Category: Sci-Fi Wisdom

Wisdom of Sci-Fi: The Litany Against Fear

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

Hello, friends!

I may lose some geeky street cred by admitting this, but I don’t have the Litany Against Fear from Dune memorized.  I can get through the first two or three lines, but after that I get the words all muddled up, and then I usually just trail off into silence.  That’s a shame, because I’ve heard that the Litany really does help people cope with extreme fear and anxiety.

Before I talk about the Litany Against Fear and why it apparently does work (at least for some people), I want to acknowledge the fact that fear is not always a bad thing.  There’s a scene from Star Trek: Voyager that’s stuck with me over the years, a scene where Captain Janeway confronts an alien being who is supposed to be the living embodiment of fear.  When speaking to this being, Janeway has this to say:

I’ve known fear.  It’s a very healthy thing, most of the time.  You warn us of danger, remind us of our limits, protect us from carelessness.  I’ve learned to trust fear.

People who are or who claim to be totally fearless are, in my mind, kind of stupid.  There really are things in this world to be afraid of.  But sometimes fear gets out of hand, either inhibiting us in our daily lives or causing us to react to perceived threats in ways that are harmful, both to ourselves and to others.

This brings us to something called the “amygdala hijack.”  The term was coined in 1995 by American psychologist Daniel Goleman, and it refers to the way the amygdala (a part of the brain associated with, among other things, fear) can sometimes override our more logical brain functions.  Once the amygdala perceives a threat (real or otherwise), it can hijack control over the rest of our brains and throw us into an immediate fight/flight/freeze response.

Earlier this year, I spent some time talking to a therapist.  Some family stuff was going on, and I needed help processing it all.  My therapist and I ended up talking a lot about the amygdala hijack, and I learned that it is possible to stop an amygdala hijacking in progress or prevent it from happening in the first place.  It doesn’t take much.  On one occasion, I tried simply saying out loud, “Hey amygdala, cut it out!”  That actually worked.

There are also mindfulness exercises you can try.  Reciting a prayer or mantra may also help.  Or you could try using the Litany Against Fear.  A few people have told me that the Litany really does work, and given what I’ve learned about the amygdala hijack, I can totally see why.  First off, the Litany calls direct attention to what your amygdala is doing: mind-killing.  Taking the time to recite the rest of the Litany then gives your brain the time it needs to recover.  Several sources I’ve looked at mention that it takes about six seconds for the rational part of your brain to reassert itself after an amygdala hijacking.  The Litany is just a bit longer than six seconds.

Maybe it’s finally time I memorized the Litany Against Fear in full.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Check out some of these articles:

“Why Dune’s Litany Against Fear is Good Psychological Advice” from Forbes.com.
“Amygdala Hijack: When Emotion Takes Over” from Healthline.
“Six Seconds to Emotional Intelligence” from Albertus Magnus College Blog.

Wisdom of Star Trek: The Motion Picture

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 23 Comments

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is not exactly the most beloved film in the Star Trek franchise.  It’s slow-paced.  It feels kind of sterile.  The uniforms look just awful.  But I recently found out about the director’s cut, and I have to say it’s a huge improvement.

Granted, the movie still has its problems.  Among other things, those uniforms still look awful.  But at least I felt like I was watching Star Trek and not a bad rip-off of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  And the movie was thought-provoking in the way that Star Trek—and in fact all of science fiction—ought to be.

The movie’s antagonist is a vast, near-unknowable alien intelligence, an intelligence which has come in search of its Creator, and which is threatening to wipe out all life on Earth if the Creator’s identity is not revealed.  Speaking of this vast, alien intelligence, Mr. Spock explains:

It only knows that it needs, Commander.  But like so many of us, it does not know what.

If I may get a little personal for a moment, I’ve been feeling a bit discouraged lately.  Discouraged about what?  My writing journey?  My career?  My personal relationships?  Take your pick!  I just feel like something is missing.  I need something, and frustratingly I don’t even know what that something is.

But after watching the director’s cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I’ve decided that’s okay.  That’s part of life.  We all go through this at some point or another.  This need for something—and the frustration of not even knowing what it is we need—is such a universal experience that even the most alien of alien intelligences may feel the same way sometimes.  I don’t know about you, but I find that to be a comforting thought.

P.S.: Well, it’s a comforting thought until some alien intelligence decides to take out its frustration on us Earthlings.

More Sci-Fi Wisdom from The Light Brigade

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

Last week, I shared some Sci-Fi wisdom from The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley.  I’m madly in love with this book, in case anyone hasn’t noticed. Today, I’d like to share another quote from Light Brigade, something that I found particularly enlightening.

There’s a theory that consciousness itself begins with story.  Stories are how we make sense of the world.  All of us have an internal story that we have told ourselves from the time we were very young.  We constantly revise this story as we get older, honing and sharpening it to a fine point.  Sometimes, when we encounter something in our lives, or do something that does not match up with that story, we may experience a great sense of dissonance. It can feel as if you’ve lost a piece of yourself.  It can feel like an attack on who you are, when the real world doesn’t match your story.

This idea of stories—both the stories that society wants us to believe about ourselves and the stories about ourselves that we make up on our own—this becomes a recurring theme throughout The Light Brigade.  It’s also been a recurring theme in my personal life these last few years.

It strikes me as a very writerly way of looking at the world. But it’s also, I think, a scientist’s way of seeing things.  Much of The Light Brigade, and especially the section quoted above, reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s classic essay “The Relativity of Wrong.”

[…] when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong.  When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

In a similar way, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we stand for, and what our purpose is in this world—these stories are imperfect descriptions of reality.  And that’s okay.  It doesn’t mean these stories are entirely false or that they have no value.  It just means some stories are more accurate then others.

All we can hope for is that our stories are as close to the truth as possible.

Wisdom of Sci-Fi: The Light Brigade

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 19 Comments

This weekend, I finished reading a book called The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley. The story is set in a futuristic war where soldiers are teleported to and from the battlefield.  Except the teleporters don’t always work right. For Private Dietz, this means she keeps getting teleported through space and time, and thus she ends up experiencing the whole war in the wrong order.

I loved this book.  Highly recommended!  There’s a lot of thought-provoking stuff.  Today I’d like to zero in on just one passage among the many that resonated with me:

Did you know those who are mildly depressed see the world more accurately?  Yet they don’t live as long as optimists. Aren’t as successful.  It turns out that being able to perceive actual reality has very little long-term benefits.  It’s those who believe in something larger than themselves of thrive.  We all seem to need a little bit of delusion to function in the world.

Is that too cynical?  Maybe.  Private Dietz is something of a cynical woman.  But that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.

To put it another way, I think pessimism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  People who give up hope tend to stop trying, to stop fighting for anything better.  Maybe optimism is a survival mechanism, almost like an evolutionary advantage that keeps some people going when others would rather give up.

But being an optimist is not so easy.  Sometimes you have to make a conscious choice to believe things will work out okay.  You have to stubbornly insist that there’s still hope despite what seems like pretty compelling evidence to the contrary.

At least that’s been my experience, and (spoiler warning, sort of) somewhere in her personal timeline, maybe Private Dietz learned that lesson as well.

Wisdom of Gattaca: Measuring Human Potential

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

I recently spent a whole month researching and writing about aliens.  For a science fiction writer like me, learning about astrobiology—the scientific search for and eventual study of alien life—is an immensely valuable source of inspiration.  However, there is more to Sci-Fi than aliens and outer space.

I think I always knew this on some level, but the first movie to really make me understand it was Gattaca.  Growing up with Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who, I thought I had a pretty good feel for what science fiction was all about. While Gattaca didn’t totally break the mold (it does have spaceships, after all), it stretched the limits of the genre as I understood it at the time.

It was also a movie that raised a lot of questions and did not always supply the audience with easy answers.  Take this scene where the Mission Director at Gattaca talks about “a new measuring stick” for human potential.

Mission Director: We have to ensure that people are meeting their potential.

Police Detective: And exceeding it?

M.D.: No one exceeds his potential.

P.D.: If he did?

M.D.: It would simply mean that we did not accurately gauge his potential in the first place.

I really don’t want to agree with the Mission Director’s point.  I’m pretty sure, given the overall themes Gattaca explores, that the movie doesn’t want me to agree with him.  And yet it’s really hard to argue against the Mission Director’s logic here.

You can’t really “turn it up to eleven.”  You can’t really “give 110%,” because that’s just not how percentages work.  People may underestimate you.  You may underestimate yourself.  But you do have limits.  You can’t do more than you’re capable of doing, you can’t achieve more than you’re able to achieve… can you?

So I don’t really know how I feel about this exchange of dialogue, except that maybe the Mission Director’s logic started from a faulty premise.  Maybe the very idea of “a new measuring stick” for human potential is wrong.  Maybe human potential isn’t a thing that can be measured at all.  Maybe it’s not a quantifiable thing, at least not in the way the Mission Director presumes that it is.

But I don’t know.  Have you seen this movie?  Do you agree with what the Mission Director is saying?  Do you disagree? Let me know in the comments!

Wisdom of Sci-Fi: For the Benefit of Humanity

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 7 Comments

I’ve wanted to do a Wisdom of Sci-Fi post about Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice trilogy for some time now.  I absolutely love these books, and I’ve been telling every complete stranger I meet to go read them.  These books are full of so much wisdom.

But they’re not easy to quote.  For these Sci-Fi Wisdom posts, I really like to have a nice, pithy quote.  Something that really brings an important idea into focus.  That’s kind of hard to do with the Ancillary series.  I feel like you have to be immersed in the politics and culture and language of that universe before the truly poignant moments start to make sense.

However, I did find a quote in Ancillary Mercy (book three of the series) that does a decent job summing up what this series is all about:

How can there be any benefit at all?  She tells herself that, you know, that all of it is ultimately for the benefit of humanity, that everyone has their place, their part of the plan, and sometimes some individuals just have to suffer for that greater benefit. But it’s easy to tell yourself that, isn’t it, when you’re never the one on the receiving end.

The “she” referred to here is Anaander Mianaai, the ruler of the great and powerful space empire in which these stories are set.  Through the course of the series, we’ve either heard about or witnessed the many things Mianaai and her empire have done for the alleged benefit of humanity.

I guess you could say Mianaai has a “the ends justify the means” philosophy.  It’s easy to fall into that mode of thinking, even when you’re not the ruler of a vast space empire.  Who doesn’t want to fight for the benefit of their family, friends, co-workers, etc….  These are worthy causes.  The benefit of humanity is a worthy cause.  But when you accept that the ends justify the means, when you really start to believe that, then maybe all you’re doing is making excuses.  Maybe you’re just telling yourself you’re doing what’s right, even though you know you’re doing what’s wrong, and you’re desperately trying to ignore the full consequences of your actions.

Something to think about, at least, and to be on guard against in yourself and others.

P.S.: And seriously, if you haven’t read Ancillary Justice, I highly recommend it.  It’s the best book I’ve come across in many, many years.

The Three Body Problem: The Forefront of Physics

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 20 Comments

You may have heard this quote before, or something very much like it.  It comes from nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), who said, “If you can’t explain your physics to a barmaid it is probably not very good physics.”

With that sentiment in mind, today I’d like to share another quote from the recent hit Sci-Fi novel The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the difficulties of modern physics summed up so succinctly anywhere else:

Modern theoretical models have become more and more complex, vague, and uncertain. Experimental verification has become more difficult as well.  This is a sign that the forefront of physics research seems to be hitting a wall.

In other words, modern physics has become so weird and convoluted that hardly anyone (barmaid or otherwise) can understand it.  And that means something is very wrong with modern physics.

Personally, I tend to avoid high-level physics.  Part of the reason is that, as a science fiction writer, I’m more concerned with the everyday experiences my characters have to deal with.  What’s it really like to walk around on Mars?  What sorts of gases might my non-human characters be able to breathe? What could go wrong if some hotshot space pilot tried to fly through the rings of Saturn?

But another part of it is that a lot of high-level theoretical physics stuff—things like string theory, supersymmetry, the multiverse—does sound vague and uncertain.  It feels more like guesswork than science.  Admittedly, the best guesses of a theoretical physicist are built on a firmer foundation that anything I might think up.  But still, for the purposes of science fiction, I feel like I have more leeway to make stuff up with high-level physics than I do with “ordinary” physics like the rocket equation.

I’ve heard physicists sometimes joke that someone—time travelers, aliens, God, the universe itself—is deliberately messing with us.  Maybe that’s why our latest high-tech physics experiments keep producing such confusing results. Maybe that’s why we have to keep resorting to such vague and uncertain theories to explain our discoveries.

And minor spoiler: The Three Body Problem sort of takes that joke and runs with it.  But in all seriousness, the forefront of physics does seem to have hit a wall.  At least that’s my impression, and I loved how Cixin Liu summed that feeling up in just three quick lines.

Wisdom of Sci-Fi: Silence is Often the Best Thing to Say

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

Frank Herbert’s Dune is among my all time favorite books.  It’s had a profound impact on my life and my writing.  I also read the other books Frank Herbert wrote for the Dune series, and I read one of the spinoff novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.  Those other books were… well, they didn’t have the same kind of impact.

Even so, there was one line from one of those other books that really struck a chord with me.  I remember the line well, but I had to do a little digging to figure out which book it came from (it was Chapterhouse: Dune).

Silence is often the best thing to say.

A close friend recently told me some disturbing news.  He’s going through some difficult stuff right now, and he wanted to talk about it.

Now I’ve been going through some difficult stuff myself lately.  It would have been easy to steer the conversation toward my own problems.  It also would have been easy to start handing out trite, simplistic advice.  You know, the kind of advice that sounds wonderful in theory but doesn’t work so well in practice (see just about any self help book).

But no, I remembered those words from Frank Herbert: “Silence is often the best thing to say.”  My friend wasn’t looking for advice, nor was he looking to get into a contest with me over whose problems are worse.  He just needed to talk—to vent, really.  What he needed from me was someone willing to listen.  So I kept my mouth shut and listened.

Wisdom of Sci-Fi: Only One of Each of Us

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

In my last Wisdom of Science Fiction post, I wrote about what it feels like to look up at the stars.  It is, for me at least, a humbling experience, a reminder of how small and insignificant I am in this big, wide universe.  I really liked how that post turned out, but I also felt like that post had missed something.  It felt incomplete.

So today I’d like to share a quote from one of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek, an episode called “Balance of Terror.” The crew of the Enterprise find themselves in a long, drawn-out conflict with a Romulan bird of prey.  While waiting for the Romulans to make their next move, Captain Kirk briefly returns to his quarters and ends up dwelling a little too long on his own fears, self doubts, and insecurities.

Dr. McCoy comes to visit, and he has this to say to the apprehensive captain:

In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets.  And in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this.  And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk.

This little speech may have been addressed to Captain Kirk, but please go ahead and replace your name for his.

I started writing this post before the traumatic events of a few weeks ago, events that left me dwelling a little too long on my own fears, doubts, and insecurities.  I saw one life lost, and another person will likely spend the rest of his life in prison as a result, all because of a stupid and petty disagreement, as I’ve come to understand it—a lot of posturing and imagined self-importance, to borrow some words from Carl Sagan.

So it seems fitting to me to return to regular blogging by finishing this post.  Looking up at the stars can be a humbling experience, but at the same time, paradoxically, it serves as a reminder of how special we all are. In all the universe, there’s only one of you, only one of me… only one of each of us.  We are unique in the truest sense of that word. Value your life.  Value the lives of others.  Don’t let such a unique gift as human life go to waste.

The Wisdom of Samwise, Sagan, and Scott Levine

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 12 Comments

I’m categorizing this as part of my Wisdom of Sci-Fi series, even though The Lord of the Rings is definitely not science fiction.  There’s a part in the third book, as Frodo and Sam are nearing the end of their journey and have ventured deep into enemy territory, when we get this description:

The land seemed full of creaking and cracking shadows and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot.  Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.  The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

I started thinking about this little moment after a recent post by Scott Levine (it’s an inspiring post; please go check it out!).  Scott’s been doing a lot to spread the word about light pollution, and he’s encouraging people in his community to get out, look up, and see the stars.

In his post, Scott alludes to the fact that we live in troubling times.  No, maybe Sauron’s armies aren’t marching against us, pillaging our villages and slaughtering Dwarves, Elves, and Men alike; but still, these are troubling times. But as Scott says, the stars give us a chance to get away from the news and the pessimism and all the other anxieties in our lives, just for a bit.

Personally, I’ve always found stargazing to be a humbling experience.  I have a lot of big dreams, a lot of ambitions, and also a lot of frustrations in my life. And like most people, I feel I have good reason to worry about the current state of the world.  But taking a moment to look up at night helps remind me that I am, ultimately, a very small being, and that this is a very small world.

As Carl Sagan once said in reference to the famous Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth: “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged place in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.”

None of this is to say that the problems in our lives or in the world are unimportant.  Samwise Gamgee didn’t suddenly give up on his quest after seeing that one twinkling star, nor did Mr. Frodo.  But there is something about those little, distant points of light that can help us keep things in perspective.

And if I may stay up on this soapbox for just a bit longer, I think if we were all a bit more humble, and if we could all let go of that posturing and imagined self-importance that Sagan was talking about, I suspect our very small world would be a much happier place, and many of the problems and conflicts we worry about so much would start to go away.  Maybe not all of them, but a lot of them.

P.S.: From now on, whenever I get to that scene in The Lord of the Rings, I’m going to imagine that that one star Sam sees is Arcturus.  Seriously, Scott’s post is really inspiring and thought provoking. Please go check it out.