John C. Wright's Blog, page 159

Count to a Trillion cover art

Well, the Internet is an odd and sometimes wonderful thing. I just found the cover of my latest forthcoming book.

Here it is:

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Opera Corner

I have often heard about the songstress Beyonce Knowles, originally of the group Destiny’s Child, that she was both attractive and talented. Well, I was duly impressed when I finally heard her sing! Here is the clip:

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Love of my neighbor and Contempt of the World

I wrote a scene in a story last night where a man says a prayer over his son before sending him into combat. Because it is a science fiction story, the battle is against an enemy not exactly human, but I wanted a nice and soldierly prayer.

In my search, I came across this prayer by happenstance, and my attention was arrested by the contrast between between what his supplicant asks, and how he deems it best to live his life, and the views on how to live expressed by such representatives of modern thinking as faithful readers of this column have no doubt seen here in recent days.

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Materialism Revisited

Part of an ongoing, if not neverending, conversation. We are discussing the favorite topic of materialists everywhere, Materialism. Dr. Rolf Andreassen has volunteered to act as my assistant from the audience to see if we together can pull off the trick of deducing our way from our separate axioms and mutually alien worldviews toward anything like a mutual understanding.

The questions are directed at him, and the comments written in the second person, albeit any reader may participate to his heart’s content. An alert reader will notice that I am trying to discover the unspoken axioms of epistemology and ontology, that is, the metaphysical theory of what Materialism holds to be real or unreal, knowledge or opinion. I suspect there is a paradox hidden at this level, which makes the conclusions of Materialism so startlingly unlike reality.

One difficulty that arises in any philosophical conversation is that what is being discussed is usually an unspoken axiom or assumption not shared by the two parties in the conversation. This is why the patience of Job and the humor of Socrates is needed to thread through the labyrinths of such conversations.

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What to Read When You Tire of Tolkien

As a follow up to a former post, let me also make a few recommendations of books to read when you are in the mood for fantasy, but you DON’T want to read something in the mood or atmosphere of Professor Tolkien.

Being something of an old and backward curmudgeon, I will limit my recommendation to authors who went out of fashion before I was born. There are many fine and imaginative fantasists spinning their magical worlds into creation writing these days, more than an inattentive reader can count, and I will not trouble anyone by failing to select one over the other.

Here are my suggestions:

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Tolkien and Beowulf

I just this day finished reading A COMPANION TO BEOWULF by my friend and classmate Ruth Johnson. It was remarkably clear, well written, concise, and chock full of fascinating insights and observations.

Let me in particular remark on her last chapter, which concerned Tolkien and Beowulf. I had not heretofore been aware of how large a figure JRR Tolkien loomed in the scholarship of the epic poem BEOWULF, nor what a great influence his seminal essay The Monster and the Critics, had in turning the attention of the academic world from the historical to the literary merits of the poem.

Ruth Johnson makes the argument that Lord of the Rings is an updated version of BEOWULF. No, not the events, but the world, the worldview, the motif, the techniques, and especially the approach toward religion.

It is to be noted that many critics faulted Tolkien for not including anywhere in Middle Earth any description or hint of rituals, rites, temples and cults with adorn the vivid backdrops of other works of fantasy. Except for a few indirect hints that there is a High God somewhere, and angelic powers the elves revere, Lord of the Rings is perhaps unique among fantasies in that there is no mention of the religious side of society or the spiritual side of man.

But, of course, Tolkien is not unique: he is following BEOWULF. The poet of BEOWULF (so Tolkien interpreted the evidence) wished to depict his pre-Christian ancestors in the admirable light men are right to have for their ancestors, but without attributing to them a Christian faith they could not have had.

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What to Read After Tolkien

I was recently asked what to read after one was done reading The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. The person asking was a Catholic, and so was also curious as which works of High Fantasy, if any, were likely to be in keeping with Catholic sensibilities.

Of course, any fantasy set in anything like the real period in Europe between the reign of Constantine and the rise of Luther will be in keeping with Catholic sensibilities to the degree it reflects real history: the culture was thoroughly immersed with the Christian atmosphere. Any fantasy world with knights and castles and kings and bishops where these elements are treated authentically rather than, say, as in a Dungeons and Dragons world, should be in keeping with this atmosphere.

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Pagan, Christian and Postchristian Civilization

When asked what makes civilization better than barbarism, you are likely, dear reader, to be at a loss for words to answer; but the reason why you are at a loss for words will be one of two opposite reasons, depending on your temper and character.

If you are of the temper and character that is instinctively and unselfconsciously loyal to civilization and to all that it implies, you are likely to be at a loss because the answer is too big for words.

Perhaps you will think of a dozen things in an instant, or see a dozen things in a moment, reminding you how precious civilization in all her aspects shines: civility, peace, order, rule of law, security in possessions and realty,  commerce and travel by land and sea, literacy and philosophy and poetry, domestic comforts and domesticated animals, the fellowship of man, medical and technological advantages, the lengthening of the average lifespan, low infant mortality rate, electric lights, books, music, and, in short, all the beauty and dignity of life inside the city walls and civic institutions.

Again, you are likely to be at a loss to answer because you will think of a dozen things in an instant disagreeable or deadly about the anarchy, savagery and barbarism which spreads once the lamps of civilization are extinguished: dirt and toil and heartbreak of nature, the degradation and starvation, the disease and want, the brevity of life, and the continual violence and fear of violence. If you are philosophically inclined, you will think of the mental environment of the savage, who lives without record of the past or hope for the future in a cosmos dark with ignorance. The arbitrary and capricious dark gods who walk the forest or haunt the clouds may this day send victory in battle or may send defeat; or send a plague or famine to take your loved ones from you; and may indeed wipe out your whole warband, tribe and nation, so that the forest will swallow all traces that you and yours ever existed, except, perhaps, for a few carven totem poles rotting in the glade, or perhaps the painted walls of an unlit cave.

On the other hand, if you are of the opposite temper and character, you are likely to be at a loss because the question is unreasonable if not repellant to you.

Perhaps you have some romanticized idea of the liberty and dignity of the noble savages, their freedom from the cares of owning land, their spiritual insights and consequent elevated levels of kindheartedness and simplicity of life. To prefer civilization to barbarism in effect is to close that great mute book of the life experiences of those who live at oneness with nature, or to burn that book. Book-burning is the crime and pastime of such institutions as the Spanish Inquisition or the National Socialist Worker’s Party of Germany; to burn a book is a confession of intellectual weakness and grave moral evil. Hence, to prefer civilization to barbarism is tantamount to fanaticism or bigotry.

Indeed, the very idea that the different ways of life can or should be ranked into categories of better and worse perhaps strikes you are unscientific, unreasonable, partisan, self-serving, biased and ignorant, perhaps even racist.

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On Stranger Tides — Jolly Sailor Bold

Tim Powers was kind enough to send me a note of congratulations when I entered the bosom of the Catholic Church.

In return for his favor, I would like to do him the courtesy of recommending the movie PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ON STRANGER TIDES.

If you squint at the film just right, you will see appear momentarily his name in the credits, something like: “Inspired by an idea vaguely related indirectly to a dream I once had about a book called ON STRANGER TIDES by Tim Powers, and basically we just wanted to use a cool name for a movie based on a Disneyland ride.”

I think Tim Powers gets a nickle each time the film is shown, so rush right out, watch it twice, or better yet, go buy some of his books.

Well, I liked the movie, because, when it comes to movies, I am easy to please. (I was secretly rooting for the Spaniards, dontchyaknow).

As long as the film makers do not insult my comfortably modest intelligence, and they include a few fistfights, swords duels, gunfights and dogfights, a tapdance scene, a duel between submarines, at least one prehistorical monster, a species-creating monolith from beyond the stars, a talking llama, a robot, a gorilla, and if a startling new insight into the human condition for me to ponder is expressed in terms memorable and elegant, and the guy gets the girl at the end, I am happy.

Actually, I have never seen nor heard of a movie that had all those things in it. So never mind: I am impossible to please. What stupid standards I have. If only I eliminated the requirement for a tapdance and a space monolith, and the talking llama, my taste would be broader.

My new standard is that any movie with pirates, mermaids, ninja, and a mystical fountain of youth is all right by me. This one has three of the requirements. And there is a song!

In this scene some evil pirates are set out as bait by some more evil pirates in order to attract some evil mermaids, whose tears are needed by very evil pirate (being helped by a somewhat evil pirate and being hunted by a medium evil pirate) to unlock the secret of the Fountain of Youth, being sought at the same time by an evil-looking Spaniard in order to stop the ambitions of the evil Monarch of England, ruled at that time by one of the Dursleys, a muggle. Got it? The only guy clearly and unambiguously good in this film is a man of the cloth. How that one slipped by the censor, I don’t know.
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Determinism and Indeterminism

Children, beware the wine of Philosophy, because once you are hooked, there is no escaping the barb of it. Having reached a point where (or so I thought) he and I had covered all the points of the topic of materialism, Dr. Andreassen asked me once again to address the issue.

I realized to my chagrin what an honor he does me, not only taking the time to write and ask my opinion, but being willing to answer with the patience of Job. I cannot in due courtesy refuse the offer. Here we go again.

I assure all my patient readers, rightfully bored with this topic, that I will certainly post more articles in the near future about much more significant philosophical topics touching the issues of the day, such as which version of Catwoman is the best, or whether green Orion animal-women are more attractive than Princess Leia in a slavegirl bikini.

Let us start the discussion with a point of agreement.

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