John C. Wright's Journal

Has Gnosticism ever inspired any good science fiction?

I would argue that David Lindsay’s VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, which was Gnosticism almost undisguised, merits praise as one of the greats and classics of science fiction literature, an attempt to tackle truly profound issues, matters of God and Devil, life and death, vice and virtue, in a science fictional narrative and metaphor. I think all the answers are most wrong and wickedly wrong, of course, but the audacity of the narrative is intoxicating. CS Lewis and Alan [sic: should be Harold] Bloom — men who even their foes admit know literature well — agree that Lindsay’s obscure book is fascinating reading.

THE MATRIX was also a gnostic parable, and so is THE LITTLE PRINCE, both of which had some good wire fu fights in them. Well, okay, only MATRIX had wire fu in it.

Other books I do not know if we can classify them as Gnostic. What about A.E. van Vogt’s WORLD OF NULL-A? Or some of the writing of Phillip K. Dick? What about THE PARADOX MEN by Charles Harness?

Feel free to discuss. Here is one of the few areas where you overopinionated host (me) does not have a strong opinion.

Continued from last entry. An alert reader, noticing an oddity in my snippet of a scene, makes bold to ask:

"But the World Dictator agrees to hand cannons at dawn with the roustabout mercenary because…..?"

Excellent question!! A question worthy of double exclamations points!!!

Ah! I will have to finish writing the book, and sell it to my editor, and get it printed, and you will have to buy the book to find that out.

But I will give you a hint. One of the reasons given below is the not the real reason. See if you can spot it.
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3146 words written tonight between 10.00 and 4.30.

I threw out my last idea. My wife, aka my muse, gave me a better one. Just have the hero, Menelaus Montrose, go shoot the villain, Ximen “Blackie” del Azarchel.

Good guy and bad guy shooting each other in the face with futuristic hand cannons. That is what makes science fiction! (I ask you: Did Frodo Baggins ever shoot the Dark Lord Sauron the Great in the face with a high-caliber pistol? No! And that is why LORD OF THE RINGS is not science fiction. Whereas did robot Agent Smith ever shoot VR-ninja-messiah Neo in the face? Yes! And that is why THE MATRIX is indeed science fiction.)

The two agree to a duel. They are arguing, of course, over a woman, the Space Princess Rania, and over the coming world war, in that order. On his way to the agreed-upon showdown, Menelaus phones the computerized and superintelligent copy of Del Azarchel’s mind and memory that the two men made together back when they were friends.

Here is a snippet:

Menelaus said, “You are the old Blackie, my Blackie, the one I knew! And the Blackie I knew would not stand idly by and let this all happen.”

“And the Montrose I knew would not repay my saving his life by taking mine, any version of me. You know there is a means of avoiding this war, and yet you pretend not to see it.”

“I ‘spose you don’t mean having Blackie abdicate?”

“Certainly not.”

“I ‘spose you don’t mean me divorcing Rania?”

“Certainly not. I mean you die at his hands, and let Blackie marry your widow.”

“Oh, good. I was going to say my wife’s religion prohibits divorce, and so that is clean out of the question.”

“Your life is meaningless compared to the lives of countless millions, not to mention the loss of more than just life if civilization burns.”

“Maybe I should say my religion prohibits letting a low-down murdering skunk shoot me in the ass, so that is likewise clean out of the question, as I hold my ass to be sacred.”

Science Fiction luminaries clash!

http://erkelzaar.tsudao.com/reviews/H.G.Wells_on_Metropolis%201927.htm

The review has three surprises for me. First, Wells did not like the film, which was (and is) a brilliant milestone in sciencefictioneering. He thinks it derrived from his own THE SLEEPER WAKES (and perhaps with some justice). Second, H. G . Wells, a damned socialist, actually has the wit and wherewithal to make accurate and correct criticisms of the socialist mopery in the film, pointing out, for example, the link between mechanization and high wages. (This came as almost as much as a surprise to me, to hear economic common sense from Wells, as I was to find out that his Time Machine was real, and he used it to chase Jack the Ripper into the modern day.)

Third, I did not know the original German name of the Metropolis was Neubabelsburg

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To think, I used to admire James Randi almost above any other living man.

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/524-suggestions-for-the-us.html

However, the "brights" have left the socially useful and entertaining hobby of debunking frauds and magicians (something the Church used to do, see here, for example) and now seek to put forward arguments about as devoid of logic as an argument can be.

"If you don’t believe in gay marriages or in abortions, don’t have one. If you don’t believe in euthanasia or in physician-assisted death, then die your own way."

What does this have to do with CSIOP’s mission statement of scientifically investigating claims of the paranormal? Why, nothing. Mr. John P. Stoltenberg believes (and Mr. Randi apparently supports) that belief in magic is the same as belief in theological metaphysics, and that no non-magical argument exists against killing babies in the womb, killing helpless people in hospital beds, and pretending sodomites can marry. As a matter of fact, I came to quite opposite conclusions for quite logical and non-supernatural reasons long before I converted from atheism. At that time, I would have argued that atheism does not necessarily lead to immorality; and that there can be decent and well-meaning atheists. But Mr. Randi now presents himself as one shocking counter-example.

Keep in mind, this is a ‘Bright’ talking, someone who holds reason to be paramount. Let us example the logic of the statement merely by substituting other terms for the active terms: 

If you do not want murder, then don’t commit one.

Hm. Can anyone detect the flaw, the unspoken assumption, in the reasoning there? Why, yes, perhaps the action described has some negative side effects or far reaching consequences, or affects someone (such as an unborn baby, or his father, or his grandparents) who has an interest in the outcome.

The second flaw is the mere assumption that any act of self-destruction is licit, because only you matter to you. I suppose the assisted suicide of an orphaned bachellor with no debts who was also of sound mind might have minimal reprocussions outside his own person, but this is a somewhat rare case. In one of the few cases where Objectivists and Catholics agree, there aresome people who regard self-destruction as the source of all evil. (The Objectivist cites a man’s life and his love for it as the source of all values and virtues; Catholics regard the separation of Man from God, the author both of man and of The Good, to be a rejection of all good in one way or another. When Adam bit the apple of disobedience, he was eating death, commiting, in a spiritual sense, assisted suicide.) 

The third flaw is not an error in logic, but in judgment. The argument rests on the mere assumption that merely because you want something, you should have it, and the world should not hinder you from obtaining, and, in the case of overturning ancient laws and customs, the world must provide it. This is what William Briggs calls the gimme argument. Argumentum Ad Ego.

Part of an ongoing conversation.

  said: "I wish there were an Academy of English! French and German and Spanish have one, why not English?"

I answered: To safeguard our liberty, no doubt. The Academy of English would be an entirely leftwing-political-correctness organ, if it existed, and words such as "blind" or "Negro" or "Sodomy" would be decreed ungrammatical. The word "he" would be redefined to mean only male antecedents, and the word "they" would be declared the singular pronoun.

  said "Don’t forget history. It should probably be theirstory."

 said: "Yep, that was one that didn’t make it past the self-appointed censors in my time at Earlham College. ‘Herstory’ was a common term, at least in promoting various Women’s Studies events. ‘Manual’ was also on the outs.

I commented: "Because feminists object to hands? Manual comes from the same root as manipulate, manu(s) means hand."

  comments: "Well, and ‘history’ comes from ἱστορία … but if they’re going to invent their own folk etymology for ‘history’ I see no reason why they wouldn’t for other words like ‘manual’ either. :/"

This lead me to this idea, which I have expressed erenow: 

One recurring leitmotif I see again and again in Left-leaning and "progressive" writing and thinking is this idea that facts are optional, nay, that facts are an oppressive attempt by a father-figure (sometimes literally called "the Man") to impose unpleasant barriers and unwelcome bounds to the endless pursuit of the Pleasure Principle.

In Freudian terms, the Left represents only a pure ‘Id’ impulse, what Plato called the Appetitive Soul; at least one wing of the Right represents what Freud (incorrectly to the point of slander, in my opinion) called the ‘Ego’, but which Plato called the ‘Thymos’, the passionate or honor-craving soul; whereas the Church, the enemy of the World, represents what Freud (incorrectly to the point of slander, in my opinion) called the Superego, what Christians call the Conscience.  (Frued’s slander here was that the conscience was not an organ of perception of moral reality, but merely an aggregation of social conventions imprinted into an unselfaware yet governing habit of shame.) 

A short way of saying that is to say that the Left approaches one too many a political issue in the same mood and spirit as a teenager whose collection of Playboy porn has been discovered in his sock drawer by an angry father. The main issue is outrage that his short-term and unlawful pleasure has been hindered.

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The latest from Wright’s Writing Corner

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/111104.html

I must say,  I agree with the sentiments of the lovely and talented Mrs. Wright.

I was not even aware of this stupid "war on adverbs" that Mr. Elmore declared, since I do not solicit the opinions of others on my writing, nor do I take kindly to the red pencil of the editor when the matter is one of style rather than grammar. The insolence of simply decreeing that what was formerly a matter of style (that is, a matter of artistic judgment and personal taste) is NOW a matter of grammar (that is, simply correct or incorrect according to an objective and impartial authority) is not only breathtaking in its insolence, it is risible in its absurdity: how can one man trying to found a school of artistic taste declare himself, without any precedent, to be the objective authority? It is like seating the prosecuting attorney in the jury box as the foreman.

I suspect such sublime foolishness would not have taken place in a society with a healthy attitude toward metaphysics, and hence able to make a distinction between personal opinion and authoritative judgment. Moderns seem to lapse into the stance that all things outside of the findings of natural philosophy in the physical sciences are utterly arbitrary and without meaning: hence the Moderns cannot tell the difference between a school of style (which apply only to those within that school) and the conventions of genre (which apply to all seeking an audience within that genre) and the rules of grammar (which apply to all speakers of the language).

Why is it that Toyota is being hounded by the US Government, which now just so happens to own two of its major competitors? Why are we letting Congress, the owner-manager of GM, hold hearing of the safety of Toyotas, with whom they are in economic competition? Should they not at least be required to recuse themselves, and let some neutral third party, such as Fiat, hear the case?

In the meanwhile, for your reading enjoyment, let me pass along this article, which I found at ‘s journal here, courtesy of :

How a secret rule caused the crisis
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The wife and  I had a book signing at the local Barnes & Noble this Sunday, and to my pleasant surprise more than two readers from my livejournal showed up and bought a book, and one of them sent his parents. So please accept my gratitude!

Fortunately, they merely talked to the chubby, out-of-work actor I hired to impersonate me at public appearances (usually, I am not allowed to bookstores, unless I am wearing a seeing eye harness, and I get the actor to pretend to be blind). However, with modern cellphone/bluetooth technology, I can sit outside the store and send him signals by radio, either barking in morse code, using my tongue on the touch-sensative pad. You humans really have no idea how convenient modern America is for people like me, compared to what we suffered in Atlantis, Ireland and Egypt.  Well, let us not dwell on past horrors. After all, when Fenrir the Great, bound on the isle of Lyngvi, arises and breaks Gleipnir asunder, all the evils we have suffered at the hands of Man willbe revenged sevenfold. The great river Van, which gushes from his bound jaws, will dry up. When you see the stones of the riverbed of Van, that will be the sign for the wolf-days to come.

John C. Wright, Author — my true appearence

In any case, I managed to sell several copies of LESBIAN LOVE-VAMPIRES OF VENUS to some people from my church who had also stopped by. Eegh. In hindsight, perhaps I should have warned them about the racy bits.

Cross posted from http://m-francis.livejournal.com/139367.html I reprint the whole here without comment. It speaks for itself.

Witchcraft and the Dark Ages

Although some folk apply the term "Dark Ages" to the entire medieval period, others apply it only to the early middle ages and refer to the High Middle Ages as the Early Renaissance.  This is done in service to belief, of course.  It is not how the historians generally view things.  (In fact, those have been abandoning such propaganda labels in favor of century labels.)  But in any case, one of the most cherished foundation myths of the Modern Ages is that of the West’s struggle to free itself from the violence of religious intolerance.  This is almost as basic as the myth of Galileo springing pristine from the brow of Copernicus. 

One aspect of that violence was the witch mania. 

1. The Age of Faith

Now, belief in sorcery had been common enough among the Romans, who distinguished three classes of witches and prescribed death for the worst class.  It was common, too, among the Germans, though the details differed.  So it’s no surprise if the folk of the Middle Ages, who were after all the descendants of those self-same Romans and Germans, also believed in such things. 

The Church however either ignored magic or treated it leniently; this for the very good reason that she taught that magic was a mere superstition.  St. Patrick’s Synod in the 5th century anathematized anyone who believed that there really were witches with magical powers.  Charlemagne issued a Capitulary for Saxony that declared it criminal for anyone acting on a heathen belief in magic to burn or devour the flesh of accused sorcerers.  (This suggests that pagan Germans did not treat sorcerers very nicely.)  The Canon episcopi about the same time declares that women who believe they fly through the air in Diana’s train are simply deluded and orders expelled from the congregation anyone who insists on the reality of it. 

When Archbishop Abogard of Lyons (9th cent) learned that rustics in his diocese believed that witches destroyed their crops with hailstones and colluded with men from Mangonia (who sailed ships through the sky to steal crops).  He felt obliged to tell his flock that men could not control the weather, sail ships through the sky, or wield any magical powers.  Also there was no such place as Mangonia.  He had to personally intervene to save four "captured Mangonians".  (From an SF point of view, ships sailing through the sky and stealing crops has a cool ring to it.)

Ecclesiastical discipline (ascr. to Regino von Prüm) advises clergy to warn their congregants against credulous belief in covens of witches flying through the night sky and worshiping Diana.  Bishop Burchard of Worms (late 10th cent.) prescribed penance for those who believedin the powers of witches.  Pope Gregory VII forbade the Danish courts to execute people accused of witchcraft. 

Vincent of Beauvais, to disabuse a woman convinced she was a witch who could pass through keyholes, locked the door and chased her about the room with a stick, while exhorting her to escape through the keyhole.  (Now THAT is the scientific spirit, right there!) 

And so it went through the "Dark Ages." 
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In yesterday’s article, I proposed the theory that Leftism was not a mental disease nor a political theory, but a religious heresy, that is, a Godless form of Christianity that believes in millennial eschatology, personal revelation, and overthrow of the world-system, an internal deity, and, in short, was modern Gnosticism.

One aspect of Gnosticism is rejection of all the world as illusion. Matter is innately evil, and exoteric systems, such as theology and logic, are innately misleading. Only the Inner Voice is true, and reality is optional.

Some of you perhaps thought I was kidding or exaggerating. Maybe so. But there are at least some currents among the Left for which this is not an exaggeration, and sometimes, as if by oversight, they tell the truth about themselves.

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/freshloaf/2010/02/15/atlanta-progressive-news-fires-reporter-for-trying-to-be-objective/

My comment: this is not the first time a report has been fired for being honest and objective. It is the first time to my knowledge that the editor admitted that his official editorial policy was non-objective, i.e. dishonesty, rhetoric and propaganda. Is the smell of contempt for you that I scent floating from the Leftward side of the political compass my imagination? I hope so. And yet, one does not and perhaps cannot feel that the victims of one’s own lies and deceptions are one’s intellectual equals. Liars always feel smarter than the people they lie to. Maybe that explains their attitude.

N.B.: the word inter-subjectivity, in case you do not recognize it, is Newspeak gobbledegook.

Let me apologize at the outset for the length of this article, but I ran out of time during the trying-to-shorten-it phase.

QUESTION OF CONSENT

I had a thought-provoking dialogwith a commenter earlier this week in this space, on the topic of what, aside from the mere consent of the parties, made behavior licit. The conversation began as a debate about the definition of marriage, but addressed the more general question of the nature of liberty in society.

Mike Flynn is distinguishing between a purely formal rule and a substantive rule of licit. The argument that consent is enough is an argument that the form is the only factor (does consent exist, yes or no? If yes, the act is licit. If not, the act is not licit). The contrary argument is that the substance of the decision (to what are we consenting?) must also be taken into account. This requires a value judgment.

An example of a formal rule might be: any measure parliament passes with a majority vote while in lawful session, becomes law upon signature of the King. This rule says nothing about the content of the bill, merely the form that must be followed. Contrast a substantive rule: Congress shall pass no law infringing the right to bear arms. Even if passed according to the proper formalities of vote-counting and executive signature, such a law is arguably unconstitutional. An arguably neutral law, such as a tax law, if it is held to apply to pistol ball sales, has to be subjected to a judgment call. Some arbiter must weigh and decide whether the tax on pistol balls constitutes “infringement” — whereupon something other than the mere formality of the vote and signature is considered.

Modern jurists prefer, where possible, formal laws to normative laws, because moderns are wary of allowing any officer of the state the paternal discretion to enforce norms. The reason why bureaucrats act in the maddening fashion they do is because the modern habit, when a case of the abuse of discretion is brought up, is to reduce the discretion. When the courts of law are too lenient, for example, impatient legislatures pass a “three strikes”, in effect removing from the judge the discretion to be lenient on a case by case basis.

A similar state of mind prevails in moral reasoning. Indeed, a whole philosophical movement which we might call “normative agnosticism” haunts the modern mind, where it is considered to be in bad taste, if not downright unscientific, to make statements other than purely formal ones when it comes to human behavior. Such judgments are condemned as akin to tyranny, or perhaps the cause of war and tyranny. The motto seems to be: if only we all believed in Nothing, we would have nothing to fight over, ergo would all get along. The idea is so contemptible as to need no further refutation aside from itself (it is itself a belief, after all) and the behavior of its partisans (who are the mere opposite of peaceful.) However, most “agnostics of norms” will admit, upon questioning, that there are certain cases where a value judgment is needed.

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CBS ran a hit piece on the adoption agency the wife and I used, which is CWA (Christian World Adoption). When asked if they could give their side of the story, CBS at first agreed, and granted them an hour-long interview. All of that interview, their entire presentation of their side, was left on the cutting room floor.

Here is a link to the CWA statement on the issue.

Not to be confused with interior decorating. The lovely and talented L. Jagi Lamplighter holds forth on the merits of saying what your characters think.

Read the whole thing here: http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/110286.html

Allow me to recommend this short article appearing over at FIRST THINGS, a review of a book on the Narcissism that afflicts the current era. 

[…]
The book reviewed points out how antisocial narcissism is. Having high self esteem, as it turns out, does not make you easier to get along with, more loving, more humane, more productive, or less violent. Quite the opposite. At the risk of stealing thunder from the author, let me quote the final paragraph: