…which is seldom a bad thing.
Spiked-online is generally an interesting site, with challenging articles which often hit the nail (more or less) on the head. And sometimes not. In The geek shall inherit the Earth, I think that it would be best to say ‘your meta-context is showing’. I have met Sandy Star, and so can attest the author is a bright agreeable person, but I find myself questioning the thrust of this article even though agreeing with many of the specific points.
In essence Sandy is saying that the ‘mainstreaming’ of SciFi and Fantasy films suggests a retreat from reality and the stagnation of society, though he does not actually blame the science fiction/fantasy genres for causing this.
I would say some aspects of civil society are not just stagnating but are actually decaying in many ways, and it seems to me that one need look no further than the growth of regulatory statism to see the reason why this has happened. However it strikes me that Sandy’s characterisation of fans of the science fiction/fantasy genre too broad as obsessives can be found in all walks of life and as most of the people I know seem to like SciFi/fantasy, and none seem to exhibit the desire to retreat into fantasy obsessed atomised isolation, I do not think it is a reasonable generalisation. But I would suggest maybe it is actually a sign of an entirely countervailing current to the one represented by ‘real world’ politisization/desocialisation.
The prevailing democratic statist meta-context takes as an un-stated axiom that the political process is there to alter the form and incidence of as much personal interaction as possible, replacing them with politically derived formulae of behaviour, be it the way you can act towards then people you work with way you can interact with your children, what your house must look like, etc. etc.
But perhaps the fact so many folks want to read and watch stories of people (or werewolves/elves/vampires/daleks) operating within utterly different context and sometimes even meta-context quite removed from the one they see around them, indicates not stagnation or a rejection of reality, but rather a resistance to the intellectual stasis of the mind that modern political structures are trying to impose on civil society. It is nothing less than a willingness to think in other terms, based upon other axioms. Science fiction/fantasy authors often inform how we see the real world and it is no accident that Heinlein is so popular with libertarians and libertarian oriented conservatives. And I never found enthusing over Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light got in the way of me doing likewise about Karl Popper’s Open society and it’s enemies.
And as for the internet making us less social, that is quite incorrect. I have found that the contrary is true. The internet (and particularly the blogosphere) is about establishing networks that have huge implications in the real world… and these bring people together, in the real world. That is what brought me to a blogger bash in the Hollywood Hills a few months ago and will hopefully lead to me meeting up with a Czech blogger in Prague in a few weeks. It is what lead me to meet, face to face, all manner of people I have never met before and most likely never would have.
Oh and Sandy, if the science fiction/fantasy genres lead to ‘individuation‘, how is that a bad thing? Why is differentiating yourself from society undesirable? If so, as you are a fellow science fiction/fantasy geek like myself, I take it you think the Borg in Star Trek are the good guys then? Must be a flashback caused by that dormant Marxist nano-virus in the air-conditioning in the Spiked offices. Whilst I am rather partial to Seven of Nine, I do not think many people would agree with you.
I want to be a member of the race that rules the sevagram.
And I actually think that this is about as far from a retreat from reality as is possible.
I feel a lot better about administrating MUSHes now.
Thanks. 🙂
That article gave me a headache.
LotR is popular because it’s a dramatic fairytale-like story with goodies and baddies that are easy to tell apart. It’s appealing to historicists because its explanations revel in the past roots of things (the roots of mountains, etymology, ancient forests, a golden age – just ask anyone with a large enough beard).
SF is popular because it helps one to understand our *present* society much better (if you change x,y,z.. then society evolves in directions a,b,c..) It also fosters optimism about things getting better and life becoming more diverse and interesting ad infinitum. Neither of these gifts can be found abundantly in modern literary fiction with its pretentious mysticism, relativism and power-obsession.
It’s useful to distinguish between a geek and a nerd. A geek is somebody with deep knowledge in a particular field. (Nowadays it’s desirable to be a geek in one or two fields; Adam Smith would approve.) A nerd is a geek with the addition that he accepts the false judgment of peers that geeks are necessarily unsexy or morally inadequate. Nerds are created by denying children the right to freedom of association. Telling people they shouldn’t be nerds is likely to have the opposite result. Dragging a person away from the one thing that brings them joy would be contemptible.
Claiming that stuff on the internet is somehow less real, or that somebody surfing in his bedroom is cut off from reality, is false. Something is real if it can kick back at you. Amazon does this all the time. So does Gimli the dwarf, as gamers and film producers can attest.
I say that it’s only by exploring ideas that we can confront those questions. Since we’ve no idea which ideas will be needed next, daydreaming and fantasy might be a useful, rich source of inspiration.
OK, perhaps I’d better disappear and individuate myself a bit.
I am being too cynical in suspecting that Sandy’s headline pun was conceived before the prolix ramble was cobbled up, with topical padding, to to justify it? In light of the government’s suggestion that advertising junk food should perhaps be banned by law, perhaps their slogan could be The Weak shall Inherit a Girth ?
From the referenced article:
Rather than being integrated into society by being forced to take people as they come, the internet allows you to preselect whom you choose to fraternise with, based upon whether or not they share your specific interests. And if you dislike or disagree with someone you encounter in this faceless environment, then rather than go through the process of being forced to account for your worldview, you can simply retreat from confrontation.
Um…Sounds a hell of a lot better than the ‘real’ world.
I also have physically met a number of people from all over the country that I would not otherwise have met if it weren’t for the Internet. Far from isolating people from one another, it is drawing together people with like interests. The Global Village is becoming a reality after all, and it lives in the Internet.
Re: Forced to account for ones worldview
Personally I love to account for my worldview. It’s true that if you dislike or disagree with someone you meet on the internet, you can simply disengage yourself.
However, as the flame-filled political messageboards in every community seem to indicate, people are almost overly fond of outlining and defending their beliefs. Sometimes the desire to defend one’s beliefs here reaches almost masochistic tendencies–for example, I believe Samizdata’s comments section occasionally fields a dyed in the wool statist.
Last year I hosted a get together for about 20 online gamers who I had met and talked to only on the Internet. Two of them were Germans who had never left Germany before (it was their first time on an plane, odd for twenty and thirty somethings in that part of the world I would say).
Anyhow, the Internet and specifically a sci-fi based game was the enabling social technology.
Further to this, one of them has just bought a pub. I know someone who owns a public house! Because of the Internet and sci-fi! It’s a social enabler of the highest calibre.
But perhaps the fact so many folks want to read and watch stories of people (or werewolves/elves/vampires/daleks) operating within utterly different context and sometimes even meta-context quite removed from the one they see around them…
Perry, I think you are absolutely correct here. In my youth, I read obscene amounts of science fiction and fantasy. I would have to say that the primary reason I read so much, and why my selections were totally dominated by sci-fi/fantasy, was that I loved to escape into a different, more dynamic, and exciting world in each book. Worlds that had adventure, and frontiers, and danger.
As the statists increase their control over us, especially the nanny-statists, they stifle our feeling that we can, if we desire, go out and find adventure and opportunity. Some adventure, at least, can be briefly felt while watching a movie or reading a book–and that’s why they are gaining in popularity.
Patrick: “I believe Samizdata’s comments section occasionally fields a dyed in the wool statist.”
Yup. Here’s one!
(a “old-style liberal statist”, maybe?)
When Starr says “the society that lies outside … stagnates”, well, it doen’t look that way to me. Unless he is referring to less faith in grand designs of top-down social engineering, to which I reply, good.
Perry mentions a “willingness to think in other terms, based upon other axioms”.
As an example, I suspect I probably be more likely to consider libertarians totally crazy (rather than just slightly crazy 😉 if I had never read James Hogan’s “Voyage From Yesteryear”. (Which I highly recommend).
Perry is spot on as regards the social and cognitive advantages of blogging.
I thought libertarians were all as commonsensical as myself until I discovered Samizdata.
Indeed, I thought wanking was a Chinese city until I dsiscovered Samizdata.
Still, the Internet wouldn’t be the same without you.
So how is a story with hobbits or light sabers any more reality avoiding than a story set in the real world but premised on a fantasy world model like Marxism or Freudianism? Which is more divorced from reality: The Trouble with Tribbles or Das Kapital? Who is more unwilling to “confront reality”: the geek reading Lord of the Rings or the socialist who really believes it is possible to centrally manage an economy with hundreds of millions of interacting elements?
At least the geek in the Spock ears knows that the stories he loves are at best just allegorical. The intellectual by contrast is trying earnestly to get the government to spend billions to build a teleporter.
How can any film that has the isolationist nutbar literally go down in flames be considered mainstream Hollywood fare? In what way is this attitude seeping into the movie biz conciousness, if such a thing can be said to exist? If it does become the basis for understanding that while evil might sleep, it never goes away without a fight, how can this be viewed as a bad thing?
Internet socialization has been incredibly good for me. I have met some awesome people, one in particular has become one of my closest friends, I have known her for over 5 years now.
Blogging in particular has opened my eyes to other parts of the world and other perspectives to an amzing level. I look at many of my non-internet peers now with a near disgust for their narrowness of perspective, because they speak of people and attitudes in other countries and know little about that which they speak. Most of their “knowledge” comes from various news organizations, and not the perspectives of individuals. Ive also learned a lot about debate, and about what should be involved in forging a “worldview”. There is nothing so powerful as trial by fire, and throwing your ideas out there to be either accepted or torn apart by others around the world shows where the weaknesses of your argument lie. I find after only a few months of heavy blogging that I can hold my own with confidence against the average person. Blog sites such as these are a meeting of the best of minds, and a way to share the knowledge and perspectives of an enormous range of individuals, forging stronger and stronger arguments in the arena of ideas.
Yes limberwulf, that’s the internet at it’s best.
At it’s worst it can turn into hollow echo chambers where only the orthodoxy of the site in question is allowed.
It is merely a tool, and like all tools has it’s good and bad uses. It can either enhance or stifle debate.
Aren’t SciFi and Fantasy but the latest names for something that has been around longer than nation states have, a genre, a storytelling style there has always been a demand for ?
In essence Sandy is saying that the ‘mainstreaming’ of SciFi and Fantasy films suggests a retreat from reality and the stagnation of society, though he does not actually blame the science fiction/fantasy genres for causing this.
I would say some aspects of civil society are not just stagnating but are actually decaying in many ways, and it seems to me that one need look no further than the growth of regulatory statism to see the reason why this has happened.
Go back far enough in Western culture and there were times when all fiction was deemed to be corrupting, moving people away from Godliness, and likely is the case still in many Eastern Theocracies today. Of course right up to the present day, one camp belittles another camp’s fictions as artless and empty and sure to lead to curved spines and blindness. Here, sci-fi is just one example.
As for a rise in regulatory statism, I think the proliferation of fiction may have something to do with it. Fiction, unlike real life, comes to some sort of conclusion, and usually one can put a pretty bow on the generalized concepts that are the fiction’s elemental theme. A diet of such ‘closures’ conditions people to think that life can be led in the same way, batches of incidents with a tidy ending, instead of the linear path into unknowns, until we eventually push up daisies (pretty much the only known). It seems the majority of people walk around, conditioned by fiction, to observe life’s shortcomings through a filter of fiction, moved ultimately toward some forcefully collectivist path in an attempt to bring into reality their distorted perceptions. Hence the rise in statism is rooted in the proliferation of fictions, and a decline in real science to generate reproducable facts. A culture awash in fictions is a culture likely to harbor superstitions more readily, and Statism depends on clinical superstition to prosper.
Fiction can be used for good or ill. Most geeks recognize the assumptions behind the worlds they play in, and won’t pretend for a moment that those are real. They are often the ones in school who become scientists, engineers.
Personally, playing around in the sci-fi world has brought me into contact with people I would not have met otherwise. Indeed, I have felt it was an enriching experience.
The Wobbly Guy
Fiction, unlike real life, comes to some sort of conclusion, and usually one can put a pretty bow on the generalized concepts that are the fiction’s elemental theme.
Which led defense attorneys to hate Perry Mason. To some extent, enough to generate articles about it, jurors expect them not only to prove reasonable doubt, but to find the actual guilty party.