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.

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.]

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.

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.

Exploring Mars

In the midst of all the various messes on Earth, it's nice to have some good news to talk about, even if it took place over a hundred million kilometers away. I'm referring, of course, to the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity rover on Mars. This is not the first rover to land on Mars: there was the relatively tiny Sojourner rover, which landed in 1997 as part of the Pathfinder mission, and then the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed separately in January 2004. These missions were all very successful, with Spirit and Opportunity in particular far surpassing expectations. Though their primary mission was only scheduled to last 90 sols (a Martian day, which is 24 hour and 39.5 minutes long), Spirit remained in operation for 6 Earth years, and Opportunity is still functioning today, making it the longest-lasting Mars surface mission. There are several orbiters in operation around Mars, including Mars Odyssey, which has been circling Mars since late 2001, making it the longest serving spacecraft ever at Mars. But Curiosity is far larger than any previous rover, it can move much faster (Opportunity has traveled less than 35 km in 8 years; Curiosity is expected to cover more than half that in 2 years), and it has far more capabilities. While it won't be able to definitively answer the question of whether was once (or even still is) life on Mars, it will get us much closer to an answer, and it will lay the groundwork for future human expeditions to Mars.

One of the MSL mission's most impressive feats, however, is the one it has already accomplished, namely landing on Mars using several different stages and a complex series of maneuvers. While most engineers agreed the principles behind the landing process were sound and were the best possible method for landing a rover as heavy as this one, due to the complexity of the process there was a lot that could have gone wrong (after all, quite a few previous Mars missions have failed at the landing stage, and none of them were doing anything so complicated). But everything seems to have gone perfectly, and the most risky part of the mission is now over. After a few weeks of checks, the rover should be ready to go and start doing some science, as well as sending back some cool pictures. For an animated overview of the whole mission, including the very cool (and very sci-fi) landing procedure, check out this video.

The total cost of this mission is about US$2.5 billion. While that may sound like a lot of money, if the mission accomplishes most of its goals, it will be a real bargain. After all, some recent Hollywood films have cost more than 10% of that, and this is a real spacecraft landing on a real planet millions of kilometers from Earth, and doing real science, not to mention spurring advances in technology and engineering that will continue to be useful in the future. Or to look at it another way, the tax breaks that the oil industry enjoys each year (about US$4 billion) are greater than the entire cost of this mission, and the entire annual NASA budget is less than 2% of the US defense budget. Considering all the long-term benefits, both tangible and intangible, that missions like MSL can bring to humanity, we would be better off spending more on them and less on advanced weapon systems we don't need, or on facilitating the extraction of more climate change causing non-renewable energy resources. If nothing else, missions like Curiosity will inspire many young people to study science and engineering, something we can certainly use a lot more than stealth bombers or carbon emissions.

State of the World

As usual, a lot has been going on in the world in the past few weeks. The situation in Syria has developed into full scale civil war, even if the government still has a massive advantage in terms of equipment. China and Russia's continued efforts to block stronger measures against Syria in the UN Security Council is a disgrace, if not entirely unexpected from governments who want to be free to crush dissent militarily if the need (from their point of view) arises. Speaking of China, not only are the tragic self-immolations in Tibet in protest against Chinese rule continuing, but people in Hong Kong are showing their unhappiness with efforts by the Chinese government to use education as a tool to instill the same sort of mindless hyper-nationalism that it encourages in the rest of the country. Unfortunately, even here in the independent state of Taiwan, China has been able to use its economic power to influence the local media.

In the US, one of the biggest recent stories was yet another mass shooting. Like the one in Arizona early last year, it briefly focused some attention on the issue of gun control, but not nearly as much as it should have. No one with any sense can possibly think it's a good idea for assault weapons to be as easily available as they are, and yet very few in Congress even have even made an effort to do anything about it. Of course the NRA, one of the most insane organizations on the planet, is largely responsible, given the ridiculous amount of clout it wields among spineless politicians throughout the US. Not only does it defend the right of nutcases to buy assault weapons, it is fighting attempts by groups like Amnesty International to regulate the weapons trade and efforts by environmental groups to ban lead bullets. While there are a number of organizations about which little or nothing good can be said (Focus on the Family and the US Chamber of Commerce are two that come to mind), I'm not sure any of them do more harm than the NRA, at least in the US itself.

Also in the US, election campaigning is heating up. Thanks in part to the absurd Citizens United decision, Mitt Romney might actually become the first challenger to outspend an incumbent US president in an election. But while Barack Obama has been far from perfect, I'd be hard pressed to think of any issue where Romney's (current) position is better (he may claim he'd be tougher on China, but challengers always say that, and they never are if they actually win), and I can think of many where he is much worse. In terms of real long-term issues like the growing gap between rich and poor in America or, most important for humanity as a whole, climate change, Romney would clearly be a disaster. The world will just have to hope he doesn't succeed in buying his way into office (with help from mysterious right-wing billionaires) or in having his fellow Republicans disenfranchise enough voters in their supposed fight against virtually non-existent voter fraud to tip the balance in his favor.

What I've Been Reading – April 2012 to June 2012

The following are some comments on most of the books I read over the past few months, with one major exception. I also managed to finish Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged in this period, but while I mention it in some of my comments on other books, I decided to do a separate posting on it, as I already had enough other books to write about, and if I want to take the time and space point out even some of the problems with Rand's ideas, it would add a lot to an already lengthy post.

Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks
Against a Dark Background is a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks, an author whose work I have discussed previously. This book, like The Algebraist, is not set in the Culture, the society that forms the background for most of his science fiction, though some have pointed out that in the case of this novel it could still be in the same universe. Though it wasn’t one of his first published books (it came out in 1993), it was rewritten from a draft that dated back to 1975, well before his first published novel, The Wasp Factory (1984).

Against a Dark Background contains a number of features that are familiar to readers of Banks’ novels: a complex plot, a strong element of mystery, and frequent use of flashbacks that reveal more and more about the characters’ backgrounds. In this case I was able to guess some of the answers to the various mysteries fairly early, but I was still surprised by some of the plot twists. Another similarity between this novel and many other Banks novels is a noticeable flawed protagonist. Sharrow, the protagonist of this novel, is not so bad at the time the main action of the novel takes place. She is still somewhat arrogant and self-centered, but she does care about those around her and is concerned about the consequences of her actions, often feeling guilty for harm that others suffer even when her own responsibility is arguably limited. But as a child and a teen, particularly in her relations with her half-sister, she was often downright nasty (not that her sister was that wonderful either), and the prank she pulled on the family android was downright evil. Still, the reader still ends up sympathizing with her, in part because many of her antagonists are clearly worse.

The “dark background” of the title could refer to any number of things. There are the dark machinations taking place behind the scenes and the dark state of political society in Goltier, the world Sharrow lives in (this is, after all, a society where a powerful organization can legally obtain a license to hunt down and kill someone). Indeed, despite the fairly advance technology that appears in the novel, it becomes clear that Goltier is actually is in a kind of Dark Ages, as it has a history that stretches back many millennia and it was at times in the past much more advanced. The dark background could also refer to the isolation of Goltier and the system it belongs to in the universe, or even the darkness in the souls of some of the novels’ chief characters.

In any event, Against a Dark Background is another solid novel from Iain Banks. While it doesn’t have some of the more unusual features of a few of his novels (such as the use of reverse chronology for half of Use of Weapons or the atypical narrator of parts of Feersum Endjinn), that is not necessarily a negative for most readers, and it has all the elements that make most of his novels among the best out there. Anyone who has enjoyed other novels by Iain Banks will almost certainly like this one too, and new readers will find it a good introduction to his work.

Freedom from Fear by Aung San Suu Kyi
This is a collection of essays and speeches by Aung San Suu Kyi and a few more essays about her, selected and edited by her late husband Michael Aris. Several of the essays are from a time prior to her involvement in the struggle for democracy in Burma, which began in 1988. These include a biography of her father Aung San, an introduction to the history and culture of Burma, and two scholarly essays. The biography of Aung San, while painting an overall picture that is clearly very positive, is nevertheless written in a remarkably objective tone, to the extent that if the introductory paragraphs were removed, a reader would probably not even guess that it was written by his daughter. It is true as she points out at the beginning that she didn’t really remember her father, as he was assassinated when she was 2 years old, but her matter-of-fact tone is still impressive, and she doesn’t seem to gloss over mistakes her father made, and the positive view of him is supported by what little I’ve read about him elsewhere. The essay about the history and culture of Burma is also clear, concise and highly informative, and it strikes me as about as good a short introduction to the country as can be found anywhere. The scholarly works, one a comparison of intellectual life in Burma and India under British colonialism and the other a study of Burmese literature and its relationship to nationalism in the same period, are interesting and straightforward, without the excessive use of academic language with weighs down most essays of that nature.

The middle part of the book is mainly taken up by essays and speeches of Aung San Suu Kyi about democracy and related issues from the period beginning in 1988 when she returned to Burma and became a leader in the struggle against the country’s authoritarian military government, as well as a few interviews and discussions. While a few of her views might be considered overly idealistic, for the most part she argues her case with precise logic. Among the excellent points she makes are those pointing out the absurdity of claiming that democracy and human rights are somehow unsuitable to particular cultures, an assertion made by non-democratic governments in places ranging from Burma and China to Singapore. It was also refreshing to read some good arguments for selflessly struggling to improve one’s society as a sort of antidote for the absurdly self-centered viewpoints of Ayn Rand, whose book I was plowing through at around the same time.

The last part of the book includes several essays written by others about Aung San Suu Kyi’s background and experiences in the pro-democracy struggle. Two deal mostly with the time before 1988 when she was living in India and the UK (among other places) and the other two mainly with the post-1988 period. The one that struck me the most was the one written by a British woman who was her classmate and close friend at Oxford. Though of course very positive, it was also revealing (if not surprising) to read that Aung San Suu Kyi was rather straight-laced even as a young woman, to the point of being somewhat prudish about sex. Of course it is precisely this sort of rectitude that has given her the strength and charisma to fight a tyrannical government for so long, so while I may not agree with her views on such things, there is no question that her strong principles are an important part of what makes her such an admired leader.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns is the second novel by Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner. It is centered on a pair of Afghan women who come from very different backgrounds but eventually find their lives closely entwined. In both cases, their family background and upbringing seems slightly unusual for Afghanistan – Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman in Herat and grows up with her mother in almost complete isolation from the outside world, while Laila is the daughter of an usually enlightened father who encourages her to become educated – but many of the hardships and tragedies they endure are unfortunately all too typical.

Hosseini’s prose is very clear and straightforward, so the book is not at all a difficult read in that sense. Some of the terrible experiences that the protagonists have to endure are less easy going, but not everything is so black, and the book ends on a positive note. One thing some Western readers might have a little difficulty with is some of the cultural attitudes, such as when Mariam’s mother speaks positively of honor killings, saying her own father should have killed her when she got pregnant, or when Mariam herself quickly takes to wearing a burqa. But particularly in the latter case, Hosseini effectively puts the reader in the women’s position, making it easier to understand their acceptance of things that outsiders may see as symbols of oppression. That isn’t to say that Hosseini himself is advocating this kind of thing; it is clear his sympathies lie more with people like Laila’s father. But he is good at conveying other points of view, showing the reader that such things are not as simple as they seem to Westerners.

This novel gives the reader an excellent idea of what it must be like to be a woman in Afghanistan, and for the most part it’s not a pretty picture. At first, during Mariam’s childhood and again in the early part of her marriage, one gets the feeling that things could be much worse…then they do get much worse. The same is true for Laila. But as I said, while Hosseini paints a bleak picture of women’s lives during the civil war and under the Taliban, he does express hope for the future. Given some of the things I’ve read about the problems women still face there today, I only hope he doesn’t turn out to be too optimistic.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Stardust was Neil Gaiman’s first solo prose novel. Gaiman originally rose to fame as a writer of graphic novels, and Stardust was originally published as a "story book with pictures" in collaboration with illustrator Charles Vess. The book is best characterized as a fairy tale for adults. He was consciously influenced by “pre-Tolkien” English fantasy, though the book is also reminiscent of one of Tolkien’s more old fashioned fairy stories, Smith of Wootton Major, which was in the same tradition.

The prose style is clear and simple, and the story is engaging. As a story for adults, it has its dark elements – there is death and other unpleasantness. But it’s no more dark than the original Grimms' Fairy Tales, probably less so. The tale begins in the village of Wall, which is named for the wall it is located next to. The wall has only one opening, and the villagers stand guard on it all the time, permitting no one to go through – except on one day every nine years, when a market is held on the other side of the wall. The market is attended by people from all over the world, and by people from the world on the other side of the wall, which is, of course, Faerie. First the young villager Dunstan Thorn becomes entangled with a woman he meets at the market, and then eighteen years later his son Tristan becomes even more deeply involved in Faerie.

Stardust is very entertaining, and anyone who likes traditional fairy tales is sure to enjoy it. There has also been a movie adaptation, starring Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Robert De Niro, among others (I haven’t seen the film version, but reviews were generally positive). The novel is a good choice for an easy, enjoyable read.

Steel Beach by John Varley
Steel Beach is a science fiction novel by John Varley. It portrays a large human civilization underground on the Moon. This is the largest of several human settlements in the Solar System (though the others are only mentioned in passing), as humanity was kicked off the Earth by a vastly more advanced alien civilization almost two centuries before the novel begins.

Steel Beach is narrated by Hildy Johnson, a cynical veteran journalist who writes for one of the Moon’s top tabloids. Technologically, the Lunar civilization is highly advanced, and everyone’s basic needs are taken care off, largely by the omnipresent Central Computer which oversees all aspects of Lunar life. Human lifespans have been artificially extended, all but the most serious injuries – those involving direct, massive damage to the brain – can be repaired, and people can replace organs, radically alter their appearance, or even change gender at will (Hildy is male at the beginning of the novel, but fairly early on becomes female – which seems to have been his original gender). On the downside, most people seem to devote much of their time to fairly frivolous seeming activities – the largest religion is one that celebrates television and the cult of celebrity – and others, in a sense, drop out of society by moving into artificial recreations of various Earth locations from the past called Disneys (Hildy spends much of his time in Texas, a Disney based on the 19th century frontier state). More seriously, more and more citizens are attempting suicide, and sometimes succeeding.

The novel touches on a lot of different topics, including memory and perception of the past and present, gender and sexual orientation, suicide and the motivations behind it, privacy, personal fulfillment, personal freedom and non-conformity in a societal context, and human evolution and genetic engineering, all in the course of a story that, while not particularly action heavy, keeps the reader’s attention. In part because I was reading them at the same time, I began to mentally compare this novel to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, perhaps because it covered a little of the same ground. The comparison became more apt late in the novel when Hildy becomes involved with a group called the Heinleiners, who take their inspiration from the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. Heinlein was well known as a right-wing libertarian, so he had much in common with Rand. Like her, he had some disturbing ideas in some of his novels, and also like her he didn’t show much subtlety in arguing his points. Through Hildy, Varley shows considerable sympathy for the Heinleiners, though he also notes their faults, referring to them as “crotchety malcontents” (it’s also not clear whether the Heinleiners – or Varley – agree with all of Heinlein’s sometimes disturbing positions on certain issues; their main thing is individualism and personal freedom). While I suspect from this that I would disagree with Varley on a number of things, he presents his ideas objectively enough and tells his story well enough that any philosophical differences I might have with him didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the novel, which was in sharp contrast to my experience with Atlas Shrugged (or some of Heinlein’s novels, or that matter).

Varley’s prose is well-written and interesting, in that he, in the character of the narrator Hildy, deliberately slips into various dialects and styles at different times, depending on what he’s writing about. He is often witty and, as noted above, generally avoids ranting on political and social issues (though he discusses them and does sometimes offer definite opinions), unlike his apparent inspiration Robert Heinlein, an author he is often compared to. For that matter, I should say that many of his ideas (or what ideas are conveyed through the novel) are agreeable, such as a more open attitude toward sexuality and a positive portrayal of women. While I might agree more strongly with the left-leaning stance of writers like Ian Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson than with Varley’s libertarian sympathies, I enjoyed Steel Beach and would be willing to pick up another Varley novel if I come across one.

Links: Human Evolution and the Colonization of Space (Plus Fast and Furious)

There are several current events I considered writing about in this entry to my blog: the elections in Greece, the presidential run-off election in Egypt against the backdrop of power grabs by the military, the questionable impeachment of Paraguay's president, the terrible Supreme Court decision overturning the Montana law restricting corporate spending (and thus upholding their likewise terrible Citizens United decision), the much better though still imperfect Supreme Court decision overturning most of Arizona's draconian anti-immigrant law, or President Obama's excellent but overly delayed executive order halting deportation of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children (Time had an excellent article on young undocumented immigrants in a recent issue, but it's not available online). But instead of writing anything about things going on now, I'm just providing a link to a long but fascinating article on how humans may evolve when we colonize space. It has a number of serious typos that lead me to suspect it was scanned and transferred to the Internet by a computer, but otherwise it is highly readable and quite thought-provoking. Of course most of it is pure speculation, dealing as it does with things that will happen far in the future if they happen at all, but since we may start seeing the first truly permanent human settlements away from Earth in the next few decades or at least during this century, it seems reasonable to start thinking about it. Coincidentally, I just finished a book that deals with some of the same issues, a science fiction novel by John Varley called Steel Beach, which I hope to briefly discuss in a future post along with other recent reads.

I was going to limit this post to that one link, but yesterday I happened to read an article on the Fast and Furious operation, a story that I hadn't been following closely but which has gotten a lot of attention in the US, particularly in Washington. The irony of Republicans, who along with the NRA bear a lot of the responsibility for the sheer volume of absurdly powerful guns that are sold in the US, using the controversy around the operation to attack the Obama administration was apparent to me, but I accepted the standard view that the original operation was at the very best incompetently run. This article, however, provides an entirely different view. Whether its version of events is the correct one I can't say, but it certainly sounds plausible and seems to be backed up by considerable evidence, though there is naturally a substantial "he said, she said" element in the testimony of the agents involved. In any case, it provides an interesting alternative perspective.