The Inscrutability of Angels

[Elok]

So, I checked The Better Angels of our Nature out from the library, because I figured I had no business not reading a book that had generated so much talk about a subject I was interested in.  I started out sort-of agreeing with Pinker; I think violence has indeed become much less an everyday part of life, and we are much safer and more secure in a variety of ways than our ancestors.  And the experts Pinker cited sounded interesting.  Sadly, Pinker himself came across as an insufferable dingbat, and I stopped reading the book a third of the way through when I realized I was only reading it to say I'd read the whole thing, and it just didn't matter to me that much.  It seemed like he'd started with a conclusion he liked ("the Enlightenment was rad!") and was working in whatever evidence he could find to fit it, forcing in or eliding what didn't work.  With lots of bizarre theories and special pleading along the way.

Just for example, he posits that perhaps we're less violent in part because we have better manners and hygiene, and people Back Then were so dirty and gross that they didn't think twice about hitting each other.  The past was full of people entertaining themselves with horrible violent narratives like Grimm or the Bible; we have far more explicitly violent narratives today, but we've obviously compartmentalized this since we're not violent so past violent narratives count as evidence but Call of Duty and Dexter don't.  Lots of statements like "today we are shocked by X behavior," where it's clear that "we" means "people in Steven Pinker's subculture."  As it happens, lots of moderns see nothing wrong with hitting people who insult your family.  However, they're disadvantaged or reactionary and don't count as modern, or something.

Even the harder analysis of history is pretty weaksauce.  He shifts back and forth between materialistic and cultural explanations of history, whichever will suit him better at present, but tends to favor cultural because it's friendlier to sweeping assertions.  He misses obvious stuff like the very different conditions surrounding the American and French Revolutions (ours worked and theirs didn't because we followed the right Enlightenment thinkers instead of crappy ones like Rousseau), and dismisses the idea that the extended great-powers peace since 1950 is due to nukes by failing to account for the game-changing impact of ICBMs.

Mostly, I feel that a lot of "people have become less violent" is really another way of phrasing "life today is better than the past in general."  Like, in the old days, most of war deaths were due to starvation and disease, because armies back then were forced to feed themselves by robbing whatever village was closest along the campaign trail.  Good preserved food didn't come along until the 19th century.  Wars dragged on interminably because the means to make them quick and decisive didn't exist.  Communications were slow, transport was slow, everything was unreliable, most politics were local.  What does it mean, really, to call technological and economic improvements a "better angel"?

This is a thread, so I should probably have input from people other than me, huh?  Anybody else read it, or tried to?

[Lorizael]

I haven't read this book, but I know the thesis (duh) and I've read The Language Instinct. My general opinion is that Pinker is an engaging writer and a linguist/cognitive scientist. The former means he can make us believe the things he writes. The latter means there's not any particular reason we should believe the stuff that isn't about linguistics or cognitive science. (Which is not to say he can't be right about material outside his area of expertise. It's just that the only reason people are bothering to debate his thesis is because he's a good enough communicator to get people's attention.)

[Elok]

Well, this died, so I'll make it into an Elok-and-authors sort of thread in general.  Hey, BUncle.  You mentioned taking a class from Orson Scott Card at one point.  Does he talk/think in the same weird way he assigns to all of his characters, or at least all the recent ones?  E.g., does he run on the assumption that all women devote fifty percent of their mental energies to getting impregnated, or turn routine conversations into variations on the iocaine powder scene from The Princess Bride?  Is he tremendously entertained by scatological humor, and if so does he interweave it effortlessly with abstract discussions of moral philosophy?  I realize you may have met him some time ago, but after reading the Pathfinder books I begin to wonder just what's going on in that head of his.

[Buster's Uncle]

Lovely thing - I didn't wake up super-alert. 

The short answer is I thought he was sane and sensible when I sorta knew the man (we met several times at UNCG in 86, and the class at Appalachian in 87 was interactive, and we were more than just acquaintances; he might even remember my name if I was in Greensboro NC and ran into him) in the late 80s, and I still think he was then.  The stuff you mention was always there, and of course he's from a ultra-conservative cultural background - but he appears to have dennis millered; turned stupid-full-reactionary over the thing that happened in New York.

I can only guess about the new Scott Card from his public behavior -and there was a distinction needed making there when I knew him- but I know his work pretty well, and will have much more to say later if this isn't a crazy-busy Sunday...

[Lorizael]

Some writer friends of mine did his workshop maybe 5-10 years ago? They came away from it with a positive image of him as a person, despite disagreeing with him a lot on social stuff. So whatever may have happened to him politically since 9/11, he is apparently still a decent human being.

[Buster's Uncle]

SO - I haven't read any of the Pathfinder books -

(but if I was in contact with Scott, I swear I'd mock him w/o ANY concept of let or mercy whatsoever for actually going there and doing a, judging from the Wikipedia article, pre-Garden of Eden story, not only ripping off the Battlestar Galactica remake finale I seriously doubt he ever saw, BUT ALSO a trilogy of the lamest most overused bullcrap fan idea in science fiction?  REALLY Scott?  He gave me down the road -loudly and with swearing in front of the class for the first. third person omniscient narrator. fiction. story. I. EVER. wrote. because it was a humor-piece series of dreams mocking various clichés and he thought I was flipping him off.  -He also harshly criticized in red ink the bit I sent up near the end w/ a prospector on Mars digging up, basically the monster from Who goes There, only to be interrupted -and saved, actually- by an alien lawyer cease-and-desisting him in person on behalf on John W. Campbell's estate before the plot could get going.  It was illusion-breaking and all that, "But it a good fan move.", he concluded.  [He also told me if I fixed the bits he pointed out, I could sell it - gave me an A - and offered to publish it for no money in Short Pages -a well-thought-of-in-the-biz critical zine he put out in those days- if it didn't sell.  I did another draft, but never tried any of the publishing stuff...  I need to dig that sucker up and have a go...]  But, you know, for Pathfinder, I think he deserves the Oerdin-said-panda-about-me level of mock, almost.  Jeeze - )

- but I have read the Alvin Maker books, the Ender books -the three still about Ender Wiggins- Folk of the Fringe, many short story collections (w/ extensive autobiography and world-view revealed in intros and endnotes; he's one of those George Bernard Shaw-type writers who never let the work just speak for itself when he can elaborate and opine)-even A Planet Called Treason- and most significantly, The Worthing Saga.

Now, if you've read none of those -and you should; he's almost as good as he thinks he is, at least his old stuff, and writes about characters who had mothers and much of it should suit you well enough, emphasizing wholesomeness and the value of family and native culture and traditions and so on - Alvin is about an early America in a world where people have "knacks" -magical talents- and there's a lot of faux frontier tall-tale stuff, like I gather you saw in Pathfinder to find him vulgar.  Alvin meets historical figures like Mike Fink, Davy Crocket, and a young Abe Lincoln in this river-rafting logger period - none of which is nearly as lame as my description makes it sound.

-And the last on my list above has Jason Worthing -later in the book when he's setting up his scheme starting a colony world single-handed, making preparations for the tank embryos to be able to live when born- experiences a profound and lovingly/lengthily-described satisfaction at working the land with his own hands, tilling the fields and finding the work good.  -There's a little of that Amish-porn in the Alvin books and even the last Ender one, but The Worthing Saga REALLY shoves it up your ass and dares you to (be wrong and) dissent.


WELL - Scott's from the 50s southern Cal 'burbs, albeit LDS w/ many cultural roots glorifying agriculture that obviously informs his world-view/leanings (and has made it crystal clear in not only my personal hearing all the way back to SF club speaking in 86 and teaching in 87, and endlessly in various non-fiction commentaries that the FIRST thing you have to know to ever understand him is that he's Mormon - culturally, if not believing for one second 2/3rds of it, certainly not the most bizarre stuff, when I knew him).

I, on the other hand, am a sharecropper's grandson; when Gramma died, a decent chunk of the farmland was left, willed to be divided six ways to the children.  Daddy was all hell no, he didn't want no tobacco-field land.  He was toiling in those fields getting a red neck when he was in single digits, they all were - and not a soul, not a single soul of the six of them EVER worked in farming from the second they left home - Daddy ranked farming up there with serving in the Korean War, getting shot at and handling dead bodies, some so rotten in the river limbs pulled off, as roughly equivalently desirable - and he told me if he had Korea to do over, he'd rather go to jail or starve.  Four have gone to their graves not-farming and glad - another's close, never farmed, and the sister who lived next door and got all the land the rest refused to take -this despite a decade of retarded fighting with her sisters over the will- sold the lot of the fields off, pronto.

-Scot's worship of farming life embedded in his (sitting in air-conditioned indoors) work all over, is, like he opened calling my first story in front of the whole class at full volume, "A piece of [poop]!"


-Now, I only read his stuff after I got to know him, and I'm a big, big fan of his on the actual merits of the work.  The man I knew then was sane and sensible, a fine teacher, a hell of a writer -and don't make too much of his considerable moral failing in cursing me out in front of the class, then apologizing just to me out of hearing when I explained my true motivational set after class.  You know I can talk story like a mother, like a much more experienced writer of fiction than I am -though I daresay there's proof enough I'm good in Planet Tales, just this week- and he thought I had a trunk-full of stories and gave him a freshman effort and was disrespecting him -probably some of the clichés I mocked could be found in something he sold in 1977 starting out- and I was an immature, annoying, 23, and the not making the apology in front of the class was just an oversight -human nature that it only mattered to me- the A and offer to publish was apology enough for me, really, and he made me believe it wasn't for apology.

-I thought enough of the man that I was shocked and sick of heart when I found out he'd dennis millered and joined the enemy a few years ago.  There's a post, if you want to dig it up, 2012 post-election thread, ISTR...

[Buster's Uncle]

The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card.

This was a re-read, but the last time might have been over 20 years ago, and I barely remembered even having read it after so long, so it hardly counts as one.  The long time I took to read it this time is reflective of how late I've been going to bed recently, and not the good quality/readability of the story.

Despite being science fiction, with psychic powers and all taking place on other planets, this reads a lot like a first draft of the Alvin Maker series.  Most of it's set in fairly primitive agrarian communities and centers around a guy with special powers.

Recommended, but with the caveat that Card in this seems to think so well of the pre-technological farming life that one is led to wonder whether his idea of hot pron is a documentary about the Amish.

My dad grew up on a working farm, and he strongly begged to differ about the joys of the life.

[Buster's Uncle]

...Speaking of people driven insane by the New York thing:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2012-11-08-1.html
That's Orson Scott Card, the SF author.  I know this guy a little - if I ran into him on the streets of Greensboro, he might actually remember my name, and it's been 24 years.  He was hardly ever going to write the sequel to Das Kapital, and I was vaguely aware that he'd been taken in by the monkey, but I. am. shocked.  He was a thoughtful man, a genius intellect and always talked good sense.

If your have no time or a weak stomach for bull, leave the link up there alone.  Check out four consecutive entries from his article sidebar:

• OSC says: Don't just take my
word about the state of scientific
evidence on same-sex
"marriage."
• OSC asks: Why do we allow
them to teach global warming to
our children in science class? As
Bret Stephens points out, it's
really religion
• Bush never lied to us about Iraq
• Environmentalists Pick Up
Where Communists Left Off

 

Sometimes people just sap my will to live.

We're not talking about some ignoramus, either.  We're talking about a brilliant, well-educated, scientifically-literate man who's EARNED his pile of Hugo awards and always struck me as entirely sane, if an angry fellow. 

The right has run on fairy tales since Reagan, the Reagan fairy tale itself being one of the greatest, but this --- this just as well be Richard Bachman talking about ascending to higher dimensions, this is as rooted in reality as the cubic sun and the flat earth.  We are all in deep, deep trouble, and I take back all my lol smilies in this thread.

[Elok]

Okay, by "the New York thing," are you referring to 9/11, as Lori implies, or Joseph Smith and the golden plates?

I've read everything Enderverse except the short stories (including the silly prequels he's cowriting with a Hollywood screenwriter), a bunch of standalone novels (Pastwatch, Treasure Box, Magic Street), the two Empire books, and the Gate trilogy, as well as reading the first two Alvin books (said meh) and the Pathfinder trilogy.  I looked at the Worthing Saga but never got around to actually reading it.  I wasn't actually referring to his political views, though I'm aware those are extreme; I'm quite capable of keeping my enjoyment of an author's work separate from his politics.  I got through all of Falkenberg's Legion in spite of Pournelle's view, very clear from the text itself, that people on welfare are the enemies of the human race.

Card's generally a good writer, but his more recent works are very hit-and-miss.  His (still generally good) sci-fi or fantasy conceits tend to be undermined by his fundamentally bizarre opinions, not just about politics, but human nature.  Also, Mormonism.  I don't know about Pathfinder's wiki, but I didn't spot any obvious cliches in the trilogy--not that I have your level of exposure to sci-fi.  The way he actually implemented time travel seemed novel enough.  But the characters and their interaction ... oy.  Almost every character spouts off dialogue about alpha males, dominance hierarchies, and the desires of women to have men's babies, and gets into these Machiavellian mind-game conversations where there's ten lines of analysis of psychological motives (self and others') for every one line of actual speech.  And I'm talking about conversations between ostensible friends and allies, here.  I have to wonder if he is under the impression that actual human beings act this way.

And then you have the Gate books.  He starts out with a neat magic system in the first book, sets us up for a cool war between tribes of magic people and modern human armies.  He then abandons that promise for two books full of rehashing ideas from previous books, with a completely different magic system based on (surprise!) soul procession from a higher plane and notions of demonic possession.  It makes the hero literally invincible, and the actual magic war gets shoved into the background.  Actually, he shoved a war into the background in Pathfinder too, come to think of it.  Perhaps someone should write him a note suggesting that wars are interesting?  Anyway, he kicks up the misogyny to eleven in that'n.  It's mostly tolerable in the first one (every teenage girl wants to screw the all-powerful teenage wizard, but it's, uh, a relatively minor element you can roll your eyes past), but key plot points in the sequels depend on female characters being treacherous sperm-hounds.  And then a girl who is literally possessed by Satan seduces the hero, transferring the devil to him and getting pregnant along the way.  That's right, Satan's an STD.  Of course she doesn't get an abortion, because Card, but the hero basically ignores her and the child from that point on except to remark that she's doing well for a teenager with a baby (living with said kid and its gym-coach grandpa).  Now, that kid almost certainly has some amount of magical power, which the mother is not equipped to handle, but her whole pregnancy only existed to make a pro-life point so whatever, to hell with her.  I maybe should have spoilered all that, but anything that keeps you from reading the last two Gate books is more of a public service than a spoiler.  You can spoiler it if you want.

[Lorizael]

...and gets into these Machiavellian mind-game conversations where there's ten lines of analysis of psychological motives (self and others') for every one line of actual speech.  And I'm talking about conversations between ostensible friends and allies, here.  I have to wonder if he is under the impression that actual human beings act this way.

There was kiiiind of a reason for Ender et al. to do this, but yeah that shouldn't be how everyone operates.

...not that I have your level of exposure to sci-fi.

Is this self-deprecation of yours reflexive? Because I'm honestly not sure it's true. You always talk about your relative lack of exposure in the context of < a long list of the relevant SF you have read >. 

[Elok]

Well, he's listed a bunch of stuff I've never read or been exposed to, like Lord Foul's Bane or basically any sci-fi television outside of a bit of Star Trek.  I don't know crap about Battlestar Galactica, for example.  For context, I grew up reading Lewis and Tolkien, Redwall (yes, shut up), Anne McCaffrey, and Star Wars EU books, along with a few lightweights from my dad's old sci-fi bookshelf.  Including Ender's Game.  Much later in life I moved on to read some other specfic, including big classics like Dune and Foundation.  I've read a lot of Timothy Zahn because I liked his Star Wars stuff, I've gone through Neal Stephenson after Guy recommended him, and I read most of the Card books at the library.  I get the feeling that I still don't qualify as "well-read in the classics," whatever that would entail.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yo, 'Lok really knows his poop, but then I surmise you do, too, Lori - I bet you both have been reading for pleasure since you were both in single digits, just like me, but I have had more decades to do it, albeit I've settled for more re-reads of what I own and don't buy much, thus all the Card I can speak to past going nuts over that terrorist incident 17 years ago is Empire.  (I'm strongish on Golden Age 50s SF, because that's what school libraries had in the 70s.  I was an Asimov kid, too.)

Maybe Card was tonally trying to do a Herbet/Dune thing - that series -and other of his work- was full of hyper-capable people who wasted time lecturing each other, more one-upping dominance games than anything else.  -I can say from long bitter experience that what you mostly get from condescension IRL (or online) is people pissed at you - I bet that's happened with both of you to me, Lori for sure...


Funny.  Elok ninja'd me, leaving my open exactly on-topic.

[Lorizael]

As a kid I read a lot of D&D fantasy crap (Weis and Hickman) along with the stuff you're supposed to read (Tolkien, Lewis). Didn't really start getting into SF books until middle or high school, when I read Niven, Asimov, Herbert, Card, and others. Most of my early SF exposure was via TV/movies (Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, etc.). I also feel like I'm not well-read and that there's a lot (both recent and classic) I've never touched. Truth is, there's just too much stuff out there to have no blind spots.

[Buster's Uncle]

That last is true. 

Check for my edits.

As for TV, y'all can't know how hungry and desperate we were in the 70s before nerds took over the world.  We all watched Buck Rogers and the real Battlestar Galactica and Space: 1999 - all three children's shows on the face of it, none very good, especially that last - and even Fantastic Island/Journey/Voyage whichever was on and island not by Vern.  Starved, I tell you.  This future we're living in is rather a nerd heaven.

[Buster's Uncle]

I've remarks on Folk of the Fringe, but first, find/quote on Empire a few years ago...