Colonization

Between my school years and my early twenties I was coming to decisions about what to do with my life – where to apply my effort. I’ve mentioned in interviews how I focused on writing because it could incorporate many of my other interests. All knowledge is useful when your vocation is describing the world and its people. Though that world might be a fantastical or science fictional one, there are truths about the way ecologies work, physics works, science works, how people behave and more besides. Once asked what I thought was one of the most important factors in writing my answer was: the truth. In writing I could eclectically select from my other interests and apply them.

What I haven’t mentioned before is how I put aside one of my interests: art. I was good at drawing and painting and felt that with sufficient effort I could become very good at it. But what is the measure of success in this enterprise? Money is one measure, personal satisfaction is another, but at the time I looked to the art world to see what was lauded and what did I find? I found daubs that looked like the products of snails dipped in variously coloured paints and dropped on a canvas. I found sculptures that looked like interpretations of the world from a five year old. And I found a pile of bricks sitting in the Tate gallery. No, art was not for me, because the systems of measure of excellence were fucked up and had been for a long time.

I remember the feeling of disappointment; of an option closed down by gatekeepers who seemed to have lost all grip on reality. Now I wonder about the many girls and young women, physically competent and excelling at sports, who push themselves to do better and into competition. Are many of them now feeling the same when they look to the future of something they want to turn into a vocation? Do they get that sinking feeling of disappointment seeing the option, the course, and the final goals closed down by a silly ideology that puts them on the track, or in the swimming pool, or whatever physical sport they want to pursue, with a man? Are they reconsidering their futures?

The ideologues of the left talk much about colonization and, as ever, they are accusing those who oppose them (basically anyone who isn’t them) of the sin they commit. While in the process of supposedly ‘decolonizing’, their ideology has colonized the arts and humanities, the media, governments and schools, and it’s now colonizing the sciences and the sport’s world. It’s a virus – spreading from the organs originally infected to destroy others too. It does not assess whether what is destroys is good or bad, and offers no rational replacement for the same. Except, of course, for the wonderful utopia it purports to be ushering in.

4 thoughts on “Colonization

  1. Authoritarians are identifying as “liberal”. Other authoritarians who are most definitely not conserving western liberal culture, respect for human rights and individualistic ideas are allowed to identify as “conservative”. Actual western conservatives are drifting away from their values as they slowly allow the left to either subsume or redefine what “conservative” means; often by being contrarian just to be contrarian. Regardless of the label or what gang colors they’re wearing today, the psychotically authoritarian monoculture marches on parasitically subsuming and consuming all while creating nothing and producing nothing but misery and incompetence it used for recruitment.

  2. Dear Mr Asher

    This is a courtesy e-mail to let you know that one of your titles
    has been reviewed in our summer edition.

    The URL for you social media/blog/whatever is

    http://www.concatenation.org/frev/asher-jack-four.html

    This has a relentless narrative that never runs out of steam

    Regards

    Peter

    SF2 Concatenation
    Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation
    http://www.concatenation.org

    The winner of three SF Eurocon Awards.

    Well over a million pages downloaded in 2021

  3. I think you need to do some research into the effects HRT has on AMAB folks.

    This whole post is one of the weirdest things I’ve read from someone who writes about humans being transformed from fragile mortals into almost god like machine amalgams. But I guess maybe your take on it is “HOW HORRIBLE IT WOULD BE IF WE COULD USE TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE OURSELVES ACCORDING TO OUR DESIRES”, huh? like. Is that Catadapt girl from The Engineer a horrible idea, to you? Yes, it’s fiction obviously but am I to understand that rather than aspirational, all your conceptions of the future as conveyed by your fiction are to be understood as horror?

  4. Neal great meanderings as always, fully agree with what you say. I look at some wonderful wildlife art we have where a leopards fur has been rendered so convincingly that it could be a photo, then as you say the publicised mainstream is a ‘heap of shit’! Also agree that the ideologies of the ‘left’ are becoming all pervasive. What good has communism done to Russia! Keep up the good work, I look forward to your next book. Regards, Pete

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