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.

An AI robot for children

It really wasn't too long ago that we looked to the future of robot and AI technology with optimism rather than fear. Ideas of a technological utopia pervaded the post-war liberal consensus, which interpreted people as their own worst enemy. Social progress married to technology would fix man's flawed nature.

I'm not sure when exactly the bubble popped. Technology is too weak to override nature and at the same time too strong to be trusted, as depicted over and over in popular books and movies like Jurassic Park. Further, and more impactful I think, was that the digitization of life on the Internet concentrated unheard of power in a handful of stateless, unaccountable megacorporations who turned out to be as censorious as Pravda.

So any enthusiasm for Moxie, an AI robot designed for children, is at least 10 years past its expiration date.

This kind of advertising is purposely designed to hit you right in the feels, but like the Google Super Bowl ad it's got just enough creepiness to make the hair on your neck stand up. Let's dive in.

At the suggestion of his parents, Riley goes from binge-playing a mobile game to interacting with an anodyne avatar for a collective of middle-aged computer programmers based in Southern California. The supportive, well-meaning parents monitor from a distance and are pleased as punch at Riley's progress. With Moxie's help his emotional IQ is skyrocketing, even though the kids at school who would be his friends are bullying him for playing with a doll.

Then comes the ad's pièce de résistance. Riley is to gather intelligence on a friend and report back to Moxie. Moxie drops this proposition with a "no one has to know" look on its animated face. We are left to wonder why a cloud-connected AI would want information about your kid's friend's interests, as well as anything else a credulous child may confide. If you've been following Big Tech's data mining operations the last few years, you already know.

Fast Company demoed Moxie and noted this:

What’s still unclear to me, despite asking the company directly, is exactly what Moxie’s lesson plans will include. What is the actual content, and how is it presented within the flow of conversation? Is Moxie a friend who likes to talk about feelings, or a serious instructor who might teach your child math?

Content is everything, especially when it comes to letting something near your kid, let alone drop $1,500 on it. If Moxie were some random Facebook account, you would be wary of your impressionable child giving it attention. Why is it any different when it's a real live avatar?

There is one silver lining. Moxie's designers built in a 1-hour maximum for "play" before it goes to sleep for 24 hours, like the screen time limit that most parents impose on our kids to prevent habit formation. However, that does not pacify my inner neo-Luddite.

Make your kids go outside and make friends. It's the best way to socialize them. And it's cheaper.

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.

Realism and the quest for meaning

At its best, worldbuilding not only offers an escape to the audience. It enhances the verisimilitude of a story. However novel the setting, if its rules are internally consistent and logical, and the setting-bound characters have understandable motives, the reader will connect.

The idea of fully immersing the reader in the setting is seductive. What quicker way to learn, or what better way to make them feel as the characters do? It may seem intuitive that the more realistically the setting is presented, the more verisimilitude the story has, but that is often not the case. Realism flattens the space the writer works in, disallowing narrative concepts that inform the reader how they should feel about the characters and where the story is going. This can actually leave the reader confused and with a cold, empty feeling.

From the realism Wikipedia page:

Realism as a literary movement was based on "objective reality." It focused on showing everyday activities and life, primarily among the middle or lower class society, without romantic idealization or dramatization. It may be regarded as the general attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation and "in accordance with secular, empirical rules."

You've probably heard of Chekhov's gun. It's the dramatic principle that if you take the effort to show the audience something, it should come into play later. A gun is the most striking example of this, but it could be anything. Cranky Uncle Bill has a prosthetic leg. The question leaps to our mind: Why? Such a detail must be included for a reason. That reason is the payoff. The prosthetic leg is the setup.

Realism disdains this principle. If something is there, it's there whether it comes up again or not.

This extends to all story elements, not just setting. Real people are textured and exhibit the full range of emotion. They do not fit into the molds of heroes and villains. The realist approach calls that "simplification." Thus, for the sake realism, character archetypes are done away with. There is no black and white, but endless shades of gray.

The same goes for plot. What did you do today? You may have started a book, cleaned out the garage, taken the kids for a play date, or prepared a big family meal. But so many other things happened that don't align with personal narratives. You watched TV, slept, ate, went potty. These mundane activities, interchangeable day to day, have no bearing on plot. But, if a depiction of reality is the foremost goal, who are you to leave it out?

This cuts the writer's job in half. Normally a writer creates the fictional world of the story and selectively depicts it in service to the story. Under realism, the writer gives you everything without discernment. You might call this vain and lazy, and I wouldn't disagree.

Realism has its place, especially in literary and period fiction. Elsewhere, though, it has a tendency to demoralize the reader. People approach stories with a variety of wants and desires. Perhaps first among them, on the meta level, is the quest for meaning. What is a story but to give meaning? I'm not talking about the meaning of life, just something to care about, like the success of a startup or the outcome of a battle. Realism denies this want by obscuring meaning in the people and events it depicts in copious but profane detail. So the reader's left feeling cold and empty.

For further reading on this subject, I recommend Rawle Nyanzi's blog post, "Indoctrinated Into Realism."

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

A word is worth a thousand pictures

While readers form varying degrees of attachment to setting, characters, and plot, from a writer's perspective it's setting that makes the plot and characters possible. In science fiction and fantasy, we call this worldbuilding.

In a misguided effort to "show, don't tell," novice writers risk killing the setting by describing it to death. The hero walks over a hill and is presented with a vista no one has ever seen before. What follows are several block paragraphs amounting to set design notes for the Hollywood adaptation that'll never be made. You can practically hear the whir of the camera as it pans left to right.

I get it because I've been there. My natural state is to communicate my unique vision in all its glorious detail. It's why I started writing in the first place.

There are two problems with this. One, it limits the reader's imagination. If you say castle, it conjures a different image in everyone's mind. But if you say an imposing gray castle with a 15-foot moat, stone towers thrusting into the cloudless sky and flying the lord's coat of arms, a horse stable, a chapel, 46 liveried servants, and a roaring fire at one end of the banquet hall, you have conditioned the reader to rely on you to tell him everything that was otherwise implied.

Now, there's nothing wrong with those details. Some of them may serve a purpose. But if they don't serve a purpose, they're just more words the reader has to muddle through to get to the point. This brings me to a good general rule about detail. Books are not a visual medium, so don't focus on how something looks. Focus on what it is, on what it does.

Two, and I credit my editor with this: The more you explain something, the less it makes sense. Unless you are a wizard like Tolkien, make broad brush strokes except as needed. Every detail and nuance you introduce that doesn't impact the story has the potential to confuse the reader and break the worldbuilding.

I've been rereading Dune to analyze how it so effectively connects with readers. A big part of this effectiveness is the worldbuilding, which has no rival except in Tolkien's Middle-Earth. So how did the master, Frank Herbert, craft the world of Dune?

He started with a lot of expositional dialogue. He couched it in the tensions of a royal family being ordered to a new fief, something even a child can understand. The Baron Harkonnen's scheming and Paul's sparring session with Gurney Halleck serve the tension well. The exposition also comes via Paul's questioning of his identity, jumpstarted by the famous gom jabbar scene. The exposition never comes all at once, but in pieces, with the important pieces often repeated for emphasis.

When it came to the setting of Arrakis and literal world building, Herbert focused on relevant details. For example, Fremen have blue within blue eyes and wear stillsuits to conserve their bodies' moisture. Most other details about them are incidental. House Atreides's base of operations is a city in the Imperial Basin, surrounded by the rock cliffs of the Shield Wall. Other than that, Arrakis is worm-ridden desert. Simple. How far and how high the cliffs are from the city, the size and population of the city, etc. doesn't matter. So why act like it does?

This post was inspired in part on Jeff Vande Zande's post, "World building in fiction." Check it out.

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.

IndieGen.xyz

Publishing power was decentralizing and democratizing before the current pandemic turned the world upside-down, with ViacomCBS announcing they were selling Simon & Schuster in March. In the last 2 months, the trend has only sped up, with Barnes & Noble to be the next major domino to fall.

As tradpub's slow demise sinks the book market into chaos, readers will miss the content curation legions of laid-off agents, editors, and publicists used to provide. People read what's put before them, and what's put before them is put there by a distribution and marketing network that will soon go extinct.

Long story short, we are all independents now.

Amazon could have filled readers' need for content curation, but they've dropped the ball. Into the void steps IndieGen.xyz, a "virtual convention" for indie creators. It's the brainchild of Paula Richey, who writes:

We can’t rely on big platforms to give our indie creators a level playing field. They’re all too invested in engineering the outcomes they want. Here, your work rises or falls on its own merit. How well will you serve your customers?

I’ve had my suspicions confirmed that a certain giant retail platform is turning into a pay-to-play marketplace. Just like I’ve said, sponsored ads are taking up all the best space, and the regular spaces for all the little people have been nerfed to make those ads more necessary.

IndieGen.xyz is a straightforward, customer-centered search, not a complex algorithm that hides some things and recommends others. This is why it doesn’t host the actual sales pages or handle the payments. It doesn’t take up a lot of space. It doesn’t need to sort the shoppers. All they have to do is browse the site and find what they want. I hope some of them want what I have to offer at OtherRealm Studio, and will eventually buy some IndieGen.xyz merch as well once I get that done, but I’m not about to cheat to make it happen. I create what I create and people want what they want; it doesn’t need to be complicated.

Richey is doing a public service with this site, and I'm proud to support it. This is where the rubber meets the road. Browse the booths, or if you've got something to sell, apply for one yourself. The process is easy and quick.

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.