Does Scarcity of Market Share Lead Billionaires, Entrepreneurs, and Crony Politicians into Tunnel Vision for More Market Share?

Only after the second chapter of Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir present an argument that scarcity creates an involuntary tunnel vision effect with attention. This book so far bolsters a hypothesis that I'm coming up with: that billionaires, successful entrepreneurs, and crony politicians in capitalist cultures forge paths of growth and accumulating more rather than sharing and supporting society by fighting against material scarcity because the billionaires, successful entrepreneurs, and crony politicians are stuck in a mindset of scarcity.

But a scarcity of what? It's not material wealth. Maybe it's time, but they could easily hand off things. Maybe privacy, authenticity of people around them, genuine relationships with people, etc. etc. No, accumulating more and more material things wouldn't help address those scarcities except for maybe paying more for security to guard against sycophants.

Maybe the billionaire, the successful entrepreneur, the crony politician feel a scarcity of attention market share. Even those with the biggest market share now have to fear competitors and innovators that threaten to make the billionaire/successful entrepreneur/crony politician obsolete. Because lose that market share, especially with a lavish lifestyle, the billionaire/successful entrepreneur/crony politician risks losing their lifestyle and possibly losing all their material wealth. They would fall into material scarcity, which they may never have experienced before or have a memory of material scarcity being a horrible experience.

And today's capitalist, competitive business, finance, and political culture further exacerbates this sense of scarcity for the billionaires, successful entrepreneurs, and crony politicians. This hypothesis doesn't look to garner sympathy for these billionaires and successful entrepreneurs (and politicians that have gained power through the lobbyists that advocate for these businesses, billionaires, and successful entrepreneurs) because this path hurts society more than it helps.

Heck, as an aside, just look at how much middle and high school culture in the United States supports the importance of popularity and market share of attention instead of being a good person.

Rather, I seek to indict society and developed Western culture for building up this ideology and inflicting people with this state of mind. Any thoughts on this hypothesis? Any thoughts on fighting this phenomenon? Any objections?

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Cries for Civility Ignore Disgusting Reality Created by Freeloading Bullies

Today's entry will consist of a few things that I've encountered on the Internet in the media that provide some insight into our culture and the human condition during partisan times.

My first entry for consideration: "Democracy Is a Blessing: Phatic Ritual and the Public Sphere in Northeast Brazil".

The essay gets fairly academic. However, "Democracy Is a Blessing. . ." provides some interesting perspective that Brazilians may have forgotten in the last decade or so. The essay might help us innovate some ideas and practices to address some parts of our existential crisis. Frankly, I might characterize a fair amount of people in the GOP and Trump supporters as White Supremacist deplorables. A lot of them also people might have what George Lakoff calls Authoritarian Hierarchical Personalities that feel frustrated at the levelling off of relations between people, the generations, etc. etc.

A lot of this thinking on my part comes from hearing Baby Boomers complaining that younger generations showing too much familiarity, not enough respect, expecting the world from the people around them, and not paying their dues. At the same time, though, most older generations on their way out make this complaint about the generations under them. Even elder politicians told Barack Obama, a late Baby Boomer, that he should wait his turn as Obama clawed his way to the top (for a podcast version of Obama's story, check out WBEZ's Making Obama series).

Read enough about politics and businesses, and you'll run into younger generations "not paying their dues" or "not waiting their turn". At the same time, the younger generations complain that older people are "keeping them down" or "not teaching them how things work".

The United States definitely has proven an interesting testing ground for the tensions between tradition and progress, conservatism and liberalism, young and old, hierarchy and informality. This country has also acted as a Person on the Frontier trying to act as the City on the Hill, a youngish country ignoring its tradition while trying to create and "protect" its tradition (read up on the Magna Carta, An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown, and you'll see where some of our traditions and Constitutional Amendments come from!).

I appreciate the tension between the slackening of formality and the phatic demonstrations of less digital people in the world. Lately I've wondered if this country's focus so much on growth and efficiency has led to people enjoying each other less and trying to avoid human interaction as it gets in the way of improvement and accomplishment. At the same time, I'm probably the person most likely to complain about people interrupting me and how much of my day goes into interacting with people.

Maybe my appreciation of that tension comes from a yearning of more connection with people in real time, hoping for more experience of positive emotion, not just guilt at not accomplishing as much as I should have. Even before a study pointed out loneliness as a public health crisis, my mind had fixated more on the rational fact that I need to connect with people for my health, to fend off bad health, not necessarily because of some authentic, instinctual gregariousness.

All of which feels like a ruminating transition to an interesting discussion on an episode of the NPR Individisible limited series podcast (not associated with the "grassroots" political organization by the same name). Kerri Miller (NPR host in Minnesota) hosted the episode, trying to focus on and understand how partisanship since 2016 has built walls and has created so much tension.

A portion of the episode explored our sense of what we consider the sacred (or inviolable) lines that we think others shouldn't cross. Amongst family, friends, co-workers, strangers on the streets, people we meet in bars, etc. we cross each others' line, working ourselves up when we learn someone else has voted for Trump or Hillary, how they feel about immigration, their thoughts on capitalism or socialism, abortion, and so many things now.

I have a criticism for these kinds of discussions by the media about the loss of civility. The pundits that just want civility and peace don't appreciate that these situations cause real harm. The discussions don't, but the events and interactions that create these topics do. People who need asylum because of horrible conditions behind them get turned away, leaving them with nowhere to go (after the United States swore never again after World War II, when the country turned away Jewish people trying to escape the Holocaust). Just yesterday, after the shooting at UNC Charleston, I wondered if shootings and hate crimes would soon become an everyday experience. Will we bat a lash at a White Supremacy act of terrorism next year?

Finding some kind of ritual or set of gestures that could diffuse tensions and glue together social bonds would do a great service for this country. At the same time, my readings into evolutionary anthropological morality shows that these tensions and conlfict has existed from day one of human existence, and maybe even longer before that. The Republicans since at least Reagan like to complain about freeloading welfare cheats, just sucking up our taxes. A theory that has just started revealing itself to me today has argued that bullies act as a type of freeloader, too. How did older societies regulate freeloading on the bottom and at top? Shame, which most of us seem to wield as a weapon until someone picks up a physical weapon or explosive (even though in more serious cases, people would be expelled from society or even killed).

Suffice to say, the United States has some serious issues that people need to talk about and resolve (and possibly more). Good will and faith needs exercising, but the will, faith, and civility can't come at the cost of actually discussing the issues to resolve them in a way that uses facts, truth, real respect, and kindness.

Because right now, we have people in positions of power that look to push into reality found community causes like Dominionism that seeks to "redistribute the wealth up to priests" and to make the United States into a Christian theocracy. One person with a powerful political position that believes in Dominionism: Ted Cruz. Just take a look at this video of Ted's father, Rafael Cruz, give a speech about how Ted will further the cause of Dominionism (first few seconds is part of the speech, then you have to wait a bit to get back to the speech, but these other parts provide some further context):



I just became exposed to Dominionism today. It has helped make a lot more sense of Trump's administration to me.

We really need to get our act together, fellow country people. The freeloading of bullies needs to stop.

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We Need Deeper Understandings of Human Nature to Stop Cycles of Anger, Hurt, Bigotry, and Partisanship

(Hmmmm. . .maybe this whole turn a social media thread/rumination into a blog entry might yield too much.)

I currently have Episode 89: You voting in 2016 vs you voting in 2018 of the Make Me Smart podcast on queue with some of it partially listened to. As of the point I've reached, the hosts, Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood, are revisiting their interview with George Lakoff from Episode 12: This is Your Brain on Trump. This re-visit feels like a coincidence because I'm looking into some of Lakoff's work for my bachelors project.

I've taken out three to four of his books from the library and looked more into his thought on the Internet, (though I haven't yet started the books). In what I've seen and heard from him so far, though, I'm a little disappointed.

Then again, I've been disappointed a little, in general, with thought in positions of pluralism and the importance of thinking independently, openly, and empathetically, though I support these causes 100%. To be frank, I also feel disappointed by most positions out there in the present day, Far Leftist, liberal, conservative, or Far Rightist.

I have problems with assumption of correctness without building up a basis for the correctness. Even the Rawlsian "Veil of Ignorance" argument for coming up with equal rights blindly without knowing your position in the world still feels somewhat shallow. Even then, I'm sure after the veil has been pulled away, people with unfair advantage will try to push for more advantage. Some type of logical fallacy must exist regarding the veil.

The Invisibilia podcast even had an interesting episode about the UN trying to inculcate pluralistim into Somalian culture. A study of one of these initiatives confirmed that art and performance could push people into these positive directions and what factors do so. Nonetheless, the study couldn't determine the why's and reasons for why people are susceptible to such manipulation.

So this phenomena leads me to a flipside of questions: if these tools can be used for good without understanding them, couldn't the phenomena be used in a similar fashion for evil? Shouldn't we work harder to understand these underlying causes and sources? Shouldn't we understand what human factors lead us to be manipulated, lead us to adopt Lakoff's Strict Father or Indulgent Mother models?

Sometimes it feels like Lakoff, many academics, and all of us in our politics, depend on the elegance and coherence of arguments and narratives to convince people. If people simply don't accept the argument, then we dismiss as ignorant or as adopting the wrong side of the argument. In the case of Lakoff's models, they have adopted the "Strict Father" (since Lakoff demonizes those who do).

Now, I'm coming from a difficult position. I believe in

• Pluralism
• Fairness
• Empathy
• Open mindedness
• Ppenness to experience and
• Against true systemic unfair advantages/privilege and will fight tooth and nail to protect them

At the same time, to fight tooth and nail, I want to have good back up to the causes I'm fighting for. I want an understanding of human nature, tendency, instinct, and inborn causes that bring about these reactions in people. I'll fight without good back up, but I still want the back up.

Hopefully, through this understanding, I can show the other side their incorrectness and that they're hurting themselves by not standing down. Their persistance to continue in their ways of hate and pain hurts them. Even take the standoff of terrorism and civilization. I don't like to go back to pinning down the rise of cycles of hate, anger, and violence down to some historical point. After all, it's possible to go even further back to reach another historical point to show the injustice of that original historical point. It's called a cycle for a reason.

Rather, though, investigating the human reactions to these historical points that reverbate further and further back in time and investigating how those historical points have fired up human instinct to start cycles that cause so much damage and hate can help show us

• The positives and negatives of actions taken
• How they can be self destructive to
• The self
• The community
• Civilization
• Earth

If we understand where we have come from, we can break out of our cycles.

I am a Unitarian Universalist, not a Christian, so I tend to appreciate texts and ideas from multiple different heritages in all of human history. Some text from Paul's letter to the Romans has always stuck me since I had read it:

[. . .] But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit. [. . .]

I cut a bunch from the quote. I'm not so into the divine and theological interpretation of the text, even though that's the origin of it. Rather, if you replace "God" with "understanding", "human nature", or "reality" (which, obviously, Christians will argue is blasphemous), I believe the text better fits my approach.

I like to think that if we can figure out a good interpretation of the original causes of human behavior, we may not need the laws created by politicians. These lawas were created at a time when one partisan side had the power vs when another side was out of power. For instance, I'm coming to appreciate a constant between all sides of conflict in humanity: we all have an instinct for "fairness".

Yet we have different interpretations of what fairness means because of our position in the disagreement. If we can figure out some basic premises of how the human instinct of "fairness" works, including how different individuals and groups interpret the application of fairness, we can have a better idea of how to extrapolate and reason out how to act without needing to remember rote legislated laws.

And if there's an existing cycle of conflict, maybe we can figure out how to get out of the cycle in a way that satisfies all sides. Getting out might even require one or all sides to feel and accept guilt, but to do so in a way that they accept their part in contributing to the cycle of anger, hate, bigotry hurt, and even violence.

In the current atmosphere of politics in the United States, I urge our politicians to behave civilly and engage in a due process that respects impact and unveiling undue advantage. I also urge our politicians to figure out better ways to get a better tab on their consituents, electorate, and the facts, considering

• Their staffers seem to be getting information that leads them to believe their electorate is more conservative
• Their staff is underfunded thus causing dependence on lobbyists for information
• That services put into place to provide Congress with nonpartisan information, like the Congressional Research Service, is being sabotaged

Since Congress, especially the Republican establishment (whatever that means these days), can't seem to get it through their heads that they have lost touch with the country, you won't find me telling everyday people to be civil. The United States government is supposed to be "government of the people, by the people, for the people" (interestingly, our heritage has gotten that from John Wyckliffe). If politicians won't do the work to find out what the people think and feel, then the people of America need to make sure we let the politicians know how we think and feel (even if that means to happen in public, in an elevator in governmental buildings, in restaurants, in town halls, etc.).

Nonetheless, whether one group or another should act civilly or not, we should all seek to

• Understand the nature of the phenomena behind us
• Figure out why we and others behave the way that they do
• See how our current trends are destroying us, even though we believe it's saving us

If we continue with this partisan cycle, we're going to do destroy ourselves and the world. On the other hand, if we can understand our human nature, we can hopefully break out of this cycle and figure out how to prevent such cycles in the future (including preventing genocide).

Who's with me on this one?

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Goals, Intention, and Emotional Attunement

I plan to get a little personal this time, but I do it in service of expounding on my projects and activism. The last month or so has woken me up into a combined flurry of rage (at the government), research and learning, and processing projects, life, my goals, and my relating with other people. All this reminds me and teaches me the reason for doing all this.

My focus and goal is to understand people’s need for emotional attunement and how society, cultures, communities, families, and other social institutions assist people to feel attuned. Studying and writing utopianism and dystopianism, especially with a focus on the reasons for people wanting to be in them or not, has an obvious connection to try to understand emotional attunement. The same goes for activism, the desire to increase emotional attunement in the world. I can’t say I have all the answers from these ventures, or that I have many answers, but maybe I’ll figure a few along the way with a couple questions to add to the world, too.

I’ve focused a bit on the personal level of emotional attunement over the last week. Without getting into details, I’ve run into a situation or two in which I’ve felt a little more excluded and isolated lately. I have had a little comfort that a fair share of married men around my age feel this way. It also makes a little more sense of why men have a higher mortality rate after the loss of a wife, usually from their death but maybe also from divorce. Suffice to say, I’ve gotten lazy about meeting new people and have gotten a little too dependent on my wife for meeting new people and making connections.

Probably the biggest issue I’ve had lately comes down to my mind going blank in social situations. I wouldn’t call myself shy or anything because I don’t get anxious in anticipation of social situations or while in them. My mind just goes blank because I can’t come up with anything to say, like I don’t have the knowledge available for a conversation or the data to break the ice. I’m probably dealing with a confidence issue, but it’s not because of emotion but because of lacking knowledge and practice.

When my social experiences don't make sense, I find myself scouring the Internet, typing all types of questions into handy dandy Google. Part of this scour session settled on tips for questions to ask and things to say about yourself when at networking events.

One of the suggestions really struck me as useful: After saying hello and/or exchanging names, say something like “I’m here to [state your intention], how about you?” Extrapolating on that for a social party, you can say something like “I know [host/relate connection to host] through [reason for connection], how about you?” I really like this approach for social situations because if you don’t share something about yourself, it could come off as gatekeeping. An old habit I used to have at parties was grilling people to find something in common, but I could see them getting the impression that they're being gatekeeped or interrogated, too.

Then it hit me: having and knowing your intention, what you want to do in the moment, what you want to do in your situation, what you want to do in the medium term, what your goals are in life goes a long way. I don’t mean in any spiritual way, but maybe in some profound psychological way, both in the way we think of ourselves and the way we project ourselves.

Honestly, I feel silly realizing this at age 39. Teachers, parents, attempted role models try telling us to figure this shit out, so we can pave a path for our careers and college paths. This evening, I witnessed on the 'L' an older man lecturing a couple of high schoolers about the importance of doing good in school, staying in school, staying out of the gangs, doing well in college, then getting a good career. His focus for them was to get the girl, which makes for a deficient goal to me. Sure, having a good relationship helps with happiness, but (thinking the kids want a girlfriend and settled down with a girl jumps to an assumption -- what if they're asexual or homosexual and) this kind of advice doesn't go far enough. Kids need enouragement to think about things more concretely and come up with more specific but grander goals and plans.

Through privilege, my focus on reacting to my environment rather than acting on it because I didn’t have perspective, and just having the right amount of mental stimulation without concrete inspiration or steady emotional attunement, I didn’t fully understand the consequences of mortality, the vastness of potential out there, and the limitations that come from human prejudice, lack of imagination, and ignorance. Without that kind of persective, I couldn't understand my potential to affect the world or become more attuned with it. Now I plan to have goals and intentions in mind, from why I'm walking from one side of the house to the other to what I plan to accomplish with my life.

And I believe this goal setting for discovering what does and does not work for emotional attunement will have twofold results. First, it will provide me concrete goals to aim for (even though I may need to work more on benchmarking). More importantly, though, I feel like it will help me attune to society and other people better. Seeing a goal and working toward it will provide focus and flow. It will also help to connect with people and institutions/organizations that connect with my goal (and who doesn't connect with wanting emotional attunement?), which I believe will load to more flow and attunement with other people and enjoyment from interacting with them. After all, what is more compelling and attractive than someone with a plan and the humbleness not to be boring about it?

I look forward to it.

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We're Embedded in a Cycle of Horrible Humanity & Need to Work to Get Out

In the studies for my project/book, the big thing I learned but always knew is how the problems in our come from individuals being embedded in the flow & momentum of life. Individuals just react rather than examine the situations occurring. In this embeddedness, it's easier in the moment to strike out to survive or to gain an upper hand.

We all have notions & talk the talk that we believe peace, compassion & other good things will make the world better. More often than not, though, our instinct & first thoughts are to look out for number 1, our family, our race, our gender, our country, etc.

This survival/ambition instinct only furthers the cycles we're embedded. To rise above it, we need to stop, examine, learn develop wisdom, develop insight, develop empathy, develop compassion, develop forethought. Otherwise we will destroy the world, the environment, each other & ourselves. Break out of cycles, we can develop joy & real appreciation.

I'm not religious, but I think St Francis of Assissi & others knew the importance of this.

I have privilege, but I have instincts & thoughts of survival that get in my way of taking real risks to improve the world. Some people & populations need to focus on survival & compassion for self before acting outward or a mixed approach.

I need to act where & when I can to pull out of the cycle & encourage others to do the same. That often means those I need to act where & when I can to pull out of the cycle & encourage others to do the same. That often means those like me who will listen to me but not to those not like me. It's hard work on myself first then outward.

But the first step is to pull myself & ourselves out of this cycle of angry despair & fear to see its absurdity & destructiveness.

That has probably been my biggest holdup with finishing my novel/project. . .finding out convincing confirmation & argument that this cycle sucks & another approach will benefit us with more joy & appreciation. More work to do.

Celebrities, Artists, Narcissists and the Illusion of Significance and Meaning

A few months ago on the New York Times Website, I found an essay about people telling each other about how busy they are and complaining about being busy all the time. It concludes that people engage in this behavior because it provides the illusion that they’re significant and their life has meaning. After all, if you’re so busy with commitments, you’re doing something important.

I’ve bought into this argument. I try not to complain about being busy and telling people I’m so busy when people ask me how I’ve been doing.

Having bought into so much, I’ve even bisociated this compulsion of busyness with narcissistic celebrities and artists, the ones that always want attention and have to be in the spotlight. . .but may not always have anything to show for it. Their crazy PR campaign may even have an element of an art piece.

Writers and artists capture meaning and stories in their works. Some of those works even capture enough attention to become part of tradition and cultural heritage. Art and stories become an attempt to contribute efforts into something permanent or to make that something permanent. It voices a desire for immortality and to influence the future.

I know that urge influences my desire to write and empowered career decisions I’d like to make in the future. Contributing to the transient and everyday doesn’t satisfy me. As Henry David Thoreau influenced me with a book after more than a century, I’d like to do the same for a young, impressionable mind. Even touching minds with an older person open to thoughts and experience would be cool.

I had told myself when I talked about my work and projects with people that I was simply sharing, working though a road block or even looking to see if others might have insight that I don’t. After all, that WAS what I was doing.

People would most of the time just ask why I don’t sit down and get it done. Definitely a two pronged analysis can be made:

1. I want to look important and significant by complaining about my work
2. People get annoyed by empty words and would rather see action and results

My explanations here definitely sound narcissistic, but I don’t think most people would see me this way. At least that’s the impression that people give me. A lot of these premises and conclusions come from overthinking more than anything. At least, I hope it’s more overthinking rather than narcissism.

Combine the elements mentioned in that opinion piece about busyness providing illusion of significance and meaning with the desire to contribute to the permanence of heritage and tradition through my writing. My sense of significance and meaning has a level of illusion to it until the future, possibly after my lifetime. Imagine people who either don’t have any material to present, still working hard on presenting said material or present material or lots of material that gets exposed to critics. Maintaining motivation with no or negative results can get discouraging and impact confidence or self-esteem.

In this case, an illusion can provide more benefits than negative. I have mentioned in the past that people often live with an illusion of inflated worth and meaning. The busyness linguistic illusion probably works into that. As does probably getting yourself seen, seen with adulated people, letting other people know about your big (maybe even highly pretentious) projects, coming off as a style maven, a trend setter, going to the big social events and all types of things.

These things may have a loose connection to permanence (you have to know people, after all). We have to ask ourselves, though, how much are people in the spotlight trying to maintain an illusion of significance and meaning? If an artist or celebrity didn’t have that outlet, what would happen? Does an artist or celebrity really just want a taste of that significance and meaning, or do they want to make it happen?

I like to think that they want to make it happen. I don’t think it’s that horrible that they want the illusion until it really happens. Sometimes people have to fake it until they make it.

Everyone, though, should get a chance to drink from that goblet of meaning and significance. There’s a reason why celebrities and attention-seeking artists get viewed as narcissists. . ..


LINKS OF NOTE: The ‘Busy’ Trap – New York Times, bisociation, Henry David Thoreau

Herbert's Dune and Patience: Do Adolescents Have More?

I have faint remembrances of aphorisms about differences between adolescence and adulthood. A theme sticks out to me: adolescents are less patient than adults. This theme probably has some truth to it, but I’m starting to think it’s not all true. Maybe the adolescent impatience of action comes from patient yet stubborn academic curiosity. Maybe it comes part and parcel with human nature and instinct.

A fellow writer and I had a passing conversation on the topic. They mentioned how they read Frank Herbert’s epic Dune at the young age of 12 or something like that. I had read the original Dune series something like seven or eight years ago (at around age 26 or 27).

We had very different reactions to it. They loved the book and couldn’t stop praising it, like many people I’ve met throughout life. Me, I found it compelling thematically but frustrating and a slow read. It also had a bunch of loose ends that Herbert or his son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J Anderson really never addressed in later books (unless they did in prequels).

My friend and I also had this difference: they only read Dune while I read the whole Dune series. Except for God Emperor of Dune and the last two written by Herbert’s son and Anderson, I thought the writing only got better. It became more concise, clearer and did more showing than telling.

I put God Emperor of Dune in a complete category of its own. It had its own bits of drama, but it’s more of a psychedelic treatise dialogue about social philosophy. Reading it makes the rest of the series resonate. Yet it’s dense and a chore to get through, much like one of Plato’s dialogues. . .or maybe an answer to some of the dialogues.

Dune inspired my writer friend to love science fiction and to one day want to write science fiction works of their own. I understand it. Isaac Asimov gave me the same inspiration. In my teenage years, I only read a couple of Asimov’s works and didn’t really grasp the social philosophy thrown in there. I hadn’t even read his more philosophical work until I was older.

Asimov may not have written the vast epic world building political tracts that Herbert did, and I’m really happy about that. Nonetheless, Asimov imparted a sense of expansive human nature and the possibilities of the natural world. He challenged his humans with the totalitarian genius of robots and even struck fear into his humans by giving his robots creativity and the ability to dream (probably one of the tragic and shortest stories of Asimov’s, “Robot Dreams”).

Near the end of his writing career, Asimov seemed to breach into the same world building vastness of Herbert, just not as hard and dense. I wish Asimov had written more in this vast direction. Even though softer science fiction, Asimov started presenting some interesting ideas.

Frank Herbert wrote hard science fiction and he did it dense. He explained practically everything. The drama and topics didn’t necessarily all grow out of provable science. The whole Dune series had a lot of psychedelia to it and had some interesting theories of human potential. If possible, we have a long way to go to get there.

The aspects of ecology, extensiveness of history and play with politics between royal families and mercantilism feel based in social reality. Putting the interpretation that spice in Dune is comparable to oil in today’s world doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch. Sure, people can’t eat oil, it doesn’t turn their eyes blue and it doesn’t provide the ability of prescience, but petroleum holds a lot of sway over the world and its nations.

In fact, I found all the dense detail Herbert put into Dune the difficult part. The plot wouldn’t go anywhere for pages. The book would go on and on explaining the thoughts of a character, the basis for a royal family’s actions, the existence of a ritual in a culture or go on and on about how a person with prescience experiences the galaxy.

My problem, I think, originates from the fact that I’m a fairly well read person, have read a lot of history and social philosophy, read a fair amount of psychedelia, kept up with politics and anthropology and have an OK grasp of science fiction. Back in the early to mid ‘90s, I even patronized a Bulletin Board System that was very Dune themed. The system operator went by Maud Dib and called something Kwisatz Haderach (but I forget what).

A lot of academia I studied in college had influenced Dune. On the flipside, Dune influenced much of the pseudo-intellectual works I researched in high school. Dune has become a point on the intellectual heritage I have followed. By the time I had read it, I had become familiar with a lot of the ideas around it. By the time I reached Dune, I had something of a skeptical “seen that, done that” attitude.

Only the cynicism of the characters struck me as new, and they just depressed and confused me. I’m an idealistic guy who has a hard time understanding why people can’t realize that if we just get along and do lots of research, we can make the world an awesome place. Why haven’t we done it already?

Otherwise, I got impatient and bored with the exposition. Just get to the plot, show me what’s happening and I can probably figure out the motivations and rules behind things as they develop.

I can also imagine Herbert having a checklist of things that he wanted to have happen in the book, but he would come up with a new idea that he’d throw in, but he had to integrate that new idea and come up with a reason why that idea had been there in the first place.

After reading his Wikipedia entry and learning that Dune started as two serials in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, this feeling makes a little more sense. Even though rewritten for the novel form, Dune still has a few vestiges of “Just in case you forgot this important fact. . ..”

I can see possibly having had a different experience reading Dune as an adolescent. Maybe I would have some familiarity with it, having been exposed to works influenced by the novel. A lot of the stuff pre-dating Dune, however, I would know nothing about.

In my adolescence, I had tons of time and had a hunger for knowledge and novelty. Dune’s vast world of knowledge could have fed me. At worst, it would have inspired me like Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Cape Cod. In full disclosure, I didn’t finish reading either of those works in my adolescence.

Those two books played a big inspiration for me wanting to be a writer. I could sense the ambition behind them and felt they had a lot of understanding behind them that I just didn’t get. If I just plowed through them, maybe I could reach that understanding, too. I haven’t gotten there with the likes of Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson, though. Somehow they’ve actually become even more opaque as I’ve gotten older.

I don’t know what has changed since I was an adolescent. I’m not saying losing that kind of patience is bad, even though I miss having it. Does that stubborn patience to explore things that make no sense to us come as a human characteristic that dies as we grow older? Or, like my writer friend said in our conversation, do we just not have the time as adults to follow through on this curiosity? Are we so busy working and trying to accomplish things that we don’t have the patience we had once?

I feel like I get a grip on that curiosity and patience again here and there but really only once in awhile. Per the advice of a past college professor, I’ve taken up writing a half hour in the morning on my project. That’s when I think I stumble into that state of mind.

In the past, I could get very frustrated and angry about questions that would arise while writing. Nowadays, though, I’m amazed at how much I’ve written and how much more research I have to do for more understanding. Instead of focusing on not having it done, though, I feel joy that I’ve found a path in the woods that will eventually lead me somewhere.

Who knows? Maybe I’m finding that patience again.


LINKS OF NOTE: Frank Herbert, Dune, Dune series, Brian Herbert, Kevin J Anderson, God Emperor of Dune, Plato, Isaac Asimov, “Robot Dreams”, spice, prescience, Bulletin Board System, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Henry David Thoreau’s, Walden, Cape Cod, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ruminations on Sociability in Animals While at the Aquarium

I felt like a human this past Monday at the aquarium watching beluga whales. They had trainers interacting with them and all, but I still felt touched. So touched, in fact, that I came close to tears.

I tend to feel that way when characters in fiction or on TV and movies let their guard down with each other or by themselves. Maybe it comes from some voyeuristic tendency, as I don’t have this reaction interacting with other people in the moment. Maybe it has something to with the privacy created by people focusing totally on something other than me.

The whales and trainers got me going when the explanation of how the trainers win trust of the whales. Giving them fish and scratching their tongues, that’s all I remember from the list of things that the belugas like humans doing for them.

Trust built through bribery, trainers move onto teaching the belugas tricks and simple communication. I jest about bribery. The trainers and belugas reminded me a bit of building a relationship with a cat. More like I remembered someone telling me that cats have strong social tendencies, even though I often thought of cats as loners. Feral cats form colonies, though.

Not to sound like a crazy cat lady, but the wife and I have a great relationship with our cats. It has improved a lot since we had to chase the girl cat around a basement to stuff her in a crate and take her home. Now she sits next to me on a chair when I’m using the computer at the kitchen table. Now, seven or so years later, we have a family of four that loves spending lots of time together.

Per Wikipedia, belugas have strong social tendencies, too. Doesn’t come as a surprise considering their show. I didn’t know it at the time, though.

The trainers and belugas showed their great relationship. Trainers showed tons of warmth, generosity and sincerity. Belugas displayed tons of energy doing tricks and swimming around, only overtaken by their desire for food and affection. Their connection felt authentic, sincere, reciprocal, enthusiastic and warm.

Their interaction brought heart to the idea of a contract. We generally think of contracts as cold, boring pieces of paper that suck life out of people relating to each other. People and non-human entities make contracts to protect themselves from possible abuses or to make sure that one party does what the other wants them to do. Contracts focus on taking from the relationship what each party can get.

The belugas and trainers focused more on giving than taking. Maybe the whales didn’t so much. They REALLY liked getting fish and having their tongues rubbed, but they looked grateful and humbled by all the attention. Even as they looked impatient doing tricks, their irritation seemed not so much about getting food or a tickle. They wanted to engage the trainer and connect.

At the same time, the trainers looked a little bored when the belugas went off to do their tricks. They must have felt proud by the whales wowing the audience, but they looked bored and impatient to get back to connecting and interacting with the belugas.

The show returned life to contracts by focusing more on connecting through giving and taking rather than taking benefit from one or the other. Being social is fundamental for many animals, from humans to whales to cats, even to plenty of fish that come together to form schools.

Social instincts play such a central role, at least for me, that seeing it in action chokes me up a wee little bit. But I could just be sensitive.


LINKS OF INTEREST: beluga whales, Feral cats

Storylab Chicago: Keeping Us Human through Storytelling

Last week at the prompting of a performer-of-many-trades friend, I had the delight of attending Storylab Chicago. The Black Rock Pub & Kitchen hosted the event and apparently welcomes Storylab every third Wednesday of the month.

Six storytellers provided fuel for laughs, reflections to ponder and even some sighs of sadness. The night provided a great opportunity for them to get up in front of the crowd to either have fun performing or challenging themselves with something new. At least one of the story tellers got up there because she challenged herself to do something new everyday in the year before her thirtieth birthday. Another story teller got up there as yet another avenue for creative expression.

I have the feeling my friend did it for a variety of reasons. She wanted to challenge herself. She wanted to share in the experience after spending time in the audience. She wanted to share with friends and strangers. She wanted to practice what she had learned in a class.

They have an egalitarian and populist method to get people signed up for performance at future Storylab events. I would have thought someone would have to take the Storylab Chicago's Storytelling for Everyone class, know someone who organizes Storylab or have some kind of reputation as a storyteller to get up there. After all, the place was packed and there is only so much time.

Anyone can get up there and tell their story. Well, there is a process to get up there, but essentially anyone can. You just sign up for the mailing list and put a star by your name. They probably won't let you get up there right away or at the next storytelling event. As I said, the place was packed and there's only so much time. Indicate you want to get up there and tell a story, though, and the organizers will get you scheduled to get up there at one of the future events. Bunch of people I was with wanted to try reserving a night just for their stories.

I like seeing the organizers of Storylab keeping up an oral tradition that we could see fall by the wayside otherwise. We all spend a lot of time on the Internet, doing the whole social networking thing. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Four Square, name your poison. We can easily spend hour on top of hours on these social network sites, sharing our stories, quips and opinions. A lot of our storytelling has transferred onto the Internet.

Suffice to say, Social Networking and the Internet provides an opportunity for people who don't have access to other people. It even provides an avenue of expression for people who may not care for verbal communication. We have seen great advances in society, science, the arts and a number of things because of the Internet and Social Networking. It has helped the human race evolve faster and more robustly than before. A lot of good has come out of the Internet and Social Networking.

But we can become dependent on these tools and maybe even addicted to them. Just look at people who REALLY get into World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs. Others love to spend tons of time on Facebook and other social networking sites. I can easily spend my time doing research, reading the news, following the stock market.

Heck, I'll admit it, I'd rather communicate through e-mail or chat than talk on the phone. I have no idea why other than I spend too much time on the phone at work already. For many of us, we find a lot of enjoyment while using the Internet and sometimes just plain prefer it over the material world.

I have no grand argument as to why keeping up this kind of oral tradition strikes me as so important. Maybe I will one day. I just think keeping up this type of tradition, even if it has to be done intentionally rather than organically, helps us to hold onto an aspect of what makes us human on a live basis. We share in real time, sometimes without as much of a conscious thought, we're present and we come closer to feeling like there's some sense in the world, even if just for a few hours or even a couple minutes. It's an important feeling and activity.

It's something that makes us, I believe, more human.

QUOTES OF NOTE: Storylab Chicago, The Black Rock Pub & Kitchen, Storytelling for Everyone, storytelling, oral tradition, World of Warcraft

Is There Such a Thing as a Stability Economy?

It's scary how unrest like in Egypt can make the stock market prices go up. Makes you think about how our economy can benefit by unrest in the world since that creates a scarcity and drives up profit margin.

Makes sense, though, since our economy is based on Growth and Manifest Destiny. Last time I was thinking about how we need to figure out a new economy that gets rewarded by stability and peace.

At this point, the human race has access to pretty much all habitable land, which gets more & more concentrated into the less & less hands, along with bunches of other capital since there's too much labor in the world. The only way for the human race to continue on this Growth Destiny economy is to break out into space & get real space exploration going.

Otherwise we're just going to turn inward, destroy the earth and destroy civilization as we know. The human race may continue after a vast population decimation then continue on with its Growth Destiny, but it's not a fun process.

This situation always kind of makes me think of Robotech and other alien invasion stories. When aliens invade, humans shelve their hostilities to fight the greater enemy. Once aliens leave, humans fight amongst themselves again. But while the aliens attack, humans work together and the possibility of good occurs.

Stuff like that often makes me wonder if an aspect of our racial evolution is to learn how to get along. In alien invasions, we could possibly get new tech to move out into the universe, but at what cost?

As it stands now, though, we can't depend on aliens to save us. We have no signs of technology that will take us out into space to continue our Growth Destiny. Maybe the only way we can move on is to learn how to get along & figure out how to have a stability economy that we can use to focus collective human effort onto a greater mission.

Just sayin'. . ..

Scary Revealed Truth About Speculative Fiction and Publishing

The title of this entry almost says it all about:

Xcentric.com
Jason Stoddard: Science Fiction Writer

Majority of the time, the author addresses fears that I've mostly been able to bury under empty rationalizations. Digital distribution can skew the supply and demand economics of traditional storytelling writing that pitching novels and short stories to publishers may not necessarily cut it anymore. That market may go obsolete eventually, simply because the Internet and its distribution channels has created an expectation of free entertainment. New models must get created, and this guy, even though he doesn't know what will work, doesn't fear bringing up the problem and ruminating about possible solutions that may or may not work.

On a nice note, he publishes his less successful stories on his blog that he couldn't bring himself to polishing enough to sell or just couldn't find a home elsewhere. They have some compelling elements, and I can respect the man for having the imagination and balls to have horrible things happen to people and to have real callous people that you can believe could exist and, scarily, prove relatively compelling.

Overall, though, as an amateur writer, I can see why they haven't found homes. They need tons of fleshing out for both details and showing expostion rather than telling it. Plenty of interesting situations show and intimated, if only he took the time to develop the stories into something amazingly enjoyable. To each their own, and a writer can only handle so much of working on one story or idea. And, personally, I'd have a hard time working a ton on these stories with horrifingly and callous aspects.

Don't fear too much, though. Jason also provides plenty of advice on how to market during this transition stage from the traditional publishing world to the world of, as he calls it, the Mediapool. He has plenty of good ideas, but honestly -- and this may have to turn into another entry of mine -- all the social media overwhelms me.

I don't know how much of this intimidation comes from having a busy life of working as an insurance agent while trying to write fiction, from ADHD or from any other aspect that may influence my semi-instinctual aversion to all the stimulation and work it takes to get involved in social media. Hell, real time face-to-face socializing can overwhelm me at times. At least social media doesn't happen in real time, mostly. . ..

Also, he seems to take a strong stance on trying to make something happen, similarly to Demis McGrath. Jason often complains that traditional science fiction writers have moved away from writing in hard science and having lost their appeal to much of the world. At the same time, the people with tons of potential for becoming fans spend a lot of time on social media like Second Life or Boing Boing. This guy just about describes me when he describes the science fiction writer, and it strikes fear in my heart. Admirably, though, Jason wants to bring the social media users (hopefully not filled with Trolls) and science fiction writers for the good of both.

So yeah, this Website scares me because it reveals the Truth about the future of publishing and other forms of entertainment that can get recorded combined with the shrinking potential of becoming a content creator without also becoming a minor marketer. For those who don't know, both things take a lot of damn work. Hopefully I can muster up the time, the energy and know how to make it work for me. Until then, though, I'll just have to hope that the traditional publishing world can prop me up. Here's to people enjoying a book with pages in it over reading electronic devices with text and the part of human nature that is conservative when it comes to innovative (even as I curse that nature when it comes to socially just innovations).

Yeah, I'm something of a hypocrite. Sue me.