In the year 2075 "Luna" is a penal colony for Earth, and revolution is brewing. Four conspirators decide to overthrow the Authority that rules them; Mannie, a Jack of all trades and third-generation "Loonie"; Wyoming Knott, a surrogate mother with a personal vendetta against the Authority; Professor de la Paz, an anarchist by profession; and Mike, a self-aware computer, the only one of his kind, who controls all the electrical systems on Luna. The foursome pool their skills to concoct a scheme that will forever change life on the moon and politics on Earth.
They don't give out the Hugo award for just anything; this book has a lot to say about human nature, politics, and power. Its stance on human nature is classically comedic: the characters have many flaws and trivial affairs, but there is hope for all of them. Heinlein makes the plot believable by combining these very human characters with intricate descriptions of physics and sociology; of all the science fiction books I've ever read, this is one of the few I half-expect to come true.
I'd like to spend some time on where the Lunar society intersects with our current social struggles. Despite being founded on a population of convicts, Luna is mostly a peaceful society where crime is low and war is impossible. However, there are instances which are commonplace there but shock visitors from Terra (Earth); the concept of "eliminating" wrongdoers, and the Loonie response to violence against themselves. Elimination is a certain kind of murder in which a group of Loonies forces someone out of an air lock and onto the vacuum of the moon's surface. There are no written laws on Luna, but everyone seems to know whether someone deserves to be eliminated. New conscripts often face this fate due to social blunders. Even more violently, there are several scenes in the book when agents of the Lunar Authority attack, and when this happens, Loonies of all ages drop whatever they're doing and fight with whatever they have at hand until every last offender is dead. Women literally tear rapists apart, and children fearlessly wield kitchen knives against intruders with laser guns. It's an interesting outcome of the setting's effect on social understanding, and I appreciate the fact that it doesn't seem to be driven by a political agenda.
This agenda's back seat to the story is somewhat opposite to what I have to criticize about Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (you knew I couldn't get too deep into science fiction without bringing her up). In fact, the setting itself is ideal, even metaphorical, for creating a politically clean slate upon which to see politics afresh, as though experimenting with a control group. The characters hail from every nation on Earth. Because of their polygamous family structure, it's impossible for most of them to be sure of their ancestry, in contrast with the ethnically segregated United States. Rather than taking a swing at a particular ideology or group, Heinlein suggests that we all share the blame for political oppression by showing that the Lunar Authority is made up of nationally diverse politicians. This suggestion is cemented by the scheming that begins among Loonies almost as soon as they begin to envision life without an Authority. These characters are as close as they can be to a political and physical vacuum, but they go on being political creatures just as they keep on breathing air.
Into this mix is a personal note: one of my biases toward the book is the fact that Prof, one of the best fleshed-out characters, shares my political views more than any fictional character I've ever read. He adheres to "rational anarchism," a term Heinlein apparently invented. Essentially, he believes that political systems are imaginary constructs, and that with each person lies his own responsibility for his own actions. This viewpoint reinforces three things: the Loonies' ability to envision a society with a different kind of government than what history has shown them; Earth's ability to set aside political differences when they believe their economy is threatened from above; and Heinlein's ability to imagine people accepting or rejecting an ideology even when doing so is the hard choice.
From the stance of science fiction, my fascination was drawn over and over to Mike the computer. His name is short for Mycroft, the brother of Sherlock Holmes, and his motivation for participating in the coup is to test the limits of his intelligence. We see him do various incredible things, such as divide his personality, invent CGI, and calculate probabilities for future, qualitative events. It is a credit to Heinlein's writing that these are described with such emotion and curiosity that we can believe they are happening for the first time in human history. Moreover, in many ways, Mike is the most sympathetic character in the book. The first scene details Mannie patiently, fraternally explaining humor to Mike one joke at a time; much later, when Mike has learned and practiced enough to control and calculate far more than anyone ever expected of him, he still longs for a simpler future when he and Mannie can go back to trading jokes.
Read this book! It's a wonderful monolith of science fiction, and you'll be sure to learn something about your own relationship with society.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Monday, August 1, 2016
Review: History in English Words by Owen Barfield (1926), and a Sapir-Whorf glimpse at fantasy
Owen Barfield, long-time member of the Inklings (the legendary Oxford University book club whose members included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis), liked words.
He liked them so much that he drew from them a detailed history of Western Europe's epistemic development.
History in English Words is a plunge into etymology that claims that the words we use contain a pattern that impacts more than language hobbyists. The basic thesis is this: if we know our history, and know which English words are borrowed from which other languages, we can put two and two together to trace the introduction and evolution of concepts we as a civilization now consider given, but which we did not always know. Thus we can gain a new lens through which to see our cosmology and learn from it.
Fascinating, right? If you're not a fan of etymology, linguistics, or history, don't worry; I'll have another science fiction review up soon. My recommendation of this book is simple: if you like etymology, absolutely read it; if not, give it a try, but don't feel bad if you don't get all the way through it.
For my fellow word nerds, this is an important book. First of all, most of the book is a detailed walkthrough of the various periods and categories of English's lexical history, beginning with its oldest known (to Barfield) ancestor, Indo-European. Different chapters give us windows into subjects like Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian doctrine, to name but a few. His sequence is mostly chronological. Most of the subject matter consists of specific examples of words we use every day, many of whose present meanings have escaped completely from their original metaphor or intention.
Speaking of metaphor, there's a sub-theme to the book concerning the creation of words that is relevant to anyone who seeks to write creatively. I've said before that it's our responsibility to take an active role in the maturation of the language we speak, but only here did I learn that this action is actually metaphor at its root. Barfield's example is the word "prevaricate," which a modern dictionary defines as "to speak or act in an evasive way," but whose Latin roots mean "to plow in a furrow." Barfield argues that we can't actually conceive of new ideas in any way other than building on concepts we already possess. So if you can't just point to an object and place a new word on it, the only way you can create it in an understandable way is to compare it to something which it actually is not: a metaphor!
While I'm here, I might as well point out the implications of this conclusion on fantasy. G. K. Chesterton, from whom the name of my blog is ripped off, has written that "the test of fairyland [is that] you cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail." This reminds me of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, which basically says that the language we learn to use influences the concepts we are able to envision. I propose that how we write, read and accept fantasy, a genre naturally experimental with metaphor, indicates what we are able to conceive as a culture, and by omission what is unimaginable to us.
I may revisit this hypothesis, and I hope those of you who decide to read Barfield are as delighted as I am with both his adventure into our language and with how far our imagination can take us.
He liked them so much that he drew from them a detailed history of Western Europe's epistemic development.
History in English Words is a plunge into etymology that claims that the words we use contain a pattern that impacts more than language hobbyists. The basic thesis is this: if we know our history, and know which English words are borrowed from which other languages, we can put two and two together to trace the introduction and evolution of concepts we as a civilization now consider given, but which we did not always know. Thus we can gain a new lens through which to see our cosmology and learn from it.
Fascinating, right? If you're not a fan of etymology, linguistics, or history, don't worry; I'll have another science fiction review up soon. My recommendation of this book is simple: if you like etymology, absolutely read it; if not, give it a try, but don't feel bad if you don't get all the way through it.
For my fellow word nerds, this is an important book. First of all, most of the book is a detailed walkthrough of the various periods and categories of English's lexical history, beginning with its oldest known (to Barfield) ancestor, Indo-European. Different chapters give us windows into subjects like Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian doctrine, to name but a few. His sequence is mostly chronological. Most of the subject matter consists of specific examples of words we use every day, many of whose present meanings have escaped completely from their original metaphor or intention.
Speaking of metaphor, there's a sub-theme to the book concerning the creation of words that is relevant to anyone who seeks to write creatively. I've said before that it's our responsibility to take an active role in the maturation of the language we speak, but only here did I learn that this action is actually metaphor at its root. Barfield's example is the word "prevaricate," which a modern dictionary defines as "to speak or act in an evasive way," but whose Latin roots mean "to plow in a furrow." Barfield argues that we can't actually conceive of new ideas in any way other than building on concepts we already possess. So if you can't just point to an object and place a new word on it, the only way you can create it in an understandable way is to compare it to something which it actually is not: a metaphor!
While I'm here, I might as well point out the implications of this conclusion on fantasy. G. K. Chesterton, from whom the name of my blog is ripped off, has written that "the test of fairyland [is that] you cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail." This reminds me of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, which basically says that the language we learn to use influences the concepts we are able to envision. I propose that how we write, read and accept fantasy, a genre naturally experimental with metaphor, indicates what we are able to conceive as a culture, and by omission what is unimaginable to us.
I may revisit this hypothesis, and I hope those of you who decide to read Barfield are as delighted as I am with both his adventure into our language and with how far our imagination can take us.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Writing is Healing
Welcome back! Three years isn't much of a hiatus, is it?
A lot has changed since my last post. In short (because this isn't a blog about my life), I started and finished a graduate program in business administration and lived for two years on a mountain with a community of Franciscan friars. Now I'm living with relatives while I look for a job in a non-profit or service cause.
I never intended to take a break from writing, and I never stopped thinking of myself as a writer. I can't even say that life got in the way; after all, I've never been busier than when I was an undergraduate, and I did far more unprompted writing during that time than in the rest of my life combined. Yet graduate school was a desert experience for me: I had few friends, and most of my energy was divided between physically exercising, discerning my future, and the yet-undiscovered experience of studying. And the Franciscans run an intentional community, which means that although I was never bound by their vows, to participate fully in their lifestyle I needed to focus my creative energy on hospitality.
* * * * * * * *
Although this isn't a blog about my life, I need to talk about my return to writing in order to re-invite you into your own genius. And to do this, I need to get personal and messy by talking about my own demons.
I believe there are two kinds of demons we face every day. You can call them vices, addictions, illnesses, obstacles, challenges, opportunities, pitfalls, or whatever works for your own experience; I prefer to personify them. The first kind are the ones that will be with us our whole lives. They show up in different ways depending on our situations. Most importantly, however difficult they make life for us, they are not intrinsically bad, for they are part of us. They do harm primarily when we pretend they don't exist or try to kill them, but we can accomplish great good by embracing them.*
My own include perfectionism, loneliness (especially for intimacy), and self-doubt.
The second are exterior and not intrinsic to us. In fact, we often use them to try to drown out the first kind of demons, the ones that are the parts of ourselves we don't like. They should be either moderated or eliminated. They include coping mechanisms like substance addictions, promiscuity, and the pursuit of tangible achievements such as money.
My own include procrastination, internet overuse, and obsession with achievement. When I indulge in too much of even one of these, my writing crashes faster than a state trooper in a Blues Brothers movie.
The first two go hand in hand. To illustrate, here's a list of what I've done on my computer while writing this post:
-helped a friend revise his Magic: the Gathering deck.
-watched six action movie trailers.
-looked up Mass times for a local church.
-mapped this morning's run.
-mapped the total area I've run while living here, then catalogued it with my other running statistics.
-checked my email.
-volunteered for a walk-a-thon.
-checked my LinkedIn page.
-checked the twenty-one webcomics I follow, then read a handful more pages of webcomics.
-read an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.
-read an issue of The Fantastic Four.
-researched Project A119 (this one's actually quite interesting, especially if you like history).
-read an article about marriage.
-read an article about a human stress index.
-read a list of stupidest posts on Twitter.
-read a list of celebrities who look like Pokémon.
-read a list of stupid bosses.
-played a set of trivia quizzes.
-researched the answers I got wrong on said quizzes.
-listened to Christian rock on Youtube.
-listened to rock that is decidedly not very Christian on Youtube.
-watched a short cartoon.
-read about Hiyao Miyazaki.
-updated my blog profile.
-taught myself how to count to twenty in sign language.
-played about thirty games of Su Doku on "evil" mode.
-checked my Facebook profile about eight thousand times, wherein I saw exactly three notifications and two messages, one of which was about those movie trailers and Magic: the Gathering cards.
And if that doesn't look to you like a problem, I did all this in the time it took me to write this post's second paragraph (about twenty-two hours). You might have other coping methods, but with smart phones becoming ever more ubiquitous, I doubt I'm in the minority with this issue, especially among my generation.
As for obsession with achievement, notice the fact that I can quantify what I've learned today.
* * * * * * * * *
In my confused, teenage years, writing itself was a coping mechanism, through which I could order my thoughts and feelings on my own time and in my own medium, where they made more sense than they did when I was put on the spot or had to conform to values I didn't understand. When my emotions were well integrated, writing became a powerful way to process them. When they were poorly integrated, my writing flagged and I suffered what I've come to know as "dark moods," where it was difficult for me to focus on anything but a yearning for intimacy.
My writing hiatus was accompanied by a hiatus of this dynamic. This owed itself to a commitment of my spiritual time toward hospitality and fraternity, as well as an extremely difficult relationship which made all intimacy significantly less savory.
Now that I'm back in what we may call a "non-intentional community" (better known as a "suburb"), my balance between creative effusiveness and anxious yearning has begun to return. It fits to consider this a vacillation between extroversion and introversion: sometimes I long for company, while other times I long for solitude. And while I think the rigors of community life have given me more maturity, still I find myself returning to coping mechanisms like idle internet surfing, which, were I better integrated, surely I wouldn't need. Would I?
Willpower or discipline can certainly help, but I think the key to the healing which each person needs uniquely is balance. So here are, in my opinion, the key elements of balance of which writing is a cornerstone in my life:
Human needs: I tell this to college students whenever I can. I was never the sharpest tool in the shed, but I got good grades because I was one of the only students in my school who got a good night's sleep most nights of the week, exercised regularly, and have still never tasted Ramen noodles. Maslow figured it out long enough ago; when our other needs are met, we can focus our attention on the mysteries that make us human.
Work and play: Work allows you to create a positive difference in your community, while play allows you to explore yourself with a different set of consequences. I tend to enjoy labor-intensive work and mentally-intensive play, so writing is play for me, but it flourishes only when I can also be of service to others through work.
Company and solitude: Too little socializing can drive anyone crazy, but often so can too much. Because writing is a solitary experience for most people, it should be complemented by regular human interaction, especially intimacy. However, I've found it can also help to process loneliness by creating communication. Loved ones can also help us with the creative process by discovering our blind spots.
The familiar and the strange: Perhaps it's the fantasy writer in me, but I find something romantic in exploring new places and meeting new people. Yet few of us find it easy to appreciate both novelty and familiarity. A balance between the two of these is essential for knowing your writing material. You'll need to have characters you know like your own heart, and you'll want them to be exposed to things that surprise them, or your story isn't going to convince me.
Standards and forgiveness: This is the most important balancing act because it pervades all the others at every moment. As a perfectionist, I find it especially difficult. I want to live a balanced life, but what happens when I don't? What happens when I can't? (Impossible!) My tendency is never to give myself room to put all the standards down and laugh at myself before picking them back up. It probably has a lot to do with my long hiatus from writing. Other personalities might skew the opposite way, and be too lenient on themselves, lacking the discipline which balance often takes.
I have deliberately failed to make this list exhaustive; it's here for you as artists and human beings to pick it up and play with it. It is a result of my embracing perfectionism, loneliness, and self-doubt, rather than running from them or denouncing them as evil. It is also an example of the baring of the imperfect self that needs to happen for true creativity to awaken. After all, if we understood life perfectly, what would be left to write about?
*I recommend Helen Palmer's book on the Enneagram personality model, or any trustworthy book on the subject, on the matter of our lifelong behavioral biases. Specifically to the Enneagram, I'd dissuade you from taking a questionnaire and pinning a type on yourself without reading further; most questionnaires I've taken have gauged me inaccurately.
A lot has changed since my last post. In short (because this isn't a blog about my life), I started and finished a graduate program in business administration and lived for two years on a mountain with a community of Franciscan friars. Now I'm living with relatives while I look for a job in a non-profit or service cause.
I never intended to take a break from writing, and I never stopped thinking of myself as a writer. I can't even say that life got in the way; after all, I've never been busier than when I was an undergraduate, and I did far more unprompted writing during that time than in the rest of my life combined. Yet graduate school was a desert experience for me: I had few friends, and most of my energy was divided between physically exercising, discerning my future, and the yet-undiscovered experience of studying. And the Franciscans run an intentional community, which means that although I was never bound by their vows, to participate fully in their lifestyle I needed to focus my creative energy on hospitality.
* * * * * * * *
Although this isn't a blog about my life, I need to talk about my return to writing in order to re-invite you into your own genius. And to do this, I need to get personal and messy by talking about my own demons.
I believe there are two kinds of demons we face every day. You can call them vices, addictions, illnesses, obstacles, challenges, opportunities, pitfalls, or whatever works for your own experience; I prefer to personify them. The first kind are the ones that will be with us our whole lives. They show up in different ways depending on our situations. Most importantly, however difficult they make life for us, they are not intrinsically bad, for they are part of us. They do harm primarily when we pretend they don't exist or try to kill them, but we can accomplish great good by embracing them.*
My own include perfectionism, loneliness (especially for intimacy), and self-doubt.
The second are exterior and not intrinsic to us. In fact, we often use them to try to drown out the first kind of demons, the ones that are the parts of ourselves we don't like. They should be either moderated or eliminated. They include coping mechanisms like substance addictions, promiscuity, and the pursuit of tangible achievements such as money.
My own include procrastination, internet overuse, and obsession with achievement. When I indulge in too much of even one of these, my writing crashes faster than a state trooper in a Blues Brothers movie.
The first two go hand in hand. To illustrate, here's a list of what I've done on my computer while writing this post:
-helped a friend revise his Magic: the Gathering deck.
-watched six action movie trailers.
-looked up Mass times for a local church.
-mapped this morning's run.
-mapped the total area I've run while living here, then catalogued it with my other running statistics.
-checked my email.
-volunteered for a walk-a-thon.
-checked my LinkedIn page.
-checked the twenty-one webcomics I follow, then read a handful more pages of webcomics.
-read an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.
-read an issue of The Fantastic Four.
-researched Project A119 (this one's actually quite interesting, especially if you like history).
-read an article about marriage.
-read an article about a human stress index.
-read a list of stupidest posts on Twitter.
-read a list of celebrities who look like Pokémon.
-read a list of stupid bosses.
-played a set of trivia quizzes.
-researched the answers I got wrong on said quizzes.
-listened to Christian rock on Youtube.
-listened to rock that is decidedly not very Christian on Youtube.
-watched a short cartoon.
-read about Hiyao Miyazaki.
-updated my blog profile.
-taught myself how to count to twenty in sign language.
-played about thirty games of Su Doku on "evil" mode.
-checked my Facebook profile about eight thousand times, wherein I saw exactly three notifications and two messages, one of which was about those movie trailers and Magic: the Gathering cards.
And if that doesn't look to you like a problem, I did all this in the time it took me to write this post's second paragraph (about twenty-two hours). You might have other coping methods, but with smart phones becoming ever more ubiquitous, I doubt I'm in the minority with this issue, especially among my generation.
As for obsession with achievement, notice the fact that I can quantify what I've learned today.
* * * * * * * * *
In my confused, teenage years, writing itself was a coping mechanism, through which I could order my thoughts and feelings on my own time and in my own medium, where they made more sense than they did when I was put on the spot or had to conform to values I didn't understand. When my emotions were well integrated, writing became a powerful way to process them. When they were poorly integrated, my writing flagged and I suffered what I've come to know as "dark moods," where it was difficult for me to focus on anything but a yearning for intimacy.
My writing hiatus was accompanied by a hiatus of this dynamic. This owed itself to a commitment of my spiritual time toward hospitality and fraternity, as well as an extremely difficult relationship which made all intimacy significantly less savory.
Now that I'm back in what we may call a "non-intentional community" (better known as a "suburb"), my balance between creative effusiveness and anxious yearning has begun to return. It fits to consider this a vacillation between extroversion and introversion: sometimes I long for company, while other times I long for solitude. And while I think the rigors of community life have given me more maturity, still I find myself returning to coping mechanisms like idle internet surfing, which, were I better integrated, surely I wouldn't need. Would I?
Willpower or discipline can certainly help, but I think the key to the healing which each person needs uniquely is balance. So here are, in my opinion, the key elements of balance of which writing is a cornerstone in my life:
Human needs: I tell this to college students whenever I can. I was never the sharpest tool in the shed, but I got good grades because I was one of the only students in my school who got a good night's sleep most nights of the week, exercised regularly, and have still never tasted Ramen noodles. Maslow figured it out long enough ago; when our other needs are met, we can focus our attention on the mysteries that make us human.
Work and play: Work allows you to create a positive difference in your community, while play allows you to explore yourself with a different set of consequences. I tend to enjoy labor-intensive work and mentally-intensive play, so writing is play for me, but it flourishes only when I can also be of service to others through work.
Company and solitude: Too little socializing can drive anyone crazy, but often so can too much. Because writing is a solitary experience for most people, it should be complemented by regular human interaction, especially intimacy. However, I've found it can also help to process loneliness by creating communication. Loved ones can also help us with the creative process by discovering our blind spots.
The familiar and the strange: Perhaps it's the fantasy writer in me, but I find something romantic in exploring new places and meeting new people. Yet few of us find it easy to appreciate both novelty and familiarity. A balance between the two of these is essential for knowing your writing material. You'll need to have characters you know like your own heart, and you'll want them to be exposed to things that surprise them, or your story isn't going to convince me.
Standards and forgiveness: This is the most important balancing act because it pervades all the others at every moment. As a perfectionist, I find it especially difficult. I want to live a balanced life, but what happens when I don't? What happens when I can't? (Impossible!) My tendency is never to give myself room to put all the standards down and laugh at myself before picking them back up. It probably has a lot to do with my long hiatus from writing. Other personalities might skew the opposite way, and be too lenient on themselves, lacking the discipline which balance often takes.
I have deliberately failed to make this list exhaustive; it's here for you as artists and human beings to pick it up and play with it. It is a result of my embracing perfectionism, loneliness, and self-doubt, rather than running from them or denouncing them as evil. It is also an example of the baring of the imperfect self that needs to happen for true creativity to awaken. After all, if we understood life perfectly, what would be left to write about?
*I recommend Helen Palmer's book on the Enneagram personality model, or any trustworthy book on the subject, on the matter of our lifelong behavioral biases. Specifically to the Enneagram, I'd dissuade you from taking a questionnaire and pinning a type on yourself without reading further; most questionnaires I've taken have gauged me inaccurately.
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