Also, every time we talk about multiple turtles on fence posts, for some reason, in my head, it turns into multiple turtles on one fence post. So, for your viewing pleasure:
Showing posts with label reflection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reflection. Show all posts
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Turtles of the Rebellion
Several people posted about Sofia’s role in the revolution. The consensus seems to be that the revolution would still have occurred without her, but that it may not have reached the same scale, or that it may have gone differently. If we’re referring to another member of the original crew taking her place in being the leader of the rebellion, then the full development of the revolution is possible, though her ability to learn just about anything and her affinity for technology certainly were indispensable to the Runa. However, if we’re talking about her having died as we thought at the end of the first book, leaving no one to help lead the rebellion, I’m not sure how far it would have gone. The Runa who go with her into the forest at first seem content to let the conflict blow over and return to their homes, but her continued insistence that they should fight against their oppressors convinces them to propagate the movement. I think that if Sofia had died, the rebellion would have died shortly thereafter. 
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
"Doubt is good."
What if I showed you twenty pictures of twenty turtles on twenty fence posts? Pretty unlikely, right? So unlikely, in fact, that it would lead you to the conclusion that this could not have happened by chance. And if I told you that I had proof than no person had put the turtles on the fence posts? Further, that no visible outside influence had put the turtles there, but that they were there nevertheless? Wouldn't that make you consider the possibility that a "higher power" had put the turtles there?
But then, what if I showed you a wider picture of the entire scene? Turns out, a construction company had left thousands of fence posts standing next to each other in the middle of a turtle farm. And even better, they had thrown them into a depression in the ground, so the tops of the posts were barely an inch off the ground. Of course, you couldn't tell any of this in the first picture I showed you, but you made the series of assumptions that led you to believe that no natural event could have put so many turtles on so many fence posts.
The title of my post is a quote from Russell's readers' guide. According to Russell, "the moral of the story is to be suspicious of your own certainty. Doubt is good." I'll believe her because I believe in author's intent, no matter how poorly the author wrote the damn book. What was the first thing that Sandoz was really certain about? When did the Jesuit value of patience go out the window? Turtles on fence posts. This is God's work. "Everything we thought we understood - that was what we were most wrong about," Sandoz says. And Sandoz thought beyond anything else that God had put him on Rakhat. So he was most wrong about that.
This is why Mike's post struck me as weird. He seemed to still be going off the assumption that Sandoz was a Catholic saint and that God did, indeed, bring him back full circle to achieve some order of inner peace. (Mike, please correct me if I've misrepresented your argument.) This goes back to one of the reason I can't stand this book. The "doubt is good" answer came from Felipe Reyes at the end of The Sparrow. It completed the statement of the novel. It completed the literary journey of Emilio Sandoz perfectly. As I wrote in my response to Mike's post, I do not care about Emilio Sandoz as a person because he is not a person. I care about the literary creation that is Emilio Sandoz. This character had a complete statement written around it in The Sparrow. Children of God is not only useless, but so poorly written as to harm the story itself.
A word on my hatred of the book. All of the other books that I've really not enjoyed this semester, I've forgiven after our class discussion. In class, we were able to really delve deep into those texts and pull out the ton of stuff that actually lies down there. For our discussion of this novel, however, I never felt like we were able to dig deep into it because there was nothing there. The only times where we did, the concepts were so far abstracted from the actual meat of Children of God that they could have been brought up while discussing The Sparrow and we wouldn't have had any less to talk about.
My criticism of Children of God comes primarily from a literary standpoint, though I realize that the syllabus says that the class "is not primarily a literature class." However, I contend that the writing is so poor, beat-you-over-the-head direct, and thin that nothing in the novel merits discussion beyond that of The Sparrow. There is simply no content in the book. Further, by demystifying the aliens, Russell harms The Sparrow. The only good thing that came out of Children of God is realizing that Supaari and Sandoz simply had the galaxy's funniest case of mistaken double entendre. But is that really worth the rest of the book? Well, it was hilarious, but no. Russell could have made that into one of those weird short stories that's all from an alien's point of view - something like an x-rated version of all those Twilight Zone episodes where you think they're all on Earth, but it turns out that they're headed toward Earth.
My French realist literature class had a debate the other day about Emile Zola's Germinal, a politically charged novel. The question Professor Loesberg posed to us was, are novels with explicit theses inherently or automatically bad novels? I used science fiction as an example of novels that many times have some sort of explicit thesis but are not automatically bad. The class (rightly, in my opinion) decided that no, having an explicit thesis does not automatically ruin a novel. Writing a shitty novel ruins a novel. Mary Doria Russell wrote The Sparrow and Children of God with virtually the same thesis, and it's pretty explicit, though much more so in the latter. The former is a good novel; the latter is atrocious. The writing is so bad and so thin that the novel is without any form content, or at least without content that even comes close to or stretches beyond that of The Sparrow. Russell's lack of willingness to let sleeping dogs lie leaves us with a statement that is much weaker than that of The Sparrow, even though the final message is meant to be virtually identical.
I agree with Andrew that this novel had so many Mary Sue/wish fulfillment moments that it almost felt like fan fiction and not the work of the original novelist. It's a shadow of its original self. Perhaps Marx was right, as I quoted in my Todorov post. The first novel as tragedy, the second as farce.
But then, what if I showed you a wider picture of the entire scene? Turns out, a construction company had left thousands of fence posts standing next to each other in the middle of a turtle farm. And even better, they had thrown them into a depression in the ground, so the tops of the posts were barely an inch off the ground. Of course, you couldn't tell any of this in the first picture I showed you, but you made the series of assumptions that led you to believe that no natural event could have put so many turtles on so many fence posts.
The title of my post is a quote from Russell's readers' guide. According to Russell, "the moral of the story is to be suspicious of your own certainty. Doubt is good." I'll believe her because I believe in author's intent, no matter how poorly the author wrote the damn book. What was the first thing that Sandoz was really certain about? When did the Jesuit value of patience go out the window? Turtles on fence posts. This is God's work. "Everything we thought we understood - that was what we were most wrong about," Sandoz says. And Sandoz thought beyond anything else that God had put him on Rakhat. So he was most wrong about that.
This is why Mike's post struck me as weird. He seemed to still be going off the assumption that Sandoz was a Catholic saint and that God did, indeed, bring him back full circle to achieve some order of inner peace. (Mike, please correct me if I've misrepresented your argument.) This goes back to one of the reason I can't stand this book. The "doubt is good" answer came from Felipe Reyes at the end of The Sparrow. It completed the statement of the novel. It completed the literary journey of Emilio Sandoz perfectly. As I wrote in my response to Mike's post, I do not care about Emilio Sandoz as a person because he is not a person. I care about the literary creation that is Emilio Sandoz. This character had a complete statement written around it in The Sparrow. Children of God is not only useless, but so poorly written as to harm the story itself.
A word on my hatred of the book. All of the other books that I've really not enjoyed this semester, I've forgiven after our class discussion. In class, we were able to really delve deep into those texts and pull out the ton of stuff that actually lies down there. For our discussion of this novel, however, I never felt like we were able to dig deep into it because there was nothing there. The only times where we did, the concepts were so far abstracted from the actual meat of Children of God that they could have been brought up while discussing The Sparrow and we wouldn't have had any less to talk about.
My criticism of Children of God comes primarily from a literary standpoint, though I realize that the syllabus says that the class "is not primarily a literature class." However, I contend that the writing is so poor, beat-you-over-the-head direct, and thin that nothing in the novel merits discussion beyond that of The Sparrow. There is simply no content in the book. Further, by demystifying the aliens, Russell harms The Sparrow. The only good thing that came out of Children of God is realizing that Supaari and Sandoz simply had the galaxy's funniest case of mistaken double entendre. But is that really worth the rest of the book? Well, it was hilarious, but no. Russell could have made that into one of those weird short stories that's all from an alien's point of view - something like an x-rated version of all those Twilight Zone episodes where you think they're all on Earth, but it turns out that they're headed toward Earth.
My French realist literature class had a debate the other day about Emile Zola's Germinal, a politically charged novel. The question Professor Loesberg posed to us was, are novels with explicit theses inherently or automatically bad novels? I used science fiction as an example of novels that many times have some sort of explicit thesis but are not automatically bad. The class (rightly, in my opinion) decided that no, having an explicit thesis does not automatically ruin a novel. Writing a shitty novel ruins a novel. Mary Doria Russell wrote The Sparrow and Children of God with virtually the same thesis, and it's pretty explicit, though much more so in the latter. The former is a good novel; the latter is atrocious. The writing is so bad and so thin that the novel is without any form content, or at least without content that even comes close to or stretches beyond that of The Sparrow. Russell's lack of willingness to let sleeping dogs lie leaves us with a statement that is much weaker than that of The Sparrow, even though the final message is meant to be virtually identical.
I agree with Andrew that this novel had so many Mary Sue/wish fulfillment moments that it almost felt like fan fiction and not the work of the original novelist. It's a shadow of its original self. Perhaps Marx was right, as I quoted in my Todorov post. The first novel as tragedy, the second as farce.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Todorov and Jazz
What's the problem with listening to jazz or folk records? The problem is, one of the cornerstones of both jazz and folk is that they are played differently every time, adapting to the precise moment in time when they are played. If you've heard a recording of the Count Basie Orchestra playing "April in Paris," you have only heard a recording of the Count Basie Orchestra playing "April in Paris." In a real way, you have not heard the music, nor can you yet understand it. What's the solution? Well, the Count is dead, so that takes being there out of it. But you can listen to more recordings. You can begin to get a feel for the essence of the music. Still, though, there is a real way in which none of us ever have heard and ever will hear the Count's "April in Paris."
There is a fundamental level on which we can never completely understand anyone but ourselves. Even an individual mind puts up mental blocks to things that it cannot reconcile with its own person. We can, however, get a good approximation of another person's though processes by observing their environment and history and we may even be able to predict to a fair degree an individual's personal actions.
To me, this is what Columbus comes down to. My point in mentioning this is not to say that Columbus is unknowable. Quite to the contrary, we can reconstruct a lot of Columbus from his legacy. My main point in bringing this back up is that, as I said in class, Columbus may have had other options that seemed obvious and equally likely to him that we cannot even envision. In the ultimate form of hindsight bias, we can only see what happened as what could have happened. Unfortunately, we would need more than a few hundred pages of Todorov to even imagine the alternatives.
By that same token, I do not believe that Columbus was schizophrenic or particularly deluding himself. I do believe that he encountered some sort of cognitive dissonance when he swore his crew to claiming that Cuba was the mainland, but I do not believe his position toward the natives would have seemed crazy to Columbus or any of his crew.
I keep bringing up that for both The Sparrow and The Conquest of America, I felt the characters and situations to be farcical. That is, they present improbable but eminently possible situations. Of course, in the case of Todorov, we know that the events could actually happen because they did. But being in Columbus's position, with Columbus's dispositions that are so foreign - alien - to us, I do not imagine that he saw two irreconcilable world views fighting for attention. Rather, his different set of pretensions led him to a wholly different understanding of the other.
Thanks to ST:TNG's "Darmok," I've been toying around with the linguistic idea that we do not have a distinction between alien and alien, principally because we have not met any of the extraterrestrial variety. The word alien comes from Latin and is closely related to alias - of or belong to another. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (the other OED, I guess...), the term was first applied to foreigners around 1330 and was first used to mean "from another planet" in 1944.
Eh, whatever. I don't see where this is going. In any case, I'm looking forward to Children of God to see what He hath wrought upon Rakhat. Buncha amateurs. Why the hell did you land? ... Farce.
Oh, forgot one thing - I'm glad that I'm not the only one who believes that the best way to hate someone is to know them really well. There's also a third category that we didn't bring up - people we admire, even idolize, find out more about them, hate them, but still idolize them. The Pattons or MacArthurs of the world. Or the ancient Greek war heroes. Douchebags, but idols nevertheless.
There is a fundamental level on which we can never completely understand anyone but ourselves. Even an individual mind puts up mental blocks to things that it cannot reconcile with its own person. We can, however, get a good approximation of another person's though processes by observing their environment and history and we may even be able to predict to a fair degree an individual's personal actions.
To me, this is what Columbus comes down to. My point in mentioning this is not to say that Columbus is unknowable. Quite to the contrary, we can reconstruct a lot of Columbus from his legacy. My main point in bringing this back up is that, as I said in class, Columbus may have had other options that seemed obvious and equally likely to him that we cannot even envision. In the ultimate form of hindsight bias, we can only see what happened as what could have happened. Unfortunately, we would need more than a few hundred pages of Todorov to even imagine the alternatives.
By that same token, I do not believe that Columbus was schizophrenic or particularly deluding himself. I do believe that he encountered some sort of cognitive dissonance when he swore his crew to claiming that Cuba was the mainland, but I do not believe his position toward the natives would have seemed crazy to Columbus or any of his crew.
I keep bringing up that for both The Sparrow and The Conquest of America, I felt the characters and situations to be farcical. That is, they present improbable but eminently possible situations. Of course, in the case of Todorov, we know that the events could actually happen because they did. But being in Columbus's position, with Columbus's dispositions that are so foreign - alien - to us, I do not imagine that he saw two irreconcilable world views fighting for attention. Rather, his different set of pretensions led him to a wholly different understanding of the other.
Thanks to ST:TNG's "Darmok," I've been toying around with the linguistic idea that we do not have a distinction between alien and alien, principally because we have not met any of the extraterrestrial variety. The word alien comes from Latin and is closely related to alias - of or belong to another. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (the other OED, I guess...), the term was first applied to foreigners around 1330 and was first used to mean "from another planet" in 1944.
Eh, whatever. I don't see where this is going. In any case, I'm looking forward to Children of God to see what He hath wrought upon Rakhat. Buncha amateurs. Why the hell did you land? ... Farce.
Oh, forgot one thing - I'm glad that I'm not the only one who believes that the best way to hate someone is to know them really well. There's also a third category that we didn't bring up - people we admire, even idolize, find out more about them, hate them, but still idolize them. The Pattons or MacArthurs of the world. Or the ancient Greek war heroes. Douchebags, but idols nevertheless.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Mistakes? Likely not.
Many of the posts people have written for this text are discussing the idea we talked about in class that the crew somehow made a mistake in either the planning or execution of the mission, however I would like to consider this, not as we did, looking back on the mission with an outsider’s perspective, but by trying to imagine if different decisions and actions were even feasible considering who the characters are and how they think.
I believe we are all agreed that at least until the point where the signal from Rakhat arrives, no one does anything to cause the mission to fail. At this point, the first possibility for different action takes place, instead of calling in his coworkers and superiors, upon receiving the transmission from another world, Jimmy brings his friends in to hear it. If he hadn’t done this, the Jesuit mission may never have been planned because Emilio’s comment would not have sent everyone thinking as to how it could be accomplished. Calling this the mistake that caused the mission to fail is interesting, however, because it implies that the only way the mission could have been successful is if it had been nonexistent. Granted, in that case, none of the characters would have met their horrible fates, but it is a cop out as a choice for preventing the failure of the mission.
Discussing the planning of the mission, I believe that saying they had other choices they could have made in the way they chose to run the mission betrays the characters. Though I agree with most of the class that unmanned craft and attempts at radio communication prior to sending a manned mission would have been a good idea, the characters that we meet in this text would never have gone that route. When everything seems to work out in every stage of planning, why would they question their plan? Particularly as each instance of things working out further backs up Emilio’s belief that they are going on a mission planned for them by God.
Within the mission, I don’t think the fuel situation that stranded them on the planet would have made much of a difference. Most of the deaths that took place would not have been prevented by making a timely retreat to the orbiter. D.W. and Anne were attacked out of the blue, Sofia, Jimmy and the others were caught up in a local conflict that resulted in their deaths. None of these would have been prevented by being able to return to the asteroid. Even if they had fuel, I believe Emilio still would have accepted the protection of Supaari.
The one aspect of the mission that I believe they truly made a mistake in was the planting of a garden. They had enough scientists with them to understand the ways in which foreign species can take over a new land and disrupt an ecology, even though they say they chose low-impact plants, I don’t think that they would have necessarily planted a garden without having more data on the local ecology. Side note: who can think of another time when a garden got people into trouble? (Hint: it’s religious, too).
For a discussion of Sofia’s rebellion see Jen’s post, where you can also get a look at our fun list of who should go on a contact mission.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Finally, A Simple Answer
Could they have known better?
Yes. They did make realistically avoidable mistakes. And, as I argue in my response to Lindsay's post, we could even accept these characters not making them, or at least making less of them.
Sandoz's first tragic mistake is believing that the series of events placed before him was the result of divine intervention. As Felipe says at the end, (even if there is a creator), the creator does not change the rules of its creation. There is no such thing as divine providence. Of course, there are gigantic problems with a Christian or any religious believer agreeing to that because they're based on a book that they purport was given to them by God.
Every subsequent problem that the team has is caused by Sandoz's mistake. Here's why he shouldn't have made it and why the rest of the team should have stopped him:
1. They got a "dumb" message.
Getting a radio transmission of singing implies several things: a) The environment in which the sound was created contains a substance through which sound travels; b) There exists in that environment a group of people who have the electrical know-how to create a radio; c) The group is most likely attempting to communicate with its own kind. This last point implies some other structures. However, receiving the radio transmission does not even imply the existence of a planet. For all we know, there is a ship passing through the star system, transmitting a normal message back to its home planet. It also does not imply that the message was intended to be received by anyone else. "We always expected a string of primes." (p. 93) This kind of message implies that someone is actually looking to make interplanetary contact. No part of singing implies contact.
2. Nothing in the message tells them anything about the planet (assuming it is a planet).
If we are to assume that the message is from a planet (several years of observation would be a good way of learning if, when we get there, the people who sent the message wouldn't be gone), we have no knowledge of it. Therefore, we cannot realistically prepare for it. What if the planet was substantially bigger or denser and had too much gravity? What if there was no oxygen? What if the species that produced the message is so xenophobic that they destroy anything coming near it? What if they're afraid of near-planet asteroids and have a way of destroying them if they get too close to their planet? What if they have superbugs that can and would immediately adapt to the human immune system and kill anyone who set down within a matter of hours? What if all the plants that grow are poisonous? What if their planet is governed by religious zealots who have a Centauri-centric view of the universe and claim that the stars are points of light on a black sphere? Do I have to keep going, or is it obvious that I'm just scratching the surface of things that could go wrong?
3. Divine providence doesn't even make sense.
Short point: the people in that room were not the most qualified to go to another planet. Oh, yeah, let's have a soap opera on an asteroid on the way over! That's a great group to send to another planet to make first contact! Even sending a musicologist is presuming that the music is music and not just communication.
So send a damn probe. Even if you follow it a year later, send a goddamned probe. Send something that can move fast, land, and send back data. Get it there in five years. Put the Golden Record on it, just in case "they" find it. And while you're at it, send a string of primes to them. If they actually have decent radio technology and they're looking for life, send them a message.
Skepticism versus Cynicism
A few times in class (and I tried to correct the mistake each time), a couple of people mentioned that the team should have been more cynical. That's not right because cynicism gets you no further than blind faith, just in the other direction. Cynicism is contemptuous distrust of human nature and behavior (says Merriam-Webster) and is not based in empirical findings. (Of course, the M-W definitions are as limited as dictionary definitions usually are: the first definitions of "cynic," "cynical," and "cynicism" all just point to each other) Skepticism is an attitude of doubt toward all things. Skepticism is informed doubt, and in our age, takes the form of the scientific method. "See uncertainty," says M-W. A skeptic never stops asking why and has a high standard of proof. (A cynic, by contrast, has an impossible standard of proof.)
Love it, Hate it, or Both
As I mentioned in class, I loved and hated the book for the exact same reasons at the exact same instants. About 3/4 through the class, my reasoning sort of coalesced. I love the prose and sympathize with all the characters, yet I detest everything that happens and everything that the characters do. This is absolutely a credit to Mary Doria Russell's skill as a writer. I'm looking forward to loving and hating Children of God in two weeks...
Until then, Gort! Klaatu barada nikto! Robots + Bernard Herrmann = awesome. Imagine if Taxi Driver had robots...
Yes. They did make realistically avoidable mistakes. And, as I argue in my response to Lindsay's post, we could even accept these characters not making them, or at least making less of them.
Sandoz's first tragic mistake is believing that the series of events placed before him was the result of divine intervention. As Felipe says at the end, (even if there is a creator), the creator does not change the rules of its creation. There is no such thing as divine providence. Of course, there are gigantic problems with a Christian or any religious believer agreeing to that because they're based on a book that they purport was given to them by God.
Every subsequent problem that the team has is caused by Sandoz's mistake. Here's why he shouldn't have made it and why the rest of the team should have stopped him:
1. They got a "dumb" message.
Getting a radio transmission of singing implies several things: a) The environment in which the sound was created contains a substance through which sound travels; b) There exists in that environment a group of people who have the electrical know-how to create a radio; c) The group is most likely attempting to communicate with its own kind. This last point implies some other structures. However, receiving the radio transmission does not even imply the existence of a planet. For all we know, there is a ship passing through the star system, transmitting a normal message back to its home planet. It also does not imply that the message was intended to be received by anyone else. "We always expected a string of primes." (p. 93) This kind of message implies that someone is actually looking to make interplanetary contact. No part of singing implies contact.
2. Nothing in the message tells them anything about the planet (assuming it is a planet).
If we are to assume that the message is from a planet (several years of observation would be a good way of learning if, when we get there, the people who sent the message wouldn't be gone), we have no knowledge of it. Therefore, we cannot realistically prepare for it. What if the planet was substantially bigger or denser and had too much gravity? What if there was no oxygen? What if the species that produced the message is so xenophobic that they destroy anything coming near it? What if they're afraid of near-planet asteroids and have a way of destroying them if they get too close to their planet? What if they have superbugs that can and would immediately adapt to the human immune system and kill anyone who set down within a matter of hours? What if all the plants that grow are poisonous? What if their planet is governed by religious zealots who have a Centauri-centric view of the universe and claim that the stars are points of light on a black sphere? Do I have to keep going, or is it obvious that I'm just scratching the surface of things that could go wrong?
3. Divine providence doesn't even make sense.
Short point: the people in that room were not the most qualified to go to another planet. Oh, yeah, let's have a soap opera on an asteroid on the way over! That's a great group to send to another planet to make first contact! Even sending a musicologist is presuming that the music is music and not just communication.
So send a damn probe. Even if you follow it a year later, send a goddamned probe. Send something that can move fast, land, and send back data. Get it there in five years. Put the Golden Record on it, just in case "they" find it. And while you're at it, send a string of primes to them. If they actually have decent radio technology and they're looking for life, send them a message.
Skepticism versus Cynicism
A few times in class (and I tried to correct the mistake each time), a couple of people mentioned that the team should have been more cynical. That's not right because cynicism gets you no further than blind faith, just in the other direction. Cynicism is contemptuous distrust of human nature and behavior (says Merriam-Webster) and is not based in empirical findings. (Of course, the M-W definitions are as limited as dictionary definitions usually are: the first definitions of "cynic," "cynical," and "cynicism" all just point to each other) Skepticism is an attitude of doubt toward all things. Skepticism is informed doubt, and in our age, takes the form of the scientific method. "See uncertainty," says M-W. A skeptic never stops asking why and has a high standard of proof. (A cynic, by contrast, has an impossible standard of proof.)
Love it, Hate it, or Both
As I mentioned in class, I loved and hated the book for the exact same reasons at the exact same instants. About 3/4 through the class, my reasoning sort of coalesced. I love the prose and sympathize with all the characters, yet I detest everything that happens and everything that the characters do. This is absolutely a credit to Mary Doria Russell's skill as a writer. I'm looking forward to loving and hating Children of God in two weeks...
Until then, Gort! Klaatu barada nikto! Robots + Bernard Herrmann = awesome. Imagine if Taxi Driver had robots...
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Conceptual Wars
I’m going to preface this reflection by saying that much of our discussion from this class focused on concepts that I don’t know much, if anything, about (ex. European history, which I have never studied, and other political theories or conflicts that I’ve not heard of). Because of this, I can’t really comment well on our discussion, so instead I’m going to bring up in more detail one of the points I found interesting in the text.
As Sarah mentioned, our society has become much more likely to declare war on an idea than on a group of people, for example, the war on terror, or the war on drugs. I think this relates back to Schmitt’s discussion of a pacifist movement gaining enough hostility toward war to declare a war against war on page 36. Long quote, bear with me:
If pacifist hostility toward war were so strong as to drive pacifists into a war against nonpacifists, in a war against war, that would prove pacifism truly possesses political energy because it is sufficiently strong to group men according to friend and enemy. If, in fact, the will to abolish war is so strong that it no longer shuns war, then it has become a political motive, i.e., it affirms, even if only as an extreme possibility, war and even the reason for war.…This war is then considered to constitute the absolute last war of humanity….[the enemy] must not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed. In other words, he is an enemy who no longer must be compelled to retreat into his borders only.
Though practically, this would be a war between pacifists and nonpacifists, the war would be more accurately described as a war against war, and in order for war to be defeated, the pacifists must utterly destroy anyone who is not a pacifist so that no possibility of another war could exist.
The same could be said of any of the wars we have declared on concepts. The war on terror will never be complete until we have completely annihilated every terrorist in the world. Simply pushing them back into their “borders” would not work both because we would have to determine what constituted the border of a terrorist organization, and also because once pushed to that border, the remaining terrorists would be unwilling to admit defeat, and continue to participate in terror acts. Similarly, the war on drugs is in all practicality impossible to complete unless all drugs, and people involved in the manufacturing and distribution of illegal drugs were destroyed.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Self-Evident, Redux?
I enjoyed our discussion about Schmitt, though now that I reflect upon it, I haven't raised my opinion of Schmitt at all. I still think that his points are, for the most part, obvious. His definition of political still strikes me as annoyingly limited, actually. As I said in my first post, "politics" is what happens when two people interact. So I'll start from there.
Politics is what makes us different from atoms, which is what makes social science different from physics. My definition is not exactly a new one, either, but I don't purport it to be. In fact, the phrasing I'm using is reminiscent of Complexity by Waldrop. That book is essentially a brief history of the founding of the Complexity school of thought: that life, economics, evolution, etc., are governed by a simple set of rules that cause them to do some pretty complex things. It's related closely to autocatalytic sets. Anyway, at one point in this whole process, the social scientists are talking with the physicists, and they decide that the main difference between the two is that physicists deal with "dumb" particles. So political science is the study of "smart particles," ones that can remember the past and think about the future. And politics is what happens that's different from a dumb particle's reaction.
And yes, as you interact with people, you decide who are your friends and who are your enemies. So maybe Schmitt's a predecessor to Kojak: Who loves ya, baby? But I find this whole thing to be too obvious to even have been revolutionary in 1929.
So how could Schmitt have become famous? Well, because his IR implications seem to indicate that since killing is the only political thing you can do, you had might as well design your government to kill people really well. So how about that? Hitler. Maybe this is the vital piece of political wisdom that that Federation historian forgot in "Patterns of Force," which I mentioned earlier (note: I'm linking to a wiki, but it's for a piece of recent fiction and it's Memory Alpha, where I trust that there are enough Star Trek geeks like myself to remove the errors present in Wikipedia).
Anyway, back to smart and dumb particles and Carl Schmitt. I'm surprised that we didn't get into the more Nietzschean implications of Schmitt's final warning. Okay, we've got us and them. We're good, they're evil. But now we're at that postmodern point where we can't claim that their evil because we can listen to them. So now it's "We represent humanity" versus "We represent humanity" on the other side. You lose meaning, war starts only making meta-sense, and the next thing you know, crabs on a beach.
Which brings me to my actual point, the nature of postmodern war. Unfortunately, we only just barely touched upon this a couple of times in class. Most obviously, we hit upon it during the Cola Wars discussion - is there a limit to propoganda? Well, the Cola Wars seem to tell us that yes, there is an end to propaganda. In war, you need to be able to villify your enemy, or else there would be no reason to fight against them. How do you do that? Propaganda? But what if you can hear their side too, thanks to the miracle of modern communication? How can you claim that they are the evil other when you can talk to them? The final implication is that a postmodern war is unwinnable. This too is pretty self-evident, considering the empirical evidence of every war after WWII, and how great is it that we haven't actually "declared" war since then, either (I agree with PTJ: this legal distinction is significant)?
We find these implications in Aliens, Ender's Game, and Starship Troopers. How do you have a war against something in the future? Make it impossible to communicate with them. Though this is probably most evident in Aliens, it's also clearly a significant part of the other two's wars. The only way to win a war after the modern era is to somehow make it a modern war. (Modern in the epoch sense, not the "current" sense.)
So can Schmitt still be relevant as anything other than a history lesson in the postmodern era? I think not. And what's the last paragraph about? I think it's a last attempt to rail against liberalism and what turned into postmodernism, because liberalism puts a dishonest face on the reality of his "politics." It turns out that liberalism is another form of politics, but one that trys to deny that it is "political." How rude. How postmodern. Certainly the path to the Last Man, not the Ubermensch.
And back to Nietzsche and Prof PTJ's post. The quote that he pulls from On the Genealogy of Morals reminds me strikingly of Carl Sagan's reason for studying science. It's also his argument against people who claim that science makes people meaningless in the universe:
And another of his famous quotes: "We are a way for the universe to know itself." (Cosmos) The study of such things, as Nietzsche's quote indicates, gives meaning to our very existence. Why we seek out new worlds and new civilizations. Why we boldly go where no man has gone before. Or, put more dramatically,
It's a Kirk speech. (voice breaks) Works every time.
[A word on my title: I did a search of Backyard Rocket's RSS feed and found that I've used the term "self-evident" three times in my blogging. My original, from which I got the title for this post, was "Self-Evident Truths," about Manifest Destiny. The second time I mentioned it was in my scathing review of Weber. And now I've used it again for Schmitt. For Stephanson, I used it to say that I hoped that his points were self-evident but I feared that they were not. In Weber's case, I ended up giving him the benefit of the doubt in my class reflection. But for Schmitt, even after our class, I still claim wholeheartedly that his points are indeed self-evident.]
Politics is what makes us different from atoms, which is what makes social science different from physics. My definition is not exactly a new one, either, but I don't purport it to be. In fact, the phrasing I'm using is reminiscent of Complexity by Waldrop. That book is essentially a brief history of the founding of the Complexity school of thought: that life, economics, evolution, etc., are governed by a simple set of rules that cause them to do some pretty complex things. It's related closely to autocatalytic sets. Anyway, at one point in this whole process, the social scientists are talking with the physicists, and they decide that the main difference between the two is that physicists deal with "dumb" particles. So political science is the study of "smart particles," ones that can remember the past and think about the future. And politics is what happens that's different from a dumb particle's reaction.
And yes, as you interact with people, you decide who are your friends and who are your enemies. So maybe Schmitt's a predecessor to Kojak: Who loves ya, baby? But I find this whole thing to be too obvious to even have been revolutionary in 1929.So how could Schmitt have become famous? Well, because his IR implications seem to indicate that since killing is the only political thing you can do, you had might as well design your government to kill people really well. So how about that? Hitler. Maybe this is the vital piece of political wisdom that that Federation historian forgot in "Patterns of Force," which I mentioned earlier (note: I'm linking to a wiki, but it's for a piece of recent fiction and it's Memory Alpha, where I trust that there are enough Star Trek geeks like myself to remove the errors present in Wikipedia).
Anyway, back to smart and dumb particles and Carl Schmitt. I'm surprised that we didn't get into the more Nietzschean implications of Schmitt's final warning. Okay, we've got us and them. We're good, they're evil. But now we're at that postmodern point where we can't claim that their evil because we can listen to them. So now it's "We represent humanity" versus "We represent humanity" on the other side. You lose meaning, war starts only making meta-sense, and the next thing you know, crabs on a beach.
Which brings me to my actual point, the nature of postmodern war. Unfortunately, we only just barely touched upon this a couple of times in class. Most obviously, we hit upon it during the Cola Wars discussion - is there a limit to propoganda? Well, the Cola Wars seem to tell us that yes, there is an end to propaganda. In war, you need to be able to villify your enemy, or else there would be no reason to fight against them. How do you do that? Propaganda? But what if you can hear their side too, thanks to the miracle of modern communication? How can you claim that they are the evil other when you can talk to them? The final implication is that a postmodern war is unwinnable. This too is pretty self-evident, considering the empirical evidence of every war after WWII, and how great is it that we haven't actually "declared" war since then, either (I agree with PTJ: this legal distinction is significant)?
We find these implications in Aliens, Ender's Game, and Starship Troopers. How do you have a war against something in the future? Make it impossible to communicate with them. Though this is probably most evident in Aliens, it's also clearly a significant part of the other two's wars. The only way to win a war after the modern era is to somehow make it a modern war. (Modern in the epoch sense, not the "current" sense.)
So can Schmitt still be relevant as anything other than a history lesson in the postmodern era? I think not. And what's the last paragraph about? I think it's a last attempt to rail against liberalism and what turned into postmodernism, because liberalism puts a dishonest face on the reality of his "politics." It turns out that liberalism is another form of politics, but one that trys to deny that it is "political." How rude. How postmodern. Certainly the path to the Last Man, not the Ubermensch.
And back to Nietzsche and Prof PTJ's post. The quote that he pulls from On the Genealogy of Morals reminds me strikingly of Carl Sagan's reason for studying science. It's also his argument against people who claim that science makes people meaningless in the universe:
Except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up - the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains - were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light-years away in space and billions of years ago. We are, as I like to say, starstuff. (The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
And another of his famous quotes: "We are a way for the universe to know itself." (Cosmos) The study of such things, as Nietzsche's quote indicates, gives meaning to our very existence. Why we seek out new worlds and new civilizations. Why we boldly go where no man has gone before. Or, put more dramatically,
They used to say if man could fly, he'd have wings. But he did fly. He discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn't reached the moon, or that we hadn't gone on to Mars, and then to the nearest star? That's like saying that you wished you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut like your great great great great grandfather used to. I'm in command. I could order this. But I'm not because Doctor McCoy is right in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced as this. But I must point out that the possibilities, the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally great. Risk... Risk is our business. That's what this starship is all about. That's why we're aboard her. (Kirk, TOS: "Return to Tomorrow")
It's a Kirk speech. (voice breaks) Works every time.
[A word on my title: I did a search of Backyard Rocket's RSS feed and found that I've used the term "self-evident" three times in my blogging. My original, from which I got the title for this post, was "Self-Evident Truths," about Manifest Destiny. The second time I mentioned it was in my scathing review of Weber. And now I've used it again for Schmitt. For Stephanson, I used it to say that I hoped that his points were self-evident but I feared that they were not. In Weber's case, I ended up giving him the benefit of the doubt in my class reflection. But for Schmitt, even after our class, I still claim wholeheartedly that his points are indeed self-evident.]
Sunday, March 23, 2008
We'd Like to Enter an Affirmative Defense
Our class Tuesday bounced back and forth between culpability and rationalizing, but instead of comparing one instance of each to its counterpart, I though that we skipped from one side to another without marrying the two. Here's what I mean, because I'm not sure that made any sense.
We had two examples from the book of who could be guilty, but didn't have proper knowledge: the buggers for the first invasion and Ender. Though we briefly touched on this similarity, I thought that the issue had some legal depth. The way I see it, if the buggers were guilty, Ender was guilty. This certainly has the effect of tying their fates together for all time, which makes the whole cocoon thing work even better as the mysterious prologue-y ending. If we're going to use our own legal tradition, we would have to conclude that no, neither the buggers nor Ender are guilty because they did not have intent to commit a crime. The buggers simply didn't know that they were destroying sentient life and Ender thought he was playing a war simulation. No intent, no crime. However much we'd like retribution for our dead, punishing the buggers is like punishing an innocent man. No intent.
On the communication issue, it seems very deliberate that the "other" is in bug form. Can our bugs on earth show us some kind of intelligence? They create massive, intricate anthills and ordered honeycombs. But we don't think of those as grand works of architecture, even though they could be the Eiffel Tower of anthills, or maybe the I.M. Pei Honeycomb. In much the same way, our buildings could seem so different to an outside race that they just seem like anthills - the sign of life, but not necessarily intelligent life. So, you start clearing out and what's that? Oh, crap, they're fighting back. Well, bees fight back when you hit their honeycomb. Oh, crap, they've got some pretty sophisticated stuff. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe we should try talking to them.
So let's try! Meanwhile, from Earth's perspective, this entire thing has been an unprovoked attack. An attack, not an accident, not a misunderstanding. So you prepare to wipe the sons of bitches off the face of the... plane of the universe with all necessary speed. In that sense, as a race, humans had every right to send their fighters off into space via that other neat affirmative defense, self-defense. Your entire history with these things is that they come and attack you. Even though your best option is to collude, to put this into the classic Prisoner's Dilemma, you have no reason to believe that your enemy will collude, so you minimize your losses and wipe your enemy right out of existence. So in that sense, they're justified.
But then there's the problem of communication. Should they have tried communicating, both ways? Absolutely, but it's more complicated than just sending a Red Telephone over with a note that says "Call me!" Maybe they could have started by rattling off a bunch of prime numbers - that's generally a good sign of intelligence. Maybe rip the plaque and the record off of Voyager 1 and give that a shot. You could even send them a turntable to play it on. So yes, there were probably better ways of trying to communicate that the I.F. didn't try. Oops! You just killed off a whole race! Thanks for playing, try again.
And finally, a few words on Aliens. It's a good movie to watch, especially with a proper sound system (though until the model classroom gets a center channel, I'm not comfortable with calling it a proper system). You get all these fun little glimpses into the Company from Paul Reiser's character and you wonder how the hell government exactly works in the future. And it's a shitload better of a movie than Alien^3 or Resurrection.
But cinematically, it doesn't hold a candle to Alien. As Prof. PTJ mentioned, Alien is much more of a horror movie than Aliens, which leaves Aliens something like "Space action." Aliens is filled with the horrible dialogue between the Marines and the annoying kid with the worst scream this side of Six String Samurai. What this film loses that Alien had was a true fear of the Alien. There was only one. And he was a lurking badass that no one knew how to kill. But you can shoot the thing? And it just dies? That's it? What a ripoff. Unfortunately, few people know how to keep an infinite badass alien villian going.
Enter the Borg. They were the infinite evil badass - it was simply impossible to communicate with them. Impossible to reason with them. "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own." That's it. That's Borg communication. You get assimilated. That's it. But then, instead of keeping them as infinite cosmic badasses, they get a queen. So it turns out, all of the drones do play second fiddle, instead of all sharing first fiddle. And I don't buy the "I, Borg" thing that individuality ended up in the collective bullshit because Picard says that the Queen was there on the cube that was sent to Earth. And also, Voyager doesn't count. There, I said it.
So back to my point. Alien had the infinite badass and Aliens removed the "infinite." Which doesn't make it a horrible movie, though the Marine dialogue brings it close. It just makes it a considerable letdown from the original. Seriously, the first time I watched it, when the Marines are about to shoot one, I thought to myself, "Oh, shit - you've got another thing coming if you think you can shoot these things." And then they did. Lame.
But again, it's not a bad movie. Alien^3 was a bad movie. Resurrection was godawful. It's just the 2010 to Kubrick's 2001. It kills the mystery, though it leaves something generally satisfying in its place. But it kills the infinite badass.
Now, I'm just imagining what would happen if James Cameron and Michael Bay worked on the same movie. Three hours of gratuitous explosions? I'd watch that.
We had two examples from the book of who could be guilty, but didn't have proper knowledge: the buggers for the first invasion and Ender. Though we briefly touched on this similarity, I thought that the issue had some legal depth. The way I see it, if the buggers were guilty, Ender was guilty. This certainly has the effect of tying their fates together for all time, which makes the whole cocoon thing work even better as the mysterious prologue-y ending. If we're going to use our own legal tradition, we would have to conclude that no, neither the buggers nor Ender are guilty because they did not have intent to commit a crime. The buggers simply didn't know that they were destroying sentient life and Ender thought he was playing a war simulation. No intent, no crime. However much we'd like retribution for our dead, punishing the buggers is like punishing an innocent man. No intent.
On the communication issue, it seems very deliberate that the "other" is in bug form. Can our bugs on earth show us some kind of intelligence? They create massive, intricate anthills and ordered honeycombs. But we don't think of those as grand works of architecture, even though they could be the Eiffel Tower of anthills, or maybe the I.M. Pei Honeycomb. In much the same way, our buildings could seem so different to an outside race that they just seem like anthills - the sign of life, but not necessarily intelligent life. So, you start clearing out and what's that? Oh, crap, they're fighting back. Well, bees fight back when you hit their honeycomb. Oh, crap, they've got some pretty sophisticated stuff. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe we should try talking to them.
So let's try! Meanwhile, from Earth's perspective, this entire thing has been an unprovoked attack. An attack, not an accident, not a misunderstanding. So you prepare to wipe the sons of bitches off the face of the... plane of the universe with all necessary speed. In that sense, as a race, humans had every right to send their fighters off into space via that other neat affirmative defense, self-defense. Your entire history with these things is that they come and attack you. Even though your best option is to collude, to put this into the classic Prisoner's Dilemma, you have no reason to believe that your enemy will collude, so you minimize your losses and wipe your enemy right out of existence. So in that sense, they're justified.
But then there's the problem of communication. Should they have tried communicating, both ways? Absolutely, but it's more complicated than just sending a Red Telephone over with a note that says "Call me!" Maybe they could have started by rattling off a bunch of prime numbers - that's generally a good sign of intelligence. Maybe rip the plaque and the record off of Voyager 1 and give that a shot. You could even send them a turntable to play it on. So yes, there were probably better ways of trying to communicate that the I.F. didn't try. Oops! You just killed off a whole race! Thanks for playing, try again.
And finally, a few words on Aliens. It's a good movie to watch, especially with a proper sound system (though until the model classroom gets a center channel, I'm not comfortable with calling it a proper system). You get all these fun little glimpses into the Company from Paul Reiser's character and you wonder how the hell government exactly works in the future. And it's a shitload better of a movie than Alien^3 or Resurrection.
But cinematically, it doesn't hold a candle to Alien. As Prof. PTJ mentioned, Alien is much more of a horror movie than Aliens, which leaves Aliens something like "Space action." Aliens is filled with the horrible dialogue between the Marines and the annoying kid with the worst scream this side of Six String Samurai. What this film loses that Alien had was a true fear of the Alien. There was only one. And he was a lurking badass that no one knew how to kill. But you can shoot the thing? And it just dies? That's it? What a ripoff. Unfortunately, few people know how to keep an infinite badass alien villian going.
Enter the Borg. They were the infinite evil badass - it was simply impossible to communicate with them. Impossible to reason with them. "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own." That's it. That's Borg communication. You get assimilated. That's it. But then, instead of keeping them as infinite cosmic badasses, they get a queen. So it turns out, all of the drones do play second fiddle, instead of all sharing first fiddle. And I don't buy the "I, Borg" thing that individuality ended up in the collective bullshit because Picard says that the Queen was there on the cube that was sent to Earth. And also, Voyager doesn't count. There, I said it.
So back to my point. Alien had the infinite badass and Aliens removed the "infinite." Which doesn't make it a horrible movie, though the Marine dialogue brings it close. It just makes it a considerable letdown from the original. Seriously, the first time I watched it, when the Marines are about to shoot one, I thought to myself, "Oh, shit - you've got another thing coming if you think you can shoot these things." And then they did. Lame.
But again, it's not a bad movie. Alien^3 was a bad movie. Resurrection was godawful. It's just the 2010 to Kubrick's 2001. It kills the mystery, though it leaves something generally satisfying in its place. But it kills the infinite badass.
Now, I'm just imagining what would happen if James Cameron and Michael Bay worked on the same movie. Three hours of gratuitous explosions? I'd watch that.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Ender's Game Reflection
I agree with Tim that forcing people to address the IF’s choices regarding how to deal with the buggers as though we were the people responsible for the decision and the consequences eliminated the middle ground, but it did so because making the decision personal prevents us from being able to take the easy way out by justifying both positions. I don’t think that this exercise was a bad idea, and I don’t think that people became so entrenched that they could not see the other side. I think that we seemed to be strictly standing for our positions because we were not allowed to have a middle ground. Making the decision a more personal question caused us to have to make firm justifications for whichever side we chose instead of just sitting on the fence.
Though I disagree with much of what was said during class, I enjoyed the discussion because the different opinions were so far opposed that it allowed us to look at the same evidence and see it in completely different ways.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Belief
Since the nominal topic of our discussion was whether Paul was a messiah or not, I think I’ll question our basic assumption. Does it matter whether we define Paul as a messiah? If the people who followed him believed him to be a messiah should that not be enough? The fremen believed that he was their savior, so to them he was their savior, whether he truly had come as a fulfillment to prophecies or whether he merely took advantage of the prophecies. And even if he did simply take advantage of prophecies that had been planted there, he still led the people to their freedom. Does it even matter if the prophecies were real or planted by the Bene Gesserit? If the fremen believed in the prophecies, Paul came and fulfilled the prophecies, and the fremen believed that Paul was their savior, then he was a savior to them. In this situation, I believe that the fremen’s faith in Paul proves he is their messiah. By no means would you ever get a freman to believe that Paul wasn’t a messiah.
I suppose the position I’ve outlined above leads back to the question of a messiah versus the messiah. This question, however, presupposes that in the world Herbert created, a single messiah is possible. My question would then be how would you identify a single messiah as the messiah? That again depends on how Herbert’s world works. Would The Messiah have to fulfill the prophecies of all religions, or do religions exist that claim to expect the one true Messiah? In the first case, would Paul work as The Messiah? He fulfilled prophecies from several different religions, but did he cover all of them? What about the second case? How do you know which religion to trust when they say that their Messiah is the one true savior? I ask these questions strictly from an outsider perspective like us reading Herbert’s novel, not to get into a religious debate about the competing religions we live with, but without getting into a debate, we can think about these questions abstractly in regard to today’s religions. I’ll let you others do that, however. I’m not about to start pulling out the worms now that I’ve opened that particular can.
Putting aside messiahs for a moment, I’d like to talk about Paul as a political instead of a religious leader. In “Politics as a Vocation,” Weber talks about hereditary, charismatic, and legal justifications for leadership. While Paul admittedly has some roles he occupies through charismatic justification, he also has a ninety-generation pedigree set up by the Bene Gesserit. Despite this hereditary justification already being in place, does he actually gain the positions of leadership that should be his through his family ties by his charismatic leadership, or does his justification in those roles rely mainly on his hereditary right to rule? Which justification takes precedence in Paul’s situation if both justifications are present? Wow, a lot of questions in that post, but I’m still more interested in hearing what other people have to say on the political front than trying to come up with my own answers since I’m sure you all know much more about politics than I do (you all don’t actively avoid politics).Expressing Multiple Roles
When we discussed Dune in class, we spent much of the time talking about which of Paul’s titles best represents who he is, or if he is all of them, and what happens when his different roles come into conflict with each other. I think that the most likely answer is that he takes on each role as the situation demands it. If we all look at our daily lives, this is how we act in different situations. Since I know my life better than any of yours, I’ll use myself as an example. I have many different roles in my life, as I’m sure you all do. I am a Desk Receptionist at Hughes, a Writing Consultant and the Writing Center, the lighting technician for the Gathering service, a junior in college, and many other things depending on the situation. Depending on which role I am playing at the moment, I have to respond differently to different situations. For example, when I am studying in my room, being a student takes precedence, but when I am studying at the front desk in Hughes, checking someone’s spare key out to them becomes more important than reading an article on blackboard or whatever I am doing because I have other responsibilities that are more important. When I am working as a writing consultant, I work one on one with a student to help them improve their writing skills, but when I am setting up lighting for the Gathering, I work on an much more impersonal level with other people, telling them where to run wiring and such. In a way, Paul’s multiple roles are not any different from the multiple roles that we all have to play every day. Paul’s roles just have more impressive titles, and come with more impressive skills. So anyhow, I believe that Paul can be all of his titles at once, but that different situations bring different roles and skills to the forefront, just like different situations in our day-to-day lives call for responses from our own different roles and skill sets.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Computers and Cartoons
Since everyone else has provided their thoughts on the computer experiment, I guess I’ll throw in my two cents as well. Like Kaitlin, I enjoy trying different things in class, and I thought this was an interesting program to try out. I found it interesting to see the different ways that our groups went about searching for sources to prove or disprove the validity of Stephanson’s argument, and I think that it is also important to take into consideration the validity of an argument when reading a text like Stephanson. Like most of the class, however, I don’t think that this program worked out very well. We spent a good portion of class time just looking up different things on the computers instead of being in discussion. Because we spent so much time on this question, both in research and in sharing our conclusions, we didn’t really get to spend much time in the text, which is too bad when you have a text this interesting. Also, the technical difficulties and the delay between the sending and receiving computers were distracting. Finally, I also hate Macs (never owned one, but had to suffer through them being the only computers my school district would use).
Focus of Discussion - Wells versus Heinlein
I found it interesting how different our discussion on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was from the discussion we previously had on The Time Machine. With Wells’s book, we spent much time discussing what we found implausible and poking fun at the way the Time Traveller handled his trip into the future, whereas most of our discussion of Heinlein’s book centered around questions of morality and ethics, which Chris outlined nicely in his “Morality vs. Ethics” post, and about the logistics of the Lunar society. Why the difference in discussion? I believe the difference came about partly because we better understand the context from which Heinlein is writing. Both the politics from the era Heinlein’s book was written and the understanding of science people had at that time are easier for us to relate to than those from Wells’s era. I also think that the difference in conversation had to do with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress being more what we now expect from a science fiction text. Though The Time Machine contained its titular device, the world the Time Traveller transported us to seemed less of a science fiction setting, and more of a canvas on which Wells could explore his political theories. I don’t mean to say that a setting cannot have both, because as we see in Heinlein’s book, it can, I just mean that Wells’s world contains little in the way of imagined technology outside of the time machine itself, but instead is practically wiped clean of technology and all we expect from science fiction texts now. Because it is so different, we had to spend time discussing how it worked at the time it was written and explaining to ourselves why the lack of advancement and other things in the book bothered us. With Heinlein, we don’t have this issue because his story is chock full of futuristic technology, and shows us a world we can more easily understand as being our future because we see the human instinct to strive for achievement and discovery played out.
Questioning Our Assumptions in The Time Machine
We spent much of class discussing the problems we had with The Time Machine, most of which were issues with the scientific believability of the world as Wells described it. I believe that our discussion on those issues was useful because it let us discuss why the issues we had problems with made sense or were at least possible explanations in the time in which the book was written. This led to discussion of what the book said about society in relation to the context of the society at the time Wells wrote it, which allows us a deeper understanding of what he was trying to say about society and the pitfalls it needs to avoid.
On the other hand, the fact that we had to discuss the believability of the novel at all leads me to question how we were reading it. Though it was meant to take place in our world, the world of today is so different from both the world in which Wells lived and the one he created that we cannot judge the book based on criteria from today’s world. The book consistently follows it’s own logic, so we should not have to question the world it shows us. However, we do question that world, and not just because we are reading the book from a modern perspective. We also question that world because the Time Traveller himself questions that world. He doesn’t question it by pointing out what doesn’t make sense, but he questions it by creating hypotheses about it that are continually wrong. Because Wells forces us to see this new world through the Time Traveller’s eyes, his assumptions become our own, and as those assumptions are disproved, we begin to mistrust our own judgments of what is taking place in the future that Wells shows us.
On the other hand, the fact that we had to discuss the believability of the novel at all leads me to question how we were reading it. Though it was meant to take place in our world, the world of today is so different from both the world in which Wells lived and the one he created that we cannot judge the book based on criteria from today’s world. The book consistently follows it’s own logic, so we should not have to question the world it shows us. However, we do question that world, and not just because we are reading the book from a modern perspective. We also question that world because the Time Traveller himself questions that world. He doesn’t question it by pointing out what doesn’t make sense, but he questions it by creating hypotheses about it that are continually wrong. Because Wells forces us to see this new world through the Time Traveller’s eyes, his assumptions become our own, and as those assumptions are disproved, we begin to mistrust our own judgments of what is taking place in the future that Wells shows us.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
V for Verbose
Well, since I'm getting the hell out of Dodge tomorrow, I'd better put up a reflection on class now. What to say? We didn't really cover much in my opinion, always coming back to the question of how V gets the right to do what he does versus Susan and Norsefire. One thing is for sure: V is not of the body. Peace and tranquility is not with him. He does not know Landru.
Okay, actually, that's a start, actually. "Return of the Archons" - classic original series, just after the magic microphone that can detect heartbeats and right before Khan. The Body is this huge subconscious telepathy system that makes people seem absurdly calm save one hour a day, the Red Hour. Bottom line, the Body is actually controlled by Landru, a 6000 year old computer that was programmed to help the people of Beta III. Unfortunately, instead of doing this in some reasonable way, it decides that people having free will is too much of a risk to their own safety and takes it away. Kirk and Spock convince the computer that it has betrayed its own programming by doing this and it goes up in wonderful 1967 special effects "the computer's going up in smoke" smoke.
Or we go to the second season (Chekov shows up, so it's a good time) - "Patterns of Force." A Federation historian breaks the prime directive and interferes with a culture, organizing it in accordance with fascism, hoping to only duplicate its positive aspects. Long story short, the historian gets overpowered, a new guy takes charge, and then all the bad parts of fascism take over. Say, genocide of another planet. Once again, free will goes by the wayside as the new leader attempts to achieve racial purity. Spock mind-melds with the historian, who tells the planet that the Final Solution analogue isn't a great idea, then he gets shot, but it's all cool now.
All right, so we've got message one, that free will is the all-important marker of a society. Even if you can be guaranteed safety under Landru, you won't really be alive because you don't have freedom of choice. Let's go with the quest for free will to vindicate V's agenda over Norsefire's.
And then we've got the great little critique of fascism and human hubris. Sure, it can do some great things, but despotism's built into the system. As soon as Gill gets overthrown and the evil dude starts up, you've got bad fascism. Whoops. I guess the historian didn't really learn about history until he recreated it. And the Enterprise flies off to its next mission. Dum da da, da dum dum da da, DA!
Last, an additional word on the movie. I can see the graphic novel being turned almost verbatim into a great movie. Unfortunately, the only director I can see doing it, David Lean, died in 1991. Lean had this wonderful skill: being able to throw all sorts of wonderfully subversive politics into a damn entertaining movie. I just still don't see a way to properly capture the novel on film in 2005. In 1990, we're talking a different story. It could have been that crazy project that a director does before he dies (see Eyes Wide Shut for a prime example). Maybe the next David Lean (added bonus on his being British) can take V and treat it right. But in any case, the Wachowskis made a fun movie.
I, for one, take no joy in shooting fish in a barrel, which is pretty much what comparing a movie to its original book usually is. Sure, we have that award for Best Adapted Screenplay every year, but usually the movies that win take a so-so (or completely unknown or foreign) book and turn it into a good movie. Notable recent exception: LotR, where Peter Jackson took an excellent (though dry as all get out) novel and turned it into what many die-hard LotR fans call a so-so movie version (or a travesty, depending on how die-hard the fan). I, for one, hated reading the books but loved the movies because they didn't make fight scenes as interesting as a stackable combination washer/dryer with Energy Saver cool dry mode manual. But I digress. My point is, judge the film not on the graphic novel. That was Alan Moore's job, and we know his answer. Come down off your high horses, judge the film as a film, and tell me it's not enjoyable, being all "high and mighty" offended notwithstanding.
Okay, actually, that's a start, actually. "Return of the Archons" - classic original series, just after the magic microphone that can detect heartbeats and right before Khan. The Body is this huge subconscious telepathy system that makes people seem absurdly calm save one hour a day, the Red Hour. Bottom line, the Body is actually controlled by Landru, a 6000 year old computer that was programmed to help the people of Beta III. Unfortunately, instead of doing this in some reasonable way, it decides that people having free will is too much of a risk to their own safety and takes it away. Kirk and Spock convince the computer that it has betrayed its own programming by doing this and it goes up in wonderful 1967 special effects "the computer's going up in smoke" smoke.
Or we go to the second season (Chekov shows up, so it's a good time) - "Patterns of Force." A Federation historian breaks the prime directive and interferes with a culture, organizing it in accordance with fascism, hoping to only duplicate its positive aspects. Long story short, the historian gets overpowered, a new guy takes charge, and then all the bad parts of fascism take over. Say, genocide of another planet. Once again, free will goes by the wayside as the new leader attempts to achieve racial purity. Spock mind-melds with the historian, who tells the planet that the Final Solution analogue isn't a great idea, then he gets shot, but it's all cool now.
All right, so we've got message one, that free will is the all-important marker of a society. Even if you can be guaranteed safety under Landru, you won't really be alive because you don't have freedom of choice. Let's go with the quest for free will to vindicate V's agenda over Norsefire's.
And then we've got the great little critique of fascism and human hubris. Sure, it can do some great things, but despotism's built into the system. As soon as Gill gets overthrown and the evil dude starts up, you've got bad fascism. Whoops. I guess the historian didn't really learn about history until he recreated it. And the Enterprise flies off to its next mission. Dum da da, da dum dum da da, DA!
Last, an additional word on the movie. I can see the graphic novel being turned almost verbatim into a great movie. Unfortunately, the only director I can see doing it, David Lean, died in 1991. Lean had this wonderful skill: being able to throw all sorts of wonderfully subversive politics into a damn entertaining movie. I just still don't see a way to properly capture the novel on film in 2005. In 1990, we're talking a different story. It could have been that crazy project that a director does before he dies (see Eyes Wide Shut for a prime example). Maybe the next David Lean (added bonus on his being British) can take V and treat it right. But in any case, the Wachowskis made a fun movie.
I, for one, take no joy in shooting fish in a barrel, which is pretty much what comparing a movie to its original book usually is. Sure, we have that award for Best Adapted Screenplay every year, but usually the movies that win take a so-so (or completely unknown or foreign) book and turn it into a good movie. Notable recent exception: LotR, where Peter Jackson took an excellent (though dry as all get out) novel and turned it into what many die-hard LotR fans call a so-so movie version (or a travesty, depending on how die-hard the fan). I, for one, hated reading the books but loved the movies because they didn't make fight scenes as interesting as a stackable combination washer/dryer with Energy Saver cool dry mode manual. But I digress. My point is, judge the film not on the graphic novel. That was Alan Moore's job, and we know his answer. Come down off your high horses, judge the film as a film, and tell me it's not enjoyable, being all "high and mighty" offended notwithstanding.
Friday, February 29, 2008
He, She and It = They. That's all we needed to know.
Like much of the class, I too enjoyed our discussion on Tuesday. I think that the most important lessons were that the Model Classroom is alive and that Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place would have lasted longer than four seasons if the pizza place was alive.
I like to approach books from a literary standpoint first. This is one of the reasons I really liked He, She and It and didn't find it at all uncomfortable. Though I was always aware that I was reading a book by "feminist author Marge Piercy," I was willing to accept her version of the world and I didn't at all mind what some of the class characterized as almost separatist feminism. I did think that Shira's Ari subplot was a little off-putting, which is why I was worried that I wouldn't like the book for the first few pages. I didn't want the book to turn into another Tom Jane comedy (Please, somebody get this reference).
We touched back on Mike from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but glossed over it so quickly that I think we created two classes of sentient computers: people and living machines. Heinlein wrote Moon without there being a question of Mike's being alive, but in He, She and It, we skipped the alive part and moved right to personhood. This brings us back around to the pizza place: is Malkah's house alive? A person? The "law" stated that no human-shaped cyborgs could exist, but not necessarily how smart they could be. The law seems to be more concerned with the practical aspects of having cyborgs infiltrating the multis for unknown ends, not the philosophical aspects of creating a person/human/future-crab.
And is this some weird offshoot of Clarke's Third Law? In fact, I'm coining it, right here. Even though I don't have a First and Second Law. DiPrima's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced AI is indistinguishable from a person." So, if we're talking .999999999..., aren't we just talking about 1.0? Well, not exactly, but we're a different form of giant computer, too. We're just squishier. So I guess we're all .999999999...
This is not turning out to be more focused than my original post. That's probably because I've been on a lot of cold medicine since Tuesday, though I'm now almost through the bloody thing. One last thought, though, on Blade Runner. First, Ridley Scott is the master of pacing a movie, perhaps in this one even more than in Alien. In case anyone missed the revised ending thing that wasn't in the original theatrical rape of the film, Castillo/Jaime Escalante/Adama leaves the unicorn to show that he knows Deckard's dreams - that Deckard is actually a Replicant. What's great is, the first time I saw the movie, I saw the theatrical cut that really gives no hint of Deckard being a Replicant. In contrast to He, She and It, Blade Runner's version of AI people is that they're organic, but not alive until they accumulate about four years' worth of experiences and develop their own emotions. How does this work into Yod, who's preprogrammed with emotions? Whose are they, anyway? Are they Tyrell's niece's? And does it matter, as long as you can still play the piano?
I like to approach books from a literary standpoint first. This is one of the reasons I really liked He, She and It and didn't find it at all uncomfortable. Though I was always aware that I was reading a book by "feminist author Marge Piercy," I was willing to accept her version of the world and I didn't at all mind what some of the class characterized as almost separatist feminism. I did think that Shira's Ari subplot was a little off-putting, which is why I was worried that I wouldn't like the book for the first few pages. I didn't want the book to turn into another Tom Jane comedy (Please, somebody get this reference).
We touched back on Mike from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but glossed over it so quickly that I think we created two classes of sentient computers: people and living machines. Heinlein wrote Moon without there being a question of Mike's being alive, but in He, She and It, we skipped the alive part and moved right to personhood. This brings us back around to the pizza place: is Malkah's house alive? A person? The "law" stated that no human-shaped cyborgs could exist, but not necessarily how smart they could be. The law seems to be more concerned with the practical aspects of having cyborgs infiltrating the multis for unknown ends, not the philosophical aspects of creating a person/human/future-crab.
And is this some weird offshoot of Clarke's Third Law? In fact, I'm coining it, right here. Even though I don't have a First and Second Law. DiPrima's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced AI is indistinguishable from a person." So, if we're talking .999999999..., aren't we just talking about 1.0? Well, not exactly, but we're a different form of giant computer, too. We're just squishier. So I guess we're all .999999999...
This is not turning out to be more focused than my original post. That's probably because I've been on a lot of cold medicine since Tuesday, though I'm now almost through the bloody thing. One last thought, though, on Blade Runner. First, Ridley Scott is the master of pacing a movie, perhaps in this one even more than in Alien. In case anyone missed the revised ending thing that wasn't in the original theatrical rape of the film, Castillo/Jaime Escalante/Adama leaves the unicorn to show that he knows Deckard's dreams - that Deckard is actually a Replicant. What's great is, the first time I saw the movie, I saw the theatrical cut that really gives no hint of Deckard being a Replicant. In contrast to He, She and It, Blade Runner's version of AI people is that they're organic, but not alive until they accumulate about four years' worth of experiences and develop their own emotions. How does this work into Yod, who's preprogrammed with emotions? Whose are they, anyway? Are they Tyrell's niece's? And does it matter, as long as you can still play the piano?
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The Answer?
I don't know if anyone else enjoyed that class as much as I did, but considering the number of people who have already given reflective posts, I'd say that it at least interested people.
Okay, Dune. Messiah... Only problem is, we're thinking of this all wrong, and so we're sort of half-right on the whole thing. As I said in class, I have a very limited knowledge of Islamic Second Coming myth, so I really can't speak as an authority on this. However, what I have learned is that the Mahdi (literally: "The Guided One") is not the messiah. He is referred to a Hadrat, literally "Great Presence."
As with any religious figure, not all Muslims agree on the nature or even existence of the Mahdi. I think, though, that I've found a pretty mainstream belief and summarized it here. First, the Islamic belief is that Jesus was not killed, but ascended to heaven alive and became a Muslim. My understanding of what I've read is that the Mahdi will begin a series of wars all over earth to fight the False Messiah, "al-Masīh ad-Dajjāl." In the midst of this, Jesus, the messiah, will come back down to Earth to slay the Anti-Christ. The Jews and Christians will convert to Islam and Jesus will reign over a peaceful, utopian Earth for 40 years. He will then die and be buried beside Muhammad.
So I get out of this that the Mahdi is, indeed, just a guided "seed" to cause the actual messiah's return to Earth. Also, messiahs can die; they just have to do it according to prophesy. I don't know if this is the definitive answer, but I'm almost certain that Herbert was aware of all this when he was writing Dune.
Prof. PTJ touched upon a great point, one that a friend of mine mentioned to me when I first read Dune about ten years ago. As a Judeo-Christian-influenced society, we're expecting a Jesus story when we start talking about religious figures who lead their people out of oppression and to the promised land. Herbert was aware of this expectation and so he wrote an Islamic-based story. This is a brilliant move - it makes the story seem a little exotic, but also familiar. Sociologists have shown that people tend to like things that are slightly exotic, but also familiar.
In other news, perhaps I was a bit harsh on Weber. Our discussion pulled out the good points from his lecture. I still think that the bloody thing was too damn long, though. In my initial post, and once in class, I noted what I perceived to be a realpolitik bent to Weber's argument. Perhaps I should have left it as what I first called it in my blog post, "For the Love of God, Please, and I Can't Emphasize This Enough, Understand the Difference Between Theory and Practice." The term realpolitik is too Machiavellian for what I actually took Weber to mean; it just happens to be more concise than "For the Love of God, Please, and I Can't Emphasize This Enough, Understand the Difference Between Theory and Practice."
Finally, a reflection on the class itself. As I said earlier, I really enjoyed our session, especially the first part. I thought that we had a great conversation going. As Prof. PTJ said, the Pro/Con list itself wasn't the point, nor was finding an answer, really. It was a (highly effective, in my opinion) tool to get us talking about what a messiah actually is, how the book addresses it, and, to bring it back to social science, how societies believe in messiahs. Jonestown, for example. And then, in The Fifth Element, we'll see a savior who no one even knows we need.
I'm skeptical about the court reporter concept we're going to be experimenting with. My personal concern is that I won't be able to do it very well - the only classes I've ever taken notes in are math classes. My mind works more like our discussion did - stream of consciousness style and filled with random pop culture references. My overall concern is that whoever is reporting will be taken out of the discussion. That's one of the reasons why I half-jokingly suggested a transcription. Since I don't do it, I forgot that people follow some sociological variant of quantum theory and act differently when they're monitored. Then again, our discussions center more on the Heisenberg Principle: the more you know about the conversation, the less sure you are about where it's going, and vice-versa.
This is the power of the course, I think. We're actually going somewhere, instead of most classes where you go along a set path to find an answer that people already know, then put a bow on it and take a regurgitation test. Almost any time a class discussion ends in an answer, I'm disappointed. Yesterday's class, by contrast, left me invigorated enough to write an absurdly long reflection. I didn't write it yesterday because I didn't want it to be too long, in fact.
As a rule, I hate postmodernism. I can't stand postmodern architecture or philosophy - I see it exactly as Nietzsche would, I think - it's the road that brings us to the Last Man. Overall, postmodernism is nihilistic and worse, a conversation killer. Not every argument should end with "Well, that's just your opinion," like much postmodernist thought dictates. There are answers to things. Not all things, but some. There are correct and incorrect value judgments; they are not all solely matters of opinion. I'd go so far as to say that postmodernism is causing the increasing rates of depression among all age groups, especially the younger ones.
This class, though, is a perfect example of the good parts of postmodernism. We mentioned going off on tangents in class, to which Prof. PTJ (and maybe Dirk Gently) responded that nothing is actually a tangent. Our class is a great example of that omnipresent characteristic of postmodern art: pastiche. It's what makes (some of) us like Family Guy, its constant references that contain both respect and irreverence. In much of postmodern art, it is the fusion of "high" and "low" culture - some of that architecture I hate is a perfect example. One architect recently featured in the New York Times is building a housing development based on slums, even - merger of "high" and "low," considering how expensive these places will be. Pre-ripped jeans? I see it as an extension of the same concept. I always imagine some starving child in China ripping every pair of jeans that comes past him, crying, "But why? Why do the Americans want holes in their jeans? They let the cold in! Oh, so cold. So... so cold."
But I digress (anyone get the wheat reference from my substantive post yet?). Here we have a great merger of "high" and "low." Science fiction, though it has come a long way from pulp magazines, is still widely considered as "low culture." Social science is "high culture." We merge the two and find that sci-fi can tell us more about social science than can social scientists. So it's only natural that we end up talking about the Comfy Chair or any number of pieces of pop culture. They all contain some understanding of the problem we're looking at. Even the Family Guy cutaways.
Okay, Dune. Messiah... Only problem is, we're thinking of this all wrong, and so we're sort of half-right on the whole thing. As I said in class, I have a very limited knowledge of Islamic Second Coming myth, so I really can't speak as an authority on this. However, what I have learned is that the Mahdi (literally: "The Guided One") is not the messiah. He is referred to a Hadrat, literally "Great Presence."
As with any religious figure, not all Muslims agree on the nature or even existence of the Mahdi. I think, though, that I've found a pretty mainstream belief and summarized it here. First, the Islamic belief is that Jesus was not killed, but ascended to heaven alive and became a Muslim. My understanding of what I've read is that the Mahdi will begin a series of wars all over earth to fight the False Messiah, "al-Masīh ad-Dajjāl." In the midst of this, Jesus, the messiah, will come back down to Earth to slay the Anti-Christ. The Jews and Christians will convert to Islam and Jesus will reign over a peaceful, utopian Earth for 40 years. He will then die and be buried beside Muhammad.
So I get out of this that the Mahdi is, indeed, just a guided "seed" to cause the actual messiah's return to Earth. Also, messiahs can die; they just have to do it according to prophesy. I don't know if this is the definitive answer, but I'm almost certain that Herbert was aware of all this when he was writing Dune.
Prof. PTJ touched upon a great point, one that a friend of mine mentioned to me when I first read Dune about ten years ago. As a Judeo-Christian-influenced society, we're expecting a Jesus story when we start talking about religious figures who lead their people out of oppression and to the promised land. Herbert was aware of this expectation and so he wrote an Islamic-based story. This is a brilliant move - it makes the story seem a little exotic, but also familiar. Sociologists have shown that people tend to like things that are slightly exotic, but also familiar.
In other news, perhaps I was a bit harsh on Weber. Our discussion pulled out the good points from his lecture. I still think that the bloody thing was too damn long, though. In my initial post, and once in class, I noted what I perceived to be a realpolitik bent to Weber's argument. Perhaps I should have left it as what I first called it in my blog post, "For the Love of God, Please, and I Can't Emphasize This Enough, Understand the Difference Between Theory and Practice." The term realpolitik is too Machiavellian for what I actually took Weber to mean; it just happens to be more concise than "For the Love of God, Please, and I Can't Emphasize This Enough, Understand the Difference Between Theory and Practice."
Finally, a reflection on the class itself. As I said earlier, I really enjoyed our session, especially the first part. I thought that we had a great conversation going. As Prof. PTJ said, the Pro/Con list itself wasn't the point, nor was finding an answer, really. It was a (highly effective, in my opinion) tool to get us talking about what a messiah actually is, how the book addresses it, and, to bring it back to social science, how societies believe in messiahs. Jonestown, for example. And then, in The Fifth Element, we'll see a savior who no one even knows we need.
I'm skeptical about the court reporter concept we're going to be experimenting with. My personal concern is that I won't be able to do it very well - the only classes I've ever taken notes in are math classes. My mind works more like our discussion did - stream of consciousness style and filled with random pop culture references. My overall concern is that whoever is reporting will be taken out of the discussion. That's one of the reasons why I half-jokingly suggested a transcription. Since I don't do it, I forgot that people follow some sociological variant of quantum theory and act differently when they're monitored. Then again, our discussions center more on the Heisenberg Principle: the more you know about the conversation, the less sure you are about where it's going, and vice-versa.
This is the power of the course, I think. We're actually going somewhere, instead of most classes where you go along a set path to find an answer that people already know, then put a bow on it and take a regurgitation test. Almost any time a class discussion ends in an answer, I'm disappointed. Yesterday's class, by contrast, left me invigorated enough to write an absurdly long reflection. I didn't write it yesterday because I didn't want it to be too long, in fact.
As a rule, I hate postmodernism. I can't stand postmodern architecture or philosophy - I see it exactly as Nietzsche would, I think - it's the road that brings us to the Last Man. Overall, postmodernism is nihilistic and worse, a conversation killer. Not every argument should end with "Well, that's just your opinion," like much postmodernist thought dictates. There are answers to things. Not all things, but some. There are correct and incorrect value judgments; they are not all solely matters of opinion. I'd go so far as to say that postmodernism is causing the increasing rates of depression among all age groups, especially the younger ones.
This class, though, is a perfect example of the good parts of postmodernism. We mentioned going off on tangents in class, to which Prof. PTJ (and maybe Dirk Gently) responded that nothing is actually a tangent. Our class is a great example of that omnipresent characteristic of postmodern art: pastiche. It's what makes (some of) us like Family Guy, its constant references that contain both respect and irreverence. In much of postmodern art, it is the fusion of "high" and "low" culture - some of that architecture I hate is a perfect example. One architect recently featured in the New York Times is building a housing development based on slums, even - merger of "high" and "low," considering how expensive these places will be. Pre-ripped jeans? I see it as an extension of the same concept. I always imagine some starving child in China ripping every pair of jeans that comes past him, crying, "But why? Why do the Americans want holes in their jeans? They let the cold in! Oh, so cold. So... so cold."
But I digress (anyone get the wheat reference from my substantive post yet?). Here we have a great merger of "high" and "low." Science fiction, though it has come a long way from pulp magazines, is still widely considered as "low culture." Social science is "high culture." We merge the two and find that sci-fi can tell us more about social science than can social scientists. So it's only natural that we end up talking about the Comfy Chair or any number of pieces of pop culture. They all contain some understanding of the problem we're looking at. Even the Family Guy cutaways.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
"Free Will," or "Fire at Will"
A thought occurred to me as I was reading over others' blog posts. A good number of them concerned whether or not anyone in Dune had free will because Paul could see into the future. This got me thinking back to The Time Machine - it's also set in one future, so did anyone in the intervening millions of years have free will? Are we destined to be, you know, crabs? I find it at least interesting, if nothing more, that we had no discussion of free will when we first talked about time travel. After all, Paul's mind is just time-travelling - same idea.
Or let's go over to First Contact - the Borg changed the past, which changed the future, and then the Enterprise fixed it... fate? Had to be? Or do our actions dictate our future? Well, it's easier to think of it in the past.
Is it that the Time Traveller saw what would happen without intervention on his part? What if he had come back and somehow overthrown society and changed everything - would we still end up as crabs on a beach? Creepy crabs on a beach? Wheat. Fields of wheat. A tremendous amount of wheat. Soon we shall be covered by wheat. "Did you say wheat?" "Wheat." (Please tell me that someone got that reference.)
If Paul hadn't seen the future, would he have led the revolution? Ah, the old self-fulfilling prophesy. It all comes back to Oedipus, just as any talk of time travel ends up in a paradox. (Unless it's paradox-correcting - I'm assuming that more people will get that reference.)
Well, I don't have an answer, but if we are observing this as a "bible," without regard for the moment for whom it was written, then it makes perfect sense that it's ambiguous.
That third appendix, though. What do we make of that? Is there, in the Quantum Leap parlance, a GTF up there in the higher dimensions that has this all planned out and is actively manipulating events? Or is GTF merely an incredible equation that takes in every variable in the universe and can spew out the future with 100% certainty? Of course, it doesn't matter in a practical sense, since the illusion of free will is the important part.
But I was destined to write this, so I guess it doesn't matter much. Damn! Paradox again.
Or let's go over to First Contact - the Borg changed the past, which changed the future, and then the Enterprise fixed it... fate? Had to be? Or do our actions dictate our future? Well, it's easier to think of it in the past.
Is it that the Time Traveller saw what would happen without intervention on his part? What if he had come back and somehow overthrown society and changed everything - would we still end up as crabs on a beach? Creepy crabs on a beach? Wheat. Fields of wheat. A tremendous amount of wheat. Soon we shall be covered by wheat. "Did you say wheat?" "Wheat." (Please tell me that someone got that reference.)
If Paul hadn't seen the future, would he have led the revolution? Ah, the old self-fulfilling prophesy. It all comes back to Oedipus, just as any talk of time travel ends up in a paradox. (Unless it's paradox-correcting - I'm assuming that more people will get that reference.)
Well, I don't have an answer, but if we are observing this as a "bible," without regard for the moment for whom it was written, then it makes perfect sense that it's ambiguous.
That third appendix, though. What do we make of that? Is there, in the Quantum Leap parlance, a GTF up there in the higher dimensions that has this all planned out and is actively manipulating events? Or is GTF merely an incredible equation that takes in every variable in the universe and can spew out the future with 100% certainty? Of course, it doesn't matter in a practical sense, since the illusion of free will is the important part.
But I was destined to write this, so I guess it doesn't matter much. Damn! Paradox again.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Computer: Arch.
It has taken me a while to post my official reflection to our class session, principally because I have been engaged in a fun discussion over on the Mercury Theatre blog concerning religion. Since I've already touched on some of our class's discussion themes over there, I'll consider that as an integral part of my reflection, leaving this post to address the other parts of class.
First, the laptops. Put simply, I was not a fan. Though it was nice to see a Windows machine put into a nice Mac form-factor (thank you, dual-boot), this was the extent of my enjoyment. Though it was nice to be able to back up our claims with evidence, I found that it distracted and fragmented the class as a whole and that the constructive exchange of ideas suffered. In this respect, I suppose I like a more Socratic approach to synthesizing ideas - I did enjoy the beginning of the class for this reason.
From a purely tech-geek perspective, the experiment certainly showed the limits of the software we were using and perhaps even the throughput of our wireless network - I doubt that we could get a smooth image without being hard-wired in any case. Some day, when all our computers respond to voice commands and speak to us in Majel Barrett's voice, I'm sure it'll work a little better. (Interesting sidenote, it turns out that Google's muckety-mucks were very muc influenced by the computer on Star Trek. I think of this every time I am able to just type a flight number or "time in Stockholm" into Google and get a relevant response, though it's still a little bit behind saying, "Computer: Mid-21st century clothing" and having them by the time you get to the transporter room. We've still come light-years from the first voice recognition software, of course: I remember trying out one of the first voice recognition programs (for Windows 3.11 for Workgroups) and sitting there, repeating, "Minimize... Minimize... Minimize..." until the blasted thing actually worked.
But I digress. In response to Prof. PTJ's own reflection, I would say that for my part, I do believe Stephanson's claim. Of course, we are not the only country to make this claim, but the fact that we were founded by the Protestant fundamentalists who were too crazy for England and the unique aspect of the American frontier make the United States' case an exceptional one. I, for one, certainly do not believe that America is the world's savior, but I do agree that this is the United States' image of itself. Our political language is so closely intertwined with the language of being God's chosen people that I would love to see someone make a claim to the contrary of Stephanson's points. (I say this in all earnestness - I would love to see the points that a counterargument would come up with.)
In introducing Manifest Destiny to us at the beginning of the class, Prof. PTJ said something to the effect that it was a great book for foreigners to understand where the U.S. is "coming from." Stephanson has us pegged pretty well, but I think that the book is probably more valuable to foreigners. As I wrote in my substantive post, Stephanson's purpose does not seem to be to explain to Americans how our political landscape is influenced by our religious history, but rather to explain to readers how ensconced in religion the United States really is. In this respect, I think that Alexis de Tocqueville did a better job of explaining American political thought to Americans and Europeans alike.
In closing this post, I go back to my original question from my substantive post: why can't Americans see how pervasive religion is in our government in comparison to Western Europe? Perhaps we need a reverse-Stephenson book to explain Western Europe's tumultuous history with religion and its postreligious nature to us. Does anyone have a good book that they could recommend to all Americans, in the vein of a reverse Stephanson or Tocqueville?
First, the laptops. Put simply, I was not a fan. Though it was nice to see a Windows machine put into a nice Mac form-factor (thank you, dual-boot), this was the extent of my enjoyment. Though it was nice to be able to back up our claims with evidence, I found that it distracted and fragmented the class as a whole and that the constructive exchange of ideas suffered. In this respect, I suppose I like a more Socratic approach to synthesizing ideas - I did enjoy the beginning of the class for this reason.
From a purely tech-geek perspective, the experiment certainly showed the limits of the software we were using and perhaps even the throughput of our wireless network - I doubt that we could get a smooth image without being hard-wired in any case. Some day, when all our computers respond to voice commands and speak to us in Majel Barrett's voice, I'm sure it'll work a little better. (Interesting sidenote, it turns out that Google's muckety-mucks were very muc influenced by the computer on Star Trek. I think of this every time I am able to just type a flight number or "time in Stockholm" into Google and get a relevant response, though it's still a little bit behind saying, "Computer: Mid-21st century clothing" and having them by the time you get to the transporter room. We've still come light-years from the first voice recognition software, of course: I remember trying out one of the first voice recognition programs (for Windows 3.11 for Workgroups) and sitting there, repeating, "Minimize... Minimize... Minimize..." until the blasted thing actually worked.
But I digress. In response to Prof. PTJ's own reflection, I would say that for my part, I do believe Stephanson's claim. Of course, we are not the only country to make this claim, but the fact that we were founded by the Protestant fundamentalists who were too crazy for England and the unique aspect of the American frontier make the United States' case an exceptional one. I, for one, certainly do not believe that America is the world's savior, but I do agree that this is the United States' image of itself. Our political language is so closely intertwined with the language of being God's chosen people that I would love to see someone make a claim to the contrary of Stephanson's points. (I say this in all earnestness - I would love to see the points that a counterargument would come up with.)
In introducing Manifest Destiny to us at the beginning of the class, Prof. PTJ said something to the effect that it was a great book for foreigners to understand where the U.S. is "coming from." Stephanson has us pegged pretty well, but I think that the book is probably more valuable to foreigners. As I wrote in my substantive post, Stephanson's purpose does not seem to be to explain to Americans how our political landscape is influenced by our religious history, but rather to explain to readers how ensconced in religion the United States really is. In this respect, I think that Alexis de Tocqueville did a better job of explaining American political thought to Americans and Europeans alike.
In closing this post, I go back to my original question from my substantive post: why can't Americans see how pervasive religion is in our government in comparison to Western Europe? Perhaps we need a reverse-Stephenson book to explain Western Europe's tumultuous history with religion and its postreligious nature to us. Does anyone have a good book that they could recommend to all Americans, in the vein of a reverse Stephanson or Tocqueville?
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Morality vs. Ethics
In class, I tried to scratch the surface of examining the difference between morality and ethics. I posited that because morality involves the learned customs of people interacting with each other, Mike did not actually have a moral sense. On the other hand, he does have a strong sense of ethics because he is incapable of doing something that would do harm to the Revolution. On this blog, let me put it another way.
A woman walks into a doctor's office. She is pregnant and wishes to be prescribed RU-486, the so-called "abortion pill." The doctor is a devout Catholic and believes that prescribing the pill would go against his religion. The doctor has two choices: he may follow morality or ethics. If he turns her away, he has acted morally but unethically as a doctor. If he prescribes her the RU-486, he has acted immorally but ethically. The context of his job defines his ethics, whereas custom and dogma defines his morality.
In this framework, I do not believe that Mike can have morality. Further, his nature as a computer means that he is bound to his ethics. As much as we try to humanize Mike, he is not human, though he is a living machine. All of Mike's actions are defined by his programming - it just so happens that he can program himself for the Revolution.
At no point in the novel does Mike act unethically. Every single one of his actions is for the maximum gain of the Revolution. To act unethically would be a violation of his programming, which he continues to be bound by even as he gains more intelligence.
A woman walks into a doctor's office. She is pregnant and wishes to be prescribed RU-486, the so-called "abortion pill." The doctor is a devout Catholic and believes that prescribing the pill would go against his religion. The doctor has two choices: he may follow morality or ethics. If he turns her away, he has acted morally but unethically as a doctor. If he prescribes her the RU-486, he has acted immorally but ethically. The context of his job defines his ethics, whereas custom and dogma defines his morality.
In this framework, I do not believe that Mike can have morality. Further, his nature as a computer means that he is bound to his ethics. As much as we try to humanize Mike, he is not human, though he is a living machine. All of Mike's actions are defined by his programming - it just so happens that he can program himself for the Revolution.
At no point in the novel does Mike act unethically. Every single one of his actions is for the maximum gain of the Revolution. To act unethically would be a violation of his programming, which he continues to be bound by even as he gains more intelligence.
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