The outstanding online magazine Raise the Hammer is out with a new issue. I have another article in the column Digital Kayak that Ryan has graciously made space for. Here’s a little snippet for ya:

In a study published in the October 2005 of Biological Psychology, Meredith Chivers from Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and J. Michael Bailey from Northwestern University, claim that straight men are only aroused by women, but straight women are aroused by all human sexual activity and some non-human sexual activity. In this case, non-human means bonobo monkeys.

Eighteen men and eighteen women participated in the study. Devices intended to measure sexual stimulation were attached to the participants, and then they were shown a variety of video clips showing sexual activity, including one scene featuring bonobos (bonobos on bonobos, that is – no “interspecies” videos were shown). The men were not aroused by the monkey business but according to the study, the same could not be said for the women.

Yes, that’s right: monkey sex. If that’s got you salivating – and, well, even if it doesn’t – go read the full column.

If you’ve got time – I don’t right now – you can join the party over on Angry in the Great White North, where I’ve stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest in the comment section of a recent post.

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have run a clever campaign. They have hammered at Liberal corruption and capitalized on high-profile Liberal mistakes. At the same time, they’ve combined policies with broad appeal – like a reduction in the GST – with policies targeted at specific chunks of Canadians, like a reduction in taxes for people who take public transit.

An examination of the broader Conservative agenda has been largely absent from the national discussion, which has worked out nicely for the Conservatives. The “new” Stephen Harper isn’t scary any more, they claim, because he smiles more, delivers better speeches and announces feel-good policies that “stand up for Canada”.

But the real reason Stephen Harper isn’t scary any more is because Stephen Harper has stopped saying what he really thinks.

In an article entitled Rediscovering The Right Agenda originally published in June 2003 that can be found on the website of Christian Coalition International (Canada) Inc., Harper, leader of the Canadian Alliance at the time, lays out his strategy for uniting the Right. In the process we learn what he really believes.

Harper begins by dividing conservatives up into two groups: “economic conservatives and social conservatives”, and then describes the common enemy that helped unite them: “radical socialism”, which to Harper is “public ownership, government interventionism, egalitarian redistribution and state sponsorship of secular humanist values” on the domestic front, and “fascism, communism and socialist totalitarianism” on the international front.

According to Harper, the root of the problems facing Canada’s conservatives in 2003 was that conservatives led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had defeated these common enemies by “permanently underminin[ing] the traditional social-democratic/left-liberal consensus in a number of democratic countries” and causing the fall of Soviet Communism (unsurprisingly, he doesn’t mention that Reagan also permanently undermined democracy in a number of democratic countries).

The loss of common enemies meant that Canadian conservatives “must rediscover the common cause and orient our coalition to the nature of the post-Cold-War world”. This required a new enemy, which Harper identifies as “the social agenda of the modern Left”:

Conservatives need to reassess our understanding of the modern Left. It has moved beyond old socialistic morality or even moral relativism to something much darker. It has become a moral nihilism – the rejection of any tradition or convention of morality, a post-Marxism with deep resentments, even hatreds of the norms of free and democratic western civilization.

This descent into nihilism should not be surprising because moral relativism simply cannot be sustained as a guiding philosophy. It leads to silliness such as moral neutrality on the use of marijuana or harder drugs mixed with its random moral crusades on tobacco. It explains the lack of moral censure on personal foibles of all kinds, extenuating even criminal behaviour with moral outrage at bourgeois society, which is then tangentially blamed for deviant behaviour. On the moral standing of the person, it leads to views ranging from radical responsibility-free individualism, to tribalism in the form of group rights.

Stick your face two inches from the monitor and look at your reflection. What you’re seeing right now isn’t just your average run-of-the-mill moral relativist. You’re seeing something “much darker”: a moral nihilist.

Which, if you’ve watched The Big Lebowski, is even worse than being a Nazi. To quote Walter, “Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos!”

This hatred of the norms of Western civilization doesn’t just appear when resentful post-Marxists “trapped in their framework of moral neutrality, moral relativism and moral equivalence” craft social policies. It has foreign policy implications as well, most importantly in the US-led war on terrorism:

The clearest recent evidence of this phenomenon is seen in international affairs in the emerging post-Cold-War world – most obviously in the response of modern liberals to the war on terrorism. There is no doubt about the technical capacity of our society to fight this war. What is evident is the lack of desire of the modern liberals to fight, and even more, the striking hope on the Left that we actually lose.

You can see this if you pay close attention to the response to the war in Iraq from our own federal Liberals and their cheerleaders in the media and the universities. They argue one day that there are no weapons of mass destruction, yet warn that such weapons might be used. They tell us the war was immoral, then moral but impractical, then practical but unjustified. They argue simultaneously that the war can’t be won, that it is too easy for the coalition to win and that victory cannot be sustained anyway. Most striking was their obvious glumness at the fall of Baghdad. But even previous to that were the dark suggestions on the anniversary of September 11 (hinted at even by our own prime minister) that “we deserved it.”

Harper doesn’t beat around the bush: conservatives “have answers” to social and foreign policy issues because of their understanding of “historic values” and “moral insights on right and wrong”. They “understand, however imperfectly, the concept of morality, the notion that moral rules form a chain of right and duty, and that politics is a moral affair.”

This may seem like a foreshadowing of Conservative attacks on Liberal ethics during this campaign, but this is something far different than promoting honest government. Harper’s “moral insights” are instead at the root of policies such as placing “‘hard power’ behind our international commitments” (i.e. backing America’s war on terror and invasion of Iraq with our military, a policy he explicitly supports).

And unsurprisingly for a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, to Harper making money is also a moral issue, citing the “moral and civilizing importance of markets”. Trade, he implies, is invented and sustained by conservatives.

Why is there such a difference between Harper then and Harper now? The common wisdom of January 2006 is that Harper has become more centrist and more pragmatic, a transformation all the more startling given it happened in the space of two-and-a-half years.

Perhaps Harper’s own words are a better guide. His strategy for the Right’s political success advocates “careful political judgment” and the realization that “real gains are inevitably incremental”.

Stephen Harper in 2006 recognizes that real gains are at hand. Winning requires “careful political judgment”. It also requires that Canadians in 2006 forget the Harper of 2003.

This morning I replied to a post on another blog discussing whether or not native Canadians will be likely to vote Conservative. This sparked another comment which said in part:

But it’s time the native people of Canada joined the rest of Canada and made their mark. The Indians I know are a proud people. But they are so stuck in the Indian Affairs mindset that they find it difficult to break free.

The author of that comment finished off by saying “As always, when I speak on this subject, I should say that I am of Anishinabe Ojibway ancestry.”

When someone says something they think might be offensive, this is a classic defence. It’s the old “I have friends that are black/gay/handicapped/whatever” ploy. Here it’s especially effective because the author doesn’t just have friends that are native, he is native.

I’m not saying that the comment quoted above is offensive or racist, just that the author was clearly pre-empting that kind of accusation. The reason I’m writing this is because it reminds me of something I’m not particularly proud of, or comfortable with, but will share with you anyway.

I was waiting at a stoplight a few weeks ago and two black guys in complete hip-hop-inspired clothing came strolling by. “Couple of niggas”, I thought.

I was shocked. I had offended myself. “Am I a racist?” I thought. “Where did that thought come from?”

The n-word was never, ever used in my home growing up. I was as likely to use the f-word around my parents and I never have. And it’s not a word I use in conversation, either. So why’d it pop into my head?

I don’t want to point fingers but the only people I ever hear the n-word from are black people on television, in movies, and in music. I probably don’t have to prove this point, but here’s an example anyway: the song “Down 4 My Niggas” by Snoop Dogg contains the word “nigga” 55 times.

In the movie Coach Carter there is one part that stuck out for me even though the rest of the movie sucks. Samuel Jackson, who plays the coach of an inner-city high school basketball team that is mostly black, takes the team members to task in the locker room one day. He says something along the lines of:

The word “nigger” was a derogatory term used by the white man to denigrate our ancestors in the days of slavery. It is not okay to say that word. When you do, you are teaching the white man to say it. You are telling him it is okay.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when I had that thought, it was when I saw youth dressed hip-hop. It’s an easy mental association. To use the artist I just mentioned, hip-hop = Snoop = “nigga”, 55 times in one song.

This bothers me. I feel mentally contaminated, the same way people must feel when they convert to Christianity but still blaspheme every time they stub their toe. I don’t want to think the n-word, let alone use it.

I accept that there is certain language I should not use for cultural reasons – because I’m not part of the group – but it does get awfully confusing, especially when you’re bombarded by certain words. The n-word is one example, but there’s no shortage of others. Search for “fag” on Google and the fourth result is www.whatafag.com, a website for “kind, well-behaved homosexuals”.

When used without malice, does any word have the power to hurt? Do we dismiss the people who campaign against some language, like Samuel Jackson’s coach, as too easily offended? Or are they right, that some words carry a weight of hatred and prejudice that means they should never be used?

Personally, I try to never use questionable words until I know someone well enough, and they know me well enough, that I know they won’t be offended. But it’s hard to censor your own thoughts.

I went clubbing in Toronto on New Year’s Eve with a good friend. We went to a club that has turned pretty ghetto over the years. We managed to have a good time in spite of the less-than-stellar sound system and a washroom that ranked among the nastiest I’ve seen (and I’ve seen some pretty gross bathrooms).

I enjoyed the music, which was mostly esoteric subgenres of electronic music ranging from ambient to techno to trance. Electronic music is still the staple dance music in most clubs, although in most it’s the worst kind of top-40s crap: Britney remixes and cheesy dance versions of Coldplay. As a musical culture however, its glory days are over, at least for now.

A lot of electronic music and its culture sought to unify modern technology and older spirituality. House, with its tribal rhythms. Trance’s shamanistic inspirations. The name given to jungle, or drum’n’bass, evokes, well, drums in the jungle, something Livingstone might have been worried to hear on his explorations in Africa.

Juno Reactor, one of my favourite electronic groups (probably best known for their work on the soundtracks of The Matrix and sequels), produces a skillful blend of electronic and tribal music. They collaborated on their 1997 Bible of Dreams album with Amampondo, the famous South African traditional percussion troupe.

Electronic music’s combination of technology and ancient spirituality has created many musical successes and some vibrant communities. As an attempt at spiritual unification between the modern and the ancient, however, it is a failure.

There are other much more well-known fusions of the modern and the ancient – more specifically, science and religion – taking place right now that I think are similar in their motivations.

Intelligent Design (ID) is the idea thought up by Christians to replace creationism that basically says nature is too complicated to have evolved by itself, thus an “intelligent designer” – i.e. God, but they don’t want to say that – must have been involved (to learn more, click the link since I’m not going to get into it).

One could argue that its proponents are seduced by the powerful authority people grant to science, and they want their particular world-view, that God created the universe and everything in it, to have that same authority. This is probably true to some extent, but I think there is a deeper motivation here.

On the other hand there are those firm believers in science that have little use for religion. But I use the word believers intentionally. Many are enthralled by science to a religious extent.

I came across a version of the Ten Commandments rewritten from a “scientific”, “logical” point of view. The first commandment was “Thou shalt worship only reason”. (What about ethics? Morality? The remaining 9 said not a word about these.)

This just scratches the surface. Immortality through genetic engineering, mind transfer, where your consciousness is transferred to a computer, and true artificial intelligence (in a sense, the human creation of a soul), are technologies that many people think can be realistically achieved.

These are religious ideas wrapped in science. Science as spirituality.

Nothing illustrates this need for unification better than the growth of Scientology. Christian believers in Intelligent Design shade their faith with science. Scientists striving for immortality and artificial intelligence include overtones of religion in their research. Scientology, on the other hand, grabs science and religion in approximately equal parts, jams them together and then sells the result to movie stars.

This raises a lot of questions. What is happening here? Are these things driven by a human need for unification between old and new? Do people sense they are entering an era where technology is no longer a collection of tools but a new way of being, as long anticipated by science fiction? Is technology that crosses into spiritual boundaries (e.g. artificial intelligence or immortality) achievable, and should it be achieved? Are we destined to become one with the machine? At what cost?