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Push Back.

September 1, 2018 by Exangel

by David D. Horowitz.

“Don’t worry about making subtle distinctions in your dissertation. You want to make a big splash to get your work published as a book that gets you an academic job.” Thus, a professor decades ago advised me and the six other students in our graduate seminar. I greatly respected this professor—but this comment felt wrong then, and it feels wrong now.

I understood our professor hoped each of us would use a dissertation to establish a distinctive identity that would increase our professional attractiveness. I understood our professor hoped we would feel emboldened, unafraid of controversy, willing to publicly defend unpopular positions: all admirable traits in budding scholars.

Yet, once you begin ignoring subtlety to “make a splash,” you not only begin fearing the complexity of life, truth, and your own character: you begin indulging in stereotypes. And once you begin indulging stereotypes to justify strident positions, you risk needlessly offending those who are stereotyped. And they will likely become enemies, not friends with whom you can exchange and discover.

Of course, these days there is no shortage of demagogues hawking stereotypes. Blog comment sections richly illustrate the problem: “libtard,” “Dumb-ocrat,” “feminazi,” “conservatroll,” “Republitard,” “right-wing a******,” and on and on with insult, not persuasion. No subtlety here. And no respect except for those in one’s tiny enclave of lockstep dogma. No challenge, no exploration, no tolerant curiosity: just circle-the-wagons rhetorical shooting matches combined with implicit litmus-testing to make sure someone still agrees with 99.9 percent of the enclave’s dogmas and thus merits continued acknowledgement as a human being.

Push, bump, conflict, argue, push back harder, defame, denigrate, declaim: everything but learn. Everything but acknowledge error or change of position, the need to research, and the complexity of impure motivation. Just bump and bump back, because… well, because those people over there are your enemies, and we’re your friends because… we agree, and they’re wrong! And they’re evil, too!

I focus on this tonight, for someone I knew fifty years ago, during my eight-year childhood stint in a midwestern suburb, is making national news. What a bump in the night this is! He was the baby brother of a good friend of mine. Well, I just learned baby brother is a famous right-wing radio and television talk show host. Apparently, he was pressured to resign tonight for tweeting threats about a Parkland shooting survivor, and this is a major national news story. I was a good friend of the host’s older brother, and I remember many times seeing baby brother when visiting my friend’s house. I am not here to pass judgment on him, except to say this: he can bump and shock and attack his way to all the fame in the world, and I would not want to be like him. If others want to consider me a courteous failure—as in Nice guys finish last—they’re welcome to do so. This “bump and push to stake out a public identity and more likely succeed” mentality profoundly damaged my family and various friendships of past years. It is toxic. It is ruinous. I have lived through this.

So, I will always be concerned for subtlety, the complexity of truth, and rigorously honest inquiry. And above all, I aim to eschew the cheap stereotypes that poison current political discourse. I know kind people who identify as capitalists and who work for corporations. I know kind people who identify as liberals and Greens. I see discipline and innovation in the business world, and I see desensitizing hyper-competitiveness. I see compassion and innovation in social services, and I hear my share of moral snobbery and dismissive judgement there, as well. I do not see anyone who is purely good or totally right, and I see everyone as able to learn from everyone.

And, in the midst of the froth and fury, I’d like to imagine myself someone who can always learn, who can always acknowledge error, who can always evolve and revise and consider. I do not want to be a gavel banging out sanctimony. I aim to stay a handshake encouraging exchange. I daresay many share this view of themselves—and long for encouragement to explore and respect subtlety, nuance, and complexity. I’m fine with making a splash—but not if others get needlessly wet and angry in the process.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Fall 2018: Things That Go Bump.

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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