My rules for half-believing the universe is a simulation without becoming a lunatic

I think I'd been toying with the notion that the universe might be a simulation for a while before I heard it was actually a respectable idea and that some scientists, including Neil DeGrasse Tyson, think there's good evidence for it. It wasn't science that led me to toy with the possibility that the universe was a simulation; for me, it was something that emerged after a lifelong attempt to try to understand how the universe could have been created by a conscious force that wasn't evil, when so much in the universe seemed to be evil. 

Sometime last year, Amazon, probably using some kind of mind-reading algorithm, advertised to me the Kindle version of a book on the subject. It was The Simulation Hypothesis by Rizwan Virk. I guess I should have figured there was a reason why the book was only $3.99. It wasn't edited very well, and a lot of it was somewhat tiresome reiterations of material written by others, likely to pad the book into something long enough to be published. (The publisher, Bayview Books, seems to exist only to publish Virk's work so far.) Still, I don't think the author is lying about being an MIT computer scientist, and for me, who had never really read any of the scientific rationale behind the plausibility of a simulated universe, it was a decent introduction. I didn't really care for his paper-thin explanations of how the various religions of the world might have actually been talking about a simulated universe all along. That felt like hooey. But he presented the main arguments being put forward by scientists to support a simulation idea. The best two are:

1. Even as primitive as we humans still fundamentally are in our scientific advancement, we're not that far away from being able to create alternate realities that humans can't tell from the real world. And if we can do it, that means others can, too. It's an ability that would be ubiquitous, which suggests that it's very likely, just from a probability standpoint, that we are in a simulation. So are the programmers who created our simulation, and so on.
2. The universe displays properties that we would expect it to if it had been programmed, such as limits to how small (or "pixelated") space can be, as well as limits to how small a unit of time can exist. These limits help explain the answers to Zeno's paradoxes, but they also are what we'd expect if the universe had been set with parameters by a programmer. 

It's universes created solely to provide power for the spaceship battery of their creator all the way down. 

My own moral reasons

I'm glad to know that science doesn't think I'm an idiot for the things I more or less came up with on my own, but those aren't the main reasons I find a simulation-type understanding of existence to be appealing. Both the DeGrasse Tyson interview I linked above and the article from Scientific American concluded by saying that if we are living in simulation, there's nothing we can do about it, so it "might not make much difference." But to me, it makes a whole world of difference.

Unlike a lot of non-theists, I'm not certain there is no god. I'm about exactly 50/50 split on this. That 50/50 split changes day-to-day, but I think on the whole, its balancing point is at just about 51% no and 49% yes. Why not just no, like so many non-theists? Because it's just weird to me that anything exists at all. It's weird that we're here. It's weird that we know that we're here and that we are aware of the weirdness of it. And it's weird to think this weirdness just happens and that it might always have been happening. I understand that believing in God doesn't remove these problems. In fact, believing in God just makes the problem more confounding, because you've gone from the notion that the universe, which we know something about, has always been in a constant cycle of creation and destruction, to thinking that an unknown and unknowable being has always existed. That's why I'm an agnostic. It's a simpler kind of weirdness. 

It's not an altogether satisfying weirdness, though. A universe that just happens isn't especially satisfying. There's no reason to it, no point. An entity with a mind who made the universe, on the other hand, might indicate a point to all of this. The problem with believing in a god who made this universe, though, is that the universe is a fairly brutal place. Everything on our planet lives by killing and eating some other living thing. With plants, that's not an issue, because the plants are generally designed to be eaten, and many even need to be eaten in order to propagate. But everything else would probably prefer not to be eaten. Generally, the strong dominate the weak. Human history is full of a lot more people who lived unhappy and difficult lives than ones who've lived lives of ease and pleasure. So if I am to believe that someone designed this universe with a purpose in mind, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this someone is kind of an asshole. 

If the universe is a simulation, though, it might allow some wiggle room that would leave the creator(s) some slack. I say might, because it's still entirely possible that our simulation designer is either sadistic or merely indifferent to our plight, and that's why the universe is the way it is. There are, however, some possibilities about why this simulation exists that might make the suffering seem less cruel. I hasten to emphasize that these are all just possibilities, and I don't exactly hold to any of these things as a belief. These are ideas that make it easier for me to think both that the universe might have a purpose and that the ones who built it for that purpose might not be simply sitting back and paring their nails while the universe suffers. These possibilities are, in no particular order:

1) There is some higher plane of existence that has problems of its own, and this universe was necessary as research to help them solve that problem. Maybe a conflict-riddled universe, under specific conditions, helps others to observe the dynamics of conflict-riddled worlds in order to help solve their own conflicts. We'd be laboratory rats in this situation, of course, but at least if we knew we were lab rats who were helping cure the ills of some other plane, it might help make sense of our suffering. 

2) The creators have a sense of ethics about this experiment, and every sentient being who is in it was actually part of the design team, or at least they are members of the world in which the simulation was created. They have all agreed that, for the greater good of their world and what it might learn from this simulation, they will enter it and play the parts of sentient beings in our world. They either chose roles based on some criteria we can't guess at or the roles are given out randomly. Their memories of having existed outside the game are wiped when they come inside. Everyone knows when they enter the game that there is a chance of suffering, but they believe that when they come back out of the game, it will have produced some result that makes it worth it. This would help solve one of the things that has always seemed the most unfair to me--the fact that nobody who is here asked to be here. Possibly, once we are done with our roles, our memories will be uploaded to the servers of the designers to help analyze the data. 

3) Perhaps--very much modeling some religions--the creators have prepared some region of bliss for those who were part of the simulation. They recognized that the parameters they created for the world made it possible that sentient beings who suffer might arise, and to make up for this, they have prepared a place where everyone can go and enjoy an eternity of joy to compensate them for having participated in the simulation. Less appealingly, perhaps they, like the creators of Westworld, think that merely wiping the memories of participants at the end of the game is enough to satisfy their ethical requirements. 

What a simulation hypothesis does and doesn't change

As I mentioned above, there are some versions of a simulation theory that might not, in effect, be much different from what some religions have been telling us for a long time. Moreover, we're really not in a very different position from where we are with religion, because we're equally unable to know with certainty what the nature and goals of the creators are. We're equally stuck figuring out on our own what we should do with our time here.

When I was an evangelical, someone asked me once how I knew that the universe wasn't the dream of a god, like in Hinduism. I said that if this was true, we'd never be able to know it, so the only thing to do was to make the best choices we could based on what seemed to be real. That might still be the wisest advice when confronted with the simulation theory. 

Because we don't know what the purpose of the simulation is or what ethical rules, if any, the creators apply to it, we are still stuck with the existence of some of the worst possibilities. The programmers might be sadists. They might be indifferent. There's a very strong possibility we're here for the entertainment of our creators, since humans themselves have been creating stories that are, in a sense, their own little worlds for as long as we've been able to talk. Maybe life creating life that creates life is just what life does, and there's a nearly infinite regress of simulated worlds. Like in Calderon de la Barca's La Vida es Sueño, even the dreams in our world are themselves dreams. The point is that a simulation hypothesis, in some versions, might not be very reassuring. It all depends on what kind of simulation this is, and we don't know the answers to that. 

However, since at least some of the possible versions offer better answers than the ones religion has given to us, or more comforting answers than the ones a world that "just is" provide, I find even this possibility somewhat reassuring. 

My rules for not going crazy half-believing these things

1. Morality still matters. 

One possible difference between this and what most religions tell us is that since everyone who participated in the simulation would have contributed to the goal of its being staged, all would share equally in the reward. The creators needed Hitler as much as Mother Theresa for the experiment to work. Or, in the versions of a simulation that exist for the entertainment of the programmers, they might need villains and well as heroes. They wouldn't fault someone for having played a villain any more than we would fault an actor for having played a particularly wicked role. 

Believing the world is a simulation, then, might tempt some people to think that being good or bad are equally valid choices. Since nothing is real, there is no right or wrong. Those are just part of the illusion. 

To me, though, if the world is a simulation, and the simulation was done with any level of care (which, subjectively, it seems to me to have been), then everything in the simulation is there for a reason. Moral choices seem to be a central element of being a human being in this game. In fact, I more than half think of this simulation as part of a thought-experiment in morality by the programmers. Maybe ethics have always been a central part of human society by design. 

We don't know what view the programmers might ultimately take of ethical behavior, or whether they're likely to punish and reward particular conduct, but since it does seem that morality is a key part of what this whole experiment is about, we at least shouldn't be quick to act like it doesn't matter. 

(I realize that by writing that ethics is the point of the whole theatrical performance, that leaves open the question of why nearly all of the 13.4 billion years of the play that has gone on so far didn't, as far as we know, include beings capable of understanding moral choices. As I've said, none of these things are fully ensconced beliefs for me. They're more ideas that don't sound totally stupid and which maybe make life seem less pointless to me.)

2. Resist the urge to think suffering was done to entertain some god

Writers are often told to "kill their darlings." That is, in order to make a story interesting, something bad has to happen to someone. If we extrapolate this need we seem to have to throw bad things into a plot just to see what happens, we might think that the beings who programmed this world would have a tendency to do the same thing. We could end up thinking that every bad thing that happens to us is being done to further a plot in the very highly advanced Sims game of some coding kid in a higher dimension. 

Maybe it even makes sense of suffering a little bit to think like this, although the reasons for the suffering in this case would be enough to make one literally curse the gods. However, since we don't know the particulars of the simulation, it's equally possible that what's interesting to the designers isn't your individual suffering. At least, it's not interesting enough they'd program in every bad thing that happens to you. Rather, it's possible that what they find interesting is the world they created in which bad things can and often do happen. In that case, your suffering is only generally planned, not specifically. Nearly everyone will have bad things happen, according to the design of the universe, but there is no need to plot the lives of every participant in the machine down to that degree. 

In fact, all the evidence we have suggests that the designers of the universe are happy enough with the broad outline of what they created that they see no need to constantly interfere with it. The laws of physics do not get tinkered with. Early Christianity looked to miracles to prove it was true, but I think the lack of miracles is one reason I tend to think we have a deistic creator, one who set the rules and then left the experiment to run unhindered with. This means you neither need to fetishize your suffering nor feel you've been singled out by the creators. 

3. Treat it like it matters

In Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, a Pontiac dealer named Dwayne Hoover goes insane. His insanity is a matter of "bad chemical and bad ideas." The ideas, in Hoover's case, were supplied by the writer Kilgore Trout, who convinced him that everybody on Earth was a robot except Hoover. Hoover became a solipsist, someone who believes that he is the only person who truly exists, the only one with free will. He believed all of the universe was a test set up exclusively for him by the Creator of the Universe.

Hoover eventually started attacking people in his dealership, believing thereby he was obtaining the approval of the Creator of the Universe. He did not care that he had hurt anyone, because he did not believe the people he was attacking were real people like him. 

I just realized there was a Breakfast of Champions movie and that Bruce Willis played Dwayne Hoover in it. 

Hoover's notion is a bit different from someone who believes the universe is a simulation, because in a simulation, we're all equally experiencing the big lie, but in Hoover's case, he believed that the big lie was all for him. The effect, though, might be the same. People who think we are living in a simulation could be tempted to act like Hoover. They might even try to act like Neo in The Matrix, always attempting to see beyond the simulated world into the real one. 

I suppose everyone is free to come to whatever conclusion seems best, but to me, that's not the conclusion I draw. If the universe is like a big video game, then there should be a lot of freedom to treat it how you want. You can spend your time trying to end poverty or you can fiddle-fart around and try to enjoy yourself. But as far as our relationship to the creators of the game goes, I think our time here is best spent more or less playing the game in the more obvious ways. In Minecraft, you're not given any rules or objectives. You appear and then you move around and figure things out. There's an "end" to the game, but that's far from the only objective. Even though the game doesn't guide you in what you're supposed to do overtly, when you start moving around and figuring out how things work, the design and the intent of the game does become somewhat apparent. 

I think that's how we should treat life if we live in a simulation. We're here. Might as well try to play the game the way the designers seem to have intended it to be played. It'll probably be more profitable that way. Eventually, when you learn a few things, you can decide to play in more exotic ways, and maybe some of those will be ways even the designers didn't guess at. That's all possible, but not unless you at least start by playing it the "right" way. 

Simulation and suicide

Far from making me think life is pointless and not worth living, the possibility we live in a simulation gives me at least some small hope there might be a point. It even helps provide an answer to the question I so often ask of why anyone should keep on trying to live instead of giving up and dying by suicide immediately. 

If the universe is a simulation, then at least there is a chance there is a point to it. Of course, that's true in religion, too, but all religions require me to believe a perfect being created this mess of a universe, and I just can't accept that. If, however, the universe was created by beings somewhat like us, although likely more advanced versions of us, then maybe it ultimately will make some sense in a way we can understand. 

I mean, maybe not. The universe as a simulation isn't a completely reassuring thought. If this is all a big live-action play, then I got kind of a shit part, and I wonder if anyone is even noticing. Maybe I really am just an extra to the Dwayne Hoovers of the world, the ones the creators are actually interested in watching. Maybe rather than giving me a reason to keep living, maybe suicide is the right option because it's the only way to protest to the creators of the game about the nature of their experiment. Mostly, though, I don't feel like that's been my natural reaction since I started seriously considering the possibility the universe is a simulation. 

I don't totally come down on any side, just like I don't totally accept that this is really what I believe about the nature of reality. On the whole, though, I think that that if DeGrasse Tyson (and Elon Musk) are right, then that holds at least some possibilities not open in either religions or nihilism, and I find it more reassuring than not. For now, I, a person who half believes the universe is some kind of simulation or experiment, find enough consolation in the idea that I am still pushing through with a life I'm not totally sure I want and still trying to use that life to do some good. 

Shakespeare and soft suicidality: A Thanksgiving meditation

Ask any lay person to recite a Shakespearean soliloquy, and I'd wager eight out of ten people would start with "To be or not to be." That speech is to Shakespearean literature what the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth are to classical music. It's strange, perhaps, that one of the best known and most cherished passages in the English language is an extended meditation on suicide, one that takes a fairly agnostic position on the subject--it'd be nice to try, but the risks seem kind of high. Personally, there are only three Shakespeare passages I can quote more than a few lines of without looking at the script: 1) To be or not to be; 2) "Out, out brief candle," from Macbeth; and 3) The "seven ages of man," from As You Like it.

Curiosity about death and suicide pervades the first of these three soliloquies; the second one from Macbeth is imbued with a nihilism that welcomes a coming death. The third, after a number of comical references, ends with terrible force by describing the end of human existence: "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans...everything."

Shakespeare scholars warn us not to read any character's words as the real thoughts of Shakespeare. The term "negative capability" comes from Keats' reading of Shakespeare. It means, among other things, Shakespeare's ability to lose himself in his characters, so it's impossible to tell where the author's real sympathies lie. But even if those passages in Shakespeare that talk about suicide or question the meaning of life aren't meant to be met with full acceptance, it's hard to deny that these passages are among the ones that hit us in the face the hardest when reading Shakespeare. They're the ones that knock us down with their truth. When people comment today with amazement at how someone writing more than 400 years ago understood people so well, I imagine they are thinking of passages like this.

"Soft suicidality"; How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.

I'm not suicidal. (Really, Karen--you don't have to worry!) I just don't enjoy life that much, and often find it nearly beyond my ability to manage, in spite of my good fortune. I realize I have it very, very good compared to most humans born into the world today and throughout history. I ought to be enjoying myself more. It's an affront, perhaps, to the fates to not enjoy my good fortune more than I do. If it makes you feel any better, my own guilt about the fact that I don't enjoy my good fortune more is itself one of the things that robs me of my joy. But I think life ought to offer more than just relative gratefulness, more than simply realizing that I'm not a sex slave or a Murle child in South Sudan or a North Korean prisoner of conscience. Life ought to be something to be grateful for in absolute terms.



My good fortune does not mean the world is good

I know better than anyone the good hand I was dealt. I have great parents. I have a really nice family. Everyone around me, outside the province of Mrs. Heretic's teeth, has wonderful health. I'm in the upper-middle-class in income, even if I manage to find new and inventive ways to squander that income.

And just because I haven't faced the worst this world has to offer doesn't mean I don't understand how horrible it can be and the fate I've been lucky to avoid. I have what you might call a long and intimate second-hand knowledge of just how horrifying the game can get for some people.

But telling me to be thankful because the really awful things didn't happen to me personally seems like some strange cousin of Stockholm Syndrome. To whom should I be thankful? To the God/Universe/Fate that allows some children to be born into slavery but not me personally? The fact that it happens at all should make us question to goodness of things. Falling to my knees to give thanks that things aren't as bad for me personally as they could be is what happens in the Book of Job. God terrifies Job, rather than giving an answer as to why the wicked suffer, and eventually, Job is frightened into stopping his questions. Might makes right.

I'll eat your pumpkin pie, just quit telling me to be thankful

There's another element to it. Telling me that I've got it better than most people is like the teacher who calls on you to give an answer, but right before you give your answer, the teacher says, "This is an easy one." Suddenly, all your confidence melts away. You can't win now. If you get it right, it was an easy one. If you miss it, you're a total moron. This is one reason why I get so annoyed with those people in my social media who keep posting that video with the condescending description, "for the people who still don't understand white privilege." It's not that I don't understand it. It's an easy idea. And it's not that I don't think it exists. It's that it's really not a helpful idea to me. All it makes me feel like is that my life is the "easy question," and if I do well, I was supposed to, and if I mess up, I'm double the screw-up anyone else is. In this sense, my blessings are...well, not curses, but less blessed, anyhow. I hate being told my life is an easy question, because the answer sure doesn't seem to be coming easy to me. EVEN THOUGH YES, BEING WHITE, MALE, AND STRAIGHT DOES MAKE IT EASIER. It's still hard for me. Just because others are doing advanced differential calculus doesn't mean I find algebra easy.

But Thanksgiving as we tend to practice it asks us to reflect on these very advantages we privileged folk have. You might as well have a holiday called "All the Reasons you Ought to be Doing Better Than You Are Day."

Taking time to realize that we've got it pretty good--and most people in America are probably in this category--might help us to keep from catastrophizing our problems. It might be good for our mental health and happiness to some extent. Realizing that the latest unexpected expense setting me back isn't a calamity on the level of civil war or famine can help keep me from dwelling too much on it. So to the extent that "Thanksgiving" is calling for an attitude of balance, fine.

It is DEFINITELY important to say thank you to the people in our lives who make it better, both for our own good and also out of just plain politeness.

But I am tired of being told to make generalized, omni-directional thankfulness a perpetual attitude.

Life is hard. If it's not hard for you, I'd guess you don't think about it too much. Good for you. If that's true, feel free to ooze all the thankfulness you want. But the ubiquity of sentiments like those of Hamlet or Macbeth seem to me like a pretty good indication that it has always been recognized that life is a struggle, a struggle so trying it's not entirely clear that it's worth the trouble.

When I eat too much good food this year, surrounded by the people who keep me on the affirmative side of life being just good enough to keep going, I'll count myself incredibly lucky. But lucky doesn't mean thankful. 

Why you might want to stand for the national anthem even if you think you don't

Here are some things this post is NOT saying:

-You must stand for the national anthem. It astounds me that a president who was elected by the American impulse not to be told how to act summarily ignored that impulse.
-If you do not stand for the national anthem, you are less American, less patriotic, or love your country less than those who do stand.
-The national anthem or the flag are inherently sacred, apart from the meaning we choose to give them.
-Forced acts of patriotism are meaningful.
-The underlying argument that sparked the protest is not a very valid point to make, or not critical to the health of the country. On both an emotional level--the kind that comes about from watching videos of young black people get killed in what certainly looks like an unjust manner--and a cognitive level, when one looks at statistics about young men of color in America, it appears the American dream is not offered equally to young people of color. 


I've been surprised how divisive the issue of standing for the national anthem before football games has been. Trump baited us, of course, but having taken the bait, I'm surprised how viciously we're willing to fight each other over it. As these arguments go round after round, they sometimes stray into offshoots of the main argument. It's one of those offshoots I want to address. Eventually, if you argue this long enough, you'll get into territory where you're addressing propositions like "Is it just a song?" and "Is it just a piece of cloth?" That is, is there anything intrinsically meaningful about standing for the national anthem?

What would the meaning be?

Although a lot of people are conflating standing for the national anthem with respect for members of the armed services, past and present, I'm only aware of one explicit meaning given to the ritual at sports events. When we are asked to rise (and I'd say we are asked, not ordered: the PA announcer always says "please rise"), it's "to honor America." That's a pretty amorphous objective, one that each person who stands is going to interpret in their own way. When I stand--and I always have--I can't think that I've ever felt much of anything in the way of patriotic sentiment. I don't tend to find a whole lot of meaning in ceremonies. But I can see that it matters to some people around me. The ceremony they care about loses meaning for them, though, if everybody does not participate. It requires my outward observance. So I give it, in order for them to enjoy a ceremony that matters to them.

This may seem like I'm saying it doesn't mean anything at all to me, but in a sense, its meaning to me has a lot to do with life in a democracy. I'd be fine without a national anthem prior to sporting events, but it seems to matter to a majority of the community, so I participate to a limited extent. By standing, I'm saying that what other people want sometimes is more important than what I want personally. It may not really be a great song. It might be some rather pedestrian, 19th-Century bombast about a battle with a racist third verse we thankfully never sing. We might have a history as a nation that was just as long without it as our national anthem as we've had with it. Everything about the custom might be arbitrarily chosen and a complete accident of history. But it's an accident we've been living with for a while, and it's an accident that my neighbors seem to care about, so I'll participate.

Not everything is meaningful

I don't feel this way about every ritual. For years after 9/11, baseball stadiums were in the habit of pulling out a second patriotic act. In the 7th inning, where "Take me Out to the Ballgame" used to go, they started doing "God Bless America." And they were actually acting like we were supposed to stand for that, too. I remember getting in an argument with the person next to me at a Washington Nationals game one year when I didn't stand for it. I claimed it was because to stand for a song other than the national anthem was disrespectful to the national anthem, like saluting a state flag would be disrespectful to the national ensign. In reality, though, I was just annoyed by what felt like too much community patriotic display in one night. The 7th inning already had a great American tradition attached to it, I thought, and I didn't want to see it replaced because in our post-9/11 world, we were all falling over each other to show how much we loved America.

As a teenager, my high school suddenly re-implemented the Pledge of Allegiance soon after Desert Storm began, after years of not observing it. I found this troubling, like we were being told to get on board with the war. Not that I necessarily objected to the war, but I did object to being told not to object to it. So I stood for the Pledge, but I didn't recite it. I don't think anyone noticed, or if they did, nobody cared. But I just couldn't see myself going along with a group ceremony then. I didn't think the claims of the community to my participation were stronger than my personal conscience.

But maybe we need a few ceremonies we all agree on

I'm a snarky pain in the ass a lot of the time. When group organizers are trying to get some community activity going, I am usually the one crapping all over their efforts. In the Marine Corps, I sang the wrong words to cadences while we ran. Or I wouldn't sing them at all, and claim I had a religious objection to some of the baudier lyrics. I've uttered thousands of really great jokes under my breath. As a child, when my poor parents were trying to establish traditions for us, I worked against anything I found too solemn. I ignore 95% of all work functions outside of work.

Partly, this is just a reflection of my own personal predilection toward autonomy. And this predilection is probably healthy for the community, provided it isn't too prevalent or too pronounced. Too much community spirit can lead to totalitarian communities. It's a good thing to have a couple of wise asses in the group to keep the group from taking itself too seriously.

But there is also a danger in a community being too atomized, too focused on the individual. What would a school be without those PTA parents I find so hard to talk to? What would the Marine Corps be without those obnoxious Sergeants acting like we really belonged together? A few years ago, I coached my son's baseball team. It was a disaster for a while, because I wanted to be the wise-ass at the back undermining my own leadership. It took me a few weeks to realize that I had to be the chipper, annoying presence who made the whole thing stick together, or there would be no thing for people to make fun of.

Just because I make fun of something doesn't mean I don't love it. I keep my country at a safe emotional distance, but I also love it. I don't want it to dissolve. I want it to be there, so I can go on snarking about its traditions for decades to come.

Standing for he national anthem doesn't have any meaning unless we ascribe meaning to it. The flag is a piece of cloth. But this is the ritual we have. We don't have another one that's more central, more recognized. If we have nothing at all, no ceremony, however flawed, that is a space where we all recognize that we do, in some sense, belong together, then we will not belong together in any sense for long. If the community can make no claims on us at all, then there is no community.

Standing for a bad, 200-year-old song so convoluted the singers often screw up the words is not a great ritual. But it's the closest thing to an all-encompassing, American ritual that we have. At some point, the ones who mistrust community have to give the community some right to trespass our personal space, or the community will not be there. America is a more fragile thing than we imagine.

Words that should have been said by someone other than me

I admire those who kneel. It would have been much, much easier on Colin Kaepernick to just go along with the ritual, not rock the boat, and do what was expected. Those who kneel show a bravery I didn't have in high school to make their objections visible. And the underlying social reality of black Americans is real enough that I understand not feeling like you want to show outward signs of respect for a country that doesn't respect you.

But I don't think anyone who is kneeling wants the community to fall apart entirely. I suspect that many of those who kneel might love America more than many who stand, and it's the fierceness of their love that makes them kneel. But they may not realize the peril the nation is in. When Russian trolls seek to take America down, their easiest target is just to make us fight with each other. And we are starting to make it easy for them.

Former Green Beret-turned-NFL-long-snapper Nate Boyer approached this the right way last year when Kaepernick began his protest. He didn't berate Kaepernick. He said Kaepernick's protest was understandable, and made him sad more than angry. He longed for a time when Kaepernick would WANT to stand for the national anthem again.

These are the words the President should have said, rather than demanding the patriotic observances of free citizens. The paradox of democracy is that it doesn't work if we make you do it, and it doesn't work if we don't all do it without being forced. In that sense, standing for the national anthem does take on some meaning, because its significance arises, like the nation itself, from voluntary participation.

So I'm not saying you must, you should, you ought. I'm saying you might want to.

"American Bastards" is not a good translation of 미국놈

A few weeks ago, CNN, among others, fell victim to one of my least favorite examples of a human translation that reads like a computer translated it. The headline reads "North Korea state media celebrates gift to 'American bastards,'" the "gift" being the ICBM tested on the Fourth of July.

This is an example of a translator getting a little giddy. True, 미국 (pronounced mee-gook) means "America," or, in an adjectival sense, "American." And you can certainly find dictionaries that will tell you that 놈 (pronounced like the word "gnome") means "bastard." But there are two caveats. First, even in its pejorative sense, the word has never meant what we mean by "bastard," i.e. "an illegitimate child." That's just one of many pejorative terms one could use to translate the idea of the word as an insult. Others are: pigs, dogs, jerks, slime, etc. I really think some dictionary maker long ago picked "bastard" as the go-to translation, and people have been automatically following that for so long, we've come to believe that really is what it means. (For reference, the Korean profanity Wiki page, which had this term first on the list.)

Secondly, Koreans, just like us immoral Westerners, have been getting a little freer with their swearing in the last few decades years. Words that used to shock no longer do. "Gnome" just does not carry the hand-over-mouth level of resonance that "bastard" does. In fact, there are many senses in which the word doesn't even mean anything particularly bad. You can call someone a "good gnome," (착한 놈) which I would translate as something like "a good dude."

Merciless punishment to American imperialists!

One of the best South Korean movies of the past decade was called 착한놈 나쁜놈 이상한놈, or "The good gnome, the bad gnome, and the weird gnome." Its title for English-speaking audiences  was "The Good, the Bad, and the Weird," playing on the classic Western. That was the perfect translation, and it correctly didn't even include "gnome." In South Korea, the term is now used on television without it scandalizing anyone. That Gangnam Style song everyone was freaking out about a few years ago includes the saying that "a jumping gnome has a flying gnome above him," meaning "no matter how good you think you are, there's always someone better." Anyone who translated that sentence as "the flying bastard is above the jumping bastard" is an idiot.

Here's what Naver.com, my go-to English-Korean dictionary site, has to say about the word "gnome":

One might argue that North and South Korean dialects use the word differently, and that the word carries a stronger feeling in North Korea. Possibly this has some truth, but whatever meanings things have in the beginning, those fade over time. North Korea has been calling Americans "Mee Gook Gnome" for so long, it's lost a lot of its resonance. That's just the term they use now for us in certain contexts.

At the very least, a South Korea reading North Korean pronouncements about the U.S. does not think "bastards" when he reads 미국놈, which means an American reading a translation with the word in it is getting a different feeling than a South Korean reading Korean.

Cast out the invading imperialist American forces, who are the source of all unhappiness and suffering!

At its worst, the word carries a sense of dismissiveness--"punk" is far closer to it than "bastard." I'd translate it just "Americans," or, if you must keep something pejorative in it, maybe "Yanks." Forcing "bastards" in there is heavy-handed. Not every translation needs something in English to account for everything there in the original. Putting it in there seems calculated to get a reaction, to make the text seem more derisible and ridiculous.

When CNN and others yuk it up at the crazed invective of North Korean media, it gives people the perception that North Korea is not rational, that they can't even form coherent sentences. Public discourse about this story was partially sidetracked by head shakes over the use of "bastards" (always in the headline and always in scare quotes), which meant pundits glossed over more important subjects. The only conclusions one can reach from reading "American bastards" are that either North Korea hates America so completely that war is inevitable, or that North Korea is so foolish we can afford to ignore them. Both of these assumptions have their own dangers.

If the Americans start a war of aggression, they will be the first destroyed! (This uses the term "gnome." Isn't it already clear from context that there's a negative connotation? Do I need "bastards?")