The following is a guest essay by the author of our (relatively) popular "A Manifesto for the "Tea" Party (and other Right-thinking people)". Sorry, no prizes for guessing his true identity.
In the wake of the horrific mass murder at an elementary school in Connecticut the other day, I would like to take a leaf from the book of Jonathan Swift and offer a modest proposal for preventing such a tragedy from taking place again. Whenever something like this happens, you hear a lot of people going on about how there are too many guns in America and that’s why these things happen. No, I say! Sure, a person may be 40 times more likely to get shot in America than in Canada, England or Germany, but the real problem is not that there are too many guns, it’s that there aren’t enough! As the wonderful people at the NRA are always telling everyone, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Some argue that guns make it easier for people to kill people. Well, sure. That’s what’s so wonderful about them. I mean, just squeeze that trigger and bang! …sorry, I got a little carried away there. What I meant to say was, guns make it easier for people to kill the people who want to kill people. I mean, as all gun-lovers know, if you make it hard to buy guns, only the bad guys will have guns. Some might say that if guns were hard to buy, even the bad guys, whoever they might be (and they could be anybody!), would find it more difficult to get guns, but I’m sure they’d find a way to get them, and if we assume that then obviously we’ve got to protect ourselves.
Given the assumption that anyone dangerous will have a gun anyway, and the incontestable fact that gun ownership is sacred therefore the idea of making it hard to own a gun shouldn’t even be discussed, the answer is obviously not less guns, but more guns. Like defenders of gun rights have pointed out repeatedly in the past couple of years after every one of these shooting incidents (and it’s not like they happen all the time – I mean, what’s a few mass shootings a year anyway?), if someone at the scene had had a gun and been able to get off a shot, then the massacre could have been stopped. So what about in this particular case? Obviously, just having one or two armed security guards wouldn’t be enough, because the shooter might have gotten the drop on them or just slipped in through an unguarded door. Some of my fellow gun lovers have suggested that the solution is to arm the teachers. This would be a step in the right direction (and how cool it would be for all our elementary teachers to have guns on them!), but there would be still be a risk that a gunman coming into a classroom might catch the teacher by surprise and shoot the teacher and a lot of kids before another teacher could come to the rescue. Basically, if only one other person has a gun, a massacre might still take place. Ah! But what if the students had had guns too?
The only way to be sure that no shooter is ever in a situation where he’s the only one with a gun is to make sure everyone has a gun. Right now there are only around 88 guns for every 100 people, and since some of us have more than one, there are obviously still a lot of people who don’t have any. More guns will make everyone safer, so we should make sure every single person has a gun. And how can we do that? Simple! Issue a gun at birth to every newborn child! Sure, they won’t be able to use it at first. But as soon as they can be taught to hold it properly, they should take it everywhere they go. So if some nut charges into a kindergarten hoping to get into the news by killing a bunch of kids, they’ll all be able to open fire on him and take him out! There might be a few stray bullets that hit other kids, but at least the overall death toll will probably be lower than if the gunman has the only gun. If we arm the kids, no one will dare pull a stunt like this one again!
Though arming children is the core of my proposal, another thing we have to do is get rid of any and all bans on different types of guns. First of all, when the omniscient, infallible Founders were writing the Second Amendment, they weren’t just talking muskets. They clearly had things like Glock pistols and Bushmaster assault rifles in mind, and we know for sure (because we know they must have thought the same as us about these things; after all, how could anyone we admire like the Founders possibly have thought differently from us?) that they wouldn’t have wanted the government to restrict them in any way. Secondly, we can’t take the chance that some nut, robber or home intruder might have better firepower than us. I mean, a lot of the perpetrators in the more notorious recent incidents have had Glocks and such. Of course these sorts of weapons are absolutely necessary. After all, who knows when you’ll have your home invaded by an army of intruders or you’ll have to fight off the powerful armed forces of the United Nations trying to impose world socialism on us? That’s what their real purpose is, you know. The UN is a sinister…ahem, sorry, got off track there. Anyway, obviously people need to be able to buy guns that can fire off a dozen quick shots without a need to reload. We certainly can’t let a situation arise where some lunatic has a semi-automatic rifle with a high capacity magazine and the people around him only have cheap pistols. Everyone has to be encouraged to get the best guns money can buy, so they’ll never be outgunned by the bad guys. Perhaps the kindergarteners should be restricted to smaller guns…but no, let them learn how to handle the big ones early. They can practice by hunting. Do you know what a semi-automatic assault rifle can do to a duck or a squirrel? You haven’t lived until you’ve blown some small animal to…er, sorry, another little tangent there. But anyway, semi-automatic weapons with high capacity magazines for everyone.
Some anti-gun people will say that guns are more dangerous to their owners and their friends and families than they are to any possible bad guys. They’ll point to statistics that say a gun kept at home is far more likely to shoot someone in the household by accident or in an act of suicide than it is to be used against an intruder. They’ll point to stories like the recent one about a guy who was putting his gun in his truck when it went off and killed his 7-year-old son. Sure, this sort of thing may happen on occasion, just as soldiers get killed by friendly fire. But anyway, like some guy I saw on the comment board for a news article along those lines so nicely put it, if a gun goes off and kills someone’s kid, they can just have another kid. Survival of the fittest and all that. If careless people shoot themselves or their families, that’s too bad for them. And it's not like having a lot of weapons around will make it more likely that someone's mentally disturbed family member is going to get hold of them and run amok. Whatever would make anyone think that? But anyway, if all the sane people have guns, including kids as I have suggested, the occasional loose cannon will get shot down before he kills too many people. In the final analysis, a few more losers committing suicide, some accidental deaths here and there and even the occasional mass shooting are a small price to pay to be able to own such a wonderful, exciting thing as a gun. Remember, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, so get yourself and your children guns and be ready to shoot down the other guy before he does it to you.
An interesting proposal indeed. Well, as at least one Republican congressman (Louie Gohmert of, you guessed it, Texas!) has already suggested that elementary school teachers should be armed, no doubt he or someone like him will consider pushing this idea. For another tongue in cheek look at the gun issue, check out this (and also the original).
Friday, December 21, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Forty Years in Earth’s Gravity Well
On December 14, 1972, Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan climbed into their lunar module and lifted off from the surface of the Moon, rejoining Apollo 17 command module pilot Ron Evans in lunar orbit before embarking on their journey back to Earth. Since that day forty years ago, though many people have gone into space, no human being has left low Earth orbit. This is very unfortunate, and something that I hope will change soon, as I have remarked before. Though the Moon is in orbit around Earth, it is essentially outside Earth’s gravity well, in that a rocket capable of getting to the Moon would also be capable of going to places beyond the Moon. But while we have launched robot probes to various places in the Solar System, we have not launched humans out of Earth’s gravity well since the end of the Apollo program.
As I noted in my post on the death of Neil Armstrong, only a dozen human beings have walked on the Moon, and another dozen who went to the Moon without landing on it. These men (all of them were European-American males, true, but the lack of diversity was not their fault) are the only people to have left low Earth orbit or to have seen the Earth from a distance, as a small object in space (even from the space station it fills half the view). While most people are only familiar with Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, and maybe his Apollo 11 colleague and second man on the Moon Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, all of the astronauts who went to the Moon deserve recognition for their achievements and for their unique experience. Other than Apollo 11’s Armstrong and Aldrin and Apollo 17’s Cernan and Schmitt, the other people to walk on the moon were Pete Conrad and Alan Bean of Apollo 12, Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14, David Scott and James Irwin of Apollo 15 and John Young and Charles Duke of Apollo 16. Those who went to the Moon without landing on it include the crew of the missions Apollo 8 (the first humans to go to and orbit the Moon), Apollo 10 (which also orbited the Moon and included later moon-walkers Young and Cernan), the aborted Apollo 13 (which passed around the Moon after the explosion that nearly cost the astronauts their lives) and the command module pilots for the missions that involved landings. In addition to Apollo 17’s Evans, they were Jim Lovell (Apollos 8 and 13), Frank Borman (Apollo 8), Bill Anders (Apollo 8), Tom Stafford (Apollo 10), Michael Collins (Apollo 11), Dick Gordon (Apollo 12), Jack Swigert (Apollo 13), Fred Haise (Apollo 13), Stu Roosa (Apollo 14), Al Worden (Apollo 15), and Ken Mattingly (Apollo 16).
Of course all of these men are quite elderly; those that are still alive, that is. Moon-walkers Armstrong, Conrad, Shepard and Irwin have died, as have Swigert, Roosa and Evans. Of the 17 men still living who have been to the Moon, the youngest are Schmitt and Duke, who are 77. Many of the others are now in their early 80s. Even if many of them end up living unusually long lives, it seems improbable that more than a few, if any, of them will still be alive two decades from now. So unless things change fairly soon, it’s possible that a day will come when there is no one living who has been to the Moon or even out of Earth’s gravity well. Such a sign of stagnation in humankind’s exploration of space would truly be regrettable.
There is still debate about what NASA’s medium-term and long-range goals should be, particularly where it should attempt to go first. One possibility that has been floated recently is building a space station at the Earth-Moon L2 point, the gravitationally-stable Lagrangian point beyond the far side of the Moon, a location from which spacefarers can operate robotic probes on the surface of the Moon and engage in radio astronomy, among other things. This is an intriguing idea, as is the idea of sending humans to an asteroid, back to the Moon, or perhaps best of all to Mars. The problem is that NASA has not received the funding to vigorously pursue any of these goals, and while private space ventures are making great progress, most of the really long-range journeys will probably require government involvement, at least for the next few decades. The exaggerated hysteria over the so-called “fiscal cliff” makes immediate prospects for increased funding for NASA remote. Still, while it is sometimes hard to be optimistic, I hope that by the time the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17’s lift off from the Moon comes around, humans will be preparing to go back there or on to another distant destination like an asteroid or Mars.
As I noted in my post on the death of Neil Armstrong, only a dozen human beings have walked on the Moon, and another dozen who went to the Moon without landing on it. These men (all of them were European-American males, true, but the lack of diversity was not their fault) are the only people to have left low Earth orbit or to have seen the Earth from a distance, as a small object in space (even from the space station it fills half the view). While most people are only familiar with Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, and maybe his Apollo 11 colleague and second man on the Moon Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, all of the astronauts who went to the Moon deserve recognition for their achievements and for their unique experience. Other than Apollo 11’s Armstrong and Aldrin and Apollo 17’s Cernan and Schmitt, the other people to walk on the moon were Pete Conrad and Alan Bean of Apollo 12, Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14, David Scott and James Irwin of Apollo 15 and John Young and Charles Duke of Apollo 16. Those who went to the Moon without landing on it include the crew of the missions Apollo 8 (the first humans to go to and orbit the Moon), Apollo 10 (which also orbited the Moon and included later moon-walkers Young and Cernan), the aborted Apollo 13 (which passed around the Moon after the explosion that nearly cost the astronauts their lives) and the command module pilots for the missions that involved landings. In addition to Apollo 17’s Evans, they were Jim Lovell (Apollos 8 and 13), Frank Borman (Apollo 8), Bill Anders (Apollo 8), Tom Stafford (Apollo 10), Michael Collins (Apollo 11), Dick Gordon (Apollo 12), Jack Swigert (Apollo 13), Fred Haise (Apollo 13), Stu Roosa (Apollo 14), Al Worden (Apollo 15), and Ken Mattingly (Apollo 16).
Of course all of these men are quite elderly; those that are still alive, that is. Moon-walkers Armstrong, Conrad, Shepard and Irwin have died, as have Swigert, Roosa and Evans. Of the 17 men still living who have been to the Moon, the youngest are Schmitt and Duke, who are 77. Many of the others are now in their early 80s. Even if many of them end up living unusually long lives, it seems improbable that more than a few, if any, of them will still be alive two decades from now. So unless things change fairly soon, it’s possible that a day will come when there is no one living who has been to the Moon or even out of Earth’s gravity well. Such a sign of stagnation in humankind’s exploration of space would truly be regrettable.
There is still debate about what NASA’s medium-term and long-range goals should be, particularly where it should attempt to go first. One possibility that has been floated recently is building a space station at the Earth-Moon L2 point, the gravitationally-stable Lagrangian point beyond the far side of the Moon, a location from which spacefarers can operate robotic probes on the surface of the Moon and engage in radio astronomy, among other things. This is an intriguing idea, as is the idea of sending humans to an asteroid, back to the Moon, or perhaps best of all to Mars. The problem is that NASA has not received the funding to vigorously pursue any of these goals, and while private space ventures are making great progress, most of the really long-range journeys will probably require government involvement, at least for the next few decades. The exaggerated hysteria over the so-called “fiscal cliff” makes immediate prospects for increased funding for NASA remote. Still, while it is sometimes hard to be optimistic, I hope that by the time the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17’s lift off from the Moon comes around, humans will be preparing to go back there or on to another distant destination like an asteroid or Mars.
Friday, November 30, 2012
What I've Been Reading – July 2012 to October 2012
Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert
Salammbô was Gustave Flaubert’s follow-up to the famous but controversial Madame Bovary. Superficially it is very different, as instead of being set in provincial France and telling of the adulterous affairs of a country doctor’s wife it is set in ancient Carthage and tells of the brutal conflict between the city and its mercenary army. However, both share Flaubert’s carefully thought out prose and a bleak outlook on life.
The mercenary revolt, also called the “Truceless War” by the historian Polybius, writing in the 2nd century BCE, took place immediately after Carthage’s defeat at the hands of Rome in the First Punic War (241 BCE). The city of Carthage, due to financial difficulties as a result of its defeat, attempted to persuade its mercenary army to accept a payment of only a part of what they were owed in overdue pay, and in part due to poor handling of the situation, instead provoked them to revolt. Soon the mercenaries were joined by many of Carthage’s Libyan (non-Phoenician native peoples) subjects in a war that was characterized by great brutality on both sides.
Flaubert apparently did a lot of research in preparation for this novel, and made a special effort to be historically accurate. Nevertheless it is obvious to anyone who knows the actual history well that he has taken quite a few liberties. Some of these are to be expected; Polybius’s account is brief and so a lot had to be added to expand it into a novel. Still, Flaubert exaggerates a number of things considerably. The hostility between the mercenaries and the people of the city grew rather more gradually than is the case in the novel; the riotous feast in Hamilcar’s gardens and the slaughter of the company of Balearic Islanders by the Carthaginians seem to have been entirely Flaubert’s invention. He also greatly exaggerates the incompetence of Hamilcar’s rival Hanno, even beyond Polybius’s version (which some modern historians already consider somewhat biased). The romantic attraction between Hamilcar’s daughter Salammbô and the rebel Libyan Matho is of course an invention, as is the theft of the veil of the goddess Tanit by Matho and Spendius, an episode which reminded me of Fritz Leiber’s stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser – though Matho and Spendius were even more amoral than Leiber’s heroes. Salammbô herself is largely an invention, as Polybius merely mentions that Hamilcar promised an unnamed daughter to the Numidian chief Naravas (spelled Narr’ Havas by Flaubert) in return for his help. The grisly episode where the Carthaginians sacrifice children to the god Moloch (now known not to exist – early historians misinterpreted the Punic word mlk to be referring to a god, when it actually meant a type of sacrifice) is also basically fiction; while most historians conclude that the Carthaginians, like some other ancient peoples including on rare occasions the Romans, did practice human sacrifice, it seems to have involved much smaller children (often stillborn infants).
Despite these and other unhistorical elements, such as making Spendius a slave of Hamilcar freed by Matho and the exaggerated account of all the groups of people flocking to take part in the assault on Carthage, Flaubert does capture the viciousness of the Mercenary War and does so with evocative language. The novel is a somewhat disturbing read at times, not only in its depiction of the (unfortunately mostly historical) cruelty and violence that took place in the war but also in its racist attitudes – the Carthaginians are a decadent Oriental people, and on the few occasions black Africans make an appearance, they are portrayed as savages little above the level of (non-human) animals. The ending is not a happy one either; this is something this novel shares with Flaubert’s better-known Madame Bovary. But for those who can overlook its flaws and endure its depressing elements, Salammbô is an interesting historical novel, and one that is regarded as a classic in France.
Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
Maskerade, another entertaining novel by Terry Pratchett, is a parody of Phantom of the Opera featuring the witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, plus Agnes Nitt, an overweight young woman (and prospective witch) with an incredible singing voice. Unlike in many other Discworld novels, the fate of the world is not at stake, though there is still murder and mayhem a-plenty. It shares many basic features with Pratchett’s other novels, such as good, sardonic humor, dramatic action with quite a few plot twists, and occasional ironic reflections on more serious subjects. Basically it is light entertainment, but very well done and not without some deeper, more thought-provoking elements.
The Age of Wonder: How the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of Science by Richard Holmes
The Age of Wonder is a non-fiction book by Richard Holmes about science in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Each chapter has a different topic, but the whole thing is tied together by the careers of four individuals who serve as Holmes’s chief protagonists: the botanist Joseph Banks, the German-born astronomer William Herschel and his sister Caroline Herschel, and the chemist Humphry Davy. Though it is a work of non-fiction, the book reads as easily as a novel and is quite fascinating. It also has a fair amount of excitement and adventure, especially in the chapters on the first balloonists and on Mungo Park’s travels in Africa.
One particularly intriguing theme running through the book is the relationship between science and poetry in this era. Though nowadays they are seen as having almost nothing in common, Romantic poets had many connections with science and the scientists (or Natural Philosophers, as they were called then) of their day. Keats referred to Herschel’s discovery of Uranus in a poem, Wordsworth wrote about Newton, Byron and Shelley frequently wrote about scientific discoveries, Mary Shelley wrote the science fiction novel Frankenstein, and Coleridge was passionate about science and a good friend of Davy. Davy himself wrote poetry and even published some of it in his youth, and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, wrote a scientifically-based epic poem called The Botanic Garden.
Mostly set in England, but opening in Tahiti and including episodes in Germany, France, West Africa, and elsewhere, The Age of Wonder is a wide-ranging work that touches in varying degrees of depth on the careers of numerous scientists, poets, and writers of the era. Anyone who has an interest in the Romantic Age, the history of science, or good historical non-fiction in general should check it out.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
High Fidelity is a novel by British author Nick Hornby. The narrator, Rob Fleming, is an independent record store owner and former club disc jockey in his mid-thirties. The plot of the novel centers around his relationship problems, not only with his current girlfriend but also with various past girlfriends and an American singer-songwriter who he meets, as well as his interactions with the two guys who work at his record shop. Music, of course, is mentioned a lot, especially as Rob’s life (and even more so the lives of his employees Dick and Barry) revolves almost entirely around music. Since the record store doesn't get a lot of customers, most of Rob, Dick and Barry's time is spent making up top 5 lists, debating the merits or flaws of various bands and singers, and talking about obscure music trivia.
Rob is in many ways quite rather self-centered, and he is tormented by various insecurities as he goes through something of a mid-life crisis due to his relationship troubles.
I have to admit that to some degree I share some of his flaws and can relate to many of his problems, though not all of them (the sort of anxiety he deals with when he goes to Marie's place, for example, is something I've never felt). I would like to think I would have handled some of his more awkward conversations better than he does, but I certainly have had plenty of occasions where I wish I handled things differently, and I suspect this is true of the vast majority of people. His reflections on past relationships, and his discovery that his perception of many of them was distorted, also represent a fairly universal problem.
Though the parts about relationships and life choices give the book depth, the thing that most clearly sets it apart is the music. I won't go into that in depth here, though perhaps on my music blog I'll someday write an essay about musical snobbery, something Rob, Dick and Barry are definitely guilty of. Having said that, their knowledge of music – and by extension Nick Hornby's – is quite impressive. I should mention that many years ago I saw the critically acclaimed film adaptation of this novel, and my recollection is that it was pretty good, even though I don't remember it very well now and tend to confuse it with Say Anything, perhaps because both feature a lot of music and both star John Cusack. One thing I do remember about the film version of High Fidelity is Jack Black's excellent portrayal of Barry, who is the ultimate musical snob (and something of a jerk as well). In addition to the film version, there is apparently a Broadway musical based on the book. In any case, the novel is a good piece of modern fiction with particular appeal to music fans.
Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles
Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization is a good, recent overview of the history of the ancient city of Carthage by Richard Miles. I know quite a bit about this subject myself, having become fascinated with Carthage and its most famous citizen, the brilliant military leader Hannibal, when I was still in elementary school, but nevertheless there was a fair amount here that was new to me. Much of the newer information is based on a combination of more recent archeological discoveries and new interpretations of both older discoveries and the ancient sources. Miles does a good job of explaining the current views about early Carthage and particularly the relationship between the Carthaginians and other Phoenician settlers in the Western Mediterranean on the one hand and other peoples, particularly the Greeks, on the other.
The part of the book on the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage had less that was new to me, but even here the idea that there may have been a deliberate effort by Hannibal and his staff, particularly the Greek historian Silenus, to foment the idea that Hannibal was associated with Heracles-Melqart, a syncretistic amalgamation of the Phoenician god Melqart and the Greek hero-god Heracles (known to the Romans as Hercules), who had come to unite the older peoples of the Western Mediterranean against the upstart Romans was something I hadn’t read about before, though I knew that the Barcids (Hannibal and his predecessors, his father Hamilcar and brother-in-law Hasdrubal) had used Heracles-Melqart on their coins. While it is now difficult to be certain how extensive Hannibal’s use of such propaganda was, especially since the pro-Carthaginian histories of Silenus, Sosylus and others no longer exist except in isolated fragments, Miles makes a plausible case for the idea.
As for the rest of his account of the Punic Wars, I was somewhat disappointed that Miles seems to simply accept the traditional views regarding Roman leaders like Flaminius and Varro, despite the obvious bias of the main ancient sources. Also, he states that the river Hasdrubal had promised the Romans he would not cross bearing arms was “the river Hiberus [now generally thought to be the river Júcar]”. However, in the past most historians have believed the river in question to be the Ebro, including the modern histories I have (Lazenby discusses the theory that it might be a river further south but discounts it). This is significant because the Júcar is south of Saguntum, the Spanish city whose capture by Hannibal sparked the Second Punic War, whereas the Ebro is to the north. Miles, however, doesn’t even mention this traditional view, let alone discuss arguments favoring the interpretation he uses, even in the footnotes, in contrast to the way he deals with most other controversial points. But these are the only significant flaws I noticed, and in any case there are many other accounts of the Punic Wars around. For anyone looking for a comprehensive, readable survey of the history of Punic Carthage, Carthage Must Be Destroyed is probably the best choice available.
A Doll's House and Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen
A Doll's House and Ghosts, two famous plays by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen dating back to the late 19th century, attack social conventions of the time, particularly with respect to the role of women. While Torvald Helmer's condescension toward his wife Nora seems almost unbelievable today (though at the time, unfortunately, it may not have seemed so) and Nora's sudden enlightenment about the nature of her status a tad unrealistic, especially given her naivety early in the play, these seemingly exaggerated elements ensure that the point is made all the more clearly. Ghosts shows the tragic results of a woman's efforts to keep up appearances while living in a completely dysfunctional family. While they may not seem so revolutionary today, both of these plays were extremely controversial in the very conservative period in which they first appeared. They were both attacked in very strong language by conventionally-minded critics, and banned in many places. But they also attracted a following among more liberal people, and helped to change people's attitude toward marriage and the status of women.
The Book of the Short Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Book of the Short Sun is a "science fantasy" trilogy by Gene Wolfe consisting of On Blue's Waters, In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl. It is a sequel of sorts to The Book of the Long Sun, which unfortunately I have not read (though I intend to look for a copy. There are frequent references to characters and events in The Book of the Long Sun, but it is not essential to have read it to understand The Book of the Short Sun, though the latter is not always so easy to follow for other reasons, as I'll explain. The second and third books tie in to a more limited degree with Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, with the three sets making up Wolfe's "Solar Cycle". The Book of the Short Sun is set on three worlds, the planets Blue and Green and the interstellar colony ship The Whorl of the Long Sun, which was also the setting of the The Book of the Long Sun.
While Wolfe has not had the commercial success of the biggest scifi authors, he is a critical favorite who has won a number of awards. Most of the books in his "Solar Cycle" have placed in polls for the best science fiction books of all time. Some critics have even claimed Wolfe is the greatest living American writer. While this is a somewhat subjective judgment, he is certainly a good writer, though his books are not the easiest to read. In certain ways, The Book of the Short Sun is somewhat easier to read than The Book of the New Sun, as there is less of the unusual vocabulary found in the latter book (though there are a few examples, such as "whorl" for world, "augur" for priest, and "manteion" for church or temple). However, as the narrator Horn himself observes at one point, he has "written whatever crossed [his] mind" and so his narrative skips back and forth in time, telling both the story of his earlier journey and what is happening at the time he is writing, and neither strand of the story is told in a completely linear fashion. He often refers in passing to events and characters that are not properly introduced until much later (in the respect it reminded me a little of Rushdie's Midnight's Children), as well as to events and characters in The Book of the Long Sun. None of this makes the book impossible to follow, but it does tend to encourage flipping back and forth to keep track of what is happening. Some parts of the story are told in detail, while others are merely summarized, and some are never explained properly at all. This sort of non-linear storytelling style also reminded me a little of Infinite Jest, though The Book of the Short Sun is not quite so complex and it does have an ending, even if it is one that doesn't resolve everything clearly, unlike David Foster Wallace's book, which doesn't have a proper ending at all. In any case, while it may occasionally make for frustrating reading, this narrative structure is fascinating and also adds an extra element of realism, as the book does read much like a disorganized account scribbled down in spare moments by a person who is in the middle of fast moving events – and is himself changing as the narrative progresses.
The narrator is the key character in the book, though as the story evolves, it becomes clear that his identity is somewhat ambiguous. It is apparent early on that something has happened to him in the course of his travels to change his physical appearance, but it is gradually revealed that it may have changed more than that. Horn originally departed his home to search for Silk, the protagonist of The Book of the Long Sun, which was ostensibly written by Horn and his wife Nettle. Horn views Silk as a saint-like character and a great leader who he tries to emulate, though he is generally self-deprecating about his efforts. Nevertheless, Horn seems to take on many of Silk's qualities. He is frequently taken for Silk himself and is looked to as a leader and a source of wisdom by many of those he meets. Indeed, in certain ways he is a Christ-like figure, as was Severian from The Book of the New Sun (who appears near the end of this book as well, though he is not named). The manner in which the man calling himself Horn can be seen as a symbolic representation of Jesus is reminiscent of the way both Gandalf and Frodo in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings are also in certain respects (particularly in terms of nobility and self-sacrifice) Christ-like. Another similarity between Wolfe and Tolkien is theology. While the people of Horn's worlds have a pantheon of gods, Horn concludes that only the one known as the Outsider is a true god. The Outsider is similar to Tolkien's Eru or Illuvitar, who is likewise a somewhat mysterious god that stands above and beyond the Valar, who act as the gods of Middle Earth. Of course both the Outsider and Eru clearly represent the Christian God. These similarities between Wolfe and Tolkien (who corresponded briefly back when Wolfe was just starting his career) may be explained in part by their religion, as I have read that Wolfe is Catholic, like Tolkien was. While I don't necessarily agree with their theology, both of them did a good job incorporating it into their stories in a way that benefited them rather than detracting from them.
There are many aspects of this book that could be discussed in greater detail. For instance, the inhumi as they are first described seem reminiscent of the Thread in Anne McCaffery's Pern books, as they are said to be able to launch themselves from their home planet of Green through space to Blue. This obviously doesn't seem very realistic from a scientific point of view, but later in the story there are suggestions that this explanation may not be the true one, merely a myth believed by the humans on Blue (and perhaps perpetuated by the inhumi themselves). Indeed things in Wolfe's books are very often not quite what they seem. Even questions that I might have had in the course of reading, such as why Horn believes his son Sinew hates him, the nature of the Neighbors/Vanished People and exactly how their civilization collapsed, or how the spirit travel that Horn and others engage in actually works, may at best be answered in an ambiguous manner, like the question of Horn's identity is, but this may well be intentional on Wolfe's part, as in real life things are often no clearer. So while this book may not be the best choice for simple light reading, it challenges the reader like good literature should, and yet remains engrossing throughout. Overall, while saying Wolfe is the greatest living writer in the English language is probably an overstatement, The Book of the Short Sun, like The Book of the New Sun, shows that he is one of the most interesting writers out there, and certainly is one worth reading.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Secession and Other Silliness
In my recent election recap, I neglected to mention one of the widely reported absurd reactions to the results. It seems that almost as soon as President Obama won reelection, people in a number of different states started petitions on the White House petition website calling for the US to permit their states to secede from the country. The petition which got the most signatures (at least 75,000, three time the number required to elicit an official response from the White House) was from Texas, the state I grew up in. Presumably the signers were motivated chiefly by dismay at the election results, though pro-secession sentiment is not new in Texas, which was briefly an independent nation and also a member of the Confederacy at the time of the US Civil War. But secession is a bad idea for a number of reasons.
Now I am not by any means opposed in principal to regions in a country declaring independence. I am a firm believer in the right to self-determination, and I support the right of occupied territories around the world (such as Tibet, West Papua, Western Sahara, East Turkestan, Chechnya and Kurdistan) to claim independence from their occupiers if that is the will of the majority of their people (though this becomes more tricky when the occupier settles large numbers of outsiders – who presumably will not support independence – in the territory, as has been done by empires since at least the Assyrians and is still being done by countries like China). But not all struggles for independence are equally worthy. While there is a lot to be said for the idea of breaking up the largest and most dangerously powerful countries in the world, including the United States, China and Russia, to name the most obvious ones, this particular effort, even if it were truly serious, would not be one I’d support, for a number of reasons.
First of all, it should be pointed out that it is unlikely that the signers of these petitions represent a significant segment of the population of the states in question. While 75,000 people may sound like a lot, Texas has a population of over 25 million, so only a very tiny proportion of Texans have signed, and the same is true of the petitions by residents of other states. But even if the petitions really represented the sentiments of a substantial group, there remains the question of their reasons for wanting to secede, and the consequences should they get what they wish.
From their timing, it is clear that the main motivation for most of the signers of these petitions is unhappiness at the reelection of Barack Obama. While I can understand this to some degree (had Mitt Romney been elected, I’d have been even less inclined than I am now to consider returning to the US on a permanent basis), dissatisfaction with an election result is a rather weak reason for seceding. It is rather ironic that the Obama haters who no doubt make up a substantial proportion of the petitioners are, by calling for their states to secede, making Obama look like Abraham Lincoln – after all, it was Lincoln’s election as US President that prompted the southern states to secede in 1860-1. Using Obama’s victory as an excuse to secede is particularly ridiculous given that, despite the shrill claims of some, he is a fairly moderate leader who has shown little inclination to push for dramatic changes, and it is improbable that he will be able to do anything revolutionary in his second term even if he wanted to.
Speaking of poor reasons to secede, the Confederate states that seceded in the wake of Lincoln’s election victory are a very good example, and one that relates closely to why secession by states like Texas would also be a bad thing today. While Confederate sympathizers now try to claim the South was fighting for states’ rights, anyone who knows the actual history is aware that the only states’ right which really concerned the southern states was the right to retain slavery. Slavery had been the big issue dividing the nation for decades, and it was the election of a pro-abolition President and the perception that the balance of power was permanently tilting toward the “free” states that led the South to secede. All the talk about fighting for “states’ rights” and “the Southern way of life” is just another way of saying they were fighting for slavery, and no independence fight is justified if its main purpose is to allow the seceding region to oppress or enslave others. Now let’s look at some of the things that those who would like Texas to secede dislike about the way things are going in the US under Obama (I know they claim budget issues as their key motivation, but I don’t buy that for a minute). Legalization of same sex marriage, making contraceptives easily available to women, allowing young undocumented immigrants to attend college without fear of deportation, making it easier for people to vote, taking a scientific approach to the issue of climate change, allowing Muslims to worship freely, teaching evolution in schools rather than theories with no scientific basis…these are the kinds of things that bother many of these people, and these are almost certainly among the first things that would be targeted in an independent Texas (or Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.).
The above issues are why I would not like to see states like Texas secede from the US; even as it is, membership in the Union only partly restrains the negative impulses of many in the more conservative states (President Rick Perry, anyone?). If they were independent, I hate to think what would happen. While they might not try to bring back segregation or other blatantly discriminatory practices, I am sure the rights of ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals and Muslims would take a huge step backwards, and schools would be teaching all sorts of absurd nonsense. If I could feel sure that an independent Texas would uphold the principles of equality and fairness and would educate its children on the basis of rationality and science, then I could very willingly support a movement to separate from the US. As it is, I’m happy that these petitioners represent only a tiny fringe movement.
Another silly issue that dominated the post-election news in the US even more than these petitions to secede was the story that CIA Director and former general David Petraeus was resigning due to an extramarital affair, and another top general was being investigated for potentially “inappropriate” email exchanges. As a few commentators pointed out, good leaders are not so readily available that the US can afford to lose them for so inconsequential a reason as having an affair. While I am not in position to judge Petraeus’s effectiveness as either a general or the head of the CIA, I certainly don’t think he should have had to resign just for having an affair. America needs to stop being so obsessed with people’s sex lives and start getting its priorities straight.
Now I am not by any means opposed in principal to regions in a country declaring independence. I am a firm believer in the right to self-determination, and I support the right of occupied territories around the world (such as Tibet, West Papua, Western Sahara, East Turkestan, Chechnya and Kurdistan) to claim independence from their occupiers if that is the will of the majority of their people (though this becomes more tricky when the occupier settles large numbers of outsiders – who presumably will not support independence – in the territory, as has been done by empires since at least the Assyrians and is still being done by countries like China). But not all struggles for independence are equally worthy. While there is a lot to be said for the idea of breaking up the largest and most dangerously powerful countries in the world, including the United States, China and Russia, to name the most obvious ones, this particular effort, even if it were truly serious, would not be one I’d support, for a number of reasons.
First of all, it should be pointed out that it is unlikely that the signers of these petitions represent a significant segment of the population of the states in question. While 75,000 people may sound like a lot, Texas has a population of over 25 million, so only a very tiny proportion of Texans have signed, and the same is true of the petitions by residents of other states. But even if the petitions really represented the sentiments of a substantial group, there remains the question of their reasons for wanting to secede, and the consequences should they get what they wish.
From their timing, it is clear that the main motivation for most of the signers of these petitions is unhappiness at the reelection of Barack Obama. While I can understand this to some degree (had Mitt Romney been elected, I’d have been even less inclined than I am now to consider returning to the US on a permanent basis), dissatisfaction with an election result is a rather weak reason for seceding. It is rather ironic that the Obama haters who no doubt make up a substantial proportion of the petitioners are, by calling for their states to secede, making Obama look like Abraham Lincoln – after all, it was Lincoln’s election as US President that prompted the southern states to secede in 1860-1. Using Obama’s victory as an excuse to secede is particularly ridiculous given that, despite the shrill claims of some, he is a fairly moderate leader who has shown little inclination to push for dramatic changes, and it is improbable that he will be able to do anything revolutionary in his second term even if he wanted to.
Speaking of poor reasons to secede, the Confederate states that seceded in the wake of Lincoln’s election victory are a very good example, and one that relates closely to why secession by states like Texas would also be a bad thing today. While Confederate sympathizers now try to claim the South was fighting for states’ rights, anyone who knows the actual history is aware that the only states’ right which really concerned the southern states was the right to retain slavery. Slavery had been the big issue dividing the nation for decades, and it was the election of a pro-abolition President and the perception that the balance of power was permanently tilting toward the “free” states that led the South to secede. All the talk about fighting for “states’ rights” and “the Southern way of life” is just another way of saying they were fighting for slavery, and no independence fight is justified if its main purpose is to allow the seceding region to oppress or enslave others. Now let’s look at some of the things that those who would like Texas to secede dislike about the way things are going in the US under Obama (I know they claim budget issues as their key motivation, but I don’t buy that for a minute). Legalization of same sex marriage, making contraceptives easily available to women, allowing young undocumented immigrants to attend college without fear of deportation, making it easier for people to vote, taking a scientific approach to the issue of climate change, allowing Muslims to worship freely, teaching evolution in schools rather than theories with no scientific basis…these are the kinds of things that bother many of these people, and these are almost certainly among the first things that would be targeted in an independent Texas (or Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.).
The above issues are why I would not like to see states like Texas secede from the US; even as it is, membership in the Union only partly restrains the negative impulses of many in the more conservative states (President Rick Perry, anyone?). If they were independent, I hate to think what would happen. While they might not try to bring back segregation or other blatantly discriminatory practices, I am sure the rights of ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals and Muslims would take a huge step backwards, and schools would be teaching all sorts of absurd nonsense. If I could feel sure that an independent Texas would uphold the principles of equality and fairness and would educate its children on the basis of rationality and science, then I could very willingly support a movement to separate from the US. As it is, I’m happy that these petitioners represent only a tiny fringe movement.
Another silly issue that dominated the post-election news in the US even more than these petitions to secede was the story that CIA Director and former general David Petraeus was resigning due to an extramarital affair, and another top general was being investigated for potentially “inappropriate” email exchanges. As a few commentators pointed out, good leaders are not so readily available that the US can afford to lose them for so inconsequential a reason as having an affair. While I am not in position to judge Petraeus’s effectiveness as either a general or the head of the CIA, I certainly don’t think he should have had to resign just for having an affair. America needs to stop being so obsessed with people’s sex lives and start getting its priorities straight.
Monday, November 19, 2012
2012 US Election Recap
Though it's sort of old news by now, I can't let the US elections pass without commenting on them briefly. In an earlier post, I talked about my own choices on the ballot I had received. Unfortunately, since I was voting in very conservative, overwhelmingly Republican Texas, not a single candidate I voted for won. On the national level, however, the results were considerably more gratifying. Though I voted for Jill Stein myself, I definitely wanted Barack Obama to win reelection over Mitt Romney, and as I noted in my other post, assuming my vote swap partner followed through, I helped ensure he got an extra vote in Florida, where it was much more useful than my vote in Texas would have been (for that matter, I even contributed a few dollars to his campaign). So I was very pleased to see him win quite convincingly over Romney. I was also very happy to see some good Democratic candidates for Senate like Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Heidi Heitkamp win, and some truly awful Republican candidates defeated. Though the House results were not as good, some of the worst extremists on the Republican side were defeated. Also, there were many positive state referendum results, including three states approving same sex marriage, two states legalizing recreational use of marijuana, and one voting to allow the children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition.
Though overall the results of the election were about as good as I could reasonably have hoped for, being the cynic that I am I can't help but note the downsides as well. As mentioned earlier, the Republicans held onto the House and while some of the very worst extremists were defeated, there are still a lot of awful right-wing congresspeople left. A perfectly reasonable measure to require labeling of GMO foods was defeated in California thanks to heavy spending by Monsanto and similar dangerously powerful groups. While the Green Party's Jill Stein came in fourth overall and received close to three times the number of votes that the Green Party candidate got in 2008 and four times the votes of their 2004 candidate (she also got the most votes that any female presidential candidate has ever received in the general election), she still got far fewer votes than she deserved to get (less than half of 1%), and the party's Texas candidates didn't get all that many votes either, though the ones in races without Democrats did get enough to guarantee ballot access for the party next time around (5% was required and I believe two of them got 8%). The extremist Ted Cruz easily won election as a US Senator from Texas. And I still find it disturbing that people like Romney, Ryan, Akin, McMahon, etc. could even come close to winning big races. Finally, the fact that House Republican leaders like John Boehner and Pete Sessions both made the ridiculous assertion that the elections showed that the American people opposed tax increases, when not only did Obama and most of the Senate Democrats (the vast majority of whom have called for the wealthy to pay higher taxes) win but the Democrats even won more of the popular vote in House elections than the Republicans (who kept their majority mainly due to gerrymandering of Congressional districts) does not bode well for reasonable compromises on budget issues.
Despite these caveats, I have to consider myself generally happy with the results of this election. If this election actually forces the Republicans to reverse course and move back toward the center a little, rather than going further and further to the right as they have been doing, then it will prove even better. But for now, it has to be considered just one victory in a long war.
Though overall the results of the election were about as good as I could reasonably have hoped for, being the cynic that I am I can't help but note the downsides as well. As mentioned earlier, the Republicans held onto the House and while some of the very worst extremists were defeated, there are still a lot of awful right-wing congresspeople left. A perfectly reasonable measure to require labeling of GMO foods was defeated in California thanks to heavy spending by Monsanto and similar dangerously powerful groups. While the Green Party's Jill Stein came in fourth overall and received close to three times the number of votes that the Green Party candidate got in 2008 and four times the votes of their 2004 candidate (she also got the most votes that any female presidential candidate has ever received in the general election), she still got far fewer votes than she deserved to get (less than half of 1%), and the party's Texas candidates didn't get all that many votes either, though the ones in races without Democrats did get enough to guarantee ballot access for the party next time around (5% was required and I believe two of them got 8%). The extremist Ted Cruz easily won election as a US Senator from Texas. And I still find it disturbing that people like Romney, Ryan, Akin, McMahon, etc. could even come close to winning big races. Finally, the fact that House Republican leaders like John Boehner and Pete Sessions both made the ridiculous assertion that the elections showed that the American people opposed tax increases, when not only did Obama and most of the Senate Democrats (the vast majority of whom have called for the wealthy to pay higher taxes) win but the Democrats even won more of the popular vote in House elections than the Republicans (who kept their majority mainly due to gerrymandering of Congressional districts) does not bode well for reasonable compromises on budget issues.
Despite these caveats, I have to consider myself generally happy with the results of this election. If this election actually forces the Republicans to reverse course and move back toward the center a little, rather than going further and further to the right as they have been doing, then it will prove even better. But for now, it has to be considered just one victory in a long war.
Monday, October 29, 2012
2012 US Elections
As many people around the world and everyone in the US who is not an infant, senile or in a coma are surely aware, the United States is holding elections for President and a vast number of other offices, not to mention various referendums and propositions, next week. In fact, the election has already started, as early voting has been underway for some time, with Barack Obama already having become the first sitting US President to take advantage of early voting. While at this point there is still reason to hope that the extremists will not take over completely, it could still go either way. There is still a distinct possibility that Mitt Romney could edge out Obama for the presidency, and given the number of extremely close Senate races, the majority of them for seats currently held by Democrats, it is also quite possible that the Republicans will win a Senate majority. If the American electorate was both sensible and well-informed, neither of those things would be even a remote possibility. Unfortunately, much of the electorate can’t be bothered to look at the issues in any depth, so they end up relying on the flood of bullshit coming out of their televisions – and their various personal biases and uninformed ideas about reality – to make their decisions. Of course both of the major parties are guilty of using distorted and downright false attack ads, but the Republicans have a lot more of them, paid for by the giant corporations and right-wing billionaires who love them so much, and their candidates by and large have positions on most issues that would be laughable if there wasn’t a very substantial danger that they’ll soon be in a position to carry them out.
As I am voting in Texas, there is little chance that any of my preferred candidates will win (Obama may win nationally, but he’s not going to win in Texas). Nevertheless, I intend to fill out my ballot at least as far as the major races are concerned, though I will probably not vote on local races where I know nothing about the candidates. I have done a bit of research on the bigger races on my ballot and will note my conclusions below. Some of my major sources are candidate questionnaires prepared by the Dallas News and Vote 411, though the latter is much shorter and so less useful. I’ve found conflicting information about whether I’m in US Congressional District 24 or 32, so I have included my thoughts on both races. As a general note, I should mention that the Green Party, the third party that I like the best, seems to have a somewhat mixed set of candidates in that some, like presidential candidate Jill Stein and US Senate candidate David Collins are making a real effort, while others don’t seem to be campaigning much or at all (at least they have failed to fill out candidate questionnaires or set up websites or even blogs – actual websites would probably be cost prohibitive). In the latter cases, if there is another halfway decent candidate (usually a Democrat), they'll get my vote over the Green. Annoyingly, the best Green candidates are in races where the Democrat is not too bad (e.g. the Presidential race), and some of the least active ones seem to be races where there are no other good choices.
US President
Barack Obama (Dem)
Jill Stein (Green)
Rocky Anderson (Justice)
Gary Johnson (Lib)
Mitt Romney (Rep)
Virgil Goode (Constitution)
This, of course, is the big race this year. Though there are quite a few candidates running for the office, only incumbent President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney have a realistic chance of winning. Romney’s positions on almost every issue of importance – including the environment, budget policy (including tax policy), corporate influence, banking reform, immigration and gay marriage – are terrible, so it would be an unmitigated disaster for the US and the world if he wins. If I was voting in a swing state (of course there shouldn’t be such things, but that’s another issue), there’s no question I’d be voting for Obama. Since I’m not (Romney is unfortunately sure to win in Texas), I have given some thought to other candidates. One interesting way for voters to check out the views of a wider variety of candidates and compare them to their own is through various candidate match quizzes online. These are not always completely reliable, as in some cases their methods of determining a candidate’s stance are a bit debatable. Also, there are some issues where I have not made up my mind, or my position is too nuanced to fit the options given. With those caveats in mind, here are my results from a few such sites, with the first striking me as the most accurate:
http://www.isidewith.com/presidential-election-quiz
Jill Stein 95%
Rocky Anderson 82%
Barack Obama 81%
Mitt Romney 17%
http://2012election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004491
Jill Stein 100%
Barack Obama 84%
Gary Johnson 53%
Virgil Goode 23%
Mitt Romney 13%
http://www.ontheissues.org/Quiz/Quiz2012.asp?quiz=Pres2012
Rocky Anderson 75%
Jill Stein 73%
Barack Obama 58%
Gary Johnson 35%
Mitt Romney 8%
Virgil Goode 5%
Of more significant third party candidates, Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party is a right-winger little better than Romney. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee, seems to emphasize the individual freedom, anti-war side of libertarianism, but like most libertarians he would do little or nothing good on important issues like climate change and restraining corporate power. Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, on the other hand, have good stances on a majority of issues and are worthy options for those in safe (or hopeless) states who want to send Obama a message.
I like a lot of what Obama has done in his first term, and I recognize that on many issues his hands were tied by an uncooperative Congress or other circumstances. But I do think he should have been a lot firmer on many issues, and I have major disagreements with some things that have been done by those under him, such as the DEA’s handling of marijuana issues, the deportation of undocumented immigrants (though his recent executive order helps partly make up for this), or the treatment of Bradley Manning. His record on the environment has been mixed: the improved fuel efficiency standards are great and there has been some effort to encourage alternative energy, but his record on Keystone is mixed and I think he could have made a green economy a much bigger priority. I have also been annoyed by some of his campaign’s efforts to portray him as friendly to fossil fuels.
Since I’m not in a swing state, my disagreements with Obama would be more likely to cause me to cast a protest vote against him in favor of a candidate like Jill Stein whose positions more closely match my own if it weren’t for the vitriol and absurd falsehoods with which he has been attacked by the right-wing in America. The more I see of that sort of thing, the more it makes me want to vote for him to express my disagreement with these extremists. Perhaps my best options would be to swap votes with a Stein supporter in a swing state, which I will do if I find someone to swap with. If I can’t, I could still go either way between Obama and Stein, though I'm leaning a bit more toward Obama in order to boost his popular vote total against the inevitable aspersions that the Obama haters will cast on his legitimacy if he should win the electoral vote but lose the popular vote (even without having a questionably close vote in an individual state like Bush in Florida in 2000). [Update: I have reached an agreement with Calla Rowell in Florida to swap votes; she'll vote for Obama and I'll vote for Stein. I should note that this has not only been ruled legal by the courts, I see it as perfectly ethical. After all, I am not voting for anyone who I would not have at least strongly considered voting for anyway, and I am able to indirectly help the other candidate I considered voting for. It's really a win-win option in this sort of situation. Of course, if I had overwhelmingly preferred one of the two, I wouldn't have considered vote swapping in the first place.]
US Senator
Paul Sadler (Dem) – Good on environment, budget, immigration, but a little vague on many issues, seems a bit hawkish, praised Kay Bailey Hutchinson
David Collins (Green) – Serious Green candidate, good on most issues
Ted Cruz (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue
John Jay Myers (Lib) – Typical libertarian, poor on environment (not quite a climate change denier, but close)
For me, this race is much like the presidential one. If I thought Sadler had a good chance to win, I’d definitely be voting for him. Since he probably doesn’t (a scary thought, considering how bad Cruz is), I have to at least consider Collins as a slightly closer match to my own views, and to send a message to the Democratic Party in general that they need to address some issues, particularly environmental ones, more seriously than they often do. At this point, I could go either way on this one.
US Representative District 24
Tim Rusk (Dem) – Good on environment, immigration, taxes, Social Security
Kenny Marchant (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue
John Stathas (Lib) – Typical libertarian, bad on environment (climate change denier); there's a picture of him on one election site wearing a flak jacket and toting some kind of assault weapon, which makes him look like a complete nut job
This is an easy choice; Tim Rusk is by far the best candidate.
US Representative District 32
Katherine Savers McGovern (Dem) – Good on environment, immigration, taxes, women’s issues
Pete Sessions (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue, doesn’t directly deny climate change but effectively not much better than a denier
Seth Hollist (Lib) – Typical libertarian, bad on most issues except drug policy, also doesn’t directly deny climate change but effectively not much better than a denier
Another easy choice; Katherine Savers McGovern is far and away the best candidate.
Railroad Commissioner
Chris Kennedy (Green) – (Only shown on Vote 411) Supporter of alternative energy
Dale Henry (Dem) – Supports wind and solar and calls for measures to ensure energy extraction is done safely but also wants to “drill, drill, drill”, borderline climate change denier
Christi Craddick (Rep) – Climate change denier, though she makes nods to renewable energy and environmental protection, believes campaign contributions to be protected by the First Amendment, admires Margaret Thatcher
Vivekananda Wall (Lib) – Acknowledges climate change but won’t specify any action, other responses vague
I was certain this race would be very close, I’d have to at least consider voting for Dale Henry, as he is better than Craddick. However, it’s been years since a Democrat won a statewide race in Texas. What’s more, I dislike the tendency for Democrats to try to win in Texas by tilting to the right. It’s particularly bad for an office like Railroad Commissioner, where what is needed is someone who will make the environment a priority and not let the fossil fuel industry always get its way. Chris Kennedy doesn’t seem to be doing a lot of campaigning, but I’m probably going to vote for him to show my support for having a Green on the Railroad Commission and send a message to the Democrats to choose candidates with real environmental credentials.
Railroad Commissioner
Josh Wendel (Green) – No response to questionnaire
Barry Smitherman (Rep) – Climate change denier, extremely pro-fossil fuels
Jaime Perez (Lib) – Not a climate change denier, wants oil and gas industry to encourage alternative energy, favors eliminating subsidies, but also wants to “aggressively” exploit traditional energy (oil and coal)
Given that there are no Democrats running and there is a Green candidate, this would normally be an easy choice. However, Jamie Perez seems better than most Libertarian candidates, and Josh Wendel doesn’t seem to be campaigning at all (at least the other Green running for Railroad Commissioner responded to the Vote 411 questionnaire). I’m still more likely to vote Green because I support the principles the party stands for and I’d like to see them get 5% on at least one statewide race to ensure future ballot access. However, I’m not too happy that they don’t seem to be trying in this race, while Perez seems to be making at least some effort to attract support from environmentalists. I will probably have to do a bit more research on this one. If I can find some evidence that Wendel is actually campaigning, I’ll vote for him. If I find something new about Perez I don’t like so much or even if I find nothing more at all, I’ll also vote for the Green. But if I don’t find any sign that Wendel is campaigning, and I find more reasons to support Perez, it’s possible I may end up voting for Perez instead. [Update (Oct. 31, 2012): Having taken a look at Perez's website, he seems a bit wacky with his railing against the "Monetarchy". While his wackiness seems a lot better than that of many other Libertarians (see John Stathas above), a faceless Green still seems like a better choice.]
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 2
RS Roberto Koeisch (Lib) – Responses brief and vague
Don Willett (Rep) – Somewhat more reasonable sounding than most Republicans (e.g., arguing that the perception of pro-business tilt on the court is due to business-friendly Legislature), but a self-professed conservative who quotes Scalia and Roberts
Just based on his responses to the questionnaire Willett seems slightly less awful than some other Republicans, but his references to Scalia and Roberts are not encouraging. I certainly won’t vote for Willett, but to vote against him I need a decent alternative. Unfortunately, Koeisch doesn’t inspire much confidence. I may just skip this one.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 4
Charles Waterbury (Green) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire), wants court to favor individuals over corporations
Tom Oxford (Lib) – Not pro-business, named liberal Texas judge William Wayne Justice as a judge he admired, otherwise information limited
John Devine (Rep) – No response to questionnaire
Tom Oxford seems slightly better than most Libertarians and if it were only him and the Republican, I’d probably vote for him. But since the Green candidate Charles Waterbury is on the ballot and he did at least respond to one of the candidate questionnaires (and gave good responses), I’ll probably vote Green on this one.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 6
Michele Petty (Dem) – Good responses to questionnaire, attacks pro-business decisions
Jim Chisolm (Green) – Not listed (No response on Vote 411)
Nathan Hecht (Rep) – Flatly denies pro-business bias
Mark Ash (Lib) – No response to questionnaire
If John Chisolm, the Green candidate, was actively campaigning I’d have to give him at least a little consideration. But he doesn’t seem to be, and the Democrat Michele Petty looks pretty good. So I think Petty will get my vote in this race.
Presiding Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals
Keith Hampton (Dem) – Most responses seem good if vague, unwilling to comment on death penalty since the issue may be heard by the court, highly critical of Keller’s controversial refusal to grant a plea for an hour’s extension for filing an appeal, thereby resulting in the execution of a death row inmate
Lance Stott (Lib) – No response to questionnaire
Sharon Keller (Rep) – No response to questionnaire, ruled against new trials in two controversial case, was charged with ethics violations over the case cited above though ultimately not punished
This one isn’t too difficult. Hampton looks at least okay, whereas Keller is awful (the only thing I know about Stott is that he’s a Libertarian; not exactly a positive). I’ll definitely go with Hampton on this one.
Member, State Board of Education, District 11
Jason Darr (Lib) – No response to questionnaire
Patricia Hardy (Rep) – No response to questionnaire, took slightly more moderate stances on evolution, Islam and Thomas Jefferson disputes than some extremist members of the board, but was the one responsible for the idiotic banning of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See based on an email from a fellow board member
While Hardy is not one of the worst members of the awful Texas State Board of Education, that’s merely a relative thing. If I can find anything positive about the Libertarian Jason Darr, I’ll vote for him. Otherwise I’ll probably have to skip this one, though I might still vote for Darr to send a message about my irritation with the idiocy of the board over the past few years, which Hardy has take at least a little of the blame for.
On additional election related note, this is a little disturbing, especially when combined with the various Republican efforts to suppress voting. We’ll just have to hope it’s not so close that these things will be able to tip the scales.
As I am voting in Texas, there is little chance that any of my preferred candidates will win (Obama may win nationally, but he’s not going to win in Texas). Nevertheless, I intend to fill out my ballot at least as far as the major races are concerned, though I will probably not vote on local races where I know nothing about the candidates. I have done a bit of research on the bigger races on my ballot and will note my conclusions below. Some of my major sources are candidate questionnaires prepared by the Dallas News and Vote 411, though the latter is much shorter and so less useful. I’ve found conflicting information about whether I’m in US Congressional District 24 or 32, so I have included my thoughts on both races. As a general note, I should mention that the Green Party, the third party that I like the best, seems to have a somewhat mixed set of candidates in that some, like presidential candidate Jill Stein and US Senate candidate David Collins are making a real effort, while others don’t seem to be campaigning much or at all (at least they have failed to fill out candidate questionnaires or set up websites or even blogs – actual websites would probably be cost prohibitive). In the latter cases, if there is another halfway decent candidate (usually a Democrat), they'll get my vote over the Green. Annoyingly, the best Green candidates are in races where the Democrat is not too bad (e.g. the Presidential race), and some of the least active ones seem to be races where there are no other good choices.
US President
Barack Obama (Dem)
Jill Stein (Green)
Rocky Anderson (Justice)
Gary Johnson (Lib)
Mitt Romney (Rep)
Virgil Goode (Constitution)
This, of course, is the big race this year. Though there are quite a few candidates running for the office, only incumbent President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney have a realistic chance of winning. Romney’s positions on almost every issue of importance – including the environment, budget policy (including tax policy), corporate influence, banking reform, immigration and gay marriage – are terrible, so it would be an unmitigated disaster for the US and the world if he wins. If I was voting in a swing state (of course there shouldn’t be such things, but that’s another issue), there’s no question I’d be voting for Obama. Since I’m not (Romney is unfortunately sure to win in Texas), I have given some thought to other candidates. One interesting way for voters to check out the views of a wider variety of candidates and compare them to their own is through various candidate match quizzes online. These are not always completely reliable, as in some cases their methods of determining a candidate’s stance are a bit debatable. Also, there are some issues where I have not made up my mind, or my position is too nuanced to fit the options given. With those caveats in mind, here are my results from a few such sites, with the first striking me as the most accurate:
http://www.isidewith.com/presidential-election-quiz
Jill Stein 95%
Rocky Anderson 82%
Barack Obama 81%
Mitt Romney 17%
http://2012election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004491
Jill Stein 100%
Barack Obama 84%
Gary Johnson 53%
Virgil Goode 23%
Mitt Romney 13%
http://www.ontheissues.org/Quiz/Quiz2012.asp?quiz=Pres2012
Rocky Anderson 75%
Jill Stein 73%
Barack Obama 58%
Gary Johnson 35%
Mitt Romney 8%
Virgil Goode 5%
Of more significant third party candidates, Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party is a right-winger little better than Romney. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee, seems to emphasize the individual freedom, anti-war side of libertarianism, but like most libertarians he would do little or nothing good on important issues like climate change and restraining corporate power. Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, on the other hand, have good stances on a majority of issues and are worthy options for those in safe (or hopeless) states who want to send Obama a message.
I like a lot of what Obama has done in his first term, and I recognize that on many issues his hands were tied by an uncooperative Congress or other circumstances. But I do think he should have been a lot firmer on many issues, and I have major disagreements with some things that have been done by those under him, such as the DEA’s handling of marijuana issues, the deportation of undocumented immigrants (though his recent executive order helps partly make up for this), or the treatment of Bradley Manning. His record on the environment has been mixed: the improved fuel efficiency standards are great and there has been some effort to encourage alternative energy, but his record on Keystone is mixed and I think he could have made a green economy a much bigger priority. I have also been annoyed by some of his campaign’s efforts to portray him as friendly to fossil fuels.
Since I’m not in a swing state, my disagreements with Obama would be more likely to cause me to cast a protest vote against him in favor of a candidate like Jill Stein whose positions more closely match my own if it weren’t for the vitriol and absurd falsehoods with which he has been attacked by the right-wing in America. The more I see of that sort of thing, the more it makes me want to vote for him to express my disagreement with these extremists. Perhaps my best options would be to swap votes with a Stein supporter in a swing state, which I will do if I find someone to swap with. If I can’t, I could still go either way between Obama and Stein, though I'm leaning a bit more toward Obama in order to boost his popular vote total against the inevitable aspersions that the Obama haters will cast on his legitimacy if he should win the electoral vote but lose the popular vote (even without having a questionably close vote in an individual state like Bush in Florida in 2000). [Update: I have reached an agreement with Calla Rowell in Florida to swap votes; she'll vote for Obama and I'll vote for Stein. I should note that this has not only been ruled legal by the courts, I see it as perfectly ethical. After all, I am not voting for anyone who I would not have at least strongly considered voting for anyway, and I am able to indirectly help the other candidate I considered voting for. It's really a win-win option in this sort of situation. Of course, if I had overwhelmingly preferred one of the two, I wouldn't have considered vote swapping in the first place.]
US Senator
Paul Sadler (Dem) – Good on environment, budget, immigration, but a little vague on many issues, seems a bit hawkish, praised Kay Bailey Hutchinson
David Collins (Green) – Serious Green candidate, good on most issues
Ted Cruz (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue
John Jay Myers (Lib) – Typical libertarian, poor on environment (not quite a climate change denier, but close)
For me, this race is much like the presidential one. If I thought Sadler had a good chance to win, I’d definitely be voting for him. Since he probably doesn’t (a scary thought, considering how bad Cruz is), I have to at least consider Collins as a slightly closer match to my own views, and to send a message to the Democratic Party in general that they need to address some issues, particularly environmental ones, more seriously than they often do. At this point, I could go either way on this one.
US Representative District 24
Tim Rusk (Dem) – Good on environment, immigration, taxes, Social Security
Kenny Marchant (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue
John Stathas (Lib) – Typical libertarian, bad on environment (climate change denier); there's a picture of him on one election site wearing a flak jacket and toting some kind of assault weapon, which makes him look like a complete nut job
This is an easy choice; Tim Rusk is by far the best candidate.
US Representative District 32
Katherine Savers McGovern (Dem) – Good on environment, immigration, taxes, women’s issues
Pete Sessions (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue, doesn’t directly deny climate change but effectively not much better than a denier
Seth Hollist (Lib) – Typical libertarian, bad on most issues except drug policy, also doesn’t directly deny climate change but effectively not much better than a denier
Another easy choice; Katherine Savers McGovern is far and away the best candidate.
Railroad Commissioner
Chris Kennedy (Green) – (Only shown on Vote 411) Supporter of alternative energy
Dale Henry (Dem) – Supports wind and solar and calls for measures to ensure energy extraction is done safely but also wants to “drill, drill, drill”, borderline climate change denier
Christi Craddick (Rep) – Climate change denier, though she makes nods to renewable energy and environmental protection, believes campaign contributions to be protected by the First Amendment, admires Margaret Thatcher
Vivekananda Wall (Lib) – Acknowledges climate change but won’t specify any action, other responses vague
I was certain this race would be very close, I’d have to at least consider voting for Dale Henry, as he is better than Craddick. However, it’s been years since a Democrat won a statewide race in Texas. What’s more, I dislike the tendency for Democrats to try to win in Texas by tilting to the right. It’s particularly bad for an office like Railroad Commissioner, where what is needed is someone who will make the environment a priority and not let the fossil fuel industry always get its way. Chris Kennedy doesn’t seem to be doing a lot of campaigning, but I’m probably going to vote for him to show my support for having a Green on the Railroad Commission and send a message to the Democrats to choose candidates with real environmental credentials.
Railroad Commissioner
Josh Wendel (Green) – No response to questionnaire
Barry Smitherman (Rep) – Climate change denier, extremely pro-fossil fuels
Jaime Perez (Lib) – Not a climate change denier, wants oil and gas industry to encourage alternative energy, favors eliminating subsidies, but also wants to “aggressively” exploit traditional energy (oil and coal)
Given that there are no Democrats running and there is a Green candidate, this would normally be an easy choice. However, Jamie Perez seems better than most Libertarian candidates, and Josh Wendel doesn’t seem to be campaigning at all (at least the other Green running for Railroad Commissioner responded to the Vote 411 questionnaire). I’m still more likely to vote Green because I support the principles the party stands for and I’d like to see them get 5% on at least one statewide race to ensure future ballot access. However, I’m not too happy that they don’t seem to be trying in this race, while Perez seems to be making at least some effort to attract support from environmentalists. I will probably have to do a bit more research on this one. If I can find some evidence that Wendel is actually campaigning, I’ll vote for him. If I find something new about Perez I don’t like so much or even if I find nothing more at all, I’ll also vote for the Green. But if I don’t find any sign that Wendel is campaigning, and I find more reasons to support Perez, it’s possible I may end up voting for Perez instead. [Update (Oct. 31, 2012): Having taken a look at Perez's website, he seems a bit wacky with his railing against the "Monetarchy". While his wackiness seems a lot better than that of many other Libertarians (see John Stathas above), a faceless Green still seems like a better choice.]
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 2
RS Roberto Koeisch (Lib) – Responses brief and vague
Don Willett (Rep) – Somewhat more reasonable sounding than most Republicans (e.g., arguing that the perception of pro-business tilt on the court is due to business-friendly Legislature), but a self-professed conservative who quotes Scalia and Roberts
Just based on his responses to the questionnaire Willett seems slightly less awful than some other Republicans, but his references to Scalia and Roberts are not encouraging. I certainly won’t vote for Willett, but to vote against him I need a decent alternative. Unfortunately, Koeisch doesn’t inspire much confidence. I may just skip this one.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 4
Charles Waterbury (Green) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire), wants court to favor individuals over corporations
Tom Oxford (Lib) – Not pro-business, named liberal Texas judge William Wayne Justice as a judge he admired, otherwise information limited
John Devine (Rep) – No response to questionnaire
Tom Oxford seems slightly better than most Libertarians and if it were only him and the Republican, I’d probably vote for him. But since the Green candidate Charles Waterbury is on the ballot and he did at least respond to one of the candidate questionnaires (and gave good responses), I’ll probably vote Green on this one.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 6
Michele Petty (Dem) – Good responses to questionnaire, attacks pro-business decisions
Jim Chisolm (Green) – Not listed (No response on Vote 411)
Nathan Hecht (Rep) – Flatly denies pro-business bias
Mark Ash (Lib) – No response to questionnaire
If John Chisolm, the Green candidate, was actively campaigning I’d have to give him at least a little consideration. But he doesn’t seem to be, and the Democrat Michele Petty looks pretty good. So I think Petty will get my vote in this race.
Presiding Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals
Keith Hampton (Dem) – Most responses seem good if vague, unwilling to comment on death penalty since the issue may be heard by the court, highly critical of Keller’s controversial refusal to grant a plea for an hour’s extension for filing an appeal, thereby resulting in the execution of a death row inmate
Lance Stott (Lib) – No response to questionnaire
Sharon Keller (Rep) – No response to questionnaire, ruled against new trials in two controversial case, was charged with ethics violations over the case cited above though ultimately not punished
This one isn’t too difficult. Hampton looks at least okay, whereas Keller is awful (the only thing I know about Stott is that he’s a Libertarian; not exactly a positive). I’ll definitely go with Hampton on this one.
Member, State Board of Education, District 11
Jason Darr (Lib) – No response to questionnaire
Patricia Hardy (Rep) – No response to questionnaire, took slightly more moderate stances on evolution, Islam and Thomas Jefferson disputes than some extremist members of the board, but was the one responsible for the idiotic banning of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See based on an email from a fellow board member
While Hardy is not one of the worst members of the awful Texas State Board of Education, that’s merely a relative thing. If I can find anything positive about the Libertarian Jason Darr, I’ll vote for him. Otherwise I’ll probably have to skip this one, though I might still vote for Darr to send a message about my irritation with the idiocy of the board over the past few years, which Hardy has take at least a little of the blame for.
On additional election related note, this is a little disturbing, especially when combined with the various Republican efforts to suppress voting. We’ll just have to hope it’s not so close that these things will be able to tip the scales.
Friday, October 19, 2012
A Major Discovery: A Planet in the Alpha Centauri System
A major astronomical discovery was announced in the past few days, one that was not all that widely reported (or at least I didn't see a lot of reports on it). A team of astronomers announced that they had discovered a planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri B, one of the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system. The stars of Alpha Centauri, at a distance of 4.3 light years, are the closest stars to us other than the Sun itself. What's more, the two main stars, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B are very similar to the Sun, so a planet orbiting at the right distance from either of them might very well be habitable. The recently discovered planet is certainly not habitable by life as we know it, as it orbits far to close to its star and so is probably hot enough to melt rock. But where there's one planet, there may be more. The prospect of habitable planets around one or both of these relatively close, Sun-like stars is very exciting.
Alpha Centauri A is a yellow star of the same spectral class as the Sun, though it is very slightly hotter and more massive. Alpha Centauri B is a little cooler and less massive than the Sun, and is orange in color. These two stars orbit each other at a distance at a distance ranging from that between the Sun and Saturn to that between the Sun and Pluto. A third star, a small, cool red dwarf named Proxima Centauri, appears to orbit the other two at a great distance (it is somewhat closer to us, and so is the closest star other than the Sun). The planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, designated Alpha Centauri Bb, is slightly larger than Earth (making it the smallest planet yet discovered orbiting a normal star other than our Sun) and orbits the star in only a little over 3 days, as compared with 88 days for Mercury in our solar system and 365+ days for Earth. Since it is so close to Alpha Centauri B, it is certainly very hot, probably several times as hot as Venus, which has surface temperatures of over 400 degrees Celsius. If there is a habitable planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, it would have to be much further out. It is even possible that both Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B have habitable planets, which would be an exciting prospect. If such planets do exist, we may discover them within the next decade or two, or even sooner, though it is easier to detect planets that are very close to their stars with our current technology.
However, even if we do discover planets in the habitable zones of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, it will take further advances before we will be able to look for indications that life exists on them (such as the presence of molecules that are unlikely to produced by non-organic processes). Supposing that we do find signs of life on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system a few decades from now. What then? The obvious answer would be to go and visit them, or at least send a probe to explore them. But while Alpha Centauri is relatively close, the key word here is "relatively". Even the closest stars are still incredibly distant. It takes light 4.3 years to reach them from the Sun traveling at 300,000 km per second, while light from the Sun reaches the Earth in only 8 minutes and reaches Pluto in about 5 hours. Our current rockets can't reach even 1% of light speed, so it would take them thousands of years to get to Alpha Centauri. While propulsion systems have been proposed that might get us up to a few percentage points of light speed, it will take quite a bit of work, including further technological advances and lots of money, to actually build them. So it's not likely that we will be able to visit Alpha Centauri anytime soon. But if habitable planets are actually discovered there, especially ones with signs of life, it might provide the incentive needed for humanity to undertake the long-range project of trying to get to them. This discovery may be the first step along that road.
Here's an infographic providing more information on Alpha Centauri and the newly discovered planet.
Alpha Centauri A is a yellow star of the same spectral class as the Sun, though it is very slightly hotter and more massive. Alpha Centauri B is a little cooler and less massive than the Sun, and is orange in color. These two stars orbit each other at a distance at a distance ranging from that between the Sun and Saturn to that between the Sun and Pluto. A third star, a small, cool red dwarf named Proxima Centauri, appears to orbit the other two at a great distance (it is somewhat closer to us, and so is the closest star other than the Sun). The planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, designated Alpha Centauri Bb, is slightly larger than Earth (making it the smallest planet yet discovered orbiting a normal star other than our Sun) and orbits the star in only a little over 3 days, as compared with 88 days for Mercury in our solar system and 365+ days for Earth. Since it is so close to Alpha Centauri B, it is certainly very hot, probably several times as hot as Venus, which has surface temperatures of over 400 degrees Celsius. If there is a habitable planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, it would have to be much further out. It is even possible that both Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B have habitable planets, which would be an exciting prospect. If such planets do exist, we may discover them within the next decade or two, or even sooner, though it is easier to detect planets that are very close to their stars with our current technology.
However, even if we do discover planets in the habitable zones of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, it will take further advances before we will be able to look for indications that life exists on them (such as the presence of molecules that are unlikely to produced by non-organic processes). Supposing that we do find signs of life on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system a few decades from now. What then? The obvious answer would be to go and visit them, or at least send a probe to explore them. But while Alpha Centauri is relatively close, the key word here is "relatively". Even the closest stars are still incredibly distant. It takes light 4.3 years to reach them from the Sun traveling at 300,000 km per second, while light from the Sun reaches the Earth in only 8 minutes and reaches Pluto in about 5 hours. Our current rockets can't reach even 1% of light speed, so it would take them thousands of years to get to Alpha Centauri. While propulsion systems have been proposed that might get us up to a few percentage points of light speed, it will take quite a bit of work, including further technological advances and lots of money, to actually build them. So it's not likely that we will be able to visit Alpha Centauri anytime soon. But if habitable planets are actually discovered there, especially ones with signs of life, it might provide the incentive needed for humanity to undertake the long-range project of trying to get to them. This discovery may be the first step along that road.
Here's an infographic providing more information on Alpha Centauri and the newly discovered planet.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Mocking Religion
One of the biggest news stories of this month was the furor over a low budget anti-Muslim film, portions of which were posted on YouTube where they attracted the attention of radical Islamists who took to the streets in protest in countries throughout the Middle East and Asia. Though the film itself is not worth commenting on (I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to), the subsequent debates about the conflict between religious sensibilities and freedom of expression is a more important issue, as some conservative Muslims have called for the enactment of international laws against insulting religion. While this proposal has little support in the West (and as the misuse of blasphemy laws in places like Pakistan shows, it’s a very bad idea), some Western leaders have said that while freedom of expression takes precedence, they personally oppose saying anything that insults others’ religious beliefs. But is this really wrong? After all, any sort of mockery or lampooning of a religion will be bound to be considered insulting or blasphemous by overly sensitive believers.
In medieval Europe, anything considered blasphemous by the religious authorities was punishable by death, as it still is in a few of the most conservative Muslim countries. But lampooning religion has a long and indeed artistically respectable history in the West, including brilliant works of art from Candide to The Life of Brian. While I myself have mostly refrained from mocking religious beliefs in this blog, except for my criticism of the practice of burning ghost money in Taiwan and the Catholic stance on contraception, I wouldn’t rule it out in the future (I can even think of tempting satirical targets in the beliefs or writings of every major religion). I don’t think religion should be any more inviolate than other belief systems, such as cultural traditions, superstitions, or nationalism. But I do think that any mockery of such things should be intelligent and based on actual elements of the religion (or whatever belief system is the target). Unintelligent name-calling and irrational insults make the one attacking look like more of a fool than their targets.
Offensively stupid attacks on Islam (and other religions and ethnic groups) are unfortunately not hard to find. Comment boards on news articles are littered with offensive Islamaphobic garbage from Internet trolls, including comments calling for all Muslims to be killed, comments comparing Muslims to pigs, and other blatant hate speech. That sort of thing is indefensible, and while I wouldn’t say the posters deserve to be stoned, some more mild form of punishment might well be in order. Aside from being violent and extremist, these comments are idiotic and ignorant. One I saw tried to rationalize his Islamaphobia by stating that all the violence and conflicts in the world involved Muslims (a laughably ignorant assertion, given that some of the world’s worst conflict zones – the Congo comes to mind – have no Muslims at all) and that Islam spread through forced conversions. The latter claim was only true at certain times and places – in most places Islam spread peacefully – and considering the history of forced conversions in Christianity from Charlemagne to the European colonial era, only an extremely biased or extremely ignorant person would condemn Islam for forced conversions without condemning Christianity as well.
For that matter, Christians are hardly in a position to accuse Muslims of violent overreaction to perceived slights to their religion (especially since the violent Islamists constitute a tiny minority of Muslims). While it’s true that now attacks on Christianity can be made with relative impunity in most places, only four and half decades ago John Lennon received death threats in the US just for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, even though it was the truth, at least in the UK (which was what he was talking about). I am not saying that most of the Islamaphobes in the West are Christians, but some certainly are (the maker of the recent film and the Quran-burning pastor in Georgia are just two examples – and I also read some rather incendiary comments about Mohammed in a newsletter for a Christian organization once), and many of the blanket attacks on Islam apply equal to Christianity, and many other religions for that matter. But even anti-religious secularists who attack all religions equal shouldn’t engage in gratuitous insults. On the other hand, if they want to make fun of believers and even their holy books and holy figures, and they do so in an intelligent way, basing their mockery on the actual tenets of the faith or the way it is actually practiced (as opposed to just making things up), then I say more power to them. And as Salman Rushdie (and others before him) pointed out, if your belief system can’t handle a little lampooning, then it must not have been very strong to begin with.
I will also add that the violent reactions among the radical Islamic fringe to any depictions of Mohammed, let alone hostile or insulting ones, is an example of one of the worst tendencies among religions and other strongly-held belief systems, namely that of trying to impose your beliefs on others. I understand why Islam discourages depictions of people in general and Mohammed in particular – a similar feeling that such images may become objects of worship motivated the Christian Orthodox iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire and some Protestants – but that doesn’t mean non-Muslims should be bound by this. Similarly, if your religion forbids gay people from marrying, the eating of pork or beef, the consumption of alcohol or other drugs, abortion, extramarital sex, dancing, shaving, wearing hats, standing on your head, or whatever, then don’t do those things – but don’t try to tell non-believers they can’t do them, or advocate secular laws and other measures that make doing these things difficult (unless you have a completely non-religious reason for it, as might arguably be the case for a very few of the above things). For that matter, even believers cannot be punished for violating such rules except by expulsion from the religion – and if they choose to still consider themselves followers of your religion despite violating some of its rules, then there’s nothing you can reasonably do about it. In the final analysis, if a religious believer really wants to help spread their religion, the best way they can go about it is by being tolerant, pleasant, caring and positive in their speech and actions, not by responding to mockery with hostility or by telling others what they can’t do. As Rushdie said, argument is one of the characteristics of an open society, and people will always be saying things you don't like. As a Middle Eastern observer noted, this film and the response to it is an example of how the crazy people on both sides feed on each other. I would say the best response to the fringe elements on both sides (aside from taking whatever measures are appropriate against those who resort to violence), if we bother to pay any attention to them at all, is to laugh at them, and satire, whether targeted narrowly or broadly, is the best way to do that.
In medieval Europe, anything considered blasphemous by the religious authorities was punishable by death, as it still is in a few of the most conservative Muslim countries. But lampooning religion has a long and indeed artistically respectable history in the West, including brilliant works of art from Candide to The Life of Brian. While I myself have mostly refrained from mocking religious beliefs in this blog, except for my criticism of the practice of burning ghost money in Taiwan and the Catholic stance on contraception, I wouldn’t rule it out in the future (I can even think of tempting satirical targets in the beliefs or writings of every major religion). I don’t think religion should be any more inviolate than other belief systems, such as cultural traditions, superstitions, or nationalism. But I do think that any mockery of such things should be intelligent and based on actual elements of the religion (or whatever belief system is the target). Unintelligent name-calling and irrational insults make the one attacking look like more of a fool than their targets.
Offensively stupid attacks on Islam (and other religions and ethnic groups) are unfortunately not hard to find. Comment boards on news articles are littered with offensive Islamaphobic garbage from Internet trolls, including comments calling for all Muslims to be killed, comments comparing Muslims to pigs, and other blatant hate speech. That sort of thing is indefensible, and while I wouldn’t say the posters deserve to be stoned, some more mild form of punishment might well be in order. Aside from being violent and extremist, these comments are idiotic and ignorant. One I saw tried to rationalize his Islamaphobia by stating that all the violence and conflicts in the world involved Muslims (a laughably ignorant assertion, given that some of the world’s worst conflict zones – the Congo comes to mind – have no Muslims at all) and that Islam spread through forced conversions. The latter claim was only true at certain times and places – in most places Islam spread peacefully – and considering the history of forced conversions in Christianity from Charlemagne to the European colonial era, only an extremely biased or extremely ignorant person would condemn Islam for forced conversions without condemning Christianity as well.
For that matter, Christians are hardly in a position to accuse Muslims of violent overreaction to perceived slights to their religion (especially since the violent Islamists constitute a tiny minority of Muslims). While it’s true that now attacks on Christianity can be made with relative impunity in most places, only four and half decades ago John Lennon received death threats in the US just for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, even though it was the truth, at least in the UK (which was what he was talking about). I am not saying that most of the Islamaphobes in the West are Christians, but some certainly are (the maker of the recent film and the Quran-burning pastor in Georgia are just two examples – and I also read some rather incendiary comments about Mohammed in a newsletter for a Christian organization once), and many of the blanket attacks on Islam apply equal to Christianity, and many other religions for that matter. But even anti-religious secularists who attack all religions equal shouldn’t engage in gratuitous insults. On the other hand, if they want to make fun of believers and even their holy books and holy figures, and they do so in an intelligent way, basing their mockery on the actual tenets of the faith or the way it is actually practiced (as opposed to just making things up), then I say more power to them. And as Salman Rushdie (and others before him) pointed out, if your belief system can’t handle a little lampooning, then it must not have been very strong to begin with.
I will also add that the violent reactions among the radical Islamic fringe to any depictions of Mohammed, let alone hostile or insulting ones, is an example of one of the worst tendencies among religions and other strongly-held belief systems, namely that of trying to impose your beliefs on others. I understand why Islam discourages depictions of people in general and Mohammed in particular – a similar feeling that such images may become objects of worship motivated the Christian Orthodox iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire and some Protestants – but that doesn’t mean non-Muslims should be bound by this. Similarly, if your religion forbids gay people from marrying, the eating of pork or beef, the consumption of alcohol or other drugs, abortion, extramarital sex, dancing, shaving, wearing hats, standing on your head, or whatever, then don’t do those things – but don’t try to tell non-believers they can’t do them, or advocate secular laws and other measures that make doing these things difficult (unless you have a completely non-religious reason for it, as might arguably be the case for a very few of the above things). For that matter, even believers cannot be punished for violating such rules except by expulsion from the religion – and if they choose to still consider themselves followers of your religion despite violating some of its rules, then there’s nothing you can reasonably do about it. In the final analysis, if a religious believer really wants to help spread their religion, the best way they can go about it is by being tolerant, pleasant, caring and positive in their speech and actions, not by responding to mockery with hostility or by telling others what they can’t do. As Rushdie said, argument is one of the characteristics of an open society, and people will always be saying things you don't like. As a Middle Eastern observer noted, this film and the response to it is an example of how the crazy people on both sides feed on each other. I would say the best response to the fringe elements on both sides (aside from taking whatever measures are appropriate against those who resort to violence), if we bother to pay any attention to them at all, is to laugh at them, and satire, whether targeted narrowly or broadly, is the best way to do that.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Fighting over Rocks in the Ocean
One of the big stories in this part of the world lately has been an increase in tensions between Japan, China and Taiwan over the islands known in Chinese as the Diaoyu or Diaoyutai Islands and in Japanese as the Senkaku Islands. In July, a group of activists based in Taiwan sailed to the islands to raise a flag, though rather absurdly the flag they raised was that of China, i.e., the People’s Republic of China, not that of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name); they claimed to have forgotten to bring their ROC flag. In August, another group of activists sailed to the islands from Hong Kong and planted both PRC and ROC flags before being arrested by the Japanese and deported back to Hong Kong. About a week later, a group of Japanese nationalists traveled to the islands to emphasize Japan’s claim, setting off anti-Japanese riots in China. Most recently, the Japanese central government officially purchased the islands from the Japanese family whose ownership it had previously recognized. While this was done in part to prevent a group led by a nationalist politician from making a bid for them, China has reacted angrily and Taiwan has also protested.
All three sides in this dispute have looked rather foolish. A key point to keep in mind is that these islands are uninhabited. All sides have asserted “historical claims” to the islands, which is frankly ridiculous. Historical claims are often founded on dubious grounds even when inhabited places are at issue; in the case of uninhabited rocks no one should be trying to use history as the primary basis for a claim. China and Taiwan say that the islands appeared on maps from the Ming and Qing dynasty and that some of the later maps marked them as being part of China. This is meaningless, as marks on a map signify very little, particularly when talking about a place where no one lives; in fact Qing China didn’t even rule all of the island of Taiwan, so how could it have exercised any sort of meaningful control over a bunch of rocks in the ocean far to the northeast of Taiwan? As for assertions that the islands were actually inhabited at some point by Chinese, even if this were the case, it was almost certainly a case of temporary habitation by fishermen or even pirates, and it’s unlikely that the Qing government even knew about it or that those on the islands cared anything for political claims by China or anyone else.
From what I have read, the only substantial settlement on the islands was during the first half of the 20th century, when a Japanese businessman built a fish processing plant on one of the islands that employed about 200 workers. This business collapsed in 1940, however, and no one has lived there since, so this hardly amounts to much more of a basis for claiming ownership than the activities of Chinese fishermen in the 19th century. From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1972, the islands, along with the much larger Ryukyu island group of which Okinawa is the main island, were under United States administration. While they were handed over to Japanese control in 1972, there is no particular reason why they should have been, as even Japan’s claim to the Ryukyus, which were once an independent kingdom, is a little dubious. But China’s claim is certainly no better, and Japan not unreasonably points out that China only started making a claim after potential oil and gas reserves were discovered in the area around the time of the American handover. On the other hand, Japan’s refusal to even officially acknowledge that a dispute exists is equally foolish, as its calling them an “integral” part of Japan (how can a bunch of rocks hundreds of kilometers from the main Japanese islands be integral in any way?). Certainly belligerent posturing by either China or Japan is completely uncalled for, given the shakiness of both sides’ claims.
As for Taiwan, the government has for the most part taken a slightly more low-key stance, and has called for negotiations over the islands. But in other ways it has managed to just look as foolish as China and Japan, if not even more so. In the incident in July, the activists’ fishing boat was actually escorted by Taiwanese coast guard vessels, even though they carried a PRC flag with them, and in the August incident, the Taiwanese coast guard gave the activists supplies, even though they were not coming from Taiwan but from Hong Kong and were essentially asserting the PRC’s claim, not Taiwan’s. At least as absurdly, the Taiwanese government has cited the same highly dubious “historical evidence” that China has. This is largely because the current government particularly is still trying to claim to be the heir of the Republic of China regime that ruled China itself in the first half of the 20th century (though without daring to challenge the PRC directly), but in fact, using such specious historical evidence is tantamount to supporting China’s equally baseless claims to Taiwan itself, which is a foolishly self-defeating approach to take.
The Senkaku or Diaoyutai Islands are not the only disputed islands that have been in the news recently. The Liancourt Rocks, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese, are disputed between South Korea, which currently controls them, and Japan, which they lie almost exactly between. They were in the news recently because a South Korean soccer (football) player held up a sign referring to the Korean claim after his team won its bronze medal match against Japan in the recent Olympics. The islands (really just rocks) are inhabited by a single Korean civilian couple and several dozen Korean police officers and a few other government personnel. There are numerous disputed historical references to the rocks in Korean and Japanese records, but in this case also such things are a rather dubious basis for any kind of claim, as given that the rocks, being too small and isolated for permanent occupation without outside help, were uninhabited until 1991 when the couple living there now were sent by the South Korean government. In this case it is South Korea which refuses to consider negotiations or arbitration. In any event, both sides elaborate arguments backing up their claims are about as ridiculous as those of the claimants to the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands.
The most complex dispute over islands in East Asia is that over the various island groups in the South China Sea, the largest such groups being the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands. Both China and Taiwan claim all of the islands in the South China Sea, and Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also claim various islands, rocks and shoals in the region. China exercises practical control over the Parcels and recently provoked controversy by upgrading the administrative status of the territory to a “city”, though its center of government is an island with only a few hundred residents. There was also a standoff between Philippines and Chinese vessels back in April over a shoal in the region. Aside from protests by Southeast Asian claimants over Chinese aggressiveness in the area, these actions have led the US to urge the parties (meaning mostly China) to refrain from stirring things up, which of course has led to angry statements from China. Taiwan, meanwhile, exercises control over the largest island in the Spratlys, which has a few hundred non-civilian residents, though Vietnam holds the largest number of islets. None of the islands in the South China Sea, however, has any significant civilian population and it is unlikely that they were inhabited for any substantial length of time in the past either. Once again, all the historical “evidence” asserted by the various claimants is questionable at best, and in most cases laughably flimsy. In one particularly absurd case, China, Taiwan and the Philippines have even laid claim to all or part of a sunken atoll or bank, even though it is entirely underwater. But the Philippines did make some good points regarding their dispute with China over the shoal mentioned above, namely that “historical claims are not historical titles...a claim by itself, including [a] historical claim, [is] not...a basis for acquiring a territory” and “the act of fishing by Chinese fishermen [cannot be considered] a sovereign act of a State nor can [it] be considered as a display of State authority.” These arguments apply equally to all the arguments based on history made by the different sides in all of these disputes.
While China is the most aggressive party in the South China Sea dispute, none of the various claimants in any of these disputes has a very substantial basis for their claims. Indeed, these conflicts illustrate the some of the more ludicrous aspects of the modern concept of sovereignty. The idea that any nation should have sovereignty over barren, uninhabited rocks in the ocean is silly to begin with. It is even more ridiculous to claim that such sovereignty is absolute or worst of all permanent. Anyone who uses the worlds "eternal", "forever", "inseparable", or the like in relation to sovereignty over any place can be discounted as a raving lunatic. These rocks have been around thousands of times longer than the nations that are fighting over them and will no doubt be here long after the nations are gone (though they may be underwater thanks to our alteration of the world's climate). If they belong to anyone, they belong to the seabirds and plants that call them home. Ideally of course, rather than making silly arguments and getting all worked up over nonsense like "national pride" (as if any of these nationalist protesters are really affected in any significant way by whether their country owns these rocks or not), the disputants would simply find a way to share the resources involved (though given the problem of climate change, I’d just as soon see any oil and gas in these areas left in the ground). But when it comes to territorial disputes, nations tend to behave like small children in a room with a bunch of desirable toys: They don’t want to share them with anyone else, and rather dubiously claim to have been playing with them first when anyone else tries to claim them. It would be nice to see them all grow up a little and find a way to share, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem too likely.
Related articles:
http://news.yahoo.com/china-sends-patrol-ships-islands-held-japan-051725925.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/05/us-china-usa-southchinasea-idUSBRE87401120120805
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0905/China-territorial-disputes-a-warning-in-the-history-of-Imperial-Japan
[Update: One topic I didn't touch on here is the residual hostility toward Japan in countries like China and Korea due to Japan's deeds in the early 20th century. While in disputes like the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Japan probably has a slightly stronger case, it's also true that Japan, unlike Germany, has never fully faced up to some of the horrible things it did in WWII and the period leading up to it (the Rape of Nanjing, comfort women, treatment of POWs and subject peoples, etc.). While this is not directly relevant to these territorial disputes, it doesn't help matters, especially when some of the same right-wing nationalists that have prevented Japan from making a full apology for what it did in the past are also among those provoking tensions over the islands along with the nationalists from China et al. However, this does not excuse the absurdly militant attitudes on the other side -- supposedly even Taiwan and Hong Kong singers and movie stars have been avoiding having anything to do with Japan lately out of a cowardly fear of exciting the ire of anti-Japanese Chinese nationalists. If these people were up in arms for the remaining comfort women or other victims of Japanese militarism it wouldn't be so bad, but to ignore historical issues of justice in favor of fighting for these rocks is idiotic. One Chinese protester was at least quite perceptive about the government's role: "'I think the government is encouraging this,' said one protester, who gave his name as Uda Chen. 'They could have stopped all of us approaching when we were at the subway station. The government has taught us to be anti-Japanese at school, so if they want us to stop it would be like slapping their own mouths,' he added." Of course, one wonders why if he is aware that the government has brainwashed him and is manipulating him, he continues to do what it wants.]
All three sides in this dispute have looked rather foolish. A key point to keep in mind is that these islands are uninhabited. All sides have asserted “historical claims” to the islands, which is frankly ridiculous. Historical claims are often founded on dubious grounds even when inhabited places are at issue; in the case of uninhabited rocks no one should be trying to use history as the primary basis for a claim. China and Taiwan say that the islands appeared on maps from the Ming and Qing dynasty and that some of the later maps marked them as being part of China. This is meaningless, as marks on a map signify very little, particularly when talking about a place where no one lives; in fact Qing China didn’t even rule all of the island of Taiwan, so how could it have exercised any sort of meaningful control over a bunch of rocks in the ocean far to the northeast of Taiwan? As for assertions that the islands were actually inhabited at some point by Chinese, even if this were the case, it was almost certainly a case of temporary habitation by fishermen or even pirates, and it’s unlikely that the Qing government even knew about it or that those on the islands cared anything for political claims by China or anyone else.
From what I have read, the only substantial settlement on the islands was during the first half of the 20th century, when a Japanese businessman built a fish processing plant on one of the islands that employed about 200 workers. This business collapsed in 1940, however, and no one has lived there since, so this hardly amounts to much more of a basis for claiming ownership than the activities of Chinese fishermen in the 19th century. From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1972, the islands, along with the much larger Ryukyu island group of which Okinawa is the main island, were under United States administration. While they were handed over to Japanese control in 1972, there is no particular reason why they should have been, as even Japan’s claim to the Ryukyus, which were once an independent kingdom, is a little dubious. But China’s claim is certainly no better, and Japan not unreasonably points out that China only started making a claim after potential oil and gas reserves were discovered in the area around the time of the American handover. On the other hand, Japan’s refusal to even officially acknowledge that a dispute exists is equally foolish, as its calling them an “integral” part of Japan (how can a bunch of rocks hundreds of kilometers from the main Japanese islands be integral in any way?). Certainly belligerent posturing by either China or Japan is completely uncalled for, given the shakiness of both sides’ claims.
As for Taiwan, the government has for the most part taken a slightly more low-key stance, and has called for negotiations over the islands. But in other ways it has managed to just look as foolish as China and Japan, if not even more so. In the incident in July, the activists’ fishing boat was actually escorted by Taiwanese coast guard vessels, even though they carried a PRC flag with them, and in the August incident, the Taiwanese coast guard gave the activists supplies, even though they were not coming from Taiwan but from Hong Kong and were essentially asserting the PRC’s claim, not Taiwan’s. At least as absurdly, the Taiwanese government has cited the same highly dubious “historical evidence” that China has. This is largely because the current government particularly is still trying to claim to be the heir of the Republic of China regime that ruled China itself in the first half of the 20th century (though without daring to challenge the PRC directly), but in fact, using such specious historical evidence is tantamount to supporting China’s equally baseless claims to Taiwan itself, which is a foolishly self-defeating approach to take.
The Senkaku or Diaoyutai Islands are not the only disputed islands that have been in the news recently. The Liancourt Rocks, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese, are disputed between South Korea, which currently controls them, and Japan, which they lie almost exactly between. They were in the news recently because a South Korean soccer (football) player held up a sign referring to the Korean claim after his team won its bronze medal match against Japan in the recent Olympics. The islands (really just rocks) are inhabited by a single Korean civilian couple and several dozen Korean police officers and a few other government personnel. There are numerous disputed historical references to the rocks in Korean and Japanese records, but in this case also such things are a rather dubious basis for any kind of claim, as given that the rocks, being too small and isolated for permanent occupation without outside help, were uninhabited until 1991 when the couple living there now were sent by the South Korean government. In this case it is South Korea which refuses to consider negotiations or arbitration. In any event, both sides elaborate arguments backing up their claims are about as ridiculous as those of the claimants to the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands.
The most complex dispute over islands in East Asia is that over the various island groups in the South China Sea, the largest such groups being the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands. Both China and Taiwan claim all of the islands in the South China Sea, and Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also claim various islands, rocks and shoals in the region. China exercises practical control over the Parcels and recently provoked controversy by upgrading the administrative status of the territory to a “city”, though its center of government is an island with only a few hundred residents. There was also a standoff between Philippines and Chinese vessels back in April over a shoal in the region. Aside from protests by Southeast Asian claimants over Chinese aggressiveness in the area, these actions have led the US to urge the parties (meaning mostly China) to refrain from stirring things up, which of course has led to angry statements from China. Taiwan, meanwhile, exercises control over the largest island in the Spratlys, which has a few hundred non-civilian residents, though Vietnam holds the largest number of islets. None of the islands in the South China Sea, however, has any significant civilian population and it is unlikely that they were inhabited for any substantial length of time in the past either. Once again, all the historical “evidence” asserted by the various claimants is questionable at best, and in most cases laughably flimsy. In one particularly absurd case, China, Taiwan and the Philippines have even laid claim to all or part of a sunken atoll or bank, even though it is entirely underwater. But the Philippines did make some good points regarding their dispute with China over the shoal mentioned above, namely that “historical claims are not historical titles...a claim by itself, including [a] historical claim, [is] not...a basis for acquiring a territory” and “the act of fishing by Chinese fishermen [cannot be considered] a sovereign act of a State nor can [it] be considered as a display of State authority.” These arguments apply equally to all the arguments based on history made by the different sides in all of these disputes.
While China is the most aggressive party in the South China Sea dispute, none of the various claimants in any of these disputes has a very substantial basis for their claims. Indeed, these conflicts illustrate the some of the more ludicrous aspects of the modern concept of sovereignty. The idea that any nation should have sovereignty over barren, uninhabited rocks in the ocean is silly to begin with. It is even more ridiculous to claim that such sovereignty is absolute or worst of all permanent. Anyone who uses the worlds "eternal", "forever", "inseparable", or the like in relation to sovereignty over any place can be discounted as a raving lunatic. These rocks have been around thousands of times longer than the nations that are fighting over them and will no doubt be here long after the nations are gone (though they may be underwater thanks to our alteration of the world's climate). If they belong to anyone, they belong to the seabirds and plants that call them home. Ideally of course, rather than making silly arguments and getting all worked up over nonsense like "national pride" (as if any of these nationalist protesters are really affected in any significant way by whether their country owns these rocks or not), the disputants would simply find a way to share the resources involved (though given the problem of climate change, I’d just as soon see any oil and gas in these areas left in the ground). But when it comes to territorial disputes, nations tend to behave like small children in a room with a bunch of desirable toys: They don’t want to share them with anyone else, and rather dubiously claim to have been playing with them first when anyone else tries to claim them. It would be nice to see them all grow up a little and find a way to share, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem too likely.
Related articles:
http://news.yahoo.com/china-sends-patrol-ships-islands-held-japan-051725925.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/05/us-china-usa-southchinasea-idUSBRE87401120120805
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0905/China-territorial-disputes-a-warning-in-the-history-of-Imperial-Japan
[Update: One topic I didn't touch on here is the residual hostility toward Japan in countries like China and Korea due to Japan's deeds in the early 20th century. While in disputes like the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Japan probably has a slightly stronger case, it's also true that Japan, unlike Germany, has never fully faced up to some of the horrible things it did in WWII and the period leading up to it (the Rape of Nanjing, comfort women, treatment of POWs and subject peoples, etc.). While this is not directly relevant to these territorial disputes, it doesn't help matters, especially when some of the same right-wing nationalists that have prevented Japan from making a full apology for what it did in the past are also among those provoking tensions over the islands along with the nationalists from China et al. However, this does not excuse the absurdly militant attitudes on the other side -- supposedly even Taiwan and Hong Kong singers and movie stars have been avoiding having anything to do with Japan lately out of a cowardly fear of exciting the ire of anti-Japanese Chinese nationalists. If these people were up in arms for the remaining comfort women or other victims of Japanese militarism it wouldn't be so bad, but to ignore historical issues of justice in favor of fighting for these rocks is idiotic. One Chinese protester was at least quite perceptive about the government's role: "'I think the government is encouraging this,' said one protester, who gave his name as Uda Chen. 'They could have stopped all of us approaching when we were at the subway station. The government has taught us to be anti-Japanese at school, so if they want us to stop it would be like slapping their own mouths,' he added." Of course, one wonders why if he is aware that the government has brainwashed him and is manipulating him, he continues to do what it wants.]
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Human Exploration of the Moon
As most people who follow the news know, Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon, died last week. To me, this was a reminder not only of the incredible achievement of landing humans on the Moon but also of how long ago it was that we did it. The six successful Moon landings took place from July 1969 to December 1972, which means that the last time humans walked on the Moon was nearly forty years ago (an anniversary that will be worth commemorating, even if it is not a happy one). Of the twelve men who walked on the Moon, only eight of them are still alive. Of the twelve others who flew to the Moon without landing on it, three have died. Unfortunately, given the current state of the space program in the United States, the country which launched the Apollo program that Armstrong and the others were a part of and the only nation with the resources to have (or rather have had) any chance of repeating the achievement in the relatively near future, it is quite likely that we will reach a point in the next decade or two when there is no one alive who has been to the Moon, or anywhere beyond near Earth orbit for that matter (this was also mentioned by at least one other commentator). I hope I am wrong, not only because I wish long lives to the remaining Apollo astronauts, but because I would love to see people get back to the Moon soon (though I’ll admit to having mixed feelings about the possibility of the Chinese going, due to my strong dislike for their government). However, it is difficult to be optimistic about the odds of this happening.
Another thought Armstrong’s death brings to mind is the imbalance in name recognition among the people who went to the Moon. Neil Armstrong deserved all the accolades he received for his achievements with the space program, as well as his professionalism, his great skill as a pilot, and his coolness in the face of danger (in one famous incident a year before the Moon landing, the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle he was flying began having problems, and he ejected less than a second before it would have been too late – yet afterwards he seemed completely unfazed by the experience). But while it is only right that school children all over the world learn his name, the comparative anonymity of almost all the others who went to the Moon is rather unfair. The only one who enjoys anything remotely like the name recognition of Armstrong is Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, who with Armstrong was on the historic Apollo 11 mission and so was the second person to walk on the Moon. Along with the mentions he gets in history books for this reason, Buzz Aldrin is far more of an extrovert than the extremely reserved Armstrong was and has made numerous appearances in television shows and movies. He makes frequent public appearances and the Buzz Lightyear character in the Toy Story movies was named for him. Nevertheless, he remains considerably less well known than Armstrong, and as for the others, few people know who any of them are. I have to admit that I myself would have trouble naming more than half of the twelve who landed on the Moon or more than a few of the other twelve. This is regrettable, since all of them were part of one of the most extraordinary achievements in human history. For those who want to know more about what that unique experience was like, I recommend the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. While the publicity-shy Armstrong didn’t participate, many of his fellow Moon voyagers did, and their tales about the amazing trip they made are fascinating.
Both Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the third member of the Apollo 11 crew, have remarked that one mistake NASA made was not sending someone to the Moon who would be skilled at describing the experience to the public. While I think they are too modest about their own efforts to convey how they felt, it is true that the emphasis at the time was on just getting the job done, not talking about it either at the time or afterward, which made the whole thing seem much duller than it should have. Certainly Armstrong was never inclined to talk about what he did much, which was somewhat unfortunate. Despite this, he did contribute one of the most memorable and even poetic quotes in human history upon setting foot on the Moon, when he said “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” (even if he did fluff it a bit by dropping the “a”). Like the Apollo missions themselves, that quote is likely to be remembered as long as modern human civilization endures.
As for the future of human exploration of the Moon and other places beyond Earth, I’ve written about it before and I’ll no doubt do so again. But this is also an issue which was mentioned in many of the obituaries of Neil Armstrong, so it is worth touching on here. In the last years of his life, Armstrong made several of his rare public appearances in order to criticize President Barack Obama’s cancellation of the Constellation program that would have sent humans back to the Moon. While I myself had some problems with Obama’s changes to NASA as reflected in the Constellation program constellation, I think some of Armstrong’s criticisms were misplaced. As I noted at the time, when George W. Bush proposed the Constellation program, he failed to put his money where his mouth was. It was seriously underfunded and by the time Obama took office, there was already next to no chance of it succeeding in its stated objectives without a large budget increase. Obama can and should be blamed for not giving NASA more money, but the same criticism applies to all his predecessors, Republican and Democratic, all the way back to Richard Nixon. The cancellation of the Constellation program itself made sense in the context of the stingy funding provided to NASA by both Bush and Obama. Some of the other points made by Armstrong at the time were more valid, such as a lack of clear goals for human space exploration, something I also observed at the time. But the goals Bush had set with Constellation were no more meaningful if he wasn’t going to pay for them. It’s also worth noting that while Armstrong and fellow Apollo astronauts Jim Lovell and Eugene Cernan criticized the new vision for NASA, Buzz Aldrin, despite being supposedly pro-Republican, spoke in favor of it, as he considered the Constellation program to be lacking in vision (he prefers to see a focus on reaching new places, such as Mars). In any event, the political problems NASA has faced and continues to face are bipartisan ones, as both its supporters and those who are indifferent or even hostile to it (with the latter groups being regrettably more numerous) come from both parties. Maybe the Curiosity mission and perhaps even the reflections evoked by Armstrong’s death will help remind more people in and out of government how incredibly inspiring the space program can be, and how much value we can get for what is comparatively a small sum of money.
Another thought Armstrong’s death brings to mind is the imbalance in name recognition among the people who went to the Moon. Neil Armstrong deserved all the accolades he received for his achievements with the space program, as well as his professionalism, his great skill as a pilot, and his coolness in the face of danger (in one famous incident a year before the Moon landing, the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle he was flying began having problems, and he ejected less than a second before it would have been too late – yet afterwards he seemed completely unfazed by the experience). But while it is only right that school children all over the world learn his name, the comparative anonymity of almost all the others who went to the Moon is rather unfair. The only one who enjoys anything remotely like the name recognition of Armstrong is Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, who with Armstrong was on the historic Apollo 11 mission and so was the second person to walk on the Moon. Along with the mentions he gets in history books for this reason, Buzz Aldrin is far more of an extrovert than the extremely reserved Armstrong was and has made numerous appearances in television shows and movies. He makes frequent public appearances and the Buzz Lightyear character in the Toy Story movies was named for him. Nevertheless, he remains considerably less well known than Armstrong, and as for the others, few people know who any of them are. I have to admit that I myself would have trouble naming more than half of the twelve who landed on the Moon or more than a few of the other twelve. This is regrettable, since all of them were part of one of the most extraordinary achievements in human history. For those who want to know more about what that unique experience was like, I recommend the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. While the publicity-shy Armstrong didn’t participate, many of his fellow Moon voyagers did, and their tales about the amazing trip they made are fascinating.
Both Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the third member of the Apollo 11 crew, have remarked that one mistake NASA made was not sending someone to the Moon who would be skilled at describing the experience to the public. While I think they are too modest about their own efforts to convey how they felt, it is true that the emphasis at the time was on just getting the job done, not talking about it either at the time or afterward, which made the whole thing seem much duller than it should have. Certainly Armstrong was never inclined to talk about what he did much, which was somewhat unfortunate. Despite this, he did contribute one of the most memorable and even poetic quotes in human history upon setting foot on the Moon, when he said “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” (even if he did fluff it a bit by dropping the “a”). Like the Apollo missions themselves, that quote is likely to be remembered as long as modern human civilization endures.
As for the future of human exploration of the Moon and other places beyond Earth, I’ve written about it before and I’ll no doubt do so again. But this is also an issue which was mentioned in many of the obituaries of Neil Armstrong, so it is worth touching on here. In the last years of his life, Armstrong made several of his rare public appearances in order to criticize President Barack Obama’s cancellation of the Constellation program that would have sent humans back to the Moon. While I myself had some problems with Obama’s changes to NASA as reflected in the Constellation program constellation, I think some of Armstrong’s criticisms were misplaced. As I noted at the time, when George W. Bush proposed the Constellation program, he failed to put his money where his mouth was. It was seriously underfunded and by the time Obama took office, there was already next to no chance of it succeeding in its stated objectives without a large budget increase. Obama can and should be blamed for not giving NASA more money, but the same criticism applies to all his predecessors, Republican and Democratic, all the way back to Richard Nixon. The cancellation of the Constellation program itself made sense in the context of the stingy funding provided to NASA by both Bush and Obama. Some of the other points made by Armstrong at the time were more valid, such as a lack of clear goals for human space exploration, something I also observed at the time. But the goals Bush had set with Constellation were no more meaningful if he wasn’t going to pay for them. It’s also worth noting that while Armstrong and fellow Apollo astronauts Jim Lovell and Eugene Cernan criticized the new vision for NASA, Buzz Aldrin, despite being supposedly pro-Republican, spoke in favor of it, as he considered the Constellation program to be lacking in vision (he prefers to see a focus on reaching new places, such as Mars). In any event, the political problems NASA has faced and continues to face are bipartisan ones, as both its supporters and those who are indifferent or even hostile to it (with the latter groups being regrettably more numerous) come from both parties. Maybe the Curiosity mission and perhaps even the reflections evoked by Armstrong’s death will help remind more people in and out of government how incredibly inspiring the space program can be, and how much value we can get for what is comparatively a small sum of money.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
What I've Been Reading -- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Here's my commentary on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which I read a few months ago. It's a little more disorganized than I would prefer and it doesn't address all of her arguments in detail, but it was already long enough – though not even 1% of the length of the book itself – and I didn't consider it worth spending any more time on than I already had. Still, it seemed appropriate to talk about it a little, especially considering Mitt Romney's choice of Rand disciple Paul Ryan as his running mate in the US presidential election (Ryan used to get his interns to read her work and gave copies of this novel as Christmas presents, though he has recently distanced himself from her philosophy due to its atheistic aspects) and the prevalence of other Rand followers in US politics nowadays.
I hardly know where to start with this one. First of all, though it is in the form of a novel, it is as much or more a lengthy polemic in support of Ayn Rand’s highly problematic (to put it nicely) philosophy. It seems less a novel than a manifesto for talented sociopaths. What’s rather creepy is how closely her extremist ideas accord with many of those espoused by many members of the so-called Tea Party. How many of them are directly inspired by her I don’t know, but certainly some of them are, perhaps the most prominent examples are Paul Ryan and the Pauls, Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul. But even many of those who haven’t read her would probably be going “Yeah! Exactly!” on every page – at least until the later parts, where she attacks Christianity, though not by name. Of course much of the rest of her philosophy – such as self-centeredness and total hostility to the concepts of altruism and living for the sake of others – are completely contrary to Christianity, but many Christian Tea Party members manage to ignore similar contradictions in their political beliefs. But even aside from inconsistencies in the ideas of her followers, many of Rand’s own ideas are logically flawed or based on false premises, to use a word she was fond of.
Apparently Rand considered herself a fiction writer first and a philosopher second, but that’s not what comes across in this book. I have read many works of fiction that incorporate philosophical and political ideas, and even many that have expression of such ideas as their main purpose. Yet most of the authors of such books do this with some subtlety, incorporating their ideas into the story in a plausible manner. At the very least, they usually do not spend every single part of the story talking about them, and not every character is neatly categorized as (what the author views as) good or evil. Yet with Atlas Shrugged, the entire book of over 1100 pages is a constant, one-sided argument for her ideas.
Perhaps this can be made clearer by comparison with other books. A novel like Voltaire’s Candide or Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha is a bit difficult to compare to Atlas Shrugged, as they are totally different in style and present their arguments in completely different ways. Furthermore, in Voltaire’s case, he didn’t try to claim to be primarily a writer of fiction, and in Hesse’s case the philosophical ideas are not political in nature. A more instructive comparison might be with a contemporary writer with a strong political viewpoint, such as China Miéville or Kim Stanley Robinson. Take Robinson’s global warming trilogy Science in the Capital for example. Robinson’s own viewpoint is clearly evident to anyone who reads the novel, and in many arguments, characters presenting his side do win rather handily. But the opposing side at least isn’t given such blatantly nonsensical arguments as Rand gives to the antagonists in her novel (a point I’ll come back to). Furthermore, not all debates are so clear cut as to which side is right (an example from another of Robinson’s books comes to mind, namely the terraforming debate between Sax Russell and Ann Clayborne). This never happens with Rand, as for her absolutely everything is black and white. Finally, much of the dialogue and events in Robinson’s trilogy are not connected to any of the political, economic or philosophical issues that are discussed elsewhere, whereas in Rand’s case, there’s virtually nothing in the entire book that doesn’t directly relate to her ideas. Even if I agreed with her on everything (with I certainly don’t), this would get tiresome. In this case, it made the book tedious as well as objectionable.
I am not going to attempt to answer all of the hundreds of pages of arguments Rand makes in favor of her philosophy, as that would take more time than it is really worth. Instead, I will point out a few of the obvious problems. Before I do so, I should also say that I actually agree with some of her basic points. For instance, she spends a lot of time arguing in favor of the primacy of the mind and of reason, and criticizing those who refuse to think. I completely agree with this – I also find what I call “willful ignorance” extremely annoying, to say the least. But when I – or someone like Albert Einstein, Aung San Syu Kyi or Kim Stanley Robinson or any number of other highly intelligent people in different fields – use my mind in thinking about what kind of society would be best for me as an individual as well as those around me, I reach conclusions that are in many cases diametrically opposed to Rand’s.
One concept that is central to Rand’s view of the world is the idea of “prime movers”, a small minority of people who are responsible for keeping everything going with their initiative and leadership skills, or as she would put it, their use of their minds. These are the people she sees as inventing things, making technological advances, finding new ways to do things, and simply running large operations such as major companies with their single-minded use of their brainpower to solve any problems that arise. The whole premise of the novel is that such people decide to start dropping out of society and disappearing rather than continue to be exploited by the rest of society, which mostly consists of “moochers” (those who sponge off the prime movers) and “looters” (those who use the power of government to deprive the prime movers of their hard-earned profits). As these people, according to Rand, hold up the world like Atlas in Greek mythology, when they start to disappear everything starts to fall apart.
Now, I will be the first to admit that I am fairly cynical about the mental capabilities of humanity in general, or at least I think most people don’t use their brains as much or as well as they should. It has also occurred to me that most of the inventions and discoveries human society rests on, from the use of fire to the Internet, were the work of a relatively small proportion of humanity. So does that mean I share Rand’s concept of “prime movers”? Not exactly. First of all, most of Rand’s “prime movers” are industrialists and bankers, not inventors or scientific pioneers. Except for Hank Rearden and John Galt, none of them appear to have invented anything of major significance. While I recognize that it takes a certain type of ability to build and run a large corporation or a bank, I don’t think it is a particularly rare talent or something that most moderately intelligent people could not learn with a little training. Also, even as far as those responsible for scientific and technological progress is concerned, I hardly think the number of people involved is as tiny as the number of Rand’s “prime movers”. Someone like Bill Gates may play the key role of starting up a major company, but once it is established much of the work – even much of the brainwork – is done by many others. Even someone like Steve Jobs cannot be given sole credit for everything his company accomplished. What’s more, there is not nearly such a clear dividing line between the smart, capable people with drive and everyone else. Very important discoveries and inventions may be made by people whose talents are otherwise fairly modest, or are relatively narrow in scope. Some people are good at coming up with ideas but not at putting them into practice, and others have no original ideas of their own but are good at finding ways to use those of others. In any case, there are a lot of elements that go into anything that is produced in a society, and no one can do everything alone. As Elizabeth Warren (or a staff ghostwriter) observed in a recent political mailing: “We don't know who is going to have the next big idea in America. But we're pretty sure they're going to need employees who can read and write. They're going to need power to keep the lights on and clean water and functioning sewers to keep going. They're going to need roads and bridges to move their goods to market or bring customers to their store. And they're going to need police officers and firefighters to keep their businesses safe.”
One of the main villains in Rand’s novel is of course the government, specifically a number of bureaucrats who collaborate with favored businesspeople to create regulations that hurt the ones doing all the real work. The negative roles played by businesspeople like James Taggart, the brother of protagonist Dagny Taggart, might seem like an acknowledgement that not all businesspeople are honest and trustworthy, but Rand seemed to think that those that are capable (like Dagny and Hank Rearden) are automatically honest, and those that are dishonest are automatically incompetent, which any observer of reality knows is not the case. She also seems to think that the only way unscrupulous (by her standards) businesspeople can gain an advantage is by using regulations to aid their cause, when a sufficiently powerful company, especially one with a near monopoly, can use all sorts of market tools to stifle competition and block innovation. As for government, Rand believes that its only legitimate role was policing to prevent legitimate owners from being robbed (though of course she ignores the complexity of determining ownership in the first place). She ignores the role government has played in creating the infrastructure that the US was built on (true, the railroads, like the Taggart company in the novel, were private, but almost all other major infrastructure projects from the Eire Canal to the interstates were mainly government projects. Furthermore, one of her main “heroes”, Hank Rearden, develops a new metal (this and even more so Galt’s invention sound rather dubious scientifically, but we’ll let that slide) and later is forced to give up his patent by a scheming government. But of course patents could not exist in the first place without the government. Perhaps granting patents is another legitimate government function that Rand neglected to mention? She also fails to address the fact that patents can be and frequently are used to hinder innovation. Though it would be difficult to argue that a complete lack of patent protection such as existed before the industrial age would as a whole be more conducive to progress, neither patents nor monopolies are universal positive either, something Rand ignores. Also, while she seems to recognize that incompetence could be deadly, she completely fails to acknowledge that government regulation can help to maintain minimum standards so that companies don’t kill people with their products, whether due to negligence or unscrupulousness.
Rand also implies that applied science is superior to theoretical science. One of her villains is the physicist Robert Stadler, who has a powerful mind but acquiesces to and even supports the corrupt system around him. He was supposedly based in part on Robert Oppenheimer, and perhaps Albert Einstein as well. His theoretical work is used by others to create a sound based weapon of mass destruction (which obviously represents the atom bomb – Rand’s apparent anti-nuclear stance is something many of her modern day followers don’t seem to share), but unlike Oppenheimer and Einstein, when confronted with the fact of the weapon, he decides to violate his remaining principles and speak in favor of it. Stadler complains on a number of occasions of people who expect him to actually produce things with his scientific work, when he is only interested in theoretical work. Given the way Rand writes, this clearly means that in her view applied science is actually superior. But in reality, most of the important developments in technology over the past few centuries have been based on theoretical work. Even aside from nuclear power, many other modern technologies are based on the work of people like Einstein who were doing purely theoretical work. A relevant quote to this effect appeared in a recent news story about the apparent discovery of the Higgs boson: “Finding the Higgs particle would not be of practical value, at least not yet, but Roser argued that when the electron was first discovered in 1897, nobody guessed how it would lead to the high-tech, wired world we have today.” To insist that science should produce immediate commercial results is ignorant and short-sighted.
In fact, a study of history and in particular the history of science shows that the real “prime movers”, to the extent that there are such people, were as often people who sought knowledge for knowledge’s sake, or even people who were motivated by altruism, which Rand considers a great evil. Many advances in the field of medicine in particular were made by people who simply wanted to help others, which Rand claims no one should want to do. The great chemist Humphry Davy invented the safety lamp as a public service – and possibly to some extent for public recognition to feed his ego – but in any case not in order to profit directly. The idea that selfishness is the only driver of innovation and progress is absurd.
In fact, one of the biggest flaws in Rand’s philosophy is that for someone who places such emphasis on seeing things the way they really are, she is remarkably blind to reality. She insists on the reality of absolutes that clearly do not exist. She insists that it is not human nature to be imperfect, or to try to take advantage of others when the opportunity presents itself. In her view, if people like her prime movers were given free reign, they would naturally be honest if self-centered in their dealings. They would pay their workers what they are worth, because it is in their interest to do so, and they wouldn’t take advantage of monopoly power to gouge their customers. Anyone who knows anything about people, however, knows that being talented and ambitious certainly does not guarantee that someone is honest in their dealings with others, and even those who attempt to be will inevitably on occasion act in ways that favor their interests at the expense of others, because despite what Rand says to the contrary, in dealings between people subjectivity always plays a role. Simply put, powerful industrialists were given the type of free rein Rand calls for, many of them would take advantage of it in ways that would be harmful to society as whole, and ultimately to the kind of human progress that Rand celebrates. John Donne once said that no man is an island, and any observer of human nature realizes the truth of this statement. Humans are social animals, and while some individuals among us are relatively misanthropic and content to remain alone most of the time, very few people can function without interacting with others at all, and this means some degree of compromise and consideration of the greater good. That’s what makes a society function, and this will be true no matter how strongly Rand and her disciples may deny it.
As noted earlier, all “debates” in the novel are extremely one-sided. Rand’s antagonists say completely absurd things that no one with any sense would agree with. But while there may somewhere be people who actually claim that thinking is an outdated notion or that virtue consists in giving to the undeserving, as characters in Rand’s novel do, I don’t know any actual liberals, progressives or leftists who say such things. Of course, she seems to believe that all ideology that emphasizes doing things for the benefit of others in essence equates to an abdication of reason, but her arguments for this view make little sense. In any case, an “objective” observer can clearly see that people like, for example, Aung San Suu Kyi (who advocates acting for the greater good) have not abandoned reason but are at least as thoughtful as Rand – more so, in fact. Rand’s protagonists easily win all intellectual arguments in the novel because Rand makes their opponents out to be idiots who literally refuse to think or engage in logical debate. But in the real world, there are many people who could make mincemeat of their arguments for selfish behavior.
As for how far Rand goes in her disdain for any sort of compassion, a fundamental human emotion that is common to one degree or another in everyone but sociopaths (who as I noted would probably love this book), one example will suffice. At one point the protagonist Dagny Taggart is riding on one of her company’s trains and upon leaving her car for the diner, encounters the conductor preparing to force a tramp off the moving train, which would mean his death. Dagny observes that his collar is laundered and that despite his general indifference to his possible death, he tightens his grip on the bundle that contains his only possessions, which she sees as a “gesture of a sense of property”. These things are what make her stop the conductor and invite the tramp to eat with her – the implication being if the tramp had not had a laundered collar and a concern for his possessions, she would have stood by while he jumped or was pushed off the train to his death. Even the sheer cold-bloodedness of this attitude is not enough to put the reader off, the idea of judging the worth of a human life on such narrow standards is irrational. There are many people who have contributed a great deal to human progress who were fairly careless of their appearance and material possessions, and many who have those characteristics do little or nothing worthwhile. But this is just one example of Rand’s simplistic, absolutist viewpoints. For example, she has a judge who talks about “objective law” and contrasts judicial decisions based on justice with those based on mercy. But the latter ignores the fact that court need not choose one or the other; the ideal should be justice tempered with mercy, which allows justice to be done, without rendering absurdly hardhearted decisions – which can also be stupidly counterproductive as far as the society is concerned, by locking up people with potential and leaving less room to incarcerate hardened criminals.
As an example of “objective” law, Rand might name laws against theft, i.e., depriving others of their property, as this is clearly a big obsession with her. But who determines who owns what in the first place, or what can be owned? For example, suppose a group of people live on an island with a spring as the only water source. Can one of them lay claim to the spring and charge the others for the water that comes out of it? Perhaps she would say the person would have to have some sort of basis for the claim. But suppose the group arrived together by shipwreck, and one of them was the first to find the spring. Would that be a sufficient basis on which to claim a resource needed by all? This would be a problem for the group to determine. This same problem applies to land and property laws in a more developed society such as the US. How do we determine ownership of a piece of land? And does ownership of a piece of land imply ownership of any resources buried beneath it? The answers to these questions are not the same in all countries and under all legal systems, and there is no absolute “objective” answer to them. Another potential example of “objective” law might be those against murder. But what then of questions of self-defense, or someone who kills in order to save a third person? The point is that no law can be truly “objective”; they all have to be determined by the society. Reason can and should be used to make this determination, but essentially it is used to create a set of moral and ethical standards for the society, standards that take into account both rights and needs and both individuals and the society as a whole.
Some of what Rand says about sacrifice is correct, but as usual, she takes it to extremes. For example, she says that a woman who buys food for her hungry child rather than buying a hat is not making a sacrifice, unless she values the hat more than the child. This is true, but what if she has to give up something that has much greater value, such as a treasured heirloom or even food for herself? Someone who gives up their own life to save the life of another is certainly making a sacrifice, and someone who is forced to choose between two things of equal value is also making a sacrifice of whatever they give up. Rand says that sacrifice is “the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t”, but she ignores the fact that in many situations it is the surrender of one thing you value in return for another. She might have argued that this is simply a trade, but if you are forced to give up something you value and would normally prefer to keep, you are still making a sacrifice of sorts.
One of the most obvious flaws in all of Rand’s ideas about the way a society should operate, particularly the preeminence of industry and the idea that it should be completely unrestricted, is that she completely ignores environmental issues (judging from a bibliography at the back of the book, she did later write an essay about environmentalism, judging from the title one that was dismissive of the seriousness of environmental concerns). While Dagny does at one point seem to show something resembling an appreciation for nature, she also spends much of the same period of time thinking about how to build roads through the isolated area she is in. A more indicative attitude is seen when she and Hank Rearden are driving through empty countryside and bemoaning a lack of billboards – and criticizing those who would see that as a good thing. More importantly, Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, Francisco D’Anconia and their friends speak blithely of endless building, mining and development, as if the Earth’s resources are unlimited and pollution is a complete non-issue. The planet is not made entirely of oil, coal, copper and other resources, and if we exploit them without restraint, eventually they will run out. And we can’t pollute the air and water endlessly without eventually facing some sort of consequences. All this is even aside from the problem of climate change, something which Rand, despite her so-called “objectivism” would no doubt ignore the evidence for like her contemporary followers do, because it doesn’t fit with their preconceived notions of how things should be.
It is particularly frustrating how Rand manages to make even the more positive aspects of her novel less palatable. Even aside from her distortion of the basically sound principles of reason and objective thought, the value of the novel’s relatively forward looking stance on sexuality and the role of women (especially considering that it was published in the 1950s) is diminished by her follow through. Dagny Taggart is a powerful, capable woman who has defied sexist attitudes to become the real boss of the country’s most powerful railroad. She also defies conservative sexual mores by having affairs with three of the book’s male protagonists (the way all these “supermen” fall for Dagny makes her seem almost like a wish fulfillment for Rand). But in these affairs she is quite submissive sexually, letting the men ravish and dominate her. Granted, the idea of sexually aggressive women was almost unknown in mainstream literature in those days, but you would expect a woman like Dagny to be a little less passive sexually. As for other aspects of femininity, the very idea of maternal feelings is of course ignored, as it would not fit with Rand’s philosophy. Virtually the only family relationships are hostile ones, such as that between Dagny and her brother or Hank Rearden and his mother and brother, or even Cherryl Brooks and her family. While I might agree that the traditional ideas of the love and loyalty we “owe” to those we happen to be related to are exaggerated and often absurd, Rand, as usual, goes to far in the opposite direction, denying the existence of any sort of family bonds. Race is not even mentioned. Theoretically Rand’s philosophy should be color blind, just as her “heroes” include self-made men and people from well-established families. And yet all of her protagonists seem to be white (while Francisco D’Anconia is Hispanic, his Spanish ancestry is emphasized), and in his absurdly long diatribe near the end of the book, John Galt refers to “some barefoot bum in some pest hole of Asia”, which certainly could be construed as racist, though it’s equally likely to be due to another of Rand’s absurd ideas, namely that anyone is poor deserves to be.
This attitude is the flip side of her embracing of the American myth: the belief that anyone who has talent and works hard will certainly be successful. This myth is perpetuated by all the rags-to-riches stories that are favored in education and the media (in Atlas Shrugged Rearden and Galt are examples of the same sort). I am not denying that such things do happen, but it is equally clear that many people in America who are both talented and diligent nevertheless live their lives in poverty and obscurity. In many true rags-to-riches stories an element of luck, of being in the right place at the right time, is key to the protagonist’s success, even if this is not apparent in the way the story is told. In any event, there were also be many people who through no fault of their own get no opportunity to exercise their true talents, even if they discover them (how would a child how has a natural talent for physics or computer programming discover it if they never get exposed to these disciplines?). The idea that anyone who is poor must be lazy, incompetent or both is ridiculous, yet Rand clearly believes this (the character of Cherryl Brooks and her description of her family background is but one example).
Of course, I wouldn’t dispute the fact that some poor people are lazy or incompetent and that this is the reason they cannot escape poverty. The problem with Rand and so many other people is insisting on absolutes that don’t exist. It’s like the debate over the causes of the financial crisis in 2008. The left insists it was entirely the fault of greedy financial institutions playing games with people’s money, while the right tries to blame it on low-income people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. While the evidence points more to the former, I wouldn’t say the latter had nothing to do with it either. But even if blame belonged equally to both, I would have much more sympathy for people whose chief mistake was ignorance or an overestimation of their own ability to pay and who ended up suffering for it then bankers and other Wall Street people who didn’t have ignorance as an excuse and at most suffered by losing out a few extra millions in income. Similarly, while I’m sure there are lazy, no-account poor people taking government handouts and hard-working, capable entrepreneurs who get hindered in legitimate business efforts by government red tape, there are also hard-working, capable poor people who get nowhere and unscrupulous entrepreneurs who trample on everyone they can to get a profit. I don’t see any benefit to society in making things harder for the latter type of poor people just to make taking advantage of the system more difficult for the former type, but I can see a lot of benefit in regulating the latter type of entrepreneur at the cost of making the former type deal with a little more bureaucracy. Rand’s problem is refusing to believe the latter two types of people even exist.
One thing that is very evident in Atlas Shrugged is Rand’s hostility to communism. The word itself is never used, but there are frequent references to “People’s States” which have evidently sprung up all over the world, and are portrayed as disaster areas where starvation is rampant. More directly, the tramp saved by Dagny Taggart tells a story of working in a factory where the owners instituted a policy of “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability”, which of course is the most famous Marxist dictum. Rand portrays this as not just an utter failure but as the worst form of “evil”. I suspect that she is correct in arguing that a wholesale application of the principle would not work (as I noted in my comments on The Communist Manifesto, Marxism has plenty of obvious flaws), though it need not be as bad as she makes it out to be. But what is interesting is Rand’s unrelenting hatred for the principles of Communism. It was only after finishing the novel and reading the brief biography of the author at the end that I learned that she was born in Russia and lived through the Bolshevik Revolution, encountering many of the worst aspects of the Communist efforts to enforce conformity of thought before defecting to the US in the 1920s. This makes many of her attitudes, including her absurdly exaggerated view of American exceptionalism as well as her worship of capitalism and hatred of socialism, a little more understandable – but it doesn’t make them any more correct, or less distasteful in their extreme form.
What is particularly ironic about Atlas Shrugged is the type of literature it most closely resembles is Communist propaganda literature from Cold War-era Russia and China. It is in certain ways almost an exact mirror image of such literature: instead of heroic, downtrodden workers and evil, oppressive bosses, it features heroic, downtrodden (in a manner of speaking) bosses; lazy, incompetent workers; and evil, oppressive government officials. Otherwise it is almost identical – everything is black and white, the heroes are unrealistic, the villains are caricatures, the writing is polemical and the arguments are one-sided.
I haven’t even touched on many of the questionable points of view made in this novel, such as the claim that money is not evil but good (money itself is just a tool and so neither good or evil, but the desire for it does lead to considerable evil) or that creating art is identical to digging coal mines (while some artists do create through a more conscious process and there is some similarity between the inspiration which strikes artists and that which strikes inventors, to claim that in all ways the creative processes in art and business are the same shows a rather poor understanding of art – though it might explain why Rand’s writing doesn’t seem terribly inspired artistically speaking). Speaking of such things, I haven’t really talked about Atlas Shrugged from an artistic perspective, except to note how her ideology predominates to an extent that there is little room for genuine story-telling and characterization; I might add that her prose, while not awful, is not all that great either, and the plot, while interesting at times, also gets bogged down in the constant polemicizing – certainly the story is not as exciting as the back cover blurb might lead you to believe. Readers looking for entertainment should look elsewhere, as should those looking for a philosophy to actually live by. Those who want to understand the mentality of many in the so-called “Tea” Party and today’s American right wing might consider reading the book – but shouldn’t expect to get a great deal of pleasure out of it.
I hardly know where to start with this one. First of all, though it is in the form of a novel, it is as much or more a lengthy polemic in support of Ayn Rand’s highly problematic (to put it nicely) philosophy. It seems less a novel than a manifesto for talented sociopaths. What’s rather creepy is how closely her extremist ideas accord with many of those espoused by many members of the so-called Tea Party. How many of them are directly inspired by her I don’t know, but certainly some of them are, perhaps the most prominent examples are Paul Ryan and the Pauls, Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul. But even many of those who haven’t read her would probably be going “Yeah! Exactly!” on every page – at least until the later parts, where she attacks Christianity, though not by name. Of course much of the rest of her philosophy – such as self-centeredness and total hostility to the concepts of altruism and living for the sake of others – are completely contrary to Christianity, but many Christian Tea Party members manage to ignore similar contradictions in their political beliefs. But even aside from inconsistencies in the ideas of her followers, many of Rand’s own ideas are logically flawed or based on false premises, to use a word she was fond of.
Apparently Rand considered herself a fiction writer first and a philosopher second, but that’s not what comes across in this book. I have read many works of fiction that incorporate philosophical and political ideas, and even many that have expression of such ideas as their main purpose. Yet most of the authors of such books do this with some subtlety, incorporating their ideas into the story in a plausible manner. At the very least, they usually do not spend every single part of the story talking about them, and not every character is neatly categorized as (what the author views as) good or evil. Yet with Atlas Shrugged, the entire book of over 1100 pages is a constant, one-sided argument for her ideas.
Perhaps this can be made clearer by comparison with other books. A novel like Voltaire’s Candide or Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha is a bit difficult to compare to Atlas Shrugged, as they are totally different in style and present their arguments in completely different ways. Furthermore, in Voltaire’s case, he didn’t try to claim to be primarily a writer of fiction, and in Hesse’s case the philosophical ideas are not political in nature. A more instructive comparison might be with a contemporary writer with a strong political viewpoint, such as China Miéville or Kim Stanley Robinson. Take Robinson’s global warming trilogy Science in the Capital for example. Robinson’s own viewpoint is clearly evident to anyone who reads the novel, and in many arguments, characters presenting his side do win rather handily. But the opposing side at least isn’t given such blatantly nonsensical arguments as Rand gives to the antagonists in her novel (a point I’ll come back to). Furthermore, not all debates are so clear cut as to which side is right (an example from another of Robinson’s books comes to mind, namely the terraforming debate between Sax Russell and Ann Clayborne). This never happens with Rand, as for her absolutely everything is black and white. Finally, much of the dialogue and events in Robinson’s trilogy are not connected to any of the political, economic or philosophical issues that are discussed elsewhere, whereas in Rand’s case, there’s virtually nothing in the entire book that doesn’t directly relate to her ideas. Even if I agreed with her on everything (with I certainly don’t), this would get tiresome. In this case, it made the book tedious as well as objectionable.
I am not going to attempt to answer all of the hundreds of pages of arguments Rand makes in favor of her philosophy, as that would take more time than it is really worth. Instead, I will point out a few of the obvious problems. Before I do so, I should also say that I actually agree with some of her basic points. For instance, she spends a lot of time arguing in favor of the primacy of the mind and of reason, and criticizing those who refuse to think. I completely agree with this – I also find what I call “willful ignorance” extremely annoying, to say the least. But when I – or someone like Albert Einstein, Aung San Syu Kyi or Kim Stanley Robinson or any number of other highly intelligent people in different fields – use my mind in thinking about what kind of society would be best for me as an individual as well as those around me, I reach conclusions that are in many cases diametrically opposed to Rand’s.
One concept that is central to Rand’s view of the world is the idea of “prime movers”, a small minority of people who are responsible for keeping everything going with their initiative and leadership skills, or as she would put it, their use of their minds. These are the people she sees as inventing things, making technological advances, finding new ways to do things, and simply running large operations such as major companies with their single-minded use of their brainpower to solve any problems that arise. The whole premise of the novel is that such people decide to start dropping out of society and disappearing rather than continue to be exploited by the rest of society, which mostly consists of “moochers” (those who sponge off the prime movers) and “looters” (those who use the power of government to deprive the prime movers of their hard-earned profits). As these people, according to Rand, hold up the world like Atlas in Greek mythology, when they start to disappear everything starts to fall apart.
Now, I will be the first to admit that I am fairly cynical about the mental capabilities of humanity in general, or at least I think most people don’t use their brains as much or as well as they should. It has also occurred to me that most of the inventions and discoveries human society rests on, from the use of fire to the Internet, were the work of a relatively small proportion of humanity. So does that mean I share Rand’s concept of “prime movers”? Not exactly. First of all, most of Rand’s “prime movers” are industrialists and bankers, not inventors or scientific pioneers. Except for Hank Rearden and John Galt, none of them appear to have invented anything of major significance. While I recognize that it takes a certain type of ability to build and run a large corporation or a bank, I don’t think it is a particularly rare talent or something that most moderately intelligent people could not learn with a little training. Also, even as far as those responsible for scientific and technological progress is concerned, I hardly think the number of people involved is as tiny as the number of Rand’s “prime movers”. Someone like Bill Gates may play the key role of starting up a major company, but once it is established much of the work – even much of the brainwork – is done by many others. Even someone like Steve Jobs cannot be given sole credit for everything his company accomplished. What’s more, there is not nearly such a clear dividing line between the smart, capable people with drive and everyone else. Very important discoveries and inventions may be made by people whose talents are otherwise fairly modest, or are relatively narrow in scope. Some people are good at coming up with ideas but not at putting them into practice, and others have no original ideas of their own but are good at finding ways to use those of others. In any case, there are a lot of elements that go into anything that is produced in a society, and no one can do everything alone. As Elizabeth Warren (or a staff ghostwriter) observed in a recent political mailing: “We don't know who is going to have the next big idea in America. But we're pretty sure they're going to need employees who can read and write. They're going to need power to keep the lights on and clean water and functioning sewers to keep going. They're going to need roads and bridges to move their goods to market or bring customers to their store. And they're going to need police officers and firefighters to keep their businesses safe.”
One of the main villains in Rand’s novel is of course the government, specifically a number of bureaucrats who collaborate with favored businesspeople to create regulations that hurt the ones doing all the real work. The negative roles played by businesspeople like James Taggart, the brother of protagonist Dagny Taggart, might seem like an acknowledgement that not all businesspeople are honest and trustworthy, but Rand seemed to think that those that are capable (like Dagny and Hank Rearden) are automatically honest, and those that are dishonest are automatically incompetent, which any observer of reality knows is not the case. She also seems to think that the only way unscrupulous (by her standards) businesspeople can gain an advantage is by using regulations to aid their cause, when a sufficiently powerful company, especially one with a near monopoly, can use all sorts of market tools to stifle competition and block innovation. As for government, Rand believes that its only legitimate role was policing to prevent legitimate owners from being robbed (though of course she ignores the complexity of determining ownership in the first place). She ignores the role government has played in creating the infrastructure that the US was built on (true, the railroads, like the Taggart company in the novel, were private, but almost all other major infrastructure projects from the Eire Canal to the interstates were mainly government projects. Furthermore, one of her main “heroes”, Hank Rearden, develops a new metal (this and even more so Galt’s invention sound rather dubious scientifically, but we’ll let that slide) and later is forced to give up his patent by a scheming government. But of course patents could not exist in the first place without the government. Perhaps granting patents is another legitimate government function that Rand neglected to mention? She also fails to address the fact that patents can be and frequently are used to hinder innovation. Though it would be difficult to argue that a complete lack of patent protection such as existed before the industrial age would as a whole be more conducive to progress, neither patents nor monopolies are universal positive either, something Rand ignores. Also, while she seems to recognize that incompetence could be deadly, she completely fails to acknowledge that government regulation can help to maintain minimum standards so that companies don’t kill people with their products, whether due to negligence or unscrupulousness.
Rand also implies that applied science is superior to theoretical science. One of her villains is the physicist Robert Stadler, who has a powerful mind but acquiesces to and even supports the corrupt system around him. He was supposedly based in part on Robert Oppenheimer, and perhaps Albert Einstein as well. His theoretical work is used by others to create a sound based weapon of mass destruction (which obviously represents the atom bomb – Rand’s apparent anti-nuclear stance is something many of her modern day followers don’t seem to share), but unlike Oppenheimer and Einstein, when confronted with the fact of the weapon, he decides to violate his remaining principles and speak in favor of it. Stadler complains on a number of occasions of people who expect him to actually produce things with his scientific work, when he is only interested in theoretical work. Given the way Rand writes, this clearly means that in her view applied science is actually superior. But in reality, most of the important developments in technology over the past few centuries have been based on theoretical work. Even aside from nuclear power, many other modern technologies are based on the work of people like Einstein who were doing purely theoretical work. A relevant quote to this effect appeared in a recent news story about the apparent discovery of the Higgs boson: “Finding the Higgs particle would not be of practical value, at least not yet, but Roser argued that when the electron was first discovered in 1897, nobody guessed how it would lead to the high-tech, wired world we have today.” To insist that science should produce immediate commercial results is ignorant and short-sighted.
In fact, a study of history and in particular the history of science shows that the real “prime movers”, to the extent that there are such people, were as often people who sought knowledge for knowledge’s sake, or even people who were motivated by altruism, which Rand considers a great evil. Many advances in the field of medicine in particular were made by people who simply wanted to help others, which Rand claims no one should want to do. The great chemist Humphry Davy invented the safety lamp as a public service – and possibly to some extent for public recognition to feed his ego – but in any case not in order to profit directly. The idea that selfishness is the only driver of innovation and progress is absurd.
In fact, one of the biggest flaws in Rand’s philosophy is that for someone who places such emphasis on seeing things the way they really are, she is remarkably blind to reality. She insists on the reality of absolutes that clearly do not exist. She insists that it is not human nature to be imperfect, or to try to take advantage of others when the opportunity presents itself. In her view, if people like her prime movers were given free reign, they would naturally be honest if self-centered in their dealings. They would pay their workers what they are worth, because it is in their interest to do so, and they wouldn’t take advantage of monopoly power to gouge their customers. Anyone who knows anything about people, however, knows that being talented and ambitious certainly does not guarantee that someone is honest in their dealings with others, and even those who attempt to be will inevitably on occasion act in ways that favor their interests at the expense of others, because despite what Rand says to the contrary, in dealings between people subjectivity always plays a role. Simply put, powerful industrialists were given the type of free rein Rand calls for, many of them would take advantage of it in ways that would be harmful to society as whole, and ultimately to the kind of human progress that Rand celebrates. John Donne once said that no man is an island, and any observer of human nature realizes the truth of this statement. Humans are social animals, and while some individuals among us are relatively misanthropic and content to remain alone most of the time, very few people can function without interacting with others at all, and this means some degree of compromise and consideration of the greater good. That’s what makes a society function, and this will be true no matter how strongly Rand and her disciples may deny it.
As noted earlier, all “debates” in the novel are extremely one-sided. Rand’s antagonists say completely absurd things that no one with any sense would agree with. But while there may somewhere be people who actually claim that thinking is an outdated notion or that virtue consists in giving to the undeserving, as characters in Rand’s novel do, I don’t know any actual liberals, progressives or leftists who say such things. Of course, she seems to believe that all ideology that emphasizes doing things for the benefit of others in essence equates to an abdication of reason, but her arguments for this view make little sense. In any case, an “objective” observer can clearly see that people like, for example, Aung San Suu Kyi (who advocates acting for the greater good) have not abandoned reason but are at least as thoughtful as Rand – more so, in fact. Rand’s protagonists easily win all intellectual arguments in the novel because Rand makes their opponents out to be idiots who literally refuse to think or engage in logical debate. But in the real world, there are many people who could make mincemeat of their arguments for selfish behavior.
As for how far Rand goes in her disdain for any sort of compassion, a fundamental human emotion that is common to one degree or another in everyone but sociopaths (who as I noted would probably love this book), one example will suffice. At one point the protagonist Dagny Taggart is riding on one of her company’s trains and upon leaving her car for the diner, encounters the conductor preparing to force a tramp off the moving train, which would mean his death. Dagny observes that his collar is laundered and that despite his general indifference to his possible death, he tightens his grip on the bundle that contains his only possessions, which she sees as a “gesture of a sense of property”. These things are what make her stop the conductor and invite the tramp to eat with her – the implication being if the tramp had not had a laundered collar and a concern for his possessions, she would have stood by while he jumped or was pushed off the train to his death. Even the sheer cold-bloodedness of this attitude is not enough to put the reader off, the idea of judging the worth of a human life on such narrow standards is irrational. There are many people who have contributed a great deal to human progress who were fairly careless of their appearance and material possessions, and many who have those characteristics do little or nothing worthwhile. But this is just one example of Rand’s simplistic, absolutist viewpoints. For example, she has a judge who talks about “objective law” and contrasts judicial decisions based on justice with those based on mercy. But the latter ignores the fact that court need not choose one or the other; the ideal should be justice tempered with mercy, which allows justice to be done, without rendering absurdly hardhearted decisions – which can also be stupidly counterproductive as far as the society is concerned, by locking up people with potential and leaving less room to incarcerate hardened criminals.
As an example of “objective” law, Rand might name laws against theft, i.e., depriving others of their property, as this is clearly a big obsession with her. But who determines who owns what in the first place, or what can be owned? For example, suppose a group of people live on an island with a spring as the only water source. Can one of them lay claim to the spring and charge the others for the water that comes out of it? Perhaps she would say the person would have to have some sort of basis for the claim. But suppose the group arrived together by shipwreck, and one of them was the first to find the spring. Would that be a sufficient basis on which to claim a resource needed by all? This would be a problem for the group to determine. This same problem applies to land and property laws in a more developed society such as the US. How do we determine ownership of a piece of land? And does ownership of a piece of land imply ownership of any resources buried beneath it? The answers to these questions are not the same in all countries and under all legal systems, and there is no absolute “objective” answer to them. Another potential example of “objective” law might be those against murder. But what then of questions of self-defense, or someone who kills in order to save a third person? The point is that no law can be truly “objective”; they all have to be determined by the society. Reason can and should be used to make this determination, but essentially it is used to create a set of moral and ethical standards for the society, standards that take into account both rights and needs and both individuals and the society as a whole.
Some of what Rand says about sacrifice is correct, but as usual, she takes it to extremes. For example, she says that a woman who buys food for her hungry child rather than buying a hat is not making a sacrifice, unless she values the hat more than the child. This is true, but what if she has to give up something that has much greater value, such as a treasured heirloom or even food for herself? Someone who gives up their own life to save the life of another is certainly making a sacrifice, and someone who is forced to choose between two things of equal value is also making a sacrifice of whatever they give up. Rand says that sacrifice is “the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t”, but she ignores the fact that in many situations it is the surrender of one thing you value in return for another. She might have argued that this is simply a trade, but if you are forced to give up something you value and would normally prefer to keep, you are still making a sacrifice of sorts.
One of the most obvious flaws in all of Rand’s ideas about the way a society should operate, particularly the preeminence of industry and the idea that it should be completely unrestricted, is that she completely ignores environmental issues (judging from a bibliography at the back of the book, she did later write an essay about environmentalism, judging from the title one that was dismissive of the seriousness of environmental concerns). While Dagny does at one point seem to show something resembling an appreciation for nature, she also spends much of the same period of time thinking about how to build roads through the isolated area she is in. A more indicative attitude is seen when she and Hank Rearden are driving through empty countryside and bemoaning a lack of billboards – and criticizing those who would see that as a good thing. More importantly, Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, Francisco D’Anconia and their friends speak blithely of endless building, mining and development, as if the Earth’s resources are unlimited and pollution is a complete non-issue. The planet is not made entirely of oil, coal, copper and other resources, and if we exploit them without restraint, eventually they will run out. And we can’t pollute the air and water endlessly without eventually facing some sort of consequences. All this is even aside from the problem of climate change, something which Rand, despite her so-called “objectivism” would no doubt ignore the evidence for like her contemporary followers do, because it doesn’t fit with their preconceived notions of how things should be.
It is particularly frustrating how Rand manages to make even the more positive aspects of her novel less palatable. Even aside from her distortion of the basically sound principles of reason and objective thought, the value of the novel’s relatively forward looking stance on sexuality and the role of women (especially considering that it was published in the 1950s) is diminished by her follow through. Dagny Taggart is a powerful, capable woman who has defied sexist attitudes to become the real boss of the country’s most powerful railroad. She also defies conservative sexual mores by having affairs with three of the book’s male protagonists (the way all these “supermen” fall for Dagny makes her seem almost like a wish fulfillment for Rand). But in these affairs she is quite submissive sexually, letting the men ravish and dominate her. Granted, the idea of sexually aggressive women was almost unknown in mainstream literature in those days, but you would expect a woman like Dagny to be a little less passive sexually. As for other aspects of femininity, the very idea of maternal feelings is of course ignored, as it would not fit with Rand’s philosophy. Virtually the only family relationships are hostile ones, such as that between Dagny and her brother or Hank Rearden and his mother and brother, or even Cherryl Brooks and her family. While I might agree that the traditional ideas of the love and loyalty we “owe” to those we happen to be related to are exaggerated and often absurd, Rand, as usual, goes to far in the opposite direction, denying the existence of any sort of family bonds. Race is not even mentioned. Theoretically Rand’s philosophy should be color blind, just as her “heroes” include self-made men and people from well-established families. And yet all of her protagonists seem to be white (while Francisco D’Anconia is Hispanic, his Spanish ancestry is emphasized), and in his absurdly long diatribe near the end of the book, John Galt refers to “some barefoot bum in some pest hole of Asia”, which certainly could be construed as racist, though it’s equally likely to be due to another of Rand’s absurd ideas, namely that anyone is poor deserves to be.
This attitude is the flip side of her embracing of the American myth: the belief that anyone who has talent and works hard will certainly be successful. This myth is perpetuated by all the rags-to-riches stories that are favored in education and the media (in Atlas Shrugged Rearden and Galt are examples of the same sort). I am not denying that such things do happen, but it is equally clear that many people in America who are both talented and diligent nevertheless live their lives in poverty and obscurity. In many true rags-to-riches stories an element of luck, of being in the right place at the right time, is key to the protagonist’s success, even if this is not apparent in the way the story is told. In any event, there were also be many people who through no fault of their own get no opportunity to exercise their true talents, even if they discover them (how would a child how has a natural talent for physics or computer programming discover it if they never get exposed to these disciplines?). The idea that anyone who is poor must be lazy, incompetent or both is ridiculous, yet Rand clearly believes this (the character of Cherryl Brooks and her description of her family background is but one example).
Of course, I wouldn’t dispute the fact that some poor people are lazy or incompetent and that this is the reason they cannot escape poverty. The problem with Rand and so many other people is insisting on absolutes that don’t exist. It’s like the debate over the causes of the financial crisis in 2008. The left insists it was entirely the fault of greedy financial institutions playing games with people’s money, while the right tries to blame it on low-income people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. While the evidence points more to the former, I wouldn’t say the latter had nothing to do with it either. But even if blame belonged equally to both, I would have much more sympathy for people whose chief mistake was ignorance or an overestimation of their own ability to pay and who ended up suffering for it then bankers and other Wall Street people who didn’t have ignorance as an excuse and at most suffered by losing out a few extra millions in income. Similarly, while I’m sure there are lazy, no-account poor people taking government handouts and hard-working, capable entrepreneurs who get hindered in legitimate business efforts by government red tape, there are also hard-working, capable poor people who get nowhere and unscrupulous entrepreneurs who trample on everyone they can to get a profit. I don’t see any benefit to society in making things harder for the latter type of poor people just to make taking advantage of the system more difficult for the former type, but I can see a lot of benefit in regulating the latter type of entrepreneur at the cost of making the former type deal with a little more bureaucracy. Rand’s problem is refusing to believe the latter two types of people even exist.
One thing that is very evident in Atlas Shrugged is Rand’s hostility to communism. The word itself is never used, but there are frequent references to “People’s States” which have evidently sprung up all over the world, and are portrayed as disaster areas where starvation is rampant. More directly, the tramp saved by Dagny Taggart tells a story of working in a factory where the owners instituted a policy of “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability”, which of course is the most famous Marxist dictum. Rand portrays this as not just an utter failure but as the worst form of “evil”. I suspect that she is correct in arguing that a wholesale application of the principle would not work (as I noted in my comments on The Communist Manifesto, Marxism has plenty of obvious flaws), though it need not be as bad as she makes it out to be. But what is interesting is Rand’s unrelenting hatred for the principles of Communism. It was only after finishing the novel and reading the brief biography of the author at the end that I learned that she was born in Russia and lived through the Bolshevik Revolution, encountering many of the worst aspects of the Communist efforts to enforce conformity of thought before defecting to the US in the 1920s. This makes many of her attitudes, including her absurdly exaggerated view of American exceptionalism as well as her worship of capitalism and hatred of socialism, a little more understandable – but it doesn’t make them any more correct, or less distasteful in their extreme form.
What is particularly ironic about Atlas Shrugged is the type of literature it most closely resembles is Communist propaganda literature from Cold War-era Russia and China. It is in certain ways almost an exact mirror image of such literature: instead of heroic, downtrodden workers and evil, oppressive bosses, it features heroic, downtrodden (in a manner of speaking) bosses; lazy, incompetent workers; and evil, oppressive government officials. Otherwise it is almost identical – everything is black and white, the heroes are unrealistic, the villains are caricatures, the writing is polemical and the arguments are one-sided.
I haven’t even touched on many of the questionable points of view made in this novel, such as the claim that money is not evil but good (money itself is just a tool and so neither good or evil, but the desire for it does lead to considerable evil) or that creating art is identical to digging coal mines (while some artists do create through a more conscious process and there is some similarity between the inspiration which strikes artists and that which strikes inventors, to claim that in all ways the creative processes in art and business are the same shows a rather poor understanding of art – though it might explain why Rand’s writing doesn’t seem terribly inspired artistically speaking). Speaking of such things, I haven’t really talked about Atlas Shrugged from an artistic perspective, except to note how her ideology predominates to an extent that there is little room for genuine story-telling and characterization; I might add that her prose, while not awful, is not all that great either, and the plot, while interesting at times, also gets bogged down in the constant polemicizing – certainly the story is not as exciting as the back cover blurb might lead you to believe. Readers looking for entertainment should look elsewhere, as should those looking for a philosophy to actually live by. Those who want to understand the mentality of many in the so-called “Tea” Party and today’s American right wing might consider reading the book – but shouldn’t expect to get a great deal of pleasure out of it.
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