I had a triple shot medium latte today, which is three times more than my normal daily dosage. A little later on, I drank a large Coca Cola. And then the shaking, which was a fun experience… If they ever want a Parkinson’s simulator at a museum of unnatural health, the triple ought to do the trick. The reason behind the excess caffeine is best distilled into three words, one for each shot: really late night. I managed to snatch about five hours of sleep, waking up at nine, but my sleep cycle was thrown off radically.
I’ve been striving through Book 2, which has a clever double meaning title that will most likely confuse and deter some. In striving to imagine a somewhat distant future for the story, I’ve come across what seems to me an interesting conundrum: every scenario in my mind heavily features Islam, yet I don’t care at all to write about a future in which Islam is the focus and Sharia is the status quo. So I’ve actively rebelled against my natural inclinations (and what seems to me logical conclusions) regarding the political and religious landscape of the world in 50 or 100 years. Oh, I’ve written in snatches of future historical events that involve terrorists, and in my mind, they’re all Islamofascist in nature, but I’ve intentionally left Islamofascism on the backburner. Perhaps that’s a realistic portrayal of things to come, perhaps not. Though as a fiction writer, I’m not sure I want absolute parity. Whether or not Europe still exists as, you know, European, in my future dystopic existence, is a question I blithely ignore, though clearly it has merit for today.
I think the biggest question I am trying to explore in my book is what happens after we presumably solve all our current crises? I assume an awful lot: terrorism still exists, but advances in computer tracking of cellular groups have decreased the efficiency and effectiveness of such networked organizations like Al Quaida, who are thusly placed firmly in the box of murderous has-beens; Islamofascism has been quashed, to be replaced by a kind of Bizarro World version of it, which is basically watered down Christianity without the damnation/salvation thing. It’s gotten me to thinking: why have I chosen this route?
As an author, I want to explore the other side of myself, the side I don’t often let loose in public. So I’ve placed a pseudo-Christian faith (more faux than pseudo, now that I think about it) in my crosshairs, for it’s this kind of faith I would imagine to be more appealing to non-believers than Sharia, but in some ways, more deadly, at least from an eternal standpoint. I suppose what I’m trying to say is, in my current worldview, Islamofascism is a deadly cancer, but part of me realizes, or at least imagines, that what’s even scarier, more vicious, and more troublesome than a jihadistic religion, is one in which there is neither heaven or hell but what we make ourselves, in which God is a mere word upon which can be placed all manner of potential human virtues, and in which we ourselves are the arbiters and adjudicators of morality. In this sense, I see a Christianity in which Christ has lost all meaning.
And that’s infinitely more dangerous than a pile of people who wear suicide vests as business attire.
But I also wonder about my propensity to rail and rant against Islamofascism in my every day life, but then I tackle a much less physically harmful religion in a piece of speculative fiction. It caused me to wonder about writers such as Noam Chomsky or Maureen Dowd, for whom there is no greater danger than the fundamentalist Christianity they see creeping upward in American politics and social agendas. Why do they tackle Christianity over something that is obviously more of a physical and sociological danger to them?
I don’t have an easy answer. I can claim that I at least see the physical dangers Islamofascism presents to human beings. But given an opportunity to explore in fictional depth the future state of political religion and religious politics, have I shirked my duty? For as much as I despise the anti-Christian writer crowd for their biased take on the state of the world, I have to give them credit for being consistent.