WRITING – ORIGINALITY BE DAMNED

It disgusts me to have to say this, but if you want to write original material, you’re wasting good stamps sending it to a major publisher. Apart from the fact that it’s impossible to get your manuscript through the machine, originality is out of style.

Once upon a time publishers were at the cutting edge of innovation and originality, always on the look out for something new. A rich culture was the result, running parallel with a healthy publishing industry based on ideas.

Most of those publishers have now been swallowed up by the big money men, and a once proud industry has been reduced to accountancy. New ideas may be failures and that is bad for the bank balance.

Gone are the days when a publisher would nurture a writer through two, maybe three, market failures, safe in the knowledge that, if the third or fourth was a success, the others would follow through. Now, formula novels are the only likely way of getting into print.

This situation will change eventually. One day, small presses will break through their anonymity and hit the reading public with a new style of publishing and writing. But until then, the second oldest profession is the only way to the top.

© Anthony North, November 2006

Writing Index

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EVOLUTION

The general premise of evolution is that life constantly changes and adapts. This is in opposition to the Creationist view that life appeared miraculously on Earth and has remained unchanged since Creation.
The first known theorist to apply evolution was Lucretius in the 1st century AD. In the mid-18th century Linnaeus classified most known organisms, recognizing the possibility of relationships between them.
About the same time the Comte de Buffon suggested that changes in fossils could have been caused by environmental factors, whilst Lamarck first suggested, in 1809, that changes in form could be due to inheritance.
Also essential to the process at this time was geologist, Lyell, who showed how the environment changed constantly, thus giving a reason for animals to have to change to survive. This was the last factor needed by one Charles Darwin.

ENTER MR DARWIN

In his 1859 Origin of Species Darwin showed that species adapt through natural selection, in that those who adapt best to the environment have the best chance of survival, whilst those who do not die out.
Darwinian evolution still required a mechanism by which adaptations were passed on through inheritance. This came with Mendel and his devising of genetics, and Crick and Watson’s discovery of DNA in a double helix which unfolded at conception, passing a parent’s genes to the offspring.

EVOLVING PROBLEMS

The theory of evolution is neat and rational, but whilst some form of evolution is definitely correct, there are many problems with the theory as it stands. For instance, it requires slow change, whereas evidence suggests something different.
There appear to be periods of fast change interspersed by periods of no change at all. If this could be tied with periods of fast change and no change at all in the environment, all well and good, but science cannot prove this.
Similar problems arise with the evidence to prove evolution. For instance, only 10% of the fossil record has been found, leaving huge gaps in the evidence. Hence, science’s evangelical approach to the ‘truth’ of evolution is misplaced.
Of course, evolution was much more than a theory of life. The idea of the ‘survival of the fittest’ was a perfect philosophy and for the strongest to prosper. As such, Nazism and modern capitalism are based on the premise.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN?

Opposing evolution is Creationism and the idea of ‘intelligent design’ within life. The two stances seem so contradictory that there is no possibility of tying the two ideas together. However, this is not the case.
Computer programs have now been devised on the concepts of evolution. Over many ‘generations’, the programs evolve to be better programs, adapting through natural selection. However, this is not the whole picture.
In order to know in which direction evolution must go, the programs are given a ‘basic design function’, without which they could not work. This is a form of intelligence within evolution. It is not inconceivable that a similar process could lie in evolution proper. It is the challenge of theology and science to study the possibility rather than bicker.

© Anthony North, December 2006

THE REBEL

We have always lived in a world ruled by an ‘establishment’ of one sort or another. Yet the on-going process of knowledge accumulation shows that, for the free flow of knowledge, an establishment is a hindrance. Although vital for order, an establishment upholds old knowledge.
To counter this, society has always thrown up the rebel to counter the authoritarianism of an establishment. Such rebels are seen, by authority, as the seed of disharmony and chaos, as seen in the Biblical Prophets, or the anti-Industrial Romantics with their naive poetry and decadent ways. Usually, this is because their fanaticism made them claim absolute truths that were too much the antithesis of the established order.
In this form, the rebel is clearly wrong. And wrong for an important reason. The way knowledge works is that advancement occurs by taking a small step into the unknown, based on the knowledge presently accepted. The idea of the rebel should be to nudge that knowledge on to the next stage. The rebel who ignores present knowledge is not taking a small step into the unknown, but a great leap into the dark. There is little wonder he causes conflict and chaos. He doesn’t take into account the deep fear in mankind concerning the unknown. And when faced with the unknown man will always opt for the comfort of the security of the knowledge he believes in.

Other rebels have worked in a different way, taking existing knowledge into account and simply nudging the process forward. Typical examples of this are Darwin and Mendel. In their theorising of natural selection and genetics they did, indeed, cause conflict. But it was conflict through debate, and in the main they eventually won their argument and the established view adapted.
Darwin and Mendel teach us another lesson about the rebel. Whereas science believes that great advancement can be made within their own disciplines, these two great paradigm shifters were both amateurs, OUTSIDE their particular discipline.
This is an uncomfortable truth for an establishment, but a logical fact. A particular discipline can be seen as simply collecting data to uphold their particular view. Real change simply has to come from outside – from someone uncluttered by perceived conventions. In this area, Patternology would validate the authority of such outside influences, and can only enrich knowledge. There is, however, a severe hurdle which society must overcome before this more moderate rebel can truly provide his vital function within society.

This hurdle was infamously identified by the sociologist, Foucault. Fascinated by where power was held within a particular society, he argued power was really knowledge. Basically, how we are made to see ourselves defines how, and by whom, we are controlled. Fascinated by society’s outlook on crime, insanity and deviance, he realised that power structures within life define what is normal and what is abnormal. Based upon an established view, only the normal can be tolerated, with the abnormal forever marginalised.
From the Medieval witchhunts, where ideas counter to Christianity were seen as evil, to the Soviet Gulag, where political views opposed to communism were seen as insanity, power and knowledge go hand in hand in order to marginalise an opposing view. And if we think we have grown up today, we only have to remember the Satanic Child Abuse fiasco of the 1990s and the way anti-capitalist ecological views are marginalized or watered down to realise that the same forces of marginalisation are alive and well.
The rebel has a difficult task to perform.

(c) Anthony North, Feb 2007