Anathem of the Heart and Anathem of the Mind

Wow, that was a good book. I'm speaking of Anathem, the book I mentioned in my last post. I'm a Neal Stephenson fan, so I knew I was going to be reading this book anyhow, but it was even better than I had expected.

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

I think this is the first openly and explicitly science fiction novel I've read in quite a while. I don't know...it seems like SF is on the way out, and then I read a book like this. It's got classic SF tropes like a spaceships (including one of the best hard-SF generation ships I've encountered, the Daban Urnud) and other worlds. Moreover, it takes scientific ideas, such as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and builds a good story around them. Very well done in that respect. And it even has a satisfying ending, though enough loose ends remain to make me hungry for more of this.

And it left a lot of room for speculation. We got just a glimpse at Urnud's version of the mathic tradition (and of course heaps of detail on Arbre's). It makes me wonder if "Laterre" has its equivalent. More specifically, it makes me wonder if this is, in fact, the Society Eruditorum, and if the Laterran versions of Fraa Jad and his ilk are none other than Enoch Root and the others who would be considered Wise. In addition, I wonder at the connections, if any, between newmatter and the alternate chemical elements of the various alternate worlds, and the Solomonic Gold. In short, I wonder if there is any connection between this novel and Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle.

There were certainly lots of references to other Stephenson novels. Yes, even The Big U, with the nuclear waste hidden beneath the millenial maths. The descriptions of how the Bolt, Chord, and Sphere worked also reminded me of the various nanogizmos from Diamond Age.

Anyhow, I am very pleased with how this book worked for me. It gave me a lot to think about, which I always consider a good thing.

Anathem

No, that's not a misspelling. I picked up the latest novel by Neal Stephenson recently, and am in the midst of reading it. I'm not far enough along to properly review it but I must say I love it so far. The last few books he read were all historical tales, and were set in the real world, so he didn't get to exercise the world-building skills he did in earlier stories like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, which were set in the future. Anathem is set in...well...I don't know yet if it's a parallel universe, an alien planet, or what, but it's not Earth. Despite this, it is just enough earthlike to be comprehensible, yet tantalizingly different. In some ways, it reminds me of the feeling I got when I watched Wings of Honneamise for the first time. I felt like I was exploring a world that was not mine, but was nonetheless a real place.

Hopefully I'll have more to say when I finish the book.

Theocracy

I had a conversation with a friend the other night, in which the topic of theocracy came up, in particular, as it applies to a potential future system of government for the US (or some other country, but we were talking about this one in particular). I kept thinking about that last night, and I came to the conclusion that I can't really support establishing a theocratic government here in the US.

This is despite the fact that I'm a Christian and a) believe in God, and b) believe that God is basically a good and benevolent being. Certainly, then, it should make sense that putting God in charge of running the country can only be a good thing. After all, God is better able to see the "big picture" and make decisions based on how things truly are, rather than being limited by personal perception and prejudice, as human beings are. The Bible is full of passages describing Him in terms appropriate for a great ruler or leader, so why not put Him in charge of the country?

And I can't really argue with that. If God's name was on the ballot (for any office, not just President) He'd have my vote hands-down. Problem is, He's not on the ballot (as far as I've seen at any rate). And, I doubt He'd step into the oval office even if we wrote His name in.

Which leaves us with the closest alternative--electing some human representative to stand in for God, to rule as He would rule and to speak His words to the people to be their laws. Such a person would be a sort of living conduit for divine will, much as the prophets were in the Old Testament. The OT is full of God talking in the first person, through the prophets, who were talking as if they were God, though they weren't. Rather, it was God speaking through them. I can envision something like this working as well. The problem here comes in finding someone who is a completely reliable prophet of God, and not either a) a false prophet who speaks his own words as if they were God's, but instead serves some other power (such as a false god, himself, or some conspiratorial organization) or b) a genuine prophet who is still a mere human with his own failings, who will sometimes fail to properly channel God's words for reasons similar to those given above.

This brings us to a third alternative, which is probably the closest to what comes to mind when one hears of a theocracy. That is, a person or person who rules in the name of God, and who probably claims divinely-granted authority, but who does not claim to BE God, or to speak directly for God. Priests, rather than prophets.

The Old Testament had its priests, of course. So did the New Testament--and they were often the ones whom Jesus was slamming hardest. So it isn't entirely sure that a priest-ocracy is what we need either. In general, Theocracy generally turns into Me-ocracy, where Me is typically the person proposing the theocracy (i.e. "Why don't you just put me in charge--I'll get things back to the way God wants them!").

So we have to be wary of leaders claiming to be/speak for/rule by God. But what about God's laws? The OT's full of them--people who set out to read the Bible from cover to cover often don't make it past that point in Exodus where was had been a rousing adventure story full of armies clashing and waters parting and strange Fortean meteorological phenomena descends into something more akin to a legal text. The laws of Moses are pretty extensive, and parts are surprisingly modern to readers such as myself (I was intrigued to note that the Bible distinguishes between degrees of homicide, for instance).

Still, Jesus died to set us free from "The Law" which seems to imply at least some subset of the Mosaic Law. Certainly the dietary laws are mentioned explicitly in the NT as not being binding anymore. On the other hand, there are parts of the law that we like, such as that old favorite "Thou Shalt Not Kill." I don't want to be killed, and I'll bet you don't either, so we want to hang onto that law. We don't want Jesus's death to separate us from that one.

The thing is, even if that law is no longer binding on us, that doesn't mean we should go around wantonly murdering people. If I don't kill people, it's not necessarily because the Ten Commandments contain "Thou Shalt Not Kill." It could be because there's nobody I really want to kill--because I personally consider killing so unpleasant and distasteful that it would take a lot to make me do it. It could also be because a totally separate set of laws (the ones that happen to govern the land in which I live) also contain homicide laws that differ from those given in the Bible (perhaps postulating more degrees, and stipulating different sets of punishments) but still are generally along the "Don't do it" vein.

There are a lot of laws in the modern world that have nothing to do with morality. We don't really think the Brits are going to Hell because they drive on the left side of the road--but if one of them comes over here and decides to go for a drive, he'd better stay on the right side instead. I call these laws "Protocols" in the sense of networking protocols. When you're writing network software that's meant to interact with pre-existing hardware and software, you have to follow certain rules in order to ensure that the other machines can make sense of the data you send, and you can make sense of that which you receive. Network protocols ensure the smooth functioning of the network, and protocol laws ensure the smooth functioning of society.

Even the murder laws can be seen this way. Killing people is bad because murder is morally wrong, but it is a crime because it disrupts the smooth functioning of society. Morality does not necessarily enter into the picture (though there's often a lot of overlap). The New Testament talks a lot about love--God's love for us, and our love for God and for each other. To me, this is the source of true morality, not the law of Moses and certainly not the laws of the State of California. But you can't legislate love. You can't put a gun to someone's head and say "You WILL love your fellow man or I will blow your effin' brains out!" Or rather, you CAN, and I have heard proposals from some who favor theocracy that amount to basically this. Or worse, something like "You will believe the things I believe or I will blow your effin' brains out!" Romans 10:9 states "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." You can make someone confess at gunpoint, but you can't make him believe. Force, and thus law (which is backed by force or threat of force) cannot truly convert and cannot truly save. It can only make people act in a semblance of salvation.

But is this enough to be worth the threat of this kind of coercion being misapplied? The current US constitution is incompatible with Mosaic law (which IS law and CAN be applied through force, unlike love and belief). Applying a system of government like that specified in the laws of Moses would necessitate changing or removing many parts of the constitution (which is perfectly possible, and explicitly allowed by the constitution itself--it's a meta-document meant to be changed as needed). However, I personally don't believe that the benefits to be gained by doing this are worth the cost. I think that one of the reasons why Christianity has thrived so well in this country is because there is no official religion. People are free to believe whatever they want. There are countries in Europe where everyone's automatically Lutheran (or whatever) unless they state otherwise, which has resulted in a lot of apathetic, non-practicing Lutherans. Here, you're a Lutheran (or a Baptist, or a Methodist, or whatever) because you choose to, or because you were raised that way and have chosen not to rebel, not because the government says you are. If everyone were forced to at least behave like Christians should, to me that would negate the whole significance of a person behaving like a Christian because he IS one. The law of Moses is not the only legal system that can ensure a smoothly functioning society, and it's certainly not the only one under which Christianity can thrive and grow.

So what do I propose? Keep things basically the way they are, in terms of religion's role in life. A person's faith is a deeply personal thing, not something that can be spread at gunpoint, at least not without perverting it and turning good spiritual food into poison. I'm a Christian, and would prefer it if everyone else were too, but I also believe in freedom of religion. I'd rather you were a Christian, but if you want to worship Cthulhu instead, you're free to do so. If you ever get tired of squid-gods and want a more loving (and lovable) deity to worship, I'll be here for you, ready to tell you the good news of Jesus Christ. But if you choose to worship Cthulhu instead, I'll not stop you with violence or threats thereof, unless you take some action to interfere with the functioning of society (i.e. violate the protocols that we happen to be living under now). So no human sacrifices, for instance, because that's not allowed, because it prevents the victim from functioning in society (due to being dead). But aside from that, your faith is your business, and that's the way it should be here in the US.

Poser

I attended SigGraph last month, just a one-day, exhibit-hall-only visit, but it was the first time I'd been to one in years.  While there, I picked up a copy of Poser 7 from the Smith Micro booth.  I've been trying to draw characters in somewhat more interesting poses than just "standing there looking cool," and I'd been wanting to pick up a pose reference book.  I figured that Poser would do the job for me, and be more versatile since I could create any pose I wanted, and view it from any angle.

And it's been all that, though I haven't been drawing much lately for other reasons.  Thing is, when I bought it, they gave me a coupon code for a free 6 month passport on their web store, Content Paradise, along with a sampler CD-ROM of stuff available from there.  The stuff (including a fully posable M1-A1 Abrams tank) is cool enough I decide to give the site a shot.  I download the major freebee packages, including three male figures and one female.  Looking around at the stuff starts giving me ideas of characters, settings, and plots.  I find an anime-esque girl named Terai Yuki and a texture pack for her, and that suggests a character to me--a sort of female version of L or Near from Death Note (one of my favorite manga series) only instead of tracking down a killer notebook, they're looking for terrorists who are using supernatural means in their attacks.  There's a lot of spy and action/adventure stuff on the site--commando outfits, vehicles, guns, etc.

So, what started out as a universal pose reference thing for me has morphed into this addictive character-creation and visual story telling program.  I picked up a few scenery packs, including a really cool industrial area with pipes and factory-type buildings (I'm a sucker for industrial imagery)--just the sort of place for our heroes to infiltrate--or blow up.  I also got a stealth outfit for my infiltrator and blower-upper, who I've named Rydlie.  I've created some action poses, including a hanging-from-a-wall pose that I've been trying to draw (unsuccessfully) for a while.  This is a really fun program.

Thing is, my main character, the Terai Yuki variant that I've named Kiya (it's amazing how you can throw together clothing and texture options, maybe tweak face and body geometry a bit, and a character materializes, complete with name) only has one outfit.  The default Terai Yuki minidress totally fits the way I envision the character, but she really needs more variety.  I went through the Content Paradise clothes list looking for outfits, but I mostly just find morphs for existing outfits that don't seem to be present there.  I google a bit, and I discover that these are available for sale from a totally different website, called Renderosity.  Curious, I decide to poke around to see what they've got there--in particular if there's any outfits or accessories for the other characters I have.  

I find very few, but a whole lot of other characters listed that I saw products refer to on the Content Paradise site, but never actually found for sale there.  I just figured that they were older versions of the Poser men, women, and children, that they no longer bothered selling because they'd been replaced with newer, better ones.  There was a bit of content for these on CP, but not a lot.  Renderosity was chock full of such content, much of it very cool.  But these figures weren't for sale there either.

More googling turned up Daz3D as the makers of these figures.  And they had yet another web store, with these figures and more.  I knew there was a Poser community out there, but I had no idea it was this huge, with at least three large, well stocked web stores.  I'm wondering what I got myself into.

I also noticed some patterns to these stores.  Content Paradise obviously focuses on the e Frontier/Smith Micro figures and content for these, but seems to have more real-world stuff.  There are cop and firefighter outfits, office and factory scenes, business equipment like laptops and cell phones, and that sort of thing.  Also a lot of military vehicles, such as the Abrams tank I mentioned earlier.  This was suggesting some relatively realistic stories, albeit with some fantastic elements (and thus, the Death Note esque storyline).  Renderosity has more SF and fantasy stuff, including some really cool looking cyberpunk sets, and some very revealing fantasy outfits for the (Daz) women, which look like something out of Boris Vallejo (or in some cases, Masamune Shirow) painting.  And I like SF and fantasy too.  Now I don't know what to do!

The funny thing is, I find all of this appealing in more or less the same way I find RPGs appealing.  I don't play RPGs to fight, or to loot, or even to socialize (though I enjoy all of these) but mostly to create imaginary people in imaginary places.  I think the whole Poser thing is appealing because it lets me do the same sort of thing.

Sigh, now I've got one more drug in my life :)