Science Fiction and Narcissus

I never cared much for science fiction. The name implies something loftier than the genre delivers. It’s heavy on fiction and rather short on science.

But I may have to reassess. Ralph Peters explains how science fiction can be put to good use in “Taliban from Outer Space.”

I was an effective intelligence officer. Why? In junior high, I matured past the French Existentialists and started reading science fiction. The prose was often ragged, but the speculative frameworks offered a useful approach to analysis.

Begin with the view that all opponents are aliens from another cultural planet. Build your assessment from a blank slate. What do the alien collectives desire or fear? How do they perceive the galaxy? What are their unique weaknesses?

Here’s an approach that’s heavy on science and short on fiction. We tend to embrace the fiction that culture is of little consequence, that its influence is confined to superficial customs of dress and mannerisms. We assume cultural differences are like nouns in other languages, merely needing the proper translation, and that all cultures have an equivalent of everything we value. Peters disagrees:

These alien tribes seek to destroy physical objects and systems valued on Planet America. They perceive time differently. They treat other life forms more harshly than we do. Their own lives are shorter, with different arcs. They quite like our weapons, though . . .

The point isn’t to argue that Afghans are inferior beings. It’s just that they’re irreconcilably different beings – more divergent from our behavioral norms than the weirdest crew member of the starship Enterprise.

Peters is a voice crying in the wilderness. The stars are aligned against him. The opposite school of thought now reigns. That school asserts the fiction that international conflicts result merely from misunderstanding.

These misunderstandings arise either because the buffoons formerly in charge needlessly poked our national stick in a foreign hornet’s nest or else their garbled speech was misperceived by the buffoons on the other side.

So naturally, once the misunderstanding is erased, the conflict will dissolve and we will return to our natural state of pursuing mutually beneficial goals.

This approach to international relations requires execution by the most enlightened and eloquent among us – the degreed and pedigreed. It obviously lies beyond the reach of the one-dimensional militant mind and those with garbled speech and twangy accents.

Only those in love with the sound of their own voice, the true narcissists who have an unshakeable faith in their powers of persuasion, could believe in this fiction and ignore its disastrous historical record.