I watched a show on Discovery the other night about prolonging human life. The show laid out a semi-plausible scenario by which a middle aged person today might possibly survive for the next thousand years. Some of the technology is almost certainly heading our way in the next few decades, such as growing new organs from stem cells. Other bits, such as being able to move a human personality from cloned body to cloned body, are most likely pure fantasy.
Watching the show, I had two questions:
1. Who's paying for all this? Let's suppose that we can grow new hearts, lungs, and livers that are genetically perfect matches that have no risk of rejection. This certainly can't come cheap. Today, the technical difficulties of organ transplants presents a serious obstacle to them being more widespread. The difficulty of finding a suitable donor, plus the dangers of rejection, make organ transplants a tough call even if you're wealthy. Due to the risks, the people who need them most probably wait until they are too sick for the transplant to really help them. But, if people in their forties and fifties, in relatively good health save for early heart disease, can have a new heart grown for them that will genetically be part of thier body, I imagine the demand would jump tremendously.
Some costs would probably fall. You wouldn't need extensive follow up treatment with anti-rejection drugs, for instance. But, other costs would almost definitely rise. Until they build a robot capable of the job, the number of surgeons capable of performing a heart transplant is probably going to be fairly small. The way to attract more surgeons into the field would be to increase salaries. Increasing salaries means increasing costs.
Insurance companies will almost certainly be mandated by law to cover these expenses, which means that the cost is going to get passed on to everyone. Is there a point where the cost of paying for all potential life saving treatments begins to hurt everyone's standard of living? If my current insurance costs tripled, could I still afford a mortgage?
2. Let's magically wave our hands and say that everything will be paid for without pain. Advances in robotics and computing are rapid enough that human surgeons become a thing of the past and we now have armies of robo-surgeons operating 24/7, paying for themselves after a hundred surguries, and driving the cost of open heart surgury down to about what it costs to have a tooth filled. It's not impossible--look at the cost curve for laser eye surgury, once several thousand dollars an eye, now a few hundred.
Now, people can keep swapping out thier major organs, and life expectancy sky-rockets. People start living healthy lives to 110, 120, 130. Are people going to still expect to retire at 65? Are we going to raise the retirement age to 100? How many careers can support someone for 75 years or more? You might think you're sitting pretty as a heart surgeon, then, boom, along comes a robot that does your job better. Maybe you work for a major coporation like Wachovia. Your jobs safe until... what's that? Wachovia was sold to Wells Fargo? Never mind.
If I keep writing, will novels I'm writing then be better, or is there a point where any artist would be doomed to become a parody of himself? Would it be routine for people to start new careers at fifty, sixty, or eighty? What's the job market going to look like when eighty year olds are suddenly as hungry for entry level positions at twenty year olds?
I don't want to be overly negative. Obviously, there are huge upsides to living longer. On a personal level, I'd love to be able to spend the extra decades in good health with my loved ones. On a social level, maybe politicians who are fifty, sixty, and seventy years old might think about the consequences of thier policies fifty years from now if they thought they'd actually be around to experience the effects.
It could happen. You never know.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Further musings on the economy
I've been thinking further about my concerns that 401ks may be having the perverse effect of ruining people's savings by creating bubbles in the stock market. The governmnet has designed a system where people blindly pump money into stocks and bonds week after week, whether the markets are rising, falling, or spinning in circles. I keep reading that, long term, the stock market will continue to grow. But, what if we are being encouraged to place our money in something that doesn't inherently possess the value of the dollars flowing into it?
One could argue that this was exactly what happened with the housing market. Government policy was designed to promote the altruistic goal of helping people buy houses. This was done partly through the tax code, partly through regulation, and partly through Fannie Mae purchasing loans of questionable value. The feeling was that homeownership is always a good thing, both for the individual and the community. But, the noble goal led to the creation of a bubble as people bought houses that they couldn't have afforded if the government policies hadn't been in place. This artificially boosted prices across the board, led to massive overproduction of houses, and created a collapse that has unfolded for the last five years and may take another decade to work out.
I also have to wonder if there isn't a bubble in higher education. Again, altruistic government policy has been to give everyone possible access to college through assistance with loans, grants, etc. The result has been a lot more people going to college, but it's come with the price tag of college costs rising much faster than inflation. And, while having a college degree is still preferable to not having one, it seems like a four year degree doesn't produce that much of an economic boost any more. Government policy has increased the supply of people with degrees, but the demand hasn't kept pace. In conditions like this, you would expect wages to fall... which, in fact, seems to be what's happening in the real world, though there are certainly so many complicating factors it's tough to pin the blame just on this.
Government policy also steered US farm policy to produce a lot of corn. So much corn that we had to find other uses for it than just eating it off the cob or baking cornmeal, so we used it to replace sugar in our beverages. Now, government policy is encouraging us to burn corn for fuel, and the prices of foods that have corn in them are rising.
It's thoughts like these that push me most strongly toward the libertarian camp. We need to scrap every federal legal code that encourages production or consumption of anything and find out what an actual free market looks like. It can't possibly be worse than what we have now.
One could argue that this was exactly what happened with the housing market. Government policy was designed to promote the altruistic goal of helping people buy houses. This was done partly through the tax code, partly through regulation, and partly through Fannie Mae purchasing loans of questionable value. The feeling was that homeownership is always a good thing, both for the individual and the community. But, the noble goal led to the creation of a bubble as people bought houses that they couldn't have afforded if the government policies hadn't been in place. This artificially boosted prices across the board, led to massive overproduction of houses, and created a collapse that has unfolded for the last five years and may take another decade to work out.
I also have to wonder if there isn't a bubble in higher education. Again, altruistic government policy has been to give everyone possible access to college through assistance with loans, grants, etc. The result has been a lot more people going to college, but it's come with the price tag of college costs rising much faster than inflation. And, while having a college degree is still preferable to not having one, it seems like a four year degree doesn't produce that much of an economic boost any more. Government policy has increased the supply of people with degrees, but the demand hasn't kept pace. In conditions like this, you would expect wages to fall... which, in fact, seems to be what's happening in the real world, though there are certainly so many complicating factors it's tough to pin the blame just on this.
Government policy also steered US farm policy to produce a lot of corn. So much corn that we had to find other uses for it than just eating it off the cob or baking cornmeal, so we used it to replace sugar in our beverages. Now, government policy is encouraging us to burn corn for fuel, and the prices of foods that have corn in them are rising.
It's thoughts like these that push me most strongly toward the libertarian camp. We need to scrap every federal legal code that encourages production or consumption of anything and find out what an actual free market looks like. It can't possibly be worse than what we have now.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Are 401ks dangerous?
For years, I've been a cheerleader for 401ks where I work. I personally have helped at least a dozen people get set up over the years. To me, it seems like a no-brainer. Our company matches the first 5% of your pay that you contribute. If an employer wants to boost my pay by 5%, it seems a little rude to say no. And, for that first 5% that I contribute, I instantly double my money. That's a pretty swell rate of return.
Due to Rick Perry calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, I've seen a lot of proposals lately to allow workers to contribute part of their social security taxes to a 401k like savings plan that they would own. Again, this strikes me as a common sense idea. The problem with Social Security is that the government really has no mechanism for actually saving the money. By law, they use the money to buy US Savings bonds. That money instantly goes into the federal budget and gets spent. The bonds are paid back from future tax revenue. It works as long as more and more workers pay into the system to support an ever growing number of retirees. Alas, there are demographic bubbles that will soon produce a system where the number of retirees grows much faster than the number of workers.
But, is the government administered saving plan any better? Is my company's 401k? The problem that I see is that, prior to the creation of the 401k, people investing in the stock market were mainly investing thier own money. They were buying stocks because they thought the price was attractive, and they were careful because they alone carried the risk.
But, with 401ks, every week millions of people turn their money over to financial institutions who buy stocks for them. They can't simply sit on the money until a good deal comes along. Week after week, they must go out and purchase stocks. And, if they pick wrong, perhaps they get a smaller bonus, but they don't actually lose their own money.
Can our present financial woes be at least partially traced to the fact that so many of us are subscribing to a mostly blind investment? Are those enough smart enough to plan for our own retirement through these plans unwittingly helping to create market bubbles that will eventually destroy any value we've accumulated?
And if so, what can we possibly do to fix this?
Due to Rick Perry calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, I've seen a lot of proposals lately to allow workers to contribute part of their social security taxes to a 401k like savings plan that they would own. Again, this strikes me as a common sense idea. The problem with Social Security is that the government really has no mechanism for actually saving the money. By law, they use the money to buy US Savings bonds. That money instantly goes into the federal budget and gets spent. The bonds are paid back from future tax revenue. It works as long as more and more workers pay into the system to support an ever growing number of retirees. Alas, there are demographic bubbles that will soon produce a system where the number of retirees grows much faster than the number of workers.
But, is the government administered saving plan any better? Is my company's 401k? The problem that I see is that, prior to the creation of the 401k, people investing in the stock market were mainly investing thier own money. They were buying stocks because they thought the price was attractive, and they were careful because they alone carried the risk.
But, with 401ks, every week millions of people turn their money over to financial institutions who buy stocks for them. They can't simply sit on the money until a good deal comes along. Week after week, they must go out and purchase stocks. And, if they pick wrong, perhaps they get a smaller bonus, but they don't actually lose their own money.
Can our present financial woes be at least partially traced to the fact that so many of us are subscribing to a mostly blind investment? Are those enough smart enough to plan for our own retirement through these plans unwittingly helping to create market bubbles that will eventually destroy any value we've accumulated?
And if so, what can we possibly do to fix this?
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Did 9-11 change the world forever?
Did 9-11 change the world forever?
Perhaps, but what day doesn't?
The terrorist attacks of 9-11 created a lot of hub bub, but I would say that the world has been far more transformed by smart phones or the collapse of the housing bubble. It's true that we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives by letting the 9-11 attacks seduce us into two open-ended wars, but how much have these wars really changed the world? Afghanistan seems to be pretty much on the verge of reverting back to the exact state we found it in. Iraq seems temporarily stable, but it was stable when we went into it. It wasn't a threat to the world in 2002, and it's not a threat to the world now. Nor, despite our best efforts, does it appear to be a beacon of democracy for countries throughout the middle east to emulate. Instead, most of the arab revolutions taking place strike me as being closer to the Iranian model: Dictators who were liked by the West are being overthrown, and the governments that rise out of them don't seem like they are going to be particularly progressive. Of course, it's still early for many of these nations. I don't pretend to guess what they will look like thirty years from now.
My suspicion is, if they are more democratic and less "jihady," it will be because of smart phones, and not because of smart bombs.
Is America safer today than it was in 2001? I suppose that an airplane would be much more difficult to hijack today. (Has there been a successful airplane hijacking anywhere in the world during the last ten years?) On the other hand, we have a lot of evidence that if a terrorist wanted to be less spectacular in his efforts, he'd have little standing in his way to purchase a gun and walk into any business in America and open fire. But, perhaps terrorists don't think we'd be overy terrified if they followed this path. Given the flash mobs that started popping up in American cities this year (including Greensboro, at a park I've walked through a hundred times), we've gotten so good as a populace at inflicting random violence on ourselves, we've set the bar too high for international terrorists to compete.
I also remember reading in 2001 that Osama bin Laden was hoping that an attack on the World Trade Center would cripple the US economy. But it turns out that banks in collusion with congress had a far more effective strategy to accomplish this.
I don't want to down play the pain of the day. A lot of people died for no good reason at all. A lot of families were shattered. It was a tragedy by any objective or subjective standard. But, I think it's a good thing that, ten years later, its receded so much from national memory. As anyone who has lost a loved one discovers, life moves on. And I think this was the ultimate defeat for Bin Laden and his ilk. We don't hold national "Bin Laden" hate days. Most of us just went back to our lives. In the long run, all his grand designs have come to nothing.
Perhaps, but what day doesn't?
The terrorist attacks of 9-11 created a lot of hub bub, but I would say that the world has been far more transformed by smart phones or the collapse of the housing bubble. It's true that we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives by letting the 9-11 attacks seduce us into two open-ended wars, but how much have these wars really changed the world? Afghanistan seems to be pretty much on the verge of reverting back to the exact state we found it in. Iraq seems temporarily stable, but it was stable when we went into it. It wasn't a threat to the world in 2002, and it's not a threat to the world now. Nor, despite our best efforts, does it appear to be a beacon of democracy for countries throughout the middle east to emulate. Instead, most of the arab revolutions taking place strike me as being closer to the Iranian model: Dictators who were liked by the West are being overthrown, and the governments that rise out of them don't seem like they are going to be particularly progressive. Of course, it's still early for many of these nations. I don't pretend to guess what they will look like thirty years from now.
My suspicion is, if they are more democratic and less "jihady," it will be because of smart phones, and not because of smart bombs.
Is America safer today than it was in 2001? I suppose that an airplane would be much more difficult to hijack today. (Has there been a successful airplane hijacking anywhere in the world during the last ten years?) On the other hand, we have a lot of evidence that if a terrorist wanted to be less spectacular in his efforts, he'd have little standing in his way to purchase a gun and walk into any business in America and open fire. But, perhaps terrorists don't think we'd be overy terrified if they followed this path. Given the flash mobs that started popping up in American cities this year (including Greensboro, at a park I've walked through a hundred times), we've gotten so good as a populace at inflicting random violence on ourselves, we've set the bar too high for international terrorists to compete.
I also remember reading in 2001 that Osama bin Laden was hoping that an attack on the World Trade Center would cripple the US economy. But it turns out that banks in collusion with congress had a far more effective strategy to accomplish this.
I don't want to down play the pain of the day. A lot of people died for no good reason at all. A lot of families were shattered. It was a tragedy by any objective or subjective standard. But, I think it's a good thing that, ten years later, its receded so much from national memory. As anyone who has lost a loved one discovers, life moves on. And I think this was the ultimate defeat for Bin Laden and his ilk. We don't hold national "Bin Laden" hate days. Most of us just went back to our lives. In the long run, all his grand designs have come to nothing.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Are there holes in the theory of evolution?
A few weeks ago, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry referred to evolution as "a theory that's out there." There is nothing in his political history to indicate that he believes the theory to be accurate. Does this disqualify him from being president in my eyes? Probably not. Unlike, say, global warming, a politician's thoughts on evolution play a fairly trivial role in shaping political policy. There may be a few decisions around the margins about funding some vaccine or another, or permitting genetically modified crops, where it would be nice to have a president who has a firm grasp on the latest biology. Aside from this it seems like there isn't a lot of damage to be done. I'd vote for a candidate who believed life was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster if they could show me a plausible tax policy that would address this nations long term economic problems.
However, some on the right are apparently worried that Perry's views might be too much for a majority of voters. In response, right wing pundit Ann Coulter has taken the interesting approach of writing two columns lately attempting to prove that the theory of evolution has gaping holes in it. Worse, it is treated as gospel by an unthinking media, and never debated, so that the truth can come out showing that scientific facts actually disprove evolution and support intelligent design.
I thought I'd address a few of her points:
1. There's a media conspiracy not to question evolution:
First, I don't think there is such a thing as "media conspiracy" in the modern age. If you google "holes in evolution" you get 58 MILLION hits! It's being debated and challenged all the time. If none of the challenges gain traction, it's because none of them do as nice a job of explaining the biological evidence around us. But it's crazy to say that the challenges are hidden or supressed when anyone with a smartphone is ten seconds away from reading about the subject. Perhaps by "media" Ann means "television." Even Fox News doesn't run nightly debates on the topic the way they do about, say, global warming. But, global warming is a topic where getting the answer and the policy reactions right could decide the futures of whole nations. Under react to a genuine problem, and we might give our grand children a very ugly future. Over react to a phantom problem, and we might give our grand children a very ugly future. It's a high stakes debate with serious consequences.
Evolution, not so much. Let's pretend that, tomorrow morning, every biology professor in the world woke up and suddenly decreed that, oops, they've been wrong, and intelligent design is a better theory than natural selection. How would this affect our foreign policy? Our energy policy? Tax policy? While I advocate believing a good theory over a bad theory for purely intellectual reasons, I honestly don't think my daily life would be affected by a massive paradigm shift. It's just not worth devoting endless hours of television to the topic.
2: There are gaping holes in the fossil record. Every day, some "truth" about the fossil record is overturned by new evidence.
Well, duh. That's the thing about science. When you find evidence that you might be wrong about something, you present it, and alter your theories accordingly. You don't insist that the Piltdown Man is a genuine fossil after it's been shown to be a hoax. You don't continue to publish that chart showing similarities between embryoes of different animals once it's been proven that the truth had been twisted to fit a theory. Ann points out that the fossil record doesn't show constant, slow change, but instead shows long periods of stability followed by rapid change. Darwin believed that evolution was a slow, continuous process. But, most modern evolutionists now advocate a theory called "punctuated equilibrium." Basically, evolution slows to a crawl once organism fill the avalable niches in an stable ecosystem. But, eventually, continental plates collide creating land bridges, or an ice age sets in, or a comet smacks the earth, and the stable ecosystems go topsy turvy and explosive evolution follows as organism fill the new niches.
And, there are gaps in the fossil record. We live on a planet that is very good at erasing evidence of past life. The conditions to fossilize every creature that has ever lived simply don't exist, and never have. The picture of the past is always going to be fragmented when it comes to fossils.
However, fossils are only part of the story. A more powerful proof of evolution these days comes from genetics. Genetic trees showing links between animals we didn't believe were closely related have been overturning lineages built by examining fossils. Again, weak and wrongly interpretted evidence is readily tossed aside when better evidence comes along. This is the core of science. Can intelligent design theory point to any similar process for weeding out mistakes? If the flagellum of a given bacteria is self-evidently designed, is a nearly perfect cube of a salt cystal also evidence? Is everything designed? Even diseases and birth defects? Was Mars designed? Was Venus?
3. Intelligent design explains the evidence.
This is probably the saddest argument of all. Let us pretend for a moment that it's true. We develop some new imaging system and discover that, written on the surface of every electron with a very, very tiny magic marker are the words, "God was here." What can we conclude?
I fear the inevitable conclusion would have to be that creation really wasn't about us. The universe is filled with innumerable stars, far more stars than human beings. Our own solar system is filled with far more lifeless planets than places that support life. Our designer, it would seem, has a strong preference for quiet, dead, places. And, when he did get around to designing some life, he spent a very, very, very long time satisfied with single-celled organisms. The amount of time devoted to perfecting algae is impressive. Eventually he got around to making some jelly fish, some worms, some shell-fish. Much much later, he had the idea of crafting a spine, and introducing a new pattern of life to the world. Then, for a long time, he seemed pretty enamored with dinosaurs. But, apparently he got bored and moved on.
Only in the very tiniest sliver of geological time did he get around to creating men. For most of men's history, they were just another ape. A little more proficient at making tools than chimps, a little more complicated in social organizations than bonobos. Then, boom, in the blink of the geologic eye, these clever apes started building cities and writing books and reached a stage where they could debate whether they were the whole point of creation.
I have intelligently designed many books. For us to feel that we are the central focus of some grand designer of the universe is like a single period on page 300 of my novel Bitterwood feeling like it's the whole reason I sat down to type up the story. If we can deduce a designer from all of creation, then we must also deduce that we are, at best, an after thought. We are significant in neither time nor space nor number in the larger picture.
If we use intelligent design to study the universe, we must conclude that we are insignificant in the eyes of a creator. An atheistic interpretation of evolution deduces that there was no creator, and that through some rather remarkable strokes of luck, we've arisen from the background noise of the universe as the first beings ever to be capable of pondering our own existence. I find the latter to be a happy view, and the former to be depressing. And yet, if someone can produce evidence for intelligent design that better explains the world than our current theories, I'll accept it. Truth isn't to be judged by whether or not it makes me feel good about myself. I will gladly accept a difficult truth over a feel-good lie any day.
However, some on the right are apparently worried that Perry's views might be too much for a majority of voters. In response, right wing pundit Ann Coulter has taken the interesting approach of writing two columns lately attempting to prove that the theory of evolution has gaping holes in it. Worse, it is treated as gospel by an unthinking media, and never debated, so that the truth can come out showing that scientific facts actually disprove evolution and support intelligent design.
I thought I'd address a few of her points:
1. There's a media conspiracy not to question evolution:
First, I don't think there is such a thing as "media conspiracy" in the modern age. If you google "holes in evolution" you get 58 MILLION hits! It's being debated and challenged all the time. If none of the challenges gain traction, it's because none of them do as nice a job of explaining the biological evidence around us. But it's crazy to say that the challenges are hidden or supressed when anyone with a smartphone is ten seconds away from reading about the subject. Perhaps by "media" Ann means "television." Even Fox News doesn't run nightly debates on the topic the way they do about, say, global warming. But, global warming is a topic where getting the answer and the policy reactions right could decide the futures of whole nations. Under react to a genuine problem, and we might give our grand children a very ugly future. Over react to a phantom problem, and we might give our grand children a very ugly future. It's a high stakes debate with serious consequences.
Evolution, not so much. Let's pretend that, tomorrow morning, every biology professor in the world woke up and suddenly decreed that, oops, they've been wrong, and intelligent design is a better theory than natural selection. How would this affect our foreign policy? Our energy policy? Tax policy? While I advocate believing a good theory over a bad theory for purely intellectual reasons, I honestly don't think my daily life would be affected by a massive paradigm shift. It's just not worth devoting endless hours of television to the topic.
2: There are gaping holes in the fossil record. Every day, some "truth" about the fossil record is overturned by new evidence.
Well, duh. That's the thing about science. When you find evidence that you might be wrong about something, you present it, and alter your theories accordingly. You don't insist that the Piltdown Man is a genuine fossil after it's been shown to be a hoax. You don't continue to publish that chart showing similarities between embryoes of different animals once it's been proven that the truth had been twisted to fit a theory. Ann points out that the fossil record doesn't show constant, slow change, but instead shows long periods of stability followed by rapid change. Darwin believed that evolution was a slow, continuous process. But, most modern evolutionists now advocate a theory called "punctuated equilibrium." Basically, evolution slows to a crawl once organism fill the avalable niches in an stable ecosystem. But, eventually, continental plates collide creating land bridges, or an ice age sets in, or a comet smacks the earth, and the stable ecosystems go topsy turvy and explosive evolution follows as organism fill the new niches.
And, there are gaps in the fossil record. We live on a planet that is very good at erasing evidence of past life. The conditions to fossilize every creature that has ever lived simply don't exist, and never have. The picture of the past is always going to be fragmented when it comes to fossils.
However, fossils are only part of the story. A more powerful proof of evolution these days comes from genetics. Genetic trees showing links between animals we didn't believe were closely related have been overturning lineages built by examining fossils. Again, weak and wrongly interpretted evidence is readily tossed aside when better evidence comes along. This is the core of science. Can intelligent design theory point to any similar process for weeding out mistakes? If the flagellum of a given bacteria is self-evidently designed, is a nearly perfect cube of a salt cystal also evidence? Is everything designed? Even diseases and birth defects? Was Mars designed? Was Venus?
3. Intelligent design explains the evidence.
This is probably the saddest argument of all. Let us pretend for a moment that it's true. We develop some new imaging system and discover that, written on the surface of every electron with a very, very tiny magic marker are the words, "God was here." What can we conclude?
I fear the inevitable conclusion would have to be that creation really wasn't about us. The universe is filled with innumerable stars, far more stars than human beings. Our own solar system is filled with far more lifeless planets than places that support life. Our designer, it would seem, has a strong preference for quiet, dead, places. And, when he did get around to designing some life, he spent a very, very, very long time satisfied with single-celled organisms. The amount of time devoted to perfecting algae is impressive. Eventually he got around to making some jelly fish, some worms, some shell-fish. Much much later, he had the idea of crafting a spine, and introducing a new pattern of life to the world. Then, for a long time, he seemed pretty enamored with dinosaurs. But, apparently he got bored and moved on.
Only in the very tiniest sliver of geological time did he get around to creating men. For most of men's history, they were just another ape. A little more proficient at making tools than chimps, a little more complicated in social organizations than bonobos. Then, boom, in the blink of the geologic eye, these clever apes started building cities and writing books and reached a stage where they could debate whether they were the whole point of creation.
I have intelligently designed many books. For us to feel that we are the central focus of some grand designer of the universe is like a single period on page 300 of my novel Bitterwood feeling like it's the whole reason I sat down to type up the story. If we can deduce a designer from all of creation, then we must also deduce that we are, at best, an after thought. We are significant in neither time nor space nor number in the larger picture.
If we use intelligent design to study the universe, we must conclude that we are insignificant in the eyes of a creator. An atheistic interpretation of evolution deduces that there was no creator, and that through some rather remarkable strokes of luck, we've arisen from the background noise of the universe as the first beings ever to be capable of pondering our own existence. I find the latter to be a happy view, and the former to be depressing. And yet, if someone can produce evidence for intelligent design that better explains the world than our current theories, I'll accept it. Truth isn't to be judged by whether or not it makes me feel good about myself. I will gladly accept a difficult truth over a feel-good lie any day.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Crying Wolf in American Politics
Michelle Bachmann's best day of her political life and her worst day were probably one in the same. She rose to the very top of the pack of contenders for the GOP nomination by winning the Ames Straw Poll... and completely vanished from national media attention within 48 hours due to Rick Perry announcing his run from President the same day. Perry appeals to almost exactly the same voters who support her, but has an actual resume, having been governor of Texas for 11 years.
Nothing is certain in politics, but at this point, I have to assume that Perry will be the Republican nominee. He's got the red meat rhetoric that will fire up the base, an economic track record that fiscal conservatives can pull behind, and a state's rights view that libertarians like myself can find intriguing.
It's a rare day that I don't read about ten editorials on Real Clear Politics, and I have to sigh at the weary sameness of the attacks against Perry. They boil down to: 1. He's too religious and anti-science. 2. He's a radical right-winger. 3. He's racist. 4. He's dumb.
The thing is, these same labels have been stuck on every republican candidate since Reagan. I think that most voters just tune out these labels at this point. For what it's worth, I think that Republicans have mushed up the word liberal until it's almost meaningless. Bill Clinton was a fairly middle of the road politician who was called liberal every day he was in office. Barak Obama actually was liberal, but voters didn't seem to be afraid of liberalism any more, probably because the label had been overused. So, now the right has had to ramp up the rhetoric from liberal to socialist. One day, perhaps, it will provide the groundwork for electing a genuine socialist.
So what do I think of the four main charges?
1. He's too religious and anti-science. I'm not a bigot. Even though I'm an atheist, I think a man should be free to profess his religious beliefs. I'm just curious if Perry feels the same way. The first Bush said that he didn't think atheists could be patroits. I can't google any similar comments by Perry, but rest assured I'll be listening for this closely. As for being anti-science, he doesn't seem to believe in evolution, which is a strike in my opinion. But, he's really being attacked for denouncing man-made global warming as a hoax. I'm not prepared to call the theory a hoax. I think it's an interesting theory that explains a lot of evidence. But, I also think that people who say that the debate is settled are equally anti-science. There have been radical temperature changes in the past plainly not triggered by human action.
I want a president who is capable of thinking about science in a rational manner. I'm not sure Perry can do this. On the other hand, I don't doubt that Obama can think rationally, but what has it gained us? I'm not sure that understanding evolution helps make better decisions about, say, conducting unauthorized military operations in Libya.
2. He's a radical right-winger. He thinks social security is a Ponzi scheme. He thinks states should be free to chart their own courses on marriage and drugs and education. He thinks it's treasonous for the Fed to keep printing money. Will the American people put up with this? Who the hell knows. But, I read an article denouncing almost every idea put forth in Perry's book "Fed Up," and I found myself thinking that Perry was right almost every time. If he does stick to his guns, he will be presenting voters with their most conservative presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. But, his state's rights position, in my mind, provides a buffer against his most radical positions. It can shift the fights on social issues out of the federal level and back to the states.
3. He's racist. Some of the articles I've read treat Perry as the second coming of the Confederacy. Anyone who champions state's rights must deal with the problem that this was a code word in earlier times for allowing state sponsored segregation and oppression.
But, these aren't earlier times. The true meaning of the tenth ammendment strikes me as a fair constitutional debate. If there is any evidence that Perry holds racist views, I'm open to hearing it. So far, the attacks are remarkably unpersuasive.
4. He's dumb. Meh. As a certified smart person, I can tell you that raw intelligence is a vastly overrated commodity. I heard he had mediocre grades in college. So what? He's climbed up out of extremely modest beginnings and gone on to be elected governor of one of our largest states three times. I don't know if he's read Camus or can give even a short hand overview of quantum mechanics. He's demonstrated that he can govern a state without taking it completely off the rails. I don't think he's a genius, but I don't think most political decisions require genius.
So, after writing a reasonably pro-Perry column, do I intend to vote for him? Probably not. I've got a good track record going for voting Libertarian. In the past, my choices have been to vote for a Libertarian who can't win but who I agree with on 95% of issues, or a Democrat or Republican who will win but whom I disagree with on 95% of issues. I think I'd have to agree with Perry in the 30 to 40% range to switch loyalties. So far, I'm not there.
Nothing is certain in politics, but at this point, I have to assume that Perry will be the Republican nominee. He's got the red meat rhetoric that will fire up the base, an economic track record that fiscal conservatives can pull behind, and a state's rights view that libertarians like myself can find intriguing.
It's a rare day that I don't read about ten editorials on Real Clear Politics, and I have to sigh at the weary sameness of the attacks against Perry. They boil down to: 1. He's too religious and anti-science. 2. He's a radical right-winger. 3. He's racist. 4. He's dumb.
The thing is, these same labels have been stuck on every republican candidate since Reagan. I think that most voters just tune out these labels at this point. For what it's worth, I think that Republicans have mushed up the word liberal until it's almost meaningless. Bill Clinton was a fairly middle of the road politician who was called liberal every day he was in office. Barak Obama actually was liberal, but voters didn't seem to be afraid of liberalism any more, probably because the label had been overused. So, now the right has had to ramp up the rhetoric from liberal to socialist. One day, perhaps, it will provide the groundwork for electing a genuine socialist.
So what do I think of the four main charges?
1. He's too religious and anti-science. I'm not a bigot. Even though I'm an atheist, I think a man should be free to profess his religious beliefs. I'm just curious if Perry feels the same way. The first Bush said that he didn't think atheists could be patroits. I can't google any similar comments by Perry, but rest assured I'll be listening for this closely. As for being anti-science, he doesn't seem to believe in evolution, which is a strike in my opinion. But, he's really being attacked for denouncing man-made global warming as a hoax. I'm not prepared to call the theory a hoax. I think it's an interesting theory that explains a lot of evidence. But, I also think that people who say that the debate is settled are equally anti-science. There have been radical temperature changes in the past plainly not triggered by human action.
I want a president who is capable of thinking about science in a rational manner. I'm not sure Perry can do this. On the other hand, I don't doubt that Obama can think rationally, but what has it gained us? I'm not sure that understanding evolution helps make better decisions about, say, conducting unauthorized military operations in Libya.
2. He's a radical right-winger. He thinks social security is a Ponzi scheme. He thinks states should be free to chart their own courses on marriage and drugs and education. He thinks it's treasonous for the Fed to keep printing money. Will the American people put up with this? Who the hell knows. But, I read an article denouncing almost every idea put forth in Perry's book "Fed Up," and I found myself thinking that Perry was right almost every time. If he does stick to his guns, he will be presenting voters with their most conservative presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. But, his state's rights position, in my mind, provides a buffer against his most radical positions. It can shift the fights on social issues out of the federal level and back to the states.
3. He's racist. Some of the articles I've read treat Perry as the second coming of the Confederacy. Anyone who champions state's rights must deal with the problem that this was a code word in earlier times for allowing state sponsored segregation and oppression.
But, these aren't earlier times. The true meaning of the tenth ammendment strikes me as a fair constitutional debate. If there is any evidence that Perry holds racist views, I'm open to hearing it. So far, the attacks are remarkably unpersuasive.
4. He's dumb. Meh. As a certified smart person, I can tell you that raw intelligence is a vastly overrated commodity. I heard he had mediocre grades in college. So what? He's climbed up out of extremely modest beginnings and gone on to be elected governor of one of our largest states three times. I don't know if he's read Camus or can give even a short hand overview of quantum mechanics. He's demonstrated that he can govern a state without taking it completely off the rails. I don't think he's a genius, but I don't think most political decisions require genius.
So, after writing a reasonably pro-Perry column, do I intend to vote for him? Probably not. I've got a good track record going for voting Libertarian. In the past, my choices have been to vote for a Libertarian who can't win but who I agree with on 95% of issues, or a Democrat or Republican who will win but whom I disagree with on 95% of issues. I think I'd have to agree with Perry in the 30 to 40% range to switch loyalties. So far, I'm not there.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Worse than Racist
So, last week, it was announced that in the Ultimate Spiderman comic, Peter Parker is being killed off and replaced by a half-black/half-latino teenager named Miles Morales. My immediate reaction was... again?
Not because Spiderman has been replaced with a black character before, but because the list of superheroes who've been replaced by black characters, at least temporarily, is at this point an exceedingly long one.
Just off the top of my head, Superman was replaced by John Henry Irons. Green Lantern was replaced by John Stewart. Firestorm, replaced by black man. Wildcat, replaced by black woman. (Or was she hispanic? Memory fails.) Mr. Terrific is now black. The Invisible Kid from Legion of Superheroes was a black frenchman. Later, Element Lad got the melanin makeover. Green Arrow was replaced by a bastard son whose ethnicity tended to drift based on what artist portrayed him. Mister Miracle, briefly black. The Blue Beetle has also had a race change. Over at Marvel, Goliath became Black Goliath. Captain Marvel was replaced with a black woman. Iron Man was replaced by Rhodey. In the Ultimate Universe, Nick Fury is black.
I cannot deny that comic books for a very long time were dominated by white characters. Hell, between the Hulk and Brainiac Five, there were more green-skinned superheroes than black ones. And, when comics tried to rectify this, they gave us cringe-inducing attempts like the first run at Black Lightning. I can see the temptation to say, "Look! We're not racist! We've got a black Superman! How cool is that?"
The problem, of course, is that these characters always turn out to be benchwarmers and second stringers. Iron Man is black only long enough for readers to clamor for the return of Tony Stark. Sometimes, the black replacements are set up as heroes in their own right. War Machine, Steel, and Black Goliath all got their own books, and all flopped. These characters are just set up to fail.
I don't seriously think the comic creators who make these decisions to revamp white superheroes as black superheroes do so with any racist intent. I'm sure they actually intend to promote diversity and cultural understanding. But, at this point, they are committing a sin worse than racism. They are serving us cliches. It's been almost thirty years since Goliath became Black Goliath. I think at this point, the black hero replaces white hero story has been done to death. Maybe, just maybe, the key to getting more black heroes into comics is to just create some new heroes with some new stories?
Not because Spiderman has been replaced with a black character before, but because the list of superheroes who've been replaced by black characters, at least temporarily, is at this point an exceedingly long one.
Just off the top of my head, Superman was replaced by John Henry Irons. Green Lantern was replaced by John Stewart. Firestorm, replaced by black man. Wildcat, replaced by black woman. (Or was she hispanic? Memory fails.) Mr. Terrific is now black. The Invisible Kid from Legion of Superheroes was a black frenchman. Later, Element Lad got the melanin makeover. Green Arrow was replaced by a bastard son whose ethnicity tended to drift based on what artist portrayed him. Mister Miracle, briefly black. The Blue Beetle has also had a race change. Over at Marvel, Goliath became Black Goliath. Captain Marvel was replaced with a black woman. Iron Man was replaced by Rhodey. In the Ultimate Universe, Nick Fury is black.
I cannot deny that comic books for a very long time were dominated by white characters. Hell, between the Hulk and Brainiac Five, there were more green-skinned superheroes than black ones. And, when comics tried to rectify this, they gave us cringe-inducing attempts like the first run at Black Lightning. I can see the temptation to say, "Look! We're not racist! We've got a black Superman! How cool is that?"
The problem, of course, is that these characters always turn out to be benchwarmers and second stringers. Iron Man is black only long enough for readers to clamor for the return of Tony Stark. Sometimes, the black replacements are set up as heroes in their own right. War Machine, Steel, and Black Goliath all got their own books, and all flopped. These characters are just set up to fail.
I don't seriously think the comic creators who make these decisions to revamp white superheroes as black superheroes do so with any racist intent. I'm sure they actually intend to promote diversity and cultural understanding. But, at this point, they are committing a sin worse than racism. They are serving us cliches. It's been almost thirty years since Goliath became Black Goliath. I think at this point, the black hero replaces white hero story has been done to death. Maybe, just maybe, the key to getting more black heroes into comics is to just create some new heroes with some new stories?
Monday, July 25, 2011
Be careful what you wish for...
I've been watching the debate about raising the debt ceiling with morbid fascination. For most of my life, I've disliked politicians who seemed to lack a spine, and who would say whatever it was they needed to say to get elected, then just go along with the flow when they got to Washington. Our current fiscal situation isn't the blame of radicals, be they left or right. Ron Paul, for instance, is a radical. And he has spent his years in congress voting agaist pretty much every law of importance to pass before him. He was strong on his principals, but he didn't get much done. And I, for one, fantasized about having more men like him in Washington.
Our current debt is built on a foundation of compromise. Sure, Obama has poured gasoline on the debt fire, but it's crazy to pretend he lit the fire. For the most part, Republicans and Democrats alike have worked hand in hand for decades to pile up this debt, save for a brief bubble in the 90's where accounts went into the black, though that "surplus" was created entirely though overtaxation on Social Security. In theory, these Social Security revenues were set aside to pay future benefits. In truth, they were converted to general revenue the second they came in, with the not-so-secret knowledge that future benefits would be paid not from this surplus, but from future taxes.
Surprise! It's the future! And, suddenly, the two parties who compromised us into this debt have discovered that they have principals. My wish for people who would stand their ideological ground has come true, much to my horror. The Republicans won't allow for even a dime of increased tax revenue, even from closing truly counterproductive loopholes like ethanol subsidies. Democrats, on the other hand, are waiting with knives drawn for the Republicans to pass actual cuts, since if they really, truly want to balance the budget, sacred cows like Social Security have to be in play, and Democrats want to be seen as the defenders of the elderly, always a very strong political hand.
I had assumed that compromises would be struck at the last second. Now, I'm not so sure. I think the strategy of both parties is shifting to, "Let's just start campaigning for the next election." But, honestly, what is possibly going to change after the next election? Let's suppose that there's a Republican president, a Republican congress, and a Republican senate... 59-41. The 41 remaining Democrats are going to be from the bluest states in the country. They can shut down any legislation they want to if they stand together. And, do you really think Republican's will be unhappy with this? If they had total power, they'd be forced to make tough choices to bring the budget into balance, like cutting entitlements, military, or raising taxes. I predict they'd do none of the above, and campain for reelection on the platform of, "We tried, but those nasty, nasty Democrats stopped us." Which, with the substitution of one word, is pretty much going to be the full Obama campaign slogan.
Our entire political system seems to have abandoned actually accomplishing stuff, and is now built entirely on strategically pinning blame on opponents.
How do we get out of this spiral? Is there an exit strategy? Will somebody please turn on a light at the end of this tunnel?
Our current debt is built on a foundation of compromise. Sure, Obama has poured gasoline on the debt fire, but it's crazy to pretend he lit the fire. For the most part, Republicans and Democrats alike have worked hand in hand for decades to pile up this debt, save for a brief bubble in the 90's where accounts went into the black, though that "surplus" was created entirely though overtaxation on Social Security. In theory, these Social Security revenues were set aside to pay future benefits. In truth, they were converted to general revenue the second they came in, with the not-so-secret knowledge that future benefits would be paid not from this surplus, but from future taxes.
Surprise! It's the future! And, suddenly, the two parties who compromised us into this debt have discovered that they have principals. My wish for people who would stand their ideological ground has come true, much to my horror. The Republicans won't allow for even a dime of increased tax revenue, even from closing truly counterproductive loopholes like ethanol subsidies. Democrats, on the other hand, are waiting with knives drawn for the Republicans to pass actual cuts, since if they really, truly want to balance the budget, sacred cows like Social Security have to be in play, and Democrats want to be seen as the defenders of the elderly, always a very strong political hand.
I had assumed that compromises would be struck at the last second. Now, I'm not so sure. I think the strategy of both parties is shifting to, "Let's just start campaigning for the next election." But, honestly, what is possibly going to change after the next election? Let's suppose that there's a Republican president, a Republican congress, and a Republican senate... 59-41. The 41 remaining Democrats are going to be from the bluest states in the country. They can shut down any legislation they want to if they stand together. And, do you really think Republican's will be unhappy with this? If they had total power, they'd be forced to make tough choices to bring the budget into balance, like cutting entitlements, military, or raising taxes. I predict they'd do none of the above, and campain for reelection on the platform of, "We tried, but those nasty, nasty Democrats stopped us." Which, with the substitution of one word, is pretty much going to be the full Obama campaign slogan.
Our entire political system seems to have abandoned actually accomplishing stuff, and is now built entirely on strategically pinning blame on opponents.
How do we get out of this spiral? Is there an exit strategy? Will somebody please turn on a light at the end of this tunnel?
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
The Moral Hazard of Credit
Used properly, credit is one of the most powerful tools of capitalism. It makes it possible for individuals to purchase items that would require impractically long periods of time to buy simply by saving. If credits for mortgages weren't available, most of us would probably need decades to save enough to buy a house outright. If student loans weren't available, only the children of the very wealthy would have hope of pursuing the advanced education required to be a surgeon or an attorney. A country might manage its budget quite well, but still find itself needing far more money than it can reasonably raise in taxes, to defend itself from a hostile neighbor, or to deal with the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Borrowing can even lead to wealth for the borrower. A successful restaurant might borrow enough to open a second location and double their revenue. Under most circumstances, the house purchased on credit over thirty years has a good chance of growing in value enough to cover the interest paid on it. A student who borrows heavily to become a doctor has a much higher likely potential lifetime income than a man who finished high school but never went to college because he couldn't afford it.
So if credit's a good thing, then having more of it available is an even better thing, right?
Last month, I sold my house. I came out okay, covering my mortgage at least. I didn't sell it for enough to cover my total investment in the house once I count all the upgrades I made, but if I factor in the fact that my mortgage payments were significantly lower than rent payments would have been for an identical property, I think I at least broke even. And, I now have enough money in savings that I no longer will need to whip out my credit card any time my car needs new tires or the furnace won't start (not that I own a furnace any more, but this was the type of expense that used to catch me just at the moment when I felt like I had every bill paid and a little extra left over). I'm essentially debt free, and can now focus on actually saving money.
Back in 2008 when the economy went in the tank, I had been pretty heavily in debt. Between my car and my credit cards, I owed about as much as I earned in a year. I got to that level of debt because my debt was essentially painless. Credit cards had low minimum payments, and my particular credit card debts were all at ridiculously low interest rates. I had good credit and was forever getting offers to open new credit cards with fixed interest rates of 2.99% for balance transfers. I could carry a lot of debt and it was costing me less than $200 a month to manage it. And, I always figured I'd pay it off one day when my writing career took off!
Curiously, this plan worked. The economy tanked just as my writing revenue increased. Still, every dime I made in writing for the last couple of years has gone to either taxes, self-promotion (it's expensive travelling to a half dozen SF cons a year), or paying down debt.
But, I have to wonder: Did my access to easy credit make me less ambitious and aggressive than I might have been? I used to make a lot more money on my day job, but have twice taken paycuts to pursue positions with fewer responsibilities, and this year I voluntarily shifted from a 40 hour week to a 32 hour week to make more time for writing, though the immediate effect has been a 20% pay cut. This year, I've already made enough money from writing to cover that cut, but I might never cover the income I lost when I got off the management track at my job. I sold my first book at a time in my career where I was a well respected assistant manager and the company I worked for was on the verge of a major expansion. I almost definitely would have become a manager if I'd stuck with that path. Instead, I permanently burned bridges to that potential future income by taking a lesser position so I could have the brain power needed to focus on writing.
One of the reasons I felt confident in doing this was that I had excellent credit. I could take make less and still live comfortably because I could borrow any money I needed to make ends meet. It made sense to me at the time, but looking back I just shake my head at my foolishness. Without easy access to credit, I would have had to make tougher decisions. I tell myself that I was able to write more books because I wasn't completely swept up in managing a branch, but I meet authors all the time who have far more time consuming day jobs and still manage to crank out books. I could have made the choice to just work harder, but credit made it possible to live as if I still had my old income. On the flipside, I could have taken the pay cut at work, then started cutting my expenses far more aggressively than I did. I could have put my previous house on the market from day one and moved to less expensive digs. Or, I could have kept the house, but sought a roommate to share expenses. Instead, I paid off my car loan, which was $250 a month, with a low interest credit card, where I paid only $50 a month. That car is long since gone. That debt lingered around until this year.
It was a stupid choice. But it was an easy choice back then. It didn't require me to sacrifice or compromise in the present. The burden of my choices would fall on some future me. Well, now I am the future me, and I'd like to go back to 2001 James and give him a dope slap. I'm doing okay now, but it might have been nice to have some choices on how I spent my income the last few years. It might have taken a trip overseas with the revenue from a novel contract, for instance. Instead, I've been paying for a car I no longer own and tanks of gas long since burnt. Thanks a lot, 2001 James.
I'm relating this very personal story in hopes of making a larger point. Just as my easy access to credit kept me from having to make tough choices ten years ago, America also fell into the trap of easy credit. As individuals, Americans stopped saving money. There was no longer any need to put aside money to make a down payment on a house or car; there were lenders willing to finance every last dime, and then some. Parents no longer had to scrimp and save to put aside money for their children's education. Junior could just borrow what he needed to get a diploma. Wage growth flattened out. Employers could get more work out of employees without offering proportionally high increases in pay, and the workers didn't complain, because they could enjoy ever growing living standards thanks to easy credit. Maybe most people's raises only worked out to a few dozen dollars a month, but that's enough to finance a big screen TV.
As a people, we started increasing out standard of living in the present by pushing the cost to our future selves.
Then, of course, there's the elephant in the room. While Americans were taking advantage of credit cards, student loans, and easy mortgages, our representatives were busy giving us anything we wanted without actually having to find the revenue to pay for it. Prescription drug benefits? Two wars? Huricane clean-ups at home and abroad? Throw them onto the national credit card. The government could borrow money at the lowest interest rates in history. Why, it would be crazy not to borrow at these rates!
I got lucky. I had a wake up call on my debt just as I was finally making enough money from writing to replace some of the more reliable income I'd thrown away a decade earlier. But America, the nation, can't go out and get a second job. And I never quite got to the point where I was forced to use my credit cards to pay my credit cards, but this is essentially what the debt ceiling debate is all about. Will we borrow money in order to pay our interest on debts we already have?
Worse, I feel like the current debate is focusing on what we should have done ten years ago. Less spending? Higher taxes? We had the option to choose a decade ago. Now, I really see no choice but to embrace both. Less spending to keep us from digging our debt hole even deeper, and higher taxes to pay down the debt we've already incurred. My fear is that we'll wind up with option three: Make a few symbolic cuts and plug a couple of tax loopholes for show, then keep borrowing and let some future America deal with the problem.
Borrowing can even lead to wealth for the borrower. A successful restaurant might borrow enough to open a second location and double their revenue. Under most circumstances, the house purchased on credit over thirty years has a good chance of growing in value enough to cover the interest paid on it. A student who borrows heavily to become a doctor has a much higher likely potential lifetime income than a man who finished high school but never went to college because he couldn't afford it.
So if credit's a good thing, then having more of it available is an even better thing, right?
Last month, I sold my house. I came out okay, covering my mortgage at least. I didn't sell it for enough to cover my total investment in the house once I count all the upgrades I made, but if I factor in the fact that my mortgage payments were significantly lower than rent payments would have been for an identical property, I think I at least broke even. And, I now have enough money in savings that I no longer will need to whip out my credit card any time my car needs new tires or the furnace won't start (not that I own a furnace any more, but this was the type of expense that used to catch me just at the moment when I felt like I had every bill paid and a little extra left over). I'm essentially debt free, and can now focus on actually saving money.
Back in 2008 when the economy went in the tank, I had been pretty heavily in debt. Between my car and my credit cards, I owed about as much as I earned in a year. I got to that level of debt because my debt was essentially painless. Credit cards had low minimum payments, and my particular credit card debts were all at ridiculously low interest rates. I had good credit and was forever getting offers to open new credit cards with fixed interest rates of 2.99% for balance transfers. I could carry a lot of debt and it was costing me less than $200 a month to manage it. And, I always figured I'd pay it off one day when my writing career took off!
Curiously, this plan worked. The economy tanked just as my writing revenue increased. Still, every dime I made in writing for the last couple of years has gone to either taxes, self-promotion (it's expensive travelling to a half dozen SF cons a year), or paying down debt.
But, I have to wonder: Did my access to easy credit make me less ambitious and aggressive than I might have been? I used to make a lot more money on my day job, but have twice taken paycuts to pursue positions with fewer responsibilities, and this year I voluntarily shifted from a 40 hour week to a 32 hour week to make more time for writing, though the immediate effect has been a 20% pay cut. This year, I've already made enough money from writing to cover that cut, but I might never cover the income I lost when I got off the management track at my job. I sold my first book at a time in my career where I was a well respected assistant manager and the company I worked for was on the verge of a major expansion. I almost definitely would have become a manager if I'd stuck with that path. Instead, I permanently burned bridges to that potential future income by taking a lesser position so I could have the brain power needed to focus on writing.
One of the reasons I felt confident in doing this was that I had excellent credit. I could take make less and still live comfortably because I could borrow any money I needed to make ends meet. It made sense to me at the time, but looking back I just shake my head at my foolishness. Without easy access to credit, I would have had to make tougher decisions. I tell myself that I was able to write more books because I wasn't completely swept up in managing a branch, but I meet authors all the time who have far more time consuming day jobs and still manage to crank out books. I could have made the choice to just work harder, but credit made it possible to live as if I still had my old income. On the flipside, I could have taken the pay cut at work, then started cutting my expenses far more aggressively than I did. I could have put my previous house on the market from day one and moved to less expensive digs. Or, I could have kept the house, but sought a roommate to share expenses. Instead, I paid off my car loan, which was $250 a month, with a low interest credit card, where I paid only $50 a month. That car is long since gone. That debt lingered around until this year.
It was a stupid choice. But it was an easy choice back then. It didn't require me to sacrifice or compromise in the present. The burden of my choices would fall on some future me. Well, now I am the future me, and I'd like to go back to 2001 James and give him a dope slap. I'm doing okay now, but it might have been nice to have some choices on how I spent my income the last few years. It might have taken a trip overseas with the revenue from a novel contract, for instance. Instead, I've been paying for a car I no longer own and tanks of gas long since burnt. Thanks a lot, 2001 James.
I'm relating this very personal story in hopes of making a larger point. Just as my easy access to credit kept me from having to make tough choices ten years ago, America also fell into the trap of easy credit. As individuals, Americans stopped saving money. There was no longer any need to put aside money to make a down payment on a house or car; there were lenders willing to finance every last dime, and then some. Parents no longer had to scrimp and save to put aside money for their children's education. Junior could just borrow what he needed to get a diploma. Wage growth flattened out. Employers could get more work out of employees without offering proportionally high increases in pay, and the workers didn't complain, because they could enjoy ever growing living standards thanks to easy credit. Maybe most people's raises only worked out to a few dozen dollars a month, but that's enough to finance a big screen TV.
As a people, we started increasing out standard of living in the present by pushing the cost to our future selves.
Then, of course, there's the elephant in the room. While Americans were taking advantage of credit cards, student loans, and easy mortgages, our representatives were busy giving us anything we wanted without actually having to find the revenue to pay for it. Prescription drug benefits? Two wars? Huricane clean-ups at home and abroad? Throw them onto the national credit card. The government could borrow money at the lowest interest rates in history. Why, it would be crazy not to borrow at these rates!
I got lucky. I had a wake up call on my debt just as I was finally making enough money from writing to replace some of the more reliable income I'd thrown away a decade earlier. But America, the nation, can't go out and get a second job. And I never quite got to the point where I was forced to use my credit cards to pay my credit cards, but this is essentially what the debt ceiling debate is all about. Will we borrow money in order to pay our interest on debts we already have?
Worse, I feel like the current debate is focusing on what we should have done ten years ago. Less spending? Higher taxes? We had the option to choose a decade ago. Now, I really see no choice but to embrace both. Less spending to keep us from digging our debt hole even deeper, and higher taxes to pay down the debt we've already incurred. My fear is that we'll wind up with option three: Make a few symbolic cuts and plug a couple of tax loopholes for show, then keep borrowing and let some future America deal with the problem.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
When Push Comes to Shove
I saw this ad on World Net Daily this morning and it caught my attention, since it looked to me like a little girl about to push her brother off a cliff (albeit playfully). I thought at first I was seeing an inappropriate ad for some vacation spot, like the Blue Ridge Parkway, but then I read the text and discovered it was an inappropriate ad for higher education. "Attending our school is like getting shoved off a cliff!" is the message I'm getting here. But, of course, the real kicker turns out to be the final line in the ad. Since, when I think of Christ, the first thing that pops into my mind was his reputation for pushing children off of mountaintops.Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Birthers
The press has mostly moved on from the question of whether President Obama was born in Hawaii or not. Donald Trump kicked the hornet's nest and got some people worked up about the question, but most people accept that the two birth certificates (short form and long form) released by the Prez are the real thing.
However, I was over at World Net Daily earlier today and notice that they are running an unscientific poll of their readers asking where they think Obama was born. 67% say Kenya. 3% say Hawaii.
Again, this is a voluntary reader poll, with self-selected responders, making it scientifically pointless. But what's fascinating when you read the comments section is that for many of these people, the absense of evidence is the strongest proof, and the presense of of evidence is the ultimate disproof. There are no records of a Kenyan birth certificate, or of Stanley Anne Dunham (Obama's mother) ever travelling to Kenya. The fact that these records can't be found is proof of how damning they were. On the other hand, within days of the long form birth certificate being produced, the folks at WND were declaring it a fake. The fact that he bothered to fake a birth certificate is the ultimate proof of his Kenyan birth, right? The fact that his birth was announced in the newspapers days after he was born is also proof of his foreign origins, since this shows that his grandparents were eager to make their grandson appear to be a legitimate American citizen.
What's most interesting is the curious presumption that Barack Obama's minders possess superhuman competence in some areas, and are horrible bumblers in others. Team Obama was clever enough to plant the birth announcements almost five decades before Obama ran for president, but too stupid to double check the spelling on the stamp used to certify the birth certificate! (If you aren't following this, the birth certificate is stamped at the bottom with a rubber stamp. WND has blown up the stamp and there's a THE in the stamp that looks like TXE. But, it's plainly a rubber stamp with uneven amounts of ink on the various letters. An H turns vaguely into an X if there's less ink in the middle of the outer lines.) Anyway, this supposed typo is just one of about 30 bits of "evidence" they have that the certificate is fake. So, team Obama is competent enough to scrub every bit of evidence on two continents dating back to the 1960's, but incompetent enough to release a document with 30 different mistakes.
Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head and sigh.
However, I was over at World Net Daily earlier today and notice that they are running an unscientific poll of their readers asking where they think Obama was born. 67% say Kenya. 3% say Hawaii.
Again, this is a voluntary reader poll, with self-selected responders, making it scientifically pointless. But what's fascinating when you read the comments section is that for many of these people, the absense of evidence is the strongest proof, and the presense of of evidence is the ultimate disproof. There are no records of a Kenyan birth certificate, or of Stanley Anne Dunham (Obama's mother) ever travelling to Kenya. The fact that these records can't be found is proof of how damning they were. On the other hand, within days of the long form birth certificate being produced, the folks at WND were declaring it a fake. The fact that he bothered to fake a birth certificate is the ultimate proof of his Kenyan birth, right? The fact that his birth was announced in the newspapers days after he was born is also proof of his foreign origins, since this shows that his grandparents were eager to make their grandson appear to be a legitimate American citizen.
What's most interesting is the curious presumption that Barack Obama's minders possess superhuman competence in some areas, and are horrible bumblers in others. Team Obama was clever enough to plant the birth announcements almost five decades before Obama ran for president, but too stupid to double check the spelling on the stamp used to certify the birth certificate! (If you aren't following this, the birth certificate is stamped at the bottom with a rubber stamp. WND has blown up the stamp and there's a THE in the stamp that looks like TXE. But, it's plainly a rubber stamp with uneven amounts of ink on the various letters. An H turns vaguely into an X if there's less ink in the middle of the outer lines.) Anyway, this supposed typo is just one of about 30 bits of "evidence" they have that the certificate is fake. So, team Obama is competent enough to scrub every bit of evidence on two continents dating back to the 1960's, but incompetent enough to release a document with 30 different mistakes.
Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head and sigh.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
State of Things follow up
I was a guest on the State of Things today, along with Henry Jenkins and and James Daily, talking about Superman renouncing his US citizenship. I mentioned briefly one of my short stories in which a hero gets restored to life by a time travel paradox and the Supreme Court must decide whether or not the murder conviction of the hero's arch enemy should be overturned. If you're interested in reading that story, it's called "Where Their Worm Dieth Not." I appeared originally in an anthology edited by Lou Anders called Masked. If you're a fan of prose superheroics, I can't recommend this anthology highly enough.
The story is also available in a collection of my own short fiction, There is No Wheel, which is available only on Kindle and Nook. There are three superhero stories in this collection, and the rest of the stories roam around the speculative fiction landscape, with some ghost stories, some hard SF, and even a tale about the Rapture.
If you haven't heard the State of Things broadcast in question, it's already available for download at the WUNC website.
The story is also available in a collection of my own short fiction, There is No Wheel, which is available only on Kindle and Nook. There are three superhero stories in this collection, and the rest of the stories roam around the speculative fiction landscape, with some ghost stories, some hard SF, and even a tale about the Rapture.
If you haven't heard the State of Things broadcast in question, it's already available for download at the WUNC website.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Clark Kent: American
Superman isn't an American. He's a known alien whose only official place of residence is an underground bunker in Antartica. While he does spend a lot of time in Metropolis, he's certainly got a good track record of saves all around the world. He's saved planes with bad engines in Argentina, put out brush fires in Africa, plugged failing dams in Korea, and rescued stranded subs in Russia. He's shown himself to be a watchman for the world.
Then there's Clark Kent. Smallville just had it's series finale, and I was a bit distressed at the choices the program made right at the end. Basically, they settled into the classic notion that Clark Kent exists mainly as a disguise for Superman.
It's a shame, because the series for most of it's run did a good job of making you understand that Clark Kent was the real person at the heart of Superman. Clark doesn't exist to give Superman a place to hide when he's tired. Clark exists because that was the only name he knew for the first two decades of his life. Clark Kent isn't a secret identity... he's an ordinary man with mid-western values who just happens to have a laundry list of superpowers he's mildly embarassed to possess. And, despite some false information on his birth certificate, Clark is 100% American.
The proof lies in his choice of career. Clark's a newspaper reporter; it's really tough to imagine a more American job. Clark probably spends the bulk of his days going to school board meetings and sitting in on zoning hearings. For the two hours he spends listening to some Metropolis city commisioner debating a new subway line, he could be out fighting crime, rescuing airplanes, or venting volcanoes. But, he's made the decision to write the article about the subway line over saving some village in South America because Clark understands that, in his ordinary job, he is an essential cog in the great machinery of democracy.
Yeah, there are going to be days where Clark has no choice but to put on the cape and go out to beat up Gorilla Grodd and his zombie monkey army. And, sure, if a plane is falling out of the sky, he's one of about a dozen people in the DC universe who can stop it. But I'd like to think that Clark, as Superman, has seen a lot of the world. He's seen countries where children are starving, other countries wracked by civil war, and plenty of places where the leaders are nothing but thugs who enrich themselves while their citizens suffer.
Clark understands that the real problems of the world aren't going to be solved by men in tights swooping in and beating up people. Instead, civilization works best when governments are freely elected and operate transparently, under the watchful eye of a free press.
Clark Kent punches the clock and works eight hours a day reporting on the boring mechanics of government because he believes that in doing so, he's building a better world. I imagine he's frustrated daily with a lot of the idiotic things that government does. He fights his most important fights by sitting down and typing, so that the people can know what is being done in their name.
Superman is a demi-god who can't be bothered with politics. He owes his loyalty to no country, and pays no taxes. Clark Kent is a citizen of the United States of America. He votes. And I bet he pays every last penny of his taxes, happy to chip in his small part toward the purchase of civilization.
Then there's Clark Kent. Smallville just had it's series finale, and I was a bit distressed at the choices the program made right at the end. Basically, they settled into the classic notion that Clark Kent exists mainly as a disguise for Superman.
It's a shame, because the series for most of it's run did a good job of making you understand that Clark Kent was the real person at the heart of Superman. Clark doesn't exist to give Superman a place to hide when he's tired. Clark exists because that was the only name he knew for the first two decades of his life. Clark Kent isn't a secret identity... he's an ordinary man with mid-western values who just happens to have a laundry list of superpowers he's mildly embarassed to possess. And, despite some false information on his birth certificate, Clark is 100% American.
The proof lies in his choice of career. Clark's a newspaper reporter; it's really tough to imagine a more American job. Clark probably spends the bulk of his days going to school board meetings and sitting in on zoning hearings. For the two hours he spends listening to some Metropolis city commisioner debating a new subway line, he could be out fighting crime, rescuing airplanes, or venting volcanoes. But, he's made the decision to write the article about the subway line over saving some village in South America because Clark understands that, in his ordinary job, he is an essential cog in the great machinery of democracy.
Yeah, there are going to be days where Clark has no choice but to put on the cape and go out to beat up Gorilla Grodd and his zombie monkey army. And, sure, if a plane is falling out of the sky, he's one of about a dozen people in the DC universe who can stop it. But I'd like to think that Clark, as Superman, has seen a lot of the world. He's seen countries where children are starving, other countries wracked by civil war, and plenty of places where the leaders are nothing but thugs who enrich themselves while their citizens suffer.
Clark understands that the real problems of the world aren't going to be solved by men in tights swooping in and beating up people. Instead, civilization works best when governments are freely elected and operate transparently, under the watchful eye of a free press.
Clark Kent punches the clock and works eight hours a day reporting on the boring mechanics of government because he believes that in doing so, he's building a better world. I imagine he's frustrated daily with a lot of the idiotic things that government does. He fights his most important fights by sitting down and typing, so that the people can know what is being done in their name.
Superman is a demi-god who can't be bothered with politics. He owes his loyalty to no country, and pays no taxes. Clark Kent is a citizen of the United States of America. He votes. And I bet he pays every last penny of his taxes, happy to chip in his small part toward the purchase of civilization.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Laura Kathleen Herrmann - Five Years Later
Yesterday marked the five year anniversary of Laura's death. Thursday, I took Simon and Veronica to place flowers at her grave. The headstone continues to accumulate sea shells; Laura loved to go to the beach and collect shells and beach glass. Each time I visit her grave, it seems as if the shells have changed. Some probably get washed off by rain, then chewed up by lawn mowers. But new ones always spring up to replace those that have gone missing.
Almost always, the shells are fragments, bleached perfectly white. I hadn't really thought about it before, but on this visit I found symbolic value in this; the fact that the shells are fragments reflects that Laura's life was a fragment. What we think of as a full, natural lifespan was cut short by cancer. She spent an unfair number of days of her life simply wanting to breathe deeply. I don't mean to devalue her life. She worked within her physical limits to live as fully as anyone. But, I sometimes will be at a farmer's market, or a library, or a beach, and see thin, gray haired woman walking by, smiling, engaged with friends and family and strangers, and I mourn that Laura never reached this stage of life. She would have been one kick-ass old lady.
As for the symbolism that the shells are all bleached white... as the years go by, it becomes harder to remember Laura's flaws. There's a tendency to remember her courage, her wisdom, and her strength, while setting aside her fears, her foolishness, and her weakness.
The truth is, without her fears, her foolishness, her weakness, she wouldn't have had me in her life. Not because I was such a foolish choice, but because, if she'd been perfect, she wouldn't have needed anyone's help. But, she wasn't perfect. She was afraid of dying, afraid of loneliness, terrified at times of what cruel twist fate had lying in wait for her just around the corner. My personality tends to be analyitical, cynical, and flippant, not the most attractive traits, yet well suited toward dealing with existential fears.
I don't visit Laura's grave as often as I used to. I didn't go for her birthday this year. I doubt I'll go again before late summer. By then, I'll have been back to the beach. I hope this year I can find some beach glass, pale blue and green and brown. Small fragments that will fit into the gaps in the indented letters on her headstone, filling them in with some darker shades to provide contrast with the white shells and the gray stone.
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Superman was never an American
The latest attempt by DC to grab a few headlines involves Superman renouncing his US citizenship. I haven't yet read Action Comics 900, the issue this happens in, but my understanding from news reports is that Superman takes a stand in support of Arab rebels that the White House is unhappy with, so Supes goes before the UN to renounce his citizenship since he's tired of having his personal opinions mistaken for official US government policy.
Some conservatives view this as political correctness run amok. Both Mike Huckabee and Glenn Beck have denounced this action as coming from the liberal "blame America" crowd that coddles terrorists and gives comfort to our enemies.
Still, the timing is interesting, in that a poll released yesterday showed that 18% of Americans and 30% of Republicans still don't think that President Obama is an American citizen despite the fact he's released his official birth certificate twice now.
If Superman existed in today's America, he couldn't vote. He couldn't legally get a driver's license or a job. He could never testify in court. He has no birth certificate or any other papers to verify his legal identity. Under classic Superman mythology, Superman has made it public that he's an alien from the planet Krypton. He arrived here in a spaceship that illegally slipped over our borders. He has never, to my knowledge, applied for US resident status under the name "Superman." Under what possible legal argument could Superman be considered an American citizen?
It's also worth noting that, in the Silver Age comic book mythology that I grew up with, Superman was decidedly not a Christian. Instead, he still clung to a few Kryptonian practices, including at least paying lip service to the Krptonian sun-god Rao. "Great Rao!" he'd exclaim when he was astonished. Assuming he was ever caught on tape talking about Rao, don't you think the Christian right would have risen in mass to demand that Superman convert to Christianity? If he didn't, wouldn't his every actions have been suspect to the right wing talkers of the world? If 9-11 had unfolded and Superman hadn't saved the towers and the pentagon because that morning he happened to be busy fighting Brainiac, don't you think that conspiracy theories would have arisen that Superman must have wanted this to happen? Especially if Osama bin Laden then spent the next decade on the loose? You know that the Joseph Farahs and Rush Limbaughs of the world would be fill the airwaves with speculation about where, exactly, this alien's loyalties were placed.
Of course, Superman could try to silence all this talk by revealing that he had a secret identity, with adoptive American parents, and that even though he couldn't reveal his true identity, he could assure us that he was, in fact, an American. The main problem is, Clark Kent is an American purely by fraud. In the current Superman mythology, after Jonathan and Martha Kent find the alien baby in the field, they decide to pass him off as their own child. So, Clark goes to work every day with a social security number issued to him on the basis of a fraudulent birth certificate. The Kent's committed perjury. If Lex Luthor ever found this out, Clark is probably one DNA test away from deportation. And what would the American public think, knowing that aliens are sneaking over our borders to take low wage jobs that real Americans no longer want, like newspaper reporting?
Finally, despite the 1950's era slogan that Superman stood for truth, justice, and the American Way, just how does he actually embody any of these traits?
Truth? Truth is right out the window, since his whole public persona is a carefully constructed lie. Clark Kent spends every minute of his day lying, wearing glasses he doesn't need, slouching his shoulders, pretending to be a klutz with irritable bowel syndrome so he can run off to the bathroom at a moment's notice. But what can you expect, given that his adoptive parents were so adept at lying? They taught him from an early age that deceipt was a virtue. When you and I wanted to make friends as children, we were told, "Just be yourself." When Clark felt lonely and isolated, his folks said, "You can't trust friends. You can't trust anyone. Never let anyone see who you truly are." With this kind of upbringing, we should consider ourselves lucky Clark didn't turn into a serial killer.
Justice? Only if you think vigilante justice is superior to due process. Superman seems to be unable to stop a bank robbery without first punching his way through a wall. Once he's inside the bank, he destroys evidence by melting the robber's gun (conveniently wiping out fingerprints) and ruining all the surveillance tapes by spraying the room with x-rays. You know every bad guy he nabs is back on the streets inside of an hour. And, speaking of x-rays, the citizens of Metropolis must give off more rads than a Japanese power plant, given how frequently Superman scans the city looking for missing kittens and run-away bad guys. If you work at the Daily Planet, and are diagnosed with breast cancer when you're 30 that probably has been caused by Superman's radioactive stares, you have no legal recourse available to you. You can't sue Superman because you don't know his real identity, and he keeps his economic assets hidden from everyone, including the IRS. Where's the justice in that?
The American Way? There is nothing more patriotic than voting, and Superman's not even registered to vote! I don't know that he's ever taken a public position on the merits of capitalism versus communism, but it is noteworthy that he's never taken a dime for his services. He's accepted no corporate sponsorships, and he's never tried to cash in on his fame and powers. He seems to be the living embodiment of the Marxist motto, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." And while Superman does spend a lot of his time fighting extraterrestrials, it's worth noting that the person he spends the majority of his energies trying to bring down is a highly successful businessman who rose from poverty by using his genius, education, and good business sense to become one of the richest men in America. Also, Lex Luthor can show you his birth certificate.
But even more to the point: The premise of America is that the law treats everyone equally. The premise of Superman is that he has the power to be above the law. He uses his powers altruistically, it's true, but if you or I tried to fly a helicopter thirty feet above the main street of Metropolis, we'd have hell to pay with the FAA. Superman does it with impunity. If we tried to drive 80 on the freeway, we get a ticket. The classic Superman didn't even respect the speed limit set by light. If you or I crashed through a skyscraper window, we'd be expected to pay for damages. Superman either fixes things himself, an act of non-union labor performed without building permits or concern about building codes, or, if he does leave behind some sort of cash compensation for damages, the money is coming from unknown source that the IRS would probably really, really want to know about. The American Way is respect for the rule of law. Superman's way is, "I'll do what I want, because, hey, I'm Superman."
Supes, if you're saying adios to America, good riddance. Krypton must have known you'd grow up to be a hyper-violent nincompoop who'd wear his underwear outside his big boy pants when they shot you into space as a baby. Don't let the door snag your cape on the way out.
Some conservatives view this as political correctness run amok. Both Mike Huckabee and Glenn Beck have denounced this action as coming from the liberal "blame America" crowd that coddles terrorists and gives comfort to our enemies.
Still, the timing is interesting, in that a poll released yesterday showed that 18% of Americans and 30% of Republicans still don't think that President Obama is an American citizen despite the fact he's released his official birth certificate twice now.
If Superman existed in today's America, he couldn't vote. He couldn't legally get a driver's license or a job. He could never testify in court. He has no birth certificate or any other papers to verify his legal identity. Under classic Superman mythology, Superman has made it public that he's an alien from the planet Krypton. He arrived here in a spaceship that illegally slipped over our borders. He has never, to my knowledge, applied for US resident status under the name "Superman." Under what possible legal argument could Superman be considered an American citizen?
It's also worth noting that, in the Silver Age comic book mythology that I grew up with, Superman was decidedly not a Christian. Instead, he still clung to a few Kryptonian practices, including at least paying lip service to the Krptonian sun-god Rao. "Great Rao!" he'd exclaim when he was astonished. Assuming he was ever caught on tape talking about Rao, don't you think the Christian right would have risen in mass to demand that Superman convert to Christianity? If he didn't, wouldn't his every actions have been suspect to the right wing talkers of the world? If 9-11 had unfolded and Superman hadn't saved the towers and the pentagon because that morning he happened to be busy fighting Brainiac, don't you think that conspiracy theories would have arisen that Superman must have wanted this to happen? Especially if Osama bin Laden then spent the next decade on the loose? You know that the Joseph Farahs and Rush Limbaughs of the world would be fill the airwaves with speculation about where, exactly, this alien's loyalties were placed.
Of course, Superman could try to silence all this talk by revealing that he had a secret identity, with adoptive American parents, and that even though he couldn't reveal his true identity, he could assure us that he was, in fact, an American. The main problem is, Clark Kent is an American purely by fraud. In the current Superman mythology, after Jonathan and Martha Kent find the alien baby in the field, they decide to pass him off as their own child. So, Clark goes to work every day with a social security number issued to him on the basis of a fraudulent birth certificate. The Kent's committed perjury. If Lex Luthor ever found this out, Clark is probably one DNA test away from deportation. And what would the American public think, knowing that aliens are sneaking over our borders to take low wage jobs that real Americans no longer want, like newspaper reporting?
Finally, despite the 1950's era slogan that Superman stood for truth, justice, and the American Way, just how does he actually embody any of these traits?
Truth? Truth is right out the window, since his whole public persona is a carefully constructed lie. Clark Kent spends every minute of his day lying, wearing glasses he doesn't need, slouching his shoulders, pretending to be a klutz with irritable bowel syndrome so he can run off to the bathroom at a moment's notice. But what can you expect, given that his adoptive parents were so adept at lying? They taught him from an early age that deceipt was a virtue. When you and I wanted to make friends as children, we were told, "Just be yourself." When Clark felt lonely and isolated, his folks said, "You can't trust friends. You can't trust anyone. Never let anyone see who you truly are." With this kind of upbringing, we should consider ourselves lucky Clark didn't turn into a serial killer.
Justice? Only if you think vigilante justice is superior to due process. Superman seems to be unable to stop a bank robbery without first punching his way through a wall. Once he's inside the bank, he destroys evidence by melting the robber's gun (conveniently wiping out fingerprints) and ruining all the surveillance tapes by spraying the room with x-rays. You know every bad guy he nabs is back on the streets inside of an hour. And, speaking of x-rays, the citizens of Metropolis must give off more rads than a Japanese power plant, given how frequently Superman scans the city looking for missing kittens and run-away bad guys. If you work at the Daily Planet, and are diagnosed with breast cancer when you're 30 that probably has been caused by Superman's radioactive stares, you have no legal recourse available to you. You can't sue Superman because you don't know his real identity, and he keeps his economic assets hidden from everyone, including the IRS. Where's the justice in that?
The American Way? There is nothing more patriotic than voting, and Superman's not even registered to vote! I don't know that he's ever taken a public position on the merits of capitalism versus communism, but it is noteworthy that he's never taken a dime for his services. He's accepted no corporate sponsorships, and he's never tried to cash in on his fame and powers. He seems to be the living embodiment of the Marxist motto, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." And while Superman does spend a lot of his time fighting extraterrestrials, it's worth noting that the person he spends the majority of his energies trying to bring down is a highly successful businessman who rose from poverty by using his genius, education, and good business sense to become one of the richest men in America. Also, Lex Luthor can show you his birth certificate.
But even more to the point: The premise of America is that the law treats everyone equally. The premise of Superman is that he has the power to be above the law. He uses his powers altruistically, it's true, but if you or I tried to fly a helicopter thirty feet above the main street of Metropolis, we'd have hell to pay with the FAA. Superman does it with impunity. If we tried to drive 80 on the freeway, we get a ticket. The classic Superman didn't even respect the speed limit set by light. If you or I crashed through a skyscraper window, we'd be expected to pay for damages. Superman either fixes things himself, an act of non-union labor performed without building permits or concern about building codes, or, if he does leave behind some sort of cash compensation for damages, the money is coming from unknown source that the IRS would probably really, really want to know about. The American Way is respect for the rule of law. Superman's way is, "I'll do what I want, because, hey, I'm Superman."
Supes, if you're saying adios to America, good riddance. Krypton must have known you'd grow up to be a hyper-violent nincompoop who'd wear his underwear outside his big boy pants when they shot you into space as a baby. Don't let the door snag your cape on the way out.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Headlong toward doom!
I've been doing a lot more posts about writing than about politics lately, which is natural since I'm deep inside the process of writing The Dragon Apocalypse series. When I'm writing, the rest of the world turns into murmuring shadows at the periphery of my awareness. I'm only dimly aware of friends and family. Hell, I'm only dimly aware of myself.
So, while I've been following politics just enough to still understand the jokes each week on "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me," I haven't really been tuned in to the political world to the degree I feel I should be. Which is stunning, because I feel like recent months have produced 1. an actual impeachable offense by the President and 2. the most frightening political "debate" I personally can remember.
1. The impeachable offense. So... we're still bombing Libya, right? And, unless I've been totally in a fog, the President hasn't yet asked congress for the authority to do so. How is this in any way constitutional? If unilaterally declaring war against a nation that posed no threat to us whatsoever isn't a high crime under the constitution, just what the hell is? Yet, Dennis Kucinich seems to be the only congressman willing to take a stand on this. The rest of congress seems to be hiding from the issue as much as possible. Drudgereport ran headlines day after day for months over whether Clinton had lied about having sex with an intern. Libya generated headlines for a day or two, then faded from sight.
One giant lesson to be drawn from this is that the "anti-war" left is, in fact, merely "anti-republican." If a republican president were bombing a nation under the exact same circumstances, you'd have crowd's descending on the national mall to declare the president a war criminal and a fascist. But, with Obama giving the commands... nary a peep.
2. The so called "debate." First, the whole threat to shut down the budget over 66 billion or 30 billion or whatever: The deficit is 1.4 trillion. 66 billion is a rounding error, hidden in the numbers you don't bother including when you say "the deficit is 1.4 trillion." If the deficit had been "1.466 trillion" before the budget passed, it became "1.400" trillion afterward. Only, of course, it didn't, since the second the deal was picked apart and all the imaginary numbers were pulled out the total actual savings didn't even hit 1 billion.
But, what does it matter? The big news wasn't this year's budget, which can be blamed on democrats who failed to actually pass a spending bill. No, the big news is that both the republicans and the president have finally put forward serious plans to balance the budget!
Except, of course, they haven't. Both plans were actually roadmaps that lead us headlong toward doom. Paul Ryan's plan "balances" the budget in something like 20 years! It's just built into the plan that we'll continue to run deficits for two more decades. Obama's far more "serious" and "courageous" plan only runs deficits for another 12 years! Let's say that you weigh 400 pounds, and have just had a wake up call because last year you only weighed 360 pounds. You announce to the world that you have agreed to embark on a serious diet plan. This year, you were on track to gain 80 pounds, but you skipped lunch earlier, so now you're on track to only gain 79 pounds. Progress! And, next year, the real cuts kick in, and you'll only gain 60 pounds! And the following year, 54 pounds! And, twelve years from now, you'll be completely stable, and gain no weight whatsoever!
I'm sorry, but, no, 12 years from now, you'll be dead, or in such horrible condition that death would be the merciful alternative.
All the plans to cut the deficit over a long time scale are meaningless. If the deficit is to be cut, it will have to be on a time scale of two years... since that's how long either party can be sure of having control of the house.
And, slowing the rate of growth of the deficit doesn't count as "cutting." The problem is no longer that we are running deficits. The problem that confronts us are the debts that we've already accumulated. This debt sits on the American chest like a succubus, robbing us of energy. If we spend another decade or two piling on debt, then the interest paid on the debt will exceed the taxes we collect. We will be bankrupt.
It's not too late. Getting a balanced budget will require spending cuts, but also increased taxes. To those who protest that any tax increase will just be met with a spending increase, I feel your fears, but, to me, the increased taxes aren't justified by future spending... they are morally mandated by past deficit spending. We built up these debts. Did we never intend to pay them? With what? Happy thoughts? The fact is, every time a democrat or republican has voted for deficit spending in the past, they were casting a vote for higher taxes in the future.
The future has arrived. The car is pointed toward doom. Do we step on the accelerator, or the brakes?
So, while I've been following politics just enough to still understand the jokes each week on "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me," I haven't really been tuned in to the political world to the degree I feel I should be. Which is stunning, because I feel like recent months have produced 1. an actual impeachable offense by the President and 2. the most frightening political "debate" I personally can remember.
1. The impeachable offense. So... we're still bombing Libya, right? And, unless I've been totally in a fog, the President hasn't yet asked congress for the authority to do so. How is this in any way constitutional? If unilaterally declaring war against a nation that posed no threat to us whatsoever isn't a high crime under the constitution, just what the hell is? Yet, Dennis Kucinich seems to be the only congressman willing to take a stand on this. The rest of congress seems to be hiding from the issue as much as possible. Drudgereport ran headlines day after day for months over whether Clinton had lied about having sex with an intern. Libya generated headlines for a day or two, then faded from sight.
One giant lesson to be drawn from this is that the "anti-war" left is, in fact, merely "anti-republican." If a republican president were bombing a nation under the exact same circumstances, you'd have crowd's descending on the national mall to declare the president a war criminal and a fascist. But, with Obama giving the commands... nary a peep.
2. The so called "debate." First, the whole threat to shut down the budget over 66 billion or 30 billion or whatever: The deficit is 1.4 trillion. 66 billion is a rounding error, hidden in the numbers you don't bother including when you say "the deficit is 1.4 trillion." If the deficit had been "1.466 trillion" before the budget passed, it became "1.400" trillion afterward. Only, of course, it didn't, since the second the deal was picked apart and all the imaginary numbers were pulled out the total actual savings didn't even hit 1 billion.
But, what does it matter? The big news wasn't this year's budget, which can be blamed on democrats who failed to actually pass a spending bill. No, the big news is that both the republicans and the president have finally put forward serious plans to balance the budget!
Except, of course, they haven't. Both plans were actually roadmaps that lead us headlong toward doom. Paul Ryan's plan "balances" the budget in something like 20 years! It's just built into the plan that we'll continue to run deficits for two more decades. Obama's far more "serious" and "courageous" plan only runs deficits for another 12 years! Let's say that you weigh 400 pounds, and have just had a wake up call because last year you only weighed 360 pounds. You announce to the world that you have agreed to embark on a serious diet plan. This year, you were on track to gain 80 pounds, but you skipped lunch earlier, so now you're on track to only gain 79 pounds. Progress! And, next year, the real cuts kick in, and you'll only gain 60 pounds! And the following year, 54 pounds! And, twelve years from now, you'll be completely stable, and gain no weight whatsoever!
I'm sorry, but, no, 12 years from now, you'll be dead, or in such horrible condition that death would be the merciful alternative.
All the plans to cut the deficit over a long time scale are meaningless. If the deficit is to be cut, it will have to be on a time scale of two years... since that's how long either party can be sure of having control of the house.
And, slowing the rate of growth of the deficit doesn't count as "cutting." The problem is no longer that we are running deficits. The problem that confronts us are the debts that we've already accumulated. This debt sits on the American chest like a succubus, robbing us of energy. If we spend another decade or two piling on debt, then the interest paid on the debt will exceed the taxes we collect. We will be bankrupt.
It's not too late. Getting a balanced budget will require spending cuts, but also increased taxes. To those who protest that any tax increase will just be met with a spending increase, I feel your fears, but, to me, the increased taxes aren't justified by future spending... they are morally mandated by past deficit spending. We built up these debts. Did we never intend to pay them? With what? Happy thoughts? The fact is, every time a democrat or republican has voted for deficit spending in the past, they were casting a vote for higher taxes in the future.
The future has arrived. The car is pointed toward doom. Do we step on the accelerator, or the brakes?
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Announcing Anarchy Books!
I'm turning today's blog post over Andy Remic, a fellow Solaris author with a truly dizzying array of books. Now, as if being an amazingly prolific writer wasn't enough, he's decided to be a multi-media publisher as well! I'm giving him this blog space to help spread the news:
My name's Andy Remic, I'm the author of various SFF/thriller novels like Kell's Legend for Angry Robot Books, and the recent Solaris novel, Cloneworld, and James has kindly allowed me to hijack his blog to bring you news of my new publishing venture, ANARCHY BOOKS. ANARCHY BOOKS is a radical new publishing company aiming to publish books, albums, films and video games, many of which share the same concept or story. Most books will be published in electronic formats, but there will be limited edition paperback runs as well.
Take our first release, Serial Killers Incorporated, which has just been published and is available now. There's a novel about Callaghan, a hard-drinking, drug-fuelled, womanising no-good son-of-a-bitch. A photographer for Black & White, a rabid tabloid rag, Callaghan’s in way too deep with Mia, his Mexican girlfriend and Sophie, estranged wife to Vladimir “Vodka” Katchevsy, infamous Romanian gun-runner and killer. At the nadir of his downward spiral, Callaghan is approached by a man: a serial killer who brings him a very unique and dangerous proposition. This novel is also released with its own accompanying album, a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails-inspired indie band th3 m1ss1ng. Both album and novel share concept and even some text/lyrics, and were developed together.
In the future, we're publishing full novels by well-known popular novelists Jeffrey Thomas, Gary McMahon, James Lovegrove, Eric Brown, and Tony Ballantyne, along with some very high caliber newcomers, such as Vincent Holland-Keen and Alex Caine Duncan.
We're also releasing an anthology, VIVISEPULTURE, twisted weird tales in the tradition of Kafka, Poe and Borges, and again have some wonderful writers involved in this project, such as Neal Asher, Stan Nicholls, Steven Savile, Ian Watson, Ian Whates and Conrad Williams, with artwork created by Vincent Chong.
Serial Killers Incorporated is currently on special offer at Amazon for $1.83 (for a very limited period only!), and we're also looking for submissions and partners to collaborate on tie-in films, video games and music albums.
Check out www.anarchy-books.com for more information, and thank you to James for giving us a platform!!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
There is No Wheel: An essay on my particular brand of nihilism
I'm releasing an anthology of my short fiction very soon to Kindle and Nook, and will be posting several articles about it over the next few weeks over at dragonprophet.blogspot.com, my writing blog. But, I'm placing this essay here on my "politics and religion" blog, since this essay isn't so much about the book as it is about my central understanding of life.
One of the great debates of the last 300 years or so has been the tension between religious world views and rationalist world views. Both rationalists and theists look at the world and find patterns and designs within it.
People inclined to believe in religion look at these patterns and draw the conclusion that life can't be random. There is some driving force keeping everything in tune, even down to the level of individual life. As we humans wind our ways through the treacherous seas of life, some of us take comfort knowing that an unseen navigator has his hand on the wheel, and where ever we go, it's where we're meant to be. Religiously minded people may not agree on who the navigator is, or the final destination, but they do agree that an intelligent force with a master plan is behind everything we experience.
Rationalists deny that there is any navigator. Yet, this doesn't necessarily mean that all life is random. When Adam Smith wrote of an "invisible hand" that guided economies, he didn't mean that there was an actual being attached to that hand; instead, there are just laws that govern human behavior. Darwinists can explain much of the world through the guiding principal of natural selection. Objectivists (Ayn Rand's philosophy) argue that each man is responsible for taking control of his own wheel; where you go in life is where you choose to steer your life. More liberal minds tend to view our destinies as being guided by larger forces: We become rich or poor, success or failure based on elements such as the health, medicine, and education that was provided to us as children. Rationalists tend to be much more divided than religionists as to who or what has their hand on the wheel guiding our lives, but they do agree it isn't purely random. Yet what is the guiding force? Is it nature or nurture? Survival of the fittest, or survival of the fairest, the kindest, the toughest, the smartest, the wisest? What hidden laws govern the human past that we can then use as a guide to the human future?
It will surprise no one who has read the title of this blog post to know how I answer the question "Whose hand is on the wheel?" I don't believe there is a wheel.
The theistic interpretation of life's supposed patterns strikes me as almost too absurd to argue. I've heard brainless theists argue that we can deduce God's will by the fact that he sends hurricanes to smite godless places like New Orleans. After the Haitian earthquake, I read completely serious arguments made that the fault lay in Haitians having sold their soul to the devil to gain independence, leading to their present cursed state. The flip side is that some people who experience tremendous good fortune will attribute their success to God. All of life's rewards and punishments are meted out according to a higher plan, and the less the higher plan makes sense to us (as when seemingly wicked people thrive and seemingly good people suffer) the more we view this as evidence that God's plan is so far above human understanding that it must be truly freakin' awesome!
But the rationalists don't do much better. They tend to latch onto a set of "rules" and argue that, under perfect condition, life follows these rules. If you've ever tried to argue with a libertarian absolutist, you quickly realize how faith-based and impervious to reality their arguments are. I'm not picking on libertarians alone, however, since their philosophical opposites, communists, have also constructed a wall of arguments that can never be bashed down by experience or evidence.
Both rationalist and theists present models of the world that say, "If you behave this way 100% of the time, you will get this outcome 100% of the time." They want life to make sense.
I am pleased to report that it doesn't. Humans can and will slip free from the shackle of every grand predictive theory you care to place on them. I can show you children who were loved, well fed, safe, and well educated, including in morality, who grow up to become narcissistic monsters capable of abandoning their children, betraying their friends, and running their lives into the ditch. I can show you children who were bounced from foster home to foster home, subjected to abuse, who managed to grow into successful, compassionate adults. I know immigrants who arrived in America without a dime in their pockets, unable to speak English, who twenty years later own their own restaurants and are respected members of the community. And I know people who were born to millionaires, given almost limitless opportunities to chase their dreams, who wind up as nothing but bums. But, the reverse of all these are also true: I know rich kids from happy families who became rich adults in happy families. I know poor folks from broken homes who become poor folks with broken homes.
Nor can I take comfort in thinking that, while all the grand predictive theories of how to live may be hokum, at least I am the master of my own destiny. While many people's problems are self-inflicted, some times you just encounter forces that utterly disrupt whatever plans you may have once had for your life. You exercise, eat well, never smoke, and wind up diagnosed with cancer when you're 30. You build a successful business and it all comes crumbling down when a crazy person with a lawyer decides to take you for all you're worth. Or the flip side: you're just one of the millions of people who write a book or a song each year, essentially following the same long shot formula as the rest of the creative herd, and suddenly Oprah loves your book or Apple uses your music in a commercial and in the span of a year you go from starving artist to an embarrassment of riches.
I truly think that dumb luck is far and away the most consistent driving force deciding who comes out of this life judged as a winner or a loser.
I suspect that most people regard my world view as bleak. They want to feel as if they have some measure of control over their lives. Here's the compromise I've arrived at that keeps me comfortable and happy despite my underlying nihilism, and certainty that life has no higher meaning, as there is no higher judge to provide that meaning. I accept that there are no guarantees or sure fire formulas. Then I live my life the same way I'd live it if there were. I accept that I can't control whether a book I write will be sold or not. I write it anyway. I accept that the people I love may not be alive a month from now. I love them anyway. I know that some stray blood vessel in my brain may burst at any second and wipe away every conversation I've ever had with a friend, every joke I've ever laughed at... and I laugh at all the ones I remember now, here, at this moment.
There is no wheel. There is nothing holding us to the road we heroically follow into the terra incognita of the future. Stop clenching your hands at the ten and two positions. Lean back. Relax. And enjoy the ride.
One of the great debates of the last 300 years or so has been the tension between religious world views and rationalist world views. Both rationalists and theists look at the world and find patterns and designs within it.
People inclined to believe in religion look at these patterns and draw the conclusion that life can't be random. There is some driving force keeping everything in tune, even down to the level of individual life. As we humans wind our ways through the treacherous seas of life, some of us take comfort knowing that an unseen navigator has his hand on the wheel, and where ever we go, it's where we're meant to be. Religiously minded people may not agree on who the navigator is, or the final destination, but they do agree that an intelligent force with a master plan is behind everything we experience.
Rationalists deny that there is any navigator. Yet, this doesn't necessarily mean that all life is random. When Adam Smith wrote of an "invisible hand" that guided economies, he didn't mean that there was an actual being attached to that hand; instead, there are just laws that govern human behavior. Darwinists can explain much of the world through the guiding principal of natural selection. Objectivists (Ayn Rand's philosophy) argue that each man is responsible for taking control of his own wheel; where you go in life is where you choose to steer your life. More liberal minds tend to view our destinies as being guided by larger forces: We become rich or poor, success or failure based on elements such as the health, medicine, and education that was provided to us as children. Rationalists tend to be much more divided than religionists as to who or what has their hand on the wheel guiding our lives, but they do agree it isn't purely random. Yet what is the guiding force? Is it nature or nurture? Survival of the fittest, or survival of the fairest, the kindest, the toughest, the smartest, the wisest? What hidden laws govern the human past that we can then use as a guide to the human future?
It will surprise no one who has read the title of this blog post to know how I answer the question "Whose hand is on the wheel?" I don't believe there is a wheel.
The theistic interpretation of life's supposed patterns strikes me as almost too absurd to argue. I've heard brainless theists argue that we can deduce God's will by the fact that he sends hurricanes to smite godless places like New Orleans. After the Haitian earthquake, I read completely serious arguments made that the fault lay in Haitians having sold their soul to the devil to gain independence, leading to their present cursed state. The flip side is that some people who experience tremendous good fortune will attribute their success to God. All of life's rewards and punishments are meted out according to a higher plan, and the less the higher plan makes sense to us (as when seemingly wicked people thrive and seemingly good people suffer) the more we view this as evidence that God's plan is so far above human understanding that it must be truly freakin' awesome!
But the rationalists don't do much better. They tend to latch onto a set of "rules" and argue that, under perfect condition, life follows these rules. If you've ever tried to argue with a libertarian absolutist, you quickly realize how faith-based and impervious to reality their arguments are. I'm not picking on libertarians alone, however, since their philosophical opposites, communists, have also constructed a wall of arguments that can never be bashed down by experience or evidence.
Both rationalist and theists present models of the world that say, "If you behave this way 100% of the time, you will get this outcome 100% of the time." They want life to make sense.
I am pleased to report that it doesn't. Humans can and will slip free from the shackle of every grand predictive theory you care to place on them. I can show you children who were loved, well fed, safe, and well educated, including in morality, who grow up to become narcissistic monsters capable of abandoning their children, betraying their friends, and running their lives into the ditch. I can show you children who were bounced from foster home to foster home, subjected to abuse, who managed to grow into successful, compassionate adults. I know immigrants who arrived in America without a dime in their pockets, unable to speak English, who twenty years later own their own restaurants and are respected members of the community. And I know people who were born to millionaires, given almost limitless opportunities to chase their dreams, who wind up as nothing but bums. But, the reverse of all these are also true: I know rich kids from happy families who became rich adults in happy families. I know poor folks from broken homes who become poor folks with broken homes.
Nor can I take comfort in thinking that, while all the grand predictive theories of how to live may be hokum, at least I am the master of my own destiny. While many people's problems are self-inflicted, some times you just encounter forces that utterly disrupt whatever plans you may have once had for your life. You exercise, eat well, never smoke, and wind up diagnosed with cancer when you're 30. You build a successful business and it all comes crumbling down when a crazy person with a lawyer decides to take you for all you're worth. Or the flip side: you're just one of the millions of people who write a book or a song each year, essentially following the same long shot formula as the rest of the creative herd, and suddenly Oprah loves your book or Apple uses your music in a commercial and in the span of a year you go from starving artist to an embarrassment of riches.
I truly think that dumb luck is far and away the most consistent driving force deciding who comes out of this life judged as a winner or a loser.
I suspect that most people regard my world view as bleak. They want to feel as if they have some measure of control over their lives. Here's the compromise I've arrived at that keeps me comfortable and happy despite my underlying nihilism, and certainty that life has no higher meaning, as there is no higher judge to provide that meaning. I accept that there are no guarantees or sure fire formulas. Then I live my life the same way I'd live it if there were. I accept that I can't control whether a book I write will be sold or not. I write it anyway. I accept that the people I love may not be alive a month from now. I love them anyway. I know that some stray blood vessel in my brain may burst at any second and wipe away every conversation I've ever had with a friend, every joke I've ever laughed at... and I laugh at all the ones I remember now, here, at this moment.
There is no wheel. There is nothing holding us to the road we heroically follow into the terra incognita of the future. Stop clenching your hands at the ten and two positions. Lean back. Relax. And enjoy the ride.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The most dangerous thought you’ll ever have
I’ve given a lot of advice on how to be a writer over the years, but today I’m going to give my absolute top bit of advice on how not to be a writer. All you need is one single thought, a basic assumption that you build your future on. That single dangerous thought is this: When I’m a writer, I’ll finally have time to write.
I used to firmly believe this. When I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I had a job I hated, and I told myself I could be a writer if only I had the time. So, I paid off all my debts, saved a little money, and quit my day job. And, I did write… some. A little. I tried to find the discipline to write every day, but, looking back, even though I was without a day job for the better part of a year, very little of the writing I did during that time amounted to anything. I made a few story sales to markets that paid in copies. Eventually, the money ran out, and I went back to work.
I didn’t hate my new job as much as my old job, but I still wanted to make it big as a writer and quit. I’d squeeze out a short story every few months, always dreaming of the day I’d have the time to really write. Then, I had a second chance to ride the “time to write” pony when I attended the Odyssey Fantasy Writer’s Workshop. My work agreed to let me take off the six weeks for the class, and my wife at the time covered all the bills and was generally a trooper. I went to the Workshop feeling like I’d have all the time in the world. After all, classes were just a few hours each morning. The vast bulk of the day was free time, far from home, without distractions. Six glorious weeks immersed in writing to produce… precious little. A few deeply flawed stories. I went home certain I’d failed; I wasn’t a writer. I’d had my best possible shot, and hadn’t written a thing worth reading.
Back home, my life got more complicated as I took on new responsibilities on my job. I bought a house and suddenly had yard work and maintenance to deal with. I had less free time than ever. Whereas before Odyssey, I’d make a point of setting aside whole evenings to write, I now had to write in little bits and fragments. I used to get together with friends every Friday night to play video games; I didn’t want to miss their company, so I started taking my laptop and writing while they played, then join them when they took smoke breaks. Everything I had in my head about the proper conditions for writing told me I should be alone in a quiet room with unbroken, dedicated blocks of time before me. Now I was writing in the barest scraps of time, in the moments in between and on the way to the rest of my life.
And from these time scraps came Nobody Gets the Girl, and Empire of Dreams and Miracles, and To the East a Bright Star, and a dozen other stories I consider my prime work.
It’s almost a cliché to say that as you age, it feels like the days get shorter. But, I swear, my own personal experience confirms the cliché. Subjectively, I feel like I have half the hours in a day that I used to have when I was 40, and back then I had half the hours in a day I had when I as 30, and I can’t even remember how I filled all the hours of my seemingly endless free time when I was twenty. The future never holds more time. Not only are the hours of my life ticking down like a clock on a bomb, the clock hands are moving faster and faster, until they’re just a blur. Hell, I woke up this morning a whole hour from my life had vanished while I was sleeping!*
If you’re waiting until you have the time to be a writer to start writing, I pity the unborn characters and worlds within you. If the thought “when I am a writer” ever enters your thoughts, get rid of it. Shoot it, bludgeon it, cut it out; employ the violent metaphor of your choice to remove that phrase, because it’s utterly poisonous, the most dark and wicked viper crawling around in your skull. The thought you need is “always I am a writer.” And then you should $#%&ing write something, you procrastinating fool.
*The day after daylight savings robs you of an hour is a good day for a rant such as this.
I used to firmly believe this. When I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I had a job I hated, and I told myself I could be a writer if only I had the time. So, I paid off all my debts, saved a little money, and quit my day job. And, I did write… some. A little. I tried to find the discipline to write every day, but, looking back, even though I was without a day job for the better part of a year, very little of the writing I did during that time amounted to anything. I made a few story sales to markets that paid in copies. Eventually, the money ran out, and I went back to work.
I didn’t hate my new job as much as my old job, but I still wanted to make it big as a writer and quit. I’d squeeze out a short story every few months, always dreaming of the day I’d have the time to really write. Then, I had a second chance to ride the “time to write” pony when I attended the Odyssey Fantasy Writer’s Workshop. My work agreed to let me take off the six weeks for the class, and my wife at the time covered all the bills and was generally a trooper. I went to the Workshop feeling like I’d have all the time in the world. After all, classes were just a few hours each morning. The vast bulk of the day was free time, far from home, without distractions. Six glorious weeks immersed in writing to produce… precious little. A few deeply flawed stories. I went home certain I’d failed; I wasn’t a writer. I’d had my best possible shot, and hadn’t written a thing worth reading.
Back home, my life got more complicated as I took on new responsibilities on my job. I bought a house and suddenly had yard work and maintenance to deal with. I had less free time than ever. Whereas before Odyssey, I’d make a point of setting aside whole evenings to write, I now had to write in little bits and fragments. I used to get together with friends every Friday night to play video games; I didn’t want to miss their company, so I started taking my laptop and writing while they played, then join them when they took smoke breaks. Everything I had in my head about the proper conditions for writing told me I should be alone in a quiet room with unbroken, dedicated blocks of time before me. Now I was writing in the barest scraps of time, in the moments in between and on the way to the rest of my life.
And from these time scraps came Nobody Gets the Girl, and Empire of Dreams and Miracles, and To the East a Bright Star, and a dozen other stories I consider my prime work.
It’s almost a cliché to say that as you age, it feels like the days get shorter. But, I swear, my own personal experience confirms the cliché. Subjectively, I feel like I have half the hours in a day that I used to have when I was 40, and back then I had half the hours in a day I had when I as 30, and I can’t even remember how I filled all the hours of my seemingly endless free time when I was twenty. The future never holds more time. Not only are the hours of my life ticking down like a clock on a bomb, the clock hands are moving faster and faster, until they’re just a blur. Hell, I woke up this morning a whole hour from my life had vanished while I was sleeping!*
If you’re waiting until you have the time to be a writer to start writing, I pity the unborn characters and worlds within you. If the thought “when I am a writer” ever enters your thoughts, get rid of it. Shoot it, bludgeon it, cut it out; employ the violent metaphor of your choice to remove that phrase, because it’s utterly poisonous, the most dark and wicked viper crawling around in your skull. The thought you need is “always I am a writer.” And then you should $#%&ing write something, you procrastinating fool.
*The day after daylight savings robs you of an hour is a good day for a rant such as this.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Really? I skipped a whole month? Also, Sharia4America
So, somehow I skipped a whole month without finding anything in politics to rant about. Primarily, this was due to my being distracted by writing. I'll be announcing news soon about a new multi-book deal, the second of which I'm now writing, and it's been difficult to focus on the "real" world when the world of fiction is proving so satisfying.
Then, there was also something tiresome about the news lately that made it difficult to care much. The major news stories seem to me to break down to: 1. The middle east is unstable. 2. Neither democrats or republicans have any serious proposals to deal with our budget crisis. 3. A lot of speculation about who is an is not running for president. 4. Hourly updates on a famous actor behaving very badly.
Are any of these items news any more? The headlines may as well read "Status Quo Maintained."
Then, yesterday, I found an interesting headline. I cruise both far right and far left news sites, and can usually count on World Net Daily to produce a news story or two about the atheist conspiracy to destroy America. Since, as an atheist, I feel I should keep informed of this conspiracy, this is news I can use. I'd much rather be getting the master plot updates directly from the Grand Poobah at Atheists Against America, but I guess he's lost my email address. Oh well.
Anyway, the headline yesterday, in a World Net Daily Exclusive, was, "Will Statue of Liberty be fitted with Muslim burkha?" I figured this might be a fairly short article--"No."--but read on anyway. It seems an outfit called Sharia4America has announced plans to place a veil over the Statue of Liberty to hide this shameful false goddess until such time as it can be torn down and replaced with a mineret. I read the article certain that it was parody, but WND was reporting on the story as if it was real, interviewing a variety of "experts" on the threat that sharia law poses to America's freedoms. And, the story had, you know, a photograph showing the statue of liberty with a burqa. What more evidence do you need?
If you're World Net Daily, I suppose you take a site called Sharia4America at face value, since it fits into your master narrative: America is under assault, here's the evidence, the Muslim's aren't even trying to hide it any more. But, it took me precisely two minutes worth of googling to discover that the image of the Statue of Liberty in a burqa dates back to at least 2003 and was created by something called "AES Art Group," as part of a larger project called Witnesses of the Future, the Islamic Project. The art was full of images meant to comment on the conflict between Islam and Western values, and was characterized by some critics as being anti-Islamic.
I suppose that it's possible that Sharia4America is a genuine organization, but the fact that their primary image can be traced to artists who had the intent of criticizing Islam leads me to suspect that it's a hoax or a parody. But, at this point, it looks like a thousand bloggers have picked up on the story as a real event, and I see even the AP is now carrying the story. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. But, right now, my gut tells me that this is a case of people not being able to recognize satire and "reporters" not bothering to check their facts. Which, come to think of it, isn't news either.
Then, there was also something tiresome about the news lately that made it difficult to care much. The major news stories seem to me to break down to: 1. The middle east is unstable. 2. Neither democrats or republicans have any serious proposals to deal with our budget crisis. 3. A lot of speculation about who is an is not running for president. 4. Hourly updates on a famous actor behaving very badly.
Are any of these items news any more? The headlines may as well read "Status Quo Maintained."
Then, yesterday, I found an interesting headline. I cruise both far right and far left news sites, and can usually count on World Net Daily to produce a news story or two about the atheist conspiracy to destroy America. Since, as an atheist, I feel I should keep informed of this conspiracy, this is news I can use. I'd much rather be getting the master plot updates directly from the Grand Poobah at Atheists Against America, but I guess he's lost my email address. Oh well.
Anyway, the headline yesterday, in a World Net Daily Exclusive, was, "Will Statue of Liberty be fitted with Muslim burkha?" I figured this might be a fairly short article--"No."--but read on anyway. It seems an outfit called Sharia4America has announced plans to place a veil over the Statue of Liberty to hide this shameful false goddess until such time as it can be torn down and replaced with a mineret. I read the article certain that it was parody, but WND was reporting on the story as if it was real, interviewing a variety of "experts" on the threat that sharia law poses to America's freedoms. And, the story had, you know, a photograph showing the statue of liberty with a burqa. What more evidence do you need?
If you're World Net Daily, I suppose you take a site called Sharia4America at face value, since it fits into your master narrative: America is under assault, here's the evidence, the Muslim's aren't even trying to hide it any more. But, it took me precisely two minutes worth of googling to discover that the image of the Statue of Liberty in a burqa dates back to at least 2003 and was created by something called "AES Art Group," as part of a larger project called Witnesses of the Future, the Islamic Project. The art was full of images meant to comment on the conflict between Islam and Western values, and was characterized by some critics as being anti-Islamic.
I suppose that it's possible that Sharia4America is a genuine organization, but the fact that their primary image can be traced to artists who had the intent of criticizing Islam leads me to suspect that it's a hoax or a parody. But, at this point, it looks like a thousand bloggers have picked up on the story as a real event, and I see even the AP is now carrying the story. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. But, right now, my gut tells me that this is a case of people not being able to recognize satire and "reporters" not bothering to check their facts. Which, come to think of it, isn't news either.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The future of jobs
This weekend, about every third editorial I read was about what can and should be done by government to promote the creation of more jobs. One common theme among the articles was the seeming paradox that corporate profits are improving, but this isn't resulting in a new wave of hiring.
At the risk of sounding like a cranky radical (you may judge left wing or right wing), corporate profits are improving because corporations have figured out how to make and sell as many things as they used to using fewer people. Corporations don't have a mandate to create jobs; they have a mandate to create profits for stockholders. Employees are just a cost of doing business, and smart businesses cut costs wherever they can.
Some people are attracted to large corporations because they provide the illusion of job security. Microsoft or Fedex or even McDonald's look to be companies that will be around for the long haul, and it might seem like, once you get a job with a corporation that has been around decades and will last for decades, you can be assured your job will last.
But, it's big corporations who can be the most agressive when it comes to making the cuts needed to stay profitable. So you've got twenty years experience? Do you really turn out more work than the five part timers you could be replaced by for the cost of your salary and benefits? Or, having gotten secure in your job, are you actively making yourself replacable by taking for granted that you've found your niche in life?
I'm not writing this to condemn corporations as cruel or heartless, however. I'm writing more as a wake-up to the American worker. We can bemoan the fact that corporate CEO's take home multi-million dollar bonuses that could have been used to hire more workers, or we can accept that these are the facts of life in the new American century, and, really have been the facts for a good twenty or thirty years now.
The only way to ensure that you will never be fired is become your own employer. Develop your most profitable skills to the point that other people willingly pay you money to excersize those skills.
Self employment isn't easy. I'm writing this as someone who still has a job with a corporation, because, while I can concievably replace my salary with my own efforts, it's a much higher hurdle to replace my salary and my benefits. Health insurance is a huge expense. But, I know my goals, and the longer I strive, and the harder I work, the closer I get to reaching them.
One giant hassle of self-employment has been handling my taxes. I think I've done a fairly good job. As a writer, my revenues in a year come from fewer than a dozen sources, and my expenses aren't excessively difficult to keep track of. Still, the stress I feel every April when I mail off the taxes I owe always cause me to wonder if it's worth it. It's not like I've sat down and read our entire zillion page tax code. What if there's some odd sub-clause I'm missing and the next thing I know I'm in court defending myself because I didn't pay the 9x12 manilla envelope tax when I mailed off my last book contract?
So, returning to the question that started this column: What should government do to create more jobs for you? Nothing. It's up to us. This is still America. If we've reached the point where we can't pull themselves up by our own boot straps, we're done for. But, the government could do more to put us bootstrappers on equal footing. Corporations can deduct health insurance. Why can't I? Give the American people fairness, and we can't provide our own opportunities.
At the risk of sounding like a cranky radical (you may judge left wing or right wing), corporate profits are improving because corporations have figured out how to make and sell as many things as they used to using fewer people. Corporations don't have a mandate to create jobs; they have a mandate to create profits for stockholders. Employees are just a cost of doing business, and smart businesses cut costs wherever they can.
Some people are attracted to large corporations because they provide the illusion of job security. Microsoft or Fedex or even McDonald's look to be companies that will be around for the long haul, and it might seem like, once you get a job with a corporation that has been around decades and will last for decades, you can be assured your job will last.
But, it's big corporations who can be the most agressive when it comes to making the cuts needed to stay profitable. So you've got twenty years experience? Do you really turn out more work than the five part timers you could be replaced by for the cost of your salary and benefits? Or, having gotten secure in your job, are you actively making yourself replacable by taking for granted that you've found your niche in life?
I'm not writing this to condemn corporations as cruel or heartless, however. I'm writing more as a wake-up to the American worker. We can bemoan the fact that corporate CEO's take home multi-million dollar bonuses that could have been used to hire more workers, or we can accept that these are the facts of life in the new American century, and, really have been the facts for a good twenty or thirty years now.
The only way to ensure that you will never be fired is become your own employer. Develop your most profitable skills to the point that other people willingly pay you money to excersize those skills.
Self employment isn't easy. I'm writing this as someone who still has a job with a corporation, because, while I can concievably replace my salary with my own efforts, it's a much higher hurdle to replace my salary and my benefits. Health insurance is a huge expense. But, I know my goals, and the longer I strive, and the harder I work, the closer I get to reaching them.
One giant hassle of self-employment has been handling my taxes. I think I've done a fairly good job. As a writer, my revenues in a year come from fewer than a dozen sources, and my expenses aren't excessively difficult to keep track of. Still, the stress I feel every April when I mail off the taxes I owe always cause me to wonder if it's worth it. It's not like I've sat down and read our entire zillion page tax code. What if there's some odd sub-clause I'm missing and the next thing I know I'm in court defending myself because I didn't pay the 9x12 manilla envelope tax when I mailed off my last book contract?
So, returning to the question that started this column: What should government do to create more jobs for you? Nothing. It's up to us. This is still America. If we've reached the point where we can't pull themselves up by our own boot straps, we're done for. But, the government could do more to put us bootstrappers on equal footing. Corporations can deduct health insurance. Why can't I? Give the American people fairness, and we can't provide our own opportunities.
Monday, January 10, 2011
A few thoughts on politics and guns
The shooting of Gabriel Giffords has caused me to think about some of my basic assumptions. As a libertarian, I'm relatively pro-gun. I think the Supreme Court has things about right. The second ammendment does plainly guarantee that any citizen should have the right to own a gun, but doesn't prohibit reasonable laws regulating these arms. I firmly believe that 99% of gun owners are honest folks who would never dream of using a gun for aggressive violence.
But, having the right to own a gun for hunting, target practice, or self-defense is one thing. Owning a gun that will let you fire off thirty rounds into a crowd in a minute or so is a completely different matter.
Life isn't a Hollywood action movie. I can't think of many plausible situations where a person is likely to need a gun that fires off more than 5 or 6 rounds in order to defend themselves. I know it will never happen since the NRA opposes any restrictions on guns, but couldn't we slow the pace of these spree shootings that seem to happen almost yearly in the US simply by limiting the magazine sizes of guns? Six-shooters were good enough for cowboys. Let's make that the limit. Then, a spree killer has to stop and reload (or carry multiple guns, but if you're carrying five guns into a supermarket, maybe someone will notice before you get four feet away from the congresswoman).
Can anyone give me a sane argument why this would be an intolerable limit on our civil liberties?
Guns don't kill people. People kill people. And some people are bat-shit crazy and there's really no good way of filtering them out. When they do finally get their hands on a gun, let's make them reload.
Thought two: Hateful rhetoric and a culture of violence.
Blaming Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh for this shooting or for the rise of "hate speech" is more about hating Palin and Limbaugh than it is based on any sort of evidence or reason. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times that this violence was inevitable due to the harsh rhetoric of modern politics, but it makes me wonder if he's actually paying attention to history and the news.
The reality is, if you're under 25, you haven't seen a serious assassination attempt on a president, congressman, senator, or supreme court justice. You could argue that the president has better security these days, but congressmen aren't surrounded by squadrons of guards. US senators freely go jogging on the streets of DC without armed escorts. Supreme Court Justices don't wear bulletproof vests when they go grocery shopping. For all the talk of political violence, anyone half way paying attention has to see that we live in very peaceful times. As a people, we don't solve our political disagreements by gunning each other down in the streets.
Is political violence today worse than it was in the 60's and 70's? For all the talk that the Tea Party members are racist bastards driven to insanity by a black president, does no one remember that it was little more than 50 years ago when KKK members routinely lynched blacks and murdered civil rights advocates?
Even back in the 90s, it seemed like there was a spate of homegrown terrorists bombing abortion clinics and targeting federal buildings and mailing bombs to college campuses.
Maybe the increased security after 9-11 is the reason, or maybe we just started getting our violent rages out by playing video games, but it seems to me that we've had a remarkably civil and non-violent political discourse in our country for the last thirty years or so. I don't even think the shooting last weekend counts as political violence because the guy was obviously wacko. He didn't need Glenn Beck telling him to shoot people; he had that creepy little skull on that shrine in his back yard whispering what to do.
So, I'd like to say to the right wingers and the left wingers out there reading this: Thanks. Thanks for being decent folks and limiting your political action to name calling and shouting. I'm grateful that you haven't turned us into a place where we settle our differences with rifles instead of ballots. You're alright, my fellow Americans.
Unless you think that you need more than six bullets in your gun to defend yourself from a burgler. In which case you're just a jerk.
But, having the right to own a gun for hunting, target practice, or self-defense is one thing. Owning a gun that will let you fire off thirty rounds into a crowd in a minute or so is a completely different matter.
Life isn't a Hollywood action movie. I can't think of many plausible situations where a person is likely to need a gun that fires off more than 5 or 6 rounds in order to defend themselves. I know it will never happen since the NRA opposes any restrictions on guns, but couldn't we slow the pace of these spree shootings that seem to happen almost yearly in the US simply by limiting the magazine sizes of guns? Six-shooters were good enough for cowboys. Let's make that the limit. Then, a spree killer has to stop and reload (or carry multiple guns, but if you're carrying five guns into a supermarket, maybe someone will notice before you get four feet away from the congresswoman).
Can anyone give me a sane argument why this would be an intolerable limit on our civil liberties?
Guns don't kill people. People kill people. And some people are bat-shit crazy and there's really no good way of filtering them out. When they do finally get their hands on a gun, let's make them reload.
Thought two: Hateful rhetoric and a culture of violence.
Blaming Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh for this shooting or for the rise of "hate speech" is more about hating Palin and Limbaugh than it is based on any sort of evidence or reason. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times that this violence was inevitable due to the harsh rhetoric of modern politics, but it makes me wonder if he's actually paying attention to history and the news.
The reality is, if you're under 25, you haven't seen a serious assassination attempt on a president, congressman, senator, or supreme court justice. You could argue that the president has better security these days, but congressmen aren't surrounded by squadrons of guards. US senators freely go jogging on the streets of DC without armed escorts. Supreme Court Justices don't wear bulletproof vests when they go grocery shopping. For all the talk of political violence, anyone half way paying attention has to see that we live in very peaceful times. As a people, we don't solve our political disagreements by gunning each other down in the streets.
Is political violence today worse than it was in the 60's and 70's? For all the talk that the Tea Party members are racist bastards driven to insanity by a black president, does no one remember that it was little more than 50 years ago when KKK members routinely lynched blacks and murdered civil rights advocates?
Even back in the 90s, it seemed like there was a spate of homegrown terrorists bombing abortion clinics and targeting federal buildings and mailing bombs to college campuses.
Maybe the increased security after 9-11 is the reason, or maybe we just started getting our violent rages out by playing video games, but it seems to me that we've had a remarkably civil and non-violent political discourse in our country for the last thirty years or so. I don't even think the shooting last weekend counts as political violence because the guy was obviously wacko. He didn't need Glenn Beck telling him to shoot people; he had that creepy little skull on that shrine in his back yard whispering what to do.
So, I'd like to say to the right wingers and the left wingers out there reading this: Thanks. Thanks for being decent folks and limiting your political action to name calling and shouting. I'm grateful that you haven't turned us into a place where we settle our differences with rifles instead of ballots. You're alright, my fellow Americans.
Unless you think that you need more than six bullets in your gun to defend yourself from a burgler. In which case you're just a jerk.
Friday, January 07, 2011
Five writing mantras that bear repeating
These are the most important truths of writing I've learned to date. At various points in the past, I've posted all these rules in various configurations, but, these are my writing mantras, and the whole point of a mantra is that it's something you repeat:
1. The worst novel you put on paper is better than the best novel you have in your head.
Suppose you sit down and bang out a manuscript that is, in your judgement, utter crap. Guess what? Other people can read crap. They can go through your manuscript and tell you what they like and didn't like. On the other hand, that golden, gleaming, perfect novel that exists only inside your skull is completely unreadable by anyone other than yourself.
2. Here. Now.
These words have saved me time and time again. When I get the most lost in a story it's often because I can't see the trees because of the forest. I'm getting distracted by the big picture, worried about whether I'm sharing enough information about what happened twenty years before the story began, or properly laying the groundwork for what will happen ten chapters from now. Screw the past and the future. When you sit down to write, focus on the immediate spot in time and space that your character occupies in the scene at hand. Make the moment concrete, and when it's done, move on to the next one. Do this a couple of hundred times, and whoah, you've written a book!
3: To write a good novel, you must first write a bad novel.
First drafts aren't supposed to be great all the way through. You've got to just slog ahead and write some stuff wrong so that you can later go back and write it right. Or, maybe you'll never get it right; a bad novel is still priceless. I've written nine novels to date. I've sold and published four, two more will either be sold or published this year, and three of these will never be published because they aren't at the level of craftmanship I now demand of myself. But, I couldn't have written the six good novels if I hadn't written the three bad ones. I had to write the bad novels A: so that I could prove to myself I had the discipline to finish the tasks I started B: so that I could inflict them upon critique groups that went on to give me useful advice on plotting, character development, style, pacing, dialogue, etc., and C: so that I could learn more about the types of stuff I was lousy at writing so that I could better understand the sort of stuff I was good at.
4: Never look back.
When writing my first novel, I kept getting caught in the trap of changing my mind about stuff I'd already written and going back and revising and reworking before I got to the end. Then, when I did get some forward momentum going, I'd change my mind on something and have to go back and revise again. It took me two damn years to finish that first book. I got better on my second and third books, gaining the willpower not to go back and revise while I was still writing, but lacking the willpower or wisdom to not go back and read what I'd already written, or to show what I'd already written to other people. By book four, I hit the formula that has worked for me on all subsequent books: I don't show any of the novel to anyone until I've completed the first draft. I don't even show it to myself; I forbid myself to go back and read the previously written chapters, since I can't read without editing them. I've never reached the end of a book without gaining a dozen insights in the last three chapters about the kinds of stuff I should have put in my first three chapters to make the book feel like a closing circle. You aren't going to know every thing that you have to include in your first chapter until you've written your last chapter. The surest, fastest way to get to that last chapter is just to keep pushing forward, keep working in your newer, better ideas as if you've been writing with them in mind all along, and keep that hunger to show the book to someone building until you write "the end."
5. Little by little, the work gets done.
For the most part, when I set a word count goal for a week, I meet that goal. But, it's also definitely not unheard of for me to blow a word count goal, sometimes severely. Inky black pools of despair open before me during these times as I wonder just what ever made me think I was any good at this game.
Almost always, I'm not missing my goal due to some internal barrier to creativity. I'm missing it because there are 1,000 things in this world that are more fun and/or vital to do in my "free" time. I'll skip a night of writing because a friend wants to go out to dinner, or skip a Saturday because one of my neices is having a birthday party cookout and the whole family is invited. I'll miss a Sunday afternoon in the spring because the sky is flawless blue and the air is a perfect 72 degrees and it's been months since my girlfriend and I have gone bike riding.
So then I start feeling guilt. I'm skipping writing to go to dinner? I'm skipping writing to enjoy sunshine? Are these such rare events that I should toss aside my pursuit of art? Is the sun slated to stop shining tomorrow and this is my last chance ever to enjoy it? Well, maybe it is. Who knows? So when all my big blocks of the time disappear, for happy reasons or sad, I start making bargains. I take my laptop and type 500 words while my girlfriend drives us to Asheboro. I get up 10 minutes earlier than normal and type two foggy paragraphs. I sneak back to my room between panels at a science fiction con and type like a demon for 45 minutes. The more moments I steal, the easier it is to transition back into stealing hours.
Steal the moments.
Little by little the work gets done.
1. The worst novel you put on paper is better than the best novel you have in your head.
Suppose you sit down and bang out a manuscript that is, in your judgement, utter crap. Guess what? Other people can read crap. They can go through your manuscript and tell you what they like and didn't like. On the other hand, that golden, gleaming, perfect novel that exists only inside your skull is completely unreadable by anyone other than yourself.
2. Here. Now.
These words have saved me time and time again. When I get the most lost in a story it's often because I can't see the trees because of the forest. I'm getting distracted by the big picture, worried about whether I'm sharing enough information about what happened twenty years before the story began, or properly laying the groundwork for what will happen ten chapters from now. Screw the past and the future. When you sit down to write, focus on the immediate spot in time and space that your character occupies in the scene at hand. Make the moment concrete, and when it's done, move on to the next one. Do this a couple of hundred times, and whoah, you've written a book!
3: To write a good novel, you must first write a bad novel.
First drafts aren't supposed to be great all the way through. You've got to just slog ahead and write some stuff wrong so that you can later go back and write it right. Or, maybe you'll never get it right; a bad novel is still priceless. I've written nine novels to date. I've sold and published four, two more will either be sold or published this year, and three of these will never be published because they aren't at the level of craftmanship I now demand of myself. But, I couldn't have written the six good novels if I hadn't written the three bad ones. I had to write the bad novels A: so that I could prove to myself I had the discipline to finish the tasks I started B: so that I could inflict them upon critique groups that went on to give me useful advice on plotting, character development, style, pacing, dialogue, etc., and C: so that I could learn more about the types of stuff I was lousy at writing so that I could better understand the sort of stuff I was good at.
4: Never look back.
When writing my first novel, I kept getting caught in the trap of changing my mind about stuff I'd already written and going back and revising and reworking before I got to the end. Then, when I did get some forward momentum going, I'd change my mind on something and have to go back and revise again. It took me two damn years to finish that first book. I got better on my second and third books, gaining the willpower not to go back and revise while I was still writing, but lacking the willpower or wisdom to not go back and read what I'd already written, or to show what I'd already written to other people. By book four, I hit the formula that has worked for me on all subsequent books: I don't show any of the novel to anyone until I've completed the first draft. I don't even show it to myself; I forbid myself to go back and read the previously written chapters, since I can't read without editing them. I've never reached the end of a book without gaining a dozen insights in the last three chapters about the kinds of stuff I should have put in my first three chapters to make the book feel like a closing circle. You aren't going to know every thing that you have to include in your first chapter until you've written your last chapter. The surest, fastest way to get to that last chapter is just to keep pushing forward, keep working in your newer, better ideas as if you've been writing with them in mind all along, and keep that hunger to show the book to someone building until you write "the end."
5. Little by little, the work gets done.
For the most part, when I set a word count goal for a week, I meet that goal. But, it's also definitely not unheard of for me to blow a word count goal, sometimes severely. Inky black pools of despair open before me during these times as I wonder just what ever made me think I was any good at this game.
Almost always, I'm not missing my goal due to some internal barrier to creativity. I'm missing it because there are 1,000 things in this world that are more fun and/or vital to do in my "free" time. I'll skip a night of writing because a friend wants to go out to dinner, or skip a Saturday because one of my neices is having a birthday party cookout and the whole family is invited. I'll miss a Sunday afternoon in the spring because the sky is flawless blue and the air is a perfect 72 degrees and it's been months since my girlfriend and I have gone bike riding.
So then I start feeling guilt. I'm skipping writing to go to dinner? I'm skipping writing to enjoy sunshine? Are these such rare events that I should toss aside my pursuit of art? Is the sun slated to stop shining tomorrow and this is my last chance ever to enjoy it? Well, maybe it is. Who knows? So when all my big blocks of the time disappear, for happy reasons or sad, I start making bargains. I take my laptop and type 500 words while my girlfriend drives us to Asheboro. I get up 10 minutes earlier than normal and type two foggy paragraphs. I sneak back to my room between panels at a science fiction con and type like a demon for 45 minutes. The more moments I steal, the easier it is to transition back into stealing hours.
Steal the moments.
Little by little the work gets done.
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