Humanists, Meet Humanists

This, folks, is why you read a book more than once.

And why sometimes you have to remind yourself that reading out of good books doesn’t necessarily meaning reading books off someone’s “good books” list.

This is from Terry Pratchett’s “Unseen Academicals,” in which again this famous Humanist again proves that Humanism isn’t all that far from the teachings of one Jesus Christ, it’s just that some of Christ’s followers are a bit on the wonky side.

Here’s what I mean, reproduced in two pictures from the book, rather than via typing all those words:

The important bit:

Glenda blinked, trying to get the slide slightly less than three seconds out of her memory. “And that’s true, is it?” But it had to be true. There was something about the way the image was sticking to the back of her brain that declared the truth of it.

“I want to see it again.”

“You what!” Said Hix.

“There’s more to it,” said Glenda. “It’s only part of a picture.”

“It took us hours work work that out,” said Hix severely. “How did you spot it the very first go?”

“Because I knew it had to be there,” said Glenda.

And Glenda watches the bit of preserved memory again, of an Orc attacking someone. But she sees more than the teeth and the claws.

“There!” She pointed at the frozen image. “That’s men on horseback, isn’t it? And they’ve got whips. I know it’s blurry, but you can tell they’ve got whips.”

“Well yes, of course,” said Hix. “It’s quite hard to get anything to run into a hail of arrows unless you give it some encouragement.”

Greater evil behind the lesser evil. Greater evil driving others to use as weapons. We see it daily. Not necessarily in the form of tooth and claws and whips forcing others into the hail of arrows. But we see it in politics, in society, where if you’re not supportive of one thing you must be a hater.

It’s as Paul wrote to the Corinthinas, in 1 Corinthians 13:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my good to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

In Unseen Academicals, through the eyes of Lord Vetinari, this story is told:

 This is the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. From a tyrant. An amusing tyrant, yes, but a tyrant who has had people killed and gotten away with it because of that moral superiority.

There is no superior morality without charity. Not even the Humanists can claim to be superior without it. And there is enough evil done both by purported Humanists and purported followers of Jesus Christ for me to think that any braggadocial claim of moral superiority is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

Because, to continue from the King James:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, it not puffed up.

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

I don’t see any of that in the so-called moral superiority. What I see is superiority wielded as a weapon, just as racism is wielded, just as jingoism is wielded. Help is offered not because one is charitable, but in an effort to make one’s enemies look uncharitable.

Good books hold mirrors up to the reader. Good books help us hear the echoes of our own sounding brass, of our own tinkling cymbals.

And here’s something interesting, also from Unseen Academicals: A refutation of the Humanist “If God Were There, He’d Stop All This” argument. Page 315:

[After being asked if wizards could to something to convince the Ankh-Morpork populace that there’s nothing to fear from Mr. Nutt, an Orc.]

“Yes,” said Ponder. “We can do practically anything, but we can’t change people’s minds. We can’t magic them sensible. Believe me, if it were possible to do that, we would have done it a long time ago. We can stop people fighting by magic and then what do we do? We have to go on using magic to stop them fighting. We have to go on using magic to stop them being stupid. And where does all that end? So we make certain it doesn’t begin. That’s why the university is here. That’s what we do. We have to sit around not doing things because of the hundreds of times in the past it’s been proved that once you get beyond the abracadabra, hey presto, changing-the-pigeons-into-ping-pong-balls style of magic you start getting more problems than you’ve solved. It was bad enough finding ping-pong balls nesting in the attics.”

“Ping-pong balls nestin;?” said Trev.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Ponder glumly.

Humanists don't believe in God because they believe they are morally superior to Him. Yet we see here the wizards of Discworld recognizing that the behavior Humanists would expect in a god isn't the kind of behavior that wins awards.

Someone's gonna be upset.

"Lawn Mowers"

When I read the opening paragraph of Adam Chandler’s article this morning in The Atlantic, this vignette from MASH immediately came to mind:

FRANK: When I heard you were engaged, I sat down and did some hard thinking. And there, printed right on the paper was the answer: lawn mowers.

MARGARET: You lost me, Frank.

FRANK: Lawn mowers, Margaret. That's what this war is all about. The smell of fresh-cut grass on a hot summer's day; girls with straight, white teeth; freckle-faced kids in striped T-shirts.

MARGARET: Oh, Frank, when you talk like that, l-I could . . .

FRANK: May I give the bride a peck on the beak?

MARGARET: I don't think it would weaken the war effort.

Here’s the opening, in case you don’t want to click on the link:

“The U.S. is riven by politics and race and religion and foreign policy and the economy. But one constant unites nearly all warring demographics: fast food, America’s highly imperfect, deep-fried North Star.”

Frank Burns could probably come up with some ludicrous reasons why it’s lawn mowers and straight-teethed girls the Korean War was fought for. Just as Chandler can see a nation “riven” by so many slashes and arrows being bound together by chicken nuggets.

But yanno, I think he’s looking at the world through a cracked and crooked lens.

Yes, there are problems in this nation.

And yet there are many examples where politics, race, religion, foreign policy, the economy – and probably even lawnmowers – are uniting forces.

I look at Troop 1010 as one example. We’ve got six girls of different backgrounds and faiths working together. They may not necessarily see eye to eye on anything ranging from religion to lawnmowers, but they are moving toward a common goal.

I see many quiet acts being done by people of different faiths, of different religions, working together to make things better. And those efforts may well indeed involve chicken nuggets, but it’s not the grease in the deep fryer that unites them.

Anyhoo, this isn’t a deep dive into anything that would get me into The Atlantic. I just thought the juxtaposition of chicken nuggets and lawn mowers was funny.

It’s Krep. Which Means It’s Time

So this week I read the first thirty pages of Doleful Creatures, and I have come to the following conclusion: The first thirty pages are incoherent, barely comprehensible krep.

That’s a good sign.

It means, of course, enough time has passed between Revision 17 and Revision 18. I can cut through the spare moments when I think I write good and see the glaring, fiery evidence that I cannot.

So what’s the next step?

A few possibilities:

1. Write a new synopsis of the story I want to write. Then write a detailed timeline to get me from A to Z. Then decide:
a. Look at what I’ve got and see what I can shoehorn into the plan, because certainly what I’ve got can’t all be krep
b. Start over.
2. Just start over, but without a coherent plan, pantser that I am.
3. Give up.

Clearly, I cannot choose No. 3. I want to write. Reading the first thirty pages, krep that they are, showed me I have some writing chops, though organizationally I appear to be as efficient as a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest.

And pantsing hasn’t really served me all that well the first seventeen times, though clearly I have gotten to a better idea of what kind of story I want to write, so the time wasn’t completely wasted.

Also, I’ve been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett lately, which is both good and bad. Good, because he keeps the story going. Bad because I know I’m light years from even the writing skills of Mel Gibson, let alone Mr. Pratchett. But it does give me something to aspire to. Because in reading Early Pratchett, you can see he was aping his elders a bit. Later Pratchett, he was his own master. That’s the journey I need to make.

If only I could cut out some of the intermediate steps . . .

More good news: I have a binder in which I’ve got my last notes on the book. Tucked into the plastic cover is an old synopsis I wrote. I re-read that too, and I can see that I’ve taken the story beyond that one. Maybe too far, which would explain why I’ve taken it through so many revisions. But I firmly believe it’s getting better, if not yet completely coherent.

On to the next thirty pages . . .

Bookmark: Count Floyd

So this bookmark I found in my copy of Terry Pratcthett's "Unseen Academicals." It's one of mine. I remember making it, and signing it myself. But I don't remember why.

It's 8 1/2 by 11, by the way. And a little pixellated.

Revision 18 . . .

So over the weekend I entered a pitch contest with Doleful Creatures.

And maybe figured out how to fix it. Again.

And by "fix it," I do mean another rewrite. Which might be good. Or not.

The story has always needed more wossname, as one of Terry Pratchett's characters might say. The wossname might be ratcheting up the stakes for Jarrod, whom I said in my pitch was at fault for humans now entering the world of animals. Which isn't really part of the book. Which is a problem for the contest since the book was supposed to be in finished form.

Which doesn't matter since I haven't heard anything about the contest and it was supposed to be almost instant feedback. I probably misread the closing date or put my email address in wrong, which I'm sure impressed the contest-holders.

I can't help but fight feelings of despair. 2013. I've been nursing this thing since 2013. And maybe it's getting better . . . 

1984, Brave New World, Feet of Clay

I’ve written a lot on this blog about the two pillars of 20th century dystopian fiction: Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and George Orwell’s “1984.”

After reading George Packer’s piece in the July 2019 issue of The Atlantic, I’m prepared to argue there’s a third book that should be added as a pillar: “Feet of Clay,” by Terry Pratchett.

I agree it’s a tenuous argument at best, despite Pratchett’s well-deserved reputation as a modern satirist.

Let’s start with Packer’s article, wherein he reviews Dorian Lynskey’s “The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984.”

Orwell’s lasting power comes, Lynskey argues, not form idiot interpretations of the novel but through its basic message: “The moral,” as Lynskey quotes Orwell, “to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.”

Enter Sir Samuel Vimes. Descendant of “Stoneface” Vimes, who executed the last rightful king of Ankh-Morpork. No matter the king was mad. No matter he had a horse as privy councilor. No matter he tortured opponents, critics, and probably even loyalists who got up his nose. That he was king, and that Stoneface Vimes killed him means, as far as Dragon King of Arms, that Vimes is an unperson, and the unperson who is Cecil Wormsborough St. John “Nobby” Nobbs, as a descendant of the Earl of Ankh, ought to rise to the throne. Toe be, of course, a puppet of the snobbier remnants of Ankh-Morpork nobility who think they ought to be in charge but they don’t quite have the genealogy to pull it off.

And let’s not forget the golems, fighting for justice, but getting it, as it turns out, very wrong.

The schemers aim to use fakery and imagery to promote their puppet and become de facto rulers of the city, most powerful in the Discworld – putting the “right” people in place. And since Lord Vetinari, current ruler of Ankh-Morpork is a self-described “benevolent tyrant,” the people won’t really care who’s in charge, as long as the economy keeps purring along.

Back to Packer’s article:

As Lynskey points out, Orwell didn’t forsee ‘that the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals, and without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.’

Or what the state, the party, the charismatics, say it should be.

And more, lest you think this is only aimed in one right-leaning direction:

Progressive doublethink – which has grown worse in reaction to the right-wing kind – creates a more insidious unreality because it operates in the name of all that is good. Its key word is justice – a word no one should want to live without. But today the demand for justice forces you to accept contradictions that are the essence of doublethink.

Want an example? Packer says:

Many people on the left now share an unacknowledged but common assumption that a good work of art is made of good politics and that good politics is a matter of identity. The progressive view of a book or play depends on its political stance, and its stance – even its subject matter – is scrutinized in light of the group affiliation of the artist: personal identity plus political position equals aesthetic value. This confusion of categories guides judgments all across the worlds of media, the arts, and education, from movie reviews to grant committees. Some people who register the assumption as doublethink might be privately troubles, but they don’t say so publicly. Then self-censorship turns into self-deception, until the recognition itself disappears – a lie you accept becomes a lie you forget. In this way, intelligent people do the work of eliminating their own unorthodoxy without the Thought Police.

This willing constriction of intellectual freedom will do lasting damage. It corrupts the ability to think clearly, and it undermines both culture and progress. Good art doesn’t come from wokeness, and social problems starved of debate can’t find real solutions. “Nothing is gained by teaching a parrot a new word,” Orwell wrote in 1946. “What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.” Not much has changed since the 1940s. The will to power still passes through hatred on the right and virtue on the left.

Sir Samuel Vimes, in Pratchett’s novel, knows both hatred and virtue. He sees them in himself, and hates both of them. He stands as the man in the middle who is still able to see clearly, doubts his convictions, doubts his doubts, and still manages to fix things, or at least make them as fixable as Ankh-Morpork will allow them to be fixed. No free elections under Lord Vetinari, but under Lord Vetinari it’s the bad guys who end up in prison. Or summarily executed. Because, you know, tyrant.

So in this way “Feet of Clay” isn’t dystopian. It’s a satire of the real, very imperfect world where we live, wherein there are people like Sir Samuel Vimes who know that two plus two can only equal four.

More on this as I continue to read this wonderful, and increasingly timeless, story.

Purloined Sketches

Again, I have to snatch my kids' drawings when I can. This is a bit of sketching from our daughter.

Beware the Cults of Personality and Dogma

So apparently I need to see the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl.”

The enemy here is not nuclear power. The enemy isn’t even Communism. The enemy is little men who believe they can control the truth, control the facts, and just assume the little people will go on with the deception either because they’re too busy to think otherwise or they simply believe the government is totally legit and has all the answers.

I don’t have HBO, and I’m leery of “free” trials, because they always want your credit card information and I never read the terms and conditions. I don’t trust The Man.

Listen to the raisin’s speech from this clip again:

And how proud [Lenin] would be of you all tonight. Especially you, young man. The passion you have for the people. For is that not the sole purpose of the apparatus of the state? Sometimes, we forget. Sometimes we fall prey to fear. Our faith in Soviet socialism will always be rewarded. Now, the state tells us the situation here is not dangerous. Have faith, comrades. The state tells us it wants to prevent a panic. Listen well. It’s true, when the people see the police they will be afraid. But it is my experience that when the people ask questions that are not in their own best interest, they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labor, and leave matters of the state to the state.

We seal off the city. No one leaves. And cut the phone lines. Contain the spread of misinformation. That is how we keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor. Yes, comrades, we will all be rewarded for what we do here tonight. This is our moment to shine.

And though the little flag pin and the commentariat are pointing at POTUS, I can hear this kind of rhetoric – and see the toadying apparatchiks – on both sides of the American political fence. There are those both on the right and on the left who will happily participate in the Brave New World that is party purity and will actively do their parts to keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor. Because they, not the people, know what will keep the people happy and safe and ignorant. But most importantly, self-important and smug that they and their side are right, so they become lulled into that sense of stupor that ensures they Won’t. Question. Anything. Because they are right.

Here’s what the writer of Chernobyl says, in part, about the goals of this mini-series:

Well, we are experiencing something now that I used to think was mostly just a phenomenon in a place like the Soviet Union, which is a disconnection from truth. And the emergence of a cult of personality. And a distrust and debasement of experts who don’t go along with whatever the official narrative is. It’s so upsetting, and we don’t know quite how to handle it. What I want people to consider is that no matter what it is we want to believe, and no matter what story it is we want to jam the world into, the truth is the truth. If you organize your life around some political party’s list of things you should believe, or an individual that you think is going to come and save you, you are disconnecting yourself from truth. And there is a price to pay. 

For a million reasons, this was not an anti-nuclear polemic. It’s anti­–Soviet government, and it is anti-lie, and it is pro–human being. But anyone who thinks the point of this is that nuclear power is bad, is just, they’ve just missed it.

Any follower of any political party can fall for this. Cults of personality or cults of dogma exist on any political spectrum. Those too smug to see the own cults of personality or dogma on their end of the stick are the ones we need to watch out for, because they're the ones who'll eagerly help any Brave New World or Big Brother come to power.

Skin Failure

A while back, I had a job I hated.

I left that job and eventually moved on to something much better.

But there are still the reminders that crop up. The failures, mostly, because I screwed up at times at that job.

But the thing that gives me total skin failure is when I hear a phone ring that’s the same sound as the phone I had at the job I hated. I will not even try to reproduce it here, because it’s that awful.

So much better off where I am now. When the phone rings, I don’t cringe.

Old Man Yells at Cloud

Did a large procession wave their
torches as my head fell in the basket,
and was everybody dancing on the casket?
Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want
Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do.

I’ve had my credit card information stolen twice. Both times, it was because of iTunes.

The second time, it happened right after I told the folks at Apple that my credit card information had been stolen and that they should cancel any pending orders on my account before I put my new credit card information in.

I put it in.

Someone immediately spent $50 on my account. (So to hear some of the latest things being said about Apple being a champion of user security want to make me laugh out loud.)

Since then, I refused to put credit card information into iTunes, and that made it unhappy. Even if I wanted a free app, it wasn’t happy. And because I was not put on Earth to make software applications happy, I wasn’t bothered.

So to hear that Apple is pulling the plug on iTunes? Well, not that bothered.

And I’m not that bothered to rush out to use any of their replacement products either. Because their customer service through iTunes convinced me they weren’t all that interested in keeping my information private, or even listening to me when I thought things were vulnerable. And before you ask, yes, I do practice good password security. No two passwords are the same. Hardly any of my usernames are the same. Nevertheless . . .

And thus the They Might Be Giants lyric. I’m dancing on their casket. Even though iTunes is coming back as a bifurcated zombie.

And, of course, it’s not really dead. At least for Windows users.

Which means it’s imperfect – because iTunes has always been imperfect – for my needs. Any schlub moving on to its replacements will have to pay a monthly fee for the privilege.

Not that I used iTunes all that much. The free app was so my daughter could get her Fitbit working with her iPhone. And pretty much all the music I had catalogued there was ripped from CDs.

Call me funny, but I’m not a fan of streaming media. I want to know that I actually own what I’ve purchased. You don’t see stores or record executives coming to my house to physically remove the CDs I have. Yet that kind of thing is all too easy with “the cloud.”

So yes, this comes:

I’M NOT BORING! [Narrator: He’s Boring, Folks.]

First, this: It’s not wise to upset the resident giant.



And no, I don’t feel boring. I may indeed BE boring, but I don’t feel boring. Most of the time. My kids may have different opinions on this. So in a way I probably am boring, from a certain point of view.

So let’s create a list of things I am, or likely am:

1. Boring. Yes, I said boring. Because last weekend the highlight was getting the garden planted. Not that I really wanted to do it, but because it really needed to be done and I wanted to be done with it. My biggest disappointment from the weekend is that we did not get the lawns mowed. That sums up a lot of the reasons we do things as adults. And probably a fair amount of the suicides.

2. Easily confused. I chalk this up to being an adult, as this comic clearly illustrates:

The more I learn, the less I know, and the more I learn, the more I am exactly like the computer Kirk destroyed by feeding it illogical nonsense. Part of being an adult is not necessarily being able to parse the illogical nonsense that’s fed to us constantly, but on deciding which bits of illogical nonsense to focus one’s energy on so they’ll go away. See the garden example in No. 1 above.



Note: This clip is not from the computer-destroying episode, of which I think there were several. I just like Kirk’s drama in this scene. Because you KNOW he’s NOT bluffing.

3. Stuck in a rut as far as music goes. For this, Amazon has to take some of the blame. We have Amazon Prime, and I’ve really enjoyed exploring the breadth of its musical offerings. I’d say breadth and depth, but because my musical interests don’t necessarily intersect in every fashion with the interest of the masses, I find myself endlessly saying “Alexia, skip this one” because I’ve heard a particular song over and over and over again because the depth in certain artists and areas just isn’t there. I’m sure somewhere there’s keen interest in the music of Now, but for the most part, that is not me. We have a pretty good collection of CDs, but as the number of CD players has actually diminished in the house, their usefulness is fading. Still cling to them, though.

4. A little burned out. Working two jobs is taking a bit of a toll. And that’s a major red flag. Good news is I actually like both jobs I’m working now, so I’m doubtful we’ll see a repeat of 2005. I am, however, looking forward to the seven-week break between semesters coming up in August.

5. Stressed over kids. I used to hear Mom say that if she could revisit the time in her life when all her kids were little, she’d do it all over again. Scoffer, I was. But compared to the stress of raising teenagers, maybe having a bunch of little kids around the house wasn’t all that bad. I mean, our kids aren’t terrors. But there’s a fair amount of stress to go around. It’s like that scene in the MASH episode “Divided We Stand,” where General Clayton sends in a psychologist to see whether the MASH is breaking up under the strain and might better serve by dispersing its personnel to other units, viz:

Henry Blake: I mean, uh I mean, you’re not gonna write down everything I say to you, are you?

Capt. Hilderbrand: I have a report to make, sir.

Blake: Oh, of course. Like a brandy, Captain?

Hilderbrand: No thanks.

Blake: Gin? Scotch? Rye? Beer? I got it all. Don’t get the ide that I drink. I mean, it’s just that, uh, you know, uh, every now and then there's a lot of pressure around here, and, uh, you know Not that there's a lot of pressure or anything like that. It's just that every now and then, like your least little pressure, it'll build up to an incredible amount of pressure around here! Radar. - Would you bring in some brandy?

Radar: Thought you might like some brandy.

Blake: That’d be real nice. Um, Captain Hildebrand doesn’t care for any.

Radar: Oh, then I won’t bring his glass in.

Blake: Great little kidder, that one.

Michelle’s pressure is at its peak, teaching and getting food ordering ready for camp. So that spreads. Thus the gardening thing from No. 1.