[morning freewrite]
This morning I awoke with a headache.  Dehydrating I think.  In civilization
one never drinks enough fluids.  No wonder we get kidney stones.  I wonder
sometimes at all the problems we've created with civilization while making
what improvements?  More material possessions.  Longer life expectancy.
Good things, yes.  Is it unavoidable that we must take the bad changes with
the good?

Most SF writers believe it is not.  A utopia would be possible if only we
keep learning and applying.  Other SF writers (SF stands for Speculative
Fiction as much as science fiction.  Harlan Ellison is the first writer I
know to embrace the difference between them...) are projecting a darker
future.  Humans are Hobbesian, so you can't expect them to create utopia on
their own.

I don't know whether either of htese views is correct or incorrect --
Heilein's future seems the most realistic in a strange way.  His characters
are people.  Most everyone works for reasons of their own.  They each have
moments of nobility and depravity.... I suppose, though, that Heinlein moves
towards a distinctly more noble vision of the future.  People in his works
are basically good.  They often contravene the mores of their society in
order to do what is right.  The people are like Greek tragics -- but they
are usually able to overcome their flaw....

Heinlein himself is a success story, so perhaps that is why he does that.
He understands that _he_ made it to where he stands, a preeminnent writer of
vision.  He thinks everyone could do the same.  His world-view is basically
utopian.  Al humans are equally superhumans.

I think I lean more towards such sayings as "A man never went broke
underestimating the American people."  Humans are foolish.  We're children
masquerading as adults.  But because we're cute like children it's okay.  We
don't communicate well.  We don't deal with our emotions well.  We do a lot
of things that are trivial and unimportant.  We are, basically, nothing more
than monkeys, performing for our own entertainment.

I have three more minutes.  New idea needs to form as the old idea has
become exhausted.  We have reached the metaphor.  Now we must get out of it
before it closes around us.  Having to go further, to take a second look at
our metaphor does nothing for our argument -- it only an exploration of the
theme.

I do that.  I create but don't like to revise.  Not writing, but the purer
thought behind.  I will change my mind, but that is something much more than
refinement of idea, it is ideological shift.  Writing, I create an illusion.
Perhaps it is a nillusion of a real world like a mirror, or perhaps it is an
illusion of something false -- yet in all cases, I'm playing with smoke.
Shaping a creature that seems interesting, but not really interesting on
bringing it back to earth.... Just connecting it to other smoke creatures.
I am an ivory tower philosopher?  I am a person with their heads in the
clouds?  Perhaps the latter -- practical matter interest me least.  How will
I get by day to day?  Providence will provide.  In one form or another, I
will survive until it is my time to die.  Interesting outlook, that.   It
seems that we have forgotten that.  So many archaeological digs, so much
science... And all of it tells us that man attempts to escape his fate, that
man does not believe in fate -- no one thinks that the curled skeletons in
Pompei are there because they decided it was time to die.... They must have
been asleep, they say....

[End morning freewrite]