The term 'Butlerian Jihad' is obviously a reference to Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon'.
Deriving the name from somebody named 'Serena Butler' or 'Jehanne Butler' is just plain stupid.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
N is for Nobody
Science fiction is dead.
Exhibit 1: Last month I found myself in the ‘Fantasy and Science Fiction’ section of an average-sized bookshop, one of a major chain of such shops that you can find in any shopping centre in the country.
There were some Star Trek books. There were some Star Wars books. I think there may have been some Stargate books. There were a few of those sequels to the Dune Books by Brian Herbert which I have never had the slightest inclination to read. There was ‘I, Robot’. There was, in one gleam of hope, a whole slab of shelf devoted to a new edition of Philip K. Dick’s novels.
Beyond that, it was all Fantasy.
Of course, not all bookstores are like that. But if Science Fiction was a going concern, there wouldn’t be any bookstores like that.
To a first approximation, therefore, it would seem that no science fiction with mass appeal is being written today.
Refutations of this statement, with copious counter-examples, would be welcome. While awaiting them I will have a go at possible explanations:
(1) As a superannuated fuddy-duddy, I am out of touch with the vibrant and populous community of modern science fiction readers. Entirely possible... but if they were really vibrant and populous one would still expect to see more evidence of it in the chain bookstores. I think.
(2) It just got too hard to write science fiction, because the real world got too science-fictiony, and was more or less the same as the Cyberpunk world we used to read.
Exhibit 2: When I read science fiction, even my favourite stuff, it always has a period feel nowadays: In all but a very few cases, it is obviously of the 50s, or the 60s, or the 70s, or the 80s, and could not be anything else. I can immediately imagine a ‘generic’ science fiction story of each of those decades, as dated by its themes and characters as if it were full of artifacts and celebrities of that period.
Exhibit 3: I can think of two authors immediately who wrote science fiction that was interesting and good, in different ways, and then went off to achieve fame and fortune writing formulaic fantasy. I can’t think of anyone who went the other way.
I sat down once and thought about what sort of thing I liked to read best of all, and I remember deciding that it was science fiction stories of the sort written by Larry Niven. I can’t think of any particular way they stand out. It is just that every other particular science fiction author I think of has particular foibles that would grate on me if I had to read only them forever. So, if I was forced to take the short stories of only one author with me to Camp X-Ray to read and re-read for the term of my natural life, it would have to be Larry Niven.
Having said that, I have almost never re-read a Larry Niven novel.
And, I can’t think of any way in which Larry Niven has changed my world view. Perhaps changes in world view only arise in response to being sufficiently irritated. So, although ‘N’ was originally going to be for Larry Niven, I have changed my mind.
N is for the next science fiction author to make an impact on the way I look at the world.
Nobody.
Exhibit 1: Last month I found myself in the ‘Fantasy and Science Fiction’ section of an average-sized bookshop, one of a major chain of such shops that you can find in any shopping centre in the country.
There were some Star Trek books. There were some Star Wars books. I think there may have been some Stargate books. There were a few of those sequels to the Dune Books by Brian Herbert which I have never had the slightest inclination to read. There was ‘I, Robot’. There was, in one gleam of hope, a whole slab of shelf devoted to a new edition of Philip K. Dick’s novels.
Beyond that, it was all Fantasy.
Of course, not all bookstores are like that. But if Science Fiction was a going concern, there wouldn’t be any bookstores like that.
To a first approximation, therefore, it would seem that no science fiction with mass appeal is being written today.
Refutations of this statement, with copious counter-examples, would be welcome. While awaiting them I will have a go at possible explanations:
(1) As a superannuated fuddy-duddy, I am out of touch with the vibrant and populous community of modern science fiction readers. Entirely possible... but if they were really vibrant and populous one would still expect to see more evidence of it in the chain bookstores. I think.
(2) It just got too hard to write science fiction, because the real world got too science-fictiony, and was more or less the same as the Cyberpunk world we used to read.
Exhibit 2: When I read science fiction, even my favourite stuff, it always has a period feel nowadays: In all but a very few cases, it is obviously of the 50s, or the 60s, or the 70s, or the 80s, and could not be anything else. I can immediately imagine a ‘generic’ science fiction story of each of those decades, as dated by its themes and characters as if it were full of artifacts and celebrities of that period.
Exhibit 3: I can think of two authors immediately who wrote science fiction that was interesting and good, in different ways, and then went off to achieve fame and fortune writing formulaic fantasy. I can’t think of anyone who went the other way.
I sat down once and thought about what sort of thing I liked to read best of all, and I remember deciding that it was science fiction stories of the sort written by Larry Niven. I can’t think of any particular way they stand out. It is just that every other particular science fiction author I think of has particular foibles that would grate on me if I had to read only them forever. So, if I was forced to take the short stories of only one author with me to Camp X-Ray to read and re-read for the term of my natural life, it would have to be Larry Niven.
Having said that, I have almost never re-read a Larry Niven novel.
And, I can’t think of any way in which Larry Niven has changed my world view. Perhaps changes in world view only arise in response to being sufficiently irritated. So, although ‘N’ was originally going to be for Larry Niven, I have changed my mind.
N is for the next science fiction author to make an impact on the way I look at the world.
Nobody.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
More precious than carbuncles
This post is about different books than the one Marco is writing.
In the Narnia books the land of Narnia is described as a small country on the margin of a great empire, the land of Calormen. We are never told the extent of it, but in The Horse and His Boy Shasta and Bree travel north for ‘weeks and weeks’ along its coast from a spot which seems far from its southern edge, while Narnia itself is the sort of place which can be crossed in a few days. ‘It is not the fourth size of one of your least provinces’, as Prince Rabadash tells his father the Tisroc.
Calormen is far larger and more populous than Narnia and Archenland, where humans first appeared on the world. And, while throughout the history of Narnia the inhabitants of these little countries continue to resemble King Frank and Queen Helen- that is, to look and act English- the Calormen are people of Middle Eastern appearance. While Aslan is remembered and revered in Narnia and Archenland, the Calormenes are heathenish in their habits, with manners resembling those of the Ottoman Turks.
Where did this vast empire come from?
Why do its inhabitants look different?
And how did they come by such different customs?
In many thousand years, one might reasonably expect people to swarthen and grow heathenish, simply by dwelling in hot countries Aslan does not deign to visit. This timeline, however, while possibly apocryphal, provides an awkwardly short interval for this huge country to be populated and develop such a distinctive culture.
If we are to accept the dates in this timeline, another hypothesis is necessary.
In ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ it is stated: ‘King Frank and Queen Helen and their children lived happily in Narnia and their second son became King of Archenland. The boys married nymphs and the girls married wood-gods and river-gods.’
For one thing, this contradicts the timeline: but it is easy enough to argue around that. Now, the timeline tells us:
204 - Outlaws from Archenland travel across the Great Desert to the South and establish the kingdom of Calormen.
It would be reasonable for even a smallish band of outlaws to increase to the few millions needed to fill up Calormen over four hundred years or so. But outlaws in mid-twentieth-century fantasy worlds are usually male and unlikely to form decent breeding populations. However... coming from a time when it might not have been unusual to interbreed with demihumans, perhaps the dark complexions and distinctive cultural traits of the later Calormenes come from non-human ancestresses?
In Narnia and Archenland, which have a European climate, the demi-human population is drawn from (Non-Christian) European mythology; in the deserts of the south, is it not reasonable to expect demi-humans out of the Age of Ignorance? All the curious things out of the Arabian Nights and the pre-Islamic pantheons one can read about in the introduction to Sale’s ‘Koran’. I postulate that this band of outlaws from Archenland got the ancestors of the Calormenes upon lovely fire-goddesses and air-goddesses, ifrits and djinni, in the southern deserts and jungles. The lesser Gods and Goddesses of the Calormenes mentioned in The Horse and his Boy- Azaroth and Zardeenah- may well be deified ancestors from this time.
Tash is another matter. While the worship of the lesser deities seems to have fallen by the wayside by the time of The Last Battle, we get to see Tash making a personal appearance, in all his icky vulture-like four-armed glory. He is obviously not a mere deified ancestor. Given the claim of the Tisrocs to be his descendants, there may be a stomach-churning non-PG-rated kind of story in the remote past of their line. If I were to write it, I would associate it with the only other bit of Calormene history C. S. Lewis (or Walter Hooper) has put in this timeline:
302 - Aslan turns the Calormenes of Telmar, who disobey his principles, into non-speaking beasts.
Anyway, enough of that sort of thing.
I think the tombs of the ancient kings outside of Tashbaan are associated with a people of more Narnian/Archenlander culture. They are called ‘ancient kings’, not ‘ancient Tisrocs’, or some other eastern-sounding title. ‘Kings’ are what they have in Archenland and Narnia. I am guessing that the tombs were associated with the original Kingdom of Calormen, that the line of the Tisrocs and associated worship of Tash arose somewhere further distant to the south, and that the Tisrocs took over this Kingdom as a going concern. Conquest is the usual way in which slave-owning cultures arise, after all, and if the Calormen culture is meant to be modelled on the Turks, it makes sense for them to be a nomadic people who rode in and took over. The Tisroc’s empire is probably not that old at the time of The Horse and His Boy. The Tisroc says ‘More than five Tisrocs in Tashbaan have died because their eldest sons, enlightened princes, grew tired of waiting for their turn,’ as though ‘more than five’ was a significant number. This suggests to me that there probably have been no more than 20 or so Tisrocs reigning in Tashbaan before that time, and their reign there began no earlier than c.600 by the timeline; probably closer to 800.
In the Narnia books the land of Narnia is described as a small country on the margin of a great empire, the land of Calormen. We are never told the extent of it, but in The Horse and His Boy Shasta and Bree travel north for ‘weeks and weeks’ along its coast from a spot which seems far from its southern edge, while Narnia itself is the sort of place which can be crossed in a few days. ‘It is not the fourth size of one of your least provinces’, as Prince Rabadash tells his father the Tisroc.
Calormen is far larger and more populous than Narnia and Archenland, where humans first appeared on the world. And, while throughout the history of Narnia the inhabitants of these little countries continue to resemble King Frank and Queen Helen- that is, to look and act English- the Calormen are people of Middle Eastern appearance. While Aslan is remembered and revered in Narnia and Archenland, the Calormenes are heathenish in their habits, with manners resembling those of the Ottoman Turks.
Where did this vast empire come from?
Why do its inhabitants look different?
And how did they come by such different customs?
In many thousand years, one might reasonably expect people to swarthen and grow heathenish, simply by dwelling in hot countries Aslan does not deign to visit. This timeline, however, while possibly apocryphal, provides an awkwardly short interval for this huge country to be populated and develop such a distinctive culture.
If we are to accept the dates in this timeline, another hypothesis is necessary.
In ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ it is stated: ‘King Frank and Queen Helen and their children lived happily in Narnia and their second son became King of Archenland. The boys married nymphs and the girls married wood-gods and river-gods.’
For one thing, this contradicts the timeline: but it is easy enough to argue around that. Now, the timeline tells us:
204 - Outlaws from Archenland travel across the Great Desert to the South and establish the kingdom of Calormen.
It would be reasonable for even a smallish band of outlaws to increase to the few millions needed to fill up Calormen over four hundred years or so. But outlaws in mid-twentieth-century fantasy worlds are usually male and unlikely to form decent breeding populations. However... coming from a time when it might not have been unusual to interbreed with demihumans, perhaps the dark complexions and distinctive cultural traits of the later Calormenes come from non-human ancestresses?
In Narnia and Archenland, which have a European climate, the demi-human population is drawn from (Non-Christian) European mythology; in the deserts of the south, is it not reasonable to expect demi-humans out of the Age of Ignorance? All the curious things out of the Arabian Nights and the pre-Islamic pantheons one can read about in the introduction to Sale’s ‘Koran’. I postulate that this band of outlaws from Archenland got the ancestors of the Calormenes upon lovely fire-goddesses and air-goddesses, ifrits and djinni, in the southern deserts and jungles. The lesser Gods and Goddesses of the Calormenes mentioned in The Horse and his Boy- Azaroth and Zardeenah- may well be deified ancestors from this time.
Tash is another matter. While the worship of the lesser deities seems to have fallen by the wayside by the time of The Last Battle, we get to see Tash making a personal appearance, in all his icky vulture-like four-armed glory. He is obviously not a mere deified ancestor. Given the claim of the Tisrocs to be his descendants, there may be a stomach-churning non-PG-rated kind of story in the remote past of their line. If I were to write it, I would associate it with the only other bit of Calormene history C. S. Lewis (or Walter Hooper) has put in this timeline:
302 - Aslan turns the Calormenes of Telmar, who disobey his principles, into non-speaking beasts.
Anyway, enough of that sort of thing.
I think the tombs of the ancient kings outside of Tashbaan are associated with a people of more Narnian/Archenlander culture. They are called ‘ancient kings’, not ‘ancient Tisrocs’, or some other eastern-sounding title. ‘Kings’ are what they have in Archenland and Narnia. I am guessing that the tombs were associated with the original Kingdom of Calormen, that the line of the Tisrocs and associated worship of Tash arose somewhere further distant to the south, and that the Tisrocs took over this Kingdom as a going concern. Conquest is the usual way in which slave-owning cultures arise, after all, and if the Calormen culture is meant to be modelled on the Turks, it makes sense for them to be a nomadic people who rode in and took over. The Tisroc’s empire is probably not that old at the time of The Horse and His Boy. The Tisroc says ‘More than five Tisrocs in Tashbaan have died because their eldest sons, enlightened princes, grew tired of waiting for their turn,’ as though ‘more than five’ was a significant number. This suggests to me that there probably have been no more than 20 or so Tisrocs reigning in Tashbaan before that time, and their reign there began no earlier than c.600 by the timeline; probably closer to 800.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
I know, I know, I excised this topic from the Accidental Blog
But, I was just cheered up enormously on the way home yesterday listening to Cardinal Pell on the radio. I am proud to be associated with a religion whose #1 spokesman in Australia is sane and sensible.
On climate change: 'It's much less important than the fate* of the five or ten or fifteen per cent of the poorest Australians; it's much less important than the problem of marriage breakdown, it's much less important than the problem of abortion.'
Amen, alleluia, amen, alleluia, etc.
Contrast this with the breathtaking probably-quoted-out-of-context statement that appears to contradict 2000 years of Christian thought by the Jesus-didn't-really-mean-that-stuff-about-divorce-to-apply-to-kings-ican bishop of Canberra and Goulburn: 'The Cardinal, for whatever reason, put private morality as number one, and private morality is important, but the public agenda, the social agenda, the contribution that the world community makes to its common welfare is essentially part of the Christian agenda, this is our core business.'
Hmm. The fate of poor Australians is part of the social agenda. Marriage breakdown is part of the social agenda. Abortion is part of the social agenda. These things are part of the core business bit of the Christian agenda, because Christian saints and theologians have been saying they are for thousands of years and because there is a very clear, very solid, very well attested link between the private sin and the public welfare. It is not the core business of Christianity to uncritically accept the loopiest catastrophic extrapolations of global warming trends and advocate actions to avert them that (a) have no chance of stopping climate change anyway, (b) will hurt the poor, and (c) constitute a dreadful waste of resources that might be better used in other ways.
* Not 'faith', as it has in the transcript.
On climate change: 'It's much less important than the fate* of the five or ten or fifteen per cent of the poorest Australians; it's much less important than the problem of marriage breakdown, it's much less important than the problem of abortion.'
Amen, alleluia, amen, alleluia, etc.
Contrast this with the breathtaking probably-quoted-out-of-context statement that appears to contradict 2000 years of Christian thought by the Jesus-didn't-really-mean-that-stuff-about-divorce-to-apply-to-kings-ican bishop of Canberra and Goulburn: 'The Cardinal, for whatever reason, put private morality as number one, and private morality is important, but the public agenda, the social agenda, the contribution that the world community makes to its common welfare is essentially part of the Christian agenda, this is our core business.'
Hmm. The fate of poor Australians is part of the social agenda. Marriage breakdown is part of the social agenda. Abortion is part of the social agenda. These things are part of the core business bit of the Christian agenda, because Christian saints and theologians have been saying they are for thousands of years and because there is a very clear, very solid, very well attested link between the private sin and the public welfare. It is not the core business of Christianity to uncritically accept the loopiest catastrophic extrapolations of global warming trends and advocate actions to avert them that (a) have no chance of stopping climate change anyway, (b) will hurt the poor, and (c) constitute a dreadful waste of resources that might be better used in other ways.
* Not 'faith', as it has in the transcript.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
The Land without People belongs to the People without Land
Kim’s reply now seems much less like an attempt to walk both sides of the street then when I first read it. My letter to him, on the other hand, now seems too terse to convey what I was trying to say properly.
This is what I might have said if I had been writing a blog post, rather than dashing off a quick email:
There is currently much debate about the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers. This policy was instituted by the Hawke-Keating government, and has historically had broad bipartisan support. This policy may be justified in several ways:
1) These entities called countries have a right to control who enters certain geographical areas. Otherwise, what is the point of having them? I do not agree with this argument on theological grounds (e.g., ‘The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens’, Baha’ullah) and it has been critiqued extensively from both left and right, but there is broad support for it in the electorate. Thus, detaining unauthorized arrivals will tend to deter other unauthorized arrivals and keep the process of migration under control. Kim does not explicitly refer to this primary deterrent function of mandatory detention in his reply.
2) People entering Australia illegally may injure us by taking our jobs, bringing plagues into the country, stealing our women and running riot in the streets. These reasons are all highly dubious, but are the main rationale offered by Kim, viz.: ‘…the damage that the unmonitored release of large numbers of refugee claimants could inflict on our community in terms of illegal employment and health risks’; ‘…we continue to support a regime of compulsory detention of unauthorised arrivals in order to carry out thorough health and character checks’. I trust the ‘bot’ calculated that most letters on this topic would be from sentimental folks who would not be moved by the Realpolitik justifications.
3) We should discourage people from doing something that is very dangerous- making a long ocean crossing in unseaworthy craft operated by criminals. There is a moral rationale for deterring people from doing this by making their experience unpleasant once they land, even if like me you believe that nations have no intrinsic right to control ‘their’ borders. I am in complete agreement with this justification. Unsurprisingly, as I am the only one I am aware of who has made it, Kim does not mention it.
4) Given that 1) is a fact of life, our natural admiration for the initiative and daring of these asylum seekers, and our dispassionate assessment that they form a very small group of people posing no threat to our way of life, is tempered by the realization that it is unjust to let in illegal immigrants while others are waiting patiently to proceed through legal channels of immigration. This sense of injustice was milked to great success by the Coalition government. But, I think it is only valid if the ‘queue’ which is being ‘jumped’ is a real queue, and not a shabby con. If a refugee who follows legal procedures for immigration to Australia is likely to die of old age before making it the head of the queue, then it is nonsense to talk about ‘queue jumpers’. It is ridiculous to demonise people for not going through proper channels if proper channels are woefully inadequate. Kim’s bot does not mention ‘queue jumping’ because, I think, explicitly saying it was okay would scare swing voters, while explicitly saying it was bad would cause the rank and file to complain that he was exactly the same as Johnnie.
Thus, I should have said:
Kim, this popular justification that the Coalition is going on about- number 4- is fraudulent. You know it, and I know it. But we both know that it could be made a decent argument, and should you win government you will need more decent arguments than number 2 to continue the Hawke-Keating mandatory detention policy. I figure that with a refugee intake of 200-250k per annum, targeted to the places where the refugees actually are, most people who have a valid case and want to come to Australia will have a fair chance of making it here within a decade, and will be content to go through legal channels instead of risking their lives. Then, you will be on firm ground to throw the book at those asylum seekers arriving here unannounced. ‘Why didn’t you fill out the forms we were distributing in Peshawar?’ you can ask. ‘Why isn’t your name on the list?’
I suddenly non sequitured to mention Israel in my letter because of what I had been reading just before, which had brought home to me very strongly two things.
a) The consequences of justification 1) in the 1930s and 40s, when it condemned millions of people who had the desire to emigrate, the wherewithal to support themselves, and the qualities to be exemplary citizens of their new countries, to appalling suffering and death.
b) The amazing capacity of a small struggling country to absorb large numbers of immigrants in a short time, leading me to believe that if we could easily cope with many more refugees than we were taking.
Marco and I were recently discussing the best way to exert pressure on the candidates in the upcoming federal election in order to increase Australia’s unskilled migrant intake, because there aren’t enough unskilled workers to go around. Refugees would be the best source of unskilled migrants, because they need it more and because they will earn us international good nation points. Can anyone recommend any good lobby groups?
This is what I might have said if I had been writing a blog post, rather than dashing off a quick email:
There is currently much debate about the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers. This policy was instituted by the Hawke-Keating government, and has historically had broad bipartisan support. This policy may be justified in several ways:
1) These entities called countries have a right to control who enters certain geographical areas. Otherwise, what is the point of having them? I do not agree with this argument on theological grounds (e.g., ‘The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens’, Baha’ullah) and it has been critiqued extensively from both left and right, but there is broad support for it in the electorate. Thus, detaining unauthorized arrivals will tend to deter other unauthorized arrivals and keep the process of migration under control. Kim does not explicitly refer to this primary deterrent function of mandatory detention in his reply.
2) People entering Australia illegally may injure us by taking our jobs, bringing plagues into the country, stealing our women and running riot in the streets. These reasons are all highly dubious, but are the main rationale offered by Kim, viz.: ‘…the damage that the unmonitored release of large numbers of refugee claimants could inflict on our community in terms of illegal employment and health risks’; ‘…we continue to support a regime of compulsory detention of unauthorised arrivals in order to carry out thorough health and character checks’. I trust the ‘bot’ calculated that most letters on this topic would be from sentimental folks who would not be moved by the Realpolitik justifications.
3) We should discourage people from doing something that is very dangerous- making a long ocean crossing in unseaworthy craft operated by criminals. There is a moral rationale for deterring people from doing this by making their experience unpleasant once they land, even if like me you believe that nations have no intrinsic right to control ‘their’ borders. I am in complete agreement with this justification. Unsurprisingly, as I am the only one I am aware of who has made it, Kim does not mention it.
4) Given that 1) is a fact of life, our natural admiration for the initiative and daring of these asylum seekers, and our dispassionate assessment that they form a very small group of people posing no threat to our way of life, is tempered by the realization that it is unjust to let in illegal immigrants while others are waiting patiently to proceed through legal channels of immigration. This sense of injustice was milked to great success by the Coalition government. But, I think it is only valid if the ‘queue’ which is being ‘jumped’ is a real queue, and not a shabby con. If a refugee who follows legal procedures for immigration to Australia is likely to die of old age before making it the head of the queue, then it is nonsense to talk about ‘queue jumpers’. It is ridiculous to demonise people for not going through proper channels if proper channels are woefully inadequate. Kim’s bot does not mention ‘queue jumping’ because, I think, explicitly saying it was okay would scare swing voters, while explicitly saying it was bad would cause the rank and file to complain that he was exactly the same as Johnnie.
Thus, I should have said:
Kim, this popular justification that the Coalition is going on about- number 4- is fraudulent. You know it, and I know it. But we both know that it could be made a decent argument, and should you win government you will need more decent arguments than number 2 to continue the Hawke-Keating mandatory detention policy. I figure that with a refugee intake of 200-250k per annum, targeted to the places where the refugees actually are, most people who have a valid case and want to come to Australia will have a fair chance of making it here within a decade, and will be content to go through legal channels instead of risking their lives. Then, you will be on firm ground to throw the book at those asylum seekers arriving here unannounced. ‘Why didn’t you fill out the forms we were distributing in Peshawar?’ you can ask. ‘Why isn’t your name on the list?’
I suddenly non sequitured to mention Israel in my letter because of what I had been reading just before, which had brought home to me very strongly two things.
a) The consequences of justification 1) in the 1930s and 40s, when it condemned millions of people who had the desire to emigrate, the wherewithal to support themselves, and the qualities to be exemplary citizens of their new countries, to appalling suffering and death.
b) The amazing capacity of a small struggling country to absorb large numbers of immigrants in a short time, leading me to believe that if we could easily cope with many more refugees than we were taking.
Marco and I were recently discussing the best way to exert pressure on the candidates in the upcoming federal election in order to increase Australia’s unskilled migrant intake, because there aren’t enough unskilled workers to go around. Refugees would be the best source of unskilled migrants, because they need it more and because they will earn us international good nation points. Can anyone recommend any good lobby groups?
Oops, there I go messing up somebody's survey again
Rather than the scary ultraconservative I expected to turn out as, my analytical approach to the questions on the survey these folks are running suggests that I am an amoral libertarian moonbat. Curses! (Blue = self-identified liberals, Red = self-identified conservatives, Green = me).
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
My Form Letter from Kim
I might possibly have posted this beofre, but am doing so again (or not!) in response to a query from Marco... In October 2001 I wrote an email about immigration to then leader of the opposition Kim Beazley, and received the following standard reply:
However, I actually didn't write anything 'concerning the treatment of asylum seekers who have entered Australia without authorisation'. This is my letter:
Dear [Dr Clam],
Thank you for your letter concerning the treatment of asylum
seekers who have entered Australia without authorisation.
We appreciate your comments and understand your concern for these people, the vast majority of whom are fleeing oppressive regimes.
Immigration detention is a sensitive issue. Policy in this area must balance the rights of asylum seekers, who have gained unauthorised entry into Australia but who are not by and large violent criminals, against the damage that the unmonitored release of large numbers of refugee claimants could inflict on our community in terms of illegal employment and health risks.
In its review of policy for the coming election, the Labor Party is
undertaking a review of immigration detention issues.
Australia has benefited hugely from our intake of migrants and refugees and has an enviable reputation in the field of human rights. Labor policy on this issue is framed with this in mind, and within the provisions of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
We acknowledge the need to preserve the dignity and human rights of asylum seekers who have arrived in Australia without authorisation, while addressing community concerns about the cost of detention and the need to enforce strict health and character testing. The process of refugee determination needs to be streamlined to ensure that genuine refugees, and in particular young children, are assessed and released into the community as soon as possible, in order to minimise any recurrent trauma associated with long-term detention.
We recognise the importance of providing refugees with access to appropriate counselling and settlement services to help them adjust
to life here, so that they can set up home for themselves and their families and contribute to the community. We believe that measures must be taken to ensure that unauthorised arrivals who do not satisfy the criteria for protection established by the UNHCR are deported as soon as practicable, both to uphold the integrity of our migration program and send a decisive message to the people-smugglers and their victims.
We consider that the allegations raised in the Four Corners TV program about conditions and management practices in detention centres such as Villawood are further evidence of the need for an independent judicial inquiry into these centres.
The Government has obviously lost control of the immigration detention regime. No distinctions are being made between those asylum seekers who have a high likelihood of being granted refugee status, but whose application process is not yet complete, and those detainees who in many cases have failed in their applications and are now awaiting deportation.
Though we continue to support a regime of compulsory detention of unauthorised arrivals in order to carry out thorough health and
character checks, a future Labor Government will ensure that asylum seekers who are likely to be granted refugee status are not kept in detention for a moment longer than necessary, especially women, children, the frail and other vulnerable people.
Thank you again for taking the time to let me know of your concerns.
Yours sincerely
Kim C Beazley
Leader of the Opposition
However, I actually didn't write anything 'concerning the treatment of asylum seekers who have entered Australia without authorisation'. This is my letter:
Dear Sir -
I am concerned about our nation's failure to take significant numbers of refugees. The only way to stop illegal immigration with its attendant horrors is to have a viable channel of legal immigration
open to refugees, to the tune of say 200-250 000 a year (Far less in per capita terms than Israel has coped with at numerous times in its
history).
I know you would be pilloried for suggesting any such thing, but
please keep our moral duty in mind should you win government!
From my postcode, you can see (a) that I am in a safe Labor seat anyway, so can't offer you anything ;) and (b) I am not from some leafy anglo-celtic neighbourhood preaching tolerance to others - my suburb is full of Australians from all over the world and I like it that way.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Spero: Question 4, the bare bones
The bit below is what I have in my old not-so-very-analytical Spero document. I will expand the points into sentences, and paragraphs, but this is the plan of what I mean to say:
point 4 : God - what do we mean by God?
1. Reason
In the absence of evidence outside our own experience of God, we have a duty to hope for the Best God Possible
* Omnibenevolent - only thing that is required
* Omniscient - required for true omnibenevolence * Personal - a thing cannot be benevolent - “2D slice through 3D Superperson”
We must rigourously cut away from our idea of God anything that is unworthy of a human, since how much more would it be unworthy in God? reductio ad malum
2. Faith
Our ideas of God must not conflict with our personal experience of God. If they do, either our hypotheses or our experience are lacking. The cup and the ocean. Authority is of use in that we can see -
i) where our experience of God overlaps with others
ii) more exact/challenging ways to express the God we have experienced
point 4 : God - what do we mean by God?
1. Reason
In the absence of evidence outside our own experience of God, we have a duty to hope for the Best God Possible
* Omnibenevolent - only thing that is required
* Omniscient - required for true omnibenevolence * Personal - a thing cannot be benevolent - “2D slice through 3D Superperson”
We must rigourously cut away from our idea of God anything that is unworthy of a human, since how much more would it be unworthy in God? reductio ad malum
2. Faith
Our ideas of God must not conflict with our personal experience of God. If they do, either our hypotheses or our experience are lacking. The cup and the ocean. Authority is of use in that we can see -
i) where our experience of God overlaps with others
ii) more exact/challenging ways to express the God we have experienced
The Good Samaritan
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell among robbers, who began to beat him. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the robbers beating the man, he spoke to them in words of great power and beauty, telling them of the wickedness of violence, and how it was loathsome in the eyes of G_d to beat strangers. ‘Get lost, greybeard!’ the brigands shouted to the priest, and he passed on towards Jerusalem. So too, a diplomat, when he came down the road, saw the robbers beating the man, and spoke to them of the folly of violence, and how little profit there was to be had in beating strangers. The diplomat, too, the brigands told to bugger off, and he made haste to Jerusalem. Next there came a cowherd of Edom, uncouth in his speech, and when he saw the brigands beating the man he began at once to whale the bejesus out of them with a bit of four by two, so that they fled. Then he bound the man’s wounds, put the man on his own horse, and took him as far as the nearest inn, where he looked after him.
Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
Spero: Question 3
What is Good?
Every definition of good that I can think of at the moment is circular. The imperfection of the universe points towards ways that it could be more perfect. Ways that the beings in it could know more truth and create more beauty, could operate with fewer restrictions and become more truly what they are. That direction is, generally, the direction toward 'good'.
There are two possible interpretations of what is “good” in the universe. Good may be related to:
(i) The potential for each living being to reach their fullest capacity to be what they are, in this world.
(ii) The fitting of each being into a “thing fit for eternity” like the pots of the poem Rabbi-ben-Ezra.
For both of these cases, many things remain the same: Hence, the prohibitions against killing, against taking what is not ours, against activities that disfigure the soul, are required in both. Food, shelter, education, clean water and clean air, true freedom of thought and expression; these all work towards them both. There are a few practical differences between the two definitions of good; merely removing a source of temptation will work towards (i), by minimising the hazards that must be avoided in a finite time, but will not help towards (ii). We do not really know which ‘good’ is more important. But we should imagine the best good we can, and work towards that. If we cannot imagine what is good, how can we ever achieve it?
Axiom : Optimism is the first duty of Mankind
As I said before, the importance of God is that God is good. It is not important that God is powerful, or that God has done great things for us, or will do great things for us, or that God created the universe. Worshipping God for any of those reasons is idolatry.
Every definition of good that I can think of at the moment is circular. The imperfection of the universe points towards ways that it could be more perfect. Ways that the beings in it could know more truth and create more beauty, could operate with fewer restrictions and become more truly what they are. That direction is, generally, the direction toward 'good'.
There are two possible interpretations of what is “good” in the universe. Good may be related to:
(i) The potential for each living being to reach their fullest capacity to be what they are, in this world.
(ii) The fitting of each being into a “thing fit for eternity” like the pots of the poem Rabbi-ben-Ezra.
For both of these cases, many things remain the same: Hence, the prohibitions against killing, against taking what is not ours, against activities that disfigure the soul, are required in both. Food, shelter, education, clean water and clean air, true freedom of thought and expression; these all work towards them both. There are a few practical differences between the two definitions of good; merely removing a source of temptation will work towards (i), by minimising the hazards that must be avoided in a finite time, but will not help towards (ii). We do not really know which ‘good’ is more important. But we should imagine the best good we can, and work towards that. If we cannot imagine what is good, how can we ever achieve it?
Axiom : Optimism is the first duty of Mankind
As I said before, the importance of God is that God is good. It is not important that God is powerful, or that God has done great things for us, or will do great things for us, or that God created the universe. Worshipping God for any of those reasons is idolatry.
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