John C. Wright's Blog, page 101
May 12, 2013
Additional Questions on the Question of Chastity
Part of an ongoing conversation. Dr. Rolf Andreassen, with whom we have been discussing the morality (or otherwise) of monogamy, makes the following comment. My questions below refer to this and also to previous comments by the good doctor. I solicit answers not just from him, but from any reader who cares to comment.
As for sex, I haven’t said it’s relative at all; I have merely said that I wish to draw the line in a different place from Mr Wright’s lifelong monogamy. The actual rule may still be absolute. However, since I do not have full knowledge of the morality, I’m much more inclined to let consenting adults work out their own damnation than I am when children, who cannot meaningfully consent, are involved.
You define two categories of moral behavior. The first category is known moral absolutes, such as the rule against child abuse. The second category includes those things where your lack of full knowledge inclines you to defer to the opinion of the individual involved. You imply that the lack of informed consent on the part of the child is one significant consideration.
If I have not misunderstood your position, the rule against child abuse is an absolute in your philosophy, but the rule against unchastity is a matter of opinion where reasonable men can differ.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Water can Wet You, and Fire can Burn
More on the same topic:
A learned reader asks that since technology reduces the risk of pregnancy, the influence of conception-morality on sex-morality is lessened, why do I conclude that sex-morality can nonetheless be completely deduced from conception-morality?
He asks for clarification, which I would be glad to provide, if I could. I fear my powers of description, in the limited space here, are unequal to the task. Let me at least offer a summation of the argument, which can be, as needed, drawn out in more rigorous detail at a time when time permits.
I hold that morality is a matter of duty, and that thought is a matter of logic.
Logically, sexual reproduction is a member of the category sexual reproduction. While a sterile woman, or a woman seeking temporary sterility via contraception, can have herself personally a different motive for engaging in the act of sexual reproduction than the final cause of sexual reproduction, I submit that the nature of the sexual reproductive act is such that it has an innate final cause independent of the personal motives of those engaging in it. The final cause of the sexual reproductive act is sexual reproduction. The result of sexual reproduction is the reproduction of the species, namely, the birth of a baby.
Once reason why this point is difficult to argue is that “sex is sex” seems to me to be a tautology. While the motive for the sexual act, namely, a desire for short term pleasure, and the reality of the sexual act, namely, the reproductive act, can be divided in speech, in reality this is merely two ways of describing one thing. The two ways are the motives of the individuals and the final cause of the act in and of itself.
Morally, I submit that it is both a matter of duty and of mere prudence when engaging in any act to make reasonable provision for the effects and side-effects of the act.
In the case of the sexual act, it is both a matter of duty and prudence not to encourage any emotion or passion which is inappropriate, inapt, rude, wrong, dishonorable, or false-to-facts to the reality.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
May 10, 2013
Ongoing Investigation
Thought this was funny. Humor from Israel.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
May 9, 2013
Mavors v Atkins and Other Official Fanboy Questions
An unwary reader writes in and asks:
Here’s a couple of John C. Wright Official Fanboy Questions that I’ve been wondering about, and since this is a post regarding your actual work (as opposed to other topics, like eschatology, morality or Catwoman), I felt here might be an apt place to ask them, should you feel like answering:
1) Who would win in a fight: Lord Mavors (assuming he didn’t automatically decree the outcome of the battle to be in his favor) or Marshall Atkins (assuming he restricted his number of lives to 1)?
ANSWER:
There is little surprise if the question were answered WITHOUT the restrictions specified, because the answer would be too obvious: Mavors would win the fight because he would decree the outcome.
Atkins has as many powers as a Telchine, but he is a natural creature bound by the laws of nature, whereas Mavors is a supernatural creature who gets to write or tweaks the laws of nature: Which, for him, are more like suggestions or guidelines, really.
Generally speaking, fantasy characters usually have the advantage over science fiction characters, because fantasy characters occupy worlds which are basically alive, that is, the rules of fantasy worlds usually have a fate, or a spirit, or a pantheon which determine the outcome based on some idea (right or wrong) of proper conduct, merit or justice.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
May 4, 2013
Lunar Sacrament of Conciliation
As a treat for the readers of HERMETIC MILLENNIA, this is a scene that was cut from the final manuscript for reasons of pacing and length, and because I changed to order of some events, but which I dearly wish I had been able to include in order to better establish a change of heart in a minor, though pivotal, character which happens later. For all my inventiveness, I was not able to invent a spot later in the manuscript to introduce the scene unjarringly. Not wishing for total oblivion to overtake one of my minor but beloved villains, so that his villainy not be forgotten, I here memorialize it as its own stand-alone short story.
Lunar Sacrament of Conciliation
The silences of the Moon never grow familiar.
Father Reyes y Pastor was standing on the lunar surface in the graveyard, hands folded and hood bowed, three score and more tall steles marking the burial mounds looming above him, when something touched his shoulder. He expected to hear a footstep when someone come up behind him, and no amount of time on the surface could undo that ingrained and inherited expectation from his nervous system.
His surprise carried him a dozen yards.
Reyes vented air from his wrists and boots to soften his fall. The deceptive elfin gravity did not make a tumble any less dangerous; a man fell at one sixth the acceleration as on earth, but a cut or bruise to the suit could be disastrous.
He landed in a crouch, and the dust formed a curtain about him. In the gloom he saw a hooded shape among the steles, dark in an Hermetic garb, masked against the vacuum, but wearing the tabard of the Senior Landing Party Member, and the gleaming number 2. It was Del Azarchel, and he held up a hand in the sign for radio silence, all four fingers touching the thumb in a not-quite-closed fist, and the attention light from his chest was focused on the glove, making it visible.
Two weeks had passed since last they met, and the time was dusk, and so the sun was setting over the eastern rim of the crater-wall. (By a convention older than Galileo, on the Moon, the direction of sunrise was the west.) The setting sun was neither reddened nor flattened, there being no atmospheric diffraction here. The floor of the crater was filled with shadow black as ink, but the cliff walls and peaks to the east were dazzling like magnesium flame, and this lightscatter was enough to make out the silhouette among the steles.
Del Azarchel hopped toward him in eerie silence, clouds of white dust rising and falling with abrupt vertical motion in the airlessness at each footstep.
Reyes y Pastor waited, still in a crouch, his gauntlets touching the gritty surface beneath him, shockingly cold now that the sun no longer shined directly on it. He looked at the approaching figure, clicking his goggles through several energy bands and interpretative sequences, as if that would reveal some clue. No one came outside the base environs without cause, no more than a crewman would disembark from a submarine. Reyes wondered if he had been blamed for some terrible failure of the Great Work, and was now to be murdered. Was there another cause for such secrecy and solitude? But no: had not Reyes been promised the Eighth Millenium to reshape mankind? Del Azarchel would not rescind his promises.
Reyes y Pastor resigned himself. He simply could not understand the workings of the mind of the someone whose intelligence was between fifty and one hundred points higher than his.
Del Azarchel drew out a wire and extended it toward him. It was a phone wire. Reyes plugged in. Del Azarchel’s voice was tinny, and seemed to come from behind him.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two hundred eighty five years since my last confession.”
And with these words, the dark figure sank to his knees onto the sub-zero lunar surface.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Lunar Sacrement of Conciliation
As a treat for the readers of HERMETIC MILLENNIA, this is a scene that was cut from the final manuscript for reasons of pacing and length, and because I changed to order of some events, but which I dearly wish I had been able to include in order to better establish a change of heart in a minor, though pivotal, character which happens later. For all my inventiveness, I was not able to invent a spot later in the manuscript to introduce the scene unjarringly. Not wishing for total oblivion to overtake one of my minor but beloved villains, so that his villainy not be forgotten, I here memorialize it as its own stand-alone short story.
Lunar Sacrament of Conciliation
The silences of the Moon never grow familiar.
Father Reyes y Pastor was standing on the lunar surface in the graveyard, hands folded and hood bowed, three score and more tall steles marking the burial mounds looming above him, when something touched his shoulder. He expected to hear a footstep when someone come up behind him, and no amount of time on the surface could undo that ingrained and inherited expectation from his nervous system.
His surprise carried him a dozen yards.
Reyes vented air from his wrists and boots to soften his fall. The deceptive elfin gravity did not make a tumble any less dangerous; a man fell at one sixth the acceleration as on earth, but a cut or bruise to the suit could be disastrous.
He landed in a crouch, and the dust formed a curtain about him. In the gloom he saw a hooded shape among the steles, dark in an Hermetic garb, masked against the vacuum, but wearing the tabard of the Senior Landing Party Member, and the gleaming number 2. It was Del Azarchel, and he held up a hand in the sign for radio silence, all four fingers touching the thumb in a not-quite-closed fist, and the attention light from his chest was focused on the glove, making it visible.
Two weeks had passed since last they met, and the time was dusk, and so the sun was setting over the eastern rim of the crater-wall. (By a convention older than Galileo, on the Moon, the direction of sunrise was the west.) The setting sun was neither reddened nor flattened, there being no atmospheric diffraction here. The floor of the crater was filled with shadow black as ink, but the cliff walls and peaks to the east were dazzling like magnesium flame, and this lightscatter was enough to make out the silhouette among the steles.
Del Azarchel hopped toward him in eerie silence, clouds of white dust rising and falling with abrupt vertical motion in the airlessness at each footstep.
Reyes y Pastor waited, still in a crouch, his gauntlets touching the gritty surface beneath him, shockingly cold now that the sun no longer shined directly on it. He looked at the approaching figure, clicking his goggles through several energy bands and interpretative sequences, as if that would reveal some clue. No one came outside the base environs without cause, no more than a crewman would disembark from a submarine. Reyes wondered if he had been blamed for some terrible failure of the Great Work, and was now to be murdered. Was there another cause for such secrecy and solitude? But no: had not Reyes been promised the Eighth Millenium to reshape mankind? Del Azarchel would not rescind his promises.
Reyes y Pastor resigned himself. He simply could not understand the workings of the mind of the someone whose intelligence was between fifty and one hundred points higher than his.
Del Azarchel drew out a wire and extended it toward him. It was a phone wire. Reyes plugged in. Del Azarchel’s voice was tinny, and seemed to come from behind him.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two hundred eighty five years since my last confession.”
And with these words, the dark figure sank to his knees onto the sub-zero lunar surface.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
May 1, 2013
Alfonzo on Kermit
The media is ignoring the story, and so is the GOP. The man killed crying babies, cutting their spines and letting them die, and strapped down a young lady against her will, drugged her, aborted her child, all against her will. The right to choice types do not seem to mind the deprivation of choice if it augments the death toll of the culture of death.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 28, 2013
A Question I Never Tire of Answering
A reader I hope is young and not being serious asks:
Let me get this straight: you, a presumably rational individual who writes science fiction stories for a living, sincerely believes that the creator of our 13.7 billion year-old universe of 70 sextillion stars magically impregnated a human female about 2000 years ago – a woman who then gave birth to a son named Jesus who performed miracles, rose from the dead and served as the creator’s messenger to humanity?
This might make for a mildly interesting, if outlandish, science fiction story, but the source of your belief system? If you’re going to base your life philosophy on absurd myths, why not choose something a bit more interesting? Why not master the Dark Side of the Force or the Golden Path, becoming a Sith Lord or a God-Emperor and strive to rule a Galaxy? Why choose something as ridiculous and wretched as Christianity? I must admit I am rather perplexed…
My answer:
I am more than a presumably rational individual, I am a champion of atheism who gave arguments in favor of atheism so convincing that three of my friends gave up their religious belief due to my persuasive reasoning powers, and my father stopped going to church.
Upon concluding through a torturous and decades-long and remorseless process of logic that all my fellow atheists were horribly comically wrong about every basic point of philosophy, ethics and logic, and my hated enemies the Christians were right, I wondered how this could be. The data did not match the model.
Being a philosopher and not a poseur, I put the matter to an empirical test.
For the first time in my life, I prayed, and said. “Dear God. There is no logical way you could possibly exist, and even if you appeared before me in the flesh, I would call it an hallucination. So I can think of no possible way, no matter what the evidence and no matter how clear it was, that you could prove your existence to me. But the Christians claim you are benevolent, and that my failure to believe in you inevitably will damn me. If, as they claim, you care whether or not I am damned, and if, as they claim, you are all wise and all powerful, you can prove to me that you exist even though I am confident such a thing is logically impossible. Thanking you in advance for your cooperation in this matter, John C. Wright.” — and then my mind was at rest. I had done all I needed to do honestly to maintain my stature as someone, not who claimed to be logical, objective and openminded, but who was logical, objective, and openminded.
Three days later, with no warning, I had a heart attack, and was lying on the floor, screaming and dying.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 27, 2013
What fools these mortals be
Aliens are unique to science fiction.
In no story about detectives solving a murder or heiresses wondering what baron to wed will you find anything told from the point of view of a nonhuman intelligent creature. All other genres, from Westerns to War Stories to Historical drama to mainstream tales about college professors cheating on their wives, are told from within the human realm of human nature and can never leave it. In science fiction and in science fiction alone is there an opportunity to step outside the human realm, and turn, and look, and to see the mask of man from the outside. Only in science fiction can we speculate on what humans look like to intelligent nonhumans.
Science fiction has this unique property because it is the only genre where the readers will accept the introduction of props, settings and characters which do not exist now on Earth or at any time in the historical past. All other genres are restricted by their readers to the confines of the real; and, as a matter of fact, extraterrestrial intelligences do not exist now on Earth or at any time in the historical past. By definition, a story with a nonhuman extraterrestrial character is science fiction.
A broader question is how well (if at all) we humble human authors can invent and readers can imagine anything from a point of view other than a human one.
If the task is absurd or impossible, then this unique aspect of science fiction is trivial.
If the task is feasible, and can be done and done well, then this unique aspect of science fiction grants the genre a profound purpose—a purpose far deeper than the mere telling of tall tales about earthmen fencing four-armed green Martian savages to rescue a kidnapped space princess.
If the task is feasible then science fiction is the only place to go, the only vantage where to stand, to look at mankind, because it and it alone steps away and turns and looks at humanity from the outside.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 24, 2013
NOT YET
This wonderful site is not yet ready for public viewing.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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