Be not afraid

I didn't link to this Glenn Greenwald post when he first wrote it nearly a month ago, but it's been bouncing around in my brain since then. Most recently, it bounced off of a terrific essay by Scott Bader-Saye in the latest issue of Prism magazine.

The essay is adapted from Bader-Saye's book, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear. Since Prism still isn't online yet (I blame the good-for-nothing former editor), I had to keyboard this in:

Do not be afraid. We live in a time when this biblical refrain cannot be repeated too often. Among all the things the church has to say to the world today, this may be the most important.

Child predators and suicide bombers, West Nile virus and avian flu: No one has to be convinced that we live in fearful times, but what does all of this fear do to us? What kind of people do we become if we are fed a steady diet of dread? How does fear affect our moral lives? ...

Fear is a moral issue insofar as it shapes the kind of people we become, and the kind of people we become has a lot to do with how we see the world around us. Our judgments about what is going on in the world and how to interpret events go a long way toward helping us define proper actions. Quite simply, how we view (or interpret) the world shapes how we act in the world. In The Responsible Self, the 20th-century American ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr went so far as to say that the first question of ethics is not "What is right?" or even "What is good?" but rather "What is going on?" Before we can apply a law or seek a goal, we must first interpret what is happening around us. Thus reading the signs of the times is itself a moral act. In order to live well, we need to know how God is involved in history. To use Niebuhr's terms, the moral life is centered around the "fitting" response to the pattern of God's activity in the world.

But what if we are unable to see God's hand in our lives or in the world around us? What if history does not seem to be unfolding a divine purpose but only lurching this way and that in response to one crisis after another? What if, in a postmodern world, we are less likely to see a "story" in history and more likely to see randomness, chaos and threat? Niebuhr seemed to recognize that for many it was becoming harder and harder to see God at work in the world. "We see ourselves surrounded by animosity," he writes. "Hence the color of our lives is anxiety and self-preservation is our first law."

In a culture of fear, the short answer to "What is going on?" is "We are in danger." Insofar as we accept that answer as our dominant description of the world, our lives will be shaped by the self-preservation of which Niebuhr speaks. Our moral vision becomes tunnel vision. Fear becomes the ambient background to our lives rather than a proper response to a concrete and passing threat.

Bader-Saye goes on to discuss how this culture of fear can "inhibit ... hospitality, peacemaking and generosity," replacing them with "the 'virtues' of the ethic of safety -- suspicion, pre-emption and accumulation." 1 John 4:18 says that "perfect love drives out fear." Bader-Saye argues that the converse can also be true, that fear can drive out love.

When "We are in danger" becomes the answer that shapes how we view the world, then our options are restricted to the responses of fear -- fight or flight (or, as Bader-Saye puts it, "attack or contract"). Other options cannot be considered, or even imagined, if we are governed by fear.

Here's where Glenn Greenwald comes in:

Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States -- the Pajamas Media/right-wing-blogosphere/Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush-Limbaugh-listener strain -- actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and "our women" will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have -- not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.

And their key political beliefs -- from Iraq to Iran to executive power and surveillance theories at home -- are animated by the belief that all of this is going to happen. The Republican presidential primary is, for much of the "base," a search for who will be the toughest and strongest in protecting us from the Islamic invasion -- a term that is not figurative or symbolic, but literal: the formidable effort by Islamic radicals to invade the U.S. and take over our institutions and dismantle our government and force us to submit to Islamic rule or else be killed.

They actually think this is going to happen ("read Zawahiri's speeches about the Plan for Caliphate!!") and believe that we must do everything in our power -- without limits -- to stop it. And there are a lot of them who think this. ...

It is so astonishing that they think this that it is actually easy to forget, and it is thus worth taking note of every now and then.

It is astonishing that anyone would think that. So astonishing that my first reaction is to think maybe Greenwald is overstating his case. But then I read the Roger Simon article that prompted Greenwald's post and the frantic recommendation of it by Glenn Reynolds, and then I read as much as I can bear of the Fox/Malkin/Limbaugh strain Greenwald cites and have to admit that he's right -- "This is an actual fear they have."

The next temptation is to respond to this fear rationally, to try to explain why this fear is unfounded, why the pipe dreams of extremist relics of history are not a credible threat. Terrorists may be capable of random violence, but that is all they are capable of without our willing or eager cooperation. But this doesn't work. I think Bader-Saye identifies why this doesn't work. Reason is not part of the fight-or-flight response. Like love, hope and courage, reason cannot be heard or imagined by those governed by fear.

So what is the answer? How do we reach those who are governed by fear?

I wish I could tell you those were rhetorical questions employed here as a transition leading into some profound concluding paragraphs in which I answered them, but I'm afraid they're not. They are, for me, genuine questions that I really don't know the answer to.

Part of the answer, I think, is to call out the demagogues and the fear-mongers promoting this fearfulness, to point out how they benefit from it and, frankly, to laugh at them until they go away. (If you have a friend or family member watching Fox News, for instance, telling them they've been lied to tends to be much more persuasive than telling them they're stupid for believing those lies.)

But another part of the answer, I suspect, simply involves refusing to join them in their fearfulness -- living lives not governed by fear, lives that allow for and celebrate reason, love, hope, courage, hospitality, peacemaking, generosity and all of the other wonderful things that fearfulness precludes.

Comments

[Pope Easier Rhino I]

Perhaps, if nothing else, we should inspire a "flight" response rather than a "fight" one in those who seem unable to make any other choices. It's not much, but running never killed anyone, and it might do some of those people good to get some exercise.

Okay, I'm being pithy, but seriously, huddling in a dark corner whimpering is a slightly better choice than puffing out your chest and going to kill some terrorists for God. Especially since those same terrorists seem to have the same idea; maybe the world would be better off if those of us who can't do anything but fight or flight chose flight.

[Craig]

It is astonishing that anyone would think that.

I'd bet the Romans said the same thing regarding Christianity. One needn't use a military (or fanatical guerrillas, or whatever else the Limbaugh crowd is terrified of) to take control of a society, you know.

[cjmr]

Okay, I'm being pithy, but seriously, huddling in a dark corner whimpering is a slightly better choice than puffing out your chest and going to kill some terrorists for God.

I suppose that succumbing to anxiety and depression is better than posturing and violence. But it isn't a healthy reaction to trauma, either. There are many, many 'shades of grey' along that reaction scale, and we need to find one that is positive and healthy for all involved, not just a state of incapacity or incompetence.

[Jeff]

I'd bet the Romans said the same thing regarding Christianity. One needn't use a military (or fanatical guerrillas, or whatever else the Limbaugh crowd is terrified of) to take control of a society, you know.

Considering how the Romans persecuted the Christians, I think they did fear that to a certain extent. And the persecution actually increased this tiny sect into a movement large enough to survive, and eventually surplant, the Roman Empire.

[Izzy]

And then we will have to be Muslims and "our women" will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs.

Which makes me wonder why, exactly, the right wing is so freaked out about the theoretical Muslim Invasion. I mean, this sounds like a "threat" that would be fine and dandy with most of them.

Unless there's some substantial difference between sharia law and the "Culture of Values" or whatever they're calling it these days.

[Rozzen]

It's like those Chick tracts that made a *huge* deal of Mohammed having had several wives.
Totally unlike anyone in the Bible.

[hapax]

Jeff Considering how the Romans persecuted the Christians, I think they did fear that to a certain extent. And the persecution actually increased this tiny sect into a movement large enough to survive, and eventually surplant, the Roman Empire.

Umm. No.

Despite pervasive Christian mythology, Roman "persecution" of Christians was pretty much like the witchcraft "persecutions" of the Middle Ages; deadly when they happened, but for the most part sporadic, local, and quick to burn out.

The motivations weren't fear of being taken over, as fear of extremism; the official charge against Christians wasn't any sort of "heresy" but "treason"; by refusing to sacrifice to the Emperor, they were essentially refusing to assimilate into a tolerant, multicultural society.

And it wasn't the persecutions that allowed the Christian sect to survive, grow, and eventually take over, although martyrdom did provide inspiring legends. It was their powerful network of social support, and not incidentally their encouragement to marry and have large families, in a society that was in some ways the libertarian ideal -- riddled with rigid individualism, casual cruelty, and apathy.

But it was very unlikely that Christianity would have ever become more than a significant minority if a certain provincial general hadn't seen the advantage of co-opting it for his political ambitions...

[85% Duane]

If their fear of Muslims is like my fear of spiders, I can dig that. OTOH, I've never let my fear of spiders influence my voting. Well, at least not subconsciously.

[McJulie]

In reading about the right-wing fear of "Muslims" I'm struck by how similar it is to their earlier fear of "Communists." They just plugged one into hole vacated by the other, changed the details a bit, and voila.

[Buhallin]

The strangest thing about this fear is that they almost seem to revel in it - to ENJOY it. I remember on perusing a few of the nastier right-wing blogs last year, links to this started flying around:

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm

It's a good example of what happens when a decent, if conservative, sci-fi writer goes completely racist bonkers. But the wingnuts were gobbling this thing up - it was the call to action they've all been waiting for! Everyone needed to read this and understand what we faced!

Amusing side note: I was at an SF con a few months ago, and on one panel the author commented, ironically, how very wrong most SF authors truly get the future. If you think about it, he's right - a very, VERY few SF authors seem to have had any level of accuracy... Gibson still holds the title, IMHO.

Back on topic: I think the Simmons tripe above highlights one other group which resonates with the fear... I'm not sure if they believe it as much as the fearful, but they WANT the invasion. These are the guys who sat up late having heroic fantasies after Red Dawn. No more Big Red Threat, they need someone new to invade so that we can shoot them ourselves!

[NonyNony]

In reading about the right-wing fear of "Muslims" I'm struck by how similar it is to their earlier fear of "Communists."

McJulie has made the comment I was going to make - this is nothing new. It is comical to anyone who has even a glimmer of what the world is like - there is approximately a 0% chance[*] that there is going to be any kind of "Muslim invasion" of the US that overthrows our government, forces us to convert to Islam, institutes Sharia Law, and turns our society into a copy of the fundamentalist theocracy model of Iran. It's a logistic impossibility. Of course, they prey on the fact that a large chunk of the populace of the US doesn't actually have "even a glimmer of what the world is like" outside our borders, so the fear mongers succeed despite the facts.

[*] I'll leave open the possibility that we could be invaded by a technologically advanced Muslim civilization from a parallel universe. I suspect that the odds of that are so slim that we can still call it "approximately 0%".

[Buhallin]

Hrm, I may have spoke too soon on the whole "No Red Dawn" scenario...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/09/12/russia.parliament.ap/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/09/12/russia.bomb.ap/index.html

[Rozzen]

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm
Ah. Argumentum ad a Time Traveller From the Future Told Me.

[Scott]

How do we reach those who are governed by fear?

I dunno - you could stop contributing to it w/ economic demogoging and global warming "we're all gonna die tomorrow" hysteria. Naaah. That would interfear with you getting power over others. One man's fearmongering is another man's being a prophet.

[Jos]

One man's fearmongering is another man's being a prophet.

Show me the well-organised Muslim army with the capability of overrunning the US and maybe then you have a point.

[MichaelR]

Ah, I was wondering when the trolling fuckstick would crawl out of his hole.

Look, you clueless shitsack, the big difference between "ZOMG MUSLIMS" and "ZOMG GLOBAL WARMING" is that one of them actually has a base in real science. But sociopathic cockfaces like you worry that you might have to worry about how your actions impact people other than yourselves so clearly it's all just a power grab.

I apologize to the readers of the blog in general if using language that gives Scott the same kind of respect he gives anyone else is offensive. But not to Scott. He can go choke on a rancid dick.

[Jesurgislac]

Buhallin: The strangest thing about this fear is that they almost seem to revel in it - to ENJOY it.

They do. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to Attack of the Clones...

There is a British national stereotype (which is as false as most national stereotypes) of taking terrible events in your stride - not as a Fearsome Warrior who goes out and Slays, but as a hapless civilian under fire. There was a showgirl theater in London - nudes doing poses alternating with stand-up comics doing dirty jokes - which stayed open all the way through the Blitz, and put up a sign saying so "We Never Closed". Someone did a blogpost earlier this year, right after the second anniversary of the July bombing of the Tube: British Terror Alert

The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross."

Londoners have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists themselves have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

This doesn't say Brits are any more or any less scared of terrorist attacks than Americans - it's just that the national stereotype of how to cope is different.

If you think about it, he's right - a very, VERY few SF authors seem to have had any level of accuracy... Gibson still holds the title, IMHO.

I say John Brunner. (Can we have a thread for this, Fred? "The Shape of Futures Past".)

[MichaelR]

There's actually a word for that sort of thing: Zeerust. The "Tales of Future Past" link seems to be broken, but the French postcards from 1900 are certainly interesting.

[Indiana Joe]

I'd say that the most powerful, best-organized, Muslim army is less of a threat to the US than the Republican party.

[cjmr]

but the French postcards from 1900 are certainly interesting.

And, at a guess, NSFW? If they're 'French postcards', not French postcards, that is.

[MichaelR]

No, they're perfectly safe. They are indeed postcards, and they are indeed from France. Although for some of them I couldn't quite pin down what was going on or where "LOOK! FUTURE!" played into it.

[cjmr]

Okay. I read a 'Victorian novel' once where 'French postcards' were a very specific type of (men's) postcard.

[wintermute]

If their fear of Muslims is like my fear of spiders, I can dig that. OTOH, I've never let my fear of spiders influence my voting. Well, at least not subconsciously.

1) How would you know?

2) How has it consciously influenced your voting?

[wintermute]

Amusing side note: I was at an SF con a few months ago, and on one panel the author commented, ironically, how very wrong most SF authors truly get the future. If you think about it, he's right - a very, VERY few SF authors seem to have had any level of accuracy... Gibson still holds the title, IMHO.

Isaac Asimov used to be terribly amused at the idea that he had any talent at predicting the future. Apparently, when people asked him how he did it, he took great pleasure in directing them to a story predicting that Everest would never be climbed. It was published several months after Sir Edmund Hillary managed that very feat, so he could tell people, with immense satisfaction, that he couldn't even predict the past.

[alfgifu]

To be fair, Britain has been under some sort of active threat or another for the past century. If it's not riots in the streets, it's the blitz. If it's not the IRA, it's Al Quaeda. We've never been secure, as such. I've been cleared out of a shopping centre more than once - and my school was closed one afternoon - because of bomb scares. That was a long time before 9/11, as well (and, by the by, largely funded by Americans). Perhaps we'd be less placid about it if we had the same sort of illusion of safety as America managed for so long. The fear seems to be connected to the potential, not the actual, threat.

Maybe if there were a few (in the best of worlds, failed) terrorist attacks every year, it would be harder to drum up this sort of paranoia. Of course, it could go the other way.

[Buhallin]

I would have to think it would go the other way, alfgifu.

For those accustomed to dealing with fear, you just deal with it. For those unaccustomed to it (as most Americans are), you try and fix it. Look what ONE sizable terrorist attack has gotten us... I shudder to think of what lengths my country would go to if we had several attacks each year.

At last count, the civilian death toll in Iraq is running somewhere between 30 and 60 times the count from 9/11. If that's our response to ongoing attacks....

[Fraser]

Ohh, that Simmons piece .... 1)Why would being a fiction writer, someone who makes up conversations, make you better at remembering real conversations? I'm a reporter, and I know I coulnd't report a conversaton as accurately as he pretends to?
2)The fact the whacko is a time traveler would hardly prove that he's telling the truth about the future. Remember Guns of the South in which some Afrikaaners help the South to win and preserve slavery, all the while explaining that the alternative is Northern victory followed by a century of brutal occupation and repression?
Of course, that's picking nits when arguing with someone who holds up Muslims as bad because they discriminated against and singled out Jews, as if that never happened under enlightened religions such as Christianity. But sometimes I like to pick nits.

[Rosina]

For those accustomed to dealing with fear, you just deal with it. For those unaccustomed to it (as most Americans are), you try and fix it. Look what ONE sizable terrorist attack has gotten us... I shudder to think of what lengths my country would go to if we had several attacks each year.

I think the terrorists could get away with it if they used guns. There are the equivalent of 'several' 9/11s in gun deaths each year, and not much will to declare war on guns.

[damnedyankee]

Fred's posting of the terror code reminded me of this variation from the Project for the Old American Century.

[tony]

I would say John Brunner too. If anyone invented the internet, it was him, in Shockwave Rider.

[cjmr]

1)Why would being a fiction writer, someone who makes up conversations, make you better at remembering real conversations?

The only thing I can think of is that a fiction writer will often hold made-up conversation in his/her head for years, until s/he writes the rest of the story that goes around it.

I have a more substantive point, but first I need to get something off my chest. Gibson? You think William Gibson predicted the future ? The man wrote those famous stories with a typewriter in the mid-1980s. His major characters spout Star Trek-style nonsense while doing things which are not only impossible but also irrelevant to the plot. Yes, I understand that the future technology geeks had actually already built sounds superficially like Gibson's stories when its reported on the radio, but you just wrote that on a blog which means you're actually using the Internet and thus ought to have noticed by now that it doesn't in reality actually resemble anything he described. If you want some authenticity, try Neal Stephenson. People are trying to really build many of his ideas. The Metaverse from "Snow Crash"? Check out Second Life. The (Young Lady's Illustrated) Primer from "Diamond Age"? Look again at the OLPC project. Or try people like Vernor Vinge and Greg Egan who actually work in relevant fields and so know the difference between "unlikely but interesting" and "utter nonsense".

Anyway, my real point is about the Great Fire. It's not called that by accident you know. Far from being a disaster it cleared a large area of London for redevelopment with relatively little loss of life (the fire spread fairly slowly and people were rightly afraid and ran for their lives). Without the Fire a lot more of London would still be narrow cobbled streets. Even the Germans didn't neatly demolish whole blocks, they'd take out one house or shop with a bomb and leave the rest, very untidy.

No, I'm joking. The real point is that Bader-Saye offers this bizarre contrast between two possibilities, belief in God, and unthinking fear. Now, for the purpose of demonising the Republican administration, that serves fine. But as a way of actually understanding the world it's hopeless. God is pretty scary too. So long as you believe in God (at least the God described in e.g. Genesis or Job) you must fear him, and that fear is a powerful agent for evil in the world. "Kill your daughter's boyfriend before he corrupts her and condemns her soul to eternal punishment" says God. I know that the book is written for a Christian audience, but I hope the rest of it is written more thoughtfully. Personally I do not live in "fearful times", there is always war and talk of war, and the Americans are always cowering and swaggering at the same time, nothing has changed, except a particularly cynical style of politics has arrived.

[Buhallin]

Gibson's vision and accuracy is not in the tech, but in the societal predictions. The toys are completely secondary. GOOD science fiction is only peripherally about the tech - the interesting part is what it does to the people who use it.

And while I've heard good things about Snow Crash, I heard a lot of good things about Cryptonomicon too, which I just finished... What a load of tripe. The ability to spout a few random accurate techie terms and borrow a fun encryption scheme from Schnier does not make one a good writer. So my jury is definitely out on Stephenson... But I disliked Cryptocomical because it ignores the above - it's all about the toys, and has very, very little attention to what all of that really MEANS to society. He touches on it a bit, but only in the most superficial and idealistic way. I think it's one of the reasons techies LOVE his work - it gives them the toys without all those troublesome issues of what their use really means.

[85% Duane]

Well, at least not subconsciously.

1) How would you know?

2) How has it consciously influenced your voting?

Yeah, see how even thinking about spiders got me all tongue-tied? *shiver*

[pepperjackcandy]

Does anyone have an e-mail addy for Fred? I have something I need to discuss with him.

[cjmr]

There's an email link in the sidebar. Almost at the bottom.

[wintermute]

Cryptonomicon had a good 50-page story buried in a 500-page thesis on why libertarians are too moderate. I loved the first and last scenes in Snow Crash but everything in between was unmitigated crap; the absolute worst was the subplot with the robot dog, but describing anything in it as "mediocre" requires far more generosity than I'm willing to grant it. Though I'm sure Scott masturbates himself to sleep over the "look how much better it would be to live under Mafia rule than the US government" scenes.

Zodiac was OK, if a little hackish, and I was surprised at how much I liked Diamond Age. Probably because it was more of a novel than a political manifesto, a sin compounded when the politics in question are so amazingly infantile.

For an example of a libertarian who can actually write without beating you over the head with his politics, check out the Polity series by Neal Asher; I'd never have had any idea what his politics were, if I hadn't found his blog. Well, that or read the introductions in his short story collections. His actual stories are excellent, though.

[Jesurgislac]

One reason why I'd name John Brunner - besides the fact that in The Shockwave Rider he predicted pretty much everything about the Internet except the modern processors that mean we don't have to be phreaks any more - is that in order to judge how well a person predicted the future, you really have to go back thirty or forty years and look at what the sf writers then were predicting about the future that's become our present. Anyway, Gibson and Stephenson are tyros, dwarves riding on the shoulders of giants.

[Bugmaster]

What ! *spills coffee*
Zodiac was great. It was barely even science fiction, it was so realistic. Sure, it had some over-the-top moments, but I wouldn't call those "hackish"; I'd call them "satire". Snow Crash was great, too, as long as you don't take it seriously (um, you know it was a parody, right ? I mean... "The Deliverator" ?); the Rat Thing was kind of neat, because you could argue that, by that time, many of the people in that world have become, effectively, Rat Things (even Mr. Ng). Fido helped drive that point home. Diamond Age was good, but I can see why some people don't like it... It takes a certain mindset to appreciate the detailed discussion of Turing Machnies that occurs in the middle.

Cryptonomicon was a brick. It was basically Neal Stephenson saying, "screw good writing; I'm an Important Author now, who is going to write Important Things". True to form, everything he wrote since then was pure crap.

[ako]

2)The fact the whacko is a time traveler would hardly prove that he's telling the truth about the future. Remember Guns of the South in which some Afrikaaners help the South to win and preserve slavery, all the while explaining that the alternative is Northern victory followed by a century of brutal occupation and repression?

Good point. It's actually a lot more plausible that the guy busting in out of nowhere and going "The Caliphate will KILL YOUR GRANDSONS and MAKE YOUR GRANDDAUGHTERS WEAR VEILS unless we EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES! By the way, you're my grandfather," but can't coherently explain how they overthrow civilization with nothing but terrorist bombings, is some kind of whack-job trying to inflame global war against Islam by pushing emotionally compelling but fact-light horror stories.

The real point is that Bader-Saye offers this bizarre contrast between two possibilities, belief in God, and unthinking fear. Now, for the purpose of demonising the Republican administration, that serves fine. But as a way of actually understanding the world it's hopeless. God is pretty scary too. So long as you believe in God (at least the God described in e.g. Genesis or Job) you must fear him, and that fear is a powerful agent for evil in the world.

I sort of agree with this. Not believing in God doesn't necessarily lead to becoming fixated on fear; and a lot of people get driven to that by their religion. But it's very specific religious beliefs that lead to that kind of thing, not a general belief in God or gods. Not even all forms of Christianity. Just specific ones.

But given how much of the current morbid fixation on fear is lead by people with strong religious convictions, and how little involves the non-religious, it seems odd to blame it on people not having enough faith.

[Bugmaster]

Check out Gibson's Virtual Light for a couple more societal predictions. And, I feel deeply sorry for anyone whose introduction to Stephenson was The Cryptonomicon. It's an awful thing to do to someone, giving them Cryptonomicon. Oh, and also, check out Interface (written under the pseudonym "Stephen Bury", IIRC). It's a book about Karl Rove and the Bush administration, written before either of them came to power. Very spooky.

[cjmr]

...as the almost infinite list of books to check out of the library grows even longer...

[damnedyankee]

The man wrote those famous stories with a typewriter in the mid-1980s. His major characters spout Star Trek-style nonsense while doing things which are not only impossible but also irrelevant to the plot.

I'm going to have to ask you to step outside now, Blank Person. Or failing that, come to Averlast Gym and ask for "Abel Undercity" and put your Lindens where your mouth is.

Nobody disses Neuromancer on my watch.

[Salamanda]

ako:But given how much of the current morbid fixation on fear is lead by people with strong religious convictions, and how little involves the non-religious, it seems odd to blame it on people not having enough faith.

I agree with you. I didn't get the impression of blame from this piece, though, as much as one of calling Christians to task for buying into a culture of fear when it goes against what they're supposed to live by.

[Fraser]

Loved Snow Crash. Enjoyed Diamond Age. Cryptonomicon, I'm with you bugmaster.
As for Gibson being that good at predicting society, I recall him showing a world where the Internet was apparently the domain of tough-guy street punk hackers and normal people largely shut out, which has very little in common with the Web we know. But he's more entertaining than the one Bruce Sterling novel I've read.
cjmr, I'm a fiction writer myself, so I understand having mental conversations, but that hasn't translated into an ability to recal lengthy real-world conversations with accuracy. Though of course, the time traveler could have been using some sort of secret device just to make sure Simmons didn't forget all his conclusive proof that Islam Is The Enemy and that our worries about civil rights are silly.
And while I realize I'd be pretty shaken if I confronted a time-traveler, I think I'd do better defending the non-total-war viewpoint than Simmons did. A sure sign of a crappy polemic is that the guy on the Wrong Side is completely ineffective in the debate.

[Fraser]

Read Simmons' follow-up message which explains how totally plausible everything is, how Christianity has tolerance woven into its modern makeup and how Europe is already transforming into Eurabia due to the governments selling out to Muslims.

[The afore-mentioned Blank Person]

Shouldn't you be playing Shadowrun instead of fooling around in the Linden's (openly admitted) attempt to build Stephenson's Metaverse ?

Also I am ashamed to admit that I only just realised that Wintermute is a Neuromancer reference, in my defense it's been a long time since I last read it.

I agree with people who say that Gibson captured some of the feeling of the networked future that become the networked present. But I don't think his picture of the resulting society holds up any better than his horrible non-grasp of the technology. In terms of literary ability, sure Stephenson is more Agatha Christie than Herman Melville but this came up in the context of SF as prophecy.

In some ways we're not doing much better than when Stanisław Lem wrote his critical essays on SF in the 1960s and 1970s. Most SF writers still have no science background (which means they don't know what the interesting questions might be, let alone have some ideas for answers) and most are still pretty bad at characterisation, dialogue, pacing, and other elements of good writing - and remember we're only seeing this work after editors have worked hard to make it fit for sale to the public. The fans still make bold claims for SF's potential for great literature, seldom heard in other ghetto genres like romance, and they still celebrate books based on their volume of sales like a cheap paperback crime novel. These two ideas are contrary, mainstream literature doesn't say "This author although she writes awful dialogue and has never come up with a plot that didn't have a Deus Ex Machina in the final act, must be great because she sold the most books this year".

[Rich Hailey]

Is anybody paying attention to the shifting demographics in Europe? Do yourself a favor; take a quick look at the fastest growing groups in France. And Germany. And Britain. Cultural wars may be fought with guns and bullets but they are won with babies. The tale of Vortigern is instructive as well.

Do I believe a mighty army of Islamic warriors will come to Europe and enforce sharia at the point of a sword?

Nope.

Do I believe a silent invasion is underway via immigration and birth rates? Absolutely. Would the same tactics work in America?

It did for the Europeans.

As for Fred's suggestion that terrorism is impotent without the willing co-operation of the victim, well, we're already seeing signs of that co-operation. How many newspapers declined to carry the Opus cartoons?

Fred's partially right; living in fear s not the answer. But burying your head in the sand and pretending there's no real problem isn't the answer either.

Buhallin said:

Look what ONE sizable terrorist attack has gotten us... I shudder to think of what lengths my country would go to if we had several attacks each year.

One attack? One? You do remember the USS Cole, right? The Khobar Towers? Our embassies in Tanzaia and Kenya? The first attack on the WTC? Not to mention all the plots that have failed since 9/11. Remember Richard Reid?

Not only do you fail to learn from history, you appear to ignore it as it happens around you.

[cjmr's husband]

Richard Reid didn't fail.

He was the most successful terrorist in the last few decades.

[Vermic]

@Ako: It's actually a lot more plausible that the guy busting in out of nowhere and going "The Caliphate will KILL YOUR GRANDSONS and MAKE YOUR GRANDDAUGHTERS WEAR VEILS unless we EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES! By the way, you're my grandfather," but can't coherently explain how they overthrow civilization with nothing but terrorist bombings...

Look, the secret plan to establish the Global Islamic Caliphate is a very simple, three-step process:

1. Bomb skyscrapers, plazas and cathedrals worldwide.
2. ...
3. Prophet!

Heh.