed to be in charge of a campaign to get graduates jobs in IT but nothing much came of it. Still, it was economic distress, more than anything else, which doomed the regime. Students, in particular, felt that, unless they got a Government job, they would have a very precarious future. This suggests that something like Peter Turchin's 'elite overproduction' thesis was at work. If too many get higher educational credentials but are unable to gain correspondingly remunerated employment, they may rebel against the system and bring it crashing down. Sadly, in a totalitarian country, 'elite overproduction' can be easily dealt with by shooting people or sending them to a Gulag. This explains why, under Biden, American students have not been able to overthrow Neo-Liberalism, destroy Israel, and enforce Sharia Law. Kamala Harris, a notorious Communist, was put in charge of the gas chambers which have sprouted up all over the country. Still, things could get worse. If Trump becomes POTUS ten trillion dissidents will be raped to death. Vance, sadly, will just focus on fucking sofas. This is because sofas come from Iran. 

Alexandra Plakiasi's awkward shite

Awkwardness arises out of lack of skill resulting in an appearance of clumsiness or a tendency to do the wrong thing. It is mended through practice or instruction. On the other hand, a shy person or one who dislikes a particular milieu may have an inner feeling of awkwardness even if everybody thinks they are socially very polished.

The feeling of awkwardness is very useful. It shows you there is some danger or likelihood of failure in the activity you are engaged in. If you get drunk, your feeling of awkwardness may disappear but you may end up doing something very foolish. Thus 'awkwardness' is like Spiderman's sixth sense for lurking danger.

Awkwardness can also be a social signal. If you show you are unused to a particular activity, some kind soul may come to your aid. A skilled politician or lawyer may deliberately act or speak in an awkward manner to garner sympathy for his cause or to suggest that he or she is an ordinary, decent, sort of person.

Writing for Aeon, Alexandra Plakiasi, takes a different view. She confuses awkwardness with an exogenous constraint on doing or saying the right thing- more particularly, she speaks of problems affecting a whole Society for which it hasn't yet developed 'Social Scripts'- i.e. an adequate vocabulary or common method of description and analysis-  rather than lack of skill or an endogenous feeling of shyness or dislike of a particular milieu. It is certainly true that a given Society may lack knowledge of some novel event or have a blind spot with reference to a particular type of activity. There may be some topics which are 'taboo'. An example of this in my own community was the reluctance of parents or elderly relatives to use the word 'pregnant' in connection with a newly married couple. The custom at that time was for a bride to take a special kind of bath on discovering she was with child. Thus, parents ringing their sons in America or Europe would coyly ask 'has she bathed yet?'. The son would wax indignant. His bride might be a bit of a slob- she ate pizza and watched Football at all hours- but she did shower regularly. It was unfair of Mummy or some inquisitive Aunty to ask if the lady in question brushed her teeth or went potty or had a bath now and then. Since then, 'Social Scripts' have changed. Everyone acknowledges that young people use contraceptives. Pregnancies are planned for. There is no fear that 'the Evil Eye' will be attracted by referring to expectations regarding the happy event. I suppose, there still may be an element of 'awkwardness' in discussing such matters in more orthodox households but it isn't really the case that some big Revolution in Social Mores- e.g. the overthrow of Patriarchy and Neo-Liberalism- is required so as to alleviate the pitiable condition of a bride regarding whose bathing schedule anxious inquiries are being made. 

What is awkwardness? This turns out to be a tricky question.

No. It is easy to answer along the lines I have indicated.

Most of us know it when we see it (or experience it), but definitions are hard to come by.

Look up a dictionary. That's not hard to do. 

Partly that’s because empirical work on awkwardness tends to treat it as a type or symptom of embarrassment.

It is no such thing. A very polished person may still feel embarrassed because their spouse got drunk at the office party and tried to have sex with the sofa even if that spouse has become the Vice President of the USA. 

But this is a mistake. Embarrassment happens when an individual commits a social gaffe;

Not necessarily as in the example given above.  

its characteristic facial and bodily expressions involve a kind of apology. Embarrassment is thus a kind of social repair.

No. One may feel embarrassed but decide to brazen things out. Usha Vance often says to Donald Trump 'the word Sofa is Persian. That's why my husband fucks sofas any chance he gets. On the other hand, he leaves Ottomans alone because Turkey is a member of NATO. '  

But awkwardness is different: it’s not something an individual causes, and it’s not something an individual can resolve on their own; it’s a social rupture

Nope. It is merely a lack of skill. When you are a teenager, you know your first kiss will be awkward. Also you may jizz in your pants. So what? At least you got to first base with something other than a piece of furniture.  

. The failure involved in embarrassment is a failure to conform to existing norms.

No. There is a social norm such that you are expected to display embarrassment when people point out you have neglected to put on your trousers. Also, have you heard of underwear, dude?  

Awkwardness is different: it happens when we don’t have a social script to conform to.

No. We may have a 'social script' but may lack practice in the relevant activity. You can explain this. Say 'Unused as I am to Public Speaking, I have neglected to put on my trousers. Also, I haven't heard of underwear.' 

In other words, embarrassment happens when we violate socially prescribed scripts;

No. Embarrassment happens to me when I seek to violate socially prescribed scripts by farting vigorously but end up shitting myself. Thankfully, I am not wearing any trousers and don't believe in underwear.  

awkwardness happens when we lack prescriptions to guide us.

No. If there are no 'prescriptions' then awkwardness can't arise because it doesn't matter what you do. What is the correct etiquette to observe while getting hit by a bus? Even if you shit yourself, nobody will consider you to have embarrassed yourself or behaved in a maladroit manner.  


People often feel like awkwardness is about them – that they are awkward, or not. But awkwardness is a collective production. More accurately, it’s a collective failure.

Nope. It is merely lack of skill or practice. Where Society as a whole faces a novel problem, or has a blind spot, there is no real awkwardness. One can simply say 'you know, this is a topic which us guys are really bad at talking about. We should be more open about such things. Where's the shame in discussing sex with sofas? It is a completely natural occurrence. In Iran everybody fucks a sofa at least twice a day. Don't forget, it was the Ayatollahs who won the War on Terror. We could take a leaf or two out of their book.'

Awkwardness is a kind of normative negative space, offering what Adam Kotsko calls ‘insight through breakdown’.

Fuck off! Your first kiss is awkward. But you soon get the hang of things.  

It arises when people find themselves suddenly without a social script to guide them through an interaction or an event.

Nope. If you are being hit by a bus, you don't give a shit about 'social scripts'.  

The term ‘script’ carries associations of playacting, and that’s not a bad way to understand awkwardness. But the lesson of awkwardness is that, in the dramedy of life, we’re not just the actors, we’re the writers.

Why stop there? Why not say we are the producers who have sold shares in the production to lots of different people? We will only make a profit if the show closes on its first night. That's why our dramedy is called 'Spring-time for Hitler'.  

Aman knows he should speak up about the sexist behaviour of his coworkers, but doesn’t, because they’re his friends and he doesn’t want to make it awkward.

He doesn't want to be retaliated against. Still, if he were skilled at bringing up such issues, he could do so and gain by it. 

A tenured professor is bothered by her colleague’s flirtatious remarks, but says nothing, because it would be awkward to bring it up.

She is afraid of retaliation. If she were skilled in such matters, she could do so in a manner which enhances her reputation and power within the faculty. 

A person runs into a recently bereaved coworker, and wonders whether to address their loss, but doesn’t know what to say, so doesn’t mention it.

Again, this is lack of skill.  

We often joke about awkwardness; it’s a staple of contemporary comedy. The exclamation ‘Awkward!’ functions as a light-hearted deflection, defusing social tension.

It gets annoying fast.  

The reality is heavier. Awkwardness can be funny, but it can also be serious – it inhibits our ability to act even when we know we should, and it can shut down or pre-empt conversations about important topics like menstruation, money, menopause, mortality.

Very true. King Charles feels very awkward when he has to ask Kamala Harris whether she is on the rag and has enough money to buy one of those burgers Americans are constantly eating. Also, does she know she will die within the next thirty or forty years?  

The desire to avoid awkwardness

is what causes people to acquire skill or practice in different activities required for their well being and advancement.  

acts as a powerful social inhibition, preventing people from speaking up, and motivating compliance with problematic social and moral norms.

No. What prevents people speaking up is fear of sanctions of various sorts.  

So, which is it, then? Is awkwardness a funny, quirky, everyday occurrence, something we should learn to live with and even embrace?

Yes- provided the relevant skill is not seen as worth acquiring. It's fine for an American of a particular class to come across as an inarticulate cretin. It would not be fine for a European aristocrat of the old school to appear socially maladroit.  

Is it a serious social inhibitor with negative implications for moral decision-making and social change?

No. Fear of sanctions may be important. But, if there are no sanctions, you can be as clumsy and maladroit as you like.

Or – in truly awkward fashion – might it be both?

No. On the other hand, awkwardness may be bisexual or might keep fucking sofas even if the ottoman gets jealous. 

It often seems that awkwardness is a personal problem. Indeed, one of the most surprising things I discovered while writing my book Awkwardness (2024) was just how many people self-identify as awkward – and how attached people become to this label.

I suppose she is speaking of Americans. They truly are a gormless bunch.  

Movies and popular culture reinforce the idea of awkward people, typically portrayed as socially inept misfits who stick out and don’t fit in with trends or social norms.

But, like 'Rain Man' they might be very good at making money. Money is cool.  

This focus on individuals suggests that the best way to avoid awkwardness is through silence and conformity – to imitate others, blend in, and say nothing.

This is a way to avoid sanctions. You can be as clumsy and stupid as you like provided people think you are loyal to the ruling clique.  

But this is only part of the story, and it gets awkwardness wrong in important ways. Yes, awkwardness is caused by a failure to conform to existing social norms.

Nope. Robinson Crusoe might be awkward when trying to construct a canoe for the first time. If I try to put together an IKEA cabinet, my lack of skill and practice will be displayed in my awkwardness and the fact that the cabinet collapses the moment I put anything in it.  

But this failure isn’t individual and, rather than think in terms of awkward people, we ought to think in terms of awkward situations.

No. Any given  situation won't be awkward at all for a person with the right skills.  

And yes, awkwardness can be painful, and unpleasant. But it’s not embarrassing, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Unless it is. If you are still jizzing in your pants after twenty years of marriage, you have plenty to be ashamed of.  

Contrary to popular belief, our awkward moments aren’t cringeworthy.

I don't suppose the author jizzes in her pants or shits herself when she only intended to fart in a witty and apposite manner.  

Rather than cringing inwardly about them, we ought to examine them more closely. Because once we realise the true nature of awkwardness, we can stop seeing it as an individual failure and start seeing it as an opportunity for social change.

If everybody jizzes in their pants and shits themselves, Neo-Liberalism will be overthrown.  

In short: we should take awkwardness less personally, and more seriously.

So as to overthrow Neo-Liberalism by shitting and jizzing.  

The sociologist Erving Goffman recognised that social interaction is a kind of performance in which we occupy various roles.

The idea was ancient. Petronius had said  quod fere totus mundus exercet histrionem but the ancient Greeks had a similar notion. 

When a performance fails, the actor feels discredited – to use Goffman’s term, he loses ‘face’. Maybe he’s trying to play a role his audience won’t grant him (for example, a failed attempt to flirt, or a rejected marriage proposal) or he loses his composure and botches the performance.

He lacks skill or practice.  

We usually perform one self at a time: our roles and our audiences are ‘segregated’, thereby preventing the kind of uncomfortable clash that can happen when, say, you run into your boss while out on a date,

with his wife?  

or have to talk about sex with your parents.

I would do so anytime they suggested I finish my homework or get a fucking job and move out you worthless cretin.  

But sometimes this clash is unavoidable, and things can get awkward. A character on the TV show My So-Called Life (1994-5) summed up the problem: ‘What I, like, dread is when people who know you in completely different ways end up in the same area. And you have to develop this, like, combination you on the spot.’

Adolescents do face that problem. It is difficult to be all gangsta when your Granny demands kisses and hugs.  

The ‘on the spot’ nature of social performance marks a disanalogy with theatre: unlike an actor memorising a script, the social scripts that guide everyday interactions are highly flexible and shift quickly, without explicit negotiation or reflection.

Theaters can put on 'improv'.  

A single person will play many roles in the course of a day, or even a single afternoon.

Also that person may shit or piss at some times while giving a lecture on philosophy at another. It is generally considered a faux pas to combine these activities.  

In this sense, our interactions are more like social improvisation than scripted drama. And like improvisation, successful social interaction depends on a cooperative partner willing to go along with the scene.

Not when we are shitting or pissing unless we are severely disabled or just very very drunk.  

The social cues by which we navigate the world range from the explicit – a dress code; the ‘no presents’ written on a party invitation – to the nearly imperceptible.

Very true. Bank robbers have to be reminded to put on a bowler hat and three piece suit. Also they must not give presents to the cashier.  

Even where cues are explicit, there are often unspoken understandings in place: what counts as ‘black tie’ or ‘festive cocktail attire’? Is the request ‘no presents’ really to be taken literally, or is it merely a polite pretence that everyone will ignore? Slight changes in a conversational partner’s speech pattern; a gaze held just a little too long; a centimetre of physical distance – any of these can shift people’s understanding of the interaction taking place. Is this a date, or a work dinner? Are they about to hug, kiss or shake hands? When two people land on different answers: awkward!

They land on different answers because of different levels of skill or practice. If this is 'common knowledge' there is no 'awkwardness'.  

Awkwardness thrives in uncertainty.

Life is uncertain.  

This explains the link between awkwardness and silence: since silence can mean so many things, it makes it difficult to coordinate on and curate an interpretation of a situation.

Only if one is as stupid as shit. Astrophysicists have no difficulty interpreting the silent but starry Heavens.  

For example, is no one speaking up because no one else has a problem with the sexist comment someone just made? Or is everyone as uncomfortable as I am, but equally unsure how to act? Sometimes silence is acquiescence; other times, it’s a form of protest. In contrast to an explicitly voiced objection, the silence on an issue can be hard to read.

Only if one wants the thing to be hard to read. Why were people silent when I farted at the Committee meeting? The answer is that I always fart at the Committee meeting. I was only put on the Committee because people wanted such meetings to be as brief as possible.  

Indeed, awkwardness is fundamentally a kind of social disorientation.

No. You can be awkward when putting together an IKEA cabinet all by yourself.  

There’s a certain comfort in being able to socially situate oneself.

There is a greater comfort in thinking you will go to Heaven wile your boss will burn in Hell for all eternity.  

That’s not to say that hierarchies are comfortable or beneficial for everyone – far from it. But even as social rejection and downranking hurt, there is a different kind of discomfort that comes along with being socially lost and disoriented, and this is the discomfort associated with awkwardness.

Nope. Everybody's first kiss might be awkward.  

This disorientation is built into the very etymology of the term: it derives from the Middle English ‘awk’, meaning ‘wrong’ or ‘clumsy’, and the English suffix ‘-ward’, denoting direction or orientation – yielding ‘facing the wrong way’. But just like passing someone on a road, facing the right way depends on knowing how things are done around here.

No. You can come up with a superior way of doing things.  

Awkwardness requires the presence of others: individuals aren’t awkward, interactions are

Rubbish! I had to give myself an enema before a colonoscopy. I was very awkward indeed.  

Knowing social scripts is one thing; truly internalising them is another.

Knowledge exists. 'Internalizing' doesn't exist. It is merely a metaphor for being able to do things without conscious effort.  

From the Italian sprezzatura to the French nonchalance to the Chinese concept of wu wei, various traditions have admired the ability ‘to practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort’, as the 16th-century Italian diplomat Baldassare Castiglione put it.

This comes from practice. However, if a superior way of doing things becomes available, the person who sticks with the old way of doing things appears clumsy or awkward.  

By contrast, contemporary putdowns like ‘try-hard’ or ‘pick me’

this is a derogatory term for a woman who betrays her sex in order to get ahead.  

show that it’s not enough to know the social script; its execution should look effortless.

No. You should be able to disguise your mercenary motives so as to come across as a good person.  

This is one way awkwardness functions to distinguish insiders and outsiders.

Nope. The King may be very awkward and socially inept. He is still an insider.  

It’s also why we should be wary of labelling others ‘awkward’.

Why not? It is better to say 'that dude is awkward but thoroughly decent' than say 'he shat himself deliberately while officiating at my wedding coz everything always has to be about him. Fucking attention whore.'  

This gets awkwardness wrong – it’s not a personality or character trait, but something that emerges from social interactions.

Nope. Anybody can be awkward when doing something they are not used to while all by themselves.  

Awkwardness requires the presence of others: individuals aren’t awkward, interactions are.

No. Interactions can get rid of awkwardness. The person with superior skill can guide the other. That way you don't end up jizzing in your pants.  

This might seem surprising: people often describe themselves (or others) as ‘awkward’, and it seems that some people do have more difficulty navigating social interactions than others. But there are practical as well as theoretical reasons for resisting the idea that awkwardness is an individual trait. The label ‘awkward’ is not as innocuous as it seems: it’s ambiguous, and it obscures more than it reveals.

No. It is innocuous enough. Awkwardness or inexperience can be overcome. But it may not be vital to do so.  

For example, suppose I describe my colleague Rob as ‘awkward at parties’. This is ambiguous: am I saying that he feels awkward at parties, or that he makes me feel awkward at parties? Or both?

You are saying Rob isn't a party person. He lacks social skills. Maybe he doesn't think they are worth acquiring. If you say 'Rob makes me feel awkward at parties' people will think Rob has such superior social skills that you feel like a bumbling fool in his presence.  

This ambiguity creates a dangerous space for bias or even ostracism:

Thus Grievance Studies should have a new branch catering to those who are awkward. After that you can create a Department of Flatulence Studies. Why are so few Presidential candidates notorious for farting incessantly? Is it because of Neo-Liberalism?

I may mistake my own discomfort at Rob’s presence for a property of Rob – projecting my own feelings of awkwardness on to him in a sort of pathetic fallacy.

You may also think that Bill Gates is as poor as fuck or Anne Hathaway is as ugly as shit.  

For example, suppose Rob is in a wheelchair, and I have little experience interacting with wheelchair users.

Don't sit on their laps and order them to take you to the pub. 

I might feel some uncertainty about how to approach the situation, worrying about saying ‘the wrong thing’ or not knowing whether to stand or kneel while speaking with him.

Definitely kneel if you are sucking him off. Otherwise you might throw out your back. 

Using the term ‘awkward’ risks placing responsibility for my discomfort on to Rob.

Which Rob would be cool with if you were sucking him off.  

Not only is this fundamentally unfair,

like my saying I am cuter than Beyonce 

but it means that I’m less likely to try to remedy my ignorance – what arrangement would make Rob most comfortable?

Suck him off- provided you are a hottie.  

And since I’ve now classified Rob (in my own mind, if not to others) as ‘awkward’, I may be less likely to seek out interactions with him in the future.

If you aren't sucking him off, why would he care? 

As the feminist scholar Sara Ahmed writes in The Promise of Happiness (2010): ‘To create awkwardness is to be read as being awkward

To create chocolate cake in your pants is to be read as having shat yourself.  

'Maintaining public comfort requires that certain bodies “go along with it’’.’

Did you know that trillions of women are being raped on buses and trains every day? They 'go along with it' because of Neo-Liberalism.  

We can now begin to see how awkwardness becomes threatening, and how it can be weaponised, as Megan Garber has argued in The Atlantic.

These nutters have weaponized stupidity.  

Because awkwardness is often aversive, those perceived as causing it risk ostracism.

Ostracize these nutters. Or, don't. They are fucking hilarious. We get that this lady is awkward. The question is, is she as awkward as Agnes Callard? That's the gold standard.  

Changing social norms and rituals isn’t easy; adopting new ones can be costly.

The norm in Philosophy Departments is to give tenure only to utter imbeciles.  

The person whose presence reveals the inadequacy of the status quo thus presents a threat. For example, in a department where the men routinely take clients to a strip club after dinner, or tell sexually explicit jokes in meetings, the presence of women colleagues might make things awkward, as they are forced to confront the clash between their workplace rituals and professional norms.

Sadly, this wasn't the case and still isn't in many professions and organizations.  

One option would be to accept this conflict as of their own making, and adjust their behaviour accordingly. But too often, it’s the presence of the women that is blamed: now it’s awkward to tell those jokes, because there are women here.

It is likely that men were worried that women would be promoted over their heads because of their superior performance. They needed to point out that people who have to sit down to pee are bound to be inefficient. Also, suppose you are on fire. Men can piss on you and thus douse the flames. Fuck are women going to do? That's the main reason, women should not be hired. As for bawdy jokes, lots of men don't like them because they go to Church.  

Blame falls on those perceived as different for ‘making’ things awkward. In many cases, though, it was awkward all along: that awkwardness was just being borne by someone else, as they tried to conform to others’ expectations.

In the private sector, failure to hire the most efficient can lead to bankruptcy. Awkwardness does not matter. The bottom line does.  

Understood in these terms, awkwardness won’t necessarily become any less unpleasant to experience. But it’s worth paying more attention to when and where it arises, and be more willing to tackle it head-on.

Report anyone who uses the word 'awkward' to H.R. This is the a-word, like the c-word, n-word etc.  

An unspoken expectation in many social interactions is that people already know how to navigate them.

No. That expectation only applies to people who appear to already possess the relevant skill-set. If I dressed up as a plumber, you would expect me to do a good job fixing your toilet. This would not be the case if I dressed up as a prostitute.  

People avoid admitting social ignorance, and we are embarrassed by those who do, as if they’ve violated some unspoken social norm. But why should not knowing which pronoun, title or fork to use be any different from not knowing where the bathroom is, or what time the café opens?

It isn't. The suggestio falsi here is that the a-word is being used in some malign way probably on orders from Neo-Liberalism.  

The reluctance to ask that social norms be made explicit reveals a deeper expectation: that social interaction should appear effortless.

Only to those habituated to them.  

Awkwardness highlights the fact that our interactions are scripted.

No. It arises where there is a lack of skill, practice or relevant knowledge. Also, drunkenness doesn't help.  

Its aversiveness shows the extent to which people prefer not to be reminded of this fact.

They also don't want to be reminded that they shit and piss. I found this out the hard way.  

And the lucky among us may not have to be.

The lucky among us don't have to teach useless shite. 


We engage with physical infrastructure daily, often without thinking about it. That thoughtlessness is a privilege: when I walk into the lecture theatre and reach for the light switch, it’s more or less at arm’s reach, and I expect that to be the case in every room I walk into. Sometimes, the cord that pulls down the screen is a bit too high for me and I have to stand on a chair, and this is mildly annoying, embarrassing even. At that point I begin to feel irritated with the design of the room. I might wonder, who is it made for?

Men. White Men. They are evil bastards.  

Social scripts are like light switches and cords – we reach for them automatically, only really noticing their placement or existence when they’re not where we expect or need them to be.

No. There is only one way of turning on the light. There are many ways of interacting socially. You may choose to be witty or grave or as boring as shit.  

Of course, that’s not true for everyone. For many people, navigating the demands of daily life requires giving a good deal of thought to the placement of light switches, doorknobs and the like.

Cognitive impairment can involve having only short term memory. 

For people who are neurodivergent, who struggle with reading facial cues, or who find themselves in unfamiliar social settings, the world is full of rooms with unpredictable, unreachable infrastructure.

But if they say 'I have such and such medical condition' or 'I'm a foreigner', people will make allowances.  

Awkwardness is a reminder that social infrastructure exists and that it is not equally accessible to everyone.

No. Awkwardness or clumsiness exists even where there is no Society.  If you are unused to chopping wood, you do it in an awkward manner. 

The good news is that with effort and attention, social resources can be made more accessible.

The bad news is that useless tossers will want us to pay them for tackling imaginary problems.  

Awkwardness highlights where that work needs to happen.

It doesn't need to happen at all.  

Understanding the social origins of awkwardness also helps reconceptualise it.

Its origin is not 'social'. It is either a matter of lack of skill or experience or else is psychological.  

Instead of thinking about it as a personal failure – a cringeworthy source of personal embarrassment, or shame – it can be recognised for what it is: the result of collective ignorance or absence.

Individuals who come up with smarter ways of doing things change Society. The author hasn't done so. She is trying to add 'Awkwardness' to the Grievance Studies Curriculum. The fact that I iz bleck isn't grievance enough. I also need to blame Society because I have to drink three bottles of Gin a day so as to overcome my shyness and run naked through the streets. 

Not till Biden runs naked through the streets (after undergoing gender reassignment surgery) will Society overcome its bondage to Neo-Liberalism. 

And this is where the trope of the awkward misfit does a disservice.

We think highly of the awkward misfit because we suspect the dude may become a tech billionaire.  

When awkwardness is understood as an individual failure to fit in, the response is supposed to be: do better; conform; learn the script.

Acquire the relevant skill. Scripts only matter if you are a telemarketer. But that's a low wage job.  

But that’s not always possible. Nor is it always desirable. In some cases, those norms are not serving everyone – or anyone. For example, many job interviews now eschew small talk and follow-up questions, following a scripted formula in which candidates are all asked the same questions with no follow-ups.

But people with good connections will get hired one way or another.  

This may feel awkward, especially for interviewers used to casual chit-chat. But that same chit-chat might unfairly skew the process by emphasising considerations of ‘fit’ and disadvantaging candidates who have less in common with interviewers. Professors

of useless subjects 

may feel awkward asking students to share their pronouns, but this takes the burden of awkwardness off the students who might otherwise have had to jump in and correct people’s assumptions.

If you are being hired to do useless shite, it doesn't matter how useless or crazy you are.

The upshot is that awkwardness isn’t something an individual should, or even can, fix on their own.

Nope. You can take courses on all sorts of things- e.g. elocution, etiquette, etc, etc.  

To view awkwardness as shameful, or embarrassing, is therefore not just a philosophical mistake but a practical one:

No. If you are hired to do a particular job you should learn to do it well. A clumsy surgeon kills his patients. He should feel ashamed of himself.  

it is to miss out on an opportunity to repair the social infrastructure.

If you really have the power to 'repair the social infrastructure' why not eliminate crime and poverty and incessant flatulence?

Take the case of pronouns again: someone who finds it awkward to state their pronouns, but understands this awkwardness in terms of shame, might see the problem as stemming from a lack of courage or assertiveness, and feel bad about their failure to speak up.

It is good to feel bad about your cowardice. It is wrong to blame society because you deserted from the Army the moment your regiment was ordered to go to the frontline.  

This puts the burden on them, going into new social or professional situations, to summon up the courage to change how they introduce themselves, which can make new interactions a source of stress or anxiety.

Also, the burden is on them to put on clothes rather than turn up naked.  

If we understand awkwardness in terms of social scripts, things are different: the person might work with friends or colleagues to think about ways to build pronouns into introductions, or emails, or the structure of meetings.

There is no need. Just say 'I identify as a cat. Kindly make miaow miaow noises when speaking about me.'  

But it’s important, too, to be mindful of who’s doing this work.

It isn't 'work'. It is useless shite. 

Because awkwardness is felt as a form of social discomfort, it doesn’t attach to everyone equally.

Everybody feels awkward when doing something new or with respect to which they are out of practice. This is true whether they are alone or in company.  

Social expectations of who does the work to make others feel comfortable – and correspondingly, who is held accountable when people feel uncomfortable – intersect with scripts around gender and social status.

Not to mention sobriety and sanity.  

Women are often tasked with managing others’ moods and are expected to get along with others;

Nice women are. Drunken prostitutes- less so.  

this ‘emotional labour’ includes the work of repairing social interactions that become awkward. There’s a privilege in not worrying about others’ discomfort.

Especially if you don't have to sit down to pee.  

All of this might seem like a lot to put on a minor, everyday irritation.

Like having to sit down to pee. 

If we’re used to thinking of awkwardness as the kind of thing that crops up on bad dates, or a minor annoyance of office life, then what I’ve been saying so far might seem a bit overblown.

It is mad. But we get that this lady wants to become the doyen of Awkwardness studies. Did you know that if everybody just shat themselves every day, then Neo-Liberalism's 'social script' would be erased? 

Doesn’t everyone have awkward moments, and is it really such a big deal? The answer is that some of us have more awkward moments than others

And thus should get extra help from the Government. 

And some awkward moments are a big deal: it matters that we have social scripts to talk about grief, or harassment, or race, because not talking about these topics erases an important part of people’s experiences.

Why not have 'social scripts' for talking endlessly about pissing and shitting? They are an even more important part of people's experiences.  

The silence associated with awkwardness can function to erase important parts of people’s experiences. But if we listen to it carefully, it can also tell us where more work is needed.

Also we should listen carefully to farts.  

The work of building our social infrastructure often goes unremarked upon.

Why am I not getting paid for this building work? Is it coz I iz bleck?  

Awkwardness alerts us to the fact that our social norms are under construction.

No. It alerts us to a lack of skill or psychological condition- e.g. shyness.  

It’s an opportunity to examine the work that goes into our social lives, and why that work so often remains invisible.

How about the work I do when I produce a turd? Why does that remain invisible? Is it coz I iz bleck? 

In the drama of life, we don’t have to settle for being actors – we can be writers, too.

In which case we are acting the part of writers. Just say 'the drama of life is 'improv'.' 

Not everyone can afford to do this work. Not everyone’s contributions receive equal credit. But for those of us willing and able, awkward moments are an alert that our current social scripts are not working, and an opportunity to get to work writing better ones.

What 'better script' has this nutter written? If you shit yourself at the office party, it is the fault of Society. Change the script so that you get a Nobel Prize for the turds you produce. Only thus can we challenge the hegemony of Patriarchy or Neo-Liberalism or having to sit down to pee.