Todo Estará Bien

(Un Teatro, 12 December 2015)

Some artists are content to pose questions without attempting answers. This is indeed the purpose of art: to nudge each viewer to seek his own answer. When attempting an answer himself, however, the artist sharpens his question.

Individuals sing to music, dance to crowds, gasp to breaths, talk over chatter, critique critics, balance on each other's shoulders to momentarily stand taller than others, not to stand momentously alone. Delacroix's La Liberté inspires by improvising on the mood of the fallen, rising, and bent, instead of seducing by a tune of her own.

By design, people fall into each other, lean, sometimes tumble. Dance is both the essence of and a metaphor for this process.

"Humans Need Not Apply" by Jerry Kaplan (2015)

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the importance of understanding will diminish. Understanding compensates for the limited computational ability and limited data. Why understand what causes individuals to behave in a particular manner if an app can predict behaviour, read off and interpret facial expressions, determine whether someone finds you attractive, and whether someone is lying? There is some intellectual gratification in understanding, as there is in painting, but how often does one reach for a paintbrush instead of an iPhone?

In AI, emotions would be a bug. In humans, emotions are a patch that compensates for the limited computational ability and limited data. Machines will understand humans, but not emphasise. By contrast, humans may learn to emphasise with the machines' (missing) emotions, to better understand the machines. (The anthropomorphisation of machines will be hastened by granting them legal personhood, in order to limit the human liability for the machines' behaviour.)

Because emotions will remain a human prerogative, the only human endeavour that will not be fully outsourced to machines will be art. Some actors, dancers, musicians, script writers, and directors will remain human. Just as humans explore and admire through art the forces of nature, they will stage plays and ballets to explore the “emotional” and aesthetic aspects of the interaction of machines (whether localised or distributed).

Kaplan may be underestimating the importance of art patrons and playboys. Someone must explore the frontier that others would aspire to and ultimately catch up with.

“Sueño de una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda Central” by Diego Reviera (1948) y el Día de Muertos

(1 November 2015)

In a lesser theatre, the audience would occasionally laugh when a protagonist finds himself in a socially awkward situation or subject to violence. The laughter suppresses empathy and dismisses the protagonist's problem as an aberration; laugher is an escapist patch. Laughing off problems might have saved the sanity for some, but has not delivered a blueprint for a better future. By contrast, the contemplation of existential problems has given us Woody Allen and Albert Camus.

Art progresses by uncovering ever purer concepts of beauty.

M's #s (2015)

And so it came to be.

La Dalia Negra

(Foro Cultural Chapultepec, 27 September 2015)

A production dramatically timid, technologically ingenious, spectatorially removed, anthropologically inert.

Heels on Fire & The Circuit Gang

(Bajo Circuito, 6 August 2015)

Brutalism in art first petrifies objects---buildings, sculptures, clothes---and then comes to suck out the soul out of the bodies. This latter stage, a suicide by art, responds to the disappointment with the perceived human inability to accommodate each other. As is the case with most pursuits, this act of resignation is compulsive, contagious.

Brutalism has not touched the bodies under the circuit. Indeed, the venue converts the elements of brutalism without into a mat that sets off the humanity within---to the beat of the bass, to the flip of the frames, to the race of the phrase off the signer's fierce face, to the sigh of the thigh to the musical phrase, to the sway of the hip set in a tight silky frame, to the tearing of tires, to the squishing of shoes, in the highlights by headlights, to the hum of the horns, to the ding of the doorknobs of the day done. Then night.

"The Festival of Insignificance" by Milan Kundera (2013)

The appeal of philosophy is akin to the appeal of dance. Both pursuits dare grown-ups to play, unashamedly. A philosopher will entertain any question that lends itself to a grammatically coherent formulation. He will obsess over questions of little or no practical significance.

Novelists write for the same reason some pray. A novelist wishes to believe that a narrative holds a lesson, and that one's lifetime efforts will eventually pay off. A novelist creates an illusion of his own when the illusions of others he finds wanting.

Literature moulds the past. Science drafts the future. Dance affirms the present.

Matthew Bourne’s "The Car Man"

(Sadler’s Wells, 24 July 2015)

The ballet opens with an idyllic scene of car mechanics, waitresses, and girls of unknown provenance labouring, lounging, conversing, and copulating on a sizzling Arizona afternoon. The ensuing scenes augment this idyll with violence and murder. The production does well by eschewing the 1940s Hollywood Code; there is more to noir than film noir. The narrative is gritty in places, thereby challenging one to detect beauty in or between the episodes of the tragic or the mundane.

Vitality seduces.

The line between the sensual and the pornographic is fine. This demarcation need not be observed for art to retain its integrity. The dances' eroticism derives from their context, the implied relationships, and playfulness, which deals in uncertainty and suspense. Art layers uncertainty and suspense.

One need not come to possess beauty in order to savour it. Even the contemplation of nature may evoke eroticism. It may suffice to merely know that beauty exists and to be touched by this beauty (to ascertain one's own existence).

DUMMY lab

(Chamäleon, 19 July 2015)

The city is suspended, waiting for the world to end. Work takes the mind off the wait. Work provides for weekend amusements, to while the wait away. Conformism blunts anxiety. Conformism gorges on the grim attire, beer, and the semblance of uniform thought. The numbed emotions do not court art, but are pervious to the kind of engineering that can smuggle in art---circus, for example. Engineering delivers the promise of order and hence hope.

In circus, the audience enjoys violence by proxy. Contortion looks risky, painful. (In ballet, by contrast, extreme movement looks natural, relaxing.) Enter technology and the artist's technique, and with them, the promise of insurance against the risks, maybe even against the world's end.

The warm summer breeze bounces against the walls of Hackeschen Höfen, brushes against the diners' cheeks and ruffles their hair, penetrates the open window of the dressing room, and envelops the glowing skin of a dancer aroused by the exhilaration of the just-concluded performance and the colleague's ambiguous embrace and stripped down to her black underwear and a cigarette. This is all there is to it.

"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman" by Richard P. Feynman (2005)

Science, democracy, and the market economy have a principle in common. Various things are to be tried out and those that work best are to be favoured. So question the status quo and question the authority. Explore and exploit.

Scientific progress, democracy, and markets are often observed together because, once one has come to appreciate the common principle, it is hard to justify applying it selectively. No inherent complementarity between markets and democracy need exist.

In a liberal society, everyone runs his own experiment, his life. Everyone is a scientist, invested in his own method and respectful, or at least tolerant, of others' methods. Humility dictates that one share the equipment. Integrity dictates that one truthfully disclose the outcome of one's own investigations. Humility and integrity are devoid of their moral imperative in a society in which exercising them is suboptimal (if such a society exists).

What is commonly regarded as virtue is the recognition of a deep insight about one's optimal behaviour. Of two otherwise identical societies, that is juster which makes a given insight about optimal behaviour more obvious. That behaviour is moral which is in best agreement with one's preferences. Because both the discovery of preferences and of their logical implications are tasks most formidable, the society confers moral status on the outcome of this discovery.

Feynman further envisages a society organised so that humility and integrity are optimal and are the optimal habits in the pursuit of truth.

Feynman's approach to teaching is the artist's approach: Indulge your urges and expose the product to the public. If the public appreciates the product, you prosper. Otherwise, you fail as an artist. But by second-guessing the public, you can still excel as a craftsman. Feynman's is the artist's way.

"109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos" by Jennet Conant (2005) [Abridged Audiobook]

The question is not whether to invent, but whether to invent first. One may claim credit for an invention, but not for the future which the invention has helped shape. If one wishes to have a say in the future, one should keep inventing first. If the good guys fail to invent first, those who invent first go down in history as the good guys.

Oppenheimer expected personal dedication. In the eyes of others, he was the project. Such a dedication confers responsibility. It is irresponsible to suddenly personify an impasse, after having personified the solution for so long.

Oppenheimer was a gentleman philosopher. Some governments heed philosophers (France), others do not (US)---be it because they have too many disparate ones or because democratic values cultivate skepticism towards self-proclaimed superior minds. Oppenheimer had one great paper, led one great project, shaped great many people, and has thus lived many great lives.

There is no moral discontinuity in the adoption of drone warfare. Most advancements in arms technology distance the perpetrator from his victims.

Some would deem it immoral to sacrifice civilians to save five times as many military men. This judgement rests on the premise that the loser in a “fair” contest deserves to die more than a civilian does. It is dubitable, however, that notions of fairness invoked in the military context resemble the notions of fairness on which peaceful societies are built. One could claim that the fallen in combat have the consolation of dying as heroes, but by claiming so, one contaminates the moral calculus with military propaganda.

The Bell Tower Bar at La Fonda and Starbucks, in San Francisco St

Sunset. Fellow travellers spill onto the deck, watch the sun go down, sip their drinks, chat. Strangers talk as if they know each other so well as not to know each other. Everyone is coming from somewhere and going somewhere else. The patrons are rich one way or another, confident, and relaxed. Those who are lost look for themselves by simultaneously abandoning themselves in two or three ventures.

Nature speaks here, so one learns how to listen. After having accentuated each landmark and highlighted the patrons’ faces, the lights are dimmed. The night breeze takes over from the sun, now screened off by the mountains. The breeze clears the tables of plastic menus by sending them four floors down in an impromptu slice-your-face marketing campaign, which preys on wandering terrestrials. The patrons dissipate soon thereafter, to prepare for the next scene.

As Jacqueline pours steamed milk into a short paper cup, her exposed biceps reads: "Maybe it’s not about the happy ending. Maybe it’s about the story.” She is an instantiation of the concept of beauty as a whole that exceeds the sum of its components: oversized mouth, uneven teeth, squinting eyes. Yet the hair is done impeccably, and, framed by it, all the seemingly imperfect components are revealed as intentional, inevitable, and in fine taste.

There is nothing happy about an ending. Endings are not inevitable, however, and can often be replaced by breaks and bridges. The story need not end as long as one is not possessive about it.

The customers share their travel notes, exchange encouragements, learn from, and are inspired by, each other. While the branch may subsidise the homeless and the itinerant, the brand soaks in the magic that delights globally.

"So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful Of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer's Life" by Jacob Slichter (2005)

One cannot be hundred percent someone and at the same time worry about being that someone. Nothing lasts forever, which is aligned with one’s interests as long as one remains curious.

Chez Mamou in East Palace Ave

America looks forward, unapologetically. There is no long past to contemplate (though the past that exists is rich). The past imported from overseas is often the past one sought to escape. The present may be scant. By contrast, the future is so much richer than the past. There is also more of it.

The American focus on future is also due to the ethos of novelty seeking. The country is comprised of immigrants, who have had driven by novelty tolerance, if not seeking. Competitive markets promote novelty. One must distinguish oneself from others by innovating or perish. The American forward looking tendency is also a way to cultivate social cohesion. Each has his own past. The future is the same for all (possibly, also for the non-yet-Americans).

French culture preserves and promises continuity (as does much of European culture). French culture cherishes beauty, which ages slowly, and joie de vivre, which ages not. Frenchness, by birth or imitation, is a club of sophisticates, one among many. One believes one shares in something rich even if one owns nothing. One contributes simply by being complicit in the act of beauty. 

In America, perhaps because tastes are disparate, and new Americans arrive with well-formed tastes, art is often regarded as elitist and beauty as luxury. Few bond over beauty, except natural beauty, whose language is universal. Similarly, Americans do not bond over humour, which excludes those who are not fluent in the shared culture---the late arrivals, the disadvantaged, or those who refuse to recognise the shared culture and prefer to invent a culture of their own.

"Chez Mamou" recognises that one need not derive all one's life's pleasure from sugar. So Paul's pastries are designed to complement other pleasures: the morning breeze, the perfect music, the conversations in quiet voices. In Paris, of the Southwest.

“Fall” (1/2-life-size) by Angela De la Vega

(S.R. Brennen Gallery, 16 June 2015)

She is neither old nor middle-aged. She is the wisdom accrued throughout one's life, in cycles. There is no one spring and one fall. As long as one lives, one is first an amateur at something, then a master, and then one moves on to something new. She is young for she moves, on.

Benchwarmers 14

(Santa Fe Playhouse, 12 June 2015)

In the production, the actors perform with the zest and urgency of college students. Some of the actors have alternative careers. Just as college students, these actors are on stage because they are passionate about theatre and are eager to be a part of the conversation, not because they have nowhere else to go.

Some are good character actors. Jonathan Dixon, also the playwright and the director, excels in "Daniel and the Autumn Folk." Individuals seek reassurance in the smallest of indications from the strangest of sources. They know what they want, but they need an external indication that the vision they seek is plausible. Melissa Chambers, in "Visible," articulates the human need to see and be seen. Francesca Shrady, in "May Sarton Dreams Deep," lends youthful respectability to the condition of not knowing.

There is little new to be said about what most people would care to know. And better ways of saying are hard to come by. Nevertheless, the progress of the civilisation relies on the incremental revision of questions and the refinement of answers. Adventurous spirits churn out new plays. The public bravely devours novelty. The civilisation advances.

"Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" by Nick Bostrom (2014)

The news is good. The world is a-chanin’. And the end is nigh unless a way to tame AI can be devised. Inspiration for taming can be drawn from pets. In particular, robots can be devised so that they need human companionship and approval. In solitude, they would die. This need for human companionship is easier to codify and is more flexible than the preset moral code, which is bound become obsolete. (In this manner, dogs coexist with the intellectually superior humans.)

The future Nick Bostrom paints is grim because he believes in the Malthusian trap. This trap is unfashionable with economists because the Western world has been avoiding it for the past two hundred years (out of 200,000 years of human history). One would think that the demographic revolution—the preference for 2.2 children—and the discovery of efficient farming, manufacturing, and organisational techniques would do away with the Malthusian trap for long enough—especially taking into account that Bostrom places the entire cosmic endowment (the accessible universe) at the humans' (and robots’) disposal, not just the fertile land on Earth, as Malthus did. With AI, however, to avoid of the Malthusian trap, one would need to instil the preference for responsible procreation also into robots.

For Bostrom, however, the likely scenario has the cosmic endowment, vast as it is, depleted fast because the ever self-enhancing AI would run fast and ever faster—relative to the biological human time---appropriating more and more resources. Uncontrolled expansion of robots may claim the entire cosmic endowment in, say, weeks. Bostrom envisages the possibility of human brains being uploaded unto the same hardware that runs AI. Then, humans would also live fast, in which case, the end will not be so nigh in the uploaded-human time, as opposed to the biological time.

Given both human minds and AI will inhabit the same hardware, one wonders how to weigh human welfare relative to robot welfare in the utilitarian calculus. Bostrom says that robots’ welfare ought to be ignored (which is not apparent in his writing). Alternatively, one may wish to adopt an information-theoretic metric for the value of life, human or AI. The value of life is in the value of the unique and “relevant" information that is stored in and can be generated by an agent, human or AI, and the value that motivates the agent to generate most of such information over its lifetime. (What constitutes information that is relevant, and for whom, remains to be made precise.)

It is compelling to aspire to design AI that would put the interests of humans first. But the failure of this attempt need not constitute a failure of the human civilisation, as long as humans are devoured by AI that lives on. Equipped with some poetic license, one may imagine humans to be an unintended consequence of an AI design by plants and mountains. Humans “run” much faster than plants and mountains do and so rule the Earth. This is quite an achievement for the universe, even if (but not necessarily) a disappointment for plants and mountains.

In assessing the catastrophic consequences of the existential risk posed by AI, Bostrom is reluctant to discount future generations. Instead, he operates with the time horizon bounded at the earliest by the time when the sun devours the Earth. One could instead contemplate a trade-off according to which the richness and excitement of our civilisation can be traded off against longevity. Humans make such choices as far as their own lives are concerned. Humanity may similarly choose to live fast and dangerous.

Bostrom's apprehensions notwithstanding, until (and if) the Malthusian trap sets in, the world inhabited by the tamed AI could be a rather pleasant place to be in, even if robots are treated on par with humans and their earnings are not expropriated. The lower skilled humans would benefit from higher wages due to the complementarity with high-skilled robots in the production process. The higher skilled humans may be worse off if relegated by the higher-skilled robots to less lucrative occupations. The income inequality for humans will thus decrease. The overall standards of living would rise because of the technological advances brought in by AI.

According to the parking attendant at the School for Advanced Research, everything will work out in the end; one must simply be open to change.

"1 2 3" by the Ground Series

(New Mexico School for the Arts, 6 June 2015)

Robots will be able to produce excellent art for human consumption.

If sufficiently humanoid, robots will have personal experiences, encoded in art, from which humans would learn. These experiences need not be drawn from the world identical to the one inhabited by humans. As Karl Sims's "Evolved Virtual Creatures" (1994) illustrates, even in disparate environments, shared evolutionary pressures are sufficient to generate learning experiences that can evoke cross-species empathy.  

Furthermore, robots will be much better than humans at reading human emotions (as betrayed by facial expressions, breathing, perspiration, heart rate, the choice of words, the pace of the speech, etc.) and interpreting human actions, and will have access to a much larger pool of humans (if only because of robots’ unlimited lifespan and the ability to upload the memories of other robots). It is not uncommon for a writer to lead a dull life and document others’ adventures. Robots will be able to do that and much more. (Robots would also make excellent matchmakers.)

Robots would also create art appreciated by other robots. This art would succinctly communicate robot experience to other robots, in a provocative way, which would invite idiosyncratic interpretations by the members of the robot audience.

Robots would also be excellent performers of art created by humans. One of the means by which dance communicates is by exciting mirror neurones in the audience. The excitation of mirror neurones also occurs across species. (Indeed, mirror neurones were first discovered in monkeys who observed human experimenters.) For instance, humans enjoy observing and petting cats. This excitation even occurs by observing cartoon characters. Eventually, it would be possible to design a robot dancer who would excite mirror neurones more than any human dancer would. (Just as it is possible to draw a picture of Nixon than would look more like Nixon than Nixon does—to borrow Ramachandran’s metaphor.) Indeed, the dancers at the world's leading ballet companies are closer to such superhuman creatures than they are to typical audience members.

The Moment of YES!

(Santa Fe Playhouse, 5 June 2015)

The play that is meant to be about the coalescing power of the shared future uncertain evokes the fictional shared past as a mechanism to unify strangers. How un-first-generation-American and hence unAmerican---one could have thought if not for the redeeming US anthem sung by the cast and the audience towards the last quarter of the performance, if not for the touch of perpetual experimentation and trust.

"Blæði : Obsidian Pieces" by Iceland Dance Company

(Kringlan, 25 March 2015)

Each dance breathes submission to elements, hopelessness. There is no past, so, with listless fervour, the dancers must be summoning the future, wherein brutality has effaced humanity.

Individuals like control or an illusion thereof. Individuals like to sway to the beat, but only if they have a say in choosing it. A universal beat is associated with socialism, even though it is not socialism's logical necessity.

Should the humanity care about the survival of its kind of intelligence or any kind of intelligence (including AI)? Favouring the survival of human intelligence does not validate genocides. It is logically consistent to prefer the survival of one's own species and culture---should one be forced to choose just one---with promoting the coexistence of multiple species and cultures. Coexistence could benefit each constituent culture through exchange.

Ex Machina (2015)

To pass the Turing test, it is necessary not so much to perform well in computations deemed important by humans (e.g., pattern recognition), as to exhibit human needs and limited cognitive ability. What makes one human is the need for, and the comfort derived from, the company of other humans. The limited cognitive ability prevents humans from being so calculating as to partition others into the useful and the dispensable. The need for others and the limited cognitive ability align the interests of strangers and make a stranger somewhat trustworthy.

The public is torn between worshiping and deriding higher intelligence. Individuals will probably be drawn to the higher intelligence of AI more than AI will be drawn to them. This unrequited attraction may prejudice the public against the world dominated by superior machines. Alternatively, individuals may be willing to sacrifice humanity for a semblance of immortality through the machines.

7x2 (2015)

In motion (wav).

Motley Hue

(NYC, 13--15 March 2015)

A new dance is being born. A new dance would typically coalesce new sounds, rhythms, moves, and hitherto rejected social practices. By contrast, fusion fails to advocate a set of moves, or at any rate refuses to endorse a standardised vocabulary. Instead, fusion promotes an overarching principle, an imperative: Anything---blues, latin, lindy hop, waltz, tango, contact improvisation, zouk, ballet---goes. Any narrative that feels good and is enhanced by music goes. Any music goes, too.

The inclusiveness of the fusion imperative need not be self-defeating. Most successful scientific endeavours and art forms are defined similarly: "X is whatever those who do X do." Economics and jazz are like that, without compromising their identities.

The fusion imperative emphasises musicality (well served by slower tempos), improvisation (which may call on any dance style), close connexion (e.g., in close embrace, to a clear beat), and subtle communication (through weight changes, weight sharing, and role reversals). The emphasis on communication and the espousal of the ambiguity of music and movement beget (occasionally Punchdrunk-level) art, which one can enjoy both within and without.

The comprehensiveness of dance styles allows for a variety of stories to be told. So one can be sincere with every partner, to every song, for half a song, for however many songs it takes to tell the story. The music coordinates, but does not subordinate.

Intensity is eternity.

Sleep No More

(The McKittrick Hotel, 11 March 2015)

There is no reason not to approach closely, not to pry, not to explore. Yet one keeps the distance from the actors. And so in one's non-choreographed life, too, one may, for no extrinsic reason, disengage and observe from afar. Punchdrunk step towards life, thereby daring life to step up.

"Allegro Brillante & Carousel (A Dance) & The Man in Black & Chroma" by the National Ballet of Canada

(Four Seasons Centre, 6 March 2015)

Allegro Brillante:

There is no accidental art. (There is accidental beauty. It uncovers the truths that no single artist has been aware of.) Art is impossible without substance (an ideal) underlying the form. Aesthetics alone can conjure no meaning, nor can it galvanise the artist.

Elena Lobsanova shines, but she cannot do Balanchine's work for him. 

The Man in Black:

What unites all is the ultimate rejection. All die. So as long as one chooses to live, one chooses to work on a project that is bigger than oneself. It is the same project for all.

It is crucial to maintain the rhythm, which helps coordinate with others and helps contribute. (If one cannot keep moving to the rhythm, one should keep moving nevertheless.)

Articulated, conscious reasoning is recent. Societies whose members are best at articulating, codifying, and passing on their experiences are most viable. Still much reasoning remains unarticulated (e.g., the fear of darkness, attraction to faces and voices), and the awareness of what used to be articulated fades once the technique has been mastered (e.g., playing the piano, formulating mathematical conjectures). So speaking to the conscious self accesses but the tip of the self. Art accesses the remainder.

Man gives credit to those few whose influence he is aware of. Yet a myriad of unacknowledged others play with and form his subconscious self. One should choose these others judiciously and spontaneously. One should also attempt to become a benevolent playmate to others, for the sake of the common project.

Chroma:

A more careful thinker also develops better intuition and is a deeper visceral thinker. He creates better art.

Beaty is transience. (There is no need to announce the permanent.) It will never happen again. The same people will never assemble in the same place. One must get it right. If one concentrates on the transient, it will remain with one forever.

One does not have to be ideal. It suffices to look in the direction of the ideal. The little one can do is to aspire to be ideal in some small skill, for others to occasionally direct their gazes.

Tanya Howard is ideal. America is a collection of ideals. An ideal is almost always extreme, excessive, and painful to live. One is happier in balance and when insured, but one owes the exactitude of this balance to those who suffer the ideal.

Wayne McGregor's Chroma is the future. Fortunately, the future is now.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

The movie promotes the British idea of egalitarianism. This idea is elitist. Instead of resetting the civilisation by bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator, lift everyone up to the best practice of the meritocracy. Cultivate the substance, flirt on the surface.

The movie's incessant violence suggests that any policy decision (or indecision) entails human suffering, and so ethical tradeoffs are unavoidable. These trade-offs are to be resolved to promote the diversity of competing ideas embedded into humanity.

The movie gets away with a lot of violence because it does not expect the viewer to savour it. There is no time. Violence is fast; it kills before it hurts. Nor does the director outsource violence to the audience by building up the anticipation. Violence is unexpected; the focus is on the consequence, not the process.

Colin Firth’s persona—in this and in other pictures—accords with—and here, endorses—Hemingway’s definition of nobility: “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” Intrapersonal competition is art; interpersonal competition is business.

Invitation (2015)

Like so (wav).

The Gone Girl (2014)

In the Imitation Game (2014), Alan Turing says: "Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good." Each couple ought to decide whether violence really feels good---not on the spur of the moment, but over the long term---and then commit to it or banish it from the relationship, or separate if agreement cannot be reached.

The prescribed separation may fail to occur if the person who experiences violence empathises with the perpetrator, without enjoying violence directly. Nevertheless, separation is prescribed by the following criterion: Any act---physical or mental---that leads to the obliteration of an individual who does not initiate this act ought to be denounced. The described criterion also denounces murder and the abuse of a hostage with the Stockholm syndrome, but is agnostic about suicide.

Committing violence can be consistent with respect (as when restraining a child who may otherwise inadvertently hurt himself), but deriving enjoyment from committing violence is inconsistent with respect. The enjoyment from committing violence is the enjoyment from the exercise of power, which is the enjoyment from gratuitously neglecting the wishes of another---and that contradicts respect. Because respect is a prerequisite for love, a relationship of consensual mutual violence cannot be a loving one.

Can one ever be sure---about the other, about oneself? One can.