Coping Strategy

          Coping Strategy

 

          I have given up on immortality and will settle for reproducibility.

A Philosophical Disagreement

          A Philosophical Disagreement

 

           I was at the gas station, paying for a tankful of gasoline, when Gina, the owner, asked me how my wife Sherri is. I said, “Well enough,” and then added that ‘well enough’ is my stock answer to how-are-you.

          Gina, as ever an optimistic extravert, said, “You can do better than that. If you say ‘I feel fantastic’ all day, then by the end of the day you’ll feel fantastic.”

          I, as ever an introverted pessimist, replied, “Ohh no no no no no, that’s not how my so-called mind works. If I say I feel fantastic all day then by the end of the day I’ll feel awful for not feeling fantastic!”

 

 

Sunblocks Ranked

         From the Annals of “The National Liar”:

       Sunblocks Ranked

 

 

          Ranking types of sunblock, in increasing order of effectiveness:

 

          rating 0:  A bottle full of chemical goop.

          rating 1:  loose-fitting, cool, all-covering clothes

          rating 2:  shade tree or shade forest

          rating 3:  overcast weather

          rating 4:  a floor, 4 walls, and a ceiling

          rating 5:  winter

          rating 6:  night

 

 

Mome Declares Himself Fallible

Mome Declares Himself Fallible

 

 

          Nome, Alaska  -  In a surprise announcement yesterday, J.R.”Bob” Dobbs, Mome of the Noman Particular Church, proclaimed the doctrine of Momal Fallibility.

          “What, me infallible?” the Mome snarked. “Of course Momes can make mistakes. In fact we’ve made some big ones. Just judge for yourself.”

          Sources high in the Noman Particular Church said that they adopted this doctrine because they needed more wiggle room. “We’ve painted ourselves into a corner. It’s high time we ‘fessed up,” said Ordinal Maustinger, the Mome’s most trusted advisor. “His Holiness has made a bad call lately, and he needs a face-saving way to back out of the mess.”

          The ‘bad call’ referred to is the infamous Elvis Clone debacle. “His Holiness sure dropped the ball there,” Maustinger confided. “We never made sure that that hanky was really one of Elvis’s; or if the genetic material found there was his; or even how that genetic material got there in the first place. But ‘Bob’ insisted on cloning, so we went ahead; after all, he’s the Mome. And the result? Well, let’s just say that the clone we grew didn’t see things our way. Put it all together, and it spells M-I-S-T-A-K-E.”

          “I am a man, mortal and therefore sinful,” the Mome confessed to the world. “I say I am fallible, and I say so ex cathedra. My judgement is not perfect; to claim otherwise is the sin of intellectual pride. Only God is free from all error – and sometimes I wonder about Him.”

 

         

"Alternate Jesus"

      Review of Imaginary Book:

     “Alternate Jesus”

 

 

          Every so often there comes along a book which shakes the world. Such books incite revolutions, topple empires, destroy religions, spread mass insanity, and spark genocidal wars. Fortunately, “Alternate Jesus” is not such a book.

          In “Alternate Jesus”, the author asks, what if Jesus of Nazareth had never been crucified?  How would history have been different? The author gives us two answers; two “alternate worlds” in which Jesus lived. Unfortunately, only one of those answers is convincing to this reviewer.

          The book has two parts: “In This Sign Conquer”, and “What is Truth?” In Part One, Jesus seizes control of his environment by secular means; in Part Two, Jesus takes a more spiritual approach. Part One is all too convincing, for its message is “power corrupts”. Part Two is mystical, not dramatic. It teaches that “truth shall set you free”, but it deliberately does not tell us what truth is.

          “In This Sign Conquer” starts in the city of Rome, where King Jesus had just successfully concluded his Crusade Against Empire. With the defeated Roman Empire at the mercy of his Zealots, he proclaims himself Prophet, Messiah, and God-Emperor of the World. “That was his high point,” the chronicler wryly comments. We then see Emperor Jesus play out, within his reign, the entire history of the medieval Church, including censorship, repression, fanaticism, fraud, corruption, witch-hunts, wars and genocides. It ends with Emperor Jesus’s death and the collapse of his tyrannical theocracy.

          “What is Truth?” shows Jesus as an old man, teaching Torah to his students – among whom we find the Roman Ambassador to Judea. The story is a dialog between the old Rabbi and his students, friends and rivals; they ask each other what truth is. In a style similar to Plato’s dialogs, Jesus draws from all participants their own ideas as to the nature of truth; and in return the students draw out his own views. This part of the book is lyrical, philosophical and mystical – and for those reasons lacks the spectacular drama of Part One.

          The book, as a whole, lacks balance. “In This Sign Conquer” is a critique of the historic Christian Church; and as such, all too effective. After such an indictment one would expect praise of equal power, but “What is Truth?” seems thin in comparison. It is more for poets, priests and philosophers than for the rest of us.

          The difficulty is partly due to the nature of the subject. It is easy to write political protest for the masses, but far less easy to present ecstatic mystical liberation theology in terms that relate to the average reader’s everyday life. Neither Dante nor Milton could describe their Heavens as vividly as their Hells. This difficulty is compounded in a secular age such as ours.

          Another difficulty is due to the nature of history. “Alternate Jesus” is an alternate-worlds story, subject to the epistemological limits of such a narrative. We of this world-line can visualize the world-line of “In This Sign Conquer” because it is a lesser line than ours; it contains less information. The opposite is true for the world-line of “What is Truth?”; it is a greater world than our own, one of higher content, and for this reason we cannot know it fully.

          God-emperors have risen and fallen many times; there is nothing new in that old story. But in our world, Jesus died young, so we do not know what he would have taught, had he lived to old age. For this reason, “What is Truth?” falls short; it ends with mystery; one must fill in details for oneself. It ends with silence, as “In This Sign Conquer” ends with noise; and in both cases we see reflected the tragedy of our own world-line’s Jesus, who died before he could tell us all that he had to say.

 

 

 

“Both Sides Now: An Afterlife Exposé”

      Review of Imaginary Book:

     “Both Sides Now: An Afterlife Exposé”

 

          What are we to make of this strange yet familiar book? Surely no-one has ever taken so odd a stance; yet even first-time readers feel as if they had heard this story before. Could it be that this satire tells the true nature of Eternity?

          But that would be too simple, too “linear” a way of thinking. The author is an ironist; he delights in reducing ideologies to the absurd. The bigger they are, the harder they fall; what bigger pratfall, what wilder reversal, could you imagine than for Heaven and Hell to swap places?

          For that is the author’s heretical jest. In this paradoxical morality play, we see the Paradise and the Inferno of medieval Christian theology set into circular motion. Heaven falls, becoming a Hell, and Hell rises, becoming a new Heaven; and by book’s end it is clear that the cycle will repeat forever.

          For this is no accident, but inherent in the nature of the situation. The blessed are corrupted by their pride in being blessed; the damned are reformed by their humility in being damned. We see the all-too-familiar class privilege rationalizing power abuse, in parallel with the inspiring sight of suffering souls redeeming each other through mutual aid. No wonder this book’s subtitle is “An Afterlife Exposé”!

          Shall we call this book’s author a cynic? An idealist? Both? Neither? Surely the term “realist” doesn’t apply; yet this admittedly fantastic fable has a compelling inner logic. Small details help, such as the slightly orange tint to Heaven’s golden clouds that deepens as the decline from the peak progresses. It was inevitable that St. Francis prefer Hell to Heaven, as would Mark Twain, Gotthold Lessing, and D. T. Suzuki; and just as inevitable that Heaven’s theocratic bureaucracy have personnel such as St. Torquemada and the Archangel Goebbels.

          In the book’s first chapter “Summer of our Discontent”, we see Heaven reaching – and passing – its peak, in alternation with Hell bottoming out. In Heaven, the coronation of the Godling is completed; the new deity’s first command is to declare war on Evil. (The clouds turned slightly orange.) Meanwhile in Hell, a temporary cease-fire is declared.

          The book’s second chapter is “The Purge”. In Heaven, St. Torquemada and the Archangel Goebbels start expelling suspect blessed; meanwhile in Hell, the cease-fire holds and peace burgeons.

          In chapter three, “Zeroth Circle”, falling Heaven and rising Hell meet and pass each other. Separated souls exchange messages; some choose this point to escape the Wheel.

          In chapter four, “Fallen Spring”, fallen Heaven turns into veritable Hell, and rising Hell becomes truly Heavenly.

          The last chapter, “Looking Up” sees attain – and pass – Heavenly perfection, just as the former Heaven bottoms out.

          And that completes the cycle!

 

 

 

 

Rivendell on Trantor

        Rivendell on Trantor

 

             Call a settlement of limited size but of great duration a “Time colony”, or a “Rivendell”; and call a civilization of great size but of limited duration a “Space civilization”, or a “Trantor”. The names “Rivendell” and “Trantor” refer to, respectively, the Elvish town in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; and to the planet-spanning galactic capital city in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy .

             I propose this census:

             Rivendell: a million people, for a million generations.

            Trantor: a billion people, for a thousand generations.

             The first is a fair-sized colony, lasting for tens of megayears, a

longish species lifetime. So this is a Local Range; the Home of a Kind.

The second is a world civilization, lasting for tens of kiloyears,

about the length of history. This is a World Culture with a History.

             Rivendell colonizes time, and Trantor colonizes space.

             To keep Rivendell fresh, let’s make it a college town, home of Rivendell University, in its new location. They had to leave the old place and build a new campus here, due to mega-volcano eruption. They’ve still settling in, it’s been only 1.7 million years. But despite Rivendell’s traditionalism, it manages to keep up with the times; for they accept students from all across space, especially Trantor. How’s that for a happening place?

             And as for Trantor… there is no boredom on Trantor, and no shortage of rebels. Trantor is always up to something big; a war, a revolution, a reformation, a renaissance; political decay, cultural flowering, religious crises and scientific breakthroughs; and whatever Trantor does, it does it.

             Trantor never sleeps. So of course people will want to go to Rivendell  just for a bit of rest. But sorry, no uninvited visitors.

             So which would you prefer? Rivendell or Trantor? Rivendell is at least a somewhat happening place; and Trantor has respectable longevity chops; and it’s a fair trade-off. The elvish city is to the techno-world as deep time is to history.

             I see an SF novel in this, with a single world inhabited by both a Trantor and a Rivendell. (Almost everywhere, from Trantor’s point of view; temporarily, from Rivendell’s.) To Trantor,  a thousand years is a long time; to Rivendell, a thousand people is a big crowd.

             Rivendell has changed locations several times, to keep up with the geography. There are abandoned fossil Rivendells, which other peoples dug up for treasure and technology; notably the precursors to the Trantor world-civilization. The word “Trantor”, to the Trantorians, means the name of their planet; and also mankind; and also ‘culture’, ‘peace’, ‘order’, and many other soothing ideals; with predictable tragicomic consequences.

             A spacelike civilization meets a timelike civilization; temporarily, locally; yet everyone in Trantor is affected by Rivendell, all over the planet; and Rivendell never forgot Trantor, even after mountains wore down.

             For one thing, they stole a lot of tech from each other. There may even be a tendency for Trantor to re-create another Rivendell, on a distant world; and a reciprocal tendency for Rivendell to recreate another Trantor, in the distant future.

             Rivendell’s rebels will leave, and will either vanish into obscurity, or find a Trantor to influence. Rivendell’s influence on galactic culture is slow but cumulative; a trickle of exiled geniuses; Trantor’s influence is all at once.

             Perhaps a rebel Rivendellian will leave, mix with Trantor society,

collect a cadre of likeminded malcontents, and then leave for a distant

world, to found New Rivendell. (Where they will offer modern boredom!)

             Trantor’s rebels will go out, in waves after waves, each to form their own utopian Rivendells. Some of those Rivendells will remain static until they go extinct, others will mutate into new Trantors.

             Rivendell is to Trantor as spore is to redwood.