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hprotagonist0 writes "Salon has posted an article by sci-fi author, scientist, and essayist David Brin (The two Uplift trilogies, The Transparent Society) with his thoughts about LotR. A technophillic optimist, he warns against waxing too Romantic about feudal, good vs. evil fantasy. Instead, he says, we should look ahead to the future. Thought-provoking."

David Brin, famous for works such as The Transparent Society, as well as his work in science fiction, sent us a recent essay. Entitled "Giordano Bruno After 400 Years: A Pain in the Neck Who Would be Treasured Today", the piece is about Giordano Bruno (No - really?) a forgotten hero of the Renaissance era. Click below to read more.

We live in a publicity-craving era of frenetic fame-seekers. So it can be ironic to realize how some of the most celebrated people of the past somehow slipped into obscurity, even after a lifetime spent earning acclaim. Take Aldous Huxley, for example. The author of Brave new World and many other bold novels -- who also helped usher in the psychedelic era -- managed to time his death so the obituary vanished in a back corner of any newspaper that bothered to mention it at all. He did this by passing away on Nov. 22, 1963, the same day that President John F. Kennedy was shot.

Care to top that? Try this. Even as we slowly work off our hangovers and headaches from those Y2K non-events and anticlimactic "millennium celebrations" -- and while we watch the Internet undergo partial self-destruction at the hands of some of its brightest sons -- I notice on my calendar that we nearly let pass without notice the 400th anniversary of the death (on an execution pyre) of Giordano Bruno.

Giordano who?

Giordano Bruno... only one of the greatest geniuses of the later Renaissance and one spectacularly interesting fellow.

All right, few people know of him today. Tourists blink in puzzlement at his statue, now standing in the Roman square -- the Campo de Fiori -- where the Inquisition incinerated him. But his name wasn't always obscure. With a colorful personality and a flood of unconventional opinions, Bruno was a sensational figure as the 17th century drew to a close -- a prominent Renaissance thinker who, true to that complex era, mixed philosophy, religion, logic and mysticism while preaching a daring worldview that helped set the stage for what we now know as science.

Born near Naples in 1548, Bruno joined the Dominican order of monks at age 18. But soon his restless spirit and critical mind led him to question church teachings, including the notion that the heavens revolved around the Earth, forcing him to flee to Geneva, then France, England and Germany. Bruno's habit of questioning established doctrines brought him into conflict with powerful leaders of both the Catholic and Reformed churches, few of whom were known to tolerate free-thinkers.

Still, with luck and uncanny survival instincts -- and by appealing to the intellectual excitement of the time -- Bruno kept teaching unconventional views in Oxford, Marburg, Wittenberg, Prague, and Frankfurt. Eventually lured back to Italy on a pretext, Bruno was imprisoned in 1592 by the Inquisition, tried as a heretic and burned alive on Feb. 17, 1600.

It can be easy to get carried away over some of Bruno's most prescient views - for instance championing the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus before Galileo did, then going much further to suggest that the twinkling stars in our night sky are actually suns shining on distant planets, possibly harboring other forms of life. He also held that humans might someday acquire almost godlike powers by understanding lightning and other heavenly mysteries. In that event, we might still need religion for moral guidance -- he opined -- but no longer to shape our models of the physical or biological world.

In an era transfixed by the primacy of the human image -- when great minds of the establishment insisted that the Creator must have a navel and a beard -- Bruno completely rejected the anthropocentric universe, believing instead that the Earth and individual humans are ultimately accidental products of a single living world-substance. In this, he presaged many notions of Darwinian biology.

To a modern mind, his call for tolerance and open enquiry seems especially poignant and prophetic.

Still, one does Bruno a disservice by emphasizing only the things he got right. Many of his other writings now seem silly, deliberately provocative, or just perplexingly obscure, such as his doctrine of panpsychism (belief that reality is constituted by the mind), which anticipated the teachings of Gottfried Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza... and may be echoed in today's extropian movement. He used to get into terrific rows with contemporaries over minutiae that would put most of today's philosophy professors into snoring catalepsy. (People cared deeply about such things, once upon a time.) His fascination with magic and the occult would hardly impress scientists in the year 2000, though it might lend him a New Age cult appeal.

So? The essential point -- and the reason I find this long-dead fellow's life worth noting -- is how Bruno looked around a superstitious age with eyes that were essentially modern. Even his flaming egotism and penchant for pushing other peoples' buttons would fit in well, today.

The clergy of his time weren't dummies; they had their own "grand unified theory" of how things worked and how people should behave. If we have made progress since that era, we owe it less to our improved orthodoxies than to the way we've learned to _tap_ the creative energies of those who defy the intellectual status quo, instead of killing them. Slowly, often grudgingly, society discovered that there is something to value in the rancorous, difficult, blasphemous few who gleefully challenge authority. Those who rip away the set pieces of any conservative worldview to reveal disturbing truths that lie beneath and beyond. Such people, though irksome, are also responsible for much progress in the world.

Imagine if Bruno somehow got teleported into our time -- perhaps with other standout intellects like Benjamin Franklin. One could picture him adjusting with relish to an era so enamored of flamboyant eccentrics. In a month, he would be on all the talk shows. In a year, he might have his own.

In fact, why not spin a story about that? Imagine that some future, time-traveling age will share our own fascination with exceptional men and women of the past. Suppose they reach back to grab Bruno out of his pyre at the last moment, if only to repair and then enjoy a colorfully vivid person who surged so far ahead of his time, caroming about the realm of ideas like a joyous crank, shouting at his stupefied contemporaries to _wake up!_

Not all geniuses are saintly or perfect. Some can be simultaneously offensive, delightful, in your face and profound in both their prescient visions and their spectacular errors. They are also terrifically alive.

So very alive that I feel they somehow testify for the rest of us. They help justify us, showing that humanity _must_ have a reason -- beyond mere creation or natural selection -- for being.

david brin,copyright 2/00 1000 words

==

David Brin is a scientist and bestselling novelist. His 1989 thriller Earth foresaw both global warming and the World Wide Web. A movie with Kevin Costner was loosely based on The Postman and Startide Rising is in pre-production at Paramount Pictures. Brin's non-fiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? -- deals with threats to openness and liberty in the new wired-age. His latest novel, Foundation's Triumph, brings to a grand finale Isaac Asimov's famed Foundation Universe.

Thanks to a rather interesting string of e-mails (Thanks Evan!), today's feature writer is none other than David Brin. Brin's bio is after his piece, but suffice it to say he's one of the most interesting writers, IMHO, out there today. This piece, one of his essay's, deals with why George Marshall should be Man of the Century. (Another one of Brin's essays that many of you will remember is his work dealing with Star Wars, Episode One.)

A Quiet Adult: My Candidate for Man of the Century

by David Brin

It seems our favorite preoccupation this year -- even more riveting than worry about the Y2K bug -- is an obsession with making lists. The 100 best movies of all time. Top musicians of the millennium. And so on, as if we'll somehow better grasp the coming era by tidily summing up the past.

Time Magazine is one beneficiary of this mania, as crowds throng to its web site eagerly voting for who will be named "Person of the Century". Of course the matter won't be decided democratically. Time's editors will select whose face fills the first Year 2000 cover. (And pedants will insist that Time can do it all over again in January 2001, when the next century officially begins.)

Naturally, I have an opinion. But I'm not hopeful that Time's editors will pick my candidate, a man whose name many readers may not recognize, even though they owe him a great deal.

#

The poll figures at the Time Magazine web site show, if nothing else, the power of organized write-in campaigns. Heading the list are Yitzhak Rabin, Elvis Presley, and Billy Graham. In slots number six through eight we have Pope John Paul II, Martin Luther King and Gordon B. Hinckley, Chairman of the Mormon Church. People also tend to pick "favorite" figures, hence the prominent appearance in the top 20 of John Lennon, Madonna and Princess Diana.

A large number of rather dour folks seem to have concluded (reluctantly, I hope) that Adolf Hitler was the most significant figure of this century, because he caused the biggest ruckus and slaughtered lots of people. This faction is large enough to win him the number four slot.

Only a handful of the top twenty made a decisively positive difference to world history, instigating profound and universally recognized changes for the better. People like Dr. King, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Henry Ford certainly deserve mention. But in my opinion, none of the flamboyant top candidates altered the course of human civilization as much as one quiet man who was never an entertainer, religious figure, or chief of state.

His name was George Marshall. Let me explain.

#

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, there were fond hopes for a new era of reason. Some of the world's great intellects spoke of a coming time when nations would abandon the strict command hierarchies of the past, such as monarchy or inherited wealth, in favor of more open systems based on merit. A time when colonialism would give way to equality among peoples and superstition would step aside for of free enquiry. While few contemporary politicians shared these aspirations, there were some exceptions. Theodore Roosevelt and later Woodrow Wilson proclaimed their belief in such a vision, calling for a mature, planet-wide civilization based on pragmatism, mutual respect, local self-determination, universal education, democracy, and international cooperation for peace.

As we all know, events did not go as they wished. After the horrific agonies of World War One, the progressive worldview was rejected both in America and abroad, partly due to narrow minded self-interest, but also because humanity was otherwise preoccupied. Like careening drunks, we commenced a long and horrible infatuation with ideologies -- from communism and fascism to nationalist jingoism and every other "ism" imaginable.

Hitler and Stalin were no more than particularly gruesome manifestations of this fever -- a passion for simplistic visions of utopia, shared with almost hysterical ardor by millions who invested their favorite manifestos with the kind of devotion formerly given to kings and religions. These hypnotic formulas were nearly always based on reducing human beings to formulas or paper caricatures, denying our true complexity.

Today, at the end of this tense century, we might look back on it as a pit that Homo sapiens fell into, then somehow managed to climb out of again, chastened and perhaps even a bit wiser. Though ideology still sings its polyphonic siren call to millions, the trend in human affairs seems now to be gradual movement toward tolerance and pragmatism... along with a healthy dose of suspicion toward all authority. Despite a myriad problems, ours is a better, more hopeful world than it was in 1942, when humanity wallowed in violence, justified by frantic polemics.

How did this change come about?

First and above all, the worst ideologues had to be defeated. For this task, Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- who guided the United States from isolation into the crucial alliance against fascism -- relied utterly upon his most trusted military advisor, George Marshall.

Earlier, Marshall had been responsible for training a generation of American officers in completely new doctrines and tactics that modernized our armed forces, preparing them to face the coming struggle with unprecedented agility. Then, as Chief of Staff, Marshall streamlined the chain of command and personally selected the younger leaders who won great victories.

When offered command over the D-Day invasion of Europe, and the glory that would come with it, Marshall passed that honor to Dwight Eisenhower because FDR confided -- "I don't sleep well when you are away." His value as a wartime diplomat, nurturing a fragile alliance among prickly allies, was immeasurable. In gratitude, Winston Churchill called him 'the noblest Roman.'

Marshall's most difficult work commenced after victory was achieved. Dragged out of retirement in order to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, he worked with fellow titans -- Harry Truman and Dean Acheson -- to counter relentless crises from Finland to Greece and helped midwife the birth of Israel.

Of course he was the guiding force behind the "Marshall Plan", which turned the great wealth of the United States into a river for the war-ravaged peoples of Europe and Asia. In fact, if the Plan had been his sole accomplishment, it would be enough to merit placement on the short list for Man of the Century. That one act of resolve -- achieved over fierce political opposition -- reversed the bellicose tradition of 4,000 years by treating vanquished foes with generosity instead of vindictiveness. Among those who have been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, few names were ever so universally acclaimed.

While Marshall's name may be unfamiliar today, the respect that mid-century contemporaries held for him was almost unprecedented. President Harry Truman once said of Marshall that "He was a man you could count on to be truthful in every way, and when you find somebody like that, you have to hang on to them."

David McCullough adds to this image, in his biography of Truman. "Like George Washington, with whom he was often compared, Marshall was a figure of such flawless rectitude and self-command (that) he both inspired awe and made description difficult."

Amid the tempests of an angry era, Marshall (again, in cooperation with others) helped ensure that the United Nations was built into something more capable than the old League of Nations and that the principles Woodrow Wilson pleaded for in 1919 would at last become the official standards of world conduct.

Yes, I'll concede the obvious. Adherence to those standards has been spotty, even by the nations who championed them. Nevertheless, we should find it profoundly historic that there is now a widely accepted world moral code, one that even the worst dictators pay lip service to. Today the words that Woodrow Wilson used so long ago cast long shadows across every negotiating table. They have weight whenever oppressed people rise up to denounce the tyrants that kept them down. Without a world conscience to appeal to, how would Ghandi and Mandella have prevailed? Marshall played an important role in putting ideals high on the international agenda.

Alas, ideals aren't enough. Good words often must team up with harsh practicality. Back in the late forties, ideological fevers still raged, both in Moscow and in a Washington D.C. that seemed awash with hysteria and panic. Surrounded by frantic calls for either isolationism or spasmodic war against the Soviets, George Marshall calmly helped forge the Atlantic Alliance. The strategy of containment that he and Acheson devised -- aiming to neither provoke the Communist Empire, nor allow it to run wild -- was the middle road that guided every U.S.administration for 50 years, notwithstanding episodes of naivete and saber-rattling.

In sharp contrast to the spasmodic impulsiveness that used to drive international affairs, Marshall's global plan was sober, far-seeing, patient, prescient, and it held until the Soviet fever finally broke.

Many mistakes -- and even calamities -- happened along the way. Much that is regrettable was done in the name of America and the West. But you have only to ask the people of Prague, Warsaw, and a hundred other places how they feel about the outcome.

Above all, we did not panic and fry this planet.

Wasn't that enough?

Then consider yet another great service, when the administration headed by Truman and Marshall ordered the United States military to end racial segregation and discrimination in its ranks, becoming the first great American institution to show the way. With the armed forces integrated -- passing millions of young men through a rigorous "school for equality" -- the writing was on the wall. There could be no going back. The rest of society must follow.

George Marshall would be the last to claim sole credit for any of these accomplishments. Invariably courteous and imperturbable under pressure -- ('the imperturbability of a good conscience,' George Kennan called it) -- he was, in David McCullough's words "without a trace of petty vanity or self-serving ambition."

Which is my chief point in nominating him. For it is ultimately demeaning to pick one charismatic individual, elevating him to stand, detached in godlike splendor, above all the other billions who lived and labored in this century, making our age unlike any other for its combination of savagery and progress. The great achievements of this era were realized by teams of bright, cooperative people, not megalomaniacs or magnetic orators. In the long run, leaders are only as effective as the citizens they persuade to follow them.

By appointing and encouraging skilled people, demanding the best from them, and then stepping aside when his pupils won acclaim, George Marshall showed us how to guide a modern, confident civilization, not a fervid rabble. This style explains his effectiveness... and the reason why so few of his countrymen now know his name.

#

As the Twentieth Century wanes, the notion of arranging society according to some contrived dogma has at long last begun to seem tiresome. Many of us now see that all of the radical and zealous prescriptions were part of the same feverish disease, that only time and patience could cure. Even modern saints like Ghandi -- though properly admired for their principles and moral courage -- are seen to have been limited or foolish in their specific political agendas, from pastoral-socialism to libertarian solipsism. Humanity proved more complex than ideologues ever imagined.

Couldn't the "Man of the Century" somehow reflect this hardwon lesson? Naturally, it should be a person who dramatically affected the course of human events. But how about also picking someone who can serve as a role model?

Many of the most popular candidates displayed courage, brilliance, fortitude, compassion and relentless tenacity -- admirable traits of heroes. Indeed, George Marshall exhibited many of those same qualities.

But he also showed a few that are far more rare. Calmness, quiet competence, adaptability, a genius for detecting and promoting talent, an aversion toward flamboyance, plus a tireless willingness to hear the other guy's point of view.

These traits go beyond mere heroism. They are features of a genuine adult.

That word -- adult -- is one the editors of Time Magazine might do well to ponder when they pick a "Man of the Century." If we humans are going to make something of ourselves in the next hundred years, we should not start by picking our role models from among the last century's passionate prima donnas.

How about instead honoring the millions who are best exemplified by George Marshall. Those who spent their lives in quiet service, showing us how to behave as grownups.

-- David Brin
November 1999
http://www.kithrup.com/brin/

David Brin is a scientist and bestselling novelist. His 1989 thriller Earth foresaw both global warming and the World Wide Web. A movie with Kevin Costner was loosely based on The Postman. Startide Rising is in pre-production at Paramount Pictures. His latest novel, Foundation's Triumph, brings to a grand finale Isaac Asimov's famed Foundation Universe.

Brin's non-fiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? -- deals with threats to openness and liberty in the new wired-age. http://www.kithrup.com/brin/

himi writes "After his articles on what was wrong with the Star Wars movies were linked here, David Brin's mailbox got flooded - as per usual. He's posted an interesting reply to most of the points raised in those emails. It's a good read, even if you don't agree with him. "

sethg wrote to us with a little nugget about David Brin, author of 'The Postman'& 'The Uplift War' that he's written for Salon. The first is an interesting discussion of "Star Wars" despots vs. "Star Trek" populists, while the second examines what's wrong (and right) with "The Phantom Menace". Brin has always been one of my favorite authors and he does an /incredible/ job of de-contructing the myth-as well as making you laugh.