Friday, February 11, 2011

There are a surprising number of avowed Marxists and Socialists in Science Fiction writing. Presumably, since they couldn't make their ideologies work in the real world, they figure they can make it work in the imaginary world instead. Science Fiction has attracted a lot of Libertarians for exactly the same reason.
Fantasy writer Michael Moorcock has described the novel the Lord of the Rings as effluence. But if the Lord of the Rings is effluence then surely Michael Moorcock's work is diarrhoea of the most liquid kind. It poured out at a prodigious rate and it was pretty thin stuff.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

"I used to be amused by Utopians. With life experience, I have grown to fear them. The great failing of Utopians is that they can never accept that someone else might not want to be a part of their Utopian vision. Like ill-mannered tourists, they assume that if you don't agree with them, it must be because they're not explaining it simply enough, or often enough, or loudly enough, or ultimately, because you're stupid.
Utopians always think achieving Utopia is simply a matter of education—and then re-education—and then coercion, legislation, litigation medication conditioning threats book-burnings eugenics surgical modifications hunting down the counter-revolutionaries killing the reactionaries genetic engineering—and ultimately all Utopians, no matter how nobly they begin, always end up at the same conclusion: that the only thing that keeps Man from building a secular heaven here on Earth is the nature of Man, therefore we must build a New and Better Man."
Bruce Bethke, Final Afterthoughts

Monday, February 7, 2011

It is said that modern technology like the Internet has the capacity to bring the people of this world closer together, just as it was claimed during the Industrial Revolution that canals and trains would bring people closer together by breaking down the barriers of distance, and therefore of estrangement. Mass distributed technology however does not make the masses more humanist, more reasonable or more cooperative - it simply amplifies what is already there, and that includes the animal and the base, as well as the noble. Mass technology and mass society brings humans out into sharp relief, and it is an image that will increasingly overload the senses with a combination of admiration and revulsion.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

"It is the sneering contempt in which white working class people who have socially conservative views and attitudes are treated by the great liberal commentariat. Their preferences in culture, sport, clothes, places to go on holday, celebrities, and a hundred other things are regarded with such unbridled contempt as to have practically begged for a reaction.
How often over the past say 30 years have you seen a TV interview with a group of 'inarticulate' local people who are not thrilled at the idea that their neighbourhood is now peopled by those from a distant land whose language they do not understand and a smug, self righteous, smooth faced reporter showing us all how nasty these pathetic little people are?
I have and worked in countries all over the world and there is practically none other where the liberal bougeoisie has a greater sense of alienation from their fellow citizens who have to wear blue overalls at their workplace."
Guardian comment by Chesire Salt

Friday, February 4, 2011

"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints."
Burke commenting on the French Revolution.

Thursday, February 3, 2011