A Firm Foundation of The Unknown

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Serdar’s recent blog post on the importance of skepticism and “not being sure” struck a chord in me. We need skepticism, yet we don’t leverage it and work against it – until our lack of skepticism creates a disaster. As he notes

“There ought to be room for the development of a whole sub-discipline of public relations that uses what we know about behavior on a mass scale to constructively leverage doubt. We have thus far used fear and greed and delusion, but we’re not stupid; we can use compassion and generosity and insight if we choose to.”

Later, he wonders if this can be explored in fiction. I have, to an extent, and had an insight I wanted to share.

My Avenoth novels take place in a techno-fantasy world that survived a devastating war. In turn, this setting was based on an unused science fiction novel I had in mind, looking at how we might survive and prosper after our many challenges. I learned a lot in theorizing the latter and creating the former, even if the themes aren’t always apparent.

(Perhaps making them more subtle means they affect people more . . .)

In the current Avenoth setting, the population is well-educated, aware of the past – and taught to be skeptical. Society is a complex dance of unions, churches, professional organizations, neighborhoods, governments, grounding people in oft-harsh reality. It is a society deliberately remade to ensure it can survive – and skepticism is part of it.

Contemplating that society taught me several things about the hope for a society where skepticism is valued:

  • Society that values strong ties, truth, and skepticism is easy to visualize. We know we want it – it seems we don’t want to work on it.
  • Society has to confront and deal with unsurety to have functional skepticism. Too many people sell the drug of certainty to those who want it.
  • A society that wants functional skepticism has to ask for it deliberately. It must be valued.
  • Many people know how much bullshit they believe. They don’t want to admit it.
  • A skeptical society must be skeptical of the past. Too often want the past to bless us with approval, meaning we see it with distorted vision.

Ironically, the Avenoth series, which started as a kind of fantasy/sf deconstruction, took me in this direction. It was educational, even if it wasn’t the exact point of the stories when I started.

I’d like to think that humanity can learn without a massive disaster. I fear it may be too late considering COVID-19, climate change, and economic problems. What we can’t avoid, may we learn from.

At least writing this series, I can see how it’s possible to learn. That is one of the virtues of fiction, but I do wish I could find more, as Serdar does.

Steven Savage

Spare Me The Sudden Experts

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When the US pulled out of Afghanistan, I was surprised. I was used to us being there, and “leaving” was something always discussed in the future. It came fast.

The news kept coming fast. The Taliban on the move, the invasion of Kabul. Everything was so rapid.

What was even more rapid was watching so many people suddenly become experts on Afghanistan. Social media lit up with opinions and advice and critique and so on. Plenty of people were happy to provide great wisdom that, for some reason, they’d never shared before.

It was the same as everything else I’ve seen online and in the news for years. Plenty of very confident people holding forth sudden opinions on complex subjects. Of course, most of them had political agendas, even if they didn’t know it. Even an opinion I might agree with stoked suspicion.

Sadness oozed through me like hot tar. Twenty years in Afghanistan and it took a day or two for it to become the territory of Reply Guys, Keyboard Warriors, and annoying pundits. The all-devouring news cycle closed in, and the opportunists pounced on fresh meat.

Spare me these sudden experts.

I watched the same kind of people opine on Benghazi and COVID-19, Biden’s electability and the safety of going maskless at school. There are legions of people, for pay and for free, who will pontificate about anything for no good reason.

Our culture has no place for ignorance. For admitting you don’t know. For humility and re-focusing. It’s all about the immediate satisfaction of acting like you’re right. It’s all about a high, engagement numbers, and whatever agenda.

These experts are meaningless. Scrambling, hollow things trying to feed a voraciously empty ego. No plans, no goals, just the next buzz and sometimes a political agenda disconnected from their moralistic posturing.

Of course, I know where this goes – I feel I can hold forth on this due to observation. The American attention span is short. People won’t want to go back. Afghanistan is going to be a discussion, then a buzzword, then a footnote. Also we have COVID-19 to deal with.

The Sudden Experts will just find something else.

Steve’s Update 8/15/2021

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Whew, another busy week. Beyond the usual, COVID-19 got several people I know, which has been stressful. I’m now backing off of some social plans during the Delta spike.

Giveaways:

A School of Many Futures: The grammar check and final edit is past the halfway point and finishes the coming week. Then it’s on to assembling the document. As noted earlier, the ebook release moved to mid-September and the final print release probably up to mid-October.

Agile Books: “Agile Writer’s Mindset,” my next Agile book, will pick up once I get through everything else – so probably October/November.

The Way With Worlds series: Expect “Man Made Disasters” in November as always. Not much has changed on the new covers, those will start when things are more quiet (maybe I should do one or two for practice.)

The Seventh Sanctum rewrite: Didn’t get as much done as I wanted, but I did figure out the proper launch methods. Now I need to figure the best way to deploy python in this setup, then its back to generators. Sadly this tends to take a hit when other things build up, and I have to stop that.

Steven Savage