Me as me, by request
Feb. 29th, 2016 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Paul asked, so here I am.
I've been reading the Long Earth series, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I'd been putting it off, because, you know, this is the last of the scumble, but you can't do that indefinitely. I'm on the third volume, and there's a lot to like here (two Doctor Who references in one chapter, followed brazenly by a mention of the programme just in case we missed the namedrops) and I'm enjoying it...
...but I'm really getting tired of That Character.
You'd know her if I named her. She's an extreme example of a type of character that's becoming more and more prevalent in stories, or so it seems to me. They're hard. It's their defining characteristic. They think, or rather they know, because they're far too sure of themselves ever to just think anything, that being hard and cold is the right way to be, and they look on the rest of us with barely-concealed contempt. They have all the answers to all the important questions, and if they don't happen to have an answer then the question obviously isn't important. They have no capacity for emotional perception or expression and call it "intelligence." They are studiedly offensive to people around them and call it "honesty." And they can always be recognised in a crowd, because the author is behind them jumping up and down and waving a placard saying S/HE'S RIGHT YOU KNOW. That's the most annoying part, really; that the story is invariably stacked in these characters' favour. They are never wrong, never embarrassed, never taken down the several pegs they so richly deserve.
And in the Long Earth series, people like that (there are several, and they're all the same) are the next stage in human evolution. I wasn't aware that arrogance and egocentrism were survival traits, though perhaps in our society we have made them appear to be so.
This character has a clear line of descent from, e.g., Heinlein's Grumpy Old Genius types, who also sounded much the same from one book to the next, but Heinlein managed to make his mouthpieces tolerable and even sometimes endearing. I don't know which half of Praxter was responsible for the ones in Long Earth, though I have my suspicions, but I am hoping (though not very much) that in the final book they will be shown up as the immature, self-deluded posers they truly are.
The next stage in human evolution will be human. It will have all the passions and desires, hopes and dreams, that humans have now, though maybe more highly developed. It will not be infallible, and if it makes fewer mistakes than we do it will not be because it has cut out half of its nature and thrown it away. And it will have empathy, because that is the greatest part of what makes us human, and it is only when we knowingly discard empathy that we become less than human.
In other news, I'm still here, and I owe heartfelt thanks to a lot of people who have helped me. I hope they will forgive my dilatoriness in rendering such thanks.
How are things with you?
I've been reading the Long Earth series, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I'd been putting it off, because, you know, this is the last of the scumble, but you can't do that indefinitely. I'm on the third volume, and there's a lot to like here (two Doctor Who references in one chapter, followed brazenly by a mention of the programme just in case we missed the namedrops) and I'm enjoying it...
...but I'm really getting tired of That Character.
You'd know her if I named her. She's an extreme example of a type of character that's becoming more and more prevalent in stories, or so it seems to me. They're hard. It's their defining characteristic. They think, or rather they know, because they're far too sure of themselves ever to just think anything, that being hard and cold is the right way to be, and they look on the rest of us with barely-concealed contempt. They have all the answers to all the important questions, and if they don't happen to have an answer then the question obviously isn't important. They have no capacity for emotional perception or expression and call it "intelligence." They are studiedly offensive to people around them and call it "honesty." And they can always be recognised in a crowd, because the author is behind them jumping up and down and waving a placard saying S/HE'S RIGHT YOU KNOW. That's the most annoying part, really; that the story is invariably stacked in these characters' favour. They are never wrong, never embarrassed, never taken down the several pegs they so richly deserve.
And in the Long Earth series, people like that (there are several, and they're all the same) are the next stage in human evolution. I wasn't aware that arrogance and egocentrism were survival traits, though perhaps in our society we have made them appear to be so.
This character has a clear line of descent from, e.g., Heinlein's Grumpy Old Genius types, who also sounded much the same from one book to the next, but Heinlein managed to make his mouthpieces tolerable and even sometimes endearing. I don't know which half of Praxter was responsible for the ones in Long Earth, though I have my suspicions, but I am hoping (though not very much) that in the final book they will be shown up as the immature, self-deluded posers they truly are.
The next stage in human evolution will be human. It will have all the passions and desires, hopes and dreams, that humans have now, though maybe more highly developed. It will not be infallible, and if it makes fewer mistakes than we do it will not be because it has cut out half of its nature and thrown it away. And it will have empathy, because that is the greatest part of what makes us human, and it is only when we knowingly discard empathy that we become less than human.
In other news, I'm still here, and I owe heartfelt thanks to a lot of people who have helped me. I hope they will forgive my dilatoriness in rendering such thanks.
How are things with you?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-29 11:17 pm (UTC)Agreed wholeheartedly about empathy, and well said.
Also *waves* Delighted you're still here!
Things are nice with me (it sounds like a deadly word but it's a good way to describe the average of dealing with joyful side jobs and an obnoxious day job that pays the bills).
no subject
Date: 2016-02-29 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 08:14 am (UTC)I expect that in these books they will turn into godlike beings of ultimate enlightenment (by their own lights) and go off to create a new and much more efficiently run universe somewhere. One thing that even these authors cannot escape is that writing about such creatures successfully interacting with each other, without any leavening of actual humanity, would be BORING. Imagine an all-Vulcan Enterprise.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 08:49 am (UTC)The people you refer to - there woman isn't one of them, though she behaves a lot like them - strike me as suffering some sort of autism. But that may be just me. And autism is definitely not a likely path of evolution for our species.
Good to hear you are doing better, and I hope that the same is true for Janet - give her my regards, by the way, if she remembers me. We did meet, but I suspect I was too much in the background of her life for her to remember me.
Getting along is probably the best way to describe my current status. Currently trying to change my eating habits to lose weight - with mixed success (habits changing, weight not). Thanks for asking.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-02 12:47 am (UTC)No, she's not one of them, but she's definitely cut from the same cloth. She's just as sure that the human race is irredeemably stupid except for her. I've been watching the human race for a lot longer than she has, and I have come to no such conclusion.
I did wonder about autism, but I don't know enough about it to judge.
Sometimes getting along is the best we can hope for. *hugs*
no subject
Date: 2016-03-03 05:22 am (UTC)...And with regard to your follow-up point... Are you *sure*? =:o}
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 12:12 am (UTC)I'm doing well, other than achy from a snowboarding fall yesterday :)
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 07:23 am (UTC)Good to see you. And glad.
I'm okay. Living with the consequences of being me, as usual. So a bit mixed, but basically okay. And very grateful for my friends.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 07:27 am (UTC)I'm considering reading those books myself. We have the first, but it was a gift to Mr D, so by the time it was free, I'd moved on to other things.
One of the reasons why I like your stories so much is because That Character doesn't appear. There's an essential kindness to your fiction that I, at least, find utterly beguiling.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-02 03:54 pm (UTC)On the "How are things ... " front, relieved that you are back, and anxious, at a suitable moment, to discourse with you on the subject of Books and their Dissemination, and whether Lulu do library discounts.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-02 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-02 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-07 07:42 pm (UTC)