What follows is a letter I sent to some of my dearest friends over the holidays, and minus some info that could be useful to my enemies, I am posting it here in lieu of end-of-year updates and best-of lists which are still pending.
Dear friends, enemies, frenemies, badventists, sadventists, nonventists, interventionists, impressionists, expressionists, exhibitionists, and philbert,
After several years too long in an apartment I could not really afford and blowing through almost all of my savings I have finally moved to an apartment I can afford. I have a straight but otherwise unobjectionable roommate, a little porch, a nice view, good neighbors, an old, blind, deaf but stable cat, a little more stuff than space, and high hopes. Should you need my address to send me what I can only imagine will be glowing praise and positively gushing pro-James haiku, my new address is:
[redacted]
I should have moved two, maybe three, years ago, but high executive function has not exactly been a calling card lately. “Trying” in general has not been a thing lately for me. If you are receiving this email, you are valued, missed, and cherished as much as the oxford comma in this sentence, which is quite a lot. I stan the comma, oxford or otherwise, and sprinkle it liberally through all my work, much as one would sprinkle baco bits over a salad at potlucks. Remember potlucks? I do.
That said, I am increasingly bored with not trying. It is boring. I am boring. So I am thinking about forming a committee to draft a proposal dedicated very seriously to examining the feasibility of maybe trying. I have not been tending my relationships well or forming new ones with particular alacrity and as I value my existing relationships and would like to feel the touch of another human being’s skin before the heat death of the universe this is probably something I need to change. I guess.
Also on the docket are maybe having some sort of goals and/or purpose (a bigger porch would be nice), a community I feel good about belonging to, some sort of resolution to the existential, spiritual, and practical problems of living in this country, on this planet, in these pants, that have been leaving me more or less paralyzed lately. I might just cut straight through it all and start a cult. The robes would sparkle.
The truth is I have never felt I belonged anywhere since leaving Adventism, but I never felt I belonged there either. I always feel between things. Halfway between there and here, up and down, gay and straight, smart and stupid, and now that I am officially middle-aged that feeling has only intensified. I might be looking for church that is not church, if that makes sense. Community but not dogma. Intimate connection with quiet, private nooks.
In the meantime, I am waiting for my cat to die. She is well cared for and still seems to be taking some joy in existence and my life does not necessarily need to stop like I am holding my breath, but somehow it does. It is difficult to care for pets in their senior years and I am not well suited for it and truly wish I were made of sterner stuff, for my own sake as well as hers. And yours. And everyone who relies on me to be functional and good. I will try. I want to try.
I don’t know, I am still trying to figure it all out. I would settle for figuring any little thing out. Moving to a place I can afford was a good start. That’s one thing. I am going to try and build on that momentum.
I love you all. I hope you are getting through the holidays with your wits and spirits intact. I will be making an attempt to reach out more in the future, and should my beloved but challenging cat finally decide immortality is for chumps, you can expect some requests for slightly longer than usual visits from yours truly. That’s me. I’m yours truly.
Wow this letter takes some turns tonally doesn’t it? Wild.
It it my continued delight to count each and every one of you as friends. I look forward to new adventures in the year to come.
[redacted] (sometimes James) [redacted]
Monday, December 30, 2019
Sunday, December 08, 2019
Goodbye, Monkeys
(Some spoilers about Aurora and The Three Body trilogy below)
I have read some great SF novels in the last year or two, and they have almost universally had a fairly dismal view of the human race. If speculative fiction functions as a metric for the optimism of the culture that generates it, then I can only surmise that Things are Not Looking Good.
Children of Time imagines a future where the human race tears itself apart, and then much, much later flirts with tearing itself and the remnants of its own empire, again. Aurora posits a society on a colony ship that barely holds itself together, and ultimately decides to turn back because living outside of our natural ecosystem or recreating one that is stable turns out to be quite difficult. The Expanse books portray three space-faring human societies constantly on the verge of annihilating each other over nothing. The Three Body trilogy is a grand, nihilistic spectacle where life throughout the universe irretrievably degrades it's environment, up to and including the fundamental physical laws of the universe!
Star Trek flirts with this same pessimism in the form of Q. He's the only one asking why we think we deserve to be out there, which to me, in the year of our lord Q 2019, a great question. I think the older I get the less I think of our expansionist rights as less self-evidently true than just a powerful baseline genetic drive. Locusts have the same drive, it doesn't make it good for anyone trying to grow food in their path.
I think part of being "evolved" or "enlightened" is a certain level of potential conscious restraint on our base natures, and when it comes to what we do and why we do it I think we could stand to spend more time thinking about it clearly and what exactly we're working towards. And, call me crazy, how it impacts the other living species we interact with.
I look around at this society today, and I am not exactly filled with hope about what this species has to offer anyone outside of our gravity well. There is kind a philosophical hope people hold on to that simply reaching for the stars will by itself re-align our spirits towards humanism and hope and I'm not entirely sure it works that way. Most of our outward reaching space programs seem to be more about billionaires trying to write their names on the face of the moon than any sort of grand, humanist principles. The idea of humanity working together to explore space is inspiring. the idea of Elon Musk sending rich people to space on golden thrones is, uh, less so. Imagine Donald Trump flushing 10 to 15 times on his golden toilet as it tools around the solar system. Unless they're not coming back, in which case everyone donate some jewelry, we've got ships to build.
We think of our evolution in purely technological terms, and this is why we keep failing. "How could all this new tech get twisted so immediately to evil ends?" we wonder, politely ignoring that the problem is us, it is always us. None of our technological advances matter if we are not good people, if we have not even figured out what it means to be "good people," what it would look like to be better people, if we refuse to even engage with the question.
Perhaps that's too harsh. Perhaps we engage with what it is to be good on a daily basis. Given the state of the world, I'm not particularly convinced we are having a spectacular success with it though. And of course, people disagree about what it is to be good, on seemingly every level. More religion, less religion, the right kind of diet, the wrong kind of diet, the right kind of story, the right kind of law, the right kind of support, the right kind of governance, etc, down through every kind of personal preference or lifestyle choice. These all contribute to what it is to be a good kind of person to another kind of person, and god help if you if you fail anyone on the internet on any one of these metrics because lord will you hear about it. You're hearing about it now, from me! I have judged us all and found us wanting. Mene, Mene, Tekel, you IDIOTS!
I suspect we are, for reasons I'm not sure I currently understand, incapable of being "good" en masse. That's not a declaration of original sin, but more an assessment that we need some time to grow in that regard before we figure it out. Assuming we don't destroy ourselves and our planet before we figure it out. Because it really seems like we're just fucking determined to kill ourselves rather than be nice. Nobody criticize our choices or we're taking the whole planet with us. We'll do it! We're crazy!
So should we expand into space? Would our presence out there be a net benefit to ourselves and whatever environment we find ourselves in? Is heading out into space just another way of running away from problems which will inevitably follow us if we don't address them? Does 'should we' in terms of environmental impact even make sense if the universe outside our bubble of air is devoid of life? I would entertain a version of going into space that involves us channeling all our destructive instincts into destroying asteroids and lifeless planets, our destructive appetites thus sated, allowing us to chastely conserve our home environment like god's sweet angels.
Maybe the question isn't "should we advance technologically" because we kind of just do that. Maybe the question is, "What other ways might it be urgent to advance in that we are strenuously avoiding?" When we head out there, what are we bringing with us? Who cares if our spaceships are gleaming if we just use them to brutalize each other and/or other random life forms?
I'm just not sure I care if billionaires are launching their cars into space when they do it on the back of human misery. None of our toys matter if we are not good to each other. Create for me a world invested in human flourishing and happiness in the short and long terms, physical and psychological health, a respect for the environment we depend on, more, an environment thriving with us not in spite of us, an investment in the common good, clear and critical thinking, and then maybe get back to me on the glory of humanity achievement. Until then we're just children with fancy toys, flirting with disaster.
I have read some great SF novels in the last year or two, and they have almost universally had a fairly dismal view of the human race. If speculative fiction functions as a metric for the optimism of the culture that generates it, then I can only surmise that Things are Not Looking Good.
Children of Time imagines a future where the human race tears itself apart, and then much, much later flirts with tearing itself and the remnants of its own empire, again. Aurora posits a society on a colony ship that barely holds itself together, and ultimately decides to turn back because living outside of our natural ecosystem or recreating one that is stable turns out to be quite difficult. The Expanse books portray three space-faring human societies constantly on the verge of annihilating each other over nothing. The Three Body trilogy is a grand, nihilistic spectacle where life throughout the universe irretrievably degrades it's environment, up to and including the fundamental physical laws of the universe!
Star Trek flirts with this same pessimism in the form of Q. He's the only one asking why we think we deserve to be out there, which to me, in the year of our lord Q 2019, a great question. I think the older I get the less I think of our expansionist rights as less self-evidently true than just a powerful baseline genetic drive. Locusts have the same drive, it doesn't make it good for anyone trying to grow food in their path.
I think part of being "evolved" or "enlightened" is a certain level of potential conscious restraint on our base natures, and when it comes to what we do and why we do it I think we could stand to spend more time thinking about it clearly and what exactly we're working towards. And, call me crazy, how it impacts the other living species we interact with.
I look around at this society today, and I am not exactly filled with hope about what this species has to offer anyone outside of our gravity well. There is kind a philosophical hope people hold on to that simply reaching for the stars will by itself re-align our spirits towards humanism and hope and I'm not entirely sure it works that way. Most of our outward reaching space programs seem to be more about billionaires trying to write their names on the face of the moon than any sort of grand, humanist principles. The idea of humanity working together to explore space is inspiring. the idea of Elon Musk sending rich people to space on golden thrones is, uh, less so. Imagine Donald Trump flushing 10 to 15 times on his golden toilet as it tools around the solar system. Unless they're not coming back, in which case everyone donate some jewelry, we've got ships to build.
We think of our evolution in purely technological terms, and this is why we keep failing. "How could all this new tech get twisted so immediately to evil ends?" we wonder, politely ignoring that the problem is us, it is always us. None of our technological advances matter if we are not good people, if we have not even figured out what it means to be "good people," what it would look like to be better people, if we refuse to even engage with the question.
Perhaps that's too harsh. Perhaps we engage with what it is to be good on a daily basis. Given the state of the world, I'm not particularly convinced we are having a spectacular success with it though. And of course, people disagree about what it is to be good, on seemingly every level. More religion, less religion, the right kind of diet, the wrong kind of diet, the right kind of story, the right kind of law, the right kind of support, the right kind of governance, etc, down through every kind of personal preference or lifestyle choice. These all contribute to what it is to be a good kind of person to another kind of person, and god help if you if you fail anyone on the internet on any one of these metrics because lord will you hear about it. You're hearing about it now, from me! I have judged us all and found us wanting. Mene, Mene, Tekel, you IDIOTS!
I suspect we are, for reasons I'm not sure I currently understand, incapable of being "good" en masse. That's not a declaration of original sin, but more an assessment that we need some time to grow in that regard before we figure it out. Assuming we don't destroy ourselves and our planet before we figure it out. Because it really seems like we're just fucking determined to kill ourselves rather than be nice. Nobody criticize our choices or we're taking the whole planet with us. We'll do it! We're crazy!
So should we expand into space? Would our presence out there be a net benefit to ourselves and whatever environment we find ourselves in? Is heading out into space just another way of running away from problems which will inevitably follow us if we don't address them? Does 'should we' in terms of environmental impact even make sense if the universe outside our bubble of air is devoid of life? I would entertain a version of going into space that involves us channeling all our destructive instincts into destroying asteroids and lifeless planets, our destructive appetites thus sated, allowing us to chastely conserve our home environment like god's sweet angels.
Maybe the question isn't "should we advance technologically" because we kind of just do that. Maybe the question is, "What other ways might it be urgent to advance in that we are strenuously avoiding?" When we head out there, what are we bringing with us? Who cares if our spaceships are gleaming if we just use them to brutalize each other and/or other random life forms?
I'm just not sure I care if billionaires are launching their cars into space when they do it on the back of human misery. None of our toys matter if we are not good to each other. Create for me a world invested in human flourishing and happiness in the short and long terms, physical and psychological health, a respect for the environment we depend on, more, an environment thriving with us not in spite of us, an investment in the common good, clear and critical thinking, and then maybe get back to me on the glory of humanity achievement. Until then we're just children with fancy toys, flirting with disaster.
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