1984 (a book review post)

I first read 1984 in 1984. I was in 8th grade, and I suppose my teacher thought it was appropriately timed, though I do think 8th grade was the normal time to have the book assigned anyway. Maybe. At any rate, I remember reading the book and having thoughts like, "Isn't it great that someone wrote such a great warning for us so that this can never happen here." And that seemed to be the consensus, even from the teacher: This will never happen here.

Oh, how wrong we were.

No, I'm not saying we're full on living in Big Brother world, but, in many ways, we have taken our first steps toward it. And I'm not just talking about how we're (the USA) the most surveilled nation on the planet, either.

Here's an example:
In the book, the proles (the mass of common people) are kept uneducated, just enough education so that they can do the menial labor jobs they need to do. This serves multiple functions, but the primary ones are that the uneducated tend to question authority less and do as they're told more. It makes them unquestioning of their lots in life so that they don't rise up in revolt. When they're told that their lives are better than the people's of days past, they accept it and are thankful.

For the past several decades, the Republicans have been working at undermining education and preaching the worthlessness of education to their followers for these exact same reasons. When they tell their followers something like "the Republican healthcare bill is better for you than Obamacare," their followers swallow it whole and think it's yummy because they don't have the facilities to question what they're being told. The Republicans have discredited science in favor of dogmatism, and that's straight out of 1984.

At this point in my life, though, the thing I probably find most interesting about the book is the stuff about language, because Orwell has been proven, yet again, to be ahead of his time. The idea of Newspeak in the book is to reduce language to a point where things like freedom and equality aren't even concepts, and we, today, tend to think that that's kind of a dumb idea. I mean, you can't get rid of concepts, right?

Well, let me give you another example:
Anthropologically speaking, all cultures started out with only two colors: light and dark, or white and black, depending on how you want to say it. Other colors didn't exist for those people. You might think that's crazy talk because, if you look out the window, clearly, you can see a whole range of colors: blues and greens and reds and all of these colors that are just part of our world. Clearly, those colors exist, right? Well, sure, from an objective, scientific standpoint, those colors, the wavelengths for those colors, exist, but those people didn't see those colors, not the way we see them; conceptually, they were just lights and darks. But over time, other colors got added in, and it was actually an expansion of the world for those people.

See, here's the thing, and this is a science fact: Language changes our brains. How we speak and what we speak affects our brains and how we see the world and interact with the world. Learning other languages and new patterns of speech changes the "wiring" in brains and causes us to see the world differently. [So does reading, by the way.] So this concept in 1984 where they remove the ability from people to think of freedom and independence by removing the concepts from the language is not very far-fetched. It's not far-fetched at all.

And, hey, Trump is doing a great job of reducing language. And rewriting facts and history to suit his own agenda, another thing covered in the book.

I mean, it's like the GOP read 1984 and decided that they could use it as their own, personal playbook.
"...a hierarchical society [is] only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."
That sounds like them to me.
"...human equality [is] no longer an ideal to be striven after, but a danger to be averted."

So, yeah, this book is still vitally important and everyone should be reading it. The thoughtpolice, though not quite real in the sense they are in the book, are growing in power, and a huge segment of the population have fallen under their sway and believe every fabrication and alteration that comes out of their mouths. Right now is a time for clinging to facts and truth and upholding them because "reality" isn't as objective as we'd like to think it is. In fact, reality is only as objective as we make it, and we can't allow Trumpism to bend and warp the truth of the world around us into the madness he'd like to make it.

A Deepness in the Sky (a book review post)

Wow, it's been a whole year since I reviewed A Fire Upon the Deep. If you remember back to that book, I said I was only going to read this one if it was better, and it was better, better enough that I wanted to know what happened even though I had some major issues with the book going in. And this one was slow, too, but not quite as slow as Fire. But let's just cut to it...

The first major issue with this book is that it's barely related to the first book in this "trilogy." Vaguely. Like, there's a character... Well, it's like going to a party somewhere and meeting someone who is your very distant relative through marriage. Or, maybe, two marriages. Like, you know, the divorced spouse of your fourth cousin twice removed. That's how related this book is to the first book. They're both set in the same party, um... universe, but there's really no connection other than that.

Which is probably part of why I liked it, because I thought the first book was, for lack of a better word, stupid.

Which is not to say that this book doesn't also have a strong dose of stupid, the main one being a star that turns itself on and off. Yeah, like it has a switch, except that it's on a timer. So for a couple of centuries, it's a faintly glowing dwarf somethingorother, then it will flare to life and burn bright for 50 years or so then go back out. And, somehow, there's life on the planet that orbits the star, highly evolved life, that has adapted to this pattern, something we're not even going to touch, because the problem is the star.

There is no explanation offered for this. It's just some mystery of the universe. Or, maybe, it's an alien artifact. Whatever. We don't care enough to try and find out, and the author doesn't offer any kind of rational explanation for it. Because, you know, physics, and physics doesn't allow for something like this, so the author didn't bother other than that it enabled the plot he wanted.

Look, if you're going to make up some piece of stupid shit like this for your story, you need to at least offer some kind of explanation as to why it exists. Well, unless you're Lewis Carroll and your whole book is full of the absurd.

The next major issue I had was the aliens. There's a problem with aliens in sci-fi and that's that almost always the aliens turn out to be just humans in costumes. Metaphorically speaking. The aliens act like humans, think like humans, pretty much are humans except for the fact that they look some other way, though, frequently, they're also based on bipedal symmetry, just like humans. I have a philosophical difference with this approach to aliens. BECAUSE THEY'RE ALIENS! If they're aliens make them act... I don't know... like... ALIEN! In some way! Make them different other than just cosmetically. Vinge completely fails to do this with his spider creatures.

Look, I get it: Aliens are hard, but at least make the effort. Rather than make the effort, though, Vinge makes excuses and tries to pass it off as the humans (in the book) anthropomorphizing the spiders as they learn about them, and that does work for certain sections of the book BUT there are clearly sections where the humans have no relation to what's going on with the spiders, and the spiders still act just like humans. He barely ever mentions the fact that they extra limbs. It's like they're just hanging around useless... like they would be if it was a human in a spider costume.

For all of that, though, the story was interesting enough to keep me involved, which says a lot about it considering the fact that I came into it with the idea that it needed to do something right away to get me to keep reading it. Mostly, that had to do with the characters, which were much better than the characters in the previous book. I especially liked Sherkaner Underhill; he's probably the reason I kept going at the beginning.

Actually, there are a lot of good and likable characters in this, just don't get too attached to most of them. Vinge is a bit like George RR Martin in that respect. They are all the characters who must die to prove the situation is serious. Or they all could be, and you never know which ones will make it through.

The book is also incredibly topical from a political standpoint, and that part I found very interesting. The political conflicts among the spiders, with their truth-denying conservative faction undermining the more progressive scientific community is somewhat engrossing. It wouldn't have surprised me if dogmatic religious spider had started saying, "Climate change is a hoax." That narrative is definitely worth a look considering the current status of American politics.

But is the book, as a whole, worth reading? I don't know. I would just skip the first one for sure if you think you might be interested in this one. Since this one serves as some kind of "prequel" for the other one in that it happens chronologically first, it might even be better to read this one first. But, really, unless you're just into hard sci-fi, I would give these books a pass. I'm not going on to the third book (but, then, it's the actual sequel to the first book, and I didn't like any of those characters, and I don't care what happens "next").

Last note:
Having said all of that, I do have some ideas about how this book relates to the first book in a more substantial way, but there's no way to verify any of it; it's all speculation on my part and, although it would be neat, it also doesn't matter, not to the story. Maybe if there's ever a fourth book and Vinge pulls all of these threads he's left lying around together, maybe, I'll read that one; otherwise, I don't plan on reading anymore Vinge.

Christmas in... (pictures I like)

December... (pictures I like)

Clone Wars -- "An Old Friend" (Ep. 6.5)

-- To love is to trust. To trust is to believe.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

[Well, actually, considering that we're into season six, now, probably no one new is going to sign up, BUT! Hop over to The Armchair Squid for his take on the current episode.]

Padme has proven to be a very difficult character for the writers of the Clone Wars series. Obviously, she's a character they felt obliged to include, but she doesn't have a place in the action of most of the series, so most of her appearances, like this one, have shoehorned her into stories where she didn't belong. That doesn't mean that some of those stories haven't been good, anyway, but my reaction always tends to be, "What? Why is Padme doing this? She's a senator!" But in this arc she's acting in the position of some kind of bank investigator. I mean, doesn't the Republic have people for this?

It would have been much more interesting if there had been some kind of ongoing political story line that involved her and her role as a senator. That would have made sense.

None of that is to see that this is not going to be a good and/or interesting arc, but I'm still having issues with Padme in a heist plot where she's the one breaking into the bank vault. Sort of.

All of that and the return of Clovis, Padme's ex who betrayed her and with whom Anakin has... issues. As we know, Anakin doesn't handle jealousy well. As my wife said, "Man, he's a real dick." Seriously, Anakin is the jealous boyfriend/husband no one wants to have.

Also, those banking clan dudes are just freaky looking.

The New Civil War

240 years ago, we fought a war that we say was a war for freedom. For independence. But it was only a war for white freedom and white independence. From other white men. At least, that's what it became because the Founding Fathers couldn't work their way through the issue of slavery.

So we had to have another war 150 years ago to finish the first war and state that freedom is for everyone. Freedom is for everyone, no matter their skin color.

Evidently, not everyone got that memo, so, now, here we are again in the midst of another Civil War, the New Civil War. Sure, this time it's not being fought on the battlefield with guns and bullets (yet) because this war is more like a spiritual war. Last time, the Civil War was fought with actual bodies, but, this time, it's being fought for the Soul of America and what kind of soul it will be, and it's mostly being fought in the information realm.

Will we be an America filled with hate and fear, or will we be an America filled with respect and tolerance?
The irony? Those who claim to belong to the religion of love -- and not just love, unconditional love -- are the ones preaching hate and fear the loudest. I suppose they think "god" is racist, too, just like them. I don't think you can come to any other conclusion if you look inside their churches.

Of course, the "Christians" tend to forget that it is the Jews who are "God's" chosen people. I don't seen anywhere in the Bible where it says "God" changed his mind about that, so, maybe, white people shouldn't be so stuck on themselves about how cool and important they are.
But I digress... [Actually, I do digress, because that's for an upcoming post. Sort of.]

But it sort of brings me to my point, and the point is this:
All of this is still about slavery and race. Still.
I mean, Fuck. What the fuck, people? It's been 150 fucking years since the Civil War. It's time to get over it and quit idolizing your fucking moments to racism and slavery. Tear that shit down.
Look, if Germany can do it, so can you.

And my other point, which is that you can't actually talk to those people, and it's time for liberals, those on the left -- whatever you want to call the people who aren't part of the 25-33% of the country who make up these hardcore Conservative GOP asshole Trump-followers -- to stop trying to reach over to the 25-33% of the country who make up these hardcore Conservative GOP asshole Trump-followers and convince them of the wrongness of their ways. They're NOT going to be convinced. Ever. You're wasting your time and, frankly, everyone else's time, too.

Look, these "people" know that Trump is a lying pile of shit -- which is an insult to lying piles of shit, but they don't make words that go low enough to accurately describe what Trump is (and my mind just isn't degenerate enough to make that kind of stuff up) -- and they have repeatedly shown that they don't care. They don't know or care anything about what "America" means or stands for (the fact that there were people who got upset about NPR's presentation of The Declaration of Independence on fucking Independence Day is proof enough of that). They have repeatedly shown that all they care about and, thus, all they know is some deranged fantasy where white people rule the world and they get to lay waste to it as they please without suffering any of the consequences. They are not going to be talked out of that delusion.

The truth is that this is a war. An actual war, and we on the Left need to start treating it as such. This is really not a time for debating. We're long past that. The world is teetering on the brink, a lot of brinks, actually... Maybe it's better to say that world is currently finely balanced on the head of a pin. Anyway, we're all teetering on the edge of destruction, environmental destruction even if there weren't other things, and we have to stop letting asshole idiots make the decisions. Decisions which have as their sole goal of making them more rich and damn the consequences because they won't be around to suffer them.

I'm not saying we need to arm ourselves and take to the streets or anything like that (though it would be disingenuous not to point out that a significant portion of those on the Right have been stockpiling weapons for decades), but it is time to quit pussyfooting around and trying to engage in conversations. Get the fuck out and do things like voting. It's not hard! [There is no reason that Ossoff should have lost in Georgia or that Measure C should have failed here in Sonoma county other than that Liberals didn't get out and vote. And that's just messed up. At that point, you're basically just -- and I'm going to be crude here, even for me -- bending over and taking it.]

Here's the deal:
If you're Liberal or anti-Trump or whatever you want to call yourself and you're whining about how things are going, but you're not doing anything about it, then shut the fuck up! Seriously, if you're not going to take action and do simple things like voting, then you don't have the right to complain. It's time to take this shit seriously. It's not a game.
For all intents and purposes, this really is a war. The New Civil War.

More Colors (pictures I like)