The self-confidence of a philosopher

I considered all the usual attractions for a lover and decided she was the one to bring to my bed, confident that I should have easy success; for at that time I had youth and exceptional good looks as well as my great reputation to recommend me, and feared no rebuff from any woman I might choose to honor with my love.

(Pierre Abelard: Autobiography)

That's the spirit!  Scholastic philosophers get all the chicks.

Although it must be noted that that what first attracted Heloise to Abelard was his considerable songwriting talent.  

And Abelard has claimed that, before meeting Heloise, he had had no experience of the company of women.

De profundis

Every time giant squids appear in the news I am reminded of an old science fiction short story by Murray Leinster titled De profundis (nothing to do with Oscar Wilde).

The narration is told in the first person, and it pretends to be a report composed by a member of a species of intelligent, telephatic squid-like creatures who live in the abyssal depths. The creatures have a peculiar cosmology: for them the Universe is a shell of solid rock, full of water that is repelled from the center by some kind of natural force. That, for them, explains the decrease in pressure as you ascend, and the fact that most objects tend to sink.

However, the existence of gasses (on which they depend for flotability) is in contradiction with the theory. They come to regard gasses as some kind of spiritual substance, their souls in fact. When they die, the gas ascends to the center of the Universe, where the existence of an hypotetical Great Bubble is postulated.

As is to be expected, the protagonist has to undergo a trip to the surface, to find strange things like emerged landmasses and the Sun. The fact that the surface has quasi-religious significance in his cosmology only adds to the tales's charm.

Although the inclusion of telepathy cheapens it little (as it tends to happen whenever  that gimmick is used in science fiction), this is one of the best stories told from the point of view of the alien. Another great example is Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death by James Triptee, Jr.

Competitive Sports and Moral Theory

Dr. North put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "You can trust me. I'm not like those kids that beat you up, that morning."

Lemuel glanced up gratefully. "You know about that? I discovered the rules of their game were purely arbitrary. Therefore I naturally oriented myself to the basic reality of the situation, and when I came up at bat I hit the pitcher and the catcher over the head. Later I discovered that all human ethics and morals are exactly the same sort of --" He broke off, suddenly afraid. "Maybe I --" Dr. North sat down behind his desk and began shuffling the Rhine ESP deck. "Don't worry, Lem," he said softly. "Everything will be all right. I understand."

(Philip K. Dick: Null-O)

Vance and Lem

Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem is usually compared to the likes of Philip K. Dick, Borges, and Kafka, but I think some interesting similarities can be drawn with Jack Vance too. (Of course, Lem would have a pretty low opinion of Vance, as he had of most western science fiction. But let's ignore that.)

First and foremost, both Lem and Vance like to deal with failures of communication. In the case of Lem, those failures tend to be between different species: The planet Solaris and the scientists who study it, the natives of the planet Eden and the astronauts stranded there, the Quintans of Fiasco and the human contact mission. He uses them as methaphors for the Cold War, as a way tho show the limits of knowledge, and to critique anthropomorphism.

Vance depicts failed attempts at understanding between human cultures. The most extreme case is the conversation between Kergan Banbeck and the Weaponeer in The Dragon Masters, but there are a lot more examples strewn across Vance's body of work.

"I heard you distinctly," replied the Weaponeer. "Your words have no meaning, they are absurdities, paradoxes.

(Jack Vance: The Dragon Masters)

"Can you not understand me?" barked Kergan Banbeck in exasperation. He glanced at the sacerdote, an act of questionable decorum, then performed in a manner completely unconventional: "Sacerdote, how can I deal with this blockhead? He does not seem to hear me."

The sacerdote moved a step nearer, his face as bland and blank as before. Living by a doctrine which proscribed active or intentional interference in the affairs of other men, he could make to any question only a specific and limited answer. "He hears you, but there is no meeting of ideas between you. His thought-structure is derived from that of his masters. It is incommensurable with yours. As to how you must deal with him, I cannot say." [..] The sacerdote reflected. "He speaks not nonsense, but rather a language you fail to understand. You can make him understand your language by erasing all knowledge and training from his mind, and replacing it with patterns of your own."

(ibid.)

There are few aliens in Vance's stories: humans are more than weird enough. Not to be able to understand an alien mentality is unsettling; not to be able to do the same with a human one is even more so. For Vance, like for Max Weber, human societies are "suspended in webs of meaning they themselves have spun". But the configuration of those webs can diverge radically, even if their outer strands are attached to the same physical universe and a common human nature.

Vance and Lem are both satirists. In the case of the former it's a little difficult to see because of all the pulpy adventure, but it's there. Many passages from the Dying Earth books are reminiscent of Lem's Star Diaries, with their bizarre societies and strange cosmovisions. Both authors have penned roughly comparable satires of bureaucracy (Dodkin's Job and Memoirs Found in a Bathtub). Both authors have made fun of academic culture (compare the beginning of The Futurological Congress with the conclave of xenologists in Night Lamp).

Another similarity is that they share an uncanny ability to coin new words that sound just about right. Take for example the creative insults used by the robots to denigrate humankind in the eleventh voyage of the Star Diaries, or the ones directed at people who violate the societal norms of the utopia described in Vance's Wyst.

The apartments were originally intended to house male or female couples, or mated couples, but the philosophy was denounced as "sexivationist", and apartment assignments are now made at random, though often persons will trade about.

(Jack Vance: Wyst)

"Port Mar is hardly notable for sophistication; the Rhunes, however, consider Port Mar a most worldly place, characterized by shameless alimentation, slackness, laxity and a kind of bestial lasciviousness to which they apply the term 'sebalism'.

(Jack Vance: Marune)

Rearding female characters, neither Vance nor Lem posssess any remarkable skill at depicting them. Gustave Flaubert they are not.

Finally, Vance is no stranger to the Borgean delights of fictional erudite books and the reviews thereof. He did a little of that in the Demon Princes novels, which feature extracts form the work of a pompous philosopher-sociologist, Baron Boddisey. Although Vance hasn't devoted an entire book to reviews of imaginary texts, like Lem did in A Perfect Vacuum.

Puns

Do you mean to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide--that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life--are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man's laughter, which is the end of the other. A pun is primâ facie an insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is written on the subject is deep raving. [...] A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

(Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table)

An English sea-captain being asked if he had read "The Exile of Erin," replied: "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it." Years afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply:

Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!

(Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary)

Classical halitosis

On one occasion when giving a speech, Hiero, a Greek ruler in ancient Sicily, was interrupted by complaints about his bad breath. This revelation of what must have been a chronic problem distressed him considerably, and on returning home he reproached his wife for not having told him of it. She indignantly justified herself by saying that she had thought that all adult males smelt as he did.

(Gavin Betts and and Alan Henry: Teach Yourself Ancient Greek)

¿Entre las líneas, o por el otro lado?

El revolucionario Tedoro exhortando a sus compañeros de cautiverio:

"¡No os rindáis! ¡No deis un paso atrás! ¡Comed la comida que os traigan, pero no hagáis ni una sola concesión más! ¡Son seres malvados! ¡Avergonzadles! ¡Desafiadles! La duda significa una brecha en la armadura; ¿queréis inclinaros para que luego os partan en dos? ¡No cedáis, no cejéis en vuestro empeño! ¡Si el que manda os da permiso para sentarse, quedaos de pie! ¡Si os da papel rayado para que escribáis, hacedlo entre las líneas!"

(Jack Vance: La máquina de matar)

Si os dan papel pautado, escribid por el otro lado.

(Juan Ramón Jiménez)

A door into Lafferty's mind

I found some pictures of R. A. Lafferty's studio door in this page.

every flat surface not covered by books was covered by collage, of which Ray himself was the creator. When he was moved to a nursing home after a stroke, all his stuff was cleared out of his house, I think so the house could be remodeled and sold. (The University of Tulsa was offered his papers, but shamefully, they don't seem too interested.) The writer and poet Warren Brown managed to save this door from the trash.

Lafferty writing at the center of his vast library, taking bits and pieces from classical antiquity, the christian tradition, and many other sources. Myths, words, etymologies, strange theories of History. Rearranging them in quirky new forms, sometimes difficult to interpret but always a delight to read. That collage is a fitting metaphor. If there's one science fiction author whose work merits annotated editions, that author is Lafferty. I would love to read a study about his use of classical and biblical allusions.

Return from the stars

The beginning of this novel by the late Stanislaw Lem is one of the better depictions of "future shock" ever put to paper. Really top-notch science fiction. The rest of the book, while still interesting, doesn't quite live up to the promise of that exceptional beginning. Nevertheless, the occasional flashbacks to an ill-fated space mission manage to convey extremely well the grandeur and awe of space, in a manner that brings to mind Kubrick's "2001".

Cielo e Infierno

Con el siglo VIII y, definitivamente, el siglo IX las violentas persecuciones religiosas instituidas por los confucianos, de las que también hemos hablado, quebraron la prosperidad de la orden [budista] en China, sin poder aniquilarla de forma total y permanente. [...] Los oponentes más decisivos fueron fueron lógicamente los literatos confucianos. Frente a sus tesis -que el deber y no el miedo y la esperanza de la recompensa y castigo transcendental deben ser la fuente de la virtud, que la devoción para obtener la remisión de los pecados no era expresión de la verdadera piedad, y que el nirvana idealiza la inactividad- los apologetas del budismo replicaron que que el confucianismo sólo mostraba consideración por el mundo actual o, a lo sumo, por la felicidad de los descendientes, pero no por el más allá futuro. Afirmaban, además, que el cielo y el infierno eran el único medio disciplinario efectivo de la virtud humana.

(Max Weber: Ensayos sobre sociología de la religión)

Asimov sobre Sócrates

En primer lugar, permítanme despachar a Sócrates, porque estoy harto y aburrido de esa afectación de que saber que no se sabe nada es un signo de sabiduría.

Nadie sabe nada. En cuestión de días, los bebés aprenden a reconocer a sus madres.

Por supuesto, Sócrates estaría de acuerdo y explicaría que él no se refiere al conocimiento de trivialidades. Se refiere a que hay que abordar las grandes abstracciones sobre las que discuten los seres humanos sin ideas preconcebidas y no contrastadas, y que esto es lo único que sabemos. (¡Qué afirmación más increíblemente arrogante!)

Al discutir temas tales como "¿Qué es la justicia?" o "¿Qué es la virtud?", su actitud era la del que no sabe nada y tiene que ser aleccionado por los demás. (Es la llamada "ironía socrática", ya que Sócrates sabía de sobra que él sabía mucho más que los pobres infelices en los que se cebaba.) Al fingir ignorancia, Sócrates conseguía que los demás expusieran sus puntos de vista sobre estos conceptos abstractos. Entonces planteaba una serie de preguntas, aparentemente propias de un ignorante, con las que conseguía que los otros se perdieran en un fárrago tal de contradicciones que acababan por echarse a llorar y por admitir que no sabían de qué estaban hablando.

El hecho de que los atenienses permitieran que este juego continuara durante décadas y que le aguantaran hasta los setenta años, momento en el cual le obligaron a beberse el veneno, nos da una idea de su maravillosa tolerancia.

(Isaac Asimov: El secreto del Universo)

¡Por el perro! Creo que Asimov tiene mucha razón.

Como también la tiene Matthew Stewart, hablando de los sofistas:

Pues bien, ¿a qué obedece el hecho de que, en las historias tradicionales de la filosofía, los sofistas aparezcan condenados al infierno o al olvido? Cierto es que las doctrinas asociadas a la sofística -el relativismo y el escepticismo- no han gozado entre los filósofos de la misma popularidad que sus contrarias. La mayoría de los filósofos han preferido las morales de inspiración divina y el conocimiento absoluto. Mientras que las calumnias de Platón se basan, ciertamente, en su propia fe de signo opuesto en absolutos divinos, esto no basta para explicar el sino de los sofistas, pues muchos otros filósofos aceptables han defendido las mismas doctrinas impopulares.

El problema, a mi juicio, tiene que ver más con la actitud de los sofistas hacia sus propias doctrinas. Hicieron de la filosofía un medio para un fin. Los filósofos siempre han reclamado que se considere la filosofía un fin en sí mismo. La filosofía, o la vida contemplativa, es felicidad. Es la vida buena, no unas cuantas lecciones que hayan de tomarse en consideración de camino a la vida buena. No ha de venderse en el mercado al lado de las frutas y verduras. [...] Y, sin embargo, los sofistas eran amantes del conocimiento. De hecho, en su desdén por las obtusas doctrinas metafísicas, los sofistas revelaron un sentido de la objetividad y la imparcialidad que debería haberles convertido en los auténticos representantes de la tradición.

(Matthew Stewart: La verdad sobre todo)

Mutilation as transhumanism

There are many science fiction stories about groups of people who voluntarily renounce some limb, organ, or mental faculty in order to achieve a state they consider more desirable than plain vanilla human. The novels of Greg Egan feature voluntary asexuals and autists. In Samuel R. Delany's Aye, and Gomorrah, astronauts are neutered to avoid the efects of space radiation on gametes. Parts of Michel Houllebeq's The Possibility of an Island take place in a future "utopia" where sexuality has been abolished (see also: Postgenderism).

In Bernard Wolfe's Limbo, amputations of limbs are a mark of status, the more the better. The zoanthropes in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun renounce their higher mental faculties to live a life of savagery. The scanners in Cordwainer Smith's story Scanners live in vain are humans whose sensory nerves are cut to allow them to undergo the rigors of space travel. They come to regard their status as noble and desirable, an resent an invention that makes their transformation obsolete. The cyborgs in David R. Bunch's Moderan constantly attempt to reduce their organic parts to the bare minimum.

One man's mutilation is another's enhancement. All of the above transformations could be considered varieties of transhumanism. At least, by the characters who wanted them.

Given that, in the simpler cases, the technology required is just a well sharpened knife, there are historical precedents to those fictional movements. The millenarian russian sect from the nineteenth century called the Skoptzy, for example:

As their title indicates, the main feature of the sect was sexual mutilation. This they called their "baptism of fire." Of this there were two kinds, the "lesser" and "greater seal" (i.e. partial and complete mutilation). In this the Skoptsi maintained that they were fulfilling Christ's counsel of perfection in Matthew xix. 12 and xviii. 8, 9. A terrible operation with similar purpose was sometimes performed on the women. The earliest records of such female genital mutilations date from 1815. Usually the breasts only were amputated, according to the 1911 encyclopedia. Other accounts suggest that the labia were also removed.

(Wikipedia entry for Skoptzy)

The most surprising fact about them is the kind of people who joined:

Nobles, military and naval officers, civil servants, priests and merchants were to be found in its ranks, and so rapidly did the numbers increase that 515 men and 240 women were transported to Siberia between 1847 and 1866 without seriously threatening its existence. In, 187? many trials of Skoptsi took place all over Russia. In 1874 the sect numbered at least 5444, including 1465 women. Of these 703 men and 100 women had mutilated themselves.

(ibid.)

More recently, many members of the Heaven's Gate cult also castrated themselves (science fiction, along with Christianity and New Age stuff, was an important part of their belief system). And then there is the lesbian couple who wanted their child to be deaf like them.

I suspect that, in time, mutilative practices will become central to transhumanism, either by religious reasons, group identity ones, or just plain ol' crazyness.

Bad Ronald

Bad Ronald es una película para televisión de los años setenta, basada en la novela homónima de Jack Vance.

Ronald Wilby es un adolescente inadaptado con cierto talento artístico y una imaginativa vida interior, que vive con su superprotectora madre divorciada. Tras matar accidentalmente a una chica que se burlaba de él, Ronald corre a su casa sin saber qué hacer. La madre, que no quiere separarse de Ronald bajo ningún concepto, propone un curioso plan: esconderle en una habitación secreta de la casa, y fingir ante la policía que se ha escapado.

El plan parece funcionar, pero Ronald, en su aislamiento, va perdiendo su ya de antemano tenue anclaje en el mundo real. Fantasea con un reino imaginario llamado Atranta, identificándose con su noble gobernante el príncipe Norbert. Poco a poco va llenando la paredes de su escondite con dibujos, plasmación de sus fantasías.

La situación se complica cuando la madre fallece durante una operación quirúrgica. Poco después la casa es vendida a una familia con tres hermosas hijas, con Ronald todavía dentro, ya completamente loco. Espía a la familia a través de agujeros en las paredes. Roba comida del frigorífico cuando no hay nadie mirando. Lee el diario de una de las hijas, y la toma por la princesa Vancetta, prometida del príncipe Norbert. Por la casa ronda un fantasma que no está muerto...

El personaje protagonista recuerda un poco al Norman Bates de Psicosis: vouyerismo, fijación con la madre... También a un personaje real: Henry Darger. Y alguna que otra semejanza tiene con Don Quijote de la Mancha: una fantasía hiperactiva, la tendencia asignar identidades imaginarias al objeto amoroso...

A primera vista, y sin haber leído la novela original (hoy prácticamente inencontrable), la historia parece estar un tanto alejada de las típicas de Vance, un autor que normalmente trabaja dentro de los géneros de ciencia ficción y fantasía. Sin embargo, su marca es clara: muchos personajes vanceanos (sobre todo los antagonistas) son estetas o artistas frustrados poseedores de una rica vida interior, llevada a veces hasta extremos casi solipsistas. El Howard Alan Treesong de El Libro de los Sueños es una especie de Ronald Wilby cienciaficcionístico.

¿Con qué propósito escribiría Vance esta historia? Además de para ganarse el pan, claro. ¿Es acaso Bad Ronald una sátira de sus propios lectores? Posiblemente:

... I detest the field [science fiction]. I don't like the people in it. Not the writers, but the fans. The young fans and some of their adolescent attitudes of going to conventions in funny clothes and being Star Trek-ians and getting all these strange societies up. I think I don't want to be associated with those people.

De hecho, esta humilde, efectiva, y sumamente disfrutable película resulta profética en su retrato del friki inadaptado, sexualmente inelegible, que se retrae del mundo real para refugiarse en la fantasía. ¿Cuantos Ronald Wilby habrá escondidos físicamente en sus habitaciones, y escondidos mentalmente en una galaxia muy lejana, la Tierra Media, o en un videojuego? Los japoneses incluso tienen una palabra para este fenómeno: Hikikomori.

Sin embargo, sospecho que la historia es también, hasta cierto punto, autobiográfica. Vance ha mencionado en entrevistas que de niño era bastante introvertido, a la vez que un lector ávido y omnívoro. El peligro de perderse en un mundo de fantasía no le debió ser extraño. Gene Wolfe afirma que su novela Paz, protagonizada por un asesino, es "más autobiográfica de lo que la gente cree". ¿Podría suceder lo mismo con Bad Ronald?

Fragmentos de la película pueden verse aquí, aquí, y aquí. ¡Gracias, YouTube!

Calculators

What a satire, by the way, is that machine [Babagge's] on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; that turns out results like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of them!

I have an immense respect for a man of talents plus "the mathematics." But the calculating power alone should seem to be the least human of qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and better than any one of them. Sometimes I have been troubled that I had not a deeper intuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has consoled me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels clicking in a calculator's brain. The power of dealing with numbers is a kind of "detached lever" arrangement, which may be put into a mighty poor watch. I suppose it is about as common as the power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a moderately rare endowment.

(Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table)

Caracoles

Cuando camino de vuelta a casa bordeando el parque y acaba de llover, me encuentro con caracoles que han abandonado el césped y se adentran en la acera. Muchos han sido pisoteados por algún viandante previo; las conchas rotas permanecen como recordatorio de sus infaustas expediciones.

El caso es que semejante escabechina me parece completamente innecesaria. A veces incluso siento la tentación de coger a los caracoles que me voy encontrando, y volverlos a echar al césped. Después de todo, ¿qué se les ha perdido en la acera? Están mucho mejor entre la hierba húmeda, creo yo.

Sin embargo, ciertas dudas detienen mi misión salvadora. ¿Es realmente inútil para los caracoles el pasearse la acera? No sé, a lo mejor el pavimento contiene alguna substancia que necesitan y no se encuentra en la tierra del parque. En ese caso, mis buenas intenciones resultarían contraproducentes.

Esta mortandad de moluscos, ¿no creará una presión evolutiva que conduzca al desarrollo de un instinto para evitar la acera? ¿Cuántas generaciones de caracoles deben morir aplastadas hasta que surja una variedad sensata, sin impulsos suicidas? La evolución darwiniana es un dios ciego y cruel que sólo otorga sus dones a cambio de incontables muertes y sufrimientos. Debería ser declarada ilegal, o al menos políticamente incorrecta. Como escribió un tipo, de cuyo nombre no me acuerdo, que fue citado por Dawkins en El Gen Egoísta: "Nature, red in tooth and claw".

En Ciudad de Clifford D. Simak los perros, que han heredado el mundo tras la desaparición del hombre, han sido condicionados para ser vegetarianos. Esta delirantemente utópica imagen de la crueldad natural domeñada es lo que más recuerdo de la novela. Supongo que tiene inspiración bíblica, en pasajes como "el lobo y el cordero serán apacentados juntos, y el león comerá paja como el buey".

En fin... como siga así terminaré convirtiéndome al jainismo.

Clerics don't use swords

I had always thought that the weapon restrictions for the cleric class in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game were completely arbitrary, but apparently they have some historical justification. Take for example Odo, Bishop of Bayeux:

Mounted on a white horse, and wearing over a white albe a coat of mail, "wide in the body, but with tight sleeves," he rode wherever the battle raged most fiercely, and, wielding a baston, charged with his knights wherever aid was needed, and did signal service that day. (Roman de Rou)

In the Bayeux Tapestry he is depicted in accordance with the above description. Both he and the Duke are armed with "bastons," which are nothing less than formidable rugged clubs, and over the head of the bishop are the words, "Hic Odo Eps baculum tenens confortat pueros," illustrating a critical period of the battle when the varlets who had the care of the harness took fright and began to abandon it. Odo, "the good priest," as Wace calls him, observed the disorder, and galloping up, exclaimed, "Stand fast! stand fast! move not a foot! Fear nothing, for please God we shall conquer yet!" very probably enforcing his exhortation with the "argumentum baculinum," of which he was so powerful a master.

As far as the bishop is concerned we may believe that his fighting with a bludgeon in lieu of a sword or a lance was in evasion of the edict of the council of Rheims, A.D. 1049, prohibiting the bearing of arms by the clergy; but the war-club was a not unusual weapon at that period, and seems to have been the precursor of the iron mace of the Middle Ages.

No mention of his character level or choice of spells, however.

Dawkins? Or Vance?

Here is a little passage from a book:

It is true that there are quite a number of ways of making a living - flying, swimming, swinging through the trees, and so on. But, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive. You may throw cells together at random, over and over again for a billion years, and not once will you get a conglomeration that flies or swims or burrows or runs, or does anything, even badly, that could remotely be construed as working to keep itself alive.

And here is another passage, from a different book:

Consider the class of all possible objects, the number of which is naturally very large: infinite indeed, unless we impose an upper limit of mass and certain other physical qualifications. Thus imposing and so qualifying, we find that still only an infinitesimal fraction of this class of objects can be considered life-forms... Before we have even started the investigation we have exercised a very stringent selection of objects which by their very definition will show basic similarities.

One of the passages cited above comes from Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker. The other comes from Jack Vance's The Star King, a very entertaining science fiction novel written in the sixties. Which is which?

Underground Weber

Max Weber began his studies of rationalization in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he shows how the aims of certain Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted towards rational means of economic gain as a way of dealing with their anxiety about whether they had been saved. The rational consequences of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with its religious roots, and so the latter were eventually discarded. Weber continues his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classifications of authority. In these works he alludes to an inevitable move towards rationalization.

...

Weber described the eventual effects of rationalization in his Economy and Society as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in an "iron cage" (or "steel-hard casing") of rule-based, rational control.

(Wikipedia entry on Rationalization)

Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me. You, for instance, want to cure men of their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and good sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also that it is DESIRABLE to reform man in that way? And what leads you to the conclusion that man's inclinations NEED reforming? In short, how do you know that such a reformation will be a benefit to man? And to go to the root of the matter, why are you so positively convinced that not to act against his real normal interests guaranteed by the conclusions of reason and arithmetic is certainly always advantageous for man and must always be a law for mankind? So far, you know, this is only your supposition. It may be the law of logic, but not the law of humanity. You think, gentlemen, perhaps that I am mad? Allow me to defend myself. I agree that man is pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering--that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, WHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD. But the reason why he wants sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is PREDESTINED to make the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the "direct" practical man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road almost always does lead SOMEWHERE, and that the destination it leads to is less important than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to save the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all the vices. Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of LES ANIMAUX DOMESTIQUES--such as the ants, the sheep, and so on. Now the ants have quite a different taste. They have a marvellous edifice of that pattern which endures for ever--the ant-heap.

...

Though I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.

(Dostoyevsky: Notes from the Underground)

Dostoyevsky, science fiction writer

He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned, because every one proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further.

(Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment)

That comes from the preachy, dull epilogue of "Crime and Punishment". The protagonist has a vision while imprisoned in Siberia, just before his unconvincing conversion and redemption.

Actually, that part of the novel would be improved by inverting the scenario: making the dream real (the crime of the protagonist being the first outbreak of the memetic plague) and the conversion episode just a consoling hallucination, a cheap fantasy of Raskolnikov to evade himself from the apocalyptic wasteland mired in a total war of everybody against everybody else.

Many of the better parts of Dostoyevsky's novels are the ones bordering on the fantastic, anyway. The "Grand Inquisitor" and the conversation with the Devil in "Brothers Karamazov", for example. Or when Father Zossima describes hell:

Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves, cursing God and life. They live upon their vindictive pride like a starving man in the desert sucking blood out of his own body. But they are never satisfied, and they refuse forgiveness, they curse God Who calls them. They cannot behold the living God without hatred, and they cry out that the God of life should be annihilated, that God should destroy Himself and His own creation. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath for ever and yearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death....

(Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov)

Maybe I have read too much science fiction.

Testamento de un bibliófilo medieval

Testamento ético, para ser exactos.

Avoid bad society, make thy books thy companions, let thy book-cases and shelves be thy gardens and pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If thy soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will thy desire renew itself, and thy soul be satisfied with delight.

Claro que a veces los herederos no están por la labor:

I have honored your by providing an extensive library for your use, and have thus relieved your of the necessity to borrow books. Most students must bustle about to seek books, often without finding them. But you, thanks be to God, lend and borrow not. many books, indeed, you own two or three copies. I have besides made for your books on all sciences, hoping that your hand might find them all as a nest. [The father probably compiled reference books for the use of the son.]

Seeing that your Creator had graced your with a wise and understanding heart, I journeyed to the ends of the earth and fetched for your a teacher in secular sciences. I minded neither the expense nor the danger of the ways. Untold evil might have befallen me and your on those travels, had not the Lord been with us!

But you, my son! did deceive my hopes. You did not choose to employ your abilities, hiding yourself from all your books, not caring to know them or even their titles. Had you seen your own books in the hand of others, you would not have recognized them; had you needed one of them, you would not have known whether it was with your or not, without asking me; you did not even consult the catalogue of your library....

Sacado de aquí y aquí.

First Post

The aftermath was a period of depression, during which Gersen spent long mornings and afternoons on the Avente Esplanade, gazing out over the Thaumaturge Ocean.

(Jack Vance: The Killing Machine)