Home For Fiction – Blog

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Individuality and Capitalism: Lessons From Remaking my Website

November 13, 2023

Home For Fiction, Programming, Society

capitalism, home for fiction, programming, society

For a long time I’ve been meaning to revamp Home for Fiction. When I put it together back in 2017, I was in the middle of defending my doctoral dissertation, and I had no time or energy for coding, so I simply picked a ready template. Recently, I finally decided to modify it, and the process was thoroughly revealing. From all things, it also taught me a thing or two about individuality, capitalism, and how society is becoming increasingly more dysfunctional.

Yeah, I know; all this from putting together some web pages?

But, in the end, that’s why we need to be experiencing the world around us before we write: in order to discover the connections that lie there unnoticed.

So, in this post, I’ll briefly explain my motivation in changing some things and, above all, what it taught me about individuality and capitalism. And we’ll begin precisely from this point.

individuality and capitalism – cartoon of Punning Walrus in front of computer
This image holds meta- value, because the inclusion of my Punning Walrus cartoon was one of the motivating factors behind modifying the Home for Fiction website
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Ethics or Morality: A Crucial Difference

October 2, 2023

Philosophy, Society

knowledge, philosophy, society

Let’s get this out of the way: There is no “god-given” definition of either ethics or morality (there’s a meta- element of irony here, as you can hopefully perceive). Most people might even use them interchangeably to refer to the same thing. However, there is a crucial difference between the two.

In most definitions, morality refers to a person’s moral convictions, what they consider right or wrong. Ethics, on the other hand, usually refers to systems of convictions; agreed convictions, in a way. For example, we might refer to “journalistic ethics”, that is, a commonly agreed set of practices and behavior that journalists should adhere to.

The proverbial plot thickens – there are never simple answers – because one’s personal convictions, their morality, is always a result of external factors; our environment, our culture, our upbringing. Perhaps some would like to suggest that our DNA pushes us in certain directions, but that, too, would be a result of external factors: We might be born good/evil (a huge oversimplification), but the externality remains, as our DNA is a result of our ancestors.

Ultimately, the debate “ethics or morality” is important – after all, that’s the whole point of this post, right? – because it refers to another crucial difference that, although contained in the one between personal/collective convictions, is easier to miss.

That difference is between knowledge and behavior.

ethics or morality
For Plato, as for most ancient Greek philosophers, morality was related to eudaimonia (ευδαιμονία), or human well-being.
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Digital Literacy and Old Age: an Irrelevant Correlation

September 25, 2023

Programming, Society

computer, ignorance, programming, society

There is a persistent but fallacious belief regarding digital literacy: “Old people can’t use computers”. Not only is this hilariously wrong, it also has some dangerous consequences that we’ll see in this post.

The truth is, you simply can’t… simplify things and treat any group of people as if they were a homogeneous lump. There are people who are old and can’t even turn on a computer, and there are people like Grace Hopper, who was recalled from retirement (twice!) to work on the US Navy’s IT infrastructure.

Obviously enough, there are many gradations in between, too. There are old people who perhaps can’t program but who can still use a computer. There are also old people who know how to turn on the computer, somewhat use it, but would be unable to troubleshoot it the moment something goes awry.

But all that isn’t very important.

Instead, what is important is to understand the dangers of correlating digital literacy to age – either old or young.

If you googled “old person using computer”, you’d get plenty of stock images of old people struggling in front of a screen, sitting next to a younger person, or holding a credit card and looking confused. Instead of perpetuating such stereotypes, here’s an image of Commodore Grace M. Hopper, nickname “Grandma COBOL“.
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