Category: rants

Walking After Midnight

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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When I was a teenager, I wanted to go hang out in the pool hall like the “bad boys” did. I wanted to learn to shoot pool – and I also wanted to just be in that kind of space – but it was made pretty clear that girls weren’t allowed.

I didn’t want to hang out in the pool hall because I was sexually attracted to bad boys. I wasn’t. It wasn’t sex I was after; it was the freedom to do something like hanging out and shooting pool.

(Learning some years later that my father was something of a pool shark and could have taught me to play well made this fantasy more poignant. I could have worked my way through school shooting pool instead of making pizzas and loading trucks.)

In the chapter “Walking After Midnight” in Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust,  she quotes Sylvia Plath writing in her journal at 19:

Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars — to be part of a scene, synonymous, listening, recording — all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstructed as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.

That sums up exactly how I felt. While I read Plath back in the day, I don’t remember stumbling across this observation or realizing that she, too, understood this need, but I suspect this explains some of the tragedy of her life.

We didn’t want a romance with the likes of Jack Kerouac. We wanted to have adventures like he had. Of course, those adventures were all like the boys’ clubs in the funnies – “no girls allowed,” except, of course, as sex objects. Continue reading “Walking After Midnight”…

Unintended Consequences, or How We Fail to Hear About Good Books

personby Gillian Polack
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Today I’m thinking about how we hear about writers. This is not only for general reading, but also for academic writing. The second, in this case, leads to the first.

One of the subjects academics ask me about or various bods want me to write about is Australian science fiction and fantasy. Until a few years ago I knew when any book was coming out and knew most of the writers and was exceptionally useful. Right now, I’m only useful on some subjects.

I can talk about writers until about 2015, and often write about writers before 1900. An article of mine on Tasma-of-the-many-names was just published in Aurealis, an Australian speculative fiction magazine. I can write about Jewish Australian writers and, in fact, do. I can also write (and do) about the links between Australian writing and the writing of other countries. Also, many books that incorporate history are still part of my terrain because, first and foremost, I’m an ethnohistorian.

Recently, I stopped writing about most contemporary Australian writers. Some I still know a bunch about, but for many I know only the names of their works. Given I have so much else to write about and don’t have the physical capacity to go chasing, I now avoid mentioning certain types of writers. I still consult, behind the scenes, when international scholars want to flesh out their knowledge, but I have to tell them that, “I know about this person and their work, but I don’t know where it belongs.” I no longer introduce Irish fans to the latest in Australian speculative fiction: we talk about other things.

Why did this change?

There are three reasons.

When I let the wider world know that I was not well, two groups of local writers dumped me from their social circles, almost instantly. This marches alongside with when my eyesight started failing and I was no longer permitted to be an award judge. It was apparently too difficult to give me lifts or to make sure that a dinner was reasonably COVID-safe or to find a type of text my eyes could read without making them worse.

These decisions by others makes it much harder for me to find out more about writing from Australia, and especially from Canberra and the Canberra region. Given how much the world of publishing is changing and how we hear about something is often somewhat random, this has significant consequences. If I can’t answer questions at an academic conference, very few of the scholars asking questions look further. They’re also overworked and under stress: this is not an easy decade for any of us.

I don’t hear about work now by these groups of writers or those who are close to them until after the work is published. I would have to put in extra work for each and every published book to find out that it has been published and if a book is in my scholarly ballpark. I have chronic fatigue, five books to finish, and I am no longer paid to write articles about groups of books. I miss being a pro-blogger and a literary magazine person, because they gave me paid time to chase things. My paid time is firmly Medieval right now, and does not include modern SFF unless I’m writing something for Aurealis.

Prior to my exclusion, chat told me what was going on and I could chase it and… I knew so much without much effort. My social circles, in fact, were what initially pushed me into writing about contemporary speculative fiction online and in magazines and giving papers at conferences. One of the symptoms of my illnesses is chronic fatigue: I will take that extra work, but only when I can. I’ve had this symptom since my 20s, but it’s only after I confessed to it that it changed what I knew by changing who would accept me in their social circles.

Only a very few non-Australian academics write about Australian speculative fiction. I know many of them. My refocus on subjects that are achievable without make me more ill affects how these writers are seen outside Canberra. It is not intentional discrimination on my part, but if I don’t have time or energy to chase up something new that touches on my areas of expertise I then write on subjects that are just as interesting to my readers, but that don’t push me beyond my capacity. Eustace the Monk is a case in point. I’ve now been asked by a number of people about Eustace, and used the same core research for each inquiry. This enables me to have a full life, despite the illness.

Second, when I was excluded from a particular science fiction convention, the writers who consulted with me there lost access to me. And me, I was no longer in a position to hear about their work while they were thinking about it, because they no longer asked me questions or did my workshops. Work by those writers has to wait, the way work by most other writers waits, for me to get around to it. Since I was first working on a dissertation and now on non-fiction books, and also write my novels, the wait is long.

The first and second reasons added together affect one group of writers in particular. When scholars and fan organisers ask me about most Canberra authors, I tell them what I know, but what I know is no longer insider-knowledge for most writers. I’m not the only one, as local academic jobs in the Humanities are few and far between. Scholarly work about Australian speculative fiction is likely to mention writers’ names in passing than to look at their work closely or to teach it at university. Those who were part of my earlier studies are still getting articles written about them or even being tagged for (paid) academic stuff as a long-term result of that work. I am not doing the research or running academic programmes: I am merely one of the half dozen people who can be asked casually about the subject. That ‘merely’ has consequences for how much attention given to some writers who are probably very deserving of scholarly work and being taught at university. Some writers still get attention, but most writers won’t be seen. This only affects a group of universities, but there are very few universities in the world that teach Australian speculative fiction as a subject. Other courses that include Australian writers will only include the extraordinary,  and most of our fiction will be passed over.

The third reason, of course, is that I’m Jewish. I am no longer included on lists of writers to ask about this or that, because Jew cooties may be infectious.

So many other writers locally have no idea of my work at this point, much less my research. I joke that I’m better known in Germany than in Australia, which is not entirely true. I’m better known in some parts of Germany than in some parts of Australia. I’ve gone from being an Ambassador of Reading for the country, to being left off lists as a writer. This, again, reduces who I see and who I can recommend to others. It has, in fact, a bigger impact that the other two reasons combined. Jew cooties would not be a problem in the writing world if there had been a flurry of activity to replace the Jewish writers and publicists and editors and more. There has not been. We’re seeing an increasing numbers of holes in communication in both the writing world and in academia, and even in bookshop events, simply because of individuals who are too Jewish and whose work has not been replaced.

This is worse in the US than Australia. In Australia it’s my kind of work that’s missing. That’s too big to examine here. Maybe another day.

This disadvantages those who are not leaving me out of things, because I won’t write the general introduction to a field I am not on top of. The result right now? An introductory article I was going to write for an academic journal is not even going to be suggested. Someone else will have to write it.

When we play games with people’s lives, the person whose life is targeted is not the only victim. As a Jewish writer, my book sales are down by 75%. As a Jewish/chronically ill academic, the book sales of those I would have written about are also diminished.

The writing world is complex. Hate and exclusion do not affect just the target: they change what books we know about and what writers we want to read. My recent life is an example this.

 

Update: The chrnoic illnesses have ruled my week and so I put this up unedited. If you read it before 14 August, note that it is now edited! And tagged.

Becoming an “AI Vegan”

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Arwa Mahdawi introduced me to a new term, or maybe a new concept: “AI vegans,” which is to say, people whose attitude and actions in relationship to so-called “AI” parallels the way vegans deal with animal products.

Mahdawi cited an article by a professor who directs online education at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, David Joyner – someone who’s clearly not a tech-phobe.

I like this concept quite a lot. While I am not vegan, I respect the vegan approach, and often think that they’re likely right on all points, especially with respect to the effect on the environment.

The criticisms by the “AI vegans” go like this:

  • “AI” is immoral and unethical – particularly because the materials used to develop it were stolen from people (including me and others here in the Treehouse).
  • Using “AI” is bad for your health – recent studies have shown harm to the critical thinking faculties of those who use a lot of chatbots to do their intellectual work for them.
  • The “AI” industry is very destructive to the environment, requiring massive amounts of water and electricity – which includes building new coal and other fossil fuel powered power plants despite the fact that we’re at the tipping point for renewables.

Those ideas directly parallel the vegan attitude toward animal products. I’d add a fourth one: Most “AI” products being sold don’t work very well. This is particularly true of writing programs, but also true of many of the ones aimed at employers who want to fire their workers.

I do my damnedest to avoid any use of “AI.” I try to disable it in writing programs – it gets in my way – and I’ve reached the point where I assume any feel-good story on social media is “AI” generated. I suspect it’s in the spell-check programs now, because they don’t work as well as they used to. I’m sure it’s in the grammar programs, but since I don’t use that crap – my command of grammar is certainly better than any fucking programmer’s, much less “AI’s” – I don’t worry about those.

I hope the “AI vegan” movement catches on, because this slop is out of control.

We keep being told that some chatbot can pass the multiple guess part of the bar exam with flying colors. As someone who has taken that exam, I don’t find that difficult to believe. A bot that has incorporated previous tests and other prep materials for that exam or any similar exam can probably do a great job on it, especially since the bots can’t think and are only making the statistical best guess in any situation.

I mean, the biggest problem with multiple guess exams – yeah, I know they’re technically called multiple choice and probably have some fancy new name these days that I’m not familiar with since thank all that’s holy I haven’t had to take one in years, but you know what I mean by multiple guess – is that they don’t reward thinking.

Despite the fact that every time I’m faced with four choices for an answer I always want to go with a fifth one, I used to be pretty good at those tests. I had a gut understanding of them. I do not think this is one of my best traits, though it was useful. Continue reading “Becoming an “AI Vegan””…

Lateness

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m late with this post because I’ve been wrangling antisemitism again. It’s become worse… again. And so I’m behind on things… again. The good news is that the book I’m writing on how a bunch of people see and share the Jewish history of Germany from before 1700 is reaching the end of a first draft. It may be difficult to find a publisher because things Jewish are not popular right now, but I’ve been exploring how museums and tourist places, and books, and strangers, and community presentative, and historians and archaeologists and even occasional random antisemites are part of how we see the past.

In one way, this is Gillian as she always is. My life revolves around story and history, after all.

In another way, it’s a new path, because I’ve not had the confidence to question some of our big assumptions about who we are and how we came to be. Just today I saw a comment about Ashkenazi Jews not being actually European. I want to revolt when people say things like this, because it shows how very little they know about Jewish history. Most of us were first brought into Europe by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago. Some came earlier, some came later. If we’re not European, then there are a lot of other people counted as European who are not.

The heart of Ashkenazi Jewish culture was formed in what’s now France and Germany in the Middle Ages. Our religion is from the Levant and our religious culture is from the Levant, but our popular culture and how we shape our world is European. yet there are many people who question this and yet accept eastern and central Europeans whose ancestors arrived in Europe far more recently. And I know why this is.

What I haven’t understood is how deeply I and all my teachers accepted the othering. I’m now de-accepting it and discovering that the reason I’m so comfortable analysing English and French and German history is because the heart of Ashkenaz is not only in Germany (I was there last year, exploring for the book) but even Ashkenazi Jewish educational teaching has a French and German heart.

We are both Levantine and European in equal amounts. They’re not separate things, either. There’s not a section of my European ancestral cultures that’s European and another section that is from Jerusalem. There’s a wonderful integration. Maybe I’ll explore this hen I’m finished the five big projects I’m currently engaged in. Or maybe I’ll just sit back and think, “This explains so much.” Last night I explained how much and why to a friend who is a chazan and he was mindboggled because … once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

There are so many reasons I adore research. Being mindboggled is definitely one of them. Also, it’s such a very Jewish thing to experience more and more hate and to turn to learning for comfort.

Walking and “AI”

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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These days my morning book is Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking. It’s a particularly appropriate book for me, since I do a lot of walking.

My neighbors frequently comment on my walking, though most of what I do is walk around the neighborhood or to some stores. It’s not exciting most of the time, though I do see little things in people’s yards – there’s someone on Emerald making miniature houses and putting them at the edge of their yard. They even have addresses.

My walking is a combination of exercise and mind-clearing and errand-running, but it is an important part of my life. There are days when getting my steps in is my biggest accomplishment.

Walking and reading about walking demonstrate one of the biggest flaws in the large language models and other machine learning software that’s being marketed as “AI”: it can’t walk. All it “knows” about walking comes from ingesting books like Solnit’s, which means it can probably associate walking with pilgrimages and Wordsworth and desert hikes.

But it has no idea what any of that actually means. I can read about Solnit joining a pilgrimage in northern New Mexico and think about that region – which I’ve visited – and what it feels like if you don’t have the right shoes for a hike.

And I can also follow her sidetrack about the man who has painted the stations of the cross on his old Cadilac and go off on a tangent in my mind about low riders and guys with well-kept old cars who play booming music and the boys I went to high school with who souped up ‘57 Chevys and cruised around the drive-in.

In one section discussing promenades in Mexico and other Spanish-influenced places, she connects the walking version with car cruising, because walking begats other things, even if people like me do a lot of walking because we are so damn tired of car culture.

“AI” gets none of that, because it can’t walk and it can’t smell and it can’t see and it can’t hear and it can’t touch and actually it can’t even read; it just sorts words and images.

It may be useful for some things – though not enough things to be worth all the money being thrown at it – but it is never going to be an intelligence. Continue reading “Walking and “AI””…

Stumbling Toward a Path Forward

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I just saw an email with the subject line “Gutting the Student Loan Program” and realized that I’m tired of seeing reports about another outrageous thing done by the grifter’s regime that comes with that breathless feeling of “do you believe they’re doing this?”

Of course I believe they’re doing this. They’re out to destroy everything good about our government. They’re gutting everything you ever thought was worth having, not to mention things you didn’t realize existed or realize you needed.

None of the attacks surprise me anymore and I don’t need breathless reports about the latest one. (I think this email is about firing people at the Department of Education, which the Supreme Court just permitted by overturning a stay even though it’s pretty clear that the underlying litigation should be successful.)

Much more useful is what the people at Unbreaking are doing, which is detailed reporting about the ways in which the regime is breaking the government.  Looking thoroughly at each bit of destruction is much more useful than spinning outrage, especially since it can provide a way to fight back.

We’re constantly faced with “which one of these things is worse” calls every time an issue comes up. But they’re all bad.

Right now I tend to think the fact that the government employs people they claim are law enforcement agents and lets them go out with their faces covered (not for health reasons) and without badges to kidnap people off the street, coupled with the building of concentration camps and the mocking of the people they lock up in them, is the worst thing that’s going on.

But the overall destruction of good government programs – from civil rights protections to the National Weather Service – is probably just as important, if not as immediately terrifying.

We do need to know about all the different things being done, but pretending to be outraged about the latest one as if we didn’t see it coming is driving me crazy. Continue reading “Stumbling Toward a Path Forward”…

The Latest Texas Floods

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Even though I was born in Houston and grew up in a small town near there, my Texas heart is in the Hill Country, so the recent flash flood disaster hit close to home.

I have family in New Braunfels, which is a little southeast of the disaster in Hunt, but also on the Guadalupe River. A year ago, we rented a place near Hunt to see the eclipse and spent much of our time downhill from that place floating in tubes on the river. It was a peaceful time and we enjoyed hanging out with relatives for several days.

I assume that the place where we stayed survived the damage (it was across a road and uphill from the river) but I’m sure the steps down to the river and the facilities there are gone. The worst loss there would be a bathroom and some tubes for floating. Fortunately, no one built homes too close to the river at that location.

Flash floods are a fact of life in that part of the world. In fact, the saying “turn around, don’t drown” was started by Hector Guerrero, a warning meteorologist for the National Weather Service in San Angelo, Texas, which is about 150 miles northwest of Hunt and also experienced flash floods in the latest storm.

While the Guadalupe River and other rivers in the Hill Country flood regularly, this event was particularly bad given the extreme amount of rain that fell quickly — about 15 inches in a few hours, which is about half the yearly average rainfall.

I listened to weather expert Daniel Swain’s discussion of the disaster on Monday morning and learned that one of the reasons the Hill Country is at great risk for erratic rainfalls like this one is because the Gulf of Mexico is so warm.

I knew the Gulf was warm, since I spent so much of my childhood at the beach playing in that water and was surprised when I moved to the East Coast and discovered that the Atlantic is not as warm, even in summer. (Much less the Pacific.) And of course, with climate change, the Gulf is getting warmer, which is why there is now greater risk from hurricanes.

But I didn’t realize how much affect such warm water has. In fact, the warmth of the Gulf and the winds and storms that it produces also are a cause of tornado weather all the way north to Canada. Different weather patterns crashing into each other – and that’s not the scientific explanation, just my grasp of it – cause a lot of problems.

Some of the flooding was also related to a tropical storm in the Gulf that hit Mexico and moved north, just as an example.

I was not surprised by the flash floods, because I know the area. I used to drive my father around the area west of New Braunfels since he liked to look at the wildlife. We would stop as we crossed every creek, to see if there was any water in it. Many of the creeks and even some of the rivers are mostly dry or close to it, except when it rains. Continue reading “The Latest Texas Floods”…

The 4th of July

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Black t-shirt with the words Mundus Sine Caesaribus on it.

I grew up with Fourth of July celebrations, though the ones I remember were not particularly patriotic – I don’t recall any speeches, much less any on the topic of loving one’s country – but rather an excuse for a community gathering.

In Friendswood, the then tiny town outside of Houston where I grew up, there was a parade every 4th followed by a barbecue and small rodeo in the community park. My sister and I rode horses in the parade most years, sometimes accompanied by our parents (depended on the number of horses we had available at the time).

I recall participating in the rodeo a few times, doing barrel racing and pole-bending on my horse Sue, who was quite good at those things, having been trained as a cutting horse. However, we never practiced enough, plus Sue was part Mustang, which gave her short legs. We never won anything.

In high school I remember marching with my high school band in a nearby town for the parade and even playing in a half-assed band for that town’s rodeo.

Much later on, when I lived in Washington, DC, I went down to the Capitol grounds for the symphony concert and watched the excellent fireworks display on the mall from there. No speeches at that event, either. I recall singing “This Land Is Your Land,” though. Reagan was president and most of the people at the concert were not big fans.

So my thoughts on the 4th of July have more to do with horses and parades and barbecue and music than they do with patriotism. Which is a good thing, because this 4th I am fresh out of patriotism. The regime in charge of our government is busy undermining almost everything I hold dear about the United States of America and bringing back all the worst aspects of our country. Continue reading “The 4th of July”…

Changes

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m back from my daring adventure in Perth and Adelaide. I discovered – to my great happiness – that antisemitism in Australia is far more closely targeted than it looks. The bigotry in the media and on the Left surrounded me where I live and so I was inundated and so were many people I know. That inundation is targeted, not at me, but at anyone Jewish. I happen to be local to it and know too many people who share those politics. This is not me, personally (though a part of it is also me, personally) but most Jewish in Sydney and Melbourne and Canberra. Sydney and Melbourne have the largest Jewish population in the country, and that has been very precisely targeted with hate, but Canberra? It’s where the politics happen and the media mocks. I’m mostly collateral damage. That’s the good news. The other good news is that, outside Canberra, the science fiction community has a normal mix of politics and does not carry hate. The Arts, however, does carry hate. More and more I mix with other Jewish writers and editors because they don’t demand I hate myself.  There are many writers and industry professionals who do not make those demands, but they leave me alone because I’m either politically perilous because of my upbringing or they simply don’t want to worry about it. “Jew cooties” strike again.

The moral of this story is that we can be trapped in a fishbowl where haters surround us. It’s only a fishbowl. It’s not even a whole city. Most non-Jews in Canberra want to tell me how awful Israel is and inform me about their views on genocide. They don’t want to talk about my end of things, not my murdered cousin, not everyone I know caught up in the war (Israeli and Palestinian) and most certainly not how alone I’ve been in Canberra, because they don’t want to reach out to me as friends. This is the problem I’m facing. Not even our “I talk to the Jewish community” Senator has sorted out how this affects local Jews and that we are the ones forced to explain ourselves every day and remind others that we’re still human.

I’m very glad that this is specific to certain circles in Canberra, even as it hurts to be dumped and deserted and hated. I now have ten days when I rediscovered that I hurt, but am still me, and that I have more friends than I knew and (if I can get past the hate) even have a life. I was less ill when I didn’t have to reach out and hope that the person I emailed wouldn’t come back to me with a demand that I denounce whatever (that day) they wanted me to denounce. And I have chats with taxi drivers to sustain me.

I have been saying for a while that the antisemitism is part of a wider problem of not seeing people for their actual cultures and religions. Jew-hate is a symptom of a wider disease. I was (locally) silenced and left out of things because I am wrong because I’m Jewish and Gillian (some people dislike me, and I may not enjoy this, but when it’s a personal thing it’s not the same thing as bigotry at all) and could see how so many people translate ‘Jewish’ into “Zio’ and ‘person who murders’ and other excitingly false tags and stories. Every time they think along these lines, it’s as if a slab of historical understanding is wiped from their brain, by choice.

I could also see that Muslims in Australia are mostly assumed to be Palestinian Australian (the actions of the certain Pakistani Australian senator do not help with this, at all). So many people assumed that there was a single Muslim voice and vote, when Muslim Australians are… Australian. We are such an independent mob. Why should Muslims not think for themselves? In fact, they did, and voted in a bunch of ways during the election. The media, being its current slow self, did not pick up on this. It also did not realise that so many Australians belong to other religions. The taxi drivers were Hindu, but from quite different parts of India. In Canberra, I’m more likely to run into a Sikh or Coptic Christian, but I have Hindu friends here. The only religion numerous enough to change an election outcome is Christianity. Australia is closer to a secular country than other Christian countries, but it’s still Christian. I lie to explain that the Lord’s Pray opens Parliament and that our ruler is also the ruler of the Church of England, but the truth is that, everyday, Christmas and Easter are times the country stops. Many atheist Australians still live the Christian year. They don’t do it in a religious manner, but they will eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and see Christmas Day as a day on which no-one should work.

What does all this mean?

I think we need to reconsider Australia as a country. We should look at the hateful targeting of minorities (Indigeous Australians have suffered and still suffer what Jewish Australians are currently enduring, to give the most obvious example) and not accept the media and the Left as arbitrators of our lives.  In my perfect world, the majority I discovered when I broke out of my goldfish bowl will know to reach out to people like me (my friend Anna did, which is why I was able to safely travel) and connect us again with a safer world. This connection can be done with coffee locally, or a chat, or a movie, or a walk in the park. It’s an acknowledgement that our lives matter and that we don’t have to self-hate in order to be allowed to live. Simple things with radical consequences.

There is so much shouting right now. For every shout, I think we need ten instances of community building. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m talking to other Jews who have become isolated and scared and bringing them into my suddenly-much-safer place. I’m writing fiction and essays that promote safe paths for people, and affirmation of cultural complexity. I’m still spending an hour a day analysing the rest-of-world, because it’s still not safe, but I’m taking the second hour I used to analyse and using that to analyse from a more productive and positive direction. I’m going to finish books and get them into the world, because that’s another path to reducing hate.

Finding publishers is the tough bit right now. Not all publishers are antisemitic, nor even half of them, but there are other crises happening and Jew cooties mean that many prefer works by someone other than me. Many, but not all – I need to find those who want my novels and non-fiction. Some of this is already happening.

A friend reminded me of a song that tells a story of how big change happened here, in Australia, when we were in a place that we thought we could never get out of. I was not one of the victims then. I was on the side doing the hurting and had no idea that I was part of something that awful. It wasn’t anything I intentionally did, it’s that I didn’t know that it was on me to reach out and be part of change. Vincent Lingiari and his friends and colleagues spearheaded that change when I was in the early part of primary school. Most of my life, then, has been spent seeing what changes can be made when we see people as themselves. A pop song helped and the use of the melody by an insurance company didn’t help at all, so I’m not sure how much today’s children know of what began when I was a child. Let me share that song, because it explains in the best way.

Time Is on Our Side

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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When I meditate – which I do sporadically, though I keep intending to get more regular about it because it always makes me feel better – I see myself as being one with the universe.

I don’t mean I’m the all-encompassing universe all by myself. I mean I’m a tiny speck of this amazing great whole.

I find this very comforting. It reminds me that so much of what is touted as of paramount importance is really meaningless.

It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try to do good in the world as best I can, but it does help me let go of too much attachment to the outcome of anything I do. These days, with so much damage being done to our lives every day, I find it helpful to remember that while doing is up to me, outcomes aren’t.

In his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman has a chapter called “Cosmic Insignificance Theory,” which I think is much the same thing as my meditation. He observes:

Truly doing justice to the astonishing gift of a few thousand weeks [four thousand weeks is an average human lifespan] isn’t a matter of resolving to “do something remarkable” with them. In fact, it entails precisely the opposite: refusing to hold them to an abstract and overdemanding standard of remarkableness, against which they can only ever be found wanting, and taking them instead on their own terms, dropping back down from godlike fantasies of cosmic significance into the experience of life as it concretely, finitely – and often enough, marvelously – really is.

Cosmic insignificance theory is diametrically opposed to the kind of world the broligarchs seem to be after, particularly the ones who think they’re going to live forever, perhaps uploaded and combined with some all-powerful “AI.” Continue reading “Time Is on Our Side”…