23SEP2023 – Generational Differences

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Happy first day of Fall here at the Autumnal Equinox.

So, I looked around at the news to see if anything jumped out at me.  Meh.  Lots of stuff is going on.  The Texas AG sat down with Tucker to talk about the impeachment hit the DOJ put out on him and how it failed.  That was pretty interesting but I wasn’t in the mood for that level of wonkery.

There are all kinds of articles about Menendez but I’ve got a weak stomach so the little bit I’ve done already is about half the fatal dose for that stuff.

But then I was watching a YouTube video by a sf critic called Bookpilled, where he listed what he considered the top science fiction books in his opinion.  The list was fairly interesting:

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

The Stars My Destination / Tiger! Tiger! by Alfred Bester

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin

Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

City by Clifford D. Simak

Hothouse by Brian Aldiss

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Blood Music by Greg Bear

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

Blindsight by Peter Watts

So, because the list seemed thoughtful, I went onto one of his other videos.  This one was called Battle of the Hard Sci-Fi Classics [100 Book Challenge #35-40].  In this “challenge” the host read one or more books by the “Big Three.”  The works he read were “Rendezvous with Rama” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke; “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein; “I, Robot” and “The Gods Themselves” by Isaac Asimov.

Well, I’ll say Bookpilled was not particularly impressed by these golden age authors.  Clarke and Asimov were damned with faint praise but his true scorn was reserved for poor old Bob Heinlein.  Scathing would be a mild description of his comments about the Dean of Science Fiction.  Not amused.

And that brings me to the point of this little essay.  The reviewer Bookpilled, is a Millennial.  His sensibilities were formed in a different world from mine.  Now, much of his criticism of Heinlein (and of the other two authors to a lesser degree) center around the merits of the works as literature.  He finds fault with the characterizations of the protagonists, the seeming simplicity of the plot devices and even with the level of foreshadowing of events.

And in a lot of ways, the criticism is justified.  Heinlein’s characters were very often “types.”  The wise older man, the talented but naïve young man, the omni-competent hero, the socially awkward scientist.  And some of his books, especially in the later years were less successful as “works of art.”  But Bookpilled didn’t just give “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” low marks.  He was viscerally outraged by almost everything in the book.  He was especially upset about Heinlein’s handling of sex.  And, granted, sex is one of the truly weakest aspects of Heinlein’s writing, especially (apparently) from the point of view of Millennial readers.  But it’s interesting that his writing is completely unreadable for this apparently enthusiastic science fiction reader.  Why is this?  Frank Herbert is approximately of Heinlein’s generation but Herbert’s Dune is on Bookpilled’s top fifteen list of all time science fiction books.  So, what’s the deal?

I think the generational difference is that when science fiction was a new art form its audience was entirely made up of young men.  And the aspect of the work that earned it praise was almost entirely its capacity to inspire enthusiasm and wonder about the future.  Whether it was interstellar space travel, nuclear power, or alien life forms the loftiness of the prose and the depth of characterization were almost unimportant to the success of the story.  And so, when these older stories are read by 21st century critics they are not amused.  It matters not at all that “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is probably the first story to consider a political revolution between Earth and a space colony.  He’s read a host of books that took this concept and then updated for the present reader.

In these updated versions, the protagonist may be a black trans-lesbian with anti-white-colonial credentials and the computer will be the disembodied mind of Che Guevera or Woody Allen or someone else, depending on whether it’s an earnest political story, a comedy or something I can’t even imagine.  And the “diversity” allows the author to virtue signal to his audience the correctness of his story.  And if he’s a talented writer it allows him to add exotic points to the writing.

And that’s fine.  Every generation has its own art.  I think the important thing for me to note is that there is a place today for art that does not follow the template of the current day.  Bookpilled is a guy that looks like he’s somewhere in his early thirties.  So, his sensibilities are in line with his generation.  Now, I think he’s probably a fair example of his cohort and I’ll even say he’s probably not hostile to the world view of his parents’ generation.  He just sees things from his point of view.  But if he can enjoy Dune, Mote in God’s Eye, The War of the Worlds and even Frankenstein then he is reachable through art that speaks with a very different voice than his here and now literature.

So as an incipient science fiction author I think it behooves me to understand my potential market.  These young people are intelligent (well, at least the ones I want to reach).  Probably good writing, even if it comes from a different world view will interest them if it can provide sympathetic characters and interesting plot.  But if my plot challenges their world view it will need to be persuasive.  I won’t be able to win them over with exposition.  I’ll need to show them what I want them to understand.  That’s the challenge.

Well, why not?  Propaganda for its own sake is pretty awful even if it’s of your particular stripe.  So, Bob Heinlein be warned.  The Millennials have lost their patience and if you’re not careful they’ll take back your grandmaster’s hat and robe.  Get a copy of “Fifty Shades of Gray,” a highlighter and drop all the dears!

FBI, Bored with Persecuting Trump, Hire Bob Menendez as Sparring Partner

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“Sometimes a politician is so utterly, openly, and shamelessly corrupt, you just have to tip your hat in admiration“

(David Burge
@iowahawkblog)

I guess it was time for the FBI to indict Bob Menendez again.  So they raided his house and found bars of gold and probably myrrh and frankincense too.  They’ll probably put him on trial too.  And, as usual he’ll be released after a mistrial because New Jersey juries are almost as dishonest and DC juries.

You know compared to Merrick Garland or Joe Biden I can feel some sympathy for Menendez.  He’s just a regular crook peddling his influence and voting according to what the bigger crooks tell him to do.  He doesn’t jail Americans for protesting election fraud and he doesn’t start wars to help his cronies make billions.  He’s just a simple ham and egger, stealing a gold bar here and a gold bar there.  Where’s the harm?

Tucker Answers the Questions

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Some Swiss guy named Urs Gehriger interviewed Tucker Carlson.  There’s a change of pace!  Being a Carlson fanboy of sorts I found the interview fairly interesting.  There were no big surprises but the questions and answers were fairly satisfying.

One of my favorite quotes is toward the very end of the interview:

Weltwoche: In general, what gives you hope in a rather worrisome time, looking into the future? 

Carlson: That the stakes have suddenly gotten so high that smart people are rethinking their assumptions. I see it all around me. I see people all around me asking themselves, “I used to believe this. Is it still true? Was it ever true? What is the truth?” People are focused on questions of truth and falsehood, I think, much more deeply than they ever have been, and that’s a good thing.

I also see an awakening of spiritual awareness and religious faith in the United States that I think is great. Not everyone is reaching the same conclusions that I’m reaching, but that’s okay. It’s better than thinking that Amazon’s going to make you happy, because Amazon is not going to make you happy, actually. That’s not true. That’s a lie. And more and more people seem to be concluding that it’s a lie, and I think that’s a great thing.

That Tucker Carlson thinks there are “smart people” who are rethinking their positions on important issues might give me some cause for hope.  He has access to some of the movers and shakers and maybe there really is a change going on among the elites.  I haven’t seen any proof of that.  In fact, the exact opposite seems to be the case.  The term “doubling down” seems to be the order of the decade.  But maybe he can see that starting to happen.  At least it leaves a sliver of hope.

The Show Must Go On

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“And as the morning light comes streaming in you get up and do it again, amen. – Jackson Browne

As we all live our lives it sometimes seems that the radical changes and disruptions in our society that the Left has instituted must overwhelm the system and everything will come apart at the seams forcing us to abandon normalcy once and for all and take up a new existence as 21st century hunter-gatherers living off the released zoo animals and other feral survivors of a better age.  As we struggle to survive, the weak will go to the wall.  When cannibalism reappears the hopeless, like John Fetterman, will be the first to go in the pot.  And he may have his finest hour as soup or stew.

But what I notice is that despite the almost unending downward spiral of our world, people get up every morning and throw some water on their faces and figure out how to put food on the table and fuel in the oil tank.  And somehow, they do it with a laugh and a joke.  Now it may be gallows humor for sure.  But they still manage to make the joke.

And they’re right.  You can’t get through life no matter how bad things get with your teeth perpetually gritted.  You can do it for a while.  But if you keep it up too long, you’ll go mad.  Sure, when the latest atrocity occurs, you’re got to rail against it and shake your fist and maybe say terrible things about your enemies.  And maybe some people finally crack and go berserk.

But if you’ve got a wife and kids or even if you don’t, somehow you have to make it to Friday and you have to do all the things that get you there.  And more than that you have to somehow find some joy in the world.  Unless you’re a Dickensian villain like Uriah Heep or Ebenezer Scrooge grinding through your entire life clutching at thorns without a friend in the world is a fate worse than death.  Even a man on death row probably talks to the guards sometimes just to break up the monotony.

And that’s something I rediscovered recently.  After the 2020 election I was morose to a remarkable extent.  Other than family I couldn’t see what was going to keep this world going for me.  Disillusionment with our government was total.  I had little interest in day-to-day events and the news from Washington was nauseating.  And I think this had a deleterious effect on my peace of mind.  Apocalyptic thinking was becoming routine.

But even though things have continued to degrade in our day-to-day life I have had a chance to reflect.  Rather than thinking that the world has truly hit some all-time low, what I realize now is that we were formally living in a kind of golden age.  And through the foolishness of malicious people, it has been stamped out.  And in reality, most of mankind’s existence has been under conditions much, much worse than even this.

If we’re not as free as we once were, at least no one has branded us and sent us to work in the salt mines.  We may not be middle class Americans anymore but we haven’t reached North Korea levels of starvation.  We’re no longer proud of our leaders and our government but so far inflation hasn’t reached triple digits.

We live under a banana republic but so far, I can still make fun of Dementia Joe and the Keystone Gestapo he employs.  No one has dragged me off to the gulag yet.  And I seem to have rediscovered my sense of humor.

So yeah, things are bad.  As Howard Beale said “We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy.”  But when things are crazy you still have to live and maybe you can laugh at the crazy once in a while, even if you laugh while cleaning up the latest result of the crazy.

New England Leads the Nation in Election Fraud Education

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Connecticut is demonstrating how absentee ballot fraud is done on a wholesale basis.  A surveillance camera captures a state employee repeatedly dumping batches of absentee ballots into a drop box.  And the Democrat state officials look decidedly uncomfortable explaining how this impossible thing; voter fraud, could end up on a video feed for all to see.  And that’s the wrong part, as far as they’re concerned, the part where they get caught.

Well, from now on I’m looking forward to hearing all the fairy tales that the Democrats are ready to tell.  Just a few bad apples, nothing to see here, blah, blah, blah.  But this was a Democrat primary and the incumbent was the one who won by the margin in the absentee vote.  Will the Democrat who got cheated just roll over?  Should be very interesting.

Rufo’s Short Film on the “Cluster B Society”

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Christopher Rufo has made a ten minute video claiming to define the current psychopathology of the Left as the “Cluster B Society.”  It describes four different personality disorders that taken together allow for the phenomena that we see at work in the world today.  And being an academic he is able to draw the clearest examples from the college campus where narcissists, border-line personalities, sociopaths and hysterics have indeed captured the campus and established their own stable institutions that everyone else there must endure.

I don’t find myself competent to judge the accuracy or the importance of the details that Rufo is using to prove his thesis about the particular personality types that he points to in this video.  But the overall effect that he describes is familiar to everyone who has lived through the last ten years.  The feminized and hysterics-driven environment we find ourselves in is all too clear to those of us who grew up in a much saner world.

I’m not sure who is the audience for this video.  Maybe those with a grounding in psychology.  Even lacking that background I found it interesting.  But I’m not sure how it can be used to change the problem.  But I acknowledge that Rufo might find this explanation for the dysfunctional campus useful for someone like himself who is attempting to purge a particular college of its shrieking madwomen.  Kudos to him for that.