According To Hoyt

Baseless Elitism: The Dangers Of Inductive Reasoning
Vindaloo Diesel

False Induction

You know what really bugs me? Elitism. Not all of it, only the unjustified kind. Justified elitism is your basic meritocratic thinking: “I have achieved/accomplished/finished this, I therefore hold in a higher regard those who can do this than those who can’t.” That’s one thing. Then there’s unjustified elitism, such as “I am an atheist and he isn’t. Because there is no proof of god, this means I’m smarter than him.” Or “I’m ‘progressive’ and he’s ‘conservative’. He doesn’t support government-mediated social welfare and entitlements. Therefore he is a petty-mined, unintelligent, uncharitable bastard.”

It’s not quite the same thing as racism or prejudice. Instead it represents a failure of inductive reasoning. Person A takes a position on a specific subject. Person B takes this position and then generalizes it into an overall assessment of Person A’s character, intellect, or other personal characteristics.

In other words, it’s like trying to figure out the composition of an entire forest by looking at a single fir tree.

Overgeneralization and Oversimplification

Other than the fact that I’m sick of this false elitism being perpetrated all over my backside, what’s really scary about this mode of thought is that it hampers open communication and understanding of the complexity and nuances of ideas. So let’s leave behind elitism for a minute and focus on the twin foibles of overgeneralization and oversimplification.

Nothing illustrates this better than the idea of the Party Line. ‘Oh you voted Republican? You must not be a conservationist.’ Or ‘Oh you’re a Democrat? Gun-grabbing hoplophobic eunuch…’

You can see the problem already. It’s attempting to impute an Either/Or where none should exist. Can you link conservation, gun control, drug legalization, and social welfare together logically? Not especially. Which might explain why I see no problem with supporting two of them and being vehemently opposed to the other two (guess which ones).

Whether it’s the two party system or the innate desire to label someone either ‘us’ or ‘them’, I couldn’t say. What I do know is that this tendency destroys our ability to question our own stance and understand the other guy’s, whether political, scientific, personal, or professional. This tendency to oversimplification means that instead of the four positions mentioned in the last paragraph, we see only one, whether referring to ourselves or to our political opponents. Attack one, attack them all. To put this into context, say Person A attacks Person B’s position that all handguns should be banned. ‘A’ presents a well-reasoned argument that may have had some sway over Person B if he hadn’t gotten all defensive and closed himself off to the merits of Person A’s case immediately. Why did Person B get so defensive? Because when Person A attacked one of Person B’s many political opinions, Person B felt like Person A was attacking not only his entire political ideology, but also his personal character. Person B was oversimplifying his own political views into a single artificially monolithic construct.

Turning this around, imagine that Person A expresses a distaste for the Intelligent Design. Person B then makes some remark implying Person A is of a decidedly leftist persuasion, like himself. Person A takes umbrage and decides to start a movement called Conservatives Against Intelligent Design (launching at the end of the month-ish). In addition to making a total ass of himself, Person B has alienated a lot of people who, like Person A, aren’t particularly socialist, but aren’t ID supporters either. Best case scenario is that people like Person A no longer voice their opinions, fearing they’ll be lumped in with people like Person B. Worst case is that people like Person C, who was on the fence about evolution-creation but was definitely conservative, and Person D, who’s a political opportunist, throw their hats in the ring in support of ID (I’m pretty sure this is the real reason for the strength of the ID movement). They’ve taken advantage of Person B’s conflation of one issue with an entire ideology and used this as a weapon against B. They’re not taking the opposite position on that issue in order to say ‘Hey we’re different from this guy.’

Oversimplification and overgeneralization are bad no matter how you look at it. But ignoring all the strategic pitfalls you may find yourself in by engaging in false induction, at its most basic it is a crime against reason: It prevents you from being honest in your assessment of the beliefs, opinions, and contentions of everyone including yourself.

The Sin Of False Pride

I’ve got no problem with pride, so long as it’s deserved. As my best friend and I used to say back in high school “It ain’t cocky if you can back it up.” Of course, that was our excuse for being egomaniacal twerps who deserved a good ass-kicking and never got it. But anyway, the thing about pride is that it’s generally contingent upon a perception of achievement or superiority. The problem I see today, the problem I mentioned in the first paragraph, is that either the perception is false, or the achievement/superiority is much smaller in reality than it is in the individual’s mind.

People who possess otherwise fine minds allow unreasoned and often silly propositions to piggyback their way into their ideology along with one well-reasoned. As is seen all to often in scientific circles, a man can develop one of the most important theories in sociobiology while simultaneously supporting crackpot conspiracy theories. The brilliance of one does not somehow invalidate the wrongheadedness of the other. Granted, that was an extreme example, but many scientists seem to not dwell even a second on the many inconsistencies between the various philosophical theories underlying leftist concepts (’the collective’ and ‘Maslow’s hierarchy’ being foremost among them) and what science actually says about individual behavior. They imply that being ‘experts’ or ‘having proven themselves’ by getting a PhD, their political stance must be as reasoned as their professional and scientific opinions, when nothing could be further from the truth. These are the same people, after all, who don’t understand the distinction between positive and negative liberty, or that between a classical liberal and a conservative.
Or a leftist may imply that because he voted for social welfare, he’s a more charitable person than the next man. He’s taken a simple proposition; that he supports government-mediated charity whereas the other man doesn’t, and extended it to imply that the other man doesn’t believe in charitable works whatsoever.

Or the conservative might look upon my own stance on marriage, drugs, or freedom of expression and declare that I am an immoral hedonist while he’s a sparkling beacon of tolerance, brotherly love, and non-judgmentalism. He’d be just as wrong as the men in the other two situations.

So long as we allow this false pride in ourselves and in others to go unchecked, we will never have a free exchange of ideas, we will never be able to argue on the merit of the positions themselves, and we will never find our way past the flawed positions that all political ideologies flow from.

** Vindaloo Diesel is alternately known on the internet as a meathead, intellectual, geek, or giant troll, which he uses to disguise the fact that he’s actually an amazing guy who helps people he should probably ignore. His friends find equal amounts of consternation and amusement in the fact that he’s incapable of dating women who aren’t evil gorgeous blondes who treat him like garbage. When he’s not ranting about life, the universe, and everything; he’s either lifting weights, looking for fights (but they keep running away!), engaging in juvenile humor, or making homoerotic jokes with male friends who may or may not actually be straight (because Gay Roulette is even funnier than Gay Chicken).

 

You aren’t G-d, and thank heavens, neither am I.

Not that I’m putting Stranger in a Strange Land down.  on a scale of Heinlein books, we’ll say it was my favorite at 14, not so much at 55, but still, you know, yeah “Thou art God” and all that might have been the zeitgeist of the time (or to quote Heinlein at a later date “what some writers will do for money!’) but Heinlein still missed the most outrageous implications of the idea.

And why should he not?  He was a man who believed in personal responsibility and tending your own garden, and keeping your nose off other people’s gardens, so his Martian who has tumbled on to a modified, collective solipsism uses his powers for good…. ish.  Sure, there’s a lot of mattress beating, but in the end, the “special powers” are used to do things like lose weight, fix one’s life, etc.

Being G-d — note, not godlike, which is more what people try to escape to with super heroes and all that — is rather more complicated a business.  You’d be responsible for before and after, for eternity and its sequel.  It’s a job only an insane person would want.  Unfortunately, a lot of insane people are being thrust into that position.  Or they’re going insane after being thrust into that position.

Not that they’re gods, or heaven have god like powers, but they don’t believe in a power or a reality higher than themselves, which effectively thrusts them into the position of deciding what the rules are, and what the purpose every single day.

Humans weren’t designed that way.  We’re creatures of the band.  Our remote almost-human ancestors would have been born into a rigid hierarchy, because ape bands have a rigid hierarchy.  It can change, but it can’t go away.  We were designed to obey rules and boundaries, learned and instinctive.  And the very keeping of body and spirit together, in more primitive times, imposed an order on a primate’s life, whether pre-human or human.  There was food to forage for, and things to hunt, and young ones to look after, and someone had to look out for the lions.

It wasn’t a wide and  formless chaos in which you didn’t even believe reality existed outside your perceptions.

No, I don’t believe in nobility of birth, which makes me rather mad for an ape.  But I do believe in structures, in order, in purpose.

I remember with both fondness and dread the summer vacations of my teen years.  The first month or so was lovely, as I could spend the day doing whatever I wanted.  The last month (particularly if the start of school was postponed way past October as it sometimes was due to stupid political tricks) was heinous.  I could spend the day doing whatever I wanted.

The difference is that in the beginning of vacation, I had a pile of books I’d been accumulating during the school year, I had walks I wanted to take, friends I wanted to touch base with, stuff that had been waiting to be written.

By the end of that vacation I’d done all that, and it was a formless nothing, broken occasionally with housekeeping duties (they were there at the beginning too, but viewed as interruptions.)  I never liked school much (I liked learning, but remarkably little of it happened at school) but by the end of that, it was a welcome relief, because it circumscribed those wide and formless day in which I, mostly, got sick of myself.

Were the social rules thrown out in the late sixties (heck, started to be thrown out in the early twentieth century after WWI) restrictive and stupid?  All social rules are restrictive and stupid, and a good number of them are objectively counterproductive.

Except for where they give us a framework and a guide to life.  When we threw out all social rules, we also threw out ancient precepts and cautions, things like “if you don’t work, you don’t eat” and “deserving poor” and… and misery or happiness are in your hands, choose.

Instead we replaced them with a lot of nonsense “victim of society” and “no one is ever really guilty” and “Who are we to judge.”

This opening of our minds till our brain fell off left those people not fortunate enough to be raised by people of strong principles floating in a sea of tedium and lack of purpose.  Since the only firm principle they have is that there was never anyone as enlightened or perceptive as themselves, they can’t examine their own beliefs and actions for errors.  They also can’t find reality with two hands and a seeing eye dog, which is why they think reality changes with what you believe, and therefore think that your refusing to engage in their preferred speech, or saying things they don’t like is a literal aggression.  Because they believe words an stories can tear the world apart and put it together in another shape.

It’s not that they’re gods — though they might think they are — but that they’ve reverted to the mind of the primitive savage, unable to connect cause and effect outside themselves, and therefore living in a world they think thoughts or intentions can alter for good and ill: buffeted by the thoughts and intentions of others, looking in vain for the safe room that will allow them to remake the world anew with their thoughts.

That is what is behind their attacks on those who don’t think the same way they do.  That is what is behind their bizarre displays like trying to levitate the Denver Mint.  It is definitely what is behind their belief that if they erase history and remake it in their image, and install a regime that has brought death wherever it was tried, this time there will be utopia.

They’re savages, in a haunted world, blindly offering sacrifice to forces they can’t understand and trying to think the world in their image and semblance, then finding scape goats when it doesn’t work.  Which is always, because that’s not how this works.  That’s not how any of this works.

Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you stop thinking about it.  It has a power over you.  The actions and wishes of others, both the ones that live with you, and those who occupied this earth for millennia before you were born have an effect on you,  both good and ill.  They discovered things that worked, and things that didn’t.

The perfect communist state is not going to suddenly work, just because you want it to, real hard.

Things like getting up early, keeping healthy, finding an occupation you can work at without too much suffering, looking after yourself and those you are responsible for, keeping a decent and cleanly appearance and space, abstaining from (too many) mind altering substances (well, a glass of wine doesn’t alter my mind.  It does relax my mood.  But that’s me, with my genetics.  Your millage may vary.) work.  They’ve worked … well, since we have records or humans.

What should you pursue?  What will give meaning to your life?

I don’t know.  I’m not G-d.  I do know that for all of us there’s something that’s worth doing really hard.  Whether it’s keeping the most amazing garden ever, or writing books, or simply being the perfect secretary.

For many of us what gives meaning to life is not what feeds us (and for a long time writing was both of those things to me, but different types of writing) and that is pursued in the after-hours. Or what gives meaning to life is not your work, but that it enables you to feed your family, go out with your friends, and enjoy those.

I know someone whose higher purpose seems to be long hikes; I know someone whose higher purpose is to be the best administrative assistant ever (haven’t talked to her in years, but Portugal, you know?); and I know writers and artists and clothes designers, partly because, you know, I tend to associate with that type of thing.

As far as I can tell your higher purpose in life should be something that will live after you, to be satisfying.  That can be raising your family, yes, but it can be writing books, crocheting, making quilts, or even just living an exemplary life, which people, seeing, want to imitate.  You won’t see your influence, but it will live on after you and shape the future.  Even if all you do is rescue stray kittens.

And you need companions on your journey, people who will see and understand.

The early left had all this, as they were convinced that they were working towards paradise on Earth, and they were by and large happy individuals.  I think the current left knows their purpose is nihilism disguised as revolutionary fervor.

That doesn’t work, because you start hating yourself and everything around you.

Work for something you think will bring good.  Yes, some of us will be tragically wrong like those early communists (though remembering humans AREN’T infinitely perfectable would have corrected their error) but many won’t, and thus the future becomes better than the past.

But more importantly, you won’t be floating in a sea of lack of purpose and tedium.  You’ll get up to do something which is an ordered endeavor and furthers what you believe is good.  And you’ll have a band, going along with you, and supporting you on the way.  You’ll be a happy ape, whatever else you are.

I doubt anyone will read my work after I’m dead, but someone will have read it, and used his or her own gifts to create something I can only dream of.  Or someone who read it will have said something to someone else, who will go on to create something great.

And so we go, and so things get better. Not from above, by government fiat.  Not because some human who is “a sort of god” can think us all into paradise with his mind, but slowly, incrementally, with the present grounded on the past and the future extending into infinity with promise we can’t imagine.

Now forgive me, I must go, I have my own tree to climb.  Later today I hope to finally catch the short story I’ve been hunting.  And then there’s a novel on the horizon.  It might even turn out to be great.

It’s a worthy pursuit.

 

 

 

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com.  One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM ALMA BOYKIN: Familiar Tales

Smiley Lorraine: Wolverine. Rosie Jones: 100-lb. Skunk. Morgana Lorraine: Witch with Editorial Problems.

Welcome to a world where Familiars choose magic workers, and a few others, as their partners. A world of adventure, tax-deductions, bad publisher tricks, and odd veterinary clinics, where wolverines wear glasses and iguanas sing along with the radio—badly—while casting spells and keeping their chosen humans out of mischief.

Or try to.

(Five short-stories.)

AND IT HAS A SEQUEL:

FROM ALMA BOYKIN:  Strangely Familiar

 

When a goth-gal gets a Familiar, everything changes.

Neither Jamie Macbeth nor Lelia Chan wanted Familiars. Now they have them, and Angus and Tay insist that their humans rise to the occasion. From inverted autos and giant cloven-hoof prints to attacking puzzle balls and the perils of shedding season, nothing’s quite the same once a Familiar saunters into the picture.

Especially when magic-workers start dying of unnatural causes. Or do they?

[The silly writer — what do writers know? — calls this a novella, but it’s actually a 50k word novel, not even short by indie standards.  Your gain, you get a bargain.- SAH]

FROM PAM UPHOFF:  Project Dystopia (The Directorate Book 8).

They didn’t warn him about the giant poisonous spiders.

Ebsa joins Paer on an archaeological project seeking to discover who built, and what destroyed a civilization on a cross-dimensional world just a few centuries ago. But the spider attacks were . . . not that bad.

It was when they drove to the coast to help an injured man that they discovered just how bad it could get.

FROM BERNADETTE DURBIN: Minstrel

When a heroine in peril disguises herself as a minstrel to escape her treacherous, wrathful brother, she finds herself on a series of unorthodox adventures that raise from lowly minstrel to king’s advisor.

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: Capricious

 

 

Good Bad Books by Alma Boykin

George Orwell talked about good-bad poetry, most notably Rudyard Kipling’s works. According to Orwell, the poems were memorable, well-written, and enjoyable to read and recite. Alas (for Orwell), the poems supported the Empire and King, failed to teach the proper social message, and distracted people from the real problems of the empire and of society as a whole.

In history we occasionally talk about good bad books. Now, these are not “well-written books with a bad message,” pace Orwell. Nor are they the books you sneak-read when no one is looking, adult Westerns or steamy romances, Aga sagas (a British sub-genre), or those books that used to arrive “tastefully packaged in plain wrappers for your privacy” according to the ads in the back of the magazines. Nor are they the so-bad-they’re-funny. No, these are the books that are so strikingly shockingly appalling that a herd of historians rear back on their hind legs and say “oh h-ll no! I’ll show you,” and a surge of really useful, good, insightful literature appears.

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO BRING UP THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR/WAR BETWEEN THE STATES/WHATEVER. IT IS AN EXAMPLE THAT I HAVE BOOKS FOR. 

One of the clearest examples of this is the historiography of the history of chattel slavery in the US. In 1908 U.B. Phillips wrote a book, American Negro Slavery arguing that slavery was not an entirely bad thing, that it had problems, but it was a civilizing force and that the Yankees had done terrible things by the way in which they eliminated it. It developed a regional following and some rebuttals, but lingered in the background for a while, until WWII exploded, bringing about a new generation of historians. In 1956 Kenneth Stampp argued that slavery was evil and that it was not paternalistic at all, but was all about economic control and domination. And then Stanley Elkins published, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life in 1959 and everyone went, “whoah. That can’t be right.” Elkins argued from a psycho-historical standpoint, comparing slaves to Holocaust survivors, and introducing the idea of “sambos,” of African-Americans infantilized by the brutality of slavery, making them all immature victims. Yeah, you know what’s coming next.

1976, Eugene Genovese published Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made and showed that slaves had been actors in their own right. Not infantilized, not made voiceless, the slaves created a rich culture with regional variations, one that encouraged strong family and community ties and that provided a foundation for the freedmen communities that followed. (And it’s a really well-written book, too. Highly recommend all his stuff.)  Peter Kolchin looked past the Atlantic to compare American slavery with Russian serfdom and demonstrating the complexities of both. In 2000 Ira Berlin’s book Many Thousands Gone covers the entire experience of slavery in North America, looking at how it varied in place and time. Phillips and Elkins two books, by now completely discredited, spurred a flurry of very good and useful research that added a great deal of personal story to the field of Southern History and slavery history.

How do you spot good-bad history? Well, for one, is the author proclaiming some new thesis that no one has ever considered, or applying a new technique in a way that perhaps doesn’t make sense. I consider John Demos’s book Entertaining Satan an example of this. He used Freudian analysis on the girls involved in the Salem, MA witchcraft trials. Now, there’s a big problem with trying to get inside the minds of people who left no written records. And a bigger problem with trying Freudian analysis on pre-modern minds. Yes, some things are pretty universal through the ages. Some, on the other hand, are not. Where Demos uses maps and demographic and economic studies he’s pretty good, but Freud doesn’t fit. And several books have come out that do a better job of discussing and describing the events, the whys and wherefores.

I also look for sources. There is a well known popular historian of religion who produces a number of books about different major faiths, including a recent comparison volume. This author never uses original sources. And some of the claims made really need primary-source support that the author does not provide. That sets my “bad history” needle twitching – a claim that lacks supporting evidence. “Trust me” is not a good historical argument. If I pick up a new environmental history, I go to the bibliography and start reading. If certain books and sources are not there, even just as passing mentions like “in contrast to So-and-So, my work shows that,” I get concerned.

I suspect we can find similar stories in fiction. Someone ventures forth with a horrible treatment of an original or useful idea, and a bunch of other writers go, “hey, I can do that, but better.” I know John C. Wright took the key scene of the award-winning dinosaur short story and produced one far better written, and more thought-provoking, using a very similar starting point. I’m not certain what one could do with Empress T, although the idea of someone being anointed by a mysterious force to be ruler of the galaxy has been used a few times. And IIRC it usually ends poorly for the galaxy. You could have some fun with the original Glittery Hoo Hah ™ trope, wherein, say, a spaceport workin’ gal has a fling with an alien and to her chagrin discovers that he’s fallen deeply in love with her and wants to be with her for the rest of their lives. She just wants to get the money so she can move on to her next client and pay her bills.

There are some historical (pre-historical novels, really) that took Jane M. Auel’s work, applied archaeology and serious anthropology, and came up with more plausible versions. Minus the naughty bits, or at least the most explicit naughty bits.

I’ve looked at the blurbs for a few feminist pacifist sci fi or fantasy books and thought, “Hmm, there’s an interesting idea there, but not worth my paying $35 and a lecture about the evils of war and how One Good Woman can bring Everlasting Peace and Harmony by the strength of her . . . ahem, moving right along.” But the idea that places do not exist until they are mapped has a lot of possibilities.

Something I’m exploring in the current free draft, Language of the Land, is what would happen if women really did run everything, a world where feminists run the show and men are legal minors all their lives, unless they are able to purchase manumission. And even then their rights are curtailed. The idea came in part from skimming a chapter of a really, really bad fantasy that I’m not going to bother naming, where this was presented as a good thing. I added an element of magic that levels the ground (literally) between men and women.

There are people who love any book. I’m sure somewhere, someone thinks Empress T. is a wonderful story with a fantastic plot. There are people who think Elkins had something in his hypothesis, even if he didn’t approach it correctly. I know Kris Rusch’s blog generated a heated discussion of “good and bad books,” with some useful ideas batted back-and-forth. There are also badly written books that are their author’s pride and joy. But those are not good-bad books, by Orwell’s definition or by mine.

[The inestimable Mizz Boykin has a non-bad book out.  Strangely Familiar: A Familiar Tales Novella.  Go and give it a try. – SAH]

 

Though I’m taking a break from membership because the idiots are having a non-ironic exhibit on how great Cuba is and her “complex” politics (there’s nothing complex about feudal servitude, which is what the Castros have installed in the island) I love the Denver Museum of Nature And Science.

Most of all I love the “hall of life” which starts with the formation of the Earth and ends with proto-humans.

To begin with, some of the exhibits are aesthetically pleasing and stimulate the imagination (none of these are the large plastic models of the creatures while alive which need a make over/upgrade horribly bad. They look — and probably are — of seventies vintage.)  But more importantly, they give me the… length and breadth of the struggles of life on Earth, and a sense for how many times everything came near to being lost.

This is particularly good for me in the times we live in, because it reminds me that despair is a sin, or as someone or other told his followers, impatient for him to come back and put everything right for them “Do not fall into despair.”

Lately despair is everywhere.  As the magnitude of the — I don’t like the term, but it’s the most apt — deep state’s hold on our civil life, and their reckless disregard for the wishes of Americans become obvious, there are any number of Agony Annies wanting to turn in all their chips and cower in despondence and despair under their desks.  As it becomes obvious that not just our government but our culture is corrupt all the way down, they scream they’re being de-platformed and sit down for a good cry.

I’m often accused of being an optimist and out of touch with reality.  This usually provokes gales of laughter to those who know me well.  I’m a depressive with a tendency to spiraling fits of depression that make me unable to function sometimes for months, beyond the strict necessities of life.  ALL of my friends, and my family members know that, and also how many times they have to talk me out of the fetal position so I can, you know, bathe and dress. ( I do usually manage that, though eating varies between not at all and a lot.  I do manage to function to put a post up, or go to the store, or vacuum.  It’s just that there’s effort involved.  And fiction writing is sometimes quite beyond my energy.)

Now do I inflict that on readers of my blog?  No.

You know why not?  Because sometime in my thirties, I realized that I was going to end up heavily medicated and unable to tell which parts of my thoughts were me or the meds, or I was going to have to learn to tell reality apart from the whispers of the black dog.  Which I manage.  Most of the time.  Oh, I don’t manage to control the feelings, which is why everything is done with immense effort, but I can control the thoughts and reason through things.

In other words, I’m not an optimist.  I’m an individual who — for genetic reasons, I’m sure, though a lot of the depression is auto-immune related and might be part of the inflammation — unable to trust her feelings has learned to reason through to reality and to the real odds on things.

I think most normal people get their feeling of how things are going out of the air, which is to say, once one of the herd panics, the others stomp off in the same direction.

Look, I never told you things were wonderful, did I?  The left is in a raging panic, like any aristocrat who feels his power base tremble.  Their bizarre behavior and even more bizarre ideas that they’re not ashamed to put in public are a sight to see.  One none of us would have believed if we hadn’t seen it.  Hell, I grew up amid leftists, worked almost twenty years for an industry filled with them, and I see it and don’t quite believe it.

This wouldn’t precisely be a problem, if over the last almost century they hadn’t wormed into the positions of power in our culture, our society, and honestly at this point, most of our scientific institutions.  Because they have, though, this makes the institutional backbone of our society sick nigh onto death, which yes, does affect all of us.

The good news, though, is that they’re truly terrible managers, and sh*tty at running anything.

Good news? you say.  Yes, good news, because it leaves openings for other ways to do things.  I’ve told you before, publishing would never have met a real challenge from indie, if they hadn’t happened to decide that their job was NOT to sell books to the masses but to “educate” the masses, thereby rendering their product well night unconsumable, and leaving an opening for competition.

Let’s say they’re doing the same in other institutions too.  I can’t tell you of them because the stories I hear are from commenters and friends who are, for good and sufficient reason, deeply under cover.  But let’s say almost everywhere from the would-be hard sciences to retail, the story is more or less the same.  “The business is being run in the interests of Marxist ‘wokedness’ not of keeping the business going, and the wheels are starting to come off.”

The fact that they’re such terrible managers, and that the wheels started coming off 20 years ago are good things, because men are adaptable animals.  We’ve gotten used to working around these things to a great extent, often without noticing.

The fact that they’re going completely bat guano nuts is good too.  Why?  Because before this there was some doubt of ideological bias, even where it was plain as the nose on your face (well MY nose is VERY plain, guys.) I remember having an argument with a fellow righty about why there were so few conservatives/libertarians in publishing.  He completely bought their version, hook, line and yeah sinker, and maintained it was because conservatives “being the status quo” were less creative.  Note that this involved someone who was (and is) here in the trenches with us, knowing exactly how established the left is everywhere, believing that the right is “the establishment” instead of the club of the damned who managed to think themselves outside of polite society.

Now?  Now the left has gone so enraged, so in-your-face demanding of utter conformity and has so glaringly threatened job loss or worse for those who don’t march in goosestep with them, that these polite fictions that kept dissidents quiescent are gone.

Sure, you can believe them, but you have to be crazy to keep believing them when challenged, because frankly we have proof otherwise daily.

So why are so many people wanting to give up now?

To an extent, I understand. I mean we knew that the left had control of everything, but now it’s being rubbed in our face EVERYDAY.  It’s like knowing someone in your family hates you, versus actually catching them sinking a metaphorical knife in your back.  As I’ve had occasion to know recently (not in my literal family) even though you knew it was coming, it still hurts a lot.  (Hence “Curse your sudden and inevitable betrayal.”)

On the other hand, what exactly did we expect?  Those in power, when their grip starts to slip, will fight back.  How the hell else would you expect the story to go?  Is this a Mary Sue novel?

Sure, I see them running by with their heads on fire going “Google, Amazon, facebook.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the reason those worked and became monopolistic is that they did their job better than others.  Amazon’s platform for instance is way better than any other ebook seller.  And yeah, I’m on Weme and Minds, and everything, but you know what, the flaws are obvious even compared to the current mess that is Facebook.

The counter-intuitive good news (yeah, I’m full of those today) is that they’ll fail and become vulnerable in the same measure as they become “woke” because “Wokeness” requires such a departure from reality at every level that it can’t function in the real world.

I’ll mention, on this, that Amazon is the least “politically involved” of these.  Yeah, I know, they pulled confederate flags, but that’s no more than corporate dunderheadism.  The screams that they’re censoring or deplatforming indie writers who are conservative are nonsense, and propagated by someone so far in the chamber that she can’t see outside it.  The truth is that they’re randomly deplatforming writers of whatever stripe in a futile attempt to get past fake reviews and robots that “page read” things for KU.  I don’t know what the solution to their problem is, I know what they’re doing is just pissing off random people.  They honestly might have to go with a “per book” price, and then consign themselves to eat a certain number of “borrows” which are from bots.  BUT I’m in enough writers’ groups with people of all stripes (in some of them I’m there because I’ve been quiet so many years they forgot I exist.  Let’s put it that way) and TRUST ME ON THIS, there is no political motive to the loss or reviews or the loss of accounts.  (And the later worries me more, as it’s more or less random, so scary.)

The others?  Well, they’re squandering their monopolistic advantage by becoming “the least respected name in–”  Which is how things get replaced, but yeah, not instantly.  Even publishing had a decade to play with their push-model crazy before the competition arose.  So some patience is indicated.

I have at least two friends of a technical bend working on ways to sell ebooks to the public that present a LIKELY possibility of competing with Amazon, despite Amazon’s entrenched advantages.  I’ve been using duckduckgo for searches over google (yeah, I duckduckwent) and so far Facebook has failed to banish me to outer darkness (Not to mention not banishing Brad Torgersen who has turned FB into a powerful platform.)  I checked my profile recently — ie. the things they think they know about me — and realized that they think I’m politically moderate.  Which explains all those calls from OFA in 2012, right?

So, again, our advantage is that yeah, they have control of the institutions, but they’re not very efficient or good at it.  Which means there’s room both for infiltration and competition.

Will this happen overnight?  Snort, giggle.  What are you, two?

The left took control of society before I was born.  It is unlikely I’ll face a level playing field before my death.  Possible, but unlikely.  It’s likely it will remain easy to get ahead in my field and others by making woke noises.  It’s likely that all we do is keep society functioning, and make small gains until… well… probably until my grandchildren are my age.  It took the left 100 years to get where it is.  We’re not going to reverse it overnight.

But we must try.

We must try because the left will destroy not just civilization but humanity, if left to play out its illusions uncontested.

We must try because we’re the people who don’t betray their principles for advancement.

And we must try because we are making gains.  Things are shifting ever so slowly.

No one now tries to tell you that there are no conservatives in most traditional publishing because conservatives just aren’t creative.  No one would believe them if they told you that.

No one in the general population is that worried about the left’s sacred cows, like anthropogenic global warming.  We’ve chipped enough at that.  If you go to Europe where we don’t have that kind of foothold, you’ll figure out how much really quickly.

More and more normal, every day people just scratch their heads at the leftists in their pulpits and say “Well, that’s a thing.”  Then shrug and go about their every day business.

The wheel is turning.  It’s slow but it is turning.  You can see it in a hundred interactions, a million little lights glimmering in the darkness.

If you want to give up do it.  The way ahead is still very hard.  You can get better rewards by making noises like a leftist.  (I’m afraid these days just keeping your lip buttoned is no longer an option.  If you do that, you’ll be lumped in with us, outcasts.)

Besides, despair is cozy and comfortable.  As Peterson says (and I said it before I heard him, btw) if nothing you do means anything, then you don’t have to do anything.  There’s no moral duty to resist the crazy, no imperative to act.  You can do nothing.  Sure, despair and depression come with that, but they’re a small price to pay for not feeling like you have to do or risk anything.  It’s a lot like all those writers who want to be writers but know no one would recognize their brilliance.  They’re free to write only when the muse strikes, and not bother putting their work before the public, because, well, it wouldn’t make any difference, and they’re cozy in their despair.  Hey, at least they don’t have to spend all their free time writing.

It’s an understandable choice.  And some people are just tired of fighting.  That’s even more understandable.

It’s not one I choose to take. And if you want to see the cause of liberty triumph, eventually, it’s not one you’ll choose, either.

Build under, build over, build around.  Get ready to take the weight of each institution as it goes gibbering off into the night of leftism.

Be not afraid.

We got this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perpetuating the Problem and Passing the Blame – by Amanda S. Green

After last week’s little foray into snarking, I thought it time to get back to Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks & White Liberals. To say I believe this is an essay I believe everyone should read is putting it mildly. Sowell doesn’t shy away from hard topics nor does he sugar coat anything. What he does is poke holes into what liberals want us to believe are truths. He does so with facts, with logic and with experience. In doing so, he shows how liberals, especially white liberals, have caused more harm than good, despite all they crow from the proverbial mountaintop.

The next section of the essay is entitled “White Liberals” and Sowell wastes no time in getting down to business.

White liberals in many roles—as intellectuals, politicians, celebrities, judges, teachers—have aided and abetted the perpetuation of a counterproductive and self-destructive lifestyle among black rednecks. The welfare state has made it economically possible to avoid many of the painful consequences of this lifestyle that forced previous generations of blacks and whites to move away from the redneck culture and its values. Lax law enforcement has enabled the violent and criminal aspects of this culture to persist, and non-judgmental intellectual trends have enabled it to escape moral condemnation. As far back as 1901, W. E. B. Du Bois, while complaining of racial discrimination against blacks, also condemned “indiscriminate charity” for its bad effects within the black community. (BRAWL pp 51-52)

That single paragraph strikes at the heart of so much of the liberal agenda. Welfare. Relaxation of law enforcement rules (Hello, London, this applies to you too). Indiscriminate charity. Is it any wonder so many liberals, especially white ones, hate what Sowell has to say?

By projecting a vision of a world in which the problems of blacks are consequences of the actions of whites, either immediately or in times past, white liberals have provided a blanket excuse for shortcomings and even crimes by blacks. The very possibility of any internal cultural sources of the problems of blacks have been banished from consideration by the fashionable phrase “blaming the victim.” (BRAWL, pg 52)

Oh my, doesn’t that sound an awful lot like what we hear whenever someone starts questioning motivation, causation, or anything else when it comes to a cause the liberals have adopted. We are supposed to believe every woman who cries rape or sexual assault and not look at the circumstances surrounding the alleged crime because to do otherwise is to victim blame. We are supposed to take into account every time a cop is shot, especially if that cop is white and the shooter is black, the “fact” that cops are bad and have abused the African-American community for years. To do otherwise is to victim blame. Of course, that forgets one important fact, in that situation, the victim is the fallen cop and not the shooter. Except the African-American community has been assigned the status of victim by many who self-identify as liberals. Why? Because, more than 150 years ago, slavery was legal in this country. So, everything goes back to that and we, as whites, must continue to make amends for things done by people long dead. [AND to people long dead- SAH]

As Sowell says, blaming “others for anything in which blacks lag has become standard operating procedure among white liberals.” (BRAWL, p 52) There is something wrong with tests if blacks don’t pass at the same levels as whites. We have professors claiming math is sexist or racist. Yet no one seems to bat an eye and ask why Asians are able to take the same tests and pass them at the same – or higher – level as whites. No one seems to worry about how Hispanic or other minorities do on these exams. Yet white liberals cry “foul!” long and loud over how these tests are biased against African-American students.

My question to those liberals: what makes the African-American student more important of a minority than the others?

It is a question that will never be answered or, if it is, will be turned against me. I’ll be accused of showing my white privilege, of not understanding the problem, of being insensitive. I will become the problem, as will anyone else who asks similar questions, at least in the minds of the liberals. After all, it is so much easier to blame the person asking the question than it is to actually consider the question, and the problem underlying it, and realize you might actually be part of the problem.

Any parent knows there comes a time when you have to tell you child you expect certain behaviors from him. There are certain social rules they have to learn and follow. There are certain levels of achievement in school they have to attain and, if they surpass them, they will be rewarded. Parents, at least good parents, don’t tend to reward or accept mediocrity from their children if their children are capable of doing more. They certainly don’t encourage it. You want the best for your children so you encourage them to do their best. THAT is how they get into the better colleges. THAT is how they find the better jobs. THAT is how they earn promotions.

And that, my friends, is something the liberals don’t discuss, much less admit, when they continue to promulgate a welfare state and a welfare state of mind.

Think about it. When is the last time you heard a liberal suggest someone might want to look at themselves, at what they did that led up to their failure? It doesn’t matter what sort of failure. It is the act of introspection in question here. According to Sowell, you don’t see liberals doing that very often. “Apparently there can only be external reasons for anything negative that happens to blacks.” (BRAWL pg 53) What a disservice that is to the African-American community. By taking this approach, you don’t allow them to grow. You allow them to make excuses and blame others without ever taking a hard look at themselves.

The incorrigibility of white society—and the corresponding futility of black efforts to improve their situation by improving their own education and other qualifications—is another leitmotif of much white liberal writing. (BRAWL, pg 54)

Let’s all take up the cry of “White guilt! White privilege!” After all, that’s basically what the liberals are claiming. We can’t understand because of the color of our skin. It’s all our fault.

Except there’s a bit of a problem with that. Not all of us who question the cries of “white guilt” and “white privilege” are white. Another problem is those claims are only applied when someone questions a situation involved African-Americans. You don’t hear it when we discuss any other minority. Why is that? Liberal America doesn’t have an answer for that. Or, if it does, it won’t give it because it will disrupt their narrative.

Something else liberals tend to “overlook”, as Sowell points out, is the hostility – the prejudice – some members of the African-American community hold towards others: Jews, Hispanics, Whites, etc. Why don’t we hear about this? Because we are told over and over again that only whites can be prejudiced, “that racism requires power, which blacks do not have.” (BRAWL, p 54) However, as Sowell points out, “the arbitrary proviso of ‘power’ was never part of the definition of racism until racism among blacks became widespread enough to require a convenient evasion.” (BRAWL, pg 55)

Once again, the rules are changed to fit the narrative and no one had better question it or you’ll be guilty of victim-blaming, of showing your white privilege, etc. We must march to the “right” beat – or is that the “left” beat – or be condemned.

Liberals have been so busy finding excuses and immortalizing them that they have become a large part of the problem.

The general orientation of white liberals has been one of “What can we do for them? ”What blacks can do for themselves has not only been of lesser interest, much of what blacks have in fact already done for themselves has been overshadowed by liberal attempts to get them special dispensations—whether affirmative action, reparations for slavery, or other race-based benefits—even when the net effect of these dispensations has been much less than the effects of blacks’ own self-advancement. For example, although the greatest reduction in poverty among blacks occurred before the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, the liberal vision in which black lags are explained by white oppression requires black advances to be explained by the fight against such oppression, symbolized by the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. This scenario has been repeated so often, through so many channels, that it has become a “well-known fact” by sheer repetition. Moreover, this protest-and-government-action model has become the liberals’ preferred, if not universal, model for future black advancement. (BRAWL pp 55-56)

This sort of “help” has been anything but. How many generations do we now have of families living on welfare? Yes, welfare is necessary in some situations, but it should not be an end-all, cure-all for our nation. It should be there to help those who can’t work. It should offer training for those who can work but who lack the skills. But, for the latter, there should be a limit to how long they continue to be on the dole. It doesn’t matter what their race, color, creed or sexual identity might be. What we need to be wary of is becoming a welfare state.

But there I go again, blaming the victim and showing my white privilege. (Yes, that is my great-grandmother – my Cherokee great-grandmother – who is spinning in her grave at the idea of my family claiming white privilege.)

Well-meaning or not, liberals have done more harm than good. Worse, they continue to do so, without qualms and without daring to look at the impact their actions have had on a large section of our population. How do we stop it? I’m not sure we can. Not unless we are willing to stand up and speak out and face, without losing our temper or becoming defensive, the condemnation they will sling our way.

For now, we need to read more authors like Sowell. We need to learn our history and learn the facts – not accept the “corrected” history they would thrust down our throats.

Looking at the rest of the essay, it’s going to take two more weeks to finish it up. Sowell manages to pack more information in a few pages than most so-called scholars do in tomes. So, until next week, do yourself a favor and pick up something by Sowell and read it.

[For raising the tone of this blog — ATH is culture! — and helping me with the exposing of the roots of the current mess — in her case with more facts! — if you decide to  send the woman a drink]

 

Or worse, in this case, they get actions.

Look, guys, this is not new, and it wouldn’t surprise many people in the past.  It’s more that what we’re engaged in is a very weird revolutionary activity.

It is a revolutionary activity, don’t make a mistake on that, just because I haven’t bared my boobs like the chick above, and I’m not charging forth with standard.

Think back, those of you who are my age or close to it, to all the times when you were — seemingly — the only one who saw that “what everybody knew” was wrong, all the times when if you had said what you believed people wouldn’t necessarily oppose you: they’d just think you were crazy.  It’s not that you didn’t think them: of course you thought them.  And in the company of very trusted friends or family, you might even say something, but you had no way of reaching the public.

Having blogs, commenting on blogs, working on internet diffusion of ideas that are contrary to the establishment — and the establishment is wholly liberal now — is a revolutionary activity.

The founding fathers and their precursors did in fact engage in much the same activity, given their technology: handbills, political discussions, all of them were part of the revolution, or perhaps the ramping up to it.

Thing is, the founding fathers, (and the few saneish French revolutionaries) EXPECTED the other side to have a say.  Hanging was not off the table for all the revolutionaries.  When they pledged their life, their liberty, their sacred honor, they expected to lose all three.  The chances of success were infinitesimal.

So, why are we shocked by the people who think we need to be put down and controlled?  Why are we shocked by attacks on the amendments the founding fathers gave us?

The other side gets a say.

Look, for almost a hundred years now they’ve been at least as privileged as the French aristocracy.  There are tangible benefits to lefty privilege.  Why do you think people virtue-signal?  Because virtue signaling translates into jobs, book deals, media appearances and applause.

They had it all.  Make the right noises, support the right causes, and you’ll be on top.

Thing is most people aren’t even political.  They are clever apes who identify what is best in their tribe and what will bring them rewards.  We’re the weird ones.  And the rewards have been on the left for almost a century.

Yes, they managed the neat trick of pretending to be revolutionaries even as they controlled all of the establishment.  The extent to which they controlled it is becoming very apparent in the civil war going on in our institutions.

But they are still the establishment.  Third generation now.  And it has its privileges.  No one on the right with Obama’s type of mind and experience could make it to president.  (And no, Trump isn’t the same.  He’s run businesses.  Obama couldn’t run a lemonade stand.  And oh, yeah, for the lurkers, this is not racial, it’s political.  Red diaper kids rarely manage to comprehend economics.  Their religion makes them believe a set of precepts that is at odds with the world.)  No one on the right who was no smarter than most main stream pundits would have got anywhere.

We’ve had to be faster, stronger, and insanely hard working to be heard, and evne then we were torpedoed at every turn.

Then there was the net.  And computers.  And ways to communicate.

You have to understand how deep 2016 cut.  They spent all their money, they pushed all their celebrities, they controlled all the press.  Everything said they were going to win.  And then they lost.

Is it any wonder they’ve gone nuts?  This is like Marie Antoinette finding her palace full of not-at-all-respectful peasant women, demanding bread.  (True.)  And the guards being unable to clear them away.  (Also true.)

So yeah, unsavory rats like Zuckerberg are going to try to preemptively ban our opinions.  Banks are going to try to refuse money to companies who make guns.  Idiots like the Twitter Twit are going to call for us to be crushed.

Did you expect to have a revolution, and the establishment didn’t fight back?

I’m seeing despondency and preemptively throwing in the towel.  I even understand it, kind of.  We seemed to be growing.  There seemed to be no limits.  And now there are action to limit us to, to stop us.

So what do we do?

We do the same we’ve always done.  We’re faster, smarter, more capable.  We need to stay one step ahead.  We need to ensure the establishment fears us, at least as much if not more than they fear the left.  Sure, we’re the nice people who don’t boycott, who don’t make a political line in our consumption…

Guys… we might have to.  And we might have to get more vocal.  We have to make them fear as they’ve made us fear.  We have to fight back as hard as we can in this arena of words.

Because, guys, this is a civil cold war.  And we want it to stay cold.  If it goes hot, then the OUTSIDE COUNTRIES get a say, and America as such will be a notional memory.

There is one thing we remember from the cold war: Mutual Assured Destruction works.

It’s hard, because we’re starting from behind.  But we need to make them understand if they can ban us, we can ban them.  If they can punish our opinions, we can punish theirs.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  Because that prevents us having to take the whole head.

Sure.  If the war turns hot, we’ll probably “win.”  But what we’ll lose in resources, in time, in people, and possibly in sovereignty will be incalculable.

So, let’s fight the cold war so we don’t have to fight the hot.

This is no time to get wobbly.  Even if we win it is no time to get wobbly.  The French revolution was, arguably, lost after being won, because they let the nutters and the nihilists control it.

Yeah, things suck right now and the waters are about to get choppier.  Did I promise you a rose garden?  I must have been talking about thorns.

Giving up absolves you from having to fight.  It also allows the left to turn the US into another Venezuela.

Liberty is always a generation away from extinction.   Pull your pants up, take a deep breath.

We’re revolutionaries, with all the danger that entails.  No one said it would be easy.

Keep going.  In the end we win, they lose, but only if we fight.

 

 

A Beginner’s Guide to Creative Commons licenses – D. Jason Fleming

I’ve been listening to Creative Commons-licensed music for over a decade at this point, and everything I write goes out under a CC license. In addition, my social media bios describe me as a Creative Commons advocate.

So, while I am in no way associated with the Creative Commons nonprofit organization in San Francisco, I do know a thing or two about how the licenses work, and I sometimes get a bit distressed at how less experienced people misunderstand CC licenses and what they mean.

The two biggest misunderstandings I see usually go hand in hand: that there is one single Creative Commons license, and that it means you can do whatever you feel like doing with the licensed content. The usual tell is a phrase along the lines of “used under the Creative Commons license”. Since there is actually a set of CC licenses, the definite article is a giveaway that somebody is either ignorant, or being deceptive. (Usually the former.)

There are, in fact, seven CC licenses; and only three of them are “Free Culture” — that is, you can do what you want with the licensed work, with no restriction, provided you follow the terms of the license. (Technically, one of those three gives you permission to do whatever, without following any terms, but we’ll get to that.)

The shorthand for Creative Commons licenses is simple: CC followed by one, two, or three two-letter abbreviations and the license version number. The CC stands for Creative Commons, naturally, and the other abbreviations tell you which terms apply. There are four, one of which is present in all licenses. (Again, there is one exception, which will be the last one explained.)

Let’s start with the most restrictive license:

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0. This is sometimes referred to as the “listen and share” license. This gives you the right to acquire the work for free, make copies, and give those copies to anyone. However, the license must remain intact, you cannot use it to make money or aid you in making money, and you cannot change the work in any way.

So, if it’s a work of music, you can listen to it, and share it, and that’s it. If it’s a book or a story, you can read it and share it, but that’s all.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike License 4.0. This is much more free, in that you are permitted to use the artwork in your own work. The terms of the license do limit you, of course. You have to give the original artist credit, at a minimum naming and linking to their site. You can’t make money off of your derivative work or your copy of the original work. And any derivatives you make must be shared under this same license.

This brings us to the question: What is a derivative work? Basically, it’s anything that is transformative to the original work. If you burn a CD with music on it, but don’t change the music, that’s not derivative. If you put some music into a video, that is transformative, and therefore derivative.

CC BY-ND 4.0

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License 4.0. Here we get toward freedom in one way, but not others. You can copy, share, and sell the licensed work, provided you give attribution and do not alter the work or create works that derive from it.

CC BY-NC 4.0

Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License 4.0. And freedom in other ways comes in here, but not fully. With this license, you can make any changes or derivatives you want, but you must give attribution to the original creator, and you can’t profit from your derivative works.

With those out of the way, we now enter into the realm of Free Culture. There is an official definition of what makes a work free culture, but what it amounts to is that the conditions of the license do not limit your ability to alter or build upon the work, nor do they prevent you from profiting from your own derivative of that work. There are, however, still conditions that you must follow.

CC BY-SA 4.0

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 4.0. This license lets you do what you want, to any extent that you want, but you must give attribution to the original creator, and you must share the resulting work under this same license. I think of this license as the sweet spot, because using it is guaranteed to grow the pool of Free Culture works in the world.

CC BY 4.0

Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. Do what you want, to any extent that you want, but you must give attribution to the original creator. There is one musician who has been releasing his work exclusively under this license for about a decade, and if you watch Youtube at all, you have heard his work. Kevin MacLeod has thousands of credits on the IMDb and even got his music in a Martin Scorsese movie.

And finally, we have the real outlier, the CC Zero License, which is a dedication of the licensed work to the public domain.

CC0 1.0

Creative Commons Zero License 1.0. If something is released under this license, do what you want, no restrictions, no attribution necessary. However, I personally hold that it’s simply good form to give attribution if there is a means to do so.

So, now you have a better idea of the range of freedoms and restrictions that the Creative Commons gives you. I focused on how you would look at them as an end user, but I think you can see, at least implicitly, how using them can benefit you as a creator as well.

I was thinking the other day, apropos nothing much (you know that kind of thought you have when lying in bed between waking and sleep) and realized how strange our sleep arrangements were when I was little.

You see, my parents believe mortgages happen to other people.  So when they got married, my grandparents converted what used to be the “storage” portion of their house into a shotgun apartment which my parents rented until I was seven and they’d built their house, into which we moved at that time.

This is why when I was little I thought windows were “posh.”  We didn’t have any.  The height of my ambition was a veranda.  (Having now rebuilt two upper-floor porches from scratch, I’m okay, really.)

The floor plant of the house was as follows: Living room/mom’s “office” for meeting with clients, into which daylight came from two glass panels on the front door.

Mom and dad’s room (3/4 of that width, with a window cut up top to get a little light from the living room.  (Not super effective.)  And a hallway, large enough for a row of chairs and enough space for an adult to walk past.

Past mom and dad’s room, the space widened again, and there was a single bed for my brother and a very large bin-cabinet for mom’s work supplies.  After that there was a kitchen the width of the apartment and about twice as long as the living room (I’d say about 14 ft? but I’m remembering with a child’s eyes.)

We pretty much lived in the kitchen.  Mom worked at the kitchen table most of the time, and cleared it only for meals.  The radio was in the kitchen and was the main form of entertainment in the house.  Dad brought his typewriter from work, and worked at the kitchen table.  I learned to type (and write) at that kitchen table.  Mom’s knitting machine (a way to supplement money between big jobs.  Even local farmers payed to have a sweater knit a winter, even if sometimes you had to undo the previous sweater (developing holes) and redye the wool.) was against the wall across from the sink and stove.  My earliest memories of reading were of scrunching on the floor next to the knitting machine and just going away in my mind.  Oh, the kitchen door had glass in it too, but this being a Mediterranean climate, in all but the coldest days, the door would be open for more light.

You will notice there was no bathroom.  That’s because the bathroom was outside grandma’s kitchen door.  And it wasn’t an outhouse, but a full bathroom, with sink and shower.  It just was outside.  I don’t know how much of this was because the walls were thick stone and almost impossible to pierce/plumb, or how much because great grandma thought bathrooms were dirty and should be out of doors.

Anyway, what I realized is that I had (at least) three sets of memories: one of my brother sleeping in the 125 grams (1/2 of a quarter kilo.  The word for quarter and room is the same in Portuguese.  Yes, my family is like that.)  Of me sleeping in the 125grams (particularly when I started school, about a year before we moved out.) and of me sleeping either in my parents’ room with mom, or upstairs with my cousin Natalia.

So I lay there and put them in order.  The apartment was adequate, though not wonderful when my parents had only my brother (about nine plus years before I was born.)  There was a curtain to give him some privacy, and he had a little “not quite bedroom.”

Then I was born.  Fortunately when I was born, my dad worked outside town, so I simply slept with mom, except on weekends, when I was turfed out to my grandparents’ and slept with my cousin Natalia (14 years my senior.)

Dad came back home when I was about 5.  At that time my grandparents had partitioned off a bedroom off their large, second floor family room, for a visiting relative.  My brother was sent up to sleep in that room, and I inherited the 125 grams (at any rate he was six one at that time, and the little childhood bed, even with all the additional patches at the bottom that grandad had made over time, was not particularly safe for him.)  So when I started school I had my own “room” of sorts.

Note I had to reason this out and pay attention to things like my brother’s surgery at sixteen, when he was laid up in grandma’s spare room.

All of which is not to tell you how terrible my childhood was.  It wasn’t.  Heck, grandma’s backyard was a kingdom and I ruled it as queen.  Also, I wasn’t aware of being poor (we weren’t for the area.  The neighbors sharing a wall with my parents’ apartment were raising six children in the same space arranged similarly, cut out of the house of the farmers’ next door. Mom was raised in a smaller space with four siblings.)  Our diet could be eccentric, mostly because mom lived in search of the cheapest meal, so they could save more money for the house, but when I went into school I was one of better fed kids there. I’d have been one of the healthiest too, except for my screwed up auto-immune.  We had plenty of books, even if sometimes I had to go dig in the storage buildings for them.  Sometimes my paper was rationed because I used a sh*tton of it writing and drawing, but then dad’s godfather who owned the general store across the street found in his attic a pallet of composition books that had been there probably 50 years.  They’d long since been written off, so instead of selling them, he gave us the lot.  Those books, with yellowed pages and gengivitis-pink covers lasted me for my purposes till highschool.  I wrote my first “novels” in them.  And I had toys aplenty.  In fact the only lack of my childhood was people to play with, since I was by far the youngest in the family and my brother, the next youngest, had modeled his amusements on our older cousins.  This is probably why I make up stories (it was so lonely.  It started with imaginary friends) and why I started to read very early and read a lot.  It’s a weird upbringing for a kid, but not bad.

What I was thinking about, lying in bed, though, was that these days if one of my kids tried to get married and rely on that type of arrangements for living, I’d hit the roof.  “Wait, you don’t even have a bathroom?  You’re going to share the single bathroom with a family of three?  And it’s OUTSIDE?”

Unthinkable, right?  As is “Tell me again how this apartment doesn’t have running water, and first task in the morning is to bring in a bunch of it in gallon jugs!  Is this even up to code?”  And “Wait, you wife is going to run her small business out of the kitchen, meet clients in the tiny living room, and store her stuff throughout the house, including kids rooms?”  You know what the verdict would be: “You guys can’t do that, that’s slum conditions.  CPS will be down on you like a ton of bricks.”

And yet, when and where I lived, it was solidly middle class.  A little below my parents’ means, since they were saving to buy a house outright, but not, you know…. alarmingly low.  If anyone had reported us to the equivalent of CPS, the social worker would have laughed herself into stitches.  There were people living much worse.  We had cement floors in the kitchen (not beaten Earth) and electrical light throughout.  And I pulled through my constant illnesses, was doing well in school, and my brother made it to college (even in my time that was rare for village kids.)  It would be viewed, now, as someone complaining of living in a small but adequate home.

And that’s what this is all about.  I’m sick and tired of the whining about “inequality” as though that means anything.  It’s a sanctifying of envy, is all it is.  As it is, my family was pretty wealthy compared to our neighbors, partly because my mom squeezed every penny till it screamed, and kept the house sparklingly clean.  So we lived like people richer than us, while a lot of the local craftsmen who made a ton more lived in filth and misery, with six or seven kids crammed in the same space we had.  They got a ton more meals out, pastries on the weekend and “bought wine” (as opposed to the one you grow yourself) though.

Sure, right now there are people so wealthy I still can’t imagine their circumstances (let alone my little self who dreamed of windows imagining their circumstances.)  But I fail to see how their being unimaginably wealthy hurts me.  We have a bathroom per person, right now, and a powder room to spare and I have room for my hobbies that mom could only dream about for her job.  And we’re not exactly wealthy.  (We’re not poor either.  Though we might be if the kids don’t graduate and support themselves soon.)

But thing is, I’m not taking money from anyone living in conditions similar to what my parents lived when I was born. (No one lives in the same conditions.  Not if CPS catches them.)  I make my own money.  I don’t take it from the poor.  And the people above me, save for those that ally with government to get the tax money, aren’t making money off me.  They’re just making money.

I think the left has a fundamentally broken understanding of economics.  They believe in a fixed pie, in which the only way to get rich is to steal from others.  In that kind of system inequality is a problem, because the people at the top are rich at the expense of people at the bottom.  But that’s not what we live in.

The only system in which their fantasies are true is the one that suggest to “cure” our inequality:A top down, controlled economy, with bureaucrats in charge.

Thing is, my friend Nicki grew up in the Soviet Union, under one of those systems designed to stop inequality.  Not only were the common people unimaginably poor (the village would seem like a bit of paradise to them, what with one family per house, and each family growing most of their own food in the backyard) but the party members lived almost like our current one percent, and yep, on the backs of the poor.

In communism and socialism, the only way to live well is to exploit others.  And boy, do they ever.  Some of the world’s wealthiest people are children of “great leaders”.

And in OUR country there is enough interference, mind you.  See where I said above that my parents would have been denounced to CPS if they tried to do what they did then, now and in the US (or even in Europe.)  And yet, fifteen years of sacrifice allowed them to build a house beyond the dreams of their parents’ (particularly mom’s parents) and to send two kids to college.  And then to have my brother build a house beyond THEIR dreams.  If the government had forced them to move out of that little (and relatively cheap) apartment and rent a real one, in one of the highrises then coming into the village, they’d probably never have been able to move out.

Rage, if you must, at bureaucrats who make your property not your own, and force people to live in ways that much wealthier middle-class people think acceptable.  That does, probably, rob wealth from the poor, in the long run.

But stop worrying about inequality. What does it matter to you what your neighbor has?  In college, (or even I, at professional meetings) my kids found out we were Job-poor.  We’re not of course.  But I’m a writer, which means work/payment is irregular and can’t be counted on. Also, though we have a mortgage, we partake my parents’ madness in the at consumer credit is something that happens to other people.  (We should take out a small loan and do some work in the house — we bought it short sale and it needs stuff done — and then pay it off, instead of saving for the work.  But my dad’s last words to me, as I got on the plane to the US after my wedding, were “don’t run up debts.”) So our kids were raised buying clothes at thrift stores, and without a single European vacation.  OTOH they each had their own computer from age 3, and we did buy them materials/books for whatever interested them at the time.  So, in a way we were richer than their rich friends.

And note, at no time did our way of living have anything to do with how billionaires live.  Who cares how billionaires live?  How does their being very well off affect you?  Do the people who are much worse off than you get a vote in how you live?

And what precisely would it do to take people’s money away and give to those below them in conditions?  Remember where I said the people in the village who made more money than my parents lived far worse, because they never saved for better housing (or kept the one they had clean?)

Make the most of what you have, and stop hankering over the unimaginable riches of the super-rich.

The poor we shall always have with us, but the poor in America live better than my parents did, middle class and working as hard as they could, long ago and far away, and we live better than my parents ever did.

The rich we shall always have with us, even the super-rich.  In the middle ages, inequality was if anything greater, as the poor lived close to animals.  But their kings — except for ceremonial and power — lived worse than our wretched poor.  And going back further, Solomon in all his glory couldn’t get piped in hot water, or food warmed instantly in a microwave, or aspirin to manage the headaches he acquired from his multitudinous harem.

You can’t eliminate the super rich.  Even vast revolutions don’t manage that.  They just replace them and the source of their wealth.  You can’t eliminate the poor.  As Venezuela is proving yet again, the best you can do is make everyone poor.

Let everyone do what they want to and can do with their own.  And keep your mind off other people’s business.

If you must have fantasies of being super-rich, have those.  But don’t bother thinking that you’re not that because others are.

Envy is poison that corrodes the soul.  Work for what you want.  No one has ever stolen your success.  Only you can blight your own life.

If you don’t think about it, the problem of inequality goes away.  That means it’s not a problem.

Go tend your garden.

 

 

 

*Sorry this is so late.  I have all symptoms of a sudden cold, but I think it might be allergies.  At any rate, I just feel I’d like to sleep a lot and took time getting organized enough to do this.

Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com.  One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

GRAY RINEHEART: Walking on the Sea of Clouds

Before permanent lunar encampments such as Clarke’s Clavius Base (in 2001: A Space Odyssey) or Heinlein’s Luna City (in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress) could be built, there would have to be the first settlers–the first people to set up shop and try to eke out an existence on the Moon. Walking On the Sea of Clouds is the story of such lunar pioneers: two couples, Stormie and Frank Pastorelli and Van and Barbara Richards, determined to survive and succeed in this near-future technological drama about the risks people will take, the emergencies they’ll face, and the sacrifices they’ll make as members of the first commercial lunar colony. In the end, one will decide to leave, one will decide to stay, one will put off deciding … and one will decide to die so another can live.

FRANCES DECHANTAL:  Marguerite: A Novel with a Little Murder

What should a loving relative do to help her family? Can Marguerite Wilmington protect her cancer-stricken nephew from a killer at large in the hospital? Can she help her widowed sister and not lose herself in the process? Can she finance her own next cup of coffee?

Marguerite is a journey through a child’s cancer treatment with added stress from a mysterious extra threat to the child’s life.

L.A. MAY:  Niko and the Shades

Monsters lurk in the streets of Aldemyr …

Fifteen-year-old Niko secretly longs for magic spells, crystal balls, maybe even a hero’s sword. Instead, he can see the scarpies, sinister little shadow creatures who live in darkness and feed on black magic. Most people can see one or two, here or there, but Niko sees them everywhere, scuttling along the streets, hiding in shadows.

No one takes the scarpies seriously. Niko’s cousin calls them spectral rats. But when a powerful figure at the royal court is murdered by black sorcery, Niko begins to think the scarpies are involved. While court factions scheme for power, Niko may be the only one who can stop a magical assassin before someone else is murdered, and a killer takes control of the kingdom.

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: follow