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Barbarian, Troglodyte, Morlock

Posted November 3, 2015 By John C Wright

Longtime reader Nate Winchester says:

I don’t know… I guess like the lovely Mrs Wright, I’ve known a few… I guess they weren’t full SJWs, but one might call them larvae… and they’re not bad people!

It’s like the zombie movies ya know? They’re infected, I get that we’ll have to shoot them in the head, just wish we could figure out some way to cure them before it gets to that point, ya know? Especially because they seem to fight it sometimes.

It just gets… old.

I agree. The SJWs are not bad people. Not at first. Even Lucifer was not totally wretched and evil at first.

That is the important thing to remember.

They are good people with a bad theory who are addicted, like a cocaine addict, to the rush of ego-gratification that comes from self-righteousness.

The Morlocks once were human, once dwelt on the surface, under the sun, and once ate wholesome meats, and did not feast on human flesh. It takes several steps pf evolution to go from being a good man to being a subhuman troglodyte cannibal. Not all have taken all the steps

It is a three stage trap into which they fall, and at each stage, for the best of reasons.

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Poe’s Law in Action

Posted November 2, 2015 By John C Wright

When I first heard of this, I thought it was an Onion parody.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426260/halloween-colleges-costumes-consultants

olleges are hanging flyers around campus with phone numbers of officials that students can call to consult with about whether or not their Halloween costume is perfectly politically correct. “Unsure if your costume might be offensive?” asks a poster that’s been hung around campus at State University of New York at Geneseo. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions.” The poster contains the phone numbers and e-mails of five (five!) campus officials that students can contact and discuss the very important issue of whether or not what they will dress up as to get drunk in will be advancing social-justice causes. Wesleyan University has been hanging similar posters around the school — but with six (six!) numbers listed.

It’s a good first step. Maybe next year, the schools can deploy cultural-sensitivity control officers to bust into parties and round up anyone spotted in a sombrero or afro wig. To make the world, you know, better.

My comment: The irony here is, first, that these are college age students, that is, men old enough to serve in the military and be placed in charge of multi-million dollar vehicles and ordinance, women old enough to bear children and be in charge of a family; and, second, that they are college age students are a college, an institution allegedly devoted to the education of the young, a process requiring intellectual discipline and academic freedom.

And yet the campus will not prevent fornication between students and coeds, unwed motherhood, or other matters far more ruinous.

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Sold!

Posted November 2, 2015 By John C Wright

I just read this review of Jim Butcher’s latest book:

1 of 106 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
I’m just going to rate this a 1/5 on principle…
By Zoe S. Galaitsis on October 6, 2015

I’m just going to rate this a 1/5 on principle, after Jim Butcher got nominated by Vox Day and his Rabid Puppies. Not sure what’s going on there but Butcher hasn’t come out and said a thing, not even to deny their platform of reviling women, gays, and non-Christians. I’m generally wary of reading anything by him or giving him any money at this point.

 

Hmm. Funny. I do not recall our platform reviling women, gays and non-Christians. I recall our platform was to support books on their merit and entertainment value, regardless of political correctness, and to give science fiction awards based on their skill at telling a science fiction story, not to give science fiction awards based on political party loyalties.

I do recall being in the receiving end of actionable libels from major international news organization, and I do recall thinking that no one was stupid enough actually to believe such obvious and clumsy lies, but in this case I overestimated the intelligence of the reading public. I thought that they would be smart enough to, you know, read.

Therefore the principle that this reviewer is upholding is the unreality principle, that principle that lies are better than truth, and outrageous lies are better than lies; the principle that injustice is better than justice, so judging books based on the fact that someone you arbitrarily and unjustly decided to hate likes those books is better then reading the book and judging on the merit.

Have you wondered why award-winning SFF books and stories, the kind sold to libraries and touted as best sellers, are all so bland and bad?

Consider the simple logic of it. A community must either judges stories on the merit or not on the merit.

If the community judges stories on the merit, then the most meritorious works will be lauded, assuming the community has any taste at all. (And if you do not agree with the tastes of science fiction readers, why read science fiction?)

If, on the other hand, the community judges stories not on the merit, as when, for example, you judge the story on the political correctness of the message or of the author’s private life, then not the most meritorious works will be lauded. Bland and bad stories will be promoted and feted, and your, the reader, will not hear if there are any good stories out there.

Do you want to know why brilliant hard-core science fiction like THE MARTIAN by Weir did not win awards but boring and predictable lecture-fiction with little science fiction in it, or none, won instead? It is because fairplay is not in fashion among the termites who have eaten their way into positions of influence in the award-nominating structure.

Envy the Morlock! How simple it becomes to live in a world with no right or wrong, which are subtle and silent and require a nicety of judgment and wisdom to discern: but party loyalty is obvious, self-aggrandizing and loud, and any idiot can see who is a member of the groupthink collective, and who is an unperson scorned by Big Brother.

Humans think. Morlocks hate.

They hate whoever the two minute hate says to hate. It does not matter whether Emmanuel Goldstein is real or not, or whether Jim Butcher writes well or poorly. The target is created for the sake of the hate; the hatred is not a reaction to some hateful thing, real or imaginary the target has does or is.

Be that as it may, this review was a sufficient incentive to buy a copy of Mr Butcher’s latest book. Money permitting, I shall buy two copies.

I don’t know and I don’t care what Mr Butcher’s political leanings, sexual preferences, denomination or race is. I have not examined his Ahenpass, or discovered is he has a quatroon as a greatgrandfather. I am not a Leftist. I care if he can perform the job for which I pay him, that is, write a good story in return for my hard earned book buying dollar.

Aeronaut

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cinder-Spires-Aeronauts-Windlass/dp/0451466802/

 

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The Martian

Posted October 29, 2015 By John C Wright

Best movie all year. No science fiction fan has a valid excuse not to like this movie. I was sure they would mess it up, but it was a remarkably faithful adaptation from the book.

I will write up a longer review in days to come, time permitting. In the meantime, go see it. Take your muggle friends, and they will understand the appeal of hard SF.

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A Time for Peace, a Time for War

Posted October 28, 2015 By John C Wright

Never apologize to the Morlocks, for they will only take the apology as a confession, and, sensing weakness, fall upon you, and drag you underground to their lair and feast on your living flesh.

This advice applies not merely to the enemy in the culture war attempting to get you mocked, reviled, and fired for your political incorrectness, but also to the enemy in the Jihad, attempting to get you to die, to surrender to slavery or submit to Islam.

Vox Day in his new book SJWs ALWAYS LIES includes the excellent advice that one must never apologise to a Social Justice Warrior, never attempt to ameliorate nor appease them, never appeal to their better nature. His experience (and mine) shows this is futile as well as counterproductive.

A civilized man, hearing an apology or a request for quarter, will interpret it as a request for forgiveness and a request for a return to the peace the existed before the dispute broke out: an SJW, hearing an apology, will take it as a surrender, will sense blood in the water as a shark does, and redouble the attacks.

This is because the civilized man regards other men as real people and seeks to live in peace. An SJW is a creature who regards peace as intolerable, and thinks of other people as mere shadows, mere puppets on the stage of his own internal psychodrama.

A civilize man attacks enemies in order to restore civilization, and hence attacks those who threaten it, and hence takes a proffer apology as a sign that the threat is ended. An SJW, on the other hand, is a witchhunter who attacks the witch not because he believes you (or anyone) is a witch. Your name could have been picked at random out of a hat. He attacks because he wishes to be seen by the warren, his peers, as zealous and loyal, and because whichever witchhunter hunts the most witches gains a high status.

Such is the disagreeable truth and tactical necessity of the culture war, and it has an even more disagreeable sequel: a whole cadre of so called moderates arises who, while claiming to agree with you and to abjure the foe, makes calls for peace and compromise never directed at the witchhunters, always at the witch. One such recent display was being debated over at Vox Day’s website:  http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/10/dialogue-with-moderate.html

This led to a question we have heard debated frequently in conservative and Christian circles, which is, namely, when is it right, if ever, to fight an enemy without remorse, without quarter, without adherence to the Marquis of Queensbury Rules, savagely, and totally?

The answer to that question falls into two opposite errors: the Scylla of those who answer “always” and the Charybdis of those who answer “never.”

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Anniversary of Superversive 2

Posted October 27, 2015 By John C Wright

We celebrate the first year of the superversive literary movement with the second half of last week’s essay by that brilliant essayist, Tom Simon.

This essay I think is one of his best, and since I think he is perhaps the best essayist since essayist since Montaigne, that is saying quite a bit. Of course, I happen to be particularly interested in this topic, and his essay makes clear to me a personal puzzle touching why a writer I once respected and read avidly now bores and offends me.

http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/10/27/superversive-blog-life-carbon-and-the-tao-part-two/

Here is a collection of his essays:

wdtd

A collection of Mr. Simons excellent essays on Tolkien and our craft.

And here is the first part:

http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/10/15/superversive-literary-movement-anniversary-essay/

Let me quote a teaser:

Life, Carbon, and the Tao – Part Two

by

Tom Simon

What’s so special about the Tao?

Here I am using the term Tao the way C. S. Lewis used it in The Abolition of Man: meaning the basic principles of morality on which all civilized peoples have generally agreed. Here are some of the perennials: Don’t murder your neighbour, don’t steal from your neighbour, don’t mess around with your neighbour’s wife, don’t perjure yourself. Men have differed on the definition of neighbour, and some  of the wide variation in human cultures is accounted for by that  difference. Some peoples apply the Tao only to members of one’s own  tribe, or one’s own nation. Some try to apply it to every human being  without exception. And of course there are differences of detail, such  as whether a man should marry one wife or four. But every culture that  survives is based on the Tao, just as every life form is based on  carbon; and the reasons, at bottom, are similar.

What the Tao does is to establish a minimum basis for safe dealings  between human beings. If, every time you went into Starbucks, you had to  seriously question whether the barrista would sell you a cup of coffee  or shoot you on sight, I fancy that Starbucks, as a business, would not  have lasted long. Fortunately, both you and the barrista subscribe to  the Tao. Even if you don’t understand the reasons for the rules, you  obey the rules, at least most of the time, because that is the only  way that you can get along and do business together. Even to live  together in a community requires the Tao. My neighbours lock their  doors when they go out, it is true. But if I did not accept the Tao,  locks would do them no good; I would smash the doors with an axe and  help myself to their belongings. And if they did not accept the Tao,  they would have no grounds to complain. No human being can live as a  solo army, at war with the whole world. We are born weak and helpless,  and most of us are weak and helpless again before we die; and we all  have to sleep in between. The Tao literally keeps us alive when we  cannot defend ourselves.

The basis of the Tao, in one word, is reciprocity. “Do unto others  as you would have them do unto you.” Or if that is too strong for you,  take the formula of Confucius: “Never do to others what you would not  like them to do to you.” Over tens of thousands of years, in the  laboratory of daily life, in tribes and villages, cities and nations, we  have boiled down the art of reciprocity; we have codified the things  that none of us (when sane and healthy) wish done to us, and we agree  not to do them to others. In almost every culture, this code is  reinforced by the prevailing religion; but it is quite possible to  accept the Tao without any religion at all. It is the common moral  currency of humanity, and with the caveat noted above, it passes  everywhere. Societies that reject the  Tao  do not hang together; and  individuals who reject the  Tao  soon find themselves without any society.

When I turn from real life to fiction, I find a curious difference. In  the stories of the past — in nearly all fiction before, say, the late  nineteenth century, and all  popular  fiction until a much later date —  the  Tao  is taken for granted; only there is a class of people who do  not observe the  Tao.  These people are called  criminals,  or   outlaws,  or  villains.  In the older kind of fiction, the villain  upsets the  Tao  to take advantage of a weaker party, and the hero  restores the  Tao  by avenging the victim.

Consider the  Odyssey.  Odysseus was a sharp operator, maybe, but still  a hero; he restored the  Tao.  Old Polyphemus, the Cyclops, violated the   Tao  in a pretty straightforward way: he ate his house guests. The  Greeks set great store by the laws of  xenia,  or hospitality; and even  we degenerate moderns, when our friends invite us to dinner, do not  expect to  be  the dinner. Later, he restored the  Tao  in the matter of  adultery, dealing with his wife’s suitors in a brusque but exemplary  manner. (No, he could not have called the police. Odysseus was the King  of Ithaca; he  was  the police.)

It is only we moderns, for the most part, who try to write fiction  without the  Tao.

 

Read the rest:

http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/10/27/superversive-blog-life-carbon-and-the-tao-part-two/

 

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If I have my own Meme, Am I famous?

Posted October 27, 2015 By John C Wright

Someone brought this to my wife’s attention on Facebook.

It is embarrassing that I was reading this quote, and was struck by how august and wise it was, until I looked down and saw who wrote it.  Read the remainder of this entry »

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Quote of the Day

Posted October 26, 2015 By John C Wright

This is the quote of the day, if not of the decade. It is something I have thought for years, if not decades, but I never found the words to bring my misgivings into focus.

“Pragmatism in politics is like cocaine. A little bit goes a long ways. You not only win, but you feel like an all-conquering tiger. But gradually, you start needing more and more to achieve the same affect, until finally, you overdose and your heart stops.”

This gem is from the Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors, our own Vox Day.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-impracticality-of-pragmatism.html

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Impersonal Appearance

Posted October 23, 2015 By John C Wright

I have been asked to answer questions about SOMEWHITHER on the Catholic Geek podcast this Sunday, October 25th, which is the feast day of Sts. Crispin & Crispinian, patrons of shoemaker and cobblers.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/webuiltthatnetwork/2015/10/25/the-catholic-geek-john-c-wright-discusses-somewhither

Call in! (914) 338-1458

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My Elves are Different; Or, Erlkoenig and Appendix N

Posted October 23, 2015 By John C Wright

My Elves are Different.

When calculating how to portray the elves in my current writing project (tentatively titled Moths and Cobwebs) I was thinking about Erlkoenig and Appendix N, and (of course!) about GK Chesterton. There is a connected train of thought here, but it meanders through some ox-bows and digressions, so I hope the patient reader enjoys the scenic route of thought.

First, Erlkoenig. I had noticed for some time that there was many a younger reader whose mental picture of the elves (those inhabitants of the Perilous Realm, the Otherworld, whose ways are not our ways) was formed entirely by JRR Tolkien and his imitators. Tolkien elves are basically prelapsarian men: like us in stature and passions, but nobler, older, and not suffering our post-Edenic divorce from the natural world. This is not alien to the older themes and material on which Tolkien drew, but there is alongside this an older and darker version.

This darker version is one which Tolkien did not draw upon, except, perhaps, in the scene in THE HOBBIT when the starving dwarves come upon the elves of Mirkwood feasting. When they step forward, the campfirelight vanishes, the elves disappear, and the dwarves are throw into an enchanted sleep. That is the kind of trick Puck might play on mortal fools.

But there is mischief worse than these, kidnapping and killings and cradle-robbing, which the older tales retell. Again, Boromir and Eomer mention tales of the Lady of the Golden Wood which captures that sense of elves as something fair and perilous, but their misgivings, in Tolkein’s world, are merely wrong.

Here, for example, is a song about Erlkoenig, the elfinking, who is attracted to a boy child much as Oberon in Shakespeare wishes the Indian child to be his. There are several recordings of this on YouTube, but in this one the master singer captures an expression that I hope not to see in my nightmares.

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