re:considering

Some books are well nigh impossible to review. Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is one of them. My reason for this feeling is this is so very obviously the first of the three books in the Mars Trilogy – the stage setting, the laying of the foundation for more to come…

As such it is a good one, I think.

In many ways this is Big Ideas fiction, and I’m an avid fan of every book that makes me think. The grandness of the scale is impressive, a multi-decade storyline involving a lot of people, both as individuals and as pieces in a jigsaw too big for them to fathom. The main characters are mostly scientists, with little idea of how they and their side taking affects the world or how they and their ideas will come back at them, with a political twist.

The way the story plays out is plausible, if depressing, but I am eager to get to know how this social, economic and political experiment will develop.

On the down side this is very clearly about people and systems of people – normally known as “societies” and their close kin “political systems” and “economic system” – and not about individuals. Sure, we follow certain characters, but in a distanced third person, and only for a short while – the story is told from multiple perspectives, and these perspectives shifts every now and then. These characters are there to illustrate different viewpoints and different ideas about who to tackle a situation, and sometimes this is too obvious.

Sometimes the text feels like an embellished piece of non fiction, veritable info dumps that gets no less info dumpish by being real science.

Finally, the text is somewhat dated. It plays out in a reality where the US and Russia were still THE dominant actors. This, honestly, doesn’t bother me much. Politics is politics, just like economics is economics – the name tags are not as important as the actual system, and the basic premise that he stipulates is not that far fetched.

All in all it works quite well and at the moment I’m staring at the door waiting for the next instalment – Green Mars – to be delivered; the SF bookshop was out of stock, so I had to order it from another source. (I do favour brick’n'mortar bookshops, I want them to stay in business, so I try to use those I particularly fancy. No luck this time, though.)

I should say that this is not a book to read as distraction. It needs a focussed mind to work, as evidenced by the fact that I had to put it down for a while – since my previous post here I’ve had planned tonsillectomy, followed by high levels of pain and its mitigator (codeine based painkillers, yuk /but that’s another story/) and what felt like a fried brain. During that time – almost two weeks – I either didn’t read at all, or did feel-good rereads.

I’m very glad that I picked Red Mars up again, as it ultimately was a rewarding read.

What is language? And how came it to be what it is? Language is so central to us as as human beings that most of us never even stop to wonder how it came to be that way. True, linguists works hard to dismantle language, to isolate the parts and to put labels on those parts, working away like physicists trying to find the smallest possible building blocks of the known universe and beyond. But the question of how language came to be have largely been left untouched, largely because spoken language do not leave archaeological finds as a physical track so whatever theory have been issued it have been founded largely on guesswork and wishful thinking.

In The Talking Ape linguist and anthropologist Robbins Burling tries not to dismantle language but to look at language and in a bid to understand how it evolved. He piece by piece pick apart prevailing ideas about the origins of language, scrutinizing them for contents and useful bits and then present the idea that language, while the common theory has been we evolved it because it gave us an upper hand in doing things like hunting, is that it has facilitated social interaction and that social interaction, planning and learning is what has set us apart form other animals.
The topic touches at a lot of sensitive and uncharted areas, like that of consciousness, and Burling is careful to underline that what he poses is a hypothesis, nothing more, but at the same time at least I think at the core looking at language and ask “why did it evolve, why did people who had language win the race for prevalence” is a sound method.

While me makes a good case against creationist linguistics (we woke up one morning and behold, there was language in our heads!) I do think he misses the impact culture and economics has had on humans and therefore on our language. Yes, we need language to sustain a city-dwelling society, but why came cities to be? The author is an anthropologist, and as such refers to his own field studies in agrarian communities. Based on is own observations and present knowledge of how human civilisation has evolved his theories are valid, but they fall somewhat short when he lacks them means to validate them against a city culture. Not that they would not hold together (a double negation! what a sacrilege!) but with the holistic take he has chosen this lack shows clearly.

Never the less I think this book is very much worth the effort and I recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.

The book has also been reviewed on the blog Popular Science.

This is my third read of A Song for Arbonne, and this third time, despite knowing what will happen, it hits me just as hard as it did the first time – maybe even more. Despite this I didn’t have it in queue for a reread – there are so many other books to read, out there – hadn’t it been for it being chosen as the next group read at the Green Dragon, the Librarything pub.

As usual with Kay a number intertwined themes are present throughout the book – most prominently themes of loyalty and trust, and of the destructive powers of a monocultural society. The backdrop is a early medieval type of world, with feudal nations or nation states, each small enough to be travelled on horse in a couple of days, and in a precarious balance of powers. We follow Blaise, who first seems to be a mercenary just like any other – the younger son of some noble family, not in line of inheritance and thus not particularly needed – as he after long travels ends up in legendary Arbonne. Coming from the patriarchal Gorhaut he is prejudiced against “women-ruled” Arbonne but as he comes to know both the men and women ruling the river valley he slowly beings to understand and appreciate, if not love, a culture that could not had thrived elsewhere. Had it not been for his background, slowly revealed throughout the tale, this could had been enough. But he soon finds himself embroiled in the kind of politics that define both nations, cultures, and their vessels – the people ruling.

Kay paints an elaborate and believable world were people’s powers and strengths have their limits, in a feudal society were the produce of the land is what ultimately sustains the economy, were even the powerful has draughty windows and cold stone floor, and were death is as omnipresent as life.

Personally I don’t much like the ending. It is a sad one, in more ways than one, even if the characters themselves seems to accept it as a good one. Still, a very good read, and a rewarding one.

I’ve made several tries at starting this post, the first as far back as 12 March. Why has it been so hard? If I question myself I think the most probable answer is “the scope”. Some people reads the five-book series as a space opera adventure. Others reads it as a treatise on gender. Yet others as a discussion on culture and politics. And to me it’s all of these.

At the most visible layer the books tells the tale of one Pyanfar Chanur (with the last book having a different perspective and protagonist). A trader travelling between space stations bringing wealth to her down-planet clan she get caught up in interspecies politics, quite by accident, and her life takes a hard turn.

Pyanfar is female. So are all other hani in space; hani being her species. In hani society the women runs the show for the feeble-minded and rash males, of which only a few survives to maturity. Males are viewed as unreliable, ruled as they are by their feelings rather than their minds.

Other species we encounter are the mahendo’sat, a primate (I imagine them as a wee bit more human-proportioned gibbons because if I start thinking of them as baboons or any other of the ‘great’ apes I’d die laughing), who like humans travels space male and female alike; the stsho, with three genders and ability to change gender throughout life; the kif, who seems almost exclusively male, but who know? They are almost reptile, or at the very least rodent-like; and then the methane-breathers – the knn, the t’ca and the chi, with only the t’ca able to communicate with the oxygen-breathers, and then only via complex multi-tiered matrices.

There’s also some stray humans, most notably Tully whose escape from a kif ship is what get Pyanfar entangled in the conflict in the first place. But we don’t get the story as seen by humans – rather humans are the most alien species of all, in this setting.

Against this backdrop it is possible to discuss almost any topic there is concerning culture, politics, societies… and that is exactly what’s going on, if you want to look further than the action.

Some people might be put off by the ‘cats in space’ theme put forward by the cover art but I really do recommend these books.

The Chanur series consists of the books The Pride of Chanur, Chanur’s Venture, The Kif strikes back, Chanur’s Homecoming, and Chanur’s Legacy. The first and the last could be viewed as standalones, while the three in the middle is one story split over three volumes.

Away from cyberspace we mark our identities with clothes, hairstyle, shoes; showing (or NOT!) off ourselves to others by visual cues, shaping our outward representations; our public selves.

Not everyone do this in a conscious way. A lot of people don’t even understand they are wearing the equivalent of uniforms, just as others are very much aware that they are in the business of making personal and sometimes political statements.

These visual cues support the individuals within a society in their need for organising their surroundings – which people to feel linked to, which people NOT to feel linked to. Who to listen to and who to dismiss.

This leads to a very prejudiced way of sorting people and their opinions. But, as the proverb goes – “prejudice is the foundation on which society rests”. We need short cuts, or the brain goes down from overload.

So, even while the internet was originally hailed for providing an environment where people were NOT judged based on gender, colour or clothing style we are now witnessing a plethora of ways to differentiate the self from the anonymous collective.

So, at places like Facebook people join groups not to be active parties in a community but to tell others their preferences – a kind of personal tags. And we blog and bedeck ourselves in profile pictures seldom picturing ourselves but rather picked for their subtexts and metaphorical meanings.

I’ve read, in a text not available on-line so I can’t link to it (Reload – rethinking women and cyberculture), that in internet communities where people were free to take on other identities than their own the identity most commonly used is ‘white caucasian male’. Because whatever the social construct those are the people other people listen to without being biased.

So. We need to tell the world where we want to belong, and when what we are don’t coincide with what we need to be to be taken seriously we lend an identity the shape of with fits our needs.

In the on-line world or in the flesh and blood world judging the correctness of those projected images is equally difficult.

But it’s fascinating to see how humans always find a way to satisfy those basic needs. Like announcing identity.

One of the interesting aspects of reading texts that deal with human history is what these texts tells us about our own time (or the time when they were originally written). Currently I’m reading Gender in the Early Medieval World. It consists of a number of essays written during the early 2000’s by different scholars, and they cover different aspects and themes.

The ‘world’ means, in this context, Europe proper and the Middle East. As the term ‘medieval’ generally is applied to the nations and cultures that succeeded the Roman empire this is an accurate term but to me the ‘world’ is rather larger than that, so that I think the editors show their Eurocentric world view.

Our present values also show through in the implicitly – maybe even unconsciously – made judgements on gender roles during the times discussed. Not that I disagree. But a value judgement is a value judgement, no more no less, and just as we perceive times past our time will in turn be looked down upon – there are no moral absolutes, just as there is no fixed path to civilisation, or an apex of said.

So, halfway through the book I feel like I’m watching a meta-philosophical argument trying to repair damages done by previous generations; putting salve and plasters on an academic agenda which has previously excluded the impact of the hidden society – e.g. those not male and politically and economically empowered – on the evolving cultures, societies and nations.

This willingness to see history as something more than an enumeration of years and important kings, masters and wars is interesting. When this approach was discussed in the 1970’s it was perceived as a Marxist agenda, and thus suspect. Or – this is at least what I remember from my years in compulsory school (from ages 7-15, at the time).

Just let’s hope that academia in general is ready for a more, let’s say, holistic approach to their topics. It is certainly long overdue.
If they manage academia might at last be of some relevance to the civil society.
(Not that this is what some of them remotely wants, but that is a whole another discussion.)

Today I received an image in the mail. It was sent by a female colleague and I know she meant no harm but personally I thought it a bit over the top.

Not that it was offending, in any way. It was a nominally harmless joke – the text “An international symbol for marriage has now been agreed upon”, attached to an airport sign style icon showing a dominating female at whose feet a subservient male kneels while offering the woman his credit card.

I can think of countless ways this symbol, with it’s byline, should be hilariously funny. So why don’t think that is the case?

My reasoning goes like this –

I think this a very common stereotype used between men. It’s a way for a man to joke at his own expense, to play down the emotional aspects of his relationship with his wife. Despite the fact that we look down our long noses on societies were marriage is not a matter of love but of economics and politics we on a societal and cultural level have inherent difficulties with admitting to being in some way ruled by feelings and emotions – we, as rational beings expect of ourselves to behave in entirely logical ways.

Also men, at least in the cultures and societies I have encountered, are supposed at the very least to be independent of women. But a relationship is a co-dependency. This adds to the need to play down the importance of the relationship.

I can understand this need to downplay. Very few are strong or single-minded enough to recognise or withstand these behavioural imperatives. What I don’t have much acceptance for is women who are complicit in enforcing their own subservience.

In this category I count women who complain endlessly how their men don’t help with washing the dishes or cleaning up the house but then deny them the right to help by complaining on how the go about these tasks.

I am known to laugh at gender stereotypes. Some of them work to defuse situations we by no means have the tools or means to handle or change. Others are too close to observed truth, within a given culture, not to be funny.

This particular image, though, paints a picture were the male has to submit to the dominatrix, to give her all his money or perish (in this it also plays on religious imagery but I’m not going into that aspect).
It paints a picture of the shopaholic wife, and so either endorses a consumer lifestyle or shows women as slaves to shopping. Whichever of these two the woman can be interpreted as a mindless animal rather than a representative of Homo Sapiens. She is a slave to her impulses, and her impulses is enslaving the male.

It also paints a picture that justifies men having a higher income, even if they are in the same business and have the same skill levels and experiences as women. You know – “it’s all right, the money will end up in the woman’s purse anyway”.

Contrary to these interpretations it could also be read as showing how it is the woman who have to handle all the purchases of a household. On the surface this seems a more benign interpretation – she is able and responsible! – but in reality it means the male escapes responsibilities by placing them on the female, who then have to carry a burden which should rightfully be shared between the involved.

Whichever way seeing the image did not make me laugh. I only felt very VERY disturbed. It’s closely related to the logic used to justify the delimitation of women’s rights as humans just because males are so brain dead they can’t control themselves if they sees some female skin.

Demeaning to men and women alike.

It follows that GAAAHHH!!! is the only rational reaction I can muster.

Over a period of time I’ve had an on-line and offhanded talk with some colleagues. The talk have been a bit rambling but have touched on matters of interpretation of truth and how the social and cultural belongings of a person or group of people colours that interpretation.

I think it can fairly well be said that I don’t think there are any specific eternal truths to be found, anywhere. The idea of Truth with a capital T have nevertheless been, and still is, an idea both strong and potent in the minds of humankind. The impact it have had on our history is undeniably big.

The list of thinkers that have elaborated on the concept is as long as history is old. What is it that makes truth such a tasty, even addictive, concept for some people? And what makes a lie?

And, as one of my colleagues so aptly stated – what is the difference between an interpretation that unbeknownst to the interpreter differs from the original, and conscious misinterpretation? He raised this topic while thinking of the US Bill of Rights, but it’s an interesting issue in a wider perspective as well, mainly because it relates to the way we look at a wide variety of topics. Like, we hail the the ancient Greeks for their giving us the concept of democracy, and a lot of people seems to think what they meant with it was just what we mean. Is it? In some countries, certainly, because it excludes all women, and all men that aren’t above a certain income level. Then, democracy means that only rich males are allowed to participate in the decision-making.
To me, of course, this is not democracy. To me the word implies that power is given to the people. (This means there exist no democratic countries, as of today). I, then, is a conscious misinterpreter of the concept ‘democracy’, as I widen it to include all people. But it could be argued that the Greeks thought it included all people too, they just didn’t think women or the less well situated to be ‘people’.

This is not an academic discussion. Throughout the history people with the power to assert their (skewed) interpretation of a ruling or guiding document to be true have used this to their personal benefit, often to justify organised harassment and torture of groups of people. Going back to the US Bill of Rights mentioned earlier it’s now certain that the US as a nation views some people as more equal than others, whatever it says in that document. And as it at the time is was written did NOT include people not classified as ‘people’ it could be argued that this is in line with the original idea. Even if the idea originated in 1776, and even if it could be argued that rather a lot of water have flowed beneath the bridge since.

This is just one example. There are examples spread throughout the world. That I happened upon this one was because my colleague mentioned it – a coincidence, not a judgement.

So, maybe it’s not the concept of truth that should interest us, but how we treat each other; how we perceive and judge each other.

So, no, there’s no truth to be found. Not out there, not in here. Mainly because truth is not the important thing – being true is.

The statement is a contradiction, in itself, but I stand by it.

Visiting Italy is both a ascent into the heavens of civilization and a descent into the antithesis of everything that makes sense in human society. British journalist and author Tobias Jones is, in The Dark Heart of Italy, trying to make sense of this pungent contradiction. He tries to explain the business climate, and the way businessmen and politicians and historical prejudice and conflict and culture are entangled in a web more complex than a 300-page book can do justice.

The sad thing about this book is that nothing in it felt new or revealing.
The good thing is that, despite the dark issues he tackles, his love for Italy shine through. This makes this book something else than the hit-and-run journalism it risks being. Because despite Italy being a nation where cunning is hailed as virtue, and where political violence is never that far away (and where TV programming is abysmally disgusting), it is also a nation of taste and style, and of big beauty.

Anyone who consider reading this book should make sure they get the revised edition, with the extra added postscript. Five years can make a big difference, and sometimes it’s good to hear the author reflect on his own writings. This is such a time.

And yes, I liked the book.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years or four. Civilization in space consists of hundreds of thousands of space born humans, scattered about at space stations and space ships – stationers and spacers. But these stationers and spacers are only subsets in a larger cultural rift – that between a basic market economy, however tightly controlled by the big movers, in the form of the Merchanter Alliance and that of the radically positivist culture of Union, formed by dissident and renegade scientists.

In most of the books set in the Alliance-Union Universe Union are depicted as elitist and conformistic. We learn that they breed genetically and psychologically engineered humans, born in birthlabs. We learn that they program people so that some become free humans and some of them become what we would call slaves, or at least servants.
And we learn that they are all the same, and evil.
Much like the how the western world viewed the Soviet union, in fact.

For a long time the book Cyteen was the only one to give us a glimpse behind the scenes in Union, and while most of us felt revulsion at the basic premise of this society we were none the less shown that there lived people of all sorts, and with a wide range of ideas and opinions. We also gets to understand that this lesser breed of humans – azi, in the language of this universe – is, YES, basically humans, too.
The back story is one of power play, politics, and a murder, but the premise is this rational and positivist culture driven and ruled by scientists and the true theme is the exploration of what a rational mind can do, under the ‘right’ circumstances.

Since the end of December 2008/beginning of January 2009 this story is continued in Regenesis. It takes up the threads left dangling back in the late 80’s, when the first story was published, and continues to reveal new takes on the old issues while at the same time elaborating on the ideas of social and psychological engineering.

I think one of Cherryh’s greater strengths as an author (obviously not counting her abilities at words and pacing) is her ability to discuss difficult issues while at the same time creating believable characters – to show how big scale politics affects the reality of the individual, through the eyes of the individual. This way we get to see that Enemy is just a label and that yes, They is just like Us – just trying to survive, making the best of their situation with what means they have.

This should not be controversial. But in this time it might well be a very lonely voice in a choir screaming hate, at the top of their lungs.