Why An SF Author Would Join The Dark Side
Here is a link to the controversial blog entry by obscure science fiction author John C. Wright. The conversation surrounding his remarks will only involve talking past each other, until we see it as an argument over the three moral dimensions unique to social conservatives: purity, obedience, and loyalty. His hostility will only make sense in that light. By contrast, social liberals have two moral values: fairness/reciprocity, and avoidance of harm. Conservative moral intuitions share those two dimensions, but subordinate them to the other three.
The odd thing is, the more dimensions to an author's morality, the more cardboard the characters and settings are likely to be. Liberals have been around the block enough that they have seen loyalty, obedience, and purity prop up organizational heirarchies that create harm and inhibit reciprocity. A commitment to harm-avoidance and a level playing field must precede all other values. Otherwise loyalty is nepotism and cronyism; obedience is a jack-booted thug; and purity is obsessive-compulsive disorder. In short, they are all forms of corrupted governance, hoarding worldly power through self-serving double-standards. There are countless ways for us to appeal to the two values we share with conservatives. Countless examples to illustrate how they cannot honor both sets of their values because one set sabotages the other. Spend the time doing that.
And by the way: yes, it is our job to educate them. Do you like it when they tell you to change and then say that the reasons are beyond our understanding, so they don't have to support it? Pretty obnoxious, isn't it? With that attitude, there is no way to ever find out that you're living under the wrong rules. Well, I've seen liberals do that, and it's no better. Never tell someone to change and then say "It's not my job to educate you". Any time anyone asks anyone else to change, the burden of proof is on them that the change is for the better. Skepticism is healthy, never forget that. It is our job to back up our claims as to why loyalty, obedience and purity can be taken to destructive extremes. Otherwise we ask them to obey our inscrutable demands through blind faith. Quit it, please. We have the facts on our side, and may as well use them.
In the meantime, a point about this boycott on Mr. Wright's obscure books. Were you going to read them anyway? Don't get me wrong, there are some extremely good stories written by authors who you could look up in your Monster Manual under "Dire Amish". But I'm comfortable missing out on throwback work with a shallow understanding of the world. My reading pile is too full already, and the competition too fierce, to shed much of a tear. Most of us are less concerned with the quality of writing than we are about the issues that literature addresses: science, business, religion, politics, philosophy. Authors can get obsessed with writing skills. It's their job, that's understandable. But when we read the last page and close your book, we readers continue to exist! And then we do those other things, which we usually care about more.
I would bet that the saving grace for Orson Scott Card's career was that he was already famous for his literary work before starting to write ultra-fundamentalist newspaper opinion columns. Whereas the recent kerfuffle surrounding Mr. Wright has probably garnered more attention than most of his novels, and is likely the height of his fame. Few are likely to explore the work of an author if their first and only exposure has been to find out he hates their friends and family on blind faith. There are just too many equally good authors and good books to direct our scarce exploratory reading in that direction.
I don't expect Mr. Wright to stop saying what he thinks just because I am no longer interested in his books. His stories would not somehow become richer if he stopped slandering and put in some characters who he doesn't understand at all. Let's not make this a boycott. I don't intend it as a disincentive-- just a helpful new way to winnow down information overload. It takes a really good reason for me to pick up a new author, and any excuse will do to avoid one. Look at the supply and demand ratio. The audience for fiction is what these days? Twelve people? Thirteen? (I kid, but you get the point.) And how many really high-quality novels and short story collections have accumulated? Several human lifetimes' worth. As Cory Doctorow says, writing is almost a non-economic activity now. A hobby. Which kind of author do we want to be among the few for whom it is an economical profession? Screeching red-eyed lecturers, or warm, genial sweethearts?
The odd thing is, the more dimensions to an author's morality, the more cardboard the characters and settings are likely to be. Liberals have been around the block enough that they have seen loyalty, obedience, and purity prop up organizational heirarchies that create harm and inhibit reciprocity. A commitment to harm-avoidance and a level playing field must precede all other values. Otherwise loyalty is nepotism and cronyism; obedience is a jack-booted thug; and purity is obsessive-compulsive disorder. In short, they are all forms of corrupted governance, hoarding worldly power through self-serving double-standards. There are countless ways for us to appeal to the two values we share with conservatives. Countless examples to illustrate how they cannot honor both sets of their values because one set sabotages the other. Spend the time doing that.
And by the way: yes, it is our job to educate them. Do you like it when they tell you to change and then say that the reasons are beyond our understanding, so they don't have to support it? Pretty obnoxious, isn't it? With that attitude, there is no way to ever find out that you're living under the wrong rules. Well, I've seen liberals do that, and it's no better. Never tell someone to change and then say "It's not my job to educate you". Any time anyone asks anyone else to change, the burden of proof is on them that the change is for the better. Skepticism is healthy, never forget that. It is our job to back up our claims as to why loyalty, obedience and purity can be taken to destructive extremes. Otherwise we ask them to obey our inscrutable demands through blind faith. Quit it, please. We have the facts on our side, and may as well use them.
In the meantime, a point about this boycott on Mr. Wright's obscure books. Were you going to read them anyway? Don't get me wrong, there are some extremely good stories written by authors who you could look up in your Monster Manual under "Dire Amish". But I'm comfortable missing out on throwback work with a shallow understanding of the world. My reading pile is too full already, and the competition too fierce, to shed much of a tear. Most of us are less concerned with the quality of writing than we are about the issues that literature addresses: science, business, religion, politics, philosophy. Authors can get obsessed with writing skills. It's their job, that's understandable. But when we read the last page and close your book, we readers continue to exist! And then we do those other things, which we usually care about more.
I would bet that the saving grace for Orson Scott Card's career was that he was already famous for his literary work before starting to write ultra-fundamentalist newspaper opinion columns. Whereas the recent kerfuffle surrounding Mr. Wright has probably garnered more attention than most of his novels, and is likely the height of his fame. Few are likely to explore the work of an author if their first and only exposure has been to find out he hates their friends and family on blind faith. There are just too many equally good authors and good books to direct our scarce exploratory reading in that direction.
I don't expect Mr. Wright to stop saying what he thinks just because I am no longer interested in his books. His stories would not somehow become richer if he stopped slandering and put in some characters who he doesn't understand at all. Let's not make this a boycott. I don't intend it as a disincentive-- just a helpful new way to winnow down information overload. It takes a really good reason for me to pick up a new author, and any excuse will do to avoid one. Look at the supply and demand ratio. The audience for fiction is what these days? Twelve people? Thirteen? (I kid, but you get the point.) And how many really high-quality novels and short story collections have accumulated? Several human lifetimes' worth. As Cory Doctorow says, writing is almost a non-economic activity now. A hobby. Which kind of author do we want to be among the few for whom it is an economical profession? Screeching red-eyed lecturers, or warm, genial sweethearts?