see "Kingdom of Heaven"

It's almost out of theaters and this is one you really have to see on the wide screen. It's not Ridley Scott's best film, but it is by far his most vivid - and that's saying a lot.

Entering the theater, I passed posters for "Bewitched", "Mr & Mrs Smith", "Zorro," "Fantastic Four", "Willie Wonka", "House of Wax", "Star Wars", "Batman", "The Pink Panther", "War of the Worlds:... and several other ripoff-remakes that I cannot now remember. And it made me wonder what kind of chickenshit era we are in.

Sure, some of them will be cool or funny or well-made. But is there anybody OTHER than Ridley Scott who has the guts to try something new?

KINGDOM of HEAVEN may not have the world's most stunning script, but it is very evocative and the big battle is simply fantastic. A real breakthrough. You really felt you were there.

Get a ticket before it vanishes! Support originality.

another pause: recent events

I just returned from the annual Future in Review or FiRe Conference, in San Diego. A terrific gathering of technologists, venture capitalists, visionaries and explorers. A highlight was an onstage interview with Elon Musk (founder of PayPal) whose Falcon rocket may soon offer cheaper unmanned access to space and start beating the hell out of Lockheed and Boeing... and Burt Rutan, whose Spaceship One opened the way for commercial, private human access to sub-orbital space.

While chatting in the hall, I offered the following joke that they seemed to enjoy:

"Want to help Russia and America at the same time?

Send half our lawyers, freedom in both countries will go up.

Send half our business school grads and MBAs, both economies will skyrocket.

And send half of NASA's managers. America will get a great space program and Russia some good farm labor."

(Actually, I've been telling that one since 91. Don't get me started.)

=== === ===

Norman Spinrad - often a ranting bad boy in the genre of science fiction - also happens to have one of its sharpest critical eyes. In a recent issue of ISAAC ASIMOV'S MAGAZINE, he offers the following quotables, relevant to our ongoing topic.

"Science fiction can envision not just technology and science beyond that presently existing in the universe of the reader, but cultures evolved beyond our own, and create a belief in the reader that such things are possible, indeed MUST demonstrate that they cohere with the realm of the possible in order to do so.

"And if we believe that something is possible and it really is, one can be moved to attempt to make it so. Thus science fiction is not only a visionary literature that can transcend the culture in which it is created but a transformational literature that can, and has from time to time, evolved those cultures onward."

--

This just came in from a reader. Some of you may have seen it already. An absolutely brilliant faux scientific talk about the process of resurrecting the lost subspecies of vampires. The callous, smug amorality is exactly how science can and often DOES go wrong. http://www.rifters.com/real/progress.htm . It is also gruesomely hilarious and eerily plausible.

And yes, it has a slight anti-modernist tinge. But not really! Satire, dire warnings and self-preventing prophecies are very much part of the process by which science tames its own arrogance and modern people have managed (so far, much of the time) to generate positive sum games... getting the good while preventing the worst or most obvious mistakes. Anyway, this thing is a hoot.

----

I was especially amused that one of you tried to make a case that democrats are the ones engaged in blatant attempts at election stealing nowadays. We should all re read that fellow's remarks. (1) in order to contemplate just how contorted logic can be used to set up weird points of view... and to see Limbaughism in action. (2) in order to stretch your OWN minds to see an alien point of view.

At one level, like many Limbaughisms, this one may contain a grain of truth. Events in San Diego and WA state show that democrats can hypocritically do some of the same things they criticize. (You all know that I do not shy away from skewering leftist hypocrisies.) At another level, of course, it is the coal mine calling a pencil black, Rush's standard technique. If even one of HUNDREDS of electoral allegations are true, the present administration is illegitimate. And on no level even imaginable can it claim to have a mandate.

Two out of ten thousand issues:

(1) Rush promised us indictments. Hunneds. Tousens. Milliuns of indictments, as soon as "honest men take over the filing cabinets" in DC. It would be an entertaining housecleaning as the "most corrupt administration in human history" (the Clintons) met justice in greater numbers than French aristos in tumbrels.

Only... a funny thing has happened on our way to the guillotines... The number of former Clinton officials indicted for actual malfeasance in office has been - after 5 years - ZERO!

It is the 1st time an 8 year administration has ever had ZERO indictable corruption revealed in its aftermath. This "black-is-white" reversal of expectation is not only deeply disappointing for those who want a good scandal-show... but is typical of Limbaughism. The railing incantations fill true believers with indignant wroth, so much so that they can evade any glimpse at actual facts. So much that they can convince themselves that a bunch of aristocrats who hold tightly to EVERY rein of government for their own enrichment, controlling nearly all media, are STILL UNDERDOGS. And honest ones, at that.

(2) Another of a million betrayals of this country that WILL be indicted someday -- my contention that this administration has overseen the steepest plummet in US military readiness in our lifetimes. I'll finish with one latest bit of supporting evidence.

Officers Plot Exit Strategy - By Mark Mazzetti
LA Times Staff Writer, May 22 2005

KILLEEN, Texas — Army Capts. Dave Fulton and Geoff Heiple spent 12 months dodging roadside bombs and rounding up insurgents along Baghdad's "highway of death" — the six miles of pavement linking downtown Baghdad to the capital city's airport. Two weeks after returning stateside to Ft. Hood, they ventured to a spartan conference room at the local Howard Johnson to find out about changing careers. Many young lieutenants and captains, key leaders in combat, are deciding against Army careers in light of the open-ended war on terrorism.

The Myth of Majority Rule: Part III

The Myth of Majority Rule: Part III  (or return to Part 1)

We've taken a two part detour into "propaganda" -- specifically, the kind of pro-enlightenment propaganda that helped to make most of us the people that we are. A system of relentlessly repeated messages that have helped our Enlightenment/modernist civilization to push upstream against the hard current of human nature -- an everpresent tide that keeps trying to drive us into the more typical social patterns that dominated nearly every other culture.

Especially rule by bullying, self-interested and coercive elites. And the incantatory lackeys - the wizards and priests and spin-doctors who used tools of romantic persuasion to rationalize aristo bullying as a good thing.

Which brings us back to today's politics. What I plan to do now is to intersperse recent comments with some material that I wrote about the issue of "minority veto"... back in different times. Specifically, I am disturbed by the recent spat over the US Senate filibuster rules. We have just seen one party - the party that used filibusters far more often, in the past, suddenly using their (highly debatable) recent razor-thin electoral victory as justification for promoting a new agenda, claiming that all they want is to simply allow "majority rule" to manifest in an efficient manner, giving the President's judicial nominees the "courtesy" of a simple up down vote. *

But can 50.1 percent legitimately over-rule the wishes of 49.9 percent who disagree? Pushing a radical agenda that at least 49% of the electorate actively despises?

Actually, majority rule has long been already tempered in much of American political life. Until recently, Congress seldom passed a law supported by just 51% of the people, while vigorously opposed by nearly half. We've already discussed how minority objections are traditionally palliated by negotiation, mollification, and tradeoffs. The power of opposing groups can be measured by multiplying their numbers by their fervor, so that small but intense lobbies may effectively veto measures desired only tepidly by much greater majorities.

(I wrote that paragraph, and the next one, before 2001. It now seems like another century. In any event, you can see how the filibuster was originally intended to fit this purpose... and how it would also have been abused, when the cloture rule was 66% instead of a mere 60%.)

This dance of factions can be frustrating, as when popular measures such as gun control are stymied by vigorous advocacy groups like the NRA. But on the whole, it is a better, more mature way of doing things than pure majority rule, or tyranny by 51%. Minority veto slows progress, but it also forces legislators to keep seeking that elusive, worthy goal -- consensus.

I could go on about how this applies to the whole notion of civil disobedience, which can be viewed as the legitimate resort of minorities whose passion matches their sense of disenfranchisement. Innovators like Thoreau, Ghandi and Martin Luther King emphasized that breaking the law should never be a first resort, and that the state has some right to imprison protestors who stage sit-down strikes or block traffic. Indeed, only half of the effectiveness of any act of civil disobedience arises from inconveniencing the obdurate majority. The other half comes from proudly and willingly accepting proportionate punishment, demonstrating sincerity, courage and commitment. Protestors who whine about serving a small amount of jail time, for protesting in some provocative manner, miss the whole point.

As do authorities who use disproportionate force. Very few cultures in history would have let Gandhi or King live long enough to try out their methodologies and begin the long process of rousing the conscience of a semi enlightened majority. Today, though, civilization appears to (at least for now) 'get it'. If you protest something with letters to the editor - or a posted irate blog - there are (supposed to be) no repercussions. If you picket, you get more attention, perhaps, but pay a deterrence penalty of lost time and possibly abuse from passersby. If you lie down in front of trucks, you may be fined. Even in the unenlightened fifties, when Rosa Parks sat in the wrong part of the bus, she went to jail, but wasn't shot. And like Rosa, if your protest succeeds, you may be rewarded later and lionized as a cultural hero for the second half of your life.

(As you can tell, I am cribbing a bit from a never-published essay that I wrote in more innocent times. For example, consider the next two paragraphs, that seemed applicable until just the last few years. On today's context, they illustrate just how badly things have become poisoned.)

Minority factions may not be able to get their assertive agenda passed. But almost any group can veto actions it dislikes, providing its size, multiplied by its vociferousness, reaches a certain level. Political rigor mortis is one possible result, which is fine for the sanctimonious on both sides, who don’t want action, only a continued state of warlike threat, in order to keep the adrenaline and endorphins flowing.

But this is adversarial gridlock is a serious problem for any group or ideology that’s serious about accomplishing action. It means that a 51% majority will do you no good at all if a strong 40% opposition is truly determined to block you. In order to succeed, proponents must divide the enemy by reaching some sort of compromise consensus with ‘moderates’ on the other side... something that is loathsome to the purist. More loathsome, perhaps, than inaction.

What has changed? One of our parties has become utterly radicalized. Under conditions like this, no amount of fervor or remonstration by 49% can avail if 51% have total control of all branches of governance. Individual mavericks like John McCain may speak up occasionally for compromise. But the proof is in the pudding. GOP party discipline is so perfect that, after four and half years, George W. Bush has yet to use a single veto.

We might as well have a European system of ideology-based parties. We are certainly moving away from the American principle of emphasizing the individual candidate/delegate over the party manifesto.

 ====     ====   =====

All right, what about the executive branch? If Congress used to be a nexus for negotiation, the US political process seems to have chosen an almost military command structure for our executive. When a European country's cabinet votes, the Prime Minister generally obeys. When a president's cabinet votes, he ponders their advice and does as he likes.

Often an ideologue, riding into the White House by a slim margin, acts as if he's been anointed the mantle of history. Even when just forty percent are left out, in a landslide, should tens of millions be lightly dismissed? Of course, things are even worse when the electoral margin was razor-thin. We'll talk more about this next time..

I get into many specifics about the most recent election at: http://www.davidbrin.com/realculturewar1.html

====  ====  =====

Summarizing this section. Those who push "majority rule" as something sacred are doing the same thing that prior generations of ideologues did, when promoting the divine right of kings - or minority rule by a privileged elite. They are pounding the pulpit for a pure platonic essence that also just happens to support the power needs of their aristocratic patrons.

Yes, majority rule was an improvement over earlier systems of governance. But western civilization has long-since become more sophisticated, developing methodologies of minority veto and negotiated consensus.

Those who would have us abandon all of the hard-won pragmatic progress and subtlety of modern democracy, in favor of a gross oversimplification, are not friends of democracy in any form.

Next: a modest suggestion for how to respect minority opinion in the presidency, during an era of increasing polarization...

==See also:

Part 1: Why Majority Rule is a Deadly Ruse
Part 2:  The Propaganda of Enlightenment
Part 3: The Myth of Majority Rule
Part 4: The L-R axis redux: More on the war of ideas

==And on another topic…

Finally, a few comments in the Star Wars thread. I agree SW has common elements with both Faust and classic Greek tragedy. Indeed. In Poetics Aristotle defines a tragedy as watching the inevitable suffering of a hero who is doomed by Fate, with no way out. This defines tragedy in the old style I've been calling nostalgist, fatalistic, or romantic...

...and because it's old, that does require us to approve. Yes, when I watch a good rendition of Oedipus, I cry in sympathy as he twists and turns, caught by the gods like a fish on a hook. But I ALSO want to leap on the stage with a pistol, put poor Oedie out of his misery, then use the rest of the bullets to hunt down the nasty "gods" who committed this crime against him .

That possibility - of average (or above average) folk holding capricious elites accountable - was inherent in the sappy-silly but wonderful "Xena" and "Hercules" series, a few years back. Though they were demigods, both characters chose to side with humanity. Average joes could matter. Both main characters dabbled with anger quite often, demonstrating mature choices, instead of automatically turning irreversibly evil.

And yes, you can have "tragedy" without assuming it's fated or ordained. There was never anything ordained about nuclear war. Hence, "On The Beach" and "Dr. Strangelove" were terrifyingly tragic tales precisely BECAUSE the destruction of all life was inherently avoidable. In modernist view, drama concerns the making of good-bad choices, not twisting in the wind because three old crones happened to spin your fate that way. (For more on these fabled creatures, see my short story, "The Loom of Thessaly"!)

Oh, one more thing: someone said "films don't deal with contrition". Really? Spielberg's magnificent "Schindler's List" teaches precisely the opposite moral lesson than SWIII ROTS. Think about it. Enough. Back to this culture of ours and trying to make it work. The gritty hard work of pragmatic modern problem solvers, negotiating in good faith to make things better.

Smell the SWIII that ROTS....

Tomorrow I'll return to posting ongoing serious remarks about majority rule...

But first....

People expect that I will comment on the latest Star Wars film: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.

Sigh. Haven't I wasted enough lifespan criticizing anti-civilization drivel? Why is this particular swill so popular?

I believe there was always an inherent market for really creative and bold SF, held back by stodgy studios and the ill repute caused by all those really BAD 1950s monster movies. The true pioneer was Gene Rodenberry, who managed to persuade TV mavens to invest in what must have seemed a totally weird concept. Visionary and unprecedented!

The stage was ready for somebody to do the same in motion pictures... and reap the rewards. The first guy to get this break was a kid named G. Lucas... and he has been making huge, lavish toy commercials based on that bit of luck ever since. It could have been anybody. And knowing who was around then, it could have been worse, I guess. The original Star Wars did rock, in its silly way.

Still one ought to think back now and then. Way back when, Thomas Edison said to the early film industry he helped create: “I believe, as I have always believed, that you control the most powerful instrument in the world for good or evil. Remember that you are servants of the public and never let a desire for money or power prevent you from giving to the public the best work of which you are capable. It is not the quantity of riches that count; it is the quality that produces happiness, where that is possible. I wish you a prosperous, useful, and honourable future.”

How sad.

Now for some laughs. A fan wrote:
"In your Star Wars article you said - "Next movie will surely have a Chicano low rider caricature help Obi-Wan make his escape with the twins."

"Well, you were pretty close; it was Yoda he helped out, instead. Art imitates jokes!"

Stefan Jones sent this about seeing the new SITH flick: "My manager surprised everyone on the development team with free tickets to _Revenge_. All of my testing was on automatic today, so why not? Wonderful eye candy of course. But . . . God. The dialog and acting and characterization were hideously, egregiously, graceful-as-a-engine block-tumbling-down-a-spiral-staircase AWFUL. Anakin / Darth and "Padme" in particular. The only actor who earned his pay was the guy playing the slimy Chancellor / Emperor. Virtually no humor beyond a few moments of slapstick early on."

"Now, there's something particularly revealing about the ending, in which (no surprise) things get set up for episode 4. It's really portentous and full of gravity . . . an admission, I think, that this tedious pre-trilogy was a heap of stink and the REAL fun and genuine adventure begins with the first, innocently goofy entry. Never see this again, I will."

Hrm. With so many bad reports, what to do? Despite my longstanding criticism of the Lucasian zeitgeist, and its lengthy, high-budget toy commercials, I never kept my kids from playing with Lego X-Wings and such When Episodes I & II came around I was very mild mannered. I urged people to go to a half price matinee after waiting 2 weeks... but otherwise enjoy the crap because it's GORGEOUS crap. Lucas subsidizes 10% of the best artists on the planet.

This time tho... I just can't do it. The point that no one seems to raise re Star Wars is that only two out of six have happy endings.

Sure, that CAN be okay. Everyone agrees that the one Lucas did NOT write - The Empire Strikes Back - was by far the best. Its downer ending was magnificent, brave, hopeful elegiacal. But episodes I,II, and III? You know in advance that every decent and brave and heroic act will be futile, futile futile futile futile futile futile futile futile!

Gah! It's like he wants us to not only worship a nazi mass murderer, but also evil green oven mitts... while losing all hope. feh.

If you refer anyone on line to rants about this, here's one recent very colorful review in the New Yorker: Space Case.

(I don't have any love for the New Yorker editors. The guy who wrote the article obviously likes good SF, but those New York postmodernist editorial smofs always lop off all the favorable contrasts in order to give an impression that this garbage represents the whole field.)

And of course, take a look at Star Wars on Trial and my own series about this idiocy: Star Wars: The Dark Side: Mythology and Ingratitude 

Oh, want some subliminal clues? Try STAR WARS backwards? RAW RATS Now try the initials of the new film: SWIII ROTS. Squint a little at RAW RATS SWIII ROTS and just say it out loud! What can this clue mean?

Here is my eerie-romantic-horror tale interpretation. The George Lucas who brought us Indiana Jones and Eps IV & V is still in there! Shouting for help! Like Anekin trapped inside Vader... Ah symbolism....

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


Soon, I resume with Majority Rule....

The Propaganda of Enlightenment

Last time, we took up the issue very much in the news, of "majority rule"... and got sidetracked into the following question.

Are "modernists" immune to propaganda? No! We are human and thus can be swayed. Indeed, for most of our lives we have been subjected to pro enlightenment propaganda in the greatest indoctrination campaign of all time!

Some of you have heard me point this out before. But please bear with me. At many of my public talks, I ask audience members if they think their neighbors are subjected to propaganda and nearly everybody raises a hand. Yet, when asked to name the message that has warped their neighbors' perceptions, people offer a strange variety of suggestions, never making a coherent pattern.

Commercial advertising? Most Americans have grown pretty thick skins toward ads. Propaganda favoring religion? Or homosexual rights? These tend only to be mentioned if you angrily hold the opposite view. Interestingly, nobody names as "propaganda" a belief system that THEY hold dear. (See how this works out by taking the "questionaire on ideology" at: http://www.davidbrin.com/questionnaire.html)

In all the years I have asked this question, very seldom has anyone mentioned any of the truly pervasive messages.

Which is what you would expect! The most effective "propaganda" should be messages that you tend not to notice, because you agree with it. Because it has already been effective. And effective on you. (Think. We all like to point away from us at the "masses." But isn't it at least somewhat probable that we are part of the masses, at least in some ways.)

Go through all the movies you've enjoyed - and stirring novels - during the last few decades. Find one in which the hero doesn't bond with the audience in the first ten minutes by confronting some kind of authority figure. Suspicion of authority (SOA) is such a potent, dramatic message, that even anti-modernist rants like the Star Wars series play lip service to it.

(The superficial plot always features underdogs prevailing against garish baddies... even if the underlying story arc pushes the long term failure of democracy and citizenship, extolling the traditional alternative of rule-by-demigods. If you think about it, these two messages are not incompatible! In The Matrix, the "chosen one faces dire peril against tiitanic entities... while the rest of us are clueless, hapless, bleating sheep.)

Look carefully. Are there other messages pervading our media? Most of our modern myths supplement Suspicion of Authority (SOA) with two other lessons: tolerance of diversity and appreciation of individual eccentricity.

Think about it. If the director wants you to hate a villain, he will have the bad guy perform some intolerant act early in the film. If it is VERBAL intolerance, he/she might get away with an act of contrition after the climax. But if he kick a dog, he gonna die. Likewise, you will bond with the protagonist in direct proportion to the degree that she or he displays some quirky-but-harmless personal eccentricity.

Is it weird that I point out the existence of Enlightenment Propaganda, when my loyalty to the Enlightenment is supposedly based upon its promotion of individual responsibility, accountability, openness and pragmatism? Aren't those much more mature and sensible reasons to support the modernist agenda?

Well, please recall that we are talking about HUMAN BEINGS, here. Weirdness-& Inconsistency-R-Us. Our complexity is our wealth, even if it combines many aspects of Cave, Castle and Civilization.

Anyway, consider this. Most propaganda is diminished in its effectiveness when you see it AS propaganda. But did that happen to you, just now? Did you become less devoted to tolerance, eccentricity and suspicion of authority, when you saw how relentlessly you have been taught those values in popular media? I doubt it.

Enlightenment propaganda doesn't mind being looked-at. In fact, when you realize that you suckled these messages all your life, from a civilization that at some level WANTS you to be different (an individualist), and tolerant and suspicious of authority, doesn't it make you kind of smile at the irony? Maybe even become a bit more confident in the process, in its prospects for success. And in your neighbors, for sharing the key values?

Well, it oughta.

Moreover, the need for this kind of propaganda must be obvious. We are inherently romantics, as shown by 4,000 years of kings, priests, wizards and demigods. Reason alone won't propel us the other way. There must be other forces, plucking at our deeper feelings. No, I will not reject these messages, simply because I have noticed the campaign.

(A side puzzlement: who ordered this indoctrination campaign into being? Our typical notion of propaganda is to picture it done at the behest of some narrow clique of Illuminati-type conspirators, in some richly-paneled room. But can you actually parse out that scenario, this time? Some plutocrat-gnome telling his pals: "Hey guys. Let's pump up the suspicion of authority messages, this year." ?? It is just too weird.)

No, we have to recognize what forces are operating on our side, before we can properly analyze the weapons being used against us. Both sides of the Culture War engage in propaganda. Only understanding will help us to prevent the re imposition of ancient systems of oppression in our lifetimes.

Next time: back to a discussion of Majority Rule...

pause - answers for commenters....

=5/13/05

My last posting elicited a storm of very intelligent comments, so I will pause and offer ten capsule replies here, before resuming my riff on "majority rule in American political life."

1 - I do not claim that "consensus" can always replace majority rule. That would be as simplistic a notion as majority rule itself.

What I MEAN is that consensus should be a mature goal of anyone who prefers a decent civilization over one riven by divisiveness, rancor and bitterness. Imposition of majority will upon an angry minority is at minimum regretable. More often it is a sign of political immaturity and failure to communicate.

Such an imposition of majority will may (though regretable) also be utterly right! As in the banishment of slavery and - later - Jim Crow. But the pain and danger were undergone as a last resort.

A pretty good example of mature politics happened during the Clinton Administration, when democrats stopped ignoring the useful portions of GOP criticism of the welfare system and started listening, at last, to the parts that made sense.

The resulting Welfare Reform Bill had its problems. As usual, the goody portions wound up with less funding than they needed (e.g. remedial job training for those forced off the dole.) But the overall results were a tonic for the nation and the exercise proved that "liberals" were NOT the sort of intransigent fools that they were soon to be portrayed... when this spirit of negotiation was abruptly dropped in favor of all-out "Culture War."

2 - I do not agree that political indecision is always good. (Notice that many on the right, who praised divided govt under Clinton, are now happy to ignore the loot-and-spend frenzy that has taken place once their side got all the reins.) Government has jobs to do. We need accountability! That will allow some degree of vigor, where govt is needed... while allowing us to quickly notice and act when it starts putting its hands where they don't belong.

3 - I am willing to stay with our present system. Which emphasizes the individual representative and not the party. You are more likely to get both kooks and statesmen... each with some value, now and then. Parliamentism forces you to believe in a party line. An official ideology. An imperfect model of the world, interpreted by an imperfect party hierarchy. The US system lets local constituencies vote for the specific man or woman, sometimes quirky and willing to cross party lines. (Though not, alas, at present.)

4 - I have many suggestions to improve the present system, but they must be ranked by plausibility. And any tinkering with the Constitution is by nature (and perhaps rightly) implausible. (I'd love to see a preferential ballot like Australia (and the Hugo Awards) in which you can 1st vote your heart and then get a second chance to vote pragmatic.)

Hence I would reform the Electoral College with a couple of tweaks that DON'T require amendments.

(a) File a lawsuit against winner-takes-all allocation of electors and force proportional allocation, as is done in Maine and Nebraska.

(b) Encourage electors to realize that they are supposed to DELIBERATE! They might even (as I had hoped in 2000) make a gesture now and then. Lieberman should have been W's veep. Just two electors could have made it happen! And the message thus sent would have outweighed any actual power Lieberman attained.

That one move would have told W "You do NOT have a mandate. You have the power to prove you are a real man and a real american by leading us all." But all of his electors were loyal, unimaginative hacks.

(c) Main urgent item? SCREAM if your state and precinct still has touch screen systems that don't also create hand-autitable paper ballots that go into a sealed ballot box. Scream, then scream louder! Or you betray your nation. No less than that.

Also encourage EARLY voter registration by anyone reasonable and have them MAKE SURE THEY ARE ACTUALLY ON THE ROLLS, months in advance. Party-based exclusion in Ohio & Florida was rampant.

(d) Other suggestions? We desperately need to establish the office of Inspector General of the United States. Remind me! I will post my mini essay about this.


5 - Oh, fight plans to make your state political districts "fair and balanced" by taking redistricting out of the hands of politicians.

Surprised? See http://www.davidbrin.com/realculturewar1.html where I decry many ways that gerrymandering is evil. Our governator is proposing this measure and it sounds great. I HATE gerrymandering.

And yet I oppose Schwarznegger's move.

Because what we really need is either a federal law, so it happens everywhere, or DEALS that make it happen simultaneously in an equal number of democrat/GOP districts. GuvAhnold could negotiate such a deal with say Utah+Georgia+Fla. But he won't. ANd dang if I will support making things "fair" in blue states while leaving it all corrupt in the Confederacy.

(BTW...an idea. Spread the word that we should change blue/red metaphors to blue/gray!)

6 - I have long believed that the virtual districts concept - creating representation by affirmative affinity, rather than majority stomping on minority - was a good idea! But the Constitution....

7 - Thanks for sharing the Limbaugh Big Lie that - ' Liberals never achieve anything. They just sit around and endlessly talk and are always pessimistic.' Goebbels would be proud! I hear Limbaugh (like many conservatives) even dares to display a picture of Martin Luther King on his wall! Gahhhhhh!

Dare me some time to present my "list of major US political accomplishments in the 20th Century." The list is very long. Most items are now - restrospectively - seen as good and great, by consensus. And only two items are even remotely related to initiatives proposed by the GOP.

It is absolutely devastating. And - mind you - I do NOT disagree with as many "conservative" or "libertarian" positions as you might think! There are many ways to contribute to a civilization and the conservative mindset has its creative roles to play.

But re: major US consensus or law-driven accomplishments, Limbaugh is spreading a diametric lie. RL's position would make even Goebbels blush.

8 - Oh yes, the other item "If liberals don't like someone, they and the liberal mainstream media will simply amplify everything negative about that person, be it Bolton, Owens, Janice Brown etc. and will never present them in a fair light."

Yeah? Let's recall the 8 year campaign of lies about the Clintons. Some of the lies were at least political. (e.g. predicting a "tsunami of indictments" after the GOP gained power: seen any?) But the relentless smear campaign against the Clintons' MARRIAGE? Where did that come from? And WHY???? Can there have been any reason at all other than petty meanmindedness?

I saw, first hand, under very credible circumstances, what "Bill & Hill" thought of each other. And lemme tell you something. Those two reeeeelly liked each other.

That entirely unnecessary, brutal and vicious assault upon their family was not only unnecessary and hypocritical (most of the "House Prosecutors" who went after BC had had messy divorces - some incredibly immoral). I was also simply evil.

(And the phrase -- "Liberal mainstream media?????" Eeeeeeek! Goebbels strikes again!)

9 - One of you suggested to limit the total number of words in federal law, so that new laws must first edit the old ones, or at least simplify. Good idea.

Al Gore was the first person in the republic's history to actually DO that. Fat lot of credit he got. Again, a great conservative idea... and nothing happens till a democrat "sees the light."

10 - I agree that "progressive" is a better word than "modernism".

But it is already freighted with left-right meaning, alas.

My whole reason to pick 'modernism' is that it has already obsolesced into disuse. It can be picked up and dusted off and given OUR chosen meaning! It lets us strike out at orthogonal angles.

If we establish from the start that Modernism has almost many leftist enemies (e.g. postmodernists) as those on the right, then we have a chance to convince millions of conservative modernists out there that we are offering them a real home. In exchange for pulling their support from the regressive troika (kleptocrats neocons-apocalypts) they may join reasonable moderates of all kinds and work together, finding pragmatic ways to make a better world.

A new movement that will push some libertarian-conservative values, as well... so long as they are aimed at the overall goal of human progress.

Well, it's a thought....

Thanks all. You are a very bright bunch. More soon.

=

Modern(ist) Political Subtlety - or Why "Majority Rule" is a Deadly Ruse

And now for something topical about the rationalizations used by those who either despise - or don't 'get" - the Enlightenment...

===Minority Veto===

This week's Senate imbroglio - featuring efforts by the majority to bypass a democratic filibuster of administration judiciary appointments - can be viewed as yet another front in the Great Big War Against Modernity.

On a purely political basis, this entire stance is simply stupid. Even George F. Will has complained that the GOP position seems to assume there will never again be a democratic president, with a democratic Senatorial majority. Under those circumstances, would not republicans wish for a way to stymie the worst, most doctrinaire and ideological court appointments? A method to force some kind of negotiation and compromise, or at least respect for the views of a large and strong-willed minority?

Either their sense of history is extremely myopic... or else they think they know something that we don't know, about the political shape of our future. (Ponder this paragraph at leisure, till that last remark makes sense. And shiver.)

But let's consider this issue at a more abstract level. In a very general sense, what we are seeing is one party - claiming justification based on a slim electoral majority - asserting that they thereupon have a sweeping mandate to rule without negotiation or compromise.

Let's break up that last sentence. One of the great, consistent patterns of human governance, seen in nearly all cultures, has been a tendency for some group to claim justification based on __________, and thereupon assert that they have a mandate to rule without negotiation or compromise.

Fill in the blank. What justifications were used by past ruling groups?

Rationalizations ranged from royal divine right to the verdict of the battlefield, all the way to some inherent, logical superiority of "philosopher kings." Often these excuses were articulated with great care and passion by clever, nerdy fellows - by priests, wizards, or court ideologues, who thereby won the privilege of hanging around real power - the big fellows who got their swords, or vast estates, or trust funds mostly the old-fashioned way. By inheritance.

This pattern was so universal that it really deserves to be noticed and discussed.

Instead we have allowed arm-waving romantic rationalizers to distract us with a myriad details and fast-talking incantations. Theologians and Marxist theoreticians. Aryan mystics and Hegelian dialecticians. Machiavelli, Confucius, Rand, Mao, Strauss and all their ilk wove verbal spells to justify the use of raw power by those who already had it - or soon intended to get it - free of any obligation to negotiate with those who might suggest alternative methodologies of statecraft.

I mean, really, were the Communist theoreticians who justified a narrow clique of Party Nomenklatura families any different from the churchmen who preached in support of the slavocracy in the Old South, or the Social Darwinists who wove excuses for robber barons in the 1890s?

This commonality keeps being obscured by a bewildering storm of particulars. Which, of course, serves the common interest of their Ideologist Guild.

Alas, we keep buying into one or another of these trips. Take the latest version: majority rule.

Now, please. Let me avow that majority rule is vastly better than any previous political oversimplification. Indeed, it began as a reform generated by the Enlightenment, won at great cost, overcoming desperate opposition by every kind of social elite. In other words, majority rule was better than minority rule. (But is there something even better still?

No quasi-mystical catch phrase ever contained more essential wisdom than the one asserting that states derive their legitimate powers from "consent of the governed."

But what does 'consent' mean? Majority rule helps guarantee against the worst kinds of tyranny - those featuring iron-fist repression by a truly narrow, unaccountable and coercive elite. Hence, if we ever do have a dictatorship, it will cover the fist with silken gloves, and suffer great lengths to convince us that "we" (the majority) voted for it.

Still, that will not protect minorities. Nor will it ensure that statecraft is performed with attention to CITOKATE. (Criticism is the only known antidote to error.) Indeed, it is quite possible for majorities to be flat out, cockeyed wrong.

Moreover, majorities can also be manipulated. Whether based on ethnic, religious, sexual, lifestyle or political differences, it is easy to create a sense of "us" and "them". Such distinctions can be leveraged through propaganda, as Hitler used his campaign against Jews, gypsies and other minorities, to mobilize large portions of Germany, both before and after the election of 1933.

Consider the statement above. "Such distinctions can be leveraged through propaganda" to manipulate majority opinion. Are we immune? And by "we" I mean even we modernists? (If you do not ever doubt or question yourself, you do not belong on this list. Go away. Now.)

Are "modernists" immune to propaganda? No! We are human and thus can be swayed. Indeed, for most of our lives we have been subjected to "pro-enlightenment propaganda" in the greatest indoctrination campaign of all time!

Some of you have heard my riff on this, many times. But it bears repeating. So, next time we will talk about Enlightenment Propaganda... how effective it has been... and why this very success may be the reason why the romantics are now fighting back so hard.

Continue to: Part II: The Propaganda of the Enlightenment

or: The Myth of Majority Rule Part III

See more: Politics for the 21st Century

=====     =====     =====


A couple of science notes that you'll find amusing, in light of some of my novels...

*Augmenting the Animal Kingdom Wired News May. 3, 2005 **James Auger in his controversial new book, Augmented Animals, envisions animals, birds, reptiles and even fish using specially engineered gadgets to help them overcome their evolutionary shortcomings. He imagines rodents zooming around with night-vision survival goggles, squirrels hoarding nuts using GPS locators and fish armed with metal...

*Chimeras on the Horizon, but Don't Expect Centaurs New York Times May 3, 2005 *** If research on human embryonic stem cells ever gets going, people will be hearing a lot more about chimeras, creatures composed of more than one kind of cell. Such creations -- of pigs with human hearts, monkeys with human larynxes -- are likely to be unsettling to...

*A journalist tracks down the source of a claim, often cited by
greenhouse denialists, that most of the glaciers in the world are
growing: This one is very important!

This Site named "Site of the Week"

As most of you know, I am a grumpy blogger, who resisted this innovation in self-publishing, even though I approve of it as a social trend. (See blogs portrayed in my 1989 novel EARTH.) Even after starting it up, I've only posted about once a week, distracted by so many other things in a modern, busy life.

Hence it is with some surprise that I've learned that the perceptive Ken Newquist, of Scifi.com (home of the Scifi Channel) has named this little corner of contrainess and hope "Site of the Week," giving it perhaps TOO much national attention!

Will our cozy little corner or rationality and courteous debate survive? Ah well. We all should be flattered. And it is a tribute to you, the erudite/rambunctious citizens-of-the-Enlightenment who drop in now and then to share your insights.

Here is the blurb

"Sanity and civilization. The nature of modernism. The legacy of the Enlightenment. The Star Wars universe's fatal flaws. U.S. trade imbalances and the death of mercantilism.

These are just a few of the topics that science-fiction author David Brin delves into on his personal blog, Contrary Brin. The writer of Startide Rising, The Postman and Kiln People uses his blog to ruminate about current events, post rough drafts of his latest essays and keep fans apprised of his current projects.

As the blog's name implies, Brin isn't one to avoid controversy. The man hates Yoda, and drew the ire of millions of Star Wars fans with his 1999 assault on the inherent contradictions, anti-modernist themes and undemocratic nature of Lucas' famous space opera. In his nonfiction book The Transparent Society, Brin acknowledged privacy in the public sphere is declining but advocated that everyone—especially those in power—live equally public lives.

These themes, as well as others from his novels and nonfiction, find a receptive—and thoughtful—audience on the blog. Most entries easily see a dozen to two dozen responses from visitors, which Brin reads and responds to. This back-and-forth is fascinating to watch, and as a fan, it's great to have a chance to interact with an author on a serious, nonsuperficial level.

—Ken Newquist"

===   ====  ===

As if I needed more pressure! I'll try to get back to my episodic treatise on "Modernity and its Enemies" some time soon. After that? Well, there's this article I last worked on way back in 1996. It has to do with "Theology in the Light of a Scientific Age."

Talk about asking for trouble! ;-)

Remember the basic philosophy here, folks. Most of you would have been burned at the stake 400 years ago. I know I would have. Nowadays, that is a compliment. Let's KEEP this a civilization in which that's a compliment.

Stay burnable.

.

PS... while I despise the character Yoda, who never says a single thing that is straightforward, honest and helpful... I am not universally opposed to all things Star Wars! Luke was cool, if dumb as a stone. Han was terrific. The wookie saves the universe. I loved TESB. And George Lucas provides employment to at least 5% of the finest artists our civilization has ever produced. I plan to see the new one JUST for that reason, alone!

But I will pay half price at a matinee. You do the same.
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Examples of AntiModernism

Still too swamped to continue the formal essay. But let me call to your attention a TV show that has run in some markets, covering elements in our world that I have called anti-modernist. The following (italicized) is from the web site.

The Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organized terrorist network is an illusion. Director Adam Curtis theorizes that it's a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.

At the heart of his story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists.

Sayyed Qutb: Father of Radical Islam
In the 1950s Sayyed Qutb, an Egyptian civil servant was sent to the U.S. to learn about its public education system. As he traveled around the county, Qutb became increasingly disgusted by what he felt was the selfish and materialistic nature of American life.

When he returned to Egypt, Qutb turned into a revolutionary. Determined to find some way to control the forces of selfish individualism that he saw in America, he envisioned an Arab society where Islam would play a more central role. He became an influential spokesperson in the Muslim Brotherhood but was jailed after some of its members attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser.

In prison a more radical Qutb wrote several books which argued that extreme measures, including deception and even violence, could be justified in an effort to restore shared moral values to society. He was executed in 1966 for treason in Egypt. But his ideas lived on and formed the basis of the radical Islamist movement.
Leo Strauss Leo Strauss was a professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Leo Strauss: A Neo-Conservative
At the same time Leo Strauss, an American professor of political philosophy, also came to see western liberalism as corrosive to morality and to society. Like Qutb, Strauss believed that individual freedoms threatened to tear apart the values which held society together. He taught his students that politicians should assert powerful and inspiring myths - like religion or the myth of the nation - that everyone could believe in.

A group of young students, including Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Fukuyama and William Kristol studied Strauss' ideas and formed a loose group in Washington which became known as the neo-conservatives. They set out to create a myth of America as a unique nation whose destiny was to battle against evil in the world.

Both Qutb and Strauss were idealists whose ideas were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay.

For more of this writeup, see: http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/powerofnightmares/one.html

What's really interesting is the spate of editorial cartoons, lately, lampooning the administration's slavish devotion to Saudi interests. Of course the trigger has been oil prices. When prices were a dollar lower per gallon, GWB attacked Bill Clinton for failing to "jawbone" them down. Now the solution (in lieu of research and conservation and alternatives) is to expand subsidies for coal and oil. Ah....

Mind you, I can go along when it comes to nukes. That's one area where liberals are doctrinaire and blind.

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A guest Commentator on the Modernist Rift

While still swamped, I want to share with you some thoughts by an eminent philosopher/poet and theoretician about philanthropy, Frederick Turner. (We are both on a philanthropy round-table exploring new ideas in that important realm.)

The following excerpts touch upon matters that we have been discussing, having to do with anti-modernism and its roots in the 18th Century, when romantics and Platonist philosophers chose to wage ideological war against science and the Enlightenment.

---

I believe that the rift between the sciences and the humanities is profoundly dangerous both intellectually and culturally, leading to deep errors of understanding and unwitting crimes. Certainly at the time it seemed the only defense against what looked like a brutal pragmatism in personal relationships and a ruthless historicism in international realpolitik, where the victors in both cases would write history. But the apparent cure--the cordon sanitaire between science and the humanities--had side effects perhaps worse still. Let us look briefly at the history of those key humanistic ideas: freedom in moral action and originality in art.

To be free one must have free will. Will became the core concept of nineteenth century moral philosophy. It was will or intentionality that set us apart from brute nature. But what was the direction of will? It could only be the extension of its own field of action, since any focussing down on a specific object in the world would enslave it to the deterministic motivations of physicality. "Extension of the field of action" is nicely glossed by the word "power": so "Will" now became "the Will to Power". Thus power eventually became the key idea of the Humanities, as it remains today in its Foucauldian, Feminist, Postcolonialist, Lacanian, and Neomarxist versions. Strangely, our original enterprise, which was to delineate an alternative humanistic world to the deterministic realm of physical forces, has logically morphed itself into the very enemy it was designed to escape.

Power, whether expressed in oppressive violence by a reactionary elite, revolutionary acts by the disenfranchised, or legal sanctions by an enlightened ruling group, is the same thing as physical force: politically it means that you can send men with guns to make people do what you want. If beauty has been culturally relativized out of existence (which is indeed the result of avant-garde theory) and if logical reasoning is, as part of the regnant regime of power and knowledge, no more than the linguistic property of the oppressor, the only way to persuade people is through force.

...Thus the humanities, when cut off from nature, ended up not only looking exactly like the brutal world they hoped to transcend, but also trapped in the gradual entropic heat-death of the physical universe. And history confirmed this gloomy picture: the best-intentioned will- and power-based state in the world, the Soviet Union, turned into a nightmare of coercion and finally after seventy years blew away as if by some inexorable physical law of decay. As Lysenko found out, nature had its revenge on will.

...But during the same period natural science has, paradoxically, undergone a profound revolution. The theory of evolution proved how astonishingly original nature could be. Chaos and complexity theory showed that no Laplace calculator could keep pace with the world's own unpredictable self-organization. The feedback inherent in all dynamical systems rendered the idea of power largely obsolete in complex ecological systems, where the top-down balancing influence of the whole system could dominate local chains of deterministic cause. The predator's power over its prey is part of a system in which the prey species also determines the numbers of the predators and relies on predation to keep its own gene pool healthy. The rigid reductive xenophobia of our immune systems serves a larger organism that is free to explore all kinds of different worlds. The selfish gene becomes the microstructure of the altruism of a social species, and is in turn selected for or against by the resulting adaptability of the species as a whole and the emergent features of the ecosystem it inhabits...

...Ironically, then, the sciences and the humanities have changed places. The humanities now profess a scientifically obsolete view of events, a power-based account of the world which is as incompatible with the values of human culture as Kant rightly declared the Newtonian universe to be. This is where the "logic of the humanities," in Cassirer's phrase, has got us. Meanwhile the sciences, with their rigorous research methods, and beginning with presuppositions just as linear and deterministic as they were accused by the humanities of being, have paradoxically disclosed to us a universe full of freedom and creativity, fertile ground for art and moral action.

For the humanities this reversal is tragic, however understandable the route by which it was reached. If there is a moral it is that we should not have lost faith so soon in the power of human reason and experiment when corrigible by free criticism...

...But it is too late now to be drawing morals, and who are we to judge the grand humanistic savants of the nineteenth century? The task now before us is to rescue what we can from over a century of largely misguided theory--and thus partly tainted research--in the humanities, and put the field on a sound footing; so that we can bequeath to the future public an institution in better shape than we found it. The sciences, technology and the market now more than ever need guidance from the arts and humanities, which are the custodians of our best human traditions of truth, beauty and goodness. If those activities are exempted from the purview of the humanities, they are being given a licence to be ugly and unethical; science to allow its necessary reductive method to infect its conclusions, technology to be socially and ecologically destructive, and the market to choose short-term exploitation and cheating rather than the more profitable but more demanding path of long-term mutual interest.

---

Fascinating! I'll see if he plans to publish the entire article somewhere.

Indeed, the notion of a distinct split between science and the humanities has long been fostered by those who implicitly assume that later generations will continue to be unable to cross the gap. CP Snow famously addressed this cultural divide, which he saw as unbridgeable.

Many in the humanities clutch this dichotomy to their breasts, frantically. They adore the notion of "eternal human verities" in order to preserve a notion of equality with scientists, who have achieved truly staggering things in the last two hundred years. (In contrast, what are the transforming discoveries in psychology or ethics or literature, that have made us truly different than we were, say, in the days of William James.)

This is of course sad, and a little pathetic. The phrase "eternal verities" must be one of the most loathsome and despicable notions ever perpetrated on ten thousand college campuses, pushing the view that children can never learn from the mistakes of their parents.

Of course, this contradicts the central aim of most literature! Do we not write moving works of prose in order to enlighten others, so they will empathize and thus learn from episodes of pain and error that they never personally experienced? This is the goal of great literature, and yet, the mavens of literary criticism hold that this goal can never be achieved on a grand scale. Genrations who read great tales of tragic error will never be edified enough to STOP making similar errors themselves.

Fortunately, the simplistic rigidity pushed by Kant and others has been decisively disproved. The sciences and the arts are perfectly capable of fruitful intercourse. While we weren't looking, the "gap" has been quietly vanishing - crossed eagerly by technically-trained artists and artistically inclined scientists.

Try this exercise. Go to a place like Caltech and poll both students and faculty. See what fraction of the population not only participate in some artistic pastime, but excel at it! I will wager the figure is more than 90%. And yet, this is never reported, so precious is the comforting image of hapless nerds who have surrendered much of their humanity in order to succeed at the dry realm of facts. Or poll former Caltech graduates to survey the relative success of their careers, income or marriages. Or even happiness and overall serenity. I'll wager they score highly (on average!) in every category.

There is no tradeoff. No hidden moral cost to science. Science CAN be dangerous, because it increases human power to do good or harm. But it is also the generator of such notions as emergent properties, and the positive sum game. The belief that things can get better. Especially if science does NOT become the amoral pack of nerds that so many romantics feel driven to portray it.

--See the next entry on Modernism--

Modernism and "Sanity"

NoOne said: "Ask yourself if science has explained consciousness. Do we have an objective theory of subjectivity? No, we don't. And yet, we turn a blind eye to this huge gaping hole in our worldview. Or we try and cover the hole with bandaid by using terms such as epiphenomenalism, complexity theory etc. And then we (the ones connected to science) wonder why there's so much hostility toward us."

This is a huge topic.

The brief response. I see scientists as the LEAST-hated priesthood in human history. (You have no idea what common men/women thought of their priests, most of the time, but evidence suggests that average folk have always despised the moralistic bullying and patronizing insistence on secret knowledge. Scientists actively and enthusiastically try to share their "secrets" on PBS. Still, that makes them "least-hated"... not "best liked.")

The longer (though still brief) answer? Here is a short piece on sanity that I recently sent to the organizers of a conference that I'll be attending in June, concerning future threats such as advanced WMD.

"100 years ago we were told by confident and educated men that humanity was finally entering the era of understanding the human mind. Marx, Skinner & Freud were only a few of those offering simplistic, mechanistic models of human nature. These models not only proposed to explain and predict pathways chosen by societies and individuals, but offered means to channel those choices in desired ways. e.g. toward economic justice, rational order, or 'sanity'.

Humanity has since gone through a hellish process of discovering just how complex we really are. None of the models worked! And yet, old habits die hard. We are still coaxed to accept simple explanations from a narrow list of options, most of them occupying snug niches along a hoary-ridiculous left right political axis.

The good news is that all of those oversimplistic models also proved unworkable as methods of mass social control. As Aldous Huxley pointed out in Brave New World, our nature as inconveniently diverse, complicated and variable beings should mean there will always be some way to evade ultimate and systematic tyranny, even when it is empowered by advanced tools of science.

As we descended from the naive hopes of 1905 into the 20th Century's nadir of despair, it was practical men and women who found tortuous pathways leading upward, toward a decent society. Scientists - while still occasionally tempted by grand reductionism - have generally accepted the fantastic complexity of human nature and concentrated instead on the hard work of filling in the foundations of understanding, one brick or fact at a time.

Along the way, over-arching terms like "sanity" fell into deserved disrepute, because of their former role in helping elites to repress diversity, criticism and dissent.

And yet, the premise of this conference will be fundamentally faulty if the aim is somehow to anticipate and neutralize every kind of innovative WMD or other destructive failure modes FOR ALL TIME. This is not a game that can be won indefinitely by a dedicated professional protective class. The curve of accelerating accessibility to technological tools will increasingly favor what Thomas Friedman called the "super-empowerment of the angry young man."

If the world continues to be FULL of angry young men, there is no way that efforts at anticipatory prevention can succeed over the long run. Endeavors aimed at perceiving and neutralizing potential WMD in the near term can only be effective if they are aimed at buying time, so that a more long term solution can come into play. The solution of addressing the supply of likely users of WMD.

Careful appraisal suggests that there are only two possible classes of long term solution that have any hope of success -- (1) panopticon surveillance of everybody and severe social control, limiting individual volition and access to tools, or (2) a rapid and profound increase in the general level of human sanity, empowering autonomous citizens to solve problems rapidly and independent of supervision from above.

You almost never hear the latter approach discussed. (Perhaps because such an eventuality would undermine the position and privileges of the professional protective class.) Some will deny that human nature allows for possibility #2 at all. And yet, if you step back, is any other solution even remotely plausible, over a lengthy span of years?

Is it time, after a century of decline, to bring "sanity" back to the discussion table?

Yes, the word went into exile for some very good reasons. It was used by social elites in many cultures as a bludgeon to enforce conformity. Conformity of behavior, values and emotion. Dissidents against entrenched authority have all-too often been diagnosed as mentally ill. Harmless eccentricity was treated as dangerous deviancy.

But here is the ultimate irony. We have busily built a society whose modern standards and prevalent propaganda themes promote the very opposite of stodgy conformity! I have elsewhere relentlessly pointed out that the principal moral messages in modern film, music and art are (1) suspicion of authority, (2) tolerance of diversity, and (3) romantic appreciation of individual eccentricity.

Yes, there have recently arisen social forces deeply inimical to these teachings. But such forces face a long uphill struggle in any culture war against the three messages that fill almost every movie and song.

And so we face the irony that THIS culture's core values are rapidly coalescing around diversity, eccentricity and independence as central desiderata. So, might such a culture come up with a new and appropriate definition of sanity that is consistent with such values? A definition that does NOT preach conformity but rather relishes independence and flexibility of thought? One that cherishes diversity, yet nevertheless gently encourages palliative and caring attention to focus on people who need urgent help by the standards of a laid-back and tolerant civilization?

People wracked with anguish, for example. Or rage. Or the drug-high of relentless and unreasoning indignation. Inability to plan effective measures to achieve genuine self-interest. Inability to either cooperating with others or compete with them fairly? Might it be "mentally ill" to oppress and limit the options of others? (And that might include those who are too quick to accuse others of being mentally ill!)

Any of us would likely agree that those traits are sick in ways that truly merit attention. Attention that might increase society's overall safety without quashing creativity, eccentricity or freedom to disagree.

I contend that our long term safety from the proliferation of WMD will depend upon building a civilization in which very few of society's free and mature citizens will want to use them. In a culture that does not oppress, "insanity" will essentially boil down to the very same motivations and drives that we have the most reason to fear. Drives that will propel "angry young (or old) men (or women)" to use weapons of mass destruction against their neighbors during the coming century.

What long term solution can possibly work, other than SOME version of "sanity" becoming the norm during the next few decades?

Defining that word will certainly be a matter of extensive debate. But ultimately, it must be brought back from exile andincluded in the discussion, because all other measures are mere palliatives, buying time."

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All right, it was more of a paper than a brief note. I'll be presenting it several places this summer. One can hope.

Comments welcome.

==See the next entry on Modernism ==

Modernism thought in gestation

Still too swamped for detailed posting on the topic at hand. Sorry. I am trying to write a review of Robert O'Harrow's new book for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist... for the pay of a mug and a T Shirt. Heh.

I did find one older item that I'll share this week, that is relevant to both recent topics... modernism and bad sci fi. It doesn't use the word "modernism" yet. WARNING: this will seem a bit repetitious so those of you who are impatient with that sort of thing should give this one a pass. But it shows how my ideas were evolving a couple of years ago.

The 18th vs 19th Centuries...

It’s been said that western civilization has spent the last hundred years trying to resolve a deep cleavage in our culture -- a continuing struggle between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries... between prescriptions offered by the Enlightenment and those of the later Romantic Movement.

For generations, a vast majority of writers, artists and academics have sided with romanticism. From Keats and Shelley to nearly all modern musicians or movie stars. Seizing every opportunity to extol emotion and put down “cold” reason has become as natural as breathing. George Lucas expressed this reflex. “I’d say the primary word for me is romantic. I like the esthetics of the Victorian age.”

With nearly all of society’s most expressive and persuasive voices raised on the romantic side of this old struggle, it is a wonder that notions of cooperative progress and confident pragmatism survive at all. Even science fiction has grown much more cynical. Noir cyberpunk images push aside much of the can-do spirit seen in earlier times. Speculation about alien life is replaced by introspection about alienation.

Scholar and author Judith Berman, in a much-discussed 2001 study, showed how this trend has penetrated the very center of Science Fiction. Focusing on the flagship Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, once a daring journal devoted to ideas. Her landmark analysis revealed that a profound change had occurred. Almost none of the stories published during a year-long period had anything to do with exploring interesting futures. Even plausible “dark warnings” were avoided in favor of pieces about nostalgia, alternate pasts or presents, or featured characters who wallowed in loathing toward technology or progress.

And, mind you, this is in science fiction. Clearly the campaign against the future must have progressed even farther, elsewhere.

There is nothing new in this, of course. Cynicism has many advantages over enthusiasm. (And make no mistake. Romanticism is not the polar opposite of cynicism. Romanticism and cynicism are deeply connected, even Janus twin faces of the same personality. Every generation of romantics, since Shelley, has believed that they invented the studded-black-leather look. The howl of rage. A poetical worship of despair. It is an easy crutch, especially for people with more verbal talent than useful skill. We can all recall from the schoolyard how easily a sneer overcomes and defeats any gushing expression of enthusiasm.

What is so amazing is how they even manage, while doing this, to portray themselves as the underdogs!

In how many popular films does a skillful nerd prevail over the romantic loner? Values like competence and egalitarian advancement are seldom defended in media...

...and yet they remain popular at a deep level -- perhaps out of gratitude for the real life-improvements wrought by people like Franklin, Edison or Salk... and in part because citizens sense the underlying themes of inequality and egotism that drive so much of the Romantic Movement.

Individualism is fine. Both enlightenment and romanticism prescribe it. This link goes back to when they were allies against feudalism and monolithic religion. This is why our great modern propaganda campaign -- Suspicion of Authority -- accompanied by memes of tolerance of difference and acceptance of eccentricity, appears to be a consensus product of BOTH enlightenment and romantic impulses.

But many of us realize a stark truth -- that not everyone can be a king or rock star or handsome loner. The rest of us need fairness more than we need egomania. We rely daily on the amiable skill of countless strangers, rich in craft and diversity, who are fellow citizens of a civilization. They are more important to us than any Leader... or any Rebel.

This contrast is distilled when George Lucas says: “...there's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled.”

Lucas has a point. I concede the great attraction of the image that his Star Wars universe offers, while opposing it with all my power. (Especially the most evil elf ever depicted, that nasty, uncooperative, smarmy, patronizing, sourpuss, unhelpful, oppressively-secretive and cynically manipulative oven mitt... Yoda.)

Indeed, the Twentieth Century has been a battleground between these two occidental visions of human life. Two great utopian idealisms that continue to wrestle over the heart of the West. Marxism and Naziism were both deeply romantic. So was the Southern Confederacy. So are the leftist postmodernists and the right wing neoconservatives. Most ideologies are, because ideology is a phenomenon fundamentally based on a romantic need to encompass all of humanity within a single, simple and compelling worldview, replete with perfect heroes and perfectly detestable villains. Given the incredible harm that’s been done in the name of dogmas, monarchs and ideologues, their absence from a progressive 21st Century will be no great loss.

With so many enemies, coming from so many directions, should we marvel that the Enlightenment achieved anything at all? That fact, alone, attests to the incredible power of science.

(The landscape can get more complicated if you step back. Intellectuals of the Confucian East and Pious South despise both Romanticism and Enlightenment as expressions of crazy euro-american-individualist egoism. Moreover there are splits within, as well. The French wing of ‘enlightenment’ - rooted in Platonism - is fundamentally different than the Scots-American wing with its fixation on pragmatism. But these complications can await another time.)

Out of this welter and confusion, I don’t know which zeitgeist will prevail. Perhaps even a synthesis?

Pragmatism would be comfortable with that notion.

Here is another way of posing the issue. A great science fiction author once said -- “Keep asking questions! The more irksome the better!”

Now who do you think would be more comfortable with that notion? Percy Shelley or Ben Franklin? Star Wars or Star Trek? A world filled with black-and-white certainties? Or one where openminded people devote their passion to finding out what works?

---

Okay... fire away. I hope to get back to the main serialized train of thought soon.

--See the next part: The Propaganda of Enlightenment--

Or return to Part 1 of this series...

Star Wars redux?

First off, let me admit that "Anonymous" is right at one level. My recent screed about Star Wars is largely repetitious of earlier remarks. I was going on vacation and thought I'd quickly offer a gift - or grenade - in parting. OTOH, this is a blog, not a formal publication. It is *exactly* where a guy may rant a little at something that's happening to his culture. Even reiterating a bit.

And how can you compare MY repetition with George Lucas's? A couple of billion dollars and man-years pushing one of the most downer and anti-modernist messages of all time - with 4 out of 6 films preaching downer endings - and I am the "crank" for pointing it out?

Mark's message about the parasitical emotion-hungry, logic-destroying midichlorians was pure delight. Like me, you hunger for sense, even trying to find some way to rationalize the absurd. Anyway, you can all see where the genetic "chosen one" thing fits perfectly into the romantic obsession. The Homeric demigod may be flawed and tragic, but no one is ever allowed to question his utter superiority by nature.

Sorry, Ambi. In The Empire Strikes Back, Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasden took Lucas's BASIC idea and put words in Yoda's mouth that at least made a little sense. A knight who possesses unusual power is obliged to exercise unusual care. Anger CAN cause bad decisions - eg slaughtering all the Sand People when only a few killed your mom.

(A mom Anekin ignored for 15 years, leaving her a slave on Tatooine, when he had only to call in a favor from rich friends like Amidalah, in order to buy her freedom.)

But brief rage and bad decisions are completely different than becoming a consistently evil person. The Emperor's rant in ROTJ shows clearly what GL meant. That the Force makes you physically and psychically powerful, but morally frail. Captain Antilles showed more moral fiber in the very 1st scene than Anekin shows in the entire series. He relentlessly and CALMLY pursues the agenda of evil. (Which GL intended in the beginning by giving him that nazi helmet and name.)

I never said Yoda wanted to be a king per se... but a platonic "Philosopher King" is a phrase meaning a leader who is born into the role by nature, who faces little accountability, who is permitted to lie or manipulate (for the common good) and so on. Plato's list of traits (half of them horrific by modernist standards) fit Yoda perfectly. (You never met my real dare... to name a scene in which Y is friendly, helpful and informative.)

Note that I do not apply this to ALL Jedi! QuiJon clearly saw that something was wrong. Obiwan tries hard (tho he's a dope.) I got no probs with Luke - sweet & egalitarian... if also a dope. Mace Windoo fascinates me since in Ep2 he does the thing that Jedi are trained to do! He acts as a secret agent, infiltrates, and uses minimum force to get the job done. Had Yoda sent even one Jedi to help Mace, the whole thing would have been solved. But instead, Yoda wastes nearly all of the Jedi, hurling them into a suicidal frontal assault of insane proportions. The parsimonious explanation is that he wanted them out of the way the very moment he took delivery of his clone army.

Ambi said: Changing topics: David Brin, would it cost you much more than now to start a forum on your site? A blog is personal and passionate, but also tends to be highly partisan and one-sided. And you're not immune to it.

There is already a forum at: http://www.brin-l.com

I understand your complaint and sympathize. I started this blog at popular request knowing full well that I'd have trouble staying fair or paying enough attention to honor the bright people who check in. As you can see at http://www.davidbrin.com/ I am simply too busy for words and desperately need a dittoing machine. (As in Kiln People!)

Anyone who finds Brin-L unsuitable is welcome to explain why or suggest another forum. Again, my apologies and thanks for holding me accountable. CITOKATE.

Anders: I think my universe is better, of course. But that's not the point. My Uplift Universe is NOT the way I hope the cosmos really is. It takes a premise and tries to explore outcomes. Humanity's enlightenment civilization faces great difficulties vs a vast and overpowering Galactic culture that has many traits of romanticism for good reasons. I never thought of that before.

Yngve asks does success spoil EVERYBODY? There are times when I wish I had Spielberg's ear, to quibble a bit, but honestly, I feel he is a brilliant gift to our civilization and probably does not need my advice. (Weird - he is pals with Lucas while preaching the opposite message. Spielberg is deeply loyal to the Enlightenment.)

Same with Zemeckis. The Coen Brothers are the bravest guys around, having the most fun. Cameron - while flawed - deserves society's ongoing subsidy. The Stargate Boys need to be grabbed by the earlobe and told a thing or two... but really, they write well and know their stuff and defend enlightenment values. Glad they exist.

Sadly, the latest round of Paramount Trek-leaders absolutely ruined the franchise. They bought me dinner 3 times, picked my mind, took a few ideas (without paying)... but I would have been thrilled if they had taken my MACRO advice about story arcs and saved the series. Now that's just sad.

Eye candy? Sure. George Lucas hires the best that our civilization has patronized/subsidized - engendering artistic talent at a level that none other can begin to match. These are our cathedrals, so go enjoy their beauty. I plan to do so (though at matinee rates!)

Enjoy the cathedrals. Just don't worship the gods that Lucas plants on the altar. They are gods that hate us and our new way of working in the world.

Misc matters: Beaming Spam at the Stars

I am sorry to have been absent for some time. Been on a family vacation (with three kids!) to Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Talk about the most natural... and unnatural... wonders! I highly recommend Blue Man Group, by the way, and the Penn & Teller show (Penn is a true modernist. Any other society would have burned him alive (my biggest compliment). He'd make a large fire.

Another truly classic modernist is Stewart Brand, one of Ken Kesey's old Pranksters and a Jerry Brown guru, Brand is one of the truly eclectic thinkers of our time. See his latest on "Environmental Heresies"  wherein he suggests that nuclear power and several other notions badly need re-examining by those who genuinely want to solve problems on this planet.

Also for Cory Doctorow's inimitable insights into the phenomenon we have been discussing, drop by: http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/111-6.pdf A very colorful perspective on both the "singularity" and how even techno types can dive into romantic transcendentalism. Doctorow's blog  is also worth following. He and I share a stage Tuesday night at the Sci Fi Museum in Seattle.

=====

Okay.... before going back to my episodic paper on Modernism and its enemies, I gotta catch up some bits of miscellany. Things just keep getting weirder. For example, look at a recent phenomenon that absolutely typifies the romanticization of serious modern issues: http://www.talktoaliens.com/

Quoting one of the news reports - "Earth’s popular Internet classifieds site craigslist.org became the first commercial company to transmit into outer space this month. Extra-terrestrial civilizations now have the opportunity to search for apartments in Rome, look for a date in Seoul, or buy a used laptop in Denver amongst a huge variety of craigslist classifieds that anyone with internet access can view or post for free. Craigslist’s space transmissions are a reminder that “space efforts are a big deal to everyone living on Earth,” said Craig Newmark founder of
craigslist."

"Humor may have been the driver behind the nearly 139,000 craigslist
users who chose to beam their ads during the site’s first space transmission on March 11. When asked why they decided to post to outer
space several users felt like they had nothing to lose. “Most of our employees appear to be from outer space anyway,” said a human resources representative who posted a job ad for a Washington
D.C. coffee shop."

"While craigslist’s space transmissions seems to have a ‘why not, it’s fun’ rationale, there are questions about whether craigslist’s ads are appropriate messages to send to extra-terrestrial civilizations. Dr. H. Paul Shuch, executive director of the SETI League urges craigslist to join international discussion on protocols for CETI or communication with extra-terrestrial intelligence."



I mean, dang. There are so many levels. But as this is informal, let me just share with you a letter that I sent to these people.

Without ever getting a response.

.

Hello. My name is David Brin. I am an astronomer who is better known as an author of books such as The Postman (filmed by Kevin Costner in 1998) and The Transparent Society.

I am also a member of the SETI Permanent Study Group of the International Academy of Astronautics (http://iaaseti.org), the advisory body that has been charged with working out protocols and conventions having to do with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. This subcommittee has drafted and circulated the main internationally accepted documents concerning recommended standards for researchers and others who might receive or initiate contact by radio or other means with extrasolar civilizations.

I am writing to inform you that this subcommittee exists. A Protocol exists. And since you have announced an intention to beam messages from Earth into interstellar space, you may wish to familiarize yourself with these matters. What you propose to do comes under the category of "active SETI" and it has implications of which you may not be aware.

A number of members of the subcommittee have called for a moratorium when it comes to deliberate beaming of messages from Earth at detection levels significantly above background. The matter - controversial both inside the committee and outside - is still being debated. In any event, enough prestigious scholars and scientists have expressed concern that it might seem reasonable to ask that you pause a little and consider.

At present there is a limited range of ways that Earth civilization has become detectable. A common belief holds that TV broadcasts have already screeched loudly enough for all to hear, but this fable has been disproved. Beyond a few light years, these signals fade into background.

It is narrowly targeted beams that will far more likely call attention to our planet. Should we transmit such beams while knowing absolutely nothing about the situation out there?

Everybody has a favorite opinion about what interstellar civilizations will be like. Hollywood portrays bizarre threats. Many others feel that advanced societies will naturally be benign. These unproved opinions are not at issue.

What is at issue is the presumption that a few people may commit our world down a no-return road, without taking any time to discuss the matter with others who have pondered deeply on this subject, and who might shed light on the possibilities, both good and bad.

While smiling at the ingenuity and entertainment value of this public relations gambit, I am also hoping that you will consider dipping a little deeper into the subject. There may be ways to get the effect you desire, while still behaving as responsible citizens of a tiny planet, all alone in a dark and unknown wilderness.

With cordial regards,

David Brin
www.davidbrin.com

SEE more discussion on SETI vs Messaging to Aliens.
-----

Now of course there is a possible range of disagreement on this subject, even more than most, since SETI has long been known as a field in which one bandies around speculations that range across dozens of orders of magnitude, without a single data point (known instance of extraterrestrial life) to serve as a reality-anchor or boundary condition.

Take the following riposte to complaints about this recent beaming of trite ego messages into space:

“A community website like craigslist.org provides a good cross section of our society and therefore probably provides a fairly accurate representation of Earth today,” said Jim Lewis, vice president of Deep Space Communication Network, the company who transmitted craigslist.org’s messages into space. Craigslist.org was DSCN’s first customer when the site won its services through an on-line eBay auction in February. Commenting on the potential harm of CETI transmission, Lewis quotes Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute who said, “if you really feel that way, then you should be campaigning to have all transmissions from Earth shut down." Shostak points out that military radar installations broadcasts much stronger signals than TV antennas do, and they're on all the time. "If you're going to be paranoid, then you should be consistently paranoid," said Lewis.

Of course this is utterly specious. Seth Shostak, alas, obfuscates the distinction between detectable wide-beam leakage from a solar system like ours - of TV and radar broadcasts - vs the detectability at far greater ranges and lower sensitivities of the kind of narrow beams we are talking about here. It has been repeatedly demonstrated in recent years that 1950s broadcasts of "I Love Lucy" are probably NOT readily detectable by happenstance, at ranges beyond a few light years. But narrow beams like those sent recently by DSCN almost certainly are.

Thus, these people are peremptorily thrusting humanity into a new domain of visibility, without consultation or asking even a polite "what d'you think?" from the wide and diverse international community of people who have thought hard about this subject. A lot harder than they have.

Instead, DSCN and Craigslist behave in the typical contemporary fashion. They rationalize doing whatever they like. Typically, they quote the most radical of SETI participants and make assumptions about the nature and motivations of aliens that are not supported or justified by a single data point.

There ARE some simple ways that Craigslist and DSCN could try to address the worries of prudent people, while having their cake and doing a little harmless "Yoohoo!" beaming of adverts at the stars. If they were reasonable people, they would admit that we know little about the universe right now. They can get their publicity AND take basic precautions that our descendants (who will know the universe far better than we do now) might someday thank them for.

references:
http://iaaseti.org
Craigslist – http://www.craigslist.org
Deep Space Communication – http://deepspacecom.net
Talktoaliens.com – http://www.talktoaliens.com

==========


Sorry I've been disorganized. More soon.