Today is the day I have a minor surgical procedure. It’s outpatient and I should be back home this afternoon. As it deals with my eyelids I suspect that for the next several days I shall not be posting on this blog.
Have a good time everyone
Initially, we have no choice in our names. Our parents, by whatever method they agreed upon, select and bestowed them on us. But as we grow up, form our own sense of whom we are, we claim names for ourselves. Sometimes that means accepting the names we were given at birth, sometimes that means modifying our given names into some sort of nickname, and sometimes it means abandoning our given name entirely for one solely of our choosing.
This process is one of the myriad ways in which we assert out autonomy and our unique identity of self. Personally I have always been sensitive to the name issue and it irritates me when people abuse others by refusing the most elemental courtesy of calling them by their preferred name. This matters in close personal spaces between friends and it matters in large public spaces such as politics.
George H.W. Bush has as his vice president Dan Quayle, but that’s not really his name. His full name is James Danforth Quayle. We can set aside his politics and any argument over his qualifications or lack thereof for the office that he held, that’s not the point of my essay. He preferred to be called ‘Dan,’ that was his name, a nickname drawn from his middle name. I remember at their convention his political opponents referring to him a ‘J. Danforth Quayle.’ Not James, but that peculiar construction endemic to elite society, the initial, middle name, surname, format, such as J. Paul Getty. It was a pretty transparent attempt to use the man’s name as a bludgeon for political purposes.
If you do this sort of thing you’re an ass.
I’m pretty set on that concept. Disagree with people, argue the facts and the assumptions that operate with politically, but belittling them through deliberate abuse of their names and you are an ass.
That’s independent of your political stance. Currently an academic becoming very popular with conservative is Jordan Peterson. One of the ways he has catapulted to rightwing celebrity status is be his refusal to call transgender persons by their preferred name or pronoun, a direct assault on their identity for political points.
Mind you, Peterson isn’t in a heated national election trying to sway millions of people into voting for him. (Though that does not excuse the example with Dan Quayle’s name.) Peterson acts this way in personal one-on-one interactions and he is smart enough to understand exactly what it is he doing but he does it anyway, a petty, political, and pointless performance.
In my book Jordan Peterson is an ass.
Last night I attended a 70mm screening of the classic science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Released in 1968 2001 represents what might be considered the pinnacle of cinematic SF before the K/T 
event eight years later, Star Wars. While there continued to be released a number of low brow monster and invasion films throughout the 1950s and 1960’s, cinematic SF was, until Star Wars, moving towards a more idea centered adult focused set of stories.
Directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 deals with the gigantic themes of the origin of humanity and our possible fate. In other essays I have discussed the difference between story and plot with 2001 I want to introduce another approach, the Idea Centered Narrative.
Where story is chiefly concerned with the evolution of a character and that character’s eventual change, and plot is focuses on objectives and the barriers impeding the achievement of those goals, idea driven narratives are concerned with big thoughts and exploring theoretical landscapes. With less focus on individual characteristics idea centered narrative are often more symbolic, impressionistic, and, particularly with film, strikingly visual. This definition fits 2001perfectly.
2001 can be broken down in five acts; 1-The Dawn of Man, 2-Clavius, 3-The Discovery, 4-The Horror of Hal, and 5-Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. Others has noticed that each act makes a reference to birthdays and births a central and recurring motif throughout the film as it deals with the up-lift of humanity, symbolically shown by way of Bowman’s transformation, into a post-singularity species. Across the five acts there is no single character to follow, Bowman is in three but only in two acts does he service as an audience Point of View. Instead of a singular character, 2001, presents humanity as a whole as its character and the vehicle for its ideas. Humanity transforms, first from a pre-intelligent hominid into a thinking and reasoning animal, then into a complex but divisive species cooperating and competing as individuals and nations, and finally into the cosmic, alien, and unknowable ‘star child.’ This is a movie that is not concerned with any individual’s problems or challenges, not Moonwatcher the hominid, not Hayward the administrator, and not the doomed astronaut Bowman. Rather the central ‘character’, much like how a landscape or a city can be a ‘character’ in a film, is humanity itself and these various individuals stand in for humanity at key moments in its evolution, an evolution that is directed by unseen, unimaginably power, alien intelligences. I find it fascinating that of the five acts it is act that where Kubrick swore off the Hollywood mainstay, the close-up. Bring the camera right into the subject’s face has been thoroughly accepted mechanism for creating intimacy and empathy between the subject and the audience. Across the entire film we have close-up of our heroic astronauts, Bowman and Poole, of non-human characters such as Hal and Moonwatcher, but not when we are with the most human centered aspect of the movie, the discovery of the lunar monolith and the elaborated conspiracy keeping it secret. Instead keeps us at arms length, emotionally distant from all of these characters. I am not sure what I think about this choice; it’s one that I shall ponder for quite awhile.
There’s no doubt that 2001: A Space Odyssey deserves if venation as a cinematic masterpiece. One of the most thoughtful and though-provoking films of any era 2001 stands as giant and seeing it in 70mm was a real treat.
To me it is an inescapable observation that Trump is a terrible president. Hot-headed, shallow in thought and knowledge, indulgent, petty, mean, vindictive and with a fragile ego he possessed no quality that qualifies him for the responsibilities of his office. I say this as someone who has voted for more Republican presidential candidates than Democratic ones.
This week we learned that from a leaked letter that Trump and his people have argued that it is impossible for the President, because he is, by virtue of his position as the head of the executive branch, the vehicle of justice in this nation, to obstruct justice. He cannot be subpoenaed, indicted, and possesses the power to pardon fully himself. Utilizing laws passed to ensure that the nation’s military can command critical resources during an emergency, he has taken personal power with the potential of greatly impact the national and world economy. He has abandoned the norms of American political power, dismissing many who refuse to be cowed yes-men, going so far as to suggest, albeit in his own sense of jest, that perhaps he should stay on past the constitutionally limited two terms. He has suggested at Article 5 of NATO isn’t important. He keeps his finances opaque while foreign nation pour money into projects in which has he has a financial interest. He distances us from our Allies has be gets friendly with dictators and tyrants.
And yet it would seem that there are vast number of people who do not seem to see the same defects in Trump as I do. It is always possible that I see through a bias and they do not, the first element of wisdom is humility in certitude and recognizing the possibility of error. However facts are stubborn things and I can see no reasonable narrative constructed from the known facts and observations that lead to any other conclusion. Many of the same people who now find Trump an adequate president found spurious fault easily seen in the previous president, seriously undercutting their observations of Trump as an acceptable president.
This is poisonous partisanship. This is the end result of my team is always right. This is the threat to self-governance that we must face. Yes, this tribalism exists on both sides, I have seen numerous distortions and false stories spread by those who see only evil in the conservative parties, but truly their transgression are far less than those defending this presidency, this graft, and threat to our way of life. These times will not only try our souls it will try out nation’s.
Getting feedback on a narrative piece is always tricky. It starts with the fact that all art is opinion and all feedback on art is opinion, none of this is quantifiable or subject to objective measurement such as say the Speed of Light or the rate of radioactive decay. A piece of art, no matter how terrible or great you may value it has those who love and those who hate it. Given that starting point what I look for in feedback is consensus. If several people tell me ‘X’ then ‘X’ is more likely something that will resonated across more readers than if one person holds that opinion. This is why having a diverse group of readers is so very helpful and why every person’s opinion is valuable.
Honestly that part is the easy part, what is more difficult is maintaining a distance between yourself and the actual feedback. It is easy to become dejected at a harsh critique, one where the feedback found very little to praise or recommend, and the natural inclination to avoid that dejection is a total rejection of that feedback, but this serves no one well. Even if that critique is an outlier among the rest it represents a point of view that others in a wider readership are likely to hold and should be considered and not dismissed out of hand.
Equally dangerous is the critique that praises. These can induce joy and elation and present the danger that they are valued over other feedback. Just as with the harsh criticism it is important to maintain some level of objectivity and see what elements you may or may not agree with in the feedback.
There are no right answers, there are no wrong answers, this is all personal taste and the waters of beta reads are filled with treacherous shoals ready to wreck to unwary.