So, fonts are cool.

Except…

Well, fonts are weird. I laid out a cover for a short story earlier this week, and this particular story needed a different font-ish approach than I normally take with the covers for my short stories. Finding the right font involved typing the relevant text at the appropriate sizes, and then cycling through my font database.

Let me tell you, if you want to have a transcendental experience, there’s not a lot you could do that would be more effective than testing fonts.

I’ve had the name “J. Daniel Sawyer” since I was ten–before that, I had varients of the first and middle name, trying to find something that fit, but I found the fit when I discovered the joy of stylized signatures. It’s just fun to have that first initial hanging out there on its own, as if daring the universe to unravel what it’s hiding under the period that follows.

But cycling through fonts, narrowing the field, it occurred to me that “Daniel” is just a really, really weird looking name. I mean, what’s with that “a?” And the “ie” near the end, doesn’t that seem like overkill in the vowel department? And why had I never noticed before that “Daniel” is an anagram for “D. Alien?” And, while we’re at it, the space between the letters in a non-proportional font looks a little…suspicious. Like the “i” and the “l” are social rejects, the rest of the letters edging away from them like they’ve got really bad gas. And, for the love of all that’s holy, how could anyone think that a word that looks THAT weird be a real name?

But soft! I thought Maybe that’s the zen of the thing. The name is just a label. It has no meaning–I mean, really, why would an atheist need a name that means “God is my judge” or “Justice from God?” I’m not exactly expecting a final judgment, and I certainly don’t need a divine mandate to dollop out justice upon the annoying. This name is a kind of cosmic irony. Yes, that’s it! Names are a joke, meant to mislead people who read too many bad paraphrases of The Golden Bough . Calling myself “Daniel” instead of “Loki” is surely a feeble attempt at humor. Names are really just labels to distinguish the illusion of identity from the background chaos that forms the universal consciousness!

I was down to the Zs in the font selection tree, so I eased myself out of my meditative state and wondered if I hadn’t accidentally stumbled on the true secret of the universe. If I could find a way to put it on a T-shirt, I thought I could be the next Depak Chopra! Low overhead…high profits…and I’d get to use the word “Quantum” a lot…Such possibilities!

It was at this point that I realized that the temperature had climbed north of 80 degrees and I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since waking up five hours before. I grabbed some tea and a packet of nori and settled back down to work, surprised to find that my name no longer looked like the projection of an alien face through my computer screen.

Just goes to show you that the yogis were on to something: Fast long enough, and you’ll get transcendental visions. And for an antidote to the visions, just reach for a picnic basket!

If you find this post entertaining, please consider buying a copy of any of the books you’ll find listed in the right sidebar. Writing is how I make my living–I enjoy it and would like to keep it up!

Last night on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog I made a snarky comment about the deleterious effect of a Literary Studies degree (or, in my case, 90% of a Lit degree) on creativity. The comment went something like this:

A Literary Studies course is the worst thing you can do for your creativity, other than bashing your skull in with a mallet while reciting the lyrics to “The Song That Never Ends”

Needless to say, this caused a minor row in the twitterverse among my fellow literati, and I received a few demands to justify myself (which is not easy to do on the best of days, let alone in 140 characters or less), so, in the name of entertainment, here goes, in no particular order:

1: The Premise of Literary Studies is Misguided

Leaving aside those in search of an easy “A,” people generally go into literary studies either because they want to pursue a career as a writer or because they love stories and want to teach literature to high school and/or college students. Literary Studies courses, however, don’t do much to prepare you for either.

To write effective fiction, there are a number of things you can study that will help: psychology, history, language, applied sociology and group dynamics, neurology, chaos theory, evolutionary biology, religion, semiotics, and philosophy leap to mind. And you can also learn a lot from studying literature, in the sense of reading books that you might not necessarily read for pleasure. Cultivating a habit of learning, and observing the mediums of communication around you, is extremely useful. Getting practice actually writing stories is also very important.

To teach literature effectively, it helps to be familiar with the historical context of the work in question, the background and literacy of the audience, and the subtle connections and influences of the work to other works in the canon being studied (it is, for example, difficult to explain a lot of the symbolic subtext of Lord of the Flies to someone who’s completely unfamiliar with the mythology surrounding Satan). One would also do well to learn the the techniques of Socratic Dialog, effective communication, critical thinking, and rhetoric.

But Literary Studies degree programs, while they touch on many of these elements, do not focus here. They focus on deconstruction, explication, and political analysis (and in ways that are dishonest, which I’ll get into in a bit). A Lit. Studies student is required to write a lot of papers, but is very seldom required to engage in creative work (such as writing stories). Even in the best of programs that don’t display some of the problems I’ll detail below, this leads to a very one-sided understanding of the creative process.

In explicating a poem, for example, one teases out the layers of meaning and symbols, underlining the ambiguities and tensions and bringing them into sharp focus. The explicator comes to see poetry as an exercise in precision engineering–such glorious economy of syllables hyper-condensing such subtlety surely must be the work of precise craftsmanship, akin to designing a car.

So when you go to write poetry and imbue it with meaning, you fall flat on your face. You can’t imagine that metaphors are something you pluck from the air, rather than something you labor over with great deliberation. It doesn’t occur to you that the process of composing metered poetry (we’ll leave freeverse to one side), while it has its exacting mechanical requirements, is not engineering. Jazz also has exacting mechanical requirements, but they’re requirements that have to emerge chaotically from the practiced subconscious, or the result sounds like shit. The multilayered themes that Lit students pick apart are just as often subconscious and accidental as they are deliberate, and some of the best comes in the heat of the moment, by accident, when the author/poet isn’t trying to be profound.

How can this be? Like jazz, poetry (and narrative) obey rules so complex that it’s impossible to “fake it” by reverse engineering. The only way to brilliance is the long way around, training oneself and honing one’s craft through laborious trial and error. The method is too complex to learn by rote.

Explication and analysis have their place (I still very much enjoy them), but they don’t do the three things they’re supposed to do:
They don’t help you learn to be a better writer.
They don’t help you understand how the poet/author created her masterpiece.
And they don’t necessarily tell you what the poem or story means, because while looking at the pieces it’s very easy to miss the gestalt, and many truly masterful wordsmiths produce works that can only be enjoyed or understood on the gestalt level.

To use philosophical terms, a work of literature is “contingent” rather than a “thing in itself.” It is always a piece communication, and that nature has a non-trivial bearing on its meaning, content, etc. Studying “Literature” (in quotes here because “literary studies” encompasses film, lyrical music, narrative nonfiction, and poetry as well as fiction) in the way it’s been studied in the last seventy years is, essentially, to spend a great deal of time studying nothing at all.

2: The Methods of Literary Studies are Dishonest

Every field in the academy–the sciences, critical history, the plastic and visual arts, the dramatic arts–has a toolkit. In a science department you learn to do science (methodology, experimentation, reporting, peer review) and use its tools (from Bunsen burners to calculus), so that you may produce new and important work in that field (new scientific theories and data). In a history department, you learn to do history (research, evaluation, criticism, interact with the empirical and social sciences that might have a bearing on your studies) so that, in the end, you are prepared to make discoveries and communicate them. In a graphic arts program you learn to do art (sketching, painting, sculpting, photography, the ethical and legal environments you may have to navigate as an artist, etc.) so that you can grow into a competent, producing artist.

You see the trend. In every degree program, you learn to do the discipline. You don’t just learn to think about it, you are equipped to be an active participant in the creation of further knowledge and culture in that field.

If you’re pursuing a lit degree, though, you will come out of your degree program equipped to talk about written works as if you understood them (unless you’re an exceptional student and learned less popular methods of analysis, you probably don’t). That’s it. Four to six years and a hundred thousand bucks, just to learn the jargon. Here are some things that you won’t learn in any literary studies program I’ve ever seen:

Character voice, nested plot structure, cliffhangering, tension, writing effective sex scenes, misdirection, making violence interesting, structuring conflict, copyright law, libel law, contracts, the unique tax problems of writers, effective (and multisensory) imagery, subtext, dialog, and (unless you’re studying poetry) rhythmic techniques, applied psychology.

Note that those are things that all fiction writers employ to some extent, whether they do it consciously or subconsciously (and the business items are things that all writers ignore at their own peril).

Instead, what you’ll learn to do is “analyze” literature. What they call “analysis” is not something that would pass for analysis in any other field. The standard literary method derives heavily from Foucault and Derrida, and deals in things like deconstruction, post-structural approach to narrative, and social power dynamics projected through the medium of the text. These guys were the last of the Marxist/Bourgeois literary/social philosophers (each had different roots, but that great philosophical divide in many ways reaches an end point with them), and giants in artistic philosophy circles. They were both quite concerned with how narrative creates culture, frames thought, coerces conformity, and serves as the velvet glove of the power elite. Their concerns were with the meta-narrative–their word for “worldview”–of western culture.

For those of you in the know, yes, I realizing I’m simplifying this to a criminal degree. For the rest of you–I’m sorry that this stuff is so esoteric. It really is relevant, as you’ll see next.

Getting into the ins and outs of Postmodernism (the school of thought that they inadvertently codified) is a long and much more complicated discussion, but here’s where it gets dishonest with respect to literary theroy:

The devotees of Postmodernism began using literature as a way to do philosophy under the radar, so to speak. By carrying out their philosophical and political dialectic in the realm of literature, they were able to promulgate an ideology (some aspects of which I heartily agree with, others not so much) without being subject to the normally ruthless forces of substantive academic debate.

Over the course of the twentieth century, critical thinking in literary analysis gradually went out the window, replaced by ideologically driven thinking encapsulated in a jingoistic (and obfuscatory) vocabulary. And, in all of it, the one thing that wasn’t being studied was literature. Instead of the object of study or of craft, literature became the cypher through which myriad agendas were worked (because, after the Marxists learned how to use this kind of doubletalk, everyone else appropriated the shell game for their own ends).

3: The Culture of Literary Studies is Anti-intellectual

If you spend any time around academic institutions, you’ll sense a bit of tension between the sciences and the humanities. Back in the time of Percy Bysshe Shelley, these two broad fields of endeavor more or less declared war on each other. The hyper-rationalistic scientists looked with scorn upon all things emotional (believing, as they did, that superstition, indolence, and poverty were all the results of ignorance and fear). The Romantics fought back, arguing for the purity of nature and passion, and arguing that science could tell us nothing useful about the human condition. That split deepened and grew bitter over the centuries, and is a deep source of much of the culture war that plagues Western civilization right now.

In The Lord of the Rings, when Saruman declares himself “‘Saruman The White’ no longer, but ‘Saruman of Many Colors,’ for the white light may be broken and bent to more effective use,” Gandalf replies “He who would break a thing to understand it has left the path of wisdom.” This, in a single exchange, is the fight between the Romantics against the Rationalists. Because of that fight, the Romantic half of academia [i.e. The Humanities] (literary and religious studies and some philosophy–though this camp used to also include philosophy and history) has seen itself as the sanctified purveyor of wisdom about the human condition.

I consider it a good thing that the last fifty years have seen astonishing advances in our understanding of creativity and how it works. Rationality is no longer seen as antithetical to emotion and creativity, but as an expression of both. If you want to study any kind of art, you can’t do it anymore without an understanding of the latest in neurology. Applied psychology, sociology, optics, and ecology wouldn’t hurt either. Although the scientific picture of humanity is far from complete, the understanding of the mechanisms of human communication and thought are now far superior to the fuzzy mysticism that once passed for precision in the humanities. This doesn’t mean that there is no room for the ineffable, only that we better understand how and why some things feel ineffable.

The culture of critical theory (almost any degree program with “Studies” affixed to the end of it), though, don’t see it this way. Instead, like the priesthood of a dying religion, they have spent the last forty years fighting a rear-guard action against the sciences, and in the process they’ve grown moribund. If you want superb literary analysis, with very few exceptions, you have to go back to the era of World War 2 and before. Literary studies have, in the meantime, produced almost nothing new, and very little of note.

Ironic and tragic, but in a field of study where the horizon is as limitless as human imagination, the bulk of the intelligentsia are ghettoized. Only a very few brave souls, such as Steampunk Scholar Mike Perschon have dared to break out of the narrow brackets of modernist literary criticism and delve into the un-respectable “genres.”

Alas, the prevailing culture regards the unreadable, the unenjoyable, the old, and the highly political as the only works worthy of study and comment. (This isn’t a new phenomenon. The “Classics” of today were the pop entertainments of yesteryear. But it is a much more intense, and intensely unpleasant, phenomenon today).

Literary Studies and Creative Paralysis

When taking an intellectual approach to any field of endeavor, one risks short-term creative paralysis in the face of information overload–centipede problems, they’re called. I don’t have a problem with that–it’s natural, and it does pass if you relax and let the learning sink in.

But the broken culture, the dishonesty, the political doubletalk, and the intellectual vacuity of Literary Studies programs can and do produce long-term creative paralysis. The Lit student who learns “analysis” under these conditions is prone to adopting those same lazy, self-destructive mental habits as his own, forever second-guessing himself, wondering if this or that turn of phrase betrays unconscious racism, or sexism, or if it will be construed that way, opening him up to slander from his audience. If he’s one who wants to write romance novels, or mysteries, he’s left to wonder if his life’s work will be worth the bother, since he’s been trained to de-value entertainment and enjoyment, and to think of genre literature (or anything that doesn’t carry a heavy political message) as “pulp,” “hack,” “fluff,” or “trash.”

In the meantime, hacks like Bradbury and Ellison and Andre Norton just mastered their craft through practice without the benefit of literary studies (none of them went to college, one of them never even attended high school). Most authors through history, and most authors today, did not learn their craft by studying for a Lit degree.

So, like I said, if you’re wanting to be a writer, do yourself a favor:

Study literature by reading. Pay attention to how your favorite writers (or writers you don’t particularly like) use words to shape your perceptions, evoke emotions, and alter your consciousness. But for Pete’s sake, don’t go into debt to get a Lit degree. You won’t learn anything you need, and you’ll very likely use years of your creative life unlearning the self-destructive mental habits it teaches you. If you ARE interested in deep symbolic analysis, learn history, get familiar with your culture’s literary heritage, and take some semiotics courses. But don’t waste your money on lit courses.

If you find this post useful or thought provoking, please consider donating to the tip jar at the top right of this site, or buying a copy of any of the books you’ll find listed in the right sidebar. Writing is how I make my living–I enjoy it and would like to keep it up!

What if somewhere in the universe there was a room, and in that room was a creature, surrounded by screens and dials and controls? In his room, he sees all, knows all, manages all. He directs the thoughts and actions of every being in the cosmos. Would such a creature be God? And what would it be like to be that being, spending your days and nights watching the screens, and managing the affairs of all beings from a control room?

Twitter is a mischievous little meme. On that innocent network yesterday, I noticed fellow podcast novelist, and fabulous debate opponent Scott Roche say of science and religion: “the two are examining different things.”

Naturally, being unable to keep my mouth shut on religion, sex, or politics (this is, by the by, why I never stay long on the east coast – I have to leave quickly before I’m shot for violating public decency laws), I retorted immediately saying: “Science and religion can not meaningfully be said to be examining different things.” Hello, fundamental conflict (and, consequently, hellooooo blog content)!

On Scott’s blog he wondered whether we were operating on different definitions of religion, so was kind enough to define religion as “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices” that, in his estimation, addresses only things that do not belong in the natural world. In other words, religion deals with spirits, gods, angels, demons, and any other supernatural beings which may or may not exist, and its purpose is to put us in touch with whatever we believe about the supernatural.

Science, he goes on to argue, deals with that which exists in the natural world and is (at least in theory) measurable. It is the method by which we divine how one thing is related to another.

Scott’s division of labor between science and religion seems to me to accurately reflect how most people think about the issue, and even on the basis of this postulated Non-Overlapping Magesteria (pace Stephen J. Gould).* History does not reflect this view – it is actually a relatively recent definition arising form the intellectual ferment of the late nineteenth century – so on the face of it I find it suspicious. Frankly, it looks to me like an epistemic** dodge than a genuine description of historical reality – but I’ll leave that aside for now, simply because one of the realities of history is that words do change definitions. I may get back to the history of science and religion in a later post, but for now, I’ll stick to the current situation, and whether or not it matches the definitions Scott proposes.

Sticking strictly to the current state of the world, I think Scott’s argument fails in two important respects.

First, in a practical respect, religion currently serves a number of functions that have only a tangential relationship to the supernatural. It propounds a theory of human nature, and it provides a cosmogony (a set of metaphysical beliefs about things within the universe such as the ultimate nature of reality, the origin and destiny of life, the universe, and everything, the construction of consciousness). It also serves as a platform from which to make pronouncements about morality, relationships, and human flourishing. On every one of these points, religions differ among themselves as to the nature of their claims and functions, but most religions are concerned with most of these areas, and some religions concern themselves with all of them.

Taking them in no particular order, the fields of knowledge and understanding which religion currently claims authority are now well within the purview of the following sciences:

On every score, scientific research confirms some points of religious dogma and contradicts other areas, forcing religions to adapt by either synchronizing or radicalizing on any given point (which, by the by, is why theologians exist – to cope with the discrepancy between received doctrine and contemporary reality).

Continuing in the practical vein for a moment, religion also provides social cohesion and cultural continuity for a large number of people on this planet, including a dependable power structure. On these final two practical points, as well as on issues of morality, religion’s focus is very much on the things of this world (and, often, on securing and/or maintaining power – sometimes political, sometimes military, sometimes interpersonal, and sometimes cultural – in this world). The hegemonic ambitions, large and small, are justified by appeal to the supernatural, but are always, in practice, concerned with controlling the behavior of beings in the temporal world.

Second, on a basic philosophical level, if a supernatural world actually has an intercourse (either perpetual and ever present, as in Hinduism, or incidental and historical as in the monotheisms), then it is at least in principle accessible to natural science at the point of intercourse, and therefore science and religion are both aiming once again for the same territory.

Thus, in both the practical and the philosophical cases, religion and science are very much fighting over the same territory. The nature of this conflict is missed by religious liberals, who have inherited the syncretic mindset and tend to read their scriptures with modern cosmopolitan glasses that retrojects their late, quasi-deistic conception of God back onto times with a far more definite and robust theology. Nonetheless, push hard enough and in the right place, and you’ll find the points at which even liberal religion is on the defensive in the face of scientific inquiry. Need it be this way? That’s a topic for a future blog post, but I can tell you it has not always been this way. Once upon a time in the west, the natural sciences were seen as the handmaiden of theology rather than the other way around.

So, to wrap up, I’m confident in standing by my tweet which opened this conversation. Although religions can (and often do) preserve wisdom worth paying attention to, and often raise questions worth investigating, they are in almost no sense concerned with different things. Now, it may be possible to create a religion that is completely immune to territorial impingement from science forever, but it would not then be legitimate to argue that religion as a phenomenon was free from such a conflict.

Besides, I daresay that a religion which made no claims about reality, made no demands on its patrons, promised no rewards (temporal, eternal, or existential), and said nothing substantive about human nature would maintain a hold on parishioners for very long. Don’t believe me? Look at the thin attendance of liberal protestant churches compared to moderate and conservative ones.

Back to you, Scott!

*magisteria meaning “area of authority”
**epistemic meaning “having to do with one’s theory of knowledge” – in this case, an epistemic dodge is redefining what one means by “knowledge” in order to get around a problem with what one considers “true”

First, the appearances. You can find me on recent episodes of Podioracket, The Dead Robots Society, and doing voice work as the German Army in Philippa Ballantine’s Weather Child. You can also hear my fantasy story Buried Alive In The Blues, for which I also did some of the voice work, on the excellent (if racy) anthology series Erotica A La Carte.

For those of you who enjoy my Open Source madness will be pleased to hear that there are new LinuxJournal articles – one is a review of the Indamixx portable recording studio, and the other, which hasn’t yet published, is a review of OpenGear’s new KVM management console. I’m currently stalking a couple more regular writing gigs, so if the internet gods smile upon me, you may be seeing quite a lot more out of me in this vein in the coming months.

Podcast monkeys, you may have noticed the new buttons on the right side of the page – each podcast feed now has an iTunes one-click subscription link, as well as the normal RSS buttons. There’s also now an Uberfeed, which will give you everything I podcast (except Apologia, which you can get here).

You also may have noticed that I’m now podcasting my new novel Down From Ten. This is a comedic country house mystery with elements of romance, horror, and science fiction around the edges – it’s a change of gears from The Antithesis Progression. It’s also listed on iTunes now, so if you’re listening and enjoying it, please leave a review and tell your friends.

I’m also the subject of, and participant in dialog to, a blog series about the doctrinal foundations of Christianity by Scott Roche on the Spiritual Tramp blog. If you like my arguments on Apologia, you’ll definitely find this one entertaining.

I’ve also recorded MORE Reprobates Hour episodes, which, along with all the other special features I have on my hard drive, I’ll hopefully start spooling out here again this month.

As far as writing projects go, Free Will is picking up steam and is now officially on schedule for a November release. I’m also working on a couple more secret projects, which hopefully I’ll have news about soon here.

Finally, I hope to have some good news on sales in the next couple weeks, so watch this space!

Part 2 of the Richard Carrier is now live. We continue our conversation about science in the ancient world, discuss the works and missteps of Rodney Stark and his theory of the scientific revolution, read and discuss ancient documents germaine to the topic, and talk about the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Hera Flea returns with more Reprobates News, and Danny Schade continues to supply additional questions and commentary.

Next time, in about two weeks, we’ll talk to Cory Doctorow about DRM, Freedom, Surveilance, and Linux.

Enjoy!

It’s been a long time! Before my life was swallowed by the podcast of my novel Predestination and Other Games of Chance, I recorded quite a bit for Reprobates Hour. So now, to kick off part 2 of Season 3, Richard Carrier returns to talk about science in the ancient world. We discuss the works and missteps of Rodney Stark and his theory of the scientific revolution, we talk about the amazing and usually forgotten scientific and technological discoveries and innovations in the ancient world, and have a lot of fun along the way. In this first of three episodes, we talk about science in the Greek world. Next week, we talk about the Roman world. Hope you enjoy!

The Reprobates are back in town — spread the word!

If you enjoy world religions, are wondering where science fiction can go from here, or are curious about transhumanism or The Singularity, you’ll find something to entertain you and possibly get your dander up here.

Enjoy!

Have a listen here:

The second is a departure from the usual format. The theists at the roundtable decided to play a game called “Stump the Atheists.” Essentially, us on the secular side of the table stood for the firing squad while the believers asked probing questions, trying to find the cracks in our worldviews and philosophies. You can listen to that one here.

If you want to interact with us on the panel, please post feedback to the Apologia blog.