Recently, in an ABC television interview with Christiane Amanpour, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and its current executive chairman, made the observation that the young people graduating from colleges and university today were brighter than their predecessors and noted that he’d worked with some of the brightest minds of his generation.  Given Schmidt’s background in electronics and communications technology, I have no doubts that he has indeed worked with some of the brightest minds in his field.

But what exactly have these brilliant minds, especially at organizations like Google and Facebook, given to society and civilization?  They’ve certainly perfected the technological aspects of introspection, fame-seeking, ego-satisfaction, and instant communications over subjects largely meaningless in the larger scope of the problems facing society. They created a massive search engine that’s most useful for finding the general and trivial… and possibly one of their endeavors, through the Google book settlement, may have undermined the entire literary copyright process. Oh…and they’ve created some jobs and a form of bubble wealth.

I don’t see that these brilliant [and exceedingly well compensated] minds have been terribly successful at stabilizing our financial system.  In fact, in the quest for wealth, their algorithms and quant models have been highly destabilizing and have likely destroyed more companies and wealth than they’ve created.  Nor have the younger generations of bright minds made significant contributions, from what I can tell, to environmental improvement [those were made largely by pre-baby-boomers and early baby-boomers].  And that brilliance has been incredibly successful in revolutionizing the political system, in that the application of technology, money, and data to campaigns has made the results of most elections a foregone conclusion – and resulted in the greatest polarization in American history and potentially the most disastrous political deadlock since the Civil War.

From these observations, I have to ask at just what are these younger college graduates so brilliant?  Developing technologies and systems that make billions of dollars out of the trivial?  Or improving the economic and political and technology infrastructure of the nation?  Or finding new approaches to our health care and energy problems?  Or… [fill in scores of different questions dealing with fundamental improvements to society and the world]?

To my way of thinking, antiquated as it may be, brilliant is as brilliant does, and brilliance in pursuit of the trivial, no matter how remunerative, is merely brilliance in pursuit of mediocrity… and yet, no one seems to point this out.

The other day one of the blog comments cited a preference for even a “fake rugged individualist over some ‘it takes a village’ idiot,” and while I initially appreciated the sentiment, the comment got me to thinking, and the more I thought, the more I decided that the choice represented by the two alternatives was a false representation… and another example of the “either/or” polarization that infects our society today.

Why? By way of a slight digression, I’ll explain.

The recent history and culture of the United States as a European outshoot, short as it is, is strongly colored by the myth of the rugged individualist, the pioneer, the superiority of the individual entrepreneur, and a number of other idealized depictions of individual superiority over the group or the masses or the village.

But let’s look at a few aspects of those myths.  First of which, the majority of the conquest of the “new world” wasn’t accomplished by Europeans and their culture and tools, but by disease.  Second, individuals didn’t create all those superior weapons and tools that led to an industrial and military power by themselves.  The frontiersman with his trusty rifle, his saddle, etc., all the equipment that allowed the “conquest” of the Americas was in fact the product of the village, if you will, and the crafts and skills of those villages.  And many of the great inventions attributed to single individuals, such as the steamboat to Fulton, the steam engine to Watt, the airplane to the Wright brothers, electricity to Edison, and so forth, all could have been – and were in fact – accomplished by others at close to the same time.

The fact is that such developments are an outgrowth of the existing culture, and while it may take a bright individualist to make an advance, first, there must always be more than one such individual for the advance to be successful [more about this in a moment], and the culture must need and/or accept that advance.  Progress and success, if you will, require both the individualists and the culture or village.

In Ptolemaic Egypt, Hero [Heron] built what appears to haven been the first steam engine, as well as employed magnetism in a technical way and built a jet-like pump for fighting fires.  Yet the steam engine vanished from history and did not reappear for more than 1600 years. Similar advances occurred in early China, and, effectively, the culture turned its back on them. Being a genius with proven products wasn’t enough, and it never has been.

The term “rugged individualist” conjures the idea of the man or woman living apart from and independent of society, yet human beings cannot survive above the most primitive level without the support of and the products of society.  Likewise societies tend to languish, stagnate, and eventually collapse if they crush individuality and creativity.

A vital culture needs to support both genius and individuality and cooperative effort.  Without both, it has no future… and yet, today, all too many on the left denigrate the contribution of the outstanding individuals and all too many on the right denigrate the role of a productive and cooperative society.

Early in August, the author Neal Gabler wrote an article in The New York Times, in which he observed that “we are living in an increasingly post-idea world – a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t be instantly monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding.”  He contends that this is largely so because we are drowning in information and that the informational version of Gresham’s Law is at work, in that the mass of trivial information pushes out significant information, and because, within that mass of trivia, there is so much that confirms what we think is so that most people do not look or quest beyond their conformational biases, each of us is actually living in a smaller universe than did previous generations, even though the amount of information is infinitely larger.  He concludes by pointing out that society has historically been changed by “big ideas,” such as those of Einstein, Keynes, Freud, and Darwin, and that while there are currently thinkers who offer equally “large” and provocative ideas, those ideas are being lost in the ocean of trivia… and that society is already suffering and will continue to do so.

I don’t dispute any of Gabler’s points, and, in fact, find his observations and assessments, if anything, far too moderate, but I also believe that he minimizes two other aspects of the problem – the fact that the total mass of information acts as insulation to keep people from having to come to grips with ideas and facts at variance with their beliefs and the equation of “profitable ideas” with great ones.

Because the mass of information is so great, its very volume encompasses a range of correct data, generalizations, beliefs, anecdotes, examples, falsehoods, misrepresentations, and inaccuracies, the sum total of which creates the impression that all points of view and all ideas on a subject have equal value… or that the individual has every right to pick that information with which he or she is comfortable.  In the past, when information channels and sources were much narrower, there was a far higher percentage of “new” ideas and information that challenged existing beliefs reaching the average person.  While, in many cases, even “correct” new information or ideas were initially rejected, out of those challenges and questions emerged new perspectives and often new ways of looking and society and even the universe. Now… the new ideas are still out there… more often than not, adrift in a sea of trivia and indifference.

And… there is indeed one new “great” idea in American society, although it’s actually anything but new, but has rather undergone a re-birth, and that is the thought that no idea is of great worth unless it can be monetized profitably.  This is a central theme of the right wing of American politics today, that the profitability of government and business are paramount. Unhappily, it’s also an idea that is at the core of the left wing as well, even as the liberal left denies it.  But when the liberals make the argument that the wars in the Middle East should be stopped on monetary grounds, they’re essentially agreeing with the conservatives, in that they’re stating that social programs should be monetized, and that their worth lies in the amount of money applied to such programs.  In underlying principles, that’s no different from saying that no product is good unless it’s profitable.

Yet Galileo certainly wasn’t wealthy, nor Copernicus, nor Socrates, nor Freud, nor Einstein, nor Darwin… nor the majority of great thinkers in history.  Very, very few of the great artists were wealthy, either.  Few of the founding fathers of the United States died wealthy, either, for all their great ideas… So why do we spend so much time today idolizing the rich and famous?

Have we forgotten what greatness and great ideas are?  Or have we just reached the point where we as a society either fear them or can comfortably ignore them?

In 1768, the composer Franz Joseph Haydn wrote Lo speziale, an opera that depicted a Jewish apothecary, a work that was later revived by Mahler and Hirschfeld at the end of the nineteenth century as Der Apotheker [The Apothecary].

In the opera, non-Jews rail against the immigrant Jews for taking the jobs of the locals, and blaming them for all the misery that befalls them. Of course, in the 1930s in Germany, Hitler used the same theme, and that led to the Holocaust. Today, in the United States, a similar chorus is once more rising, as it did in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, first against the Germans, then the Irish, and finally the Italians, citing each immigrant group as the source of crime and social woe – just as many people and politicians are doing today with the U.S. Latino population. Of course, the Jews are scarcely blameless, either, historically regarding the Moabites and the Samaritans rather disfavorably

It appears to be an all-too-human trait to blame the “outsider” when matters aren’t going well in a society, and because the United States is facing the highest unemployment since the Great Depression, everyone is looking to blame someone or something else. Despite this chorus against immigrants, recent studies indicate that manufacturing employment in the U.S., the economic area where the job loss over the past two generations has been the greatest, is now and has been relatively stable for the past several years.  Because the U.S. population is growing, of course, the percentage of manufacturing jobs compared to total employment continues to decline, and because jobs have been cut in all areas of the economy manufacturing jobs have been cut as well, but such cuts are different from those resulting from basic structural changes.

The structural reasons for the losses in manufacturing employment are various, ranging from the ability to produce goods more cheaply overseas to a growing reliance on automation and robotics.  Regardless of the reasons, however, those seeking to immigrate to the U.S., either legally or illegally, did not cause the problems.  They were caused by U.S. citizens operating in response to those great American ideals – the profit motive and the bargain.  Those job losses were caused because Americans want the best good at the cheapest price, and all too many goods can be manufactured more cheaply – and more profitably — either through automation or through overseas outsourcing.

Yet all over the country, more and more blame is laid upon the immigrants, both for crimes and lack of jobs.  More than a few studies have shown that crime rates are far more related to poverty than ethnic origin and that crime rates in poor white communities are little different from crime rates in poor areas of other ethnicities. Poverty and crime go together. Yet blaming immigrants continues, despite the fact that in many areas, non-immigrants won’t take the lower-paid and often physically more demanding jobs that immigrants will and the even more important factor that the U.S. economy requires fewer and fewer unskilled and semi-skilled jobs and more and more jobs requiring education or additional training.  The days when a semi-skilled auto worker could make more than $100,000 are vanishing… if not gone, but, rather than recognizing these facts, once again, we have politicians and demagogues seeking to blame those who aren’t the cause, but who only want what everyone else wants.

Over the past few years, especially among book lovers, there’s been a continual undercurrent of dissatisfaction with chain bookstores, and I’d be the first to admit that I have my problems with the big box bookstores.  Certainly, those who’ve followed this site for several years know that I felt from way back that Borders was badly managed, but what I find interesting is that I’ve seen very little on what led to the rise of the mega-bookstore… and it wasn’t just corporate greed. Because I’m an author and because I’ve been to well over a thousand bookstores of all sizes and shapes in almost every state in the United States [excepting five], however, I may have a slightly different perspective from others.

Over the last thirty years especially, the book business has changed dramatically, the most significant factors, in my opinion, being the collapse/centralization of the wholesale distribution network and the closure of more than 2,000 smaller mall stores. The closure of the mall stores resulted from a failure of Borders, in particular, to realize exactly what those stores did, which was to increase the reader base while providing a very modest profit.  That modest profit wasn’t enough for the corporate types, unfortunately, and they thought large destination stores would provide higher margins, which they do [if run well, which Borders was not], but almost everyone who goes to a big chain store is a dedicated buyer… and the closure of the mall stores left entire areas of major cities with no convenient bookstore. With the centralization of the wholesale distribution networks, most of the bookracks in drugstores and elsewhere vanished, as did the local expertise on what sold where. These factors have reduced the number of readers and buyers, as well as led to the growth of the large book chains, including WalMart’s book sections, and, in turn, to aggressive price discounting on best-sellers. That aggressive pricing made the economics unworkable for many small independent booksellers.

Yet for all the woe and hand-wringing by some authors and others, I have very mixed feelings about smaller bookstores.  I love their passion and their love of books, and their dedication to literacy and reading, but… having visited scores of them, one thing stands out in my mind.  Except for a comparative few specialty F&SF stores [less than thirty nationwide in 1990, and less than a handful today], very few of the small independents carried much fantasy and science fiction.  I’m fortunate if I see more than three or four of my titles in any small independent bookstore, and generally there is only one copy of each. This is true of even F&SF top best-sellers as well, if with a few more copies of each title. Now… there are exceptions, such as the small store in my home town, but they’re rare.  On the other hand, the big box chains carry almost all my fantasy titles, and if they didn’t, I’d be looking for a day job or eking it out on what I’ve saved over the years.  The plain fact is that big-box stores have supported genre fiction far more than have the small independents, and that’s especially true for fantasy and science fiction.  What’s also true is that the old dispersed wholesale rack system also supported genre fiction more than the independents did.  So now, the only real outlet for a broad range of genre fiction, especially F&SF, appears to be the big box stores.

Some authors in the field are optimistic that the internet will provide another outlet, besides Amazon and B&N.com, but I have my doubts, simply because most readers don’t want to search author sites and the like – at least not until they know the author and his or her works.

So… like it or not, for now those of us in the F&SF field are pretty much tied to the big box boys and Amazon… because for all of the concern about the independents, much as I like them and their devoted people, the independents alone can’t come close to supporting the field… although that’s something that far too many authors won’t admit publicly.