Of Women and Worms

 

Here lies a toppled god;

His fall was not a small one.

We did but build his pedestal-

A narrow and a tall one.

                             There is an eternal fascination with the Great ‘What-If.’  It has pervaded the human psych since man first stared at the stars and began to wish for a remote to skip through the channels.  (“Honestly, do we have to have Mars beneath Orion again?  Can’t someone move it over by Taurus?”)  It began with stories of gods and heroes, kings and monsters.  It is the stuff of legends, myths that move our very souls in the telling.

                             Today the telling has been diversified.  We keep the old myths in new forms, and make new myths in old forms.  In the past few decades, much of the twisting turning acrobatics of the imagination of man has been devoted to the murky matters of man’s future- the lovely occupation of Science Fiction. 

                             The great classics- from Starship Troopersto Dune- are frequently being added to. Sifting through the amorphous mass of cheap material destined to compete with generic westerns and pointless romances for space on the collapsing yet infinite shelves of used bookstores there are rare gems whose authors appreciate the purpose of their work. They do not simply fantasize about the glories of genius robots and spaceships --though they love a good idea even more than the next guy-- they expound on the unchanging yet evolving minds of men. 

The more men change, the more men stay the same.



                             I’ve recently become acquainted with Frank Herbert’s masterful Dune Trilogies.  His brilliant depictions of scheming foes put humanity to the test, and his search for a truly noble leader to shepherd mankind is an endless topic which I may visit someday with an entire article.  Or several, should I be fool enough to think I could give an adequate commentary.  The first great impression left on me, however, was left by the unique (in my experience) evolution of combat.  Men have always found increasingly effective ways to kill each other, gaining more and more distance to their deadly reach.  But Herbert, in considering the effects of escalating weaponry, brought the cycle full circle and back to the beginning –just where Vizzini told us to go.  With the creation of the personal Shield, he gave men protection against all but the most deadly weapons- which, if used, would also kill the user.  The only things able to penetrate the Shields were simple objects with little kinetic energy; they had to move kinda slowly.  SIMPLE machines.  Like a wedge.

                             That’s right.  He gives us great warriors descending from the sky in giant ships, rushing into battle on distant planets.. with swords.  I tip my invisible hat to the man. 

                             But the return of combat to a personal level gives a fundamental change to human struggle.  If you take the distance out of man’s ability to kill, it becomes a personal struggle.  Being forced to see your enemy up close humanizes him.  

                             So too does one of today’s finest authors address the dehumanizing of the enemy.  Jack Campbell (John G. Hemry) writes a naval science fiction series beginning with Dauntless with a warning view of the effects a prolonged and bloody war can have upon the morale and morals of a military.  He throws it into sharp contrast by giving command of a bloodthirsty and headstrong fleet to a Rip-Van-Winkle of a Captain who managed to sleep through a century of war.  The greatest challenge he faces is not from the Machiavellian foe, but from the jaded and brutal Captains in his own fleet.  

Though, to be fair, it's easy to say 'Damn the torpedos' when you're flying a battleship

                             Heinlein is no stranger to the topic, addressing it time and time again.  When a Mobile Infantry cadet asks why they learn unarmed combat or even HAVE and infantry when they can wipe a planet clean with a touch of a button, his Sergeant responds ‘would you cut off a baby’s head to teach him a lesson?’  When Strength is valued above Prudence, an army is lost morally and militarily. 

                             There is a beauty to the imagination of man at work, creating the pure unbounded ideas inspiring many of our more brilliant inventions.  But there is a tendency in the modern reader (or viewer, depending on the story’s medium) to reach for the machines, the gadgets, the devices to be desired while ignoring the entire purpose of the genre- to elaborate on man himself. 

                            

Swedish Sincerity

Glad to be American

It’s always enlightening to read a foreign novel.  Not just one set outside of America, but one written with an entirely different background, by someone with a wholly different culture cascading around him.  One finds a different perspective on many things taken for granted, and some things not even noticed.

While reading Stieg Larsson’s trilogy beginning with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I found myself walking in a style of plot and prose similar to Dostoyevsky himself, with a particularly frightening approach to human nature.  One of the most shocking passages, however, wasn’t a radical reversal of a character; it wasn’t a savage attack on someone defenseless; it wasn’t a terrible revelation.  It was a simple warning of the Rule of Law.

Sweden –the setting of the series, and the homeland of Herr Larsson- is a relatively progressive country.  In fact, it is often radically progressive, and is sometimes an excellent example of the dangers that wrong ideas can lead to.  This point is made many times over throughout the books, but never more terribly nor more subtly than in a brief passage in the final book, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

While alone in her house, and fearing the return of a violent stalker who had broken into her house earlier that night, one of the lesser characters arms herself with a golf club, placing others around the house for use in an emergency.  The following morning, when meeting with an operative from a private security firm, she is warned by her impromptu bodyguard that, if the stalker had returned, and if she had killed him, she would have faced manslaughter charges.  Further, if it was shown that she had placed golf clubs around the house for that express purpose, she would have been charged with murder. 

The revelation came as a total shock to me.  Grounded as I am in the American idea that man has a right to defend himself, the prosecution of a woman defending herself in her own home against someone who was repeatedly threatening her is not only literally foreign to me, but utterly incomprehensible. 

Nor was this the only example of this throughout the books.  I was not surprised that any gun owned by a non-police civilian was illegal.  What surprised me was the Mace.  A series that spends much of its time concerned with violence towards women –especially defenseless women- puts illegal pepper-spray into a sharp contrast. 

This is not the first work that, while enjoyable, had caused me to pull out some hair.  I once attempted to watch the British cop show Luther, and, while I enjoyed much of the couple episodes I did see, I couldn’t stand the impossibility the police faced while hunting a cop-hunting serial killer… who was armed.  The police, like good Royal Subjects, bore no arms.  In fact, they had to wring and wrangle their bureaucratic supervisors in order to get barely a handful of Kevlar vests.  While police were dripping left and right because they could not legally protect themselves from the psycho, I gave up my faith in British television and watched something American.  (Many thanks to Sherlock, which redeemed the British ability to tell a story in my eyes.)

In one of the many delightful works of Terry Pratchett, we are transported to a distant continent on the mythological Diskworld where “swords are outlawed, so only outlaws have swords.”  In Hugh Laurie’s side-splitting novel entitled The Gun Seller, we find the central ex-army hero at the mercy of those villains with guns, many of whom happen to be... (shockingly) American.  (Of course, give the guy a weapon and he decimates the enemy forces, one ground-to-air missile at a time.  I sometimes wonder if Laurie should try an action movie… but he’d probably have to work a while to get rid of his House limp.)

The ability to defend oneself, so firmly entrenched in the American mind, heart, and Constitution, is something that I often take for granted.  It is illuminating to see the result of that ability’s legal castration.  It extends into the very minds of those restricted.  It is a statistical fact that it is far more likely for an American law-enforcement officer, fireman, or other first-responder to die as the result of a risk he took than in any European nation.  The idea that they are called to be individual heroes, and not simply cogs in a heroic system, is culturally ingrained into the American psyche since before there were United States. 

America is a nation of individuals.  She is a nation of heroes.  And I am proud to be an American.

2084

Health and Human Servitude

Anyone who has lazily flipped through the news channels, spotted the never-touched newspaper racks in the grocery store, or skimmed through articles and clips of current events online has been overwhelmed by the bile surrounding the mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services.  The right decries it as an attack on religious liberty, the destruction of the line between Church and State.  The left hails it at evidence of a war on women and of the cruelty of Obamacare opponents.

                The simple misconception occurs because the divide seeps much deeper into the conflicting rationales.  The issue at stake is not religious liberty, and not the respect of women.  It is not freedom of conscience, or the aid of federal healthcare.  The issue is the heart and soul of the United States, the very essence of the American Revolution.

                The infringement that the HHS Mandate makes upon America is that it requires businesses to offer a certain kind of health coverage.  It doesn’t matter what it requires to be covered, only that it is dictating to businesses how they are to be run.  The United States was built upon the ideal of individual liberty- the simple idea that people have the best shot at happiness if their ability to make their own choices is not infringed upon by others.  To say that a business should be forced to give certain benefits to its employees removes the choices of the employer and the employee from the equation- the first because his benefits are dictated, the second because he cannot choose an employer with the particular benefits he wants: all are now the same, regardless of what’s best for him.

               The spotlight granted to HHS illuminates a dark humor that could have come from the pages of a dystopian fiction.  Any great author portraying the dangers of certain political philosophies begins at the same place; he begins with the names.

                Names and language are the tools we use to perceive the world.  They are the connection between our minds and reality.  Is it any wonder, therefore, that Orwell, Bradbury, Lewis, Huxley, and More all put such emphasis on the names of the people and places they created?  From the tale of Utopia(No-place) brought by Raphael Hythlodaeus (Nonsense Messenger) to the Newspeak and Doublethink crated by the Ministries of Love, Peace, Plenty and Truth, names have served as translated insults and veiled sarcasm.  Even Lewis’ villain –the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments- has named itself N.I.C.E.  (Ironically enough, there is today a facet of the British Government that calls itself NICE- the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence drops the ‘H’ so that their name sounds friendlier to those patients who they deny medicines that could save them.)

                A similar brush was taken to the Department of Health and Human Services, making it sound –to all those Americans who hear the name once a year or two- like the warm and happy place the name suggests, full of bright, smiling doctors.

                When next you are told that the HHS Mandate is attacking religion or that its opponents are oppressing women, remember that it isn’t a battle between Church and State or Men and Women.  It is a struggle between Liberty and Legislators.

The Walrus and the Carpenter- Sages of the Marketplace

   

                No one can deny that there is a certain whimsical nature to marketing.  One speaks to consumers through one medium or another, trying to say something memorable that brings out a smile.  Though deadly serious, marketing professionals are the jesters of the business world.

                If the word ‘whimsical’ was not invented to describe Lewis Carroll, then it was probably invented by the man himself.  Certainly his most memorable characters are those that spout the most sense with the least logic- or the least sense with the most logic, depending on how you think of them. 

                Carroll gives an exemplary pair of sales-sharks in the tale of ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’  As told by Tweedledum and Tweedledee,(their very names suggest social media- Twitter, Tumblr and Tweedledee) the two not only convince the oysters to come and walk on the beach(a feat impractical for any mollusk) but got them to listen to the walrus so intently that they didn’t even notice that they were being eaten. 

                Now clearly the goal of marketing is not to eat one’s audience, but it is a good idea to have your audience bring their clams.

                The pair is an apt picture of the components of marketing- and is far more applicable to the rising world of internet marketing.  (In fact ‘Wonderland’ is a great way to describe the internet- but that is for another time.)   The Carpenter and the Walrus, the technical and the talkative, are the two facets of inbound marketing. 

                Naturally the first guy you need to work online is a nerd.  Nobody likes them and everyone loves them; everyone pities them and everyone is jealous of them.  You can’t make a killing with computers if you don’t know how to use them like a pro. 

                The second skill needed is the windbag.  All the best websites, blog setups, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts will catch no eyes without compelling content to hold the readers’ attention. 

                This pair has always been true of successful marketing, but in the past decade the rise of search engines, social media and blogs has drastically changed the focus of marketing from interruption to inbound.  This has placed a new realm of emphasis upon the windbags(or writers, as they prefer to be called).  Cash -or clams- comes from customers.  Customers are drawn in by conversations- and conversations are driven by clear, compelling content.

                The Walrus seems to do the bulk of the work to catch the oysters- so too does the content catch the customers.  Compelling content brings the clams.

Please feel free to comment below- I'd love to hear your thoughts!