The Breaking Time

The Children Are Our Future, pt. 2

 

'Nuff said. 

via riotclitshave

Thought for the day: "there's no magic bullet"

I didn’t make up the problems,” I pointed out. “All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”

“Okay,” the young man challenged. “So what’s the answer?”

“There isn’t one,” I told him.

“No answer? You mean we’re just doomed?” He smiled as though he thought this might be a joke.
No,” I said. “I mean there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”

-Octavia Butler, from A Few Rules for Predicting the Future

All Tomorrows: All Creeds Spring from Catastrophe

The latest edition of All Tomorrows, my Coilhouse column on sci-fi's hidden gems -- in this case the later Octavia Butler's superb Parable of the Sower -- is ready for you, dear reader:

All creeds spring from catastrophe.

The late Octavia Butler, as keen an explorer of the human soul as ever trod a future-scape, understood that far better than most. In plain, well-turned prose she charted the bonds that hold (or fail to hold) us together through time, space and tragedy.

Perhaps the pinnacle of this search is her 1993 novel Parable of the Sower (also: read Kindred, trust me). The tale is framed as the journals of Lauren Olamino, a woman who might one day be revered as a prophet or messiah. For now though, she’s just a terrified teen in the middle of an apocalypse, praying for survival.

Dystopian fiction, along with its post-apocalyptic sister, is a popular genre these days, and with the fractious times we live in it’s not hard to see why. Since I’ve begun writing this column, I’ve had more than one reader comment how energizing rebelling against a dystopia would be or how freeing it would be to “see it all burn down.” The recently departed J.G. Ballard was right when he noted that “The suburbs dream of violence… they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.”

In "Parable" Butler strips any bit of glamour away right out of the gate: dystopian times are mostly death, fear and desperation (ask anyone who’s ever lived through a warzone). But while she topples down one dream, she gives the reader a wondrous and utterly rare thing in novels of a dark tomorrow: hope.

The Grinder Dialogues: Future dreams born to the whip

Grinder symbol, copyright Warren Ellis

There's a lot of different visions of the future out there, and even for those of us who agree (mostly) on where we want to go, some very different ideas about how the hell we actually get there. 

Ages ago, I wrote This Time, let's get it right, a response to It's going to get worse, before it gets better, a rant by m1k3y over at Grinding. You should probably take a look at those posts before you go further. Also: Grinding is an excellent place you should check frequently. In the three installments so far, we've written about media, surveillance, rebellion, the role of technology and possible ways forward.

A little while later, he replied, volleying back at several of my points. This is my immensely overdue reply, divided into several convenient categories.

Also, this isn't ending. We're going to be making this dialogue a weekly feature at both places. You should read. It's going to get very interesting.

The CTS cancer map

The abandoned CTS of Asheville factory is the big bull's eye

A group of Asheville activists have released an interesting map showing 70+ cases of cancer or illness within a mile and a half of the former CTS of Asheville site:

Wells in the area have been found to be contaminated with TCE. The map was sent to Xpress by Tate McQueen, a resident of the Mills Gap Road area that’s been affected by the contamination.

A large version of the map was displayed at a recent Buncombe County Board of Commissioners meeting, as McQueen, serving as spokesperson for residents of the area, blasted federal, state and local agencies’ handling of the cleanup.

An Xpress-requested 2008 analysis by the North Carolina Central Cancer Registry covering a 1-mile radius around the site found no increased rate of cancer, but was, by the admission of health officials, “very limited.”

Lessons from the Pig Pox

Alfredo Estrelia, AFP/Getty Images

Swine Flu (I prefer the more alliterative name used above) is the latest scary, potentially world-ending disease, and you've got news outlets following the numbers of infections with a microscope.

Fortunately (so far), the cases seem to be relatively mild, and governments acted quickly to keep people indoors and distribute anti-flu medication.

Nonetheless, this does shine a light on some of vulnerabilities of our world. A highly connected society does make it possible for an epidemic to spread very, very quickly.

On the other hand, pandemics are nothing new. The Black Plague, we often forget, didn't just ravage Europe, but the rest of the world as well and there's the much more recent 1918 Spanish flu outbreak that killed roughly 20 to 100 million people (yeah, let that sink in). Humans are social creatures, and it's hard to imagine isolating different communities of them enough that an epidemic would be impossible unless you want to go back to the Neolithic.

Which brings me to my first idea.

Local is more vulnerable (in this case) 

It's been argued, most persuasively by John Robb, that the current times require a re-structuring from large, centralized nation-states to local "resilient communities" that, being more self-sufficient, can absorb and deal with the shocks of our current age.

There's a lot to this, and on several fronts (economic, political, military), Robb's right. However, resilient communities are going to have some serious problems tackling issues of disease and environmental damage.

Let's go back to the Black Plague. It took longer (a matter of years rather than months), but if a pandemic can spread in a world as decentralized and fragmented as that of the 14th century, it can do so in a more localized world as well.

What's more, most of the successful responses to disease rely on some sort of large, central power. National governments can make stockpiles of medicine, dispatch outside aid to stricken areas, track viral spread and restrict travel (kind of) over a vast area. Local communities are going to have a lot of trouble coordinating that large a response quickly enough.

While I think that a more locally-based structure will be a necessity in the future, some sort of overarching authority is also a must if disease and environmental damage aren't going to become devastating.

It's Plague Insurance time

Swine flu's spread also reveals a mostly unspoken advantage to some sort of complete health care system (such as those provided by most industrialized countries). Stopping a pandemic relies on doctors catching signs of the disease quickly and finding ways to prevent its spread.

That's one reason why the potential for a pandemic to quickly run out of control among the poor, who aren't going to seek medical help unless they're at death's door, is particularly high. In systems where health care is free or much less expensive for the non-wealthy, people will more quickly get attention if they're not feeling well.

I'd wager, especially in the U.S., that this whole incident will be used to sell national health care as "plague insurance." It proponents would be foolish not to.

Thought for the Night

“The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.”

-J.G. Ballard, 2006

A week gone and he's still writing tomorrow's headlines. I think hardly anyone has any clue how powerful that urge is.

Sage Advice

This skit from SNL just struck me right, I suppose. It makes a damn good point, and anyone who's been reading here for awhile knows about my curmudgeonly feelings on the personal debt-driven economy.

A quick and enthusiastic shoutout

I'd like to take this moment to give my very warm thanks and endorsement to Madeline Ashby (Happy Belated Birthday!) and her blog Escaping the Trunk, she was kind enough to give my work her recommendation recently. She's my age and already an accomplished sci-fi author. So make with the clicky and read.

You should also read Chrnoble, which put the Breaking Time on its blog roll and gets my love for its anti-plutocratic rants, among other things.

Thank you to both for the endorsements and for the fact that you've given me two very interesting blogs to read.

Poems for Friday: The Voice of Clytemnestra

  

Clytemnestra after the Murder, John Collier, 1882

The next time someone whines about sex and violence in literature or media -- like it's something new -- hit them. Hard.

Or, in lieu of physical violence, point them to Aeschylus. From the legends of the first dark age springs this haunting piece, spoken just after living fury Clytemnestra has settled the score with Agamemnon.

It's amazing what you get when you put "aeschylus bubbling jets of gore" into a search engine.

Ho, ye who heard me speak so long and oft 

The glozing word that led me to my will -

Hear how I shrink not to unsay it all!

How else should one who willeth to requite

Evil for evil to an enemy

Disguised as friend, weave the mesh straitly round him,

Not to be overleaped, a net of doom?

This is the sum and issue of old strife, 

Of me deep-pondered and at length fulfilled.

All is avowed, and as I smote I stand

With foot set firm upon a finished thing!

I turn not to denial: thus I wrought

So that he could nor flee nor ward his doom.

Even as the trammel hems the scaly shoal,

I trapped him with inextricable toils, 

The ill abundance of a baffling robe;

Then smote him, once, again - and at each wound

He cried aloud, then as in death relaxed 

Each limb and sank to earth; and as he lay,

Once more I smote him, with the last third blow,

Sacred to Hades, saviour of the dead.

And thus he fell, and as he passed away,

Spirit with body chafed; each dying breath 

Flung from his breast swift bubbling jets of gore,

And the dark sprinklings of the rain of blood

Fell upon me; and I was fain to feel

That dew - not sweeter is the rain of heaven

To cornland, when the green sheath teems with grain.

Elders of Argos - since the thing stands so, 

I bid you to rejoice, if such your will:

Rejoice or not, I vaunt and praise the deed,

And well I ween, if seemly it could be,

`Twere not ill done to pour libations here, 

Justly - ay, more than justly - on his corpse

Who filled his home with curses as with wine,

And thus returned to drain the cup he filled. 

-Aeschylus, Agamemnon