J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Utopian Speculations Page 1 of 10

Purpose Is the Fifth Idol

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On September 16

In Creative Work/Career, Culture Rants/Shares, Utopian Speculations

In Tim Ferriss’s recent interview with Arthur Brooks, Brooks discusses the four false idols, what Thomas Aquinas called “the four substitutes for God.” Aquinas named those substitutes as honor, wealth, pleasure, and power, but Brooks uses fame as an Instagram-age stand-in for honor.

In this short, Brooks uses U.S. cities to demonstrate each of the four false idols, or vices: New York is money (wealth), D.C. is power, Vegas is pleasure, and Los Angeles is fame. He asks which one motivates you? Which one leads you to make poor decisions?

That got me thinking, what’s the main vice of San Francisco? Historically, pleasure has its role in the Barbary Coast sense. So does wealth (gold rush, tech booms, etc.). But I would say SF’s main vice is purpose. A lot of San Francisco’s ambition is funneled toward meaning, vision, and progress. This can become pathological in a number of ways. San Francisco’s Summer of Love had a dark, druggy, rapey, violent underbelly. Visions of improving society with technology can easily tip into Panglossian techno-utopianism.

And maybe that’s what Aquinas meant, at least partially, by honor. Because there’s a performative aspect to the pursuit of purpose and progress. We (especially San Franciscans) want to to appear as if we’re doing good deeds and making the world a better place. So sometimes we virtue signal more than we act virtuously. It’s not for want of fame, it’s the desire to have a good reputation, to be seen as honorable, that can get us in trouble.

And then there’s the true believers, who get a dopamine high by pursuing their dreams for the future of humanity and society: a colony on Mars, self-aware computer programs, fleets of self-driving electric cars, fusion power that provides unlimited electricity at negligible cost. What could go wrong?

Even the artistic side of purpose has a dark side. Putin’s dark reign is greatly inspired by the science fiction works of author Mikhail Yuriev. Purpose is my own main vice–my desire to write science fiction is largely purpose driven. And while I don’t think my science fiction works have injured anyone, it’s always possible to put bad ideas out into the world. And the blind pursuit of purpose via art can easily lead a person to personal and financial ruin.

So yeah, purpose is the fifth idol. Fame certainly belongs on the list, but Aquinas didn’t know about Hollywood or Instagram. So honor should be subdivided into fame and purpose.

A Solarpunk Manifesto

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On July 19

In Alternative Economics, Culture Rants/Shares, Utopian Speculations, Writing

The other day I found A Solarpunk Manifesto in my inbox, thanks to Joe Stech and his News Refinery newsletter.

I was vaguely aware of solarpunk as a genre, associating it with progressive technological optimism, an alternative to both dystopian science fiction and steampunk. But I’d never read any attempt to describe it explicitly.

Reading the manifesto, my general reaction was yes. Count me in for science fiction as activism, post-scarcity, post-capitalism, post-hierarchical society, and the whole shebang.

While I’ve never described the Reclaimed Earth series as solarpunk, the Ringstation Coalition culture checks all of the boxes. So do aspects of my novelette The Icelandic Cure, and many of my short stories.

So yeah, I guess I’m a solarpunk author, at least in part.

Here’s the manifesto in full, shared via Creative Commons license:

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The Roaring Twenties Redux?

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On December 21

In Culture Rants/Shares, Utopian Speculations

Kia and I were talking about all the things we want to do post-pandemic. We want to see all our friends and family, eat out at restaurants, go to concerts, travel, and everything else we haven’t been able to do for nearly a year now. Will we actually do all those things once we get the chance? It’s hard to say; maybe those activities will feel too stimulating and overwhelming after living the quiet inside life for so many months. But I imagine there will at least be a period of overcompensation, not only by us but by most people globally. Many are in dire economic straits because of the pandemic, so it remains to be seen how much of a consumer spending boom will result. But the appetite will be there.

The conversation got me wondering how much of the Roaring Twenties of the 20th century had to do with the exuberance and relief that followed not only the end of World War I, but the end of the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 675,000 Americans and 50 million worldwide. The good times didn’t begin right away. The U.S. experienced high inflation for several years due to pent-up demand, short supply, and the end of rationing rules. Wages didn’t keep up with rising prices and workers went on strike as a result. Class and racial tensions boiled over in many cities, resulting in riots and numerous deaths.

In 1921 the Fed lowered interest rates, President Harding provided national unemployment relief, and the U.S. economy was off to the races. Economic boom times were accompanied and amplified by cultural changes: women’s suffrage, the availability of birth control and the possibility for smaller families, the automobile, radios in most households, frequent cinema outings, and the rise and growing influence of Black culture (jazz, dance halls, the Harlem Renaissance, etc.). Reactionary and racist groups pushed back via Prohibition, Ku Klux Klan membership, the anti-communist “Red Scare” movement, and the Anti-Immigration act of 1924. But the mood of many in the country was exuberant, expansionistic, and celebratory.

21st Century Redux?

Could our own twenties follow a similar path? As a thought experiment, what factors would need to exist and co-conspire to create our own Roaring decade?

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What Will the Structural Collapse (or Rebirth) of the United States Look Like?

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On November 14

In Culture Rants/Shares, Politics, Utopian Speculations

Let’s start the weekend with some gloom-and-doom, shall we?

First, Chris Hedges, a journalist who has been calling out the moral bankruptcy and pyramid-scheme economy of the United States for some time.

In this short film by Amanda Zackem, Hedges highlights the bread-and-circuses distractions of entertainment, consumerism, and digital media that distract U.S. citizens from the plutocratic consolidation of wealth and plundering of the state.

Next, let’s spend some time with Peter Turchin and his mathematical approach to “megahistory” in this excellent profile by Graeme Wood. Turchin, a Russian zoologist who turned his attention to the study of mathematical patterns in human history, famously predicted the unrest of 2020 back in 2010. Turchin believes he has uncovered iron laws of human societal evolution, cycles of unrest perpetuated by the “overproduction of elites.” In the United States, Turchin asserts that 1920, 1970, and 2020 are all points of major civil unrest on his 50-year historical cycle graph.

Peter Turchin hypothesizes that too many elites competing for too few elite positions leads to the creation of “counter-elites”: troublemakers who rise to power by allying with the non-elite classes. He gives Steve Bannon as an example of a counter-elite. Bannon was raised working-class, attended Harvard Business School, got rich via various investments and a small share of the Seinfeld television show, but only rose to power via his Breitbart race-baiting tactics.

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Charles Koch: When Good Intentions Produce Evil Results

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On August 14

In Alternative Economics, Culture Rants/Shares, Utopian Speculations

Tim Ferriss recently interviewed Charles Koch on his podcast. At first I found it difficult to reconcile the obviously principled, kindly man, a person concerned with the state of the world and hoping to contribute as much as he can, with some of his deeds, which include:

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