A Comment on Political Activism in Fairy Stories
A reader with the rural yet ovine name of Pastor asks:
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Cannot politics and religion and philosophy be elements of a story without that story being reduced to propaganda?
My comment:
I can speak for no other writer. In my stories political matters can crop up as elements of the plot or character development or mood or theme or background without there being an ulterior desire on my part to persuade my readers to join my political party.
I believe that in THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA your humble author describes quite a number of political and social arrangements quite unlike the free-market federalist Constitutional democratic-republicanism I personally favor, but with no purpose on my part to urge the reader to become a federalist rather than a warrior-aristocrat of the Emergency Eugenic Command, witch, iatrocrat, Simplifier, or drugged subject of the Conscript Mothers of the Natural Order of Man. I dismiss any critic who believes I portrayed these polities unsympathetically. Each was clearly shown to have advantages and drawbacks.
But I am a Christian, hence I regard God as the ultimate floor of reality, the one necessary being from which all contingent beings flow. If I am a faithful Christian, this one ultimate reality influences all lesser realities, and there is no neutral ground. Even something as lighthearted as a fight scene, I must decide if the characters act like pagan warriors or chivalrous knights, that is, with the romance of Christendom. Even a love scene must show love to be romantic, as a Christian sees love, or as situation of shameful weakness, erotic madness, or mutual exploitation, as various pagan and secular worldviews see love.
The Leftist for whom politics is the ultimate floor of being is an idolater, and makes power arrangements his personal little crappy god. It influences everything in his thought and life, and if left unchecked will eventually ruin his writing.
The Leftist who is a faithful Leftist only on their sabbath days, and otherwise ignores the business (and that would be the majority of Leftists) can write a perfectly passable story about space pirates kidnapping space princesses without any hint of politics, to the satisfaction of all involved. He will write his love scenes with romance and his fight scenes with chivalry without noticing or caring about the origin of these Christian cultural artifacts. He will not think of them as particularly Christian, merely as part of the moral atmosphere and cultural background of his society. He will not notice the incongruity between his art and his philosophy.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
