Oh I don’t know

Name a topic and I’ll write 500 words of my opinion on it.

On the value of the fiction novel and what it indicates about humankind.

Storytelling was once a great oral tradition, the most widely used method of passing on culture, religion, tradition and knowledge. Paper and writing systems have been around since ancient times as well, but the oral tradition of storytelling remained dominant until the industrial age and the spread of the printing press. However, while this declined, the modern, written storytelling came into being, in the form of the novel, such as those written by one of the most famous names in the business, Charles Dickens.

So what is the value of the fiction novel? It is intelligence. Without fiction, we do not exercise our imagination – both on the creators’ end and the readers’ end. Lies may cause conflict, but the ability to tell them convincingly is an indication of the ability to grasp some fundamental facts about existence: what is fact, and what is not. It is intelligence that is responsible for humankind’s advances over similar animals, and one can say that stories – and by extension novels – are what defines humanity. It is the ability to tell stories, to communicate complex narratives and engage the ephemeral “Imagination”, which defines us as a species and defines our intelligence.

In an alternative scheme for classifying species proposed in Terry Pratchett’s The Science of the Discworld, Homo Sapiens wouldn’t have its own branch, but would be classified under Pan, the apes. The suggestion is that we be classified as Pan Narrans, the storytelling ape.

These days, thousands of novels are published every year, ranging from generic recycled stories, sold for their word content far more so than their plot, to wondrous stories of romance, adventure, and explorations of the human condition through the half-mirror of fiction. Fundamentally, the storytelling ape remains attracted to these stories. Most will follow a pattern laid down by the great storytellers of the past, shortened version of the epics – introduction, complication, climax, conclusion. While the epics of the ancient civilisations record in a way the complexity of the human psyche, the shorter, more intimate and more concise stories told in novels reflect in a way the stories elders would have told around fires late at night, entrancing the whole tribe.

Stories also reflect the collective mind of contemporary human society at the time of creation. In ancient times, it was about great wars and stories of heroes to inspire. In the 19th century, it was the common lives of people in periods of great change, reflecting the society around them. In the 20th century, the emergence of science as a driving force prompted the emergence of science fiction.

In short, novels, and the stories they record, are so much more than just the words they contain. They are the defining achievements of humanity, reflecting and recording our world as we perceive it. Humankind developed beyond its predecessors because of our ability to imagine and to tell stories, and it is this concept that stays alive today in novels.

On Homeland Security

Ah, “Homeland Security”. One of those wonderful terms coined by the Bush administration following the attacks on September 11. An entirely new department of the US government which sprang up after the disaster, with the stated intent to… well, it’s like the label on the bottle says, isn’t it, secure the homeland? Um.

Let’s look at the term itself. If there was a more loaded phrase in use, it would have to be the ubiquitous Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is made up of three innate desires that all humans hold dear to their basic instincts: home, land and security. Home is where you rest, your shelter from the wild, unpredictable world. Land is what you build your house on, what you defend to the very last should it ever be threatened. And security, your most immediate concern after your basic needs are taken care of – the need to feel safe and unthreatened. Basically, something that can’t ever be misconstrued as a Bad Thing, something with more teflon than the space shuttle.

So if Bush and his clever political team came up with this phrase without intending the side-effect of the subconscious meaning, they’re either great subconscious thinkers, or lying. If you called it Domestic Safety, well, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing anyway, because governments are responsible for words like Domestic and Foreign. If you called it the Ministry of the Interior, that’d sound like something out of Britain, or possibly even Iraq. So it took a clever wordsmith to come up with the phrase, that’s for sure (also for sure is that it wasn’t Bush himself).

What exactly does Homeland Security do? I don’t think anybody knows. Occasionally they come out with a statement that the “terror threat level” is some new colour, any shade so long as it’s reddish, because Red is Bad. They announce arrests and operations like they co-ordinated them, when for years this job was competently done by the police and all the other levels of law enforcement. It’s a vague department with a vague job description designed to dress up the successful daily operation of people who have been doing their jobs for years as government success. Dictators have similar departments; we usually call them propaganda machines.

What annoys me even more is that the Australian government and opposition both have picked up this term in the war-on-a-verb that is the current quagmire we’re committed to. They both have homeland security ministers, their job to go out and announce domestic security policy in a way that makes to look like they’re worth the money they’re being paid. For a country that’s never used the term homeland, let alone father- or motherland, to refer to anything, it’s a clear sop to the politics of terror, a cookie-cutter template to imitate the effect generated in the USA.

All said, it may have a part to play in co-ordinating efforts and providing a focus. However, as things stand, it’s not much more than a feel-good propaganda machine.