Misspelling the Multiverse

In one of the recent MCU installments Wanda Maximoff dreams of her children. In this story dreams are our windows into the Multiverse (for real homies). The thing is, Wanda gets the calculus wrong. She is about to kidnap America Chavez, a unique young woman who has the power to travel across the Multiverse. Dr Strange tries to reason with Wanda claiming the children she seeks “Do not exist.” Wanda replies, “Oh, but they do, in every other universe.”

Wanda Maximoff simulates a subset of the Multiverse in Hex spell form, apparently in all other multiversi her children exist.

This essay is a tip for aspiring scifi and fantasy writers on how to not betray your hard core fans, by “keepin’ it real” so-to-speak.  The Principle of good scifi writing is that you only invoke the miracle exemption when necessary. The MEP = Miracle Exemption Principle. 

In the MCU the miracle exceptions are over-used, but often for comedic purposes, and the fact Marvel Comics have always taken the piss like this is well known to their readers.  (Perhaps not so well known to the typical movie goer, but they are surely catching on!)  So yeah, it is unfair to criticize the MCU for over-doing the miracles, they are a superhero universe after all, so not hard scifi.  Having said that, MCU and DC writers would do well to heed the MEP, why? It is for the same reason Martin Scorsese noted: for drama and tension, the need to generate risk in a film.  Risk in the mind of the audience (are we going to survive watching this with our guts intact and tear glands dry?).   In this respect Scorsese regards the MCU as not film, but more like Disney mass entertainment (which he thinks is a valuable form of art in itself, but is not film).  When was the last time you cried at the end of an MCU film? Or felt the need to head over to a forum to emotionally debate and discuss (I confess I did this once, only with The Matrix, 1999)?

Here we are using the word “film” to mean something special, not just motion pictures, but a sub-category of motion picture that builds tension and drama like classic literature, a distinctive art form to escapist comics.  Let me take Scorsese seriously then, but admit that drama and risk can be inserted into the MCU.  How? By using the MEP selectively for comedy, but relegating the MEP when drama is needed.  The death of Natasha Romanoff was a good suspension of the MEP.

To get the nerd stuff over with, the MCU writers abuse their audience by conceiving Wanda’s children as being real in all other multiversi (uni-verses).  America Chavez’s powers essentially make the entire Multiverse just a weird sort of Universe.  So Wanda cannot really go much wrong. The proper quantum physics multiverse (there is no such thing, it assumes one strange interpretation of QM is the only correct one, which is metaphysics, not science) would have vanishingly few universes where Maximoff has children.  This is because it is harder to have children than not have children, and harder still to have those particular two boys that Wanda dreams about.  Thus in a realistic Multiverse Wanda would find herself searching for an eternity to find those two particular forms of children in her dreams, which we presume Lacan-style is what she desires.  Would she be content with a different two brats? The MCU writers do not risk this! And thus disrespect their audience.  (But ok, witches have spooky search powers.)

In physics this is related to the Multiverse Measure problem.  No one can compute the probability of finding Wanda’s children, it is an uncomputable number (as far as we know), and vanishingly small.  Worse than the proverbial needle in a  haystack.  It is more like trying to isolate one single named electron in an infinite stack of haystacks. (Electrons cannot be named, they are all identical.)  Science nerds are encouraged to read more about the Measure Problem, it is an interesting one, because it is a direct shift of the conventional quantum mechanics Measurement Problem into a putative multiverse where there are no measurement problems, a problem however remains, it just is transformed from a collapse of the wave-function problem to a probability measure problem.  Unfortunately there are few good popular write-ups that discuss both.  (Try here for one entry point: Understanding The Measurement Problem of Quantum Mechanics, but I think you cannot do much worse than read good old Wikipedia: Measurement in Quantum Mechanics.)

Now for the film buff stuff (the real point of this essay).  The reason Wanda is not at much risk in Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is primarily (I think) because she only needs to kidnap Chavez and take her MV hopping powers.  Would it not be superior film if the MCU writers had added a new layer into the story of Wanda, and asked her character to find just those two children she dreamt of?   Finding out at the end of the film they exist but cannot be found would be awesome pathos.  The question then would be how to hint at this ending without giving it away too early.  Now that would be genius screenplay writing.

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Postscript: I paused to write this essay 35 minutes in to watching The Multiverse of Madness film/commercial-entertainment on streaming content. And, well… damn if Dr Strange does not inject a small bit of risk: “What if you reach them? What happens to the other you?  What happens to their mother?” — a really nice bit of linguistic subject shifting, first refer to the children, then to their mother, then back to the children.  To me it was a trifle disappointing, because the whole tension between Dr Strange and Wanda is that Dr Strange made a decision on behalf of the entire universe before, when yielding the Time Stone to Thanos.  The movie does not have the cinematic length to go into the ethics of how that was only a univ-verse, and how Dr Strange’s was a sacrifice for the possible good of all others, sacrificing his own life moreover by getting dusted, whereas Wanda’s toying with the entire Multiverse is a purely selfish act, for the good of no one but herself, and probably not even for her own good (a Lacanian might say).   So when the script-writers pit Dr Strange’s past moral dilemma up against Wanda’s it is about as false a comparison as comparing, (a) you or me giving up a few dollars to help a homeless tramp, versus (b) Goldman Sachs sacrificing their piousness by asking a poor family to take out mortgage bank credit to help the bank industry profit off the interest.

The next hour of The Multiverse of Madness did not threaten much to increase the risks. And (spoiler) Wanda is not really at dramatic risk because it turned out the Dark Hold Scarlet Witch had possessed her (non-dramatic risk) — but I am not really sure because I was able to not watch the ending, to pause and watch the rest some other time when not in need of a bit of cinematic daring.

I recommend such practices. I have developed a habit of not watching the endings of films that have good stories but which I suspect will have shitty endings, my imagination fills in the endings over several nights of dreaming, and day-dreaming.  It is a great way to get more value from a film than watching the writer’s ending, which as David Lynch might say is “TV violence”.  The endings of art works are the death of them, and do violence to the human imagination by forbidding the mind an alternative.  One must work harder to overcome a given TV/film ending, and the residual bitter taste never goes away (you say, “God, if only I had been able to write The Matrix sequels…” — well sure, but then you would have only perpetrated a new violence upon The Matrix fans.)

One of the enduring legacies of the MCU is that, in a way, they do obey the Lynchian directive of great story telling, because they always do leave an unknown imaginable future ahead, the small narrative arc concludes, but there is always a foreshadowing of the next chapter in the MCU.

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License:

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The Real American Splintering and Why Pete Buttigieg is Bad

To be fair, this article is not just about how bad Mayor Pete is, it applies to every advocate of centrist neoliberalism (those who promote Reaganomics and light government and quasi-free markets with just enough regulations to squelch worker rights and prop up moribund corporations, all for proceeds of indebtedness to be funnelled up to the financial class of Wall street rentiers). Neoliberals are found on either political aisle, but both Left wing and Right wing neoliberals tend to congress towards the “centre”. The political Centre is, by the way, where almost no one in ordinary main street life finds themselves, it is a ghost town in the general populace, most centrists are a rare species found in Washington and Manhattan, and Chicago University. There are no votes to be found there, which is why, when neoliberals are pitted against a cadaver like Mitch McConnell or a cad like Trump, the ghoul and the gagger tend to win.

But it is not the new polls showing Buttigieg would lose to Trump (a reversal of prior polls) which I am concerned about in this essay. This essay concerns something more systemic, it concerns gentrification of cities and the cult of “vibrancy”. This is part of what is causing a real divide in western democracies, and it is a particularly pernicious divide. Gentrification of the town of South Bend Indiana is one of the reasons to think Mayor Pete is not a person you want running the worlds most powerful democracy, not unless you are wealthy and privileged.

I am referring as source, and recommending, Thomas Frank’s book of essays Rendezvous with Oblivion, and in particular the chapter “Dead End on Shakin’ Street”. Frank describes the trend in urban planning and local government reformation projects he calls the “vibrancy” industry or cult. This is a key buzzword in the way the media and politicians dress up the anti-democratic process of city and suburb gentrification.

Now, why is this a problem? Well, for that you need a much wider perspective, and Frank’s previous book “Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?“ is the place to go for the answer. There you will find convincing evidence and anecdotes showing that Reagan’s neoliberalism was adopted by Clinton and Obama, and is inherited by Biden, Buttigieg and Harris. The idea is that the USA Democratic Party is no longer the legitimate “party of the Left”, it has abandoned the working class, and has become a party of the well-educated elite, the privileged, the credentialed, the professional class, the “creative class” (as if any class of people own creativity!).  The true story does not end there though, because the other half of Frank’s research and reporting on modern life is that the other party in the USA, the conservative Republicans, are even worse: for they have embraced neoliberalism to an even greater extreme, but dressed it’s austerity in fake populist rhetoric which at once pretends to champion the hard working labourer while in policy actualities repeatedly and viciously turns to stab them in the back (gutting unions, Wall Street bailouts, privatization of what should be universal social services, farm and home foreclosures, deficit hawkery to the extreme) and in public terms has embraced racist and xenophobic dog-whistling. You can read such accounts in Frank’s previous two books “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” and “Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government“. These should be mandatory reading for anyone living in the American midwest or post-industrial farmland, mining country and heartland.

Gentrification is only a small part of the neoliberal project. On it’s own, gentrification is not obviously a bad thing. It becomes horrific only when you see the effects on poor families. They never get to share in the fruits of investment in gentrification, they get thrown out of their apartments when the rents increase, and thanks to AirBnB industries they will never be able to afford to return to the vibrant city.  Anyone who thinks the rich deserve their riches and the poor deserve their plight belongs in the same exact mix as Nazi eugenicists and white supremacy zealots. The credo of such ideologies is based in social darwinism, the idea that you get what you deserve, and society is all the better for rewarding those who work hard and depressing those who do not. The flaw in such ideologies is obvious if you bother to do on-the-street research. Most low income workers expend more energy, suffer more psychological damage, and are placed in greater crippling debt than and wealthy folks who might occasionally find themselves short of paid employment. There is no level playing field here. There are no just deserves when it comes to being in poverty. Poverty is as self-perpetuating as wealth and privilege, and one’s character, one’s virtue, and desire to work hard have little to do with this. If you work ultra-hard and start at the bottom, it is still mostly a lottery to see if you will rise in power, prosperity and privilege in society.

When you gentrify cities you pull in this professional class of high income white collar workers, and they do not like at all to see themselves as working class (defined by working for a boss who has more power than you — most of us are working class, even the creative professionals). This has created a serious divide in America (and other western democracies in the Global North).

The old divide used to between the rich and the poor, or the upper class and the working class, and this divide was what made social democratic parties and traditional “Labour” parties (in the UK, Australia and NZ) so popular and successful, this was the type of party Franklin Delano Roosevelt led, and which led a country out of It’s greatest depression and a world war, followed by the greatest period of middle class prosperity that today only the Chinese middle class can hope to rival (if they can tackle rising corruption and pollution). The working class were always a powerful coalition of the lower class blue collar workers and the middle class white collar workers. But not any more. Thanks to gentrification and the “vibrancy” craze.

Now days most urban professionals view themselves as haughtily above the blue collar working class, and they vote neoliberal. They resent being told they are in the 99%. They aspire (or maybe delusionally believe) they are in the wealthy 1%, residing in their McMansions.

The modern divide in society is a tripartition. There is the class of the privileged, which is split between the well-educated professionals (largely Democratic  Party elite) and the big money oligarchs (the Republican Party elite), with the rest being working class poor who have no genuine power, no representation, but who in desperation are turning to the worst sort of populism — the fake and horrific populism of a proto-fascist like Trump, or to the austerity mad paleoconservatives of the Tea Party.  The main divide is between the educated credentialed elite (whose interests both neoliberal agendas serve) and the rest of us, the workers who may be educated or not, may be credentialed or not, but who reject the cruelty and technocracy of the elites.  We are the ones who currently have no say (in terms of real power) in our supposed “democracies”.  Our voice is like this essay here, reverberating out into the void in all honest political enervating terms.

We desperately need the self-serving sanctimonious professional workers everywhere to wake the f___k up, and join the rest of the working class in global solidarity.

I feel these folks have a hard fall awaiting them. The rise of global oligarchy is only going to throw more middle class families onto the trash heap of relative poverty and economic anxiety if fiscal conservatism and privatization trends continue. This will only be all the more fuel for Trumpism, which will not die when Donald Trump exits the Whitehouse. The next “Trump” will be smarter, shrewder, more destructive, more fascist. Watch out, for example, for the rise of a maniac like Tom Cotton. Or it might be a far-right evangelical like Marco Rubio, resurrected.

I’ve plugged Frank’s book. There is also a good interview on The Majority Report with author Samuel Stein talking about the undemocratic trends in inner city gentrification, you can watch it here:  Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State w/ Samuel Stein – MR Live – 8/13/19

The privileged credentialed elite who suddenly find themselves without a job, because their medical practice got automated, or their legal practice got subsumed by GoogleLaw, or their journalism got overrun by script bots, will cry out, and if their only solace is a centrist wanker neoliberal who is lecturing them to go back to school to get a job in nursing or a growth industry like e-sports gaming, you can bet they will turn about and forget all their niceties and polite latte sipping airs of tolerance and they will turn to the fascist fake populist mountebank who is promising them their jobs back. Folks, those jobs will never come back.  You will soon find yourself sympathizing with the coal miners.  Heck, the coal miners will now be ahead of you, because they learned the lesson earlier, and will have either retrained to be nurses, soulless programmers for mechanical turk-like code farms, or Über drivers, or social workers, or will have found riches in E-sports or some other venality.

If you do not form worker cooperatives, seize ownership of your work place, and vote yourself a pay rise and fewer work hours when you get robots in to ease your workload, then you are going to be replaced by either a robot or a cheaper labourer eventually. It will not be the fault of “the immigrants” (they will be out of a job too), it will be the direct decision of your boss who seeks to extract profit from your labour, and to eventually eject you entirely from the work place. If it is not your workplace, if you do not make it your workplace, you will have no real say in this.

And there is no remedy other than for a true political movement of the Left, of the entire working class, blue collar plus white collar, to come together again in solidarity and proclaim collectively, “Enough with the thievery of oligarchy, we demand a fair wage for a fair days work for all, and an end to obscene executive salaries and rentier capitalism.” Or, if you like shorter sound bites, “Bernie 2020”.