Don't Sell Your Soul

I tried to ignore this story about a guy complaining about his father who is a "right wing a-hole." Depending upon the day and my mood, I can fit or be made to fit into this pigeonhole. And when I have participated in such conversations, it's generally been unpleasant.

But then I heard just enough of Andrew W. K.'s reply that I realized he was making a point closely related to one that I had made a while back. So, if he's agreeing with me, he must be right. Right? I had noted that when interacting with someone who is selling something, their humanity becomes eclipsed by their sales pitch. And if the product is the Republican/Democrat party, the sales pitch is political propaganda. Talk to a spokesman/activist and you can find yourself conversing with someone who is indistinguishable from a spambot.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Social Justice Warrior, you just failed my anti-Turing test."

What Andrew W. K. said that snagged my attention was this sentence: "Try to find a single instance where you referred to your dad as a human being, a person, or a man." Maybe the dad was so monomaniacal in his right-wing advocacy that it eclipsed his humanity. That's a real risk. OR maybe the "Son of a Right Winger" was so monomaniacal in his left-wing beliefs that it blinded him.

I have to acknowledge the humanity of humans who are anti-Turing test failures.

This turned my notion of an anti-Turing test inside out. Or it provided a hint at what an anti-Turing test should look for. Humans can recognize other humans. And should recognize other humans. Seriously bad things happen when people ignore/deny the humanity of the other. Prior to the Civil War Huck Finn might say, "Nobody got killed except some n-----s." Hutus deny the humanity of Tutsis. Turks deny the humanity of Armenians. Nazis deny the humanity of Jews. (Yes, I've Godwinned this note. Deal with it.)

If you can't/won't see the humanity of the other, your own humanity is jeopardized.

Perhaps this is what older generations meant by "selling one's soul." 

Democrats turned the funeral of Senator Paul Wellstone into a political pep-rally. They got spanked by the electorate because of its obvious ghoulishness. But the ghoulishness wasn't obvious to them because the humanity of everyone involved had been sacrificed on the altar of partisan interests. The same lack of perspective is on display when a "Pro-Lifer" murders an abortionist.

When you read classics, the ancients' axe-grinding occasions only a quizzical "what?" But we read classics because the ancients did more than just grind axes: they shared some truth about humanity they understood. Propaganda has a limited shelf-life after which it becomes--at best--a joke, then irrelevant.

One must retain one's soul in order to create art. Art manifests something transcendent and it flees pornography. This makes some think that Liberalism is killing art when it asserts that Art is always political. Political totalitarianism is a blight on our culture.

If you deny the assertion that Art must put the correct political message first, you'll be called an International Lord or Hate, a cismale gendernormative fascist, or something as bad. Of course, I'd rather be called that then sell my soul to The Cause--any cause.

Let Hitler Speak

Years back, I was reading a periodical, I can't recall whether it was Analog or Isaac Asimov's magazine, and someone said something bad which occasioned me to write to the editor. My point then and now is that one does not defeat bad speech with censorship, but with reasoned counter-argument.

Let's suppose you think my advocating Whigs is not just disagreeable, but downright evil. And rather than counter my words, you scream shut up, and censor any utterance of them.

I think that is wrong, and instead, you should reply to my Whig speech with your own anti-Whig speech. If you disagree, say why you disagree. If you claim I'm evil, make your case to that effect.

Then, our respective audiences can decide for themselves whether Whigs deserve their place in the dust-bin of history.

In the case of Nazis, there are better reasons than, "They lost WW2," to believe they are wrong and evil.

Every person must take action in this life convinced what is right and what is wrong. We need better reasons to think the Nazis were evil than the guy in Indiana Jones pulling out a folding hangar in a menacing way, and then getting his face melted off when he looks inside the Ark of the Covenant.

What do you do when you find out that JFK admired Hitler? If all you know is "Shut him up! They're evil!", then you might think JFK was evil, too. However, if you understand that some things Hitler did were good and other things were much more evil, then you can sympathize with JFK's admiration for the good he could see, and give Hitler the doubt about the evil he did not yet see.

Transgressive things can have a sort of appeal to the ignorant. When I was a kid, parents were shocked and appalled at sex, drugs, and rock & roll. And kids went for it. Can those things kill you or ruin your life? Loud music can cause hearing loss I suppose. And alcohol is a legal, recreational drug.

You can't just say, "shut up," but you can teach discernment. And discernment requires more than Reefer Madness.

No matter how deeply you bury Hitler's evil, it has a way of coming back and citizens need discernment to recognize it when someone who doesn't sound or look like Hitler says the same things as him. For instance, the sloganeering of both John McLame and Barack Obama had a great deal in common with Nazi sloganeering. Are the GOP and Democrats both Fascists? You need discernment.

I say you get that discernment by letting the evil Fascists have free speech to make their case. But you don't stop there. They are evil. You have to follow up with your own free speech to make the opposing case that they are not only wrong, but evil. This means you have to know why we fight.

When I read Liberal Fascism and I got to the chapters about the present day, there was an Elephant in the room, and it was obvious that Mr. Goldberg was uncomfortable with the definition of Fascism he'd spent the rest of the book crafting fit Mr. Bush's "big government" as well as Mr. Obama's.

That is the reason against educating people about why good is good, and why evil is evil.

If a thing is evil because your party boss says it's evil, and good because your party boss says it's good, then you can wake up one morning like American Communists did on 23 August 1939 to find that Nazis are no longer evil, but good. And then when Hitler invades Russia, oops, your party boss has to tell you they're evil again.

This sounds ridiculous, but keep in mind the guiding principle of both Democrats and Republicans elected officials: "if you give us enough money, we vote like you like."

In this case, it isn't the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or Operation Barbarossa that redefines good and evil, but whose check is larger. If you have reasons to believe good is good, and reasons to believe evil is evil, then party bosses have to be picky about whose checks they cash.

This can be an inconvenience, but I think it should be a necessary inconvenience.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Shaft

 #34 If you are right and the group is wrong, nod, smile and slowly back away.

This is a Writers Mantra about writers' group etiquette.

If you are writing in this part of the 21st century, you've probably gotten the news that you should belong to a writers' group and you should run your prose past the other members before trying to publish your deathless prose.

I've been a member of a few writers' groups over the last decade or so and I wish I'd started sooner. You will find  prose that you think is perfectly acceptable can raise objections by one or more members of your writers' group.

Maxwell Perkins has been dead since 1947. In the intervening years no top-drawer editor has stepped in to take his place guiding literary talent through the shoals of a writing career. You need someone to tell you, "that doesn't work." And sometimes you really, really need someone to tell you that you just don't thank Hitler.

This is where a writing group is a very handy thing. Most mothers, siblings, or friends will read your stuff and pat you on the head saying, "Very nice dear." You might as well tape your manuscript to the refrigerator. Instead, you need someone who has an idea of what works or doesn't-work prose-wise. A person who writes is more likely to be that someone.

But there's a potential problem: Suppose you write stories wherein the protagonist solves crimes with two hard fists, and a hot gat. He likes his liquor straight, and his women pliable.

You'll do well if your writers group has a few manly men or right-thinking women (very, very far right-wing women). But you'll fail if the writers' group is chock full of pacifist, anti-gun, tea-totaling, radical feminists.

Writing is not a monolithic enterprise and what's catnip for some markets is dognip for others. And vice versa. A lot of what is called "bad writing" is just writing for a different market: Don't expect to sell your lesbian coming-out memoir to Zondervan.

In the ideal case, your writers' group will be a perfect reflection of your target market.

Often it is not, and that's the point of this mantra.

Holmesian readers expect Sherlock Holmes to draw some remarkable conclusion from something nobody else perceives. A non-Holmesian probably won't notice if this omission. Likewise, Science Fiction readers do not need to have certain SF tropes spelled out. I once had someone complain in writers group that he didn't know what an AI was.

Push this to the extreme. Suppose you are targeting a very narrow niche where everybody in that niche knows certain things and brings to the reading certain expectations. Further suppose that nobody in your writers' group is a member of that niche. You will get an earful.

Resist the temptation to argue. Resist the urge to vindicate yourself. You've asked the group for their opinion, they've given it, and you have to hear it.

Thank everyone for the feedback. You do not have to say aloud that you intend to ignore it. On another day they might be right.

Writers groups can be subject to groupthink. If you bring some prose to the group that's far enough outside their expectations, you'll catch flack because your prose doesn't match the groupthink. Since it's a groupthink, nobody will hear your reasons defending your prose. Thank everyone for the feedback, etc.

This works on the other side, too. When I feel the need to tear into someone who's written prose so wooden it is an insult to furniture I need to pause to ask myself why I think so:

• Am I outside the target market?
• Am I insisting the other write like I would?

If so, I should qualify my remarks accordingly.