Who Was Robert A. Heinlein

 Note: I don't do biographies of artists and authors.  The following is from reading his works and reviews of the works not the man.

 There was a time when this question was unnecessary for any person literate in English.  A few of his books: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Starship Troopers were topics of coversation at any gathering of educated people and Stranger was the field guide to a large counter-culture cult. 

 Heinlein is recognized as one of the handful of authors that defined the Science Fiction genre. 

 His Juveniles, aimed at the Boy's Life crowd, were good adventure stories for the teen aged boy who was nominally the protagonist and the reader.   Read a little deeper they were comentaries on the society we might have evolved into from the late '40's and 50's. Many of them have strong, competent female characters, and many of the problems the protagonist has to deal with are caused by corporations.

Paying it Forward Genetically.

From Heinlein: You don't own your genes, they belong to the race. 

I have updated this blog with sundry relevant posts essentially unedited at this point to see if I can kickstart this blog.  Working mothers has always been a hot topic for me even before there was such a thing.  Except for full time working mothers in volunteer women's work.  My mother a prime example.  Her first paying job was a children's librarian at about 60 when I left for college.

Why I Am Not a Feminist. Part n +5: Breedig is Sinful

Why I Am Not a Feminist. Part n +5: Breedig is Sinful

Perhaps I am not up to date on modern feminism and am locked in the mommy wars of the late 20th century, but I have yet to find many feminists of either gender that are not permanently physically and philosophically non-reproductive.  They seem to have traded the benefits of active sexuality and material success for the bonding necessary for parenting. 

Once they have achieved the good 'prick job' and the reproductive drive is satisfied with casual sex they seem to have settled for delegating the breeding to others less successful and therefore less able to provide the necessities for the next generation of leaders in any occupations let alone the 'prick jobs.'  While I do not object to any human breeding, the cream will rise from any population; I still want to scream at a well bonded couple with a successful female partner "Knock her up, humanity needs her genes."  As Heinlein noted, "Nobody owns his genes, he is merely their custodian."  Successful homosexual bonded couples solve the problem by having or adopting children.  I have heard of one lesbian couple who worked out an arrangement with a gay couple to have children naturally with both two dads and two moms.  Similar to a shared custody agreement, although at the time impossible to formalize. 

One of the issues feminists' apparently still have with Heinlein is that all of his intelligent, strong, competent, successful women were breeders.  They actively searched out intelligent, strong, competent, successful men and got pregnant as soon as possible.  Even most of the juveniles had strong female characters that were scheming to be breeders.  One would think feminists would celebrate conservation of the genes of such women, but it seems not to be the case either in fiction or in real life.  

What Would a Gender Equal Society Look Like?

Here is a question, what would a gender equal society look like?

beliefnet 

Almost any Heinlien novel including the Juveniles.  The women characters are almost always more equal in brains and competence than the men.  The only problem feminists have with Heinlein is that the women generally are interested in contributing their more than equal genes to the gene pool.  Nothing unusual, most of the women I know about who are in the feminist trenches being more competent than the average man in their chosen work are interested in contributing their more than equal genes to the gene pool as well.  They generally choose men who have been brought up to be partners rather than "husbands" and who use their male privilege to support their partner. 

Case in point: A well educated, extremely intelligent and broadly competent man (brought up by a dual career couple) did odd jobs throughout his partner's US military supported medical training, required service in a base ER, and residency; fathering and parenting 2 children in the process.  The doctor took over a small metropolitan area family practice, which needed a practice manager as well so that odd job fell to the partner.  Those of you from the yellow boards on this forum will appreciate knowing what gooddogma-sit and Tarakyan have been doing since they got too busy to post here.  Yep.  True story.

Art and Artists

Art and Artists

 From a Facebook thread on a misogynist artist.  Take your pick.

 If you cannot evaluate art without evaluating the artist you don't understand art. If a person can overcome fundamentalist bigotry to create a work of genius, more power to herm. [As to the mention of] "all men are created equal" who are you to even mention the artist owned slaves. He had no choice in his culture. That he could transcend his culture to create a better world where all are equal (even though we are not there yet after 200+ years) speaks volumes about his character.  J'Carlin 

An artist and herm art are two entirely separate and distinct entities in all cultures.  The art may live and be meaningful long after the artist has returned to dust.  While it is fun to argue about which composers of famous religious music were atheists,  the fact remains that the music they composed is sung and revered by believers in any culture affected by the religion depicted in the composition.  Religious art is by and large atrocious, and the artists justifiably forgotton.  But the stories told by that atrocious art are fundamental to religious belief.  The few exceptions were created by artists that the current crop of religious fundagelicals would probably hate. 

A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is a logic in this; he is unbiased - he hates all creative people equally. Lazarus Long Time Enough for Love, 1971, Robert A. Heinlein

There seems to be a current trend among critics to focus on the artist, especially the things about the artist that the critic hates.  Heinlein was a militarist and jingoist, therefore all of his writing is trash.  L Ron Hubbard was a religious charlatan fuggetabout all the Battlefield Earth books.  Jefferson owned and fathered slaves, therefore the Declaration of Independence means nothing.  There is nothing to see here folks.  Move along. 

I have even done it myself:  Abram was a lying, exploitive pimp.  Therefore the God he invented, and the religions that depend on that God are trash.  In my defense I had come to the conclusion that the religions that grew out of the Abrahamic tradition were trash long before I found out Abram was a prick.  I never liked him from the stories that included him, but until recently I had never followed his family and gang of thugs from Ur, to Haram, to Canaan and to Egypt.  They seem to have been a sociopathic bunch.  

[The following is a subsequent edit.  Please note this is a working blog and editing is common before and after comments]

Heinlein was also a misogynist according to any proper feminist.  Note his use of "man" in the quote.  The fact that in the vernacular it was generic for human is lost on the feminists.  The fact that all of his women characters were generally more competent in all respects than the men counts for nothing since they all were interested in procreation. Their choice of competent men to help not only with the sex but with the family as well is lost on the feminists. 

Hubbard was a brilliant student of human wants and needs, in particular their need for a strong community controlled by an unquestioned belief system.  Whether Scientology works depends on whether you ask a believer, an apostate, or a critic.  The fact that Hubbard made more money from Scientology than from writing Science Fiction "at a penny a word" is probably his greatest sin.  

The Republigelical meme that  Jefferson owned and screwed slaves is a bigot’s apologetic for their own hypocrisy.  His actual views about slavery and in particular Sally Hemings is available to any intelligent unbiased student of his life and in particular the society in which he was embedded. The Enlightenment social values were prominent in the patrician South and slavery was part of the picture.  Slaves were generally considered to be valuable chattel and treated well as well treated workers are more productive and useful.  Women slaves were even more valuable chattel as they were also genetic carriers for the slave owner's seed.  Biblical reference intentional.  Red headed stepchildren of slaves were generally favored and successful.  

Politically Jefferson was walking a tightrope.  He needed the political backing of the Southern slave owners to push his egalitarian agenda against the rigid Calvanist religious agenda for the USA.  He couldn't even call himself an atheist, let alone a humanist and survive politically to keep the Black Regiment of New England Calvinists out of the Constitution and God out of the government.  

Confessions of an Eugenicist

Confessions of an Eugenicist

As a staunch evolutionist I am becoming a bit concerned that the human race is breeding itself into mediocrity and that it may not survive the coming human caused changes to the planet that we live on.  The challenges we face will take all of the brain power of the most creative, intelligent and savvy of our children and grandchildren, and it may be that as humans we have given up on breeding them.

I admit to being dismayed that a large portion of the best and brightest in the US have bought into the false dichotomy promoted by the religious right and some feminists that women must either choose the stay at home mom track or a life style without children.  

This observation does not preclude that the stay at home mom may not have valuable genetics, many "successful" men chose accomplished women as their "homemaker" but their accomplishments outside the home are expected to end with the first child. Nonetheless early marriages for women seem to indicate selection criteria other than creativity, intelligence and savvy.  Or perhaps I should say that creativity, intelligence and savvy are incidental to the main selection criteria and society encourages keeping these traits in the closet for the main breeding population.  
   
 The excluded middle is a life style with one or more partners sharing the parenting either as a shared parenting partner or as a stay at home dad. I have seen many scenarios where women have figured out the problem of support for the children that will pass on her superior genes to the race.  From Heinlein: You don't own your genes, they belong to the race.  With effective and safe contraception women now have the choice of how to pay their genetic heritage forward.

 At one extreme was a talented dedicated woman who said to her husband "If you want kids that is fine, I will have them if you will stay home and take care of them."  Another I know of was a lesbian couple who chose gay men for fathers, and shared parenting among the four of them. The "traditionalists" are women dedicated to their careers and their children, who upfront select men who agree that shared parenting is the way to select superior genes from both and get the kids off to a good start.    

In the shared parenting scenario some of the mom tasks can be contracted, the housework, day care, etc. although in many cases traditional homemaker standards fall by the wayside.  A glance into the bedroom of a shared parenting household will appall traditionalists.  The clean laundry may or may not be folded, but is on a table not in a closet or armoire, the bed is unmade, and if the floor is relatively clean it is because the contracted housekeeper has been there recently.  

Shared parenting is not a lifestyle conducive to material excess, advancement to management in either career, as parenting is a full time second job for both parents.  A recent article suggests that the dearth of women in management positions is that they refuse advancement to keep balance in their lives. Accepting management positions for either men or women frequently means sacrificing both achievement in their chosen field of excellence, and balance outside of the office.  A hidden cost of shared parenting for men is that management is not an option both for social reasons in the paternalistic culture of many businesses and the time constraints of parenting even for older children.  

I know a lot about shared parenting from personal experience and the fact that support comes from other shared parenting couples who seek each other out.  Three times I had to use white male MBA privilege to change careers. Once because I lacked a "Corporate wife" at an important promotional social function, once because management meant a change of locale to corporate HQ and moving was not an option for the family, and once for trying to achieve balance between personal and business life.  I find I am not unique even on the male side.  Most men who co-parent jump off the corporate hamster wheel early to find more rewarding use of their skills and abilities.  

There is some evidence that in some parts of the world, Northern Europe in particular that later parenting and spouse choice based on good genetics is encouraged, but in the US and much of the rest of the world intentional breeding for mediocracy is the social standard.  I know little about the big population centers in South Asia, but anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that women are in charge of breeding, which is a good sign.  So maybe there is hope after all for the eugenicists.  Women are naturally eugenicists when given some choice, and contraception gives them that choice.  

Heinlein's Women and Their Pricks.

Heinlein's Women and Their Pricks.

If the universe has any purpose more important than topping the woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I’ve never heard of it. - Lazarus Long - Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein 1973.

Lazarus Long was a prick.  A prick with an uncommon respect for and admiration of competent women for his time, but as Galahad noted "...he has remained canalized by the primitive culture he was brought up in." Not surprising as Heinlein was canalized by the same primitive culture.  Woodie Smith 1912, Heinlein 7/7/7 (1907.)  In Christian America where men were men and women were baby breeders. Feminism was on the not to distant horizon, with some closet feminists trying to break the Kinder, Küche, Kirche track for women.  But until the mid-20th century and reliable contraception a working mother was of necessity rather than choice and "proper" mothers were expected to stay at home until the youngest child was in Kindergarten which effectively eliminated a career in a well paid profession. The options were volunteer work, teaching and service occupations.  

The early feminists tacitly accepted this culture, and advocated non-breeding for professional women.  At worst, a long delayed first and generally only child long after becoming established in a career.  Women who chose to breed in their 20s and still fight the misogyny of most professions were viewed by feminists as outlyers and not "real feminists."  The men who supported their choice of career and parent, were occasionally labled "enablers" of a dysfunctional choice for their wives.  Never mind that they too payed the price of parenting in their careers, less than women due to privilege but nevertheless choices had to be made that limited career opportunities.  But this mind set still lingers in the feminists who despise Heinlein for writing about women who intend to be mothers among other things.  



The problem feminists have with Heinlein women seems to be that all those intelligent, competent women were interested in propagating  their genotype and realized that an intelligent, competent man was a necessary adjunct in that endeavor.  Since Heinlein men are basically pricks one must appeal to the prick to get the genes. 

Make no mistake.  According to the prevailing misogynic social ethos of Heinlein's formative years, especially the military ethos, all his male characters are pricks.  See The Number of Beast where the pricks are going to go gallivanting around the multiverse while the ladies stay in Safe Harbor to have babies. Even late in his career his basic canalization was that men were gallant protectors of their women, but in general he was able to overcome this and substitute support and partnership for gallantry and most of the families had at least equally competent and frequently more competent women at the head.  
 
Heinlein was raised and socialized in a society where sex meant having babies.  (Disclaimer: I was raised in the same social ethos by feminists whose mantra was make damn sure you have sex only with a carefully chosen women who will be a partner in a good family. Recreational sex was not an option.) The difference in his later books was that recreational sex was an option, and the women knew they could manipulate pricks by effective use of recreational sex.  But in accord with Heinlein's early socialization he created few male characters that were immune to such manipulation.  I can only think of one male protagonist that was comfortable with non-manipulative recreational sex as the line marriage structure depended on it.

Gillian as Mary Magdalene

I have been wondering about the source of thinking about Mary Magdalene as the oral history of Q. As I reread Stranger with the idea of reconciling Heinlein's dominant women with the Biblical allegory of Stranger. The role of Jill becomes apparent as the source of my conviction that Mary was Q. Jesus as a virile 30 something male in that society certainly had, if not groupies at least one female around to bounce ideas off of and probably bounce around with that traveled with him. I haven't yet decided if this was intentional in Heinlein, but the parallels are certainly there. Jill is not officially wife, but is certainly "Sharing water" on a regular basis. But most important is there to help Mike formulate his strange ideas for the ordinary people that he will be preaching to.

Veteran only Franchise?

...a moral position without God?:

My problem is that if you were a human living in the time of Starship Troopers, the only way you could vote against an unjust war would be to submit to a national service process where you might be forced to fight in the very war that you judged to be unjust.
eudaimonia,

On page 143 of Starship Troopers in a discussion of a 'History and Moral Philosophy' (mandatory) class in OCS.

Throughout history men have labored to place the sovereign franchise in the hands that would guard it well and use it wisely, for the benefit of all. [snip failed examples]Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage
R.A.Heinlein

Assuming that you were old, wise and responsible enough to vote against an unjust war, you would have volunteered at 18 for a couple of years of national service, maybe or maybe not a war, but difficult and dangerous nevertheless. You are discharged and now you can vote. If at 18 you chose to chase the opposite sex and big bucks no problem, you just don't get a vote on any war just or not. You still can make the big bucks supplying the soldiers, you just can't vote on whether they should be spending the supplies in that way."

An interesting side note is that you can't vote while you are involved in national service either. I do not think Heinlein thought this one through. I would think that citizenship would be bestowed after 2 years anyway. One has paid one's dues and if one is willing to continue as a career person in a service organization I would think the vote input would be even more valuable.

Beliefnet Community > Thread - Is there any issue in modern life than can't be reduced to a moral position without God?

Beliefnet ... moral position without God?: "I specifically noted the above as being about and anti-religion. The rest of his books are not about atheism, any more than a story about fish is about water. The atheism is assumed as a basis for behavior and Heinlein felt no need to examine it. But if you read the stories looking for moral and emotional justification for behavior, it is there if you look for it, you will find nothing that smacks of God or religious beliefs. Lots of self reliance, duty to self and to others, the importance of self development for the betterment of humankind and a total lack of reliance on or praise for God."

Time Enough For Love.

I found it fascinating that while the pivotal character in Time Enough for Love, (1976) is male, Heinlein chose female professionals as some of the main protagonists when a male would have done as well. It seems that in most of his books a female is expected to be competent in something other than being female. Even in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966)where a drastic imbalance in the ratio of women to men would seem to imply that the women would not choose productive activities, when men were eager to provide them with anything they might need, some of the women chose productive occupations.

It seems that if you are going to be a female protagonist in a Heinlein novel you had better be competent at something besides wife and mother, although you don't have to skip wife and mother in the process.


Stranger In a Strange Land (1961) seems to be a bit of an anomaly in this regard. Jill is proactive early but this seems to be a plot issue rather than a role model issue. She is fairly conventional in role in the rest of the book as Mary Magdalene to the preacher/entertainer phase in Mike's Career. The other female characters are also quite conventional although quite capable. I suspect Heinlein felt he was being offensive enough in his main theme without tacking on any feminism issues.

Pay it forward - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pay it forward - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The banker reached into the folds of his gown, pulled out a single credit note. 'But eat first — a full belly steadies the judgment. Do me the honor of accepting this as our welcome to the newcomer.'
His pride said no; his stomach said YES! Don took it and said, 'Uh, thanks! That's awfully kind of you. I'll pay it back, first chance.'
'Instead, pay it forward to some other brother who needs it.'

This is apparently the first use of the specific term in this context. Although the wiki notes that the concept is at least as old as Ben Franklin. The wiki is a nice background piece for the philosophy

Is Pay It Forward a complete moral philosophy?

Perhaps the next Quarterly Panel Discussion.

A recurring theme in Heinlein from Between Planets 1951. where it was first articulated in that form. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 1966 the theme recurs explicitly several times.

As you read Heinlein you notice that Pay It Forward is really the moral philosophy that underlies all his writing.

A slight rework of a Religious moral philosophy "Do unto others, as they have done unto you" provides the same flavor. As we go through life, those in our society beginning of course with parents as the only society for an infant but expanding through the extended family, teachers and mentors in school, to those in the larger society do things for us, some of which we pay for but many of which we there is no way to compensate the source of the benefit.

Heinlein as an example has provided the basis for my personal morality, which seems to come down to a Pay it Forward imperative, and obviously I can't pay him back so all I can do is pay it forward, by helping others discover this alternative moral philosophy. As an interesting sidelight I am also paying forward a class I took at Stanford from Prof. Don Davidson as an undergraduate entitled Philosophy in Literature. He forever changed the way I read fiction. I still read the first time for the good story, but in many cases I will spend a much longer time on a second reading figuring out the philosophy that informs the story.

Notebook of J'Carlin

Wait a half! Cap'n, that car belongs to all of us just like Jake's Milky Way bars, we pooled resources." NOB 219.

Female competence.

Overachieving females seems to be the common thread in most of the Heinlein Novels. This is not to say that the men are incompetent, although as noted earlier the men in The Star Beast are almost cartoons in their conventional male pattern conservative bumbling, but the competence of the men is as a foil against which the women show their capabilities and intelligence. A common theme is a male character assuming incapability in a female only to have the capability shoved down his throat in the next paragraph.

Zeb said, "Huh? Sharpie, there's no time for that; there's something dangerous around! You girls get inside before I--"...
"Chief Pilot, there are no 'girls' here; there are four adult humans." The Number of the Beast, 1980. (NOB) 219.

She goes on with a chain of command explanation, she being on top by being the most competent for command by consensus.

The first two thirds of NOB is an exercise in sorting out competence without regard to gender assumptions, and not incidentally how this sorts out in the context of conventional marital expectations. Both wives get pregnant early in the story which adds the spice of continuation of the species of super competent humans to the mix. It is also an extended lesson on how even pregnant competent females can believably achieve their designated roles in an adventure story.

1980 was early in the recognition of female competence, particularly mothers. A the time a male department head in a University was unable to introduce a professor mom on his staff as his native language had no word for female colleague. NOB was a very early exercise in exploring the implications of a pregnant woman in command of a mixed crew in a series of life threatening situations. As usual Heinlein has worked out a coherent philosophy for women taking a productive and reproductive roles in a pioneering adventure story.

Family life issues.

In his later novels Heinlein explores the issues of family life for a competent, economically productive, female who has the normal female drive for reproduction, nurturing and child care. This may be where Heinlein parts company with conventional feminists who seem to think that babies are incompatible with full participation in life as an economically productive adult. His solutions are generally forms of group marriage, with the men selected, it seems for their willingness to take the "pee watch" that is, to accept their responsibility for the care and nurturing of the children. In Heinlein novels preservation and enhancement of the species through reproduction by the most competent, in Heinlein's case usually females, is a given.

Friday

Friday reread from a perspective of gender philosophy causes cognitive dissonance until you realize that Friday is simply a James Bond type larger than life heroine with all the human foibles that larger than life characters normally display including a tendency to use sex as recreation and manipulation. Put the artificial person Friday in a male case and change the gender of all the other characters and you have a fairly conventional spy thriller, with the hero bedding all the interesting characters of the opposite sex.

Heinlein at least gave a nod to STDs by having Friday immunized and sterilized so that promiscuity which was a designed in characteristic of her artificial personality would not have unwanted results. Heinlein is turning the design aim of female artificial persons as doxies, upside down in Friday's case as she uses her sexuality and sexual favors for manipulation as well as her own gratification. But like a conventional male hero her own sexual gratification is accepted as a integral part of the story line.

Heinlein's Female Troubles - New York Times

Heinlein's Female Troubles - By M. G. LORD - New York Times : "Given Heinlein's apparently feminist ideas, you'd think he would be enshrined as a champion of women's rights. And had he stopped writing with his young-adult novels, he most likely would have been. But the sexual revolution took a toll on him, tainting some of his post-1970 novels with a dated lasciviousness and impairing his ability to create three-dimensional women. In Heinlein's earliest stories - the ones in which lady scientists used their initials - Heinlein eroticized his women. But the prim conventions of 1950's fiction precluded doing this explicitly. By the 1980's, however, he felt licensed to reveal more - or, in the case of Friday, to describe sexual experiences from a woman's point of view. Friday is an 'Artificial Person'; she was conceived in vitro and brought to term in an incubator, which in the book's fictive world is a terrible stigma. To today's AIDS-conscious reader, however, Friday bears a worse stigma: she is a brazen disease vector, recklessly promiscuous, with a bizarre weakness for male engineers. (Heinlein trained as an engineer.) This gives unintended meaning to the idea of Artificial Person; Friday exists only as a mouthpiece. Heinlein has so thoroughly objectified her that her subjectivity falls flat.

Sometimes I wish Heinlein were a less complex writer, that I could cheerlead for his early novels"

As a result of this paragraph I am rereading Friday. So far MG's criticisms seem a little dated and shrill. I find his later novels, while sexually explicit in conformance with the popular fiction of the time, Heinlein was above all a popular fiction writer, still had that unusual emphasis on females as competent fully participatory humans, who just happened to be the half that got pregnant. I think some of the problems feminists have is that Heinlein's women are interested in having babies. Many of his explorations of family structures are setting up child care situations for women who are not dedicated child care providers. In all his families in the later novels, the men are expected to be involved in child rearing coequally with the women. Radical for the time.

Heinlein Bibliography

Probably more useful here than in a Firefox tab.

Wiki's Bibliography

The Feminist Philosopher

Note: I am starting this blog as a working outline for an upcoming panel discussion on the above title.

A little background I grew up in family of strong, independent, intelligent women going back at least three generations. My great Grandmother supported a large family as a writer, composer, and nursery school operator at the end of the 19th century.

The first Heinlein I remember reading was an ugly duckling rework in F&SF that turned into the The Star Beast (1954) which I bought as soon as it came out in paperback in the mid 50's. I resonated with the idea that the main (human) protagonist in the story was a young woman who overcame the prevailing attitude that women were basically ignored as adjuncts to the men in the story. Teen Betty Sorenson was introduced to the story to take charge of a bunch of men, adults and her boyfriend, who were botching an accidental disaster caused by the large bored extraterrestrial Star Beast. The rest of the story is about Betty making fools of the cartoon men in the story to save the world by making friends with the Queen of the powerful extraterrestrials. Much of the story was playing with the conventional role models of males and how 2 strong, competent females can use feminine social and nurturing solutions to solve problems.

In many of his early works the obligatory male protagonists seem to be continually bailed out of trouble by females who are strong, competent, and continually violating the traditional female role model of subservient companion. "Jack" in "Tunnel in the Sky" Maggie in If this goes on... Eldreth in Starman Jones.