Tag: Thoughts and Reflections

Trope Tuesday: Future Primitive

From tvtropes:

Evolution isn’t goal-directed. Sometimes …a species (often but not limited to humanity) will sometimes evolve into a more feral, less civilized, sometimes even non-sapient variety, regaining “primitive” characteristics. These “primitive” characteristics can include behaviors and/or physical traits…

Most basic is the scenario common to Post-Apocalyptic settings After the End, where humanity (or another species) is still physiologically more or less the same, but society has collapsed and technological and cultural regression have set in… In more extreme scenarios, the population may have evolved into a new subspecies or another species altogether… Most Scavenger World-type future settings are not far enough removed from the Present Day for natural selection to favor such drastic changes.

May overlap with Was Once a Man. Sometimes, it’s the motivation of an Evilutionary Biologist to try and take control of evolution in order to avert this fate.

Common to After the End settings. Likely to exist in Humanity’s Wake. Contrast Evolutionary Levels, Ultimate Lifeform and The Singularity (all of which tend to assume evolution’s a linear, goal driven process). Has nothing to do with the effects of a Devolution Device.

This trope has been on my mind as I write Edenfall, the sequel to Genesis Earth. In that book, this trope featured prominently, and drove the main character to question his faith in the progression of the natural world from chaos to order, entropy to complexity, and ignorance and barbarity to knowledge and civilization.

Perhaps the most prominent example of this trope is the Morlocks and Eloi from H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. In the far future, the children of the rich elites of society have evolved into dainty, helpless, childlike creatures, while the descendants of the lower classes have evolved into dark and predatory monsters. As different as they are, though, they have both lost the drive and ingenuity that makes us human: the Eloi because it was pamperd out of them, and the Morlocks because they were repressed for so long. Both of them have lost their humanity and devolved into little more than animals.

In the Victorian era, people generally had faith in the slow and steady march of progress: that ignorance and superstition inevitably gave way to the light of science and reason, each successive age tended to be more advanced and scientific that the previous ages, and that humanity represented the pinnacle of evolution, the crowning achievement of the natural world. They rejected the notion that catastrophic and violent upheavals had any significant effect on the development of cilivization or humanity, and believed that the world was in a state of constant, unstoppable improvement.

Well, the two worlds wars pretty much shattered that notion forever. And since that time, we’ve discovered all sorts of evidence that in history and evolution, catastrophic change and violent upheaval are the rule, rather than the exception. From the bronze age collapse and the black death to supernovae and the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Victorian concept of the slow, steady, and inevitable march of progress looks very quaint indeed.

That was what I wanted to deconstruct in Genesis Earth. But now that I’m writing the sequels, I plan to subvert this trope. I can’t say how without giving spoilers, but it’s going to be a major plot point, especially in the third book.

What happens when humans meddle in evolution? When we hack into our genetic code and rewrite our place in the natural order? Can time heal the scars of our broken world, or will it take something else to fix us? Something more than human, or something so fundamental to our humanity that it lies in every heart?

Anyways, those are the things on my mind as I finish up Edenfall and get ready to write The Stars of Redemption. With luck, they will both be out by the end of this year!

Will A Song of Ice and Fire stand the test of time?

A while ago, I wrote a blog post titled Why I don’t like George R.R. Martin, in which I laid out some of the issues I had with the Song of Ice and Fire series, and why I decided not to read past the first book. That post has been getting a lot of traffic lately, probably because the last season of Game of Thrones is coming out and there’s a lot of hype right now about it.

At FanX a couple of weeks ago, I attended an interesting panel with Steve Grad from Pawn Stars on the do’s and don’ts of collecting. On that panel, he expressed some skepticism that Game of Thrones signatures and collectibles would hold their value over time. This made me wonder: will the books this TV series is based on stand the test of time?

Full disclosure: I have only read the first book, A Game of Thrones, and have not watched any episodes of the miniseries. I’ve watched a few of the more important scenes on YouTube and occasionally follow discussions about it on online forums. After reading the first book, I decided that this series was not the sort of thing I wanted to watch or read. See the blog post linked above.

People have been calling George R.R. Martin the American Tolkien for years now, but I’ve always been skeptical of that claim. Tolkien’s books are timeless because they are so archetypal, with the classic struggle of good vs. evil permeating every page. In contrast, Martin rejects the archtypes of good and evil for a nihilistic black-and-gray morality, where there are no heroes, only victimizers and victims.

Why, then, is A Song of Ice and Fire so popular? First of all, because the writing and storytelling really are top notch. For all my criticism of George R.R. Martin, I fully recognize that he is a master. But there are a lot of excellent, masterful books that never capture the public imagination quite like Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. What, then, makes Martin’s work so different?

I believe it’s because George R.R. Martin has struck a nerve with the current zeitgeist, and scratches a uniquely contemporary itch in a way that none of the great works by the old masters can. What is that zeitgeist? It is spirit of a culture in the late stages of decadence, where wealth disparity, big government, endless wars, easy credit, runaway debt, moral decline, and corruption are the defining aspects of the age.

In a world where, in so many ways, we are shielded from the consequences of our own actions, morality becomes irrelevant and entertainment shifts to serve our basest, most carnal lusts. In such a world, we turn to nihilistic stories like Game of Thrones, which are saturated with sex and violence. They reinforce the view that good and evil don’t exist, that honor and integrity are for fools, and that wealth, power, and sexual indulgence are all ends in themselves. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, and it shall be well with us.”

At the same time, these stories satisfy a deep sense of self-loathing that arises out of the very nihilism that they celebrate. In those few moments when we are honest with ourselves, the decadence of our age profoundly disgusts us. As Haruki Murakami put it, “secretly everyone is waiting for the end of the world.” That is exactly what stories like Game of Thrones give us: gleeful destruction and total collapse, with blood, fire, ice, and steel. No one is safe. Anyone can die, even our most beloved characters. Winter is coming.

Every empire collapses, however, and every age of dedadence comes to an end. The very nihilistic elements that make stories like A Game of Thrones so appealing ultimately cause them to fall away and vanish, along with the culture itself. To stand the test of time, stories must be built upon archetypes that transcend the spirit of the age, rather than indulge it. Does George R.R. Martin do this? I don’t believe that he does.

A Song of Ice and Fire has an added disadvantage in that the TV series has overtaken the books. How many people will simply give up on the books after watching the season 8 finale? A Dance with Dragons averaged a 2.9-star rating on Amazon the year it came out, with thousands of reviews. It takes George R.R. Martin so long to write these books that it’s already become a meme, and his health isn’t all that great.

Personally, I think we’ve already reached peak George R.R. Martin. The season 8 finale will be an enormous affair, but after that the show’s popularity will steadily decline, and the books will not renew the public interest. I still think the books will do well compared to other books in the fantasy genre, but compared to previous installments, I think the Song of Ice and Fire series will go out with a loud and plaintive whimper.

A generation from now, when the current age of decadence is over and our children and grandchildren are rebuilding the world, I believe they will look at these books and scratch their heads—if they even bother to read them at all.

Extra Sci-Fi S3E8: Dune – Maud’dib

I thought this was a really good episode, though I’m not convinced that it’s better (or even possible) to lead through ideas rather than charisma. You need both, and I would argue that principles are more fundamental to human society than ideas. But still.

The part about the Harkonnens ruling through decadence and indulgence was particularly interesting. I see a fair bit of that in society today. Ten-plus years of suppressed or negative interest rates, with trillion-dollar deficits during a supposed economic boom? If that isn’t decadent, I don’t know what is. But I digress.

Everything rises and falls on leadership. A shitty job with an awesome supervisor can be amazing, but even a dream job can be ruined by a really shitty supervisor. I learned that the hard way.

My favorite example of charismatic leadership is probably Genghis Khan. I totally mean that, too. Genghis Khan’s story is amazing. He went from abject poverty and slavery to founding the largest land empire in history, all through the strength of his leadership. Extra History did a series on him, but the best version of his story that I’ve found thus far is from the History of China podcast:

The series is still ongoing, which is why the last two episodes don’t have links. You can find them in the podcast feed, though.

Now, I don’t necessarily advocate making Genghis Khan a role model. The man was responsible for a lot of death and destruction, and his empire did not endure. That said, it’s impossible to question that he was one of the most charismatic and effective leaders in the history of the world. As to whether he was a positive leader, well…

My favorite example of a positive leader is probably Shackleton. Endurance was a fantastic book. The biggest thing that blew my mind was the fact that he hired his crew entirely on the basis of five minute (or less) interviews, where they basically shot the breeze. He was so good at reading people that he could hand-pick a crew that would survive and pull together under the harshest conditions of the planet, and he did it entirely by hanging out with them for a couple of minutes. That’s incredible.

And it gets back to the tension between ideas, principles, and charisma. You need all three. Charisma is basically people skills, and all of the best ideas in the world won’t avail you much as a leader if you suck with people.

Everything rises or falls on leadership.

Extra Sci-Fi S3E7: Dune – Wandering in the Desert

So the problem I have with most “ecological science fiction” is that it draws almost exclusively on the ideas of Malthusian economics—essentially, the argument that Thanos was right. The problem with this is that Malthusian theory has been disproven by every generation of humans to live on this planet for the last 150 years. It’s even more discredited than Marxism, which is another unscientific philosophy that “ecological science fiction” draws heavily from.

I remember an old 70s novel I picked up from the local used bookstore, where by the year 2000, Earth had warmed so much that Antarctica was the only habitable continent, and resources were so scarce that the main character—a buxom blonde—had to go topless. Yeah, very 70s. The premise of the novel was so absurd on its face that I couldn’t finish it.

I also remember an Octavia Butler book that I read. It was the sort of book that makes you chuck it at the wall once you’re finished. The plot went something like this: the main character has been abducted by aliens and drafted into their breeding program, and she spends the whole book trying to escape, only to learn that she’s already pregnant and never will. The end. The writing was pretty good, but the story was so horribly unsatisfying that I haven’t read anything by her since.

From what I can tell, most “ecological science fiction” is like that. Very pretty sentences, but horribly unsatisfying stories, with way too much preaching about how capitalism is evil and humans are destroying the planet. That’s probably why these books tend to win so many Hugo Awards.

Red Mars was okay, but it was less about Earth and more about Mars itself. I was personally more interested in the political intrigue among the colonists than the terraforming project, but both were pretty good. The characters all seemed a little bland to me, though, and I never really latched on to any of them, which is probably why I didn’t read the other books. From what I can tell, they got more preachy toward the end.

Everyone praises Dune for being an “ecological” novel, but to be frankly honest I never really got into that. The political intrigue and the struggle of Paul Atreides with his prescience was a lot more interesting to me, and while the ecological bits certainly played into the plot, I didn’t really care enough to pay much attention to that.

Also, the parts that I did pick up seemed pretty unbelievable to me. From what I remember, there was a second, much smaller type of worm that produced a certain kind of excretion which, if mixed with the spice, would cause a chain reaction that would completely destroy the Arrakis ecosystem. Something like Kurt Vonnegut’s ice 9, which instantaneously freezes any water it comes into contact with, which makes it the most dangerous substance on Earth because a single drop could freeze all the water on the planet. In my (albeit limited) experience, ecosystems always find their own equilibrium, which makes them resiliant against that sort of thing. But of course, that would probably interfere with the preaching that “ecological science fiction” tends to indulge in.

From what I can tell, Dune is one of the few pieces of “ecological science fiction” that hasn’t aged poorly, and that’s not because of the “ecological” bits, but in spite of them. Because the truth is that we live in a fantastically rich and abundant post-scarcity world, where “global warming” had to rebrand as “climate change” because none of the predictions came true, and the science has been so ridiculously politicized that the Green New Deal makes the Communist Manifesto look sane and reasonable.

Thanos was wrong. So too, apparently, is the entire field of “ecological science fiction.”

Extra Sci-Fi S3E6: Dune – Plots and Plans

In Future Mrs. Vasicek’s writing group, we were talking about plotting and I remarked that plotting didn’t seem to be one of Frank Herbert’s strengths in Dune. Looking back on it, though, I think that the plot was pretty solid, but he chose to focus on other things instead—such as all of the machinations and ultimate downfalls of all of the characters, which Extra Credits discusses in this video.

When they brough up the “competent man” trope in the last season, and argued against it, I wasn’t quite sure how to take it. I know people in real life who fit the competent man trope very well, and who actually live up to Heinlein’s ideal:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

In this episode, the folks at Extra Credits argue that Herbert subverts the competent man trope in Dune by showing a bunch of characters who fit that trope failing because they fit it too perfectly. But as you can see from the quote above, that’s actually not the case.

The empaths and mentats in Dune are specialists. In fact, the world of Dune is full of specialists, from the pilots of the spacing guild to the Imperial Sardaukar to the Bene Gesserit—even the Fremen, to a certain extent, are specialists rather than Heinleinian competent men.

The video isn’t wrong to point out that specialization and hubris is the ultimate cause of all of these characters’ downfall. But they miss the trope when they argue that this is a critique of Heinlein and golden age science fiction. If anything, it’s a vindication. Heinlein’s competent man is all about being a jack of all trades, master of one (or two, or half a dozen, as the case may be). In Dune, the characters who do best are the ones who figure this out.

I do have to say, though, it’s kind of fun to revisit Dune, seeing as it’s been so long since the last time I read it. Future Mrs. Vasicek didn’t like the book at all, but I enjoyed it, especially on the second read. Very few things made sense on the first read. My favorite character is probably Jessica, though the folks at Extra Credits are absolutely right about the way that Yueh played her.

Extra Sci-Fi S3E4: The Return of the King

Okay, I think the folks at Extra Credits got it wrong with this one in a really big way.

Gollum didn’t redeem himself. That’s the entire point. Redemption is an important and very Christian theme of Lord of the Rings, but so is the problem of evil. Several comments on the video point this out:

I disagree about Gollum. He gave into the temptation of the Ring. I think more he is there for how God can turn evil into a good.

MJBull515

Gollum is more a Judas figure. Judas was not redeemed for betraying Jesus, but his evil actions did allow for the salvation of Man through Christ’s sacrifice.

Isacc Avila

“A traitor may betray himself and do good he does not intend.” Judas betraying Jesus was the catalyst that led to salvation. Gollum’s final act of greed was the catalyst that led to the destruction of the Ring.

Jet Tanyag

The thing that really gets to me, though, and the part where I think the folks at Extra Credits really do a disservice to these books, is how they argue, very subtly, that Gollum shouldn’t be held responsible for his own actions, that it wasn’t really his fault that he was addicted to the ring—that he “couldn’t escape his own sin.” (4:50)

No. Just, no.

The entire point of redemption is that we CAN escape from our sins. We see that with Theoden, we see that with the Dead Men of Dunharrow, and we see that in all the other examples of redemption that were not discussed in this video, like Boromir. In fact, Boromir is a far better example of “redemption through a single, all-important act.”

But it goes much deeper than that. In order to be meaningful, sacrifice must be intentional. It’s not just the act that matters, but the intention behind the act.

With that in mind, consider Gollum’s intentions when he bit off Frodo’s finger. The only way you can argue that his intentions weren’t evil is that the Smeagol half of his split-personality overcame the Gollum half, and flung him into the lava. But the support for that reading is ambigous at best. And if that isn’t true, and Gollum simply fell into the lava by accident, then it wasn’t a sacrifice on his part, and therefore there was no redemption.

To say that Gollum made an “accidental” sacrifice is nonsense. And to say that he redeemed himself through that sacrifice is not only a faulty argument—it completely undermines the themes of redemption and sacrifice throughout the entire book.

Gollum was never redeemed. Through him, Middle Earth was saved, but he was never personally redeemed, and that’s the point:

I’ve heard a different interpretation where Gollum’s sacrifice wasn’t an act of redemption, and was never meant to be. In the end, it was the ring’s own power that caused it to be destroyed; not Frodo, not Gollum, it was an accidental suicide. As far as I understand it, the message wasn’t “good triumphs over evil”, instead it was “evil is more powerful than good, but all it can do is destroy; in the end it will always destroy itself”.

EvilBarrels

Extra Sci-Fi S3E3: The Two Towers

This episode of Extra Sci-Fi got me to thinking about a speech that Orson Scott Card gave when he visited BYU back in 2007. He said a bunch of interesting things that have stuck with me over the years, including (to paraphrase) “conservatism is the new counterculture.” He was probably ten to fifteen years before his time on that one. But the thing that struck me the hardest was this:

Fiction is the culture talking to itself.

This goes along with what I talked about in my commentary on the last Extra Sci-Fi episode: that every generation reinvents the world. How do they reinvent it? Through story. And because there’s a necessary give-and-take as part of the process, the bestselling fiction that a culture produces is a reflection of that culture’s values, the issues of the day, and the zeitgeist as it changes and evolves over time.

We can see this in the themes discussed in this video. While Tolkien denied that Lord of the Rings was allegorical in any way, I agree with the folks at Extra Credits that the world wars and the rise of fascism almost certainly influenced his depiction of good and evil. It’s probably also true that the conflict between industry and nature influenced the book too. This isn’t because Tolkien set out to tell a story about these things; rather, because Tolkien himself was a product of the culture of his day, that culture shines through in his works.

This makes me wonder about the stories that don’t become bestsellers. Are there lots of amazing, well-written stories out there that don’t succeed simply because they’re out of step with the ongoing cultural conversation? Kind of like Orson Scott Card’s argument, back in 2007, that “conservatism is the new counterculture.” He made that argument a decade before we reached peak social justice, and got pushed more or less into cultural irrelevance because of it.

Card might not be the best example, because of his role as a culture warrior as well as his fiction writing career. With his Ornery American column, he was basically a shitposter before shitposting was a thing. But I wonder: what are the stories that aren’t getting traction only because they don’t really speak to the culture?

Or is it even possible to write a story that doesn’t speak to your own culture? Since you are a product of the culture that you live in, does that mean that your stories will be a product of that culture too? That certainly seems to be the case with Tolkien. Hindsight is 2020, though, and it’s really tricky to account for unknown unknowns.

I don’t know. I guess the big takeaway is that if you want to be a sucessful writer, you should do everything you can to immerse yourself in your own culture, not only because that’s the best way to improve your storytelling instincts, but because all of the most successful stories contribute something meaningful to the culture’s ongoing conversation with itself.

Pros and Cons: Print Books vs. Ebooks vs. Audiobooks

One of the long-term things I want to do is build a home library. Last weekend, I started cataloging my books and putting together plans for how to do that. I’m sure I’ll be posting more about that in the future, but the big question at the start of it was this:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each book format?

So I spent some time thinking about it, as well as browsing the internet to get other people’s thoughts and perspectives. There are three major formats for books now: print, ebook, and audio. Here, as best as I can tell, are the major pros and cons with each:

Print Books

Pros:

  • Ownership. If it’s physically in your possession, then you are the undisputed owner of that book.
  • No screens, batteries, or power requirements. Does not require a device to use.
  • Easy to share with others (though there is a risk that they won’t return it! See ownership above).
  • High visibility. Because of this, print books can be symbols of status or social reputation. They also are much harder to ignore once you put them in a TBR pile.

Cons:

  • Space intensive. You have to find a place for them.
  • Heavy, especially when boxed in large numbers.
  • Prone to damage, such as water damage, parasites, etc.
  • Requires shelving to properly store and display.

Ebooks

Pros:

  • Portability. Fits onto your everyday carry (EDC) device, such as a phone or tablet, as well as a dedicated ereader.
  • Requires very little storage space, both physically (on a device) and digitally (small file sizes).
  • Cheap, at least for indie published books.
  • Can read more easily at night, depending on the device.
  • Privacy. It’s easier to hide an ebook from people than it is to hide a print book, or even an audiobook.

Cons:

  • Ownership is ambiguous at best. Do you own your ebook files outright, or do you own a license to use the files? Can Amazon (or whatever site you bought the ebooks from) remove the books from your device at their discretion? It’s been done before!
  • Requires a screen or device to use.
  • Difficult (though not impossible) to share. There is a kindle lending library, but I’ve never used it, and in the handful of instances where I’ve tried, I eventually gave up trying to figure it out. Copying and sideloading is possible, but tricky. Much easier to pull a print book off the shelf and hand it to somebody.

Audiobooks

Pros:

  • Can listen while doing other things, especially driving or mindless chores.
  • Can also fit into the little gaps in your schedule, turning time that would otherwise be wasted into reading time.
  • Listening is a more passive exercise than reading. This can be a con as well as a pro.
  • Fits easily onto a phone or other EDC device, giving it many of the same portability advantages of ebooks.

Cons:

  • Takes longer to read. You can speed up the narration, but it’s not as easy or efficient as skimming a book.
  • More expensive than the other formats. An exception might be for rare or out-of-print books that aren’t available in digital.
  • Larger files, which take up more storage space. You can easily keep a large library of ebooks on one device, but you’d need a server or a dedicated hard drive to do the same with a large library of audiobooks.
  • Ownership is ambiguous. See above.

What are your thoughts? Let me know!

Larry Correia on Sensitivity Readers

Larry Correia just came out with another highly entertaining rant, this time on sensitivity readers. In case you don’t know, “sensitivity readers” are people that publishers hire to go through an unpublished manuscript to make sure that there’s nothing that could offend any marginalized groups. Larry sums it up quite well:

A Sensitivity Reader is usually some expert on Intersectional Feminism or Cismale Gendernormative Fascism or other made up goofiness who a publisher brings in to look for anything “problematic” in a manuscript. And since basically everything is problematic to somebody they won’t be happy until they suck all the joy out of the universe. It is basically a new con-job racket some worthless scumbags have come up with to extort money from gullible writers, because there aren’t a lot of good ways to make a living with a Gender Studies Degree.

It only gets better from there. And I have to say, I completely agree with him, not only from a political angle (in fact, politics has almost nothing to do with it) but from an artistic angle as well.

You can’t tell a good story without taking the risk of offending somebody. That’s because being offended is always a choice. Always. My favorite Brigham Young quote, which has gotten me banned from multiple forums, is this:

A good story stimulates the mind and excites the emotions. Anytime that happens, people will inevitably be offended. It doesn’t matter the reason. Humans are weird.

Here’s another way of looking at it: in order to create truly great art, you have to pour a significant part of yourself into it. That’s scary, because it makes you vulnerable.

The perpetually outraged crowd loves this, because it’s a weakness that they can exploit. They don’t care about your art. They only care about power. If you give them that power, they will suck all the greatness out of your art and leave you bleeding and broken on the floor.

That doesn’t mean you should always necessarily go out of your way to offend people, of course. But relying on sensitivity readers is a bad, bad idea. Why?

Because fuck your sensitivity.

Seriously, that’s my favorite part of Larry’s rant. If your skin isn’t thick enough to tell these moral busybodies to fuck off—or to simply ignore them, which is probably the better choice—they’re going to walk all over you.

Which gets to the last part of his post:

To further illustrate how Sensitivity Readers stifle creativity and suck all the fun out of books, at a recent writing convention I attended there was a panel on Intersectional Feminism or something like that. I didn’t attend it (I’m not a glutton for punishment) but several of my friends went because they were curious to see how much of a train wreck it would be.

The panel was a bunch of feminists and the whole thing turned into a big competition of who could be more offended, and who could speak for more “marginalized” people. At one point a certain author (who is an upper class white lady) had to establish her street cred, so she actually called her professional Sensitivity Reader and put her on speaker phone.

Seriously, this shit is like the victim Olympics. It has fuck all to do with creating books that readers will actually enjoy.

I went to a party that night where a bunch of people who’d attended that clusterfuck of a panel were talking about it. Apparently the only panels at this event which were more dreary was the one about the evils of capitalism (I shit you not), and the one about writing comedy which degenerated into authors who’d drank the social justice Kool Aid telling everybody what not to write because it might be “offensive”.

I’m pretty sure I was at that convention. I didn’t attend the panel, but I did run into an aspiring professional creator who told me “I just found the solution to my problem! Sensitivity readers!”

Even at the time, I wanted to put my arm around this guy and tell him to have confidence in himself and in his art. I still feel that way. We talked a bit about the outrage crowd, and about the difference between trusted alpha readers who have your best interests at heart, and sensitivity readers who may or may not. But I felt really horrible about it, because I could tell that this guy was getting pushed and pulled and tossed back and forth in all the wrong ways.

If sensitivity readers provide any value at all, it’s basically as overpriced alpha readers. But even there, the value proposition is dubious because the feedback is so toxic. Larry is right: these people create nothing. They can only destroy.

I’m a creator, not a destroyer. Because fuck your sensitivity.

And you call yourself a writer??

So I got into another online political debate on a writer’s forum last month. Shocking, I know. This one started with a discussion of political correctness and an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, and quickly devolved into an argument about corporate censorship, gun control, Trump, and every other controversial issue in politics. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for people to cry reee and let loose the frogs of war.

That’s not the interesting part, though. Before the discussion devolved into a dumpster fire, I asked one of my more outspoken opponents a simple question:

I’m curious, Perry. Are you capable of seeing the world through the eyes of someone who disagrees with you politically?

To which he responded:

I used to be, before they started endorsing hate speech and supporting authoritarian sociopaths. Now I’ve got no patience for people who believe in a society built on a foundation of inequality and selfishness.

Now, perhaps this was naive of me, but I honestly was looking forward to the challenge of trying to reflect this guy’s own views back to him. I was looking forward to him doing the same for me. After all, isn’t that what writers are supposed to do? Put ourselves in a character’s head, and show that character’s perspective?

It blows my mind that people who call themselves writers can have absolutely no interest in seeing things through the eyes of the people they disagree with. Even if those people really are evil (and in almost all cases, they really aren’t), it’s still a good idea to study how they see the world, because some of the most interesting characters are evil to the core.

Anyone who takes this stance must write horribly dull books. Their bad guys and villains must be one-dimentional cardboard cutouts, or pyromaniacal straw men. The most compelling antagonists always believe that they are the heroes of their own stories, just like everyone else, and the more compelling the story they tell themselves, the more interesting the character.

For example, consider King Candy from Wreck-it Ralph. He was absolutely a villain, but he had a very compelling story for why he was right to keep Vanellope from racing. Never mind that he was an imposter in what was actually Vanellope’s game.

In any case, I think that if we want to write well, we absolutely need to do our best to see the world through the eyes of the people we disagree with. Even if they’re wrong. Especially if they’re wrong. And if our own views are so rigid that we cannot bring ourselves to do this, then maybe we should take a good, hard look in the mirror. After all, how can we hope to change the world if we can’t—or won’t—change ourselves?