Two men cannot wield one sword.
—Draking proverb
Archives for 2013
A note on neologisms
27 May 2013 by 2 Comments
Today, in a letter to John C. Wright, I fell into a digression on neologisms, and one of the possible reasons why some of them catch on and others fail. I thought it might be as well to repeat it here, and throw it open to my 3.6 Loyal Readers for discussion or demolition:
One wants names for things, not for un-things. One may need new words to express new facts, but a lie, to be effective, must be tricked out in language that the intended victim already understands.
If I discover a species of rabbit previously unknown to science, I may point at it and say, ‘That is a zeffle.’ I have done well: I have made a new name for a new thing. If anyone asks ‘What is a zeffle?’ I can appeal to the facts by showing them the animal. But if I point at a plain old-fashioned domestic rabbit, and say, ‘That is not a rabbit, but a smeerp,’ my words will not convince even the most gullible, because there is no fact to appeal to. They have no standard of ‘smeerp-hood’ in their minds, so the word does not communicate any ideas to them, not even false ones.
If I said, ‘That is not a rabbit, but a horse,’ I would at least communicate a meaning. If I were to say, ‘That is not a rabbit, but a hare,’ I would move into the realm of the plausible, where all lies must have their being if they are to prosper.
It is for this reason that the most skilful liars work not by inventing new words, but by distorting and perverting the meanings of old ones.
Sticks and stones
24 May 2013 by 4 Comments
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me think I deserved it.
—xkcd
The myth of autarky
17 May 2013 by 26 Comments
Personally I believe that most people are influenced far more than they would care to admit by novels, serial stories, films and so forth, and that from this point of view the worst books are often the most important, because they are usually the ones that are read earliest in life.
—George Orwell, ‘Boys’ Weeklies’
Fantasyland, as the late Diana Wynne Jones showed in her seminal Tough Guide thereto, is an irksome place. It irks me, at any rate, because it is not a world but something more like a film-set; it does not have the working parts to do what it pretends to do. Tolkien was confessedly ignorant of economics, but he at least tried to make sure (for instance) that the Shire was in a naturally fertile clime that could support a large population of hungry hobbits, and that the ‘townlands’ surrounding Minas Tirith were adequate to feed the people of the city. He even threw in a sentence or two about slave plantations in the South of Mordor, around the Sea of Núrnen, to show how Sauron supplied his horde of evil minions. Many fantasy writers don’t even take that much trouble.
Whenever I read about a Glorious Imperial City of Gold™ on top of a high mountain, or a Decadent Palace of the Evil Sultan™ in the midst of a trackless desert, I always find myself asking: ‘But what do these people live on?’ A writer could, by mere fiat, say that they get their food by magic; yet the magic is never there. Not only do we not see it onstage, we also do not see any of the probable consequences and (as fools and mortals say) ‘side-effects’ that such magic would have on all other areas of life. One day I shall probably write a snarky and contumacious tract on the economics of Faërie, but for now I want to leave most of that subject on one side and tackle one particular issue. That is the attitude of almost religious awe that fantasy writers have for societies based on subsistence agriculture — an attitude that, in my wide experience, only occurs among people who know nothing about agriculture and precious little about subsistence.
This attitude is not only prevalent in fantasy; some people hold it in real life as well. Among these we must number the ‘locavores’, the well-meaning fools who think it somehow unethical to eat any food grown more than, say, 100 miles away. This is nonense, and easily proved to be nonsense; but a hundred proofs are not worth as much as one plausible story. That is why it is so dangerous that so many of our storytellers don’t know the facts of the case and do not seem interested in learning them. People, consciously or not, are forming their views of life from stories that are not based on life at all.
I hope you will bear with me, then, while I tell a little story, and if it is not a hundred-proof story, I hope it may be strong enough drink for the occasion. And if it is drink that we want, I had better put wine in the story, since wine is the drink of the storyteller, except in those far Northern climes where the skalds sing in mead-halls. I have simplified the details, but everything I say about the simple diet of Eucharia applies to our own more complex society as well. [Read more…]
Checking in
16 May 2013 by 2 Comments
I see that I have let my blog lie fallow for more than a month, which is never a good sign. In case my 3.6 Loyal Readers are still alive and wondering what became of me, here is a brief summary:
[Read more…]
‘Book bomb’ for Ben Wolverton – spread the word!
8 April 2013 by 2 Comments
Amplifying the signal. Go, and do likewise. Dave Wolverton (a.k.a. David Farland), a fine writer and superb writing teacher, is in trouble, and his family needs your help:
As many of you know, Dave’s son, Ben, was in a serious long-boarding accident last week. He is 16 and suffers from severe brain trauma, a cracked skull, broken pelvis and tail bone, burnt knees, bruised lungs, broken ear drum, road rash, and is currently in a coma. His family has no insurance.
We are having a book bomb this Wednesday on behalf of Ben Wolverton to help his family out. You can view the event’s facebook page here.
For those that don’t know, a book bomb is an event where participants purchase a book on a specific day to support the author, or, in this case, a young person in serious need: Ben Wolverton.
Many of you have expressed sympathy for Dave and Ben and have asked if you could help. Now you can. We need you to help Ben get the most out of this book bomb. Right now we are focused on spreading the word and telling others about it. If you could share this event on facebook, twitter, pinterest, your blog, or through email, please do. This is a way everyone reading this can help, whatever their financial situation.
On Wednesday, we will have the book bomb. If you haven’t yet purchased Nightingale or Million Dollar Outlines, please consider doing so on Wednesday. If you have already purchased them, you can donate money to Ben and his family here.
If you have a blog and would like to do a post about this book bomb, please email me at [email protected], and I will send you some information you can use.
Please consider “attending” our event on facebook.
Thank you.
Much of the material in Million Dollar Outlines was covered in the workshop I took with Mr. Wolverton in 2011. I can vouch for its value. However, I haven’t bought the actual book. It looks like I’ll be doing that on Wednesday.
News from the bottom of the stairs
7 April 2013 by 1 Comment
I was going to go out tonight to get a bite at Denny’s and work on the next bit of the Octopus, but a hitch has come up. We’re having freezing fog here, and the back stairs of my building were covered in glare ice. I slipped on the stairs and took a concrete step in the middle of the back. Almost passed out from the pain (and a certain amount of whiplash). I have just been on the phone with Alberta Health Link, which provides 24-hour medical advice, and while they don’t consider it strictly necessary for me to go to hospital, they do warn me that I’ll have bruising and more pain for the next couple of days – and that I should go to the nearest ER if I start having symptoms X, Y, and especially Z.
Halfway up the stairs
There’s a stair
Where I slip.
There isn’t any traction there,
Feet don’t
Grip.
I fell on my bottom,
I hurt at my top,
Because of the stair
Where I had
My
Drop.
(With apologies to A. A. Milne)
Mark Shea on a certain tall story
24 March 2013 by 2 Comments
We sometimes hear it said that Jesus was just a teacher full of punchy aphorisms and turns of phrase: a mystic who wandered around saying nice things about the niceness of being Nice. But his stupid disciples, being 2000 years stupider than Extremely Clever Us, managed to completely misunderstand him and construct an elaborate religion around him that he absolutely never intended. It’s a narrative in which our culture places an extraordinary amount of faith — far more faith, in fact, than the Christian story requires, since the Christian story does not require us to believe in absolutely ridiculous claims about human psychology that nobody would ever advance for one second were it not for the special need to debunk Christianity.
—Mark Shea, ‘Palm Sunday’
Mill on censorship of ideas
22 March 2013 by Leave a Comment
Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
—John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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