Month: September 2024

Post Renaissance European Collapse

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Since at least 1500 AD the most dominant, dynamic culture on Earth has been Europe and its colonies.  Portugal, Spain, Holland and England along with smaller contributions from France, Belgium and Germany colonized the world by sea.  And the Russians conquered northern Asia by land.  European science and technology revolutionized all aspects of life and their cultural endeavors produced superb music and art.  Basically, Europe transformed life and they dragged the rest of the world along with them.

But along the way the Renaissance civilization has seemingly lost the morale and confidence it once had.  It has adopted a global view that holds Europeans guilty for all of the ills of the third world nations and requires them to make amends by allowing endless immigration into their lands until there is no longer a trace of Europe left.  And that goes double for the United States.

I don’t think there is a previous example of something like this in history.  Civilizations have been overrun by migrations before.  The Bronze Age Collapse and 5th Century AD Rome are obvious examples but, in neither case, did the invaded civilization go out of its way to invite the event that overwhelmed them.  The globalists think they can manage this replacement of their people and culture seamlessly.  But even at this early stage of the process, things don’t look very promising.  Crime, ignorance, poverty and disease are problems that were minimized in the highly organized environment of the first world.  The new immigrants are a totally different case.  And no attempt is being made to force them to assimilate to the culture of their hosts.  Pretty soon we will have a very large population with a multitude of backgrounds and cultures that will drown out the older European culture.  And it may be the case that it will drown out the properties that this older population possessed and which were the source of the stability and prosperity that used to be the status quo.

If that’s the case, what will follow?

As I said there really isn’t any close analog for what is going on.  The globalists believe in their “end of history” theory.  They feel that the western countries have already built a framework (financial and military) that precludes the possibility of their arrangements being challenged.  After all, China gets to sell us all our stuff and in return they get to be the new Japan and do what we say.  The same holds for the Middle East and Russia and the rest of the world.  Well, it seems they might be wrong.  Lots of countries that toed the line during the Cold War are beginning to talk amongst themselves and maybe they no longer think that a monopolar world is the only or even the best choice for their future.  Places as different as Saudi Arabia and Brazil are looking around at their options and they aren’t necessarily thrilled with the program that Washington and Brussels are pushing.  Things are changing pretty rapidly.  New alliances are forming and even the military power of the United States isn’t as formidable as it once was.

So where does this leave us in a few years?  My guess is a West swamped with third world poor will be a less powerful, less technologically advanced place.  I guess it will be something like Brazil; a patchwork of poor and rich areas but without the stability formerly provided by the large middle class.  And this will allow some other countries to move ahead as world leaders.  Guessing I’d say maybe China and some other of the Asian countries are the best bet for these up-and-coming places.  Who knows, maybe in the future China might even sponsor enterprise zones in North America where Chinese industry takes advantage of labor resources to set up factories where Americans can earn slave wages to feed their families.  And I’m sure the American oligarchs will figure out a way to get their percentage from the deal.  They’ve always been interested in making a buck off the misfortune of their neighbors.

But we’ll have to wait and see.  We have an election where illegal immigration is one of the hot topics.  Anything is possible, I guess.

20SEP2024 – Quote of the Day

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Love Poems

 

And the best of all ways

To lengthen our days

Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!

 

Oh, call it by some better name,

For friendship sounds too cold.

 

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms

Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,

Were to change by to-morrow and fleet in my arms,

Like fairy gifts fading away.

Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment thou art,

Let thy loveliness fade as it will,

And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart,

Would entwine itself verdantly still.

 

No, the heart that has truly lov’d never forgets,

But as truly loves on to the close;

As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets

The same look which she turn’d when he rose.

 

Thomas Moore

Theater of the Absurd

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If ten years ago you had told me that the most interesting television presidential interview would be Greg Gutfeld and Donald Trump, I would have said, “Greg who?” followed by, “You mean the guy from The Apprentice?”

But Gutfeld provides Trump with one of the only television spaces where he’s not fending off attacks from so-called journalists.  Now I don’t count the Hannity type infomercial.  It’s too phony for anyone to take seriously.  And surprisingly, Trump doesn’t seem at ease when he sits down with Tucker Carlson for whatever reason.

With Gutfeld and his panel of goofballs Trump seems jovial and loose which is when he’s at his best.  And Gutfeld has a decent sized audience for cable tv.  I’ve been watching Gutfeld on and off since his “Red Eye” days.  He’s basically a libertarian but he doesn’t attack the Right much anymore so he’s relatively benign.  Good to see Trump getting a platform.

Aspects of World Building – 2

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This installment is a fake.  What I want to talk about isn’t really part of world-building but rather different aspects of writing characters.  But since I’m too lazy to start another series of posts for non-world-building writing considerations I’ll put them here.  And in fact, I might even do that with other posts on other aspects of writing because I am inherently messy and undisciplined.

So, aspects of characterization in science fiction!

Over the years I have noticed that characters in science fiction have become more detailed.  The earlier writers in the 1930s and 1940s often produced stories that were more about some aspect of science driving a plot that didn’t require well rounded human characters.  Even the protagonist might be something of a cardboard cutout.  Sometimes this was intentional because the author didn’t care about the characters.  They were merely a means to an end.  They just had to move the plot along to the payoff.

And sometimes this flatness was more a consequence of the extremely limited abilities of the authors to portray normal human speech and actions.  They weren’t good writers.

But the opposite problem is now the case.  There are “science fiction” authors who write “literary” stories that are extremely character driven and psychologically grounded and lavish enormous attention to the interactions of these characters but which do not produce any interesting plot.  So, if your story takes place in a dystopic or utopic future but all your characters do is discuss their romantic problems, I have a hard time thinking of that as science fiction.

It seems to me that a happy medium is what’s needed.  But that is easier said than done.

In my latest story-writing, “The Sniper,” most of the text is taken up with the plot.  There is dialog and interaction and character development but I wouldn’t say it is sufficient.  There are several relationships between the characters that need further development.  But the tricky part is fitting the required dialog into the storyline.  It’s almost as if I’ll need to have two of the characters pinned down together during a battle for them to have the time to say what’s needed.  I remember in Heinlein’s “Beyond This Horizon” there was some such scene that was pivotal for the exposition of the two major characters’ points of view and the resolution of the plot.  The hard part is making it seem spontaneous and not contrived.  Apparently, there is some art to this writing thing.

It’s funny.  Over the years I have developed a taste for some literary fiction.  Specifically, I enjoy well-written short stories.  What I have been toying with is the idea of embedding one or more literary scenes in an otherwise non-literary science fiction story.  There could be a minor scene going on and two characters, possibly neither one of them very important to the plot become involved in a discussion or an activity that has only incidental importance to the plot but which is inherently meaningful and aesthetically interesting.  Of course, that presupposes that I can come up with something that displays those qualities.

With respect to characterization, I intend to go back into my sniper novel and add more dialog to some of the secondary plot lines.  I need to work on my female characters.  I may even try to get Camera Girl’s advice on these.  She is, after all, a girl, so she may have valuable recommendations.  But I fear she may make her characters too ruthless.  Like all barbarians she is inherently merciless

And I still have to decide what I will do with my AI character.  If her creator dies, I’m not sure whether I want her to survive or not.  I had decided that she would suicide.  But I’m growing attached to her.  And I see her value in future stories.  Perhaps death of a parent can be a maturing experience.  She is rather childlike.

In conclusion, the correct amount of characterization in a story is an indication of the balanced writer.  Not so much that the plot bogs down nor so little that you don’t care what happens to the characters.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances.”

Throwing Light on Dark Matter

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I was rooting around on X and I saw a link to a review of a physics book, “Quantised Accelerations: From Anomalies to New Physics” by Michael McCulloch that Hans G. Schantz reviewed on his substack.  What caught my attention was that this book attempts to explain the observed higher velocity of stars on the outer edges of galaxies without resorting to “dark matter.”

I confess that the review describes concepts of quantum behavior that I am unqualified to evaluate but I liked the analogy of dark matter to the mythical existence of planet “Vulcan” to explain the perturbations of the planet Mercury that was required before relativity was proposed by Einstein.

It makes sense to me that before accepting that the majority of matter in the universe is indetectable it would make sense to probe a little deeper into all of the effects of the physical phenomena we’ve already confirmed.

This one is for those who enjoy contemplating the brain-twisting weirdness of the very large and the very small.