Civic dissonance

Today I was hoping to bring you a review of Alexander Hellene's The Last Ancestor, but that'll have to wait because I'm not finished reading it. So I'll talk about another book that's been gnawing at me over the years: The City & the City by China Miéville.

The City & the City is a police procedural/murder mystery with one of the most imaginative settings I've ever encountered. The story takes place in a city that exists simultaneously in two different countries. There's nothing supernatural going on here. People living in different countries under different laws and speaking different languages walk on the same sidewalks and drive on the same roads, but they act and think like the other side isn't there.

Any interaction with the other side is termed a "breach." It's so taboo that there's a shadowy police force endowed with fearsome power that prosecutes it. You have to pass through a "border" in a special part of the city to cross to the other side. The separateness is so well-kept that characters don't even blink at the irony of going across town to pass through the border only to return to the same neighborhood, just to deliver a package or question someone in relation to a crime investigation.

If you've spent any time in a city, you know how confining it can be. Space is at a premium and much of life is lived on the street. Over time you develop a sort of tunnel vision, an emotional distance from the teeming masses of humanity you encounter when walking to work or to the store. It's hard not to rub shoulders with other cultures day to day, but if you keep your head down and move along most of the time no one will bother you. Being ignored and ignoring others isn't rude; it's actually considered polite.

If social trust is the inverse of diversity (as Robert Putnam and other sociologists have found), and there is literally nowhere for anyone to relocate to, what is to be done to avoid conflict over who owns the public sphere? In Miéville's setting, the solution is more realistic than you think. People are good at pretending what's in front of their eyes doesn't exist, especially when the consequences of not pretending could hurt them. Fear is an effective palliative for cognitive dissonance.

The origins of the arrangement are a mystery in the book, but I thought it probable the two countries had very specific, meaningful claims to the land the city stands on, and were on the brink of war. A deal was brokered for the countries to divorce from each other psychologically. It would have made sense to install an overwhelming external power to check the natural desire among the denizens to fight.

Had that power not been installed, various organizations unequipped to enforce the psychological conditioning would have been thrust into that role. The disorganized, shambolic effort would have resulted in people on both sides continuing to publicly accept what their senses told them was true. They'd inevitably act on it with violence, which above all else the power brokers wanted to avoid.

It's a brilliant premise, and Miéville executes it with aplomb.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like science fiction, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

What killed the pulps

King Solomon said it's foolish to long for the old days, but I say it's doubly foolish to idolize the present. The fact of the matter is we have made mistakes and our world is worse because of them. My running hypothesis is the Boomers were the first generation to be raised in the epistemological shift after the two world wars and the Great Depression. The theology of the reconstructed man spread like a virus in the '60s. By the '70s the foundation was completely unearthed and was beginning to erode. The cultural superstructure that stood upon it would come next.

Not by accident, art was among the first endeavors to experience the decline. (See "Relativism sucks") The effects of this colonization are examined in part by Jeffro Johnson in his terrific book, Appendix N:

Back during World War II, C. S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, "We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." From a cultural standpoint, we've been laughing and sneering for a long time. These now utterly predictable mutilations of classic adventure fiction are a direct result of decades of this sort of mentality. And what are the scriptwriters and directors laughing at when they foist these revisions on us?

...

Of course, the best days of this type of story [planetary romance] are long gone by now. It was practically ubiquitous up through the sixties, but today it's shocking to see it delivered with not even a hint of snark or irony. Mentioning the very idea of this sort of thing in mixed company is liable to produce a whole raft of negative responses. We live for the most part in a culture where people are primed to turn up their noses at this sort of thing.

Pulp fiction that comprised the bulk of Gary Gygax's literary influences, no matter how popular, was anathema to the new regime. It could not be published anymore without the publisher paying a steep social cost. New art had to portray man as his own creation, with "modern" values. Old values are unevolved, unrefined, illiberal, and other euphemisms for "bad."

As if trying to prove his point, negative reviewers of Johnson's book predictably attack it on ideological grounds. They're not just "turning up their noses"; they're murdering the past with slander.

To be sure, good science fiction and fantasy stories continued to be written after the '60s, but the tide, as they say, was going out. A big reason Star Wars, released in 1977, was a smash hit was it mimicked popular entertainment that wasn't yet a distant memory for its target audience.

There was another factor in the sharp decline of Burroughs-style planetary romance, and it coincides so well with the '60s revolution that it's easy to miss. I'm talking about the Apollo 11 Moon landing. This moment became so stamped in the public consciousness that people were unwilling to entertain the unrealistic aesthetics of a setting like Barsoom or the planets in Lewis's Space Trilogy.

No two properties illustrate this dichotomy better than the movie adaptations for A Princess of Mars (2012's John Carter) and The Martian 3 years later. The former you know is an epic, swashbuckling adventure where the hero saves the world and gets the girl. The latter is basically Robinson Crusoe on Mars, a nuts and bolts survival story where bagging your poop and counting calories were plot elements. One of these movies flopped. The other was a hit and received Best Picture nominations.

I'm not saying The Martian or its movie adaptation sucks. I liked the book very much. I'm saying it owes its popularity to being a product of its time. It leverages what the audience knows about the limitations of space travel, the forbidding environment of Mars, and man's overreliance on technology. Those things weren't commonly understood a hundred years ago. Alien races, a breathable atmosphere, and jumping around like the Incredible Hulk all seemed plausible.

Which leads me to infer two things about the science fiction market:

1. People's imagination is inversely correlated with their knowledge.
2. People really don't hunger for heroes like they used to.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

The competition for authority

When you hear cancel culture apologists say "It's just a song" or "It's just a statue," understand that works both ways. If it's just a song, why the uproar in the first place?

The cancel mob chooses its targets to make the public's compromise, and eventual capitulation, as painless as possible. They want the authority to issue decrees, authority which can only be granted by public consent. The idea is to convince people they're consenting to something small, when in fact they're consenting to being controlled. Have you noticed the ubiquitous statement about "more work to be done" is attached to every announced compromise? It's another way of saying the mob's next maneuvers are to be determined.

The object of the mob's wrath is irrelevant, so a debate on the merits of whether something is "bad" also is irrelevant. When someone makes a factual claim in the form of an accusation, just say "I don't believe you." It disarms them of their claim to authority.

In the long run, I expect the University of Texas to capitulate to activists calling the alma mater racist. The only reason they haven't yet is many rich alumni have put their foot down and said the alma mater is not racist. The presence of a competing truth claim, backed by money, has left UT in limbo. The administrators are waiting for either side to relinquish their claim. This is narrative warfare's version of cold war. Who can bear the social costs of their claim longer will win. If, or when, UT gives up its alma mater, it will admit that it is a racist institution that requires works of redemption to be saved. The activists will dictate what those works look like.

Universities are notoriously weak. Against individuals the mob is hit and miss. Comic book artist Jeffrey Scott Campbell clapped back against people who criticized his drawings on ideological grounds. The hysteria he generated by disagreeing with the grounds for criticism was something to behold. Denied authority over Campbell's artistic style, Kevin Norman posted a lengthy thread justifying himself.

As silly as cutting off people over so small a thing looks, I believe no one is above this sentiment. There's nothing in our nature that compels us to share space with people we disagree with. I don't mean minor disagreements; I mean the kind of disagreement where one person calls the other a bigot. No friendship or union can withstand that level of enmity. When that happens, it's practical to retreat to opposite corners. Free men must be allowed to associate with whom they want.

Where options proliferate in a large, competitive space, the sorting is easy. Campbell draws his comic books and readers buy them or they don't. If someone doesn't like him, there are other artists to patronize. Where options are limited in a small, noncompetitive space, pray for God's mercy and His glory to be revealed to all.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Authors, moral purity, and freedom of association

I never met someone who read a Philip Roth novel, let alone liked one. But I've never been to cocktail party on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, either. Roth wrote neurotic, self-absorbed books steeped in the post-war era's listlessness and secular disfunction. As with many books that fly high on the back of the temporal zeitgeist, his aged terribly.

Vanity Fair reports on a rape scandal embroiling Roth's biographer, his publisher, and The New York Times. Anyone with passing knowledge of the way the Times functions as cheerleader for academia and the literati shouldn't be surprised.

Last week The New York Times advanced upon allegations of sexual harassment and assault in The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate and the Los Angeles Times against Philip Roth biographer Blake Bailey with an account from Valentina Rice, a 47-year-old publishing executive who alleges Bailey raped her in 2015 while they were both staying at the home of Times book critic Dwight Garner. The story raised eyebrows, and not just because W.W. Norton, Bailey’s publisher, had halted the shipping of the long-awaited book in response to the allegations leveled against the author by Rice and several former students (Bailey denies any wrongdoing).

It was particularly striking that one of the alleged sexual assaults took place at the home of one of the most prominent book critics in America, one employed by the very paper disclosing the previously unreported accusation. All of which came after weeks of its copious—and often, though not always, glowing—coverage leading up to Bailey’s release. The Times’ level of promotion wasn’t unusual for a book positioned as a serious literary biography—and especially one about the late Roth, who represents a kind of fantasy of what it meant to belong to a certain generation of American male novelists—but the paper’s own scoop inevitably raised questions of who knew what and when.

If this excerpt of Portnoy's Complaint's Wikipedia entry is anything to go by, I firmly reject what it means to belong to Roth's generation of American male novelists:

Roth had begun work on Portnoy's Complaint in 1967, before publication of his novel When She Was Good that year. The piece had its genesis in a satirical monologue Roth had written to accompany a slide show proposed for inclusion in the risqué revue Oh! Calcutta! that would focus on the sexual organs of the rich and famous.

While the slide show would never come to fruition, Roth found part of the accompanying monologue about masturbation salvageable. Roth re-fashioned the material for the novel and sold a chapter of the book, entitled "Whacking Off", to Partisan Review. Progress on the novel was slow because Roth was suffering from writer's block relating to his ex-wife, Margaret Martinson, and the unpleasant notion that any royalties generated by the novel would have to be split equally with her. In May 1968, Martinson was killed in a car crash in Central Park. Roth's writer's block lifted and, following Martinson's funeral, he traveled to the Yaddo literary retreat to complete the manuscript.

This is what passes for erudite entertainment to the gatekeepers of popular entertainment, at least at the time. Protective of its legacy, the NYT spares no expense boosting Roth and acolytes like Bailey with gusto.

One of the hundreds of people who bought the book before the ban hammer dropped took to Twitter to ask whether it was permissible to read it.

Start with asking why you're reading the book in the first place. If it's because you want to ingratiate yourself to a certain crowd, spare yourself. That world is leaving Roth behind.

As for the issue of whether you should engage in commerce with someone who did something bad, this is one of the great quandaries of our time, isn't it? If you're looking for a writer who passes a moral purity test, stop looking. He doesn't exist. To read anything, you must reconcile yourself to reading the works of sinners, including yours truly. On this, as usual Paul had a wise take:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

The key difference being a brother in Christ has heard the gospel and assented to its teachings. He knows better yet continues to live in sin, wilfully opposing the truth. I would say if Bailey shows wilful opposition to what he knows is right, as opposed to the occasional moral failings of a man whose flesh predisposes him to sin, it's permissible to refuse to read him on those grounds.

On the other hand, we saw "she who must not be named" almost lose her book deal because of her studied observation of the immutability of sex. Her defense of her stance was definitely wilful. People with a different epistemological view of reality were justified in refusing to engage in commerce with her.

That doesn't mean I think they're right or that I don't want their minds to change. All it means is they appropriately applied their conscience in accordance with what they believe, as I also reserve the right to do.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like sci-fi that is most assuredly not like Philip Roth, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

The death of imagination

This unscientific survey and the reponses remind me of Plato's allegory of the cave. In the allegory, people are chained up in a cave, facing a wall on which are projected the shadows of objects passing between a fire and the wall. The people cannot see the objects themselves, only their shadows. Plato used this allegory to explain there is a reality truer than what we perceive, and this reality consists of theoretical forms. (For the CliffsNotes version, watch The Matrix.)

The allegory is useful in a semantic/linguistic context. When I say "dog," you may imagine a hundred different breeds of dog, all of which would be correct. Lassie and Cujo are both dogs. But in our shared language, there's a theoretical dog that all those dogs are particular instances of.

When I tried it, I was surprised how long it took me to see anything. When I'm writing, I envision spaceships joined by a latticework of human-sized hamster tubes, mining colonies on the slopes of a Martian volcano, an island city situated in the middle of a crescent-shaped bay. Something as simple as an apple should be child's play! But all I saw at first was the dark red of the backs of my eyelids. I didn't get a clear picture of the apple until I imagined picking one up and eating it. Touch and taste are unique properties of an apple, so that helped.

In Theaetetus, Socrates says "the mind in itself is its own instrument for contemplating the common terms that apply to everything." In other words, knowledge is the ability to intuit universals from a set of particulars. What does it say about people if they can barely recall the shadows of the real objects they cannot see? How does that bode for their capacity to perceive universal truths?

The armchair psychologist in me says being surrounded by hypervisual media causes the other senses as well as the imagination to dull. I live as if that's true, and limit my kids' screen time accordingly.

By the way, 400 years after Plato, Paul wrote to the church in Colossae:

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

...and the author of the letter to the Hebrews wrote:

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Panopticon

The best system of control is self-administered. The most oppressive system of control is administered by the public, deputized by earthly powers. The former spurs on a passion for righteousness, the latter a passion for conformity.

A hallmark of the present age is that you can be photographed at any time in public. No matter how cordial your interactions with strangers, no matter how ethical you are, you will make an embarrassing mistake. It's inevitable.

The decontextualized images of your mistake get beamed across the planet to millions of people, who get a dopamine kick out of mocking and scorning you. An Internet sleuth doxxes you, and you're stripped of personhood and cast out of polite society. That one mistake now defines you. You are now a cautionary tale to the rest of the world: Don't let your guard down for one minute, or your life may be turned upside-down.

Does that sound like a free society or a prison?

The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched.

Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that they are motivated to act as though they are being watched at all times. Thus, the inmates are effectively compelled to regulate their own behaviour.

I can't think of a better way to divide people than weaponizing technology to enforce conformity. A society cannot withstand attack when its members are atomized thus by fear and suspicion. They will be like sheep to the slaughter.

If the Second Amendment can be restricted by the state, a strong argument can be made for restricting available technology until the people demonstrate the discipline to peacefully wield it.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

In praise of Bryson DeChambeau

Bryson DeChambeau was already a good golfer and somewhat of a personality with his meticulous, analytical style. Late last year he saw an opportunity to take his game to the next level by increasing his swing speed. This year, given 3 months at and nothing better to do, he bulked up and revamped his game.

On Sunday he won the Rocket Mortgage Classic by three strokes. His performance was a revelation to some. He was routinely bombing the ball 350 yards off the tee, and hitting high iron approach shots on par 5s.

A corner of the golf world is already fretting over this. I can understand why they would want the game to be played a certain way, consistent with the way it's always been played. What I don't understand is the "competitive advantage" argument. Competitive advantage is built in to every sport. Every player has advantages that he tries to leverage against the golf course. Not everyone can drive the ball 350 yards. Not everyone can stick their approach shots. Not everyone can hit out of a bunker. Not everyone can read the break on a putt. Without competitive advantage, the idea of competition no longer applies.

Say what you want about whether power golf is good or bad for the game. DeChambeau took a big risk and it worked for him. For one weekend, he was the best golfer in the world, and it was because of the work he put in. That effort and boldness are hard to duplicate, even for talented professionals for whom .

That's the point of greatness. Not everyone can reach it.

It remains to be seen if DeChambeau's new style of play is sustainable or will translate to major tournaments, like the Masters. In the unlikely event his career takes off and he dominates like Tiger Woods, the golf community would be wise to embrace him, much like it did Tiger. It would not only increase interest in golf, but highlight the factors contributing to greatness that can be duplicated by us commoners, like discipline, craft, and hard work.

That's my approach to writing, and the results speak to that. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

The bane of eisegesis

I first encountered the word eisegesis in Bible study. As a Christian who believes the Bible is the Word of God, it's important to know the meaning of what the Bible says. Eisegesis is a type of interpretation that allows the reader to view the text through a lens, usually bent to his prejudices. View anything through a lens, and it's distorted, changed from the original. Exegesis is the opposite, an attempt to find the text's true original meaning.

Eisegesis is the reason you hear nonsense like the Bible endorses socialism in Acts 2, or Jesus commands His followers to be pacifists in Matthew 5. These are instances of people seeing what they want to see in the text, rather than letting the text speak for itself. Not only is the eisegetical interpretation false, it holds zero binding power since it's entirely subjective. When you realize someone's interpretation of a text is eisegetical, that should be the end of your giving it any consideration.

Mark Twain said whatever your bugaboo, you will find it therein. People have powerful prejudices. They often don't realize they're reading something that isn't there.

Take, for example, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It's taken for granted this was a racist act by the cop. This interpretation fits neatly into a perceived pattern of racism in America because the cop is white and Floyd was black. But without proof of racism these facts are incidental. What evidence is there that the cop acted the way he did because of racism? The reports are the cop knew the victim, that he had come under fire within the police department before. The text of the event doesn't directly refute the interpretation, but the interpretation doesn't logically flow from the text, either.

Critical theory is an area where eisegesis is actively encouraged. I took a semester of this in college and it was my least favorite class. We learned about different theories of critique, from feminism to queer theory to Freudian psychoanalysis to post-colonialism to structuralism to deconstructionism. There were others. We learned Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is actually about the narrator's homophobia and suppressed homosexual urges.

I didn't know it at the time, but that class could have done great harm. It taught me—or tried to teach me—there is no true meaning of a text per se, but a million interpretations from a million lenses I may look through. Even if I strived for objectivity, my lens would still determine what I saw. I could not rise above my upbringing, my psychology, my politics, the facts of my birth, etc. I was alone, and I had no way with words or reason to find someone to share something meaningful with.

If you accept that, really accept that the world can only be viewed through ideological and personal lenses, it will undermine your sanity and turn you into a hyper-individualized brute, more responsive to power than to reason. These days you don't need to look far to find antisocial behavior. How much is that due to the deliberate and unmitigated lensing of our shared reality into subjective experience? Quite a bit, I'd wager.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Exclusivity in chess

I love Antonio Radic's breakdowns of professional chess games, and I don't even play chess. He devotes most of this 14-minute video to posing a question about the efficacy of a chess tournament hosted on Twitch to promote chess.

It comes as no surprise Radic himself and the majority of YouTube commenters think the PogChamps chess tournament is a good thing because they think anything to promote chess is a good thing. Chess brings them joy and they think it will bring joy to others. There's a sense of validation in seeing your pastime increase in popularity.

The man who thinks PogChamps is bad for chess seems to take his minority stance as a given and goes full curmudgeon. In the process, he gives short shrift to a straightforward, reasonable argument. For the crux of the matter is this: Is outreach to grow membership in your club a worthy endeavor?

If you answer in the affirmative, you are assuming:

1. There are people who have not heard of chess who would love it.
2. "Chess," or the chess community, will be enriched by letting in more people who were not willing come on their own.

Both these assumptions are specious, and as a matter of principle they should be rejected. There are very few people in the world who have not seen a game of chess. Going out and finding them is a quixotic endeavor. As for the second point, history shows that absorbing and catering to newbs weakens a community's distinct culture and cohesion. Your ranks will swell, but cultural bonds will weaken.

Someone who is willing to join a community on the community's terms, to learn, to be silent and listen, that is the kind of person chess—or any club—should want. They're the kind of people who will form the next generation of leaders. But you don't find them with outreach programs. You find them by steadfastly being who you are.

Counterintuitively, the best way to grow your club, as it is, is to embrace it as it is, with its present makeup. It's okay if that turns some people away. Clubs wouldn't be clubs if they weren't inherently exclusive.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Disarm and disengage

I finally got around to reading Brian Niemaier's Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You. Congratulations are due to Brian, who couldn't have timed this book's release any better.

Watching every IP I grew up with be systematically subverted and weaponized against me is a unique right of passage for young men in my age bracket. The biggest and best example is Star Wars, which Brian cites often. The MCU and Disney's other properties also come in for their fair share of criticism. There are so many more examples, it's inevitable a book addressing such an encompassing issue would feel incomplete.

This problem goes well beyond corporate-owned IPs. It's a good bet that most big-time authors, actors, and athletes you follow stand opposed to the values you embody in your life, whether those values be morality, minimally invasive government, the right to own guns, etc. Managers of most billion-dollar companies subscribe to the post-war liberal consensus. Among this group, guilt for Western Civilization runs through a positive feedback loop, spiraling towards quasi-religious displays of fealty to the latest fad.

Brian, ever the rhetorician, calls it the Death Cult. Looking at its fruits in the secular world, I can't argue with that term.

We have never needed the core message of this book more than now. If the last 2 weeks haven't put you on a war footing, I don't know what will. The culture war is heating up, and it will take strong faith and discipline to protect yourself and your loved ones from becoming a victim of it.

As the book's title says, don't give money to people who hate you. But don't let your actions stop there. The world's venom only has as much power over you as you give it time and attention. Disarm it and disengage. Trade with people who don't have an axe to grind. Confront the enemy where he can be beaten, not on social media, but right in front of you. And don't forget your best tool in defense of the truth, the one true God and His Son Jesus Christ.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Is it really Boomers' fault?

Boomers catch a lot of heat for being the "me" generation, for being the last generation to live better than their parents, for orchestrating America's decline from a proud nation to a failed social experiment. Every measure of societal health has fallen off a cliff since Boomers came of age in the '60s and '70s, and negative trends have accelerated since they rose to power in the '80s and '90s.

A question arises. Is it their fault?

I've been toying with the idea it isn't. A sea change occurred in the first half of the 20th century. The post-war liberal consensus became the de facto ideology of the ruling class. There were a few high-profile exceptions, like Charles Lindbergh and Joe McCarthy, who exist now as caricatures of backwardness. But the real power resided with the Kennedys and Rockefellers.

That ideology did not really begin to bear fruit until it had filtered into and reshaped the public consciousness. Many Boomers were toddling around in diapers while this was happening. Not one Boomer sat on the Supreme Court that delivered the Roe v. Wade decision (1970). Not one Boomer voted for the Hart-Celler Act (1965).

So if it's not Boomers' fault, whose fault is it?

Adam Lane Smith wrote a terrific piece on intergenerational views of heroism. I recommend you read the whole thing, but I pulled this quote:

If WWI was bad, at least people believed it was “the war to end all wars”. WWII convinced the survivors their sacrifices had been in vain. The Lost Generation struggled to stay out of it until they were dragged in, then they sent their children, the Silent Generation, to die in another futile war against the same enemy: Germany, this time on steroids, plus a new enemy: Japan. These two brutal regimes showed the Lost Generation and the Silent Generation that humans were capable of true evil, and many came back scarred and broken from the confrontation.

These battered, ravaged souls who threw themselves into workaholism to feed their dying kids and lived on the edge of disaster gave birth to the Baby Boomer generation. They also craved freedom from the stifling inner city, and returning GIs were given incentive to build their own single-family homes. A single woman was now responsible for maintaining the entire household while a single man was responsible for funding every aspect of life. Cue the rise of “Mother’s little helper,” designer anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills to help cope with the increased stress of isolated nuclear families who don’t have time to learn about each other or develop deep loving bonds.

How could these older generations possibly give Boomers what they needed to understand love, objective morality, warmth, nurturing, and family responsibility? Most Boomers barely knew their parents on the inside, down in their emotional core. We call the Silent Generation exactly that because they refused to talk about how they felt because they’d probably commit suicide if they stopped to think about all they’d endured and had taken from them. The Lost Generation and the Silent Generation gave themselves in near martyrdom to provide for their children, but the absence of larger family structures meant many Boomers went without those additional guideposts (grandparents, uncles, aunts) that would have taught them the value of love and family.

Some grew up understanding love nonetheless, seeing the deep sacrifices made on their behalf and recognizing what it meant. Many did not. Many Boomers resented the harsh disciplines laid upon them to prepare them for what the Lost Generation and Silent Generation knew were the secret horrors of the world. “Toughen up or you’ll die” could be an exact quote from these older generations, but to the Boomers, the strict rules from absent parents who came home exhausted and angry and barely had time for their kids smacked of draconian totalitarianism.

“You can’t tell me what to do, old man,” became the rallying cry of the Boomer generation. The movie Grease embodies this, and we start to see the true rise of the antihero.

No one wants to pile on the generation hardened by two world wars and the Great Depression. They bested the Ottoman Empire, Hitler, Mussolini, and the Dust Bowl. It would be tragic to suffer so much for the sake of world only to let faith and the first principles of culture wither on the vine, before their children could taste it.

Yet I think that's what happened.

No matter. It's up to Gen X, Millennials, and Zoomers to reverse the momentum of the recent past. It starts with faith in God, and builds through culture and community.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

The rhetoric of "racism"

Re: George Floyd, John Boyega went on a rant on Instagram to condemn racist white people. Aside from Boyega's usual candor and enthusiasm, it was fairly standard stuff.

Most notable was the pushback he got from his audience. White people flooded his mentions claiming they weren't racists, what about anti-white racism, etc. I found this interesting. Why didn't they take Boyega's rant at face value? After all, condemning racism is about the least controversial thing you can do these days. I offer three explanations.

1. Racism has been so abused as an epithet, no one really knows what it means anymore. Does it mean a belief in the lesser value of black people's lives, views about black people's genetic inferiority, or observing real-world differences among races? I've also heard thinking racism isn't a big deal is itself racist.
   
   Whatever your definition of racism, I doubt more than a fraction of the people your definition fits is capable of murder, as in the George Floyd case. Is Boyega lumping everyone together? If so, that triggers a defense mechanism in many people: Don't put me in the same category as people who aren't like me.
   
   
2. The language of race, ethnicity, and nationality has incredible rhetorical power. Defying 75 years of cultural counter-programming, group identity is ingrained deep in our human natures. It's why Trump caught such flak for talking about Mexican rapists and drug dealers. Objectively he wasn't talking about all Mexicans, but it felt like he was.
   
   In more primitive times, inter-tribal relations were concerned about keeping an even scoresheet of grievances. Lex talionis: If you kill one of us, we have the right to kill one of you. Group identity imparts group guilt for individual crimes. Some who bought into the counter-programming will naturally seek absolution.
   
   
3. Boyega's white audience isn't racist. I can all but guarantee there's not a single white racist who's a fan of Boyega. In fact, some of them may regard being a fan of Boyega as a point of pride. If so, I can see how they would look for a head pat for not being one of the evil people he's talking about.
   
   This speaks to a larger issue in "call out" culture. The people who would most benefit from being called out by you often don't hear you and/or don't care. So if the point of a rant isn't to virtue-signal, if it isn't to engage in 2 minutes' hate, what is the point? Some people, rightly or wrongly, infer you're talking about about them.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

If this fallen world gets you down and you yearn for escape and adventure, consider my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Slippery slope

Economics professor Glen Whitman says "pointing out a logical fallacy is a way of removing an argument from the debate rather than just weakening it… if you can show that the original argument actually commits a logical fallacy, you put the opposition in the position of justifying why their original argument should be considered at all."

Thus in debates pitting the enlightened heroes of modernism against the Cro-Magnons of tradition, you'll hear the modernist refrain, with a pretense of sophistication: "That's a slippery slope." Smart bois have been levying the slippery slope fallacy at sound arguments against the spiritual erosion of the West for generations. It's a conditioned response, and who can blame them? It's worked without fail.

Francis Schaeffer wrote a book describing this, called How Should We Then Live?, one of the great books of the 20th century whether you're Christian or not. The original premise of Western Civilization is the God of the Bible. Some people did not like the conclusions of that premise. So they came up with a new premise to reach the conclusions they wanted. Except the premise they came up with led to other conclusions no one wanted, conclusions that transformed civilization. Now all that's left is a veneer of the past.

This is the slippery slope in action. A thing on level ground is stable. You can build upon it. Tilt the ground, and the whole structure falls. The lesson is intuitive once you've been exposed to it. To quote a popular hymn, "all other ground is sinking sand."

So when a smart boi points out your slippery slope "fallacy," burst his conceited bubble with a rhetorical needle. Who denies the law of gravity? Not even Flat Earthers are that dumb.

It's not enough to merely beat back the philistines. People crave art that speaks to the truth of their created nature. That's what I and many other writers are trying to do. I've linked to some of them in the blog roll on the right (click here for the site's desktop version).

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Revolution against taste

A revolution against taste.

That's the most accurate way to describe the direction of The Last of Us Part II.

I'm not talking in particular about Ellie and Dinah's lesbian relationship, or the evil Christian cultists who play the bad guys. Those are choices any SJW creator would make, in alignment with the world as they see it.

I'm talking about taking control of a character, Abbie, whose actions and motivations are the opposite of what fans of the first game enjoyed. For a game so narratively focused as The Last of Us, killing the hero and beating the heroine to within an inch of death is the last thing any player wants. It's the antithesis of what a sequel should be.

"We don’t use the word 'fun.' We say 'engaging,' and it might seem like a minor distinction, but it’s an important one for us, which is, we believe that if we're invested in the character and the relationships they’re in and their goal, then we're gonna go along on their journey with them and maybe even commit acts that make us uncomfortable across our moral lines and maybe get us to ask questions about where we stand on righteousness and pursuing justice at...ever-escalating costs." –Neil Druckmann

 

Why play a game that the creator touts as divisive and uncomfortable? That might work for a 2-hour movie, but not for a 40-hour game where you actively engage the story. Gamers are not masochists. The least they expect from a game is a good time.

Many games fail because they aren't fun. If half the leaks are true, The Last of Us Part II fails in spectacular fashion because it is deliberately not fun. It's an inversion of the very idea of entertainment. You should like what you hate.

The malice and depravity of this meta statement is in part what's driving the backlash. Here's hoping other creators take note.

Rather than pay $60 for a virtual Maoist struggle session, why not read an entertaining, underpriced book? I've made available the first 4 chapters of my sci-fi thriller, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon for under a buck. I appreciate the support!

As always, let me know what you think. Leave a comment below and I'll reply as soon as I can.

Relativism sucks

There's a joke that says you should tell the truth because it's easier to remember. That's because the lie is fabricated while the truth is observed. For a lie to prevail, it must claim an equal footing with the truth or silence the truth completely. Thus arise relativism and totalitarianism.

The most pernicious lie advocates for the supremacy of the will. It prevents sinners from recognizing themselves as such, and hardens their hearts to God. They substitute their own truth over the created order, foresaking the one true remedy to their fallen spiritual condition.

"To every man his own truth, and the God within." –Marion Zimmer Bradley

"We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires." –Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI

That objects have no inherent value, only subjective ones that people assign them from the disorder of their minds, is a construct that allows falsehood to flourish. If the truth is like a hill standing above the plain, you must level the hill to prop up the lie.

You see this leveling in modern art. How could Life magazine insinuate Jackson Pollock was the greatest living American painter in 1949? Did the war kill off every talented artist in America? No, it just concretized the intelligentsia's prejudices against icky objective truths that have enflamed so many men to separation and violence. Contrast Pollock's drip paintings with a Monet or a Rembrandt. One is the work of inspiration, talent, and industry. The other you can't discern from garbage.

Even art by a mediocre talent is preferable to Pollock’s best efforts. The key difference is in the attempt at saying anything of substance. Pollock gave his paintings nondescript names, like “No. 5,” because names with actual words, which have objective meaning, might prejudice the viewer against what the viewer wants to see. Oh, you see a tree orchard? I see old men playing chess. Tom sees a shipwreck.

"The world prior to the modern age was filled with divine meaning and purpose. And the mission of the artist was to serve humanity by awakening us to that divine meaning and purpose by representing such in new and beautiful complexions. But the rise of modern science in effect de-sanctified the world by supposedly exposing all cultural meaning systems as fabrications. The world is not governed by the gods or divine meaning or purpose, but rather by physical, chemical, and biological causal laws. The mission of the artist is now redefined; the modern secular artist all too often seeks to celebrate the new, the hip, by tearing down cultural fences and mores and exposing them as artificial constructions. Art increasingly exists to shock, to turn our heads and grab our attentions with blasphemous and pornographic content. So much of modern secular art is a window into a world devoid of any objective meaning, any sense of care and purpose." –Steve Turley

That alienation you feel when you look upon modern art is the loss of hope for truth. Look upon enough modern art and the mental decks will be cleared for an evildoer to manipulate you to do his bidding.

By contrast, it is no small thing to entertain people with your art. There is something beautiful in the specificity of a story, the way it resonates with the truth and speaks to the reader's emotions and lived experiences.

I want to know what you think. Leave a comment below and I'll reply as soon as I can.

Please give my books a try, and visit the author blogs listed in the sidebar. I've made available the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Kill the bad guy

A hallmark of middle-brow entertainment is the good guys' reluctance to resort to winning tactics. While the bad guys rack up a body count, the heroes are preoccupied with stuff like "we can't become like them." They treat winning as optional and, when inevitably defeated, find a sick kind of solace in moral victory.

I was reminded of this while watching The Dark Knight, an otherwise great movie. Bruce Wayne mopes about "what I would have to become to stop men like him" (i.e., the Joker). When he has the Joker in his sights in the middle of one of the Joker's murder sprees, he goes out of his way to not kill him. The stupidity of this decision overshadows the rest of the movie.

I look at this as a symptom of the West's identity crisis. After two world wars drawn out over 30 years, emergent cultural trends ran strongly against the concepts of identity, particularly religious, ethnic, and national identity. We were no longer a people united by a shared history, but a people defined by nebulous ideals. The test of a people shifted from their cohesion and longevity to whether they live up to their ideals. At the tip of the spear it manifests as ostensible warriors making tactical decisions as if tactics were all that differentiated them from the enemy!

You'll sometimes hear this called the post-war liberal consensus. The catastrophe of this change became evident when the first generation to be raised in this culturally rudderless environment, the Boomers, rose up in the '60s. When you kill God and stunt a man's drive to fight for king and country, you end up with fewer heroes. (See CS Lewis's great book, The Abolition of Man.) But just because heroes are not in fashion doesn't mean we don't need them.

In a fight against evil, it is enough to know whose side you are on and what you are fighting for. The rest is details. In Bruce Wayne's case, he is defending his city. The Joker is sowing death and chaos. It's difficult to understand with any moral logic why Bruce Wayne is so resistant to killing in this context. He comes across as a navel-gazing dufus.

It's the kind of mistake that could only be made in the fog of the post-war liberal consensus. Under this rubric, the enemy isn't the barbarian killing innocent people, it's us in our inability to live up to our public ideals. But who does? And what sense does it make for the perfect to war against the good while evil runs rampant?

I'll add this caveat. There is a real battle against evil that should not be ignored. The ultimate battleground is in the spiritual realm, and in that sense we should guard our hearts from the devil. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

I want to know what you think. Feel free to leave a comment below. I'll reply as soon as I can.

I've made available the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon.

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