I find it extremely ironic to occasionally encounter Christians that laud atheist Ayn Rand, whose Objectionist philosophy was developed as a direct and scathing rebuttal not only to Socialism, but also to Christianity.

I came across this article in Politico about the prevalence these days of all things Ayn Rand and I feel compelled to respond.  I don’t want to get into a big treatise about her philosophy of Objectivism here, nor do I really want to argue the various merits or follies of her beliefs or the influence she’s had on the American psyche since her “revolutionary” new ideas hit the scene in the early-to-mid 1900s.  I’m not really qualified to do so right now, and I’m too busy finishing up my 4th book to launch into the study it would require.  So, I’ll just speak briefly about what I can recollect of my personal impressions of her.

I read The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged when I was in the Peace Corps eight years ago.  I have to admit right off the bat that I LOVED the books.  They were awesome reads from the perspective of story and character.  I couldn’t put them down.  On the surface they were fun and inspirational, powerful and compelling.  Rand is a champion of the individual human spirit, and her protagonists’ rise to the top of the food chain within drab, stagnated regimes of repression and oppression are incredibly exciting.  Ayn Rand is a product of having grown up in Communist Russia, if I remember correctly, and her own journey to the U.S. (when 18?) and her rise to influence is a story that eerily mirrors the champions of her novels.  It’s not at all surprising that she would compare early 20th century Russia to the USA and come to the conclusion that it’s better to celebrate individualism over the common good.

But when I scratch under the surface of her Objectionist philosophy, and when I look at those two novels from a more analytical viewpoint, I become at best incredibly alarmed or, at worst, appalled.  In my opinion, she takes the celebration of individualism over the common good of the community to an extreme by suggesting that people are better off when they act and think for themselves at the express exclusion of considering others.

In general, this is clearly antithetical to Christian values and the message of the Gospels.

Indeed, her philosophy had never really existed before she espoused it, precisely because it fell so far out of the prevailing paradigm of social understanding, informed, in large part, by Christiandom.  By naming this idea and arguing it the context of Communism vs Capitalism and making it so entertaining and compelling in her novels, she gave countless people around the world permission and justification to be utterly selfish to a degree that had never before been permitted by the dictates of religious decency.

Before Rand lovers cry fowl I should address a major point:  (I think) she would argue that when a person strives for their fullest potential and fights tooth and nail for their own interests and success, that they inherently help society, and that this attitude, in the aggregate, lifts everyone up.

We’ve all been around the block enough times to see how this is true to an extent.  I HOPE that we’ve all been around the block enough to recognize that in its purest formulation, though, Objectivism has serious flaws from a stand point of social justice.  My principle criticism of Fountain Head, for example, is that she holds her protagonist up as this superhero of innovation and success without ever acknowledging in any way that while that works great for the Fords and the Trumps of the world, it doesn’t do a damn thing for everybody as a whole.  (Imagine a world in which EVERYONE was just as successful  and innovative as Donald Trump.  There’s just no room for it!)  She never addressed this concern to my satisfaction.

Again, there are entire institutions whose aim it is to debate and calibrate these ideas (The Rand Institute comes to mind).  I don’t want to get mired in that morass, here.  I’m simply trying to remind Christians that they tread on extremely precarious ground when they lean too heavily on the notion that you can best help others by being single minded about your own success.  It is completely outside the context and spirit of Jesus’ teachings.  I’m reminded of Mathew 25, where Jesus runs down a long list of things that we should be doing for “the least” of our brothers and sisters.  There are countless biblical passages to point to that suggest Jesus advocates for caring for others, even–and sometimes especially–at our own personal expense.

Ayn Rand was a proud atheist who saw concern for others as a weakens brought on by a silly preoccupation for the afterlife.  She had no patience for those that advocated for and served others.  Her philosophy is clearly at odds with the very fabric of Christianity.

That is why I find it absurd to see so many “Tea Partiers” holding up her name with pride as they go about their business of protesting the Government. (From the Politico article linked above:)

Tea party protesters hoisted signs reading “Ayn Rand was right” and “Who is John Galt?” at the Sept. 12 taxpayer march.  …South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) penned a piece on Rand’s newfound relevance for Newsweek.

To be sure, there are probably many Tea Partiers who are not Christian at all, but there are countless examples of Christians who praise the merits of Ayn Rand.  I personally know of some.  And in fact, in the Politico article quoted above, Mark Sanford, the disgraced Governor of South Carolina (hardly a model Christian, I know) is a fan of Rand.

Most Christians, I suspect, who really understood that Ayn Rand developed her philosophy of Objectivism as a rebuttal to Christ’s very ethos, would never hold up a sign that says, “Ayn Rand was right.”

In my next novel I’ll explore what might happen to our faith traditions if their relevancy were challenged by the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.  I believe that our world religions will adapt to the new paradigm, even if it requires some kicking and screaming along the way.   I can’t speak authoritatively for other faiths, but according to my philosophy of “Both/And” Thinking, there’s no intrinsic contradiction between my Christian beliefs and the potential for sentient life on other worlds.

As this AP article suggests, I feel that the Catholic Church has learned some lessons from its closed-mindedness of the past, by allowing for the validity of the Theory of Evolution, for example.  It seems that the Church continues to improve at acknowledging that there may be more to the ‘verse than is embodied in Chapter and Verse…

(By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer – VATICAN CITY)

E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

“The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration,” said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

…

“Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God’s creative freedom.”

Funes maintained that if intelligent beings were discovered, they would also be considered “part of creation.”

The Roman Catholic Church’s relationship with science has come a long way since Galileo was tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant his finding that the Earth revolves around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

Today top clergy, including Funes, openly endorse scientific ideas like the Big Bang theory as a reasonable explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

Earlier this year, the Vatican also sponsored a conference on evolution to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”

Full article after the jump

By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer Ariel David, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY – E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

“The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration,” said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises “many philosophical and theological implications” but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.

“Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe,” he told a news conference Tuesday. “There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe.”

Thirty scientists, including non-Catholics, from the U.S., France, Britain, Switzerland, Italy and Chile attended the conference, called to explore among other issues “whether sentient life forms exist on other worlds.”

Funes set the stage for the conference a year ago when he discussed the possibility of alien life in an interview given prominence in the Vatican’s daily newspaper.

The Church of Rome’s views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of planets outside our solar system — including 32 new ones announced recently by the European Space Agency. Impey said the discovery of alien life may be only a few years away.

“If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound,” he said.

This is not the first time the Vatican has explored the issue of extraterrestrials: In 2005, its observatory brought together top researchers in the field for similar discussions.

In the interview last year, Funes told Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that believing the universe may host aliens, even intelligent ones, does not contradict a faith in God.

“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?” Funes said in that interview.

“Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God’s creative freedom.”

Funes maintained that if intelligent beings were discovered, they would also be considered “part of creation.”

The Roman Catholic Church’s relationship with science has come a long way since Galileo was tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant his finding that the Earth revolves around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

Today top clergy, including Funes, openly endorse scientific ideas like the Big Bang theory as a reasonable explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

Earlier this year, the Vatican also sponsored a conference on evolution to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”

The event snubbed proponents of alternative theories, like creationism and intelligent design, which see a higher being rather than the undirected process of natural selection behind the evolution of species.

Still, there are divisions on the issues within the Catholic Church and within other religions, with some favoring creationism or intelligent design that could make it difficult to accept the concept of alien life.

Working with scientists to explore fundamental questions that are of interest to religion is in line with the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made strengthening the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

Recent popes have been working to overcome the accusation that the church was hostile to science — a reputation grounded in the Galileo affair.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared the ruling against the astronomer was an error resulting from “tragic mutual incomprehension.”

The Vatican Museums opened an exhibit last month marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first celestial observations.

Tommaso Maccacaro, president of Italy’s national institute of astrophysics, said at the exhibit’s Oct. 13 opening that astronomy has had a major impact on the way we perceive ourselves.

“It was astronomical observations that let us understand that Earth (and man) don’t have a privileged position or role in the universe,” he said. “I ask myself what tools will we use in the next 400 years, and I ask what revolutions of understanding they’ll bring about, like resolving the mystery of our apparent cosmic solitude.”

The Vatican Observatory has also been at the forefront of efforts to bridge the gap between religion and science. Its scientist-clerics have generated top-notch research and its meteorite collection is considered one of the world’s best.

The observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, is based in Castel Gandolfo, a lakeside town in the hills outside Rome where the pope has his summer residence. It also conducts research at an observatory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.

So, here’s the deal:  I’m not “technically” participating in National Novel Writing Month, because I’m not playing by their rules:

On November 1, begin writing your novel. Your goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, local time, on November 30th. You write on your own computer, using whatever software you prefer…

If you write 50,000 words of fiction by midnight, local time, November 30th, you can upload your novel for official verification, and be added to our hallowed Winner’s Page and receive a handsome winner’s certificate and web badge. We’ll post step-by-step instructions on how to scramble and upload your novel starting in mid-November.

But I am working diligently on a novel!  I very much hope to finish it before the end of the month, too.  Unfortunately, it’ll clock in at 330 pages or so (110,000 words) and I started it years ago.

I just calculated it out:  Since my Paternity Leave began on October 7, I’ve cranked out more than 70 fresh, crisp pages on Tear of the Sunbird.  That comes out to a respectable 22,000 words.  It’ll be 35k by the time I’m through.  Can I have an honorable mention?  Does NaNoWriMo give out badges for friends of the cause?  Or am I like the guy who jumps into the marathon at mile 7 without having paid to run the race?

(If they won’t give me an honorary badge, you KNOW what I have to say about that!  Badges?  We don’t need no stinkin’…)

PS:  A quick tip of the hat to my poetry friend Jen, who is tackling NaNoWriMo with abandon, even though she has a 7 month-old baby, she’s selling her house before the end of the month, and she’s moving to Europe by year’s end!

My four-year-old daughter awoke from an afternoon nap today shaken by a bad dream.  She explained that in the dream she had been playing in the yard and suddenly became aware that the moon was watching her.  Woah.

Guillermo de Toro once shared that he drew inspiration from lucid dreams to create some of the creatures that appear in his films, such as the faun in Pan’s Labyrinth.

A fair amount of my own inspiration for writing has come to me straight out of the black depths of my sometimes twisted, sometimes parochial dreamscapes.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve awoken from a dream thinking, “I should write that down before I forget it.”  Usually, though, even if I have remembered, the dream scenarios do not hold up under the scrutiny of daylight.  It is most often the case that upon further, lucid inspection, the plots and sequences of dreams unravel to the point of uselessness.  For example, I remember awakening from a dream about a flood ready to write an epic, modern-day Noah’s Ark blockbuster.  By mid morning that day, however, the images that remained in my mind were comical and incomprehensible, at best.

Occasionally, though, the muse hits me hardest when my lights are already out.  Early in college I wrote a novella called Ice Capsule about a National Geographic photographer who uncovers some very unsettling goings-on while visiting a science station in Antarctica.  Everything about that story (I have to dust that one off and polish it up one of these days, now that I’m thinking about it) originated from a very clear dream I had in which I was far below the earth in a deep shaft of ice.  In the dream I was looking up toward the the surface at a disk of milky sky, the shaft walls glistening with swirls of blue, watching a piece of paper float down toward me.  When it reached me I realized it was a note.  I read the note and immediately awoke from the dream and scribbled down what it had said:  “She was alive when I took her, and her fear fed me.”

A major plot point regarding Embers of Shadow, Book Three of my Sunbird Chronicles, also came to me in a dream.  I never could have arrived at something so ingenious when I was awake!  Can I really take credit for it, though?  Where do these ideas come from?  Am I constantly having them (I do think about my writing all the time) and I just happen to have the right satellite dish up to receive good ideas when I’m sleeping?  Are our imaginations stronger or weaker when our thoughts are free-floating in the ether of sleep, without conventions of unidirectional time flow and external sensory inputs to anchor our synapses?

I suppose that writing ideas that come to me when I’m asleep are my ideas.  Who else would they belong to?  But it sure feels like I’m taking them from some…where, and not creating them myself.  Does that make any sense?

I hold Karen Armstrong in very high esteem and I deeply respect her ability to critique religion without vilifying it.  I don’t agree with all of her conclusions, but I trust her intentions.  This review of her new book, The Case for God, struck me as a great starting point for a “Both/And” conversation on Laustinspace about the utility and meaningfulness of spiritual practice and organized religion in modern times.

by Devilstower

Sun Nov 08, 2009 at 06:00:02 AM PST

I can’t tell if Bruce is just channeling the character of Ash from the Army of Darkness and the Evil Dead movies–one of my favorite movie characters of all time–or if he really is just being himself. It makes me wonder if Bruce Campbell can act at all, or if his natural personality has just somehow been turned into an incredibly successful cult franchise simply as the product of a completely random Universe. (The answer is the latter, by the way.)

Campbell isn’t a product of his own success, after all. He’s the lucky high school side kick of talented director Sam Rami, who has directed all of the Spiderman films and other great works like A Simple Plan and The Quick and the Dead, and who got his early start in film making by adroitly playing around with cheap horror gimmicks (same as Peter Jackson). But Campbell has seemed to make his accidental cult status into a franchise. His weird standing in the B movie hall of fame-if there ever was such a thing-has built him into his own redoubtable industry. Amazingly, My Name Is Bruce seems to have achieved the impossible: glorifying his trademark wretchedness to the point that he sinks to an all new low/high. It’s like a snake eating its own tail, or a lowly sporting-goods department salesperson (Ash, for the uninitiated) pulling himself up by his own bootstraps so that he actually is levitating on nothing.

For the initiated, this movie has all the homages and references, and I mean ALL, that you could possibly want. Ted Rami (Sam Rami’s brother) plays at least 3, maybe 4 roles (a recurring theme in Campbell flicks), it has all the vintage Rami camera work, they work in every famous Campbell line from Army of Darkness and the Evil Dead movies, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Bubba Hotep, and all the others. He gets to perform all of his goofiest physical comedy. To boot, they work in dozens of brand new terrible one-liners of the caliber of Army of Darkness–it really makes you nostalgic.

In college, after watching Evil Dead II late one night with my dorm buddies, I sat down at the computer, and utilizing the glory of the early internet, I actually found Bruce Campbell’s email address. I emailed him to let him know that I had been really impressed with his acting ability, and to my utter amazement, he emailed me back to say thanks and we actually became pen pals for a while. Eventually I stopped writing because it just seemed weird to keep it up, but he sent me on his own dime a really cool autographed poster of Army of Darkness that I still have framed to this day. Recently, he was at Sacramento’s Crest Theater to promote his new memoir, “If Chins Could Kill, Confessions of a B-Movie Actor.” I didn’t bother to go see him, and now, sitting here, I somewhat regret it. The thing is, knowing him, he’ll be back around again, charging his batteries with the flattery of a strange fan base that…oh my God…includes myself.

I’m falling more in love with this awful movie every second I sit here and write about it, but seriously, if you’re not familiar with Bruce Campbell already, DONT go rent this movie.

PS. He actually is a talented actor–or at least he’s very talented at being Bruce Campbell.

PSS. I still can’t believe this film was written by the co-executive producer of the new Battlestar Galactica series.

I just listened to a local NPR interview with John Irving, author of The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules, among other iconic novels.  One thing during the interview that he lingered upon for quite awhile was his unintentional “schtick” that his novels are usually born out of the last sentence.  He gets a novel’s final sentence stuck in his head and then he builds the entire story around it–or behind it, I guess.  In the case of Garp:  “In the world according to Garp, everyone was a terminal case.”

This is fascinating to me.  I work similarly, I suppose, but not at the micro level of the sentence.  I usually have a very clear ending in mind for my story ideas, and then I figure out how to lead up to it.  I intentionally leave the details very vague, though, because I want to avoid the pitfall of writing myself into a corner.  My books “write themselves,” as they say, and I’m always willing to let the narrative take me in a new direction.

Incidentally, that’s part of what is so fun about writing for me: learning the details of character and plot with all the anticipation and curiosity of an objective reader.  I’m wrapping up my fourth novel right now (about 30 pages, or so, to go!) and subsequently the ENTIRE Sunbird Chronicles Series, and it’s been super exciting to see how the details are coming into focus after ten years of thinking daily about the characters and where they’re (supposedly) going.

Here’s the latest summary of Arrow of the Sunbird, Book One of The Sunbird Chronicles. I imagine it to be the sort of thing that will eventually go on the back cover, but for now I will use this as the first paragraphs of my query letter to agents.   Earlier iterations have focused more on setting and plot, but I’ve realized that, as original as my setting and plot are, the pitch needs to remain focused on character (duh, right?).  If an agent (or you) can’t connect with the main character right off the bat, well, then…

Let me know what you think.  I’m very open to suggestions.

Renue Aarowyne longs to escape. After all, life as crown prince in a realm paralyzed by drought and war, perched on a stair-step world of insurmountable cliffs, can be rather suffocating for a spirited and precocious youth. But there are more than the average doses of wanderlust and teen angst compelling the Prince of Bennu to flee home: lately he’s been haunted by unsettling visions of his own death.  Are sinister forces from beyond the indomitable cliff really conspiring to kill him before he matures into an instrument of prophecy, or has he finally earned that trip to the Wiggard’s Ward?

In these dark times, Bennwyns await the fabled sunbird Solace, promised by scripture to usher in a new age, but the prince has no patience for old myths. Hunted and hungry for answers, Renue leaves home on a quest to unlock the forces brewing within him, guided toward destiny by a mysterious arrow-mounted sundial. In his pursuit of the truth, he and his fellowship awaken an unspeakable evil, and they decipher more than the sundial’s intriguing clues: they unearth an awesome secret that alters the very foundations of their world.

Welcome to my shameless campaign to show you how awesome Craig Ferguson and his CBS Late Late Show is.  I’ve long watched him here and there, but since we’re sometimes up with the baby late at night, I’ve really taken to the show.  He’s got quite a following, but he’s on so late that most people haven’t even heard of him.  But he is, without a doubt, light years ahead of all the other late night hosts, in terms of talent and entertainment and pure comedic stamina.  And while I’m sure he preps, he doesn’t use any scripts or cue cards or note cards.  He’s on 5 nights a week, and the first half hour of the show is just him.  It’s really amazing that he can keep up being so funny with new material for 30 minutes 5 days a week year after year.  And he is so quick-witted with guests–I’ve never seen guests consistently loose their cool and crack up laughing the way they always are on Craig’s show.

For now, here’s a “randomesque” sample of his charm.  I promise I’ll try not to post about him too often…

Welcome to HD!  Aug 31, 2009 Monologue: 

Bonus! Interview with Neil Patrick Harris: 

(PS:  If you think you recognize Craig but don’t know where from, it may be because Craig used to play Drew Carry’s boss, Nigel Wick, on the Drew Carey show…

Books feel so much more real when the pages are bound between covers, don’t they?  Hefting a substantial stack of paper in my hand and smelling the ink waft off the page is so much more satisfying than scrolling down an endless abyss of electronic light and shadow, or clicking a button to find out the latest wordcount.  That’s why, in spite of the week(s) of trial and error, I’ve had tons of fun developing these book covers using photoshop.  I’m no artist, which is why I’ve had to stay away from fancier artwork for now, but these covers will give my words (always in a state of flux, poor things) a static home during the endless pursuit for actual publication.

Let me know what you think!  Which is your favorite?  What do these covers reveal to you about the series and each book?  Some have told me that the fonts are too “Chinese.”  That’s not the feel I was going for, but I love the fonts too much to ditch them.  I’m worried that the fourth one, Tear of the Sunbird, is a bit too “Harlequinny.”  Am I right to worry?  What other thoughts do you have?