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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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A less interesting way, though, is to assert that they are the antagonist because they are a Bad Person, and they do harmful things because that is what Bad People do. This is especially pernicious when the author clearly believes that Bad People really exist in significant numbers, and is building their story as an extended sermon on why you should hate them in real life. This attitude does not, generally speaking, help us to sharpen our moral instincts, but to deaden them. Reflexive moral certainty is not the apex of the soul, but arguably its nadir.

I think the above is pretty general. Where it gets specific is that Progressive media doing the above is absurdly widespread and prominent, to the point that it is probably inescapable. I don't remember much that I read in the old days that worked this way, as straight-up advocacy for bigotry. That really does seem to be a... novel innovation.

Diana Moon Glampers, steelwoman extraordinaire, would like a word. As would Emperor Jagang and his group of nihilistic-rapist-socialists who literally hate life and beauty. The infantile POTUS in powers of the earth as well, whose name escapes me.

I think you're conflating two issues, which I suppose I did in OP as well. Not every book on that list is like Iron Widow. Octavia Butler and NK Jemisin have both written fantastic books that I've enjoyed; Parable of the Sower in particular is amusingly pro-2A and nevertheless popular. But it still begs the question of why the slate has been dominated by women unless the people running the Hugos would argue that women are innately better at writing scifi, or if it's some form of restorative justice, just how long they want to keep it up.

The second issue is that some books are indeed political dumpster fires. But as I said, I'm not convinced that progressives have a monopoly on publishing trashy media.

As for the Hugos themselves, the problem you're pointing to was identified years ago, and people of good conscience tried to do something about it. They were crushed, leaving the field to bad-faith actors of both tribes. Actions have consequences.

It's hard to imagine Vox Day as a person of good conscience, although I sympathized with the sad puppies. I'm not sure I would trust any of the groups to recommend me books at this point, which is surprising given how consistently good the awards were from the 1960s all the way through the early 2010s.

The infantile POTUS in powers of the earth as well, whose name escapes me.

"Themba Johnson" (and her understudy, "Linda Haig"), because for whatever the merits of MorlockP's writing might be, subtly isn't one of them. Although 'infantile' probably isn't the right measure for her: the character's point is that she's much smarter than she seems, she just applies that to political ends rather than technical ones. Note that whenever she makes a numeric 'mistake', it's in ways that make much better sound bites than the truth. (I think this is meant to directly contrast with some of the spacer leadership: Javier makes a few similar mistakes, usually related to identifying people or places of origin; that the differences don't matter in physical senses but do show relatively lacking social skills is a theme.)

Although agreed she's more a Clinton expy than any sort of steelman. For sympathetic grounder characters in Powers, you'd probably be better-served by Restivo (who's an 'honorable' soldier, if compromised by his loyalty to his commander), or Matthew. For sympathetic women, there's a pretty wide variety of spacer ladies (and a couple sympathetic young women).

Even as a Clinton expy, she's not exactly evil for evil's sake. The UN and US (correctly!) sees spacers as huge physical threats, in addition to acting as a combination of brain drain and tax shelter, not to mention the unlocked AI that's been using half of the moon as a playpen. These are just drastically different values from those of the spacers, and of most readers.

But it still begs the question of why the slate has been dominated by women unless the people running the Hugos would argue that women are innately better at writing scifi, or if it's some form of restorative justice, just how long they want to keep it up.

There's a "the top-5% women are better than top-% men, whether from socialization or other cause, at sort of the coalition management the voting system runs on". Which I don't think is particularly palatable for Hugos, but it's not the most damning indictment.

But it still begs the question of why the slate has been dominated by women unless the people running the Hugos would argue that women are innately better at writing scifi, or if it's some form of restorative justice, just how long they want to keep it up.

I am a little confused by this sentence. Who do you mean by "the people running the Hugos?" As far as I'm aware the Hugos have always been a popularity contest. Nominees and winners decided by a vote of members of the World Science Fiction Convention. Would you accept a symmetrical argument? That years where men dominated the slate must have been due to the voters judgement that men were better at writing science fiction?

There's a fair amount of evidence that the vote is gamed, has been for some time, and that the people gaming it have shifted heavily toward gaming it for ideological reasons rather than raw nepotism or enforcements of personal aesthetic taste.

Your symmetrical argument is, I think, wrong on the merits, but I'd agree that any critique consisting of "these awards are being assessed poorly" should identify examples of what should have won as a reality check.

Diana Moon Glampers, steelwoman extraordinaire, would like a word.

Glampers makes the world a worse place because she has made a mistake: she values equality over human flourishing to an unreasonable degree. I confess I didn't get far enough into Goodkind to learn much about Emperor Jagang, but from what I did read I'd say his empire made the mistake of accepting immediate, concrete evil in pursuit of nebulous, far-off good; they burn down the flawed present in pursuit of a false dream of a better future, a lesson I think you'd agree remains timely. No idea about powers of the earth, I've never heard of it before.

Both of these examples are reductive; in the case of Glampers, this is because she is from a parable so short that nuance is counterproductive; the whole point of the piece is that equality is not, in fact, a valid terminal goal, that "more equality" can actually be a bad thing in at least one case. In the case of Goodkind's books, the reductiveness is in fact a detriment to the story as a whole. Neither are even close to as reductive as "Men want us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds." Nor to the other examples you provided. That is just straight-up bigotry.

The second issue is that some books are indeed political dumpster fires. But as I said, I'm not convinced that progressives have a monopoly on publishing trashy media.

To a first approximation, monopolies don't exist. I don't think you can actually find examples of the same general combination of notability and reductiveness/bigotry from anything other than progressivism. Quotes like that aimed at women surely exist somewhere, but none of us will ever hear about it because such writing is marginalized quite thoroughly. Meanwhile, this is a Hugo winner.

But it still begs the question of why the slate has been dominated by women unless the people running the Hugos would argue that women are innately better at writing scifi, or if it's some form of restorative justice, just how long they want to keep it up.

I'd say that they aren't selecting for objective quality, but for some combination of author identity, ideological fervor, and nepotism. I don't think they're ever really going to stop. Why would they?

It's hard to imagine Vox Day as a person of good conscience, although I sympathized with the sad puppies.

Yeah, the former was who I had in mind with "bad-faith actors of both tribes." From where I sit, it seems clear to me that the reasonable people left for greener pastures long ago.

Harrison Bergeron is a short story, which is expected to have sketchier characterization than a novel. But also, Diana Moon Glampers wasn't a Bad Person who did Bad Things because that's what Bad People do; she was merely the head enforcer for the government. We don't really know how she got her position or anything like that, but she did Bad Things because that was her job.

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