For Us, the Lusting
Posted on 16 April 2010
From time to time one comes across a work of fiction meriting almost perfect scorn, indignation, and hate. Heinlein’s FOR US, THE LIVING is such a book. This is a review of the first hundred pages or so, since I lack the fortitude to continue past that point.
Published posthumously, this was Heinlein’s first attempt at a manuscript, and one which he wisely never a second time attempted to sell, breaking one of his own rules about selling everything he wrote. It is not a novel properly so called, and not meant to be read as one: it is a series of lectures or ideas about a libertarian utopia, written in the same style as the utopian speculations of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and HG Wells’ A Modern Utopia and Aldous Huxley’s Island. Like his later books Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land, the plot is basically an excuse for the lectures.
The plot, such as it is, provokes no complaint from me. A man not named Robert Heinlein is thrown into the future, rescued by a Houri or Nymph of surpassing beauty and intelligence, who also happens to be a nudist, unattached, willing to bed him, and eager to feed, nurture, and act as a tourguidess for future America.
The characters are unexceptional, and draw with Heinlein’s practiced economy of style: which apparently he had mastered even at his first attempt at story telling. The reader will quickly be charmed by the characters, including the cat.
The man is something like a Jules Verne character, basically someone meant to gawp at the scientific wonders before his eyes and ours, but if the Nautilus, the Albatross, or the Terror were crewed by delectably naked sex-bunnies rather than by Nemo or Robur the Conqueror.
For a Heinlein fan, there is some delight to be had seeing elements from his later books in their earliest incarnations, including the rolling roads from his future history short stories, the “social credit” economic theories of C.H. Douglas which appear in Beyond This Horizon, the nudism and social relativism predominant in Glory Road or in Time Enough For Love. The “covenant” from Coventry makes an appearance, as well as one of the main-character cats Heinlein depicts so lovingly in several books. There is a variation on the idea in Starship Troopers, where suffrage was limited to veterans. In the utopia of US, only soldiers can vote on whether to go to war, except in cases of invasion. Nehemiah Scudder from If This Goes On makes an appearance in much the same role, as the leader of a Ku-Klux-Klan type terror movement by Christian Jihadists attempting to impose Sharia law, and outlaw card playing, nightclubs, and dance halls. Nehemiah was defeated, and was probably sexually impotent.
The retroactively alternate future history from 1939 is actually eye-opening. We tend to forget what the future looked like from before World War Two. Heinlein very reasonably (but, as it turned out, inaccurately) predicted we would never enter that war. Europe would defeat the Axis powers, and erect a stronger version of the League of Nations, this time with a Monarch: Edward VIII (who had abdicated only three years previously to marry a Wallis Simpson—a touch of toughminded individualism Heinlein surely admired) would be crowned as King of the United Europe. America would later enact an embargo on Europe, which would descend rapidly into barbarism. Roosevelt would die in a plane crash, and President La Guardia would lead the nation into an early of peace and prosperity based on libertarian individualism, Keynesian economic currency inflation, and the de facto abolition of the nuclear family. The reader is treated to a number of lectures meant to make this snake oil sound like it is good for what ails the body politic.
The lectures as such are perfectly entertaining pieces of rhetoric. The Meno-type character (the man not named Robert) asks all the right and stupid questions, and the various Socrates-like or Virgil-in-Inferno-like characters give the set answers in tones of warm condescension mingled with surprise, just to let the reader know that any disagreement with the ideas buttered up and slid into the reader’s gawping mouth is not merely ignorant and bigoted, but, worse, it is uncool.
I suppose someone blissfully ignorant of the science of economics or the study of Constitutional law, would not be offended by the idea that the United States government in the future will free us from the sinister threat of fractional reserve banking—which (the author dismissively informs us) is merely an anarchy run for the sake of bankers, and unconstitutional! Yes, you heard it here first, folks, the evil Jewish conspiracy of Banking Trusts are violating the US Constitution whenever they loan money at usury, as this required them not to keep one hundred percent of their assets in reserve, and ergo allows them to “create new money out of an inkwell.” Hoo-haw! Someone get on the phone to William and Mary Law School. I think I missed that point when it was covered in Con Law class.
However, the Federal Reserve Board is abolished in the future (which I would not mind) and the National Bank is erected in its place (no doubt atop the unquiet grave of President Jackson) which prevents Depressions and Recessions by the dumber-than-Keynesian expedient of inflating the currency. (Yes, the same act of “creating new money out of an inkwell” that was so reprehensible when private banks did it.) Here in la-la-land, when the strawman character asks why inflation does not, you know, devalue the currency, he is brushed off by a jovial but condescending remark: “Why, you don’t think you can run the country with the same amount of money in circulation that it had in George Washington’s day!” The confusion between money as a store of value and currency as a type of legal note indicating a debt is beyond the power of this book report to explain. I will merely sneer that a first year Econ 101 student who made the mistake Heinlein made would not pass his class.
There is other Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are caused by under-consumption.
Someone utterly and completely unaware of any fact of the human condition, including the basics of human psychology, biology, anthropology, economics, ethics, politics and history—let us say a Man from Mars, or, better yet, your average High School intellectual who fancies himself worldlywise— would find these lectures amusing and unexceptional, and be convinced of their solid wisdom without ever once reflecting on them. So, from that point of view, the craftsmanship is flawless.
Here, indeed, is the core and wellspring of my loathing for this book, and it is a loathing I share (albeit felt less deeply) with all utopian literature: all that is required for utopia is that human nature be different than it is, and that we dwell in a world with no scarcity of resources, no law of cause and effect, and so on.
The croquemitaine of Nehemiah Scudder is offensive in this book. The book was written in 1939, the same year Gone With the Wind and Wizard of Oz came out as colored motion pictures, which will give you an idea of for how long pseudo-intellectuals have been, or have pretended to be, afraid of the looming threat of the coming Christian Theocracy.
I say again, that this was written in 1939, the same year Jorge Luis Borges wrote his short story Tlön, Uqbar and Orbis Tertius, which contains a subtle but biting condemnation of the fascism oversweeping the world at that time. Heinlein chose not to waste many words on the threat of fascism, because the threat of looming Christian Theocracy by obviously sexual impotent dictators occupied a greater segment of his auctorial imagination.
The other ghastly absurdity in the book is the perfect sexual libertarianism practiced, because the nymphs and satyrs of the future have no need of any marriage custom. The state will raise any children the parents are not interested in raising, or the child can stay with one parent or both or neither or all of them, depending on how many parents are in the group marriage. All sexual liaisons are matter of temporary convenience, as one’s libido directs.
When the main character and the nymph fall in love in chapter three, they are “married” merely by the nonbinding exchange of a mutual decision to do so, and this decision contains no consequences whatsoever. Mention is made of several half-siblings of the nymph (her father has at least three paramours), none of which were raised in a home, and one of which was explicitly fathered on a woman merely as in exercise in eugenic breeding.
When the nymph wants to invite one of her old lovers or ex-husbands (there is no distinction) up for a weekend, she tells the main character that it is simply none of his business. The writer expects us to be on the side of the nymph, and to dismiss the man’s desire for non-casual sex, love, romance, and family life as something between an offense against good taste and a psychotic aberration. When he later repels the advances of a rival for her sexual favors, the man is sent to a re-education session, because in the future sane thinking about love is insanity.
It was at that point that my patience was exhausted with this dreary nonsense. I suppose a young boy, or a sexually depraved man raised with modern notions of right and wrong, sees nothing wrong with being so intimately in love with a woman that one is willing to worship her with your body and endow her with all your worldly goods, and yet at the same time to be so respectful of her privacy that she cannot share with you the list of those other people or creatures with whom she is likewise sharing herself.
It was embarrassing. It was like reading the earnest sexual fantasy of a teenaged boy, where he tries to come up with some half-backed excuse to justify his sexual perversion. You can read similar lectures in the pages of John Norman’s Gor books, except in that case the perversion is sadomasochism rather than mere satyriasis.
The nymph girl, whom I am sure Heinlein meant to be a member of the human race, says she is willing to wed the man not named Robert in a church ceremony, but asks him not to, on the ground that a church wedding would make her feel greasy and unclean.
The book is actually not bad, provided you do not share my particular hatred of the enemies of life, romance, civilization and sanity, you might find it perfectly enjoyable. The overall tone of the book is set by Spider Robinson, who pens the introduction, and like the book itself it is well written and witty, and then has a spasm of Bush Derangement Syndrome or Christian-Bashing, and then returns to sounding normal and witty again. Likewise, in the middle of an otherwise witty and entertaining conversation about something else, Heinlein circa 1939 will suddenly curse women who don’t cozy up to whores and madames, on the grounds that it is hypocrisy for decent non-whore women to disapprove of “sisters who got a better deal for their wares than they did.” The clinging misogyny of that comment is only outpaced by its naive misanthropy.
Whenever Heinlein runs across anything normal, proportional, wise, or decent in the relation between the sexes, he flinches back and sneers at it. I am reminded of Gollum flinching back at elfin food. “Dust and ashes, preciousss! We cants eat that!”
If you think having a conversation interrupted by occasional eruptions of ranting evil does not mar your enjoyment of a work, then by all means, you might like this book. Or, at least, the first hundred pages or so. I make no comment and have no opinion about the balance of the work: life is too fleeting.
False-flag operations. (Even I can see a way around that restriction.)
I read the whole thing several years ago, and I can inform you that it does not change or improve as it goes along.
Brave soul. We salute your persistance.
Heinlein on mores
I got through probably the same amount of the book as you. It’s unreadable because it assumes that a truly impossible mindset (free love without any jealousy) is not only attainable, but desirable. It killed the book for me.
That’s part of why Heinlein is so frustrating to me. I love his juveniles, I loved Starship Troopers (good philosophical discussions, even if you disagree with some points) but man, when it comes to sex, he was all about the nudism and person-sharing. I managed to finish The Number of the Beast, but an otherwise interesting book devolved into a calculated attempt to convince the reader that it would be healthier to have no sexual limits. I always wondered what his wife thought of those books, and I am grateful that John W. Campbell forced him to write “clean” books and stories for his magazines.
Re: Heinlein on mores
I managed to finish The Number of the Beast, but an otherwise interesting book devolved into a calculated attempt to convince the reader that it would be healthier to have no sexual limits.
… and what’s worse, what began as a polyamory-love subplot in a book about interdimensional conspiracies and travel across all sorts of cool universes metastasized into the main point of the novel. And it was done so very unconvincingly — I could not even slightly believe that all four of the people in the Gay Deceiever yearned for each other, and absent such strong sentiment, that they would be at all likely to form a line marriage or its nearest equivalent.
I think that Heinlein was so much in love with the idea of polyamorous marriage that he missed that a polyamorous love has to be as plausible as any other kind, and that a romance plot in which the characters simply don’t seem all that romantically into each other is going to fall as flat if it’s polyamorous love as if it’s monogamous. For that matter, it’ll fall flatter, because the writer is writing against audience expectations.
Re: Heinlein on mores
In all fairness, I would not give Heinlein props for portraying any actual human relationship with any real insight, compelling conviction or evocative emotion.
I have not read an exhaustive amount of Heinlein’s corpus but the irony is that of what I have read, you can pick up any competently-written modern paranormal romance and find a story with a better appreciation of the subtleties of human character and human interaction.
Truth told, I will go so far as to commit potentially a tremendous blasphemy and say that Clarke and Asimov are guilty of the same sin as well. The very thing that made them the giants of SF was the thing the “serious” critics used as their excuse for dismissing them: they, and many of their fans, simply were not as interested in people as in ideas, and tended to be interested in characters as mostly vehicles for their ideas. I do not believe this necessarily disqualifies a work from being great or even valid art, but it is a thinness I prefer not to see these days.
I had not heard that RAH and his wife Ginny were miserable, so perhaps Heinlein exorcised his darker fantasies through his writing.
Re: Heinlein on mores
“In all fairness, I would not give Heinlein props for portraying any actual human relationship with any real insight, compelling conviction or evocative emotion.”
I am not sure I’d agree. There is honest father-son love between, for example, Thorby and Baslim in CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY. Sometimes Heinlein can bring a tear to my eye with his sentiment. But his romances are about as convincing as those of, as I said above, John Norman.
Re: Heinlein on mores
You’re right, actually; now that I come to think of it, the only relationship in STARSHIP TROOPERS that resonates with real humanity is also a paternal one: Johnny Rico and his father.
Perhaps it was simply that Heinlein just had no interest in writing about “ordinary” romantic courtship and marriage: too mundane a subject, perhaps, or one he honestly believed was of no interest to his writers, or unsellable in the field he was helping to build. Or perhaps the only way he felt he could make it convincing would be to draw on his personal life with Ginny in a way she or he was not comfortable with. (I have heard more than one story about professional comedians destroying their relationships because they mined them for stage material, and the significant others realizing too late they couldn’t deal with it after all.)
Re: Heinlein on believable personal relationships
“The Man Who Traveled in Elephants”; “Gulf”; Podkayne of Mars; Star Beast; Have Spacesuit — Will Travel; “Poor Daddy”; The Rolling Stones; Farmer in the Sky; “It’s Great to be Back!”; Job; “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag”; Tunnel in the Sky; “Space Jockey”; and, possibly my favorite love triangle of all, Double Star.
No, not a normal monogamously romantic or familial relationship in the bunch.
I’ll ignore all the stories which reveal Heinlein’s total ineptitude in depicting male friendships.
JJB
Argh — correction
“…was of no interest to his writers”
By this I meant to say his editors, or possibly his publishers. Gah. Brain-vworp.
Re: Heinlein on mores
I have been told that Asimov behaved at conventions as a mix of dirty old man and entitled rock star satyr, so I have a suspicion that his disfunctionality with respect to ordinary relationships had something to do with his whole personality and attitude. As a matter of fact, I suspect that is the reason why I could never get into his writing very eagerly; he depicts personality better in his robots than in any human.
Re: Heinlein on mores
Asimov behaved at conventions as a mix of dirty old man
I don’t know about that, but if that is the case, its not reflected in his writing.
Re: Heinlein on mores
http://fpb.livejournal.com/460186.html?thread=3776154#t3776154
You could read the whole article and debate afterwards, but the Asimov reference is in these comments. And I did not say that Asimov’s writing showed lechery; I said that it showed insufficient interest in human – as opposed to robot – personality. There is a reason why his I, Robot stories are by far the best known of his canon.
Re: Heinlein on mores
Occasionally it is – see the last third of The Gods Themselves, which has strikingly similar mores to Heinlein’s ‘adult’ novels.
Re: Heinlein on mores
Interestingly, now we have the opposite problem: Much new sci-fi and fantasy is only interested in people, not in ideas. And only interested in the basest, most common, most mundane qualities and urges of people. (I refer to the boom in “urban fantasy” and “paranormal romance” of late).
I wonder if this is, in part, a pendulum-swing away from the hard sci fi and large amounts of epic-fantasy written in the previous decades.
Re: Heinlein on mores
Having actually read and enjoyed a few paranormal romances and a bit of urban fantasy, I won’t go so far as to agree most such stories are only interested in people rather than ideas — there are usually at least a few interesting speculations to be found in most — but I agree that it does represent a distinct emphasis shift.
I would object to the characterization of this genre as “the basest, most common and most mundane qualities and urges”, however, on a number of levels:
1) There is a valid criticism to be made that the use of explicit sexuality in such stories is ultimately serving pornographic rather than artistic purposes, certainly at least from the publishers’ point of view. But I’m not comfortable with characterizing every author and story that way sight unseen — I’ve always believed there is a place for explicit eroticism in art, and the para-rom genre is actually surprisingly consistent in celebrating commitment, exclusivity and fidelity as the best context for sex. (Certainly much more so than Heinlein.)
2) Ultimately, the stories are about finding love and fulfillment in both relationships and life; those things may be very “common and mundane” in that virtually everyone worries about finding them and holding on to them, but that doesn’t make them dull or uninteresting. (They can be examined in a dull or uninteresting way by bad writers, but that’s another criticism entirely.)
I do agree there’s been something of a pendulum-shift away from the idea-driven hard SF or the plot-driven epic fantasy in recent years, but I’m not altogether sure this is a bad thing. God knows that stories like Peter Watts’ BLINDSIGHT or the DARK MATERIALS trilogy by Pullman would have been immensely improved by an authorial mindset that was actually capable of understanding ordinary people, and finding them interesting for their own sake.
Going off on a tangent
My problem with the boom in paranormal romances is twofold:
(1) the “romance” part. I am still burned over a novel I read which I thought (going by blurb, etc.) was going to be a haunted-house story but which instead turned out to be a ghost-hunter version of a Mills and Boon romance; when the heroine and the hero were swooning over each other, I was all “Yeah, yeah, tell me about the ghosts!” I really don’t care about the travails of a modern liberated urban woman’s love-life, even if said modern liberated urban woman is a witch, vampire, werewolf, psychic, or some combination thereor.
(2) the treatment of the unearthly elements. I’m sufficiently old-fashioned enough to adhere to the Professor Abraham van Helsing School of Vampire Diplomacy (“Ashwood stake through the heart, garlic cloves in the mouth, decapitation. And if you can burn the body and scatter the ashes over flowing water, all the better. Then you get *really* tough”) rather than what Terry Pratchett, in “Carpe Jugulum”, satirises as the vampires-in-brocade-waistcoats school of fiction (okay, read all Anne Rice’s stuff and loved it, but the imitations drove me nuts, and don’t talk to me about emo sparkly vampires).
What burns my toast is how creatures supposedly hundreds of years old, if not more, and non-American in origin have all the correct attitudes of the late twentieth century (except for the really evil ones, and that’s how you can tell they’re the baddies) and are steeped in the minutiae of Americana (I’m looking at you, Mercedes Lackey, and your stock-car racing elves), and how there is no element of the Otherworld about them (no, I don’t count ‘look like fashion models, go like bunnies’ to be Otherworldly attributes).
All of which boils down to that I like neither the romance nor the urban part of Urban Paranormal Romance, I suppose
Re: Going off on a tangent
Hear Hear!
I’m a horror fan and was extremely disappointed when I accidentally bought some sort of vampire romantica book for a train trip. And now my nearby bookstore has a whole self dedicated to the sexy immortals and their witch/vampire slayer/psychic girlfriends. Boring! I want my monsters evil and supernatural awe-inspiring and threatening.
That’s why I rather liked Guillermo del Toro’s “The Strain” which is a story in the Stephen King and Matheson vein. Refreshingly unromantic vampires.
Exactly! You are not a potential spouse, you are dinner
Guillermo del Toro, hmmm? He’s generally reliable so I’ll happily check this one out
Re: Heinlein on mores
“…I won’t go so far as to agree most such stories are only interested in people rather than ideas — there are usually at least a few interesting speculations to be found in most”
I defer to your greater experience, since I’ve only read a couple
But I have to say, what I’ve found is that the ideas mainly boil down to “They say witches are evil – BUT THEY’RE NOT! They say vampires are evil – BUT THEY’RE NOT! They say werewolves are evil – BUT THEY’RE NOT
Re: Heinlein on mores
They’re SEXY!
Re: Heinlein on mores
Well, they’re glittery at least.
Re: Heinlein on mores
“…I won’t go so far as to agree most such stories are only interested in people rather than ideas — there are usually at least a few interesting speculations to be found in most”
I defer to your greater experience, since I’ve only read a couple
But I have to say, what I’ve found is that the ideas mainly boil down to “They say witches are evil – BUT THEY’RE NOT! They say vampires are evil – BUT THEY’RE NOT! They say werewolves are evil – BUT THEY’RE NOT!” and so on. The “they” being tradition, folk lore, and by extension, the hierarchical, misogynistic, repressive, religious and conservative society of the past and whatever elements of it hang on in the present.
Generally every pantheon is absolutely wonderful and its rituals, magic and rites work – except for Christianity. Modern vampires scoff at crucifixes (if the authoress even knows the difference between a crucifix and a cross) but are repelled by throwing beans or the like. All witches are Wiccans and ever have been, and the Church burned millions of innocent herbgatherers, and so forth.
I’m thinking of attitudes such as a newly-released Hidden Object casual game called “Love and Death: Bitten” which is set in a generic Small Olde-Worlde Village which can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s 16th or 18th century, and the spunky heroine is (but naturally!) an orphan oppressed by her stuffy, stick-in-the-mud uncle who’s the mayor and who expects her to cook and clean and not run around the village after sunset while the forest demons are prowling and killing villagers. Naturally our heroine (but of course!) decides to head out into the forest to track down the vampire. This is supposed to stir our admiration, but I’m thinking “Too stupid to live. Doesn’t even have a penknife on her so far as I can tell. People have been killed and the Brooding Vampire Hero has been sent by the Vampire Queen to pick up a bite to eat – meaning a tasty idiot such as yourself – and you think you’re been unfairly treated by your uncle because he tells you to stay indoors until dawn instead of running off by yourself into the depths of the forest where the vampires hang out?”
Re: Heinlein on mores
It’s part of the autumn of the modern ages. Cool bourgeois reflection gives way to hot committed activism. The logic of the word gives way to the imagery of the picture.
Re: Heinlein on mores
IIRC, Virginia and Robert Heinlein were both into nudism and spouse-swapping even already in the 50s.
Sorry to hear that
In theory or in practice about the spouse-swapping?
I know William Blake was an advocate of naturism and free love back in his time (I remember reading some anecdote about a visitor finding himself and his wife unclothed in the back garden) but that despite all his writings in praise of free love, he was resolutely faithful to his wife all their lives.
And just off on a tangent again, why is it generally male writers who have this desire for a harem? I can’t think of any comparable female ones who write about far- (or near-) futures where women have three or more men on the go.
Doubtless someone will now inform me of exactly which stories/novels/authors I’ve missed with precisely that plot
Re: Sorry to hear that
“And just off on a tangent again, why is it generally male writers who have this desire for a harem?”
Because males are different from females.
Blame original sin or blame Darwinian evolution, but the fact is that many or most men have an urge to father many children on many paramours, and many or most women have an urge to find a strong provider. Even these somewhat unhealthy and sinful urges in the modern day are further decayed and destroyed by contraception and abortion: many or most men now want sex with many women without the children. Women want to act like men. Absent either Christian teaching or pagan Stoicism, such based desires will be egged on by intellectuals, entertainers, Madison Avenue, academicians, and the like.
Heinlein falls into the category of a reforming intellectual. He saw the decay of the Church and thought that decay was the source of everything good and noble in the world, and therefore sought his damnest to hurry it along, adding his scornful laughter to the multitudes gathered at the coliseum to see civilized mores and moral fed to the lions.
I don’t understand that
The literary examples seem to all work out swimmingly, which makes me go “Yes, but what about the actual mechanics of making it work? Jealousy? Division of labour? A rota for who gets to sleep with whom when – it may sound great in theory to have five buxom women waiting your favours, but in practice I’m sure even men get a headache now and again. Minding the kids? If there are going to be kids? Money to provide for everyone?”
It’s a great fantasy, but it blithely ignores the facts of human nature with handwaving over how Science or Progress will get us past such problems.
Re: I don’t understand that
I fully acknowledge that my baser instincts would love to have a harem of women at my beck and call.
But…
Being with one woman is complex enough. More than one? They’d just be sex objects. Now, my baser instincts are asking, ‘So what?’ Well, if they want to be something besides sex objects, I’m going to have a disappointed harem. Not good. If they just want to be sex objects, well…why stay in my harem and not someone else’s? Then I’ve got to keep them captive, hire eunuch guards…suddenly, this isn’t having a stable of lovebunnies at hand, it’s work. And with them passing the dagger around, waiting to see who I choose that night…
(Also, an amusing little shot at deflating our sex worship: an image of some over-sexualized celebrity, male or fame, with the caption “Somewhere, someone is tired of putting up with her (or his) s***.”
Re: I don’t understand that
You just need some Tough Love — which alas is in existence in some places.
Re: I don’t understand that
It’s not easy, it’s damned hard work. As one member of a Heinlein line marriage that has lasted more than a decade, I can confirm that.
Re: I don’t understand that
The reason why polyamory is impractical is very simple.
In any relationship between two people, there is a finite nonzero chance per annum of something going badly wrong, resulting in a breakup.
A polyamorous arrangement involves more than two people. The number of relationships involved is the combinatorial of the number of people. If any one of the relationships breaks down, the whole arrangement is put under stress and others may break down. And the chance of at least one of the relationships breaking down each year is greater than of a single monogamous relationship breaking down.
Polyamorous relationships are therefore less stable than monogamous ones.
Re: Sorry to hear that
I think Lauren K Hamilton (Anita the Vampire Hunter, etc) comes close, especially in her Fairie books.
Which is why I can’t read them any more
It just got to the point of being ludicrous. I think it was probably at the part where the werewolves indulged in crotch-sniffing to see if Anita had been doing the nasty with the wereleopard she had shared a bed with that made me go “Okay, that’s it.”
Seriously, it was beyond my abilities to suspend disbelief at that point, plus I wanted to read fantasy not erotica (when I want to read erotica, I’ll make that choice). The one Meredith Gently novel I read had me rolling my eyes so hard they were in danger of popping out of the sockets.
And it wasn’t even good erotica at that
Re: Which is why I can’t read them any more
Great literature it wasn’t, but it was fun at first. I passed around my copies to all and sundry at my office during the slow periods, and we called it “As The Vampire Turns”. I knew she was preparing to jump Ye Olde Shark before her fourth book came out, when during an interview she spent some time talking about how people were too caught up in prudery about having sex and thought of it as something still scandalous.
I thought, “But if you’re using it to titillate your readers. If it was really old hat, you’d be out of a job, lady.”
I liked the early ones
When Anita, though super-powered, was still struggling with moral and ethical decisions about the uses and abuses of her powers; she had actual human friends who were characters in their own right and not just background, and there were plots beyond “Anita proves once again how totally awesome she is.”
That’s why I was so disappointed when the later books were nothing but “Hmm, who can we have her bonk today?”. The Meredith Gently one just annoyed the heck out of me but at least it laid its cards on the table from the start, so I knew not to bother with the series.
Re: Which is why I can’t read them any more
I haven’t read any of them, but I have read this:
http://www.the-isb.com/?cat=91
Which makes me suspect you’re right.
Re: Which is why I can’t read them any more
the werewolves indulged in crotch-sniffing to see if Anita had been doing the nasty with the wereleopard she had shared a bed with
*runs screaming*
Pretty much my reaction
The Merry Gently books were even worse, if you can believe it!
Re: Heinlein on mores
Before that, RAH & Leslyn.
Either told to me by Bill Patterson from his biography or by Cal Laning’s grandson, Laning called RAH to tell him that Laning had met a girl and was considering proposing. Would Bob be so good as to come over for the weekend to render his judgment.
The three spend the weekend together, then Leslyn marries Robert instead of Caleb.
Many years later, as Heinlein’s fame grew, he asked Laning to destroy all copies of their correspondence. [Personal communication, Laning's grandson.]
JJB
Re: Heinlein on mores
Very timely, I discovered on Scalzi’s page that Bill Patterson’s RAH biography, volume one, is due in August:
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Heinlein-Dialogue-1907-1949-Learning/dp/0765319608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271735939&sr=1-1JJB
Re: Heinlein on mores
Sorry, that was Heinlein and his second wife, Leslyn. Back in the day, when he was part of the LA authors scene, pre WWII Ginny was a bit more conservative.
Just a unrelated note to say that I just picked up The World of Null-A, Null-A Continuum, and Breach the Hull. And having a sip of Pappy Van Winkle right now.
Life could be worse.
Thank you
You just made my day. Another satisfied customer.
Re: Thank you
You were right. I have been re-reading World of Null-A this week, and absolutely agree that Patrick McGoohan would have made a perfect Gilbert Gosseyn. I missed it the first time around, due to never seeing “The Prisoner” (thanks for the recommendation, btw). I have since seen it, and good old Patrick kept popping in my head as I read.
“World of Null-A” gets better at the second reading
I think partially because I sped through it the last time, eager to get to “Null-A Continuum” (which was awesome, btw…if I ever get the chance to go to one of your signings, this will be the one). I plan on reading the set again, yours included. I am still tempted to check out Null-A Three….but, I dunno…
Re: Thank you
I was really, REALLY disappointed with NULL-A THREE, and I tell you I have read every word A.E. van Vogt ever wrote, except for his magazine confessionals and his textbook on hypnosis and one chapter in a shared world anthology.
I would hate to be responsible for warning you away from a book you might like, even if I did not, but I will say that it is more worth your reading time and bookbuying dollar to pick up a copy of SLAN or WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER or THE SELKIE or THE BOOK OF PTATH or THE UNIVERSE MAKER or THE MASTERS OF TIME or an anthology of his short stories.
I actually think that a Christian-fundamentalist religious dictatorship (such as Nehemiah Scudder’s) was and is possible in a future United States of America, but I think it’s far less probable than religious dictatorships of other faiths in other countries. To be fair to Heinlein, in 1939 it seemed a lot more plausible that Christianity would develop a dangerous religious dictatorship than would Islam, because Islam was in a time of global weakness.
What’s the saying? ‘Fascism is always descending on America, but lands on Europe. Theocracy is always descending on America, but lands on the Middle East.’
Yes, but what was the last actual American theocratic movement?
Prohibition, as near as you’ve gotten to a theocratic rule. And how long did that last? And how successful was it?
I’d be a lot more worried about Civil Religion along the lines of the Pledge of Allegiance. I know that some atheists agitate about removing the “under God” part of it, but I’d rather see someone agitating about why it’s said in schools at all.
Yeah, I’m a godless European weenie!
Re: Yes, but what was the last actual American theocratic movement?
As Chesterton observed, America is the only country that is not a nation. (It’s not, actually. There are others.) The mythoi of Europe was the nation-state. What makes you German? You are ethnically German. What makes you French? You are of French blood. Macedonia for the Macedonians. Such countries neither need a pledge nor would make much sense of it. You are born German. You don’t have to promise to try real hard to be German. If you are born German outside the boundaries of the Germanies, well, that’s what made European history so boisterous. The 19th century has been defined as “The Slavs had no country of their own, and the Germans had too many.” So the Germans were always trying to unite Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Bohemia, etc. And the Czechs and Serbs were trying to break free.
But the US, Chesterton noted, was a country founded on a creed. In the US it did not matter if you were French or German, English or Irish, so long as you subscribed to the creed. A pledge of allegiance or a loyalty oath makes as much sense for such a country as the Nicene Creed does for traditional Christians. You do have to promise to support an idea in a way that you don’t have to promise to support your genome.
+ + +
Whatever else “one nation under God” might mean, one meaning is that the government is not the highest authority. It is not the ultimate authority of what is good, because it is “under” a higher good. Thus Martin Luther King could disobey the law and be not only good, but a great man. There is such a thing as an immoral law, and it is right to disobey it.
I understand the idea behind a pledge
Faced with a disparate immigrant population of varying religious, racial and ethnic varieties, trying to weld them all into one model of citizenship meant that inculcating loyalty to the flag and the country was the prime motivation.
I’m also sure that generations of American schoolchildren mumble their way through the pledge with no thought about what they’re saying.
But a civic religion means that worship of the State can be dangerous, as we’ve seen, where the President decides to pronounce sentence of death upon citizens in absentia and without trial, all in the name of State security.
I’m not against patriotism or teaching civic duty, just saying that being hyper-aware of the hideous danger lurking in permitting prayer in public schools should also be vigilant about the creation of a civic religion where a carefully non-sectarian God is invoked as protector and sanctifier of the nation, with its sacred icon of the flag, the national holiday of the Fourth of July and the pantheon of the divinized heroes
Re: I understand the idea behind a pledge
At least “sentence of death” on those who have forsworn their allegiance and have taken up arms against the United States. It is not in principle different than taking aim at any other leader of enemy forces. Imagine if an American citizen had become a member of the German General Staff in WW2. Would it have been wicked of FDR to bomb GHQ? Granted, we would be more assured if the president had been Colin Powell or Dwight Eisenhower or anyone with even some military experience; but we have an amateur who may feel he had to prove that he is Tough.
Of course it is also our pantheon of divinized [sic] heroes that serves as a check over the abuses. They always have Washington and Lincoln and Teddy and the like looking over their shoulders; the Congress to change hands when the people get disgusted; the Supreme Court to smack their wrists when they get too frisky. In extremis, the legislatures of the several States have the authority to call a Convention of the States. And there seems to be growing interest in the 9th and 10th Amendments. That, too, is part of the civic religion – a counterpoise to the Europeanization of the central government.
Re: Shooting citizens without trial
To quote Brendan Behan on this: “When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.”
Re: Shooting citizens without trial
Was he active in the Brotherhood?
Yep, member of the IRA during the 30s
Went on an unauthorised bombing campaign to Britain which ended up with him being arrested and, since he was so young, being sent to Borstal there. Eventually gave up the armed struggle for literature and drink:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Behan
Re: Yes, but what was the last actual American theocratic movement?
“I’d be a lot more worried about Civil Religion along the lines of the Pledge of Allegiance. I know that some atheists agitate about removing the “under God” part of it, but I’d rather see someone agitating about why it’s said in schools at all.”
I will explain it to you. America is not a nation, it is a covenant. Those who participate in the covenant have to swear, to make an oath, a vow, and promise of allegiance, or otherwise they are not Americans and American cannot survive.
In Europe, after the fall of the great multinational empires and the dismissal of the political philosophy that underpinned them, nationalism and a sense of the unity of common bloodlines was all that underpinned them. That nationalism can be dangerous: but the opposite vice, which is the vice of treating your mother land like a hotel, a place for the convenient citizen of the world to rest and raise a family, has its own dangers, of which the grotesquely supine submission to implacably hostile Islam is merely one.
That is why we salute the flag in America, and teach our children likewise. Without the imponderable and mystical bonds that a shared civic religion, or something like religion, that ties man to neighbor in a union, the only other options are (1) a mystic unity of blood, family, clan, race, language and culture, known as nationalism or (2) a mystical obedience to a common sovereign, known as monarchy or (3) an abolition of mysticism leading nowhere but to tyranny and disintegration of the state into implacably hostile racial, religious, and political factions, such as we see happening in Europe today.
Apple didn’t fall from the tree with Spider and Jean Robinson, did it? I read Starseed and Stardancer long ago, and they were basically ideological soapbox/lectures on the same things, thinly disguised as science fiction books.
Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
> Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are caused by under-consumption.
Ben Franklin’s lines about people without money wanting money cheap, and people with money wanting money dear, came to mind when I read Keynes. And later, when I read ‘For Us, the Living.’ Obviously a Depression is a period when people have less spending money. That’s why it’s called a slump, or Depression. Heinlein is having a little quiet fun with phrasing.
As to the economics not making sense to a rational outsider, and the insiders assuming their economy is the natural order of all things for all times and all people? Heinlein did that on purpose.
As to polyamory back when it was Free Love? You’re right. He screwed the proverbial pooch here. Best I can guess, maybe he met people who made it work, or grew up with an unhappy traditional marriage. Something skewed his judgement.
Re: Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
“As to the economics not making sense to a rational outsider, and the insiders assuming their economy is the natural order of all things for all times and all people? Heinlein did that on purpose.”
Oh, I agree. That was part of the writer’s art and Heinlein does it as well or better than anyone I’ve ever read — The Lilliputians think Gulliver is a giant; the Brobdingnagians think him a dwarf; the Houyhnhnm think him a yahoo.
My problem is that Heinlein was trying to sell the idea of funding public welfare via inflation, not just to portray it as the oddities of an economically illiterate trank-head in the far future, who does not understand why there is a depression and stagnation and inflation going on all at once, because the theory does not allow for it.
Re: Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
It is perhaps worth pointing out that the real-life welfare state set-ups that worked longest were set up by governments that were fiercely, in the German case fanatically, opposed to inflation. The Attlee government, and the Macmillan government that followed, kept the country on wartime rations for nine years after teh end of the war rather than risk inflation; and the former West Germany was famous across the world for the tightness of its monetary policy, which meant that year after year the Deutschemark rose against other currencies. However one approaches state expenditure, it must be built on a foundation of sound money.
welfare states that worked longest
-the welfare states that worked longest were fanatically opposed to inflation.
I thought Labor keeping England on wartime rations nine years was a nice, social-Democrat version of any socialist party monopolizing the means of production and putting the rest of society in a state of seige. Lenin’s forced famines may have had monetary side-effects, but that wasn’t their main point.
Re: Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
” However one approaches state expenditure, it must be built on a foundation of sound money.”
If my friend fpb who NEVER agrees with me on any topic relating to political economics, agrees with me on this, you can tell that Heinlein’s proposal to fund national welfare stipend for each and every citizen for life by means of currency inflation has got to be a bad idea.
fpb and I stand on opposite ends of the world. The only way Heinlein could find a point of view that moves away both from his and mine together is to drop off the edge of the world and fall into the abyss.
Gold is money. Paper is a promise of money. Any government that gives into the temptation to forget that fact runs the risk of Wiemar-Republic-style hyperinflation.
Re: Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
He screwed the proverbial pooch here.
Given the context, I find this comment very amusing; I’m guessing that is probably one of the few things Heinlein’s characters wouldn’t have screwed.
Re: Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
Bestiality is quite all right in either Number of the Beast or Job. Can’t remember which; maybe it’s both.
That, and the promotion of incest, was what caused me to stop with Heinlein after reading over 30 of his books. I’ve only recently returned to a few of his pieces that I’d enjoyed in the past.
“In the utopia of US, only soldiers can vote on whether to go to war, except in cases of invasion.”
Are you sure? It’s been a while since I read the book, but IIRC, it was more the other way around. Non-soldiers vote, but then those who voted for war are the first to be conscripted, followed by those who didn’t vote, followed by those who voted against going to war.
Correction
No, you are right. As in STARSHIP TROOPERS, soldiers in uniform have no vote, but the draftees in the first pool, the men who are going to go fight the war, vote on whether or not, basically, to draft themselves.
When I said “only soldiers” I meant the militia, the young men of service age, not the standing army.
a church wedding would make her feel greasy and unclean.
Well, yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s a reason for that.
(Some of Heinlein’s longer works make more sense if you assume that the expository characters are outright demonic.)
That is what you often observe in this kind of person – in real life as well as in fiction: the reversal of cause and effect. This Heinleinian super-whore is, by any moral standards that ever have obtained in any real society however nasty, actually greasy and unclean (not to mention insanitary – did Heinlein ever hear of VD/STDs?). The hurch makes her feel the way she really is, and that is why she resents it. Likewise all those people who project upon the Church or on other institutions their own inherent senses of guilt.
The book is set far in the future. If he thought about the question at all, he probably assumed that there would be foolproof prevention/cures by that time.
I evidently have not explained myself. He has put into the mouth of his superwhore the very expressions that, in real life, mark a guilty reversal of effect and cause in experiencing guilt. This is Heinlein’s own wilful refusal to recognize his own experience, placed in a character’s mounth; but any campaigner and any conroversialist knows that kind of inversion of perception and experience. E.g:”YOu are trying to make me feel guilty” means “I have shovelled my guilt away into the unconscious, and you are trying to make me look at it.”
The people I have had try to make me feel guilty, and who have imputed to me what I regarded as unearned guilt, have been progressives of the school of thought that believes all white people are privileged and racist. Does your argument also obtain for their accusations? If not, why not?
I am speaking of individual, real, and inescapable guilt – guilt that can only be removed, but not denied. A typical case is that of the abortionist feminist who rants at anti-abortion activists because they want to make her feel guilty. Is my concept clearer now?
Okay. If I understand you correctly, you accept, as I do, that moral evaluation applies only to individual actions performed through voluntary choice. That rules out attribution of guilt to white people for having the wrong ancestors. The comparison I suggested would not valid.
Up to a point. Any human being is part of a community, and communities do commit crimes. I would be very leery of, say, a Russian who refuses to take any interest in Communist crimes. There is such a thing as collective guilt. However, it is neither as certain nor as significant in an individual’s life as individual guilt.
I see. Apologies for misunderstanding your comment.
Are those the only two alternatives?
A church wedding or civic polyamory? Why couldn’t the awakened man and the future woman make a private commitment to one another of mutual fidelity and monogamy upon their honour?
Or is that way too old-fashioned, that someone might give their word and keep it?
I find it interesting that the choice is set up like that: church versus state, as it were. Almost as though there was some instinctual realisation that without the support of religion, there would be no survival of what might be considered decent behaviour past a few generations
Re: Are those the only two alternatives?
Positively medieval.
There’s a reason why the Council of Trent decided that making your promises in private just didn’t work.
Re: Are those the only two alternatives?
“A church wedding or civic polyamory? Why couldn’t the awakened man and the future woman make a private commitment to one another of mutual fidelity and monogamy upon their honour?”
As I said above, the nymphs and satyrs of the sexual utopia have no civil ceremony and no need of it. In this novel, even the idea of combining their households for economic reasons is dismissed as unnecessary: everyone gets a pension from the government. There is no civil ceremony needed. There is no distinction between “marriage” and a casual fling. The matter is entirely private and even your other lovers have no right to know.
In one sense, the novel assumes all paramours keep their fidelity with each other for reasons of private honour and for no other reason. In another sense, the human-shaped persons in this novel are dwarf chimpanzees, who are naturally polygamous and have no ability to understand why anyone would be anything but: a man who stuck with one woman would be regarded as a freak, as we would regard someone on a strict diet who only ate one food and no other.
Re: Are those the only two alternatives?
The abuse of the word “old-fahioned” for a notion that barely predates the sixties of the twentieth century tells its own story. At no point in human history has marriage ever been a purely private and unwitnessed agreement. Your notion of a wholesome human agreement is actually even more modern than Heinlein’s; he would have more right than you to call his omnifutuency (an elegant insult coined by Hugh Trevor-Roper) “old-fashioned”.
Engage in intercourse… even if you don’t want to
“When he later repels the advances of a rival for her sexual favors, the man is sent to a re-education session, because in the future sane thinking about love is insanity.”
It’s also a perfect example of peer-pressure in sexual matters. It reminds me of a rather roundabout pick-up line that college guys used to use: “Americans are so uptight about sex, not like Europeans.” The general idea was that the girl he was talking to could PROVE she wasn’t a close-minded provincial by going home with him. It’s laughable now, but it must have worked often enough.
The not-so-funny part is how quickly freelove becomes an entitlement. One of my promiscuous pals came up to me at a party and told me “I’m a prude!” She’d turned down a hygienically-challenged graduate student from the UK, and he became irate. She had slept with one of his housemates and a few others in his circle of friends, so he felt insulted that she refused him.
THAT is the Heinlein utopia: social pressure and guilt trips about rejecting unwanted advances.
Re: Engage in intercourse… even if you don’t want to
Well, really, if there are no social sanctions against promiscuity, you can’t turn someone down without its being personal.
(Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty has some interesting stories in that regard.)
Re: Engage in intercourse… even if you don’t want to
I’m writing that down. Thanks!
As regards the writing, it is unpolished and staid, but it is still Heinlein, and not difficult to get through. Sort of like Tchaikovksy’s first concerto, it is oversimplified to the point of parody, but concordant.
As regards the economics, there is much to be criticized, but I’m not certain that simply handing every citizen a chunk of cash at the beginning of the year wouldn’t do some good. Or put it in the form of a negative income tax, as Milton Friedman proposed. But the people who act inimically to the economy now might only do worse with that cash. I don’t know, but it might be worth an experiment.
As regards the Christian takeover, I think it’s a case of “low-hanging fruit” for those who support freedom. Absent any opposition, Christians might establish a theocracy, but they will never be absent any opposition. The Christian theocrats can be be held at bay by chest-thumping, constitutional law, and the popular press. Would that Mohammedian theocrats or Marxian theocrats were so easily cowed.
As regards the sexuality, what more can we say on the subject? Some of us believe in sex as a buffet, to be consumed at will for the sake of self-satisfaction, and some view it as a communion ceremony, to be consumed under strict regulation for the sake of something beyond the consumer(s). Call no society a utopia which does not take into account both views. I, holding to the former view, can take solace in the relative bounty of aids to my practice, even if the persistence of the latter view drives up the price of such. (Perhaps I could use my annual stipend for such ends. ^_^ )
I enjoy the Heinlein posts. I hope you would re-read Job: A Comedy of Justice just to watch the blood vessels on your neck bulge, metaphorically speaking.
” The Christian theocrats can be be held at bay by chest-thumping, constitutional law, and the popular press. “
Also, one assumes, by the fact that Christianity does not mandate a theocracy or any particular form of government, as Islam and Marxist Communism do.
That might, in fact, be why it is so easily kept in check.
Absent any opposition, Christians might establish a theocracy,
Define “opposition,” I guess. They were never in a more favorable position than during the Middle Ages, and never made any move to establish a theocracy. (Holding kings and princes accountable for their moral behavior is not theocracy. Theocracy is not when nearly every subject and citizen is a Christian, but when the religious authorities operate the secular apparatus of the State.)
I did say, “might.” I’m not so much arguing for the likelyhood of Christian theocracy as I am for the relative lack of cost of the prophylaxis. In other words, while it is unlikely that the the drum-beats of a few real-life Scudder analogues would mutate into enforced Christianity, I think it equally unlikely that the anti-Christian forces will ever mutate into a thriving ban on the religion. And yes, I know that Christians are discriminated against in the press and on network TV, but so are Orthodox Jews and Strong Atheists and just about anyone who actually holds to a religion or philosophy instead of the “I believe in *something* but I’m not devout” bromide (and Muslims, of course, because the press and network brass are cowards).
Mutation?
On the other hand, there’s this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36576205JJB
“I’m not certain that simply handing every citizen a chunk of cash at the beginning of the year wouldn’t do some good.”
It would do some good, sure. Every economic policy, no matter how ill-conceived, will do some good to the fortunate few. The point of the study of economics, the reason why it is a science and not a game of make-believe, is to find the invisible costs and the losses and the lost opportunities that accompany the visible good. That is the point.
“I don’t know, but it might be worth an experiment.”
I am pleased to report that the experiment was performed with admirable clarity in Soviet Russia. The evils that resulted were not a result of the badness of a few bad men who just so happened for no particular reason to rise to positions of power there. The evils that resulted where the inevitable end result of subordination the price system and the specialization of labor to political considerations. Absent a price structure, the only motive for labor is coercion. The only way to make sure goods are distributed to the poor is by terrifying the mid-level bureaucrats into doing their jobs. The only way to terrify the mid-level bureaucrats into doing their jobs is by putting a man like Stalin in charge: a ruthless gangster. Even if he were not a sadist at the beginning of his regime, he must be by the end of it, because a system without a price system can only be run on the violence principle.
“As regards the Christian takeover, I think it’s a case of “low-hanging fruit” for those who support freedom.”
If so, why do non-Christian eras and non-Christian lands have social and political systems which show no apology for tyranny? Why does liberty come from and only from fiercely Christian nations and centuries? You can find Christian princes who were tyrants, to be sure, every now and again, but finding the non-Christian times and places were individual liberties were respected, or the weak, or the poor, or women, or the stranger — that is much, much harder.
“As regards the sexuality, what more can we say on the subject? Some of us believe in sex as a buffet, to be consumed at will for the sake of self-satisfaction…”
Spoken like a rapist and an abuser of women!
“I enjoy the Heinlein posts. I hope you would re-read Job: A Comedy of Justice just to watch the blood vessels on your neck bulge, metaphorically speaking.”
It is unfortunate that the internet cannot convey a tone of voice. I want you to imagine me speaking the same tone of voice Leonard Nimoy uses to play Spock on television. When I condemn something as foolish and illogical, it is in a slow, sarcastic drawl, not a shout. It is like someone getting a sum wrong at math.
You can find Christian princes who were tyrants, to be sure, every now and again
And the Christians has a ‘tude about someone who overstepped the bounds of a prince and became a tyrant.
“If to provide itself with a king belongs to the right of a given multitude, it is not unjust that the king be deposed or have his power reduced by that same multitude if, becoming a tyrant, he abuses his royal power.”
– Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, I:6
Heck, not even Tommy Jefferson could say it better. The idea of speaking truth to power goes back to the story of Nathan upbraiding David. You may be a king, but you are king “under God.” Hence, the notion of “unjust laws” and “civil disobedience.”
“It would do some good, sure. Every economic policy, no matter how ill-conceived, will do some good to the fortunate few.”
Let me rephrase: I’m not certain that handing each citizen a chunk of cash at the beginning of the year, and then otherwise letting the market go free, would not provide a better benefit-to-cost ratio than other similarly palatable economic plans.
“The point of the study of economics, the reason why it is a science and not a game of make-believe. . . “
Having left the intellectuals no room to play make-believe, I’m not shocked that they have infiltrated their way into science.
“If so, why do non-Christian eras and non-Christian lands have social and political systems which show no apology for tyranny? Why does liberty come from and only from fiercely Christian nations and centuries? You can find Christian princes who were tyrants, to be sure, every now and again, but finding the non-Christian times and places were individual liberties were respected, or the weak, or the poor, or women, or the stranger — that is much, much harder.”
I would argue sample size. There have been few enough societies in history, and fewer of those in the modern era, and fewer still based on ideas and ideologies instead of races and war victories, that making the cause-and-effect connection between Christianity and liberty would be premature.
“Spoken like a rapist and an abuser of women!”
Also spoken like one who does not rape or abuse, but is promiscuous in heart, but not necessarily in deed. If the speech of an x is f(x), f(x) does not imply x.
“It is unfortunate that the internet cannot convey a tone of voice. I want you to imagine me speaking the same tone of voice Leonard Nimoy uses to play Spock on television.”
Fair enough. You may feel free to read mine in DeForest Kelley’s voice.
Handing each citizen a chunk of cash yearly
“Let me rephrase: I’m not certain that handing each citizen a chunk of cash at the beginning of the year, and then otherwise letting the market go free, would not provide a better benefit-to-cost ratio than other similarly palatable economic plans.”
In that case, I urge you to contemplate whence the chunk of cash comes from. If from tax revenue, then this is merely a transfer (by force) from a productive subject to an unproductive subject, which acts as a disincentive to savings and investment. If from inflation, this acts as a transfer from creditors to debtors, which also acts as a disincentive to savings and investment.
A man who pays 500 guilders in taxes that year and receives back 400 guilders in alms takes a 100 guilder annual loss. Likewise, a man who pays 300 and receives 400 gets a 100 guilder gain. The net effect is the same as if the first man simply gave the second man 100 guilders and got nothing in return. The work he did to earn that lost 100 guilders is pure loss, as far as he is concerned. The less work he does below the 400 guilder annual alms threshold, the greater the ratio between his effort and his reward.
Basically what happens there is that one segment of the economy, the workers and entrepreneurs, suffer a unfair and meaningless loss, and another segment of the economy, the idle, suffer an unfair and meaningless windfall. From an economic point of view, it would have the same effect on the economy as announcing a periodic “festival” where looters are encouraged to break into stores, loot and rob, and throw some part of the goods into the bay.
Meanwhile, the state would nevertheless still need to spend tax money to train and field an army, establish naval shipyards, and possibly a post office, post roads, hire executioners and judges and other officers and magistrates, so the distribution of alms to the general subjects would have to be funded out of tax receipts over and above the normal expenses of government.
“I would argue sample size. There have been few enough societies in history, and fewer of those in the modern era, and fewer still based on ideas and ideologies instead of races and war victories, that making the cause-and-effect connection between Christianity and liberty would be premature.”
2010 years is insufficient? The difference between East and West is too subtle for you to grasp?
You have not noticed that one and only one civilization in history ever preached and practiced the equality the man, the manumission of the slave, and the equality of women, and that civilization was Christendom?
You are merely being coy here, pretending that societies do not have ideologies or governing philosophies if the society was based on nationality (what you wrongly call race) or war-victories. That is untrue: every society, even the most barbaric, has a myth or justification, an idea, to justify it and which forms the basis of its demand for loyalty from its subject peoples. The modern notion that ideologies have to be based on a political-economic theory is a notion not found outside Christendom.
“Fair enough. You may feel free to read mine in DeForest Kelley’s voice. “
Fascinating.
Re: welfare states that worked longest
Source, please? That sounds extremely interesting, but I would like to see the research it was based on.
Re: welfare states that worked longest
>the layers of obscene irony in your ignorant response are almost beyond counting.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
I don’t disagree with your view of Soviet infiltration of US civil servants. Obviously secret conspiracies aren’t all that easy to pin down.
That said. Lenin’s motives in causing the deaths by forced famine of millions of Russians? He wasn’t paid for it. No personal monetary gain. It saved a little financial trouble for the newborn Soviet Union, but still. His motives? Not monetary. Hatred, but also a version of Marx’s idea that the first act of any governing class is to put the rest of society in a state of seige. British Labor followed Marx too. They say so still, in their party manifesto. Monopolize the means of production.
Aldous Huxley
“Published posthumously, this was Heinlein’s first attempt at a manuscript, and one which he wisely never a second time attempted to sell, breaking one of his own rules about selling everything he wrote. It is not a novel properly so called, and not meant to be read as one: it is a series of lectures or ideas about a libertarian utopia, written in the same style as the utopian speculations of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and HG Wells’ A Modern Utopia and Aldous Huxley’s Island.”
I think my life has been too much influenced by Aldous Huxley. It was the near other-worldly answers of “Island”, among one or two of his other books, that made me a mystic as it were. Oddly, I found a good deal more than I was looking for (certainly more than he intended). It was my opinion then, as it is now, that it was the mystics who had the right answers on romance and life. It was the seed which Aldous Huxley, of all people, planted that would eventually bloom into Christianity (if you’ve ever noticed…the title of my own lj is inspired by a saying from the book).
Also, if I remember it right, he advocated a sort of gold standard.
Re: Aldous Huxley
I find it exceedingly odd, that two of the men that had the most influence on my life, Aldous Huxley & C.S. Lewis, both died on the same day.
Re: Aldous Huxley
Wasn’t that also the day JFK died, upstaging them both?
Re: Aldous Huxley
Yeah, but I don’t consider him an influence in my life.
Gold, silver, tobaco, furs, cattle, wheat, steel etc are money
I thought Heinlein was playing with a sort of Keynesian/Major Douglass mush of calculated inflation/ inflated production; inflation backed by producing so many cars (etc) that you run thousands of them straight from the factory to the smelter. He’s poking fun at popular 1930s economic debates as well as supporting his own wacky idea. It’s not what I’d criticise the book for, because I don’t know enough about 30s economic polemics. I’ve seen nice girls calling themselves poly, and they get the worst of both slut and nerd reputations. Without the good stuff.
FPB: As to a capitalist welfare state requiring a stable currency; it no doubt does.
As to British Labor running a capitalist welfare state? Yes, in part. Part of Labor wanted something further left; Soviet penetration of the US Civil Service was not stronger than its penetration of British Labor. And nine years of calory restriction has some analogy with the forced famines by which Lenin, Mao, the Ethiopian colonels, and all real existing socialisms take and hold power.
Re: Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
I will freely admit that silver can also serve as a money. I am a bimetallist. The rest of your comments do not have any bearing on whether or not gold is money: the word “money” implies a good that is stored with the intent of keeping its value over time, it does imply that such a theoretically perfect money can ever be found. The example of Spanish conquests in the New World (or the California gold rush) displays that changes in the money supply do indeed change the value of the money against other goods and services.
Money means “a good that is identifiable, always in demand, keeps its value over time, long shelf life, divisible, fungible” — whatever good best matches these criteria is a money.
Currency is an IOU. Inflatable currency, such as was introduced by “progressive” and Keynesian thinkers between the wars, is meant NOT to keep its value, but to transfer value away from savers and creditors and give it to debtors in general and to the government in particular. From an economic point of view, it is indistinguishable from a tax. Inflation does not create value, it merely transfers via IOU’s value from those who save and invest and gives it to the coffers of the government.
Re: Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
“By inflating money, you produce NOTHING: you merely turn the equivalent of metres into the equivalent of centimetres. You do not have anything that you did not have before. You do, however, have rather less, in that the number of tokens that correspond to the total wealth of a country has grown much larger, and the person who holds them can purchase a lot less goods and services with what they hold.”
Exactly right, and I could not have said it better myself. If you have three dollars and three apples, and an apple costs a dollar, the exchange between them is one for one. If the Prince prints up another three dollar bills, but the farmer does not grow three more apples, the exchange rate shifts (everything else remaining equal) to a two-to-one ratio, so that each apple now costs two dollars. The only person who gains is the first person, a favorite of the Prince, who gets one of the dollars hot from the press and buys and apple before farmer catches wise and raises his price.
Meanwhile, any who saved or invested a dollar gave his bank or his debtor an apple, but is only payed back half an apple. That is how the confidence game is played.
Re: welfare states that worked longest
Sources for an account of 1929? Why, yes, I might very well want such sources. Someone who read Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression and somebody who John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash: 1929 (and, for that matter, someone who read Milton Friedman and Anna Schwarz’s account) would come away with quite different understandings, even though the event itself is well known.
In this particular case, you are writing about something of which I am ignorant; my historical education is sporadic, attained by reading about matters that came to my attention and caught my interest, and this hasn’t been one of them. No doubt I could visit the university library that I use and find a dozen books on the era. But not knowing what evidence you are relying on, I would not be in any position to confirm it without more effort than I feel free to spare. But you say that “The only thing [new?] in all this that is my interpretation is the role of Dexter White, but everyone agrees that whatever his role was, it was nefarious, and he certainly had a major part in the drafting of the Morgenthau Plan.” Does that mean that you are proposing a new interpretation, one that is not generally recognized by historians? If so, then all the more reason that it’s fair to ask you for your evidence.
Re: Keynesian rubbish about how Depressions are underconsumption
“Inflation – even deliberate inflation – was not invented by Keynesians, even supposing that it was a part of their doctrine.”
Even supposing that it was a part of their doctrine? Supposing?
There is no supposition involved. Keynes says as much in blank and white. Please read, if you can stand the turgid prose and pointless digressions, Keynes’ GENERAL THEORY. The core argument made their is that inflating the currency will allow a government run bank to increase the currency wages of the workingman while decreasing the actual value (the money value) of his wages, in order to prevent production from overtaking consumption, which, according to this theory, is the cause of depressions.
“It is, for instance, a regular feature of wartime economics, and has been practiced by all sorts of states in the form of debasement and even outright falsification of currency.”
Quite true. Keynes did not invent the practice of shaving coins. Kings have been doing that since time immemorial.
“To print or coin money for its own sake is a permanent temptation to any power charged with minting.”
Agreed.
“The early private banks in the USA that printed greenbacks on an inflationary scale were not Keynesians!”
Your argument here suffers from the fallacy of the undistributed middle. You seem to be arguing that, since there are some inflationists who not Keynesians, ergo Keynes is not an inflationist. That makes no sense, and, even if true, it would not contradict the argument that Keynes was an inflationist.
Private banks can increase the currency in circulation by printing up more IOU’s in one for or another, but, unless the private bank has a monopoly on the banking industry, or some recourse to prevent a flight from bad money to good, Gresham’s law will operate to move investment away from the inflated currency to a more secure asset. People will spend the inflated currency, and exchange it for a more sound money as soon as possible.
In other words, a private bank operates under a powerful disincentive to reduce its fractional reserve below a certain amount — namely, that as soon as the community suspects what it is doing, there will be a run on the bank and it will be run out of business. This mechanism does not, of course, act as a disincentive for the government printing up fiat money.
The Hugo Stimmes stuff, is good, and new to me-
-but I will see your claim that rich folks mastermind inflation and raise it with Franklin’s remark that rich folks (who have money) want money dear (deflation), while poor folks want inflation (cheap money).
As to Keynes not inflationary? I think you conflate two points:
1) The US Great Depression was created when Hoover deflated like Diocletian after the 1929 crash. Keynes very properly thought causing the Great Depression was bad.
2) Keynes backed inflation just as Marshall and most economists would, as a way to deal with a slump (defined as a period of insufficient money).
I’d agree with 1) and 2) but your conflation excludes something, maybe an excluded middle.
Throwback to previous posts: I’d no idea Ernest Bevin was a serious anticommunist. I’d heard of the ‘walk naked into council chambers’ thing, but took it as 1) a cautious faith in international agreements and 2) a hint he shared some nonpolitical tastes with, say, Roy Cohn. Nye Bevin,
anticommunist? News to me. Of course any trade union’s most enthusiastic members tend to be more than a hair left of center, and they have to be kept in check or they’ll kill the golden goose. (Hi UAW local 974. Where’s my job?)
That said, do you really think there’s no connection between Labour’s 9 postwar years of ‘food rationing’ and other socialist forced famines?
enormous popular support stopped after two elections?
Why? Could it be people didn’t like nine years of telling the kids ‘no more food for you. Our benign Labour governors are playing money games and blaming foreigners for it, so they can’t be bothered to subsidize a fishing fleet or support British Beef or just plain buy food.’ Not to mention the boost these regulatory schemes always give organized crime, even the crooks outside the government.
Attlee’s government was a very admirable combination of the best of the old British elite with some of the best of the new guys. They did create a solid social safety net. But, Labour as the ‘real’ anticommunists? Keynes as the ‘real’ inflation-fighter? They never claimed to be. And they weren’t. Gnash your brown, stunted, national heath fangs on THAT.
Re: enormous popular support stopped after two elections?
You are despicable, and, unlike the Bunny, not even funny. Putting words in people’s mouth is contemptible, but you are the kind of scum who does; and now it is clear that your brute ignorance is not a misfortune but the work of your own will, I am not going to give you any other answer than this assessment of your morality. I have wasted time instructing you in history you knew nothing of, only to find you – I repeat – putting words in my mouth. Get lost. From now on you will not be answered.
Re: enormous popular support stopped after two elections?
For how long will this abstinence last?