David Brin -- Science Fiction Writer

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The New Meme

PART ONE: Introduction

I EARN my living
as a writer. In other words, as a magician, shaman, metaphorist. By chant and incantation -- and with the active collaboration of my clients, the readers -- I create images, characters, alternate realities in other minds. It is an ancient, venerable profession. All tribes have had storytellers, who wove legends round the campfire. My specialty involves epics not about long ago, but times and places yet to come. It attempts to weave realistic might-bes, and vivid might-have-beens. Above all, it is the literature of change.
These are bold days for such a genre, since change is the very fabric of our time. If today's modern "priesthood" consists of scientists, we SF authors are like those wild-eyed folk in hair shirts who once stood outside the temple gates, performing tricks and dazzling the crowds, generally tolerated by the official guardians of wisdom, for astute priests understand that people need myths, as well.
In fact, the best of today's scientists seem to enjoy reading far-out, speculative tales. Perhaps they, too, like to be taken far away now and then, exploring possibilities that require no proof, only plausibility. Having worked on both sides, both inside the Temple and out, I can say that, for all their differences, science and science fiction have something deep in common. You might call it a shared frame of reference... a new and different way of looking at the world.
I alluded to this worldview in earlier essays. Now I want to look one more time at the Dogma of Otherness.
Consider the following statement:
Subjective reality is what I see and experience; objective reality is what's really out there. They aren't necessarily the same thing.
In other words, I look through my eyes and see only a version of the world, a version that can be, and often is, colored or twisted by what I want to see. Another person may witness the same events, and yet observe something entirely different.
This is the first of two ideas on which I believe Otherness is based, and to a modern reader it probably sounds pretty obvious. Who among us hasn't noticed the effect of subjectivity in daily life? The illusions others are prone to, and those (if we are honest about it) which we ourselves nurture or allow? In fact, awareness of this problem has been around for a long time. Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Buddha and countless other mystics, in countless cultures, have preached the same message -- that we all exist amid a blur of uncertainty in an imperfect world. That one can never know complete truth about physical reality via our senses alone. Much is made of the differences between their systems... Socrates teaching reason, Buddha urging meditation, and Jesus prescribing faith. But what they all had in common was far more important. Each of those sage-prophets worried that the power of human egotism tends to make each us lie to ourselves, leading to error, hypocrisy, and all_too often the rationalizing of evil actions.
Moreover, each of these great savants offered a variant on the same cure.
"Give up," they preached. "Don't bother trying to figure out how the flawed world works. Perfect knowledge is to be found only within the mind, the soul. Seek your own private salvation then, apart from the world, and don't bother getting your hands dirty trying to piece together the nuts and bolts of God's handiwork."
Before Galileo, very few philosophers in any culture dared question this near-universal, dualist mysticism, which almost always was accompanied by top-heavy hierarchies of magicians, shamans, priests, or art critics. Only from time to time would a rebel dare counter:
"Hey, I may not ever be able to be certain what is absolutely True... but I sure as heck can work to find out what isn't! Moreover, I can improve my model of the world, by slowly, carefully finding out what is truer than what I already knew."
In other words, by slowly, carefully testing the things you and others believe, through a process of elimination you can falsify, get rid of, a lot of wrong ideas __ even ones you cherished _ _ until the resulting picture, imperfect as it is, lets you see the world a little clearer than before.
This is the second half of the declaration, the manifesto, of a new revolution... one that began to take hold only a couple of centuries ago and is still tentative, uncertain, incomplete, yet has already achieved incredible wonders. To the problem of imperfect knowledge, it suggests a new and unprecedented solution... honest work.
To ever come close to what's really going on, I must learn to double check, to experiment, and even consult and cooperate with other people. Mutual deliberation, or giving of "reality checks," helps us agree on common ground, and criticism is the only anodyne human beings have ever discovered to error.
It takes great wisdom, maturity, and force of will to overcome ingrained human egotism and say -- "Hey, I can fool myself! I might even be wrong, from time to time."
But it has taken an even more remarkable revolution for people to be able to add -- "Instead of retreating into ourselves, let's try taking the problem apart into little pieces, see where I'm wrong, where you're wrong, and where we both may wind up being surprised."

The Kaleidospace logo and "Kaleidospace" are trademarks of Kaleidospace. The Kaleidospace logo is used with permission of artist [(c) 1994 MaryLou Novak]. Kaleidospace / Jeannie Novak / jeannie@kspace.com / Pete Markiewicz / pete@kspace.com_____________________________________
(c) 1994 Kaleidospace