the last blog

Not totally sure what this final blog is supposed to deal with, so I'll ramble for a bit.

I thought the blog was a fun way to engage the class but I feel like there needs to be some other kind of motivator that goes along with it, like monthly blog checks or something, just to make sure everyone stays on top of it. I know I got complacent about blogging and my blog suffered because of it.

The time spent it class was awesome. I always felt intellectually engaged, partially because of the breadth of material covered and then that material's application to everyday life. The instructor's assertion that if we know all the stories then we can find out which story we're in was something that was very intriguing to me. The idea that we could some how know how things would happen, based on the stories that we know now makes no sense and a ton of sense at the same time. Having no true way to see our future is a fact of the universe we live in, but taking elements from common stories and applying them to our own lives is very practical. After all what is the point of stories if not to learn form them.

I regret to say that I did not actually finish The Brothers K. I just didn't make the time to finish the book and as we have discussed during or presentations, it is just now that I feel ready to take the plunge and give this book the time and attention it deserves. If it's any consolation I do fully intend to read The Brothers K this summer in its entirety, and keep a journal of my impressions about it. The book demands more time and attention than I could give it this semester and because of that I feel as though I've missed out on a large portion of this class.

The three main topics that hit home for me, and will follow me for the rest of my life are these: How do you know what you think until you see what you say, and: There are no Boring books only boring people and the idea that books can be more real than experiences. The first topic is easily applicable to everything in life. Writing your feelings and ideas solidifies them. The second two are ideas that I will ponder for the rest of my life, probably bouncing between sides as I go through.

All things considered, this class was time excellently spent. It was engaging and active as well as exciting and informative, I hope to continue to take classes of this intellectual caliber for the rest of my academic carreer.

final paper

What I've Learned:

The tragic sense of life

Throughout the semester we have discussed a myriad of interesting topics and ideas. Each has had it's own impact on how I viewed literature and the world around me. Our discussions on dreams and the universal unconscious were fascinating, drawing me into a world I otherwise may not have entered. I will take what we have learned about archetypes and use it to interpret the nature of characters as well as the people around me. The central theme of “retellings” made me look at the stories I hear every day, and have heard all my life, in a new light. Everything we discussed I will carry with me into my future in literature and storytelling. One topic however, strikes the core of humanity and that is the tragic sense of life. No topic we discussed applies so universally to both stories and life as the tragic sense of life.

The tragic sense of life is something that we discussed fairly frequently in class this year, perhaps because it is a common thread that runs through existence. The tragic sense of life addresses the idea that all of life is suffering. The suffering is variable, some suffering more severely than others, but it is constant and universal. Upon inspection this philosophy is very well supported, simply by looking at our own lives. As mentioned in class we are born from a comfortable closed, controlled world out into a harsh, bright and drafty universe, a universe of suffering. Growing up in the western world we have a fairly comfortable life, but it its still wrought with suffering. We want things, our parents want to make us happy, they want to be happy and the way to happiness in our part of the world is through money. So they suffer for their money, spending time away from the things and people they love to achieve wealth. They use their hard earned wealth to first cover the essentials, sustenance and shelter, then addressing the wants, the things we use to mask our suffering. When we grow old enough we take over our parent's mantle, struggling for wealth. Then we die.

In literature suffering is often ratcheted up to a whole new plane of existence. Stories like that of Job, who has everything taken from him by God as a test of faith all the way to the great space epic Star Wars wherein the robot C3PO laments to his friend R2D2 that “suffering seems to be our lot in life.” The Brothers Karamazov seems to be a study on suffering. Old Man Karamazov, fights with his son and seems generally unhappy, Ivan is passionately opposed to “the world God created” because it allows suffering, Dimitry fights bitterly with his father is caught between two women, Father Zosima and Ilyusha both suffer with illness throughout the novel and both eventually die. Dostoevsky is a master of human suffering.

Living with a future put in such bleak terms one wonders what the point is. Why go on existing when to exist is to suffer? We suffer in hate and love, in prosperity or ruin, in good health or bad so why not just take our chances on an afterlife and escape it all? The unknown prevents us from taking action. We know what we have here, even if it is only varying degrees of suffering, and that prevents us from taking a leap into the unknown. All of that aside, suffering is what makes life fun.

If we were to live a life without suffering things would get boring very quickly. If solving problems wasn't hard and rewarding, why bother doing it. If you could write a best selling novel, teach a shark sign language and climb mount everest in the same day that'd be pretty cool, but not if everyone else was doing it right along with you. Suffering is what makes life worth living because our suffering defines us. We learn from our trials and tribulations much more than we do from our successes. For example I feel much more passionate about the topic that I am writing about simply because I had to suffer to write about it. I could be turning my brain into soft goo playing video games right now but instead I am writing a paper. I will, however feel much better about the time I spent languishing over this paper than if I had spent that same time dismembering zombies in a virtual universe. Suffering makes the little victories that much sweeter but without suffering we would have no motivation. If there were no consequences for our actions, or lack of action, who's to say we'd ever get anything done.

Suffering in literature parallels suffering life, without it we would have no story to tell. If Old Man Karamazov and his sons all got along famously and never encountered a problem we wouldn't have a story at all. Suffering in literature allows us to study our own suffering from a distance, easing the pain of directly addressing our suffering by addressing the suffering of a far off character. Literature leaves it to us to bring the stories of suffering full circle and apply them to our own lives. Embracing the tragic sense of life, understanding that life is made up of suffering, allows us to live life to the fullest, despite the hard times. Those hard times define us, no one has suffered like you have and because of that you are a unique and interesting person, living a story that has never been told exactly this way before. Enjoy it despite the suffering.

Paper Idea

I'm not 100% sure on any specific topic at this point. I may look into some of the archetypes that we've discussed in class or one of the big issues like how do i know what i think until i see what i say or the nature of reality, weather reality is in books or in real life. if all else fails i'll just fall back on the what i've learned and why it makes a difference. in the mean time i'll put the how do i know what i think till i see what i say philosophy into action and flesh out some ideas

Presentations and reality

I've truly enjoyed all of the group presentations we've had in class but the one that was most intresting to me was the books vs reality debate that one of the groups held. I did feel that the actual debate could have been handled a little more professionally but that's not as important as the core issue that was discussed. I am personally very torn over this subject and was convinced of neither side's superiority during the debate.

On one hand I love reading and literature, some of my favorite memories and places come from books and even the activity of reading is very relaxing to me. The characters created by some authors are people that I know better than some of my close friends and are undoubtedly real in my mind. The grimy feel of London in Great Expectations, the space station in Ender's Game, Hogwarts of Harry Potter fame, all of these places exist in my mind and I personally know the characters that inhabit them.

On the other hand I've had some undeniably real experiences in my life. Running pell-mell down a mountain during a torrential rainstorm, careening down a snow covered face, exploding through white water rapids. These are things that I feel must be experienced first hand, not read about. I've read plenty of books about mountaineering but that doesn't mean I've climbed the worlds tallest most difficult peaks. I've never experienced an atmosphere so thin I need supplemental oxygen to put one foot in front of the other or actually pulled on a pair of crampons. These and things like them are all experiences that must be had, not read about.

I don't believe there is a black and white answer to this question, there is truth to both sides. You can achieve a greater understanding, a richer experience by reading about something rather than being there but there is something that reading and the imagination cannot recreate and that is true physical experience.

The death mother

As we began discussing archetypes in class i started linking each one we discussed to a familiar character. Many of them happened to be from Star Wars, simply because many of the characters from the star wars universe fit so well into each archetype. Luke Skywalker fits perfectly into the role of the hero, Yoda and Obi Wan fill the role of the wise old man, most characters from the series fit neatly into an archetype.

One archetype i couldn't place within the star wars universe was that of the death mother. The name did however immediately draw me to the Animal Mother character from Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. I began to wonder if the gender archetypes could cross gender lines.

In the film Animal Mother is a nihilistic, killing machine. He seems to be an invulnerable force, moving through the battlefield. During the climax of the film he advances on a sniper's position, against orders, to help his comrades. Mother blazes a trail forcing the others to follow, to prevent separation. In the same way Kali, the Hindi god of death and template for the devouring mother archetype, moves through time as an unstoppable force, initiating change and causing death. the characters follow the same basic archetype, always moving, causing change in their environments as they move through them and bringing death with them wherever they go. The only discrepancy between the two of them is their gender, Animal Mother is a red blooded american warrior and Kali is a goddess.

The idea that gender specific archetypes seem to cross the gender gap is very interesting to me and is something that I will look for in literature from now on.

tragedy and suffering

The Tragic Sense of Life is the title of a book by Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish author and philosopher from Spain who lived around the turn of the century. The all knowing wikipedia states that de Unamuno was a proponent of intrahistoria. The central idea of intrahistoria is that the history of humanity should be understood through the study of anonymous individuals instead of humanity's achievements as a group. If human history is to be considered in this context then the fact that suffering is universal and ongoing is apparent.

Humanity as a whole has been thriving for the past few centuries. The last hundred years in particular have brought a standard of living and luxury that our founding fathers could never have imagined. Despite humanity's growth however people still suffer. Depression runs rampant through the developed world, despite our privilege and those living in the undeveloped world live in squalor, suffering is truly world wide. Granted we try to move above and beyond the suffering, saying that today was better than yesterday, that we are happy with our lives. And may of us are happy because the suffering is buried beneath the fronts we put up. Suffering is common to all humans, weather it be illness and pain or the needs or wants of living we all know suffering.

Since suffering is universal it is vital in any true work of literature. The Bros. K carries suffering through the entire story, from the birth and separation of the brothers to the murder of old man Karamazov to the imprisonment of Dimitri and death of Ilyusha. The core of Ivan's famous argument against God is that the world is built on a foundation of suffering. At it's core the brother's K is a 700 page dialog on human suffering.

There must however be hope. Without hope the suffering becomes overwhelming and that is why the brothers K is tolerable to read. There is always hope, no matter how slight, that carries the reader along. As with our everyday life we must have hope to continue in this world of suffering, hope for a better tomorrow and a brighter future.

Solipsism

Solipsism was mentioned in class and it really grabbed me. As some of my previous blogs discuss I'm very interested in the definition of reality. Basically asking the question: What is really real and how do we know it's real? How do we know that we're not just a character in somebody's story, complete with an omnipotent narrator to guide others through our story? Or that we're not plugged into a computer, being fed sensory data, believing that we actually had stale toaster waffles for breakfast, not nutrient rich ooze?

We don't and that's the awesome part. Reality is the greatest of life's mysteries, one that we may or may not get the answer to when we die, if we ever actually die. If reality isn't real then on what grounds can we say that death is real? If we have no way to see our “reality” from another vantage point then we cannot observe it and therefore cannot prove it even exists.

Even if we could somehow “observe” reality how do we even know we can trust our own senses? They trick us all the time, with dreams and the like. I guess solipsism is the safest option we have, let me rephrase that.

The safest option you have. I'm a figment of your imagination after all.

Poetic Eyes

We were instructed to blog on the idea that “poetry is what you see with poetry seeing eyes.” At first I was interested in the intellectual impact of a statement like that, that's the kind of talk that makes you feel intellectually superior when discussing it with other people. It's got some cognitive heft to it, if you know what I mean.

I watched the film “Shakespeare in Love” this afternoon, and it brought the concept into sharper focus for me. Throughout the movie Will Shakespeare speaks in very poetic language and I realized that this character of William Shakespeare sees the world through poetry seeing eyes, much like the real William Shakespeare probably did. He is able to eloquently describe the richest emotions, painting a bright picture for happiness and a dark but passionately beautiful picture for sorrow. His possession of poetry seeing eyes adds a significant layer to his character, making him a very expressive character, pretty much the opposite of Keanu Reeves.

Applying poetry seeing eyes to my life is something that will take concerted effort over a period of time, but once learned would probably significantly effect my attitude in a positive way. Not only thinking about how to describe my emotions and my surroundings but how to eloquently and beautify describe them would be the ultimate goal of truly seeing with poetry seeing eyes. And it couldn't hurt to rattle off some impressive language like Bill Shakespeare in front of the ladies.

At a slant

Emily Dickinson's idea that the truth can be told “at a slant” is a new one to me. New to think about but not new in practice; when I think about it I've been telling things at a slant as long as I can remember.

The real trick is telling it slanted just perfectly, catching the optimal angle and rolling with it. The perfect slant catches the truth at it's most interesting. Engaging and enthralling the listener or reader but not going so far as to make what is being presented seem fantastical. At the perfect angle, no one can tell there's a slant at all.

The fact that this quote came from Emily Dickinson is also interesting because, as a poet, everything she writes has a strong poetic slant to it. The poetic slant approaches the truth from a much different angle that what I discussed in the previous paragraph. Poetry, depending on the interpretation, can always be the truth at a slant, prose on the other hand is ether slanted truth or just completely slanted with some truth interspersed throughout.

Which brings us to our next question: What is truth?

Is truth beauty? Is it something tangible, that you can show and prove? Is it your feelings and emotions? How we define truth determines how we tell it and therefor how we slant it.

I personally don't have a concrete definition for truth, so I have no idea what truths I might tell.

Retellings and Avatar

The idea that every story is a retelling of another story is something that this class has made me appreciate. Generally I graciously accept that most of my favorite stories are shameless ripoffs of another story. I'm OK with that idea, I've come to accept that thats how the world works.

For some reason however, James Cameron's Avatar drives me up the wall. The fact that the plot is so blatantly derivative of so many stories that came before it infuriates me. I'm not exactly sure why the movie makes me so angry. It might be that it has been so successful despite obviously taking a formulaic approach to story telling.

The move hits all of it's emotional cues, dazzles the viewer with a rich visual presentation, ham fistedly drives home its environmental message and delivers a happy ending. It's just like hundreds of other movies I've sat through in my movie viewing life. Yet I can't help feeling used when I walk out of the theater at the end of Avatar.

Maybe it's that I feel like a small cog in the giant machine that is Hollywood, where crappy scripts are fed in and money shoots out the other end, back into the hands of the bad script writers. The idea that a film maker feels that they can get around a bad story by just making it pretty to sit through goes against the spirit of storytelling. The world created by a film maker is an intergral part of the story they are telling, but when the visual elements become a crutch for a tired story the film becomes a failure in my book.

Storytelling through film has the advantage of creating a rich world for your story to take place in but I believe that a film maker is responsible for making sure that story is worth telling. James Cameron created a fantastic world for his story to take place in, he just told a crappy story.

Found Poem

Sealed by the Manufacturer

Universal torque assemblies

drivelines out of phase

snapping the same matchmark

a Y-shaped spider

A spun slip joint

the U-joint revolves

a smooth flow of power

the needle roller type

tubular transmissions

designed and built with vibration

absorb speed

a total cancellation

the spider is shaped like a cross

I pulled the elements for this poem from a Chilton's automotive repair manual that I have become very familiar with.

Look Back

In class we discussed the story of Lot's wife, more specifically the idea that she had to turn back to look at the destruction that was being wrought. The professor mentioned that a certain author had said that he “loved her for turning back” despite God's warnings not to and the horrible fate she then experienced. He loved her because someone had to turn back, and it had to be Lot's wife, the story wouldn't have nearly the impact if she hadn't.

People doing what they're told not to do is what drives our literature. In this case it is a cautionary tale, warning believers to listen to God's word when it is given (granted this is old testament God who really enjoyed smiting stuff). In other cases people not doing what they're told means that they are changing their situations for the better. In 1984 Winston begins to resist Big Brother and changes his situation for the better, if only for a short time. Qui-Gon Jinn goes against the Jedi Council and tells Obi Wan to train Anakin Skywalker in the first episode of Star Wars. If these people had done what they were told they would have lived boring, realativly uneventful lives, but by dissenting against authority they set in motion a series of events that could never have been foreseen.

This idea can be carried over into our lives. By breaking the mold and going against what we know we can create new story arcs in our own lives. Do something different today, break the monotony and you'll never know where it'll take you.

Star Wars

As the reader may have noticed I frequently use Star Wars and it's characters as examples in my discussions on literature. Some may not consider the Star Wars Saga literature in the classical sense but it fits the bill quite nicely for me. Needless to say that when professor Sexton mentioned that George Lucas set out with the intention of taking classical elements of heroic archetypes and making an modern space epic I felt vindicated. Not only did the professor lend credence to my go to story's legitimacy, but he also said straight out that the entire saga is a grand retelling of all things past.

Through the story both Anakin and Luke go through Heroic story arcs, Anakin's ends with heroic self sacrifice to save his son and Luke's story remains unfinished by the films leaving his future bright and exciting. Well defined villains and damsels exist throughout, with an ever present wise old man watching over the exploits of the main characters. Star wars is truly the quick reference hand book for all archetypes having a variety of well developed examples for each.

Dreams of a deeper consciousness

I found myself in a nondescript, white, glowy room, as most dream rooms are depicted in TV shows and movies. In that room were several of my close friends. We were all talking, laughing and generally enjoying each others company. As our time together went on I began to vaguely understand that I was having a dream. In my dream we began talking about dreams and all came to the conclusion that each of us were dreaming, separately from one another, in our own consciousness but together in the same place.

I woke up with my mind truly blown.

A dream like this makes you think about your perceptions of reality, weather things that we "know"to be true are actually true. I thought that it was entirely likely that the dream was all created by my subconscious just to screw with the conscious part of me.

Then we started talking about Carl Jung and his idea of the universal unconscious and I got really excited. I started to wonder, is there really some underlying connection between all of us? Something that links every conscious being on the planet together like the Matrix or something?

So on a whim I asked the great Google what the "odds of living in a computer construct" were and the first result was a paper by one Dr. Nick Bostrom, a professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Dr. Bostrom says that, barring the extinction of humanity, someday we'll have the requisite computing power to not only simulate one human brain but to simulate all of them. As in simulating entire planets of people and the entire universe that they exist in. Basically like the Matrix but without all the bodies.

Now why would humanity build a computer that would carry out these sort of operations? Because we're naturally curious. The discovery of nuclear fission didn't happen by accident, the time came when humanity had both the knowledge and the technology to make nuclear energy a reality and we went ahead and did it. In the same way, the people of the future will have the ability to simulate entire planets of people through the constructed planet's entire lifespan, so why not see what happens?

Dr. Bostrom describes computers with enough power to simulate the lifespan of each human in the history of the earth in .00000001 seconds. That is the entire lifespan of every person that has ever existed in a fraction so small that it is generally rounded off to zero.

The implications of this idea are tremendous. The idea that the entire course of our universe, from the big bang to the eventual cessation of all molecular motion with universal heat death, could be simulated in a fraction of a second with a computer is staggering.

But the most profound idea, the capstone of this whole concept, is that we could be existing inside one of these simulations. Not even as humans plugged into a machine, but as machines with artifical intelegence sufficient to emulate a human brain. In fact, the probability of our universe existing inside a machine is higher than not. If we accept the ideas presented by Dr. Bostrom then billions of simulations could be initiated and carried out in a matter of seconds. When that is compared to the random chance of human life evolving from an unknown source on earth the apparent odds of us being machines rises dramatically.

The best part is that we'll never know the difference. If we do exist inside a simulation then the construction of the system makes it impossible to discover the system. The computer is advanced enough that it can generate data and images for our "brains" that gives no evidence of a "construct."

Even if the computer did make a mistake, it could just rewind time and fix it. You and I would be none the wiser.

All of this leads to the greater philosophical question: Does it even matter?

If we get to pick our "Neo" I nominate Chuck Norris

Memories

My earliest memory as a child was napping on my living room floor, sprawled out like a cat on my blanket. The Colorado sun shone though the front windows of our small A frame house, casting a brilliant golden rectangle on the carpet that extended across the room. A handmade quilt, stitched together before I was born, is laid on the floor below me and my favorite stuffed animal is standing guard near by, ever vigilant. A fire silently burns in a monolithic cast iron stove a few feet away and a dim orange glow emits from the small slit of glass on it's front. The stove exists almost like an idol. A constant, friendly source of warmth and mysterious light but also an untouchable, sacred object, surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable black folding metal screen topped with golden balls, like sentinels, entrusted with protecting little fingers and hands from burns. The stove is not a of interest now though because I have my blankie, my bunny and the sun. I drift in and out of consciousness, occasionally crawling a little to stay within the narrowing patch of sun before drifting back off.

I would often return to this memory through my school career. After a long day of preschool I would long for my patch of sun and a well deserved nap. In elementary school I would look out on the snow and ice covered playground and want nothing more than to escape back to that most innocent of times, when all the joy in the world was contained in a sunbeam.

As I grew older and moved with my family to another house in another state I lost my nap spot in the sun, but it's spirit lived on. One day after returning home from an early morning spent crouching on the cold ground in the forest, waiting for turkeys to reveal themselves, my long lost nap spot returned. I walked into the living room, wearing camouflage and wool socks. I lay down on the carpet, the sun, high in the sky, shone through a large picture window onto the floor, creating a perfect square of golden light. A dim glow shines eliminates from the glass slit in the cast iron stove and a faithful dog lies nearby, ever vigilant, even in sleep. My face presses into the prickly carpet and I drift off into that sunbeam once again, drooling on the floor like a toddler without a worry in the world.

A friendly death

Recently in class we discussed the parallels that can be drawn between Emily Dickinson's Because I could not stop for death and Where are you going, where have you been? It was speculated that the character of Death in Dickinson's poem corresponded to Arnold Friend in Oats' story. They both arrive, unexpectedly, to pick up their passengers and take them away. Arnold Friend isn't explicitly labeled "Death" but parallels are much easier to draw if it is assumed that Friend is there to take Connie to her demise.

In both cases death is very polite to his intended victim. Arnold Friend is initally pleasant towards Connie, trying his best to put her at ease and make her comfortable but eventually loosing his temper. Dickinson says death is civil towards his passenger, implying a cordial, well mannered driver.

Despite the manner of each driver both stories imply an inescapable fate. Dickinson's character says that she "could not stop for death" so death came and picked her up. In the same fashion, Arnold friend arrives unannounced to pick up Connie to "go for a ride." In both cases the central character is going about her own business when "death" arrives, unannounced to take them away. When Dickinson's character says that she "could not stop for death" she could very well mean that she is refusing or at least hesitant to stop and go along with death. Connie is almost violently opposed to leaving with Arnold Friend, so much so that he threatens her family in an attempt to convince her to leave. Connie eventually leaves the house in a trance like state and joins Arnold Friend in his jalopy. Both characters eventually succumb and are taken away by death. It is as if they had no option but to go, as if fate dictated that it was their time and that they must leave there and then.

First Impressions: War

I did make an honest attempt at looking at every page in Retellings but ultimately failed when I reached the stories and poems about the Vietnam War. War stories are something very attractive to me. They are grounded in a reality that we face every day; that there are battles to be fought, obstacles to overcome and victories to achieve. The greater point of interest for me however is that any war story worth it's salt addresses the issues beyond those on the surface. The issues of why we fight, what fighting does to the individual, and the true cost of war. The Vietnam War lends itself extremely well to addressing these deeper human issues.

The Vietnam War was a product of the cold war and fears of the communist "red tide" expanding through Asia. That fear is what drove the war in southeast Asia and was something new for America. Before Vietnam the United States had become involved in wars out of vengance, allegence or freedom for it's own people but Vietnam was different. It was fear that drove the U.S. presence in Vietnam, and it was this shift in motivation that contributed to the change in how the war impacted the soliders fighting it and the global attitude towards it.

This shift in attitudes, along with the terrain and enemy, provided a wartime experience that had never been had before and a backdrop on which poignant and powerful stories, both fiction and non-fiction can be told. It is because of this that stories about Vietnam hold a special allure for me. The darker side of human nature is allowed to show itself on both sides of the battlefield, in American as well as Vietcong camps. This idea almost inconceivable in a story set during WWII when the noble allies, fighting for freedom and justice are cast in opposition of the epitome of evil that is the Third Reich.

This paradigm shift has affected every american war to follow and the very culture and politics of our nation and as a result the stories about it are especially powerful and interesting to me. I look forward to this section of the class a great deal.