So one thing i have been thinking about is how no science fiction stories imagine a pleasant future. Well, I have really been giving that much thought, since the reason for that is obvious—pleasant futures don't really lend themselves well to conflict—as to what such a pleasant future might entail. What would be a conceivable future world that we could look forward to living in? That wouldn't just be a sci-fi setting, but that could be an accurate projection of the future, to some degree? Assuming the world will actually get better, which I kind of do, and that there is an actual direction to history, what kind of future society are we looking at? What would be a conceivable endpoint, or at least goal, in terms of a future society.
I don't mean far future either. One of my feelings is that any possible future that could be arrived at, that is, any society, would have encoded in it mechanism to ensure scientific and artistic advancement. We will not get an End of History scenario, where we settle down to one, stable, form of society, and then we never budge from that, ever again. (It's funny, how when you think about it, how conservative Marx's vision really is.) However, it seems to me that there is a certain trajectory in terms of terms of economic and societal reforms, that something like the the "Liberal Agenda" will come about in the end, it's just that the Liberal Agenda keeps mutating, so it's hard to keep track of what it actually might be. Of course, any possible future, in order to be realistic along these lines, would need to be believably based upon a foreseeable trajectory from the present (otherwise you are dealing in Fantasy).
I mean, let's start out with some simple things shall we? I assume that eventually we are just going to have to have some kind single payer healthcare. Medical cost will just be so expensive, that some attempt will be made to eliminate the cost, and cutting out the profit margin seems a good way to do that. And of course, there will be increased, nearly universal unionization, leading to higher wages for all (at least in America). This, in turn, will cut into the profit margin. (God, I wish I knew more about economics.) Kind of hard to figure out what the step it after that.
Then there is social issues. The problem I have is that I feel like you can always fail to take something into account. Part of me thinks that We have almost reached the endpoint in terms of civil rights causes. Just where is there to go from here? But I bet the Romans thought the same thing, right. But if there is still some social just causes unturned, which ones? Who is there really left out there being oppressed? What additional dimensions of human experience have not been noticed? There's race, gender, religion, and sexual proclivities, right? Race, or nationalism, will probably be a continuing source of discord until everyone is brown, but I think in many countries it will soon fade to non-importance in day to day interaction. The President of the United States is a black guy. Talking about post-racialism is bullshit, but that doesn't mean our conception of our relationship with the concept of race isn't going to go under an overhaul over the next 4-8 years. Religion, who fucking cares. sexual proclivities? I just doubt that furies are going to be the next GLBT. Fetishes in general be become kind of humdrum and not important. Lot of taboos and peoples' interest in caring about or stigmatizing certain taboos will just go away. Once gay relationships are normalized, that shit will open like floodgates, and no one will care about fetishes, whether we're talking Furries or S&M. It will be like caring about a person's favorite ice cream flavor (mine is vanilla, natch). By 2050, no one gives a fuck what you do in bed. Probably the only sexual habits I see keeping a stigmatization are things like pedophilia, bestiality, and polygamy. Basically anything that could be read as an imposition onasnother conciousness that is unable to give valid consent. Though I wonder how long such things could hold on, especially if concepts such as gender start to fall apart and sex comes to be less loaded with meaning or value. Bestiality will always be a somewhat nasty violation of animals, but polgamy? Just a way to ratify polyamorous relationships, the way we are now ratifying same-sex ones. Pedophilia is a bit more fucked up, but, the ancient Greeks did it, right? Could we concievably return to a state so sexually lax that it became acceptable. Is NAMBLA the next gay rights movement? Allen Ginsburg seemed to think so. On the other hand, that might actually be a moral aberration that has actually been corrected for by Western Individual Liberty, not something harmless that has been supressed by intolerant mores. Still, if Socrates fucked Plato... (did he? could people confirm that, or am I just imagining that shit from stuff I read and heard? Man the Greeks sure were odd.)
More later.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Blah
Yeah, well work took a lot out of me this week. Everyday I got home and didn't feel like thinking or creating or anything. I just sat around and zoned out, drank a whiskey or a beer, or both, or several of both. Wednesday night I had a borderline psychotic episode after being in a freezer for over half an hour. I still wasn't really over the bad vibes from that for the rest of the next day, and then I sleep schedule got extra special messed up. Which, in general, I sleep schedule has been of late. maybe I need to get on a schedule. A set time to go to bed and wake up might be me some good.
Today I tuned my drums for the first time in ages. I even put the heads back on the bottom of the toms. They sound much better now. The resonances are in tune with one another, each tom tightened 360 degrees past finger tight. I left the back off the bass drum, since I keep having to take pieces off the back to use on the front back the front tighteners get jammed. I wonder why that keeps happening. Perhaps I have to loosen the drumheads peicemeal, instead of completel detuning one before the next? Actually, all my top drum heads are getting hard to turn. I wonder if I can order some more down at the local music shop. Maybe tomorrow I will go down to the music shop, then go sit in the library and read books. It is unfortunate that there are no big comfy chairs at the library.
I also need to buy garbage bag tags.
Another thing I did today. I cooked fish. I got out the broiler, which I have never used before, and mixed lemon salt in olive oil and slathered in on the fish, then cooked it at 315 for about 14 minutes. I also made about a pound of mash potatoes, which I will be eating all week. I put so much butter and pepper into those bad boys that you don't even need gravy or bean juice with them, they are so delicious on their own.
I have been making a lot of sandwiches lately. They are surprisingly easy to make, tasty, and filling. Now I know why mom was always pushing them. I get Pepperidge Farm whole grain bread, which is just the most flavorful stuff you could imagine, just incredibly hearty. You feel like are are really eating a loave. I use organic lettuce. I need to start buying freshly sliced meat, though. The recent On-Sale packaged stuff I bought is terrible.
...There is now gay marriage in the state I live in. That is just so fucking weird to me.
Today I tuned my drums for the first time in ages. I even put the heads back on the bottom of the toms. They sound much better now. The resonances are in tune with one another, each tom tightened 360 degrees past finger tight. I left the back off the bass drum, since I keep having to take pieces off the back to use on the front back the front tighteners get jammed. I wonder why that keeps happening. Perhaps I have to loosen the drumheads peicemeal, instead of completel detuning one before the next? Actually, all my top drum heads are getting hard to turn. I wonder if I can order some more down at the local music shop. Maybe tomorrow I will go down to the music shop, then go sit in the library and read books. It is unfortunate that there are no big comfy chairs at the library.
I also need to buy garbage bag tags.
Another thing I did today. I cooked fish. I got out the broiler, which I have never used before, and mixed lemon salt in olive oil and slathered in on the fish, then cooked it at 315 for about 14 minutes. I also made about a pound of mash potatoes, which I will be eating all week. I put so much butter and pepper into those bad boys that you don't even need gravy or bean juice with them, they are so delicious on their own.
I have been making a lot of sandwiches lately. They are surprisingly easy to make, tasty, and filling. Now I know why mom was always pushing them. I get Pepperidge Farm whole grain bread, which is just the most flavorful stuff you could imagine, just incredibly hearty. You feel like are are really eating a loave. I use organic lettuce. I need to start buying freshly sliced meat, though. The recent On-Sale packaged stuff I bought is terrible.
...There is now gay marriage in the state I live in. That is just so fucking weird to me.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Commas
If you are writing a sentence with a lot of commas, a lot of defendant clauses, a lot of lists, maybe a lot just a lot or steps or sections, and for whatever reason you do not feel it useful to cross over into using semi-colons as a part of sentence construction, I would hang back on the use of commas, because the using of commas to divide up each, particular, phrase, is just headache-inducing, and brevity and clarity would be greatly enhanced by fluency.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
bits
Been doing lots of random writing today. Working on bits and parts of stories, mostly in outline form, trying to summarize and rework old legends. Has been slow going, as I haven't wanted to put steps down unless they fit, so lots of pacing about and circling around and typing when the spirit moves me. Also much reading of the sources and sublimating that information.
Also been doing laundry and reading The Left Hand of Darkness. It's much better than I remember it. Not really slow like I felt it was before. I think maybe I was just still miffed about the Doctorow kerfluffle, and the rhetorical device she begins with (the narrator explains why they are writing the story), still a pet peeve of mine, is less obnoxious then I remember it being. It's funny, the book is most often sighted for it's treatment of gender, but the wintry setting and alien and pangalactic cultures seem to play a much larger role in my impression of the book than the biology of the "aliens." Also, Le Guin really does seem to have a thing for making her characters not white. Not bad, of course, but quite uncommon.
Also been doing laundry and reading The Left Hand of Darkness. It's much better than I remember it. Not really slow like I felt it was before. I think maybe I was just still miffed about the Doctorow kerfluffle, and the rhetorical device she begins with (the narrator explains why they are writing the story), still a pet peeve of mine, is less obnoxious then I remember it being. It's funny, the book is most often sighted for it's treatment of gender, but the wintry setting and alien and pangalactic cultures seem to play a much larger role in my impression of the book than the biology of the "aliens." Also, Le Guin really does seem to have a thing for making her characters not white. Not bad, of course, but quite uncommon.
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