(urth) Gollancz list (was: Re: Book of the New Sun won thecontest!)

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Sat, 8/6/11, Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com>

> I have found a few Wolfe works
> "preachy," but it doesn't bother me any
> more than Mieville's preachiness, even though I agree more
> with
> Mieville than Wolfe.  I suppose because Wolfe and
> Mieville are
> intelligent I can recognize in them a like mind that can
> discuss
> differences rationally.
> 
> I don't actually have a problem with righties, I have a
> problem with
> uncritical acceptance of any position and people that have
> an aversion
> to anything that challenges their own viewpoints.  

I wonder how many readers of Wolfe are intrinsically slanted to the left.

This is way off topic so the rest of this post can be ignored by any except the curious, I am intrigued  by the "type" of reader drawn to Gene.

Outside my "politics" I'm a very nice guy and a good friend, my politics are almost abstractions that have no real impact on my life, but inside and kept to myself I tend to identify with a very extreme kind of "right".

Its curious to me, sometimes I feel like I'm ALMOST his target audience: a mostly conservative Catholic who buys into benevolent,just, and intelligently used might making right.  Then again, I've NEVER talked to anyone with my particular set of beliefs in real life.

I'm philosophically but not practically so far right its not even on a spectrum anymore: I think voting is flawed, just because most people think something is right or true doesn't make it just, a truly unpopular opinion cannot ever reign, I don't really believe in equality (some people have nothing but pain and suffering to contribute to society, others contribute great things and are inexplicably gifted with more than can benefit humanity).  At best democracy is  happy illusion, at worst a lie of false empowerment.  

I am tied to morality only by my faith in absolute right and wrong (I do happen to believe all life is sacred): arbitrary and nonsensical laws have no real moral authority, where location makes a crime (prostitution legal in Nevada but not Arizona, elimination of an inconvenient fetus/youngling illegal once it has left the womb but not before, stem cell and genetic engineering illegal when performed on things not legally recognzed as human beings, the killing of a mother deemeed a double murder, etc. woefully inconsistent)  

When I worked for my wife's family circus I saw the evils of socialism: from each according to his abilities (mostly mine), to each according to his needs (mostly not mine)  and when times are tough, nothing.  I have sympathy for the weak and the injured, the lame and the suffering, those who were not given the gifts of this world, but developed and automatic qualities will always create vast and intrinsic inequalities which the mere accident of being born human can never erase.  

It is my duty to help those with less ability achieve what they can within reason, but every system that admits to experience and mastery recognizes there is no such thing as equality.

I am still willing to accept the societal need for morally gray institutions like abortion, but I will of course then take the necessary extreme slippery slope view that all life is intrinsically NOT sacred and that all undesirable elements should be similarly removed from a position where they can cause inconvenience, (because that's the way my mind works.)

Is there anybody who thinks like this, or am I the only one?