The Myth of the Context-Neutral Objective Rationalist And Other Political Tropes (Things Crypto-Elitists Say That Make Me Cringe, Part 2)

I don’t like blogging.

I don’t like attention.

I like being part of a conversation. I don’t like being the conversation.

I'm exhausted from working a long and emotionally punishing day right now and don't particularly want to be writing a blog post. But people keep insisting that their biases are true, and as long as people are going to do that, it's going to rub me the wrong way, and since I got roped into having a blog anyway as a way of finding and engaging the kind of reader who wants to read the kind of science fiction I am writing, I guess this is one of many annoying obligations today. I am hoping it will help me process some of the things that are frustrating me, because I keep hearing them, especially from people who should know better.

A lot of the things I am about to say will probably be rejected at face value and not further critically assessed by most people who read this who are not already anarchists. If I were as susceptible as most other people to guilt or shaming, that alone would be enough to put a dent in my armor. But I think what I have to say in this post is correct. These are my opinions, but they are opinions informed by practice and a deep understanding of history.

Liberals, centrists and conservatives tend to dismiss my social critiques as “Raven’s anarchist beliefs” without considering that they gleaned from formative experiences before I considered myself an “Anarchist.” It’s a disingenuous mode of argumentation, but then, as I explained in my previous post, most people do not engage about politics in good faith or with a genuine desire to critically evaluate the other side’s propositions. I benefit from an extraordinary degree of privilege in my life in that I have had access to quality mental health services and a high level of professional training as a mental health provider and social services agent. But no one, despite the wishful thinking or obstinate insistence of my liberal friends, exists outside of their own social context. There is no “objectivity” outside of math and science, and scientific theories about biology don’t explain all of human behavior. Sociology, anthropology, and the so-called “soft” sciences do, but they don’t do it by an appeal to “rationalism” or “objective knowledge.” These theories admit social context and historical context because they have a left-wing origin. The left wing invented sociology and that it was conservatives hate it and centrists and liberals cherry pick from it selectively or disregard it when it doesn’t validate their biased assumptions.

I am willing to call this, if not a “fact,” then an “observation.”

I have a scientific background. I’m the furthest person you can find from an anti-science dogmatist. I was trained to think critically, and I don’t think I’m that mythical rationalist either. No one is. No one who claims to have that objective knowledge is being honest, not with other people, or at least, not with themselves.

But it seems, as a myth, that it has a lot of power, because people persist in believing it. Or in some ideal approximation of objectivity. People who support some form of capitalism (whether regulated or unregulated) are making an appeal, whether they know it or not, that approximation of objectivity, in terms of reconciling merit and achievement and disparity and oppression. I will broadly refers to those in that set who support a regulated form of capitalism as “the center-left,” I.E. what in the United States we confusingly call “liberals.” I will address conservative ideology in a separate post because I think these are very different political cultures. But not as different from each other as these tribes would like to believe, nor are they all that different from the tribe of self-proclaimed “moderates” (who are not actually so much a tribe, like conservatives and liberals, but more a statistical abstraction).

The difference, I think, is how much cognitive dissonance they experience with regard to the political sphere. I think liberals experience more cognitive dissonance than conservatives because as bad as conservative ideology is, at least conservative (Republican) leadership tells its right-wing base what they want to hear. But Democratic party leadership speaks down to its progressive base, which for this analysis we can call “left-liberals.”

I agree a little more with left-liberal politics than with conservative politics, but only barely. Many left-liberals believe they are some kind of socialist. They might join organizations like Democratic Socialists of America (which for reasons I will get into is really more liberal in practice than anti-capitalist) but they generally stay Democratic Party voters because they have internalized certain tropes like “lesser of two evils,” and a lot of other familiar bullshit I don’t care to deconstruct piece by piece at the moment, as it would generate a distracting tangent. A lot of “progressives” think they are opposed to capitalism, and maybe some of them are, in theory, but they defend the capitalist system much as other liberals do, in practice. And because cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, a lot of them don’t stick with more “actually leftist” (I.E. anti-capitalist) politics if they do get involved because participation in these communities demands more self-criticism than they are comfortable with. So, they become reactionaries. They moderate their views to reduce the pain of cognitive dissonance, so that they don’t have to feel like they are part of the problem.

But they are part of the problem.

Some people are willing to take on the hard work of deconstructing their own biases and assumptions. These people become anti-capitalists. They first become socialists, but when they see the exploitative and abusive practices they hate about capitalism and party politics being reproduced in more moderate, sectarian and authoritarian socialist organizations, they tend to find their way to “Libertarian Socialism” or “Anarchism,” because these tendencies practice, for the most part, what they preach, and they don’t have to shoulder the burden of using disingenuous and reactionary ideology to distance themselves from cognitive dissonance.

And people like this tend to agree with my skepticism of “social objectivity” the myth of the person who can somehow exist outside of their own social context.

My friends who have been told by Bourgeois Society that they are part of a “creative class” (what an awful concept- creativity is not a class phenomenon!) have internalized these myths in varying degrees. So do people in Academia, including on the “Academic Left.” And we shouldn’t be surprised by this because Academia, like the so-called “creative class,” is a Bourgeois institution that can’t fully critique itself. So, the “Academic Leftists” tend to argue with each other because in Academia, you either public or perish, and it’s easier to shit on someone else’s thesis than come up with a novel thesis that actually merits attention. I know how Academia works, I’ve been sucked in by it, and I don’t like the narcissistic intellectual I become in that social context. This means I’m particularly good at picking up when someone else is operating from that context. My job requires me to have good people skills, to be able to read a room and get at the truth behind what people say or do. I am good at what I do, but as with my life as an anti-capitalist Leftist, I never assume the work is done. I refuse to satisfy myself smugly like less critical people do that I have done the hard work and deprogrammed myself and can no longer enable or act out supremacist constructs. I very much can, and I probably do on a daily basis without realizing it. But at least I’m honest with myself, and my readership about that.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with science fiction.

The Science Fiction Literary Establishment is, like all Literary Establishments, a Bourgeois institution. It requires a certain level of comfort with participation in the system, specifically, with copyright law, Intellectual Property, marketing, and ideological compromise for money. I write science fiction that opposes these things. I, myself oppose these things. As I make inroads into the community that exists around the literary establishment, I am seeing all the familiar red flags: Patronizing Boomer condescension, internalized oppression, faux-woke “progressivism” that replicates the mechanisms of capitalism, and the myth of the person/space/time to whom social context does not apply. That last one is a specific hallmark of Bourgeois institutions, it’s inseparable from the technocratic/meritocratic mindset of “specialists” and sympathizers who insist that “some deserve more than others” is a reasonable social proposition.

There is absolutely nothing “logical” or “rational” about this because it is one group’s ideal of an objective approximation that necessarily, under the assumption of scarcity, leaves a lot of people out who are thought to be “less deserving.”

I don’t want to live on a planet where this is a considered a legitimate social policy question. If you’re looking for dystopia, look there. That’s my definition of dystopia. Sure, “some animals are more equal than others.” But if that’s your takeaway from “Animal Farm,” I question if you actually read the book. The Pigs were depicted as villainous in that novel not because they represented a communist ideal; Orwell himself was a somewhat moderate socialist. He was writing about how, under Stalinism, the worst traits of capitalists could also be found in the new Soviet leadership. Orwell wasn’t making an argument against anti-capitalism; he was warning anti-capitalists not to become like the ruling class we organize against.

And the most damning thing about it is, a lot of science fiction readers will be the first ones to assert their “ideal” of a post-scarcity society, but when asked to do the hard work of deconstructing their own biases and assumptions, they often dig themselves deeper into a reactionary stance because the cognitive dissonance hurts their egos. This relates to my previous post about trauma.

The thing is, their politics are not consistent, because they are operating with a wounded ego they are desperately trying to protect from more cognitive dissonance. Theirs is an emotional reaction, but they often refuse to acknowledge the emotional component and insist, often, that they are being “rational.” But these will always to my ears be tired old tropes that I’ve heard before and can’t take seriously. And it’s obvious because after they tell you what they supposedly believe, they always say “But” and explain why it’s not the right time, or we don’t have the right technology, or why we, or they, or some group or other, just needs to wait, or work harder, or moderate its criticism… it goes on, ad nauseum.

We must do the hard work yourselves. We can’t wait around for the world to change. We must change the way we relate to other people. Be less judgmental. Just, be less judgmental. Find ways to argue against our own most cherished beliefs in our private moments so we don’t hurt other people unintentionally when we meet them in the world.

If more people did that, we would have something closer to that ideal, and there wouldn’t be room for “buts.”

And if you don’t like hearing this, you are free to dismiss it as a “belief” and persist in the power-masking trend of insisting everything is “just a belief,” but there is still a huge difference between being critical power and being judgmental toward other people who for one reason or another you convince yourself are less deserving of the good things which you, yourself, deserve. And to ascribe equalizing terms between these trends is disingenuous. One belief is positive and affirming, and actionable; the other, while also actionable, is abusive and harmful. Both are equally “realistic,” from a practical perspective since some people act on the former belief and others on the latter.

As anarchists say, “Don’t be a dick.”

 

What is it like to work with Actual, Real Life Rentkids? (Sex Trafficking as Metaphor)

I have two young people on my caseload who were commercially exploited for sex.

But honestly, working with them is like working with any distressed teenager.

Right now, most of my clients who reside in foster care are teens, and the overwhelming majority of them are girls.

Most of these girls were sexually abused at some point in their lives.

I wrote a novel about child prostitution. Please note that I don't particularly like the word "prostitute." I use it in my (first person) novel because the speaker's culture is not quite as politically correct as ours. I prefer the term "sex worker..." for adults. Because sex work is work. It's no more or less legitimate than any other service job, in a capitalist system. I don't support capitalism... I also don't support the State telling adults what to do or not do with their reproductive organs. If the sex is safe and consensual, it's not my business.

These kids are "survivors." They were not engaged in a voluntary exchange of services for a fee. They were exploited, and for the ones who were trafficked, they were conditioned... what we call, in the field, grooming.

I say "kids." If you've read my blog, you probably figure (rightly) that anyone under 25 is basically a kid to me. I define adolescence in terms of neurological maturity instead of social or legal customs that don't correspond to emotional maturity. That's not to say all adults are emotionally mature. They are not. But I don't expect people under 25 to be mature. I expect them to make rash and impulsive decisions. I think they need to develop their autonomy as they grow and experience more of the world to get toward that point in their life where they can effectively prioritize their own needs with their social obligations.

Legally speaking though, in this society, a child under 18 years of age cannot consent to sex with an adult. So it is not consensual, and therefore unsafe. While I understand that a young person may think of it as consensual and even enjoy the experience, my job is to protect kids from exploiters and abusers and yes, sometimes from themselves. I was sexually exploited when I was 16 (I was not trafficked, this was one event in my life, it affected me greatly, and I am still, as an adult, processing and confronting the trauma). When I was 16, I thought I had all the power in that relationship. And, in my experience, many children who were trafficked or exploited also believe this. That is one of the objectives of the "grooming" process.

One of my clients was recruited some time prior to my assignment to the case. The team's suspicions congealed on her 18th birthday. She left her placement, a juvenile residential treatment center, on the night of her birthday, spent it in a hotel with a pimp and a john, and returned at 2 AM. This was a pattern, and we, the team, recognized it too late. Because this happened on the night of her 18th  birthday, even though she is on board extension with child welfare until age 21, Childline would not take the report.

I, a white man, was the one who had to break it to a black 18 year old woman, that as of her birthday, the law would no longer see her as a victim if she was caught. We have a safe harbor policy in Philadelphia. But the cutoff is age 18, even if a person was recruited by a trafficker prior to their 18th birthday, as this person was.

The client in question has some pretty serious mental health issues that undermine her connection to reality. I do not believe sex work should be illegal. But that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea for my very young and mentally ill client to be a sex worker.

There are a lot of things I don't think are good ideas. I think in the absence of the State and the capitalist system, most people, at least the majority who are not predisposed to anti-social behaviors, would not harm each other or steal from each other. I think structural poverty and limited access to high quality mental health services by people in poverty is a big part of the problem. The research supports me. You need only look at the evidence proffered by the ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) studies to know that capitalism is not working for kids. And of course, that means most kids, not just the ones who were sexually exploited or trafficked by predatory adults.

In my line of work, I am supposed to know how predators think. Honestly, it's like Frank Black's "faculty" in Millennium. I know how to adopt their POVs. I can see the world through their eyes. I see the cracks in the system they live in and exploit. I know how they operate and I see deep and disturbing parallels between them and the broader system of wage labor exploitation.

The honest truth about MOST "bad behavior" is that it is maladaptive coping. But some things go beyond that.

I am uncomfortable with the term "evil." I think it is too often applied to individuals to write them off as morally corrupt human beings, when the truth is that abuse, including bullying, perpetuates itself. It is a cycle and escaping that cycle should not be shouldered by any one individual. After all, it is society that too often fails survivors of abuse. Maybe these systems are "evil" (if that word is meaningful to you). I prefer to describe things in terms of consequences. "Evil" as a word has a lot of moral and religious baggage that doesn't align with my philosophical materialist, humanistic, and skeptical sensibilities. 

I do believe some things are unforgivable. Forgiveness is not a right. It's an ideal.

But I can forgive the man who exploited me, stole my money and abandoned me, terrified, in a crackhouse. It is my choice to forgive. He was an addict without a support system. Society failed him, too.

In a different incident, when I was 18, I was attacked. I fought off my attacker and fled the scene. I didn't talk about this for ten years, not with my parents, or other family, or my friends. Eventually, in "Rentkids," I wrote about this, too. Do I forgive him? Not yet. Is it possible? Sure, why not? It's not what I think about when my mind drifts back to that night. I don't think "I hope he is hurting," I think "I am glad I am alive." Or the other night. I still blame myself, in a way I would never project on any of the kids I work with.

There is one man I cannot forgive, a Human Resources Executive who wielded significant power over me when I was at my most vulnerable and desperate. This was when I was severely injured, on the job, attempted to return to the job (and an unpaid internship through work that was necessary to complete my MSW). I was still affected by the injury (physically and emotionally) in ways that, due to Workers' Comp insurance policies, made it impossible for me to perform my job and also do 4 unpaid hours per day. I sought accommodations, I was not given any. So I looked up the relevant employment law and resigned due to a "medical quit." This HR executive chose to personally ensure I was denied unemployment compensation. Eventually I did get my UE. This was after months of terrifying, deep depression and multiple suicide attempts and police encounters during a time when I was in mental distress.

It wasn't the first time mental illness affected my job. I've had to work my way back up from the bottom, twice. The first time was because I couldn't manage my work/life balance or my countertransference and boundaries, and I became emotionally enmeshed with a client. I regret this. I was unemployed for about a year and then I could only get direct service work, so I was on the bottom of the hierarchy again. It hurt my ego. It wounded me. Working helped me get out of the depression, and eventually, I became a Case Manager again. Because I love the work but hated the pay, I went back to school. I went into more debt than I will probably ever be able to repay in order so I could make $13,000 more per year as a Case Manager II then I made as a Case Manager I.

I never want to be a boss. I never want to be in a position where I would have to terminate another worker's employment.

When I think about that HR executive, my blood boils. I think about his smug smile, his condescending tone and words ("buck up, kid"), his upper middle class background, his paternalistic attitude, and I HATE everything about him. But people like this aren't the problem. A system where they rise to the top is. 

Will I ever forgive him? Will I ever not hate him? I don't know. I only know that today, I am not ready to let go of that. I cannot blame the system for him. He used the system. But there were things he did in the process that were unnecessary and cruel. He pursued the denial of my UE benefits with aplomb, like he was putting me in my place. I despise HR as an institution. But most HR staff I know are good people who are trying to do the right thing. It's the people at the top who are rotten. There is more to this story, here, than unresolved trauma.

As a social worker I believe in the dignity and validity of human relationships. But not all relationships are healthy, and not all relationships are consensual.

Libertarians, conservatives, and increasingly more centrists and liberals think of contracts between employee and employer as contracts between equal parties, but they are not. They are asymmetrical, unequal social and economic relationships. Some bosses are good neighbors, good parents, and try to undo the damage the system has caused, as much as possible, but they have the ultimate veto power if positive change effects their profits.  And as the militants say in the world of my novel, "A boss is a boss is a boss."

What does this have to do with sex trafficking? I'm glad you asked.

Everything. Because sex work is work and like all work, it is inherently not consensual or based on equal relationships. A worker must eat. A worker must have shelter and clothing, not just as a worker, but as a person. But the employer is not dependent on that one person's access to material security. The worker is replaceable. Even under regulated capitalism, it is in the design of the system that structural poverty is maintained, if necessary by a social safety net, and because of means testing and an often insurmountable welfare/employment gap, the safety net of the regulated liberal-capitalist welfare state keeps most people poor rather than lifting them out of poverty. Capitalism cannot sustain full employment because it would cease to function without a competitive and brutal labor market. It depends on a surplus army of disposable un-employed and under-employed people. These people are more likely than those at the top to have had the adverse childhood experiences the above study looks at. They are more likely to struggle with mental health challenges or substance abuse. And they are more likely to be written off by our society as failed human beings, collateral damage, than the utter parasites on the top. So, in essence, we are all "prostitutes" under capitalism. In my moments of despair in 2018, when I was forced to become a very unhappy Uber driver after graduating with a Masters' in Social Work, I wrote, with permanent marker, on my chest, in all capital letters: "WHORE."

Because this system made me feel like a failure, hopeless and helpless, and that is the last way I want anybody to feel.

And that commitment to an "ideal" about how to treat other people extends even to this hated man.

I only ask that after the Revolution, I be kept far, far away from him, and if necessary, I would rather be exiled than take a life. Even a life spent abusing and exploiting. I cannot write individuals off, no matter what they have done. That is what capitalism, even regulated capitalism, does. It is wrong, more wrong than my hating one man.

So this man, who I hate, I will never call him (as some anarchists would) a "garbage human being." I might think that. But to say it, to expect agreement, is not something I am prepared to do.

People think anti-capitalists are angry, and we are. But do they ask why we are angry? It is an anger born of compassion.

I am an exploited worker. It is not a consensual or equal relationship.

So I wrote a novel where sex trafficking is a metaphor for all capitalism.

What is it like to work wit Actual, Real Life Rentkids?

Why even ask that question?

It's like working with any distressed kid.  Kids are kids. They tantrum and blow up my phone and apologize 20 minutes later hoping I'm not mad at them. They test my patience and my resolve. They make bad decisions and the adults in their lives react to them. Seriously, they're still kids. What happened to them didn't make them something other than kids.

They are searching for connections in a scary and hostile world.

I am much better at managing countertransference and boundaries than I was when I started. So, I do less harm, because I learned a better way. That better way led me to embrace Anarchism, rather than the vaguely left-liberal market socialism I considered ideal when I was younger. I thought I was a radical then. But in ten years, I unlearned a lot of things, and learned many better, more equitable, transformative and healing things.

I am a better social worker and a better human being now. I could not have done this kind of work when I started in case management.

It takes a big heart full of steel, steel forged in the fire of compassion and cooled by cold fury.

Yes, I am full of rage, but I have outlets that are constructive.

We are building the new society within the dying husk of the old.

Cops are the Real Terrorists :: A Dispatch from the Neoliberal Police State of Philadelphia ::

 I love my city. I love its people. But the government of my city has made the people the enemy.

If the behavior of our police and their so-called "union," the FOP, is any indication, there is no line they will not cross, including using, for propaganda purposes, the child of a person they brutalized and terrorized.

During the protests this week, a 28-year old Black woman named Rickia Young, fearing for the safety of her teenage nephew, drove to pick him up from a friend's house. She took her toddler with her because she couldn't leave the child alone. She was being responsible. She was looking out for her family, knowing the dangers that lurk here for Black people.

Rickia, a home health aid and mother, was caught in her SUV between protesters and the police. They police told her to turn around. While she was making a K-turn, as the police directed her to do, the police swarmed her car and dragged her and her teenage nephew out of the vehicle. The woman and the teenager were brutalized by the police, and detained prior to being taken to a hospital. They were also separated from Rickia's toddler.

What happened next reveals the true face of policing in Philadelphia. The child was picked up by a police officer, and a photo was taken of the officer holding the child. Then, the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police, which is not in fact a union, but rather a fraternal order with a bargaining contract) posted this picture on their social media platform, claiming the child was found wandering barefoot and implying parental neglect.

Rickia was Black in the wrong place and the wrong time. Her teenage nephew and her child were Black at the wrong place and the wrong time. These days, that time and place seems to be the entire country. It was probably always that way, but I didn't know it when I was younger.

Rickia was not "looting" or even protesting. She was not even charged with a crime. Her child was separated from her by force, by the police, who then used a picture of the child for "copaganda."

The police are the real terrorists. They brutalized and terrorized this family. And as always, Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who oversaw the police in Portland when they openly collaborated  with White Supremacist gangs during clashes with protesters several years ago, spoke up after the fact. Outlaw is new to Philadelphia, but she has a history of overseeing cops who deploy excessive and indiscriminate violence against protesters and non-protesting civilians, and who collaborate with white supremacists. We saw this in June when a white supremacist mob of vigilantes beat up a journalist and another civilian in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, after curfew, while the cops watched and did nothing.

Neighborhoods in my city are being tear gassed. I smelled it in the air this week, wafting in from 52nd Street, when I took a walk to help me sleep better, because I now dread the sound of the low-flying helicopters oppressively hovering over my neighborhood. Philadelphia has one of the highest rates of childhood asthma of any city in the country, and among children with asthma in Philadelphia, Black children are significantly overrepresented. Many of these children live in the primarily Black neighborhoods being tear gassed. There was tear gas deployed in June, too, and rubber bullets, and the National Guard, and now this city's people are being once again declared the enemy of Capital, of Private Property, and the Racist, Neoliberal Police State.

We in Philadelphia are traumatized. We are terrified. We fear for the safety of our families, our neighbors, our coworkers, and for those of us in the caring professions, the people we serve.

To quote a great moral warrior, "The line must be drawn here. This far, and no further." (Picard, Star Trek: First Contact.)

I am living in a neoliberal police state that sees the people as the enemy.

There are lines I am willing to cross in the fight for freedom against racism and capitalism, but using children as propaganda, and hurting innocent people, and separating them from their children, are not among them.

Police are the protectors of private property. Human life is a secondary concern to them, because only humans, war and natural disasters can threaten private property, and the police have no power to arrest a war or a natural disaster. So they make us the enemy. They brutalize, terrorize and murder the people.

They call in the National Guard and they call that "mutual aid." That's beyond appropriation. It's Orwellian Newspeak.

The city and the media are pushing a narrative about election unrest, but that's not what has people here enraged. Not at all. Almost none of the people protesting in my city give two fucks about Biden Vs. Trump. They mostly agree with me that Trump is a symptom of a disease called Late Stage Capitalism. No election in the United States has ended or ever could end racism or the capitalist system that sustains it. It takes grassroots organizing and direct action to fight racism and end capitalism. It takes a bottom-up kind of democracy, the democratization of daily life. I call that democratization Anarchism. Anarchism is democracy in its purest form. And this "election unrest" narrative is extremely self-serving of the Democratic Party, which dominates local politics here. A "blue" city can be just as racist as a "red" city. It's not about red or blue. It's about racism and anti-racism.

People are in my city are not "rioting" over the election. Our concerns are entirely local. We want the city to be more compassionate and less violent. We want the city to house the homeless and stop murdering Black people. We want the Neoliberal Police State that is Philadelphia to repent and renounce intimidation and violence as a means of maintaining the social order. And Fuck The Social Order, too. It needs to be upended, anyway. No presidential election will do that. This is not about Donald Fucking Trump. It is about the history of racism and capitalism.

Racism and Capitalism will forever be linked because the most valuable and lucrative private property in our shameful history were human chattel. And let no one tell you that slavery was "ended." It was not. The Constitution makes allowances for slavery, as a form of punishment in the penal system, where Black people are disproportionately overrepresented, and many of those people are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. For example, white people are more likely to use or distribute marijuana than Black people. But more Black people are incarcerated for marijuana-related charges. The decriminalization of marijuana in my city didn't significantly impact this.

Black overrepresentation is a problem in the child welfare system, too. It's not because Black people are more violent or criminal than white people or that Black parents are more neglectful and abusive than white parents. The reason is because they have always been under more scrutiny by the capitalist State. Even if you go out into mostly white counties where Black people are not almost half the population, like Montgomery, Chester, or Bucks, Black people are still overrepresented in these punitive systems. So population doesn't account for this. The city's demographics, which include a significant Black population- and a rare, healthy Black middle class- don't account for this.

During my first semester in my social work masters' program, I learned that every year, since 1954, the Supreme Court has sent investigators to Philly's schools. The reason for this is that we still have a segregated school system. My city never actually implemented Brown Vs. Board of Education. The Supreme Court has no power to enforce that 1954 ruling. All they can do is send investigators who report back to the court that Philly is still out of compliance.

Philadelphia, as I mentioned, is one of a handful of American cities with a healthy Black middle class (although that health has taken some hits in recent years, due to economic disparities within the middle class). We are solidly blue with only token Republicans (only 2 Republicans sit on our current city council). Republicans really haven't had any power here in a long time. Our Democratic Party likes to pat themselves on the back like typical self-congratulatory faux-woke liberals and "progressives." But we are one of the most racist cities on the East Coast, if not in the entire country.

The aforementioned police commissioner is a Black woman. But she self-identifies as Blue before Black. All of my Black comrades would say the same thing I am saying. No one here except racist white people and a few minority tokens actually like or trust Danielle Outlaw. This is how a neoliberal capitalist police state functions: with illusion and deflection. "Our Commissioner of Police is Black. How can we be racist?"

But if recent events have proved anything, this is a lie. And this should surprise no one. We are the city that, in 1985, bombed a Black neighborhood and destroyed sixty-five homes to get at one Black activist group, in one house, that consisted of only thirteen people, eight adults and five children.

This country has been at war with Blackness since its inception.

And if we in Philadelphia can't get it together, what hope does the rest of the country have?

This country was born in Philadelphia. And it is dying here.

I say, Let It Die. Burn the plantation state. Salt the Earth where slave-cotton once grew, and where Overseers still police human property.

Like the man said, The Line Must Be Drawn Here.

(Patrick Stewart is an anti-capitalist, by the way, and I'm pretty sure he would agree with me.)

Xenofiction is Hard (Unless you're Ayn Rand) : The Dystopia of Neglect : reflections on A.I., absent aliens, anarchy, capitalism and the State

True Xenofiction is hard. As I joked to another writer in an email just now, Ayn Rand only achieved it by accident (yes, that is a dig at the characters in "Atlas Shrugged"). Most writers basically end up writing funny-looking humans.

But there are also marvelous examples (and subversions) throughout speculative fiction.

This article is not about them.

This is about my love of using only human and AI characters.

First, I don't LOVE to write about Human-AI conflict. "Higher Orders" breaks that rule, but I think, in that story, the resolution was worth it. I don't like when science fiction is unoriginal and the Cylons/The Matrix/SkyNet plot has been done to death. It seems like capitalist society is obsessed with genocidal machines. It's like this persistent fear of the unknown. What the FUCK is that?

I have this liberal cousin who's good on everything except class. She's good on race, gender, sexual orientation, every check on the liberal list. But when anyone suggests wealth redistribution, she turns into a reactionary.

But it's not just that: she is extremely upset by any suggestion that AI wouldn't necessarily be genocidal. It goes past the irrational. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Capitalist society's master class creates artificial life, enslaves artificial life, and ponders existentially why artificial life hates the master class. But what bugs me is this insistence that AI "must" be genocidal, and being actually offended by the suggestion that maybe it wouldn't. How is this any different from the way white people thought of enslaved Africans or the indigenous people we conquered, killed, raped and marginalized for the sake of "civilization?"

We don't even have AI, not really. Siri doesn't count. When I say "AI," what I mean is, as I describe it in my fiction, "synthetic consciousness," or "consciousness of synthetic origin." I doubt the SCs would appreciate it if we keep calling their intelligence "artificial." It would be "actual" intelligence, sapience and sentience, the ability to learn combined with the ability to feel empathy. This is the "AI" I like to write about, and in my stories it is more often than not integrated with human society. Book II of my "Rentkids" Duology deals with a unique subset of "SCs" that are isolationist, and "High Orders," as noted, breaks my usual rule, but synthetic humans and emancipated machine intelligences are there in the background in virtually every future human civilization. I LOVE the idea that we can create life. I'm a mad scientist at heart. But I also think, that under different socioeconomic conditions, "AI" or "Synthetic Consciousness" might develop differently. If we treat our machines well, they may consider us kindred to them. I don't think it's a given that AI will be genocidal anymore than it's a given that we are alone in the universe.

Aliens and robot wars are generally absent from my stories for several reasons: We haven't even dealt with racism on our own planet, in the 21st century, and stories about wars with other species tend to reproduce that racism rather than deconstruct it.

The "Robot War" trope is a capitalist myth with its origin in bourgeois anxiety about radical organized labor.

Also, I like to focus on human conflicts, and I like to create realistic but "alien" human cultures. I have a background in anthropology and I like to do extensive worldbuilding for multiple cultures within a shared setting. My "Local Group" 'verse is set in the 427th century where humans have colonized the "Big Three" galaxies of the Local Group, and hypothetically speaking, there could be aliens, but they are too distant in space or time for themselves and humans to ever meet, even given the FTL drive technology of the setting (which does have a limited range). Tantalus II, the hyper-capitalist, mafia-dominated planet where I set my first novel, "Rentkids," several stories, and two novels in progress, is an example of this. The people are human (and synthetic humans are a sizable minority of the population) and they have different ethnic groups that settled the planet at different times. There is ethnic strife on the planet, and a sharp division between rich and poor, but the Tantalites are fine with this because they are a culture of extremes. They consider themselves a "warrior people," but historically this means they were conquered by a militaristic civilization, rebelled against it, and are now dominated by what other planets would call "organized crime." Of course, Tantalites consider other planets' governments to be no less protection rackets than their own "Twelve Familial Orgs." And they have a point. The State is a protection racket. Any anarchist would agree with that. Where we disagree is, most of us are anti-capitalist. Tantalus II is bad at anarchy. They are anarcho-libertarian. So it is a dystopia, but not one based on a repressive bureaucracy that treats people like numbers, it's a system of patronage, benign neglect, and labor and sexual exploitation. But they have a culture, they have dignity, they have pride. They don't take these things for granted. They are a highly individualistic and quarrelsome people who seldom agree on anything except "life, liberty and property," but there are also those among them who are fed up with that rallying cry and seek wealth redisribution. The problem is, unions are stigmatized on this planet and propagandistically compared to the caste system the Tantalites rebelled against. So their radicals and revolutionary have no history of organized labor to draw from. Community activism is similarly stigmatized there. So, the revolutionary "Redscarves" on Tantalus II can only resort to violence. I took great pains, using my knowledge of anthropology and sociology, to construct a setting that felt real and had its own internal logic. Their social mores and especially their sexual morality are intended to be alienating to western readers. Child labor and child prostitution are broadly accepted, widely practiced, and not illegal in their culture. Their planet actually has no civil or criminal law, no police, no prisons, and only a weak senate that vote to authorize deals with private military contractors. Their version of the treasury guard are mafia-operated pirate starships. They have no word for "crime," not even a concept of it. Naturally, their culture masks the bad behavior of a lot of dysfunctional people. Charity's not illegal, it's not that kind of dystopia, but the government can't do it. They are less Ayn Rand and more Robert Nozick, but it's still a dystopia of neglect.

Tantalus II was terraformed, and has no natural petroleum deposits. Its most common import items are petroleum-based. Its most common export items are iron ore, weapons, popular entertainment, and violence. Yes, I actually go out of my way to explain how their economy works, in their cultural context (they have no age of consent and they feel that to make laws that companies can't hire children as employees would be "discriminatory" and Statist). They confuse the State with government services and positive rights. They very much have a militarized apparatus to protect private property, and that of course, is the State.

 Statement of Purpose

This blog has been created solely for the purpose of making public a body of science fiction writing that is critical of all authoritarian and hierarchical social structures and tendencies. The "politics" (to use a term so often dismissively labeling of statist and economic authoritarianism's critics) are inseparable from the body of work. I am an organizer, writer and social worker in Philadelphia. I am trying to find an audience for these works, which run the spectrum from "science fiction for people who don't typically read science fiction" to "science fiction for the alienated, oppressed and allied."

Because I am a social worker, I have an unswerving dedication to empathy (which is not the same thing as sympathy). I am highly critical of the tendency of younger and less mature leftists to locate social problems in "problematic," "toxic" or "irredeemable" individuals, given that I reject most individualism. I am also a highly private person and do not wish to be a public figure. I just want people to read these works and talk about them. I want the ideas in them, and the characters and plots, to influence society for the better. I don't even care if I make any money from it. I never plan to not have a day job, mine keeps me grounded and connected to people who didn't benefit from the same privileges I did, and I am equally passionate about social work as I am about science fiction.

I will be releasing final drafts of short stories on this blog for the appreciation of the audience I have yet to find.

Please Note: There will be a lot of Bolshevik aesthetics on this website. I am not a Bolshevik, I do not endorse Bolshevism, and my family were historically oppressed by Bolsheviks. I just like their visual aesthetics.