The Mouse House now owns the Star Wars trilogy. I am saying this for the benefit of the one person who does not know this, in his comfortable bubble. The internet has been all a Twitter (I made a funny!) over the news, especially the news that a seventh episode of Star Wars is a comin' for 2015. George Lucas will be "consulting", although its probably no secret he wants out of the empire he created, which probably motivated the decision to sell Lucasarts.
Lucas was never the biggest force in creating Star Wars, and it is to the detriment to the movie series that he had iron-fisted control over making the prequels. It wouldn't surprise me if he wanted out, and probably has for the longest time. Star Wars has been a creative albatross around his neck. He cannot do story and characters as well as he would like to (as evidence, look at the fact the best Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, had a cowriter and a different director), and its for the best if he sticks to the avant garde visual stuff he's always wanted to do but never got the chance to because of his indebtedness to the Star Wars trilogy.
He's out of his cage now, and I hope he uses his new resources wisely. Ideally he should be a producer, nuturing and encouraging a new generation of talent. I'm not forbidding him from making movies: I'm not a spiteful fan who hates him from everything he's ever done. If he wants to retire, put his feet up and enjoy having enough money to give everyone in the United States a university education twice over, then good for him.
Good news is that Lucas cannot release anymore insipid revisions to the Original Trilogy. Furthermore, a release of the original, unmolested trilogy is pretty much guaranteed---yes, Disney loves money and there are legions of nerds who want it badly enough to pay considerably for it, a match made in heaven. Original trilogy fans will sleep comfortably.
I am suspecting that a Star Wars revival towards the middle of the decade would work out well for science fiction the same way the original Star Wars did back in 1977. Expect more science fiction movies coming out and probably more adaptations of science fiction novels. I've been suspecting that more adaptations of novels into movies, in the vein of the Hunger Games, will continue, accelerated by the Ender's Game movie that comes out next year. I don't think it will affect literary science fiction one way or another but for the genre I think it will create good optics. Frankly, superhero movies are getting tired, and I look forwards for a cinematic Sci-Fi (capital S, capital F) renaissance.
For the most part, good news. Granted, Disney dosen't have a sterling reputation, especially regarding the most picayune lawsuits regarding its intellectual property. Still, I suspect the Force is strong with this one.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
I am the circle and the circle is me: The Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness
To my pride, and slightly to my annoyance, my SWM privilige post is the most popular thing I have written on my blog, even months after it has been written. I imagine there are still people out there wondering why privilige is a bad thing, or even whether it exists. They need something to trigger their understanding, something to illuminate the point. They need a catalyst, a perspective change.
So what do I recommend? Simple: read these books. The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness.
Set on the unoriginally named planet New World, there exists a world of only men. A war with the native inhabitants of the planet, the Spackle, has left the survivors telepathetic (and apparently unable to think of more original names to places). In this world lives teenager Todd Hewitt, unwillingly saddled with his dog Mackee. All the women are dead, the result of a plague unleashed during the Spackle war. The town of New Prentisstown is under the strict thumb of Mayor Prentiss and the local dingbat preacher (seriously, the Joker would think this guy is nuts) Aaron.
Then a girl falls from the sky: Viola, daughter of a survey party for the second wave of colonists. The two team up, eager to stay ahead of Mayor Prentiss who is up to no good, and reluctantly into the arms of Mistress Coyne, who is no better. On top of this the restive Spackle are returning, and the humans and Spackle find themselves in a deep conflict that will be very difficult to resolve, putting it mildly.
These are really deep books, dealing not only with the nature of masculinity and gender roles but violence in general, especially terrorism and warfare. If I had to sum up The Ask and the Answer in a sentence it would be what would happen if the unstoppable force of self righteousness hit the immovable object of tyrannt? Answer: nothing positive. Warfare comes across a necessary evil that needs to be balanced and restrained: the point of warfare, and too many are too willing to overlook this fact, is to compel your enemy to do what you want them to do. Unlike Starship Troopers, which makes the same point, the Chaos Walking novels are under no illusion about what warfare does to people, psychologically and emotionally.
We live in a complicated world. I don't think that we can go back to, say, the Nineties culturally: a time without some external threat or interal division. Thanks to September 11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Great Recession my generation, and the younger one following it for whom these books are intended, are scared. Books like The Hunger Games are unafraid to examine things like the use of propaganda and covert operations such as false flag operations.
Culturally attitudes towards gender are changing too. We're at a point where traditional masculinity, with all its violence and iron clad restrictions, is waning but not fully lost. If more people read these books, we'd be there a lot faster. Because if Chaos Walking does one thing right, its showing the toll of SWM privilige not just on those who are not SWM, but on those who are. The Knife of never letting go cuts both ways.
And that I should write more. That too.
So what do I recommend? Simple: read these books. The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness.
Set on the unoriginally named planet New World, there exists a world of only men. A war with the native inhabitants of the planet, the Spackle, has left the survivors telepathetic (and apparently unable to think of more original names to places). In this world lives teenager Todd Hewitt, unwillingly saddled with his dog Mackee. All the women are dead, the result of a plague unleashed during the Spackle war. The town of New Prentisstown is under the strict thumb of Mayor Prentiss and the local dingbat preacher (seriously, the Joker would think this guy is nuts) Aaron.
Then a girl falls from the sky: Viola, daughter of a survey party for the second wave of colonists. The two team up, eager to stay ahead of Mayor Prentiss who is up to no good, and reluctantly into the arms of Mistress Coyne, who is no better. On top of this the restive Spackle are returning, and the humans and Spackle find themselves in a deep conflict that will be very difficult to resolve, putting it mildly.
These are really deep books, dealing not only with the nature of masculinity and gender roles but violence in general, especially terrorism and warfare. If I had to sum up The Ask and the Answer in a sentence it would be what would happen if the unstoppable force of self righteousness hit the immovable object of tyrannt? Answer: nothing positive. Warfare comes across a necessary evil that needs to be balanced and restrained: the point of warfare, and too many are too willing to overlook this fact, is to compel your enemy to do what you want them to do. Unlike Starship Troopers, which makes the same point, the Chaos Walking novels are under no illusion about what warfare does to people, psychologically and emotionally.
We live in a complicated world. I don't think that we can go back to, say, the Nineties culturally: a time without some external threat or interal division. Thanks to September 11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Great Recession my generation, and the younger one following it for whom these books are intended, are scared. Books like The Hunger Games are unafraid to examine things like the use of propaganda and covert operations such as false flag operations.
Culturally attitudes towards gender are changing too. We're at a point where traditional masculinity, with all its violence and iron clad restrictions, is waning but not fully lost. If more people read these books, we'd be there a lot faster. Because if Chaos Walking does one thing right, its showing the toll of SWM privilige not just on those who are not SWM, but on those who are. The Knife of never letting go cuts both ways.
And that I should write more. That too.
Monday, October 8, 2012
What is mind? Yes, matter?
Within the past couple of days there have been two things published that I have been thinking about.
Firstly has been the two part series of the irrationality of Substance Dualism by QualiaSoup.
Secondly has been Newsweek's recent cover story: Proof of Heven by Eben Alexander. Its certain to give the people who agreed with QualiaSoup a headache. I don't have my finger on the pulse of the neuroscience community but I think that there has been a resurgence in the belief that the brain and the mind are distinct entities, or at least there is a distinct aspect to the human mind. Mario Beauregard and Pim Van Lommel have written on the experiences that people who have been on the threshold of death; Eben Alexander is an inductee to their ranks. Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles also has argued for an external element to consciousness; so has Dr. Stuart Hameroff.
I'm not convinced that their position is correct: to be fair, I do believe that mind states are different from brain states but it is unarguable that the former depends on the latter. The squishy grey meat in our skull is required for there to be a you or me. Yes, I've listed a bunch of bright, intelligent people who believe in a non-material component to the mind, but I know that appealing to authority is a logical fallacy. Plenty of smart people have believed in things that have been disproven.
In the case of Eben Alexander, first hand experience of a Near Death Experience would be very convincing. He isn't starting a cult or anything like that, but he has written of his experience in the good natured, good faith manner in the interest of scientific exploration. No doubt this will provide comfort to those suffering a loss, and many people will smile, nod and accept that their mortality is nothing but a transition. Speaking from my perspective, I'm just too intellectualy honest to accept that at first blush. It hurts. I'm happy they're happy, but I cannot share that happiness.
The argument in vogue is for quantum processes of some kind to be influencing our mental state. I'm not prepared to dismiss it on the face of it: new evidence suggests a link between photosynthesis and quantum physics. Evidence of quantum effects on the brain would not surprise me, though neither would it fully convert me. Its a controversial position, and in the wrong hands it could be used to handwave away any aspect of substance dualism that cannot be explained. Convinenent---but is it correct?
I don't know of any way to prove the influence of quantum whatever on the brain---again, I am neither a neuroscientist, and I am not very topical on the subject. I do not know how, much less why, quantum processes would be required to turn the human mind from a near robotic state into the creative, organized thing that it is. Maybe quantum processes are involved, but I'd hesitate to associate that with dualism or immortality.
I think that the mind emerges from the brain, the idea of a self. I believe in a more tiered idea of the soul: the brain produces consciousness, consciousness produces the mind, the mind produces the soul. No great theological or philosophical challenge; this revises, but does not erase, any such position. I do not believe this heart and soul, though I would argue for this interpretation. Its eccentric, unprovable, but dammit its mine!
Or perhaps our memories and our personality survives but both are reliant upon the brain to turn them into consciousness---after we die our selves float blissfully like old books on a great library shelf? Thats not so bad, we get two out of three, we're not gone forever. Again, eccentric, unprovable, but mine! I think I'd prefer a pantheistic fate than the traditional Abrahamic interpretation of the afterlife.
***********
A month ago I was reading something that shook up my worldview. My secular, milquetoast property dualist worldview. It was the death of someone two years ago that I did not know personally. Nerdfighter Esther Earl, dying at the absurdly young age of sixteen, by all accounts with her head held high, accepting death as the next big adventure. I would have, in her position, died stoically. However, I think I would be more resigned to my extinction than embracing of death as a change from one state of life to another.
About a decade ago I decided that I was an atheist. Not that this was a terrible transition from belief to disbelief: I was just honest to myself. I'd whittled down God to glorified flipper of the great light switch. Losing God was just jettisoning dead weight. I never liked throwing away the afterlife, for understandably selfish reasons. I'm afraid of oblivion, of the great nothingness, though after I die its not like I'll be dwelling on it. Okay, so I backslide into spirituality from time to time. Richard Dawkins can burn me at the stake for insufficent apostasy.
Hopefully it will be awhile before I find out firsthand. It better be good.
Firstly has been the two part series of the irrationality of Substance Dualism by QualiaSoup.
Secondly has been Newsweek's recent cover story: Proof of Heven by Eben Alexander. Its certain to give the people who agreed with QualiaSoup a headache. I don't have my finger on the pulse of the neuroscience community but I think that there has been a resurgence in the belief that the brain and the mind are distinct entities, or at least there is a distinct aspect to the human mind. Mario Beauregard and Pim Van Lommel have written on the experiences that people who have been on the threshold of death; Eben Alexander is an inductee to their ranks. Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles also has argued for an external element to consciousness; so has Dr. Stuart Hameroff.
I'm not convinced that their position is correct: to be fair, I do believe that mind states are different from brain states but it is unarguable that the former depends on the latter. The squishy grey meat in our skull is required for there to be a you or me. Yes, I've listed a bunch of bright, intelligent people who believe in a non-material component to the mind, but I know that appealing to authority is a logical fallacy. Plenty of smart people have believed in things that have been disproven.
In the case of Eben Alexander, first hand experience of a Near Death Experience would be very convincing. He isn't starting a cult or anything like that, but he has written of his experience in the good natured, good faith manner in the interest of scientific exploration. No doubt this will provide comfort to those suffering a loss, and many people will smile, nod and accept that their mortality is nothing but a transition. Speaking from my perspective, I'm just too intellectualy honest to accept that at first blush. It hurts. I'm happy they're happy, but I cannot share that happiness.
The argument in vogue is for quantum processes of some kind to be influencing our mental state. I'm not prepared to dismiss it on the face of it: new evidence suggests a link between photosynthesis and quantum physics. Evidence of quantum effects on the brain would not surprise me, though neither would it fully convert me. Its a controversial position, and in the wrong hands it could be used to handwave away any aspect of substance dualism that cannot be explained. Convinenent---but is it correct?
I don't know of any way to prove the influence of quantum whatever on the brain---again, I am neither a neuroscientist, and I am not very topical on the subject. I do not know how, much less why, quantum processes would be required to turn the human mind from a near robotic state into the creative, organized thing that it is. Maybe quantum processes are involved, but I'd hesitate to associate that with dualism or immortality.
I think that the mind emerges from the brain, the idea of a self. I believe in a more tiered idea of the soul: the brain produces consciousness, consciousness produces the mind, the mind produces the soul. No great theological or philosophical challenge; this revises, but does not erase, any such position. I do not believe this heart and soul, though I would argue for this interpretation. Its eccentric, unprovable, but dammit its mine!
Or perhaps our memories and our personality survives but both are reliant upon the brain to turn them into consciousness---after we die our selves float blissfully like old books on a great library shelf? Thats not so bad, we get two out of three, we're not gone forever. Again, eccentric, unprovable, but mine! I think I'd prefer a pantheistic fate than the traditional Abrahamic interpretation of the afterlife.
***********
A month ago I was reading something that shook up my worldview. My secular, milquetoast property dualist worldview. It was the death of someone two years ago that I did not know personally. Nerdfighter Esther Earl, dying at the absurdly young age of sixteen, by all accounts with her head held high, accepting death as the next big adventure. I would have, in her position, died stoically. However, I think I would be more resigned to my extinction than embracing of death as a change from one state of life to another.
About a decade ago I decided that I was an atheist. Not that this was a terrible transition from belief to disbelief: I was just honest to myself. I'd whittled down God to glorified flipper of the great light switch. Losing God was just jettisoning dead weight. I never liked throwing away the afterlife, for understandably selfish reasons. I'm afraid of oblivion, of the great nothingness, though after I die its not like I'll be dwelling on it. Okay, so I backslide into spirituality from time to time. Richard Dawkins can burn me at the stake for insufficent apostasy.
Hopefully it will be awhile before I find out firsthand. It better be good.
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