RSS
 

Archive for November, 2009

Heinlein: Master of the Talking Head

29 Nov

Three of the greats: Heinlein, Decamp, and Asimov

One of the biggest shortcomings I see in the science fiction genre at large is the overabundance of exposition. Fellow geeks will know what this looks like: in the midst of an intense interstellar firefight, the narrator pauses to let you know how a given weapon works: Then, in a blazing array of light, the starships fired their lambda cannons. Intensely focused gamma particles lanced across space, powered by individual microfusion generators, target-controlled by artificial intelligences, and tore into the defenseless colony …

Another common expository technique is to temporarily possess a character and give him/her/it (one can not always be sure of the proper pronoun in this genre) “talking head” syndrome. When done poorly, this is generally accompanied by  key phrases such as “of course” or “as you know.” As in, “as you know, the emperor of this planet, who technically operates under the mantle of the Galactic Commonwealth (GC), but is actually in the pay of the Star Thieves, plans to hold an enormous banquet in his court tomorrow evening at six,” or, “There’s a sunstorm approaching! Fortunately, of course, the thick rock of this asteroid will protect us from any harmful radiation, and we shouldn’t experience anything more than some brief communication difficulties.”

Hollywood, lacking the novelist’s luxury of plenty of words, often turns this into the complex-line-of-reasoning-in-thirty-seconds scene: the moment where the dashing archaeologist recalls to his buxom blonde companion a condensed history of this temple complex, the beliefs of the tribe who built it, and why retrieving the golden mummy head from inside it is the only possible way to prevent an ancient curse from destroying Great Britain.

Sometimes exposition fills a necessary role–giving critical information to string the reader/viewer along through the plot. This can sometimes be left out, though it may result in the audience becoming lost and/or feeling stupid (this means you, Primer). A common and more subtle solution is to include a character which serves as a sort of “exposition excuse”–the outsider to whom things must be explained. Simon Tam, for instance, often fills this role in that pinnacle of television sci-fi, Firefly.

Generally, though, exposition is pretty obvious, and often times it results more because the writer can’t help but let you in on all these cool ideas he’s had and all the hard research work he’s done. Sure, the way a city’s waste disposal system works might not exactly be necessary to the plot, but, as Victor Hugo no doubt thought before writing the chapter on the Paris catacombs, it took so much work, dammit! And then of course there’s that point in Atlas Shrugged were John Galt gets his hand on a radio transmitter and spontaneously ad-libs a philosophical treatise the length of a short book.

But every once in a while, you find a book where the exposition is ubiquitous, but, by Jove, it’s good exposition. By “a book” here I mean specifically all of the works of Robert Heinlein (you were wondering when he’d turn up, weren’t you?).

Heinlein’s works are, for the most part, good, active stories heavily padded with complex ideas that changed the face of science fiction. Read Starship Troopers and you get a war story, yes, but also a full, detailed picture of an entire society based on military service and social responsibility, a technological description of advanced far-future warfare, speculation on the possible nature of alien life, and the everyday problems of life that might face members of the military in an advanced spacefaring culture. Stranger in a Strange Land is the story of a man who grew up with Martians, yes, but it’s also a detailed critique of western society and utopian picture of an alternative way of life. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a good, bracing tale of revolt, but it’s also an entire political outline for a new free-market, minimal government society, made possible with technologies were in their fetal stages when Heinlein wrote it.

And half the reason we read it is because of all of those details crammed into the exposition.  For instance, take a look at a fairly typical paragraph spoken by Professor Bernardo de la Paz, Heinlein’s political mouthpiece  in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:

“You have put your finger on the dilemma of all government— and the reason I am an anarchist. The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it contains until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government— sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive— and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?”

Exposition? Yes. Interesting reading? Most certainly. Victor Hugo and Herman Melville were literary giants both, but let’s be honest: if I wanted to know about the scientific classifications of whales or the entire history of the Paris sewer systems, I’d look it up. If exposition is absolutely necessary, writers would be wise to look to Heinlein for how to do it well.

If you’re an aspiring science fiction writer, though, take care. Lengthy exposition is rarely necessary, and almost never fits well in a narrative. When you read Heinlein, think of it like those trick driving videos, with a big warning: “Method conducted by expert writer with proven education and intelligence. Do not attempt at home.”

 
No Comments

Posted in Culture

 

Giving Thanks

26 Nov

Thanksgiving dinner

It’s that time of year again. Quite possibly the best holiday ever invented, Thanksgiving is a holiday dedicated to eating, and eating, and eating, with a cool-down period of weeks of turkey sandwiches and chilled leftover pie. But wait! say alert readers: Thanksgiving isn’t just about food! It’s about friends, family, community, and, well, giving thanks. And so it should be, as much as our consumption-oriented culture would have us believe otherwise.

But what does it mean, really, to give thanks? What does it mean to be grateful? Be grateful, say parents across the country to stubborn children seated before plates of green beans. There are children all over the world who would love to have what you have. Be grateful, say employers to employees taking pay cuts. In this economy, you’re lucky to have a job. Be grateful, we say: at least you’re not like them.

And I am grateful. I’m grateful for a loving family that supports me in what is rapidly becoming a very unorthodox life. I’m grateful for thoughtful words from friends. I’m grateful for meaningful actions and useful gifts, books read and passed on, and songs recommended.

Today is Thanksgiving. In a few hours my house and I will begin preparing a feast designed to induce good conversation and, after that, a long and heavy food coma. We’re going to do so in a warm house, with good company. And I ask myself: am I grateful?

Today, Americans across the country will be thanking someone or something for the blessings we have. We’re grateful, we’ll say, that we have food on the table. We’re grateful for warm beds and safe streets. We’re grateful for our freedoms. And, God help us, we’re grateful for our big screen TVs, environmentally friendly hybrids, SUVs, guns, flowers, fat turkeys, and fat vegan-soy-turkey-alternatives. We’re grateful for these things because there are millions of people around the world who don’t have them. We’re only grateful for our jobs when the economy’s down, only grateful for our food when we see those who starve, only grateful for our lives when we are confronted with death. No one is more grateful for oxygen than a man who escapes a drowning.

We tend to think of these things as gifts, from God, from chance, from fate, but a gift is something given with no expectation of repayment, as an expression of love. That necklace, that book, yes, even that tie is a gift. A beautiful sunrise, the song of a bird, and the way the air smells after it rains, those are gifts.

So we are grateful; but let us be careful in our gratefulness., for these things you are giving thanks for today are not all gifts. Your social position, your prosperity, your talents, and even your life itself, are not gifts. They are responsibilities. So, when you gather around your feast this afternoon, give thanks for these things, but remember that they’re not free. All of us have a responsibility to act in this world and act well. Whether that means feeding the homeless next thanksgiving, or volunteering for a charity, or even just creating a beautiful piece of music, is up to you.

Being a child is about learning to give thanks; being an adult is about learning to give back.

 
1 Comment

Posted in Philosophy

 

A Crossroads in the Dark

23 Nov

2640305389_014d9a6cef_b


Things are not always as they seem, and the world is full of shadows. What few lights we have are weak and flickering, and our eyes will always strain to make out what is in front of us.

Two things are clear: one cannot know everything, and one cannot know anything for certain. Truisms are only true within themselves. One and one is two for certain within mathematics, it can never be more than an approximation of reality.

And yet we must choose a path, for life always goes forward. But how can we choose, when we have only limited information?

Our minds work in paradigms, or models of what we perceive reality to be. These paradigms determine how we act: a man whose paradigm describes his life as an individualistic struggle against overwhelming odds will act differently from one whose paradigm describes a world ordained by the total providence of God, and differently from one whose paradigm describes a world that is illusion concealing an underlying oneness.

Because these paradigms are the basis for how we act, it is important that we choose them carefully, and change cautiously. Most humans simply accept the paradigm they are given in childhood. Others change their paradigms based on a single emotional experience. Some are based on the closest thing we have to truth: our physical senses, our communications with other thinking beings, and the ineffable inspirations of human souls.

These conduits to truth introduce experiences into our minds. The existence of ourselves, of others, and of the physical world are experiences. So are experiments which demonstrate how closely the language of mathematics can describe those parts of reality which seem to operate according to uniform laws: physics, chemistry, electronics, medicine. So are the perceptions that occur when we hear a beautiful piece of music or read a beautiful work of literature. The look in a lover’s eyes when she trusts you is an experience. The shattering of your heart when a lover betrays you is also an experience.

Paradigms arise to contain and give structure to experiences, in order to make them useful for action. A woman betrayed often by men may form a paradigm wherein men are pigs, and act accordingly. A man for whom women fall easily may form a paradigm wherein women are whores, and act accordingly. A brilliant man like Einstein accumulates a vast array of seemingly unrelated experiences, both his own and those related to him by others, and form a paradigm that changes the world: relativity. A great man like Christ may take experiences of action and consequences, and form a paradigm to give men peace: Christianity. A corrupt man may take experiences of control and material gain by the belief of others, and form a paradigm to wage war in a peaceful savior’s name: religion.

So how may we best choose our paradigms? The easiest way is to simply accept one given you. To accept whole the stories told you by your government, by your pastor, by your employer, is easy, and may result in a sort of peace. For you, peace will be easiest if you are ignorant, for education introduces new experiences which may not be compatible with your current paradigms. If you are clever, you may be able to stretch your paradigm to accept the facts. If your desire for your paradigm is strong enough, you may be able to rewrite your experiences in your own mind, the way a doting wife might willfully ignore the scent of a different perfume on her husband’s dinner jacket.

These are easy. These are safe. These will make you a willing sheep for whichever shepherd you choose to follow, and it cannot be denied that most sheep are at least content.

Reality–the Truth–is infinitely larger and more complex than we will ever understand. Our paradigms will never be more than crude diagrams, and no matter how hard we try, most of them will be wrong. Insisting on forming these paradigms for yourself will result in a life of constant struggle, constant doubt, and little peace of mind. As a certain book says, the way is narrow, and there are few who follow it. So don’t bother–learn little, think little, and whatever it is you believe, believe it with all your heart. Do not question authority, and you will find your place in life as another gear in a great and ponderous machine.

But of course, you are still reading. You are still reading because you know, from the part of your mind that is deeper than words can reach, that it’s the narrow path that’s worth walking on, as steep and long as it may be. It will be lonely: every journey on it will be different, and at its heart, everyone must travel it alone. Take some comfort in the fact that your fellow travelers will make for interesting company.

There is no sign pointing to this path. Here is how you will find it. Question everything.  Question authority, question common sense, question the first glance and the first impression, and most importantly, question yourself. The first step is yours; understand yourself, or you will understand nothing. Always learn, always seek new experience, always seek, always struggle. Pay the most attention to those experiences which conflict with your paradigm; either your paradigm is false, or the experience is. Always look at both sides of an argument, and realize that there are never only two. Always be willing to change, but change carefully–the way is as rocky as it is narrow, and flightiness is the surest way to stumble.

Above all, realize that this is your path. Walking here was your choice. Your mistakes are your responsibility, as are your successes, and only your successes. On this path, you have no right to blame your upbringing for your beliefs, to blame your neighbors for the state of your own home, or to blame the social structures for your own condition. You have declared yourself to be yourself, and personal responsibility is the consequence of your declaration. And if you succeed in your path, try not to let it go for your head; earnest inquiry in any direction will reveal that this universe, this reality, is a far bigger place than any of us could possibly imagine.

You stand now at a crossroads in the dark. Don’t follow the hoof prints and the sound of bleating. Stand straight, breathe deep, and look carefully. What you choose will influence the rest of your life.

Walk well, and keep the wind at your back.

-
Image credit: LostMyHeadache

 
No Comments

Posted in Philosophy

 

The Dead American Giants

19 Nov

American Mastodon

For most of western civilization’s history, giant animals have always been exotic, alien, denizens of an almost mythical world. In the glory days of Rome coliseum-goers were awed by the sight of massive living creatures with tusks like siege weapons–elephants–battling against ferocious lions in events so bloody and so spectacular that their accounts remain in writing two thousand years later. I remember in my childhood reading books about Africa and being fascinated by the same traits–elephants, giraffes, Siberian tigers, all unlike any of the local wildlife in my native Montana.

The really interesting thing, though, is that it wasn’t always that way. Just twelve thousand years ago, the north american continent was swarming with giant animals to rival anything ever seen in a Roman coliseum. Great woolly mammoths roamed the northern reaches of the continent, heavier than modern Asian elephants, with great curved tusks sixteen feet long. Sabertooth tigers hunted the plains, preying on bison, deer, and even the mammoths–at over seven feet long and nearly 900 pounds, they were some of the heaviest cats to ever walk the earth.  Packs of dire wolves (canis dirus) hunted deer and giant elk in the forests, each one over five feet in length and weighing around 200 pounds (about the size of a modern English mastiff, and over twice the size of the average modern timber wolf).

Giant ground sloth

And then the giant animals you wouldn’t expect. The giant ground sloth was larger than an African bull elephant, weighing in at over five tons and able to pull foliage from trees 17 feet and higher. Giant camels–yes, camels–twelve feet high. Armadillos the size of refrigerators. Beavers weighing 450 pounds and more. The Glyptodon, which mostly kept itself to South America, and looked a bit like a VW bug if VW bugs came equipped with shorty, stubby legs and long, mace-like tails tipped with bone spikes.

Giant Ground Sloth skeleton

The one thing all of these creatures had in common as that they all died out over the same (relatively) brief period of time–12,000 to 10,000 BC, in what is now called the Quaternary extinction event. A few reasons have been put forward for this event, including climate change and large mammal epidemics, but the one that seems to have the most support is … drumroll … we did it. In a classic case of foreign species introduction, the extinction of dozens of north American species coincides with the arrival of the first humans in North America via the Bering land bridge. Surely, the giant animals must have thought, this hairless little ape poses no threat. Seconds later, the hairless ape and his friends threw their spears, and the giant animals came tumbling down.

Now, we’re several civilizations too late for any guilt and wringing of hands, so instead try to imagine yourself in the position of those first few migrating clans. The world would have been new and mystical, full of gods and hidden spirits. Something–religion, herd movement–drove you and your family north, always north, along a seemingly unending coastline. Generations pass over your long migration, children are born, old people die, perhaps passing down the stories of your long ago homeland, where it was warm, and mythic tales of disaster–perhaps a melting ice age flood–that drove you from it.

Elasmotherium

You pass herds of strange creatures with great singular horns protruding from their brows, and the greatest warriors in your tribe are those who manage to bring one down single-handedly. The horn of this beast, ground, is said to cure a number of ailments.

Finally, you reach a frigidly cold region where the sun almost never shines warmly and, suddenly, the land branches out to the east. Your tribe’s wise men know that you cannot continue into the cold forever. The shaman consults the spirits. You press on. You are at first terrified by enormous bears, 2500 pounds and more, with long, loping gaits and dagger-like teeth. There is no greater glory for a hunter than to kill one  of these, and the greatest men of your tribe wear their teeth on necklaces.

Arctodus Simus: giant short-faced bear

As you move south in this new land, you begin to see other fantastical creatures–great shaggy beasts with curving tusks and long trunks. You develop a new technology–the atlatl. With this piece of wood you can throw a spear accurately at ranges well over a hundred yards. When a tribe’s hunters all work together to bring down a great mammoth, the beast’s roars seem to echo into time itself, and by the light of the fire and the feast that night, the tribe’s old men immortalize the hunt with ochre paintings on cave walls.

This–the hunt, against what must have seemed vastly stacked odds, was not about resource depletion, species extinction, or any of the other concepts we’re so comfortable with now that we have tamed nature. This was about survival, and more than that, proving oneself worthy to live in a dangerous world. This was about glory. We may learn from the lessons of this age and steward today’s species wisely, but it might be useful sometimes to stop thinking about green power and conservation and imagine for a moment the light of fire on the wall, the smell of roasting meat, and somewhere out in the dark cold night, the terrifying and godlike scream of a sabertooth.

 
No Comments

Posted in Knowledge

 

How to Make a Leather Journal

17 Nov

Inside the journal

While I use a Moleskine wallet for my day-to-day notes, reminders, and idea, I like to have a more substantial journal to record more complete thoughts in. I used to buy leather journals at local bookstores for the task, but for the last one I bought some scrap leather, paper, and tools, and built one for myself. I used it for more than a year, and it served me very well. I’ve recently built another one, and this time I took a few photos along the way so I could show other people how to do it as well. So, without further ado:

Leather tools

Tools

Leatherworking and Sewing Awl. You’ll use this to actually sew the leather. Chances are, leather heavy enough for use as a book cover will be to heavy to sew with a normal needle. You can probably find one of these at a local hardware store.

Scalpel. A heavy duty scissors would likely work as well, but I prefer the control a scalpel offers. You can also use a scalpel to carve designs into the leather.

Needle nose pliers, to help with the sewing.

Leather shaping tools. If you intend to tool the leather yourself, you’ll need something appropriate to the task. I used a standard leather awl and a spoon-tipped modeling tool for mine, but with a little searching you’ll find that there is every imaginable tool out there for the shaping and carving of leather.

Veg tan scrap leather

Materials

Scrap leather. You can get leather for quite low prices by searching online (I get quite a lot of mine off of eBay) or asking owners of local leather working shops to give or sell you their scrap. For book covers, I like heavy, stiff leather. If you want to tool the leather yourself, make sure you buy veg (vegetable) tan leather, which is pale in color. If you buy this, you’ll probably want to buy stain also (see below).

Thread. This should come with the sewing awl. It just needs to be heavy enough to work with and hold up over the years–presumably your journal will be built to last.

Leather Dye. If you want a different shade than the leather you already have, you can use a dye. You can also use dye to make permanent patterns on your leather cover. If you use veg tan leather, you will have to use the dye (or stain) to “set” the leather once you’ve worked it.

Paper. There are plenty of places to get reams of good, high-quality paper online. You can also check a local craft store. Make sure you get something sturdy which you won’t mind looking at for a while. Also make sure the paper is “acid-free, archival quality,” which will ensure the journal remains in good condition for decades to come.


Making the Journal

1. Start by making the pages of the journal. For the method I use, I fold sections of seven 8.5″ by 11″ sheets of paper directly in half, and pile the sections to make the inside of the journal. You can use any size you like, and any number of pages –the important part is the fold itself. Make sure the folds are well creased and even for each section of paper.

A folded paper section

2. Now, stack the folded sections together to determine the width of the journal’s spine. From here there are two ways to go–you can either create a wraparound cover of the sort common to many leather journals, or you can actually create a separate spine and cover. For this journal, I chose the second option–we will follow that path for the rest of this post.

Folded paper stacks when pressed together

3. Cut the spine and covers to size. Make sure to make the spine half an inch wider on each side than the thickness of your stacked pages, as you will use this extra material to sew on the covers.

Stained journal back

4. Tool and stain the pieces. Now’s the time to create your cover design and implement it. Veg tan leather offers by far the most opportunity for decoration. You start by the tooling process, where you soak the leather surface (I just apply water liberally with a brush) and then make impressions in it with your leather tools. Once the leather dries, you can make more sharp designs by actually carving patterns into it with your scalpel. In these photos, the Ouroubouros (circled snake) and symbol on the front are carved with a scalpel, while the circled A on the back is tooled using the wet leather method. Then, stain the leather in a shallow vat or with a brush. You can make further designs when the stain is almost dry by scraping it clean with a knife–this is how the runes were created on the front of mine and the stripe pattern on the back. Notice how scraping off the stain also highlights tooled sections where the stain isn’t scraped off.

Spine section, pages attached

5. Sew the pages to the spine. This will take some time, and be careful–it’s easy to end up with some very crooked sewing lines if you’re not careful. I start by using a piece of scrap paper to mark out a guide for spine sewing. You should only need six holes or so, but they should be even, for appearance’ sake. You will sew by making your awl puncture directly into the crease of one of your paper stacks (I use seven sheets per stack instead of ten or more because it makes sewing easier) and through the leather of the spine, in a straight line running down the crease and the length of the spine. Sew the rest of the stacks in line with the first, making them as tight as possible–I’ve created journals in the past that felt poorly-made because the paper sections were sewn too far apart, making the leather feel “loose.” When you’re finished you should have your “book” of pages in the center of the spine and about half an inch of loose leather front and back.

Attaching the cover

6. Use that loose leather to attach the cover and back. Sewing the covers “inside,” that is, between the flap and the paper itself, will make for a tighter binding, but will also require a longer period of pressing (see step X). Sew tightly, using perhaps a third to half an inch per stitch, making your knot on the inside of the cover when finished.

7. Do any touch up staining with a small brush, if it’s needed, such as along the edges or over knots here and there.

8. Once all the stain is dry, place the journal under heavy weight, evenly distributed across the surface. I use a stack of old clothbound national geographic collections, probably weighing around fifty or sixty pounds. This is to crease the pages and lock the cover into the “book” shape–if you don’t this, the journal will constantly be falling open from the stiffness of the paper and the spine. Leave it under the press for a few days.

9. Pull it out of the press and put your name on the front cover. You’ve put a lot of work into this journal–you don’t want to lose it now!

The finished product

And there you have it. If any of you try this, take a picture and send it my way–I’d love to see what you come up with!

 
1 Comment

Posted in Gear, Skill

 

A Cybernetic Fairy Tale

16 Nov

Artificial_Intelligence_-_AI,_by_Steven_Spielberg,_2001,_Jude_Law,_Haley_Joel_Osment

Science fiction is the prophesy of the modern age. And, like all good prophesy, it doesn’t so much predict the future as shape it. An engineer sees a gadget in a science fiction story written two decades earlier and says, I can build that, and fiction becomes fact. William Gibson writes a story in 1984 about a worldwide computer network environment he calls “cyberspace,” and twenty-five years later it exists, and so we call it.

Besides providing ideas and language with which to talk about them, science fiction often provides an early indicator as to the questions those new ideas and technologies will bring up. In Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (2001), the question in question is the nature of what it means to be a person, and the very real possibility that soon the human race will birth its first sentient electronic children.

Bollocks, say detractors, technology will never rival the complexity of the human brain. Well, detractors, take another look. Just recently, the first complete model of the human brain was built inside a supercomputer, and the results are astonishing. Very soon the first artificial intelligences will arise that not only simulate intelligence, but will be in fact self aware. On the opposite end of the spectrum, huge advances in medical technology and bionics mean that we organic beings will become increasingly mechanical. Where for all of our history the issue has been simple, black and white, there are now arising endless shades of gray.

A.I. is a fairy tale about a young robot boy, designed to “simulate” a son in a world where actual offspring are limited by law due to resource limitations. It brings up an interesting point in the “what makes us Human” debate by saying that the boy’s decision to follow a fairy tale and not simple cold calculations is the first step out of the machine–the first spark of humanity inside the circuit boards. As computerized models of the brain grow in accuracy and complexity, it will be interesting to see what the resulting intelligences reveal–are our minds the simple result of neural synapses and hormones, or is there something more, something beyond the simple physical structures of our brains?

Despite the typically Spielberg goodwill and peace to all ending, this movie is well worth a watch to get those synapses firing for yourself.

 
No Comments

Posted in Culture

 

Who Is This God Person, Anyway?

14 Nov

Angel of War (Ink on Paper)

As a privileged white male in one of the most affluent societies on Earth, I look around and I see that life is good. There is great food, great literature, great art. There is Beethoven and Bob Dylan, Cormac McCarthy and John Steinbeck, Van Gogh and Alex Gray. There are beautiful places, beautiful beaches, beautiful sunsets, beautiful women. There is Firefly.

But, as a human not entirely blind with a working internet connection and a bit of travel under my belt, I also see that there is a lot of bad. People starve to death every day, overdose on drugs, are sold into sex slavery, are killed in war, are killed for money, are killed for revenge, are killed just because somebody thought it was a good idea at the time. Even here, in the capital city of the United States, people will freeze on the streets over the next few months.

One of the most common objections I hear to the existence of a good God is that such an entity could not allow the evil in our world and still properly be called good. As I see it, there are a few ways to look at this problem. First, you can say that there is no God. If you abandon a higher power, though, you must be prepared to accept the consequences. If there is nothing higher than this, our mortal coil, than wars, genocide and starvation are not evil. They are simply progress. In this view evolution has no purpose; it is simply adaptation to conditions. In other words, whoever wins is “most right.” If Hitler had succeeded in his eugenics programs, the Aryan Reich would have been the future of human evolution. As it is, European colonialism has already proven the superiority of white genetics and culture around the world. If there is no higher power, words like “evil” and “inhuman” are meaningless.

The second view regularly put forward, at least in the west, is the Christian/Muslim/Judaic idea of God: namely, that he exists, and is controlling the events of history and personal lives toward some future goal: “all things work together for the good of those who love him.” It is this view that the objection above refers to, and it is a good one. Every religion has members who present anecdotal evidence of “miracles” and “faith healings,” where a sick loved one recovered against the odds, or the father to a poor family got a good raise. These are all well and good, but the truth is the scales are tipped more on the other side; for every family who gets enough money that they can buy that coveted five bedroom / two bath house, there are a dozen on the streets, and for every miraculous recovery there are two dozen deaths. If God has a plan in all of this, what then? Christians are usually the first to attack any “ends justify the means” argument, but it seems to me there is nowhere this applies more than in history itself. I, for one, cannot combine the idea of a personal God who is controlling history with the sort of atrocities our history contains–let alone the histories allegedly ordered by that God himself (take your pick–from the Manifest Destiny justifications for slaughtering the Native Americans to the Judaic conquest of Canaan, “God” is one of the most popular causes cited in most of history’s premodern genocides).

I see a third option. I see too much beauty in the world, unexplainable by basic evolutionary theory, for our frail mortality to be all there is. I see too much ugliness for it all to be the work of the Christian god. In both–in the beauty and the ugliness combined–I see a gift, and one that is on this planet ours alone. That is the gift of responsibility.

Many naive souls who have never experienced nature will often attribute to it a sort of Disney-inspired, sunlight filled goodness where all the wild creatures work in harmony and accord, to the music of bluebirds’ songs. “Man,” such souls say, self-righteously, “is the only species that kills its own kind.” This is (to borrow a term Americans should use far more often) bollocks. The animal kingdom is full of death: death of prey, death of predator, death of competition, death of offspring, death of mates. In some species of ape the animal kingdom even has war.

And here’s the thing. Such death is beautiful. The way a mountain lion stalks a deer in the deep cold silence of the northern mountains, the way it runs with twenty feet between each bound, the sheer power with which it takes its quarry down, is elegance incarnate. It isn’t Disney, or the garden of Eden, but it is how it should be, and it is good.

So what about us? What is this gift of responsibility, and how does it separate us from the animals? Why is an owl stalking mice beautiful, but not a serial killer stalking college students? If there is nothing higher than us, there is no difference between the two.

I believe there is a God. I also believe he has given the human race as a species something extraordinarily valuable, and perhaps too complex to be properly called a “gift.” That is our consciousness, our language, our responsibility as free individuals and not simply animals acting on instinct and conditioning. Because we are aware of ourselves, of our surroundings, and of that ineffable “Something” beyond ourselves, we have the option of choosing a higher road–and it is that very freedom of choice that makes the lower road wrong. The owl kills because she is made to kill, and she is beautiful for it. We ourselves may even kill an animal and be right doing it, if we do it with respect and out of necessity. But when we kill another human being, when we end another consciousness, that is when we make our choice to be merely animal when we could have been human. And because we have that choice, our being animal is what we call evil.

Now, were God to step in and stop us in such acts of evil, we would no longer have the choice to be animal or to be human. We would simply be acting as programmed–according to instinct, doing “good” just as the owl kills and the cow chews its cud. We would be part of, but not participating in, creation. “Good” would have no value. Likewise, if doing good were always simple and easy, that too would lose it’s value. A fine meal given to a fat child who’s done nothing to earn it is worth nothing. The same meal given to a man who has worked hard for it is one of the best things in the world. A thing that is intrinsically free is also, by definition, worthless. Freedom is not entitlement to good things; freedom is the capacity to work for them.

So yes, the world is full of pain. The world is full of evil men doing evil deeds.  Life is a struggle. But if it were not, what would be the point? Pleasure is worthless without pain, good is meaningless without evil, and our actions only truly resonate when we bleed for them. God is not coming to comfort us, for we are not children any longer. It’s time we stood on our own two feet and stopped looking for help from the government, from fate, from God. There is work to be done, true enough. The responsibility for doing it is ours.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Philosophy

 

The Moleskine Wallet

10 Nov

Moleskine wallets

While preparing for my trip last May, one of the most common topics to come up in the countless “what to pack” lists was how to store your money. The standard “family trip to Italy” brand of advice was for the under-the-clothes money belt. This also struck me as a dead giveaway of one’s helpless tourist status, which, in my mind, is a far more attractive target to the world’s criminals than other less paranoid means of concealment.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to carry around a wallet in my back pocket, as such things tend to fall out or mysteriously vanish, as nearly happened to me in the train station in Skopje when a nimble-fingered kid tried to snatch my precious money supply after watching where I stowed it when buying a train ticket.

Another common problem I had, being a writer and apt to forget ideas if I didn’t record them immediately, was not having an easily accessed journal or notebook to write things down in. The solution to all of the above: the Moleskine wallet. No, Moleskine doesn’t actually sell a wallet–but all of their pocket-sized notebooks have a pocket on the back cover that works just fine for it. They do tear easily, so you’ll have to reinforce it with tape, but once you get used to it you’ll never go back.

My personal preferred favorite is the squared soft cover notebook, but Moleskine really does have something for everyone.

 
No Comments

Posted in Gear

 

When the World Ends

09 Nov

The old route 61

When the world ends, it’s going to look something like Centralia, Pennsylvania. I’d heard about the town before, on websites about abandoned places and television shows like the History Channel’s Life After People. It’s just over a three hours’ drive from where I live in Virginia, so when Justin, a friend of mine, came up to visit for the weekend we got up early (yes, 8:00 am is early for a Saturday) and drove up to Pennsylvania, where we spent half an hour or so driving about looking for the town.

Graffiti on Route 61

We’d finally narrowed our search down to one particular intersection–the right angle junction of 61 East and 61 South–and had been driving back and forth looking for the “town” when a biker told us that this, in fact, was it. Old paved roads, a fire station, a few houses, and lot after empty, overgrown lot are all that remain of a coal-mining town that used to house well over two thousand people.

Old sidewalk

The event that caused this rapid depopulation to what is now the lowest population burrough in PA is a coal mine fire. Though no one’s really quite sure how it started, local best guesses are that a landfill fire in 1962, in an old strip mine pit, was left untended and managed to ignite a nearby coal vein, which then spread underground to the abandoned mines under the town. From there it spread. The town’s residents only really became aware of the problem some twenty years later when the town’s mayor and local gas station owner checked the temperature of his underground tanks and found that they had reached a shocking 172 degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say, this caught people’s attention. When a twelve year old almost fell into a 150-foot deep hole leading to the burning coal pits beneath the town, things came to a head and, in 1984, the government stepped in to relocate the town’s residents.

photo-316

These days, the town itself has all but vanished. There are old moss-grown steps leading up to where doors had once been. Nothing there now but weeds. There’s a fire hydrant on a crumbling sidewalk in front of what looks for all the world like a patch of meadow in the woods. Here and there are a few relics of Centralia’s past–discarded window frames, broken chimney brick, and, off in the woods, a single mortar stone with a child’s handprints pressed into the concrete. All bits of stories whose context has almost entirely faded.

photo-364

photo-399

Just south of the town lies old Route 61. It took Justin and I several passes and one stop for directions to finally find it. It’s a stretch of highway perhaps half a mile in length which has been abandoned after repeated repair attempts, and is now blocked off at either end by piles of earth that also conceal it from the road. It’s something you’d only find if you were looking for it, and the effect of seeing it as you climb over the bulldozed barrier is eerie, to say the least. It’s also covered in graffiti. If there is one thing Centralia has taught me, it’s that should our civilization ever end, our last words will be written in spray paint.

photo-291

photo-260

A few hundred yards down old 61 the pavement warps and splits in a wide, smoking gash, one of the places where the coal fire has forced its way to the surface. The air around it is pungent with steam. We saw only a few other people–a couple with professional camera equipment, a hippy on a bike, four kids on four-wheelers doing wheelies the length of the highway– but when it was quiet and there was no one in sight, it was easy enough to imagine the rest of the world going this way. Already the center line of the old highway is overgrown with weeds and, in some places, high bushes. For all of our civilization’s comforts, we are far less permanent than we think.

Coal smoke coming out of a crack in the old Route 61

Cemetery fence

Back towards town are the cemeteries. Still mowed, still visited, there are far more gravestones here than there are remaining residents, and all of the dates peter off around the early eighties when the town was abandoned. Coal smoke billows out of nearby sewer grates, and one wonders just how long it will take before the burials here become cremations.

Coal smoke from a sewer grate

This is Pennsylvania, and there’s plenty of coal underground beneath Centralia. Experts say it will continue to burn for the next 250 years. I suppose it’d be easy enough to draw grand lessons from this town’s example, but that’d be too easy. It’s more fun to just read the graffiti. Some of it refers to the particularly ugly deeds done to Mother Earth in this spot. Some of it’s clever. Most of it’s just the usual inane blather of dumb kids with spray paint.

Maybe we can draw a grand lesson from that.

A more recently abandoned human artifact

Note: in the video below, check out Centralia shortly after abandonment:

 
2 Comments

Posted in Travel

 

Where I’m At

06 Nov

Railroad tracks

Welcome back, gentle readers, to the new and improved GoodAndLost.org. For those of you who were following the blog over the summer, no, I didn’t die in Turkey–I just never got around to writing my final return post. Suffice it to say that I made it back safely, via Thessaloniki and Frankfurt for a (far too short) day, and that since then many things have happened.

At first, I simply returned to my old life–part time work, eighteen credits of classes, old friends. But after only a few weeks of that, I began to realize that after the summer’s experience, simply living that old life was no longer an option. I began to consider alternate paths.

My first divergence was quitting school. I had a year and a half left of a history degree, which would have cost me an additional ten or twelve thousand dollars. As I have the ability to make good money in web design (and hopefully writing one day), I didn’t need the degree to make a living. I had lost all interest in the actual content of my classes as well, as I knew I could learn at least as much at least as quickly by simply reading–and without the thousands of dollars of tuition money.

My second divergence was the publication of my break with the Christian faith. It was a long time coming. I’ve given my reasons elsewhere, and will continue to give both them and the new conclusions I’m coming to in the Philosophy section of this blog.

The third divergence wasn’t so long coming, following only a few weeks on the second. That was my losing my job at Patrick Henry College, because I could no longer sign their statement of faith.

And so here I am, a week into November of 2009, with a thousand new paths open to me. I’m currently trying to build a freelance web design and writing career (if you’re interested in my designing a personal blog or business website for you, you can contact me here) to pay of tuition debts and establish a geographically independent source of income for future travels. I’m also working on a new fiction book, which should be finished in a few months, at which point I’ll begin the process of looking for an agent.

In the meantime, I’ve expanded this blog to six categories: travel, which covers interesting places visited and photos taken; philosophy, which covers personal development, ideas about life, and religion; knowledge, for random, interesting, and/or useful bits of information; culture, for good music, films, book, and art; gear, for stuff worth having; and skill, for ways to become a more useful and capable human.

Thanks for coming: I hope it’s an interesting ride.

 
No Comments

Posted in Philosophy, Travel