The First Shall Be Last, and the Servant of All

Marcia Moston, Call of A Coward: The God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife

Many of us blithely sing “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back,” on a Sunday morning with no regard for what that actually means. But Christ didn’t hedge when he said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” If we believe God is great, and God has a path for us, we must accept that God’s path far exceeds the small plans we make for ourselves.

New Jersey housewife Marcia Moston found this out the hard way when her husband came back from a church trip to Guatemala and informed her that he had been called to take over a shelter for widows and orphans, in a Mayan village so isolated that it didn’t have phone service. That makes no sense, Moston said. She was a church volunteer, a loving witness, a model of good American Christianity. What more did the Lord want?

As it turns out, everything. Moston found herself at what Bonhoeffer would have called the choice between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” If we believe Christ has redeemed us, we must ask what we’ve been redeemed for. Do we bestow God’s blessings on ourselves and keep living as we always have, or do we trust the Lord to have a plan for our lives, even if we cannot see it at the moment? Too few Christians ask themselves that question.

Moston had to give up the comforts we associate with American living, and venture into a country so underdeveloped that she had to get cooking water from a cistern in the ground. But as she recounts in this memoir full of touching poignancy and unexpected humor, God coached her to discover resilience she didn’t know she had. She learned to love with a depth and commitment she never would have discovered in her suburban life.

She also learned the importance of giving up control. We humans have this pathological need to believe we can control our circumstances, but something always sidelines us, such as recognizing our debts to others in need. But we can also make an idol of the very goals we believe God gave us. So just as Moston got comfy in Guatemala, her whole family came down with rolling hepatitis, cutting her mission short.

Marcia Moston

The idea of calling is not unique to Christianity. Secular psychologists have a similar concept, under the heading of “disposition.” Joseph Campbell explained that we all have something we are meant to do in this life, and until we start doing that thing, everything else will make us unhappy. I suspect that many Christians in the pews can relate to this feeling.

Moston believed, not unreasonably, that God meant for her to work with the disadvantaged in Central America. So when illness forced her family to return to America, and a sudden call turned her urban New Jersey electrician husband into a rural Vermont minister, she thought she’d lost everything her life was supposed to be about. You’d think, after two hard lessons, she’d come to recognize God’s purpose in her strange circumstances.

As it turns out, she found a new calling, connecting New Englanders eager to put their Christian calling to work, with needy Central Americans ready to see what Christianity looks like in action. She also learned that, despite her desire to cede control to others, she has a remarkable gift for leadership. Her ministry has helped link two groups of people, each known for their insularity, in a relationship of Christian reciprocity and unbounded love.

The life Moston describes is one of constant learning and discovery: the life of a Back East woman who thought she knew more than her churchy parents, so she left everything behind, only to find that the promises of this earth aren’t worth much. The life of a born-again housewife who learned that God has a way of turning us out of our complacency. The life of a wayfaring stranger who learned that wherever God plants us, will be our soul’s real home.

This is the book I wanted when I read Joe Loconte’s The Searchers. Where Loconte dances around the idea of Christianity as a journey we must undertake with our God, Moston recounts what it’s like to go through such a real and arduous journey. In her case, it involved literally moving from place to place. But the more important journey took place inside her soul, as she learned the difference between her culture and her faith.

Copy This Copyright Rant

A promising-looking petition on the White House website asks the administration to reverse the ongoing trend in copyright law, which has repeatedly extended the term of copyright protection. For individual work, like this blog, the term now extends seventy years beyond the creator’s death, meaning these words may be protected for well over a century. Work made for hire is now protected for 120 years after its creation. 120 years!

The petition does include one error. It wants to restore the term of copyright to its “original” 28-year duration. But America’s first copyright law, the Copyright Act of 1790, gave works a protected life of fourteen years, with the option of a fourteen-year renewal. The Founding Fathers wanted to protect the creators of original works, but in a primarily agrarian economy, the imperative to tinker with common knowledge was a powerful motivator to growth and well-being.

Who, then, benefits from copyright protection that won’t lapse until our great-grandchildren are in their dotage? Certainly not writers, by which I mean novelists, poets, and journalists. Most books published in America sell the bulk of their copies in the first year. Stephen King may butter his bread with The Shining for decades, but most working writers crank out one book (or more) per year because that’s how long they can expect to receive residuals.

Visual artists may receive some payments for the licensing of their work. But for the most part, they make most of their money on the original sale of the work. They, too, have to keep producing to get paid. Superstar actors may receive residuals, but most actors get paid a salary. And most musicians don’t make any money on their recordings; they make their living mainly on live performance, and have to tour incessantly to cover routine bills.

Creative Commons

MIT economist Erich von Hippel, in his book Democratizing Innovation, makes a persuasive case that technology producers are not helped by intensive copyright and patent protection. Apple Computer, for instance, is renowned for its innovation, yet is famously slow in reconciling real consumer need to engineering interest. Linux Red Hat and Mozilla Firefox, both open source technologies with massive end user adjustments, have proven more useful for most consumers.

In short, creative people receive little benefit from marathon copyrights. To see who does benefit, consider the most recent amendment to American copyright law, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. More specifically, look at its most common nickname: the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Bono ramrodded the act through a compliant Congress at the behest of Disney, a major contributor, because protections were about to lapse on “Steamboat Willie.”

More generally, long copyright protections serve the interest of filmmakers. Because of the ease of consumption and the constantly upgrading technologies of distribution, films have a very long life expectancy. Right now, movies created in 1923 remain under copyright, meaning only the classic silents and the very earliest talkies have lapsed into public domain. Note that they have this protection, not for creating the films, but for distributing them.

The creative personnel behind classics like Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, and Citizen Kane have already made and spent their money from these films. Indeed, nearly the entire cast and crew of these films are long dead. Yet the studio executives, who mostly were not born when the films were made, continue drawing residuals for nothing more than keeping the films circulating. This creates a huge gap between creative work and economic reward.

This problem has spilled over into other creative endeavors. American courts continue to dither over whether music recorded for major labels constitutes proprietary creative work, or work for hire. The difference means not just who owns the recordings, but what distribution protections it entails: work for hire means a long guaranteed income for the labels. Proprietary work means a more variable protection guaranteed to the artist.

Copyleft

Guess which one corporations favor.

That’s why, starting today, I release part of my rights on this blog. Look at the righthand side of your screen, at the bottom of the column, and you will see my new Creative Commons license, allowing you to share my work, as long as you keep my name on it and don’t try to sell my words.

Copyright terms that will outlive children not yet born serve to protect only one force: the corporations that hold the keys of access. But creativity is too important to belong to corporations. Please sign the petition for freer creativity today.

One More Contribution to the Season of Lincoln

Stephen L. Carter, The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln: A Novel

Though 11th Grade History extols Lincoln as the President who won America’s Civil War, in his time, Americans regarded him as a moderate. He refused to punish Southerners who surrendered, balked at Sherman’s “total war” tactics, and greeted Lee’s surrender by ordering the band to play “Dixie.” This made him popular with the masses, but the extremists who always get elected to office couldn’t stand him, and didn’t flinch to say so.

Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter imagines a world in which Lincoln survived Booth’s 1865 assassination attempt. In 1867, the Old Rail-splitter dangles between the Radical Republicans, who want a harsh, military-based Reconstruction, and a loose affiliation of moderates, Democrats, moneyed interests, and wealthy deal-makers, who want... something. With feuding conspiracies at his heels, Lincoln has to go outside the government for his defense.

Abigail Canner has just started clerking for a Washington law firm. She hopes to be America’s first black woman lawyer, but she has to earn her stripes from the bottom up. When her boss, Lincoln’s personal attorney, is gruesomely murdered with a black prostitute, and the police show no interest in the investigation, Abigail grabs a spade and starts digging. What she uncovers shakes her faith in Lincoln, law, and the American system to her core.

Carter accomplishes a remarkable feat, creating a setting that is remarkably gripping and energetic, yet primarily cerebral. His world rides on the strength of legal argument and testing evidence. Many stereotypical components of legal thrillers put in only brief appearances: this setting is rich in harsh words, yet remarkably nonviolent. Romance is subdued, constrained by the etiquette of its day, and courtship happens from the neck up.

Yet it’s also a world in which much is at stake. America’s first-ever Presidential impeachment will inevitably have lingering consequences for the nation: executive power or parliamentary? Hard money or soft? Military payback or careful forgiveness? Most important, how will voters take what amounts to a legalized coup d’etat? These questions permit no easy answers, and Carter keeps readers guessing remarkably late in the book.

This story takes remarkably few liberties. Much of Carter’s “case” against Lincoln comes from the impeachment of his Vice President, Andrew Johnson. But Johnson was regarded as a lucky drunk, foisted into the Presidency by blind chance and someone else’s politics. When the same sectarian divides attack a popular war President, the stakes increase exponentially. A case that actually turned on one vote now spills blood and threatens to restart the war.

Carter has published several legal thrillers in which past secrets collide with present exigencies. To date, he has mostly used contemporary settings, and where he has ventured into history, he has kept it within living memory. His decision to go back nearly 150 years sets a new standard for his own work. His level of ambition comes across in his prose, which is dense and slow-moving, but well worth the investment.

We seem to be in some kind of “Season of Lincoln” right now. Considering media lead times, it can’t be collusion that caused this book to appear so close to the movie version of Seth Graeme-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Sometimes a cultural moment occurs when we all turn to face the same icon at the same time. Right now, that seems to be Abraham Lincoln.

Remember, Lincoln did more than just win the war. He held America together when Diamondbacks, Radicals, night riders, and others wanted to pull it apart. Regions of the nation were permanently at each other’s throats. Election days could often end in fistfights, and so could Congressional debates. Language we wouldn’t use on our worst enemies became the lingua franca of political discourse.

The parallel with today’s America couldn’t be any more blatant.

Maybe the nation needs a new Lincoln. Obama voters thought their candidate could fill that role, which explains the messianic tone surrounding his inauguration. But it’s hard to imagine a candidate of such restraint and discretion getting elected today, when name-calling and bald lies dominate political ads. Instead of making false promises, Carter conjures our need for a new Lincoln by reminding us who the first Lincoln really was.

This book could easily descend into either hero worship or extended silliness. It’s a testament to Carter’s legal acumen and storytelling prowess that this remains a gripping, thoughtful, exciting read. And it rewards readers by resisting easy answers and proffering food for thought which will linger long after you close the cover for the last time.

American Car Culture Has To Go

Does anybody really enjoy driving anymore? That’s not a rhetorical question. Do you revel in the call of the open road, spend time behind the wheel as a recreational pastime, or “get your kicks on Route 66”? I doubt it. Cars have had a far-reaching impact on American life, American cities, and American expectations. And if we believe our own senses, these effects have been less than salutary.

An NPR report this week repeats grumbles, which reporter Franklyn Cater admits are a century old, that American cities pursue “war on cars.” As proof, Cater notes cities creating dedicated bus, bike, and pedestrian lanes; aggressive speeding and parking enforcement; and refusing to widen congested urban streets. Such measures aim to slow traffic and encourage walking or car-pooling. Some people are angry because the measures work.

Research and statistics repeatedly reveal that Americans enjoy the idea of cars. We like the principle that we could crank the ignition and motor across the continent simply because we take a wild hair. A remarkable number of Americans compare their feelings for their cars to romantic love. Many people give their cars names and treat them as members of their family. Some even admit they buy gifts for their cars on Christmas and Valentine’s day.

But those same stats reveal a different picture when we get past the broad strokes and actually look at the brass tacks of owning an automobile. Ask about insurance payments, maintenance costs, commute times, the DMV, skyrocketing gas prices, and the frustration of changing the oil on a hot summer day. No, really: ask somebody. The story will veer remarkably from our great national car narrative.

The myth of the Great American Road Trip has given way, in many cities, to ninety minute commutes. The ease of getting from place to place seems less impressive in much new urban sprawl, so vast and intricate that we cannot find our destination without military-grade satellite technology. Car culture has become so frustrating that many people, including me, joke that we’d be unable to drive if we injured our middle fingers.

Only cars enable today’s single-use urban development. City planners no longer include public parks in subdivisions, and it’s unsafe for kids to play in the streets. It’s hard to organize three-on-three basketball in a sloping driveway, so we should not act surprised when kids prefer to stay inside, watching TV and playing X-Box, feeling increasingly alienated from peers and society.

And that’s just kids. When even sallying forth to the supermarket requires a journey worthy of Odysseus, who can blame adults for not getting involved in community activities?

If cars have a deleterious effect on individuals, the cumulative effect is worse. I dread to think how much productivity we squander on daily commutes. Many cities, during rush hour, smell like the smoking section of an unwashed men’s locker room. And because we’re encased in our hermetically sealed capsules, we reduce the number of chance encounters with diverse people daily, shrinking our creativity quotient.

I did the math recently. I need my car for work, but spend much of my paycheck maintaining my car—the primal vicious circle. Without my car, I could shave five hours off my work week. That’s five hours for family, or hobbies, or growing a garden, or catching up on sleep. No wonder France and Germany, with the world’s best mass transit, have 35-hour legal work weeks, versus America’s stultifying 40-hour standard.

Frustratingly, the poorer individuals are, the further they likely live from work. Thus, the people who would benefit most from a reduced car culture are the people who can least afford to abandon their cars. Buses and taxis seldom visit the poor side of town. That’s why routine tinkering around the edges disappoints, because the problem is so integrated into our lives. Extracting it will be painful.

We cannot eliminate all cars. We rely on automobiles for mail and package delivery, safe transport of perishables, and emergency services. My parents, living in the country, would be trapped without their car. But if we compare the vast marginal costs to the limited core benefits, we know that most of us are not better off for owning cars.

Finding ways to minimize our automotive reliance will cause pain and dislocation in the short term. But for our long-term health as individuals and a society, we must reduce car culture to the smallest possible size. Our cars stand between us and our homes, our communities, and real human life.

Refuting the Myth of the Sci-Fi Virgin

Hugo Gernsback

James Reich, writing in boldtypemag.com, declared that we can trace the stereotype of the sexually misaligned science fiction nerd back to Hugo Gernsback, the pioneering magazine editor who largely laid the genre’s modern foundations. Gernsback’s nigh-Victorian aversion to sex, in contrast to the lurid exhibitionism of the penny pulps of his day, in Reich’s telling, set the stage for a neutered genre that persists to this day.

(Edit: the original link to the article I respond to here is dead. I realize that makes some specific points in this response confusing. But it also feels like vindication to know that I outlasted something so measurably silly.)

Reich’s theory is elegant in its simplicity. If we can trace a single continuous line of sexual dysfunction over the course of nearly a century, then we have a main critical thread that permeates the literature. There’s something satisfying about laying the trajectory of an entire publishing genre at the feet of a single man. Reich’s photo of a buck-toothed nerd sandwiched between two pairs of boobs makes a nice touch.

This theory also spits in the eye of reason.

Do we really believe a single editor’s grab for upmarket panache has influenced youths’ sexual development for nearly ninety years? Has no other editor really had sufficient influence on the genre as to leave a mark on its mores? That arrogates a lot of power to one man, who is conveniently not around to rebut the argument. And it assumes its audience is beholden to a moral structure that was already wheezy when Gernsback channeled it.

Reich’s thesis requires its audience to approach the literature as a complete sexual tabula rasa. It requires science fiction readers to remain immune to the influence of parents, teachers, peers, religious leaders, and other role models. It requires readers to stick their fingers in their ears and close their eyes when faced with today’s sex-obsessed popular culture. And it requires them to never read any literature other than science fiction.

It starts to seem somewhat unlikely.

Isaac Asimov

Unfortunately, Reich sees a correlation, and assumes that fandom causes sexual repression. But he does nothing to prove causation—because his is not the only explanation, or even the best one. I find it altogether more probable that people who are drawn to a life of the mind, and feel at best torn and ambivalent about fleshly appetites, would gravitate to literature that shares their values.

At one time, such readers probably would have read mystery fiction. Its use of complex mental puzzles would have satisfied the longing for intellectual stimulation, and broadly sexless protagonists like Auguste Dupin, Miss Marple, and Sherlock Holmes would have let the thinking audience feel comfy in their own skin. Cozy mysteries, with their overwhelmingly cerebral appeal, would have been just what such nerds needed.

But the intrusion of swinging masculinity, by authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, let in much of the primal physicality that brainy readers wanted to avoid. It’s impossible to read mystery today without encountering sex in such detail as to cross even jaded Lotharios’ eyes. The genre is now laced with heaving bosoms, sucker punches, and other flourishes that Agatha Christie would have lamented as unevolved.

Meanwhile, science and technology came to dominate the public discourse, giving rise to slickly published science fiction. Who can blame nerds for leaving the mystery fold and migrating to a genre that spoke to their desires? Reich’s “Raygun Gothic” provided a home for a certain audience for half a century. But since the 1980s, this genre too has attracted an increasing sexual forthrightness, and many nerds now favor fantasy or nonfiction.

Harlan Ellison

That said, Reich does dance close to one lingering consequence of Gernsback’s legacy, without ever quite touching it. Long quotes and allusions to Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard, and Harlan Ellison, who had to push back against censorious publishers, which wanted to dumb SF language to that acceptable on Saturday morning cartoons. That, unfortunately, we can lay on Gernsback’s lap.

Gernsback was unabashed in advocating his pedagogical purposes with his “scientifiction.” He wanted to use the tropes of boys’ adventure fiction to teach youth the ways and reasoning of growing science. This inculcated the attitude that SF is for children—and that reading SF is symptomatic of arrested childhood. This belief proves remarkably durable, outside the genre audience, despite copious evidence of serious adult readership.

In short, Reich’s thesis only makes sense to outsiders, and only if they don’t think too hard about it. Hugo Gernsback made a limp bid for post-Victorian respect. James Reich uses that hoary grab to infantilize science fiction audiences decades after the fact. I ask you: which of the two really holds legitimate, intellectually ambitious readers back?