Earlier in the week, I noticed, in a sort of vague, “oh, that’s what’s going on?” kind of way that there’s some truly epic foolishness being perpetrated. (I was a little bit distracted, as I assisted Mrs. Dave in bringing Working Title Pascoe into the world. Mommy and baby are doing fine, and everybody is tired. I may have said this before. That’s happening a lot, lately.) Jason brought it up first, that I saw. Amanda mentioned it, a bit. Kate hasn’t touched it, that I’ve seen. Probably safest for all involved. And Sarah is actively avoiding the subject, as she has books to finish. And if she goes anywhere near this one, progs will be feeling the impact sometime in the next decade or so. Weaponized wouldn’t even begin to describe it. The Int’l Lord of Hate and MadMike have both touched on this. Specifically. Incandescently.
Tim Bolgeo – Uncle Timmy to pretty much everybody – (and one of the biggest names in southern fandom) was stripped of an invitation to a particular convention because an as yet anonymous individual dug through archives of Tim’s e-zine, the Revenge of Humpday(I thought it was a newsletter. It’s not? But I find his ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe. Ah, well.) for something “offensive.” Great furor was raised, the Legion of the Perpetually Offended was marshaled and wailing and gnashing of teeth was brought before the concom. Consequently, Uncle Timmy’s invitation was rescinded. All this took about a day.
Look, this is right out of Larry’s Internet Arguing Checklist, arguably (hehe) the single most important guide to understanding how people are wrong on the interwebs. Right away, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Then, the cowardly troll skipped 6 and 7 and jumped directly to 8. Since the claim of racism is more or less meaningless these days – as it’s applied by one faction to more or less everything any out-group person says or does – I almost wonder at why it’s even still used, let alone so thoroughly overused.
For this isn’t about racism, per se.
It’s about social cues, and how they’re utilized to separate sheep from goats. Tribalism is human nature. From the early early days when we likely did it as much by smell as by any other sense, we’ve worked pretty darn hard to figure out who is part of Us and who is part of Them. Race is an easy (and, frankly, illusory) cue, and – in the States, at least – becoming less and less useful as a means of discrimination. This is great, and doesn’t get celebrated nearly enough. Location has, historically, been a much bigger deal. Those folks from the next valley over are weird and do things differently than we do. Steely Dan, those great analysts of popular culture, got it exactly right in the lyrics of Barrytown:
And don’t think that I’m out of line
For speaking out for what is mine
I’d like to see you do just fine
But look at what you wear
And the way you cut your hair
It’s certain that the object of the song “ain’t from ’round here,” and that while the speaker is, well, liberal enough to tolerate their presence, he’s not going to go out of his way to actually interact with the object in a meaningful way. After all, he can “see by what you carry that you come from Barrytown.” You’re Them. Enemy, at least potentially, or historically.
The coward-in-fan’s-clothing who outted Uncle Timmy is doing the same thing, only far less honorably. This is a method the GHH Brigade and the LotPO have utilized again and again. Demonstrate that someone is Other. Make lots of noise about how evil this is (not dangerous, not bad, but evil) and then call up the specter of shunning to encourage the behavior they want. Mike Resnick is evil. OSC is evil. Tom Kratman is evil. Vox is evil. Larry is evil. Now, Uncle Timmy is evil. None of these have – so far as I know – killed anybody. The ones I know personally don’t torture small animals or children for fun. They haven’t actually advocated for genocide, outside of fiction or satire (and if you choose not to make those distinctions, think shame on yourself). And yet, a multitude have, on little to no evidence, called for violence to be done against them. At least have them ejected from “polite society.”
Odd, coming from people stridently advocating for greater diversity in fandom.
One thing we can learn from this is how societies work. As I said, and then left unsupported, this is about social cues. Progs, and their Marxist forebears, use certain shibboleths as cues of in-group-ness. Every group does that. Each tribe develops a jargon, and rituals, and we can use this to our advantage. In your writing, ensure your societies have certain pieces that distinguish them from everyone else around them. Part of this phenomenon is organic, and accretes over time. Sun-worshippers may demonstrate a penchant for gold jewelry and stone in fiery colors. A loose-knit community of asteroid miners may have a marked preference for certain brands, or a specific sublight drive technology. And always, a way of speaking that tells them that they’re part of the group.
Those are easily visible examples. More important, are demonstrated ways of thinking, and the behaviors that follow from them. Unquestioned (and often unquestionable) assumptions. “We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.” The aqueduct brings water; why ever would we want to go to the trouble of building a windmill over the well? The beastmen swarm right after the harvest. Who knows why; the gods’ ways are inscrutable. We use the plasma torch to slag salvage; who wants to learn a different way of doing things? And when a stranger – or a home-grown Odd; often treated as more or less the same thing – suggests something different, or novel, the gates close.
In writing, this is ripe for conflict, which is what we want to keep the story moving along. Is the marshall going to try to strong-arm our protagonist out of town? Will the underdog faction of the local political scene enlist our hero as their champion? It’s the drive down the main drag of town and all eyes turn to follow, and all faces are closed to analysis.
Ultimately, this kind of behavior ossifies, and a community follows tradition for its own sake, which far outweighs other concerns. This appears time and again throughout history, often right before a particular polity enters a period of upheaval. Think about the Reformation, or of Western Rome’s crumble. We’re seeing a bit of that in our own time (it’s possible this process is more or less constant) as certain groups hold ways of thinking more sacred than ways of life.
What’s the upshot? For scifi fandom, it means self-identifying factions are going to grow more and more insular as time goes on. We’re seeing this, as they justify abominable treatment of individuals who have done nothing to deserve it (in fact, who have often done a great deal for fandom, both directly and indirectly) using in-group shibboleths and the thinnest of “evidence.” On an individual level, we can continue to make choices where we’ll spend our money and energy. I plan to have nothing to do with Archon, as they’ve demonstrated a distinct lack of honor and credibility.
For writing, we can continue to learn from history. Read broadly, and glean situations ripe for plot twists. Learn to understand human nature. Who, if not the author, knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Then twist the plot. Hard. Turn a portion of society against your hero. Make their road just that much harder: drop them into a situation in which they become the Other, the “ain’t from ’round here” fella. Set the social cues against them. What happens when a sun-god’s paladin follows an evildoer into a town full of earth-goddess devotees, and blends in? What does a star marshall do in the clannish society of asteroid miners several AU from the system primary? When she publicly insulted the first-among-equals kind of leader, who also happens to be her father/uncle/whatever.
And maybe, just maybe, apply that understanding of social cues and fraught situations to the less-logical-than-fiction “real” world. Inject some logic into the rampant foolishness.
Mad Genius Club 
17 responses to “Social Cues in the Decoding of Current Events”
Hmm, now that’s a different set of problems I’ve not considered giving a character.
IRL? Sigh. They scream and evict, we shun and ignore, and too late, bring in logic. The termites are already deep into the framework and we’ve got a problem.
I’m a trained and certified philosopher. I got into it for almost all the wrong reasons, and logic is still my go-to method for working out ideas. Trouble is that most people I meet seem to think arguing with emotions is what constitutes Truth. Drives me … mad. A little. I was talking to a mutual friend, and she said that we’re past the point where we can be subtle. Kanly, open war to the knife is the only way to preserve liberty.
You’re right. It’s war. Asymmetrical, to the mattresses, war. Not to convince the true believers on their side, but to catch the young, and the fans the genre left behind.
> > >
Which is possible, really.
Funny thing… one of my kids is reading Honor Harrington. Very SJW-ish, but young. Right? So we’ve had Honor Harrington books in the house since forever but someone was reading “literature” and stuff instead. Well, it seems that Honor Harrington is just amazing the way gender is treated in those books. It’s alike she’s a real person and all the other female crew members are just *crew members* and the fact that they are women or men is not the most important thing, and the Queen is black and it’s just *ordinary*.
And I’m rather bemused because… isn’t that *normal*? But I think that for a lot of people it’s not normal, in their heads. And they’ve got some weird idea about what they’re fighting against because they’ve been immersed in this need for relevance… so they make stuff up.
But certainly, the young can be caught. And they might be able to be caught best by the things that we find ordinary, like equality and diversity. Things that just *are* and so go in our stories just as a normal part of the background noise.
Dave– first, congratulations! Life is good! Yaay baby!
Second– As a philosopher, you have the keys to turning this thing around. (Yes, I could be delusional. Maybe.) People argue from emotionalism because they don’t know any different. Arguing from emotionalism is only superficially satisfying. Blind alleys and sudden embarrassments abound. Logic and reason are a form of magic, which seems like cheating. It was that repeated rug shift that led me to wondering how it all worked, and seeking a different way forward.
I think it’s the dregs of Romanticism and whatnot in the culture. A return to a more concrete basis, perhaps a socratic approach to the origin of thought could get people thinking. It had to start somehow, right?
I think the big difference in writing versus real life in a situation like this is that in the book, we author types can work out a happy ending for our misunderstood and much maligned protagonist. In real life, not so much. And in real life, Uncle Timmy’s reputation has been dragged through sewage, entirely unjustly. And I’m not sure that stain is ever gonna wash out, no matter what he, or the rest of us, do.
Those of us who know him personally know that the stain is not of his own making, but rather as the result of…well, I suppose it’s analogous to monkeys slinging poo. And we know where they get the poo.
I’ve done my best to wash off some of that poo here (http://stephanie-osborn.blogspot.com/2014/05/archon-does-itself-disservice-by.html), but there’s probably still gonna be a nasty-looking brown mark. And as kind and gentle a soul as Tim Bolgeo is, that’s a crying shame.
Yes. It’s one thing to go after Vox Day, or Larry, or even Sarah, as they have a history of beating these … persons with logic and humor. VD and Larry, especially, set themselves up as visible combatants. Uncle Timmy has invested no small about of his self into helping these very idiots. I have no insults grave enough. I weep for his spirit.
[…] Others writing on this include Cedar Sanderson and Jason Cordova. Also, missed Amanda. Stephanie Osborn sounds off. So do Vox Day and Larry Correia. Mad Mike says his piece, on which I disagree with one thing: The ConCom was indeed given a bag of feces; however, it was one they helped fill. They were given advice on handling the situation that was ignored, and once ignored they were put into an admittedly bad situation. That cleft stick was of their own making, however, and they they chose to be cowards and bow to the mob without ever — repeat ever — talking to Timmy at all. To the best of my knowledge, they still haven’t. Now to add Quilly and Barb Caffrey. Pay careful attention to these last two, as the points they make about freedom of speech are very important, since what is being done in this and similar cases is a deliberate and malicious effort to end free speech. Another post with a lot of good food for thought comes from Kiltedave. […]
[…] term to dismiss and discount someone based on their race. There will always be the segregation of ‘them’ and ‘us’, with the definitions fluidly changing depending on the situation at hand. Maybe it’s the […]
I’ll read the rest in a sec:
Congrats on a happy, healthy Working Title! Best wishes for Mom, Dad and Baby! Joy and lost sleep!
Happy news, man, truly.
Sleep lost as we speak. Er, type. Interact? Sure, like that. Joy. Yeah, that’s the one that doesn’t require goodness. Not that there’s not goodness. Just … newborn-ness.
I’m not chuckling. I’m commiserating. Really.
Newborn-ness – the state of finding oneself in this shocking big world quite unexpectedly. Crankiness might ensue.
So, fitted the young one for a kilt, yet?
Talked about that. I need to learn to sew a straight seam, but the after that, the likelihood is that I’ll make it. Much like a decent suit, he don’t get one until he stops growing. So, about eighteen years, give or take. Might be a graduation present, kinda thing. We’ll see.
I can’t speak for any of the others, but if you open up the dictionary to the word, “evil,” there should be a little 2×3 color glossy of me.
Depends on the dictionary, I expect.
I checked the OED, Tom. You’re not there yet. Should you try harder? 😉
I think that only appears in the SJW Dictionary. I don’t believe that one is used among the thinking corps.