A writer has one responsibility: to tell her or his story.
I want you to keep that in mind as you read the rest of this post, because it’s going to be important to the rest of what I’m going to say. I want you to keep that mind open, however, as you read this: an editorial on Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing as written by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, author of The Worker Prince. And once that’s read, I want you to keep in mind the following: I’ve always been a very big supporter of Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing and Bryan is a pretty good friend of mine.
But this article is really, really bad.
It didn’t really resonate with me from the beginning, since it felt an awful lot like heroes of unapproachable morality and absolute black and whites were more of Bryan’s preference and he was recommending that this should just be followed suit without actually explaining why beyond his personal opinions. It wasn’t until I reached this particular part that the argument began to grate on me slightly:
In a world where nihilism seems to rule the day, where people question a government’s motives for going to war or whether war is moral, where people complain about people judging others, about inqualities, etc., how can it be wrong to write stories which show a clearer sense of morality? What kind of future are we positing for our children? What kind of heroes are we offering them as role models? Don’t we have a responsibility to do better?
It wasn’t enough to make me mad enough to spray piss, mind you (that’s usually reserved for when I watch old episodes of The Shield), but for reasons I’ll explain below, this notion that we, as writers, have a responsibility to do “better” is pretty much the summated flaw of Bryan’s argument.
That being…what is “better”? Who gets to decide that?
If you ask people this question, you can very rarely do so without Tolkien’s name coming up as an appeal to traditionalism. The idea that because Tolkien is as vast and as sweeping as he is means he was somehow more in the right when he wrote the book is fallacious, as is the idea that morality doesn’t evolve and become even more faceted throughout time. It suggests that we, as a genre, as writers and as readers, still hold the same mindset that Tolkien did and have a moral obligation not to move past it (hence the problem with moral absolutism: people who argue in favor of it tend to think they are the ones possessed of the “right” morality).
It’s absolutely fine to appreciate what Tolkien did. It’s great to still look to him for inspiration. But it’s not okay to tell his story, his morals, his values. Because that’s not your story and you are not fulfilling your sole obligation as a writer. And this is where I start having real problems with the idea of moral absolutism. By agreeing to the idea that there are certain morals that are “true,” we are agreeing that there is only one “true” story and all others are false. Fantasy.
Such a notion is treason to both humanity and to literature.
By suggesting we have only one set of morals, we deny ourselves the ability to see anything else. And when you combine the idea of a “true” set of morals with the appeal to tradition, you end up having a rather ominous notion that the only true tales are those told from the perspective of the same person (usually a white heterosexual male). I don’t at all think that Bryan is suggesting that the experiences of the white heterosexual male is the true experience, mind, but I do think the combination lends itself a little too easily to the idea.
Bryan brings up the topic of sex, specifically the idea of us being “bombarded” by it as an impurity. There is no topic more complex approached with more frustrating simplicity than sex. A colossal part of our life that shapes us all. I suspect (and only suspect) that people who claim it as a moral impurity tend to believe that not so much emphasis on it should be placed. How do we approach it, then, when we put the emphasis on it ourselves? What do we call a man who wants to keep his daughters safe from boys by placing strict curfews on them? What do we call a woman who has multiple partners? What do we call a teenage boy who, pressured by his friends, wants to get laid at any cost?
The answers:
A protective, judicial father with a stern, unwavering devotion to his family.
A sexually promiscuous woman who is obsessed with the carnal act.
The makings of a pretty hilarious high school movie.
Or:
A guy who catches his daughter kissing a boy and beats her senseless for doing so.
A woman who is trying to find someone she can spend the rest of her life with, physically and emotionally.
A date rapist in the making.
And what of the other people? What of the daughter who rebels against her abusive father to protect her other sisters? What of the guy who loved that girl who didn’t want that? What of the teenage boy’s companions? What do they say when we ask them the question? What does that daughter’s sister say? What does that rejected guy’s best friend say? What does that teenage boy’s father say?
It’s not that we choose to embrace moral complexity, it’s that humanity just isn’t that simple.
Our responsibility isn’t to “do better,” and even if it was, you can’t do that just by saying “think of the children.” One person’s story is going to mean a lot more to that girl or that father or that boy based not on a checklist, but whether that story resonates with them. Their experiences are different, their conflicts are different, their troubles are different and we just can’t touch them if we’re all abiding by the same definition of morality.
But our responsibility isn’t to “do better,” as I said. Writers are social pioneers, writers are inciters of change, writers are raisers of awareness, writers are powerful. But very few ever choose to be. Most writers choose to use their talent with words to express their own views. Most writers choose to tell their stories. Most writers choose, instead, to write. That’s how we touch people. That’s how we do better.
We can’t abide by moral checklists. We can’t keep looking to tradition. We can’t not be human. You can say that you can have moral absolutism without cardboard characters, but that won’t matter. Because if you can break down humanity to aspects of black and white, no matter how lively they are, they’ll still be living in a cardboard world.
Lest I be thought of as picking on Bryan, I agree that there’s danger of sliding into a point where we do just use nihilism and appalling acts as a means of shocking people in the name of moral ambiguity. And, to be honest, there are authors who practice it quite frequently and with great skill and I still find it a bit wearing. I like heroes, too. I write about them. I also happen to realize that heroes are human, too. It’s not that I don’t want to be surprised when I see who wins, it’s that I want to know what happened to them to make them heroes.
I want to know about the man who rose from rags to challenge authority and the moral checklist of his day to become the greatest hero of the people and led society to kindness and compassion for all.
Or I want to know how the man who rose from rags out of a need to survive never wanted to challenge authority and did it all for someone else he loved and ultimately sacrificed the war and utopia for someone else.
Or I want to know how he rose from rags to challenge authority and murdered, killed and destroyed in the name of his utopia.
I want to know that story.
Any of them.
So long as it’s your story, not someone else’s.
