Doomsayer
We're in such a strange time, and, as a writer, I feel it keenly. Speaking only as an American (although one with an eye on the world), we're in the middle of a failing republic, or one that's going to be forced to either collapse, mend itself, or become something radically different than it has been before.
It's surreal to be living in these times, to see things careening along these paths. I have my own problems, what I am dealing with, and gods know I've commented plenty about the perils affecting publishing, and on top of that, the world's facing a true existential crisis.
Keeping in mind that Earth'll outlast and outlive humanity -- that part gets lost in the handwringing. People say "we're destroying the Earth" but we're really only making the planet unsafe for human habitation. That'll cost us dearly if nothing's done about it.
That Great Filter wall that threatens us all is looming ever larger in our view. What's an artist or writer to do?
What we always do: we create. But creation in the shadow of oblivion & extinction is trippy, scary stuff. It's almost too big to think about, or it's difficult to wrap one's head around it all.
Despite being an optimist, it's very hard to envision a world where enlightenment triumphs over ignorance -- mostly because ignorance is EASIER, and humans are profoundly lazy when they can be.
How does a writer honestly explore the human condition without laying bare the brutal realities of our existence? That we're primates, first and foremost. We're not divine godlings, and we're certainly not the pet project of divinity. Everything wrong with us stems from our primate past. We behave like primates, still, because we are.
And our acts of creation that push us past our animal heritage? Those are great, made civilization possible, but we're still tethered to the brutal man-ape monstrosity we've always been. It's why things like fascism thrive -- they tap into that basic brain aspect of our biology, using the trappings of (post)modernity to enable barbarism. That's scary stuff, like a virus we can't eradicate. Fascism will always appeal to a certain kind of human -- one who believes we're somehow super-special, while still tapping into the visceral, hierarchical savagery inherent in the human condition.
While that's all going on, we're seeing civilization straining under the burden of billionaires -- I've said that before, too, that we can have a world safe for billionaires, in which the rest of us are slaves to their whims (we're already largely captive to that), but that's a dystopian disaster that harms us deeply as a species.
There's AI, as well, marching mechanically into our lives.
It's a crazy time, with all of this stuff roiling about at once. And while it's all going on, writers of imagination are left confronting it, observing it, cataloguing it, contemplating it.
People seem to view philosophy with contempt, but I never have. I respect the work that philosophy has done over the millennia to explain who we are to ourselves, especially using the tools of observation and inductive reasoning (which I respect more than deductive reasoning, which can bake in bias, if one isn't careful).
Anyway, as a writer with a philosophical bent, these are very trippy times. I don't believe our species will survive, although I still hold out hope that it does. If we do, however, the world as we know it must radically change from what it was. It's the only way forward.
It's surreal to be living in these times, to see things careening along these paths. I have my own problems, what I am dealing with, and gods know I've commented plenty about the perils affecting publishing, and on top of that, the world's facing a true existential crisis.
Keeping in mind that Earth'll outlast and outlive humanity -- that part gets lost in the handwringing. People say "we're destroying the Earth" but we're really only making the planet unsafe for human habitation. That'll cost us dearly if nothing's done about it.
That Great Filter wall that threatens us all is looming ever larger in our view. What's an artist or writer to do?
What we always do: we create. But creation in the shadow of oblivion & extinction is trippy, scary stuff. It's almost too big to think about, or it's difficult to wrap one's head around it all.
Despite being an optimist, it's very hard to envision a world where enlightenment triumphs over ignorance -- mostly because ignorance is EASIER, and humans are profoundly lazy when they can be.
How does a writer honestly explore the human condition without laying bare the brutal realities of our existence? That we're primates, first and foremost. We're not divine godlings, and we're certainly not the pet project of divinity. Everything wrong with us stems from our primate past. We behave like primates, still, because we are.
And our acts of creation that push us past our animal heritage? Those are great, made civilization possible, but we're still tethered to the brutal man-ape monstrosity we've always been. It's why things like fascism thrive -- they tap into that basic brain aspect of our biology, using the trappings of (post)modernity to enable barbarism. That's scary stuff, like a virus we can't eradicate. Fascism will always appeal to a certain kind of human -- one who believes we're somehow super-special, while still tapping into the visceral, hierarchical savagery inherent in the human condition.
While that's all going on, we're seeing civilization straining under the burden of billionaires -- I've said that before, too, that we can have a world safe for billionaires, in which the rest of us are slaves to their whims (we're already largely captive to that), but that's a dystopian disaster that harms us deeply as a species.
There's AI, as well, marching mechanically into our lives.
It's a crazy time, with all of this stuff roiling about at once. And while it's all going on, writers of imagination are left confronting it, observing it, cataloguing it, contemplating it.
People seem to view philosophy with contempt, but I never have. I respect the work that philosophy has done over the millennia to explain who we are to ourselves, especially using the tools of observation and inductive reasoning (which I respect more than deductive reasoning, which can bake in bias, if one isn't careful).
Anyway, as a writer with a philosophical bent, these are very trippy times. I don't believe our species will survive, although I still hold out hope that it does. If we do, however, the world as we know it must radically change from what it was. It's the only way forward.
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