Michael Prescott's Blog

Clones

Here's the thing about arguing with people. What we're really trying to do, when we engage in argument, is to manipulate others. We're treating people as objects - as hunks of clay that can be shaped and molded by our eager fingers. And what is the desired result of all this manipulation? It's to make other people into carbon copies of ourselves. We want to make them our clones.

There is something sociopathic about this. Sociopaths, after all, are known for their tendency to treat other human beings as objects. And many of them are also known for their ability to manipulate and control others. 

Just stating the facts as we see them and letting other people draw their own conclusions is one thing. But sustained argument almost always entails more than this. It  involves bludgeoning the other person over the head with one "logical" argument after the next - and often, such arguments are only superficially logical, mere verbalistic stratagems. Look at the way lawyers manipulate juries, or the way politicians juggle statistics and "studies" to prove anything they like.

There is something ugly and dangerous about argument. We shouldn't want other people to be our clones. The way to respect people is not to turn them into copies of ourselves, but to go our own way and let them go theirs.

Shakespeare the drunk?

A fascinating article appears in the latest edition of the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, a publication of the Shakespeare Oxford Society, which seeks to prove that Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, was the actual author of the works attributed to the man from Stratford. The essay, by Robert R. Prechter, Jr., is entitled "Might Edward de Vere Have Suffered from Alcoholism?" (As far as I know, it is not available online.) Since Oxfordians believe that de Vere was Shakespeare, this question is tantamount to asking if the most famous author in English literature was an alcoholic.

On its surface, the idea might seem absurd. As Prechter points out, many people assume that no high-achieving individual could possibly suffer from an addiction to drink. But, as he goes on to say, this belief "is not just false, but backward.... One of the behavioral signs in early and middle-stage alcoholism is a drive for extreme achievement.... Not only can most alcoholics function, but many of them, in some ways, perform better than the rest of us."

Citing the somewhat controversial alcoholism researcher Doug Thorburn as his main source, Prechter lists a number of famous, high achieving people who were known for an addiction to alcohol and/or drugs: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Beethoven, John Lennon, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck, Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stephen King, e.e. cummings, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker ... and the list goes on. At the end of this section, Prechter concludes, "One may certainly wish to argue against de Vere's having alcoholism, but his prodigious achievement in the arts is not good evidence to the contrary."

There is certainly reason to suspect that de Vere had trouble with liquor. His personal life was a mess. His first marriage devolved into a shambles; he became estranged from his wife for years after being convinced that the daughter she had borne him was illegitimate. He expended stupendous sums on travel and entertainment and prodigious feats of charity, depleting his once vast estate, and eventually had to depend on lavish government subsidies to maintain his lifestyle. His investments generally took the form of high stakes gambles that rarely paid off. And like many alcoholics, he was prone to angry fits of tempers and even violence. He once killed a man in a street brawl. On more than one occasion he alienated the Queen by disobeying her commands, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London for several months.

If he was Shakespeare, then he could be almost unconscionably cruel; some of the Bard's buffoonish characters are clearly parodies of de Vere's rivals at court, depicted in the most humiliating possible terms. Prechter asks, "Who among us would want to be lampooned as was Malvolio in front of our eyes and those of everyone in town?... How many non-alcoholics craft such detailed humiliations of others? On the other hand, some alcoholics, such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Hunter Thompson, were expert at doing so."

Indeed, the portrait of Malvolio in Twelfth Night may be one of the cruelest examples of literary revenge in history. Oxfordians believe that Malvolio was based on the courtier Christopher Hatton, a man of modest origins who had risen in Queen Elizabeth's favor. Malvolio, whose very name translates into something like "ill will," is depicted as a social-climbing oaf, an overreaching servant who imagines that he can woo his aristocratic mistress and who is utterly humiliated in the process.

If the play, or some early version of it, was performed at court for the entertainment of the Queen and her hangers-on, then Hatton would have had the excruciatingly uncomfortable experience of seeing himself ridiculed unmercifully in front of all his friends and colleagues, while de Vere presumably chortled with amusement. It is certainly possible that a non-alcoholic could come up with such punishment for an adversary, but a man "in his cups" might seem more likely to carry through on the project.

Prechter notes that Shakespeare's works often feature the tavern as their setting. One of Shakespeare's most distinctive characters is Falstaff, who is perpetually intoxicated. Prechter notes, "He even casts Prince Hal, the obvious de Vere figure in the Henry IV plays, as a smart, affable carouser who will rise heroically to the occasion when the time comes for him to reign."

Another possible indication of Shakespeare/de Vere's alcoholism is the sheer vividness and verve of his writing, the remarkably sustained explorations of intense emotional states, the almost giddy wordplay with its inexhaustible variety and inventiveness, the rash of metaphors and similes constantly spouting from his pen, sometimes in such quick succession that their meaning becomes difficult to follow even on the printed page, let alone in the theater. Much of Shakespeare's work gives the impression of having been written at white heat, in a kind of fit of creativity, a passionate state of rapture and self-absorption. At the very least, this type of writing is not inconsistent with the wildly overflowing output of the high-achieving alcoholic.

As Prechter says, "De Vere's writing is so noble, so insightful, so passionate, that he stirs us to the zenith of our emotions. But then again, that's what peak-performing alcoholics do best: they win people over and make us love them. Although their personal lives exasperate us, we excuse their behavior because we are infatuated. We love Marilyn. We love Sinatra. We love Lennon. We love Elvis. We love Shakespeare. Non-alcoholics do not generally inspire idolization, but alcoholics do, all the time."

Meevee!

Now that TV Guide has stopped including local listings (which was, if I'm not mistaken, the entire raison d'etre of TV Guide), I've searched for an Internet service that will fill the void. I tried Yahoo TV listings - too slow and clunky. Tried TV Guide.com's listings - took forever to load. Tried Zap2it.com - also slow.

Then I found Meevee. It's fast and free. (Well, the upgraded service costs money, I guess, but the basis service is zero-cost.) And it works great!

If you're looking for local TV listings, check it out.

The sky is green

A little more on my newfound aversion to argument. In the past, I was always ready to defend my position - which was, of course, "the truth" - at a moment's notice. Imagine this scenario:

Me: The sky is blue.

Someone Else: The sky is green.

Me: You're simply wrong about that. I can cite dozens of sources attesting that the sky is blue, not green. There are optical reasons for is blueness, involving the refraction and diffusion of sunlight. And there's the evidence of your own eyes! To begin with, let's do a Google search for "sky" and "blue." We get 34,400,000 hits. But a search for "sky" and "green" yields only 26,400,000 hits.  This shows, right off the bat, that blue is associated with the sky more often than green is. Now if we look at the dictionary ...

Etc.

But now my approach is more likely to be something like this:

Me: You think the sky is green? Interesting. I must admit I don't see it like that, and I think most people would disagree with what you're saying. Nevertheless, it's fascinating to find someone who has that perspective. Maybe if I look at the sky in a certain way, I can also see it as green. In any case, thanks for sharing your insight. It would be a dull sky if everyone saw it the same way.

Much better, no?

Now, I can already hear somebody fuming, "Darn it, facts are facts, and the sky is blue!" But if a person sincerely thinks the sky is green, we're not going to change his mind by haranguing him about it.

And what difference does it make, anyway? The sky will continue to be whatever color it is, regardless of anyone's opinion. Arguing about it merely wastes time and creates friction. 

Intellectuals, in general, put a lot of stock in argument, which is their speciality, their bread and butter. This focus on arguing spills over into TV discussion shows and political debates and dueling op-ed columns. It has inspired a host of TV shows, movies, and books about combative lawyers who never admit defeat. It is the raison d'etre of talk radio. And argument is all over the Internet. 

But maybe this emphasis on the value of arguing is mistaken. Maybe we would be better off, and more content, and less stressed out, if we simply accepted people for who they are - which includes accepting people's ideas and opinions for what they are. Maybe we should enjoy diversity, rather than trying (fruitlessly) to stifle it.

Just maybe.

Sunny side up

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but sometime this January I decided to take a more positive attitude about life. I have a tendency to be somewhat negative, pessimistic, and critical, and I'm tired of it.

So I've consciously tried to derail negative trains of thought. And the first thing I discovered was how many of these thoughts flit through my head every day - stray worries, pointless criticisms, remembered insults. The second thing I learned was how many of my blog entries were inspired by negative or critical thinking - topics like dumb celebrities, political craziness, bad movies, closed-minded skeptics. And the third thing I learned was how much time I spend responding to other people's arguments or opinions, rather than simply going my own way.

It's been rather eye-opening. The immediate consequence was fewer blog posts. All sorts of possible blog entries occurred to me, but they didn't pass the smile test, so they were discarded unwritten. At this point, I'm following the advice most of us got from our moms: If you don't have anything nice to say, just don't say anything.

And it works! I feel less preoccupied with trying to prove that "I'm right and they're wrong." Let people disagree with me - who cares? It's incredibly liberating to realize that you don't have to win every argument or get the last word - or even get any word.

It's a commonplace, but true, that the intellectual diversity of our society is one of its great strengths. In a division-of-labor society, we tend to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. If one person is good at linear thinking, another may be good at garnering intuitive insights. This multiplicity of outlooks and approaches makes us stronger as a community than we would be if we all thought the same way and agreed on everything.

But if this is true, then why should I seek to make other people think of things my way? It makes no sense. It's just ego-tripping.

I admit I still fall into the habit of arguing, but not as often as before. Putting the focus on the positive is the way to go. Try it and see.

:-)

Arguing with Hitler

For a long time I've believed that it is necessary to argue for your position in order to prevent the other side - the "wrong" side - from winning. But lately I've begun to question whether this is indeed true. Part of the reason lies in some recent entries at the blog Release the Illusion, which I recommend. Another part of the reason has to do with the book I'm currently reading, Hitler: The Path to Power by Charles Bracelen Flood.

The book traces Hitler's early days in politics as he gradually ascended in influence. What the author makes clear is that Germany in the aftermath of World War I was a cauldron of competing extremist groups - communists, socialists, and fervent nationalists. Although superficially different in some respects, these groups all had one thing in common: they appealed to the very worst aspects of human nature. They encouraged scapegoating, whether of capitalists or foreign powers or "the Jews." They permitted their followers to disown any responsibility for Germany's humiliation in the war and for its economic deterioration afterward. And they made these points not primarily by appealing to logical reasoning but by tapping into primal emotions.

An atmosphere of sheer hysteria permeated German society in the 1920s. One American reporter stationed there said that the country was experiencing "a nervous breakdown." Hundreds and then thousands of middle-class Germans crowded into meeting halls to hear speakers who launched frenzied harangues that lasted for as long as an hour and a half and whipped the crowd into a state of rapturous fury.

Under these conditions, it would have been impossible for anyone to successfully argue against the extremist groups in a calm, rational way. No quiet voice of reason could have been heard in that maelstrom. The emotions stirred up by extremists on all sides were largely impervious to logical analysis or disputation.

As Flood makes clear, Hitler was a master of manipulating the emotions of the crowd, and having studied propaganda, he was well aware of the advantages of directing his message toward the emotions rather than the logical mind. An argument can always be bested by a better argument, but impassioned emotion will listen to no one. Hitler himself could not be reached by reason when it came to his fundamental prejudices, and neither could his followers, and neither could the German electorate as a whole, conditioned as it was to reacting in a purely emotional way.

There is another respect in which the communists, socialists, and nationalists were similar. All were driven by fanatical hatred of other human beings, though the target of the hatred varied from case the case. The leftists hated the rich, while the rightists hated the Jews. Hitler's genius, if it can be called that, was to combine the two impulses -- nationalism and socialism -- to create his National Socialist or Nazi Party. The program of the Nazis included attacks on the wealthy as well as condemnations of the Jews. The synthesis was not difficult to pull off, since in the popular mind, the Jews were stereotypically associated with wealthy bankers and industrialists.

Given his demonic charisma and his crafty political machinations, Hitler was almost destined to end up at the top of the heap -- but had he failed, some other fanatic would surely have risen to the top in his place. The atmosphere of Germany in that era did not allow for moderate solutions and sober compromise.

Is there any way Hitler or his equivalent could have been stopped? Perhaps only if some contrasting movement had arisen that encouraged genuine love and respect for one's fellow human beings of all religions, ethnicities, and social classes. A rebirth of the spirit of authentic Christianity as it appears to have been practiced in its earliest decades might have turned the tide - but not because the arguments mustered by this counterrevolutionary movement were superior. Hitler's direct appeal to people's worst emotions could have been countered, if at all, only by an equally direct appeal to the highest feelings - empathy, compassion, sympathy, and love.

So maybe I've been wrong all this time. Maybe argument and debate are not the way to advance one's position. Arguing with Hitler, at least, was and always must be a futile enterprise.

W.

Today I received an impassioned email protesting the policies of the Bush administration, especially in the areas of security, national defense, and counterterrorism. The person who sent it to me no doubt expected me to agree with some or all of this, but I have to say I didn't.

George W. Bush is not my favorite president, and on many issues I think he has fumbled the ball (Hurrican Katrina, illegal immigration) or taken the wrong position (Social Security privatization, Medicare drug prescription benefits, the McCain-Feingold bill). Nevertheless, I did vote for his reelection, and I'm not sorry I did. In the biggest issue facing the country and the world today - global terrorism - Bush has stood fast and stood firm.

But rather than say again what I wrote in reply, I'll just copy-and-paste my email response:

Thanks very much for your message. It made interesting reading, and you expressed yourself forcefully and clearly.

I must tell you, though, that I generally support President Bush's anti-terror policies, including the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, and NSA spying on international phone calls made to or from suspected terrorists. I don't think my (or your) freedom is threatened by any of these policies.

In comparison with intrusions on personal liberty that Americans have suffered during other wars, any present inconveniences associated with the War on Terror are modest indeed. There are no ration coupons, no internment camps for US citizens, no military conscription - all of which were features of World War II.

And while even a single death in combat is tragic, the number of American fatalities remains very low by any historical standard. Many more American soldiers died on D-Day alone than in the entire course of the Bush administration.

Although the road remains rough, I am reasonably confident that Iraq will emerge as a functioning democracy, with previously undreamed-of civil rights for all its citizens, including women. This has already happened in Afghanistan, even if the media haven't chosen to highlight it. And while al Qaeda remains a threat, we seem to have them demoralized and on the run, and many of their top people have been captured or killed. It's not pretty, but this is how wars are won, and I think we're winning this one.

With luck, we'll look back on this conflict as a turning point for the Middle East, which opened the door to democracy and tolerance throughout that region.

So cheer up! Things are rarely as bad as they seem. They may even turn out to be pretty good.

Best,

Michael Prescott 

Beyond belief

Right now I'm reading a book by Tom Harrison called Life After Death - Living Proof. The book recounts numerous seances held in the 1940s and '50s by Tom's mother, a British trance medium named Minnie Harrison, who purportedly had the ability not only to communicate with the deceased but to materialize them in physical form.

Sounds crazy, I admit. It's one thing to claim that the spirits of the dead can speak through a human channeler, but another thing to say that these spirits can actually materialize and walk around the seance room, shaking hands with the sitters or hugging them, signing their names, and giving small gifts.

Although I think many paranomal phenomena are genuine, I have been skeptical of materialization mediums. Many of these mediums have been exposed as frauds. And typically they operate under conditions that do not inspire confidence - in darkened rooms, or hidden behind curtains out of sight of the sitters. The rare photos taken of "materialized" entities often look fake, a fact that only encourages more skepticism. All of this has led me to be very wary of this area of psychic exploration. In fact, I wrote two online essays (here and here) criticizing a particular materialization medium who used the name "Eva C."

So when I started Tom Harrison's book, I was in a rather critical frame of mind. Not that I was skeptical of Mr. Harrison himself; he comes across as entirely sincere, deeply devoted to his mother, and convinced of the reality of what he and his fellow sitters observed. But people can be sincere and still be mistaken. 

My first thought was that maybe the alleged phenomena were hallucinations. Did the group of sitters want to believe in Spiritualism so badly that they convinced themselves they were seeing something that wasn't there? But this hypothesis was immediately dashed by the infrared photos and tape recordings taken of the seances. These visual and audio records at least establish that something was going on in that room. You can't take a photo or make a tape recording of a hallucination.

Next, I considered the possibility that Minnie Harrison was faking the phenomena by impersonating the "spirits." Other materialization mediums have been caught doing this. Once the medium is ensconced in her "cabinet" (usually a corner of the room veiled by a curtain), she can change into a disguise and then emerge in the role of someone's late sister, aunt, etc.

But I was wrong again. It turns out that a cabinet was used only for the later seances. In the earlier ones, Minnie Harrison was seated with the other sitters in a circle. The room was illuminated by red light - dim light, but adequate to see Minnie even as the materialized spirit moved about the room. In other words, Minnie could not have been playacting as a ghost, because she and the ghost were visible simultaneously.

Could one of the sitters have served as Minnie's accomplice, leaving the circle and impersonating a spirit? No. The same red light that showed Minnie in her seat showed all the other sitters, too. Besides, the room was very small, and when eight or more sitters were present, no one could have left the circle without being noticed.

All right. Then Minnie must have had an accomplice who was not part of the circle. Some other person, unknown to the group, entered the room after the seance had begun.

Again, this explanation fails. The room had only a single door, and it was locked from the inside. Further, the door could not be opened until the person sitting closest to it had moved his chair away (as I said, the room was small). There was a window, but it was sealed with blackout material. And the red light would have revealed anyone trying to enter.

But maybe the secret accomplice entered the room before the seance, and was hidden there the whole time? It seems impossible. The room in question did not belong to the Harrisons, but to friends of theirs, the Shipmans. It was, in fact, just a tiny room at the back of a store. The accomplice would not have had access to the room unless the Shipmans were in on the plot. Moreover, the room does not appear to have offered any place to hide. There was no closet, no bathroom.

Sometimes the apparitions were said to have "built up" from the floor and then melted away into the floor when they departed. This naturally raises the possibility of a trapdoor, opening perhaps on a basement or crawlspace. But again, the hypothesis fails. The floor was carpeted, making it highly unlikely that a trapdoor could have been concealed. And unless the Shipmans were in on it, how could Minnie and her hypothetical accomplice have cut a trapdoor into the floor?

Other observations made by Tom Harrison and the other sitters make all "normal" explanations even more untenable. At one point, a materialized entity told Tom that, to save energy, she had not bothered to materialize her legs. Tom took a look and, he says, saw that the entity indeed had no visible legs.  Some of the entities supplied information unknown to anyone in the circle, which was later verified. "Apports" (objects transported as if by magic from place to place) would show up in the sitters' homes after the entities told them where to look.

Guest sitters frequently joined the circle. Many dozens of people witnessed these phenomena in weekly sittings that extended over more than a decade. If fraud were the answer, surely someone would have spotted it.

There is also the question of motive. If Minnie were defrauding her friends on a weekly basis, what was she getting out of it? She charged no money for her work and accepted no gifts or contributions. She was ill with cancer and suffered through several operations, so she often would not have had the strength to carry out elaborate deceptions. She sought no publicity and received none.

And yet ... the mind boggles at the notion that the spirits of the deceased were actually assuming physical form in the back room of the Shipmans' store. The very idea seems beyond belief.

Still...

At the end of his book, Tom Harrison cites Sherlock Holmes' famous observation that, when all other explanations have been eliminated, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. If the Baker Street detective was right, then I'm left with the conclusion that my earlier skepticism about materializations was unwarranted.

Or as the physicist J.B.S. Haldane once quipped in a very different context - the universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine.

(This post was slightly edited after its initial publication.)

Arrrgghhh!!!

I'm watching the WB show Gilmore Girls right now (hey, don't laugh - it's a well-written show). Rory tells a teacher that she bought the teacher's book new, not used, so the teacher would get full royalties. The teacher responds, "I get full royalties whether you buy the book new or used." Rory quips that she's learning something already.

But what she's learning isn't true. Authors do not get "full royalties" on used books. In fact, authors get NO royalties on used books.

No royalties at all.

Zero.

Zip.

Zilch.

Nada.

Null set.

Goose egg.

None.

Just so we're clear on that.

Tess & Abby

As a thriller writer, I'd never intended to do a "series" character - a hero or heroine who returns in book after book. To me, this was too much like TV. Each book is just a new episode in the character's life, rather than being a uniquely important event. Besides, I thought it would be boring to do the same character over and over. What a drag.

"Series" books are big with publishers, though, because they're considered easier to market than standalones. Over the years my publisher would suggest doing a series now and then, but I always resisted.

Then a few years ago my then-editor, Doug Grad, suggested that since I'd created several female protagonists who lived in L.A., I might try having two or more of them join forces. This idea sparked something in me, and I ended up bringing together the heroines of my books Next Victim and The Shadow Hunter. They teamed up in Dangerous Games, and now they're back in my just-released book Mortal Faults. (Buy it now at Amazon.com! Okay, sales pitch over.)

Someh0w, using two characters instead of one made the idea of a series more palatable to me. I liked the dynamic of the two women, who are opposites in most respects, and therefore continually at odds with each other. The ongoing conflict makes it easy to write their dialogue and to develop new situations that test their tenuous friendship. In Mortal Faults the test is particularly severe.

The characters can be defined quite easily by contrasting one with the other. Abby is self-employed, a freelance security operative who makes up her own rules and violates any laws she finds inconvenient; Tess is in a management position in the FBI, and she believes in following procedure whenever possible. Abby is hyperkinetic, sexually adventurous, and a night owl; Tess is calmer, much more cautious about entering into relationships, and (for the most part) an eight-to-six office worker. 

These differences extend to other areas that aren't always spelled out in the books. In just about any area of life, I can tell you where these two ladies stand. For instance, Abby is a Democrat; Tess is a Republican. Abby is secular-minded with a touch of New Age consciousness; Tess is a traditional (though briefly lapsed) Catholic. Abby likes exotic foods but minimizes red meat in her diet; Tess is a meat-and-potatoes gal. Abby avoids caffeine because she's already so jittery; Tess drinks pots of coffee to get through her paperwork-filled day. Abby is the type of neighbor who plays her music too loud at all hours of the night; Tess is quiet, reliable, and will water your plants when you're away.

Generally, I can write Abby just by projecting a set of preferences that are the opposite of how I actually feel. I don't like noisy, crowded places - so Abby does. I don't drive a flashy car - so Abby does. I don't obsess over movie trivia - so Abby does. She is the anti-me. Whatever I am, she's not, and vice versa. At least, this is largely true. But there always has to be some common ground between a writer and his fictional characters. In Abby's case, it's probably her tendency to keep to herself a lot. I do that, too. (So do most writers, I think.)

Because she is a more extreme personality type, Abby is easier to write than Tess, who is more "normal" in most respects. I can relate to Tess. She sees the world basically the way I do. That's why, when people occasionally ask which of the two women I like better, I have to go with Tess, even though Abby seems to be the favorite of most readers. Tess is not as lively as Abby, true; but she's ultimately a better person - more mature, more responsible, more capable of seeing the larger dimensions of her work. Abby reminds me of a teenager who hasn't quite grown up - hyperactive, reckless, narcissistic. She is charming but, like any narcissist, potentially quite dangerous. A world of Abbys would be a world in chaos, but a world of Tesses would work okay.

Really, though, we need both. Or at least it seems my books do!