Category: Just a Thought

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Everything Ends: The State of Apocalyptic Fiction

In his 2016 book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Amitav Ghosh lays out the case for climate change and charges contemporary fiction writers with the responsibility of writing about it. But why, Ghosh wonders, aren’t our fiction writers writing about it? Ghosh condemns contemporary fiction writers for a failure to address climate change. 

I found it an interesting accusation because, in my experience, fiction writers were, in fact, writing about climate change and had been for years. Ghosh proposed the idea that writers in the literary mainstream would tend to be relegated to science fiction when writing about climate change, and considering the realities of western literary culture—where we tend to draw lines of artistic merit between literary traditions—I think he had a point. To me, though, a good story is a good story.

Regardless, in the eight years since Ghosh’s book hit shelves, I think we’ve seen a more widespread willingness of writers to go there.

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Not OK, Computer

Image by Marvel Studios and potentially every artist on the planet; it’s impossible to know for sure. Also, none of them were paid or even acknowledged for their work.

Artistry is one of humanity’s defining traits. Our creative ingenuity makes us special.

So I find it strange that, with the emergence of AI, we’re not using it to make our lives better but to automate creativity.

I won’t be watching Secret Invasion. If you haven’t heard, Disney—the most powerful and profitable entertainment studio the world has ever known—opted to exploit AI, plagiarize real artists, and save a few bucks to generate the show’s opening credits sequence. They claim the method fits the show’s themes.

It’s a story about spies fighting shapeshifting aliens.

It’s a shame because many real artists did work on the series, and I’m sure it’s great. My hope is Disney, Marvel, Method Studios, and the show’s producers change course, hire actual artists to create a new opening credits sequence, and commit to never using AI-generated creative content again.

Let’s leverage AI to do the work nobody wants to do, and let’s empower people to do the work they actually want to do, especially if that work explores human creativity in any form.

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On Knowledge and Understanding

I’ve been noodling an idea I’m not sure what to do with. It basically goes like this: Our culture encourages competition under the premise that it breeds progress, but what if it generates only a certain kind of progress and hinders others? Namely, knowledge and understanding.

Just as capitalism inspires businesses to make the better product and come out on top, we butt heads on the individual level. Turn on any talk show and listen to competing sides debate a particular issue. Their goal isn’t to foster understanding; their goal is to win.

I can’t recall ever seeing anyone on TV or any stage in front of an audience yield when proven wrong. It’s so obvious we have an Internet meme for it. I’m sure there’s a subreddit dedicated to sharing videos of people being proven wrong and not admitting it. Watch this recent Jon Stewart interview if you need to see what I mean. Stewart is a bit too aggressive at first, but after a few minutes, you come to understand he’s frustrated because he’s so obviously right, but the other guy just won’t budge even though you can see it in him: he knows he’s been proven wrong, and instead of choosing to grow as a person (something that might let some others who follow him grow as people), he turtles. 

The trouble is knowledge and understanding just don’t work under these conditions. They need open, earnest idea and experience sharing. They require generosity, fairness, and good faith. They require concession and admission when you’re wrong. This is how we grow as people. This is how we learn.

Even when teaching debate, I would bet all the moneys the goal is winning, to overcome the other side by formulating the more compelling argument. That’s great for the individual and the winning side’s interest, but it is terrible for the whole. Whoever wins, we lose.

Granted, I do think there is value in striving for the better argument. In so doing, you come to better understand your own ideas, and that’s great.

That said, you should never enter a debate with the goal of proving you’re right. Enter with the goal of earnestly sharing your ideas and experiences because they’re valid, and in so doing, the group objective should be to combine those ideas and find something greater. To learn something together.

I think it would be a mistake to conflate this with compromise. That’s different. I’m also not suggesting there is no such thing as right and wrong. Of course there is. But what I’m talking about here is truth. 

I’ve also been noodling the idea that, since each of our individual understandings of reality is subjective and flawed, taken through limited perception, no individual can understand reality alone. Each of our realities isn’t real. To find the real, we need each other.

What a world it would be if we weren’t always trying to beat each other into submission but, instead, working together to discover the thing that is true about our shared reality, something none of us can really fathom on our own.

Discuss on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or Mastodon.

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Achievement Unlocked: Mastery of the Craft

After three years, I am a master of the fine art of creative writing. According to George Mason University, anyway. Anyone can proclaim to be a writer, sure, but self-proclaimed masters are usually full of it. I proclaim nothing myself.

Anyway, as I take stock, reflect, and prepare for the transition into a new phase of my life, I thought I’d take a minute to update the blog a little. Three years ago, I essentially vanished to go find more time to write and otherwise grow as a writer. Today, I look back on those three years and realize I found a mixture of things I expected and things I didn’t. I went into the program with the goal of coming out with a finished novel. That didn’t happen. I have a decent start on one, but progress has been slow on that front. I also had the goal of coming out of the program with enough short stories for a collection. That didn’t happen either. I have several I’m extremely proud of, two of which were published last summer. However, the last three years of my writing life have been about quality over quantity.

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Demagogues

I’ve been thinking and reading about demagogues a lot this summer. Demagogues are political leaders who appeal through pathos rather than logos. For the non-Greek, feelings rather than logic. Most commonly, demagogues manipulate our fear and anger, and they generally direct those emotions at an other or a “them.” Demagogues require opponents as scapegoats. They require division.

We’ve seen their kind many times throughout history, yet I’m optimistic about them. For every one that has risen to power, I like to think many failed to gain any traction. Recognizing them is simple, something I expect any American should be able to do instinctually, yet if you find yourself caught by their influence, it may all seem a bit vexing and complicated. That’s because some of what they’re saying, on some level, makes sense and is, on some level, true. They require reality distorted.

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On ‘Salute to America’ and Questionable-at-Best Leadership

Despite his country continuing to face a historic pandemic and unaddressed racial tensions, Trump is proceeding with his “Salute to America” celebration tomorrow, and that tracks, considering the kind of questionable leadership he has exhibited not only throughout these crises but also throughout his term.

While I’m seeing talk about how much the event is costing us and the wisdom of holding such an event right now, I’m wondering why more people aren’t more outraged about the principle that he’s once again co-opted our most sacrosanct holiday for personal and political gain. Independence Day used to be a day of unity for all of us to set aside our differences and come together to celebrate the best ideals of America, but Trump has turned it into a divisive campaign rally to highlight the worst of America at our expense. Regardless of politics, this should set off even the most adamantly self-proclaimed patriots among us.

It’s not right, and it’s just one more of the countless reasons you shouldn’t vote for him in November. Of course, it is far less compelling of a reason than the thousands of Americans who have died from Covid-19 due to his poor leadership; his woefully inadequate response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the far too many others, and the social movements clamoring for change; and the countless other indicators of his ineptitude and harm; but I digress.

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Healthcare in America

Tonight, I went to the ER because I thought I was dying (I wasn’t, and I’m following doctors’ recommendations; I’ll probably be fine). For anyone who has been to a doctor in America, I don’t have to tell you this was a miserable experience. However, maybe you’re super healthy or have just forgotten how bad healthcare in America is (or maybe you’re one of the about 60 million Americans who can’t really afford access to healthcare). In any case, I feel it’s important we all consider the state of healthcare in America this year because we have a really important vote coming up in November.

I felt inspired to write something about this because it’s something I care about. I felt compelled because I’m a writer and that’s what I do. I care because the flaws in the U.S. healthcare system have harmed me and my family, because we call ourselves the greatest country in the world and can shoot a rocket down a brown person’s throat from halfway around the world using a remote-controlled airplane, but we can’t provide adequate healthcare for our own people.

Coincidentally, John Oliver’s first feature story of the new season, which aired last night, does a good job covering some of our healthcare system’s failures and the potential for a medicare-for-all system. And it’s funny. And you can watch it instead of reading it. You don’t like John Oliver? I’m sorry. Maybe it’s his accent, or maybe it’s his personality, or maybe it’s because he’s often right and persuasive and nobody likes to be proven wrong. My advice is to get over that because, if you can’t accept being proven wrong, you’ll never learn anything or grow as a person. Like our president. Maybe you aspire to that. Maybe there’s something else entirely we need to talk about.

Anyway. Personally, I’m skeptical of medicare for all because it would be a big change, and there are a lot of uncertainties, and that’s scary. But I think one of our primary goals as a society should be to reduce and minimize suffering wherever and whenever possible, and there’s a lot that just doesn’t make sense in our current healthcare system, which necessarily has to balance profits with the wellbeing of people, and no matter how you try to make sense of that, it is and always has been cruel.

Maybe there’s some bitterness in the above. That’s probably because I am bitter. There are many reasons for that, but for tonight, I’ll stick with this one. Maybe I’ll talk about more later. Yay, 2020.

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One Sentence About This State of Emergency

After two years of holding partisan control of the federal government during which border security was not an emergency, a president the American people don’t want is declaring a state of emergency that doesn’t exist to build a wasteful and ineffective wall the American people don’t want, by taking money from the military’s tax-funded budget, not Mexico as he promised, and to satisfy prejudices and assuage fears he helped create with lies and demagoguery, thus sidestepping democracy and invoking autocracy in the country that used to be the leader of the free world where self-proclaimed patriots and champions of liberty used to criticize a black president for using the power of executive order and now are celebrating victory for getting nothing their country wants or needs, because one failed businessman turned celebrity exploits the popular scorn of modern American politics to convince them he knows best and reinforces that belief with propaganda, confirmation bias, and the cognitive dissonance of a generation that stripped future generations of their prosperity and is losing its grasp on the modern world.

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On Telling Students ‘No’

Nick Mamatas went on a Tweet storm yesterday about creative writing teachers barring students from writing genre fiction. It sparked conversation in the various Internets where writers dwell. I had thoughts.

I think Nick took it too far. Were we close, I’d ask him who hurt him, but alas, we’re not. I do think Nick was onto something, though.

(I should preface the rest of this with the disclaimer that I am not a fiction teacher, nor have I ever had the opportunity of teaching fiction writing, and nor is this a criticism of any creative writing teacher in particular. It’s a hard and thankless job, and it takes a special person to legitimately be excited to help others grow and succeed.)

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Dark Fiction, Author Anxiety, and Personal Judgment

The lady and I recently watched Netflix’s The Staircase, a docu-series about the novelist Michael Peterson who was charged with murdering his wife in 2001. Similar to Making a Murderer, it’s another fascinating investigation of the American justice system. I highly recommend both of them.

A bit of a disclaimer, though: these are not mystery stories. They are not about whether the suspects did or did not murder the victim (I realize the marketing image I chose to plop down to the right of these words poses that very question, but it’s the most compelling way Netflix could find to sell you on it).

These docu-series put the American justice system on full display, exposing its flaws. They will make you question your faith in the fundamental tenet of American justice that a defendant should be considered innocent until proven guilty, and they will make you question our very humanity, especially given the context of the cruel times in which we live. If you watch them, they will anger and sadden you because the reality they portray is not one we confront often, or maybe because it’s one which we are increasingly forced to come to terms with.

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