the dispossessed – Cubilone's Dimension

BLOOD SPACE METASTASIS

Last night was the now famous supermoon eclipse. I woke up early to go outside and have a look. Quickly, like a lot of Greeks, my enthusiasm was quenched because of the cloudy sky. These September nights have been warm but cloudy and rainy. Switching from a Mediterranean climate to a tropical one? Check. At least it’s better than turning into Sahara, I suppose.

To my credit, I didn’t immediately give up, either. I sat there for 40 minutes or so, reading and underlining my morning pages from earlier in 2015. Alas, the clouds won that hopeless staring contest. I went back to bed and thought it would be a good idea taking advantage of waking up that early to take a shot at entering a WILD. Instead, I was welcomed with a bout of the worst sleep paralysis I can recall: when my body fell asleep, my consciousness didn’t, and I had hallucinations of a person walking in the apartment, into my room and around my bed. It was pitch black, so the hallucination was consistent, in that I couldn’t see him/her/it, only hear the footsteps. I had to endure this while unable to move any part of my body apart from my eyelids and their contents. All the while, the blood moon was setting behind the cloud cover. During sleep paralysis, no-one can hear you scream. You can’t scream….

Take a deep breath.

It could have been me who took this .gif. It’s a consoling thought.

Nevertheless, for all its photogenic glory, it has to be said that September 28th 2015 will not be remembered for its supermoon eclipse. It will go down as a small footnote in history that on the day NASA announced they found flowing water on Mars there had been a supermoon lunar eclipse less than twelve hours prior. It is a veritable milestone that would have me leaping for joy—if I was any proper kind of science/sci-fi/astronomy nerd to begin with. Instead, all I can think of, perhaps especially after almost half a year of constantly dealing with water as a human right and the current global state of affairs, is how we should be sorting out our shit on Earth first before starting to even think about colonizing other worlds.

Don’t get me wrong, I too get terribly annoyed when other people generally show this kind of flamboyant lack of interest in the vastness of the Universe and the amazing advances in our apparent knowledge of the world. It’s usually such people who shun video games because they’re capitalist toys and refuse to see how they can work wonderfully to promote education or cultural awareness. Similarly, they show open contempt for science fiction as a genre, no matter how eye-opening, poetic or important it might be. They’re not interested to know that Dune, for example, was one of the first books bar none to speak about ecology and sustainability when it was published 50 years ago. No, it’s science fiction. “We have real problems on Earth. Sci-fi is for comfortable middle-class white nerds”, they say, or seem to imply. My very own father told me off when I tried to explain to him the virtues of The Dispossessed. As I was saying, under normal circumstances I get borderline offended by these reactions; at this very moment, I can sort of see where they’re coming from.

What if Arrakis, Dune, Desert Planet is Mars in the distant future?

A lot of the excitement surrounding the discovery of flowing water on Mars has to do with the fantasy of modernity, the wet dream of boundless progress, the Promethean achievement of humankind founding an extraterrestrial colony. While science fiction wouldn’t have you believe it, especially with the likes of Interstellar framing the popular imagination, we’re far, far from thinking about humanity as a separate entity from our home planet. There’s no reason to believe that without Earth we could survive for any length of time. I don’t think we would want to, either. But we’re obviously not taking care of our planet as one would take care of their home. In fact, we couldn’t do much worse if we were actively trying to destroy it.

Colonising Mars as our last hope for survival after we’ve made Earth unfit for humans and broad swaths of other types of life, too, is not something I’m going to support. We’ve been making our bed, we should be honourable enough to sleep in it too—once and for all, if it comes to that. If we can’t live as part of the great ecosystem, we don’t deserve to survive. I would use the cancer analogy, namely that us out-surviving the Earth would be like cancer cells out-surviving the cancer patient who died because of them, but on second thought the analogy wouldn’t be exactly right, as it’s not really possible to kill the Earth the same way a human can die of cancer. Still, if not kill it, we just might see our Earth wither away into a wasteland where it will take many thousands or millions of years for new forms of life to take advantage of the mess we’ll have left behind—if we don’t end up like Venus, that is.

I know you might say that some ideas born out of past science fiction turned out to be possible. After all, “we” (i.e. well-funded Americans) did go to the Moon (don’t take my word for it though) and that was just four years after Dune was released and a single year after 2001: A Space Odyssey did. Back then, people were saying that we’d definitely have at least a couple of bases up there by the turn of the millennium. But here we are, the turn of the millennium’s already fifteen years behind us and I’m not seeing any bright lights up there. So what happened? Could it be that there are some hard limits to our malignant growth? I would argue that yes, and plenty of them, as much as we like to pretend they don’t matter.

Next to all this, I’m secretly hoping for disclosure of long-standing alien contact, that moment that will change everything, like Naomi Klein says, only for real. Maybe in that scenario we will be taught how to build a viable multi-planetary civilization together with them and cross the stars that way. But on our own? Now? We’d probably destroy the colony the moment they were unable to pay off their debts to Earth, or make them privatise their water company, like many people were quick to joke about with today’s discovery on Twitter and Facebook.

Riding Light from Alphonse Swinehart on Vimeo.

But all said and done, I see videos like the one above, where you get to do a to-scale virtual tour of our solar system at the speed of light, and go right back to marvelling at how far we’ve come. Suddenly it hits me how difficult, how amazing it is sending missions to moist rocks or giant chewy-cored balloons so far away from here, redefining what is possible.

What vocabulary would a space-faring civilization like in Stellaris develop to describe the vastness of space?

I want this game very bad. Very very bad.

Η παγίδα της περιεκτικότητας, ή: η αδικία του αν σου αρέσει να πίνεις, καλύτερα να είσαι κοντός, λεπτός και άντρας

Συχνά βρίσκομαι σε παρέες όπου πίνουμε οινοπνευματώδη και τους βλέπω όλους να ζαλίζονται, να ευθυμούν ή να μεθάνε πολύ πιο νωρίς από μένα. Μπορεί να πιουν μια μπύρα και να κάνουν κεφάλι ή -όπως έχω δει με τα ίδια μου τα μάτια- να πίνουν ένα Bacardi Breezer και να γίνονται γκολ. Υπάρχουν και αυτοί οι οποίοι μεθάνε πιο αργά από μένα αλλά νομίζω ότι είμαι γερότερο ποτήρι απ’τους περισσότερους.

Τι συμβαίνει; Υπάρχουν διάφοροι παράγοντες. Σύμφωνα με αυτή τη κλινική αναφορά από το πανεπιστήμιο του Ιλινόι, τα εξής παίζουν: η ταχύτητα κατανάλωσης, η ύπαρξη τροφής στο στομάχι, το βάρος, το ιστορικό κατανάλωσης (ώστε να έχει αναπτυχθεί ανεκτικότητα), το περιβάλλον, οι προσδοκίες, γενική κατάσταση της σωματικής και ψυχολογικής υγείας και το φύλο.

Οι περισσότεροι από αυτούς τους παράγοντες είναι περιστασιακοί και μεταβλητοί. 3 λίτρα μπύρα μπορούν να σε στείλουν στα ουράνια αν είσαι χαρούμενος, φαγωμένος, τα πιεις μέσα σε τρεις ώρες και είσαι με καλή παρέα. Αντίστοιχα, αν κανείς έχει κατάθλιψη, έχει να φάει 3 μέρες και είναι σε ένα reunion παλιών συμμαθητών, ίσως τρία σφηνάκια βότκα ξεροσφύρι μέσα σε μισή ώρα να τον στείλουν σπίτι ή στις τουαλέτες συντομότερα απ’ότι περίμενε.

Σύμφωνοι. Εδώ όμως υπάρχει και ένας μετρήσιμος, σκληρός, επιστημονικός παράγοντας: η περιεκτικότητα αλκοόλ στο αίμα. Αυτή η τιμή είναι το ποσοστό weight/volume (ταξίδι πίσω στη Χημεία Α’ Λυκείου!) του οινοπνεύματος στο αίμα: βγαίνει από πόσα milligram περιέχονται σε 1000ml (ένα λίτρο) αίμα. Π.χ, 0,1g/L αίμα μας κάνει 0,01% (πολύ μικρό ποσοστό).

Σύμφωνα με αυτό το προγραμματάκι που μετράει, σύμφωνα με το βάρος σου, το ύψος σου και το φύλο σου, τον όγκο του αίματος σου, κυλάνε ~5,6 λίτρα αίμα στις φλέβες μου (κάτι λιγότερο από 4 μεγάλα μπουκάλια νερού).

Προοδευτική επίδραση του αλκοόλ στον οργανισμό
Συγκέντρωση Αλκοόλ BAC (%)	Συμπεριφορά	Βλάβες
0.01-0.029	Ο μέσος άνθρωπος φαίνεται φυσιολογικός	Ελαφριές επιπτώσεις που μπορούν να φανούν με ειδικά τεστ
0.03-0.59	Ελαφρά ευφορία Αίσθηση ευεξίας Χαλάρωση Ομιλητικότητα Χαρά Μείωση αναστολών	Μειωμένη εγρήγορση Κρίση Συντονισμός Συγκέντρωση
0.06-0.10	Άμβλυνση αισθημάτων Άρση αναστολών Εξωστρέφεια Μειωμένη σεξουαλική ικανοποίηση	Εξασθένηση αντανακλαστικών Λογική Αντίληψη σε βάθος Περιφερειακή όραση Θάμβος στην όραση
0.11-0.20	Υπερ-έκφραση Συναισθηματικές διακυμάνσεις Θυμός ή λύπη Θορυβώδης	Χρόνος αντίδρασης Αδρός κινητικός έλεγχος Παραπάτημα Ακατάστατος λόγος
0.21-0.29	Λήθαργος Μειωμένη κατανόηση Διαταραχή αισθήσεων	Σοβαρή κινητική δυσλειτουργία Απώλεια συνείδησης Απώλεια μνήμης
0.30-0.39	Σοβαρή κατάθλιψη Απώλεια αισθήσεων Πιθανός θάνατος	Λειτουργία κύστης Αναπνοή Καρδιακοί παλμοί
>0.40	Απώλεια αισθήσεων Θάνατος	Αναπνοή Καρδιακοί παλμοί

Πηγή: Ιατροnet

Progressive effects of alcohol^[1]
BAC (% by vol.)	Behavior	Impairment
0.010–0.029	Average individual appears normal	Subtle effects that can be detected with special tests
0.030–0.059	Mild euphoria Relaxation Joyousness Talkativeness Decreased inhibition	Concentration
0.06–0.09	Blunted feelings Disinhibition Extroversion	Reasoning Depth perception Peripheral vision Glare recovery
0.10–0.19	Over-expression Emotional swings Anger or sadness Boisterousness Decreased libido	Reflexes Reaction time Gross motor control Staggering Slurred speech Temporary erectile dysfunction Possibility of temporary alcohol poisoning
0.20–0.29	Stupor Loss of understanding Impaired sensations Possibility of falling unconscious	Severe motor impairment Loss of consciousness Memory blackout
0.30–0.39	Severe central nervous system depression Unconsciousness Death is possible	Bladder function Breathing Dysequilibrium Heart rate
0.40–0.50	General lack of behavior Unconsciousness	Breathing Heart rate Positional Alcohol Nystagmus
>0.50	High risk of poisoning Possibility of death

Πηγή: Wikipedia (βλέπουμε μια ασυμφωνία στο πόσο αλκοόλ σε σκοτώνει στα σίγουρα μεταξύ των δύο πινάκων — αν και κατα τα άλλα μοιάζουν πολλά να είναι απευθείας μεταφρασείς. Ας μην χρειαστεί να φτάσουμε εκεί για να κάνουμε προσωπικά πειράματα)

Ένα μικρό ποτήρι μπύρα (330ml – 5% αλκοόλ), ένα μικρό ποτήρι κρασί (150ml στα 11%) και ένα σφηνάκι δυνατό ποτό (40ml στα 40%) για κάποιον λόγο που δεν μου κάνει πολύ τυχαίος, έχουν και τα τρία περίπου την ίδια ποσότητα αλκοόλ: ~16,5ml το κρασί και η μπύρα, 16ml το δυνατό ποτό. Σε αυτά τα ~16ml, η μάζα του αλκοόλ είναι 16*0,789=12,624g (γιατί η πυκνότητα του αλκοόλ είναι 0,789) . Εδώ ξεκινάει το πάρτι.

Με ένα ποτό, η περιεκτικότητα του αλκοόλ στα δικά μου 5,6 λίτρα αίμα θα είναι 12,624/5600=0,22: σύμφωνα με τους πίνακες, αρκετό για να με κάνει να ζαλιστώ σημαντικά αν δεν έχω αναπτύξει αντοχές, πίνω γρήγορα και έχω άδειο στομάχι.

Μια κοπέλα η οποία είναι στα 170cm και έχει βάρος 60kg, σύμφωνα με τον παραπάνω υπολογισμό, θα έχει 3,9 λίτρα αίμα. Η ίδια ποσότοτητα αλκοόλ θα είναι για εκείνη ένα 0,32. Σαν να έχω πιει μισό ποτό παραπάνω.

Σημείωση: αυτά τα ποσά μου φαίνονται εξόφθαλμα λάθος. Έχω κάνει τους υπολογισμούς δεκάδες φορές αλλά μου βγαίνουν σωστοί, σύμφωνα πάντα με αυτό το άρθρο της Wikipedia και σύμφωνα πάντα ότι το ποσοστό BAC είναι weight/volume σε αναλογία 1/100 και όχι 1/1000. Aν κανείς μπορεί να εντοπίσει το λάθος και να μου το υποδείξει ή αν δεν υπάρχει λάθος στους υπολογισμούς μου, να μου εξηγήσει υπο ποιες συνθήκες μια μπυρίτσα ΔΕΝ σε φτάνει στο “death is possible” 0,32%, θα ήμουν ευγνώμων. Τώρα βέβαια μου έρχονται κάτι φλασιές από ιστορίες, όπως στο The Dispossessed που άνθρωποι καθόλου συνηθισμένοι στο αλκοόλ κατανάλωναν μικρές ποσότητες οι οποίες ήταν αρκετές για να τους μεθύσουν σε επικίνδυνο βαθμό. Τόσο εν δυνάμει αλκοολικοί είμαστε τάχα όλοι μας, τόσο εθισμένοι στο λιπαντικό της κοινωνίας;

Νιώθω αδικημένος. Επειδή είμαι πιο μεγαλόσωμος πρέπει να πληρώνω περισσότερο για να κάνω κεφάλι. Με τα 3-5€ που δίνω για να πάρω μια μπύρα, η κοπέλα δίπλα μου θα αγοράσει περισσότερο αλκοόλ σε συνάρτηση με το βάρος της (συμφωνούμε ότι όλοι πίνουμε για να νιώσουμε λίγο διαφορετικά, έτσι; Δεν βλέπω και τόσο πολλούς ανθρώπους να παραγγέλνουν χυμό ή μεταλλικό νερό στα μπαρ ή να πίνουν μπύρα για τη γεύση. Υπάρχουν μερικοί που υποστηρίζουν ότι πίνουν «μόνο για τη γεύση» αλλά προσωπικά δεν το πιστεύω καθόλου).

Αυτό συμβαίνει και με το φαγητό: οι μικρόσωμοι χρειάζονται λιγότερο από τους μεγαλόσωμους. Παρα ταύτα, η τιμή του φαγητού είναι σταθερή. Πρέπει να ξοδέψω περισσότερα επειδή χρειάζομαι περισσότερα για να χορτάσω μέσα στη μέρα, κανείς όμως δεν με πληρώνει για αυτή τη βιολογική μου ιδιαιτερότητα. Εντάξει, δυστυχώς οι γυναίκες ακόμα πληρώνονται λιγότερο από τους άντρες σε αρκετά επάγγελματα (τι άλλο να περιμένεις από έναν κόσμο όπου ο περισσότερος πληθυσμός ασπάζεται ξεδιάντροπα σεξιστικές προκαταλήψεις;) οπότε τα πράγματα κατα κάποιον διεστραμένο λόγο εξισορροπούνται, περίπου όπως η κατοχή πυρηνικών όπλων από τις μεγάλες δυνάμεις της Γης έχουν αποτρέψει έναν ακόμη παγκόσμιο πόλεμο. Μια μεγαλόσωμη γυναίκα όμως εξακολουθεί να είναι σε ξεκάθαρα μειονεκτική θέση.

Λοιπόν, θα το προτείνω: τα βιομετρικά μας δεδομένα να χρησιμοποιούνται ώστε να πληρώνουμε τα ποτά και γιατί όχι, τα τρόφιμα μας, ανάλογα με το πόσο αίμα έχουμε ή το πόσο ζυγίσζουμε, όπως το ηλεκτρικό ρεύμα κοστίζει ανάλογα με το πόσο μεγάλο σπίτι έχεις ή ο φόρος πάει με βάση το εισόδημα (και καλά). Α και οι γυναίκες να πληρώνονται το ίδιο με τους άντρες. Ή, γιατί όχι, να καταργηθούν τα χρήματα.

Για έναν κόσμο φιλικότερο στις νταρντάνες και τους ευτραφείς ψηλείς (πληθυντικό τους ψηλέας), για έναν κόσμο όπου οι εύσωμοι θα μπορούν επιτέλους να νιώσουν επιθυμητοί και ίσοι με τους κοκκαλιάρηδες και τους κοντούς!

Review: The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A few light years away from Terra, there is a dual system of a planet and a moon, similar to the one back home. The planet, Urras, is a beautiful planet, rich with natural splendour, floral and faunal variety and the kind of society you’d find on Terra: full of social inequalities and a global culture founded on ownership, reflecting almost nothing of its beauty on the lives of the population.

The moon of that planet is Anarres. It has an atmosphere that paints the sky violet but is little more than a large desert with not too much water and only a few species of plants and animals – the most advanced species apart from humans living there are fish. Humans from Urras have settled Anarres 150 years now, in the space-age equivalent of ’30s Catalonia, after a massive social movement in Urras following an important religious/revolutionary figure by the name of Odo forced the Urrasti to make concessions and agree with the revolutionaries to let them put themselves into exile on the moon, founding an anarchist society in the process.

Since then, the Odonians have led quiet, balanced, happy lives on Anarres. Odo’s theories/preachings supported that people are like cells of a single organism, together with the rest of life forming a greater consciousness, and should act the part, leaving ownership and “egoising” behind and focusing on the welfare of the community. Every man’s or woman’s duty in this society is to do the thing they can do and enjoy doing best, similar to a specialised organic cell, so that they should be productive as well as happy and fulfilled in the process: that was her secret of a balanced and healthy society, in tune with its environment and living space. As a sidenote, I’d like to point out here that the same ideology is represented in 1984: that IngSoc is an organism that consists of tiny cells which are the members of the party. It asks a completey different quesion based on that assumption though: “do you die every time you clip your fingernails, Winston?” It uses this train of thought to argue for the survival of the organism even when its individual members have to be eliminated in order to ensure survival of the greater consciousness; quite the opposite of what Odo says, which is that the welfare of the organism depends on individual welfare as well as the co-operation and solidarity between its cells. In both sides of the argument, egoism is repressed, but for completely different reasons.

To return to Odonianism: to allow themselves to have such a lifestyle, people would have to get rid of such distractions as wasteful culture including ownership, money and egoistical behaviour. The experiment worked and the results we catch a glimpse of in The Dispossessed.

People on Anarres share everything, even their homes and their sexual partners — keeping a partner for yourself is regarded as egoistical and equivalent to having them as your property; it is thus disencouraged (as are all possessive pronouns, even when it comes to family relationships) unless it’s for rearing a child. People are free to lead the lives they please as long as they don’t get in the way of their ammars, that is to say their brothers, doing the same.

The protagonist is a guy named Shevek, a name given to him by a computer as is the tradition in Anarres, which ensures the uniqueness of every individual and the uselessness of last names, in turn weakening family ties in favour of a more collective familial sentiment. The reader follows Shevek throughout his life and the problems he has growing up in this society when he is not as sociable as others. You see, he is a scientist, a theoretical physicist with great potential. But what happens when his society, good, balanced and just as it may be, doesn’t allow him to be the best he can be? For games of power exist in Anarres as well, and the person in charge of him in the institute knows the ropes very well; the difference is that the payoff is influence and fame, not money. What should he do: try leaving Anarres for Urras to make his ideas known and accepted there, making the world better in the process, or stay in his society following the norms that forbid most kinds of communication with the outer world?

The answer is given in the first chapter of the book, whence we follow Shevek in his stay in Urras. The book is chronologically mixed up (fittingly, in my opinion, as Shevek’s main goal in his field is to make a unified theory of simulaneous time) and alternately follows Shevek’s backstory in Anarres and his present life in Urras. Both settings were equally satisfying: looking at a foreign anarchist who’s never known anything else coming in contact with “profiteer” (a horrible insult in Pravic) society, is just as interesting as looking at how people have managed to build a fully working bona fide anarchist society in Anarres and the details of their day-to-day existence on the arid planet.

I have divulged this much of the book’s plot for it is not therein that its charm is hidden. I don’t think I’m blurting out spoilers here. There is little mystery or what we’d recognise as development in the story. The feeling it gave me was much less of a thrilling narrative and much more of a beautiful journey in a foreign land. All the other characters apart from Shevek, even perhaps Shevek himself, were there only to guide us through this utopia. The little things the traveller discovers are what make The Dispossessed a zen-like, heart-warming experience: Shevek’s first encounters with animals; his discussion with a Terran embassador; labour allocation in Anarres; the contrast between the placentas being kept after birth in Anarres as part of their zero-waste culture and the huge shopping malls in Urras, which could make any Anarresti physically ill; sex in Urras and how Shevek finds it so foreign and pretentious, and so on.

Furthermore, and I think this is very important, we get a look at the disadvantages of living in an anarchist society as Shevek experiences them; the necessity of sacrificing certain ambitions in favour of the common good, the morality of the question itself, the tendency of people, no matter what political inclination they have and culture they belong to, to grow conservative over time and forget their very own beliefs, growing rigid and rule-abiding rather than flexible and people-friendly, utilitarian rathen than deontological…

“She [Le Guin] invites, as Tolkien does, a total belief”, reads a snippet of a critic on the back-cover of my copy. If a sci-fi novel can make me believe in the existence of a real anarchist society somewhere in the galaxy and by extension in the real possibility of an anarchist society much closer to home, I can’t but heartliy agree with the above snippet.

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