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From the end of Part One:

The long and short of it is, Reason rightly has a place at the table;  but it is does not sit there alone, nor is it itself the table.  And when we sit down at the table with all the dishes and silverware, and no food, we starve for something more than the tangible.

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What does any of the prior have to do with scifi and fantasy?  They are both attempts to fill this void of meaning and purpose, and highly analogous ones, too.  That is, they are both concerned with the “whys” of human existence, which often emerge as a quest to find what it is to be human, whether travelling Middle Earth with hobbits, or galaxies with Asgard (I admit it;  I love Stargate).  They also are one of the few ways many feel able to address the existence beyond the rational (note: not against the rational;  beyond it).  They explore those things which, set in the world we know, would be quickly dismissed as irrational (and generally, both genres have been unfairly cast aside).  

And so they create other worlds to explore the things they can sense in our own but otherwise cannot talk about because the prevailing mood of our times cannot stand it.  Despite the claims of the rationalists, many, if not all, people have experiences that belie the absence of the supernatural, even if they have forgotten them or convinced themselves they were mistaken.  I have known some who eschew all religion of every sort, and yet unquestioningly accept ideas such as ghosts and spirits, and take fate, destiny, luck and supersticions very seriously.    And so, with these ideas treated very callously (as, no doubt, some, but not all, of these things should be), our imaginations latch onto other worlds.  Scifi and fantasy become the safehaven where these ideas can be explored.  

Scifi alters the rules of the world:  “Well, in this universe, giant rings created by a technologically advanced race millenia ago create a wormhole through subspace, enabling the transfer of matter as an energy signal and its reintegration as matter at the other end.”  (And if you understood that, you, too, have seen too much Stargate.)  Those who explore the supernatural in our world are generally shelved off in the religion section with the other “irrationals.”  And so, the science fiction writer must change the rules by changing the world it is set in, whether by writing about something that happened “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” or simply introducing some piece of technology that fundamentally alters our world so that the normal rules don’t exist, atleast not in the same way.  In this way, writers loose the ties with which rationalism has unfairly bound their imagination.

Fantasy, on the other hand, generally leaves our world entirely in order to explore it more fully.  It often focuses specifically on questions of meaning and purpose, the “why” questions which are otherwise left to dust.  Fantasy skews in the exact opposite direction of scifi when it comes to technology.  In scifi, things that cannot be explained or reproduced in the real world are the product of advanced technologies.  In fantasy, however, the supernatural is always mystical, and often magical.  Scifi hopes that progress will return to us a sense of “beyond” through technology.  Fantasy, in contrast, strips away technology, eschewing it to get to the “meat” of our existence.

And therein lies the essential difference, which is greater than the Grand Canyon which separates the squirrels, ubiquitous in grade school science textbooks, which are the same species but look completely different.  It is why these two genres are analogous and not homologous.  That is, scifi still buys into the rationalistic viewpoint, particularly as regards the idea of progress.  Progress is also an idea that deserves its own post, but for now it will suffice to say that technological advancement cannot by itself make the world a better place.  Rationalism already squelches the imaginative impulse that is naturally receptive to the intangible.  That isn’t going to change because someone shows up with a Taldis, or we can teleport across galaxies.  In this sense, we can say that the essential difference is that fantasy knows that rationalism is not its friend, and scifi is still holding on to its misguided faith in it to make the world better.  There hasn’t yet been a technology, nor will there ever be, that can rid the human heart of selfishness, or replace true generosity.  If any progress is to be made in the human condition, it must come from being more human, not more technological.  

And that is why fantasy generally trumps scifi.  Scifi has a lot to offer, and is pretty cool and a lot of fun, but at its core it buys into a system (rationalism) that can never offer what it hopes for.  A lot of people who don’t feel like they quite fit in feel a lot more at home in both these genres, and scifi does champion the underdog.  But it can’t deliver on its promises.  The original Star Trek envisioned a world with cellular phones.  Well, we’ve got them, and it hasn’t made us any better.  Progress and technology can’t make anyone a better person.  People can use them to do good, but even the most humanitarian device only works because someone dreamed it, someone made it, and someone used it.  Without each of those steps, it might as well be a pile of dirt.  

The other trap of the rationalistic progress cult is that it assumes that humanity is on a linear path towards getting better, if only we can be better organised and equip ourselves better.  In addition to being utterly (and ironically) illogical to anyone the slightest bit familiar with human nature, this tends to become very reductionist morally and socially.  All of a sudden, people start deciding that issues have been decided (“we should be past that”) as if truth and conscience were majority opinions.  And worse, anyone who disagrees with the progress ideal becomes some sort of bad guy, or worse, someone to be laughed at and pitied.  Sadly, while scifi knows the sort of answers its looking for (the “becauses” for the “whys”), it’s still asking the same old question.

While, as in every genre, books vary greatly, fantasy generally offers an overall package.  This comes because of two main differences.  First, it has correctly identified the questions;  and second, it has less certainty (if any) of the answers.  I enjoy travelling through space as much as the next person, but travelling up Mount Doom, well, it’s harder, but it’s closer to my heart – who doesn’t have a Mt. Doom to climb?  And this is really at the heart of the matter.  Fantasy talks about the things that really matter to us, even if it doesn’t get them all right, and even if some fantasy books get none of them right.  They’ve chosen to not be distracted by the glimmering mirage of a future we’ll “progress” to.  And despite the high brow attitudes that it makes for low brow literature, fantasy works have proven they have something out worth paying attention to.

I doubt anyone truly understood just how huge a phenomenon The Lord of the Rings would be.  We weren’t in a “best-seller list” era, and things like hobbits had no precedent anywhere.  But a soul journey into a distant land, dark and unknown, to destroy a great evil that had been brought into the world by an ultimate bad guy?  Ideas of heroism, self-sacrifice, something greater than oneself (and the progress “ideal”), and perseverence against overwhelming odds and one’s own sense of despair?  We can point likewise to the Harry Potter phenomenon (for anyone convinced they are a gateway to the occult, I encourage you to read John Granger’s work, particularly his latest books, which uncover the Christian meanings and symbology in the series).  In a more rationalistic world than the one into which Frodo was thrust, millions of people have found resonance in these stories of a boy wizard of singular determination and sacrificial love.  They’ve found in them exactly what Tolkien meant once again – those elements of the true story they don’t even remember, but in their deepest hearts recognise as truth (cf. Mythopoeia).

Why did I title this part “Chicken Soup for the Rationalist Soul”?  Because, when it comes down to it, the reason people like scifi and fantasy, even those that are badly written or have only the tiniest fragments of the One True Story, is because they are longing for God.  They may not know it, and if they did they may not like it, but in our secularised, rationalistic world, Frodo and Sam, and even Harry Potter, may be the closest thing to catechism and faith a lot of people come across.  I hope that God can use these things to bring people closer to him, and I know he must be.  Each little bit of fantasy read chips away at the ideological hegemony of the rationalists, and hopefully a little more at the barriers we’ve put around our hearts that keep us from hearing God and fulfilling our deepest longings.

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Well, I finally finished it.. I really have to work out a blogging schedule, because I’m totally going to be tired going to work tomorrow, but I’m glad it’s done, so there’s that.  I’d love to hear comments and thoughts – agreement with me not required!

-the Rosy Gardener

Scifi and fantasy have “taken off” in the modern era.  I would even suggest that as genres, they are decidedly modern inventions.  That is, they arose, however ironically, only after the advent of the so-called Age of Reason (I guess we just weren’t thinking until then, lol).  While many works prior to this point may have had fantastical elements, they were written in periods where such events were generally considered more likely and believable, when humanity was much more inclined towards the supernatural as a whole. 

When it comes to scifi and fantasy, I consider them to be almost (but not quite) two sides of the same coin.  That is, while there are significant differences between the two, I think they are both responses, and related ones, to the same thing, which is rationalism.

I should, before continuing, clarify my use of terms.  By “rationalism,” I refer not to the use of reason, nor do I wish to criticise reason in the slightest.  What I do mean to criticise, however, is the idea that knowledge is the answer to all questions.  We may call that knowledge science, or reason, or fact, but the problem is that in our day and age, we mostly call it truth.  I do not mean to say that scientific discoveries are not true;  I am by no means in “Darwin denial.”  But that a thing may be true does not make it truth.

I have brought up this idea of there being a difference between fact and truth a number of times in conversations I’ve had.  I have never yet felt that I have explained it particularly well, but I hope I have found a way to now.  As with all those things which are somewhat mystical, the best I can do is explore the idea by proxy.  It is true that I have hazel eyes.  It is likewise true that I fancy myself a writer.  These statements are equally true, but not equally important, nor are they relevant to the same parts of myself.  My eye color is an immutable element of my physical body;  that I am a writer is (I hope) an immutable part of my soul, the intangible me.  One is extant;  the other is purposeful.

The Age of Enlightenment has had some incredibly far-reaching effects.  I don’t doubt that medical science, for one, would not have made all the advances it has in this last century without the century prior to it.  But it got a few important things wrong.  One was assuming that the times before it were dark.  Naturally, the medieval period was not all sweetness and light, but neither was it all dungeons and misery.  And it was most assuredly not backwards.  For what the medievals had to work with, they were incredibly resourceful and made a good many advances of their own.  And while they had nowhere near the scientific knowledge we do, a good many modern discoveries rest on foundations they laid.  They also were very sophisticated thinkers, and wildly talented artists.

The second mistake is a confusion of questions.  Enlightenment thinkers became excellent seekers of knowledge and understanding (which is a good thing).  They queried, explored, dissected and discovered how things worked.  They looked at the whole world like a giant clock with gears which they could examine to know the inner workings of everything that was.  And that’s when it happened.  They began to answer every question with these sorts of answers but these sorts of answers were the exact wrong kind for the sorts of questions humanity really needs answers to.  The rationalists answered every question as if it began with “how,” and yet when Man is really searching for an answer, he begins his question with “why.”  

A doctor may be able to tell someone that his loved one died because a blood clot travelled to his heart, but that doesn’t answer the fundamentally human question of why it happened:  why then;  why it “had to”;  why that person;  and so forth — even if the knowledge of how it happened is accurate and useful. 

Before the Enlightenment, there were supersticions which now we would find silly.  But there was a truthfulness to them that rationalism has not been able to match.  And that is that humanity is where the physical reality and the intangible reality (which is just as real) meet and intersect.  Animals do not ponder right and wrong, or agonise over their purpose in life.  But we humans do.  Plants don’t feel happier on a sunny day, or fuller on a rainy one.  But we have deep emotions and intuitions.  And perhaps most of all, despite our tendency not to use it, human beings are the only beings that can and do refuse to sate our every desire because we see a value in self-denial and recognise that wanting something does not make it good or necessary.  Reason is a fantastic thing, about as close to magic as a human being can get on his own.  But even at its heights, it has nothing to add to our lives when we are at the highest peaks and deepest valleys of our very existence.  It may be able to explain why a sunset is beautiful, but it cannot add to its beauty.  It may be able to explain a loss, but it cannot heal the pain.  It’s an important part of our lives, but it was never to be the only part, or even necessarily the most important one.  

Answering “why” questions with “how” answers has left a lot of people feeling rather unfulfilled, as anyone does when they don’t get a real answer to a question, especially one they consider important.  In this respect, rationalism has become decidedly irrational.  It has grounded us so firmly in the scientific method that it has most unscientifically excluded other means of knowing things, such as deep reflection, or revelation.  It has decided that some things are always irrational, and thus irrationally concludes that reason and religion are, for instance, incompatible.  And ironically, it has in fact given rise to some of the least rational responses to our existance.  So dissatisfied are people now with this way that denies everything beyond factual knowledge that many have leapt whole heartedly into the New Age, which offers a broad pool of shallow help, borrowing scientific concepts of energy and magnetism and the like and diving in a puddle they have mistaken for an ocean — but perhaps that will be another post.  The long and short of it is, Reason rightly has a place at the table;  but it is does not sit there alone, nor is it itself the table.  And when we sit down at the table with all the dishes and silverware, and no food, we starve for something more than the tangible.