My husband has a Mike Rowe habit. Normally this doesn’t affect me at all, even though we share an office. If I’m writing, I put headphones on and do writing, which is fine.

However, sometimes I’m doing non-word-things, like redoing covers or fixing typesetting issues, or whatever. Which means I don’t have the headphones on.

Normally I also don’t pay any attention to whatever is going on in Mike Rowe’s world.

Note in general he’s either fairly anodyne or says things I largely agree with. I mean being a a writer in a time when breaking in and staying employed demanded a lot of money involved a lot of work. And having written things that I had not the slightest interest in, so I know to bring my passion along, etc.

In fact, I agree with most of the SWEAT pledge. Most? Well….

Take rule 9:

Sigh. He’s missing one very important thing. Well, two. One of them is emblematic of the biggest issue I have with a repeated theme in his talks where they touch on our outsourcing to China. The other, the “library cards are free” thing it just makes me giggle and wonder if he was preserved in amber.

So, we’ll go after the first one, first, then continue to the other which will roll us into the reason I’m writing this post. (Because he annoyed me THAT much and here, at According to Hoyt we believe in punching UP because punching DOWN is for suckers.)

So, the library cards are indeed free, Mr. Rowe. They are also largely useless. Your not revising that point on the pledge makes me wonder if you’ve gone into a library in the last … 20 years?

Because not only do libraries increasingly not have any books, but the books are increasingly not useful at all. I say this as a writer who used to use the library extensively for research and then suddenly 20 years ago found it less useful, and then eventually — six years ago? — couldn’t find anything to do real research on. Craft books, sure. Videos, sure. Music, sure. I hear some places lend out kitchen equipment and tools. But books? Useful books for an education? Pah.

While an internet connection isn’t free, you’re more likely to find useful things to learn, from household repair to how to build things on youtube. And if you’re careful an internet connection can be free.

The second issue I have with that part of the pledge is more directly related to the follow up — though the fact he seems to be TOTALLY out of touch with the times and common people’s lives (like those who have gone to libraries) also comes into it — is that he doesn’t quite seem to connect with the fact that most people who pay for an “education” aren’t paying to LEARN. They’re paying for a certificate. Because without the magic sheep’s skin, you can’t get a job, even as a clerk.

Okay, now to roll into the part that made me furious: twice!

The first time I heard him say this, he was talking about this was on his just talking about how we’re too dependent on H1B visas — agreed. ABSOLUTELY agreed — and then he smoothly slides into how the problem is that Americans don’t want to work, so we absolutely need all these H1Bs and illegals.

As proof he comes up with various surveys; how many young men have given up on even finding work. AND brings up Obama’s “shovel ready jobs” and then says, straight up that this failed because no one wanted to or was ready to do the work.

At that time, I was doing something under time pressure and I yelled at bit about how “I was alive at that time, Mike. That’s not WHAT HAPPENED!” but I let it go, on the understanding that everyone is allowed to be stupid once.

Then yesterday I was doing some needed graphics work, and too sick to do writing, Dan had a program on where a guest was exposing the true horrors of China, from slave labor camps, to transplants that take organs of living political prisoners, to–

And again, Mike Rowe comes out with how he talks to all these people who are contracting jobs to China, and while he deplores this, it’s not entirely their fault, because Americans JUST don’t want to work. Look at Obama’s shovel ready jobs, and how he got no takers, so his stimulus did not work, because Americans are unprepared to work, and complete layabouts. (my term, but it was implied in what he was saying.)

This is when I hit the roof. And I said I was going to write about it. I don’t care if he never reads it, but I’m sick and tired of this meme.

I honestly don’t understand how he doesn’t know that Obama’s “shovel ready” jobs were vaporware. Everyone even vaguely aware at the time KNEW that.

Fact Check: Joe Biden Repeats False Claim About ‘Shovel-ready’ Jobs.

Quote from article:

CLAIM: The Obama-Biden administration provided “shovel-ready” jobs in the 2009 “stimulus” that Joe Biden managed.

VERDICT: FALSE. Even President Barack Obama himself admitted that the “shovel-ready” jobs did not really exist.

More on the Shovel Ready Jobs scam here: Why Obama’s Stimulus Failed: A Case Study of Silver Spring, Maryland.

More here. (Man, I miss this Jonah Goldberg.)

And pardon me for Reason, again, but this has a good point: The Reason That Shovel Ready Stimulus Didn’t Work Is That There Wasn’t Any Stimulus.

This was found on a cursory look through the internet. I remember other issues with “shovel ready” including that apparently it couldn’t exclude… pin collar jobs.

In other words, Obama scam that doesn’t say anything about Americans interest in working.

For THAT I’ll point out to 2019, before the lockdowns, when the economy was heating up. People who had been “out of the job market” for various reasons, from people who had criminal records, to people very young and very old were suddenly working. We all saw them, at restaurants and grocery stores, and pretty much everywhere.

Why? Because there were jobs, the job market was tight and employers weren’t being picky.

Then of course, we got the open border, and people that can easily be used and abused at will and can’t complain, and we’re back to “Americans” Particularly males, somehow. “Just want to play games in their parents’ basements.”

Well, while I understand that every generation has layabouts, and that complaining about the young has been the pasttime of old people since there have been people (the theory is that all the screaming increases their circulation and substitutes for exercise) I’ve had enough of this abusive myth.

Americans, even young Americans, aren’t lazier or less prepared than anyone else. As horrible as our education is, people keep learning anyway. Ten years out of school, unless captured by the diploma factories, people have acquired skills. And most people — not the idiots talking about how much work is bad because capitalism — are willing to and want to work. As proven by the hot labor market at the end of 2019. By the fact that Americans have voted three times for the guy who promised jobs, not handouts, and frankly by getting out there and looking around.

So, why do companies “need” to contract to China or get H1B Visas?

Frankly because companies want to get work cheaper and they want to be able to have very stupid managers.

Stupid managers? Sure. Managers who want to set schedule by computer and notify workers at the last minute, which makes it impossible for people to work two jobs or even have time off for medical appointments or school. Stupid managers? Sure. Managers who insist people have to come into the office to do work that’s easily and more cheaply done from home. Stupid managers? Sure. Managers who prefer to hire illegals at wages too low to live off of, but can do it because the border is open and the government is giving welfare and health care to illegals.

All of this is objectively stupid. It’s short term gain for long term pain. None of it is sustainable, and while it produces a bump on the profit line, overtime it destroys industries, the country and, yeah, people.

So faced with impossible situations some people — particularly young men who have been abused and marginalized from kindergarten on — give up. “Staying in the basement and playing games” is fairly typical depression behavior.

And then the abusers turn around and say “but we have to contract with the slavers and sellers of human parts. If we don’t no one will do the work.”

It’s time to stop repeating their lies.

You want to yell at the young? Do. They dress funny. Their music is weird. And they keep telling me there’s certain words I shouldn’t use because they are “offensive.” Which means they’re also namby pamby. (Ah!)

But do not pile on on the side of the abusers who are trying to justify their abuses.

Americans — young and old — want to work. And are a more creative and hungry work force than any abroad. No, not the slaves of China, and not the imported and often rather desperate workforce they brought here.

Americans will step up and work, if the jobs are there, and if companies don’t have cheats that allow them to exploit people.

The whole “But we don’t have a TRAINED workforce” is nonsense too. Education in China is not what we’d call education. And most people are objectively less educated. Yes, kids picked to show off certain skills are better. I for one remember the Soviet and East German athletes and how good they were. Because that’s all they did, and they were raised for show. Grow up.

Now, can Americans work as cheaply as enslaved political prisoners or literally indentured servants in China?

Well, no.

On the other hand, they won’t install back-door switches on our infrastructure critical hardware. They won’t sell our trade secrets. And they (probably) won’t go to war with the country.

This doesn’t mean companies can’t get the work done cheaply. It’s time to bite the bullet and invest in automation. More than time.

And it’s time for management that doesn’t eat the seed corn and does invest in the future.

It’s time, in other words, to enable Americans to work and stop selling them vaporware and guilt.

And Mike Rowe as many good things as he says and does should be ashamed for propagating the myth that you can’t find good workers in America, and for aiding and abetting abusers and sucky managers.

(Sarah got attacked by probably pollen, possibly a virus, and the weirdest but maybe most effective unrequested tech support personal–Indy now fixes computer hardware, and said I should share a bit of the book. Something funny and self contained, which, well, Skip generally is, until he isn’t, so herewith, trials of future academia. If it isn’t your tastes, well, you got an Indy here to fix your computer fan photo for your time today!)

Schrodinger Path

Skip:

It is not true that the engraved plaque you see when you come into the IDS buildings devoted to the training of future diplomats of Britannia says Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

I do understand why that has become widely believed, and to be fair, given how strict the testing of incoming students, it could be that. But my guess is that it would be too much blunt truth-telling for the IDS.

What the plaque, a fine sheet of silver, or perhaps a glassteel imitation of silver says, in raised golden letters – it is also not true that the IDS has ever had any aesthetics – is: You Can Never Know Enough.

This was certainly true for me. Through the year of my initial training I was often grateful that the initial problems, first contacts and negotiations were virtual, done in mersi chamber, and with species, worlds and issues created from whole cloth by instructors. This is good, because no matter how much I studied on the upcoming situation, learned all the trigger words I should never use, the relationships I shouldn’t mention, implied we’d consider their just cause – even if their just cause was wanting to eat their neighbors raw – or whatever I did, it ended with food thrown at me, elaborate insults offered to me, or me running out of the mersi room with a virtual lynch mob at my heels. Fortunately they evaporated on the threshold. Unfortunately, after a year of this, I started thinking whatever I was suited for it was not being a diplomat.

I might have said that failing wasn’t an option. Not for my Mother, at least. But at almost nineteen, I was starting to get a feeling Mother’s view of reality might be unrealistic.

So I read the card she sent me to congratulate me on finishing my first year of training with flying colors – what kind of bilge were the instructors selling her? Oh, yeah, under no circumstances is the IDS truthful – and tell me she was proud of me. I set it on the table, looked at myself in the blue uniform of a diplomat trainee – why did I always end up in blue uniforms? – and thought well, it was time to find something else to do with my life. Which was a pity because the small room with its single bed, its reader and its music system had been a refuge of sorts. Since I didn’t use my title here and went by Skip Hayden, no one seemed to know me. Because the IDS frowned on lack of self control, I’d been celibate as a monk, which I found oddly restful. Out there, or on the estate, I’d have to become the viscount Webson, and – yes – the prodigy war hero. And I’d probably have to hide in someone’s bed again.

But one thing my father had told me is that many people spent their lives in pursuit of careers they weren’t suited for and that it was a waste. He was speaking of a particularly thick-headed student at the Academy, but considering my performance here, I was sure he would say it applied to me and diplomacy.

I walked out of my room, stepping crisply. That was one of those things they’d told me to change – among the other hundred things. My walk was apparently too crisp and “military.” Which since I’d lived in a military academy for most of my life, should be no surprise for anyone. But one of the many mottos that the IDS threw around was: A Diplomat Always Looks Relaxed.

Well, I wasn’t going to be a diplomat, and I didn’t feel particularly diplomatic. I didn’t try to correct my walk – which attempt at any rate meant that instructors told me I was walking like a sick duck – and just left the dormitory floor, in search of the first instructor whose face I knew. I was going to ask for a resignation form and then I was—

Well, probably going to go back to the estate and figure out what to do with the next 100 or 150years. The impulse to become a diplomat had probably been stupid, anyway.

Of course the instructor I ran into was Matt Crowe, who was walking out of the mersi room with his own crisp step, probably just having set up hell for the next patsy to walk in for a simulated diplomatic interaction.

Crowe or Mr. Crowe – though none of the instructors had less than a doctorate, mind – as he preferred to be called, was one of the youngest instructors. He was about forty, had dark hair, grey-blue-green eyes which could assume a laser-point intensity if he thought I was being particularly stupid, always kept close-shaved and looked like a military academy graduate, as I should very well know. Which meant I was always tempted to salute and call him “sir.”

I controlled with an effort of will, as I came to a stop in front of him, and of course, predictably, what came out of my mouth was a weak and wandering, “Er…. Mr. Crowe?”

“Hayden?” he said. As though it were a big surprise to find a student wandering the halls of the instruction wing.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and there must have been something to my voice because he didn’t correct me. “I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time, sir? Or do I need to make an appointment?”

He frowned at me. “Is it vital that you see me right now?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. We could wait, but it would be a waste of both our times.”

His frown got more thunderous and I swear he’d had someone install laser light behind his eyes. That kind of look, with a glow should hurt. Him, I mean. It did hurt me. Or at least made me sound like an idiot.

He nodded once, pivoted on his heels and said, “Come.”

I followed. We walked past the mersi room, past the study rooms where we had to read over the records that we weren’t trusted to take to our private rooms, and past a rowdy group of just-enrolled trainees making jokes about their last mersi experience.

We stopped by a row of doors at the back, in front of the one that read Matt Crowe. Like most things at the Academy, they were low tech wood doors – I guess they didn’t want to get us used to unnecessary gadgets – and he pushed the door open and gestured for me to go in.

Inside it had the look-feel of an interrogation chamber, with a battered wooden desk, and two chairs one on each side. I took the one in front of the desk, and looked around to make sure there was no glaring interrogation light to point at my eyes. Crowe took his seat behind the desk, looked at me, as if that would tell him anything, and then leaned back – I guess a diplomat must strive to look relaxed, or something – and said, “What is wrong Hayden? How may I help you?”

All my instincts from Academy days reared up. When an instructor asked how he could help you, you inevitably found out he wished to help you improve your attention to detail by making you hand sew a whole new uniform between night and the morning, or perhaps clean all the restrooms in the building in two hours, given only a small sponge and a bottle of breath freshener.

But I took a deep breath, told myself I was being an idiot, and said, “I would like to resign, sir.”

He looked…. I wasn’t sure how he looked. It wasn’t exactly surprised. But it was…. Okay, I was a failing diplomat, but I’d lived with humans before. If I weren’t talking to an instructor, I’d think he was angry.

I cleared my throat, “I signed up for instruction voluntarily, and it is my right to—”

He nodded, once. And then he did the most bizarre thing.

He took something out of his pocket, got on a chair and, reaching to what looked like a completely featureless piece of ceiling, stuck the something on it. From my perspective, it looked like a round, colored paper dot. Green dot.

Then he stepped down from the chair, walked to the door, and locked it. He took his chair back behind the desk, and sat on it. Then he leaned across the desk, “Please, don’t.”

I blinked, looked up at the dot, back at the door, and then at Crowe, wondering which of us had taken leave of his senses.

He smiled, but it was a weird, restrained smile. “I suspected that’s what you wanted to do. Which is why I brought you to my office, instead of to one of the learning rooms, which is more common for this sort of interview. You see, for whatever reason video pickups just don’t work in my office, and the audio becomes oddly random and choppy, even when I’m not here. They’re used to this, so I doubt it will be noticed.”

“Sir? Is this an exercise?”

The smile became rueful, “In a way. Something you’ll learn, Hayden, is that at the IDS nothing is ever simple. Or at least that’s what I’m learning. Look, I looked at your file. There are weird whispers about you… Someone tipped us you’d been visiting houses of ill repute in certain quarters.”

“Sir, I haven’t—”

He waved it away. “I know. I checked. I’ve crawled over your records and everything you’ve done the last year. You’re Viscount Webson, right? And your mom is a countess who is sixth cousin to the queen or something?”

I blinked again. “Something like that.” It was actually third cousin, but who was counting?

“Then what I suggest is that you tell your mother someone is trying to make you wash out of the training. And tell her to have the Queen send word she would like you to graduate as soon as possible.”

I was about to say that my mother wasn’t in that kind of relationship with the Queen. And it was true. Although there was a blood relation, Queen Eleanor might be a cousin – a lot closer than sixth and probably on three sides, because Father despite being a mere commoner, had some royal bastard blood and relatives who’d married into the nobility or bought into it – but I didn’t think that Mother had the sort of friendship where she could ask a favor of the queen. Mother didn’t have that sort of friendship with anyone. Mother commanded, she did not plead.

On the other hand, it occurred to me that I might. Well, not that sort of friendship, but that sort of reach. After all I was a war hero. Things being done against a war hero would be bad news for the monarchy’s image. I had a feeling – though I’d never paid much attention to politics – that the Queen wouldn’t like this.

I sat up straight. “Tell me exactly what’s been happening, besides my rather unspectacular performance.”

He made a face. “They have been ordering you to be put through 3^rd year mersis. The ones given to the trainees who have done both three months rotations in the field.”

I blinked.

“Frankly the fact you have lasted almost the full simulations is a sign of enormous talent. Which is why I’d prefer you don’t resign. Queen Harmonia left us in a hell of a mess. To clean it up we need real talent. Which is why I was brought in, from the Space Force, having finished a doctorate in diplomacy while deployed. And why I am an instructor despite my having no title, amid all you noblemen, instructors and students alike.”

I narrowed my eyes as the picture formed. Crowe had been given a sponge and a bottle of breath freshener. “You’re on cleanup duty?”

“Of sorts.”

“But why would anyone put me on third year—” I stopped. “Did they misjudge my ability?”

He snorted. “Oh, no. I can’t find the details, on account of not being a director.”

Really, a small sponge and a tiny bottle of breath freshener. “But?”

“But it bothered me. Both the completely unsubstantiated rumors and that they were ordering this course of action, and I poked around enough and spied at doors enough—”

“Sometimes good diplomats listen at doors,” I said, piously, another plaque in another room of the complex.

He made a face which exactly reflected how I felt about the plaques, too.

“Anyway, I get the impression that one or more of the directors were…. We won’t say bribed but something very like. There would be a donation coming, sort of thing if you were made to wash out.” He opened his hands on the desk. “Nothing I can prove, or take to her Majesty. Not with the directors all being noblemen and women at the highest levels. And I very much suspect the bribe was less tangible than money changing hands.”

I sat back. Well. That could have come from anyone, though my main suspect would be Mother, complete with the card complimenting me on finishing out the year. It was just the sort of thing she would do, since she would much prefer I go back to the estate, and learn to do estate things, not to mention marry and set about producing a long line of heirs. Though the marrying might be optional. I had no idea if she knew my proclivities, but even without, I suspected she’d be absolutely happy with my having a lab contracted for children which would be wholly hers to raise, while I managed the estate, or perhaps went back to the Space Force.

For the first time I wondered if Father had stayed so long in the Force for a reason.

But if Mother was behind this, I obviously couldn’t go to her. And if Mother was behind this I definitely didn’t want to expose her. Our relationship was fraught enough.

Well.

I looked up. Crowe was looking at me, eyebrows slightly raised, as though trying to divine my calculations.

“Look,” I said. “It’s a very long gambit, but I can send a note to Queen Eleanor through some contacts.” From what I understood, my great uncle, the Judge, took tea with her majesty fairly regularly. “I need a half day pass. But I warn you, it might not work.”

He made a face. “Very well. I will, at the same time, pass a message through my contacts. It is all a very long shot, but I’d prefer the diplomatic service of the Star Empire not lose you, Viscount Webson.”

“Just… Skip Hayden,” I said, and offered him my hand. Yes, I knew this might all be some complex lie, but somehow it didn’t feel like one.

He shook my hand and did his best to break it, the bastard, then nodded and got a disposit pad from his drawer. He set it on an away pass, and signed it with his gen-print, then handed it over. It was a little thing, smaller than my palm. I slipped it into a pocket.

Yes, that did mean I had to endure tea with Great Uncle Zymon. And yes, the tea in his ornate office, with a footman behind each of us –making sure we didn’t drop crumbs or throw the cups on the floor, I guess? – felt unaccustomed and oppressive, though I’d done this once a month when I’d been in the Academy.

Great Uncle Zymon had a completely different idea of who and what was causing my issues at the Academy. He was fairly sure it was that the directors themselves were jealous of me, and afraid the Queen would appoint me to the board. Which would make perfect sense, of course, if I had a doctorate, which I didn’t. Or have any intention of getting one.

But my – paternal – uncle thought the Haydens were the most illustrious and brilliant family in all the Star Empire, and all the other families conspired to bring it down. Pretty much constantly. It was a pet paranoia which I suspected he kept in his bedside table, fed on chocolate, and only admitted to other Haydens, that is to me, otherwise someone would have locked him up long since.

But the end result is that he took my note to the Queen and I returned to training at the IDS, not expecting much of anything to result from that afternoon. I’d planned that if nothing changed, I’d resign in a week.

However, things changed.

The first thing that changed was that I found I did indeed receive stellar grades for my first year, each of the exercises being graded on a curve, for being far above my ability, and therefore the portion completed counting as more than enough.

The other change is that the mersi experiences became more…. Related to how much I had studied and how much I concentrated.

This is not to say they became easy.

Growth Mindset and Evil In the Guise of Good by Charlie Martin

I think it’s more of an effect than a cause, but academic education’s terminology gives me a pain in the brain. You know what I mean. So I admit I wish I could come up with a better way to talk about this, but we’re going to have to go with it. It does have the one advantage that it is the common terminology.

I’m talking about growth mindset and its opposite, fixed mindset.

Growth mindset is simple. It simply means that you believe that applying effort and learning enables transforming ability. In other words, in order to learn, you have to believe learning is possible, and that learning thrives when you — and those around you — believe your abilities can grow.

Its opposite, fixed mindset, is the belief that you are genetically or culturally limited—that your abilities are static and unchangeable.

The original idea and the research supporting it were reported in a book, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success[1] by Carol Dweck, a book I recommend very highly to anyone who is either teaching someone a new subject or anyone who is learning a new subject.

Early in the book, Dweck proposes four statements:

1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
2. You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are. 
3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

She suggests that if you agree more with statements 1 and 2, that’s a fixed mindset; 3 and 4 indicate a growth mindset.

Now, this has a problem for anyone who has paid much attention to the whole debate on intelligence over the last decades, going back at least to The Bell Curve[2] by Hernstein and Murray, a book that has been widely — and wildly — misinterpreted, which is probably a topic for a whole other article, but it does propose there is a quality of general intelligence that they denote that is fixed and invariable.

The Bell Curve was instantly controversial because they suggested that this correlated with race and economic class.

Clearly, to the extent that you believe Herrnstein and Murray, that leads to a fixed mindset, although there are a lot of issues with that conclusion that don’t necessarily follow.

Dweck makes the whole argument more difficult because she clearly equates having learned new skills and gained knowledge with “intelligence,” which — whatever you call it — is clearly not what Herrnstein and Murray identified as .

This confusion is hardly limited to The Bell Curve vs Mindset. Oddly, for all the objections to The Bell Curve that were raised, the education establishment adopted the conclusion they spuriously ascribed to The Bell Curve — that non-white kids were constitutionally unable to learn like white kids.

This toxic assumption led to a whole host of pernicious effects. It’s the assumption underlying most affirmative action programs — that somehow some people needed extra privileges to make up for their inherent or imposed disabilities.

And there we come back around to growth mindset. If teachers, administrators, and educators start with the assumption that certain kids simply don’t have the capability to learn and achieve, that is a fixed-mindset assumption. And one of the things Dweck learned in her research is that a fixed mindset assumption on the part of teachers was just as harmful as if a student believed they weren’t capable of learning a topic.

Basically, students respond to the teachers’ expectations. If the teacher’s expectations were low, the students would succeed in meeting the teachers’ expectations.

If the teachers’ expectations were high, the students would succeed in meeting those higher expectations.

A recent blog post by Joanne Jacobs, “How ‘anti-racist’ ideology hurt the students it was supposed to help,” talks about this problem. It’s a discussion of a new book, The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America, by Steven F. Wilson.

Wilson was the founder of the Ascend charter schools in Brooklyn, where [this link and others to New York Times are to archives pages since the articles are behind the New York Times paywall.]

5,500 students, 84 percent of them living in poverty and nearly all children of color [emphasis mine], who were reading “The Tempest” and Auden and studying African masks and the Dutch masters by fifth grade.

But by demanding high standards, Wilson was accused of the crime of “white supremacist rhetoric”—and fired.

In schools where students were saved from “white supremacist rhetoric” and given “anti-racist” curricula, scores — surprise! — plummeted.

At one school that went anti-racist, “the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards on the math section of the SAT plummeted from 41 percent in 2017 to 4 percent in 2024,” [Wilson] says.

In theory, the SAT is supposed to measure critical reading, writing, and mathematics skills, but the scores correlate highly with IQ as measured by standard IQ tests, and thus are a measure of .

So maybe Dweck’s observation that a growth mindset includes believing that it is possible to increase “intelligence” is not as far off the mark as I suggested earlier.

Or, maybe “anti-racist” curricula actually reduce intelligence.

I think the real point is that anything that encourages a fixed mindset — whether it’s based in race or class or just damn stubbornness — is damaging.

The “anti-racist” approach, like so much of the “progressive” project, has or purports to have good intentions. But it appears these good intentions have paved the road to illiteracy and a permanent underclass it wanted to help.

---

[1] Dweck, Carol S.. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (p. 12). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[2] Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York, NY: Free Press.

Or — they pointed WHAT at the alien?

No, you’ll wait for that. Chill. First we’ll get to the real stuff.

On what I’m doing with this attempt to reading myself back through the one Portuguese science fiction imprint available when I was a kid, and therefore responsible for catapulting me into reading then writing this crazy stuff, you can read my inaugural post.

The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle is what I think D. Jason Flemming calls a “Fix up” (?) ie a stitching together of four stories. Which, on the whole are pretty good star trek episodes. Which we later find it was one of the inspirations for.

Actually in reading it, I could see the series of a lot of other, later science fiction.

Anyway, these are the voyages of the Spaceship Beagle, its five year mission….

The spaceship is staffed by scientists and

In each of the stories, it meets an entity. Each entity is hard to defeat, in each entity the Nexialist on board comes through brilliantly.

The book is by A. E. Van Vogt, and while discussing the book with a friend afterwards, I found out that A.E. Van Vogt was not in fact a Dutch national translated into English, something I had in my head probably from the first time I came across his writing, and which was so deeply lodged I never questioned it.

In fact, having grown up reading him (the people who did the Portuguese imprint I’m following, the only official Portuguese imprint of science fiction had a weird fascination with Van Vogt) when I first read him in English I was disappointed and — wait for it — attributed it to his translating better into Portuguese than English.

I honestly have no idea where this came from. It’s not like there were science fiction conventions in Portugal or that science fiction, that weird sub-field of fiction that most people didn’t even know existed, had biographies of its writers aired or printed anywhere. So, where did this strange idea come from? I’m going to assume it was, like a lot of other strange ideas — such as Heinlein having three sons — the result of hearing people talk while waiting in line when there was a new and popular book release. Because Portugal didn’t have organized fandom — honestly, Portugal pretends a lot but it doesn’t have organized anything unless the culture itself has changed a lot since I lived there — but it had vibrant fan gossip network. And the only thing both faster and more inaccurate than fandom gossip is…. I don’t know. I’m fairly sure it’s faster than the speed of light. And more inaccurate than…. science fiction predictions.

Anyway, it’s entirely possible the fact he was raised Mennonite and that’s close enough to Pennsylvania Dutch for Portuguese to agglutinate it all. Or it’s entirely possibly it’s a misunderstanding I came up with all on my own. Who knows?

So, here’s a linked bio of Van Vogt — Alfred Elton? REALLY? — in case you need it, or want to review it. Not Dutch. Definitely not Dutch.

I will point out that I have a very firm idea of Van Vogt as a writer acquired when I was very young — under twenty — and that is that he throws off more interesting ideas per hundred words than any other writer in science fiction, and mostly doesn’t carry them off to their conclusion because it would be impossible.

In that sense, this novel was a disappointment. And, btw, I figured out almost as soon as I started reading it, that I had in fact read it before, but did not in any way associate it with Van Vogt.

The reasons for this are sane but also unfair. Sane because by the time I read it Star Trek was running on TV, as well as stuff like Space 1999 (yes, I do know it was lame, but I felt obligated to support it, because it was science fiction, and we weirdos had to support weirdness.) And the novel sounds like a science fiction exploration series with four episodes-of-the-week. Unfair, because this was the seventies, and of course the stuff was based on this work (and others like it.) On yet the third hand — shuddup, iz science fiction — the truth is these stories, except for the outlandishness of the extra terrestrials encountered, each of which has the potential for destroying the expedition, and all but the first having the ability to destroy humanity if not stopped, read as “generic space exploration” and even the title of the book in Portuguese — interplanetary mission — conditioned me to expect that.

Anyway, so other than that how did I like the play? It was interesting enough to qualify as a “Darn good yarn” and painless to read. The ETs are imaginative and well set out and it works well as see-problem, solve-problem science fiction.

There was a fly in the ointment. Nexialism. Grosvenor, the wonder kid, the go-to-guy for solving everything is a Nexialist, the only Nexialist on board, and his “science” is so much better than all the old traditional sciences at solving these problems.

The problem, of course, is that his science is a dessert and a floor wax. It sings, it dances and it diapers the baby. Nexialism! Is there anything it can’t do? Apparently not.

The ideas I walked away with of this very weird “science” are — Weird. Like, it is a form of what Heinlein said Friday or her boss were “general specialists” — people who could take the other sciences and integrate them — this is okay as the quirks of overachieving and not quite wired correctly geniuses, but I had trouble thinking of it as a science. To justify it he had some form of trick learning, like Heinlein’s Renshawing but more so combined with learning in your sleep. The conceit being that Nexialists could mainline all of human knowledge in a few short years and integrate the whole thing, but guys, seriously? If that were possible, why would it be a specialty? Why not do that to every human? The explanation left me baffled.

I will confess that all this “learning while you sleep” which was in vogue at the time has been “discredited” but I wonder if it really was, or which one is a lie, the learning while you sleep or the thing that assures us that just makes you tired. At some point I’ll do a deep dive into this. Today is not the day.

Anyway, Nexialism bothered me, not just at the level of making no sense whatsoever, because if it was so good why wasn’t everyone trained in it, but at the level where the man used an awful lot of hypnotism, mind control and various other things that disturb me at a gut-level, not just against the various ETs but to adjust his fellow crew of the Beagle. And while it is presented as the only way to save the ship, it made me squirm.

I also disliked the classifications of civilizations that the archeologist onboard relied on. I don’t even like that whole “hard times makes hard men” BS. I think any such view of history is severely reductive to the same point as saying “there are only two plots in science fiction” or something equally zany

Of course, in a way this was a disease of the time: both the belief that the soft disciplines like semantics and history and psychology could be made diamond hard, perfectly predictive and completely useable to control and manipulate men into a perfect SCIENTIFIC society devoid of human problems.

This whole “next stage of evolution” where we will be like gods knowing good from evil was brought home to me by stumbling, yesterday, on this episode of the Why Files. If you don’t want to watch a video, even on 2x the speed as I usually do it, it is the case of Paul Amadeus Dienach. And while I fully believe he hallucinated that while in a comma (though there are doubts the person ever existed) it is more a stew of ideas that were already in the air at the time, and which informed a lot of early science fiction. (Not believable. Among other things the world is supposed to be overpopulated.)

Now, I don’t want to make that sound like I hated the book, because I didn’t. I rolled my eyes at some of the ideas because they are very much ideas of their time. But the book is still a “good yarn” and enjoyable enough to read.

I will point out this is one of the reasons for writing a “darn good yarn” and enjoyable first and worrying about whatever the ideas are later. Because the ideas will age and shift and annoy some of the readers. But the good yarn will carry it through even if people are personally opposed to one of your tricks, like, say, mind control. The story still carries the reader through.

Now, of course, it’s entirely possible that if your ideas are super dooper humdingers you will convert the reader too. But that shouldn’t be your main purpose for writing. Your main purpose should be to tell stories. If you convert anyone, that’s secondary. And it’s more likely that whatever you did will cause them to think and change their ideas but not necessarily to what you’re selling….

If you want to sell a philosophy write pamphlets. Or blogs. If you write novels, write them for enjoyment.

And Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle was pretty enjoyable.

Now, remember They pointed WHAT? at the alien?

I want to say I am absolutely, totally against (with spikes on) changing the original words of a book because they offend the sensibilities of later readers.

HOWEVER–

The good men of the Spaship Beagle carry weapons that emit vibrations. Guess what they call them. Com’on, guess!

In a way this was illuminating, because I wasn’t aware of hallucinating VIVIDLY while reading books. No, not like a movie. It’s more like an immersive hollograph. I’m there, in the middle of the action, and hearing the thoughts of the character in whose mind I am, and–

And when they pull out their vibrators and point them at the alien…

The whole scene dissolves, and I’m laughing hard enough for Dan to be alarmed. Particularly since I was reading this at night, in bed.

I think, since this is a recent ebook edition, it would be sane and well…. it would be sane for the people editing it to call them something like vibro-pistols and footnote they’d changed it from “vibrators” which has a new widespread meaning. Because now I have that image in my head. And I’ll never, ever, ever get it out. Sigh.

The book I’m reading for next week is The Man Who Sold The Moon by Robert A. Heinlein. I haven’t read it in some time, due to having been sick and stuff, so I’m looking forward to it.

The cover and title in the Portuguese collection is this:

So they somehow refrained from translating it as something like “SCAM IN THE HEAVENS”, though to be fair those wild titles are later in the series and I suspect under quite different management. They also SOMEHOW refrained from giving it a cover pulled from a psychadelic dream. Heck, to my eye, they seem to have made the guy resemble RAH and the woman has a look of Ginny. (Though perhaps that’s coincidence.)

I incidentally found out that the people doing these covers were full on (many of them surrealist) painters. I hate one of them with a burning passion and have opinions which will probably be aired tomorrow at MGC. (I like some of the others, but unfortunately they don’t work for covers in the US now. However they reveal much about what the publishers thought of science fiction readers.)

While on that, incidentally, I’ve revised my position on “I don’t want these books in paper even if you guys want to give them to me.” Look, I’d prefer to borrow them and return them to you when I’m done because we’ve been seriously cutting down on paper books (except for those I think still hypothetical grandchildren might treasure). But there are too many I’m running across that are just too expensive for me to buy for this quixotic project, and too many books that are British or weird, and I simply can’t find in ebook. This will change as we get to more recent books, but not for the early ones.

The ones I’m missing so far, some of which I suppose have no English translation:

L’univers vivant by Jimmy Guieu

Tomorrow Sometimes Comes by F. G. Rayer

David Starr : Space Ranger  Paul French, a.k.a. Isaac Asimov.

Antro The Life Giver  – Jon J. Deegan

From What Far Star by Brian Berry

The Metal Eater by Roy Sheldon

World at Bay E. C. Tubb

Again, please don’t go and buy these to send to me. But if you have them collecting dust in some backroom, email me at bookpimping at outlook dot com, and I’ll make arrangements for you to mail them to the Vegas address, from which in the fullness of time it will make it to me, and I can return it to you when I’m done with it.

Anyway, onward and upward! We’ll continue the reading project!

These are the Voyages of Reader Sarah, her five year mission to revisit all the reads that pulled her into the science fiction circus and have got her performing with the high wire elephants!

Stay tuned.

Today we thank the Lord for men who will march and die to stand between the desolation of war and home. For men who believe they were entrusted a precious legacy and will fight to preserve it.

And we pray to Him — and vow to do what we can to make it so — for leaders who hold American lives precious and don’t spend them profligately.

And we remember.

That is all.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Ivan Zima

A novella about a Master Mentalist who has lost his ability to collect the Power for the magic that keeps the True Men in control of the Three Part Alliance. He’s lost his job, his family has distanced itself from him . . .

Ivan Zima didn’t quit, he adopted his servants and got on with life. And when those kids went off to college, he adopted more kids. After all, who doesn’t need a horse-crazy teenager, a juvenile delinquent, and three cute little girls as your empire crumbles and falls?

FROM DALE COZORT: There Will Always Be An England

In the Alternate History novel, two weeks after the D-Day landings, 1944 Britain disappears, replaced by a version of Britain from the distant past, before modern humans made it to Europe. Billy Chandler, like all Allied soldiers in the Normandy bridgehead is suddenly in a desperate situation, cut off from British-based air support, reinforcements and supplies. Meanwhile, deep in the past, 1944 Britain is in its own fight for survival, isolated in a time when Neanderthals rule Europe and no humans have reached the Americas and struggling to feed itself.

The Allies in Normandy struggle to hold out against increasingly powerful German attacks, running low on food and ammunition. Meanwhile, 1944 Britain struggles to survive, a modern nation in a Stone Age world.

BY HENRY KUTTNER, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Elak of Atlantis (Annotated): The complete classic sword & sorcery tales

Join Elak on perilous quests across the ancient world! These four classic sword-and-sorcery tales by the masterful Henry Kuttner take us to realms of wonder and terror.

Across the mystical landscapes of lost Atlantis, Elak faces down ferocious monsters, cunning foes, and alien magical arts. With his unmatched skill with a sword and unyielding will to survive, Elak battles to protect the innocent and vanquish evil in this action-packed collection.

With their unique blend of swashbuckling adventure, fantastical world-building, and Lovecraftian horror, Kuttner’s Elak tales have captivated fans of fantasy and science fiction for generations.

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the stories genre and historical context.

FROM C. CHANCY: Count Taka and the Vampire Brides

Welcome, traveler, to wild Tramontana!

Here you will find snowclad mountains, roaring rivers, vast caves perhaps never seen before by mortal man! Here the strong Horses of Night roam the mountainsides – perhaps you can tame one to ride with your charms. Here the shepherds call to the long-fleeced sheep, the sheep to their sweet lambs – and you can find true telemea, the softest and freshest of cheese, in the gift shop, herb-flavored, a dozen special varieties-

Eh? You’re not here for the gift shop?

Ah, the cameras, of course! Forgive me, most of the photographers we see head straight for the ski lifts. Or the whitewater. Yet there’s so much more to Tramontana! The healthy farmers bringing in the hay, the soaring churches, the wild gypsy dancers – you must dance with the gypsies – and Raven Castle! Oh, there’s a place of history… and mystery.

It held the line against the Turks, they say, and the ancient lords rooted out all manner of uncanny beings… or bargained with them. Have you heard the rumors? That Count Herodes has ruled from that castle for over a hundred years? True, I tell you, all true!

…Monsters don’t exist, eh? Well, well, take your photographs, and we’ll see!

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details

Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: April (April series Book 1)

April is an exceptional young lady and something of a snoop. After a chance encounter with a spy, she finds herself involved with political intrigues that stretch her abilities. There is a terrible danger she, and her friends and family, will lose the only home she has ever known, and be forced to live on the slum ball Earth below. It’s more than an almost fourteen year old should have to deal with. Fortunately she has a lot of smart friends and allies. It’s a good thing because things get very rough and dicey. They challenge the political status quo, and with a small population the only advantage they have in war is a thin technological edge. The entire “April” series is building towards a merge with the future series that starts with “Family Law”.

FROM DECLAN FINN: Fae’d To Black (Honeymoon from Hell Book 5)

THE HONEYMOON FROM HELL COMES TO AN END! THE FINAL BOOK IN THE EXPLOSIVE SERIES.

Something has been hunting Marco and Amanda before they were married. It has stalked them across the country. It sits in the dark, hiding in the shadows.

The two of them need a plan to drag the monster into the light. They need bait … and they may be it.

It’s time to hunt the darkness down, once and for all.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania

A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.

These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1)

Deep in the Colorado Rockies, Kyrie Smith has mastered the art of keeping secrets: like how she turns into a panther at will, or how she’s trying to solve a string of shifter murders while serving up the daily special. But she’s not the only one with something to hide.

Take her coworker Tom Ormson—your typical guy next door, if your typical guy could transform into a dragon and might have accidentally killed someone. Then there’s the lion-shifting cop investigating the murders, a guilt-ridden father, and a trio of dragon shifters hunting for something called the Pearl of Heaven.

As if navigating a world of supernatural intrigue wasn’t complicated enough, Tom’s falling for Kyrie, discovering powers that shouldn’t exist, and learning that trust is a two-way street paved with decades of secrets. In Goldport, Colorado, where the coffee’s always hot and the shifters are always watching, solving a murder might be the easiest part of Kyrie’s day.

Welcome to small-town life where everyone has something to hide—and some of those secrets have scales, claws, and a tendency to roar.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: GRATE

There is a price for “gifts”. This is a given of fairy lore, of course, but it’s also a known thing of the human brain.

As humans our period of having our every wish catered to is limited, and frankly I think we learn early that our wishes and needs won’t be perfectly met. After all, I remember as a mother having to ignore my babies as they fussed once I knew they were clean and fed. Why would I do that? Because what they wanted was play and the limitations of my own adult world wouldn’t allow me to spend the whole day playing with them, of course.

And after the infant stage everything we do comes with effort and time to learn. Which means we learn everything is a price.

Hence, when we find something awesome that seems to be handed to us for free — be it a thing or an ability to do some things — we tend to want to know what it’s going to cost us. If we didn’t there wouldn’t be all sorts of proverbs telling us that we definitely shouldn’t look too closely at the gift. I’m particularly struck by “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” because we all know what happened to Troy when they didn’t.

Which brings us to the Bardic Gift. I’ve been told — repeatedly — this week, by very disparate things that this is what my particular curse should be called. We’ll examine that in a minute.

I came to this post because I’m still reading The Voyage of The Spaceship Beagle. For various reasons, but mostly because the cough came back and apparently I was sleeping like fine hammered carp, it’s been heavy going. Last night I gave up and had the strong anti-histamine (more on that in a moment) syrup which knocked me out, and it’s amazing how much focused I am today.

Just in time to hit the middle story (I gather it’s three) which hinges on mind control for various purposes. This made me growl and got my hackles full up, and it took me a while to figure out why. (I mean, it’s a book. It’s not physically biting me. Heck, it’s on the kindle, and my kindle is almost tame.)

I have an intense dislike of anything that distorts my mind. I want to know that however my mind is functioning, even when under my own influence and therefore trying to dredge the depths of depression and the shoals of the seas of unwarranted despair, it’s my own. Partly because I have over a half century of checking for and adjusting for my own peculiar quirks, like depression. I know the black dog is there, I know its growl. I’m aware of its bite. I know how to muzzle it. And if I can’t I know it’s the sign of something else, like physical illness or not sleeping very well. (At this point the cough is probably allergies. I need to clean my bedroom. It’s the only place the cough persists and not coincidentally one of two rooms in the house that hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned.) But if you throw an outside factor at the mixture, I might not even be aware of it till things spin out of control. This almost happened in fact with both adderal and montelukast. The second is particularly puzzling since you’d think a brain trained to detect depression would detect depression. But this was alien, strange, unaccustomed depression. And it almost offed me.

Anyway, my aversion to pain killers and mood adjusters and yes ADD meds and asthma meds with side effects extends to almost disabling levels. Like refusing to take pain meds after surgery and therefore — apparently — prolonging the time of recovery until the doctor lassoed me and made me take meds. (On my own terms. It was more weaponized Tylenol than anything else.) Or, refusing to take the effective anti-histamine syrup, because I’m afraid it will have some effect (most anti-histamines turn off the writing) until I’m a zombie, walking into walls from coughing all night.

Now, I’m not an irrational being. Actually, I overthink everything to the point of paralysis. So my aversion is likewise not irrational.

I intensely dislike being under the influence of drugs that affect my mind, even in relatively small ways (that’s not either Adderal or Montelukast) because they affect what I still find incredibly pretentious to refer to as my “Bardic Gift”.

What the heck is a Bardic Gift? Well, I don’t know what it is to you (tovarisch.) Or even to other people possessed of (by) it. But I know how it manifests. And I suspect I know where it comes from.

The human mind is a mechanism for making sense and meaning out of chaotic reality. Some of our minds are just particularly afflicted with the need to create overarching, intricate mental machines of sense and meaning. We do it as we breathe, and it comes from such a basic level of our minds that we do this at a sub-conscious level. Literally as most of the time we’re not aware of it till the finished product presents itself with force and urgency to our conscious mind, fully finished and demanding we do the work of parturition to present it to the unsuspecting and fortunately largely uncaring world.

Fortunately? You say. Oh, heck yes, because the manifestations of this curse that I’ve identified fall on every artist, sure, but they also hit hard on the founders of cults, or creators of compelling, fully-formed, internally consistent political theories that sweep a lot of other people into the machine of sense and meaning. This is dangerous — do I need to tell you that? — because not all cults are on the side of light and, humans and reality being chaotic, almost any political theory that demands everything make internal sense and everyone fit into a niche in its vision spins more and more out of contact with reality. Such political theories fill mass graves.

Now, yes, this means that great advantage could perhaps be derived to the world in general by filling those mass graves with people like me. In theory. In very broad theory.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t work worth a damn. And to the extent you can cause it to work it plunges the civilization engaged in it into a cycle of repeating stupidity that amounts to civilizational Alzheimers.

I suspect it happens a lot to tribal civilizations, where it’s both possible to identify such people with much greater accuracy — In a smallish group you know which family is prone to wandering around with its loincloth on its head muttering about how we must paint ducks yellow so they don’t take over the world. And you know it’s hereditary — and eliminate an entire genetic strain. I suspect they’re eliminated over and over again. (Mostly under the guise of witch-hunting.) Until the tribe … remains in the neolithic for millennia. Which is why innovation and higher achievement comes with letting the oddlings move away and do their thing. Like, you know, our improbable, amazing nation. (Yes, there’s something seriously wrong with the harp in the illustration. do you really want me to spend the rest of the day autistically fixing it, or do you want me to finish this post and go work on the novel? Right.)

But we do have an example of a society with writing falling into this cycle too. China became so obsessed with getting rid of everyone with the bardic gift that they have not one but several periods in which they executed grandmothers that told stories. It came back. It is a natural tendency of the human brain, just exaggerated so it can be recreated by genetic drift. And they did it again. If you study their history (not recommended if you’re a depressive) it’s like watching grandad who has forgotten his own name continuously watering the cat and giving tuna to the house plant while walking around in someone else’s underwear and muttering how he’s the center of the universe.

So, you can’t eliminate us. And we can’t stop doing what we do, for the simple reason that it’s how our brains function while they remain alive. (I have had friends be disabled by serious health events, and I myself have been battling an intersection of serious issues for 20 years now. (Yes, it is getting better, but you only see it in the bird’s eye view. This year I can do things I couldn’t last year, but I’ve been so sick I’ve done very little. Still, it’s gains.) who still have the compelling stories — or other stuff, but most of my friends do stories — show up on whatever their schedule used to be. And they drive them insane, because–) The price of the gift is to use it.

We are given for free something for which most human beings have to struggle and the price is we have to do it. (Keep this in mind. It’s important.)

There is a plurality of creatives who are consciously creative and work hard for it. Most of the time I can tell when consuming the product, and I suspect most people can. But they are also more often really successful because they can control it and shape it to “what is selling.” Those of them who know we exist (many refuse to believe we do and think we’re lying) hate us with a purple passion, because they must painstakingly assemble structures that appear fully formed and moving to us. On the other hand, they can walk away from it when it stops paying, or when the field is so embuggered that it kills your soul to stay in it.

But we can’t. Because the vision that presents itself is so enormous, so clear, so immediate and pushes so hard that the only way to stop from creating is to kill what we are. And the only way to do that — in my case — is to feed the depressive cycle until I come to as close to death in life as I can.

I suspect most people who suffer from this use a similar mechanism to damp it, because Herr Professor Jordan Peterson has stumbled on the certainty that “Creatives who stop creating start dying.” He’s correct on that. If you take nothing else from this post and you’re a creative in this way — i.e. have the bardic gift — please, I implore you, take this: Creatives who stop creating start dying. I don’t honestly care if the creations of your gift are good or not, if you can make money or not. I don’t care if you have very little time because your real life job eats your life, I beg of you to start carving out some time to create. (Oh, and if your bend is either cult leader or political leader, unless you’re fighting on the side of letting individuals be individuals and not imposing your oh so compelling vision on them, please deviate it to writing. It’s usually possible.) TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE AND SANITY PLEASE START CREATING, no matter how slowly. (I have reason to believe at the extreme ebb of the dampening you start sending signals that make your body ill. Yes, I know that sounds newagy, but I am also convinced that’s what I did about 20 years ago, when I was trying to walk away from writing.)

Because the price of the gift is to use it, but you can channel it, it is vital that you stay in control of your own mind, so you can channel it in the right way. What is the right way? Well, again, I don’t know about you (tovarish) but in my case I try to use it not to drive people to despair or suicide. And to stir them away from the more poisonous of compelling bardic visions that involve restructuring society towards authoritarianism. Even if the thing isn’t exactly under my control, I usually can control it enough for that. (It’s a negotiated peace. I still have to keep certain elements in, or it’s worse than denying the gift.)

I’ve heard of other gifts, non-bardic. Grandma, for instance, had a healing gift. And she had sharp warnings about what happens if you don’t use it, which I gather is exactly the same as what happens to my kind, only hard and fast and with spikes in it.

Anyway — all this amounts to — I’m really leery and will always be of anything that takes control of my mind, because however misaligned and weird it is it is mine, I know it, and I have some idea how to navigate it so it doesn’t cause harm. But giving control to someone else–

Well, now. If you knew that the someone else was perfect and wanted only the best for you it would be tempting. (This is why a religious belief is protective for my kind, again so long as you keep it within bounds. My people fall into insanity all too easily. Because we do believe there is a being who is perfect and only wants what’s best for us. And (as someone put it recently) He doesn’t dress like either Jim Jones or Mao.) But there is no such human. Even the smartest and with the best intentions aren’t fit to control others, because each of us has highly personal biases and phobias that aren’t entirely under our own control. (Which is why totalitarian societies always, inevitably, become shit-holes.)

So, you must keep your mind as free of influences you can’t account for as possible. Or I can. Though I suspect the anti-histamine is less harmful than not sleeping for a week straight.

And it’s a balance. And I must walk it. Because I got this gift for free. And I need to use it as best possible. Or it will spin out of control and eat me.

Now for those not thus afflicted who’ve been reading this with horrified fascination (LOL. Trust me, it’s worse from the inside.) you too, if you’re living in this wonderful, chaotic, ever-inventing land of ours, were given a gift.

You were given Liberty for free. And the price of the gift is to use it. Or you start dying.

Use your liberty and do not let it be unnecessarily be encroached upon or deviated. (The “necessary” is up to each of us to determine. Like the juggling of lack of sleep with anti-histamine dulling of the senses.

And use it. Use it joyously and extravagantly. To create, to innovate or (simply! Ah.) to cretae a life you want to live the way you want to live it.

As we begin this long weekend, meditate on your gifts and how best to use it.

Stay frosty. Stay free. Stay creative.

*And for those wondering: Yes, sometimes I use blog posts to convey ideas that would be best conveyed in short stories. And this post might yet be a short story at some point. It’s just right now, mid-revision I don’t have time to go walk into yet another world. But it will come I suspect. Because this is complex and intricate and yeah, best conveyed in an emotional past. However this will stave it off enough for me to stay sane while finishing the monster novel. Until then:

Sincerely, SAH*

Imagine you are atop a cliff, and must leap to another. Below you there’s a chasm.

Your only chance is to leap for it. Which means there’s a moment where you’re suspended in the air. Between peaks. You could just go down hard. Lost. Done.

All you can do is keep your jump, keep your form, keep going.

Right now the US, and to an extent the world (because buckos, if we don’t make it, they’re just as cooked) is suspended in the middle of that jump.

If we fail the chasm is deep and dark. Note I’m not saying it’s eternal. If we fall the chances of the human race going down for the long count are minimal. I believe in humans. We’re scrappy and mean, a crazy little ape that just won’t stay down. But the count can be extended without being the final long count. And it can be very dark without the sun going out.

I don’t need to detail the chasm, I think. I’ve talked about it before. This generation is seriously unprepared. People out there are getting college degrees for the diploma they can’t read and being saddled with loans for jobs that don’t exist or which, thanks to the plethora of H1B visas don’t have openings, or don’t pay what they used to pay.

Even the trade schools read as a “modified, limited hangout”. A lot of those jobs are getting eaten by improved technology and/or being paid less because of immigration of one sort or another.

In fact, when making decisions for kids, I hear desperate grandparents suggest trade schools and I think “That’s a way to calm the grandparents, in the long run it won’t mean much.”

Because it all depends on how the jump goes. And either way any training you can get now, whether ivy league or local trade school if we crash you’re going to be out of luck. It’s going to be more of what we have seen: schools, government and everything weaponized against the people they theoretically serve. … for a while.

Not as long as they think it will be, because…. whisper it with me Catastrophic Technological Change. It will take their plans down too. But what comes after, we don’t know. Except that it will take a while. And what comes after only the gods of chaos know.

Except we haven’t fallen yet. We’re in middair.

Which is the reason that everything right now is in suspension. The current generation is caught between the current thing and what comes after.

What comes after? We don’t know. We know right now there are people trying really hard to remove obstacles and improve the chances our foot lands on the next peak. That the catastrophic technological changes, as it dissolves the present creates a future worth living in. That we have a shot. We, the US, western civilization, humans.

But it’s impossible to know exactly how we land, if we land, etc. because there are many things in the air with us. Mostly because–

Look, our economy has been hampered, played with, messed around since Wilson at least, and likely before. Sure, sure, the tech favored what happened, the hyper centralization of things, but there were still choices made that hinged not on the tech, but on the ideas in people’s heads. Centralized was considered better. Top down more efficient. And the cult of the expert led us into the hands of some very strange theoreticians.

It’s like a stream whose course has been deviated by dams. As you remove the dams, you get the river flowing back to its course.

Except in this case, it’s not the same river. Not anymore. Because tech has changed. People have changed. And no, not for the worst. I know. I can hear you people out there. I swear to bob assuming your ancestors were idiots and young people are dumber than you were is the immutable sin of mankind.

No, the young aren’t dumber than you were. They’re undeniably worse educated, in terms of formal education, but they are in many ways more used to change, to learning on their own, to finding their own paths than we were. Partly because we didn’t give them what they needed, and they’ve been finding their path. Partly because… well, we didn’t have acess to the firehose of information the new tech provides.

So what comes next? Who knows. You can’t tell the shape of things to come when they’re still not here. I can make guesses. I’m pretty good at guessing. And five years out I might make some accurate guesses. 20? 30? No.

Someone talked about how if you bring your A game neither AI nor anything else can stop you. They’re not wrong. But here’s the thing, your A game might not have the course you would play it on yet.

Look, when I was eleven I knew I wanted to be journalist. I wanted to find out the truth. I wanted to write about it. (I also wanted to write fiction, but that wouldn’t pay enough to live off of in Portugal.) So … well, when I investigated the possibility I found my politics (weird and European as they were) locked me out of the profession, because I wasn’t communist nor could I condone communism. Even if it called itself socialism and put on a funny wig.

So that was done, right? Except that now, forty years later that is precisely what I do, both here — let’s call it editorials — and at instapundit — let’s call it the night desk.

Could I have guessed at the shape of what I do now? Heck, guys I couldn’t have guessed 20 years ago when I started this blog on livejournal where it would take me, both good and bad.

Part of this is that we’re in a time of high change. Not in a time when you can prepare your kids for a future that might not be like the present but will be pretty close. And change is likely to accelerate as we remove the dams and trammels on the flow of tech, of economics, of invention.

Until recently I thought we were about to be shoved off the cliff, and we’d fall and then have to trust luck and spirit to make it back up fast enough that it wasn’t all lost.

Right now though, we’ve jumped. We’re up in the air, and our foot almost touches the next cliff.

All I can say is right now there’s hope.

The generation coming up, the generation caught in pretty bad positions? They’re the generations in between the ordered world of the past and what comes next.

What can we do?

Don’t give up on them. Don’t give up on removing the obstacles to freedom. Don’t give up on tech change.

And if you can, influence things in the direction of hope, of possibility, of innovation, of human liberty.

The way the wind blows might affect our jump only a little. But anything to give us a better chance.

Throw your heart into it, and throw yourself forward.