(no subject)
Jan. 30th, 2012 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieNot long ago, there were a few posts addressing the topic of "moral fiction" and/or "morally ambiguous" fiction. And when I say fiction I mean fantasy.
This is a topic that comes up fairly regularly, along with the (not unrelated) question of "political fiction." The most recent iteration was touched off by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, who's been doing a blog tour in support of his new novel The Worker Prince.
Now, I have not read The Worker Prince. I was vaguely interested in it when I first saw it mentioned, but I admit that essay linked above made me very much less interested, and the recent review posted on SF Signal leads me to believe that it's the sort of thing I couldn't get more than a few pages into before hurling it across the room. I've got a worldbuilding issue myself, and in particular I get twitchy about portrayals of religions. But maybe more about that later.
Anyway. Schmidt seems to think...well. this is what he says.
Now, there's a big leap here. I'm going along just fine with the first two sentences of this paragraph...third one is fine, I agree with it...then suddenly nihilism is equated with moral ambiguity, and suddenly moral ambiguity equals "no right and wrong." Here's wiki on nihilism:
That's not moral ambiguity. There's no ambiguity about that stance at all. "Nothing matters" is not a statement of any sort of ambiguity.
Moral ambiguity says, "Yeah, there maybe is such a thing as right and wrong, but knowing what that is at any given time can be really freaking complicated."
Not the same thing at all.
Now, there have already been a couple of responses to Schmidt, and once I read them I figured I didn't need to just repeat them, but like I said, it's a topic that interests me anyway so I chew on it.
I really think that, just like there's no fiction that isn't political, there's no fiction that isn't moral. Teasing out what the politics or moral stance of a given story are is going to be more or less complicated, depending on the aim, inclination, and skill of any given writer* but it's always there. Just personally, I think writers ought to be as aware as they can of their assumptions, both moral and political, so that when that ends up in their work--which would be always--they know it and can work with it, rather than having things just kind of splat into the text on their own. Like, for instance, the assumption that Roman religion wasn't something that Romans found particularly important or engaging. Or maybe Egyptian--the review of TWP linked above considers the Legallians to be an analog of Rome, but if the story is indeed a reworking of Moses, Egypt might fit better. (And actually, the name "Legallians" sets off certain alarms for me, but since I haven't read the book and the reviewer seems not to have seen the thing that name is suggesting to me, I'm going to assume--hope!--Schmidt didn't go there and that it's just me.) Either way, Roman or Egyptian, a few minutes of sitting down and thinking about the issue will show you why that's a really bad assumption. ** If that review is an accurate description of the book, it tells me something very specific about how much thought Schmidt has put into Roman (or Egyptian) religion, and implies that the entire issue of religion--or to be more specific, the issue of religion that isn't Schmidt's--hasn't actually been very deeply considered or researched.***
According to the review, Schmidt is very much writing deliberately from a particular sort of Christian perspective. That's awesome. I've said in the past that writers ought to be honest--that is, they ought to write what's true, whatever that means for them, whether I agree with them or not. But I can't help feeling that any writer's chances of writing "honest" increase the more they question their assumptions.
It's really quite common for people who haven't thought much about Roman religion**** to assume that it was corrupt or nothing but superstition, half decayed and just waiting for something really and truly better to replace it. Because it wasn't really an actual religion that real people really believed in, not like mine is for me. Perhaps unfairly that review gives me the very strong impression that Schmidt assumes this. And similarly I can't help feeling that in the essay linked above, Schmidt is equating "moral" with "what I think is moral." Morals he doesn't endorse become "nihilism" and fiction written according to any of those other sets of morals is in fact immoral fiction that damages society. Understand, I agree with him that fiction has an impact on people's actions and beliefs. And I think he totally ought to write according to his own moral lights. It's just, where he thinks depictions of unambiguous good and evil are positive, I think they're potentially toxic and disastrous. I might even say they're immoral and not what the world needs at this difficult time.*****
I don't mean to slam Schmidt or his book. The review also suggests that it's a pretty fun read with engaging characters, and if it seems like your kind of thing by all means go buy a copy and enjoy the heck out of it. I just really object strongly to the idea that "moral" fiction must espouse one particular set of morals and anything else must be advocating nihilism. And like I said above, I have a thing about religious issues in worldbuilding.
_
*Stories about monarchy aren't always carrying the message "the common people need to be ruled by God's chosen king" and stories where the bad guy gets away with it are not necessarily saying those bad guys are really good guys who ought to be rewarded for their villainy. Some are, certainly, but some are not, and separating those are sufficiently complicated that there exist hundreds of people whose entire occupation is writing essays and even whole books on what they think some writer was trying to do, or what some text is actually saying.
**Okay, maybe you've sat and thought many minutes, and don't see what I mean. I have one question for you. Why did the Romans care so much about whether Christians would sacrifice to the emperor? Why not just say let them, say, take some sort of loyalty oath? Surely it would have been easier on everyone--Pliny the younger really hated having to arrest and execute Christians and according to his own letters to the emperor he tried to give them every chance to change their minds. Why didn't he ever think of that obvious out? And why were Jews exempt? No, the answer is not "The Romans were just crazy, everyone knows that."
***And if the equation with the Romans is in fact what Schmidt was after--or perhaps he intends a sort of amalgam Exodus/Roman persecution--there's an additional problem, though I admit this is likely particular to me. I remember once in high school helping out in the kindergarden of the elementary school I went to, which was a Catholic school. The teacher was reading the kids some saints life or other and the Romans are mentioned and she says, "Do you know who the Romans were? They were bad people who persecuted the Christians." Except, you know, those Christians were also Romans. Every time someone says "The Romans persecuted the Christians," I twitch.
****Or any religion that isn't their own, past or present (but for some reason particularly past)
*****Or ever. What time isn't difficult?
This is a topic that comes up fairly regularly, along with the (not unrelated) question of "political fiction." The most recent iteration was touched off by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, who's been doing a blog tour in support of his new novel The Worker Prince.
Now, I have not read The Worker Prince. I was vaguely interested in it when I first saw it mentioned, but I admit that essay linked above made me very much less interested, and the recent review posted on SF Signal leads me to believe that it's the sort of thing I couldn't get more than a few pages into before hurling it across the room. I've got a worldbuilding issue myself, and in particular I get twitchy about portrayals of religions. But maybe more about that later.
Anyway. Schmidt seems to think...well. this is what he says.
All of us are flawed. There’s nothing wrong with showing that. In fact, I think it’s irresponsible not to. Cardboard characters, good guy or bad guy, are not compelling or interesting, because they are not real. But at the same time, as nihilism and moral ambiguity dominate people’s thinking, so they will dominate our world and shape how we live in it. If we teach people there is no right and wrong, we create a world of people who believe that.
Now, there's a big leap here. I'm going along just fine with the first two sentences of this paragraph...third one is fine, I agree with it...then suddenly nihilism is equated with moral ambiguity, and suddenly moral ambiguity equals "no right and wrong." Here's wiki on nihilism:
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.[1] Moral nihilistsassert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism can also takeepistemological, metaphysical, or ontological forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or that contrary to popular belief, some aspect of reality does not exist as such.
The term nihilism is sometimes used in association with anomie to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realizing there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws.
That's not moral ambiguity. There's no ambiguity about that stance at all. "Nothing matters" is not a statement of any sort of ambiguity.
Moral ambiguity says, "Yeah, there maybe is such a thing as right and wrong, but knowing what that is at any given time can be really freaking complicated."
Not the same thing at all.
Now, there have already been a couple of responses to Schmidt, and once I read them I figured I didn't need to just repeat them, but like I said, it's a topic that interests me anyway so I chew on it.
I really think that, just like there's no fiction that isn't political, there's no fiction that isn't moral. Teasing out what the politics or moral stance of a given story are is going to be more or less complicated, depending on the aim, inclination, and skill of any given writer* but it's always there. Just personally, I think writers ought to be as aware as they can of their assumptions, both moral and political, so that when that ends up in their work--which would be always--they know it and can work with it, rather than having things just kind of splat into the text on their own. Like, for instance, the assumption that Roman religion wasn't something that Romans found particularly important or engaging. Or maybe Egyptian--the review of TWP linked above considers the Legallians to be an analog of Rome, but if the story is indeed a reworking of Moses, Egypt might fit better. (And actually, the name "Legallians" sets off certain alarms for me, but since I haven't read the book and the reviewer seems not to have seen the thing that name is suggesting to me, I'm going to assume--hope!--Schmidt didn't go there and that it's just me.) Either way, Roman or Egyptian, a few minutes of sitting down and thinking about the issue will show you why that's a really bad assumption. ** If that review is an accurate description of the book, it tells me something very specific about how much thought Schmidt has put into Roman (or Egyptian) religion, and implies that the entire issue of religion--or to be more specific, the issue of religion that isn't Schmidt's--hasn't actually been very deeply considered or researched.***
According to the review, Schmidt is very much writing deliberately from a particular sort of Christian perspective. That's awesome. I've said in the past that writers ought to be honest--that is, they ought to write what's true, whatever that means for them, whether I agree with them or not. But I can't help feeling that any writer's chances of writing "honest" increase the more they question their assumptions.
It's really quite common for people who haven't thought much about Roman religion**** to assume that it was corrupt or nothing but superstition, half decayed and just waiting for something really and truly better to replace it. Because it wasn't really an actual religion that real people really believed in, not like mine is for me. Perhaps unfairly that review gives me the very strong impression that Schmidt assumes this. And similarly I can't help feeling that in the essay linked above, Schmidt is equating "moral" with "what I think is moral." Morals he doesn't endorse become "nihilism" and fiction written according to any of those other sets of morals is in fact immoral fiction that damages society. Understand, I agree with him that fiction has an impact on people's actions and beliefs. And I think he totally ought to write according to his own moral lights. It's just, where he thinks depictions of unambiguous good and evil are positive, I think they're potentially toxic and disastrous. I might even say they're immoral and not what the world needs at this difficult time.*****
I don't mean to slam Schmidt or his book. The review also suggests that it's a pretty fun read with engaging characters, and if it seems like your kind of thing by all means go buy a copy and enjoy the heck out of it. I just really object strongly to the idea that "moral" fiction must espouse one particular set of morals and anything else must be advocating nihilism. And like I said above, I have a thing about religious issues in worldbuilding.
_
*Stories about monarchy aren't always carrying the message "the common people need to be ruled by God's chosen king" and stories where the bad guy gets away with it are not necessarily saying those bad guys are really good guys who ought to be rewarded for their villainy. Some are, certainly, but some are not, and separating those are sufficiently complicated that there exist hundreds of people whose entire occupation is writing essays and even whole books on what they think some writer was trying to do, or what some text is actually saying.
**Okay, maybe you've sat and thought many minutes, and don't see what I mean. I have one question for you. Why did the Romans care so much about whether Christians would sacrifice to the emperor? Why not just say let them, say, take some sort of loyalty oath? Surely it would have been easier on everyone--Pliny the younger really hated having to arrest and execute Christians and according to his own letters to the emperor he tried to give them every chance to change their minds. Why didn't he ever think of that obvious out? And why were Jews exempt? No, the answer is not "The Romans were just crazy, everyone knows that."
***And if the equation with the Romans is in fact what Schmidt was after--or perhaps he intends a sort of amalgam Exodus/Roman persecution--there's an additional problem, though I admit this is likely particular to me. I remember once in high school helping out in the kindergarden of the elementary school I went to, which was a Catholic school. The teacher was reading the kids some saints life or other and the Romans are mentioned and she says, "Do you know who the Romans were? They were bad people who persecuted the Christians." Except, you know, those Christians were also Romans. Every time someone says "The Romans persecuted the Christians," I twitch.
****Or any religion that isn't their own, past or present (but for some reason particularly past)
*****Or ever. What time isn't difficult?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 07:14 pm (UTC)That is to say—by taking this seriously, at all, what are we actually taking seriously?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 07:20 pm (UTC)I suspect irritation over the description of the Roman-analog culture was enough to tip it over from "think about it occasionally" to "post."
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 09:24 pm (UTC)His failure is sadly even more reductive: he can't tell the difference between stories and real life.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 09:46 pm (UTC)Now, of course, those stories horrify me. I was reading not long ago about religion in Roman Egypt, and how thugs would go into the temples and do things like set fires or kill the Horus hawks kept there and then boast about what great servants of God they were--and people would then write admiringly about it, which is how we could read it today. Bleah. But that sort of story is really very common in the narrative of how Christianity took over the empire, and I doubt most people think much about the implication of that.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 11:53 pm (UTC)at the same time, I do want to know who should win; who is on the right side.
I get uncomfortable when someone seems so unquestioningly to believe there's an easily identifiable right side. Maybe sometimes there is, but in my real-life experience it seems like more often, there's a side that I support, but maybe I can see that people of goodwill seem to also support the other side. Or the issue is so murky *no* side seems entirely right. Or a clear right side seems evident, and people act on it, and then--bang, unintended bad consequences happen anyway. So when a guy says he wants to know who should win, like it's a sports match, makes me anxious. Hell, if it's like a sports match, it's especially anxious making, because in that case who should win is absolutely arbitrary. The Red Sox if you're in Boston. The Yankees if you're in New York.
I believe there are people in this world who have purer motives,
The concept of purity always makes me want to run away, too. Pure. Unadulterated. Not admixed. But that doesn't say anything about the nature of the motive. Singlemindedness and monomaniacal focus are NOT things I like. In general I like things that are admixed, hybrid, and varied.
I like that he wants to make the world a better place and that he wants to encourage his readers to believe it's possible. But I'd rather have people trying to make the world a better place amid complications and confusions, and have their choices not be obvious. If it were easy to choose and do, we'd have done it already. A fair number of people seem to think that the reason it hasn't happened already is because the Bad Guys keep on foiling the good guys, but I like stories that *don't* make that assumption.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 12:00 am (UTC)And also, of course (or, of course to me) many of the most horrifically awful, evil things have been done by people who were sure they were the ones who ought to win. The good guys. God's chosen doing God's work. They're so sure because their motives are good and their hearts are pure and they're on the side of the angels, so the things they do are right and their enemies just don't understand what's right or are just, you know, evil and opposing good. This is why I think that sort of narrative is toxic and yes, immoral.
editing to add--obviously not all narratives involving those sorts of characters are toxic. I mean the sort of narrative that Schmidt is valorizing and idealizing as Moral in opposition to all those nihilistic, non-moral fantasies he decries. You knew that, but I felt like my sentence wasn't sufficiently clear.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 09:09 am (UTC)When there is moral certainty, it's nice if it isn't comfortable. For example, from the British POV in WWII, shooting and killing the enemy in a firefight was most certainly the right thing to do. However, that doesn't make the immediate consequences pleasant.
However, I quite like an escapist action story where I can cheer on the good guys.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 09:44 am (UTC)I wonder if this definition makes me a nihilist. I believe that the meaning of your life (moral or otherwise) is the sum total of good (addition) and bad (subtraction) you've done in your life. How many people have you helped or hurt? What have you created or destroyed? But there is no inherent meaning in the universe, only what we put into it.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-10 05:57 pm (UTC)Of course, something else is conspicuously missing from this bland stew: the other half of humanity, as I argued in A Plague on Both Your Houses.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-12 02:09 pm (UTC)And as far as your actual comment--yes. Very much yes. I read that post, and enjoyed it. Also I really like your idea for an antho of grownup space opera.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-12 05:39 pm (UTC)