(no subject)

I’ve found the words for why I don’t respect a lot of “literary” fiction, but it involves judging a book I haven’t read yet.

I found a “literary” book on the library shelves that looks like it’s about an evil spider monster as a metaphor for racism against Japanese-Americans. The kind of story I would normally be interested in would be about racism against spider monsters, worldbuilding as if spider monsters were a real thing. When you don’t think about how the world you’re creating works, you may fail to examine the concepts you’ve imported from your view of this world. E.g. you might give your monster all the negative traits you assume real-world trans women have, because the monster is “bad” and to you trans women are “bad.” When you consider what the monster does and why, you also consider why the monster is really “bad” in the first place, and what you’re really arguing against, and your argument becomes accordingly more solid. Worldbuilding is by no means proof against bad assumptions, but it’s the only way in which fiction has more insight or intellectual value than nonfictional essays.

I checked out the book. I’ll see if I’m underestimating it.

(no subject)

To clarify some of my other takes: I don’t believe there’s a meaningful distinction between things that are part of “nature” and things that are not part of “nature.” The closest you can get is “things that either exist or can theoretically exist” vs. “things that can’t possibly exist,” and the more you dig into that, the farther afield it gets from how people typically use the word “nature.”

(no subject)

Sometimes folks say “Christians are assholes” and other folks say “Hey, I’m a Christian, and I’m not an asshole.” I don’t hang out in social spheres that regularly call Muslims, Hindus, etc. assholes, but I would assume Muslims and Hindus would do the same.

When folks talk about asshole atheists, the expected thing to do would probably be for me to go “I’m an atheist, and I’m not an asshole.” Thing is, I kinda am. So what I’d rather say is “don’t blame atheists for me.” It’s not their fault I’m like this, and I don’t represent them.