Does philanthropy play a role in making bright futures?

Independence Day is a good time to reflect on the big picture. Like "what will it take to create a civilization that's truly worthy of the name? One that might be much better than ours, because we planted seeds to make it so?"  

It can happen! Every single day, more than 200,000 human beings exit grinding poverty and another 200,000 or so depart mere poverty and enter something that could be called "lower middle class," with electricity, potable water, a safe roof and kids in school. That's every day, so clearly some combination of efforts by entrepreneurs, governments and donors can work... just not fast enough. There's always a desperate need to speed things up.

Yesterday I had lunch with Keith Kegley, who has helped develop Social Venture Partners into a dynamo in the philanthropic world, by guiding groups, NGOs, and individuals to invest in ongoing enterprises that do good -- many of them while at least breaking even, or perhaps making enough money to plow back into more positive sum activities.  SVP has 3000+ partners, from Boston to Bangalore.  Great, world-changing work, Keith.

I've been writing about philanthropy for twenty years. The most important pair of concepts I've pushed deal with two ends of the giving spectrum... 

   ...how to convince zillionaires to get more involved... 

   ...and how each middle class citizen can maximize impact to help save the world, according to her or his own, quirky standards. A method that's inexpensive and so easy it might even be called lazy, but that lets you check off boxes -- "I want someone to deal with that... and that" -- so each year you can confirm: "I'm one of the good people, not part of the problem."

We'll return to both of those concepts in a bit. But first...

== (Almost) the world's most successful entrepreneur weighs in ==

Amazon chief Jeff Bezos stirred a lot of discussion with his tweeted request for ideas/suggestions for how to do well-targeted philanthropy.  A great question! Here's my tweet response: 

"Jeff, years ago we spoke of getting ALL zillionaires to do this. e.g. via a catalog of pre-vetted projects."

Here's a more extended answer that I sent by email:

Jeff, you may recall how once, over dinner, we discussed my paper about a core problem (and solution) for philanthropy. 

- Host a series of fascinating meetings, asking top visionaries and practical solvers to create a list of projects needed by the world and by people -- a catalog that's pre-vetted for plausibility.

- That catalog would make a great book, inspiring folks to look at ambitious projects. (Some with long range profit potential.)

- The meetings, arguments and vetting could make a great TV series! That, by itself, might do good, even when a project is rejected.

- If just two or three other well-off families were inspired to take on a catalogued project, the multiplier effect could be huge.

I'll discuss this "EON" concept a little more, below. But first, some illustrations of how seriously some folks take the need to prod at the definitions of "giving."

== Philanthropic Innovation ==

Michael J. Totten and Brian C. Anderson discuss the rising homelessness facing Portland, Oregon. Within their dialogue they discuss Dignity Village, an informal homeless “city” democratically organized by residents and privately maintained. Over time, the village evolved from a typical homeless camp to a neighborhood of tiny homes. The village prohibits drug use and self-regulates its membership while requiring no tax-payer funds.

Along similar lines, Nolan Gray elevates our view of trailer parks by highlighting how they represent one of the last market-based, low-income housing solutions. Moreover, Gray explains, these neighborhoods bear aspects of traditional urban design as well as a blend of individual choice and private governance. While not failing to recognize their inherent challenges, Gray brings the virtues of spontaneous community order into focus.

These articles, published by my friends at the Philanthropic Enterprise, represent the last, fading glimmers of grownup, generously positive-thinking conservatism, extolling the benefits of self-organizing communities that do not wait for largesse from cumbersome governments.  

By the way, that spirit is also expressed by author Brenda Cooper in her story “Streetlife in the Emerald City,” in our recent anthology, Chasing Shadows.

Alas, it will be more plausible to listen to the well-meaning Philanthropic Enterprise folks when we finally hear them admit: 

“Yes, 90% of the U.S. right has gone stark, jabbering, treasonously insane and this resurgent confederacy must be defeated. But, while we join all decent Americans in thwarting the fox-feudalist lunacy, we’ll also nurse the embers of a decent, not-socialist tomorrow.”

(Okay, I won't insist on exactly those words. How about just: "Supply side never worked. And Rupert Murdoch has deeply harmed American conservatism. And let's oppose feudalism as vigorously as we oppose Big Brother government."  I'll settle for that.)

But let's get back to the big picture. Is the world improvable by human intervention? 

== Perspective ==

Nostalgia is a condition that all humans produce, often evoking either pain or pleasure, or both. 

It can also be one of the “addictive mental states” that I’ve written about, which trigger chemical releases that become compulsory.  

Not all addictive mental states are unwholesome! We are addicts to our kids, love, friendship and the exercise of profound skill.  Others, like sanctimony and rage, can be as driving and as destructive as heroin. See: Indignation, addiction and hope: Does it help to be 'mad as hell?'

Nostalgia's debilitating effects are more subtle than rage-addiction. But it can be almost as deeply harmful, undermining our confidence that problems can be solved with goodwill, pragmatism, negotiation and belied that our parents and grandparents weren't fools. They believed in us and we can prove them to have been right.

Ah, but there's another mental disease. One that is closely related to nostalgia.


== Romantics could be the death of us ==

People keep asking me why -- given that the most noxiously dangerous madness is currently on the political right -- I keep reminding folks to also keep a way eye on the far-left. The reason is simple. 

Romanticism should stick to novels, poems and movies. In politics it turns deadly and generally does evil.

Take just one trait that nearly all zero-sum, romantic-transcendentalist-dogmatists share. That trait is TELEOLOGY. A tendency to assume that history has a predictable pattern that it is destined to follow. (Bear in mind, below, that I actually quite despise the so-called "left-right political axis" -- a metaphor that is lobotomizing, dumb, inaccurate and misleading; but we must use it because so many romantics self-define that way.)

Simplistically-speaking: leftists tend to believe that history has a direction, toward upward progress that's unstoppable. They almost never contemplate the implications, but they do believe in upward teleology.

Rightists tend to glom onto different versions of teleology -- generally "cyclical history."  They often declare that civilization is fated to rise and fall, going back well before Oswald Spengler's infamously stupid screed "The Decline of the West," and Hitler's loony Horbigger Cult of cyclical falling moons and so on. See also the dumb and easily-refuted "Tytler Calumny" that rightists use to slander democracy. And the more recent alluring incantation called the "Fourth Turning."

It doesn't matter that professional historians, statisticians and others who actually seek such patterns never, ever find them. Both teleologies are purely incantations, designed to flatter the believer's biases.  

The leftist gets to murmur: "we shall overcome, no matter how many troops the Czar has!"

The rightist gets to mutter: "No matter how much so-called "progress" you bastard reformers make, it will inevitably get trashed and go to hell!"

Different dreams but the same romantic-teleological twaddle.

How does this relate to philanthropy?

Because generosity to the poor -- or the planet -- has grown up a bit and become fixed on outcomes rather than the old emphasis -- benefiting the soul of the giver. Both romantic mythologies -- focused on either inevitability or futility -- stab at the thing that is making all the difference in the world: pragmatically vigorous reform. Negotiated and practical action. Vigorously confident belief in both a commons and entrepreneurship. 

Awareness that the odds have always been stacked against this enlightenment renaissance. But determination to make a whole new path for history, despite the impediments of romantic fools.

-----------------

== Related Miscellany ==

Clear-eyed examination of the guilty past can find both cause for reflective regret and also surprising glimpses of decency, as people adapt to change. This moving little piece tells one such tale.

Vaclav Vincalek has an interesting series of podcasts on information, data, programming and such.

All right, one admits to mixed feelings about this video, combining admiration with outrage. With appreciation of precocious competence!  

Science -- nostalgia and foresight

First some nostalgia for the future!  Need that gift for your nerdy sci fi friend? Underbrain offers T-shirts, mugs and caps with all sorts of logos from David Brin's Uplift Universe - symbols of the Five Galaxies, dolphins & chimps posing for the Uplift Center, and the Terragens Marines patch! And the Eye-Q symbol for the Quantum Eye oracle computer in Existence. Got civilization? This will ensure that you do!

Ah, but the future used to be so cool! Some of us old timers recall the Sunday newspaper comic "Our New Age", a shining example of techno-utopian idealism written by Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus between 1958  and 1975. Spilhaus, a distinguished academic whom JFK appointed to help run Worlds' Fairs, responded to questions about his wide range of activities with the following quotation that I find especially apropos and inspiring:

“I don’t do ‘so many things.’ I do one. I think about the future.” -- Athelstan Spilhaus, creator of the Our New Age series of science comic strips in the 1950s. Some of the strip's predictions - e.g. consulting books electronically at vast distances - were on target.  Less so this one suggesting intelligent trained kangaroos as waiters and butlers by 2056!

== Distributed Science? ==

A sky-monitoring project, called SpaceView, is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that enrolls the talents of amateur astronomers to help protect American space assets from orbital trash. DARPA has been becoming way, way cool in the last 4 years, sponsoring the Maker Movement and dozens of citizen-empowerment or distributed inventiveness endeavors. This has long been a focus of mine. I quoted DARPA's  director discussing this, in my graphic novel about citizen-level manufacturing, TINKERERS.

A field that should be especially ripe for this? Distributed SETI! See how the SETI League's Project Argus would (with help from some millionaire) get 5000 amateur radio telescopes set up around the world, watching the whole sky, instead of a tiny patch at a time.  Nothing could ever sneak up on us!  Take that you nasty UFOs.

And if we ever find nasty science-villains?  Well then. Get yer Heroes of Science action figures! Max Planck! J. Robert Oppenheimer!  Marie Curie! Alas, they're Photoshopped, and not actual plastic ... but perhaps with a Kickstarter campaign they might attain reality? We need double as many, just for starters.  Galileo and Newton and Jonas Salk and Craig Venter and Kip Thorne and Louis Pasteur.... But... but what about sci fi authors? What about scientist sci fi authors?

Take this hero, for example! In Slate: Kim Stanley Robinson shows us the path of reasonableness on geoengineering, or  "terraforming" the Earth.  It should not substitue or reduce a scintilla our determination to do better at not polluting out nest.  But KSR also wisely suggests we should explore one or two ways to have a "Plan B."

== New Minds on the Horizon ==

The Navy is pondering retiring its program enlisting dolphins and sea lions to do sophisticated security work, finding mines, recovering objects and guarding against sneak attacks. The program is very successful and adaptable and I've met some of the animals who are kept healthy by a very extensive -- and expensive -- infrastructure of support staff. Only now the Navy is building an inventory of underwater robots that can do many of the same things at lower cost.  And yet...some very important studies  and insights have come out of the marine mammal programs. All the dolphins were born there and always come back of their own free will. There's no program like it. And there may be long range outcomes...

Speaking of which. Ray Kurzweil's new book, How to Create a Mind: The Science of Human Thought Revealed presents a discussion of artificial intelligence, exploring how the brain works...and how we can reverse engineer the human brain to produce a non-biological brain.

Along those lines...IBM recently announced a simulation of 530 billion neurons, 100 trillion synapses on supercomputer. Of course, all of this assumes that synapses are the only features that must be emulated in the "connectome" to simulate human consciousness. Therer are hints of intra-cellular computing within neurons and astrocytes... but let's not spoil the celebration.

And the world's new fastest computer, Titan, housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, owes its rapid computing power to graphics processing units (GPUs) -- developed for video games.

== Your Potpourri of Cool Advances ==

Only now, extrapolating... a little Uplift anyone? A newly discovered gene appears to have played a crucial role in human brain development and may shed light on how we learned to use tools and language. Apparently, the gene emerged fully functional out of non-coding genetic material, previously termed “junk DNA”, in a startlingly brief interval of evolutionary time. Until now, it has been remarkably difficult to see this process in action. This new molecule sprang from nowhere (or was "donated?) at a time when our species was undergoing dramatic changes: living longer, walking upright, learning how to use tools and how to communicate.

The key thing about disasters is to learn from them and plan to do better next time.  And perhaps the next time a super-storm hits Manhattan -- and other urban areas -- super-sized balloons will be on-hand to inflate and prevent flooding of transportation tunnels.

New battery-capacitor technology based on graphene: SMCs gets their amazing performance by using a cathode and anode that contain very large graphene surfaces. When fabricating the cell, the researchers put lithium metal (in the form of particles or foil) at the anode. Now, we can expect a lot of news items like this one and the odds are that a majority will be false leads or busts or disappointments.  But the curves are already fantastic.  Next year's Tesla cars will have vastly improved range and the next year's will have reduced battery weight. And within five years no one will be wanting internal combustion cars for their commute or drive-around-town car.  Get used to the idea!

Electrochromic windows promise to cut energy costs and respond to inhabitants' needs with the speed of electric current. A thin layer of tungsten oxide sandwiched between two glass panes can make it shine as-u-like.

New artificial muscles made from nanotech yarns and infused with paraffin wax can lift more than 100,000 times their own weight and generate 85 times more mechanical power than the same size natural muscle.

Hydrogen is an attractive fuel source because it can easily be converted into electric energy and gives off no greenhouse emissions. New results now increase the output and lower cost of current light-driven hydrogen-production systems. The chemists say their work advances what is sometimes considered the "holy grail" of energy science—efficiently using sunlight to provide clean, carbon-free energy for vehicles and anything that requires electricity. Still a long way to go.

Companies that have built multimillion-dollar factories say they are very close to beginning large-scale, commercial production of these so-called cellulosic biofuels, and others are predicting success in the months to come.

Although the overall size and asymmetrical shape of Einstein's brain were normal, the prefrontal, somatosensory, primary motor, parietal, temporal and occipital cortices were extraordinary. These may have provided the neurological underpinnings for some of his visuospatial and mathematical abilities... and his penchant for "thought experiments" projecting himself into hypothetical realms.

Recall the "OttoDogs" in EXISTENCE? Now comes a detector that uses microfluidic nanotechnology to mimic the biological mechanism behind canine scent receptors. The device is both highly sensitive to trace amounts of certain vapor molecules, and able to tell a specific substance apart from similar molecules.

Three innovative new energy technologies are explored in the current issue of Technology and Innovation — Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors:

• Tidal currents and ocean waves that can be recovered using ocean thermal conversion technology.
• Infrared thermal radiation (more than half of the power provided by the Sun).
• A new nanophosphor-based electroluminesence lighting device that caters to the exact wavelengths of light required for photosynthesis in indoor, hydroponic agriculture.

== And finally: Science weeps =

Tea Party senatorial candidates (and troglodytes) Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were not anomalies, alas. It seems that every anti-science cultist in the U.S. House of Representatives GOP Caucus is eager to join the House Science Committee, packing it not only with Climate Change denialists, but men (entirely) who proclaim the Earth to be six or nine thousand years old, who repeat bizarre theories about rape, who decry vaccination, who rail against genetic research and who denounce sciences as diverse as geology, ecology and meteorology. Do not blame the people. The total number of national votes for the two major parties' congressional  candidates was not won by the GOP.  Blame Gerrymandering.

As I've long emphasized, things weren't always this uniform on the right.  Sure, there were witch hunts against scientists in the 1950s... balanced by the fact that Jonas Salk was the most popular man in America and soon so would be the NASA techies.  And a bipartisan consensus in Congress supported Adm Hyman Rickover's upheaval of the US Navy to go nuclear. For every idiot decying the inherent inequality of minorities, there was a William F. Buckley inviting great minds on his show.  And not all Republicans helped Big Tobacco and Big Smog do their multli-decade obstruction campaigns. (So similar to climate denialism, today, using some of the same tactics and firms.)

This past diversity among Republicans is illustrated in a fascinating piece in The Chronicle: Why Conservatives turned against science: early environmental issues were bipartisan, by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes.

Summary: "Climate scientists came under attack not just because their research threatened the oil industry (although it certainly did that), but also because they had exposed significant market failures. Pollution is a market failure because, in general, polluters do not pay a price for environmental damage (and this includes not just polluting industries, like electrical utilities, but also anyone who uses a product—like gasoline—that takes up a portion of the planetary sink without paying for it). Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank, has declared climate change "the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."

And this: "Accepting the need to correct market failures required one to concede the need to reform capitalism—in short, to concede the reality of market failure and limits. This became increasingly difficult for Republicans during the 1990s and 2000s. Party leadership began supporting primary challenges against party members deemed insufficiently conservative, driving many moderates into retirement, and some out of the party entirely. Some Republicans who had acknowledged the reality of global warming lost their seats; others—including Mitt Romney—began to deny the problem, knowing that if they didn't they would not be electable as Republicans...."

Ah, but there is movement elsewhere.  That core institution of international capitalism, the World Bank, has issued a major report examining the likely economic outcomes  (mostly disastrous) expected from Global Climate Change.

Remember, the recent election was not the core event, but a sideshow to the main battle. A "culture war" that was not chosen or started by those who side with science and reason and evidenc-based thinking But it has becomes clear, that kind of thinking -- and a civilization that supports it -- is fighting for its life. And as the great historian Arnold Toynbee said.  When a society turns its back on its "creative minority"... that is when most kingdoms, nations, empires and commonwealths fail.

How to Define Science Fiction

The question has filled pages and books,  resonating across hotel bars and conferences for decades. What, exactly, is science fiction?  It matters for many reasons, not least because the genre encompasses just about everything that's not limited to the mundane here and now, or a primly defined past.

Up till the early 18th century, when Defoe, Richardson and Fielding fed a growing apetite for "realism" in fiction, nearly all literature contained elements of the fantastic. From tribal campfire-legends to Gilgamesh and the Odyssey to Dante and Swift. All through that long period, life and death were capricious on a daily basis, but society seemed  relatively changeless from one generation to the next - the same chiefdom or kingdom or noble families, the same traditions and stiff social order. Throughout that era, storytelling overflowed with surreal, earth-shaking events and the awe-inspiring antics of demigods.

Then a shift happened. Peoples' physical lives became more predictable. You and your kids had a chance of living out your natural spans... but civilization itself started quaking and twisting with change. Your daughter would likely survive childbirth. But her assumptions and behavior might turn shocking and your son's choice of profession - bewildering. Your neighbors might even begin questioning the king, or the gods! Not in fable but in real life.

Amid this shift, public tastes in literature moved away from bold what-if images of heroes challenging heaven, toward close-in obsessions with realistic characters who seemed almost-like-you, in settings only a little more dramatic or dangerous than the place where you lived.

Having made that observation - and pondered it for years - I'm still not sure what to make of it. Is there a total sum of instability that humans can bear, and a minimum they need?

Nonetheless, into this period of transformation, science fiction was "born."  The true child of Homer and Murusaki and Swift, yet denounced as a bastard from the start, by those who proclaimed (ignoring 6000 years) that literature should always be myopic, close, "realistic" and timidly omphaloskeptic.

The possibility of social, technological and human change could be admitted... even explored a little... but the consensus on a thousand university campuses was consistent and two-fold.

----    ------    ----

In "literature" proper explorations of how change impacts human beings should:

1 - deal with the immediate near-term, and

2 - treat change as a loathsome thing.

This obsession isn't as unfair or cowardly as it sounds. Yes, pre-1700s fiction incorporated fantastic imagery and other-worldly powers... and yes, science fiction carries on that tradition.  But the nostalgist professors are also right, in perceiving SF as an upstart!

Because all through most civilizations, the storytelling mythos was nearly always past-obsessed. Indeed, it is here that contemporary sci fi betrays its origins.

== The First of Sci Fi's Heresies ==

Plainly stated: science fiction retains the bold, reality-breaking element of ancient myth-telling, far better than any other genre. But it also rebels against venerable tradition, by portraying change as a protean fluid, sometimes malleable or even good! Violating a core tenet of Aristotle's Poetics, sci fi contemplates the possibility of successfully defying Fate.

Elsewhere I contrast two perspectives on the Time Flow of Wisdom. By far dominant in nearly all human societies has been a Look Back attitude... that the past contained at least one shining moment when society and people in general were better than today - a pinnacle of grace from which we fell, doomed to lament. You find this theme in everything from the Bible to Tolkien to Crichton - a dour reflex toward viewing change as synonymous with deterioration--The grouchiness of grampas who proclaim that everything - even folks - had been finer in the past.

Did you notice that the two authors I just mentioned have their books in the sci fi section of the store? All the tales on these shelves share that ancient, homeric willingness to be vivid and depart from the here and now. But there any resemblance to science fiction stops, because Tolkien, Crichton and their ilk cling to the Look Back view.

It's plain that a deep river of nostalgia flows through most fantasy novels and films, especially those that dwell lovingly on feudal tropes and images. Chosen Ones. Prophecies. Kingly lineages that deserve to inherit rulership, by right of blood alone.

Ponder that, a moment. Millions of contemporary citizens of a free and scientific civilization - heirs of Enlightenment revolutionaries - now yearn for elvish mystics and secretive mages who never publish or share knowledge, nor open schools, nor turn palantirs into internets, nor offer the flea-ridden peasants flush toilets, nor even teach the germ theory of disease.  Hierarchy and overall changelessness are somehow portrayed as romantically attractive. And always, there's that notion of better/wiser times, somewhere in the past.

==The Impudent, Upstart Path ==

Compare this attitude to the uppity Look Ahead zeitgeist. That humanity is on a rough and difficult upward path. That past utopias were fables. That any glowing, better age must lie ahead of us, to be achieved through skill and science, via mixtures of cooperation, competition and negotiation. Along with (one hopes) heaping improvements in overall wisdom.

The paramount example of this world-view would be - of course - Star Trek, though authors like Iain Banks carry the torch of long-term optimism very well.

Let there be no mistake - this is the giant fault line down the middle of science fiction's broadly varied and tolerantly diverse community of authors and readers. The notion that children might, possibly, sometimes, learn from the mistakes of their parents, avoid repeating them... then forge on to make new mistakes all their own, overcoming obstacles on their way to becoming better beings than ourselves.

It sounds like a fine desideratum. What every decent parent wants, right? Except for sourpusses.

Yet, I've found that whole notion of progress is so anathema, to such a vast range of people, that something deeply inherent in human nature must be involved. The widest cultural gap I've ever seen, about something absolutely fundamental, it explains why so many feel reflex hostility toward science fiction. Especially those who believe in "eternal verities."

Example: when I spoke about SF in China, nearly all the readers, publishers and press folk seemed deeply worried that any hint of optimism in literature might insult their ancestors, by implying generations can improve with time.

I replied in bewilderment - isn't that the point?

== Rejection of Optimism ==

Apparently not. Almost like an immunal rejection to the 1960s can-do spirit of Star Trek, wave after wave of stylish grouches swarmed over science fiction itself, claiming to have discovered dark cynicism as something fresh and original.  As critic Tom Shippey put it, in an excellent recent Wall Street Journal review:

"As science fiction approached the millennium, it began to trade the future for the past and real worlds for fantasy or virtual realities. We've had "cyberpunk," with "biopunk coming along a little uneasily behind... Other popular sci fi scenarios include alternate history ("looking backward," as if to wonder where things went wrong) and its nostalgic spin-off "steampunk" (fantasy with a history-of-science additive). The popularity of post-apocalyptic novels suggests that no convincing techno-future can be imagined."

Shippey's essay is insightful and important. I strongly recommend it... though I do quibble with that last point. Progress isn't impossible to imagine. It just takes hard work.

Any lazy author or director knows this trick; it's astonishingly easy to craft a a pulse-pounding plot and get your heroes in jeopardy - via either prose or film - if you start by assuming civilization is crappy.  That your fellow citizens are fools and all their hard-wrought institutions are run by morons. If accountability utterly fails and 911 calls are only answered by villains or Keystone Kops, and the Republic never does a single thing right... then you can sniff some coke and scribble almost any story-line. It writes itself! Bring on the special effects and heavy sighs over human doom.

No, I am not denouncing all works that express skepticism toward progress. Some do arise from stronger roots than mere cynical laziness. Among these are sincere and deeply-moving critiques of modern civilization's many faults. But here is where a delicious irony emerges. That criticism is the only known antidote to error. The best and most savagely on-target critiques are helpful in moving us forward through the minefield of progress.

After all, the core postulate of true SF is that children can sometimes learn from their parents mistakes... not that they will always do so!  This is why genuine sci fi tragedies like On The Beach and Soylent Green are so powerful.

"This does not have to happen," say Huxley and Orwell and Slonczewski and Tiptree, in their masterful self-preventing prophecies.  Be smarter, better people.  Be a better people.

==The Empire of Cynicism Strikes Back ==

Alas, other authors who are lionized, like Margaret Atwood and Ursula LeGuin, use dystopia as a rationale for finger-wagging polemic and formulaic prescriptions, rather than gedankenexperiment. With their gifts, this limiting flaw is just tragic. Shippey is especially biting toward Ms. Atwood's sycophants, who claim her works are "realistic" and therefore "speculative" - not that childish science fiction junk.

Um, sorry - not quite. For one thing, Ms. Atwood's cartoon portrayals of science are tendentiously inaccurate to the point of libel. Like Crichton, her premise always depends on the absence of cleansing transparency, which would resolve nearly all of her complaints.  Moreover 70% of males in North America would have died fighting to prevent the scenario she portrays so chillingly in The Handmaid's Tale.  That book had many merits! But realistic plausibility was not a trait to brag about, distinguishing it from science fiction!

Shippey points to the attribute that really sets Ms. Atwood's sub-genre apart from the real thing. Like Nabakov, in his weird alternate reality tale Ada, Atwood crafts no plausible scenario for her world to come into being. She just doesn't think it important. And yes, that is a departure from mainstream sci fi.

Shippey is not alone in noticing the stunning swerve from ambition to finger wagging nostalgia and dour past-obsession. (Does one really need to be convinced, after watching Avatar?)  Science fiction scholar Judith Berman skewered one of the flagship sci fi publications - Isaac Asimov's Magazine and its longtime editor Gardner Dozois, for publishing, year after year, a nearly perfect stream of grouchy, anti-future manifestos. Tales about regret, navel-contemplation and disdain toward any semblance of optimism, with "no more than a handful of stories...that look forward to the future."

Jiminy, for how many decades can some people convince themselves that Star Trek is "the man" needing a good, hard shove?  Will there ever come a time when it becomes clear that Gene Roddenberry's can-do spirit was... is... and always will be the rare thing? The underdog? The only attitude - after 6000 years of dyspeptic nostalgia - that's not a cliche?

When leftist-darling Margaret Atwood joins the late, extreme-conservative author Michael Crichton in common cause - both of them slamming the arrogant hubris of science and progress - maybe it's time to sit up and ponder what it all means. Yes, one wing of the left-right axis appears to be more dangerously insane at this moment, than the other. But both wings are rife with dogmatic, oversimplifying grouches pushing renunciation -- the notion that scientific advancement was fine up till right now... but any further progress can bring nothing but bad news.

And what if everybody feels that way, not only on Earth but across the galaxy? Could renunciation explain the great silence out there? Race after sapient race choosing to hunker in feudal -- or pastoral or feminist or zen-like or whatever -- simplicity, cowering away from ambition or the stars?

"Perhaps we should leave well enough alone," Shippey quotes Atwood as saying, just before his final, brilliant rebuttal. (Do read it.)

I can do no better than Shippey at refuting this malignant meme, except to point out, yet again, that renunciation, nostalgia and suspicion of change were timeless themes across all of recorded history, pervading nearly every religious and mythic tale that comes down to us from that long epoch of relentless repression and pain.

There was a lot of great art in those myths!  I have spent countless hours with Odysseus and Dante and Rama and the Monkey King. We can learn important things, both by heeding the lessons that ancient stories try to teach... and sometimes by reaching diametrically opposite conclusions.

Because we are the rebels. We who think change might (possibly) bring good.

The nostalgists who doubt this are welcome to criticize! That searing light of rebuke is exactly how to move forward while avoiding the pitfall-penalties of hubris. Sometimes, authors like LeGuin and Atwood and Gibson and Russ and so many other stylish grouches offer on-target points! Potential failure modes to take into account, then evade as we forge ahead.

But let there be no mistake. They are the Old Empire. Quenchers and belittlers, maintaining the ancient, relentless tyranny of nostalgia. Ten thousand years from now, the ones who will be remembered will be those who encouraged.

Those who said, let's try.

==Also see: Speculations on Science Fiction

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

Twitter                Facebook