And the Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

About three quarters of the way through one of my notebooks is a reminder that "science fiction and philosophy would be a good blog post". I remembered to write this without it.


I am completely and unrepentantly partisan in favor or genre fiction. A friend asked me the other day why genre fiction gets such a bad rap in literary circles and as I launched into an answering diatribe it occurred to me that I am not precisely balanced on the subject. And I am alright with that. There are enough people out there fighting for the sanctity of "realist prose", and enough of them still occupy positions of power in various prestigious universities that I am able to feel as though I am still supporting the underdog in my defense of genre. Granted we are seeing more and more "sci-fi and fantasy" courses in English departments and I even know - oh frabjous day -  an instructor at the Naval Academy who was teaching a course on modern graphic novels (these are really long comic books like Watchmen and Persepolis for those of you who are not quite as immersed in geek culture).

Nevertheless, the wizened guardians of the literary canon are still debating The Lord of the Rings and Asimov's Foundation series. Let them bicker, history is on our side (well, mine anyway). But just in case it isn't; or in case I haven't made enough grumpy retorts to a nebulous literati, let me explain why and how I think that science fiction is the most philosophical of all genres (including realistic fiction).


Philosophers are huge fans of hypotheticals. Generally there is some attempt to make a hypothetical sound more impressive or intellectually worthy by calling it a "thought experiment" - this might also help with funding humanities departments - but ultimately the game is to imagine an unreal situation with it's own sets of rules for the purpose of playing out a theory to see how it might work in the absence of real world complications. And I think that this is a wonderful thing; hypotheticals give us all the opportunity to test something without having to worry about irrelevant details. A while ago I mentioned an ethical dilemma involving a train and several groups of people. The point is to imagine a situation in which someone's morality comes to the fore in a clear way. It does not matter that the situation is incredibly improbable, what matters is that it is a test case for at least two different ethical systems.


In science fiction, the author gets to do the same thing. What better way to explore philosophical anthropology than to imagine a world in which artificial intelligence is on a par with or even surpasses our own (Aasimov's Robot books)? If you want to expound a pre-modern cosmology in a way that modern thinkers will be able to understand how could you improve on a contemporary professor being shanghaied into a trip to mars (C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet)? Is there a more effective laboratory for investigation into the implications of a  perfect signifier-signified relationship than a novel wherein the enemy alien's doomsday device is an entirely accurate language (Samuel R. Delaney's Babel 17)? And how could there be a more thorough thought experiment into the cosmological implications if Plato's theory of the forms and their impact on multi-verse theory than a book about intellectual monks under attack from a world more distantly emanated the good (Neal  Stephenson's Anathem)? I could go on; and on and on and on.

 

Science fiction gives a writer the ability to imagine the specific set of circumstances which would most clearly demonstrate their own innate philosophies and world views. Of course when that is all they use the novel for (in fact when anyone uses a novel for much of anything other than as a medium for good story), they tend not to write very good books. But what if the author is a philosopher? What if they are writing not in order to preach a philosophy but to tell the excellent stories their philosophies inevitably produce? Some authors certainly are mere preachers - though sometimes they preach well - and some are tremendous story tellers and not very good philosophers (I would but Heinlein into this category). But some authors are genuinely both. Philosophers with a knack for recognizing a good story and the skill and craft to tell it well. It is probably going too far to call them philosopher poets but that would point in the right direction. That is why I find science fiction so intriguing, beguiling, thrilling and ecstatic.

Also laser guns, robots, space ships and aliens.

What do you Mean by That?

  I have been thinking a good bit about jargon recently. As with so many other things I categorize jargon as neither intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. It is just a thing. Certainly it can be used poorly and it can be used well. My thought for this post is to make some overly broad generalizations about when jargon is helpful and when it can be harmful.

  The really great thing about jargon is that it saves time. Generally, jargon shows up as a way of expressing some relatively complex, recurring thought or statement into a single word or short phrase. In order to be jargon and not just new vocabulary, this has to happen in a somewhat specialized context. If I coined a new word to talk about some aspect of grocery shopping it wouldn't be called jargon; it would just be a new word since everyone goes grocery shopping. On the other hand, if I came up with a term for some arcane literary process, and it managed to catch on in the field of literary critisizm, then that would be a bit of jargon. This is why jargon can be so great. Instead of having to give this long, technical definition or proposition, I can use this one piece of jargon and everyone who is familiar with the concept will immediately know what I am talking about.

  Everyone who is familiar with the concept.

  And herein lies the problem. Too often, we use jargon when our audience is not at all familiar with the concepts it represents. So instead of helping communicate the jargon is a hindrance. This downside is obvious and we see it all the time. Teachers and professors do it, and Christians are terrible about it; but really anyone with any technical expertise can get us with it. Contractors and car people do it all the time too. Of course, depending on the audience's pride, they are generally not going to ask for an explanation because they are embarrassed for not knowing the terms before hand. (Any of you guys out there ever nod sagely when your mechanic tells you that the pifflethwattle is shot and if you don't bananafringe your tintbannder the whole gutrude may have to be replaced?).

  And that leads to the second danger of jargon: jargon can be used to deliberately obfuscate something. I generally suspect that mechanics do this to me counting on my pride to let them charge me for stuff I don't know anything about. But maybe I am just to suspicious. Either way, jargon can certainly be used as a tool to gain an edge of power over a situation or another person.

  But what strikes me as the most dangerous effect of jargon is the way it can obfuscate meaning to the person  who uses it without their ever realizing that they have no idea what they are talking about. If I have any expertise it is in two areas: Christianity and Philosophy. In both of these areas I am forever catching others and myself using terms that we ourselves aren't entirely clear on. Generally these will be terms that we have heard often enough that we understand how they ought to be used but which we have never really investigated. Think about it; do you know what it means to say "I claim the blood of Christ" or "this is a question in Meta-ethics which is linked to the concept of goodness qua positive being"? You tintinnabar needs some real bananfringing.

  I think that this is the worst way that jargon can go bad because it allows for self-delusion. If you are accidentally using language you audience doesn't understand, it is unfortunate but correctable. If you are deliberately obfuscating something, that is a problem but at least you know what you are doing. But when jargon goes wrong in this third way, you might say something completely accurate without having the least idea what the truth is. Students who do this, get A's on tests without being educated and tragically don't even know that they are ignorant. Philosophers who do it miss out on the wisdom they are seeking and, because they used the jargon correctly, they don't know where they went wrong. Christians who do it are probably in the worst shape. They have no idea what they are talking about but they think that their phrase is their answer.

  Let me challenge you to try something I do every so often. Stop using jargon for a while, try a week. Don't use any word unless you actually know what it means and are pretty sure that a middle school student could understand it. Don't ask God for "grace and peace" ask Him for what you want. Find out whether or not you know what you are talking about when you claim that "sanctification is a work of faith". Do you think you could explain the egocentric dilemma to a ten year old? Let me know how it goes.

A Nasty Eleven-Letter-Word

I was talking with a couple of friends this weekend and someone dropped the word "empowerment". Which got me thinking. It's not really a word I am particularly fond of but I hadn't taken the time to work through the reasons for my dislike. So here is what I came up with.

We usually hear the word "empowerment" in one of two contexts. Either someone is talking about one social group (race, gender, orientation, political party, religion etc...) needing to be empowered by society. Or someone is talking about a specific individual "finding empowerment". Of these two usages I prefer the second one but overall I think the word ought to be dropped from the language entirely. Before I go into the two usages though, let me talk about the word itself.

"Empowerment" is a noun, I suppose. It's a sort of action that is objectifiable. But it is also intrinsically passive. One receives empowerment, if you get power for yourself you have not "been empowered" you have simply "gotten power". Of course there are a few pop-psychology books which talk about self-empowerment, but even there, a single entity is acting as both the subject and object of the phrase; thus when I engage in self-empowerment, I receive power I got for myself. So "empowerment" is not a word which can (or at least ought to) be used in the context of one increasing their own power, it is a passive word. 
 
In the first usage (empowering a social group) I don't think the word can be used without contradicting the intentions of the person using it. Specifically, if I said that some group needs to be empowered that can only be because they currently lack power. It is possible that I would make the claim in a sort of off handed way claiming that some group or other really ought to have power, but that is unusual. Usually when the word gets used someone is talking more about taking power from another group (usually a majority of some sort) and giving it to another group. A sort of redistribution of power. Which is condescending. Really condescending. If I were to walk up to you and say "You know what you need? You need power, so lets take some from that guy over there and get it for you." You cannot really talk about empowering anyone without suggesting that a) they don't have enough power and b) they can't get it for themselves; someone else has to get it for them.
 
Not only is that insultingly condescending in a social context but it lacks a certain amount of historical viability. At the present I can't think of a single social group which currently has power which they did not either inherit, get from God, or get for themselves. People just don't do third party swaps on power.
 
In the second usage (empowering an individual) I have less of an issue with the use of the word but only because people almost never mean what it actually means when they use it. Properly understood, the phrase "You need empowerment." means something like "You don't have enough power, and you can't get it yourself so you need to find someone to get it for you". But in actual usage it generally just means "you need more power." Which may or may not be true in a given situation, but either way it is a case of misusing the language and potentially conveying an assumed superiority.
 
Of course there are times when it is quite appropriate to talk of empowering someone. Deputies are empowered, they don't have police power, they can't get it for themselves, it has to be given to them. Children are occasionally empowered by their parents who quite properly have more natural power (moral, physical and legal) and can, on occasion lend or give it to them. And God is omnipotent. So ultimately all power in existence is a result of divine empowerment, quite properly so.
 
The problem is when groups of naturally equal power (especially legal or moral power) start to talk about empowering one another. When this happens the relationship between the groups must be artificial and strained from the outset. One is the group with the power and however they feel about that (guilty, proud, justified, unjustified) they will see themselves as different both in capacity and quality from the other group (remember "empowerment" only happens when the receiver can't get the power for themselves).
 
Or am I wrong about this? These are just my reflections on why I dislike the word so much (my other thought was that I don't like it simply because power is almost always the wrong thing to focus on in any relationship) they may be way off base. Please let me know either way.