The Memes of Racism

I was talking to my wife the other day about memes, which, if you’ve been living under a rock for the last 15 or so years, are captioned pictures of viral content that have taken on almost organic consciousness on the internet. Typically they are funny, or they comment on current events specifically. I mostly know them as pictures of “puppers” and “doggos” eating “chimkin nuggets.”

In human history we have recognized symbols either tangibly or abstractly. For instance Moses from the Old Testament is a symbol of Christ (of Type) as a mediator between God and Man. A cross represents, and points to, the specific time in history when Christ was crucified. The invisible hand imagines an intangible force based on the movement of wealth in a free economy, as put forth by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations. Or, the statue of the Shinto god Hachiman could represent either war, or the essence of the god himself when present in a shrine. Personally, I believe that memes today are the avatars of pessimism and cynicism, products of the mutable post-modern age. And at the risk of misusing “post-modern,” because even the word means nothing now, post-modern typically is a junk drawer term for any deconstructed position that critiques reigning epistemological authorities or traditions of thought / belief.

One of the original instances of Pepe.

What got me thinking about memes yesterday was the hijacking of one such meme, “Pepe the frog” and its use by neo-Nazis and white nationalists (AKA the Alt-Right). 

Iterations of the Swastica used in Eastern cultures.

A famous example of a neutral symbol being commandeered for hate is the Swastika, which originated in a host of Eurasian religious traditions. In Hinduism, the symbol was associated with luck and general wellbeing. While the origins of why the Nazis took this symbol escape me, I want to say that it had something to do with the belief that India was once known as a seat of a powerfully advanced race of Caucasians, but don’t quote me on that. Anyways, regardless of the origin of the Nazi belief, the symbol was taken and used as a hate symbol. Also, the image of the cross of Christ’s crucifixion has also been co-opted by White supremacists and the KKK by using it to intimidate African Americans by burning them on their lawns, or public places. I think it’s interesting then that people have taken Pepe, something so ephemeral in the grand scheme of things, and created a hate symbol out of him.

A cross burning, carried out by the KKK.

 

While the swastika was a symbol of fascism, memes are self-assigned their meaning. People view them and ascribe meaning to them. In marketing language, viewing an ad (image or otherwise) is called an impression. So when we view memes they are impressions that we encounter. Fascist symbols are ubiquitous and are widespread. They are typically put in public places, or on medals of service, but they are not however inside a person’s living area, unless the symbol was put there. In that respect the symbol can be avoided. I think what makes viral media so impactful is that you can’t avoid it now that the internet is integrated with nearly every aspect of our lives. Not only that, memes already are an expression of the cynical and apathetic zeitgeist we currently find ourselves in. That a meme places the viewer at a disadvantage by making opposition to the image seem petty or disproportionate in use context, the power of hate symbols spreading on the internet as memes are amplified. Furthermore, the impressions are personal, inside the four walls of home. They have penetrated the inner space of our lives, and we cannot escape.

As a creator of content, the reality that someone can insert meaning into something I’ve created is extremely compelling. My heart goes out to Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe, because his symbol has been effectively stolen from him. His resulting anguish is depicted in his response to the hijacking of his creation:

Inventing Enemies

I realize that a writer’s blog should be memes and personable stuff, which I suck at. I really am a nice person. Promise! I’m just difficult to wrangle and coax out in person, let alone through the impersonal channels of the internet.

                But hey, I’m good at “being interesting.” This is what I’ve been told. So I’ve come up with a regurgitation of one of my recent reads that has really gotten be immersed in thinking.

                There’s an essay called “Inventing the Enemy” by Umberto Eco, a recent author in my collection that is occupying more and more of my time. Even now, in light of what is going on around the world, I thought the essay shows how anyone can create an “enemy.” An enemy doesn’t have to be someone were are at odds with in this scenario, just someone that we consider alien to us, or not of our kind, nationality, race, social standing, or otherwise. I wanted to give a birds eye view of Eco’s argument below. The essay is still  available in print and I highly recommend reading it, even if the language is stilted and archaic. (It was originally written in Italian and translated pieces can seem stale on the outside.)

•         Eco states that enemies are first geographically different than us. They come from the outside. He cites the barbarians invading Rome at the peak and decline of the Roman Empire as chief examples. In today’s terms someone can be an “enemy” of ours if they reside in another country. We may never have met these people, or have had any long distance contact (i.e. wireless communication, internet chatting, etc), but they are someone removed from us. And their distance makes them the easiest target for creating an enemy for us to fight/oppose.
•          Likewise, another degree of separation occurs with language. Eco cites the same example of the “barbarian” languages that invaded Rome, weakening the national identity of Rome. The word barbarian suggests a corruption of language (bar-bar-ian, like a stutter in speech). Those that we can’t understand, which requires us to have contact with them either personally or via audio message, we would reject as people we are against.
•        After language comes those that live inside the city walls. Those that are strange to us are most likely to be immigrants. The United States has a long history of targeting immigrants, either 1^st or 2^nd generation, that have come from foreign lands to be with us and are at the beginning, or in process, of assimilation into the parent culture. These are people that are ESL (English as a Second Language) or they work less desirable jobs or they are having trouble finding a footing in a strange and new environment. They are easy to pick out in a crowd, maybe because their clothing is different, or because they live in ghettos where other fellow immigrants reside. We often make enemies of these people because they are easy to blame for things that are seemingly outside of our control. Crime, population density, government spending, and education burdens can all be easily blamed on the “immigrant” by the interior culture.
•      Eco suggests, after his studying of Medieval history and philosophy, that those suffering from deformities would be the deepest layer where we could make our enemies. Assuming that the person on the outside has come in, learned our language, adopted our culture, and has demonstrably become essential to the community, those that are missing limbs, blind, mentally impaired, or suffering from congenital defects are seen as enemies because they lack on a fundamental level core abilities of other humans. This may not be as much an issue today as it was a thousand years ago, but an equivalent can be found in the homeless, who are dehumanized for their inability to care for themselves. They are seen as feral, unstable, and incomplete, therefore becoming an adequate enemy. Eco seems to have the most sympathy on this level of inhumanity simply because individuals of this strata are the easiest to blame and have few advocates.

I find the above really fascinating, and my synthesis of the arguments is limited by the amount of detail Eco lends to his argument. What is more sobering is his subsequent treatment, and potential explanation for the origins of antisemitism, not only because it is still fresh in our minds from the Holocaust but because of Arabs taking their place in the 21^st century due to the events of 9/11. Despite dominating fields of medicine, law, finance, science, physics, mathematics, and humanities, Arabs encounter daily opposition for their skin color and religion simply because they are externally different or foreign within the parent culture of the United States.

                All these ideas are potent for discussion, but I’ve discovered personally that even with lengthy discourse there is still a degree of separation between theory and practice. We can talk about something in depth, but we can never see that we too make our own enemies on a daily basis, even subconsciously, and not even care about it.

                They key point Eco makes, the final conclusion he makes in his essay that is chilling to say the least, is that having an enemy, or maintaining a diet of enemies to consume and present, creates positive growth. I will leave you with these. I hope they make you think about the weightiness of his conclusions.

The Enemy is Us

Here’s a thought:

Any view is defined from the opposing end of that view’s spectrum. The idea came to me, while I was entertaining guests at a birthday party for my daughter. I was able to “geek out” with a couple of guests, and in the pursuit of doing so I heard someone tell me that “most comics are left of center.” The context for the statement was that there was a particular group that was advocating “right-of-center” comics, but that they were met with fierce opposition from within the community. (I wasn’t aware of this, but I assume that all hell broke loose because of it.) I found the idea odd, that we need comics written “right-of-center.” No comic book writer/film critic/author writes content that establishes a worldview based on their enemy’s characterization of them—that is, I wouldn’t specifically write a book that was “liberal” because a critic of mine suggested that I was “liberal.” I would assume that they would write a story that reflected their own beliefs. I write stories that discuss things that interest me. I am not out to incite arguments. But I write what I write because I find that content interesting to me.

I find, that when someone (person B) characterizes your views (person A) as their opposite, what is happening behind the scenes is an instilling of existential competition, to validate beliefs of the original critic (person B) as valid, or more valid. I see this a lot in religion because I am a Christian and people are often insecure about their faith (myself included). I see instances where a layman witnesses same-sex marriage become validated by popular culture or reads about a scientific finding that sheds doubt on aspects of Christian orthodoxy, and their initial reaction is to characterize the supporters of those positions as being in opposition to his/her own. It’s therapeutic, ultimately, to be validated by creating an enemy. The stakes are higher now. And because enemies ultimately “lose,” we are invigorated when we read or hear something that sheds doubt on our opponent’s position.

The unintended effect is that we create our enemies as a toxic pursuit to escape our fears, rather than confront them and try to make sense of them.

What should we do, then, to avoid this?

Sorry, I have no idea. But I have thoughts.

See, going back to my opening point. If I write something that inadvertently challenges the worldview of another person, the onus is on that offended party to confront me and ask me in an understanding way why I have that position. Because I am not intentionally trying to offend someone. I’m, in most cases, just writing a story, or creating art, that resonates with me. The specter that we create of our enemies is a strawman that we sling mud upon rather than making an attempt to bridge the gap and attempt to understand any view different from our own.

Another interesting example: there was a time when I thought I was going to be a pastor of a Christian church. The unfortunate thing about this, was that I was very involved with the viewpoint of a certain pastor and I had purchased all his books and followed all his sermons. When I would confront a viewpoint that was different or, worst, in opposition to this pastor, I would write it off as poor scholarship on the opponent’s part. Then I was told an interesting anecdote as I was venting my frustrations our on my sponsoring mentor. If you read one author (his works in total), then you are a clone. If you read two authors, you’re confused. If you read three authors, you begin to develop an ecumenical understanding of knowledge pertinent to that topic.

This applies to everything: cooking, knitting, philosophy, politics, video games, religion, film, etc. What I don’t want you (reader) to take away from this is that your viewpoint is invalidated, or diminished, once you’ve reached this point of ecumenical understanding of your topic. What I desire you to take away is that people believe certain things because it’s personal to them, and there is a story behind that belief. When enough people are like-minded, they coalesce into a larger entity that takes core values (but not all of them) and synthesizes a new position that lacks the multifaceted explanations of certain beliefs.

In light of social media, I am convinced more and more that Facebook and other platforms are a cancer to our ecumenical understandings because they have condensed conversations and familiarity into statements and surface level understanding.

Chew on that for a bit.

LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES MUST READ THIS!!!

Ignore the title for now. It'll make sense later. 

Lots of good new this week. I’ve never ran Facebook ads before. I went in with little expectations. My results were a little too good to be true, though the actual book sales remain to be seen for week one. (I won’t know that for at least three weeks.) I reached a total of about 2600 people. 206 “Likes,” 8 “Shares,” the latter two are the most important. I had the opportunity to extend the campaign over the weekend, but opted not to. Typically the highest traffic days on the internet are Monday and Tuesday mornings between 8am and 10am. Between that and finishing Underground Airlines—a solid alt-history slave narrative—I feel fairly accomplished. All that is left is to finish Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, and I can finish book three and begin writing, possibly, a spinoff novel for Tall Men. The key, as I’ve said time and time again is being productive and not making excuses. Don’t call yourself a “writer.” “Writers” post their shit for free on Deviant Art. “Author” is a coveted title that I’ve always owned, because I believe in what I do. “Authors contribute to the cannon of Western/Eastern literature. They participate in the global discussion of genre and literary theory. That’s an extreme, zero-to-sixty mentality, but, then again, I’ve always been an extreme kind of person—all in, all out. But I digress.

It's bubble of non-offense I give offense to

I catch myself in the act often, that is agreeing with myself. This self-congratulatory exercise makes me comfortably numb, as in the Pink Floyd song about heroine. Being “on the same page” is an addiction that I find myself struggling to combat, especially within the medium of social networking. While I have some conservative friends, they aren’t really “conservative” in the almost pejorative sense that would inform the opinion of a “liberal” or a “democrat.” (In quotes as well because these terms too are just conventions used to typify the positions and beliefs of certain segments of social/political discourse.) Though I’ve met some of the conservative ilk (my father included), and had wonderful and challenging discussions with them, this line of open communication hardly lingers beyond conception. In fact, it disappears. Like the ephemeral dust devil in a vacant lot, there seems to be substance to the conversation, but only moments later it dissipates into nothingness.

This particularly bothers me, and I’ll list a few reasons why:

First, typically those who are “conservative” or “liberal” conceive of themselves as being agents on a larger political stage, burying their own identity into hot-button issues and fetishizing the objects of their unknowing worship (guns, birth-control, legislation, et. al.). While there are implied, expected behaviors that emanate from these exterior labels, the partisan participation in government stands as the most prominent feature of these two groups. Democracy, our current form of government, hinges on the open line of communication between all citizens (excluding members of the above terms, because they undermine this whole process). But rather than be challenged by opposing viewpoints, we consign ourselves to the echo chambers of our collaborators, engaging in one-sided, non-offensive exercises of mutual agreement. While there are a many things that “conservatives” believe, of which I do not, these beliefs are founded on life experiences and ethics unique to another segment of society that we, the outsider, have no familiarity with. For example, there is legitimate cause to value the hard work put into founding a farm or a small business, but we must attempt to understand the values of someone raised in section 8 housing and their position of continual despair and stigmatizing, how that affects their productivity and “success”. We must also not lie to ourselves (ie “I deserve X because Y” or “because of circumstance X, I should have Y”) and think that we, the individual, are outside of the mutual agreement made between each citizen—that is, to be putting back into the social, financial, and political systems what we receive. In reality we are all in the same boat, same country, same brotherhood/sisterhood. So we must listen to each other with empathy and patience, or else risk demonizing a person. Just like the army, we are only worth as much as our weakest member. Instead of ostracizing the weakest, we ought to invest into them and become stronger for our efforts.

Secondly, if we remain in our tight-knit circles of group-thought, the ultimate end is abject cynicism. Facebook is the most regretful offender of this as an unrelenting disseminator of information. Most of it is bad information, or poorly structured. Worse, our reputation is invested into our opinions, our “voice” is quantified to metrics, our validation meted out in concise, impersonal injections. So, in an effort to be right, we willfully take liberties with the truth, equivocate, and outright lie vindictively—most of the time, that is. Other times, when we share information that confirms our bias and worldview, the information may be correct, but the supplier poorly states it, thereby making it confusing and allowing all kinds of people to draw seemingly disparate conclusions. On the spectrum of news and content, we are sensitive to the most outlandish of this kind of information: some of it true and most of it false. I see it all the time in my feed. Hyperbolic bullshit of the highest order! What is more frustrating: seeing things objectively true, but the information being ignored and kept under the roiling waters of false information. When I earlier mentioned that cynicism is the ultimate end of being in a bubble, it is because of the above. Seeing the truth trampled, day in, day out, brings us to despair and disillusionment: the latter being the seed and the former the water. When it all blooms the cynic bursts forth into the light, then bitterly turns in having had enough of this shit.

The last aspect, of why living in a bubble is noisome and detrimental to being a human being, is that we always live long enough for us to be the villain. This requires less explanation, as it could just be another addition to my previous point, but typically, after seeing your own side “lose” so many times the next logical step is to become dissatisfied with the position. Sick of seeing your side unable to fix gun-control legislation? Eventually, the thought will enter your mind: “this party does nothing for me. I need to leave it,” and one will start actively looking for information that confirms their new bias. Conversely, one grows older, accumulate some modest prestige, some possessions, earns a promotion at work, and then disparagingly look down on those around you for their apparent inefficacy. (Looking back on the idealists, we scoff and call them naïve and positivistic.) Then, like a thief in the night, your sentiment for the poor disappears and is replaced by a nagging need to register for the Republican Party. I can’t think of a different scenario for the contrary position at the moment, but you can catch my meaning.

Why this is on my mind is because I look back on the great movements of history longingly, while participating in my own folly. The great movements and events of yesteryear (The Civil Rights Movement, World War 2, The New Deal, etc) where Americian came together to accomplish something, are long gone due to our willingness to participate. Even if we are, we focus only on those who share our views. I am reminded of this as I see people tearing each other apart and the future, once imagined bright by people such as Gene Rodenberry, now is murky and stagnant.

Anyways…  That’s it from me.

Back to work!

Video Games are Racist, Bruh

I have a sneaking suspicion that RPG games are inherently racist.

Hear me out.

I’ve thought about this for a while, and I don’t think it’s intentional at all. Or maybe I just read too deeply into things like this. If you’ve ever read Umberto Eco’s Inventing the Enemy you’ll know that we seem to naturally, throughout history, create enemies to propel our societies forward. We rely on differences (physical, political, religions, social, and economic) to separate the undesirables out. All this hinges on a lack of empathy toward this “other,” because once we feel empathy for the other, these differences can no longer be superficial.

From birth we are trained to recognize and pick out classes, like being a young kid and seeing a homeless person, and then—in the same day sometimes—going to a neighbor’s house of moderate wealth. Then, while still being kids, we encounter as we get a little older videogames of varying complexity that implement progression and class based forms of entertainment. Not only are they competitive, but each class’s specialization locks you into a certain path of gameplay. Fantasy roleplaying games take this concept further and suggest perks and disadvantages for playing a certain race. Elves may have bonuses to stealth and intelligence, or charisma even, evoking the image of an elite member of society, connected to social and political strongholds. Conversely, orcs may have penalties to intelligence and charisma, but they have proficiencies that boost strength and traits that are integral to physical combat. To add insult to injury, at least in the Dungeons and Dragons game system, orcs are also typically evil in alignment. (I once played a game as an orc paladin, and the whole time I was reminded by the dugeon master that orcs could not be paladins because they were evil and having a good, or even neutral alignment, was tantamount to breaking the rules!)

Race is an artificial term already, as there is no genetic difference between a human from Africa and a human from North Africa. While there are physical differences between someone from Africa, who has extra skin pigment after exposure to blistering, equatorial sunlight, and a North American person, there is no degree of separation that would deny procreation between the two. Race, if anything is an artificial moniker that human beings have employed to categorically separate individuals from each other whom hail from a variety of geographical regions on the planet. Yet there are stereotypes, not unlike the class based systems in role playing games and other video games that implement class and skill progression trees, which entertain the idea of “racial traits” (I.e. Asians are intelligent, Blacks are lazy (yet exceedingly strong), Caucasians are politically cunning). These racial stereotypes supplant the familiarity we all share as human beings with a veil of obscuring unfamiliarity and suspicion. This is how “others” are created.

So imagine the reality that as children, while we are still building a conceptual framework of the work through our observations and experiences, we are encountering the ideas, suggestions, that certain people are better at some things and others are not. Not only that, we are doing battle with, struggling for resources with, engendering a “race” based competitive ecosystem with complete strangers. The entire premise is literally Darwinian in nature.

Obviously, this is all introspective speculation and the strength of this argument depends on how willing you are to look into it. But I could easily write a book on my experiences, incorporating trolling, anonymity, death threats against female developers, and Varg Vikernes’ roleplaying game MYFAROG. The latter is funny, because on my way to Norway a few years ago I sat right next to a personal friend of Varg who told me that certain, less desirable races, were meant to specifically emulate the stereotypes of people of color (specifically blacks).

Anyways, food for thought.

No Love For Wizardry

I hate Harry Potter because it’s a sham.

Like most children back in the late nineties, I was introduced to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It was immensely popular, and my grandmother was adamant about identifying a book that would get her grandchildren to read, pushing it on to us desperate and concerted. Truth be told, I was not an avid reader until I was out of college. Before all that, reading was a chore and something you did in school, not when you got home. I spent most of my time outside, turning rocks into spaceships and sticks into swords. Books never pulled me in like they do now. I was much more visual then. Converting and abstracting text into visual stimulus was only a recent development.

My vehement distaste for Harry Potter is inexplicable. Or was, until very recently.

I’ve never liked people pushing me into things, including hobbies. I’ve never liked musicals. (They want you to sing along, see?) I’ve never liked sports. (Competitive teamwork.) I’ve never liked fads. (Vapid, short-lived, things.) I’ve always been an insular, and supremely unlovable person. The idea that my cousin “Bucky,” the poster child of self-absorbed intellect, read it faster than my brother and I didn’t bother me either. What bothered me most was that I was expected to like it.

No. I don’t like Harry Potter because it’s too real to me. And I am not satisfied with the narrative that it pushes. (It’s about a young boy that discovers his parents were wizards, that he is a wizard, that they left him a fortune to allow him to board in an exclusive boarding school. His subsequent adventures are formulaic, and I wonder why his professors didn’t have a yearly meeting about the shit he was going to get into next.)

The origins of Harry Potter being raised by abusive relatives mirrors my experiences in subtle and substantive ways. While I have never been forced to live in a confined space underneath the stairs, I have a potently vivid memory of breaking my Dad’s VCR when I was maybe between 6-8 years old. I was so afraid that he would hit me that I told him from afar and hid in his orchard. And while he shouted vainly into the winds for me to come out, I stayed and waited. It eventually got dark but I was still hiding. I got into my Dad’s red Toyota pickup and slept in the cab overnight, and snuck into the house in the morning.

Another experience: We were at a local, independent grocer, one that I have scores of fond memories at their amazing deli and all the strange, foreign things they would buy and display at the front of their isles—food from Germany, Britain, Italy, etc. My brother had a quart of pasta salad that he was entrusted with, only to drop it on accident. My father flew into a rage and pushed him to the ground calling him “stupid” while he cried. There were people around us, aghast. Someone scolded my father, to which he replied, “mind your own business,” and we hurried out of there like cockroaches exposed to a bright, shining light.

And while, only by the Grace of God, I have forgiven my father of these things over the years of dealing with this—and there are many other incidents—I have no love for a series that depicts acts of abuse and mulls them over with discretionary wealth and elitism. I think my disproportionate response stems from my deep seated belief that the fairy-tale narrative archetype is a load of bullshit. Abuse never leaves you, it clings to you and stays with you. A moment of 1-5 minutes imprints upon your life a brand of shame and anger that never leaves, though over time the scar fades. I reject the Harry Potter narrative because in real life people that suffer that kind of emotional trauma, in many cases, never escape. And even if they do, they limp away and heal lame.

I recognize that now as much as I did back then. I stopped reading after the first book, not because I refused to continue reading the entirety of the series, but because I couldn’t accept its fantasy that seemed to ridicule my own suffering.

It's Not About The Lemons

I had this very bizzare, very “Santa Barbara” experience at the farmers market today.

I was picking up the essentials (lettuce), as I am wont to do every Saturday morning. Usually there is a vendor selling Meyer lemons (great for salad dressing), so I found one quickly and went to pick out four of them (50 cents each) and fumbled with three of them, attempting to reach a fourth. This woman, who came after me, swooped in and started grabbing the ones I was going for. I made a comment that I was grabbing at least one more and she looked at me unapologetically, holding her $5 cup of coffee from the Handlebar, and just said, “sorry.” (What she meant to say was, “Fuck you and your lemons!”)

A phrase that I own and coin often is something akin to, “I’m a socialist. But it would never work in America.” There are variations of the same phrase that I often rehearse but the essence is there. I say this to my chagrin because I have been influenced in my life by events that make me pine for fairness. (Getting beat up at school, being viciously made fun of, and raised up under unremarkable circumstances. Also, my own parents have never even read my first book.) It has made me characteristically cutthroat and exploitative and I often wonder if there is an alternate timeline where things were better. At its core I’ve always felt enamored with a political and social mindset where people shared their resources to make the world a better place.

Facebook, among other outlets, sings the same familiar tune. (And when played backwards, you hear the Satanic inverse.) But I don’t think people practice what they preach. I’m a god damned positivist and I don’t practice what I preach. The socialist voice in America isn’t the same pitch and timbre of the places where this actually works, and I think for the most obvious reasons.

American nationalism peaked at the conclusion of the War of 1812. Subsequent spikes are the work of foreign wars and social upheaval, intermittent incidents in a long national history of eulogized selfishness. Even a Christian cult emerged, Mormonism, which nationalized religion and mythologized America’s origins, placing the United States at the origin of the universe. (The opposite was the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian cult emerging at the height of political corruption in the United States, which eschewed all appearances of nationalism.) At both of these peaks and valleys, American expression remained steady in its love of self-interested wealth. Our constitution is rooted in the Pursuit of Happiness, appended by the inferred, “And if you infringe upon mine, why I oughta’…”

The contrast that we see in Europe, the social milieu that makes socialism so viable, is their roots in tribalism that goes back thousands of years. There has always been infighting between states, but uncanny internal bonds. And while there has always been a sectarian conflict between ethnic groups within states, once these states matured past the frustrations of religious and class warfare, there has been a reasonably steady peace. War has also hardened these bonds on kinship. For instance, Russia has repeatedly attempted to invade Finland over the past thousand years, with the Fins rebuffing many, if not all of the assaults. The shadows of Empire have also strengthened national resolve, in the case of Norway being a property of Denmark for nearly 500 years. (They celebrate their “independence” every Seventeenth of May.)

In the United States where we are so blessed with an abundance of natural resources, acquired over the centuries through many shrewd dealings, our sordid gains have likely made us complacent. Combined with the mentality of Frontierism, prosperity through expansion and entrepreneurship, we have inherited a mindset from our forebears that is untenable in our exhausted real estate. We expect wealth and receive it from the least of our peers: migrant workers, wage slaves, immigrants, etc. Even myself, a proponent of ensuring we invest in our citizens through community programs and education, I have everything to gain from an economy that favors my willingness to exploit the labors of others.

All this came to a head, flashed before my mind, as I sarcastically, non-confrontationally, replied, “Wow, this IS Trump’s America.” It is very likely that I will not see this woman again, but given the demographics of Santa Barbara, she is statistically likely to be a Democrat, a social progressive, anti-corporation, pro-choice, drive a fuel-efficient vehicle, and pro-immigrant. Yet, at our core, we are a despicable people trained to look out for “number one,” and like a handful of Meyer lemons, we are more concerned about our welfare than that of others. Imagine the paradigm shift that I experienced when I saw this complete reversal in Norway when I was able to spend time there. I constantly compare my brief time there with my lifetime here. And while I’m sure that Norway has its own kind of culture shock due to its inherent bureaucracy and insistence on social conformance and enculturation of immigrants, the underlying spirit of their social contract is present and palpable.

Enough with myself bitching about lemons…

My second book is coming along with the first draft complete and being out for feedback among my inner circle for notes. I am hoping for another set of great comments from my brothers of other mothers Desmond and Bern. Soon I can start draft two and really dig deep into it.

My daughter Eowyn continues her external gestation. She’s doing good, and my wife also.

Stress, Work, Baby: Repeat

Usually people look at me when I’m having a panic attack and as me, “why are you nervous?” And, as I pause between labored breaths, I am drowning like a fish out of water. I hear that fucking question so many times that I makes me want to scream, but my collapsed lungs have no air to offer even a whisper.

This all started a few years ago in 2013. I was, before my first episode, a very productive person. My personality then was very outgoing, very active. I was a typical “go-getter.” But then the attacks started, and my period of work dwindled from hours a day to short bursts of maybe 30-45 minutes worth of real work.

Now I’m a dad. Between my new duty of raising my daughter and writing my books, I have little time now to pursue my original levels of productivity. Simply put: I don’t write as much, so you won’t be seeing me posting three times a week.

But the content is better. I find myself planning my projects with greater care, investing more time into making my plots flow better. At the risk of writing without a net (without any idea particular story in mind), I sit on my posts and shorts, hoping that subsequent attempts will yield a robust result. This works to a degree. There are stories that circulate over the web about laboring artists that will agonize over dozens of drafts, which I feel is a waste of time. My limit is three: first draft attempt, second draft re-write from notes, and the final third draft where I choose one aspect about my story and redo it. Taking the extra time to really rack my brain over a concept has solidified this style I’ve chosen for myself.

Now I’m a dad. It bears repeating. I’m still in shock over the transition. The presence of this, thing, in my living room that demands my life, my soul, I’ve never felt this before. My daughter Eowyn cries because she doesn’t understand the world that she now indwells. It’s not wet or dark, warm and tight. Everything is so open and vast, an echo chamber that she cries out against and hears nothing in return. It’s difficult to imagine what it’s like to be a blank slate.

Stress, work, baby: my new life, some tell me. There is a Mormon that I work with that insists that my life is over, only using colorful, inoffensive language extracted from a threadbare flannel board from the mid-80s. I already struggle with being pessimistic and incorrigible. Insisting that my life is going to change, bear baiting my dreams and hobbies with the burden of childrearing is downright nauseating. I knew what I was fucking getting in to when I decided with my wife that we wanted to have children. It’s not as if I was ignorant of the changes I was going to face. I welcome this brave new world I have entered, for better or worse. It’s high time I was forced to get over my depression and anxiety to serve another. It’s high time I saw myself through the eyes of another. To see myself carried in the arms of God, crying, lamenting at this hard life I endure every day. The perspective is awe inspiring. Like most prospective parents, I am eager to right all the wrongs of my childhood, to be a “cool” dad. Far more fascinating, in a grim sort of way, will be discovering my own pretensions that I will impose unfairly. Relying on my daughter to understand my own faults, that is the gift of parenting.

But one day at a time. Give me, this day, my daily bread. One day at a time.

I love you Eowyn, my Delightful Charger.

RCT, Easy as 1,2,3

It’s been a long time – too long.

My book’s first draft is complete and I’ve sent it to my trusted advisors for their notes and insight. This is a common practice, one that I had only recently heard of and embraced by accident when I gave my first book to my good friend Desmond. He proceeded to shit all over my book. That sounds bad, but it wasn’t. It was eye opening. Everyone should be subjected to criticism, even if you’re fucking James Joyce.

I get these moments that come and go. Fleeting ideas that condense and then dissipate like morning mist in the desert. I like writing about these but I don’t, because they are rants. And no one wants to read that shit. Most of the time I think about them because I’m mad at something, or someone. Or, I am sitting alone and recounting the day’s events and considering the slights that I received and then avenge myself by articulating these brisk and colorful responses.

One, however, coalesced.

Something that has always bothered me is the concept of white guilt. Let me preface this by affirming that there is a deep need to reassess the social and economic damage that Americans have inflicted upon indigenous people. We owe the descendants of slaves, the victims of failed Reconstruction era politics, a fighting chance to compete and receive the education they deserve. I can go on, but it would detract from the point I want to make.

Like all things, the narrative of prejudice is hopelessly complex. Let me summarize: Realistic conflict theory, as demonstrated by the Robbers’ Cave Study. I find this study fascinating, mostly for the confirmation bias it offers me in my spiritual views on the nature of humans. The experimental model of the study is rudimentary, and lacking in the sophistication of modern psychological studies that attempt to account for extraneous variables, and deploy methodologies that curb all manners and sorts of bias. Still, I think it demonstrates a tendency for prejudice to occur as a byproduct of social, political, economic, and existential tension. And I suppose what bothers me so much about this concept of white guilt is that the narrative is embedded in western civilization, largely ignoring the social narratives of other cultures where there was a demonstrable presence of ingroup/outgroup prejudice. We only ignore it because we don’t wish to make the investment of investigating the “oriental,” the “other,” and bridge the gaps we make between western civilization and the myriad expressions of humanity.

In High School, I knew a “feminist.” We are decent friends today, Facebook friends (for what it’s worth), and our contact is cordial and mutually beneficial. But it’s interesting how our relationship evolved over prolonged periods of antagonism (mostly because, at the time, I had a crush on her). She would make these outrageous, though not misplaced, claims that because I had a dick, I had wronged her, which seemed a bit harsh, granted that I had never done anything to her. It was classic “guilt-by-association.” Nevertheless, it is wrong to pay a woman less than a man because of their sex. It is wrong to view a woman as not capable of arising to the occasional “manly” deed, mostly because men and women offer mutual benefits to working together in synchronicity. It seems disingenuous, if not hypocritical, to hoist one’s self onto a banner of moral superiority and commit the same crime: devaluing someone because of their genitalia. And the same is true of “race,” which is a bit overstated, as we are all homo sapiens.

To further my point, over the last few months I binge-watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was a science fiction television show flexing its intellectual muscles in the late 80s and early 90s. In all seven seasons were captured hypothetical arguments and debate over the preoccupation with Cold War paranoia and interracial conflict – magnificent and worthy pursuits all. I enjoyed the show for its rampant, albeit unintentional, embrace of Globalism, sundering conflict and quieting planetary squabbles under the pretense of dissident races joining the Federation of Planets. It teaches us about the worthiness of our ethnic values, while at the same time devaluing them because they innately encourage the very realistic conflict theory studied by Muzafer Sherif. All ethnicities are, in the end, are artificial divisions based on superficial expressions. To be “enlightened” is to, instead, join hands toward a common goal, and cease the perpetual blame game that has progressed into the 21^st century. This is all the ad absurdum reductionism that I could glean from the show, whether they would like to acknowledge it or not.

The issue of white guilt that I have is the caveat of its proposition. I myself have never enslaved a human being or devalued one based on its sex, ethnicity, social tier, or religion. Yet I am devalued based on the assumption that my default predilections are innately sinister. Were I a Martian, living on mars with other Martians, with red skin, and there was an equally powerful group of green-skinned Martians, and we were at each other’s throats for our superficial differences, it would seem very silly to us, but it would make sense to Muzafer Sherif. He would watch us from afar taking field notes in a dust stained moleskin about our petty disputes over limited resources. And, suppose, that I am wrong, and there is no God, I have only just described the very basic principles of evolutionary biology, in which a dominant group supplants another because of their supremacy in means and resources. So I am at a precipice, a crossroads. I have the opportunity to believe that racism is as natural as Realistic Conflict Theory, but I won’t because that’s fucking stupid and we have a choice. We have always had a choice. I believe, wholeheartedly so, that this is who we are when we are blinded by our own egos. But I reject it as the definitive mode in how we operate.

Jared's Best Man Speech

In honor of my friend Jared getting married today, I wanted to say a few words on his behalf. The below is a transcript of what I will say at his reception: 

Thank you all for coming today. My name is Stuart, the Best Man, and I wanted to take some time to talk about Jared for a moment.

Some of you might know Jared through Julie, or know him as a friend, co-worker, son, or colleague. I know Jared as a friend. We lived together in college for about a year and I had no idea that I would still know him almost ten years later. I have many stories about Jared, but one of them stands out. I had just moved in with him and was still feeling out my roommates for their quirks and oddities. Jared was the guy that came home late with other women, not to sleep with them mind you, but to do far less raucous things like cuddle and play boardgames. But I sat Jared down and talked to him explaining that what we did at the apartment, which was a complex in Isla Vista leased to exclusively members of Campus Crusade, was sacred. We were out on display for the world to see and I wanted to hold him accountable. To my incredible surprise, Jared listened. He heard me out. And we built on that moment a mutual, sacred trust that has sharped us together, perhaps like iron on iron, or something like that…

We are all told that we are special. That we can do anything. I don’t really believe that now that I’m older, but Jared is one of those people to watch because he is destined for great things. His career as a writer and teacher are already in their infancy and he has distinguished himself as top of his class, par excellence, with his colleagues and fellow members of the Academy. Why? Because Jared is a magnate for discussion, someone that people naturally gather to because they see in him something wonderful and special. He challenges us by his example to question our beliefs and follow in the footsteps of Socratic liberal education, that we may think critically about the information that vies for our affections in a world of increasing ambiguity and obfuscation. And incredibly, as much as Jared challenges us and helps to mold us, the teacher that he is, there is Julie that has drawn Jared to herself. You see, if you knew Jared, you would know his aloof spirit as well as me. “Bear-bear” is always on the run, unmoored by his years of growing up across the oceans in the jungles of Indonesia and urban China. But he has finally, at long last, found someone to tie him down in the boudoir and write a new story about a man and a woman finding each other, seemingly from opposite ends of the world, and starting another generation of rootin-tooting, suspiciously hairy, crawdad catching, Whites.     

  

I Don't Get Snapchat

I only just realized that the Snapchat icon is the weirdest fucking icon I have ever seen. And because I've been really productive this weekend, I decided to draw some things that I seen in my head when I think of Snapchat.

First, an amicable ghost. Mine looks terrified. 

I thought this was a given: the Eternal Lord of Chaos, Cthulhu. Isn't he frightening?

An overweight man riding a cow through a tunnel! Why not?

Lastly two old men back-to-back. They could be doing anything. Preparing for a duel, ascending a chasm, lying in bed distantly preoccupied. Let your mind go wild! 

Also, I bought the first season of Megas XLR, only available via Itunes (and in SD). I tweeted the creator my desire to see it available in HD, so I did my part. If the name sounds unfamiliar, take the time to go watch it. It's hilarious!

XOX

SJWs, Freedom of Speech, and The Revelation of St. John

Second attempt today writing. Here. We. Go!

My friend Trey pointed out earlier this week that my initials spell S.J.W. This is incidental because I also happened to rain on everyone’s parade growing up. I was at the epicenter of the phrase’s inception back in 2014, when I was at Sequart Organization. (At least it was brought to my attention / I noticed it, and others making a scene about it.) SJW stands for “social justice warrior,” a pejorative word that typically hyperbolizes a liberal minded person that takes a stand on a number of social issues, to the effect of making others very aware of systemic disenfranchisement of minorities and the LGTBQ community. My careful wording of this implies that, while I cringe at the small proportion of the general population that such a label applies to, I do not enjoy the term, its use, and practice. It’s very misleading. It supposes that someone who wants to be a part of something but is denied entry to that subculture / practice and voices their very reasonable concern for not gaining entry has sinister motives for doing so.

                As a white male I have yet to assess my privilege. (Many online surveys I have taken suggest it to be “Moderate to High”.) I have been told that it is “very good.” But the issue I have with SJWs is the impact they have on a very moderate population of women and minorities that are trying to be accepted into the fold of popular entertainment. In order to pave the way for change, an open dialogue has to be made with the opposing side. Empathy, to understand the impact that disenfranchisement has on the Other, is key. This is what was revealed in Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s doll experiments during the Civil Rights case, Brown Vs Board of Education. The arguments I’ve seen thus far are artificially divisive where each side regurgitates the company line like a 14 year old using their parent’s arguments for why abortion is right / wrong. I recall one article a colleague of mine wrote where he attempted to engage in dialogue with an Anita Sarkeesian harasser, to no avail. Note: there is no intelligent repartee between Marc and his specimen, just an oddly robotic dialogue.

                The controversy (still ongoing, last time I checked) generally positions one in the camp of Sarkeesian’s following, because who wants to side with misogynistic near-rapists? This is frustrating because there could be something intelligent to say on behalf of the often paranoid doomsayers. There is a real problem today with the creation of safe-spaces at universities, the unchecked postmodern deconstruction of institutions, and the growing sentiment of nihilism, which, in turn, produces similar soldiers that one could term “SJWs.” I was once told by Julian Darius that for every Ku Klux Klan parade held, there is a line of Jewish and Black lawyers willing to defend the KKK’s right to assembly and freedom of speech. To censure a hate group is still censure. America is great because people get to have an opinion, even if it is really fucking stupid, still many college professors have been incorrectly coined racists and bigots because of their failed attempts to explain this caveat to their students. Freedom of speech extends to all, including the multinational corporations that own the tights that Superman wears. People have every right to stop buying comics, organize protests, and initiate and dialogue between the other side. They do not have the right to harass and emotionally harm another person because they believe something different. It’s a two way street people!

                My milquetoast rallying cry to moderation could be extended to many dialogues, including our own recent presidential race. I don’t think for a moment that Trump has anything to offer America, or her people. He is Satan. (Owning most if not all of the biblical titles.) It’s possible that we could have avoided Trump by having these conversations on consensus, say, thirty years ago, but here we are. Now we have to make the best of 2017, which I have money on being an amped up iteration of the Apostle John’s Vision of Revelation.

                I’ve made it a goal to hear someone out this year and next, regardless of their position on life. This is my resolution for the new year. I hope it can be yours too.

XOX

Thoughts on Conservatism and Progressivism

I’ve been reading a new book called Does God Make a Difference? Taking Religion Seriously in our Schools and Universities. Though I’m only halfway through, the message is rather inspiring for the advancement of liberal free education. Initially when I started the book, I was confronted with reservations about Nord’s thesis that religion needs to be taught as live, viable options to cultivate a comprehensive understanding of worldviews around the world.  The book was spurred on by the secularization thesis, which was posited during the 60s, that eventually the idea of “God” would become marginalized to the point of irrelevance. Nord’s thesis contends that the secularization hypothesis has been thoroughly nullified due to the increase in spirituality around the world. You might have noticed my use of the word “liberal free” education. This is in reference to Nord’s distinguishing between two schools of thought that provide the backbone of western education: Liberal Arts education and Liberal Free education.  The two schools underscore the advancement of what we would recognize today as progressive and conservative arts education. Isocrates (I believe this is the man Nord references, though I have had some beers and the book is still at the office) understood the importance of classics and their value to education. This would be reflected in earlier schooling models when students would learn Greek and Latin, girding their education with the cornerstones of Western philosophy and epistemology.  (It would be akin to studying drama and emphasizing the importance of classical acting methodology, replete with Shakespeare and Greek classics over more modern, experimental acting models like method acting.) Liberal Free, the second of the two is emphasized by Socrates, who argued that uncertainty in self-knowledge compels the individual to continually learn and reform their education; hence the progressive tone.  

                All this talk in Nord’s book got me thinking about the difference in conservatism and progressivism.

                The US election this year is very chaotic. Much of the conflict has been poured out on the existential meaning of America. (As in the 50 territories that constitute the United States of America.) The two party system, a broken system in my opinion, has created a cultural divide across the US between two very unrealistic extremes: Conservatism and Progressivism. There are many touting the return to a greatness of America. This is vague and needs definition. What made America great exactly? America is the product of political experimentation. It is constantly changing, reforming to compliment the current state of affairs. The contrarian voice in this is that of Progressivism, which was the zeitgeist of the 1890’s to the 1910s. Teddy Roosevelt ran on a platform of social reform to improve the quality of American lives in the workplace and at home, and bolstered America’s presence on the world scale. (By invading Cuba and building the Panama Canal.) Progressivism works by momentum. (America was sick of the rampant political corruption of the post-Civil War period.) Consequently, it is paralyzed by inactivity and the quagmire of modern American politics. Progressivism only works so far as the freshness of its ideals. Progressivism and Conservatism both lack a full solution to social and political issues in the modern day.

                I covet my identity as a political moderate. I think that it helps me see with steady eyes. When the past is worshiped with such ferocity, impregnated with nostalgic pandering, we are waging a hopeless battle to live in the past and not be forward thinking and anticipatory. It is better to understand the past so that it will inform our future. There are great lessons to learn from classical literature. The foundation of Western Civilization is important and the specters of Classical Learning still haunt us. There is value in understanding where we come from. Humanity is static in its desires. We really haven’t changed much in the last 10,000 years. Men and Women to this day love and kill. They are proud and arrogant. They fight for what they love and appeal to others to join them on crusades against enemies real and ideological. There is still plenty to encounter there.

                My only issue with those that keep looking forward is that they unfairly caricature the past. Fresh ideas promise change but have no baseline to test against. There is also an assumption of positivism, that progressivism is fundamentally idealistic. Idealism lays the path for change, but it does not establish it. Establishing change requires brokering deals and compromise. Change also takes time and thoughtful execution. I am not surprised at all that Obama Care did not do what it intended. A government funded health plan works only so much as the people are willing to pay into it and our reticence to adopt a Northern European healthcare model underscores the painful reality that our economy thrives on selfishness. Consequently, we are also not Northern Europeans, or possess the requisite cultural beliefs that are unique to their Socialist States. Perhaps a slow, continual movement towards that ideology would bring more fruitful changes?

                I am not convinced that voting for Hilary Clinton will bring about the revolutionary Golden Age that we envision. Every hopeful presidency begins with the promise of some form of political activism or Executive strong-arming. But I am certain that voting for Trump will usher in a dangerous new era of politics that will not overthrow the free world, to the extent predicted by the Huffington Post-esque outlets, but initiate a steady erosion of our already waning power. The line between conservatism and progressivism is now thin and collapsing due to the decrease in election ethics of either side. That is what I’ve noticed. Now, each side is an extreme and their proponents, extremists. Our only hope is a return to the fold of reasonable discussion. I would encourage my readers to read the news of foreign nations to gain a holistic and outside perspective of our country’s shenanigans. Even if the news is churned out by propagandists, supposing that we as readers have the acumen for sorting out truth from fiction, it is all worthwhile to ingest, even if we have to hold our noses. Food for thought.  

                Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to read up what I’m going to vote on tomorrow.

XOX

Sequart Memories

I was at the comic book store Saturday picking up a floppy (or single issue, to those who aren't familiar with comic jargon). It's something I've only recently started doing, knowing full well that I would soon have boxes of ad-filled, twenty-something paged, incomplete story arc, relics. It's funny because I actually love reading them. I never thought I would say that. But it occurred to me, walking back to my house, that I was on the cusp of a personal revelation, one that I certainly wasn't expecting then, of all days.

There was a time when I was reading comics very actively. I was working with Sequart Organization as their Webmaster and Managing editor, attempting to build the fame of Sequart and establish it as a reputable place for comics journalism and scholarship. Little did I know, it already was, but it was nice to think I had something to do with it's fame at the time. There were many initiatives and projects I undertook. Why I did them escapes me. My only lasting legacy from Sequart is my anxiety disorder and my moments of complete  mental collapse that still plague me to this day. Somewhere at Desmond's cabin (a friend of mine, one that you should read and follow!) there is a pile of Sequart merch from SDCC 2014. Julian still has a press list I  built of academics, a 6 month project where I cataloged every non-profit academic institution, picked over their English department websites, and had my manager run a web-based info blast. (We got a few responses, certainly not a worthy amount.) I learned a lot from the experience, notably that it's hard to sell comics scholarship. 

I think that here is where I made the connection in my mind about the nature of anything that is creative. In the sea of genres, art-forms, and media types there is a subjective line in the sand between so-so manifestations and quality ones. There are some really shitty comics out there. Many of them don't challenge creativity or convictions. It's just a bunch of shit. But in the quagmire of shit there are vindicating articles of art that are really good. When I was at Sequart I would write articles about the noteworthiness of a series, elevate its form to death-defying heights, when in reality it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Like my fascination with beer transitioning to wine, I have moved from comics to novels. Though there are some good stories worth revisiting. 

I think if I could go back and tell myself to avoid Sequart I wouldn't. I wouldn't tell myself about the incoming panic attacks, or the compromising, though valuable, conversations I would have with Julian (who I still love and appreciate to this day), or the slow rift it would create between one of my good friends in part due to the liberal education I  would receive from my contributors and colleagues. Comics have indeed taught me more about art, spirituality, film studies, and myself and what I want to be. I've learned about those that I idolize, their flaws and dreams. I've realized the difference between myself and Neil Gaiman is very little. We are just two creators in different life stages and places. I no longer envy him, but admire him. 

Alan Moore would say, cynically I imagine, that his tenure in comics did nothing for him, that it was all wasted effort. (He lacks the critical distance from his work that is both moving and personal.) But I know that comics have affected me in many ways, mostly good. At the end of the day, are they worthy to pass on to my children? Of course. But are they worthy to be embodied? To draw identity from? I don't believe so....

XOX

PS:

I wrote quite a bit today while I was drinking tea. 

I'm Not a Woman, But Can I Write About Them?

My second book happens to be the first one that will feature a “female” protagonist / antagonist. She isn’t really a woman, but an AI. Still she is supposed to largely reflect what a woman is and what women value. I’ve written before on the difficulty in creating authentic women characters. Frankly, I don’t know how other great authors like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have done it. Traversing the gender gap, is something I, personally, think is impossible. Rather, we can get close to the other side, maybe within the casting of stones. Who knows? The future holds many possibilities.

I’m sure people have written about this before. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Women are physiologically different from men and possess abilities that men can never realize. Social history aside, if we look at the here and now, women are doing things today that have never been done before. Currently, Hilary Clinton is running for president, something that 100 years ago was a laughable prospect among the American people. It’s a struggle for me to take that history and experience, the many thousands of years of anthropology, and condense that into a blog post. My meager thoughts on writing them are below.

I’m a big fan when it comes to animated sitcoms. Despite the cliché of the stay-at-home mom, or in the case of King of the Hill, a secondary earner, the women here server a role as a foil of the men. Even though Homer Simpson, Hank Hill, and, only recently, Jerry Smith, have many layers to their characterization, these men are undermined by their stupidity, which is mostly benign, if not occasionally selfish. I think men are pressured to be alphas, or various manifestations of masculine archetypes. Their decisions are made impulsively, citing a certain male intuition that is mostly wrong and self-centered. The women often clean up the resulting and inevitable mess. Why this is the default mode of writing males I can reasonably infer, but how the women act in return I find more interesting.

When I was writing about Mòr in Spirit of Orn, I tried to imagine what it would be like to have a sister. I grew up only with my brother, but in the families that I interacted with I noticed that older sisters tended to be those that people would go to for wisdom or insight. During adolescence, that relationship would become strained with sexual tension and infighting, resolving to a common understanding with mutual affection. (This is in the case of an older sister with a younger brother.) Conversely, in the relationship between a younger sister and an older brother is more martial, with the older brother protecting the younger sister, or feeling concerned for their wellbeing either implicitly or explicitly. In Spirit of Orn, Mòr is Conn’s younger sister. She is an aunt despite being of similar age to Conn’s son. She takes care of Conn and looks out for him in the midst of his grieving for his recently departed wife. The age gaps between each of the characters are far and wide, eschewing the nuclear family model for a non-conventional look of a family dynamic. Spirit of Orn was my first book, so I’m not surprised that my own characters were fraught with this kind of dysfunction. It likely mirrored my own angst I felt towards my family.

I wrote Mòr in a detached way. She is attempting to grieve in her own way and, in doing so, accepts the religion of the people in Orn. She also is firm in her believe that she can take care of Conn, only Conn can only fix himself and come to that conclusion on his own. I felt that Mòr also had her own sexual identity, not conforming to the mores of Skara Brae (which, at the time I wrote Spirit of Orn, were cavalier and hedonistic). She was very independent, trying to prove herself as a child, but also gave up those desires when she accepted the Orn religion because she no longer needed to. I feel that most women in literature are trying to prove themselves (as men also do). But this might be juxtaposing my own masculinity onto female characters.

The difficulty with my latest book is that my main protagonist is an outsider looking in. She chooses to be a woman. (Artificially intelligent machines are not organic and therefore have no gender.) She also chooses her own appearance, a scene that I am writing currently that I’ve labored over for the last month or so. The only experience I can relate to in designing a character from an outsider’s perspective is creating a character in a video game, an experience that is shallow and self-serving most of the time. My character will be doing what no one has done yet: embrace that identity permanently and decisively, while taking with her, the emotional and mental expectations of donning that persona. It makes me wonder if that is what a person undergoing sexual reassignment goes through. Honestly, my guess is limited by third hand knowledge.

I’m hoping though that the experiment bares good fruit. I want to continue to challenge myself as a writer. Expanding my written vocabulary and ability to describe gender are all on my list of things to grow in this year.  We’ll see what happens. There’s only 2 more left!

XOX