The Wisdom Of Henry George

"...Henry reckons Mister Lincoln only wants to get them slaves out of the cotton fields down south so that they can be put to work in mills and factories up north."
-Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016), p. 902.

Sure but the Civil War, changing slaves into free workers, is a social revolution, nevertheless. The next revolution will be workers' control.

"If he dies and someone else gets born next week who's a completely different person what has got no memory of ever being him, in what way is that Henry George?" (p. 915)

Right on.

"...what he wants the most is his whole life again..." (p. 916)

I don't. In the unlikely event that there is a hereafter, I hope that it will be an opportunity for continued learning and growth.

Comics In Prose Fiction

Some characters in novels must read comics. Stieg Larsson tells us how the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo got her nickname, "Wasp," but David Lagercrantz tells us instead that she named herself after the Marvel Comics Wasp.

In Alan Moore's Jerusalem, a boy growing up in Northampton in the 1960s reads about:

Iron Man battling Kala, the Queen of the Underworld;
Spiderman fighting the Vulture;
Superman and Batman meeting when young;
the Skrulls;
the Human Torch;
Starro the Conqueror;
the Baxter Building;
Avengers Mansion;
the Fortress of Solitude.

He reads Strange Tales, Fantasy Masterpieces, Fantastic Four and Thor with "Tales of Asgard" by Jack Kirby.

I remember the Skrulls, Starro and the regular Superman-Batman team-up in World's Finest Comics.

The Illusion Of Free Will

Alma Warren in Jerusalem (London, 2016), like Alan Moore in Voice Of The Fire, reads New Scientist. Of Alma, we read that:

"She's convinced that no-one really needs free will as long as there is a sustainable illusion of the same to stop everyone going mad." (p. 782)

James Blish's character, Dana Lje, had already addressed the issue:

"'...there are never motives behind actions. All actions are fixed. What we call motives evidently are rationalizations by the helpless observing consciousness, which is intelligent enough to smell an event coming - and, since it cannot alter the event, instead cooks up reasons for wanting it to happen...'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), p. 76.

When Dana received messages from the future informing her that she was going to practice an elaborate deception in order to join the Earth intelligence bureau and marry its director, she listed the advantages to herself of this course of action and those advantages became her motives. Thus, she consciously experienced the rationalization that usually occurs unconsciously.

Streets And Cities II

I forgot to mention here that the first of these fictional walkers around Northampton was the author himself in the concluding chapter of the previous novel, Voice Of The Fire. Moore's narratives impart information about urban geography and history which was sadly lacking in my attempt at a fictional urban walk. See here. I have suggested here how this literary technique might be applied to an sf or superhero series.

Does it make sense when some characters enter a hereafter that comprises an unfolding of their familiar urban environment into higher dimensions? It would if the hereafter were our mental projection but why should it be? People arriving in a new continent or on a new planet find the unexpected.

Streets And Cities

In Alan Moore's Jerusalem (London, 2016), named after one city and set in another for sound symbolical reasons, the characters spend a lot of time walking through city streets, thinking. I tried, and failed, to write like this about Lancaster. See here and image.

Works of fiction can present fictional walks around real cities or fictional cities. There are a lot of both kinds of cities in these blogs:

Great Cities
the fabulous city of Ys
James Blish's flying cities
Isaac Asimov's planet-wide city of Trantor
Archopolis
Chicago Integrate
San Francisco Integrate
Metropolis

The United States of Earth DC is a patchwork of cities that do not exist on Earth Real. It is after midnight in Lancaster and I still aim to watch a Smallville dvd. 

Batman

"...an old black-and-white Batman and Robin where the couple drove around in a completely ordinary 1940s car and Robin pushed his cardboard mask up on his forehead while conversing with his costumed pal in public."
-Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016), p. 808.

Here, Alan Moore writes a novel in which a character reminisces about a Batman cinema serial. Moore has also written the Batman for DC Comics, most notably in The Killing Joke. I disagree with the author about this work. See here.

Reality

In Alan Moore's Jerusalem (London, 2016), pp. 805-806, Alma Warren:

walks through Northampton;

thinks about people, issues and memories;

supposes that all the other pedestrians are similarly preoccupied;

reflects that reality is all these "...illusions, memories, anxieties, ideas and speculations, constant in six billion minds." (pp. 805-806)

If, by "reality," we mean everything that exists, then reality is much more than the contents of six billion minds on one planet. If we mean the world as experienced by humanity in general, then she is closer to being correct. However, the world is bigger than our ideas of it. If A and B converse about the world, then three factors are involved:

A's world-view;
B's world-view;
the world.

The third factor is bigger than either or both of the first two and is full of surprises. For example, I would have denied that there could ever be a Jeremy Corbyn movement inside the British Labour Party. And, while the Corbynites must be encouraged to organize and campaign, I think that it remains a dangerous illusion to believe that the Labour Party itself can ever be or become the instrument of social transformation. Indeed, Corbyn is compromised and held back by the Parliamentary Labour Party which has tried to remove him despite his overwhelming endorsement by the membership.

Having identified reality with the contents of six billion minds, i.e., with the sum total of all our world-views, Alma goes on to reflect that:

"The actual events and circumstances of the world are just the sweaty and material tip of this immense and ghostly iceberg..." (p. 806)

However, I believe that material and economic conditions and circumstances determine world-views, not vice versa. Accumulation of a surplus led to class divisions which led to kingship which led to the idea of the divine right of kings. The abstract idea did not precede the social relationship although it was possible for generations of humanity to believe that the idea had come first. The idea was thought to have existed first in the mind of God or in the minds of the founders of civilizations...

Alma reflects that:

"...no individual being can conceivably experience...the entirety..." of reality (p. 806)

- and therefore wonders:

"...just whom or what is reality real to." (p. 806)

But she has answered her question. No individual being can experience all of reality. Reality can be real without being, in its entirety, experientially real to anyone. I argued with a guy who kept trying to say that, if an event was not experienced, then it did not happen, to which I replied "non sequitur." There must have been events before the first conscious being began to exist, as a result of which that being began to exist.