Market Theocracy

Not for very long, anyway.

Hope all is well in the lives and adventures of my cybersiblings. Hugs and best wishes to you all.

Spent a few months doing pretty much nothing. Just…thinking. Not in any organized way, or anything. It was more like an alcohol and THC fueled free associative mental orgy. Of course I figured nothing out other than the fact that I really don’t want to sit around doing nothing for the rest of my life. And that I have to stop letting myself be used by people that I just imagine give a damn about me.

That’s a start I guess.

Recently, on a certain internet forum, I engaged in an argument (I won’t even bother calling it a ‘debate’ or a ‘discussion’) over the eternally touchy subject of abortion.

Or, as I prefer to call it, baby murder.

You see, this is not a subject of debate for me, no more than the subjects of rape, torture or theft is subject to debate. I have read literally millions of words on this issue and my mind is made up. Monochrome. If/then and for/next in unalterable sequence.

Abortion is murder. Abortionists are murderers. The women who have abortions (and the ‘men’ who encourage them to do so) are not fit to live in a civilized society. They are not worth my good will, my attention or my association.

I have standards.

Before I lay out my reasoning, I’d like to make a few things crystal clear:

1)I am an anarchist. The only government I recognize as legitimate is self-government. The only law I consider just is autolexic: the law that individuals make and enforce themselves. I neither support, need or desire government law making abortion illegal, no more than I need imposed laws against other forms of murder, rape or theft. History and contemporary life shows that such laws are not only ineffective, they act as a wedge for the power mongers to solidify control and act against true human freedom.

2) I do not encourage or condone violence against abortion clinics, abortionists or those failed human beings so lost that they can overcome a million years of bone deep human instinct and murder their children, just as I do not wander around avenging other murders or rapes or robberies. I simply refuse to associate with such scum. I would not piss on them if they were on fire, give them a drink if they were dying of thirst, or offer a molded crust of bread if they were starving. I’d watch them die with casual disinterest and sleep soundly that night.

Civilization is created by the choices, actions and interactions of individual human beings. It is not a system or any form of imposed order, just the sum total of individuals making moral decisions.

Pro-Choice? Sure. You chose to have sex. You chose not to use any of the vast array of birth control options. You chose to destroy a human life out of convenience or laziness or whatever idiotic justification you’ve cobbled together to convince yourself that you aren’t a piece of filth.

And I choose to send your baby murdering ass to coventry.

3) I have heard every argument in support of the ‘right’ to murder babies. I have also seen every one of those arguments shredded by men and women far more intelligent and eloquent that myself. Spare me your clumsy attempts, please. As i said: my mind is made up. This is not an invitation to debate. This is simply a statement about how I think and feel.

I hope I’ve made myself clear. Now I will explain why I think and feel this way.

I believe that the human race is special.

I believe in that intangible aspect that, for lack of a better word, I will call a ’soul.’

And I believe that the human race has a destiny. That we are destined to conquer this universe and turn it to productive use.

Please note that I did not say ‘immortal soul’. our souls may very well be no more than a firefly flicker against the scale of cosmic time. That makes each one even more special — unique and unrepeatable. Sudden awareness in this cold and bleak and hard world. Creative intelligence peering at the web of nature and trying to figure it out. Thinking, feeling minds shaping tools to shape matter to their own ends and uses. Creating beauty, spreading joy.

How many great symphonies and novels have we lost to the abortionists? How many medical breakthroughs and paradigm shattering inventions? How many geniuses have we flushed away?

You may think me inconsitent for claiming the unique worth of every baby yet admitting that I’d let abortionists and those who have abortions die. Not so. The difference is basic: innocence and potential. Just as the concept of prior restraint is evil, so is the idea that a human soul can be judged before it takes any intentional action.

Perhaps you don’t believe in a soul, and I’m not here to convince you otherwise. But I have a suggestion:

Listen to Bach and Vivaldi, please. Look at the works of Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Read the words of Shakespeare and Sandburg. When conceived, no one knew what these souls might accomplish. Would the world be better or worse without them? How about Newton? Pasteur? Einstein?

Even simpler, hold a baby as you watch a sunrise. Study the wonder in those innocent eyes. Let it touch a butterfly and feel a cool breeze on a hot day. You’ll see a soul there. You’ll feel a soul, like a vast magnetic pulsation, communicating with a mysterious universe.

If all that leaves you cold and unmoved, don’t worry. I don’t hate you.

I just feel deeply sorry for you.

The human race is special.
The human race has a destiny.
And we need every chaos born soul, every strong back, every clever mind and hard earned drop of wisdom to achieve it. We need every unique soul conceived to build our bridge to glory.

Pro-Choice? Oh, yes.

Responsibility or hedonism?
Civilization or savagery?
A culture of life or a cult of death?
Universe conquerers or just another ignorant, scratching beast?

Choose.

For all intents and purposes, I am back — with stories to tell.

I’ve been working on a long essay about my three month adventure on the raggedy edge, but have been having trouble wrapping the damn thing up. I wanted to re-start the blog with a bang, but I miss posting daily enough that I’ll have to be satisfied with a rousing Pop!

In the next few days I plan on posting the aforementioned essay, a prequel to Tessellation called Broke Circle, and another long essay on primitivism vs. progressionism that owes a debt of inspiration to William Gillis of the superb blog Human Iterations (linked handily on the sidebar there!) I’ll also be plugging my book Symbols Flow currently on sale.

Along with that will be my usual meandering thoughts on thisn’that, news both bad and good, book and movie reviews and all matter of other unseemly foofaral.

Glad to be back.

Hope you’re glad to see me.

-G.

Expect sparse posts for a little while, folks. I’m pretty consumed with the process of moving. Consider the story situation ‘on hold’. Bill — you might want to remove the sticky from the top of ETWOF for now. Sorry, man — but I promise to get back to it ASAP.

I’ll keep you all updated on my trip. When I get to K-Port I’ll be non-stop job hunting. I’ll be staying at The Salvation Army for the first month unless I luck out and get a killer job straight out of the gate. The SA might be near enough to a WiFi spot to let me get online, but I doubt I’m that lucky.

Until I get a place/connection of my own I’ll keep in touch by getting my morning coffee at Mickey D’s.

Anyway — very excited and a little nervous. Mostly excited though. Here I com, road. I’ve missed ya.

This is probably my favorite month, for entirely weather related and aesthetic reasons. I like the nice cold nights (just pulling out my quilt is a happy day for me) and the pleasantly warm-to comfortably cool days.

I also like the look of foliage when it’s getting ready for winter. Not the oft-admired ‘changing colors’ so much as the actual look of the skeleton trees. Very cool.

Still packing, cleaning and doing the other hundred and one things necessary to move. It’s a good thing I’m travelling light. A heavy trip would drive me insane.

Will try to have some writing up tomorrow. Hope all is well amongst the readerfolk.

Spent the day packing, cleaning and otherwise preparing for my move on Oct. 8th. As today was the day I officially bought my ticket, I figured it was symbolically a good day to get this shit over with.

The bulk of the work was actually transferring everything from my desktop computer to my laptop, then formatting the desktop. My dad is going to use it as the base for his ‘new’ system: a dual core thingy with some fancy-schmancy video card. Eh. As long as a computer will log onto the internet, run my freeware word processors and has enough ass to play Neverwinter Nights and Fate, I’m happy. It must also be able to run a Super Nintendo emulator as that’s where I get most of my entertainment from these days. That and Spider Solitaire, which I am strangely addicted to.

But Dad is bopping around like a kid on Xmas eve, talking about the cool new toys he’ll be ordering and how kickass his system will be when it’s all ready to go. My Dad does need power: he’s a game junkie who simply has to play the newest and best.

Whatever makes you happy, says I. And I’ll take melodramatic Japanese RPG’s with hilarious dialouge and big headed characters any day.

Having some ‘net difficulties folks. Hope to have them sorted out by tomorrow. Bear with me.

Odd but productive day of writing today. In keeping with my thoughts on direction that I posted yesterday, I managed to knock out about 6k words on three seperate stories — two rough drafts and half of another. I don’t know if this is merely enthusiasm for trying something new or evidence that I may have at last found my niche. What is obvious is that framing the stories in the way I talked about has allowed me to proceed on a long blocked story and actually do something with a couple of ideas that have been floating around in my brain for years.

What’s even more exciting is that all three stories have a good chance of appealing to the current SF/Fantasy market.

And, if I do say so myself, are pretty cool.

I’ll talk a bit more about the stories themselves tomorrow. I’m gonna go write some more.

Had a bunch of company show up out of the blue today, which means I didn’t get to polish Part 3 of Coyote. I’ll try to get it posted by tomorrow night.

I’ve been doing some thinking about writing lately. I’m conciously attempting to avoid all mytho-folklore tropes in the fantasy work I’m doing now. This is beastly, bitchily hard considering that the very structure of storytelling is bound up with those tropes.

It can be done, though. LeGuin’s mid 70’s and early 80’s short work, Jeff Ford’s entire career. Jeff VanderMeer, Hal Duncan and Steph Swainston also labor in this particular garden.

My…hmm, direction may be the best term…at the moment is a sort of focused use of the unexplained as both a reflection of and map through various human conditions, which are then distilled through the individual characteristics of normalized characters. The responses of everyday folk faced with ‘reality unmasked; naked and with no excuse’ to quote a work-in-progress (Meeting The Last Man On Earth, For Coffee: A Raincheck) functions as a form of hyperactive allegory. The metaphor rests not in the description, but in the interpretation of events and facts that fit no previous dataset.

Why? Because, to be honest, I’m bored with reading about vampires, werewolves, ghosts, elves, fairies and the like. The idea of writing about them holds even less appeal since it’s so much more work.

Another reason is the simple fact that a framework like the above is far more amenable to inserting my pro-individualism ideals on a subconcious level. The idea that the universe is a funhouse mirror construct that requires subjective interpretation makes a case for individualism in a basic, brass tacks sense. Objectivism and the like then becomes a mindset (or toolset) to strive for rather than the ultimate truth of existence.

Or, as I said to a guy on a debate forum years ago, I have no idea if there are objective truths to life or not, but I see no reason in not behaving as if there were. You have to ground your actions in some form of value. I choose to ground mine in a respect for life, compassion for others, preference for beauty and a goal for finding joy in the days that I have been alloted.