Psychology is a strange thing. I had to reflect on that this week as I wrote material in Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Conventional Forces for both Gerhard Wimmer and Moritz Lehner. What I concluded about the experience came as a surprise. Social media has also been on my mind a lot, and my wife and noticed something — it, too, came as a surprise. But before we talk about those, let’s take a look at the key performance indicators.
Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers
I lost one day to a Real Life Family Event (RLFE), but circumstance helped me make up for it!
I usually don’t write on Mondays, but this past Monday, my wife was out of town. So, I decided to spend the evening writing. Good thing, because I lost Sunday morning due to the culmination of various events. I was still able to write more than fifteen thousand words! It felt good, too.
What felt less good, or I should say, more taxing, was writing Wimmer and Lehner’s chapters. Wimmer is, for all intents and purposes, a concentration camp prisoner. Lehner is an SS officer. Wimmer’s sections challenge me because of what he’s going through. I’m trying to convey that accurately to the reader, and that’s emotionally exhausting for me. I feel bad for the guy!
Lehner, on the other hand, is easier to write. At the same time, writing his parts is more taxing. I read a biography of Goering to help prepare, and I’ve also glanced through Gustave Gilbert’s The Nuremberg Diary. He was “an American psychologist best known for his writings containing observations of high-ranking Nazi leaders during the Nuremberg trials.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it’s too easy to drop into the Nazi mindset. That bothers me. I shouldn’t be able to think so easily like a Nazi, should i?
Writing to Figure Out What I Think
That was a silly thing for me to think. It took writing Lehner to understand that. The reason that surprised me is the same reason I felt surprise that the USA’s leadership is making some of the decisions those Nazis did. To set the context: before starting this effort, I thought that:
- Nazis were bad
- The Treaty of Versailles contributed materially to the rise of Nazism
- Our modern world, with its ready access to information, should prevent Nazism from ever rising again
I don’t want to write a dissertation here, so I’ll be brief. I introduced the Nazis to Epsilon Eridani back in Evolution’s Hand. When I did, I didn’t give them much thought. They were Nazis, which is pretty much self explanatory. They were villains; I didn’t need to do a lot of setup.
But then Louisa Brunner played a big role in The Sword of Sirius. I had to realistically present her world-view. She was loyal to her Nazi leader, Hans Alder, but she was a professional soldier first. It was only near the end of the trilogy that she became a Nazi first and a soldier second.
Now, in Wayland’s Hammer (yeah, I settled on that since I couldn’t use Wayland’s Forge), Lehner is a core character, and he was always a Nazi, through-and-through. Having to get into that mindset forced me to confront a truth.
Yes, Nazis are bad. And they were humans.
Yep. That’s obvious on the level of “the surface of the sun is hot.” But I missed the implication. Namely, that I’m human, too. Under the wrong circumstances, after a series of the wrong decisions, I could end up there. That’s why it’s do damned easy to emulate that mindset.
Active Misinformation
Yes, the treaty was a problem. But it was specifically the conditions the treaty created that created an opportunity. The problem was that Nazi leadership exploited the situation. Similar conditions have been created here in the USA now, too. I won’t go into detail; if you look at what’s happened to the middle class in the USA since the 1970s, you’ll figure it out. But the conditions here were ripe for exploitation.
I knew we hadn’t lost a war; I knew we weren’t destitute (most of us, anyway). So I didn’t see this coming, even though I was at ground zero: I was on a family farm in the late 1970s. See many of them around now? No, you don’t — because there’re mostly gone, along with too many middle class jobs. I didn’t understand what that meant. I think I do now.
Finally, I thought that since Nazis were so obviously evil, and the evidence against them so abundant, I could not see how that movement could rise again. I missed the most obvious and stupidly simple answer to that: disinformation.
For example, we have someone who claims to be a leader in the US government making the bold claim that empathy is a weakness in Western Civilization. An appeal to strength, right? Who can complain about being strong? Except empathy is not a weakness; it’s a form of insight, and insights fuel strength. And guess who also assaulted empathy as a weakness?
You can read this book for free at Archive.org.
There’s a quote going around that’s attributed to Gustave Gilbert. I couldn’t find the source, so I won’t repeat it here. But in The Nuremberg Diary, on the topic of the lack of empathy in Rudolf Höss, Gilbert said:
In all of the discussions Hoess is quite matter-of-fact and apathetic, shows some belated interest in the enormity of his crime, but gives the impression that it never would have occurred to him if somebody hadn’t asked him. There is too much apathy to leave any suggestion of remorse and even the prospect of hanging does not unduly distress him. One gets the general impression of a man who is intellectually normal but with the schizoid apathy, insensitivity and lack of empathy that could hardly be more extreme in a frank psychotic.
I could go on about how our enemies have manipulated social media to confuse many of us, but the bottom line is that I was naive. Writing the character Mortiz Lehner helped me understand that. Writing the character Gerhard Wimmer helped me remember why that was important.
Social Media and Writing
From a business perspective, there are certain social media platforms on which I get zero traction for selling my books. Consequently, I’ve mostly abandoned them. Put another way, I’ve only seen advertising success on Facebook. I’ve throttled back my time on all those platforms, and not only for business reasons. It’s for my mental health.
My wife’s done the same thing. We still check in on the various platforms, but it’s seldom. Much to our surprise, that practice has helped us see see disinformation in a new light.
We’ve all heard about click-baiting. Probably rage-baiting and terms like keyboard warrior, too. They’re nothing new. But what our absence from social media has done is made us more sensitive to a particular type of engagement bait: an out-and-out propaganda attack. Our enemies are attempting to divide us. It might be something seemingly innocent, like, “Hey, remember when we were kids and could ride in the bed of a pickup? We miss those old days!”
On the surface, it seems innocent. But the implication is the “mean old US government” overstepped its boundaries and declared such things illegal. The evil government should be resisted! Of course, the post wants to to conveniently forget the number of kids who died because of riding in the beds of pickups. Remember I said I grew up on a farm? I know what it’s like to ride back there. One big bump? You’re out on your butt. If your butt happens to be on a road, well, you can do the math.
That’s just one example. For me, the key is in limiting my use so that sort of thing sticks out. There’s also the side benefit of not feeding my growing existential despair! The extra time also helps me write.
Progress against Last Week’s Goals
Here’s how I did against last week’s goals:
- Take delivery of the first draft of Dreams of Deucalion Book 3: Bait and Bleed’s cover. Done! I am so looking forward to sharing these covers with you. Miblart did a fantastic job!
- Write Moritz Lehner’s Plot Turn 1 Part I: Done!
- Write Gerhard Wimmer’s Plot Turn 1 Part I: Done! I also finished Plot Turn 1 Part II.
- Write Lehner’s Plot Turn 1 Part II: Done! I also finished Plot Turn 1 Part III. That scene really took off. Pretty unnerving, actually.
- Evaluate the Facebook and Amazon ad campaigns: Ongoing! The sales/page reads are about where I expected. It’s going to be interesting to see how the month ends up.
Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2025 Week 11
Here’s what I hope to finish this week:
- Write Gerhard Wimmer’s Plot Turn 1 Part III
- Write Moritz Lehner’s Pinch Part I
- Write Wimmer’s Plot Turn 1 Part III
- Write Lehner’s Pinch 1 Part II
- Write Owen Payne’s Plot Turn 1
- Evaluate the Facebook and Amazon ad campaigns
- Take final delivery of the Miblart cover and marketing materials for Dreams of Deucalion Book 3: Bait and Bleed
What Do You Think?
Have you ever had to write to figure out what you really thought about something? If so, I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!
