A History of Devolution -- From Jean Val Jean to Ken Lay

In many ways our cultural evolution is really devolution. What does this say about where Haint's world will be in a century or so?

Look at commerce for example. We've gone from cheering for the Jean Val Jeans (Les Miserables' hero who redeems his life on part by proudly providing good jobs and lives working people in a French village) to cheering for corporate tycoons so far removed emotionally from the lives and welll-being of their employees that they might as well be living in different countries. You're right, they ARE often living in different countries so let's say different universes.

And really they ARE in different universes, aren't they? The Ken Lays and Donald Trumps and Carly Fiorinos have no more feeling for the lives of everyday people making, oh say 34K as they do for Martians with three eyes and indescribable mouths. The language may be ostensibly the same but they sure can't converse. Of course, the Trumps and Lays can send messages down to the Martians below but the Martians don't seem to be able to send messages back up the chain, do they?

But back to evolution or devolution. When Victor Hugo's hero redeems his life and character by spending it making better lives for the villagers, we all felt uplifted. When he was chased for an old "crime" we all felt betrayed by the supposed system of law. Why? Because we realized that Val Jean's greater good moves him past the relatively puny crime.

Now, we cheer unbelievable egotistic posturing in business leaders who would just as soon throw their workers against each other in dog pit fights to the death as look at them. As long as their is an endless supply of workers to feed their egos and pockets and egos again, these "leaders" don't care what happens. How so different than the fictional hero of a time that we suppose to be less ethical, less advanced than our own.

What does this say about us and our society that we applaud the cruel and grasping, instead of the caring and giving? Perhaps it says that we are not moving forward as we would think or hope. Perhaps it says that we should rethink the way we want the future to look. Hugo did, and saw a world where leadership was a trust, not an entitlement.

Perhaps in Haint's world, we should see if that is true as well.

Cross species love

Once again Mazlov's supposed hierarchy gets kicked to the curb! (Don't worry about Dr. Mazlov's feelings. He didn't like it either and as I understand was somewhat dismayed that everybody made such a fuss over it.) A story out of Japan just goes to show that the need for love and connection overrules the need to feed. An article in the Boston Globe shows how a lonely snake can make friends with his dinner, a master.

It seems the zookeepers thought the hungry snake, who wouldn't eat frozen mice, would eat a live hamster they named "meal" in Japanese. Well heart overcame belly and the snake didn't eat the hamster. Instead, he decided a nice furry cuddle was much more important than a warm meal.

This may be even better than the lion and the lamb lying down together. At least both of those have fur. I'm not even sure how far apart taxonomically-speaking we are witha snake and a hamster.

And don't worry about the snake. He nows eats frozen mice.

This could be the start of a great short story. Lovers reincarnate as prey and predator but eternal love overcomes momentary hunger. Hmmm. Or maybe a prequel to Haint...

Thanks to Lynn Hartke for sending me this article!

Loving a dog transforms the human spirit

Over breakfast the other day my mother and I were talking about babies and dogs (she had two babies and I have none). It seems that people want to believe that having babies is an unselfish act yet so many of these same people can't understand why you or I would prefer having dogs. Perhaps because loving dogs is the real unselfish act.

When someone has a child so much of loving the child has nothing to do with the child him or herself. Heck, they don't even know that little person. Sure, the kid was riding around with mom for 9 or so months but I doubt there was a lot of communication other than warm fuzzy feelings brought on by hormones. Nothing against kids but over the years of interviewing parents about their kids the one really big fact that keeps coming out is that having kids is for the parent, not the kid. Babies are the original Mini Mes. So when parents say they love their babies, what they are saying is I love me and that little part of me I'm holding in this blue or pink blanket. That's fine and we won't get into adoptive parents who love the idea of being parents (not a bad idea, not just a particularly unselfish one).

So back to dogs. When someone loves a dog they have the chance to experience really unselfish love, love that carries the spirit higher and transforms it into something better.

Loving a dog:

Allows one to love unselfishly. For most people there is no objective in loving a dog. The dog can't get you a better home (yours might look worse for wear or you might even have trouble finding new digs with a dog); he can't be your sexual partner (don't go there); he can't get you a better job or a better social class. In fact, all he can do is love you in whatever his own fashion.

Allows one to love openly without fear of rejection or abuse of trust. The dog will not stay out all night and come in, only to tell you he's found someone else to share his bed. The dog will not reject you because you gain or lose pounds, hair, teeth, uterus or some other body part. When the dog loves, he loves without concern for anything other than you are the object of that love. A Weimaraner may show love differently than a Beagle or a Border Collie or even a Newfoundland, but they all love without reserve.

Allows one to love honestly. There are no games with dogs when it comes to love. They do not know how to play those games so you cannot play them either. No coy, "how much do you love me's" with dogs. They love and you love. Period.

Allows one to live honestly. Having this much honest love in one's life gives one the chance to live honestly as well. Having to eat hamburger rather than steak for dinner or living in a small house rather than a mansion? Dogs don't care and they won't love you any differently. Dogs inspire internal honesty (if we let them) because they are so honestly themselves and accept the world honestly. We can live a more honest life knowing someone loves us in that honesty.

Allows one to transcend our meager human spirits. Loving another creature without the expectation of getting something back other than that purest of loves allows us to grow past out human pettiness and selfish and self-absorbed lives. We can learn how to be more than human. We can embrace the greater spirit which embraces all life. We can learn to love like dogs love.

Shaking my head in wonder over Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near

For those of you who haven't read it, futurist Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near is a valentine to all those scifi writers who believed that the future and humans could only get better through technology. According to Kurzweil, in the near future humans will become technologically joined with superhuman intelligence to become superhuman. I won't dispute his ideas but I will put forward the one question that must be answered -- Why? Why do we want to supercede our biology? Yes, I know that is a hard question for humans, especially westerners, to ask themselves and others. But if we are going to make this drastic a change in our bodies, minds and civilizations, I for one want some good answers.

Perhaps the question that really needs asking is not whether Kurzweil is correct in his future projections but do we really want to allow technology to change our lives, relationships and civilizations so completely. More importantly, why do we wholeheartedly welcome such extensive changes?We have evolved over millenia to be a species that must work together, build connections with others, if we are to survive as a species. Yet the technology Kurzweil so welcomes is the antithesis of connection. He may talk about how we will all be connected through technology yet it is only the illusion of connection. We learn as a species through shared experiences. We learn as individuals through empathy, much of which is gained through shared events. I understand your hurt because I have felt pain. Virtual reality is NOT reality. In fact it is the offer of fake connection for the real connections of real people and events. Moreover, why should we want to embrace a reality for which we are not biologically or psychologically suited? Our brains are wonderfully evolved to process and manage information, and perhaps most importantly if you follow the work of certain neuroscientists (i.e., Damasio) emotional input. Where does emotion live in this new world of Kurzweil's?Lastly, are we to expect that everyone will have access to this nanobot-enhanced world? What about the poor? What about the middle-class? I suspect that Kurzweil's brave new medical and technical breakthroughs would only be available to those who could afford them. Just like medical care in America today, many people would simply be cut out and left behind.

The upshot of technology such as this at the beck and call of the wealthy is that they (who are already often extremely out of touch with the real world of everyday people) would become even more out of touch. What does this say for the decisions that they will make that influence us all? I suspect those decisions will do even less to draw us together. Why should the wealthy and powerful make decisions that help everyday people? Through virtual reality they can become even more insulated from the results of their acts. Those left on the outside (probably the mass of humanity) are not as "human" or advanced are we? So, like the 21st century version of Puritanism with this form of technology as God, everyone without it will be found wanting and cast off into the technological and civil underworld.

Note, I am not a Luddite. I would not question all new technology but something as fundamentally important as how humans interact with the world and others is something to be closely considered and examined before letting it loose to do untold damage. A device that beeps me to my keys is not likely to affect the way I interact with others and the way I think. A virtual reality womb that feeds my the sensory input and thereby chooses what I see and therefore how I feel about that input is something else all together.

So I ask again -- Why do we so easily welcome this technology without closely examining potential results from every angle?

The great and greatly missed Theodore Sturgeon in his classic, More Than Human, envisioned a superhuman formed by the connections and relationships of a number of humans. It was their interdependence that made them the next step in human evolution. I wonder if Kurzweil's world would usher in the less-than-truly-human rather than superhuman?

Learning from James Kunstler's views of the future

If you don't get either Truthout online or Rolling Stone you may have missed a moving and well-considered article by Jim Kunstler, the author of the new look forward, The Long Emergency. Kunstler addresses what happens when America runs out of cheap gas. As I'm seeing the future in which Haint and Amanda are interacting, I can't help but be moved and influenced by what Kunstler has to say. To read the article on Truthout click here.

But don't stop there. Continue on to Kunstler's homepage to get an even bigger view of where he has been and where we are going. I suspect that in the year's to come, Kunstler's work will be even more appreciated.

As for me, I'll keep his vision in mind as Haint's sequel progress.

Check out ReadersCircle.org

Hi again. Busy day here I guess.

I've just signed up for the Readers Circle so please join me over there. The Readers Circle is an online reading community. It lists book groups across North America. It also makes authors available to reading groups for interviews over the phone, via email and even in person. Its the cutting edge of readers groups!

As I mention on the site, I'm available for phone, email and in person visits. Even though the listing says I'm only available around St. Louis, MO, that's not quite the case. I'll be traveling to a number of science fiction conventions and literary fairs so if you're in one of those locations and we can work out the scheduling for an in-person visit with your group or bookstore, all the better! Check out my website for the current schedule.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Announcing new book from Wessex Collective

If you're a literate person (which I assume you are since you're here with us now) and you haven't met the Wessex Collective yet, please allow me the honor of introducing these talented writers to you. They are a writing collective in the old sense of the word. They live all over the US but they have one aim -- to publish high quality literature that would otherwise never find a publishing home. This following missive wes sent to me from Sandy Schwayder Sanchez who manages the Wessex Collective. She's also the author of two very moving books, Stillbird and The Nun.

Dear all,
The following forward is part of an email one of our authors has sent out to his list of friends about his novel The Marble Orchard which Wessex Collective is publishing this coming summer. Paul's first novel Killing The Blues was published by St. Martins in 1984 and received very favorable reviews in The New York Times Review of Books. His second novel Operation Remission was published by a smaller publisher ten years later but received even more enthusiastic praise in NYTRB. Paul is/has been a political activist, editor of an alternative magazine and carpenter as well as a novelist. We are very excited to have Paul join the collective.This is a book that is going to appeal most to baby boomers but I'm sending this out (after deleting the personal update) to all of you including the youngsters among you with the request that you forward it on.

Also please do check out our website(undergoing some gradual changes so eventually we should have a more modern look). We now have a distributor to market and sell our books to stores but of course whenever possible we prefer to make direct sales (that would be me: "order fulfillment" is my title). We have three new titles: Peter Burnham's second novel set in the same small town in Maine as Envious Shadows, The Angry Dust by William Davey (posthumously published for the first time in this country) and Little Bluestem, a collection of short stories set in the rural heartland where the author, Brian Backstrand, got to know his characters well serving them as pastor, hospice chaplain and teacher since the sixties. Brian's stories remind me of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. I hope some of you will consider giving one or all of these new books a chance (and we still have plenty of copies of Envious Shadows, The Gift and Stillbird available). Thanks folks, Happy New Year. Sandy


Subject: New Mexico Update 1/4/05From: Paul Johnson
Meanwhile I've been having a glorious time by email with Sandy Sanchez & Peter Burnham of the Wessex Collective, discussing all the issues like type face & size, paper, & the cover (right now it looks like Franny's going to take a crack at designing it), for my novel, THE MARBLE ORCHARD. As most of you know, authors don't usually get to put their oars into those waters, but Wessex is not your usual sort of publisher, it really is a collective. With my novel, they--or rather, we-- are going to try something that until the late 19th C. was the commonest manner of getting a book into print: subscription, it was called, & all it meant was that the writer & his friends would find enough people to buy enough copies in advance to cover the original print bill. That's how Poe & Melville & everybody else went about it, & it worked pretty well until books became big business. Some books, of course, still are big business, & always will be, & big businessmen continue to publish them; but thanks to all sorts of technological breakthroughs, small-scale publication can allow good books that aren't bestseller material to find their publics & pay their modest way.

I haven't seen the galleys yet, but we have a price already. In fact, we have 2 prices: buy it now, & THE MARBLE ORCHARD will only cost you $15.95 per copy. After May 1, 2006 it will go up 3 dollars, still a bargain. Here's what Laurel Speer has to say on the subject: "I'm one of the early readers of this book in ms. I've pledged to start by buying 10 copies. It's a book you'll want to give to all your discriminating friends."

I certainly don't expect you all to do that--but think about it: you must know a few folks beside yourself who'd appreciate what Peter Burnham called "a really great read," & Nancy Cardozo says is "...a deep, sweet story of accidental enlightenment. Paul Johnson captures the physical, emotional,and personal landscape of upstate New York so perfectly, you feel as though you've lived there yourself. Pay particular attention to the speech of the characters; you've met them, you know them, and there's more to them than you ever suspected. MARBLE ORCHARD is an optimistic coming-of-middle-age novel that will resonate loud and strong with those of us struggling to stay hopeful as we deal with aging, loss, and regrets."
Check out the website at http://us.f813.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=sss@wessexcollective.com, & send your checks to The Wessex Collective
PO Box 1088
Nederland, Co. 80466-1088
Love to all, Paul


Sounds like something to read to take us through the next few months of this dismal winter!

Joy