Author: Nancy E. Shaffer

NANCY E. SHAFFER has been an experimental psychologist (M.A., Cognitive Psychology, Rice University), a philosopher (Ph.D., History and Philosophy of Science, University of California, Davis), and software developer. She taught history and philosophy of science at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her philosophical work has appeared in the journal Philosophy of Science and her pop-culture philosophy website, All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. Dis/inhbition is her first novel. She currently resides in Tempe, Arizona.

Smart is a flower dying in the desert

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 29 Comments

current book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

For most of my adult life, I’ve tended to hang around people who were… well, is it rude to say people who aren’t as bright as me? I hesitate to say that, because intelligence is relative. I have book-smarts, but I don’t have much in the way of street smarts or social intelligence. Anyway, I’ve gotten so used to my social circles at this point I don’t even feel comfortable hanging around other educated people. They come across as self-absorbed and into their own “thing”–whatever that happens to be. And why not? I am.

I have this prejudice that less educated people are nicer, more other-centered than self-centered. Not in love with the sight of their own navels. My experience with other intelligent, educated friends is that we want the other person to talk about what we want to talk about, not what they want to talk about. We want to look at each other and see reflections of ourselves. And get two such people together and you have two mirrors facing each other. An infinite reflection of reflections, without any real communication.

So when seeking friends, I go to the mainstream places. I avoid other intellectually-minded folks.

The upshot of all this, though, is that in everyday life I end up having to compartmentalize a big part of myself. If I start talking philosophy or theology or science or any other topics, my friend’s eyes start to glaze over and I’ve lost them. You learn not to talk about such things, except in solitude (which is really more thinking than talking to myself. Sort of).

Well, naturally that changed a little when I started doing my website. Or at least a few years into my website. In the beginning, there was no ATPo board, there was just me, putting up episode analyses and occasionally getting email. I didn’t really want to know what other people thought, because I figured they’d tell me I was full of shit and didn’t know the first thing about Kant or Sartre or Spike or Whedon’s vampires.

But then I actually started to recognize the names of some of the folks who emailed me regularly, and I knew that I had Readers. They would tell me there really needed to be a board, so on one hot day in June, I made one. That little demon (it wasn’t a Voynak then) grew up quickly and left the nest and became something much larger and more wonderful than I ever could have imagined. Or kept up with.

But I digress. This wasn’t supposed to be a ramble about the board. My point was that I met Smart People on the board, and they were nice. Of course they wanted to talk about literature and social theory and myth and other stuff they were into that I don’t have a clue about, but that wasn’t all they wanted to talk about. And they read stuff I wrote. They read stuff I wrote and commented on it and were interested in me.

And yet still, in everyday life, I had friends I didn’t dare talk to about philosophy or other highbrow topics. In fact, I had friends who asked me not to talk philosophy. Presumably, because they wouldn’t get it. Which I understand, but living in a closet can really be confining. Confining until it’s painful. And you don’t realize the effect it’s having on you because you get so used to it.

I’ve had the experience a few times when my life became especially suffocating in this way of talking to someone of some intelligence and feeling like a woman dying in the desert who had suddenly been given water. You don’t even know you’re dying until some random person appears out of nowhere and hands you a cup, and it’s so sweet and pure and wet and wonderful and then suddenly you know you’ve been killing yourself.

Looking over my love life, I can see this is especially so. I’ve dated a variety of women, but the ones I ended up with in long-term relationships were not just “uneducated”, they were the type who would never become “self-educated” either. I have good friends who never went to college, but who have such a broad life experience and who are so well read it doesn’t matter. This would not describe my ex-girlfriends. I remember the day I decided I was going to have to break up with my first serious girlfriend, Judy. It was when I made some random comment about the solar system and she said to me, “The sun’s a star?”

Once she thought about it, she realized it was true, but the point is, she had never thought about it. I realized I was going to have to break up with her because it wasn’t the first time this had happened. It happened a lot. We walked in totally different worlds. Her world was full of the mundane realities of everyday life–getting the car serviced and paying the bills and where we would go dancing this weekend. Had she never looked up into the sky and wondered about the nature of the universe? Now this particular woman had an almost bottomless capacity for kindness and care-taking. I’m not speaking ill of her here, I’m just telling it like it is. In fact, fourteen years after we broke up, I still love her.

What set off this whole journal entry in the first place is that I’ve been doing that getting-back-into-the-dating-scene thing. I have a difficult time dating. Most of the women I meet on a day-to-day basis don’t interest me. I’m “too picky” according to my friends. Well, even according to me. I tell myself that all the time. But I’m wondering if there isn’t a legitimate reason why. Maybe after walking into the same brick wall over and over again, I’m wary of it. I meet the women I meet and it’s Judy all over again, except not half as nice or caring. Yet another woman who isn’t going to ask me what my dissertation was about, or if she does politely ask, or even curiously ask, I lose her after the first few sentences. And my dissertation topic wasn’t even that esoteric.

To save my dating chances, I learn to keep quiet about such things.

But see, the prospect of dating women who would actually engage me is daunting and scary. I’m scared of intelligent women. I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep up with them. When they start talking about the stuff they’re into, stuff I know little or nothing about, I start BS-ing and putting my foot in the mouth and it’s not pretty. Or I doze off and do not ask them any engaging questions about their interests because I’m a self-centered navel-gazer who doesn’t care about social theory or 18th century history or whatever it is.

My life coach would say at this point that I’m distorting my reality or creating a self-fulfilling prophecy or being avoidant. “You don’t want what you want.” And what you want is someone to be yourself with.

I recently started an email correspondence with a very bright woman who has (I think) a doctorate of Divinity. We’re talking about some rarefied topics in theology. Now this is Very Weird. I’ve done the internet dating thing before, and I usually say a few things about my novel, my day-job, my cats. I talk about living in San Francisco. Maybe I scare them by giving them the URL of my website. I’ve learned not to do this anymore, though. Quickest way to guarantee they will never write back again. Oh, sometimes we get to the point of a first date, and they say politely over dinner or coffee, “Well… it was… interesting.” And that’s the last we talk of it.

This is my dating life, and I wonder why I find it so difficult to face. I always assumed it was because I’m shy and dating makes me nervous. Which is true, of course, but that’s not the whole story. I actually LIKE talking to this woman. Well, we haven’t actually talked, we’ve emailed, but still–I look forward to coming up with things to say in the email. Usually I’m stumped for topics. Emailing, talking on the phone, talking over coffee–it’s all agony. Let’s see, I’ve already mentioned my cats, I’ve already mentioned my novel. I don’t share her interest in sports or politics or her taste in books or television shows. And my life is pretty uneventful, so what else is there to say? Conversation over, have a nice life.

But see, my life isn’t uneventful. It’s just cerebral. I’m struggling to understand and develop the metaphors in my novel. I’m uncovering the philosophical richness of my favorite television shows. I’m undertaking this amazing spiritual journey, but I can’t talk about these events in my life with most people because they don’t get passages like,

“One of the things about pantheism that appealed to me was the non-personhood of god, the non-anthropomorphizing of god. But at the same time, I am not attracted to the idea of a universe arising and operating out of completely blind, random processes, either. Finding some comfortable ‘in between’ view is sort of a spiritual project for me.”

And they certainly don’t reply with, “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to do, too.”

It’s not that I think I’ve found my soul-mate here. In fact, this particular woman’s about 90% heterosexual and toying with the idea of dating a woman and from the picture I’ve seen of her, I’m not attracted to her. Probably more trouble than she’s worth, dating-wise. But to have friends like her, and someday, a partner like her? That’s an amazing idea to me. Because I’ve spent most of my life running from people like that.

I usually run when I see them coming. Because intellectual = rude and self-absorbed and boring and inscrutable. Bye! And then I meet people who are so not like that (most of them on the board, and so naturally half-way across the country or the world). And once again I realize that I’m a woman dying of thirst in the desert. Or maybe a flower dying of thirst in the desert. A tropical flower transplanted where it doesn’t belong.

There really are people like that in the world?

And if there are, would they be friends with me?

And would I be able to keep up? Would I be able to keep them?

When magic comes calling

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 10 Comments

“Life is a drag most of the time–birth, school, work, death…. I wish something magic would happen.” –Aiden, “Blood and Chocolate” by A.C. Klause

I’ll be honest. I’ve never been big on the concept of faith. Faith has always struck me as the kind of thing people want you to have when they’re trying to persuade you to do or believe something and they got nothing to back themselves up.

“Have faith.”
Not.

There’s another use of the word, as in “I’ve got faith in you”. This is usually something we say to people we know quite well. But in those cases, we’ve got lots of experience with that person to back up our trust in them, and let’s face it, we really mean “trust” in that situation, which is another concept altogether.

“I trust you.”
Well, of course you do. I’m trust-worthy.

“Faith” is that thing where we put trust in the validity of concepts we have no reason to put trust in, except perhaps we believe that the sources that tell us these concepts are real come from God or some other supernatural force we might trust, but then again… trust on what basis?

OK, so I’m not big on faith of things unseen. This doesn’t make me a hard-headed rationalist or Scully on X-Files demanding proof of everything and rejecting any so-called “proof” she can’t understand in purely physical terms. Far from it. I am Mulder. OK, a Mulder wanna-be. I want to believe.

I want the magical and the mystical and fantastic to exist. But not in legends and tabloid headlines and the word of those who claim to have experienced these things I have never seen. I want the fantastic to come knock on my door and sit down on my couch and talk to me.

I want a universe filled with magic. With wonder. With things beyond current science’s pale facts, and yet not in contradiction to a science that has wisdom.

So far, however, such things have only come to me in fictional forms. Books, movies, television. I eat all that stuff for breakfast and beg for more.

At least that’s what I say I want. What I long for.

“His world had changed. Now shadows would always take on threatening shapes.”

But what if magic did come knocking? Would I be ready for it? Would I run from it? Would I long for my normal little bland life to return? It’s a good question. I hope I wouldn’t. In the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow and Xander come face to face with the fantastic, and freak out for about a minute, then shrug their shoulders and dive right in.

Would I?

The morning read

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 12 Comments

I’ve realized that keeping a blog-style journal is a very healthy thing. When you write only those things you’d allow other people to see, it turns out (in my case, anyway), it really only eliminate the self-indulgent whining. Everything else becomes an open book. Well, mostly… ; )

Speaking of books, I did go to the library Tues evening and made myself a new find. The writer’s name is Neal Schusterman. He seems to write teenaged-reader books in the fantasy genre. I checked out two books by him. The one I am reading now is called “The Dark Side of Nowhere”. It starts out with a teen-aged boy in a small town living a life that Lorne on AtS would call, metaphorically, of course, the life of “the last feisty wife in Stepford”. Everyone else is so niiiice. Complacent. Boring. He hates it there.

Teen-aged boy and his newly acquired girlfriend, not uncoincidentally the new girl in town and hence not Stepfordy, suspect something is very wrong in their town. The book takes on an X-Files demeanor as they try to figure it out. But it has a very unexpected twist that then twists again twenty pages later.

Hopefully, it’ll keep on doing the twist until the end. So far, so good.

Quotage: “Your head’s a mess and you don’t know why.”

Update: turns the classic teen-aged boredom-angst story on its ear. Everyone else is so niiiice. Complacent. Boring. He hates it there. Be careful what you wish for.

OK, this is making me a little ticked….

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 12 Comments

Items Ordered :

1 of: Harry Potter Adult Edition Box Set: Four Volumes in Paperback [Paperback]
   By: J.K. Rowling

Order Placed: 14 July 2003 at 20:52 BST    

     – Availability: Usually dispatched within 7 to 10 days

Dispatch estimate: Aug 6, 2003 – Aug 20, 2003
Delivery estimate: Aug 13, 2003 – Aug 29, 2003

OK, so first of all, they didn’t dispatch within 7 to 10 days. And second of all, their actual dispatch estimate range has been ticking away for six days now, and they still haven’t dispatched my books.

In the mean time, I’ve run out of things to read because I finished the Lioness series and just could not get through “American Gods”. So it’s back to the library for me. I can’t even check out Harry Potter there because the English language editions are always checked out. I could reserve them, I suppose, but this is something I’d rather have on my shelf. I’m sure amazon.com has the US versions, but ewww.

And so I wait. By the time I get the first four books, “Order of the Phoenix” should be out in paperback, and will look nifty on the shelf next to its companions.

Jury duty: update

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 6 Comments

So, like a dutiful citizen of the State of California and the City and County of San Francisco, I schlepped the seven blocks from my apartment building to the Superior Court building this morning to do my tour of duty as a civil court prospective juror.

Two years ago, the week of Sept. 11, 2001, was the last time I was called up. It was the criminal court that time, I think. I’m not sure. I sat in the juror waiting room all day and was never called into a courtroom. This time around, not only was I called up on the first panel of the day, I was part of the first group to be seated in the jury box, AND, I was the first person seated in the jury box.

First name of the day: Nancy Shaffer, seat 1.

I was doomed. You sit and try to look detached and like you’d rather be elsewhere in your cool black leather jacket. ‘Cause I did want to be elsewhere. Florence, Italy. Paris, France. My living room. My office at work where I had two meetings scheduled today.

But as time goes by, I realize I’m not going anywhere. Dozens of questions, issues, potential problems get thrown at the prospective jury panel. None of them apply to me. I’m not even asked to open my mouth until they get to the general questions: name, occupation, education, children, yada, yada. And of course, I’m the first one who has to answer all that. Nancy Shaffer, Database Administrator, PhD in Philosophy, single, no kids, no other adults living in my house. Not human ones, anyway.

I’m listening to everyone else talk, raise their hands when something applies to them. Nothing applies to me. It’s a lawsuit, but it’s not in any area that remotely touches my experience: rental disputes, faulty hip replacements. This one is about a traffic accident. I can say that, can’t I? Or is that TMI?

I mean, I have no biases, no special hardships, no personal knowledge of anyone involved in the case, or the city intersection in question.

When the attorneys have an opportunity to question prospective jurors in more detail, the Defendant’s attorney asks me where I got my degree at. Where I taught. Why I am no longer teaching. I tell her the names of the schools. I tell her I wasn’t a very good teacher. I tell her I’d still rather be a philosopher than a Database Administrator. But it’s all irrelevant to the facts of the case as I know them.

Then they start the phase where the Plaintiff’s attorney and the Defendant’s attorney “excuse with thanks” jurors they don’t want. I forget what it’s called. First for the Plaintiff. First for the Defendant, blah, blah. I watch people who’ve been in lawsuits or have special medical knowledge or who are too young or too old (and therefore might be prejudiced against or in favor of the people involved) leave the courtroom one by one. To go back downstairs to the jury waiting room, of course. One day, one trial. They have to go downstairs and wait to see if another panel might need them.

But I’m here. And this particular trial will last 4-5 days, followed by jury deliberations. Not too bad, all things considered. No one at work will even notice I’m gone for that period of time. That’s the kind of job I have. Only my boss who I never see will be vaguely aware that I’m sitting on a jury somewhere. I worry about that. Jury duty. Ten years ago I served on a jury for a case involving drug possession. It was difficult. You felt like you had to take notes on everything. Put it all together like a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. It was a Big Responsibility. I’m sitting here now today in the court room worried that I might be afraid to speak my mind, give my opinions about stuff. I only like to give my opinions when I can run away afterwards and not be rebutted.

Finally, the Plaintiff’s attorney waives his sixth and final opportunity to excuse a juror. It goes to the Defendant’s attorney. She asks for a minute to think, and then pours over her notes. Time ticks by. I’m wondering what I will do during the lunch period, since I already ate at the break. I wonder if I will go back to work after the judge talks to us jury members. I wonder if my colleagues will be available tomorrow for meetings, because the trial starts Thursday. I wonder if the judge will crack as many jokes once the trial starts. Finally, the Defendant’s attorney sits up and says, “I ask the court to excuse with thanks the prospective juror in seat number 1”. The judge says, “Ms. Shaffer, you may go.”

My body gets out of the chair and starts to leave, which is good, because my mind is still planning my week in court. But I’m out the door and down the elevator to the jury waiting room on auto-pilot feeling like some mystic goddess I’ve never heard of decided to smile on me for no particular reason. I mean, the attorney was not required to give any reason why she asked to excuse me. So all I can do is speculate. Was it the philosophy degree? That’s what I always think of first. “You know those philosophers. They think too much.” Was it my age? My hair style? My leather jacket? Was it because I was a lousy philosophy teacher? Or did she read my mind? “I really don’t want to miss work even though there isn’t any compelling reason I can give you as to why.”

At any rate, downstairs, I get in line. As it turns out, they don’t require any more jurors to fill panels that day. They give me a slip of paper to give to my boss, and send me on my way. I nervously run for the street car eating the half-melted chocolate that sat in the bottom of my book-bag all morning. And now I’m back at work ’cause you never know, people might still want to have those meetings I begged out of this morning. No jury duty for masqthephlsphr after all.

‘Course, there’s always next year.

They’re really out there…

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 9 Comments

An email that was in my masqthephlsphr inbox this morning. It’s bad enough this person seems to believe buffy and angel are real people. But why would s/he think they’d hang out at my website?

“heyy!!
buffy u are a role model to me.
i look up tou in many different ways.
by the way i hopeur not going out with angel because hes cute!! if u no what i mean.
if u could tell him that and heres my email [removed]
will u and angel email , i would appreciate if u and angel could email , so please try to and i have to go so get back to ya
ur friend,
Jessica”

Regarding Henry

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

current snackfood: Tortilla chips for breakfast

I’ve been cleaning out the movie cabinet lately, trying to get rid of the large volume of video tapes I own. Making some tough decisions about what to keep and what must go. Some of the movies are easy–definite keepers. Others must be watched again before I reach a verdict.

Synoposis: Rich jerk gets a personality-dectomy from a handgun.

Analysis: The moral message of this movie (“don’t be a rich jerk”) is delivered with an anvil. Everybody loves nicer but mentally deficient Henry. And Harrison Ford, while one of my favorite actors, doesn’t do incompetent well. The mean, morally deficient Henry is a more convincing acting job. Harrison Ford should stick to earnest heroes, rogues, and bastard lawyers.

Verdict: I will keep this movie in my collection because I’m fascinated by the effect brain damage can have on the personality (any one else out there an Oliver Sacks fan?), and because I love seeing rich jerks taken down a peg.

PS: My Highlander Season 2 DVDs arrived today! I am one happy TV ho. My credit card, however, is being punished for it.