#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Crypto.Fashion asked me to remind you that this and other great t-shirts are on sale through the end of the day. Also, I should mention that the announcement I alluded to this weekend has been postponed until further notice. So, you’ll have to wait a little longer for the latest Alt★Hero art to be revealed.
Created by the bestselling SF novelist Jerry Pournelle, THERE WILL BE WAR is a landmark science fiction anthology series that combines top-notch military science fiction with factual essays by various generals and military experts on everything from High Frontier and the Strategic Defense Initiative to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It features some of the greatest military science fiction ever published, such Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” in Volume I and Joel Rosenberg’s “Cincinnatus” in Volume II. Many science fiction greats were featured in the original nine-volume series, which ran from 1982 to 1990, including Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Gordon Dickson, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, Gregory Benford, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, and Ben Bova.
33 years later, Castalia House has teamed up with Dr. Pournelle to make this classic science fiction series available to the public again. THERE WILL BE WAR is a treasure trove of science fiction and history that will educate and amaze new readers while reminding old ones how much the world has changed over the last three decades. Most of the stories, like war itself, remain entirely relevant today.
THERE WILL BE WAR Volume VIII is edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr, and features 21 stories, articles, and poems. Of particular note are “Surviving Armageddon” by Jerry Pournelle, the brilliantly inventive “Dinosaurs” by Geoffrey A. Landis, “As It Was In the Beginning” by Edward P. Hughes, and the haunting “Through Road No Whither” by Greg Bear.
We are pleased to be able to say that the classic THERE WILL BE WAR anthology series is now complete. I’m sorry the late great Jerry Pournelle was unable to see it back in print in its entirety, but at least he did have the chance to see it revived. All ten volumes are now available from the Kindle store for less than $50.
And I’m very pleased to be able to announce that the Pournelle family has graciously granted Castalia House permission to continue expanding the series, which we will do with Vol. XI next year.
From the first reviews:
If former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont had truly sought independence for Catalonia, he might have been taken more seriously. But this belated turning against the EU tends to underline both his current irrelevance as well as his earlier failure to understand the basic European political realities.
Deposed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has branded the EU a ‘club of decadent countries’ and said a British-style ‘Catexit’ might be the solution. The pro-independence politician attacked the organisation as outdated in an interview for Israeli TV after his failed attempts to get European backing for his cause from his hideaway in Brussels.
He claimed the EU was a ‘club of decadent and obsolescent countries controlled by a small few and closely linked to increasingly debatable economic interests.’
Arguing Catalonia should turn the tables on EU chiefs who have warned there would be in place in Europe for the region if it breaks away from the rest of Spain, he added ‘They’re constantly telling us we’re going to be left out of the European Union but the ones who should take that decision are the citizens of Catalonia. Lets see what the people of Catalonia say. Perhaps there are not many people who want to form part of this EU…so insensitive to the abuse of human rights, of the democratic right of a part of its territory only because a post-Franco right wants it to be that way.’
The leftist Puigdemont made the same mistake that many in the American Fake Right do. You cannot be both pro-nationalist and pan-European. Europe is not a race, Europe is not a people, and Europe is not a nation. It is a continent.
Pan-Europeanism is, like American civic nationalism, a form of Globalism Lite. No true nationalist can support either. And pan-Europeanism will not succeed any more than the repeated attempts at pan-Arabism or pan-Africanism has.
As I have previously stated on many occasions, the fundamental political divide is now nationalism vs globalism. And the latter comes in many flavors, more than a few of which are cloaked in false forms of fake nationalism.
Again and again, we see that the rationales and justifications offered by atheists for their disbelief simply don’t stand up to even cursory philosophical analysis. (This is not to say their disbelief is not genuine, merely that its cause is seldom rooted in the explanations provided.) While on the emotional side, atheism may be little more than social autism, on the intellectual side, it appears to be primarily a combination of historical and philosophical ignorance.
Consider the following exchange:
AB: some people, psychopaths especially have no capacity for moral reasoning and no moral agency.
VD: Of course they do, if you define morality correctly. The fact that psychopaths have no EMPATHY does not mean they have no moral agency, because morality does not depend upon empathy.
AB: I think understand what you are saying but I simply cannot grok the idea fully as I cannot see morality as objective.
This is little more than a failure to understand what morality is, because while the existence of God is nominally disputable, the objectivity of morality is not, and more importantly, cannot be disputed.
The definitions of morality refer us to the definition of moral, which is given a follows:
Now, if “the fundamental principles of right conduct” are not mere legalities, enactment, or custom, then they must be objective, for the obvious reason that if the standard for right conduct is subjective, then no such standard exists, not being a fundamental principle. Morality not only is not subjective, it cannot be subjective, because a subjective fundamental principle is both an oxymoron and an actual contradiction in terms.
A psychopath has both a capacity for moral reasoning and moral agency because he is capable of conforming to the rules of right conduct even if he does not feel any empathy for others. He can even conform to the Golden Rule; even a psychopath knows how he prefers to be treated himself.
AB’s fundamental mistake is that he confuses the concept of a personal ethos with morality. But a personal ethos is an ersatz morality and is no more a system of universally applicable rules than a preference for calling pass plays over running plays or playing man-to-man defense instead of zone are official NFL rules.
This is an excerpt from Young Man’s War by Rod Walker
The man in charge of my first combat patrol was named Captain Jonas Howard.
Captain Howard had been in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he was willing to talk about, and some other places that he was not. He spoke in a slow Alabama drawl, rarely raising his voice, and constantly chewed sunflower seeds as a means of keeping nicotine addiction at bay. He had learned the truth about the Dark the same way that so many others in Black Division had—on patrol outside Kandahar, a hole ripping itself in the air, and then a horde of giant stinking alien bug-things swarming out to kill everything in sight.
Or so Captain Howard put it. He had bit of a flair for the dramatic.
Bull and I reported to Captain Howard’s HQ as ordered at 0500 one dark, dry morning. Howard’s HQ was a large tent with a space heater, since Castle Base had gotten a bit crowded since Invasion Day. I had heard rumors that Black Division had facilities elsewhere, and that General Culver was taking in more regular Army bases under his command, but I hadn’t visited any of them yet.
Howard stood outside his tent, watching as his men loaded up their armored troop carriers. There were already a dozen sunflower seed shells around his boots. If he wasn’t careful he was going to need dentures by the time he turned fifty, assuming any of us lived that long.
“Sir!” I said. “Corporal Roland Kane and Corporal Rufus Bullock reporting for duty, sir!”
We saluted. Howard sized us up, then saluted back after a moment.
I should have mentioned that. Listeners started at corporal rank, since in the heat of combat we sometimes had to tell privates to move quickly to avoid a Darkside attack.
“You two look too young to be corporals,” grunted Howard. He pointed at me. “You don’t look old enough to drive.”
“I am seventeen years old, sir!” I announced. My birthday had passed while in basic training. Maggie had scraped together enough flour to make me a cupcake, which had been nice.
“Don’t shout unless I tell you,” said Howard. “Some of those drones have ears like bats. Let me guess. You got bit by a zombie, the Division found you in time, and now you’re a Listener?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Howard’s gaze shifted to Bull. “And you. You’re a big fellow, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir!” said Bull with enthusiasm. “I am excited for the opportunity to bring destruction upon the Dark, sir!”
“You’re not bringing destruction to anyone,” said Howard. “You’re staying in the vehicles. The General himself will rip me a new one if I get one of his Listeners killed.”
“Yes, sir!” said Bull. “Then I am excited for the opportunity to bring destruction to the Dark vicariously, sir!”
Howard blinked and his lips twitched. I suspect he almost laughed. “Let’s hope you can retain that enthusiasm, Corporal. Both of you, report to Sergeant Mendez and do whatever he tells you.”
“Yes, sir,” Bull and I chorused in unison.
Sergeant Mendez turned out to be a Hispanic man in his middle thirties with a scarred face and tattoos that were occasionally visible when he took off his jacket. He looked like an enforcer for a drug gang, but he ran a tight ship. I suspect the fact that he looked like he could murder you with his bare hands without blinking helped him keep order.
“All right, you two,” said Mendez. “You’ll be with me in the second carrier.” He pointed at the second of the six M200 armored personnel carriers that would make up our patrol. “You’re new, so shut up, keep your ears peeled, and do your thing. You detect even a hint of Darksiders, you speak up right away, got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Bull and I said in unison.
“There’s going to be trouble on this patrol, so stay sharp,” said Mendez.
“How do you know there will be trouble, Sergeant?” I said.
“General said so,” said Mendez.
By now I had realized that most of the men of Black Division regarded General Culver as something like a prophet. It was well-known within the Division that Culver had been trying to warn Washington and the Pentagon about the Dark for years, and that he had been warning them something like Invasion Day was going to happen sooner or later. The Pentagon had ignored his warning, save for occasional demands to increase the number of female combat troops in the Division.
Well, General Culver had been proven right. It also helped that he seemed to be one of the few powerful people left with an actual plan other than hiding in a bunker someplace and hoping that his canned soup didn’t run out.
The Vikes won. That’s about the extent of my interest this week, but perhaps your mileage will vary.
Just a note to apprise the Alt★Hero backers of the current progress. I’ve now completed the script for Alt★Hero #1: Falls the Hammer, so between Chuck and me we have written 108 pages of the 576 pages required for Alt★Hero volumes 1-6 and Avalon volumes 1-6.
The first 24 pages for Alt★Hero #2: Crackdown / War in Paris are now sketched, and they are now being inked, colored, and lettered. We anticipate having at least 3 24-page books ready for digital publication by the end of the year. The digital publications will be provided to all the relevant backers, but we cannot say yet when the first trade paperback will be ready as that depends upon the artists.
Due to a number of inquiries from independent creators interested in working with Castalia, we have created a second imprint for publishing outside projects that are either complete or already in development, including a pair of black-and-white neo-Lovecraftian graphic novels as well as a color adaptation of a PG Wodehouse novel. The first 24 pages of Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted will be done by the end of the year as well.
Just in case any backers missed the email, I should mention that backers are permitted to add to their backing in the event they would like hardcovers instead of paperbacks, or paperbacks in addition to digital editions, or whatever. Just email me to let me know of any additions; those of you who have already done so will receive confirmations later this week. The current plan is to release 24-page versions in digital format when they are ready, then publish the trade paperbacks and hardcovers once the necessary six 24-page versions are complete. Each 48-page volume will consist of two 24-page books illustrated by the same artist.
We will also be sharing some more new artwork tomorrow as part of the launch of a major new site.
Mr. Rational demonstrates why no one trusts atheists, including their fellow atheists:
You’re playing semantic games here by deliberately selecting a nonsensical phrase, Vox. “The Significance of Human Existence” makes perfect sense, and yes, random events in human history are perfectly understandable in that context.
This is another example of your need to have a First Cause for everything. It’s just a more advanced version of the animism of savages. You can’t not see intent and agency in everything because it makes you insecure, and like the left’s search for racism in society what you need to find will be found… somehow.
E.O. Wilson is one of the greatest minds of our age, and you reduce yourself to paraphrasing his book title in a silly fashion. Talk about ankle-biting.
This is simply embarrassing for Mr. Rational. It would appear that the sight of “one of the greatest minds of our age” being caught out has triggered him. Badly. That “silly fashion” of which he complains is the most generous interpretation of Wilson’s title possible; the alternative is that Wilson is every bit as dishonest as the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harrises of the world.
I am not playing a semantic game. I am observing that there is ABSOLUTELY NO DEFINITION of the term “meaning” that allows E.O. Wilson to be considered simultaneously a) philosophically competent and b) intellectually honest. As another commenter has already noted, Wilson’s book was not titled The Significance of Human Existence, but rather, The Meaning of Human Existence. A second bait-and-switch is not going to justify the first.
Also notice how the triggered little gamma male immediately leaps to making the philosophy personal. He cannot accept that “one of the greatest minds of our age” is either incorrect or lying, and that fact that I am the one who caught him out only makes his acceptance of that easily observably fact all the more difficult. Unlike both Wilson and Mr. Rational, I am perfectly willing to contemplate the possibility that there is neither intent nor agency in human existence, it is only that unlike them, I am sufficiently competent to understand and accept the logical consequences of that lack of meaning.
You’re too short for this ride, Mr. Rational. I will not again be rescuing your very stupid, very dishonest comments from the spam where they clearly belong, and will henceforth spam them. Since there is neither meaning nor significance in that decision, he really has no grounds for complaint. And even if he did, well, what could that possibly matter?
Groggy thinks I made a mistake.
Vox, carefully parsing the dictionary definitions above which you provided, “what actually is” is not a valid definition to extract.
what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated; signification; import
It does NOT say that meaning can be “what actually is”.
It says that meaning can be:
- what is intended to be expressed or indicated
- what actually is expressed or indicated
An excerpt from The Heretics of St. Possenti, a novel by Rolf Nelson.
“Prophet or not, Mohammad had a good grasp of the psychology of what motivates young men—and people in general—and structured things accordingly. Praying five times a day is a powerful psychological conditioning tool. Saying all your sins are forgiven if you die for the cause is a powerful motivation when they are constantly harping on all the sins people commit. They have the sword on their flags, and they are martyrs for their cause of taking over the world!”
“They are deluded fools,” replied Thomas sadly.
“Any more so than a third-century Christian choosing to get thrown to the lions rather than recant? You call them martyrs, too, do you not?”
“But that’s different!”
“Is it? You don’t arm yourself, you preach peace, and theirs is the way of the sword. If you were a testosterone-filled young man, which symbol would attract you more, a gun, or a lamb? I mean, unless you wanted to shag the lamb, slaughter it, and roast some kebabs afterward? Same for gang-bangers. They see the cops don’t let the good guys pack heat and tell folks to not fight the bad guys. Let the cops go after them. Let the insurance cover the losses. The guys in the hood see the law-abiding as weak, chumps, nothing but chumps or—if you’ll excuse the expression—sheep to be shorn.”
“But nonviolence works in the long run. I mean, look at Gandhi. His nonviolence worked very well—within his lifetime!—and freed India from England.”
“But he also said… Wait. Just a second. Got the quote… right… here.” He found it on the screen of his tablet. “He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live forever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully. Even your number-two hero knew that some people can’t be reasoned with, only dealt with at their own level.”
Finnegan added, “He also said that nonviolence would only work with a just and moral people like the English, and The sword makes men equal. Clearly nonviolent protest and letter-writing didn’t help the kulaks against Stalin.”
“But that isn’t Jesus’ way.”
“Hey, I didn’t bring up Gandhi.”
“Well, yes. But that isn’t the path of the Bible.”
“Truth isn’t always comfortable, Padre. It is what it is.”
“But guns are a symbol of violence,” said Cranberry firmly.
“No, they are not,” shot back Finnegan, just as firmly.
“Sure they are.”
“No, they are a symbol of worldly power. An amplifier of the intent of the user. In the hands of a nongovernment employee with a good heart, a symbol of freedom. In the hands of a good government, they represent law and order. In the hands of an evil man, a symbol of oppression and crime.”
Thomas had never considered that particular distinction. The vast majority of the previous conversations he’d listened in on had been of much more technical nature. “Possibly, but that doesn’t feel right. Far too many murders, wars, robberies, and suicides happen with them.”
“All of which happened before gunpowder showed up. Jaw of an ass sound familiar? The fact that… Wait. Let me get Old Testament here, I know I’ve got that quote somewhere…. Ah, here. Maimonides. Truth does not become truer by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”
“Maimonides wasn’t Old Testament. He was Middle Ages,” Cranberry pointed out. “And Jewish.”
“Ah, whatever. So was Jesus. Exact year is irrelevant. He’s an old-time scholarly dude. And he’s right. Doesn’t make a tinker’s fart in a tornado how the truth makes you feel. True is true. It may be inconvenient that three plus three is six, but there it is. Lifeboat math and figuring out who gets tossed over or fished out is never easy for a sane man.”
“But good men of Christian faith should not murder.”
“Agreed. But killing isn’t necessarily the same as murder. The commandment is Thou Shall Not Murder, not Kill. One is not just. The other is. Do cops and soldiers, even Christian ones, carry guns?”
“But soldiers and police are different!”
“Nope. They are people, too. Same rights, same commandments. Did the Knights Templar and the other chivalric orders carry swords much as the Saracen did or rely only on prayer while blessed by the Church and fighting to keep the Holy Lands safe for Christians? Did William Marshal, first Earl of Pembroke and pinnacle of the chivalric ideals, carry only words when asked by the pope to protect the young heir to the English throne to prevent war? He was so bad-ass even into his 70s that nobody was willing to challenge him to combat, so he secured the life of the future king of England and the Magna Carta. He was even offered a plenary indulgence for any sin he might ever commit in the future in exchange, for God’s sake! A spiritual blank check to do anything he wanted. But he turned it down. He was a good man and carried a sword doing his knightly duty for many long years.”
“But that was a long time ago!”
“So was Jesus. Does that make his words any less true?”
“Point taken.”
“Is the Church of today exactly the same as it was fifteen hundred years ago? Any new developments in that time?” Mickey asked.
“Well, yes, of course! Benedictine Monks and the Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, and the various nuns’ orders. We adopted local languages in place of Latin. Other practical things like that. Times change, but the Word does not.”
“Not to mention some guy named Martin Luther…. But let’s not go there right now. So why were the monastic orders founded?”
“Monastic history is not my strong suit,” the bishop said, “but as I recall, once Christianity became the more-or-less official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, it wasn’t a great act of courage to be Christian. Some sought the hard life of a desert hermit to prove their devotion to God. Early Benedictines attempted to recreate that ascetic life, at least to a degree, and imitated Christ, who fasted in the desert before he started his ministry.”
“So a new order was founded to meet an unmet need?”
“Yes, I guess that is one way to look at it.”
“And the Templars?”
“To keep Pilgrims to the Holy Land safe, as you said, and retake it from the Islamic conquest. But this is totally different.”
“Maybe so. Maybe not.”
After reading Tom Wolfe’s unstinting praise of EO Wilson, I decided I need to read the man’s work. Who could fail to be interested after this sort of billing?
He could be stuck anywhere on God’s green earth and he would always be the smartest person in his class. That remained true after he graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in biology from the University of Alabama and became a doctoral candidate and then a teacher of biology at Harvard for the next half century. He remained the best in his class every inch of the way. Seething Harvard savant after seething Harvard savant, including one Nobel laureate, has seen his reputation eclipsed by this terribly reserved, terribly polite Alabamian, Edward O. Wilson.
Fantastic. But as I am insufficiently learned to read his scientific work critically, I elected to begin with his philosophical work, specifically, The Meaning of Human Existence. And I was unexpectedly disappointed on only the second page. To say that it does not begin well for a man of supposedly superlative intelligence would be an understatement.
In ordinary usage the word “meaning” implies intention, intention implies design, and design implies a designer. Any entity, any process, or definition of any word itself is put into play as a result of an intended consequence in the mind of the designer. This is the heart of the philosophical worldview of organized religions, and in particular their creation stories. Humanity, it assumes, exists for a purpose. Individuals have a purpose in being on Earth. Both humanity and individuals have meaning.
There is a second, broader way the word “meaning” is used and a very different worldview implied. It is that the accidents of history, not the intentions of a designer, are the source of meaning. There is no advance design, but instead overlapping networks of physical cause and effect. The unfolding of history is obedient only to the general laws of the Universe. Each event is random yet alters the probability of later events. During organic evolution, for example, the origin of one adaptation by natural selection makes the origin of certain other adaptations more likely. This concept of meaning, insofar as it illuminates humanity and the rest of life, is the worldview of science.
What? All right, hold on just one sociobiologically-constructed minute. No one, literally no one, ever uses the word “meaning” that way. Even less so can this usage be excused in the case of an author who is writing in the intrinsically philosophical context of attempting to explain the significance of Man’s existence. Let’s reference the dictionary.
MEANING, noun
Hmmm. He has at least a superficial excuse. It appears that Wilson is playing a little fast-and-loose with the definition of “meaning” here. He is clearly using it in the sense of “what actually is”. That is (unexpectedly) fair enough, except for the fact that by selecting that specific meaning of the word,(1) he reduces both his statement and the thesis of his book to basic tautologies.
Consider the title: The Meaning of Human Existence. Now let’s incorporate this second, broader way the word meaning is used, according to Wilson: The Actual Is of Human Existence. What, one wonders, can we derive from Wilson’s bold statement that humans actually exist? Are we to assume it is a catalog of facts about humanity rather than a statement about the significance of humanity’s existence? It’s more akin to a bad comedy routine than a genuine philosophical statement.
“What do you mean by that?”
“What it is. What it actually is.”
“I know what you said. But what do you mean?“
“What I said. What else could I mean?”
“Don’t you mean what else could I actually is?”
“Don’t you?”
In fact, I even suspect Wilson of cherry-picking this definition in order to beg the question he appears to be feigning to propose given the fact that it does not appear in other dictionaries, such as the Oxford online dictionary.
MEANING, noun
But the definition provided is even worse than the self-parody it appears to be. Remember, Wilson didn’t directly state that meaning is that which actually is, he declared the second way the word is used to be is that the accidents of history “are the source of meaning”. So, he’s actually using the word meaning in his own definition of the word meaning. This is either intellectual incompetence or intellectual shadiness, and while I cannot say which is the case yet, I am now on high alert to the probability of either… or both.
Given this shaky – or shady – foundation, I do not have very high hopes for the philosophy that Mr. Wilson has constructed upon it. I completely understand why some find my intellectual arrogance to be unseemly and offputting, but honestly, can you not in turn understand how I come by it, given how often this sort of thing happens?
(1) One can legitimately groan at that one. It does nicely underline my point, though.