Peggy Noonan notes in her weekend column that President Obama’s SOTU address worked in a name for the new program — in the tradition of the “New Deal” or Kennedy’s “New Frontier. For the Obama administration, it is the New Foundation. She is skeptical:
They’ve chosen a phrase for the president’s program. They call it the “New Foundation.” They sneaked it in rather tentatively, probably not sure it would take off. It won’t. Such labels work when they clearly capture something that is already clear. “The New Deal” captured FDR’s historic shift to an increased governmental presence in individual American lives. It was a new deal. “The New Frontier”—we are a young and vibrant nation still, and adventures await us in space and elsewhere. It was a mood, not a program, but a mood well captured.
“The New Foundation” is solid and workmanlike, but it attempts to put form and order to a governing philosophy that is still too herky-jerky to be summed up.
I am equally skeptical, but my interest here is a different one. We here at Volokh Conspiracy tend to be well aware of the Foundation novels — only too aware, possibly. But I recall reading here or somewhere that Paul Krugman and several other leading economic and legal academic-policymakers had come to their professions wanting to be ... Hari Seldon. Deeply attracted to the idea of a mathematically-based psychohistory. Certainly includes me. I am the son of a physical scientist; I spent my early years playing with dangerous chemicals in my father’s lab. But from the time I read the Foundation books, I was lost to physical sciences — I wanted the vision of a science of mass behavior.
This is not a liberal versus conservative thing although, it bears noting, nothing about Asimov’s Foundation vision suggested anything very liberal or libertarian. It was all galactic social engineering. At least so far as I could ever tell. However, it does lead me to wonder whether any obscure, deeply buried, unconscious Jungian archtype of the Foundation entered somehow into this New Foundation framing. This is an administration of academics, in love with design and social engineering, not so much the execution and carry-through part. Yeah, yeah, the social engineering is supposed to be all nudgy and liberal paternalism, not coercive and bad. It’s an administration of New Class elites especially in love with its peculiar combination of disinterested technocracy married to the most aggressive ideological remake of, well, the foundations of American society in a long time, and almost entirely from the top down. But in that case, who is the Hari Seldon of this New Foundation? (Alert commenter says, more important ... “Who is the Mule?”)
Well, at least the SOTU catchphrase was not ... Second Foundation! Although, for all we know, it might have started out, before the rewrite as ... Foundation and Empire. I don’t have one of those clever poll apps, so let me just ask our readers:
If you had to pick a catch phrase among the following that most accurately described the administration and its program, which of the following would it be?
- New Foundation,
- Foundation,
- Foundation and Empire,
- Second Foundation
- Or some other Foundation series related theme. Please try to keep ideas for names within the Foundation universe, or anyway no broader than Asimov era “classic sci fi.”
Update: An alert commenter observes that although the term New Foundation appeared in 2009 in the administration’s issue framing, sufficient to spark a NYT article on it, the term doesn’t seem to actually appear in SOTU, at least on my quick scan. Let me know in the comments if I’m wrong Presumably this is why Noonan phrases it slightly carefully, so as to not say that it did. Anyway, my basic point is the same.
Update 2: Thanks, Glenn, for the Instalanche! It’s a pretty long list of folks in important positions, at least of a certain generation, who are Foundation fans — and some, including my daughter, of the next. Glenn says ... “I’ll note that both Newt Gingrich and Osama bin Laden are supposed to be Foundation fans, for whatever that’s worth . . . .”
CDU says:
Noonan seems to miss the detail that FDR’s “New Deal” was meant to hearken back to his cousin Teddy Roosevelt’s “Square Deal”.
Quote
January 29, 2010, 11:55 pmCrunchy Frog says:
If Washington is Trantor, where is Land’s End?
Who is the Mule?
Quote
January 29, 2010, 11:59 pmMark Field says:
I’m skeptical of any “Jungian archetype” period, to say nothing of one particular to the Foundation novels. I read them growing up, but most of the top people in the Administration are younger than I am. I wonder if the novels remained popular with them.
BTW, I’d consider Hari Seldon et al. as good role models for Cass Sunstein (or rather, for Cass Sunstein as he apparently sees himself); Seldon wasn’t “coercive and bad”. But I’d like some evidence that Sunstein read the books or knows about them, rather than relying on “archetypes”.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:03 amShelby says:
Nightfall.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:10 amstombs says:
Obama would be the Mule — thwarting the logical course of history through his personal powers of persuasion. (“... establish a distorted new Empire upheld by his personal power only.”)
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:17 amTK75 says:
“If you had to pick a catch phrase among the following that most accurately described the administration and its program”
e) steaming pile of feces
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:42 amvic says:
“No Foundation” !!
in truth, logic, economics, or common sense?
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:44 amKen Mitchell says:
Please recall that at the end of the series, Hari Seldon is revealed to be a telepathically controlled puppet of the Robot Daneel Olivaw.
The only appropriate “Foundation”-esque title for the Obama administration would be “Shattered Foundation”.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:56 amDarrell Pittman says:
The New Cesspool
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:15 amredc1c4 says:
“Fawlty Towers” because that’s all that could be built on such a foundation.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:23 amSoronel Haetir says:
Crumbling Foundation
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:33 amMark N. says:
Asimov’s politics are a much-debated issue, but on the technocratic front, I found somewhat convincing Roger Luckhurst’s argument that the messianic technocracy found in Asimov, especially his earlier stuff (1950s and earlier), was due more to the influence of John W. Campbell than to Asimov’s own views (see pp. 69–72 in this book).
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:35 amjoe says:
that just makes me think (ironically enough, though not intended) of Chicago punk band, Naked Raygun, and their song The Mule. So, Mark Field, as a 12 year old kid when I heard that album in 1988 and screamed “It’s Foundation!”, I’m sure that the kids in the White House may have read those books.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:37 amaeolius says:
May I suggest another meaning of the term “Foundation”
As detailed at http://www.womanaroundtown.com/traveling-around/victorias-real-secret-the-victorians-knew-underwear/
It is the numerous underclothes a Victorian lady would wear under her dress. Including the all important corset.
Does this suggest a move to the Right by the Obamians?
Back to traditional family values?
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:41 ams says:
From mildly anecdotal evidence, the types on nerds who become economists and the like have an extremely high chance of having read the Foundation novels at some point in their lives. I know Krugman took a huge amount of flak for saying that he idolized Hari Seldon, but it’s certainly tough to miss the parallels between psychohistory and modern economic theory, and I know at least a few economists of varied political leanings who would say the same thing in private at least.
The real question is if anyone has ever written a paper comparing “psychohistory” with Asimov’s contemporary economic theory. My impression is that economics at the time was quite further away from there than it is today, it always seemed to me that Asimov did a good job predicting the increasing mathematization of social sciences.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:53 amMatthew Tievsky says:
I’d never noticed, but apparently Obama used the phrase “new foundation” in his inaugural speech, and subsequently used the phrase enough times to generate a New York Times article documenting the trend in a May 2009 article. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/us/politics/16foundation.html
Don’t know when/why he temporarily stopped using the phrase.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:55 amJames N. Gibson says:
Being one year younger then Barrack and having two degrees in Engineering I can state I never could get into any of Asimov’s books including “I Robot” (the book not the movie). I would suspect that it takes a certain mindset to get into those books instead of say “2001 a space odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke. I still tell fellow engineers I await the day when I would turn my computer on at work and a red dot would appear on the screen followed by the Phrase “Hello James”
Quote
January 30, 2010, 2:34 amorca says:
Seems like some of our libertarian friends are trying to ignore the wonderful economic growth the Democrats delivered last quarter.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 2:38 amCato The Elder says:
I know I read at least a couple of the books, when I was about 10. I distinctly remember enjoying them and Zahn’s trilogy at the same time. But for the life of me I can’t recollect the plot at all, even after a cursory lookover at Wikipedia. I think when you’re young you digest too much a time.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 2:51 amsubpatre says:
I like it. On the theme of Dave’s “great name for a band” :
- Obama and the New Corsets
- Barry and the Firm Young Undergarments
- Obama and his Neo-Progressive Unmentionables
- the Unweathered Control Brief
- New Strong Girdle
Quote
January 30, 2010, 2:56 amNoesis Noeseos says:
stombs, it’s been decades since I read that Asimov stuff; I pegged him for a collectivist even back then when I still considered myself a kind of (JFK) liberal. At that time I thought the Mule was a dig at Robert Heinlein, who was about the only “right wing” sf writer (viz Farnham’s Freehold) at the time (as far as I knew) and was from Missouri. At any rate, the Mule was the enemy of the designs of the Foundation(s)–and stubborn, as an individualist must always appear to a group-man.
I am not quite sure why you apparently express animus towards Jungian archetypes. The concept is Platonic (the theory of reminiscences) but in an individualistic way. True, they are collective in the sense that they exist in every person; but, being archaic, they are not subject to fads and fashions of the “progressive” ilk that pretends that the basic nature of man can be “improved” upon. Perhaps the theory’s resonance with Burkean conservatism (unintentional on Jung’s part) annoys you.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 3:39 ameyesay says:
I think a new foundation is a great idea. After the errors, misdeeds, and failings of the Rove-Cheney-Bush administration, we need a new foundation: If war is truly justified we will level with the voters instead of fabricating webs of lies to generate support for dangerous costly foreign entanglements. We will protect CIA operatives instead of leaking their names. We will work together with other democracies instead of disparaging those smart enough to avoid our mistakes and entaglements. We will invest in fighting AIDS based on what works rather than target a fixed portion to ineffective abstinence-only programs. We will join the rest of the world’s industrialized countries and assure that our citizens have health care, even if they have “pre-existing conditions.” We will resist the preposterous notion that corporations are persons. We will assure that voting technology creates an auditable paper trail that matches the voter’s selections. Yes, after eight years of Republican administration failures, it is time for a new foundation.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 3:44 amgeokstr says:
If only you were also so strongly inclined to first create the technology to assure that the “voters” were all living human United States citizens 18 or older who were only voting once each.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 4:05 amrequired says:
Dear Obama,
ditch the “New” and go with “Solid”, “Laying a Solid Foundation for the Future”. This captures what you want to say and “solid”, unlike “new”, is a reassuring word, it implies solidity and stability which is good PR in troubling times like these.
As for which of the 4 seems most accurate I’d go with “Foundation and Empire”. Very Imperial in behavior this administration was in the first year (it may slack off or the administration may double down on the trappings of empire, I’ve seen indicators both ways).
Quote
January 30, 2010, 4:15 amNigel Ray says:
Didn’t Jimmy Carter try that same phrase, “New Foundation”, in one of his speeches? I seem to remember an editorial cartoon from the period in which he was sitting on top of a pile of discarded metaphors, that featured it.
Also, the people who think President Obama is a muslim will go nuts when they figure out that in the arabic translation of Asimov’s work, “Foundation” is rendered as “Al Queda”.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 5:09 amJabli Izvesti says:
Too much is being read into the ” foundation ” stuff.It actually seems to be an extension of the “change ” mantra.They want to suggest that Obama wants to change the whole thing from the bottom.Obviously,they cannot use the word
“bottom ” in place of “foundation “.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 7:54 amKenneth Anderson says:
Irony alert!! Jungian archtype was meant as a little joke, given that the mathematicized psychohistory was intended to be about as far from Jung’s psychoanalytic methods as possible.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 8:18 amHans Clapton says:
I like “The New Foundation Garment– Girdling Amerika”
Mrs. Obama could add her support.
–and:
“Kenneth Anderson says:
Irony alert!! Jungian archtype was meant as a little joke, given that the mathematicized psychohistory was intended to be about as far from Jung’s psychoanalytic methods as possible.”
As if any fool would fail to recognize it thus.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 8:24 amDavid says:
How about “New State”, following the model laid out by Salazar in Portugal and Vargas in Brazil?
Quote
January 30, 2010, 8:51 amKenneth Anderson says:
Hans: Well, as I writing Irony Alert!, I was struck by the thought that in its own weird way, the whole enterprise of psychohistory, even though conceived as a massive exercises in statistics, at bottom looks to express longitudinally a set of archtypes. The Seldon Plan depends upon prediction and repetitions of behavior under similar circumstances — reducing mass human behavior to ... archtypes! Not what Jung had in mind, of course, but oddly cognate. So maybe not so ironic after all.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 8:54 amWilliam H. Stoddard says:
If we’re talking about the Foundation novels, I must mention Donald Kingsbury’s brilliant novel Psychohistorical Crisis, which deconstructs the whole idea of psychohistory, showing the central planning and monopoly of agency that it assumes and indeed requires, and suggesting an alternative vision in which everyone is free to plan for their own lives. The Libertarian Futurist Society gave it the Prometheus Award in 2002 for best libertarian science fiction novel of the year. I think Kingsbury is a brilliant writer (I was the one who nominated him for the award) and I would like to see him get more recognition and a wider audience—and in this context he’s totally relevant, I think.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:08 amDanzi says:
Foundation and Earth. Rushed, poorly written and at times incoherent.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:11 amrmd says:
Wow. I thought I was cynical about BHO but that bummed even me.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:15 amEric Rasmusen says:
My suggestion for what best theme for the present adminstration:
“If Trantor were bigger, the Empire would never have fallen.”
That Trantor diplomat in Foundation whom they called in to deal with the barbarians, who was so effete yet so very clever at talking a lot without conveying any meaning whatsoever also comes to mind.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:15 amjimbo says:
I always thought of Obama as being the Mule to the Clinton’s Seldon plan...
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:28 amBill Johnson says:
I cannot in good conscience label any of the putrid excresences of the current administration with the Foundation.
Other than that, the foundation was hidden, secret, and Hari came out only in the gravest of circumstances.
And who, pray tell, will play the part of R. Daneel Olivaw? There isn’t even a Giskard in the bunch.
Obama could be said to be the mule — how else to explain him?
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:29 amrhhardin says:
The herky-jerky foundation may be from a confusion of Latin fundare (to base) and fundere (to pour).
But I’d go with “The New Fundament” for more modern reasons.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:31 amjetty45 says:
Who are the 50 to be sacrificed to keep the illusion going?
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:34 amCatoRenasci says:
I like the term “solid” foundation as well — because it so clearly fits in with Victor Davis Hansen’s latest essay The Obamarang in which he shows that whatever Obama says, he does the opposite. His calling it the “solid” foundation would make it clear to the discerning observer that he’s built his house upon the sand: .... it fell: and great was the fall of it (Matthew 7:26–27)
I enjoyed reading the original Foundation trilogy when I was twelve or so, but was always as troubled by the seeming manipulation of the universe as I was taken with the brilliance of it. Asimov had great imagination, but his Weltanschauung was clearly strongly collectivist. From the perspective I’ve always preferred Heinlein.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:34 amGary McGath says:
The notion of psychohistory in the Foundation triology is based on the premise that it’s possible to predict, in exact detail, the consequences of the policies one implements. That’s very fitting.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:36 ampst314 says:
“it’s been decades since I read that Asimov stuff; I pegged him for a collectivist even back then”
I’ve never seen him write anything critical of the Soviet Union, and in fact in one angry letter to the editor (Locus Magazine) he said he would not speak ill of it because it treated his Jewish parents well before they emigrated to America.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:48 amJamesa says:
Actually, if I was going to use an Asimovian SOTU catch phrase, it’d be “Caves of Steel.” Then again, the self-referential administration would probably be more partial to “The Gods Themselves.”
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:52 amPersonFromPorlock says:
I just reread the Foundation series last year and I seem to recall that for all the talk in it of psychohistory, none of the books gives an example of the mathematics that supposedly lies at psychohistory’s core. A grandiose vision but no details about how things are actually to work... hmm.
Incidentally, what’s wrong with the ‘Old Foundation’ — the Constitution?
Quote
January 30, 2010, 9:59 amGary Larreategui says:
“The New Foundering”
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:03 amFatty Bolger says:
It’s probably a simple metaphor based on this:
But I think this is closer to the truth:
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:33 amDesiderius says:
Gibson,
I read Foundation (and loved it) when I was an engineer.
I think this group is more likely to see New York as Trantor, with Washington as Land’s End well along in the (benign, deserved, Gramscian?) waxing of it’s power, and now ready to challenge the old, teetering Empire, with the other foundation (Immelt!) planted within it’s midst poised to become overt. Only the Mule, Limbaugh, stands in their way.
Reality doesn’t seem to be cooperating.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:37 amGaal Dornick says:
Hari Sheldon was, beyond the first few pages, only the “Dead Hand” guiding the future, not a contemporary character to fill. Rather than The Mule, Obama is just one of the more ineffectual Mayors of Terminus, whose own guiding Dead Hand is Karl “Historical Inevitability” Marx.
Nightfall gets my vote. Once every 1000 years the Stars come out and everyone goes mad.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:38 amSteve Y. says:
Asimov’s later novels united the Foundation and Robot universes. It turned out that Earth’s moon plays a key (hidden) role in mankind’s future history. Without warning the President cancelled the moon mission, obviously hoping to divert our attention. But we will not be fooled!
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:40 amGrey Swan says:
As a corporate risk manager and post-structural information theorist, the Foundation series has had a special place in my heart since its first encounter in junior high, signifying mankind’s hopeless pursuit of certainties (and who can’t approximate the Mule as the improbable black swan that invariably tends to arise out of productive conditions of organizational entropy). From Plato forward, the secular world has sought its own religion of absolutes, avoiding the terror of uncertainties. Thinkers who embraced uncertainty as the natural form from which temporary order arises — from Roman thinkers like Lucretius to contemporary philosophers that include Michel Serres and Gilles Deleuze — are a rare anomaly. The overwhelming masses desire the myth of certainty — either of condition or outcome.
Even Marx, predicated on the function of Hegel’s perfection-seeking dialectic, seeks this perfect form, running away from a history of chaos. Yet few seem to realize that through chaos, the capacity for creative construction (and productive destruction or deconstruction) exists. Think of the startup companies that arose during the 1970’s Carter malaise, or the creation of the Great Generation through the great depression’s chaos.
As hierarchies fear uncertainty and chaos, given its capacity to end their continuation, expect hierarchies to produce false advocates such as Bush and Obama, doubling-down on the wrong decisions and inevitably creating implosions and destruction with power-law multiples. Instead of allowing Fannie and Freddie to collapse and suffering a decade of a weak dollar as an appropriate consequence for corporate-government excess, we’ve extended the hierarchy’s bloat exponentially. Obama ensures that Babel’s collapse won’t only destroy the hierarchy itself and its invested elite, but will fall upon the neighboring villages who avoided the myth of the hierarchy, taking them with him in its inevitable demise. Chaos will be quite remarkable when it inevitably reconciles this facade. Those who are prepared for uncertainty’s dominance will be in the best position to not only survive, but prevail through the immanent collapse of an unsustainable hierarchy.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:42 amSobe says:
I am younger than most of the people in the administration by more than a decade and have read the Foundation novels, including the sequels to the original trilogy published by Asimov in the 1980’s. I have not, however, read the new Foundation novels published since Asimov’s death by different authors (heard they’re terrible). I imagine that since they keep publishing them, along with various other Asimov novels, that yes, they remain popular. Also, I’m sure Peter Orszag has read some Asimov. Every econ major I knew in college in the mid-nineties had read some Asimov, usually The Foundation series.
Furthermore, while The Foundation novels do concentrate on social engineering quite a bit, Asimov was a well-known humanist and progressive. He generally supported the Democrats, endorsing McGovern, for example.
However, I think we should all remember that “The Foundation” in the novels is essentially a storehouse for human knowledge, because the galactic civilization in which Seldon lives is collapsing. The idea is that the Foundation will shorten the “dark ages” after the collapse from 30,000 years to about 1,000.
Therefore, I find it highly unlikely that the administration had Asimov in mind at all. In fact, I think they may have just been referring to the dictionary definition of foundation.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:49 amGaal Dornick says:
A mathmatical psycho-history would, like everything else in nature, be a fractal formula, but one so complex that the computer needed to calculate it would need to be perhaps the size of the earth.
Hey, wait a second....
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:51 ammemomachine says:
Hmmmmm.
I think the proper name would be:
“Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”
or
“Another silly program brought to you by Barack Obama, Super Genius” a la Wile E. Coyote.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 11:02 amPapa Ray says:
I vote for:
With a sub title of:
“It never was about you, it is about ME”
Papa Ray
Quote
January 30, 2010, 11:05 amMark Field says:
Sounds good, but then there’s this:
James Gibson obviously had too little free time on his hands, since I managed to read both Clarke and Asimov. Going back to the post, maybe we’re in for a Space Odyssey rather than a New Foundation (which sounds to me more like womens’ makeup anyway).
Then there’s more evidence in joe’s favor:
So now I feel less dated.
I don’t like the Jungian archetypes theory because I think it’s mystical nonsense rather than science. I’m actually quite sympathetic to Burke in some ways and I defend him here regularly.
Too subtle for me, but I’m happy to hear it’s a joke. Though for Hans’ sake I probably shouldn’t admit that.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 11:10 amBrian Macker says:
Asimov certainly didn’t read and understand Hayek before writing the Foundation series.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 11:33 amSean O'Hara says:
The idea that bin Laden is an Asimov fan comes from a translation of “al Qaeda” as “the Foundation.” But as I understand it, “al Qaeda” is more like the base of a pillar. Which is what Paul Atreides Fremen name, Usul, means.
A Frank Herbert connection makes a lot more sense — a guy hanging out in a desert cave, waiting to unleash a jihad that will kill billions of people.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 11:38 amalgie says:
The Obama Foundation Trilogy
1 Shaky Foundation
2 Cracked Foundation
3 Foundation & Failure
....uuuu..‘o^o’..nn!n....algie
Illegitimi nOn carborundum
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:01 pmMichael McNeil says:
However much the Foundation and its history departed from liberal democratic values as exemplified in the United States, that doesn’t mean that Asimov personally was a “collectivist.” One should recall that his novel The Stars Like Dust — one of the “prelude” books of the series leading up to the first Galactic Empire, whose (much later) millennium-long fall the Foundation was established to supersede, leading to a second Empire — has as its great secret being sought throughout the book the rediscovery of the U.S. Constitution, whose reimplementation out amongst the stars would lead to peace, unity and freedom out in the Galaxy, replacing the warring, despotic regimes that had hitherto dominated space. The novel ends with the protagonists breathlessly reading the now-found document to each other: “We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….”
Other stories he wrote set during the heyday of first Empire times show quite clearly that the Empire during much of its thousands of years history was a constitutional (though bureaucratic) monarchy at that time, with a democratic legislature and liberal institutions.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:28 pmcomatus says:
@37, All right then, The New Fundament it is.
Any “foundation” analogy in this administration (other than the Soros Foundation) is adequately expressed in Matthew 7:24–27.
For those here who don’t do NT, think The Navy Hymn.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:52 pmRich says:
Hari was not telepathically controlled, but he was manipulated to explore further the possibilities that he rose in his paper and then to actually act on them. Manipulated because R. Daneel saw a way of shortening time period of the dark ages by using Hari’s discovery but he needed hari to do it. I was disappointed in the last story it seemed to slipshod. R. Daneel does not take responsibility for not stopping the nuclear poisoning but passes it off. But overall I enjoyed it way back when and enjoyed it recently when I re-read it.
And yes the mule is the one.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 12:59 pmkraorh says:
I had the impression that Asimov was modeling a future, galactic empire based on the history of the Roman Empire. So if the Mule had an analogue, it probably would have been Charlemagne, who managed to establish a new empire (and even be crowned as the “Roman Emperor” in 800 CE). That said, Asimov was a collectivist, and he came from an age when it was thought that “individualism” and “self-esteem” meant being a megalomaniacal dictator like Hitler. As for today... If Obama, or perhaps Cass Sunstein or Paul Krugman want to think of themselves as Hari Seldon, then is Senator-Elect Scott Brown their Mule?
[Yes, I know that Scott Brown is a nice guy, who’s election is a good thing, and who doesn’t have the psychic powers the Mule had, and that the Mule didn’t appear in the novels until hundreds of years after the death of Seldon and the establishment of the two Foundations. I just mean he’s like the Mule in the sense that he’s this guy who all the advanced psychohistory people never see coming, until it’s too late, and he’s wrecked their plan. The Seldons in the administration probably think of him as the Mule.]
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:20 pmSuperSkeptic says:
First of all, only the initial trilogy should count. Second, I personally disliked the Mule (as a character). Third, pyschohistory only “worked” when there was a critical mass of people, so to speak, so the parallels to some current economic theories ring true to me. Lastly, do we subscribe to the crest and trough theory of history?
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:20 pmtwolaneflash says:
The Bible has a name for Soetoro’s New Foundation: sand.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 1:49 pmKevin R.C. O'Brien says:
Let’s call it the Third Empire. Better still, in German.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 2:24 pmMartyA says:
How about the “International Brotherhood of Foundation Workers Paradise?”
Quote
January 30, 2010, 2:28 pmBarbara Skolaut says:
Late to the party, but I choose “Foundation and Empire.”
Or, more accurately, just “Empire.”
Though I admit the other suggestions in the comments are good, too.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 2:40 pmDG says:
[Yes, I know that Scott Brown is a nice guy, who’s election is a good thing, and who doesn’t have the psychic powers the Mule had]
He did get elected in MA. Are you sure that he doesn’t have psychic powers like the Mule?
Quote
January 30, 2010, 3:16 pmChrisTS says:
Grey Swan:
Just out of curiosity, how do you see Lucretius as embracing the uncertain? As an atomist, he was pretty much a determinist — except for those random swerves in the atom field that supposedly account for ‘free will.’
Quote
January 30, 2010, 3:20 pmpst314 says:
“I had the impression that Asimov was modeling a future, galactic empire based on the history of the Roman Empire.”
Yes, indeed. Asimov said many times that he read Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” from cover to cover in his youth, and that it inspired his Foundation series. He inserted a number of hints at this, such as a character named Pirenne, which is also the name of a famous French (Belgian?) historian who developed a competing theory of the Fall. I think the story of the general who failed to destroy the Foundation because he was too successful and popular, and thus a threat to the Emperor, was taken directly from something in Gibbon.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 3:42 pmpst314 says:
“Asimov certainly didn’t read and understand Hayek before writing the Foundation series.”
Heh. It’s a good bet he would have been hostile to Hayek’s message.
And ironically, Asimov admitted that he never understand economics at all–although that didn’t stop him from expressing opinions on matters of economic policy.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 3:46 pmyankee says:
It also required strategic intervention by people with psychic mind-control powers to make the predicted events happen.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 3:47 pmJim C. says:
I wish you hadn’t brought that up. You made me remember what Obama has said on that subject.
And
Quote
January 30, 2010, 5:16 pmSarcastro says:
[No question, Foundation and Empire, though more out of elimination than anything else (and I also only think the first 3 deserve to be seen as part of that celebrated series.)
And all you guys with the peevish one-liners, oy.]
Quote
January 30, 2010, 6:00 pmJoe Hooker says:
It always seemed to me that Asimov was novelizing Spengler’s Decline of the West. Like Marx, Spengler posited some “iron laws of history,” but whereas Marx predicted an inevitable utopia, Spengler predicted the decadence, decline, and eventual fall of the West. All empires, he said, had a period of growth, a zenith, followed by decadence and decline. Eventually they would be replaced by another empire or civilization. That’s what Asimov has in mind for the Empire — no matter what individuals may do they always lose to the laws of history. He added in a sort of mathematical social science, psychohistory, that could actually predict all this, the idea being to have a foundation acting somewhat like the monks who kept classical knowledge alive, but acting as agents as well to reduce the inevitable “dark age.” So Asimov is really on both sides of the question — OTOH he seems to say that, as far as the Empire is concerned, no effort will save it from the laws of history, but OTOH that there is a small group of people who seem to be able to manipulate it to their advantage.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 6:08 pmarbitraryaardvark says:
reminds me of asimov’s law of trilogies:
No trilogy should have more than 4 books.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 7:19 pmMathMom says:
I read some of the Foundation books in Junior High. That was a long time ago, and I can’t make a good choice from among the offerings, because I just don’t remember them that well.
But, in the spirit of FDR, I’d say “The Raw Deal” feels right to me.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 8:13 pmR. Richard Schweitzer says:
New Foundation “fits,” and its use confirms the megalomania (which goes beyond arrogance and narcissism) to “transform America.”
Deconstruction in order to rebuild on the New Foundation, for a “better America” is the reasoning behind proposals (and for actions) that would overload the present systems (including the legal system)fiscally and bureaucraticaly.
This was intended to establish the “New Totalitarianism;” and while it has some resonance from Italy’s embrace of Corporate Socialism following WW I, it has stumbled through incompetence (of the players, not of the public).
Are we lucky — or what???
Quote
January 30, 2010, 8:42 pmDesiderius says:
pst314,
“I think the story of the general who failed to destroy the Foundation because he was too successful and popular, and thus a threat to the Emperor, was taken directly from something in Gibbon.”
That’s Gibbon’s take on Belisarius.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:35 pmBill Woods says:
Bel Riose = Belasarius.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:39 pmBill Woods says:
Trouble is, Kingsbury doesn’t write enough! Where’s that sequel to Courtship Rite? Also, I don’t think novels are his strong suit. IMHO, the originals of “The Moon Goddess and the Son” and “Historical Crisis” were better than the expanded versions.
Quote
January 30, 2010, 10:47 pmSundog says:
Crunchy Frog wrote: “If Washington is Trantor, where is Land’s End?”
Desiderius wrote: “I think this group is more likely to see New York as Trantor, with Washington as Land’s End . . .”
Folks, the Foundation reference is “Star’s End.” Land’s End is a clothing retailer.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 12:57 amSarcastro says:
Alaska is Star’s End.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 1:08 amSundog says:
Mark N. wrote: “Asimov’s politics are a much-debated issue . . .”
Not to anyone who has read his autobiography. In chapter 11 of “In Memory Yet Green,” Asimov describes how he, at age 12, enthusiastically supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1932 election. He writes, “This time my side won, and I was delighted. I never deserted Roosevelt either. His election made me a ‘New Deal Democrat,’ and I’ve never wavered thereafter. I have considered myself a ‘liberal’ ever since.”
Quote
January 31, 2010, 1:10 amSundog says:
PersonFromPorlock wrote: “I just reread the Foundation series last year and I seem to recall that for all the talk in it of psychohistory, none of the books gives an example of the mathematics that supposedly lies at psychohistory’s core. A grandiose vision but no details about how things are actually to work... hmm.”
Well, of course not. You may also have noticed that Asimov doesn’t provide technical specifications for building a working hyperdrive, even the spacecraft in the story are equipped with such drives. That’s because the Foundation series is FICTION. Hyperdrive and psychohistory don’t actually exist. They’re just premises that allow Asimov to tell the story he wants to tell.
In fact, if you examine the Foundation series closely, you’ll see that it’s not really science fiction at all. There is no actual science anywhere in the story. The Foundation series is speculative fiction that takes a sequence of real-world historical events — the decline and fall of the Roman Empire — and projects it into the distant future, expanding the scope of the story from part of a single planet to the entire Milky Way galaxy.
To the extent that there’s any scientific basis for psychohistory at all, it’s based on the laws of physics that govern the behavior of gases.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 2:15 amSundog says:
Noesis Noeseos wrote: “At that time I thought the Mule was a dig at Robert Heinlein, who was about the only ‘right wing’ sf writer (viz Farnham’s Freehold) at the time (as far as I knew) and was from Missouri. At any rate, the Mule was the enemy of the designs of the Foundation(s)–and stubborn, as an individualist must always appear to a group-man.”
I doubt that Heinlein had anything to do with it. The Mule wasn’t Asimov’s idea in the first place; editor John W. Campbell insisted that Asimov write a Foundation story in which the Seldon Plan is disrupted, and Asimov reluctantly agreed. Since it had been previously established that individual humans were unable to deflect the flow of history as predicted by Seldon’s mathematics, Asimov had to invent something that psychohistory could not have predicted: a mutant with the power to alter the minds of others and make them do his bidding.
I don’t recall the Mule being described as stubborn anywhere in the story. Nor is he really an individualist; when he succeeds in defeating and conquering the Foundation, the result is a straightforward dictatorship with the Mule as leader. And Asimov does not portray the Mule as a mustache-twirling villain. On a personal level, he comes across as a rather sympathetic character, who overcame a difficult childhood and survived many hardships to become the overlord of a large chunk of the galaxy. The Mule is certainly an adversary of the Foundation, but one cannot call him evil. (This is typical of Asimov, whose stories rarely a villain. Antagonists, yes, but they always have clear reasons for behaving as they do, even if we don’t agree with those reasons.)
Quote
January 31, 2010, 2:33 amSundog says:
Michael McNeil writes: “. . . That doesn’t mean that Asimov personally was a ‘collectivist.’ One should recall that his novel The Stars Like Dust — one of the ‘prelude’ books of the series leading up to the first Galactic Empire, whose (much later) millennium-long fall the Foundation was established to supersede, leading to a second Empire — has as its great secret being sought throughout the book the rediscovery of the U.S. Constitution . . .”
The Constitution stuff was not Asimov’s idea at all. Prior to the book’s publication, “The Stars, Like Dust” was serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction. The editor of that magazine, Horace Gold, insisted that Asimov insert a new subplot into the story. In his autobiography, Asimov writes: “Horace wanted me to introduce a new element of suspense. Everyone would have to be looking for a mysterious document, which would turn out at the very end to be a copy of the United States Constitution. I objected very strongly to that, saying it was corny and downright unbelievable. No one could suppose that an instrument of government suitable for a primitive nation forming a small part of a single world would be suitable for a stellar federation. Fred [Pohl] soothed me and said that I could explain that the document was merely an inspiration. It would satisfy Horace and I could take it out for book publication.”
When Asimov explained all this to his editor at Doubleday (which was publishing the book), the editor horrified Asimov by saying, “That sounds great. We’ll keep it in the book version too.” And the book was published that way. But Asimov hated Gold’s subplot, and it ruined the book for him. Of all the novels he wrote, “The Stars, Like Dust” was his least favorite.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 3:03 amSundog says:
Joe Hooker writes: “That’s what Asimov has in mind for the Empire — no matter what individuals may do they always lose to the laws of history. He added in a sort of mathematical social science, psychohistory, that could actually predict all this, the idea being to have a foundation acting somewhat like the monks who kept classical knowledge alive, but acting as agents as well to reduce the inevitable ‘dark age.’ So Asimov is really on both sides of the question — OTOH he seems to say that, as far as the Empire is concerned, no effort will save it from the laws of history, but OTOH that there is a small group of people who seem to be able to manipulate it to their advantage.”
That’s not really an accurate summary. Hari Seldon explains that the actions of individuals can and do have an effect on the outcome of history, but an empire of thousands of inhabited planets has a great deal of historical “momentum”, and is not easily or quickly diverted from its current trajectory. When “Foundation” begins, the Empire has already been in decline for several centuries, and Seldon’s analysis shows that preventing its collapse is no longer possible. However, it is possible to shorten the interval of barbarism between the fall of the Empire and the rise of a Second Empire from 30,000 years to a single millennium. That is the purpose of the Foundation.
So Asimov isn’t “on both sides of the question.” History is not predetermined, but the ability of psychohistory to alter its course is limited. You could say that “individuals always lose to the laws of history,” but that’s equivalent to saying that they always lose to the laws of physics. Yes, they do, if they’re foolish enough to try to defy them. But if you understand physics or history well enough, you can take advantage of their laws to change the world in your favor.
I would say that ignorant or irrational individuals always lose to the laws of history. Those who understand those laws often succeed. The question, then, is which category President Obama falls into.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 3:43 ampst314 says:
“Bel Riose = Belasarius.”
Thanks, Bill Woods!
Quote
January 31, 2010, 8:31 amghhmaster says:
Does anyone remember Clinton’s New Covenant?
That was about the same time as New Coke, and did about as well.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 9:31 amJon says:
I have to say:
hahahahahahahaahahahah
Quote
January 31, 2010, 12:29 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Ooo! Nasty, cruel and I wish I’d said it. ;^)
Quote
January 31, 2010, 12:59 pmSundog says:
ghhmaster wrote: “Does anyone remember Clinton’s New Covenant? That was about the same time as New Coke, and did about as well.”
Not the same time. Clinton was elected in 1992. “New Coke” was introduced in 1985, just after the start of Reagan’s second term.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 1:13 pmNoesis Noeseos says:
Sundog, you may be correct. I report only my memory. I read the Foundation books, oh, probably forty-five years ago and never since then. Something about them did not “taste” right. The Mule seemed to be a description of something that Asimov did not like, something not reducible to his sociological equations and thus “rogue,” rogue in a manner that I later, once having entered my libertarian phase, thought I recognized as a kin.
In my memory Asimov appears as a sophomoric reductionist. Perhaps you and your friends perceive other, more interesting and admirable qualities. Finally, all I can say is that I hadn’t thought about Foundation in many years, but I read the Conspiracy because I delight in reading the thoughts of those learned in the law who tend toward conservative and libertarian commitments.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 9:37 pmSyd Henderson says:
However, there was a collection called “Foundation’s Friends” that came out before Asimov died. One of the stories, “The Originist,” by Orson Scott Card, is excellent. It’s about a contemporary of Hari Seldon’s whose eye was focused in a different direction.
Quote
January 31, 2010, 11:06 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Yes. This whole discussion would be very much up William Safire’s alley. He used to discuss these Presidential slogans phrases all the time. I think the reason was he was a little bit involved with a slogan for Nixon in 1969. We’d had the “Square Deal” of Theodore Roosevelt and the “New Deal” with FDR and the “Fair Deal” with Truman and the “New Frontier with JFK and the “Great Society” with LBJ. some people, I guess, figured Nixon needed something. Then he kept on looking for something similar with all future Presidents.
I think William Safire would find them in speeches when the President in mind didn’t call attention to it at all.
Here he is about Jimmy Carter’s 1979 State of the Union message:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19790126&id=U1UcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=p1EEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7195,2710173
The next year he notes in passing that it is forgotten:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19800126&id=z-sNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=rG0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2949,3554777
Here is someone in U.S. News and World Report in 2009 noting that Obama had re-used a Jimmy Carter phrase:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/04/14/barack-obama-goes-the-full-jimmy-carter-with-his-new-foundation.html
Here’s Krauthammer at the same time:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041603379.html
And here’s the 1979 state of the Union message:
http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/speeches/su79jec.phtml
Quote
February 1, 2010, 12:04 amSammy Finkelman says:
Actually he was more like Frankenstein’s monster. He was supposed to be guaranteed to LOSE. You know, like Orville Faubus in the 1984 Arkansas Democratic primary Gubernatorial race. he was supposed to gather up the opposition, but lose.
I never heard anyone say it before, but I thought people could see that comparison to the Mule. Except that it’s not right. That’s not how he got elected, although it was Senator Ted Kennedy’s and Caroline Kennedy’s excuse for endorsing him (oratorical skills and all that)
The important thing about the endorsement was not the reason they gave for endorsing him, but that it was some OTHER reason than race. That made him a legitimate mainstream candidate and that was enough.
Quote
February 1, 2010, 12:18 amSammy Finkelman says:
The Mule wasn’t stubborn like a mule, he was sterile like a mule.
In my opinion, it’s with that story that Isaac Asimov started to go wrong and spoil the series. He never carried through on his original idea. The earlier parts of the series I think did NOT contain the germ of the later ideas.
Quote
February 1, 2010, 12:35 amSammy Finkelman says:
Bin Laden and Obama may not be saying anything similar, but bin Laden has thrown in his lot quite openly with Al Gore and others who keep on saying the science is settled:
“Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury — the phenomenon is an actual fact.”
- Osama bin Laden, according to an Al Jazeera translation.
In fact, I noticed some time ago, that you could characterize Al Qaeda as an effort aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
It started in 1989, right after the publicity first started in 1988, and EVERYTHING it has done has been aimed at cutting greenhouse gases emissions — outside of China, of course.
Quote
February 1, 2010, 12:43 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » “The New Foundation” -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Matthew Stinson, nadiasindi, James N. McClatchey, Eugene Volokh, Eugene Volokh and others. Eugene Volokh said: “The New Foundation”: Peggy Noonan notes in her weekend column that President Obama’s SOTU address worked in a nam... http://bit.ly/cD2LAM [...]
Robert Jacobs says:
Sorry to leave the Foundation series for this, but at least this stays in the Asimov “universe”. I think the best description of this Administration’s character is mirrored in the “Eternals” of Asimov’s “End of Eternity”. This book clearly defines the concept of social engineering by the few for the benefit of the “whole”. In the Foundation series, the 2nd Foundation was to “guide” the re-establishment of the Galactic civilization, a more benign relationship to my way of thinking. I view the concept of control and management of the actions and direction of one’s fellows as much more clearly expressed in the End of Eternity.
Quote
March 1, 2010, 5:01 pm