Time Machine

A few days ago I saw a video of an interview between Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers at the Independent women's forum may 16, 2017. In it Paglia discusses with Hoff Sommers the current debacle of feminism in western world. In the conversation Paglia makes reference to one of her favorite movies as teen, "The Time Machine (1960)". After watching the movie I decided to go for more and read the whole book.

H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, twenty years before Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Although not a formal scientific treaty but a science fiction novel, The Time Machine plot is rich in modern science ideas that popularized traveling in time.

As many book made movies there are important differences in the plot yet both share some of the key ideas.

In Time Machine, H. G. Wells narrates the story of a Time Traveler from the point of view of his curious friend, probably named Hillyer. The Time Traveler is an inventor and adventurer who has an interesting theory about time.

"There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it."

For him time travel is possible if one moves in that dimension, thus no change of Space position. As an inventor he shows a scale prototype to his visitors and most of them leave skeptically, Hillyer curiosity makes him go back just to find that the Time Traveler had a full scale device he later used to travel to the future.

In a later scene the Time Traveler returns beaten and in rags finding his friends sitting at the dinner table. After having some food he start telling the story of what happened during his trip to the future.

The most relevant part, adapted by the movie, is his stay in C.E. 802,701 when he faces two human descendant species, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The later are ape like carnivorous who live Under-world, while the first are "beautiful and graceful creatures, but indescribably frail" who lived Upper-world without major worries but who end up being a sort of cattle for the Morlocks.

The Time Traveler was optimist before his trip "I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything." but after meeting the Eloi "For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain." There are more similar references, like his poor preparation with tools thinking that in the future technology would be much better.

Wells description of the Eloi resembles the critique of Paglia and Hoff Sommers

"where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the state; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity - indeed there is no necessity - for and efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference of their children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of thi even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete."

Although the Time Traveler was wrong in his theory his description of the dystopian future resembles what extreme groups are aiming for.

Should we be pessimists as the Time Traveler and Paglia or optimists as the narrator?

He, I know thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its maker in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.

Fight Club

The first rule about Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club. The second rule about Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club. Thus, should I write a book review in the first place? 

Usually book lovers agree that books are better than their movie version. Popularized by the 1999 movie featuring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton  Fight Club is not the exception, despite I saw the movie years before reading the book. A recent interview to Chuck Palahniuk reported in Clash Daily brought up my interest in the story but this time I decided to go for the book. The story of a franchise of clandestine fight clubs were otherwise peaceful people vent their frustrations,  Fight Club illustrates what Kierkegaard wrote about Irony.

"Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude". - Soren Kierkegaard

The irony of a life without major risks but no meaning, a life so boring as to join a number of support groups trying to find novelty. The irony that "the first step to eternal life is you have to die".

Palahniuk tells the story between a regular Joe, the narrator, and his alter-ego, Tyler Durden. A permanent conflict between a typical, boring, uneventful lives and what we would like them to be. We find in their relationship with Marla the struggle between a platonic love and a lusty lover. Or the complex contrast between the beautiful and the ugly as in manufacturing an expensive soap out of human fat.

"Our goal is the big red bags of liposuctioned fat we'll haul back to Paper Street and render and mix with lye and rosemary and sell back to the very people who paid to have it sucked out. At twenty bucks a bar, these are the only folks who can afford it."

A constant battle to be different but as the narrator says:

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile."

Fight Club evolves into a larger goal, Project Mayhem, a project so secret that the first rule about Project Mayhem was not to ask questions about Project Mayhem. 

"The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history. We, each of us, can take control of the world."

The power to control the world was the power to "complete and rightaway destroy civilization to make something better out of this world".

Palahniuk leaves us with a reflection about our own reality.

We are not special.

We are not crap or trash, either.

We just are.

We just are, and what happens just happens.

How do you find meaning in life? Do you need to destroy in order to be? Can we instead learn from our mistakes and grow creating?

The Frankenstein Candidate

Vinay Kolhatkar novel is set in a near future by the US elections of 2020. A multimillionaire, Frank Kenneth Stein, who decides to fund his own presidential campaign breaking with the traditional parties. Quite the opposite of a Donald Trump who has the money but not the brains, Stein has clear and consistent ideas, thus many time conflicting.

With a complex plot full of obscure characters the novel unfolds the worst crises in history due to the games politicians play. A game that they can't stop without burning themselves and therefor are willing to do whatever to keep the wheel spinning.

The democratic presidential candidate, Olivia Allen is facing as rival the Republican Vice-President Quentin Kirby but soon realizes who the real enemy is.

Olivia Allen is a iconic character; beautiful, successful professionally and socially. It is easy to identify with her honest will to improve the system. Her optimism about working hard and fix what needs to be fixed is appealing. It is easy to feel empathy for her struggle between facing these life challenges and saving her personal life. As many of us, she realizes that the task is paramount because it goes against the stakeholders of the system. Olivia's philosophical transformation is encouraging, a hope that if people decide to think and not just hope the system may change.

The Frankenstein Candidate is a work of fiction but also a believable future. If the political system doesn't overhauls itself, which is very improbable, the size of the next crisis can be unthinkable. With the size of national and local debts, the level of monetary emission, the choking regulatory framework, and the irrational obsession with climate change, the future of a world is not shinny. Can the system be changed from within or the chances are nil leaving the only hope on a third contender with clear ideas and the pockets to compete. 

Frank Stein campaigns around the ten commandment of government; "honesty, forbearance, temperance, respect, integrity, kinship, courage, justice, dignity and humanity". This could be a model to measure how good or bad is a proposal since most of the politician promises fail on several of them. Overall these commandments are just traits of humanity.

Nice novel for the times. Now that we have elections in different parts of the world and many are about choosing the least bad.

My rating 4 stars

Anthem

Anthem is a short dystropian book by Ayn Rand written in 1937-38, during a break from writing "The Fountainhead", portraits a world so lost into a Collectivist utopia that the world "I" has disappeared from  language.

Probably Rand wrote this book as a warning after seeing the deterioration of the foundation of the American Society (Constitution) after the first term of Franklin Roosevelth. According to Amity Shlaes in her book "The Forgotten Man" in the 20's a group of intellectuals, artists, and businessmen became enchanted by the Soviet Revolution. People like Rex Tugwell, Paul Douglas and Sturart Chase among others who were influential in the conceptualization and execution of "The New Deal". The reelection of Roosevelth and the popular support to his recovery programs seemed to be a trigger for Rand to halt Fountainhead and write Anthem. 

The novel describes a restless hero who slowly has rebelled against a systems that decides everything for the people in the name of the will "of our brothers, The State". Although the description of this world is fiction, it is also a grotesque representation of realities and wishes of actual intellectuals and politicians. In Rand's time it was the Soviets and the Nazis, today we know of countries like North Korea where the State chooses even your hair style. The educational systems in most of the countries serve the needs of society and not the individual. Defenders, such as Free Range Kids, of the right of parents to raise their children against the intervention of the state (i.e. Child Protective Services) We read about philosophers like Adam Swift who advocate for removing children from their parents because parenthood is accidental and children belong to society, or news reporter Melissa Harris-Perry who defended the same idea in public TV.

Overall the hero free himself from the oppression of the system and along his beloved partner start a new settlement that defies the City.

"And the day will come when I shall break all the chains of the earth, and raze the cities of the enslaved, and my home will become the capital of the world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake."

Rand explains how the individual broke the slavery chains from gods, from kings, from race but ended surrendering to the collective, to the WE. Overall all forms of dominance people have suffer are to other people. Defiant contenders overtaking incumbents.

"Freedom he ask, from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else."

Some issues can raise philosophical debate under Rand's Objectivism. For instance the hero reverse engineer a light bulb, isn't it a violation of Intellectual Property that she advocates? The hero builds a new city based on the individual, yet he is the one leading and deciding who comes in and who stays out. His voice is triumphant but also authoritarian. He doesn't address how it would become sustainable, Can such authority based on the I be even more dangerous when people surrender their will to think?

In the age of dystropias like Hunger Games, Gone, The Maze Runner, The Giver, Divergent, etc Anthem can be a quick read for teens and young adults to make them think about how far can collectivist minds can go.

Yet some more "meat" in the novel would have made it more appealing. Despite the 6.2 million sold copies I wonder if a longer more elaborated plot would make it more appealing.

My rating 4 out of 5 stars.

Fahrenheit 451

A dystopian novel about a world without books leaves an open ended question. It is amazing how Ray Bradbury's view of the future resembles our reality 60 years later. People walk like zombies attached to mobile devices reading quick summaries of news, books, and tabloids. Entertainment as an escape from reality and a hectic life at 100 mph. No time to stop and be amazed, contemplation is a brain condition. In Bradbury's dystropia control of people's lives didn't start with the government but with indifference of people. Authorities just take advantage of the way people choose to live.

Farenheit 451 is as current as in its post-war era. Due to different reasons. In our era we need to stop to take a break to enjoy the little things of life, to share with one another and live a meaningful life.

While in the process of working this blog, we got the sad news of the departure of the Galaxy Traveler, Ray Bradbury. The Galaxy will not be the same without you.