Post by Aedh on Jul 24, 2010 17:47:21 GMT -5
"Queen City" contains material that some readers will find offensive. It's been called 'disturbing.' Is it the world of the future? Of course not--the world of the future will be far less entertaining than this--but a speculation in which some of America's expressed popular wishes have come true.
1. Certain diseases have been conquered--thanks to a cure for diabetes, and draconian laws on meat, tobacco, and alcohol consumption.
2. Soft drugs and the victimless vices have been legalized. They provide most of the revenue.
3. The pains of old age and terminal illness have been banished--through euthanasia, it's true--but shhh!
4. Zero population growth has been achieved, thanks to aggressive social policy, confiscatory birth taxes designed to finance carbon-neutrality for each new citizen, and the low-level practice of what amounts to forced sterilization.
5. Other cultures and viewpoints are fully respected and accommodated, to the point at which our own has vanished.
6. Sustainability and renewability are norms, and so most of the population have become digital troglodytes.
7. Fossil fuels are almost completely gone from the picture. So is most vehicle transportation unless you can afford an electric car--and the still-very-expensive juice to run it.
8. Strong, sexy young people take the lead, under the guidance of wise, illuminated elders, bringing America's culture of youth to fruition.
By the way, I didn't grab these eight points out of a hat. All but the last one come directly from a 2008 study commissioned by President-elect Barack Obama and carried out by public opinion expert Frank Luntz, and the last is an obvious conclusion to anyone who pays any attention at all to the media.
All it will take is for us to get there is to completely ditch our traditional values system, which is more than half-done already. If "Queen City" seems to be transgressive, it's holding the mirror up to a society which is transgressive.
There are some very nontraditional sexual things going on, mostly to do with adult-teen relationships, including at least one serious incestuous affair. For this I make no apology. "Queen City" is a reflection of America today and where it is going, and America today is screwing its children in a quite literal sense.
Our national cult of youth and beauty progresses. Thirty used to be considered 'past it.' Then 'past it' went to twenty-one, and it headed downward again. Fifteen now seems to be the age at which persons are eligible to be presented in the media as official sex objects. though tacit sexualization goes down to the grade-school levels. Yet even as we hold up our children as sexual beings, and encourage others to view them as such, we also abuse them, sending them into adulthood with destructive, nihilistic ideas of reality. We have forgotten how to parent, and look to our children for validation, approval, and meaning. It is similar to ancient cults of child sacrifice, except we aren't physically killing them to propitiate the gods. Our government and financial institutions are instead leveraging their future to try to pay for our retirements. We are doing them to debt instead of doing them to death.
Will some other defined values system enter into American society to replace the traditional Western one? In fact, no, unless one defines hedonism as a values system, and I have given the society of "Queen City" a strongly hedonistic cast. But, for fun, I have also introduced an alternate belief/value system which tacitly underlies that society, one that is Semitic in its roots--like Judaeo-Christianity--and could have become the Western paradigm, had it not been aggressively rooted out by other Semites, that is, the children of Israel. That belief system is that of ancient Canaan. It isn't a bad fit. Both were materialistic, achievement-oriented, commercialistic societies that glorified sexuality--especially youthful sexuality--and drug use; significantly, both had war declared upon them by uncompromisingly monotheistic religious warriors.
Therefore, while maintaining "Queen City" as a possible future America in which Judaeo-Christianity's death knell has rung, I have based thirteen of its characters on Semitic deities--gods and heroes of places like Tyre, Ugarit, and Alalakh. The original Canaanite stories varied from place to place, depending on who told them, but the basic features remained the same. None of them were pretty according to our current notions of right and wrong, good and evil; but then, our current notions derive from biblically-based Western culture, and the Bible was written by the winners of a long holy war to subjugate these people and stamp out their religion. In “Queen City,” Yahweh, that is, the Judaeo-Christian God, is not with us, and neither are the other Personae that Christians associate with him. Exactly why He is not with is isn‘t germane to the story; perhaps he took early retirement, or wrote us off as a loss and started over somewhere else, or simply died. Suffice it to say, He is gone.
In His absence, his old adversaries, the spirits of Baal, Tanith, Shapush, Yarikh, and others, are back. They run the show now. Like Yahweh’s son Yeshua--Jesus--they have incarnated in mortal bodies and cohabit with the mortal minds, but they have modern technology and attitudes to work with--and there is work to be done. There is, first of all, the battle for self-realization. Unlike Jesus, that star student, these spirits are beings of darkness, and are present only darkly in their hosts, who have little, if any, understanding of what is going on inside them. So they act often at cross-purposes with their humans; it is as if you were trying to drive a car down the road at fifty miles per hour with a nylon stocking pulled over your head, while at the same time fighting someone else who is trying to push you out and take the wheel himself. They must do this, but there is more. They are gods, after all. Once they get control--if they get control--there is dominion to establish. There are also ancient loves to rekindle, and ancient scores to settle--many with each other, and all of them with the devotees of Yahweh and Yeshua. If there are occasional echoes that sound like the Old Testament, that is intentional. They are about getting their own back after having been treated as demons for some thousands of years.
I have handled the representation of the old Canaanite themes in my own way because scholarly books that simply present the texts as they are found on the ancient clay tablets, are tough sledding to read. For one, as mentioned, the stories exist in multiple versions which will confuse the modern reader, because the tellers felt free to alter names and events to suit their local audiences, each of whom naturally favored their “home team” deities over the competition within the larger cultural context; one only has to imagine a Yankees/Red Sox ball game as recounted first by a New York fan and then by a Boston fan. For another, the texts as we have them are incomplete--fragmented, and riddled with problematic translations due to limitations in our understanding of the vocabulary. And, finally, there is an enormous cultural gap. For example, we consider, today, the practice of royal in-marriages--between brother and sister--to be revolting examples of incest. Four millennia ago, what revolted people was the idea of a princess, the daughter of a god and therefore a semi-divine being, marrying a common human. Who knew what would happen if divine blood became mixed with mortal clay? Monsters might be birthed! It was common knowledge at the time (consider Genesis 6:1-4) that sky-spirits breeding with mortals could lead to no good. Therefore, the princess had to be married to the one available husband who shared her blood, and that would be her brother, the prince. However unwilling the participants or deplorable the consequences might be within the family, it would at least avert cosmic disaster which would ravage the entire land. And so they did it. Finally, the ancient tellers set the stories in terms which were current to them, in which iron swords and horse-drawn chariots were the very latest in whiz-bang technology. I am simply updating to current civilization levels, the same levels that a Tyrian Frank Peretti or Ugaritic LaHaye/Jenkins would be using today.
So, then. What I have sought to do in “Queen City” is to create characters based on these ancient spirits, to range them with and against each other in ways suggested by the texts, but in a modern setting, so that what they were all about comes across with a fresh impact that says something about America while we're at it. “Queen City” is not meant to be a substitute for the texts, but hopefully, if after reading it, one then decides to tackle them, the encounter will happen with a better-prepared mind and more open attitude. But why? Why would anyone care to dig up these texts and read them? That is a good question. It has been said that we live in a “post-Christian” society today. In an age where orthodox Christians and orthodox Muslims are considered together as ’fanatics’ in the public eye, it would be fairer to say we live in a post-religious society. And yet, the human spirit has a basically religious impulse, a feeling that there must be something more than this world, out there, somewhere--or in there, somewhere--and a higher law, beyond the corruption and hypocrisy we see every day on the news. We can dethrone God and send Him packing, but it is much harder to overcome and eradicate the desires and needs that set him there to start with; to demolish the throne itself, as it were. We can say, “I will not believe,” in just the same say an alcoholic can say, “I will not take another drink.” And we fall, again and again, in just the same way. We cannot help it because it is in our nature; our natures can be changed, but it is a dreadful process.
And so, Queen City, which is set a hundred years hence, is based for geography on Seattle, and for social and human factors in Moscow--two of the most post-religious places on earth. There are yet remnants of Judaeo-Christianity around, still worshiping the absent God of Abraham, and of other faiths as well. Islam is still a force in the world, but more as a culture than a religious faith--being derived from the same Abrahamic God. As a result of this as-yet dim but increasing general awareness of Divine abdication, society has not evolved, despite the fond hopes of enlightened atheism; rather, it has devolved. Resources are scarce; trust has vanished; literacy and education are now empty words; the social contract is in shreds, and so is the economy. Extraction of natural resources and energy has largely ceased, and the final frontier of extraction is the human person--the body, its organs, tissues, blood, and whatever it can do when driven to desperation or despair. Unemployment, reckoned by today’s standards, veers between thirty and forty percent; if you don’t have a rare private-sector job, you either work for the government, contract for the government, or steal from the others. If you are one of the twenty percent still unaccounted for, you are a dogg, a postmodern serf. You may or may not be on a miserable subsistence payment of a few dollars a day, but either way, living means hiring your body out for--well, anything really--casual labor, concealed drug or tissue hauling, voyeuristic sex, victimization, turning your organs and tissue into cash a bit at a time, or simply feral living, as a predator. It is a descent into a new Dark Age. Under the new primitivism, it can’t be surprising if primitive spirits see fit to reoccupy the premises. There are, as I say, thirteen I have picked. I won’t say which are identified with each character. That is for you to think about, if you care to; or else to simply read on and take the characters as you find them. After all, our gods--and demons--ultimately find their origin in us. It is when we in awe hold our own goodness unapproachable, and our own evil unthinkable, that the spirits arise and begin to strut the stage.
1. Certain diseases have been conquered--thanks to a cure for diabetes, and draconian laws on meat, tobacco, and alcohol consumption.
2. Soft drugs and the victimless vices have been legalized. They provide most of the revenue.
3. The pains of old age and terminal illness have been banished--through euthanasia, it's true--but shhh!
4. Zero population growth has been achieved, thanks to aggressive social policy, confiscatory birth taxes designed to finance carbon-neutrality for each new citizen, and the low-level practice of what amounts to forced sterilization.
5. Other cultures and viewpoints are fully respected and accommodated, to the point at which our own has vanished.
6. Sustainability and renewability are norms, and so most of the population have become digital troglodytes.
7. Fossil fuels are almost completely gone from the picture. So is most vehicle transportation unless you can afford an electric car--and the still-very-expensive juice to run it.
8. Strong, sexy young people take the lead, under the guidance of wise, illuminated elders, bringing America's culture of youth to fruition.
By the way, I didn't grab these eight points out of a hat. All but the last one come directly from a 2008 study commissioned by President-elect Barack Obama and carried out by public opinion expert Frank Luntz, and the last is an obvious conclusion to anyone who pays any attention at all to the media.
All it will take is for us to get there is to completely ditch our traditional values system, which is more than half-done already. If "Queen City" seems to be transgressive, it's holding the mirror up to a society which is transgressive.
There are some very nontraditional sexual things going on, mostly to do with adult-teen relationships, including at least one serious incestuous affair. For this I make no apology. "Queen City" is a reflection of America today and where it is going, and America today is screwing its children in a quite literal sense.
Our national cult of youth and beauty progresses. Thirty used to be considered 'past it.' Then 'past it' went to twenty-one, and it headed downward again. Fifteen now seems to be the age at which persons are eligible to be presented in the media as official sex objects. though tacit sexualization goes down to the grade-school levels. Yet even as we hold up our children as sexual beings, and encourage others to view them as such, we also abuse them, sending them into adulthood with destructive, nihilistic ideas of reality. We have forgotten how to parent, and look to our children for validation, approval, and meaning. It is similar to ancient cults of child sacrifice, except we aren't physically killing them to propitiate the gods. Our government and financial institutions are instead leveraging their future to try to pay for our retirements. We are doing them to debt instead of doing them to death.
Will some other defined values system enter into American society to replace the traditional Western one? In fact, no, unless one defines hedonism as a values system, and I have given the society of "Queen City" a strongly hedonistic cast. But, for fun, I have also introduced an alternate belief/value system which tacitly underlies that society, one that is Semitic in its roots--like Judaeo-Christianity--and could have become the Western paradigm, had it not been aggressively rooted out by other Semites, that is, the children of Israel. That belief system is that of ancient Canaan. It isn't a bad fit. Both were materialistic, achievement-oriented, commercialistic societies that glorified sexuality--especially youthful sexuality--and drug use; significantly, both had war declared upon them by uncompromisingly monotheistic religious warriors.
Therefore, while maintaining "Queen City" as a possible future America in which Judaeo-Christianity's death knell has rung, I have based thirteen of its characters on Semitic deities--gods and heroes of places like Tyre, Ugarit, and Alalakh. The original Canaanite stories varied from place to place, depending on who told them, but the basic features remained the same. None of them were pretty according to our current notions of right and wrong, good and evil; but then, our current notions derive from biblically-based Western culture, and the Bible was written by the winners of a long holy war to subjugate these people and stamp out their religion. In “Queen City,” Yahweh, that is, the Judaeo-Christian God, is not with us, and neither are the other Personae that Christians associate with him. Exactly why He is not with is isn‘t germane to the story; perhaps he took early retirement, or wrote us off as a loss and started over somewhere else, or simply died. Suffice it to say, He is gone.
In His absence, his old adversaries, the spirits of Baal, Tanith, Shapush, Yarikh, and others, are back. They run the show now. Like Yahweh’s son Yeshua--Jesus--they have incarnated in mortal bodies and cohabit with the mortal minds, but they have modern technology and attitudes to work with--and there is work to be done. There is, first of all, the battle for self-realization. Unlike Jesus, that star student, these spirits are beings of darkness, and are present only darkly in their hosts, who have little, if any, understanding of what is going on inside them. So they act often at cross-purposes with their humans; it is as if you were trying to drive a car down the road at fifty miles per hour with a nylon stocking pulled over your head, while at the same time fighting someone else who is trying to push you out and take the wheel himself. They must do this, but there is more. They are gods, after all. Once they get control--if they get control--there is dominion to establish. There are also ancient loves to rekindle, and ancient scores to settle--many with each other, and all of them with the devotees of Yahweh and Yeshua. If there are occasional echoes that sound like the Old Testament, that is intentional. They are about getting their own back after having been treated as demons for some thousands of years.
I have handled the representation of the old Canaanite themes in my own way because scholarly books that simply present the texts as they are found on the ancient clay tablets, are tough sledding to read. For one, as mentioned, the stories exist in multiple versions which will confuse the modern reader, because the tellers felt free to alter names and events to suit their local audiences, each of whom naturally favored their “home team” deities over the competition within the larger cultural context; one only has to imagine a Yankees/Red Sox ball game as recounted first by a New York fan and then by a Boston fan. For another, the texts as we have them are incomplete--fragmented, and riddled with problematic translations due to limitations in our understanding of the vocabulary. And, finally, there is an enormous cultural gap. For example, we consider, today, the practice of royal in-marriages--between brother and sister--to be revolting examples of incest. Four millennia ago, what revolted people was the idea of a princess, the daughter of a god and therefore a semi-divine being, marrying a common human. Who knew what would happen if divine blood became mixed with mortal clay? Monsters might be birthed! It was common knowledge at the time (consider Genesis 6:1-4) that sky-spirits breeding with mortals could lead to no good. Therefore, the princess had to be married to the one available husband who shared her blood, and that would be her brother, the prince. However unwilling the participants or deplorable the consequences might be within the family, it would at least avert cosmic disaster which would ravage the entire land. And so they did it. Finally, the ancient tellers set the stories in terms which were current to them, in which iron swords and horse-drawn chariots were the very latest in whiz-bang technology. I am simply updating to current civilization levels, the same levels that a Tyrian Frank Peretti or Ugaritic LaHaye/Jenkins would be using today.
So, then. What I have sought to do in “Queen City” is to create characters based on these ancient spirits, to range them with and against each other in ways suggested by the texts, but in a modern setting, so that what they were all about comes across with a fresh impact that says something about America while we're at it. “Queen City” is not meant to be a substitute for the texts, but hopefully, if after reading it, one then decides to tackle them, the encounter will happen with a better-prepared mind and more open attitude. But why? Why would anyone care to dig up these texts and read them? That is a good question. It has been said that we live in a “post-Christian” society today. In an age where orthodox Christians and orthodox Muslims are considered together as ’fanatics’ in the public eye, it would be fairer to say we live in a post-religious society. And yet, the human spirit has a basically religious impulse, a feeling that there must be something more than this world, out there, somewhere--or in there, somewhere--and a higher law, beyond the corruption and hypocrisy we see every day on the news. We can dethrone God and send Him packing, but it is much harder to overcome and eradicate the desires and needs that set him there to start with; to demolish the throne itself, as it were. We can say, “I will not believe,” in just the same say an alcoholic can say, “I will not take another drink.” And we fall, again and again, in just the same way. We cannot help it because it is in our nature; our natures can be changed, but it is a dreadful process.
And so, Queen City, which is set a hundred years hence, is based for geography on Seattle, and for social and human factors in Moscow--two of the most post-religious places on earth. There are yet remnants of Judaeo-Christianity around, still worshiping the absent God of Abraham, and of other faiths as well. Islam is still a force in the world, but more as a culture than a religious faith--being derived from the same Abrahamic God. As a result of this as-yet dim but increasing general awareness of Divine abdication, society has not evolved, despite the fond hopes of enlightened atheism; rather, it has devolved. Resources are scarce; trust has vanished; literacy and education are now empty words; the social contract is in shreds, and so is the economy. Extraction of natural resources and energy has largely ceased, and the final frontier of extraction is the human person--the body, its organs, tissues, blood, and whatever it can do when driven to desperation or despair. Unemployment, reckoned by today’s standards, veers between thirty and forty percent; if you don’t have a rare private-sector job, you either work for the government, contract for the government, or steal from the others. If you are one of the twenty percent still unaccounted for, you are a dogg, a postmodern serf. You may or may not be on a miserable subsistence payment of a few dollars a day, but either way, living means hiring your body out for--well, anything really--casual labor, concealed drug or tissue hauling, voyeuristic sex, victimization, turning your organs and tissue into cash a bit at a time, or simply feral living, as a predator. It is a descent into a new Dark Age. Under the new primitivism, it can’t be surprising if primitive spirits see fit to reoccupy the premises. There are, as I say, thirteen I have picked. I won’t say which are identified with each character. That is for you to think about, if you care to; or else to simply read on and take the characters as you find them. After all, our gods--and demons--ultimately find their origin in us. It is when we in awe hold our own goodness unapproachable, and our own evil unthinkable, that the spirits arise and begin to strut the stage.
