Ecolinguistics, continued.

As I do love refuting the diatribe of pseudo-intellectuals, I just had to post this little gem.

Here's a copy of the original article in red italics: (download this article here).

Language & Ecology Online Journal (2004) available from http:// www.ecoling.net/journal.html
[updated version Dec 2006]
Masculinity, health and ecological destruction
by Arran Stibbe
One important way that language is connected to ecology is through the discursive construction of gender. As ecofeminists such as Diamond and Orenstein (1990) and Adams (1993) show, there is a high correlation between patriarchal social structures and ecological destruction, and social structures are created, partially, through language. Discourses which play roles in constructing images of masculinity and femininity are all around, but for this article I will concentrate on one example: an instance of a particular discourse of masculinity which has been called ‘hegemonic masculinity’. In Stibbe (2004), I analysed the construction of hegemonic masculinity in the discourse of Men’s Health magazine, drawing out implications for the emerging concept of health. There other important implications, however, in terms of ecology, and this current article looks at discourse of Men’s Health magazine in terms of its ecological implications.
The covers of the magazine, seen by far more people than those who actually buy it, display a black and white picture of an 'ideal' man, and a series of short statements in various font sizes. The majority of these statements use the conventional syntax of lifestyle magazines to set up various goals for readers, such as being thin or being a great heterosexual lover (Lose your belly! Gold medal sex etc). These are treated as something which is obviously desirable, but they may be implicated more in creating desires than responding to already existing desires. For instance, men may not have realised before that it was desirable to ‘Add 2 inches to your chest!’.
Good health is strongly correlated to ecological sustainability: a diet consisting of local produced, varied, organic fruits and vegetables is as good for biodiversity and the land as it is for health, as is avoiding canned and processed food and walking instead of taking the car. However, rather than goals which simultaneous promote health and ecological sustainability, the main goal that the magazine sets up for readers is the achievement of a huge, muscular body. Clearly this goal is related to images of power and masculinity rather than health. The following are just some of the statements from the cover of the magazine:
l SOLID MUSCLE! l BIGGER BICEPS l BUILD THIS BODY [with arrow pointing at a huge torso] l A HARD BODY l gain muscle l FIND YOUR ABS! l ADD 2 inches to your chest l HARD MUSCLES FAST! l PACK ON MUSCLE! (Men's Health 06/2000 - 09/2001 covers)
Achievement of a huge, muscular body demands the wasteful consumption of large amounts of food, and the magazine recommends one kind of food over all others:
 meat has big advantages over all other foods: It packs muscle-building protein… (Men's Health 2000: December:166)
 Meat is loaded with the protein needed to build new muscle (Men's Health 2000:December:166)
 The muscle stoker [recipe]…eat this meal and you’ll grow your biceps…That’s because the protein in the beef [1lb top London broil] helps to build new muscle tissue (Men's Health 2000:July/August:87)
 make your meat beef and you’ll also get testosterone-boosting amino acids. Testosterone helps you lift more weight and build more muscle. (Men's Health 2000: November, p84)
The cause and effect relationship between been eating meat and growing muscle is clearly expressed in the expression 'muscle-building protein', as if the protein itself will grow muscle without any effort on the part of the person eating it. Likewise, 'protein' is the agent of the verb 'build' in 'protein...helps to build new muscle', rather than the reader. In 'eat this meal and you'll grow your biceps', the reader is the agent of 'grow', but the only activity that the sentence suggests is 'eat this meal'.
Despite the associated risks of heart disease and prostate cancer Men's Health is recommending the consumption of large amounts of red meat, in order to achieve the goal of a muscular body. And meat, when produced in intensive units using chemically treated grains, genetic modification and growth hormones, is one of the most inefficient and ecologically destructive ways of producing food (Turner 1999).
This pattern of connections is repeated in relation to convenience food. In accordance with to the masculinist overtones throughout the magazine, cooking is assigned to women (Fiddes 1991:158). If men must cook, then they should do it the masculine way - with convenience foods. The association of masculinity with convenience food is accomplished through a memorable rhyme:
 A Man, A Plan, A Can: All you need is a can-opener (or a wife) (Men's Health 2000:June:96).
or a simple equation:
 You + a can opener = 12 manly meals (Men's Health June 2000, contents)
or the following imperative:
 Nuke your gut. The TV dinner diet. Three minutes to a leaner waist. These dinners aren’t just easy to make, they’re a fast way to lose weight…low in calories and incredibly tasty. Fill your freezer with these 13 meals… (Men's Health:December:133)
In terms of the environment, of course, convenience foods take a heavy toll in terms of packaging materials, processing, and refrigeration. By encouraging men to grow huge bodies on a diet of meat and convenience food, Men's Health magazine appears to be using language to establish artificial goals which celebrate hegemonic masculinity and male power, and lead to ecologically destructive behaviour. And if men find that a diet of frozen pizza and canned food does not lead to the hugely muscular and lean body of the cover model, then they can always buy one of the huge SUV cars which are heavily advertised in the magazine as a substitute.
The images in the magazine of huge muscular men and the constant implication that this is the ideal shape for a man have the potential to lead to body dissatisfaction. Body dissatisfaction, in turn, could lead to following the dietary recommendations of the magazine to consume large amounts of meat and convenience food, or to compensate for the lack of ideal physique through purchase of the range of luxury consumer items offered by the magazine. In this way, social constructions of gender - masculinity in this case - have the potential to encourage behaviours which damage ecosystems.


Now let’s look at some things wrong with this sadly illogical article, namely, that it simply refuses to acknowledge the bigger picture.

Whether a man is gay or straight, the very reason they read Men’s Health and try to attain a muscled physique and know-how in the bedroom is TO ATTRACT POTENTIAL MATES. There’s a simple logic behind this: the majority of the aforementioned traits are found to be attractive among potential mates, thusly, if one doesn’t posses these traits they may be passed over in favor of someone else. And yes, it’s a two-way street ladies, most straight men don’t find fat women attractive. Indeed, no matter one’s sexual orientation, the vast majority of people don’t find the un-fit attractive due to our collective biological imperative to breed. This is because the physically un-fit are seen as possessing traits which preferably wouldn’t be passed on to offspring (this can also be seen as an inability to care for offspring). Contrary to what radical feminists would have us believe, we are bound by biology in very real ways - our perceptions included.

So, that said, let’s go a bit more indepth with this.

1. How are patriarchal social structures defined? How is environmental destruction defined? Would not an ecofeminist have a bias in linking the two into a positive correlation? Are their research methods really unbiased?
2. Desirable traits, such as big biceps, are actually linked to better health. Admittedly, this link is open, and often culturally defined. However, this feminist assumes, like so many feminist, that what's physically preferable is dictated solely by a "boy's club" of men - and completely ignores the actual interplay that occurs.
3. Maintaining a “well-built” muscular body DOES NOT equal the wasteful consumption of a large amount of food. It requires a careful and varied diet. Maintaining such a physique doesn’t require one to consume a large amount of food, it’s absurd to assume so.
4. While a single article in the 2000 issue of Men’s Health encourages the eating of red meat - the vast majority of its online edition encourages the eating of fish (usually broiled) along with a balanced diet and regular exercise. It really seems as if the author was digging with this one, and the fact that Arran Stibbe didn’t include the information in an honest context means I place the author in same academic category as white supremacists who disregard information outside their worldview and “pick and choose” facts without looking at their outside context. For example, holocaust deniers “pick and choose” the fact that Hitler issued a “no liquidation order”, but completely disregard the historical context.

5. The "easy" food preparation diatribe Stibbe drawls on about doesn't have a root cause in men dominating women, it's root cause is laziness, a trait both genders share. Being able to simply pop something in a microwave rather then break out pots and pans appeals to the lazy side in all of us. Also, I seriously doubt Men's Health recommends chowing down on a frozen pizza, most likely they mean "Lean Cuisine".

If you really want a clean sustainable world where everyone shops at an organic foods store and we treat each other as equals, then stop being such a pompous ass.

You femi-nazi. : )

Ecolinguistics

While I was quietly web-surfing and becoming lost in one of several trains-of-thought, I came across a wikipedia article describing the wonderful field of ecolinguistics.

Have we finally reached a new level of ridiculosity? This sub-field of linguistics frames itself as the earth-friendly version of linguistics.

Here's a sample of what one self-proclaimed ecolinguistic describes the field as:

Ecolinguistics is a new branch of linguistics which investigates the role of language in the development and possible solution of ecological and environmental problems. For this, some ecolinguists use the concept of the eco-system metaphorically for language world systems which they analyse with the help of concepts transferred from biological ecology.
Ecolinguists criticize language on the levels of langue and parole and point out unecological language uses and "anthropocentrisms" which represent nature from the point of view of its usefulness for humans. In a wider understanding, the "growthism", "sexism", "classism" and "anthropocentrism" inherent in many languages and language uses are criticized.
Another important field of ecolinguistics is the research area of the relation between linguistic and biological diversity (two phenomena ecolinguists aim to preserve).
(Emphasis added by me).

This approach to linguistics is ultimately based on Micheal Holliday's research in the early 90's. Which criticized English-speaker's positive attitude towards unmarked terms such as "large", "grow", "tall", etc. and how these terms have a positive aspect, even if they undermine our surrounding environment when used to describe "economic growth".

The laughable things about this approach: these "un-marked terms" don't go without descriptors here in the real-world of syntax. For example, I can say "large amount of pollution" and suddenly "large" in that phrase has a certainly negative aspect.

You don't have to be a linguist to understand that how you frame a concept with language can influence how your readers interpret the information you're trying to convey. We don't need an entire sub-field so narrowly devoted to this subject.

In my own humble opinion, these are tree-huggers who play at being grammarians on the side.

The fact is, every creature on earth uses other creatures and the environment for its own needs. There's nothing wrong with this. This very web of usefulness creates the elegant inter dependencies we observe in the environment.

The very fact that this field of linguistics openly assigns moralistic values to its analysis of language makes this field USELESS.

My ultimate point is: ecolinguistics doesn't treat the cause of materialism, which often drives the destruction of the environment, it only points out the symptoms of materialism.

Beware Conspiracy theorists: Aliens built the Pyramids

This particular theory of faulty thinking has annoyed me for quite some time and will thusly be refered to as: Pyramidiocy.

Pyramidiocy is characterized by having an outlandish, farfetched theory about the origin, nature or purpose of the Egyptian pyramids. The theories of pyramidiots are barely supported by slender threads of evidence. They serve little purpose except to stand as bad examples of speculative thought and fanciful imagination.

Some pyramidiots, such as Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin, claim that the ancient Egyptians were too backwards to have constructed the pyramids without the help of extraterrestrials. Edgar Cayce (professional bullshit artist, also known as "psychic") claimed that beings from Atlantis helped the Egyptians build the pyramids by showing them how to levitate stones. Charles Berlitz claimed that Atlantis lay beneath the Bermuda Triangle and had a pyramid the same size as the Great Pyramid at Giza. Pyramidiots think Atlantis is the link between the pyramids of Egypt and the pyramids of Mexico.

They are not dissuaded by the fact that the one was primarily funerary while the other was primarily used for ceremonies, including some which involved human sacrifice. Arguments demonstrating that the ancient Egyptians or Mexicans were intelligent and resourceful enough to build pyramids are to no avail. This is a particularly frustrating aspect of this fanciful thinking, as it assumes our collective ancestors were as dumb as the proponents of this theory.

Other pyramidiots ascribe super technological or paranormal powers to the ancient Egyptians. Traditional explanations in terms of religion, tombs for pharaohs and their families, belief in immortality, or paid workers, slipways, canals, slaves (new evidence indicates that slaves were not directly used in the construction of the pyramids) , etc. are rejected by pyramidiots in favor of theories claiming that the pyramids were power stations or water pumps. They don't seem to realize there was little use for a power station in ancient Egypt (they didn't have light-bulbs, or anything that requires AC or DC current); plus like all ancient societies it's labor was drawn from slaves and paid-workers - not machines. Not to mention the lack of plumbing beneath the pyramids.

Some pyramidiots claim that the pyramids were built according to some sort of mystical numerology to contain coded messages. Some believe that the Great Pyramid at Giza is at the center of the world (The fact that the Earth is spherical escapes them). Some think the pyramids are a map of the sky. To put it shortly, numerological beliefs about the pyramids are like a horn-of-plenty. Some believe only God could have designed such a numerical mystery. That almost anything in the universe can be found to have interesting mathematical proportions or be related to several interesting mathematical formulae is of little interest to pyramidiots.
That there is no evidence for such beliefs seems to cheer rather than dishearten pyramidiots.

I can't quite figure out why, but then they don't seem to be the most logical bunch.

Beware Conspiracy theorists: Holocaust Denial

While I don't want my humble blog to become the vanguard against zany conspiracy "theories" - the fact is, given the sizable multitude of the simply weird things people believe, I feel it's unfortunately necessary.

That said, let's start with a particularly damaging and ugly conspiracy theory: Holocaust denial.

The mass extermination of the Jews and other “undesirables” at the hands of the Nazis during World War II is referred to as the Holocaust. It has become a symbol of evil in our time. Like many symbols, the Holocaust has become sacrosanct. To many people, both Jews and non-Jews, the Holocaust symbolizes the horror of genocide against the Jews, Romani, Homosexuals, and the disabled. Some modern anti-Semites (that includes persons on the extreme political right, and left) have found that attacking the Holocaust causes as much suffering to some Jews as attacking Jews themselves. “Holocaust denial” refers to attacking the accuracy of any aspect of the symbology or history of the Holocaust.

Holocaust denial seems to be the main motivation of the Institute for Historical Review and its Journal of Historical Review. Since 1980 this journal has been publishing articles attacking the accuracy of various claims about the Holocaust. There is clearly an agenda when a journal is devoted almost exclusively to the single issue of making the Holocaust seem like an exaggeration of biased historians. Indeed, I personally consider the entire "Institute" an affront to academic scholarship. If truth and historical accuracy were the only goals of this group, it would be praised rather than despised. However, it seems that its promoters are more concerned with hatred than with truth.

Thus, even the inaccuracies that they correctly identify are met with scorn and derision. For they never once deal with the central question of the Holocaust. They deal with details and technical issues: Were there six million or four million Jews who died or were killed? Could this particular shower have been used as a gas chamber? Were these deaths due to natural causes or not? Did Hitler issue a Final Solution order or not? If so, where is it? These are legitimate historical issues. However, the Holocaust deniers do not deal with the questions of racial laws that led to the arrest and imprisonment of millions of Jews in several countries for the “crime” of race. They do not concern themselves with the policy of herding people like animals and transporting them to “camps” where millions died of disease or malnutrition, or were murdered. They don’t address the moral issues of medical experimentation on humans or of persecution of homosexuals and the infirm. Why not? In other words, they only concern themselves with questions that are convenient to them.

Michael Shermer devotes two chapters of Why People Believe Weird Things (1997) to the arguments of the Holocaust deniers. One of the favorite appeals of the Holocaust deniers is to demand some proof that Hitler gave the order for the extermination of the Jews (or the mentally retarded, mentally ill, and physically handicapped). Holocaust deniers point to Himmler’s telephone notes of November 30, 1941, as proof that there was to be no liquidation of the Jews. The actual note says: “Jewish transport from Berlin. No liquidation.” Whatever the note meant, it did not mean that Hitler did not want the Jews liquidated. The transport in question, by the way, was liquidated that evening. In any case, if Hitler ordered no liquidation of the Berlin transport, then liquidation was going on and he knew about it. Hitler’s intentions were made public in his earliest speeches. Even as his regime was being destroyed, Hitler proclaimed: “Against the Jews I fought open-eyed and in view of the whole world. . . . I made it plain that they, this parasitic vermin in Europe, will be finally exterminated.” Hitler at one time compared the Jews to the tuberculosis bacilli that had infected Europe. It was not cruel to shoot them if they would not or could not work. He said: “This is not cruel if one remembers that even innocent creatures of nature, such as hares and deer when infected, have to be killed so that they cannot damage others. Why should the beasts who wanted to bring Bolshevism be spared more than these innocents?”

It should be noted that white supremacists aren't the only ones denying the holocaust, though it is funny to see that whitey's story of what happened is far from consistent; such as when members of neo-nazi groups don shirts that proclaim that Hitler didn't go far enough. Guess they didn't get the memo. Quite a few Iranian, Palestinian, Lebanese, and Saudi leaders have, you guessed it, denied the Holocaust. These are often the same forked tongue leaders that cry for peace with Israel in front of the world, but cry there will be peace when Israel is in pieces to their followers.

As just a side note, the image for this blog was found at an affiliate site of IHR, heretical.com (their "scholarship" just has to be true with that kind of bias!)

Creationism vs Evolution (Part 2)

There is as much evidence for evolution as there is for the theory of gravity. I don't mean to sound condescending, but you should read Essential Cell Biology or browse NCBI or Talk Origins before you claim that it's "more or less consistent with the evidence". The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. In fact, since evolution is now used as the basis of algorithms denying evolution is exactly analogous to using "F=mv". Want to find a protein similar to the one you've just purified and sequenced? Try doing it without resorting to the mathematics of molecular evolution. The difference between ID and evolution is the difference between gene splices that work and splices that don't.
Intelligent design, unlike evolution, is by definition not falsifiable. Therefore it is not "provable". It is only "consistent" with the evidence if one accepts the same explanation for every piece of evidence. Lest it be thought that biologists commit the same mistake with the theory of evolution, it should be pointed out that there are many biological phenomena that are explained by molecular biological mechanisms that are unrelated to the classical Darwinian model of selection via random walks on DNA sequences. Here are a few examples - I can come up with many more for those interested.

1. The jump from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. There is a lot of evidence (based on sequence identity between mitochondrial DNA and prokaryotic DNA) to indicate that prokaryotes were absorbed by primitive eukaryotes and formed a symbiotic relationship that's reflected in the mitochondria and chloroplasts of modern cells. This was not a sequence level perturbation, but it was a fitness perturbation that resulted in a selective advantage.
2. The SOS response. When certain bacteria are starved, the rate of mutation itself is altered by environmental factors. This produces variation when it's most needed, when the cell is desperate. Again, this is non-classical Darwinism.
3. Horizontal gene transfer in bacterial cells. Bacteria exchange genes back and forth by all kinds of methods, much more frequently than higher organisms. Again, this is non-classical Darwinian evolution because the fitness perturbation is from gene transfer rather than sequence perturbation.

The point is that biologists can and do accept explanations other than classical Darwinian evolution when such explanations are in accord with observations. It's not as if biologists are unable to look at alternate plausible theories that are compatible with our knowledge of molecular biology when they also fit the data. ID proponents do not, because ID is nothing more than the "God of the Gaps". Every time a biochemical scenario is validated for one pathway's origin (say, by tracing it through hundreds of species) then ID proponents fix attention on the holes in another pathway. It is impossible to satisfy them because every pathway that has not (yet) been exhaustively characterized becomes the work of a divine hand.

Is ID a cover for Christian creation theories? Absolutely, and while I'm no lawyer it seems the Establishment Clause forbids the teaching of ID on these grounds. Remember, ID presumes an intelligent being responsible for our creation. Usually the rationale afforded is that we are too complex to have arisen from abiogenesis. Of course, such an argument sets up an infinite recursion, which we can see as follows:

1. Let us call our "complexity" C1. By assumption, anything with complexity at least C1 cannot have arisen from abiogenesis.
   
2. Let us call the complexity of our putative creators C2. C2 must be greater than or equal to C1. Otherwise a less complex being could have created us.
   
3. By assumption 1, anything with complexity C1 (or greater) cannot have abiotically arisen. Thus there must be a creator for C2. This creator must have complexity C3 greater than or equal to C2.

It's clear that this recursion doesn't terminate. In other words, the creator, of the creator, of the creator. If it isn't logical, as ID assumes, to assume that abiogenesis (aka, that we emerged) doesn't explain our existence, then how could it be logical to explain Gods existence?

ID is not science. At best, ID is a theological position - and a shaky one at that.