M.E. Brines's Blog, page 3
August 25, 2017
Why is there so much social hostility now?
When I was a kid, people could discuss politics and religion without coming to blows. Today, wearing a “make America great again” hat is likely to “trigger” some Antifa storm trooper into curb stomping you. There’s no compromise. Whoever’s on the other side is demonized and must be destroyed.
This is because there are now two separate “American” cultures, one based on the traditional values of Western Civilization, and the other based on Marxism. It’s quite natural they should fight since that’s what happens whenever two cultures inhabit the same country. Just look at the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Or the Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia. The history of the Wild West was wild because the cultures of the American settlers and the native inhabitants were incompatible even as the terrain threw them together. Conflict was inevitable.
But genocidal levels of violence are guaranteed when one side sees the other as an enemy that must be destroyed. Just look at the eternal conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That’s what we have in this country because Progressives despise everything Western Civilization stands for. To them “racist bigotry” must be destroyed and “social justice” established before they can usher in their Socialist Utopia. If that means a few heads have to be broken to make their omelet—well, Soviet—uh, I mean, so be it then.
Western civilization stands for the primacy of the individual, free markets, free speech, and freedom of religion.
Progressivism stands for the primacy of society and government control (for the greater good, of course) of just about everything. They stand against “hate” speech and traditional religions like Christianity and Judaism, all traces of which must be eliminated from society.
How could two such incompatible groups not end up fighting? One side sees the other as the enemy standing between them and their utopia. The other sees itself—and rightly after fifty years of “culture war”--as a target for extermination by a hostile anti-American ideology.
This fight—like the Israeli-Palestinian one—won’t end until one side is exterminated. That will be the Conservatives, since they don’t have the cultural tools to exterminate the Social Justice Warriors. Handicapped by a respect for human rights and a belief in free speech and free elections, Conservatives won’t do what’s necessary to win.
The other side suffers no such handicaps. They’ve proven this in Soviet Gulags, the Cambodian killing fields, and in the ubiquitous “reeducation” death camps found in every worker’s paradise. So eventually all this social disorder and hostility will cease...when the remaining opponents of “social justice” are either too afraid to speak openly in public anymore or are removed from society.
See you in the Gulag. I call top bunk.
* * *
For a complete examination of this topic read my Conservatives are from Mars and Progressives are from Venus...at least until Amazon and Smashwords take it down because it’s “hate speech.”
This is because there are now two separate “American” cultures, one based on the traditional values of Western Civilization, and the other based on Marxism. It’s quite natural they should fight since that’s what happens whenever two cultures inhabit the same country. Just look at the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Or the Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia. The history of the Wild West was wild because the cultures of the American settlers and the native inhabitants were incompatible even as the terrain threw them together. Conflict was inevitable.
But genocidal levels of violence are guaranteed when one side sees the other as an enemy that must be destroyed. Just look at the eternal conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That’s what we have in this country because Progressives despise everything Western Civilization stands for. To them “racist bigotry” must be destroyed and “social justice” established before they can usher in their Socialist Utopia. If that means a few heads have to be broken to make their omelet—well, Soviet—uh, I mean, so be it then.
Western civilization stands for the primacy of the individual, free markets, free speech, and freedom of religion.
Progressivism stands for the primacy of society and government control (for the greater good, of course) of just about everything. They stand against “hate” speech and traditional religions like Christianity and Judaism, all traces of which must be eliminated from society.
How could two such incompatible groups not end up fighting? One side sees the other as the enemy standing between them and their utopia. The other sees itself—and rightly after fifty years of “culture war”--as a target for extermination by a hostile anti-American ideology.
This fight—like the Israeli-Palestinian one—won’t end until one side is exterminated. That will be the Conservatives, since they don’t have the cultural tools to exterminate the Social Justice Warriors. Handicapped by a respect for human rights and a belief in free speech and free elections, Conservatives won’t do what’s necessary to win.
The other side suffers no such handicaps. They’ve proven this in Soviet Gulags, the Cambodian killing fields, and in the ubiquitous “reeducation” death camps found in every worker’s paradise. So eventually all this social disorder and hostility will cease...when the remaining opponents of “social justice” are either too afraid to speak openly in public anymore or are removed from society.
See you in the Gulag. I call top bunk.
* * *
For a complete examination of this topic read my Conservatives are from Mars and Progressives are from Venus...at least until Amazon and Smashwords take it down because it’s “hate speech.”
August 24, 2017
Stress Is Simply Uncertainty
You don’t know how things are going to come out, therefore you expect the worst and experience stress. But certainty doesn’t mean Truth. You can be absolutely convinced of something that’s completely wrong. Just because you think you know doesn’t mean you actually do. But if you think something is going to come out all right you won’t experience stress like you would when you don’t know. If you have a big presentation and you “know” you’re going to do well, you don’t stress about it—right up to the point where you begin and discover PowerPoint ate your presentation.
This is why people reject evidence that threatens their foundational beliefs. It causes stress. Your worldview toppling is the ultimate uncertainty—maximum stress. When the foundation of your life crumbles—what do you do then? This is why people resist to the core of their being accepting any such evidence.
Progressives will never accept that Marxism doesn’t work, or that in practice it leads to poverty and mass murder. It doesn’t matter how many countries it’s been tried that ended up that way. “This time it’ll work, because this time we’ll do it right.”
I saw a debate recently on Youtube where Christopher Hitchens, an atheist and author of How Religion Poisons Everything, was pushing the usual arguments about religion leading automatically to oppression. His opponent countered that atheistic regimes have killed more people in just the 20th Century than all religions and religious wars combined from the beginning of recorded history. Hitchens replied that Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China, and North Korea aren’t secular atheistic states—they’re “religious” because of their cults of personality. Therefore, all their atrocities actually count as “religious” crimes against humanity. This in spite of those regimes own claims to be atheistic, and in direct contradiction to Karl Marx, the inventor of Communism, who attacked religion as “the opiate of the people.” In spite of a century of obvious evidence of the horrors of regimes liberated from bourgeoisie Christian morality, Hitchens cannot accept the evidence. It’s too stressful.
This is why people stay in cults. The certainty of clinging to the obvious lies of the cult is less stressful than the uncertainty of leaving—not to mention the pain of accepting that you were a dumb-ass for falling for it in the first place.
People dismiss “conspiracy theories” without even examining them because the possibility that they might actually be true is just too disturbing. It’s the same with UFO reports—it’s just swamp gas. This is not because people are too stupid to recognize the validity of the evidence. If anything, the more compelling the evidence, the more firmly it will be rejected—it’s a greater threat. They simply don’t want the stress involved in having to reevaluate their beliefs. A convenient lie is more comfortable than an inconvenient truth.
But do you want to live a life based on lies? Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. What he meant was basing your life on lies because it’s more comfortable than seeking the truth makes your life not worth living. And that’s true, but most people prefer comfort to authenticity.
* * *
If you are a truth seeker you might be interesting in reading:
How to Tell a Lie [https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...]
The Truth About Conspiracy Theories [http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...]
The Red Pill. The ultimate book on conspiracy theories. [https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...]
A paranormal investigation: Why Do Ghosts Wear Clothes?
[https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...]
This is why people reject evidence that threatens their foundational beliefs. It causes stress. Your worldview toppling is the ultimate uncertainty—maximum stress. When the foundation of your life crumbles—what do you do then? This is why people resist to the core of their being accepting any such evidence.
Progressives will never accept that Marxism doesn’t work, or that in practice it leads to poverty and mass murder. It doesn’t matter how many countries it’s been tried that ended up that way. “This time it’ll work, because this time we’ll do it right.”
I saw a debate recently on Youtube where Christopher Hitchens, an atheist and author of How Religion Poisons Everything, was pushing the usual arguments about religion leading automatically to oppression. His opponent countered that atheistic regimes have killed more people in just the 20th Century than all religions and religious wars combined from the beginning of recorded history. Hitchens replied that Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China, and North Korea aren’t secular atheistic states—they’re “religious” because of their cults of personality. Therefore, all their atrocities actually count as “religious” crimes against humanity. This in spite of those regimes own claims to be atheistic, and in direct contradiction to Karl Marx, the inventor of Communism, who attacked religion as “the opiate of the people.” In spite of a century of obvious evidence of the horrors of regimes liberated from bourgeoisie Christian morality, Hitchens cannot accept the evidence. It’s too stressful.
This is why people stay in cults. The certainty of clinging to the obvious lies of the cult is less stressful than the uncertainty of leaving—not to mention the pain of accepting that you were a dumb-ass for falling for it in the first place.
People dismiss “conspiracy theories” without even examining them because the possibility that they might actually be true is just too disturbing. It’s the same with UFO reports—it’s just swamp gas. This is not because people are too stupid to recognize the validity of the evidence. If anything, the more compelling the evidence, the more firmly it will be rejected—it’s a greater threat. They simply don’t want the stress involved in having to reevaluate their beliefs. A convenient lie is more comfortable than an inconvenient truth.
But do you want to live a life based on lies? Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. What he meant was basing your life on lies because it’s more comfortable than seeking the truth makes your life not worth living. And that’s true, but most people prefer comfort to authenticity.
* * *
If you are a truth seeker you might be interesting in reading:
How to Tell a Lie [https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...]
The Truth About Conspiracy Theories [http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...]
The Red Pill. The ultimate book on conspiracy theories. [https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...]
A paranormal investigation: Why Do Ghosts Wear Clothes?
[https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...]
August 21, 2017
Christian or Believer?
In a previous post we examined what “Christian” means in America today, basically “somebody who goes to church.” But what should it mean?
“Christian” used to mean somebody who was a follower of Jesus Christ. It used to mean somebody who was a disciple, who’d made a commitment to following the teachings of Jesus, to keeping the commandments, spreading the Gospel and making new disciples. But today the word “Christian” means different things to different people, to the point that nobody really knows what you mean when you say it. They only know what they think it means.
Back in the Fourth Century this same problem erupted as various heresies spread through the community of believers.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Co...] People needed a definition of what “Christian” meant. So they came up with the Nicene Creed, which essentially declares:
We believe in one God, the maker of everything. That Jesus is his only begotten son and divine. That he was born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate and died on the cross for our sins, then rose again the third day. He will come again to judge the world. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, baptism for forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the dead into a life eternal. (This is the Ciffs Notes version. If you want to read the full text click on the link above.)
Back in 325 AD (sorry, I don’t go with that common era nonsense) this was what it meant to be a Christian. You could (and churches do) add other stuff, but if you didn’t agree to this minimum, or changed it around, you weren’t “Christian.”
The Statements of faith of most church denominations use this as a base and then add a few bells and whistles, the things that make their denomination distinct from other churches. For example Pentecostals add something about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. The Catholics emphasize the authority of the Church and its traditions, etc.
And you could take away from this standard. Some organizations do stray from this basic foundation. But the ones that do are not Christian.
The problem today is there are many people in all those churches that consider themselves Christian that don’t agree with that creed. Many of them don’t even agree with their church’s statement of faith. Some aren’t even aware such a thing exists or what it means. In America today “Christian” has taken on the meaning “somebody who goes to church.”
If you tell people you’re a Christian it means something different to each individual. You mean (say) you try to follow Jesus. But members of other churches probably don’t consider your “cult” to be Christian. And to an atheist “Christian” means “anti-intellectual anti-science anti-gay hypocrite.” Muslims use the term to refer to basically anybody from the West who isn’t one of them, including atheists and agnostics.
A word that has a different meaning to everyone has no meaning at all. At least if you told people you were a Scientologist they’d know what it meant (that you were crazy.) By calling yourself a “Christian” you aren’t defining yourself. You’re completely at the mercy of what the other person thinks that means, for good or ill. (And these days, mostly ill.) We need a better word.
When people ask me about my religion, I tell them I’m a “Believer.” Believer is a word that means someone who believes. But it doesn’t give any details. This can lead to the question, “a believer in what?”
This is exactly what you want. Instead of having your beliefs defined by someone else’s expectations, it gives you the opportunity to define yourself. This is where that 1,700-year old creed comes into play.
“I believe Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for our sins and he’s coming back soon. I believe the Bible is an instruction manual for Mankind from our Creator.”
If we truly believe in the teachings of Jesus we ought to be about making disciples. Those were his last words before he left. (Matthew chapter 28) Christ left us a task.
Churches today have forgotten this. They’re all about attendance, the building program and collecting cash to finance everything. [http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...]
They’ve become businesses concerned with perpetuating themselves, not carrying out the Great Commission, which has generally been redefined (when it’s remembered at all) into you passively supporting foreign missionaries with donations when it originally meant every individual believer making disciples himself in his local community.
And if we really are believers, we ought to be about our Master’s business: making disciples. And the first step in that is to let people know who we are.
And the best way to do that is to dump “Christian” and become “Believers.”
If you found this post interesting you might also like some of my books:
The Bible - Dead Letter or Message from Your Creator?
Revolutionary Discipleship What does Jesus expect from his followers? How did he train his disciples?
Has Christianity lost its cultural relevance? Has the Church’s misguided efforts to market itself to non-Christians doomed it to irrelevance? Is it time for a new Reformation? Spiritual Embezzlement Made Easy
Of Myth and Magic A comparison of religion, philosophy and magick throughout history. Are all religions basically the same? Is there a way to Truth and contentment?
A Priestess of Mars - a romantic steampunk adventure that explores the meaning of love from a Biblical perspective. Lilith of Gomorra is a noble Martian priestess who sees love as nothing more than an exercise in naked carnality. But when she discovers a higher form of love, her faith in the ancient religion turns to doubt and she must choose between her people and the man she loves. The fate of the Earth hangs on her choice.
And if you didn’t like this post…well, there’s always something on TV.
“Christian” used to mean somebody who was a follower of Jesus Christ. It used to mean somebody who was a disciple, who’d made a commitment to following the teachings of Jesus, to keeping the commandments, spreading the Gospel and making new disciples. But today the word “Christian” means different things to different people, to the point that nobody really knows what you mean when you say it. They only know what they think it means.
Back in the Fourth Century this same problem erupted as various heresies spread through the community of believers.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Co...] People needed a definition of what “Christian” meant. So they came up with the Nicene Creed, which essentially declares:
We believe in one God, the maker of everything. That Jesus is his only begotten son and divine. That he was born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate and died on the cross for our sins, then rose again the third day. He will come again to judge the world. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, baptism for forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the dead into a life eternal. (This is the Ciffs Notes version. If you want to read the full text click on the link above.)
Back in 325 AD (sorry, I don’t go with that common era nonsense) this was what it meant to be a Christian. You could (and churches do) add other stuff, but if you didn’t agree to this minimum, or changed it around, you weren’t “Christian.”
The Statements of faith of most church denominations use this as a base and then add a few bells and whistles, the things that make their denomination distinct from other churches. For example Pentecostals add something about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. The Catholics emphasize the authority of the Church and its traditions, etc.
And you could take away from this standard. Some organizations do stray from this basic foundation. But the ones that do are not Christian.
The problem today is there are many people in all those churches that consider themselves Christian that don’t agree with that creed. Many of them don’t even agree with their church’s statement of faith. Some aren’t even aware such a thing exists or what it means. In America today “Christian” has taken on the meaning “somebody who goes to church.”
If you tell people you’re a Christian it means something different to each individual. You mean (say) you try to follow Jesus. But members of other churches probably don’t consider your “cult” to be Christian. And to an atheist “Christian” means “anti-intellectual anti-science anti-gay hypocrite.” Muslims use the term to refer to basically anybody from the West who isn’t one of them, including atheists and agnostics.
A word that has a different meaning to everyone has no meaning at all. At least if you told people you were a Scientologist they’d know what it meant (that you were crazy.) By calling yourself a “Christian” you aren’t defining yourself. You’re completely at the mercy of what the other person thinks that means, for good or ill. (And these days, mostly ill.) We need a better word.
When people ask me about my religion, I tell them I’m a “Believer.” Believer is a word that means someone who believes. But it doesn’t give any details. This can lead to the question, “a believer in what?”
This is exactly what you want. Instead of having your beliefs defined by someone else’s expectations, it gives you the opportunity to define yourself. This is where that 1,700-year old creed comes into play.
“I believe Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for our sins and he’s coming back soon. I believe the Bible is an instruction manual for Mankind from our Creator.”
If we truly believe in the teachings of Jesus we ought to be about making disciples. Those were his last words before he left. (Matthew chapter 28) Christ left us a task.
Churches today have forgotten this. They’re all about attendance, the building program and collecting cash to finance everything. [http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...]
They’ve become businesses concerned with perpetuating themselves, not carrying out the Great Commission, which has generally been redefined (when it’s remembered at all) into you passively supporting foreign missionaries with donations when it originally meant every individual believer making disciples himself in his local community.
And if we really are believers, we ought to be about our Master’s business: making disciples. And the first step in that is to let people know who we are.
And the best way to do that is to dump “Christian” and become “Believers.”
If you found this post interesting you might also like some of my books:
The Bible - Dead Letter or Message from Your Creator?
Revolutionary Discipleship What does Jesus expect from his followers? How did he train his disciples?
Has Christianity lost its cultural relevance? Has the Church’s misguided efforts to market itself to non-Christians doomed it to irrelevance? Is it time for a new Reformation? Spiritual Embezzlement Made Easy
Of Myth and Magic A comparison of religion, philosophy and magick throughout history. Are all religions basically the same? Is there a way to Truth and contentment?
A Priestess of Mars - a romantic steampunk adventure that explores the meaning of love from a Biblical perspective. Lilith of Gomorra is a noble Martian priestess who sees love as nothing more than an exercise in naked carnality. But when she discovers a higher form of love, her faith in the ancient religion turns to doubt and she must choose between her people and the man she loves. The fate of the Earth hangs on her choice.
And if you didn’t like this post…well, there’s always something on TV.
August 17, 2017
What does “Christian” really mean?
Jesus warned us:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7:15-23)
But do we really understand the difference between “good” fruit and bad? What does it means for something to be authentically “Christian?”
Churches used to have Statements of Faith that declared what it meant to be a Baptist or Pentecostal or Catholic. But churches today are so obsessed with market share, they aggressively recruit their unchristian neighbors and aren’t too picky whether they agree with an old dusty Statement of Faith, as long as they show up regularly on Sunday morning and slip a fiver into the collection plate.
According to the Barna poling organization “More than four out of five Americans claim to be Christian and half as many can be classified as born again Christians. Nine out of ten adults own a Bible. Most adults read the Bible during the year and a huge majority claims they know all of the basic teachings of the Bible.” This would seem to indicate that America is a Christian nation and that our churches have been very successful.
Yet Barna concludes his study saying, “How, then, can most people say Satan does not exist, that the Holy Spirit is merely a symbol, that eternal peace with God can be earned through good works, and that truth can only be understood through the lens of reason and experience? How can a plurality of our citizens contend that Jesus committed sins and that the Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon all teach the same truths?”
The fact of the matter is that in America today there are many church attenders but few actual followers of Christ. This is borne out further in the same study:
“The year's research also underscored the fact that half of the people who attend Christian churches on any given weekend are not Christian—that is, they do not trust in Christ alone for their eternal salvation.”
Research reveals few congregants have a biblical worldview, half the people they minister to are not spiritually secure or developed, kids are fleeing from the church in record numbers, most of the people who attend worship services admit they did not connect with God, the divorce rate among Christians is no different than that of non-Christians, only 2% of the pastors themselves can identify God's vision for their ministry they are trying to lead, and the average congregant spends more time watching television in one day than he spends in all spiritual pursuits combined for an entire week.
In a national study only 7% of Christians identified spiritual wholeness and development as the factor that will produce a successful life. “Family and Personal Accomplishments Lead People’s List of Success Determinants,” Barna went on to state: "The Christian faith commends sacrifice, servanthood and sharing as the means to significance. How is it possible to have more than 120 million adults attending Christian churches on a regular basis, but only 15 million who grasp the message that success is not about personal accomplishment or material possessions?"
Only one-third of teenagers attending church today are likely to do so once they reach adulthood. [All statistics from “Barna Identifies Seven Paradoxes Regarding America’s Faith”, December 17, 2002]
In America today a large majority of people describe themselves as “followers of Christ” and believe in the accuracy of the Bible, yet they also believe there is no absolute moral truth and argue that truth is always relative to the individual. [Barna: “Americans are more likely to Base Truth on Feelings.”]
“While most believers have heard of spiritual gifts, half of all born-again adults either do not know what their spiritual gift is or claim that God did not give them one.” [Growing True Disciples, page 74]
According to the Gallup polling organization in June 1990 74% of Americans describe themselves as having made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ [Awakening the Giant, Jim Russell, page 13], yet in the last few decades rates of illegitimacy and divorce have skyrocketed and unmarried couples have become a standard feature of our society. Over a million people are currently in prison, (statistics from Prison Fellowship) one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, certainly in American history.
For several decades now most American churches have experienced declining attendance, increasing apathy and lack of spiritual development. The youth drop out en masse as soon as they graduate and adult men are difficult to find in pews on Sunday morning. Christian churches in America are becoming little more than social clubs for old ladies.
Christian influence in society has declined and we are pushed ever more onto the fringes. In the last sixty years abortion, pornography, and gambling have been legalized and praying in school has been outlawed. It’s legal and considered socially acceptable to support an on-campus homosexual club with tax money but a Bible club has to sue just to be allowed to meet on school premises. In three generations we’ve gone from a society where teaching evolution in a public school was illegal, to one where mentioning a creator is. [http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governme...]
All of these trends are clearly documented by statistics gathered by the Barna poling organization. [http://www.barna.org/] In fact there’s a newly coined term for the increasingly successful advance of modern secularism. It’s been described as a culture war. And while the Church seems to be holding onto its market share, those of us who hold to the traditional worldview see our side is losing.
And it’s because we do not have a real sense of what being a Christian is. It’s no wonder things are falling apart if we don’t understand the most basic element of what it is to be a Christian–what’s the definition?
In America today a “Christian” is somebody who goes to church. It doesn’t seem to matter what church it is or what they teach. A “Church-ian” would be a more accurate description.
If another “Christian” finds out you’re one too, what’s the first question they always ask? “What church do you go to?”
But what should be the definition of “Christian?” (That will be the subject of my next blog post)
If you found this post interesting you might also like some of my books:
The Bible - Dead Letter or Message from Your Creator?
Revolutionary Discipleship What does Jesus expect from his followers? How did he train his disciples?
Has Christianity lost its cultural relevance? Has the Church’s misguided efforts to market itself to non-Christians doomed it to irrelevance? Is it time for a new Reformation? Spiritual Embezzlement Made Easy
Of Myth and Magic A comparison of religion, philosophy and magick throughout history. Are all religions basically the same? Is there a way to Truth and contentment?
Lilith of Gomorra is a noble Martian priestess who sees love as nothing more than an exercise in naked carnality. But when she discovers a higher form of love, her faith in the ancient religion turns to doubt and she must choose between her people and the man she loves. The fate of the Earth hangs on her choice. A Priestess of Mars - a romantic steampunk adventure that explores the meaning of love from a Biblical perspective.
And if you didn't like this post...well, there's always something on TV.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7:15-23)
But do we really understand the difference between “good” fruit and bad? What does it means for something to be authentically “Christian?”
Churches used to have Statements of Faith that declared what it meant to be a Baptist or Pentecostal or Catholic. But churches today are so obsessed with market share, they aggressively recruit their unchristian neighbors and aren’t too picky whether they agree with an old dusty Statement of Faith, as long as they show up regularly on Sunday morning and slip a fiver into the collection plate.
According to the Barna poling organization “More than four out of five Americans claim to be Christian and half as many can be classified as born again Christians. Nine out of ten adults own a Bible. Most adults read the Bible during the year and a huge majority claims they know all of the basic teachings of the Bible.” This would seem to indicate that America is a Christian nation and that our churches have been very successful.
Yet Barna concludes his study saying, “How, then, can most people say Satan does not exist, that the Holy Spirit is merely a symbol, that eternal peace with God can be earned through good works, and that truth can only be understood through the lens of reason and experience? How can a plurality of our citizens contend that Jesus committed sins and that the Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon all teach the same truths?”
The fact of the matter is that in America today there are many church attenders but few actual followers of Christ. This is borne out further in the same study:
“The year's research also underscored the fact that half of the people who attend Christian churches on any given weekend are not Christian—that is, they do not trust in Christ alone for their eternal salvation.”
Research reveals few congregants have a biblical worldview, half the people they minister to are not spiritually secure or developed, kids are fleeing from the church in record numbers, most of the people who attend worship services admit they did not connect with God, the divorce rate among Christians is no different than that of non-Christians, only 2% of the pastors themselves can identify God's vision for their ministry they are trying to lead, and the average congregant spends more time watching television in one day than he spends in all spiritual pursuits combined for an entire week.
In a national study only 7% of Christians identified spiritual wholeness and development as the factor that will produce a successful life. “Family and Personal Accomplishments Lead People’s List of Success Determinants,” Barna went on to state: "The Christian faith commends sacrifice, servanthood and sharing as the means to significance. How is it possible to have more than 120 million adults attending Christian churches on a regular basis, but only 15 million who grasp the message that success is not about personal accomplishment or material possessions?"
Only one-third of teenagers attending church today are likely to do so once they reach adulthood. [All statistics from “Barna Identifies Seven Paradoxes Regarding America’s Faith”, December 17, 2002]
In America today a large majority of people describe themselves as “followers of Christ” and believe in the accuracy of the Bible, yet they also believe there is no absolute moral truth and argue that truth is always relative to the individual. [Barna: “Americans are more likely to Base Truth on Feelings.”]
“While most believers have heard of spiritual gifts, half of all born-again adults either do not know what their spiritual gift is or claim that God did not give them one.” [Growing True Disciples, page 74]
According to the Gallup polling organization in June 1990 74% of Americans describe themselves as having made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ [Awakening the Giant, Jim Russell, page 13], yet in the last few decades rates of illegitimacy and divorce have skyrocketed and unmarried couples have become a standard feature of our society. Over a million people are currently in prison, (statistics from Prison Fellowship) one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, certainly in American history.
For several decades now most American churches have experienced declining attendance, increasing apathy and lack of spiritual development. The youth drop out en masse as soon as they graduate and adult men are difficult to find in pews on Sunday morning. Christian churches in America are becoming little more than social clubs for old ladies.
Christian influence in society has declined and we are pushed ever more onto the fringes. In the last sixty years abortion, pornography, and gambling have been legalized and praying in school has been outlawed. It’s legal and considered socially acceptable to support an on-campus homosexual club with tax money but a Bible club has to sue just to be allowed to meet on school premises. In three generations we’ve gone from a society where teaching evolution in a public school was illegal, to one where mentioning a creator is. [http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governme...]
All of these trends are clearly documented by statistics gathered by the Barna poling organization. [http://www.barna.org/] In fact there’s a newly coined term for the increasingly successful advance of modern secularism. It’s been described as a culture war. And while the Church seems to be holding onto its market share, those of us who hold to the traditional worldview see our side is losing.
And it’s because we do not have a real sense of what being a Christian is. It’s no wonder things are falling apart if we don’t understand the most basic element of what it is to be a Christian–what’s the definition?
In America today a “Christian” is somebody who goes to church. It doesn’t seem to matter what church it is or what they teach. A “Church-ian” would be a more accurate description.
If another “Christian” finds out you’re one too, what’s the first question they always ask? “What church do you go to?”
But what should be the definition of “Christian?” (That will be the subject of my next blog post)
If you found this post interesting you might also like some of my books:
The Bible - Dead Letter or Message from Your Creator?
Revolutionary Discipleship What does Jesus expect from his followers? How did he train his disciples?
Has Christianity lost its cultural relevance? Has the Church’s misguided efforts to market itself to non-Christians doomed it to irrelevance? Is it time for a new Reformation? Spiritual Embezzlement Made Easy
Of Myth and Magic A comparison of religion, philosophy and magick throughout history. Are all religions basically the same? Is there a way to Truth and contentment?
Lilith of Gomorra is a noble Martian priestess who sees love as nothing more than an exercise in naked carnality. But when she discovers a higher form of love, her faith in the ancient religion turns to doubt and she must choose between her people and the man she loves. The fate of the Earth hangs on her choice. A Priestess of Mars - a romantic steampunk adventure that explores the meaning of love from a Biblical perspective.
And if you didn't like this post...well, there's always something on TV.
August 10, 2017
The Literati’s War on Happily Ever After
Two worldviews vie for dominance in Western civilization today, the old-school traditional worldview and post-modernist thought. It’s basically a struggle for the minds of Western readers between post-modernist Humanism and Classical tradition.
Classical thought is based on the idea that there is virtue in seeking justice, that a happily ever after is attainable, and life has a meaning and a purpose. This comes from its basis in the idea of life’s origin from a Creator God of love and justice.
Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: “A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.” (Wikipedia)
There is no truth, justice is a myth and life is ultimately meaningless. A happily ever after is just an unattainable fantasy. This is a logical conclusion starting from a basis that life’s origin is a chance coming together of random molecules in a universe of chaos. If we’re nothing but super-intelligent animals evolved from slime, there is no “Truth” and justice is just an outcome we happen to find beneficial.
People like stories that confirm their pre-existing views (or at least don’t challenge them.) If a reader believes in justice, he won’t be satisfied with a story that ends with the villain going free and the virtuous being punished. Readers prefer particular authors and shun others because authors write stories that reflect their personal beliefs. In literature, Humanists search for meaning, knowing it’s ultimately futile. Classicists search for resolution, hoping for justice.
We can see these two incompatible world-views illustrated in Hollywood products. Horror movies today are overwhelmingly post-modernist, nihilist, futile exhibitions of depravity and injustice. The slasher may be defeated at the end of the movie but he always comes back. The wicked escape justice repeatedly and the virtuous perish pointlessly. This confirms the post-modernist mantra “life sucks and then you die.”
Romance, on the other hand, requires a happily ever after where the “right” couple get together. In between these extremes the great mass of fiction struggles between the two worldviews. These days you never quite know how an author stands until you read some of his work.
The Classic worldview used to be virtually universal. You can see this by watching any Hollywood movie made before 1965. A good example is Ocean’s Eleven. In the original 1960 version the thieves fail to escape with the payoff, reinforcing traditional morality: Crime does not pay. In the modern remake, they do. Post-modernist ideology promotes income redistribution. The rich gangster who owns the casino “deserves” to be robbed by our sexy, hip lower-class heroes.
The efforts of Secular Humanist Progressives to remake the American education system have succeeded in creating a fission in society between the Red State Conservative Tea Party Classicists and Blue State Liberal Progressive Post-Modernists. While the mass of people remains sympathetic to the old worldview, a growing and influential minority holds to post-modernist thought. The West Coast Hollywood Elites and East Coast Literati are at odds with the mass of consumers in “Flyover Country.”
You can see this illustrated when a movie or book receives good reviews and awards by the Literati and Hollywood elites and then bombs at the box office. And it’s entirely because of the cultural dissonance of the movie’s message not matching the prevailing worldview of the majority of the audience.
The movie Cloverfield is a good example. The beginning sets up a story where a couple that clearly belongs together ends up separating.
Action starts with the guy moving away to take a new job and she’s invited to the farewell party, in the middle of which some kind of alien monster attacks New York. Typical horror/monster tropes ensue with the protagonists trying to escape. But the movie ups the ante by putting him and his friends in a desperate quest, not just to escape, but also to rescue his ex-girlfriend from her apartment across town. This added a lot of interest to an otherwise generic “monster eats ” movie.
If this film had been made in 1958 rather than 2008, they would have rescued the girl and the couple would have escaped the monster to live happily ever after, even if all the others perished. But being a product of post-modernist screenwriters, after everybody else is picked off one by one, he rescues her and, just as they’re about to be rescued, the monster eats them. They had us rooting for the couple the whole time only to snatch them away (literally) at the end and smash our hopes. I was quite disappointed. The movie did poorly, but I think if they’d had a different ending it would have done exceptionally well.
I don’t like post-modernist stories. I don’t like being told that life is pointless. I am offended by injustice and oppression. I’m just old school and that’s the kind of stories I write.
But the Literati don’t care for “trite, sentimental claptrap” like that. That’s why J.K. Rowling, author of the highest selling book series of all times (Harry Potter) was rejected a dozen times by publishers before finally discovering one who’d publish her manuscript. Notably, even that publisher rejected it initially, but let her daughter read it and then reconsidered because of her child’s avid interest. And even after that the publisher billed it as a young adult read and did not expect the widespread interest it eventually received. But if Harry turned evil and Voldemort triumphed in the end, the Literati would have been all for it.
I’ve seen the same sort of response from my writing, accumulating 377 rejections before Indie publishing my own books. Since then I’ve sold more than 15,000 copies and won the 2012 Crow Award as well as receiving many very good reviews. But even after all that I only managed to get a manuscript accepted by a “real” publisher when I switched to writing romances.
Romance is the only genre free of post-modernist prejudice. By definition romances have to end in a Happily Ever After. Any attempt to produce a post-modernist romance that ended otherwise, wouldn’t be a romance. It’d just be a particularly depressing piece of “chick-lit” about a failed relationship.
Therefore, my advice to writers is, if you want to get published, but you aren’t a grumpy New Age nihilist, you’ll be better off hanging that fantastic story of yours around a romance plot.
For readers, if you’ve noticed a lot of the more recently published books haven’t been as satisfying – this is why. You might want to steer away from releases published by the Big Six and look into Indie published works by authors they scorn.
Classical thought is based on the idea that there is virtue in seeking justice, that a happily ever after is attainable, and life has a meaning and a purpose. This comes from its basis in the idea of life’s origin from a Creator God of love and justice.
Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: “A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.” (Wikipedia)
There is no truth, justice is a myth and life is ultimately meaningless. A happily ever after is just an unattainable fantasy. This is a logical conclusion starting from a basis that life’s origin is a chance coming together of random molecules in a universe of chaos. If we’re nothing but super-intelligent animals evolved from slime, there is no “Truth” and justice is just an outcome we happen to find beneficial.
People like stories that confirm their pre-existing views (or at least don’t challenge them.) If a reader believes in justice, he won’t be satisfied with a story that ends with the villain going free and the virtuous being punished. Readers prefer particular authors and shun others because authors write stories that reflect their personal beliefs. In literature, Humanists search for meaning, knowing it’s ultimately futile. Classicists search for resolution, hoping for justice.
We can see these two incompatible world-views illustrated in Hollywood products. Horror movies today are overwhelmingly post-modernist, nihilist, futile exhibitions of depravity and injustice. The slasher may be defeated at the end of the movie but he always comes back. The wicked escape justice repeatedly and the virtuous perish pointlessly. This confirms the post-modernist mantra “life sucks and then you die.”
Romance, on the other hand, requires a happily ever after where the “right” couple get together. In between these extremes the great mass of fiction struggles between the two worldviews. These days you never quite know how an author stands until you read some of his work.
The Classic worldview used to be virtually universal. You can see this by watching any Hollywood movie made before 1965. A good example is Ocean’s Eleven. In the original 1960 version the thieves fail to escape with the payoff, reinforcing traditional morality: Crime does not pay. In the modern remake, they do. Post-modernist ideology promotes income redistribution. The rich gangster who owns the casino “deserves” to be robbed by our sexy, hip lower-class heroes.
The efforts of Secular Humanist Progressives to remake the American education system have succeeded in creating a fission in society between the Red State Conservative Tea Party Classicists and Blue State Liberal Progressive Post-Modernists. While the mass of people remains sympathetic to the old worldview, a growing and influential minority holds to post-modernist thought. The West Coast Hollywood Elites and East Coast Literati are at odds with the mass of consumers in “Flyover Country.”
You can see this illustrated when a movie or book receives good reviews and awards by the Literati and Hollywood elites and then bombs at the box office. And it’s entirely because of the cultural dissonance of the movie’s message not matching the prevailing worldview of the majority of the audience.
The movie Cloverfield is a good example. The beginning sets up a story where a couple that clearly belongs together ends up separating.
Action starts with the guy moving away to take a new job and she’s invited to the farewell party, in the middle of which some kind of alien monster attacks New York. Typical horror/monster tropes ensue with the protagonists trying to escape. But the movie ups the ante by putting him and his friends in a desperate quest, not just to escape, but also to rescue his ex-girlfriend from her apartment across town. This added a lot of interest to an otherwise generic “monster eats ” movie.
If this film had been made in 1958 rather than 2008, they would have rescued the girl and the couple would have escaped the monster to live happily ever after, even if all the others perished. But being a product of post-modernist screenwriters, after everybody else is picked off one by one, he rescues her and, just as they’re about to be rescued, the monster eats them. They had us rooting for the couple the whole time only to snatch them away (literally) at the end and smash our hopes. I was quite disappointed. The movie did poorly, but I think if they’d had a different ending it would have done exceptionally well.
I don’t like post-modernist stories. I don’t like being told that life is pointless. I am offended by injustice and oppression. I’m just old school and that’s the kind of stories I write.
But the Literati don’t care for “trite, sentimental claptrap” like that. That’s why J.K. Rowling, author of the highest selling book series of all times (Harry Potter) was rejected a dozen times by publishers before finally discovering one who’d publish her manuscript. Notably, even that publisher rejected it initially, but let her daughter read it and then reconsidered because of her child’s avid interest. And even after that the publisher billed it as a young adult read and did not expect the widespread interest it eventually received. But if Harry turned evil and Voldemort triumphed in the end, the Literati would have been all for it.
I’ve seen the same sort of response from my writing, accumulating 377 rejections before Indie publishing my own books. Since then I’ve sold more than 15,000 copies and won the 2012 Crow Award as well as receiving many very good reviews. But even after all that I only managed to get a manuscript accepted by a “real” publisher when I switched to writing romances.
Romance is the only genre free of post-modernist prejudice. By definition romances have to end in a Happily Ever After. Any attempt to produce a post-modernist romance that ended otherwise, wouldn’t be a romance. It’d just be a particularly depressing piece of “chick-lit” about a failed relationship.
Therefore, my advice to writers is, if you want to get published, but you aren’t a grumpy New Age nihilist, you’ll be better off hanging that fantastic story of yours around a romance plot.
For readers, if you’ve noticed a lot of the more recently published books haven’t been as satisfying – this is why. You might want to steer away from releases published by the Big Six and look into Indie published works by authors they scorn.
July 28, 2017
Dracula is Christian Fiction
Church ladies and Christian publishers have a prejudice against supernatural fiction. They particularly despise anything with vampires in it. An agent who specializes in Christian fantasy and science fiction has told me that “Christian” publishers will not consider anything with vampires in it. Even if the vampires are the villains, the heroes are Christian and the story demonstrates the power of God over evil. It doesn’t matter. By definition any story with vampires is anti-Christian. This is garbage.
Dracula and all the traditional vampire stories from before Anne Rice applied her post-modernist touch to the genre are the very definition of Christian fiction.
Dracula is a story of how Evil invades a little English town. How just a touch of it spreads through seduction, by offering a fake eternal life. How seeking the promise of eternal life on your own terms leads to a life of murder and misery. And how the inhabitants of that town were helpless against the Evil when they relied on their own strength.
But when Professor Van Helsing arrives, armed with the scriptures and ancient wisdom he was able to teach the people how to rely upon the Cross for protection. Eventually by their resistance, Dracula was forced to flee and was finally destroyed.
In these stories the things vampires are said to be vulnerable to include the cross, holy water, communion wafers, the spoken word of God, prayers, hawthorn (the plant used for Christ’s crown of thorns) and garlic. That last is the only one that doesn’t demonstrate the power of Christianity.
I’ve seen several old movies where the village priest has lost his faith and is thus unable to resist the vampire. This is an object lesson teaching exactly what it is that has power over Evil. It’s not the Church; it’s Christ.
Those old vampire stories are about as Christian as a Sunday School lesson. (And a lot more interesting.)
But I understand why modern day church ladies despise vampire fiction. Since the 1970s the genre has been turned on its head. Now the vampires are the heroes. They are literally rock stars.
And the “good guys” who fight them don’t bother with the Christian tropes anymore. They don’t spout scripture like old Van Helsing. Buffy the Vampire Slayer rarely used crosses. Why bother when a good roundhouse kick never fails?
No, the modern vampire slayer employs Wiccan magic and martial arts. They’re often allied to vampires (Angel and Spike) or might actually (like Blade and Bloodrayne) actually be a vampire themselves. Everything Christian has been neatly edited out. In the movie Bloodrayne the Christian vampire hunters are so inept they have to hire a half-vampire to save them from the vampire. (And in the end that plan succeeds about as well as you’d expect.)
But it’s not surprising that vampires would be seen as heroes in our post-modernist world. After all, the secular world doesn’t believe in an afterlife. Here is all you get. Therefore the seduction of a vampiric eternal life is strong. They have no faith in anything else.
In a Christian worldview the lure of the vampire is strongest to those who have no faith. Those who believe in Christ and God’s promises know the “eternal” life offered by the vampire is a counterfeit. It’s not eternal, merely thousands of years, and it’s not life. It’s a living death. It’s hard to miss that symbology when they sleep in a coffin and drink the blood of the living.
Christians should reclaim the vampire genre from the post modernists. This was a fiction genre that was once uniquely Christian.
If you found this post interesting you might also like some of my books:
Blood! Explains the influence of blood on modern history, warfare, religion, secret societies, government and popular culture.
Maitre’d to the Damned – a modern vampire story where the hero isn’t the one with fangs.
The Fist of God – a novel. What if the Second World War wasn't just the largest war in history, but a supernatural struggle between spiritual entities? Can a confirmed skeptic defeat a coven of Nazi sorcerers on their home ground?
The Unholy Grail – another novel (see a trend?) The Nazis can never be defeated as long as they control the supernatural power of the spear plunged into Christ at the crucifixion. But scoffed at by his skeptical superiors, Stuart perverts his assigned mission into a personal quest for the spear. But can mundane weapons defeat an enemy armed with supernatural powers summoned from the very pit of Hell?
Vril–a force to recon with (the occult basis of esoteric Nazism)
Dracula and all the traditional vampire stories from before Anne Rice applied her post-modernist touch to the genre are the very definition of Christian fiction.
Dracula is a story of how Evil invades a little English town. How just a touch of it spreads through seduction, by offering a fake eternal life. How seeking the promise of eternal life on your own terms leads to a life of murder and misery. And how the inhabitants of that town were helpless against the Evil when they relied on their own strength.
But when Professor Van Helsing arrives, armed with the scriptures and ancient wisdom he was able to teach the people how to rely upon the Cross for protection. Eventually by their resistance, Dracula was forced to flee and was finally destroyed.
In these stories the things vampires are said to be vulnerable to include the cross, holy water, communion wafers, the spoken word of God, prayers, hawthorn (the plant used for Christ’s crown of thorns) and garlic. That last is the only one that doesn’t demonstrate the power of Christianity.
I’ve seen several old movies where the village priest has lost his faith and is thus unable to resist the vampire. This is an object lesson teaching exactly what it is that has power over Evil. It’s not the Church; it’s Christ.
Those old vampire stories are about as Christian as a Sunday School lesson. (And a lot more interesting.)
But I understand why modern day church ladies despise vampire fiction. Since the 1970s the genre has been turned on its head. Now the vampires are the heroes. They are literally rock stars.
And the “good guys” who fight them don’t bother with the Christian tropes anymore. They don’t spout scripture like old Van Helsing. Buffy the Vampire Slayer rarely used crosses. Why bother when a good roundhouse kick never fails?
No, the modern vampire slayer employs Wiccan magic and martial arts. They’re often allied to vampires (Angel and Spike) or might actually (like Blade and Bloodrayne) actually be a vampire themselves. Everything Christian has been neatly edited out. In the movie Bloodrayne the Christian vampire hunters are so inept they have to hire a half-vampire to save them from the vampire. (And in the end that plan succeeds about as well as you’d expect.)
But it’s not surprising that vampires would be seen as heroes in our post-modernist world. After all, the secular world doesn’t believe in an afterlife. Here is all you get. Therefore the seduction of a vampiric eternal life is strong. They have no faith in anything else.
In a Christian worldview the lure of the vampire is strongest to those who have no faith. Those who believe in Christ and God’s promises know the “eternal” life offered by the vampire is a counterfeit. It’s not eternal, merely thousands of years, and it’s not life. It’s a living death. It’s hard to miss that symbology when they sleep in a coffin and drink the blood of the living.
Christians should reclaim the vampire genre from the post modernists. This was a fiction genre that was once uniquely Christian.
If you found this post interesting you might also like some of my books:
Blood! Explains the influence of blood on modern history, warfare, religion, secret societies, government and popular culture.
Maitre’d to the Damned – a modern vampire story where the hero isn’t the one with fangs.
The Fist of God – a novel. What if the Second World War wasn't just the largest war in history, but a supernatural struggle between spiritual entities? Can a confirmed skeptic defeat a coven of Nazi sorcerers on their home ground?
The Unholy Grail – another novel (see a trend?) The Nazis can never be defeated as long as they control the supernatural power of the spear plunged into Christ at the crucifixion. But scoffed at by his skeptical superiors, Stuart perverts his assigned mission into a personal quest for the spear. But can mundane weapons defeat an enemy armed with supernatural powers summoned from the very pit of Hell?
Vril–a force to recon with (the occult basis of esoteric Nazism)
July 17, 2017
The Church Introduced Me to the Supernatural
I’m very interested in the occult and paranormal topics. UFOs, Bigfoot, magick, runes, astrology, prophecies, zombies, mummies, vampires, psychic phenomena and spiritual relics all perk my interest. I’m a big fan of Buffy the Vampire slayer, all the old Hammer studio films, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Bella Lugosi. My favorite radio show is Coast to Coast with George Noory. And it’s all because of church.
This may seem counter-intuitive. But it was church where I learned as a little boy that what we can see with our eyes and experience with our other senses is not all there is. No one has seen God at any time (John 1:18) but we know he exists. The Bible is full of miracles. Everything the church does is steeped in the supernatural.
“Think of it: the crucifixion was where a man who could perform miracles that outclass the magic of any sorcerer was murdered by an illegal government conspiracy worthy of the X-Files. Dozens of prophecies were fulfilled; the sun became dark as sackcloth. The Bible says that when Christ died there was an earthquake and that the dead came back to life and walked the streets of Jerusalem testifying to the power of God. (Matthew 27:51-53) Then three days later Christ himself rose from the dead, not as a zombie but fully human, even more than human, with the power to walk through walls. The soldiers guarding his tomb fled from the sight of beings from the spirit world, but their testimony was covered up in another conspiracy that continues to this very day.” (From Revolutionary Discipleship)
The first recorded séance in history is given in the Bible in First Samuel. The Bible mentions witches, sorcerers, demonic possession and resurrection of the dead. The Egyptian priests duplicated several of Moses’ miracles using magic. God stops the sun (Joshua 10:13) parts the sea (Exodus 14:21) and strikes an entire army dead (2 Kings 19:35.) Christianity by its very nature is supernatural.
The church I grew up in had a big missionary emphasis. They supported a very large number of foreign missionaries. To raise money to support them, every year they’d send some of them around the local churches to share stories about what they did overseas. And many of them, especially those working with New Guinea headhunters or primitive Amazon tribes always related incidents involving their conflicts with the local witch-doctors, generally more supernatural and spiritual in nature than physical.
One of the most memorable stories was from a medical missionary to Africa. Remember, I grew up back in the 1960s, a turbulent time in Africa. The country she’d been in experienced a revolution and the revolutionaries were massacring Westerners and native Christian converts. The locals sought safety in the mission hospital knowing that government forces were on their way. But that night heavily armed rebel forces surrounded the mission and prepared to attack. The Christians had no weapons and could only pray for deliverance. But the attack they feared never came. The next day the relief force arrived and there was a battle between them and the rebels. The missionary hospital ended up treating combat casualties from both sides and the missionary had a chance to talk to a wounded rebel soldier. She asked him why they hadn’t attacked. He said it would have been suicide because of heavily armed men in white uniforms defending the mission all night. But the government troops wore green and hadn’t shown up until the next day. Was it angels with assault rifles?
I grew up in the church hearing all those fabulous stories. But these days for some reason churchgoers treat anything supernatural as anathema. People find out I write about the occult and shun me. They treat anything supernatural as if it’s evil.
Don’t misunderstand. I don’t practice magick. I don’t believe in astrology or hold séances. I treat the occult the same way I treated Soviet military tactics when I was a US Army officer. If you want to understand the enemy, you have to understand their tactics. It’s like that scene out of the movie Patton when the American general defeats Rommel by anticipating his tactics, shouting at the enemy’s retreating forces, “Rommel you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”
How can you talk with a New Ager about the massive logical holes in their doctrine if you aren’t familiar with it? How can you discuss the illogic of astrology with someone interested in it if you don’t know how they think it works? You can’t have any sort of dialogue with a Wiccan if all you can say to them is “you’re wrong and are going to Hell.” That’s going to be very persuasive, but not in the way you hoped.
Yet I’ve been told by a agent specializing in Christian science fiction and fantasy that no book with vampires in it would ever be accepted by a Christian publisher, even if the vampire is the villain, is vanquished by Christian heroes and the book demonstrates the power of God. It’s rejected without further examination simply because it has a vampire in it. Nothing else matters. Somehow over the last generation all the supernatural power has been drained from the church. Anything involving the supernatural is seen as anti-Christian.
Meanwhile modern society today is steeped in the occult. Behind a façade of secular humanism beats the supernatural heart of popular culture. Occult themes predominate in movies, books and entertainment. There’s a popular TV series itself titled Supernatural. Rock groups perform using occult props. Harvard University is even doing Black Masses now. Crystal gazing, astrology and tarot readings are ubiquitous yet most Christians can only recoil from them and say, “Well, that stuff is bad.” But they can’t say why, other than the Bible forbids it, although most couldn’t point to a specific biblical reference to prove that. Ignorance and impotence are ineffective battle strategies.
Every Wiccan I know (and I know quite a few) was brought up Catholic and quit the Church. I like to say they got inoculated there against real Christianity. They were exposed to it, but only the dead rituals, not the real transforming power of Christ. Then when they grew up, they went searching for real power and discovered Wicca. The Bible never says the occult has no power, only that greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world. (First John 4:4)
But it also says we should be wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16.) In an occult-soaked world we need to know the enemy’s tactics so we won’t fall for them and so we can help untangle our friends, relatives and neighbors ensnared in them.
If you found this post interesting you might also like some of my books:
Babylonian and Egyptian Astrology – a Christian perspective
Black Magic / White Magic: What’s the Difference? (none)
Falun Gong–the Force is with us The fastest growing religion in the world today is essentially identical with that of the Jedi in Star Wars.
Of Myth and Magic A comparison of religion, philosophy and magick throughout history.
Self-defense Against Alien Abduction The truth behind UFO phenomena.
Science and Magick: Are they Compatible? Depends how you define “science.”
The Bible – Dead Letter or Message from your Creator?
The Truth About Conspiracy Theories
Vril–a force to recon with (the occult basis of esoteric Nazism)
Why Do Ghosts Wear Clothes? (A Christian paranormal investigation)
And I also do paranormal novels from a Christian perspective.
And if you didn’t like this post…well, there’s always something on TV...probably about the occult.
This may seem counter-intuitive. But it was church where I learned as a little boy that what we can see with our eyes and experience with our other senses is not all there is. No one has seen God at any time (John 1:18) but we know he exists. The Bible is full of miracles. Everything the church does is steeped in the supernatural.
“Think of it: the crucifixion was where a man who could perform miracles that outclass the magic of any sorcerer was murdered by an illegal government conspiracy worthy of the X-Files. Dozens of prophecies were fulfilled; the sun became dark as sackcloth. The Bible says that when Christ died there was an earthquake and that the dead came back to life and walked the streets of Jerusalem testifying to the power of God. (Matthew 27:51-53) Then three days later Christ himself rose from the dead, not as a zombie but fully human, even more than human, with the power to walk through walls. The soldiers guarding his tomb fled from the sight of beings from the spirit world, but their testimony was covered up in another conspiracy that continues to this very day.” (From Revolutionary Discipleship)
The first recorded séance in history is given in the Bible in First Samuel. The Bible mentions witches, sorcerers, demonic possession and resurrection of the dead. The Egyptian priests duplicated several of Moses’ miracles using magic. God stops the sun (Joshua 10:13) parts the sea (Exodus 14:21) and strikes an entire army dead (2 Kings 19:35.) Christianity by its very nature is supernatural.
The church I grew up in had a big missionary emphasis. They supported a very large number of foreign missionaries. To raise money to support them, every year they’d send some of them around the local churches to share stories about what they did overseas. And many of them, especially those working with New Guinea headhunters or primitive Amazon tribes always related incidents involving their conflicts with the local witch-doctors, generally more supernatural and spiritual in nature than physical.
One of the most memorable stories was from a medical missionary to Africa. Remember, I grew up back in the 1960s, a turbulent time in Africa. The country she’d been in experienced a revolution and the revolutionaries were massacring Westerners and native Christian converts. The locals sought safety in the mission hospital knowing that government forces were on their way. But that night heavily armed rebel forces surrounded the mission and prepared to attack. The Christians had no weapons and could only pray for deliverance. But the attack they feared never came. The next day the relief force arrived and there was a battle between them and the rebels. The missionary hospital ended up treating combat casualties from both sides and the missionary had a chance to talk to a wounded rebel soldier. She asked him why they hadn’t attacked. He said it would have been suicide because of heavily armed men in white uniforms defending the mission all night. But the government troops wore green and hadn’t shown up until the next day. Was it angels with assault rifles?
I grew up in the church hearing all those fabulous stories. But these days for some reason churchgoers treat anything supernatural as anathema. People find out I write about the occult and shun me. They treat anything supernatural as if it’s evil.
Don’t misunderstand. I don’t practice magick. I don’t believe in astrology or hold séances. I treat the occult the same way I treated Soviet military tactics when I was a US Army officer. If you want to understand the enemy, you have to understand their tactics. It’s like that scene out of the movie Patton when the American general defeats Rommel by anticipating his tactics, shouting at the enemy’s retreating forces, “Rommel you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”
How can you talk with a New Ager about the massive logical holes in their doctrine if you aren’t familiar with it? How can you discuss the illogic of astrology with someone interested in it if you don’t know how they think it works? You can’t have any sort of dialogue with a Wiccan if all you can say to them is “you’re wrong and are going to Hell.” That’s going to be very persuasive, but not in the way you hoped.
Yet I’ve been told by a agent specializing in Christian science fiction and fantasy that no book with vampires in it would ever be accepted by a Christian publisher, even if the vampire is the villain, is vanquished by Christian heroes and the book demonstrates the power of God. It’s rejected without further examination simply because it has a vampire in it. Nothing else matters. Somehow over the last generation all the supernatural power has been drained from the church. Anything involving the supernatural is seen as anti-Christian.
Meanwhile modern society today is steeped in the occult. Behind a façade of secular humanism beats the supernatural heart of popular culture. Occult themes predominate in movies, books and entertainment. There’s a popular TV series itself titled Supernatural. Rock groups perform using occult props. Harvard University is even doing Black Masses now. Crystal gazing, astrology and tarot readings are ubiquitous yet most Christians can only recoil from them and say, “Well, that stuff is bad.” But they can’t say why, other than the Bible forbids it, although most couldn’t point to a specific biblical reference to prove that. Ignorance and impotence are ineffective battle strategies.
Every Wiccan I know (and I know quite a few) was brought up Catholic and quit the Church. I like to say they got inoculated there against real Christianity. They were exposed to it, but only the dead rituals, not the real transforming power of Christ. Then when they grew up, they went searching for real power and discovered Wicca. The Bible never says the occult has no power, only that greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world. (First John 4:4)
But it also says we should be wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16.) In an occult-soaked world we need to know the enemy’s tactics so we won’t fall for them and so we can help untangle our friends, relatives and neighbors ensnared in them.
If you found this post interesting you might also like some of my books:
Babylonian and Egyptian Astrology – a Christian perspective
Black Magic / White Magic: What’s the Difference? (none)
Falun Gong–the Force is with us The fastest growing religion in the world today is essentially identical with that of the Jedi in Star Wars.
Of Myth and Magic A comparison of religion, philosophy and magick throughout history.
Self-defense Against Alien Abduction The truth behind UFO phenomena.
Science and Magick: Are they Compatible? Depends how you define “science.”
The Bible – Dead Letter or Message from your Creator?
The Truth About Conspiracy Theories
Vril–a force to recon with (the occult basis of esoteric Nazism)
Why Do Ghosts Wear Clothes? (A Christian paranormal investigation)
And I also do paranormal novels from a Christian perspective.
And if you didn’t like this post…well, there’s always something on TV...probably about the occult.
July 6, 2017
Are Steampunk Spacecraft Really Feasible?
After I published The Queen's Martian Rifles some critics complained the idea of steam-powered spacecraft was not only absurd but impossible. Really? We're going to start judging science-fiction stories by how closely they fit conventional wisdom?
I wasn't really surprised, since my Maitre'd to the Damned was once rejected by an editor who said even though it had a time machine in it, it wasn't science-fiction because I never went on a protracted rant about relativity or paradoxes or quantum physics or any of that.
According to him the plot was just "too unbelievably far out." My manuscript was rejected by a guy who specialized in books about far-out inventions that don’t exist and travel to other planets because he thought the plot was just too weird to be "proper" science-fiction? I guess he never read Dune. But is the idea of Victorian spacecraft really that impossible?
I admit the Tesla coil contra-gravity device was my one demand for suspension of disbelief. The idea was Tesla invented an electric device that treated gravity pretty much like an electro-magnet uses electricity to make magnetism. You run power through the coil and it generated gravity. Reverse the polarity and you got contra-gravity. Attach the coil to the keel of your ship and switch it on and you've got a flying ship. It actually makes more scientific sense than that flying car in the Flubber movie.
And it really isn't all that far farfetched to believe that Nikola Tesla could have invented something like that. Remember, this is the guy who invented AC current, the electric generator, the radio and a bunch of other amazing stuff including reputably an earthquake generator and (on his day off) a remote controlled model submarine he used to play with on the lake in Central Park. And this was before the invention (at least officially) of radio, radio control and submarines.
In fiction you're allowed to have one "gimmie," one suspension of disbelief. This is a time-honored literary convention. We grated Dumas that the man in the iron mask looked exactly like the king, and Tolkien that one ring really could rule them all, and Frank Herbert that ingesting alien worm excrement could bestow godlike psychic powers. Okay, maybe that last one was a stretch, but granted that Tesla invented a contra-gravity coil, everything else in The Queen's Martian Rifles follows. The coil was powered by electricity and back then you could generate that with steam engines. But is it reasonable to suppose they could have built a steam-powered spaceship and gone to Mars in 1890?
I made the assumption that given sufficient power the contra-gravity coil could provide a constant 1g acceleration. This gives an aether ship the same general performance statistics as the atomic-powered ship proposed by the Orion Project in the early sixties. Their calculations showed with a constant 1g acceleration a trip to Mars would only take 100 days. Once you assume the coil works, the only problem is finding enough current to supply it. But how to generate electricity in the vacuum of space? And with steampunk technology? You can't run a steam engine on coal in a vacuum.
A solar boiler is just a sealed vessel containing water with an external mirror to concentrate the sun's rays. The solar heat boils the water. After that, everything works pretty much the same as if you'd made the steam boiling water over a coal fire. You channel the steam through a generator for electricity, then either a radiator to cool it down and reuse or just add additional water to keep the process going as long as desired. This is not as efficient as solar electric cells, but it's quite within the bounds of 19th century technology. But could Victorians build a pressure-sealed craft that could operate in space?
The late 19th century was a hotbed of submarine development. Numerous inventors in many countries developed undersea craft: Holland, Lake, and Nordenfelt to name just a few. The same design principles that keep high pressure water out also keep air in. Any shipyard that could build a submarine back then could make a vessel sealed against vacuum. But the main objection seems to be the idea of maintaining life support in space. After all, those Victorian submarines didn't remain submerged for months at a time.
NASA determined for the Apollo missions that 1.8 pounds of oxygen were required per man-day of operation in space, plus an additional 4.8 pounds to replace losses due to leaks and such. The actual oxygen usage for the Apollo 15 mission was only 2.94 pounds per man-day, only 63% of their estimate which had been refined down after six previous Apollo missions to the moon. (NASA estimates were notoriously conservative.)
If we assume our hypothetical steampunk aether ship is the size of a contemporaneous armored cruiser (say the British Orlando class) it would displace 5600 tons and require a crew of 484, probably much less, assuming it's an unarmed exploratory vessel. This is roughly equivalent to the proposed size of the aforementioned Project Orion ship. Even supposing a crew of 484, and the actual oxygen usage of the Apollo missions (about 3 pounds per man-day) the oxygen requirement for a 100-day journey to Mars is only 72.6 tons. For a round-trip (assuming we can't resupply on the Red Planet) we'd need at least double that, plus a reserve for time spent exploring, so let's triple that amount: 218 tons.
Water requirements are close to that of oxygen. NASA provided 25.4 kg for the Apollo 15 mission, a usage rate of 2 kg per man-day. At that rate a 100-day mission to Mars with 484 men would require 106.48 tons, tripled gives 320 tons. This is assuming no recycling.
The Orlando-class cruisers were designed to carry 900 tons of coal, which we need only enough to lift us out of the atmosphere, leaving plenty of room for the extra oxygen and water supplies needed for the trip. And remember, this is assuming a ridiculous size crew. A civilian vessel of the same size would have a crew about one-tenth that of a warship.
But a major problem with long-term operations for both spacecraft and submarines operating on life support is the build-up of carbon-dioxide. Without constant removal the respiration of the crew will increase the concentration until it becomes toxic. Somehow we'll have to renew our air supply, and just pumping in more oxygen isn't enough.
Some have suggested greenhouses, and while that's certainly within the limits of Victorian technology, a greenhouse big enough to do the job would have to be larger than our ship. So, maybe we do add a greenhouse to the design, but more for aesthetics than practicality - always a big steampunk consideration.
NASA used filters impregnated with lithium hydroxide to remove CO2 from the air of the Apollo capsules. When exposed to CO2, lithium hydroxide sucks it out of the air forming lithium carbonate and water. One gram of lithium hydroxide can remove 450 cubic centimeters pf CO2. The process actually made so much water the Apollo crews actually had to dump the excess overboard. A lithium hydroxide filter with simple electric fans to circulate the air would make an effective life support system for our aether ship and reduce the amount of water our expedition would have to carry.
Lithium hydroxide is not a high-tech material. It was first obtained by electrolysis in 1821 by William Thomas Brande. The process was improved in 1855 by Robert Bunsen, the inventor of the Bunsen burner. So the life support system of our modern moon missions employed essentially Victorian technology.
As can be seen, given the patented Tesla Contra-Gravity Coil, our plucky adventurers could easily be setting foot on Luna or Mars, space-suited in a suitably modified diving suit (minus the diving weights and heavy boots, of course.) The suit would have to be modified to keep pressure in rather than water out, or our aethernaught would look like the Michellin Man. This could be done with a heavy coating of rubber. Victorians referred to garments made out of rubberized canvas as Mackintoshes, after the inventor.
Presented with the opportunity a contra-gravity coil represents, I have no doubt the people of the era that invented submarines, ironclads, motorcars and airships, would prove as up to exploring the vastness of space as they did reaching the poles and the heart of Africa.
If you want to see this technology in action, read my Queen's Martian Rifles or The Donuts of Doom. They're steampunk adventures with heroic characters. And when you do, write me and tell me what you think. I'd be glad to hear from you.
I wasn't really surprised, since my Maitre'd to the Damned was once rejected by an editor who said even though it had a time machine in it, it wasn't science-fiction because I never went on a protracted rant about relativity or paradoxes or quantum physics or any of that.
According to him the plot was just "too unbelievably far out." My manuscript was rejected by a guy who specialized in books about far-out inventions that don’t exist and travel to other planets because he thought the plot was just too weird to be "proper" science-fiction? I guess he never read Dune. But is the idea of Victorian spacecraft really that impossible?
I admit the Tesla coil contra-gravity device was my one demand for suspension of disbelief. The idea was Tesla invented an electric device that treated gravity pretty much like an electro-magnet uses electricity to make magnetism. You run power through the coil and it generated gravity. Reverse the polarity and you got contra-gravity. Attach the coil to the keel of your ship and switch it on and you've got a flying ship. It actually makes more scientific sense than that flying car in the Flubber movie.
And it really isn't all that far farfetched to believe that Nikola Tesla could have invented something like that. Remember, this is the guy who invented AC current, the electric generator, the radio and a bunch of other amazing stuff including reputably an earthquake generator and (on his day off) a remote controlled model submarine he used to play with on the lake in Central Park. And this was before the invention (at least officially) of radio, radio control and submarines.
In fiction you're allowed to have one "gimmie," one suspension of disbelief. This is a time-honored literary convention. We grated Dumas that the man in the iron mask looked exactly like the king, and Tolkien that one ring really could rule them all, and Frank Herbert that ingesting alien worm excrement could bestow godlike psychic powers. Okay, maybe that last one was a stretch, but granted that Tesla invented a contra-gravity coil, everything else in The Queen's Martian Rifles follows. The coil was powered by electricity and back then you could generate that with steam engines. But is it reasonable to suppose they could have built a steam-powered spaceship and gone to Mars in 1890?
I made the assumption that given sufficient power the contra-gravity coil could provide a constant 1g acceleration. This gives an aether ship the same general performance statistics as the atomic-powered ship proposed by the Orion Project in the early sixties. Their calculations showed with a constant 1g acceleration a trip to Mars would only take 100 days. Once you assume the coil works, the only problem is finding enough current to supply it. But how to generate electricity in the vacuum of space? And with steampunk technology? You can't run a steam engine on coal in a vacuum.
A solar boiler is just a sealed vessel containing water with an external mirror to concentrate the sun's rays. The solar heat boils the water. After that, everything works pretty much the same as if you'd made the steam boiling water over a coal fire. You channel the steam through a generator for electricity, then either a radiator to cool it down and reuse or just add additional water to keep the process going as long as desired. This is not as efficient as solar electric cells, but it's quite within the bounds of 19th century technology. But could Victorians build a pressure-sealed craft that could operate in space?
The late 19th century was a hotbed of submarine development. Numerous inventors in many countries developed undersea craft: Holland, Lake, and Nordenfelt to name just a few. The same design principles that keep high pressure water out also keep air in. Any shipyard that could build a submarine back then could make a vessel sealed against vacuum. But the main objection seems to be the idea of maintaining life support in space. After all, those Victorian submarines didn't remain submerged for months at a time.
NASA determined for the Apollo missions that 1.8 pounds of oxygen were required per man-day of operation in space, plus an additional 4.8 pounds to replace losses due to leaks and such. The actual oxygen usage for the Apollo 15 mission was only 2.94 pounds per man-day, only 63% of their estimate which had been refined down after six previous Apollo missions to the moon. (NASA estimates were notoriously conservative.)
If we assume our hypothetical steampunk aether ship is the size of a contemporaneous armored cruiser (say the British Orlando class) it would displace 5600 tons and require a crew of 484, probably much less, assuming it's an unarmed exploratory vessel. This is roughly equivalent to the proposed size of the aforementioned Project Orion ship. Even supposing a crew of 484, and the actual oxygen usage of the Apollo missions (about 3 pounds per man-day) the oxygen requirement for a 100-day journey to Mars is only 72.6 tons. For a round-trip (assuming we can't resupply on the Red Planet) we'd need at least double that, plus a reserve for time spent exploring, so let's triple that amount: 218 tons.
Water requirements are close to that of oxygen. NASA provided 25.4 kg for the Apollo 15 mission, a usage rate of 2 kg per man-day. At that rate a 100-day mission to Mars with 484 men would require 106.48 tons, tripled gives 320 tons. This is assuming no recycling.
The Orlando-class cruisers were designed to carry 900 tons of coal, which we need only enough to lift us out of the atmosphere, leaving plenty of room for the extra oxygen and water supplies needed for the trip. And remember, this is assuming a ridiculous size crew. A civilian vessel of the same size would have a crew about one-tenth that of a warship.
But a major problem with long-term operations for both spacecraft and submarines operating on life support is the build-up of carbon-dioxide. Without constant removal the respiration of the crew will increase the concentration until it becomes toxic. Somehow we'll have to renew our air supply, and just pumping in more oxygen isn't enough.
Some have suggested greenhouses, and while that's certainly within the limits of Victorian technology, a greenhouse big enough to do the job would have to be larger than our ship. So, maybe we do add a greenhouse to the design, but more for aesthetics than practicality - always a big steampunk consideration.
NASA used filters impregnated with lithium hydroxide to remove CO2 from the air of the Apollo capsules. When exposed to CO2, lithium hydroxide sucks it out of the air forming lithium carbonate and water. One gram of lithium hydroxide can remove 450 cubic centimeters pf CO2. The process actually made so much water the Apollo crews actually had to dump the excess overboard. A lithium hydroxide filter with simple electric fans to circulate the air would make an effective life support system for our aether ship and reduce the amount of water our expedition would have to carry.
Lithium hydroxide is not a high-tech material. It was first obtained by electrolysis in 1821 by William Thomas Brande. The process was improved in 1855 by Robert Bunsen, the inventor of the Bunsen burner. So the life support system of our modern moon missions employed essentially Victorian technology.
As can be seen, given the patented Tesla Contra-Gravity Coil, our plucky adventurers could easily be setting foot on Luna or Mars, space-suited in a suitably modified diving suit (minus the diving weights and heavy boots, of course.) The suit would have to be modified to keep pressure in rather than water out, or our aethernaught would look like the Michellin Man. This could be done with a heavy coating of rubber. Victorians referred to garments made out of rubberized canvas as Mackintoshes, after the inventor.
Presented with the opportunity a contra-gravity coil represents, I have no doubt the people of the era that invented submarines, ironclads, motorcars and airships, would prove as up to exploring the vastness of space as they did reaching the poles and the heart of Africa.
If you want to see this technology in action, read my Queen's Martian Rifles or The Donuts of Doom. They're steampunk adventures with heroic characters. And when you do, write me and tell me what you think. I'd be glad to hear from you.
June 22, 2017
The Two Faces of Steampunk
When people find out I write steampunk their first question is often “What’s steampunk?”
At its core, steampunk is about technology. Steampunk stories are usually set in Victorian times, granting them technological prowess similar to our modern world, but their computers are mechanical, their power source is steam rather than atomic or internal combustion, and everything is lavishly decorated in the Victorian style.
The term steampunk originated in the late 1980’s when author K.W. Jeter needed a general term to describe the work of himself, Tim Powers, and James Blaylock. At the time cyber-punk was popular and he coined steam-punk as a takeoff on that term.
I wrote a blog post once about the difference between cyberpunk and steampunk. I said that while cyberpunk was cynically dark, depressing and pessimistic, steampunk was optimistic about technology and the future. I got a lot of comments that I was completely wrong. Some even went as far to heap scorn on my definition of steampunk as “shiny happy steampunk,” insisting it was a completely different genre they called “Victorian Fantasy.”
But is steampunk by definition pessimistic?
I'm a great fan of the books of Blaylock, Jeter and Powers, even back in the 1980’s before “steampunk” existed as a genre. Their stories, while often dark, were never the nihilistic “cyberpunk with steam engines” that seems to be the operating definition of steampunk these days. Their villains were evil. Technology was just a means to an end.
In contrast, in Vandermeer’s recently published Steampunk anthology, the stories are dark, edgy and quite depressingly reminiscent of cyberpunk tales, which is why I didn’t like it much. Today, most of the literati define steampunk as “Cyberpunk with steam engines.” They nsist the stories must be dark, with destructive, dangerous, and dehumanizing technology. The hero, if there is one, must end the story worse off than he began. In other words, they're just post-modernist cyberpunk stories set in the Victorian Age.
Cyberpunk is all about the horrors of technology. It features a bleak, dehumanized world dominated by monolithic corporations where computers have granted a lucky few almost magical powers at the expense of their humanity. The future is dark and depressing. Technology has transformed civilization into a barbarous, disease-ridden, urban wasteland without freedom. It’s like George Orwell's 1984 but instead of Big Brother, everything is run by Halliburton or some other huge oppressive corporation—capitalism run rampant.
Cyberpunks vision of the world arose after a century of massive wars made more terrible by science and technology. Entire generations have grown up under the threat of a global nuclear apocalypse. We look around and see atomic waste piling up, threats from terrorists, biological warfare, genetic modification, carbon emissions, and worse, where huge corporations like Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook dominate, controlling what we watch and eat, how we work, and where and what we buy. Even our cars will soon be under their control. We live in a cyberpunk world.
But the real Victorians hadn't lived through that yet. They still had faith in science and technology. They believed science could solve any problem. Progress was always good. Technology was like a magic genie. With it Mankind would end starvation, ignorance and poverty and create heaven on earth. The future would be much better than today. That's what evolution was supposed to be about.
You see this in the work of the original steampunk author, Jules Verne. His heroes were scientists and inventors. Sometimes technology got them into trouble, but it’d eventually get them back out again, too. Rather than an endless murky gray inhabited by anti-heroes, the world had both good and evil, heroes and villains. The hero was somebody worth rooting for because he was fighting for a future worth fighting for. This is what I mean by steampunk.
But H.G. Wells also wrote in the Victorian Age, and what he wrote had a cyberpunk theme. His ideas of the future were gloomy. He wrote the first stories about biological terrorism and atomic war. His novel, The Last War, predicted a global nuclear holocaust before scientists even figured out atomic weapons were even possible! H.G. Wells' novels The Time Machine and Things to Come predicted a series of nuclear world wars destroying civilization. Mankind’s only hope was to surrender its freedom to a cabal of scientific masterminds who would employ technology to rule the ignorant masses with a benevolent fist… forever.
Do stories like that make you hopeful about the future? Although they are probably very popular with scientific masterminds, everybody else would just as soon pass, which is why, while a lot of scientists talk about how visionary H.G. Wells was, the books they mention being the most influential to them were usually written by Jules Verne.
One little known fact about Wells explains the divergent viewpoints toward steampunk, both back then and today. H. G. Wells was most famous for being an author, but he was also a political activist. He was a founding member of the Fabian Socialists, an influential British political group that still exists today.
The Fabian Socialists believed in a Marxist revolution. But unlike the Russian Bolshevists, the Fabians didn't think it could be accomplished through violence. The ruling class was too powerful and would simply crush any direct attempt at a communist uprising.
And they were right. Revolution only succeeded in Russia (and later China) because the ruling classes there were fragmented and lacked leadership. The only Western nations that came under communist control fell through the victorious advance of the Soviet Red Army at the end of World War II, never from a violent revolution.
The Fabian solution was a gradual “cultural” revolution. They'd subvert elite universities, introducing Marxist concepts—suitably disguised as fancy modern education theories, of course—to re-educate the youth and change the culture a little at a time. Once they gained a foothold in education, they'd move on into media and entertainment infiltrating movies, books, literature, and eventually even the churches, tearing down traditional ideas and replacing them with theirs. Slowly but surely they'd change society, but never fast enough to provoke a reaction, until a century or so later, Marxist ideas dominated. Then it'd be an easy task to achieve revolution since by then even the ruling class would have been brought up embracing Marxist ideals without, for the most part, recognizing them as Marxist.
The Fabian Socialists took their name from the Roman General Fabius, whose trademark tactic was deception. Their actual symbol, on their organization's seal, is a wolf in sheep's clothing. They are the actual originators of today's Progressive movement.
Even though the founders are all long-dead, their plan worked exactly as outlined. Traditional beliefs--once the foundation of society--have been discarded as outdated and replaced with Marxist tropes. The final stage of this process has been described as a culture war and is pretty much over. People with “Progressive” (Marxist) ideals make up most of those in Hollywood, education and the media. But the Progressive social justice cabal does not yet enjoy absolute power. This is why our social justice themed literati insist that steampunk must follow H.G. Wells' vision rather than Jules Verne's. Just as Soviet science fiction writers had to present the proper ideological vision of the future, so must we, although sometimes the story changes. In the 1950’s, plots were all about how we would be better Red than dead. In the sixties, they became anti-war. In the 1970’s, after flirting with the coming ice age, proper literary stories switched to anti-nuclear themes. Now we have global warming. The story changes but it's always the same voices and the same conclusion—technology will destroy us unless we turn over our final few liberties to a benignly totalitarian State.
But most people read sci-fi and fantasy to escape reality. Today, if you want to read about corrupt politicians, their villainous corporate masters and all the problems with technology run amok, all you have to do is reach for a newspaper or turn on the TV news. (Maybe this is why newspaper subscriptions are in the toilet and the network news audience is shrinking?) Cyberpunk lost its popularity when the 21st century dawned and readers looked around and saw they already lived in a cyberpunk world with all its attendant horrors and despair. They looked for something to take their minds from eternal doom and gloom and found the work of writers like Blaylock, Jeter, and Powers.
Steampunk harkens back to a time when people saw the future with optimism, where science could solve any problem and happily ever after was going to be next week. And while the theme of cyberpunk is doom, steampunk is about hope, or it ought to be.
The original Star Trek series had the essence of steampunk. Sure their technology was far beyond steam power. But they had the steampunk attitude toward progress–it was good. The future was going to be a great place. They’d cured most disease; racism was gone (except among those pesky half black/white Frank Gorshin aliens.) The matter transporter had put an end to poverty. I think that’s why it became so popular. In the midst of the Cold War, with the future looking increasingly like it might come down to a choice between being either Red or Dead, the original Star Trek gave us hope.
At least until Roddenberry died, when Berman and Piller hijacked his vision and transformed it into cyberpunk in space. In Star Trek’s later incarnations technology was no longer benign, and the future was just as dark and corrupt as our present, maybe more so. I blame their rejection of true steampunk essence and the substitution of the bitter, post-modernist dregs of cyberpunk Luddism for those shows’ loss in popularity and subsequent canceling.
I also see this as a warning to steampunk writers. In spite of the literati's scorn, you’ll do a lot better providing readers with the true essence of steampunk–optimism–than if you just write noir cyberpunk horror stories and substitute steam power for computers. There’s more to steampunk than just archaic technology–it’s an attitude.
If you want to see what I mean by steampunk attitude, read my The Queen’s Martian Rifles or The Donuts of Doom. They’re steampunk adventures that Jules Verne would enjoy. And when you do, leave a comment and tell me what you think. I’ll be glad to hear from you.
The Donuts of Doom
The Queen's Martian Rifles
At its core, steampunk is about technology. Steampunk stories are usually set in Victorian times, granting them technological prowess similar to our modern world, but their computers are mechanical, their power source is steam rather than atomic or internal combustion, and everything is lavishly decorated in the Victorian style.
The term steampunk originated in the late 1980’s when author K.W. Jeter needed a general term to describe the work of himself, Tim Powers, and James Blaylock. At the time cyber-punk was popular and he coined steam-punk as a takeoff on that term.
I wrote a blog post once about the difference between cyberpunk and steampunk. I said that while cyberpunk was cynically dark, depressing and pessimistic, steampunk was optimistic about technology and the future. I got a lot of comments that I was completely wrong. Some even went as far to heap scorn on my definition of steampunk as “shiny happy steampunk,” insisting it was a completely different genre they called “Victorian Fantasy.”
But is steampunk by definition pessimistic?
I'm a great fan of the books of Blaylock, Jeter and Powers, even back in the 1980’s before “steampunk” existed as a genre. Their stories, while often dark, were never the nihilistic “cyberpunk with steam engines” that seems to be the operating definition of steampunk these days. Their villains were evil. Technology was just a means to an end.
In contrast, in Vandermeer’s recently published Steampunk anthology, the stories are dark, edgy and quite depressingly reminiscent of cyberpunk tales, which is why I didn’t like it much. Today, most of the literati define steampunk as “Cyberpunk with steam engines.” They nsist the stories must be dark, with destructive, dangerous, and dehumanizing technology. The hero, if there is one, must end the story worse off than he began. In other words, they're just post-modernist cyberpunk stories set in the Victorian Age.
Cyberpunk is all about the horrors of technology. It features a bleak, dehumanized world dominated by monolithic corporations where computers have granted a lucky few almost magical powers at the expense of their humanity. The future is dark and depressing. Technology has transformed civilization into a barbarous, disease-ridden, urban wasteland without freedom. It’s like George Orwell's 1984 but instead of Big Brother, everything is run by Halliburton or some other huge oppressive corporation—capitalism run rampant.
Cyberpunks vision of the world arose after a century of massive wars made more terrible by science and technology. Entire generations have grown up under the threat of a global nuclear apocalypse. We look around and see atomic waste piling up, threats from terrorists, biological warfare, genetic modification, carbon emissions, and worse, where huge corporations like Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook dominate, controlling what we watch and eat, how we work, and where and what we buy. Even our cars will soon be under their control. We live in a cyberpunk world.
But the real Victorians hadn't lived through that yet. They still had faith in science and technology. They believed science could solve any problem. Progress was always good. Technology was like a magic genie. With it Mankind would end starvation, ignorance and poverty and create heaven on earth. The future would be much better than today. That's what evolution was supposed to be about.
You see this in the work of the original steampunk author, Jules Verne. His heroes were scientists and inventors. Sometimes technology got them into trouble, but it’d eventually get them back out again, too. Rather than an endless murky gray inhabited by anti-heroes, the world had both good and evil, heroes and villains. The hero was somebody worth rooting for because he was fighting for a future worth fighting for. This is what I mean by steampunk.
But H.G. Wells also wrote in the Victorian Age, and what he wrote had a cyberpunk theme. His ideas of the future were gloomy. He wrote the first stories about biological terrorism and atomic war. His novel, The Last War, predicted a global nuclear holocaust before scientists even figured out atomic weapons were even possible! H.G. Wells' novels The Time Machine and Things to Come predicted a series of nuclear world wars destroying civilization. Mankind’s only hope was to surrender its freedom to a cabal of scientific masterminds who would employ technology to rule the ignorant masses with a benevolent fist… forever.
Do stories like that make you hopeful about the future? Although they are probably very popular with scientific masterminds, everybody else would just as soon pass, which is why, while a lot of scientists talk about how visionary H.G. Wells was, the books they mention being the most influential to them were usually written by Jules Verne.
One little known fact about Wells explains the divergent viewpoints toward steampunk, both back then and today. H. G. Wells was most famous for being an author, but he was also a political activist. He was a founding member of the Fabian Socialists, an influential British political group that still exists today.
The Fabian Socialists believed in a Marxist revolution. But unlike the Russian Bolshevists, the Fabians didn't think it could be accomplished through violence. The ruling class was too powerful and would simply crush any direct attempt at a communist uprising.
And they were right. Revolution only succeeded in Russia (and later China) because the ruling classes there were fragmented and lacked leadership. The only Western nations that came under communist control fell through the victorious advance of the Soviet Red Army at the end of World War II, never from a violent revolution.
The Fabian solution was a gradual “cultural” revolution. They'd subvert elite universities, introducing Marxist concepts—suitably disguised as fancy modern education theories, of course—to re-educate the youth and change the culture a little at a time. Once they gained a foothold in education, they'd move on into media and entertainment infiltrating movies, books, literature, and eventually even the churches, tearing down traditional ideas and replacing them with theirs. Slowly but surely they'd change society, but never fast enough to provoke a reaction, until a century or so later, Marxist ideas dominated. Then it'd be an easy task to achieve revolution since by then even the ruling class would have been brought up embracing Marxist ideals without, for the most part, recognizing them as Marxist.
The Fabian Socialists took their name from the Roman General Fabius, whose trademark tactic was deception. Their actual symbol, on their organization's seal, is a wolf in sheep's clothing. They are the actual originators of today's Progressive movement.
Even though the founders are all long-dead, their plan worked exactly as outlined. Traditional beliefs--once the foundation of society--have been discarded as outdated and replaced with Marxist tropes. The final stage of this process has been described as a culture war and is pretty much over. People with “Progressive” (Marxist) ideals make up most of those in Hollywood, education and the media. But the Progressive social justice cabal does not yet enjoy absolute power. This is why our social justice themed literati insist that steampunk must follow H.G. Wells' vision rather than Jules Verne's. Just as Soviet science fiction writers had to present the proper ideological vision of the future, so must we, although sometimes the story changes. In the 1950’s, plots were all about how we would be better Red than dead. In the sixties, they became anti-war. In the 1970’s, after flirting with the coming ice age, proper literary stories switched to anti-nuclear themes. Now we have global warming. The story changes but it's always the same voices and the same conclusion—technology will destroy us unless we turn over our final few liberties to a benignly totalitarian State.
But most people read sci-fi and fantasy to escape reality. Today, if you want to read about corrupt politicians, their villainous corporate masters and all the problems with technology run amok, all you have to do is reach for a newspaper or turn on the TV news. (Maybe this is why newspaper subscriptions are in the toilet and the network news audience is shrinking?) Cyberpunk lost its popularity when the 21st century dawned and readers looked around and saw they already lived in a cyberpunk world with all its attendant horrors and despair. They looked for something to take their minds from eternal doom and gloom and found the work of writers like Blaylock, Jeter, and Powers.
Steampunk harkens back to a time when people saw the future with optimism, where science could solve any problem and happily ever after was going to be next week. And while the theme of cyberpunk is doom, steampunk is about hope, or it ought to be.
The original Star Trek series had the essence of steampunk. Sure their technology was far beyond steam power. But they had the steampunk attitude toward progress–it was good. The future was going to be a great place. They’d cured most disease; racism was gone (except among those pesky half black/white Frank Gorshin aliens.) The matter transporter had put an end to poverty. I think that’s why it became so popular. In the midst of the Cold War, with the future looking increasingly like it might come down to a choice between being either Red or Dead, the original Star Trek gave us hope.
At least until Roddenberry died, when Berman and Piller hijacked his vision and transformed it into cyberpunk in space. In Star Trek’s later incarnations technology was no longer benign, and the future was just as dark and corrupt as our present, maybe more so. I blame their rejection of true steampunk essence and the substitution of the bitter, post-modernist dregs of cyberpunk Luddism for those shows’ loss in popularity and subsequent canceling.
I also see this as a warning to steampunk writers. In spite of the literati's scorn, you’ll do a lot better providing readers with the true essence of steampunk–optimism–than if you just write noir cyberpunk horror stories and substitute steam power for computers. There’s more to steampunk than just archaic technology–it’s an attitude.
If you want to see what I mean by steampunk attitude, read my The Queen’s Martian Rifles or The Donuts of Doom. They’re steampunk adventures that Jules Verne would enjoy. And when you do, leave a comment and tell me what you think. I’ll be glad to hear from you.
The Donuts of Doom
The Queen's Martian Rifles
June 12, 2017
The Watergate Coup
Book 6 in The Agarthi Conspiracy series is now on Amazon: The Watergate Coup.
https://www.amazon.com/Watergate-Coup...
https://www.amazon.com/Watergate-Coup...
