November 2007
What would I put in capitalism's place?
What would I put in capitalism’s place? In reply, I am always tempted to quote Voltaire’s response to the complaint that he had nothing to put in the place of the Christianity he criticized. “What!” he said, “A ferocious beast has sucked the blood of my family; I tell you to get rid of that beast, and you ask me, what shall we put in its place!”
… We should refuse to be mere functions of a system that we cannot in good conscience defend.…
Squatting
We have homeless people and abandoned houses because our culture is psychotic. In five or ten years, the situation will become so absurd and desperate that our individual habits of docility and submission will break down, and ordinary people will have a strange and radical thought that was completely obvious to all their ancestors from the first land animal until the first fence: the only person who “owns” a piece of land is the person who is actually occupying it. And since we all occupy land, we are all owners, and therefore we can factor out the whole concept of “owning,” and just say, “we live on this land.”
I really like the idea of ‘just occupying’ a place. Anyone else keen to start looking for an abandoned house or warehouse or something? It’ll be like Fight Club without the dissociative-personality-disorder or the vigilante terrorist army. (The fighting will be optional.)
The Death of Cities
The Death of Cities:
… the culture of cities, which had outlasted so many civilizations, had been doomed at last when the helicopter brought universal transportation. Within a few generations the great masses of mankind, knowing that they could reach any part of the globe in a matter of hours, had gone back to the fields and forests for which they had always longed. The new civilization had machines and resources of which earlier ages had never dreamed, but it was essentially rural and no longer bound to the steel and concrete warrens that had dominated the centuries before. Such cities as still remained were specialized centers of research, administration or entertainment; the others had been allowed to decay, where it was too much trouble to destroy them. The dozen or so greatest of all cities, and the ancient university towns, had scarcely changed and would have lasted for many generations to come. But the cities that had been founded on steam and iron and surface transportation had passed with the industries that had nourished them.
– Rescue Party, by Arthur C. Clarke
20,000 words!
How I Became a Conscientious Objector
How I Became a Conscientious Objector. Somewhat related, I once read somewhere (I can’t remember where; this is paraphrased):
We say of war “we’re sending our young people off to die.” But we’re not; it’s worse than that. We’re sending them off to kill.
See also Is Anyone Ever Truly Prepared to Kill? (and previously.)
So, uh, hey, I'm still alive
So, uh, hey, I’m still alive. My absence is to be blamed on copious amounts of extra work all a sudden, and my nanowrimo novel taking up any slack. But hey, progress has been made: I have written more than 11,000 words so far! Most of them ludic even. Stupidest thing I have written:
…as if he was flying a crazed falling panda bear.
Oddest thing I have written:
“Hurr,” he said, “bmm grr.”
“Grr? Mm drr?” she replied, in a much softer growl.
“M bmm.” he growled back, a little sharply.
(It turns out my talking gorillas don’t actually speak English. Oops.) And, one of the better bits I’ve written so far, and a favourite of mine:
“And you were doing so well, too,” the man sighed. “Why do you always have to have smart mouths?” He turned away. “Karl, why do they always have to have smart mouths?”
“I think they watch too many movies,” Karl ventured. “Should I start the paperwork?”
“You may as well,” said the man. He turned back. “The paperwork he’s referring to is, of course, a ‘notification of accidental death in an industrial accident’ form. It’s a pain in the butt having inspectors out here, but it’s actually significantly easier than making sure bodies stay buried. If we report it, suddenly there’s nothing to be found out, no secrets to be kept or corpses to hide. It’s like magic.”
He leaned forward, right into Jay’s face. “It’s a pity you couldn’t have kept your mouth shut. Life-long slavery would have probably made an attractive alternative to you.”
Jay slammed his head forward into the bridge of the man’s nose. There was a wet crunch, and the man jerked back. He straightened up, hand to his nose, blood dripping down his arm.
“Damn it, Karl!” he yelled through his bloody hand. “How do they always do that?” He straightened up, his eyes glazed, and he toppled backwards like a felled tree. Karl was half up out of his seat, gazing with horrified fascination.
Karl shook himself, and glanced apologetically at Jay. “You would not believe how many times that’s happened,” Karl said. “He thinks it’s only fair to give you all an opportunity, and he’s always surprised when you all take it. On top of which,” Karl paused to sigh a deep, long-suffering sigh, “he always makes it his face, even with that blood-induced shock-syndrome of his.”
“I tell you,” Karl continued, with the abandon of a long-sufferer letting loose, “he’s pretty intelligent, on the whole. Frighteningly so, sometimes. But just that one single, glaring blind spot, you know? And I’ve tried to tell him, but he gets so distressed about it.” He stood up tall, and dropped his voice, in a simultaneously authentic and pathetic attempt to imitate the other man. “Karl, I have my honour, and if I don’t have that I’m just as bad as them.”
It was clear what Karl thought about his boss’s honour.
“Ah well, so it goes,” Karl sighed. “He was quite clear about the rest.”
Let that tide you over for another week or so :).
