I am finally weighing in on the Amazon/Hachette dispute. For those people who may not know, the basic issue is that Amazon is unhappy with the (lack of) money it makes on the sale of Hachette titles, and is refusing to accept pre-orders on Hachette forthcoming titles, while also delaying shipment on existing titles by several weeks. It has also suggested that customers purchase other book instead of the unavailable Hachette title. It is now using the same strategy with Disney movies.

Disclaimers: I am not published by Hachette in the US, although the UK version of Moth and Spark is published by Headline, which is a Hachette imprint. Nevertheless, I signed the Authors United letter which was published in the New York Times.

I do not know what is fair as far as the business end of the dispute goes. Maybe Amazon has a point. Maybe Hachette is in the right. In all likelihood, they are each right on some issues and wrong on others. Nor am I going to get into the Amazon is good for writers or Amazon is terrible for writers dispute (which is often linked with self-publishing issues, and I’m not going there either).

I signed the letter because triangulation is a sleazy thing to do, and that’s what Amazon is doing by punishing authors for its disagreement with Hachette. It’s like taking away your child’s allowance because your co-parent disagrees with you on when bedtime should be. It’s bad when it happens in families, and it’s not supposed to happen in business either. Amazon is in essence taking hostages by reducing sales of Hachette books and trying to use that as leverage to get Hachette to cave. I don’t expect the letter to solve anything either, but I did want to go on the record as against unethical business practices.

What’s really going on, of course, is that the dispute is not about how much of a cut on e-books is fair. It may have started this way, but it has now devolved to a dispute about power. Amazon wants to claim power that is traditionally held by publishing companies; Hachette, unsurprisingly, wants to retain its power.

And once a dispute becomes about a core issue such as power, becomes in effect personal, it becomes a hell of a lot harder to settle. Both sides dig in because something fundamental to their existence is threatened. When humans do this, pride and fear and self-worth all get involved. It becomes hard to give up something even if you “know” the other side is right, because conceding means admitting weakness and losing face. Compromise looks like defeat. Small hills turn into mountain ranges. Amazon and Hachette are not humans, but they are run by humans. Even if Jeff Bezos wakes up at 3 a.m. and tosses and turns about how he’s treating writers, he can’t back down now. That might make him back down the next time, and the next time, and the next . . . .

One of the best ways to solve these issues with human beings is through mediation. Mediation is not arbitration. An arbitrator will decide for one side or the other. It’s win or lose with arbitration. A mediator, on the other hand, will negotiate a settlement that is good for both sides. Often all that one side really wants is to feel heard and be given an apology.

As part of the mediation course I took in law school, I was required to observe an actual mediation. The mediation I observed was a court-ordered mediation regarding a child-support dispute and how much the non-custodial party should be paying to the custodial party. The mediator and I started by listening to one side’s position. It seemed justified and reasonable. Then we switched rooms and heard the other side’s position. It too seemed justified and reasonable. Then we got the two parties into the same room and got them talking to each other. By the end of the two mandatory hours of mediation, it was obvious to both me and the mediator that what was at issue was not how much money was paid by whom to take care of the child; the issue was about each party’s relationship with the child and the deeper kinds of care she needed. Each side was genuinely concerned about the child’s well-being. Each was afraid of losing her to the other party. Both sides cried. The party asking for more money would have been happy with a lot less than asked for if they could have received assurances that they weren’t going to lose either the child’s love or the chance to love her.

Because of a procedural oddity in the case and the stakes the lawyers had in it, the mediation ended after the mandatory period, still unresolved. But in just two hours both sides had moved considerably closer to a settlement, and one probably would have been achieved had the mediation been allowed to continue to its natural conclusion.

To solve this dispute, Amazon and Hachette need to go to mediation. Getting the transactional lawyers together to hammer out a contract has not worked, and pitting litigators at each other is not really going to solve anything now, because the issue isn’t a legal one. It’s a personal, existential issue about the survival of the two companies. The CEOs of the two companies (not their subordinates, not their lawyers) need to be locked together with an experienced mediator for however long it takes for them to be able to hear each other’s fears and figure out a way to make the pie bigger for everyone: publisher, distributor, author, and reader.

I don’t usually write about political or social issues, but the shootings last Friday night won’t leave me alone. I think the worst part of it for me is that I am no longer surprised, shocked, or even outraged by such events; they have become something that happens, like thunderstorms or earthquakes. I have accepted this level of violence and hate in my supposedly civilized country as the norm. Because it sure as hell doesn’t seem like it’s going to change, does it?

My thoughts about the shooting are complicated and messy, so this is not going to be a very cohesive post. I think that’s okay. One of the things that happens after such events is a rush to explain, blame, and prevent, and that rush to restore order or make sense of the senseless gets in the way of experiencing how truly senseless it is. Isla Vista doesn’t make sense, and it shouldn’t. As soon as we start to make sense of it, we lose the horror.

When Fred Phelps died, I thought that for him to have so much hate, he must have been very full of fear, and I imagined how terrible it would be to live a life that afraid, that consumed by vulnerability. Something similar happened with the shooter here. (I am intentionally not using his name, so as to avoid feeding into the culture of celebrity that comes with such violence.) I should state clearly that in no way do I consider either of these men victims. They are accountable for their actions. But I think it is more accurate to characterize them as damaged or broken than as monsters.

A lot of the discussion of the Isla Vista shootings is focusing, as it should, on the shooter’s misogyny and the culture which fosters such misogyny. The thing I’m not seeing much (and I admit I’m kind of avoiding reading stuff) is that this is an example of how much patriarchal culture hurts men as well. Any culture that promotes the superiority of one kind of person over another does damage to the oppressor. By no means is it as much damage as is done to the oppressed – but oppression limits the human capacities for empathy, compassion, listening, and courage. People who oppress are always afraid of being toppled.

Men who say rape victims are at fault because “her dress was so provocative I couldn’t help myself” are men without the courage to face up to their own accountability, men without the courage to admit that their own weakness exists. In a less predatory culture, they would look for compassion instead of transforming shame to violence. In a less predatory culture, people would be there to give them compassion.

Being a successful male in our culture means having sexual prowess. Objectification of women occurs and continues because men feel defined by their virility, so they need ways to promote it. Other measures of success are wealth and power. We need to find ways of helping men feel that they are successful as people without needing to prove themselves by being “alpha males.” The shadow of entitlement is lack of self-worth.

Unfortunately, this message has been said for centuries and not been heard. I am not a Christian, but I do believe that a lot of the things Jesus said matter. “If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? . . . you must love your enemies and do good. . . . Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.” (Luke 6:32, 35, 36.) “If, when you are bringing your gift to the altar you suddenly remember that your brother has a grievance against you, leave your gift where it is before the altar. First go and make peace with your brother, and only then come back and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23-24.) Compassion and peacemaking are as in short supply now as they were 2100 years ago. I think this is why I feel such futility.

The novel I am working on has a villain who is basically a high-functioning sociopath. He does not think in terms of right and wrong, good and evil; he thinks in terms of what serves his purposes. People, male and female both, are there for him to ignore most of the time and use or kill when they get in the way. He is capable of feeling neither guilt nor empathy.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 16 months living in this guy’s head, because I don’t believe that 100% evil people exist (or make interesting villains). I try to see the world from his point of view. I see where he’s been hurt. I see where he is stunted as a person. He’s going to be defeated in the end not because the plot calls for it but because he has blinded himself so much to his own weaknesses that they will catch up to him. Because of this, I think I can imagine a little what was happening to the Isla Vista shooter. To the extent that he had inherent sociopathic tendencies, violence could not be prevented. But he apparently did not know how to feel compassion for other people or for himself. And at least some of that comes from living in a culture that rewards power over compassion.

Next time it won’t be misogyny that fuels the rage. It will be an unemployed MBA graduate mowing down customers in a bank. It will be a person who was turned away at an ER rampaging through a hospital. It will be in a church or a school or a mall or a theater or at a high school football game. The shooter will be young, male, white, and an outsider. The shooter may or may not have been identified by social services as mentally troubled. The shooter will blame others for his actions.

The cost of having a predatory culture is that innocent people die. If young white males see violence as the only way to resolve their loneliness, the culture is failing them too. But until predatory culture fails at the top, it will keep its clawhold.

I’m not going to say what we can do or must do or should do.

But what I wish we could do is practice mercy.

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Last weekend was the SFWA Nebula Awards Weekend, packed with all sorts of interesting stuff. I went to several panels on writing (including one on writing about spies!), was on a panel myself about diversity, sat in on the mass autograph session with Nalo Hopkinson on my left and Linda Nagata on my right, and heard some great readings from Daryl Gregory, Samuel R. Delany, Sofia Samatar, and Nicola Griffith. I met some good people, had a drink mixed by a robot, and all in all had a good time.

But… the event also reminded me of how much I loathe hotels.

~

In the diversity panel we were talking about race, and I was trying to describe to the mostly white audience how easy it is to not even be aware of being a member of a dominant culture. One’s own power is taken for granted. I couldn’t think of a good metaphor for the experience.

I was also grumpy with the hotel because I am a vegetarian (non-vegan) and there was almost nothing for me to eat. At the hotel bar, I was limited to chips and salsa or hummus with veggies. I couldn’t even eat the fries, because they were cooked in duck fat. The hotel restaurant menu included 3 varieties of salads but only one non-meat appetizer and no entrees. The side of creamed spinach was cooked with bacon. I could have had some of the other sides, but I really didn’t feel like paying ten dollars for three asparagus spears or a dollop of potatoes.

The hotel provided lunch for the SFWA board meeting. Cold cuts. The potato salad had a bacon-based dressing. I was stuck with a cheese sandwich and some greens.

Essentially, I as a vegetarian was invisible to the hotel.

I wondered how many meat-eaters would look at the menu and notice the lack of vegetarian dishes. I suspect most wouldn’t. They would be busy looking at what they wanted among the meat dishes. This must, on a very small scale, be what it is like to be a minority. The majority doesn’t even notice the exclusion.

~

There are other things about hotels that I hate: the wastefulness of the small plastic-packaged toiletries, the lack of recycling bins anywhere, the stairs tucked away and a bit creepy to be alone in so that one takes the elevator from 2 to 3 instead of walking, while pious notes in the bathroom says the hotel cares about the environment so please consider reusing your towels. Really now?

But what I most loathe about hotels is the reek of profit. 15 dollars for a continental breakfast. Opulent lobbies (with check-in counters that are probably too high for a person in a wheelchair and an almost entirely minority staff, who probably are not paid fabulously well). Special rewards and perks. Spa service. Don’t worry about money, they say. Consume consume consume! Spend without consideration of the cost! Feel rich! Count the impractical pillows on your bed! Then go home to your ordinary little house and be dissatisfied with your life, or return to your power boardroom and devise new ways to make more money.

The check-in person asked me if I had stayed in the hotel before, and when I said I hadn’t, she launched into her patter. I’m paying for a façade, a stage set. Whenever I come home from a hotel, I feel a little bit unclean. Cheated. They don’t actually give a damn who I am but they try to convince me they do. I don’t like being lied to.

I will concede that I enjoy walking into a clean bathroom every morning. But I’m not sure the emotional exhaustion of spending several days trying to maintain my integrity under the weight of ruthless capitalism is worth it. Instead of relaxing me, hotels grind me down.

Being in a hotel, where nothing is for me, where I am only there to be used, where there is no way to change the system, makes me realize how very difficult it must be to be part of a minority culture. I’m lucky. I can leave the hotel, go back home to a place where there is no meat in the refrigerator and the comfortable Ikea furniture fairly represents my income. Return to the messiness of cats and kid and study with lots of windows and greenery around me. I’m not invisible or unheard in my own house. I imagine that marginalized people feel as though they are in a hotel – all the time. Trapped.

It would be awful.

~

The hotel as a metaphor for cultural oppression won’t work for everyone. No metaphor will. But this realization – which illuminates to me why I never have as much fun at conferences as I hope to – is going to be tremendously useful to my writing. It hits me in an emotional center that will allow me to better write about what it is like to be outside of a culture, powerless. To be lied to on a daily basis.

So that’s my real take-away from the Nebulas. And I’m grateful for it.