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With our first baby on the way, Wifeshui and I are naturally thinking a lot about child-rearing techniques. How can we instil values in our daughter-to-be? How do we ensure that she is given the social and moral tools with which to address society? How will we educate her as to what’s right and wrong?
Well, Robert Heinlein has an answer, although not one which particularly resonates with us. In Starship Troopers, he advocates corporal punishment as the “obvious” solution to juvenile delinquency, suggesting that one should train a child in the same way as one trains a puppy – by punishing them with pain when they misbehave. It’s a view which is popular not just with fascistic sci-fi societies, but with contemporary Christians as well, especially the fundies. Much of this is due to the Book of Proverbs, which contains five verses specific to the disciplining of children (Proverbs 13:24, 22:15, 23:13, 23:14 and 29:15), all of which are variations on, “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Being somewhat primitive in their paedology and pedagogy, the ancient Israelites went with a simple child-rearing system which basically amounted to: SMACK! It’s an idea which has persisted in these more enlightened times, most notably in the poisonous spew of Focus on The Fascism Family’s James Dobson.
In Dobson’s writings on child-rearing, he invariably frames the parent/child relationship as one of antagonism and conflict. Children are referred to in his case studies by such terms as: tyrant, brat, rebel, dictator, tiger, anarchist and other such stigmatising labels. By contrast, parents (pre-Dobson’s intervention) are described as nervous, frustrated, defied, defeated and embarrassed. The solution? Well, in any battle, one plays to one’s strengths – parents are bigger, stronger and quicker than their children, and so belting the hell out of a disobedient “little spitfire” seems – to Dobson – to be the obvious choice. In fairness, it was certainly the way he himself was raised – in The New Dare To Discipline he describes how his own mother used to beat him with “a multitude of straps and buckles… Believe it or not, it made me feel loved.” (You know who else talks like that? S&M fetishists. I’m just saying…) Raised in violence, Dobson has written numerous books imploring others to meter out the same treatment to their own children, and fundagelicals across the world have lapped it up. My own parents owned at least one Dobson book (I think it was Bringing Up Boys – or “How to make your sons not be gay.”) and were no slouches in the smacking department – their tool of choice was a wooden spoon on which (with no apparent irony) I had personally carved the words, “God Is Love” in a Sunday School craft lesson. As a result, I can safely say I’m in the camp he proudly describes in The New Dare To Discipline:
“I’m told Dr. Benjamin Spock is loved by millions of kids who are being raised according to his philosophy. I have an entire generation that would like to catch me in a blind alley.”
By his own admission, Dobson is responsible for a generation of children growing up with hate and violence – and the fucker is pleased about it!
So Wifeshui and I will, by mutual consent, not be following the advice of “Dr” James Dobson (medical credentials? Er… none, actually) and beating the tar out of our daughter when she comes along. There will be moments, I am sure, when it may seem like an attractive proposition, but I intend to raise our child in an environment of love and respect, not fear and blind obedience. If that eventually leads to the downfall of Robert Heinlein’s perfect society, so be it – there are better worlds in the imaginations of our great sci-fi writers (Peter F. Hamilton springs to mind) than his Nazi utopia.
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” George Bernard Shaw
I have never been a patriot, I’m afraid. Wifeshui, being proudly Cornish, tells me that she has always considered me to be the epitome of Englishness (a bit of a backhanded compliment from someone whose country was invaded and suppressed by my ancestors), but I can’t honestly say I’ve ever felt any particular affection for my country over all others. It’s true that I’ve rarely been beyond its borders, but that’s primarily due to financial considerations rather than any conviction that Britain is a better place to be. As a result, I find it hard to understand the motivations of patriots, and even harder to distinguish between genuine patriotism and smug superiority.
In times of war (also football championships, which are in many ways a surrogate for military action) one is expected to nail one’s colours to the mast and declare unstinting support for the Motherland. I’m heartened that in recent decades it has become more socially acceptable to criticise governments during wartime, particularly in the West, but nonetheless international conflict still serves to bring out the “us-and-them” mentality that lies at the heart of the human herding instinct. The Welsh Girl, with its World War Two setting and in-depth examination of what it means to love one’s country, would make an excellent piece of compulsory reading for any person seeing the world in such terms.
It’s strange that arbitrary divisions of land – invisible to the eye, except on a map – should exert so strong a pressure on the minds of those born on one side or the other. The Welsh border is a prime example. Crossing it, one suddenly finds roadsigns in a different language (one with far too many consonants for my liking), a different (if vassal) Government and a wholly different view of history and culture. Yet as the crow flies, I am separated from my colleagues in Cardiff by less than twenty miles; barely a vigorous afternoon’s walk (or swim, given that the Bristol Channel lies directly in my path). It’s only an accident of birth that makes them Welsh whilst I am English, and as such I find it hard to relate to those whose identity is inextricably bound up with their Welshness.
Identity does appear to be the key. Human nature being what it is, we like to congregate in insular groups; no doubt a survival trait inherited from our distant anthropoid ancestors. Outsiders are expressly excluded from the group, thus protecting the group members from potentially harmful pathogens and possibly dangerous individuals. Even today this tendency is clearly visible in our culture. As you might expect, I’m keen to point to the exclusiveness of certain religions in relation to this idea, but patriotism is a perfect example of how readily people will align themselves with a group or faction almost arbitrarily. The stance of this group becomes their own personal stance, psychologically strengthening their position.
As a result, patriotism is part of one’s personal identity; one of the building blocks (like religion) that, ironically, make one unique. Shaw was absolutely spot on with the statement above – being a patriot isn’t about loving your country, or even opposing another’s country. At its heart, pure and simple, patriotism is self-obsession, writ very large.
The dreadful events in Gaza over the holiday period have given the Rapture Ready crowd their usual pre-tribulation stiffies, as the prospect of their precious Armageddon looms ever closer. The fact that a sizable chunk of the USA’s population reckon that the end of the world is on their doorstep is simultaneously funny and frightening. Funny, because quite frankly who wouldn’t laugh at the sort of drivel that makes it into FSTDT? Frightening, because the USA is pretty much the world’s only remaining military (and nuclear) superpower – and a lot of them genuinely believe in this shit.
Given that all it would take to trigger an (entirely non-biblical) Armageddon is one fundaloony with their finger on a big red button (and the “Palin 2012” stickers, whilst ironic, are also pretty scary), it might behove us to give some thought to the possibility of post-holocaust survival. Step up, David Brin’s The Postman, which places its hero in the middle of an apocalyptic America where technology is all but dead and the population have been reduced to medieval squalor. What useful lessons can we glean from Gordon’s experience in this blasted landscape?
1. People will believe any old shit.
“Yeah, I’m like, a postman, and the USA is still going, only not, y’know, here, so umm… gimme some food.” Yes, I know it serves as a springboard for his rediscovered ethics and future heroism, but to start off with, Gordon is basically a shyster, taking advantage of people’s credulity. What’s more noteworthy is that people believe him, because he provides them with hope. So take note, survivors – you can go a long way by claiming outrageously unfeasible things as long as you preach a message of future salvation. Try suggesting that an invisible sky-fairy incarnated himself 2000 years ago and died and came back to life so that he wouldn’t have to send people to an eternal, fiery torture chamber. They’ll love that.
2. All-knowing superbeings are probably just a front for conmen.
Witness the all-powerful Cyclops, advanced Artificial Intelligence with awesome knowledge and excellent line in agricultural know-how. Actually just a smoke-and-mirrors scheme run by a few bright folk to deceive the aforementioned credulous masses. If you run across some sort of higher power in your post-apocalyptic wanderings, treat it with suspicion – it’s probably just a way for smart folk to make you give them your stuff.
3. People who follow Messiah figures and holy books are dangerous.
The terrible Holnist Survivalists who plague Gordon’s journey are convinced of their own righteousness, because they believe the writings of right-wing author Nathan Holn. As a result, they are capable of terrible atrocities, which are endorsed by the strange creed that they follow. True believers can do terrible things in the name of their faith, so watch out for anyone sporting the light of holy conviction in their eyes. Or a necklace of human ears.
There you go, survivors – three useful tips to help you cope when the Rapture Ready crazies finally make it to the White House. I hope they help you to make your way in a world where Geiger counters are the height of fashion and your skin diseases are considered a surer means of identification than your face. Alternatively, by applying these cautions now, you may be able to prevent the disaster from ever happening in the first place, so I guess the Postman has a lot to offer even the pre-Armageddon crowd.
Love books, but not baby Jesus? You need to join the Non-Believing Literati!
The Exterminator has recently stepped down from hosting the NBL, so for the forseeable future the Literati will be congregating here at Right To Think. I’ll keep this page updated with links to the latest NBL news and posts, so if you’re writing about something we’ve read please drop me a line (stuart.e.turner@hotmail.co.uk) and let me know and I’ll make sure your reviews, musings and literary insights are catalogued in one place.
The next Non-Believing Literati book is The Postman by David Brin (as suggested by Lynet) and the date for posting is January 12th. If you want to participate, all you need to do is buy, borrow or steal a copy of the book, read it from cover to cover, and write a post about it – a book review, a piece of “inspired-by” original fiction, a real-life story that it reminded you of – as long as it’s in some way related to the book’s content, you’re in.
Last month we read Remembering Hypatia, and below are the bloggers who posted about it (let me know if you’re not on here and I’ll add a link):
Ordinary Girl
The Exterminator
Chaplain
yunshui
Ridger
John Evo
C.L. Hanson
Having spent most of my working life in bookshops, I’ve naturally developed a rather protective attitude towards my papery charges. On a purely academic level I’m well aware that for every copy of Jordan’s latest opus we have on our shelves, another ten thousand exist at the wholesalers’ warehouse, but it still irks me when I see a spine bent or a page dog-eared. Indeed, when I discovered Wifeshui’s approach to Sudoku books (she rips out the pages as she finishes each puzzle), our very marriage was briefly in jeopardy. Books, to me, are the nearest thing I have to sacred objects, repositories of knowledge which need to survive in order that the information therein can be handed down to future generations.
Remembering Hypatia, then, was a traumatic read for me. I was already aware of the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria by Christian zealots, an act which effectively doomed the West to mental poverty for a thousand years. Not until the Renaissance did European thought once again raise its head out of the mire of superstition secreted by the Catholic Church, and even since then progress has been a great struggle, so the historical events of Remembering Hypatia had ramifications which reverberate even today. Dominant strains of Christianity have always been opposed to scientific learning, as we can see today in the antics of the Discovery Institute and its peers. Yesterday’s heliocentralism has become today’s Young Earth Creationism, and the wheels of science are still slowed by superstitious ignorants clinging to the spokes.
Although historically the Church tended to quash scientific writing because its results seemed to conflict with their interpretation of the Bible, there were other, more practical reasons for suppressing knowledge. In a world where writing material was in limited supply (large scale paper manufacturing didn’t arrive in Europe until lthe Middle Ages, so for a long time vellum or parchment was the material of choice for publishing) books were rare, and creating a new tome from scratch was a prohibitively pricey process. Small wonder then, that Christians looking to spread the word of the Church would often erase and overwrite an existing book rather than try to create an entirely new one. Because such palimpsests became so common, the Church issued a decree in 691 CE which prohibited the overwriting of Scripture or the works of the Church Fathers – which, whilst preserving such documents, encouraged the wholesale depredation of secular writings in their stead. An excellent example is the Archimedes Palimpsest, a priceless treatise by Archimedes which a priest named Johannes Myronas casually dismantled and erased in 1229 so that he could use the sheepskin parchment to write a prayer book. Only with modern X-ray technology can Archimedes original concepts be read, and if it weren’t for the very sharp eyes of one Johan Heiburg (the scholar who rediscovered the document) no-one today would know about Archimedes’ invention of calculus – thousands of years before Newton.
The destruction of books, usually through burning, has always been a characteristic of oppressive totalitarianism. The earliest recorded occurrence of this dates from about 200 BCE, when the Emperor of the emergent state of Qin in modern China had all non-Qin books burned and all non-Qin scholars buried alive. As a result, much of pre-Qin Chinese history is now lost to us, which was no doubt Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s idea in the first place. Hitler and Stalin both famously held book barbecues during their rule, and many other dictators, including Brazil’s Getulio Vargas and Chilean despot Augusto Pinochet have publicly burned the works of authors who criticised their regimes. The record for book burning, though (and this should come as no surprise) is held by the Catholic Church. Islam comes in a close second, and in fact probably only loses out on the title because it hasn’t been around for as long. Any religion has a vested interest in maintaining its memetic coherence, and so any views which deviate from orthodoxy cannot be allowed to promulgate themselves through the written word. As a result, faith has much to fear from a technology which allows the perpetuaton and dissemination of ideas, and Remembering Hypatia provides an excellent depiction of how the mob mentality can be exploited by religious memes to crush concepts that threaten them.
Thankfully, today such censorship is a thing of the past. Thanks to the internet, information and knowledge have adapted new forms, ones which theists will find almost impossible to erase. A gargantuan reservoir of human thought is available at the touch of a button, so book burning is now a largely symbolic act (as seen with the recurring incinerations of Harry Potter books in religious communities – a gesture as futile as trying to hold back a tsunami with an umbrella). The internet, the least flammable medium humanity has yet designed, looks like it can hold off the depredations of the Religious Right for a long time to come.
When I was doing my degree, we had to watch a lot of theatre. Hardly surprising, given that it was a Drama degree, and I was prepared to sit through hours of acting before I even started. What I hadn’t prepared for was the quantity of unrelenting shit we would have to wade through, posteriors numbing on hard seats as we watched yet another third-rate student theatre company slog through their all-male version of Romeo and Juliet, “re-imagined” as a musical paean to the political system in Sweden. At some point during these many crimes against art, I always though, “I should just leave.” The temptation to pick up my stuff and quietly saunter towards the exit was often compelling, but I nonetheless held on every time, hoping against all hope that the execrable theatrical prolapse in front of me might at some point display some redeeming quality. A clever lighting technique, or an ingenious bit of physicality – even a well handled set-change – any of these things could, in my eyes, recompense me for the tedium of terrible acting and primary-school direction some of these companies produced. It has ever been so: I will almost always plod to the end of the most dull and insipid play, novel, film or art gallery, expecting to find something worth gleaning from even the dreariest of works.
Note the “almost” in my last sentence. The Flight Of Peter Fromm is one of the very, very few books which I eventually just put down and never picked up again. I’m not sure I ever will. Frankly, had I wanted to learn about the history of Christian theology, I could have dug out my copy of Alister McGrath’s Historical Theology and had a much more entertaining time of it. McGrath may be a tedious apologist, but he is a good and coherent writer, and I actually prefer his sermonising to Homer’s dull-as-ditchwater musings on the history of faith. I couldn’t care less about Peter’s fall from grace – it’s hard to decide which is the more dreary; the character himself or the plot arc he follows.
The Exterminator’s review in many ways parallels my own opinion, so rather than waste still more time on Gardener’s scribblings I’ll direct you there instead. Let’s hope next month’s book is somewhat more engaging.
Certain aspects of cosmology are fiendishly difficult to get one’s head around. If you’re not possessed of a Hawking-esque intellect, the sheer effort of trying to visualise four-dimensional space-time, or the concept of the pre-Big Bang singularity is more than enough to send most people spinning into a stress-induced migraine. What is one to make, then, of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, in which such concepts are experienced directly by a cast of unpronounceable characters, and instead of being the focus of the book, are relegated to backdrop for the author’s philosophical musings on the human condition?
“Highbrow” doesn’t even come close to describing the concepts behind this lovable little collection of short stories. Calvino’s characters, despite their distinctly human foibles, exist in an utterly different manner to us mere mortals. As metaphysical entities, they experience the space-time continuum from an entirely new angle, enabling the author to explore astonishingly complex concepts from the participants’ perspective. Time is something of an irrelevance for this extraordinary beings, space and distance merely minor distractions. Thus, they can explore the Big-Bang from the inside out, fall for infinite distances, climb ladders to the moon or count the revolutions of a galaxy with impunity.
The genius behind Cosmicomics is not its novel approach to astrophysics, however. The grace and levity of these little vignettes is provided by the recognisably human attitudes and relationships portrayed in Qfwfq and co.’s universe. Take out all the fantastic extrapolations of cosmology and you would still have a series of delightfully whimsical musings on life and love, but Calvino bolsters the accessible humanity of his tales with these bizarre backdrops, and so elevates a series of comparatively mundane interactions to the level of sublime genius.
Cosmicomics is a book that asks a lot of its reader. You will never be truly sure what Qfwfq actually is, or quite whether physics could be made to work the way Calvino envisions, and there is frustration to be had aplenty for the reader who tries to make sense of it all. Instead, this is best experienced in the same way as many theists approach religion – enjoy the sensation, but don’t ask too many questions…
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