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ATTENTION POP CULTURE: Hades Was Not That Bad a Dude!

In Movies, Mythology, Rants on February 12, 2010 at 10:43 am

There seems to be a not-very-promising-looking kids movie coming out today all about the Greek gods. I have no plans on seeing it, but I’d like to use this as an excuse to talk about something that has bugged me a lot: Pop culture’s persistently negative portrayal of Hades. You know what I’m talking about- he’s usually portrayed as some kind of Greek version of Satan, or like something off a death metal album cover. Apparently in the shitty-looking new movie coming out today, he’s one of the main bad guys. And remember the Disney movie with Hades as the bad guy? Or how he looks like some inhuman S&M fantasy in the God of War games? It’s everywhere.

Unfortunately, this popular depiction of one of the major Olypians is utter bullshit. While the ancient Greeks were afraid of the lord of the Underworld and found him to be something of a hardass, he was not the “bad” member of the pantheon.

Hades was the more or less passive ruler of the next world. If he were a D&D character, he would have been Lawful Neutral king who managed his domain the same way that Zeus ruled the sky and Poseidon the sea. (Solid earth was open to all of them.)

The Greek underworld itself was also pretty varied, it wasn’t just a hell-like place where everyone got zapped with flames or tormented in a Dante-like fashion. For the most part, it was gloomy and boring, though the Elysium and Tartarus were offshoots of the underworld, where souls were either rewarded or punished, respectively.

While Hades was considered a fairly morbid and fearsome guy, people were afraid of him and his domain in the same way that people have always been afraid of the irreversible nature of death. A realm of death and eternity that no one could ever leave is kind of scary no matter how you slice it, but Hades was nothing like this:

Or this:

If anything, he was one of the more just Olympians. Yes, there was that nasty business with the rape of Persephone, but for the most part he was a pretty passive and predictable administrator. You know who was a pretty nasty member of the Greek pantheon? Well, almost all of them. Zeus, for instance, was a colossal dick, what with all the womanizing and the petty punishments he kept dishing out. Ares was a bloodthirsty maniac. Even Athena, one of the more likable deities, got all bitchy envious and turned Arachne into a spider. They were a petty, nasty belligerent bunch, which is why they’re such great characters and we continue to tell stories about them to this day.

But, for gods’ sakes, please stop using poor Hades as the stock bad guy. Cut the poor dude a break. If anything, Ares was the nastiest, what with all of the bloodlust and destruction.

BONUS MYTHOLGY RANT!: You know the sequel to The Mummy? Remember how The Rock makes a deal with Anubis and gets super-powerful? Remember how Anubis was portrayed as basically the Egytian version of Satan? Also wrong! Anubis was the god of morticians, and basically in charge disposing of corpses in a sanitary fashion. Portraying his as the malevolent figure in the Egyptian pantheon makes about as much sense as depicting St. Peter as the central villain of Catholicism. IT MADE NO SENSE! Especially since Egyptian mythology had Set and Apophis, two perfectly interesting malevolent baddies, available. Why did they pick on poor Anubis?

The Protagonist Syndrome

In Books, Movies, Television on February 11, 2010 at 6:11 pm

I recently started watching Carnivale with my girlfriend, and rather like it. I know that it’s one of those shows that ends without complete resolution, but I enjoy the aesthetics of it and the inclusion of supernatural elements that are at once flashy and subtle. I have one problem with it, though: I can’t stand the protagonist. He’s boring, stupid, and lacks a sense of curiosity about the obviously interesting setting he’s in. Worst of all, I can tell that the writers and directors of the show want me to identify with him. I identify far more with the carny hucksters and weirdo psychics, though. I want the show to be about them. The protagonist is dead weight.

This is a common problem.

Protagonists are supposed to be people we identify with, and all too often writers and directors interpret that as “let’s put some boring guy at the center of the action.” And it is usually a guy. And he’s almost always boring. Think about it: Who’s the most interesting character- Luke Skywalker or Han Solo? Frodo Baggins or Aragorn? Charlie Bucket or Willie Wonka? Johnathan Harker or Van Helsing? Jack or everyone else on Lost? The list goes on. All too often, perfectly interesting pieces of fiction have their weakest link front and center. Protagonists tend to be watered down, terminally decent, utterly good and rather boring schlubs who somehow get laid despite not having any edge to them at all. Frequently, they are outshone by the supporting cast, who are actually allowed to have a certain dimension of weirdness and even a personal demon or two. Protagonists, though, tend to be empty balls of uncompelling boredom.

What should a protagonist be like, though? How about Willie Lowman, someone who evokes our sympathy and pity even though his plight is different than ours. How about Dr. Frankenstein, whose ambition and lack of responsibility to his work is applicable to pretty much anyone who’s wanted to create something? How about Holden Caufield, who continually struggles for authenticity and who goes crazy while he does it? How about Orlando who retains his/her mercurial identity even though so many other things change? How about Satan in Paradise Lost, who bravely defies stated authority? These characters are all awesome protagonists. They are weird, yes, and oftentimes kind of nasty, but their authors made them real, above all else.

Protagonists don’t have to be decent, “normal” ciphers of characters. They shouldn’t be the one character in the given medium without dimension or depth. I can tell what the creators of various shows and movies are trying to do- they want to provide an empty slate that the audience can project their identifications onto. That’s hugely aggravating, though, because instead of having a person at the center of the action we have a void. The protagonist should carry a story, but all too often they seem to drag it down.

Goodbye, Prof. Zinn

In History, Politics on January 27, 2010 at 6:21 pm

I saw Howard Zinn at PSU when I was a junior in high school. The room was packed, and security wasn’t letting anyone else in. Determined to see the man whose book I’d just read, though, I found an opening, ducked past security, and sat down on the floor in the back of the lecture hall. He was a wonderful speaker. I’d read his book A People’s History of the United States at the urging of my history teacher, Mr. Curry, who ranks as one of the four or five most influential teachers I’ve ever had. It was probably the fastest thousand pages I’ve ever read.

I didn’t agree with everything Prof. Zinn said, but he was an immense influence. From him, I learned something about history and politics that has stayed with me to this day:

When people argue about history, they’re not arguing about accuracy.

Historical arguments in the public sphere don’t really have anything to do with the fine details of what is true. Professional historians may take sides on whether something was characteristic of a given time period or carbon-dated correctly, but public historical controversies aren’t really about that. At that PSU lecture, Zinn gave the example of Columbus.

The historical record is fairly clear about what Columbus did and didn’t do, and who he was. It’s quite clear that he did not, in fact, prove that the world was round (that was already well known) and did, in fact, kill quite a lot of Native Americans. Columbus (and his crew) were professionals and kept records of what they were doing. The truth is, as they say, out there.

The perennial controversy every October 12th, though, isn’t about the accuracy or inaccuracy of the historical record. It’s not about whether or not those written records are accurate or not. Arguments about history are clashes between what people want to believe (the “truthiness” of something, if you will) and what is actually true.

Symbols, emotions, and cultural identifications all taint the way people evaluate history politics. It’s about people wanting history to be cleaner and more idyllic than it is, and the practice of willful ignorance on the part of those who want simplicity rather than truth. When the truth that people know they can’t fight, comes up against symbols and emotions, that’s when controversy strikes. One may say something like “Yes, Columbus did kill many people needlessly but…” followed by an argument about why he should still be lionized.

This is hard even for me. It takes a certain amount of emotional fortitude for me to admit to myself that Lincoln and FDR, my two favorite presidents, did some fairly awful things. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, probably the most primal and basic of all legal rights. Roosevelt had Japanese internment, a program that destroyed my own hometown’s Japanese community.

(MLK also committed plagiarism in college. It feels sort of uncomfortable to believe that, doesn’t it? Too bad it’s true.)

Being able to face these nasty historical truths, though, is not without a certain satisfaction. What’s more, it makes the more positive aspects of history stand out with even greater dramatic effect. Zinn, though, taught me to not look for perfect figures or statuesque titans in the history books. The desire to see them as such led only to disappointment. The facts are there, the truth is out there, and longing for lionized cultural symbols only leads to controversy and argument. It is not an argument about facts that occurs every October 12th, but an argument between an emotional desire for unblemished heroes versus seeing history as-is.

Zinn taught me that history is riddled with blood, injustice, and unfairness. He made me realize that as much as one might admire an ancient city, one still has to think of the slaves who built it. History is full of those who were trampled underfoot and never given a chance, and to ignore that- to only focus on polished marble edifices of imagined ancestors -is to do a disservice to them and the truth. I didn’t always agree with him, but he illuminated truths that needed telling.

In Which it is Confirmed That I Am Not An Anarchist

In Politics on January 19, 2010 at 10:08 am

Ursula K. Le Guin, now over eighty, looks even more like someone who could turn you into a newt. With her was Margaret Killjoy (who, much to my surprise, was a dude) the founder of Steampunk Magazine. The two were sharing the stage at Powell’s to talk about anarchism in science fiction, and even though I’m far away from being an anarchist, the intersection of politics and SF has always been near and dear to my heart.

The room was full of people in boots and black jackets, and honestly I didn’t look all that out of place, considering. Le Guin read briefly from The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home, only the first which I’d read. Even now she’s still charismatic, and seems immensely comfortable in front of a crowd. The passage she read from The Dispossessed highlighted a character’s dismay this his formerly anarcho-utopian society had reverted to capitalism. I wondered to myself how much of a real difference there was between anarchy and an unrestrained marketplace and thought, not much, really.

Killjoy was actually and extremely engaging speaker. Very funny, very active, and utterly confident. I’ll confess that I found him charming, even as I found him hopelessly naive. He named various writers who, at one time or another, expressed an affiliation with anarachism and waxed rhapsodic on the joys of statelessness. I was not convinced. I don’t find any utopian vision all that convincing, really.

More cynically, I wondered how many of the audience hadn’t even bothered to read a single word of political theory, and just liked wearing black and the idea of disorder. Quite a few, probably.

Utopias always remind me of a particular episode of South Park, wherein a crowd of hippies decide that they are going to create a new model of living. “We’ll have one guy who like, makes bread. And one guy who, like, looks out for other people’s safety.”

“Like a baker and a cop?” says one of the children.

“No no, can’t you imagine a place where people live together and like, provide services for each other in exchange for their services?”

“Yeah, it’s called a town,” says one of the children.

I have my own issues with Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s politics, but in this instance they’re spot-on. Utopias reimagine what already exists, but with a certain kind of simplicity and straightforward innocence replacing complexity.

Now, don’t get me wrong- the reason that renouncing anarchism is difficult for me is that there’s a lot about it that is appealing. I do think that self sufficiency has a lot of merit, and there are plenty of things that the government should stay out of. When it comes to social issues I’m more or less a libertarian. But, there are certain things, like public education and urban planning, that I’m unwilling to do without. When I look at my beautiful hometown of Portland, OR, when I ride its bike lanes and zoom among its multi-use buildings, I know I’m experiencing the benefits of a government that has done something very, very right. Anarchism seems to rail against militarism and oppression, but fails to realize that smashing the state means getting rid of the bike lanes. That’s just unacceptable.

Bringing down civilization doesn’t appeal to me. I love civilization, despite all of its very real problems. When I think of an ideal world, I don’t think of anarcho-syncadalist communes. I don’t imagine bucolic local communities. My ideal world has high-speed rails connecting continents like iron spider webs, megalopopli teeming with urban populations. I imagine cures for cancer that everyone has access to and nicely funded educational systems. Does that mean that some people are going to have jobs they don’t like and taxes they don’t want to pay? Absolutely- and I have no problem with that. When I think of my ideal world, I don’t imagine a cessation of suffering.

But, despite that, I still look forward to the future, and I know that a utopian ideology, any kind of utopian ideology, cannot deliver it.

And Now, I Yell About Geography!

In Rants on January 14, 2010 at 9:43 am

I have a problem with Europe. Not that I’ve ever been there or dislike European people or anything. That’s not it. My problem is that I just can’t accept it as a continent.

I mean, really! The word “continent” refers to a big continuous landmass, something like Australia where you can look at it and say “Yup, that given landmass has easily described natural borders. Guess it’s a contient! Yee-haw!” Europe, though, does not have that.

It is a peninsula attached to a much larger landmass, namely “Eurasia” which is a fucking continent. The only reason there is an idea of Europe at all is that a bunch of stuffy white people who were drawing maps at the time probably had a conversation like this:

“Oh my, we seem to be occupying the same major landmass as the Mohommedians and heathen Chinese! Goodness me!”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we old chap? Here, let’s make our own landmass. The Ural Mountains can be the boundary. There we go! We’re all alone now!”

“The Ural Mountains? That would be like dividing North America using the Rockies!”

“Dividing America? That’s silly! Why would anyone want to cut up an obviously continuous geographical area?”

“But you just…”

“I know! We’ll call our new continent ‘Europe’ after the unit of currency we’ll all start using in hundreds of years!”

And there you have it. That’s how Europe came to be known as it’s very own magical and special continent.

One could argue that Europe should be its own continent because it’s culturally distinct from the rest or Eurasia. But if Europe gets distinction based on geography, than Central America should, too, as well as the Middle East. Come to think of it, India ought to be it’s own thing, and central Asia isn’t really Middle Eastern and isn’t really Asian, so the various “-stan” countries should form their own region and call it Stanistan. Brazil is linguistically distinct from the rest of South America, so it should really be separate. The Caribbean is also pretty different from the rest of Latin America, so it can be its own deal. Japan, according to some Japanese douchebags, is the most magical and special place in the world, and, besides, it’s an archipelago, so Japan is now a continent. Greenland doesn’t really belong anywhere, so it should just be its own thing, and given the differences between northern and subsaharan Africa, we should probably divide it, too.

Also, Papua New Guinea can be it’s own deal. It’s not really Asian and not really Oceanic.

Did I miss anything?

The continents, I suppose, are meant to be purely geographic forms, kind of like “mountains” and “lagoons.” Putting cultural distinctiveness into what is supposed to be a purely physical description is, quite frankly, sort of retarded.

Hooray For Context!

In Books, Comic Books, Movies, Television on January 13, 2010 at 10:11 am

First: “Why can’t you just enjoy it for what it is?” this has been a common complaint levied at me and other people who get overly analytical about popular entertainment. My father said precisely this when he complained about my comparisons of Avatar to Dances With Wolves. He contended that movies need to be viewed as separate, independent entities. (This was also something I heard a lot from an ex who liked fluffy romantic comedies.)

Second: “All it has going for it is character recognition.” This was a gripe by a member of a book group I go to. He said it in reference to two things. The first was Fables, a comic book series about fairy tale characters in the modern world, and then about the new Star Trek movie. “If you were to present these stories without their popular characters,” he said, “they wouldn’t work.”

In both of the above examples, it seems that people want to experience art or entertainment as singular and unrelated to the cultural context around it. Each thing must be taken on its own merits without prejudice or stereotype, seen on its own terms. This attitude is oddly noble but ultimately impossible to realize.

This attitude of experiencing art and entertainment as singular and context-less is noble because it is open-minded, and wishes to find the potential good of a given work. To attempt to see something without context or connections is often an attempt to see it as something intrinsically good. Or, in the case of my book group companion, it is to demand intrinsic goodness only in a work. In either case, there is a deeply held belief that cultural objects should carry some spark of inherent awesomeness, and that spark must be searched for without prejudice.

To some extent I think that is a good thing, and abandoning prejudices about art and entertainment is often a good idea. However, one cannot really abandon context and really see cultural objects as singular. Ask yourself: Could you have gone into the new Star Trek movie and pushed aside all of your visions and notions regarding Kirk, Spock, the Enterprise, etc.? Could you have seriously said “For the next two hours I will forget all of the reruns I saw as a kid, all of the movies, everything I know about Star Trek“? Unless you have a pathologically selective memory, the answer is probably no.

Good artists and entertainers know this. When they know that an audience will see everything in context of everything else, they will play with that and use that. Star Trek was great because it used audience expectations effectively, exploiting the feeling of recognition and connection to wonderful effect.

Two entirely different examples of artists exploiting context for effect are Psycho and Scream. Both of these movies placed prominent actresses, Vivian Leigh and Drew Barrymore, front and center on their movie posters, precisely where you would expect the main character to be, flanked by supporting casts. In both of these movies, though, the top-billed actresses are killed off before the major action takes place, confounding audience expectations. Would the shock in either of these movies have worked if the audience hadn’t seen the movie posters or didn’t know who the actresses were? No, but they didn’t really have to. Hitchcock and Craven knew what people would be expecting because of ad campaigns and movie conventions, and exploited those expectations for effect.

(Tangentially related: My enjoyment of Inglorious Basterds was greatly hampered by the difference between the movie’s trailer and the film itself. I was expecting lots of fun violence a la Kill Bill, but got a spaghetti western. A pretty good spaghetti western, yes, but I kept waiting for the grand guignol promised by the trailer.)

Embracing context and expectations, though, is wonderful. Instead of seeing a pile of things not judged on their own merit, one sees a grand interrelated network of things. Every action movie is related to every other action movie. Comedies are connected to other comedies, horror flicks to other horror flicks. Cognates, similarities, and variations abound. One can see the same convention tweaked over and over again, sometimes badly, sometimes well. Embracing context means that you like synthesis and variation, you accept that things combine and mutate. One can never really see something “on its own terms,” and I, for one, have no problem with that.

Ferngully in Space!

In Movies, Science Fiction on January 6, 2010 at 2:27 pm

I approached Avatar not only with skepticism, but with a certain amount of hostility. As pretty as the movie was, one could tell exactly what the plot was going to be just from the previews. It’s a tired, tired story that’s shown up in Dances With Wolves, Ferngully, Pocahontas, The Last Samurai, and, to some extent, District 9. Namely, a guy who is first pitched against an indigenous population joins their ranks, becomes their leader, and leads them in battle against his former comrades. (This excellent blog post talks about how steeped in white guilt this whole narrative is.)

Avatar’s story, sadly, is utterly predictable. At no point did I feel myself especially involved in it, or doubt how the movie would end. With the exception of Sigourney Weaver’s scientist character (whose Stanford tank top and attempts at empathy with the indigenous population recall Peace Corps volunteers) none of the characters were worth caring for. The soldiers were soldiers I had seen before, and the Na’vi familiar noble savages. The main character was far too much of an empty suit for me to care about him.

Fortunately, the movie is massively pretty. The animals and plants of Pandora abound in hallucinogenic beauty, trees and vines shimmering with a view that makes you realize what an amazing phenomena bioluminescence is. The scenes of the Na’vi riding through floating mountains on hippie-colored pterodactyl-dragons are amazing and exhilarating, and I confessed smiling immensely during the movie’s wholly satisfying climactic battle scene. Mech walkers, hover planes, guns, arrows, and exotic alien beasts all assembled to kill each other in what is probably the best action sequence in theaters right now. But, I don’t think it was enough.

Avatar has grand ambitions. It is clear that Cameron longs for it to be mentioned alongside Star Wars, Aliens, Blade Runner, and The Matrix in the pantheon of great blockbuster SF movies. Because of its amazing visuals, it perhaps has a place, but it has no Han Solo or Obi-Wan, nothing as terrifyingly iconic as an Alien chestburster, no quandaries about reality or thought. As much as I enjoyed it’s action sequences and set pieces, I still wanted more. I enjoyed it, but do not admire it. It has beauty, that is all, and beauty alone is never enough.

You Know What Doesn’t Stand Up to Logic? The Book of Genesis.

In Religion on January 5, 2010 at 10:38 am

Addendum: Seph has corrected my reasoning in this post in the comments section. Turns out the probability does not actually reach one. I shouldn’t try to post about math, but I still think that it’s utterly unreasonable to assume that a set of humans, over an infinite amount of time, wouldn’t try to do something interesting.

There are lots of things that bug me about the Bible. Lots of things. (And yes, this atheist has actually read every single word of the New Jerusalem edition that resides at my parents house. I was a precocious teenager…)

Today’s Dinosaur Comics reminds me of a particular annoyance of mine: Adam and Eve are essentially in a no-win situation in Genesis. Setting aside issues of Biblical literalism and evolution for the time being, the math just doesn’t work.

Here’s the problem: At this point, Death hasn’t been introduced into the world, yet, so Adam, Eve, and everything around them is immortal and can exist for an eternity. Also, the Tree of Knowledge is just sitting right there, and every day there’s the chance that they might eat it.

So, we’ve got a system where every moment there is a probability that something might happen, as well as an infinite amount of time. Within an infinite amount of time the probability of anything (except zero) become one. Therefore, over an infinite amount of time it is a mathematical certitude that one of them will eat the fruit. (And it does just say “fruit,” in the text, it’s only an apple by tradition.)

Think about it- if you roll a six sided die an infinite amount of times, the probability of rolling a four at some point becomes certain. Over an infinite amount of time, the probability humanity being expelled from the garden also becomes certain.

In conclusion, religion is kind of silly. One could point out things like this all day, but that would just be kind of cheap and misanthropic.

2009, in Review

In Year in Review on December 30, 2009 at 1:51 pm

Yeah, yeah, I know this “year in review” thing is a little late…

For me, personally, 2008 was pretty much the Best Year Ever. At the end of last year, I wondered how the hell 2009 would be able to compare, but also had high hopes regarding my career and future travel.

2009 was not what I expected, but still neat in its own way. Sure, I spent most of it rather ingloriously unemployed in Portland (an anticlimax compared to last year) but there was a very, very positive side to that.

When abroad (and before that, in Eugene) I had fond memories and good thoughts of Portland. I remembered it as a vibrant, liberal city, a place where something was always going on, and where the high amount of culture and activity belied the city’s more modest population. I was worried, somewhat, that these were memories colored by nostalgia, that Portland was only slightly less gray than any other American metro area.

Fortunately, though, I was wrong. This past year I’ve found that my geographical parent is even better than the home that I remembered. I hadn’t lived here properly since high school, and I’ve since found out that Portland is a land of zombie bike rides, clever smut, vampiric awesomeness and Star Trek in the park. Also, lots of really excellent beer. Having my nostalgia be confirmed and even exceeded has been an interesting experience, and I love this city more in reality than in abstraction. Portland, the place I call home, has been inspiring. I’ve had bouts of creativity and productivity here that I never had in Japan, and am perplexed and thrilled by that.

My experience is probably colored by the fact that for the most part I’ve spent 2009 writing. While I have worked for five different employers this year (GEOS, a canvassing company, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Kaplan Aspect, and Macy’s) my primary focus has been on my own creative endeavors. I have managed to actually get paid for it once, and have a small gig with a tourism website at the moment. I’ve also managed to get myself into a nifty local ‘zine somehow, which is a fun project.

This is great. Really fantastic, actually. Prior to this year, I thought that it was kind of ludicrous to expect anyone to pay me for anything I’ve written, publish it, or whatever. However, I’m getting some pretty dangerous ideas here, and I think I can pull it off. You all may need to pull me back to earth if I get too optimistic- I’m actually pitching stuff to websites, stitching together a *cough* book *cough* (I’ve been sort of embarrassed to admit that) and (this is the part that boggles my mind) actually being accepted on occasion. Last year I ended 2008 saying “in 2009 I’ll start my career.” I was anticipating going into the Foreign Service or Peace Corps, but I guess this counts as a different kind of start, something I’ve always wanted to do, i.e., be professionally creative.

I wasn’t entirely stationary- there was a little vagabonding going on. 2009 was also a year in which I rode quite a bit on the I-5 corridor, going down to Eugene and up to Seattle, down to San Francisco, and, of course, to Burning Man. (And yes, Burning Man really is neat- it’s not all hype.) Not only is Portland wonderful, but the rest of the West Coast has some pretty cool stuff going on as well. Seeing friends up and down the tectonic plate made me wish I could teleport, or, at least fly really fast. Something like that.

I have no idea what’s happening in 2010. I’m scheduled to join the Peace Corps, have a fantastic new girlfriend, am working on turning Hired Tongue into a book, flinging unsolicited proclamations of my awesomeness to editors and literary agents, and suddenly don’t really know what’s going to happen. I’ll be thirty years old, writing furiously, and still wandering about. I don’t mind that, really- it certainly beats banality. This lifestyle is fitting, for a time, but it has to lead somewhere to be truly satisfying. I don’t know how much of a vagabond I’ll still be in a year’s time. 2010 looks uncertain, but I know it will not be boring.

Three Reasons Why The Past Decade Didn’t Suck

In History on December 24, 2009 at 2:10 pm

It’s the end of the decade. Yes, it really is. Mathematical pedantry aside, we’re entering a new, arbitrarily-determined time unit, and that’s something to be kind of excited about. People seem to be complaining about the last ten years, though, and I do think that they were a pretty nasty time, all told. But, they weren’t all bad. There’s a lot to like about the past ten years. Here are a few things:

It Has Been Much, Much Worse

Think about the twentieth century:

1900s- Not much
1910s- WWI, Spanish flu, millions dead
1920s- Decadence, stock market crash
1930s- Great Depression, WWII, millions dead
1940s- Great Depression, WWII, millions dead
1950s- Cold War, Korean War, nuclear paranoia
1960s- Cold War, Vietnam War, JFK assassination, general unrest
1970s- Cold War, Vietnam War, Watergate, recession
1980s- Cold War, decadence, hair metal
1990s- The Cold War is over! WOW! HUZZAH! (Gulf War happens, though.)
2000s- Iraq War, Recession

Our parents and grandparents faced existential threats to the U.S. in the form of the Great Depression, Nazi Germany, and the USSR. We no longer have that. As much as some might attempt to remake Islamic terrorists into the Nazis or Commies of our time, they do not pose a serious threat to Western civilization. Think about it: The biggest and most complicated thing that they were able to do was destroy a significant portion of downtown New York. As devastating as that was, it was nothing compared to what Germany did to Poland, Japan did to China, we did to Dresden, and any nuclear bomb could have done to anywhere.

Moreover, as awful as the current recession is, it’s remarkable that we don’t have people standing in bread lines or trying to sell pencils in the street. Yes, Detroit has suffered quite a bit, but the economy has started growing again. The Dust Bowl destitution from the thirties stayed in the thirties. We don’t have any Hoovervilles. Think about that: We’ve been through a long, crushing recession, but have managed to avoid absolute destitution. In its own way, that’s great.

The Internet!

Remember the internet ten years ago? It was full of dancing hamsters, pirated music and porn. Now, it’s full of lolcats, pirated music and porn, but also a bunch of other neat stuff. Think about this: Let’s say you want to learn how to decoupage. So, you Google “how to decoupage” and WHAM-O! There are a bunch of sites telling you how to do precisely that! That is really, utterly, super profound. That access to information is unprecedented in human history, and despite all of the annoying memes and pictures of cats, the Internet really is the greatest thing since bread or slices. Cyberpunk (remember that?) was a SF genre chiefly characterized by the existence of a giant web of computers all across the world connected to each other. Now, Cyberpunk is dead because it’s central tenant is real. This past decade, we made a subgenre of SF obsolete. How cool is that?

The Decline of Bigotry

Yes, there’s lots of problems with the health care legislation, and no, Obama didn’t magically fix everything with his ultra-charismatic Jesus-like wizardry, but it’s still fantastic that the U.S. elected a black dude. And, despite Proposition Eight passing in California, gay people are getting married in the U.S., and we will have it sooner or later. There’s gay marriage in Iowa! That’s pretty amazing. If, thirty years ago, you were to tell someone that in 2009 the president would be black and gay dudes would be setting up wedding registries they probably would have said “Shut your pie-hole, hippie!” HA-HA! Take that, you imagined Archie Bunker-like hypothetical conservative person! Woo-hoo!

Carl Sagan (one of my heroes) once said “We live in an extraordinary age.” He said that back in the eighties, and he was right-on then. He’s extra-super-mega correct now. As much fun as it is to bitch, we do live in an extraordinary age, and it really is getting better all the time. Here’s to the next decade.