Testing...

Came back to retrieve an old entry and clean it up for a friend, only to find that my blog is all screwy. How's that for neglect? Posting this to see whether posting something new will shock Blogger into behaving a little better.

One of these days I'll post something new here. I promise.

Settings: revisiting cyberpunk and its cousins

This entry was originally posted on 22 March 2005 at 9:55 a.m.

I'm a bit curious about the film Steamboy, which is reviewed over on Wired (review here). I started reading the review and stopped about five paragraphs in, when i read this:

It's no MIT dissertation -- Otomo has created a lavish, elaborate piece of entertainment that's quite aware of mainstream audiences. Still, Steamboy takes its subject -- the corrupting influence of science -- seriously. That alone sets it apart from most contemporary sci-fi.

And then i remembered an entry i posted here ages ago (...goes to search for it...found it!--it's the first one on the page, "The purpose of cyberpunk") where i asked these questions:

Does it all boil down to setting, or is there actually something different about this kind of story? Is it just another way of telling a tale that already exists--with a setting that's more reflective of today's technology (and hence, updated, or at least more fashionably clothed metaphors)?

Bottom line: is there really anything that cyberpunk can do that non-cyberpunk fiction can't? Is it just fancy dressing, or does it really teach us something new about humanity?

And i think i have an answer. Well, half an answer. I think a setting, especially a setting in which the technology and morality are different than that of the audience (at the time of publishing), can be used to highlight moral/ethical/social quandaries--and a disparate setting can do so more effectively in some cases than stories set in contemporary times (and without magic or cutting-edge technology as plot devices). The example of this that comes most immediately to mind is Orwell's 1984. Several books by Kurt Vonnegut also come to mind, especially Player Piano.

But this raises a new question: should it be the province of speculative fiction to always answer big what-if questions about the future of our species? I don't think so. In a sense, i think that constantly expecting great revelations from speculative fiction will ultimately drive it into the territory of moralization--a sure-fire way to kill its value in the eyes of mainstream readers.

And if moralization isn't the danger, then repetition, staleness, cynicism, and a steadily shrinking idea pool are. Great epiphanies or revelations about the future of humanity should be rare and precious, not a dime a dozen--once they're around every corner, they cease to be meaningful. And this is where i have to ask another question: is it possible for speculative fiction to address low-level issues (i.e., basic human interactions--not about the future of the species, but about how we are now), to act as a mirror in a way that mainstream/contemporary-set fiction can't?

Small Town, USA

This entry was originally posted on 18 January 2005 at 12:40 p.m.

On Sunday, in a fit of needing to get out of the house, B and i went for a drive.

We followed Route 5 from Albany north through Colonie and Niskayuna and Schenectady and Scotia and out toward the old small towns that you never really hear about on the news.

We drove past a place called Hoffmans and another place where the sign said Crane's Hollow, which doesn't appear on the map, though they show Cranesville in that location. We saw the abandoned Adirondack Power and Light building with its shattered windows and silent smokestacks. We saw the longest freight train i've ever seen, two powerful engines pulling a string of cars that must have stretched over a mile in length.

We noticed something. The smaller the town, the more run down and hopeless the town, the more churches dotted the streets--churches whose well kept façades stood in odd contrast to the boarded up windows and peeling exteriors of the houses.

I had to wonder, driving past and through these places, is this the heart of America? Is this what's become of Small Town, USA? There's a sense of community that people talk about when they think back on the days around World War II--small town sensibility, church on Sunday and a trip to the soda fountain, the corner five 'n' dime and the drug store across the street--has this life, so clean and sweet in memory, truly become as dingy and remote as the small towns of Route 5?

Isn't this what was supposed to be great about our country?

Where did it go?

People fled to the cities, then to the suburbs, then to the shopping malls and strip malls and all-in-one megastores. Will they eventually return to the small towns, or have the big box corporations won? Have we so willfully given up the histories and dreams of these places, sacrificed them to the corporations?

I don't think, in the era of the big box chain retailers, that our country can ever go back to this. If we attempt it, the big boxes will follow until every vestige of individuality and community has been drained in the name of the almighty dollar. And besides, life has become too fast-paced to tolerate small town life.

Our towns no longer support themselves. Maybe they never did, at least not fully. But it seems that there was a time when most business was local, when mom and pop shops were the rule rather than the exception, when people didn't talk about company headquarters being in cities hundreds or even thousands of miles away. In a sense, now, most business is national, or at least regional.

Is this the culprit?

There's part of me that hopes that small town America isn't dead. It's the idealist in me, the part of me that thinks about these places as discrete and relatively self-sufficient and bound by community.

There's another part of me, the realist, that has seen bits and pieces of small town America, and wonders whether it should be euthanized.

Hopefully the truth lies somewhere in between.

Traditional hatred?

This entry was originally posted on 3 January 2005 at 12:26 p.m.

I'm not one for blathering Happy New Year posts, especially as the holidays this year haven't seemed all that...holiday-like, so i'm just going to skip it and jump to the mundane and gritty existence that is mine.

Late last week, B and i ate dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant and were walking back to the car. We were talking as we walked--talking about something so completely unrelated to our relationship that i don't even remember what we were talking about. I'm thinking the conversation had to do with the particular dishes we'd ordered that night.

Anyway, we're walking and a guy passes us going the other direction, and as he passes by B, he very quietly says, "Dyke." And that's it. Keeps walking his way, we keep walking ours. B turns to me and says, "I think that guy just called us dykes." I turn back to look, but he's just walking down the sidewalk, hands in his pockets.

Now at this point, a million comebacks are running through my mind--too little, too late, as usual. I'm thinking, "Gee, taking lessons in the obvious, are we?" or, "Wow, you're perceptive. Now tell me something i don't know." or, "Oh, don't be shy, show the world how much you love lesbians." or, "I'd rather be a dyke than a dumbass." But, as always, everything happened too fast for me to get into trouble.

You know, i've been called names my whole life, and i'm tired of it. But what irks me more than anything about this situation is that the guy was black.

Okay, maybe this isn't fair. But to me it seems silly that a member of one group that's been shown intolerance for several generations would show intolerance toward a member of another group that's been shown intolerance for several generations--even if the intolerance we've seen is far less atrocious than what they've seen. There's just something that sticks in my craw about being called names by a guy who's probably been called a few names himself.

What is this, some kind of perverted sense of vigilante justice? For the record, i couldn't care less about the color of a person's skin. It makes me sad that after all these years and the assassination of one Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., people still have problems with skin color. Wake up, people. We all bleed the same.

I know that queer folk who face discrimination and prejudice and intolerance and outright hate aren't experiencing a fraction of what African Americans in this country have experienced. But intolerance is intolerance, and i think both groups have faced it to a vocal (and sometimes violent) enough degree that we'd be willing to set our differences aside. If one's going to preach tolerance for one's own group, it's a bit disingenuous to wash one's own lack of tolerance aside, isn't it?

Or, to put it more bluntly: it's no longer okay to hate someone for the color of his skin (a trait he couldn't choose), but it's perfectly fine to hate someone for the people that she loves (a trait she couldn't choose)? And, what's more, it's not okay to hate someone for the color of his skin, but it's perfectly okay for him to hate freely?

Sorry, i don't buy that.

Bottom line is this: If you want tolerance for your own folks, you have to show it to others. Otherwise, you're perpetuating a tradition of hypocrisy and hate--and where does that get anyone?

Circus the Grinch breaks it all down

This entry was originally posted on 22 December 2004 at 1:52 p.m.

Welcome back for more holiday cheer from Circus the Grinch! On today's episode, Circus breaks it all down and wraps up the series for the year. Last in a short series.

Sorry for the delay, folks! Work (yes, this grinch has a day job) has been a bit crazy lately. But i'm here and ready to go, and i promise you'll appreciate today's program.

Before i get started, i'd like to thank daysleeper and Niomi (you should read her blog sometime--link's in her comment) for their comments on my last rant--truly, there are more tacky ways of stringing up lights in this world than i'd ever even imagined! I'd also like to thank the amazing and ever-elusive B, my partner, for coming up with the idea of lawn tipping; without her, my last tirade couldn't have existed. And finally, i'd like to thank the amazing Xine for providing me with a key part of the diatribe you're about to witness.

On we go!

So, I've been doing a little thinking, and I've come to an important realization about the upcoming holiday. I think it's something that many of you have already come to realize, or at least something that many of you have already thought about. Maybe some of you have already put it into words. In any case, it's something that I think will resonate with many of you out there, especially those of you who consider yourselves grinches.

And it's this: all the frustration at the root of my grinchhood (and, i'm sure, the grinchhood of many others out there) comes from a certain confusion about this strange winter holiday most commonly called Christmas. And that confusion stems directly from the fact that Christmas is no longer a single holiday. It is in fact two holidays with names that are pronounced in exactly the same way.

One of those holidays is a religious holiday. It's called Christmas. The other holiday (and again, i wish to express my thanks to Xine for her insight here) is a secular holiday called Xma$. It's the confusion and conflict between these two holidays that sets so many of us on edge. So let us, once and for all, discuss the differences between these two holidays. And hopefully someone out there in the Government will pick up on the differences and actually do something about them.

Christmas is a wonderful, beautiful holiday. It celebrates the birth of a man who a rather daunting percentage of the world's population consider their savior (though they'd spell it with a capital "S" and argue that he was also divine). And he was truly an amazing man: his teachings are among the wisest in human history. And the handful of people i've met in my life who really seem to follow those teachings are really the most noble souls i've ever known. To them, Christmas is one of the holiest days of the year.

Xma$, on the other hand, is strictly a secular and commercial holiday. Its entire purpose is to stimulate the economy during the dark and depressing month or so before we all hole up for winter. It's a holiday that assures that people in the retail industry will have jobs come March. And this isn't a bad thing, in and of itself. The beauty of this holiday is that it belongs to everyone, regardless of religious affiliation (or non-affiliation, as i nod to my athiest friends). Xma$ is a secular holiday whose tradition may have sprung from its religious counterpart, but which has since grown into its own being. If you're not Christian, you can still celebrate Xma$ without any guilt. Because really, it's about giving gifts to friends and family to show how much you care about them. Because, as we all know, regardless of our religious roots, we are all Capitalists! And Capitalism means that you should spend money on the significant people in your lives! ALL HAIL CAPITALISM! WOOHOO!

Ahem. Sorry about that.

Anyhow, there are some distinct differences in how these two holidays are (and should be) celebrated, observed, and spoken about--viz. and to wit, and without any further ado:

1. Reference. The obvious difference is the spelling. "Christmas" refers to the religious holiday. "Xma$" refers to the economic/secular holiday. They are pronounced the same.

2. Decorations. The decorations appropriate for Christmas include nativity scenes and Advent wreaths. The decorations appropriate for Xma$ include evergreens and ornaments and tacky blow-up snowmen. Lights are fair game for both holidays.

3. Holiday status. Christmas is a religious holiday. People for whom Christmas lands on a work day should be allowed to take this day off the same way that people of the Jewish faith would take the day off for Yom Kippur, for example, or the way that people of the Islamic faith would take off for Eid al-Fitr. Christmas technically should not be a Federal or State holiday. Because Xma$ is a secular and economic holiday, it is eligible for Federal and State holiday status, much like the Fourth of July or, as they have in other English-speaking countries, bank holidays. Please note this on your calendars in the event that Christmas and Xma$ are ever separated temporally by new legislation.

4. Observance. People who celebrate Christmas should attend mass or services or whatever their particular brand of Christianity calls it. This should take place either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (or both, depending on your denomination). On Christmas Day, Christians should feel free to exchange simple and meaningful gifts, especially things like gold, frankincense, or myrrh. People who celebrate Xma$ should watch parades and football on TV, and should have spent at least half a month's pay on gifts for their friends and loved ones. On Xma$ Day, people should exchange gifts, especially things like gift cards (oooh yeah, stimulate that economy, baby!) and mega-expensive crazy robotic toys that will be played with once and thereafter dumped unceremoniously into a spare closet full of Xma$ gifts from previous years.

And there you have it! Once you remove this confusion, both holidays become immediately brighter! There's no dimming of the meaning of Christmas--it's as meaningful as it always was. It's just being overshadowed a bit by Xma$, which is simply meaningful in a different way.

And really, when it comes down to it, both holidays have the potential to promote goodwill and peace on earth and general merriment.

So enjoy. To all of you of the Christian faiths, i bid you a very merry Christmas. And to all of you, especially those of you who have spent your hard-earned cash on gifts that really are meaningful and not just random crap, i bid you a very merry Xma$.

And with that, i remove my grinch hat and stuff it in a box until next year. Whichever your holiday, have a good one, everyone!

Circus the Grinch on holiday decorations

This entry was originally posted on 17 December 2004 at 12:00 p.m.

Please welcome the return of Circus the Grinch for another installment of this year's holiday observations. Today's program tackles the thorny issue of holiday decorations. Third in a short series.

There are about 290 million people in the United States, and about 80% of them identify themselves as Christians, according to sources like the US Census Bureau and various websites that house reliable religious statistics. Likewise, in 2002, there were over 109 million households in the US; roughly 36 million had children under the age of 18. If 80% of those households identify as Christian, that's almost 29 million households.

I know these are a lot of numbers. Bear with me.

If you figure that most Christian households with children under 18 years of age put up outdoor Christmas decorations (this is going to be a ballpark estimate--it's impossible in this short span of time to account for all the people who belong to Christian denominations that don't believe in holiday decorations, for example, or for the number of households that live in apartments, and so on), and if you figure that maybe half of the rest of the Christian households in the country also put up outdoor Christmas decorations, that yields...(let's see if we calculate in millions, 109 houseolds minus 36 households already accounted for, times point-eight--percent Christian, times point-five--percent we figure puts up decorations--and yes, i know there are easier ways to calculate this) roughly another 29 million households.

So, if we put this all together, we get a rough estimate of, say, 58 million households in the United States that might put up outdoor holiday decorations every year. Now keep in mind, this estimate isn't something that should be quoted, because once you start calculating things the way i did, you get farther and farther from accuracy. So this is totally conjecture and probably wrong, but i'm going to go with it.

58 million homes. That's a lot of lights. I mean, that's over half of the entire number of households in the country. And even if this estimate is high and, say, only a third of US households decorate their lawns for Christmas, that's still something like 36 million households. That's 36 million households where, every year, someone drags out a ladder and a bucket o' light strings and a ruler and a t-square and maybe even an automatic pump for their inflatable Santas and snowmen, and demonstrates to the rest of the neighborhood his (typically it's a male figure who does this) family's undying devotion to Christmas while inside, their children suck on candy canes until they're so sharp they can legally be used as weapons.

And good for them!

But.

It has come to my attention that many households cannot tell the difference between tasteful holiday decorations and absolutely tacky ones. In my grinchly wisdom, i will clarify this for you once and for all. To wit--

* White lights used to highlight key trees or bushes and spaced so that no light is within more than two or three inches of any other: tasteful.

* White lights on netting draped over every shrub in the yard, spaced so that each light is no more than one inch away from any other: tacky.

* Colored lights used sparingly to accentuate major structural lines: tasteful.

* Colored lights around every single window, corner, doorway, walkway, driveway, etc., or colored lights set in an arrow pointing to the main chimney's opening: tacky.

* Lights that conform to the natural topography of the landscape: tasteful.

* Lights wrapped around wire shaped to look like reindeer, sleighs, Santa, presents, etc.: tacky.

* Icicle lights, hung along the front eaves, in combination with tasteful lights: tasteful.

* Any lights that blink, flash, play music, dance, etc.: TACKY.

And finally, also worthy of note: inflatable snowmen, Santas, etc., are extremely tacky and should be avoided at all costs. Especially those that come with built-in illumination.

Heed these simple rules, my friends, and you too will escape the punishment for tacky decorations (oh yes, there's punishment!): lawn tipping.

Yes, you heard me right, folks: lawn tipping. I propose that Christmas Eve be made the Christmas equivalent of Mischief Night. And this will be the night during which all the kids who already know they're getting coal in their stockings are free to go out and punish the households whose unrefined tastes have led them to stake gigantic cardboard candy canes and gingerbread houses in their front yards. And they will punish these tacky microlandscapes by unstaking the inflatable snowmen and gingerbread houses, by laying the bobbing reindeer on their sides so that they twitch disturbingly on the ground, and by pinning to all the wooden signs imploring Santa to stop at this house a note reading,

Dear Family,
The elves went on strike and we recently discovered that the reindeer all carry Lyme disease. Please accept our apologies, but Santa wasn't be able to stop here this year.
Sincerely,
North Pole Associates, Inc.

So there you have it. If you wish to avoid this kind of mayhem, please be a responsible decorator and decorate tastefully. I can't be held responsible otherwise.

With very, very deep gratitude to the elusive B for the concept of lawn tipping.

The multidimensional parabola

This entry was originally posted on 13 December 2004 at 12:21 p.m.

Last week i talked about a theory discussed in Marvin Harris' book Our Kind. Near the end of what was rather a longer entry than i'd hoped it would be, i asked whether his theory still holds for post-industrial societies. (Go back one and read "War and Chauvenism" if this doesn't ring a bell.)

I think i was asking the wrong question. The question isn't necessarily "does this still apply" as much as it is this: What happens when cultures change, especially with regard to their level of technology? How does the theory address changes in technology? How do the "laws" of cultural behavior change in response to massive environmental changes or technological advances?

And, equally interesting, what would happen...? What would happen in reverse--when a post-industrial culture loses, say, computers and the internet? Would human behavior eventually return to its previous state? Is there an equation, maybe some kind of multidimensional parabola, that describes the change in behavior along the continuum?

I can't believe that no one else has asked these questions already. I think i'm going to do a little digging.

War and chauvenism

This entry was originally posted on 8 December 2004 at 12:55 p.m.

One of the books i'm reading, Our Kind by Marvin Harris, makes a very interesting argument about male chauvenism and warlike societies--that both are products of population pressure. It basically goes like this:

Few Resources -> Population Pressure
Population Pressure -> Competition b/n groups
Competition -> War
War -> Gender Inequality/Preference for Male Children

Like i said, interesting--because not all the links are readily apparent. For example, that last one. Why would war produce gender inequality? Well, he argues, in societies where people still fight with technology that requires physical strength, the 6-15% difference between the sexes is a life-or-death difference where the edge goes to men.

The idea is that men become more valuable in societies where resources are scarce and groups have to fight for them. As a result, male babies are preferred over female babies (females can produce more babies, but between resource scarcity and the need for adult males, it's more costly to raise females). And (and this is where it really gets interesting) this leads to both female infanticide and the necessity of capturing adult females as part of the spoils of war. (Keep in mind that mature females are easier to manage than female infants--they're already socialized and are at the point where they can provide domestic services and bear children.) Which means that women become objects and lose their status as contributors to politics, etc.

I'm not going to argue the validity of Harris' argument (i'm sure i've simplified it significantly, too, so any arguments that i could make against it might already be accounted for in a more sophisticated version). But i am going to ask a couple of questions.

First, can this be considered a "law" of human nature? Is it always the case that, at the very least, for all human societies, regardless of their degree of sedentariness, scarcity of resources will bring about war, and war will result in greater value being placed on men's lives than on women's lives?

And if so, does this apply to our own society?

I find it interesting that we're under the leadership of a president who has taken us to war. War on two fronts, in fact--one of which involves revenge (and currently undermanned and being swept under the carpet in the media), and the other of which, despite all cries to the contrary, involves the aquisition of a major natural resource whose world supply is quickly dwindling. Okay, so there's war for resources. I find it equally interesting that the current administration would gladly strip a woman's right to choose whether or not she'll keep her child.

The important thing to note is that the latter factor doesn't directly limit the number of female infants; in fact, logically, it would raise the total population substantially. On the other hand, the same administration strongly supports abstinence as the only form of birth control, and is willing to compromise the separation of chuch and state to ensure that this message gets across. (I'm not sure what happens theoretically if you add the religious factors into the mix, but it doesn't change the stance at all. One could consider religion simply as the medium for communicating these social policies.)

Does it fall directly in line with the Harris hypothesis? I can't say one way or the other. But i find the parallels very interesting. On the surface they have absolutely nothing to do with one another. And one might argue that surely even the current administration is far more advanced than, say, the Yanomami people (though i find this an arrogant, ethnocentric, technocentric, and patently insulting proposition).

But in the end, if you reduce it just a little and squint your left eye, isn't it interesting?

Circus the Grinch on Santa Claus

This entry was originally posted on 1 December 2004 at 12:19 p.m.

Circus the Grinch back again for yet another installment of holiday moaning. On today's program we'll be talking about the one, the only, the mysterious Santa Claus. Second in a short series.

Ho ho ho. Or something like that. I heard a very funny quote this morning that i'd like to share with you before we get into today's topic. It was from Billie Mae Richards, the now-83-year old woman who was the voice of Rudoph in the old stop-motion movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: "Rudolph was a nice Canadian boy." She added that he wasn't the mischief maker everyone thinks he was. B and i got a good hearty chuckle out of this one. It really was sweet.

Anyway, this brings me around to today's topic: Santa Claus. Because Santa wouldn't be Santa without his reindeer, right? (Let's not get into the debate over whether the reindeer were male or female. I'll let Snopes settle this one.)

Regardless of whether you're a religious or secular observer of the holiday, you can't get away from Santa Claus, either in his red-suited form or in his saintly form (though Saint Nick's feast day actually falls on December 6, not December 25, but we can overlook this along with the millions of American shoppers who do it every year). But there's always this question of belief.

Now, Saint Nicholas undoubtedly lived. And he undoubtedly died (according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, his body was in fact stolen from its resting place in Myra in 1087 and taken to Bari, where it still resides). Given the historical (and physical) record of Saint Nick, it's hard not to believe in him. But Santa Claus, on the other hand, is this weird little mythical fellow around whom the word "belief" takes on a slightly different meaning.

For the record, i have no opinion on whether or not the red-suited Santa "really exists." It doesn't really matter to me enough to either believe or disbelieve. And given that this is coming from an adult, i'm sure many of you are shaking your heads. Well, stop. Because really, think about it. Sure, you've never really gotten a present from Santa, but you're working on the assumption that existence requires only physical presence. But ideas exist, and they're not physical, so go back and rethink your assumption and come back and read the rest of this rant once your mind has begun to click like a bad hard drive.

Ahem.

Now. Yesterday i heard a kid of maybe eight or nine years say, word for word, this sentence: "I actually still believe in Santa Claus."

I wanted to cry. Because really, the kid didn't. And i'll tell you how i know. She said the words "still" and "actually." The tone of her statement was such that it sounded like she was expecting not to believe in Santa for much longer. The combination of these facts tells me that, really, she doesn't actually believe. She merely wants to believe.

I've met many people who don't want their kids to believe in Santa. And truthfully, this makes me a little sad. While i see all their arguments (it's a letdown, he's not real--at least physically, right?--etc.), i find these arguments lacking in compassion. Face it: Santa Claus, as much as he's become a bargaining tool for parents attempting to correct the unruly behavior of their children, is a bastion of hope. He's a beacon of goodness. He's a symbol of the kindness and fairness that is inherently lacking in the adult world.

And who am i (and who is anyone else) to deny a kid that kind of hope, that kind of innocence? Maybe if a smidgeon of that old belief in Santa stuck around through our lives, the world would be a little different.

Of course, Circus the Grinch has no love for the soulless and commercially-driven toy frenzy that occurs annually around December 25. But that's not what Santa's really about, is he?

Circus the Grinch on the Christmas Season

This entry was originally posted on 29 November 2004 at 12:31 p.m.

Circus the Grinch here for yet another annual round of holiday glee. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this year's exploration of "the Christmas Season." On today's show, we talk about the season and its native fauna. First in a short series.

'Round about October 31, retailers all across our fair land suddenly switch gears from the summer season to the Christmas Season. It's an awe-inspiring transformation, much like watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly at ultra-high speed: enter any regional stuff mart and you'll notice that, seemingly overnight, the merchandise on the floor has gone from patio furniture to festive colored lights wrapped around tinsel-draped plastic evergreens. Truly, a more magnificent display of winter plumage is nowhere else to be seen in the animal kingdom.

(Nevermind the fact that if there is such thing as the Christmas Season, it technically runs only from Advent through Epiphany. This, clearly, is a long-lost ancient tradition that has somehow lost all relevance to society. Read up on it here.)

Unlike many other natural metamorphoses, this one is accompanied by the emergence of something called "holiday music," which can be identified by its delightful blend of crooning vocals and the liberal use of sleigh bells. Ah, what a season! Many human ecologists believe that it is this winter song in combination with the sudden release of new and special merchandise that brings innumerable shoppers out of their summer hibernation, hungry and surly after months of eyeing the same old crap on the shelves.

The hungriest of the shoppers circle one another like tigers, sizing up each enemy before striking with lightning speed in a mad dash to buy the very last Action Figure of the Year. Many of them bring their offspring, loaded up with sugar to the point of screaming and wailing--a clever ruse to ward off other shoppers who might be muscling in on their territory. It is a wondrous sight to behold two shoppers locked in mortal combat, only to flee the scene when a third armed with an angry child arrives. Brilliant!

But the most frightening of all winter season shoppers are the Christmas Angels, who maintain a perfect plastic smile. They can often be seen wearing red and green, and, usually when working in their nests, Santa hats. Watch out, fellow nature-lovers! These shoppers are armed with the deadliest of holiday weapons: unflagging generosity, coupled with a genuine aura of goodwill and cheerfulness. Make no mistake; this observer has seen many a rabid shopper holding the very last of a hot item back down in a sudden fit of anxious guilt at the approach of an Angel.

And there you have it, fellow nature-lovers: the native species of the Christmas Season. Be careful around them all and remember that they are in fact wild animals, no matter how sweet and docile they seem.

Big box economy

This entry was originally posted on 19 November 2004 at 12:15 p.m.

Earlier this week, PBS aired a program about Wal-Mart on Frontline--Is Wal-Mart Good for America? I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart; of all the big box companies, this one is my least favorite for a number of reasons. This program actually added reasons to that list.

A couple of points made during the program really stood out. First, Wal-Mart has become so powerful that it has reversed the normal order of operations when it comes to purchasing and pricing. Standard practice involves manufacturers setting prices and retailers accepting these prices. With Wal-Mart, the reverse happens: they now demand certain prices of manufacturers, and if the manufacturers don't comply, Wal-Mart drops their products. Which means they lose a substantial part of their revenue, because in many cases Wal-Mart is their largest retailer.

Second, as one person the program interviewed argued, Wal-Mart is driving down the cost of living, but it's also driving down the quality of life. Wal-Mart's "rock-bottom" prices (and they do not sell everything for the lowest price) mean that their employees make less and have fewer benefits. Some of them work multiple jobs because they can't make a living on what Wal-Mart pays them. And--and here's the kicker--because Wal-Mart is one of the US's largest employers, and because Wal-Mart's practices drive many other stores out of business, many of their employees are in essence left without a choice about working there.

This program reminded me of something i'd recently read, a passage from the book Our Kind by Marvin Harris. I'll quote it here:

With the end of the slave trade, the Europeans forced the Africans to farm and mine for them. Meanwhile, colonial authorities made every effort to keep Africa subservient and backward by encouraging tribal wars, by limiting African education to the most rudimentary level possible, and, above all, by preventing colonies from developing an industrial infrastructure that might have made it possible for them to compete on the world market after they achieved political independence....

If you doubt that colonialism could have had such long-lasting consequences, just think of Indonesia and Japan. In the sixteenth century these two island civilizations shared meany features of agrarian feudal states. Indonesia became a Dutch colony, while Japan shut its doors to European traders and missionaries, accepting nothing but books as imports from the West, especially technical books that told how to make munitions, build railways, and produce chemicals. After 300 years of close contact with their European masters, Indonesia emerged into the twentieth century as an underdeveloped, overpopulated, pauperized basket case, while the Japanese were ready to take their place as the most advanced industrial power in the Far East.

That's on page 119 of the paperback edition.

So here's the connection: is the kind of economic oppression that occurred in the African colonies happening again, here in the US, on a smaller scale? Is Wal-Mart playing the part of Western colonial masters to the citizens of its own territories?

If so much of our internal economy is driven by Wal-Mart, and if the bulk of its employees are not making enough to do things like visit doctors, earn college degrees, and raise well-educated children, what will the result be in 20 years? Are Wal-Mart's practices in danger of dooming the US to a self-induced economic and educational depression?

Maybe it won't be that extreme. Given how complex these things are (and i've greatly simplified things here), i doubt it will. On the other hand, i can't help but wonder whether the big box economy, while attempting to make life affordable, is really more of a slow poison that will have lasting marks on society.

Reflections on Halloween

This entry was originally posted on 1 November 2004 at 12:11 p.m.

People don't fear demons much anymore. Most folks would say this is a good thing. After all, technology gets closer and closer evey day to proving that there's no such thing, that they're imaginings (or worse yet, delusions)--and really, what good could come of a nation populated entirely by the delusional?

(What's that? We're already all delusional? Oh, good. And here i thought it was just me.

Meanwhile, back at the diatribe...)

Now, just because most people don't believe in demons doesn't mean they don't feel deep, unseating, horrifying fear. Thing is, that fear is different now.

There was a time when the vast majority of people feared things like demonic possession, hellfire, damnation--in short, they feared danger to their immortal souls. But seeing as we don't seem to have immortal souls these days, it seems silly to fear these things. Right?

So what do we fear now? Let's take stock: War. Terrorism, obviously. Poverty, or even hints of it, like not being able to pay the rent on time, or having to charge the groceries. Car accidents. Death. Being unable to save for retirement and unable to live on the pittance doled out by Social Security. Disease (that's a good one--no one likes the thought of wasting away for weeks or months or years with a horrible disease like AIDS or cancer or ALS or the like). Car accidents. Plane accidents. Train accidents. Bus accidents. (Have i covered all the accidents?) What about public humiliation--does anyone fear that anymore? Oh, and don't forget being mugged, robbed, raped, murdered, tortured, or forced to live without cable TV.

Lots of fears there. Tons.

So what's the difference between all those fears and the fear of demons? You could make the argument that the former are aspiritual and the latter are necessarily spiritual, but i think that misses the point. And the point is this: time-reference.

Fear of demons, of danger to one's immortal soul (switching back, momentarily, to the days when it was okay to believe in these slippery things, and when most people did for fear of being ostracized by the community--i.e., back in the days when there was such thing as community to begin with...) requires one to think ahead. Not just tomorrow-ahead or five years hence-ahead or old age-ahead. They required people to think about the implications of all of their actions over the entire course of their lifetime. That's a lot of thinking ahead. (My old friends Gottfredson and Hirschi would argue that that takes quite a bit of self-control to pull off, it does.)

Fears like accidents, poverty, terrorism, and so on are far more immediate. Maybe they're less abstract in some ways, and maybe they're more generalized in others, but when it comes down to it, these fears are in the here and now, not the great hereafter. It's a big difference.

It's the difference between a game of chess between masters and a game of chess between novices: in the case of the former, both parties are thinking seven to fifteen moves ahead. In the case of the latter, both parties are just looking for the best possible move with the configuration that's on the board right now, future be damned and bridges to be crossed over when met.

And when it comes down to it, it's also the difference between moral fear and amoral fear. If you fear the wrath of some supreme being, or the fires of Hell or the like, your fear stems from the moral content of your actions. If you fear being mugged or raped or attacked by terrorists, well, you already have the moral high ground. We've gone from being responsible for our actions to being innocent victims of chance and malice.

It's an interesting shift, don't you think? Says quite a bit about our culture (stretched thin though it might be).

I'm not a religious person. Sure, i was raised Catholic (as long-time readers will know), but have since made my peace with the Church and struck off on my own. But that doesn't mean i think that fear stemming from the moral consequences of one's actions is a bad thing. Quite the contrary, i'm thinking that people have for too long associated morality with religion, and in the technolust that has swept through our gloriously decadent nation, they've forgotten that morality doesn't have to come from a Cross or a Star of David or any of the religious symbols we've got left.

When it comes down to it--and i think the religious aspect is just a shortcut for those less introspectively-inclined--morality, in its purest form, should come from a sense of humanity. The Golden Rule (or rather, it's inverse--"Do not do unto others as you wouldn't have them do unto you") has solid groundings in humanity, not in a distant supreme being.

This digression into the nature of morality aside, let's get back to fear. Fear and Halloween.

Now, quick disclaimer: Halloween, in its ancient form, isn't necessarily about fear. And it's not necessarily about demons, either. But it's a holiday that has come to be associated with both fear and either the dead or the supernatural, so let's just accept this as the modern nature of the holiday (which, clearly, is no longer so holy, if it ever was) and go from there.

My point is this: fear of demons, fear of danger to the eternal and immortal soul is much bigger than any other kind of fear imaginable. The other fears may be horrifying and dreadful things, but really, nothing compares to the fear that creeps into one's heart when faced with the notion of suffering forever, of not finding rest even in death (and we're all weary, so don't deny it).

And that fear of demons serves a purpose. It's a fear of something bigger. Not just something bigger than ourselves, but something bigger than all the heads of state in the world combined, bigger even than the fear of natural disaster--because that fear is, at its root, fear of humanity itself, fear of all the evil of which we're capable. Think about it: all that we've been taught to fear about Hell is really something that we've had to imagine ourselves. And if we can imagine it, we can (for the most part) do it. And that's big.

So when kids come around for Halloween dressed as Spiderman or as fairies or princesses or dragons or Batman, as cute and lovely as they are, i have to wonder whether they're missing out. Okay, maybe this isn't such a problem for the small ones, as, clearly, you don't want to traumatize them. But the older ones, they should know. They should know that the fear of demons isn't necessarily out of touch with the modern world.

There's a valuable lesson hidden in that fear, something everyone can take to heart, something at the very root of what it means to be human, of what it means to be capable of evil and responsible for one's actions.

We have a holiday that in a roundabout way celebrates that fear. We just have to make sure we're not forgetting this in the rush to create costumes that are clever or silly or slutty. Call it a non-religious holiday. Call it a day of remembrance of humanity.

And for Pete's sake, dress up as something scary next year, will you?

The purpose of cyberpunk

This entry was originally posted on 22 October 2004 at 12:06 p.m.

Lately i've been thinking about the whole idea of cyberpunk. In many ways over the years, it has gone from being a revolutionary concept around which stories revolved to being a plot device that simply exists as a convenient way of getting the characters from point A to point B.

On a related note, one of things i've been thinking about is breaking things down to their base levels, and whether or what perspectives genres add to storytelling.

If you have a story about a person whose essence has been uploaded to a global network, is it really anything more than a ghost story? If the character in the story takes the form of a program who has been exiled from a specific server, is it really any different from the story of a person who's been banished from his tribe? Maybe it would have to be a tribesman with magial powers, maybe the character would have to be a shaman--but really, is there any difference? Does putting human characters within the confines of intelligent programming really change the story all that much?

Does it all boil down to setting, or is there actually something different about this kind of story? Is it just another way of telling a tale that already exists--with a setting that's more reflective of today's technology (and hence, updated, or at least more fashionably clothed metaphors)?

Bottom line: is there really anything that cyberpunk can do that non-cyberpunk fiction can't? Is it just fancy dressing, or does it really teach us something new about humanity?

Jumping jack

This entry was originally posted on 15 October 2004 at 12:35 p.m.

Way back when we lived in Germany, my parents decided to take advantage of Being In Europe, and took us on a couple of vacations to various Interesting Places. For two of my three years there, we visited Holland. I vividly remember tulips and windmills and people driving like animals on the highway, and a statue of the little boy who put his finger in the dyke (yes, there is such a thing, though the legend--which is entirely fictional--was written by an American). The statue looks like this:



Anyway, that's not really important to the story at hand, beyond being one of the things i remember about our little vacations.

So, my story begins in Holland, probably in Amsterdam. My brother and sister and i have gone into a little shop. There are all sorts of little knick-knacky toys, and, to amuse myself while they browse, i start playing with one of them. It's a little wooden puppet toy--i think they're called "jumping jack" toys. It was a representation of a little boy wearing a costume whose cultural origins i'm not certain of anymore. The body and head were a single, flat wooden piece, and the arms and legs were separate, attached so that they would move easily when you pulled the string. It was constructed pretty much like this:



...except the legs weren't jointed at the knee--just straight.

I wasn't terribly interested in the decoration, but i was having quite a good time pulling the string and watching its limbs rise and fall, my little five or six or seven year-old brain mentally dissecting the toy, trying to grasp how the mechanism worked. And so it was that i didn't see my siblings (i'm the youngest; my brother is older than me by six years and my sister by nearly eleven) leave the store. I just kept on pulling the string, slowly, slowly.

Somehow or other--i don't remember how it happened--i learned that they'd left, and somehow or other--equally forgotten--managed to be reunited with them. Although i've forgotten these details, i recall being very upset. I hated being lost, and i had a history of it, going back to my mom losing me in the PX a few years before then (long story). So this was bad news.

But everything was fine, and we went on our way and i managed to forget about everything and concentrate on enjoying the vacation.

And thus it was a complete surprise that night when we got a knock at the door of our hotel room.

My parents answered and spoke to whoever was there, and came back into the room bearing something wrapped in tissue paper. I was curious, of course. I was always curious--but i was the youngest, and just a kid, and nothing important ever happened to me, really (...well, one thing did, but that's another story and it's much darker than this one).

So i was shocked when they presented the item to me. I unwrapped the tissue paper and saw, nestled within it, the toy from the shop, his little Pinocchio face and sombrero and orange pants looking up at me.

I'd never been so embarrassed in my short life until that day. I looked over at the door where an adult was standing--i can't be sure, but i think it was the shopkeeper. She was smiling, and so was i. Even though i hadn't even planned on asking my parents for it, i was grateful. It occurred to me, young as i was, that this was an Important Moment, and an Important Gift. I said thank you.

Several years and a number of moves later, we eventually got rid of the toy. I'm not sure whether my mom asked me first before taking it to the thrift store or wherever she took it, but i'm sure it was one of those things she figured i'd grown out of.

Thinking back on it, i'm not so sure that i ever did.

Qualitative research

This entry was originally posted on 1 July 2004 at 12:22 p.m.

Not too long ago, B's father and i were talking about quantitative versus qualitative research. I was telling him how i'm eager to get back into anthropology, where i can focus more on qualitative and narrative research. He wanted to know why i preferred it to quantitative research, and i started to explain, but the conversation kind of drifted away before i could. I've been thinking about this issue ever since.

Many social scientists like numbers. It gives us a sense of validity in the face of the clinical precision for which the hard sciences are known. Doing statistical research in the social sciences allows us to sidestep the inferiority complex we've developed as a result of years of head-scratching and scorn by both other scientists and the general populace. It's the same kind of inferiority complex that leads many of us to use obscure terminology and horrible grammar in technical journals.

All social scientists are aware of this to a greater or lesser degree, but you'll be hard-pressed to find many of us who will admit to it.

But the thing is, we don't need to feel this kind of pressure. This sense of inferiority, when you take a good look at it, is something we've brought upon ourselves in a search for validation as scientists: we're brought up to believe that science is the thing that provides us with hard, definitive answers--and human behavior, the core subject of all social sciences, is a phenomenon that defies the kind of binary pigeonholing that statistical research requires.

The hard sciences deal with some pretty abstract concepts, many of which are difficult to understand (theoretical physics is probably the most difficult discipline, by this reckoning). But when it comes down to it, all physical behavior is explicable at some level. There are extremely complex systems at work in astronomy, cosmology, geology, biology, and chemistry. But ultimately all of these things are quantifiable, and once we understand these systems and the factors that play into them, we can accurately predict their behavior.

Not so with human behavior. Despite our more predictable animal nature, we're amazingly flexible, whimsical, and varied creatures.* While our behavior does fall into clear patterns, there is enough variation that it's neither fair nor accurate to make hard and fast predictions about how a person will turn out. Think of it this way: we know how hydrogen bonds with oxygen to create water, and under which conditions this will happen, and we can predict this behavior with near 100-percent accuracy. But ask under which conditions a human child will turn out to be a bank robber, and the success of our predictions drops substantially. If we can predict human behavior even 30% of the time, it's a success from the perspective of social science.

Let's face it: when social scientists attempt to be like hard scientists, we fail miserably. It's no wonder people turn their noses up at the social sciences when our success rate--based on our self-imposed need to quantify behavior--is so dismal.

Statistics in the social sciences have their place, there's no question. We wouldn't be able to assess things like the success of new policies or rehabilitation programs without quantifiable data. But when it comes to understanding the causes of, understanding the effects of, and successfully predicting human behavior, our strengths lie in methods other than statistical analysis.

Qualia abound in human behavior. We've built our existence around them, and even though they're not truly expressible, we've spent centuries creating great works of art, literature, and music to express them. We've built wonderful organic systems around the perception, communication, and understanding of abstract notions--systems that, when quantified, lose much of their meaning. And this is where the social sciences excel.

For example, one of the best things about psychology isn't its ability to predict mental illness; it's its ability to treat it--not through quantifiable methods (though these methods should be assessed via quantifiable data in order to measure their success), but through a sort of gnostic interaction built on understanding, knowledge, and the subtle interplays of a therapeutic relationship.

As humans, we instinctively understand things on a qualitative level. We see colors, hear sounds, feel emotions, think thoughts, experience sensations, and have ideas--all of which are based on qualia. We can quantify them, as we would a suicide statistic, but in doing so, we lose a crucial piece of information: in quantifying these things, we understand how they are, but we do not capture why they are.**

Finally, there are those who would argue that all we need to know about human behavior lies within the bell curve: social sciences are probabilistic, not deterministic, and it's good enough to know what the "average person" would do. To that stance, i can only reply thus: if we, as both social scientists and humans, do not believe that we have anything to learn from qualitative research--if, in fact, we believe that the only cases that matter are those that lie along the mean, then we are dooming ourselves to academic failure. Human behavior is based as much on individual experience as it is on genetics, and because of this we will never have the level of precision in prediction as the hard sciences. In eschewing qualitative research, we deny what it is that drives us as a species, and we deny the power of insight. And once we deny the power of insight, we've lost what it means to be scientists in the first place.

*I'm sure this applies also to other animals, in varying degrees as well; we're not so special. My guess is that self-awareness and self-will have something to do with this.

**Mathematics is its own abstract realm, and this piece is not intendted as an attack on the beauty or strangeness or qualia inherent to mathematics; the author appreciates mathematics and its qualities.

The imperfection of language

This entry was originally posted on 17 June 2004 at 12:28 p.m.

I've been thinking about language lately. I suppose this has something to do with reading a book that's been translated from Turkish into English where the translator did a fabulous job of maintaining the poetic feel of the original. Or, at least, the poetic feel that i surmise the original must have had, based on the translation.

Language is imperfect. Language creates conventions that refer to reality, then it creates conventions that refer to the conventions, and then you get metalanguage, and this opens the door for us all to question the meaning of words, the meaning of grammar, and the meaning of meaning. It's a wonder that any real communication takes place.

Granted that language is an evolved phenomenon--one that will never reach "completion" unless our species suddenly stops discovering things and creating new things and new ways of thinking about things--it's less surprising that it works. After all, we've had thousands of years to hash out things like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. And yet, despite all this, there's still a massive division between spoken language and written language; practical language and poetic language. It's the kind of division that makes the imperfections of words and grammar and syntax both beautiful and frustrating.

Example: Ever try explaining an abstract notion to someone else? I notice this especially with computer-related issues. We have terminology for the various types of programs and the actions that they perform, but using that terminology leaves most people scratching their heads and wondering whether you were actually speaking the same language. So, to get around this, you try to convert the technical terms into realistic descriptions that should be more accessible, only to be met by a blank stare that indicates that the person you're talking to heard and understood each word individually but still has no idea what you're talking about. Finally, we resort to metaphor, using other systems (both physical and non-physical) as imperfect reflections of what we're trying to explain.

The same situation in literature, however, is almost like a gold mine. An author can write a very simple paragraph explaining an object, only to find that the reader just doesn't see the object as the author described it. Or, better yet, an author can write about the motivations a certain character had to take a certain action--only to have the reader continue to question it, this time from a new perspective. Or, and this one's very important, an author can write a phrase that seems very simple and very clear only to find out that it's still ambiguous enough that most readers don't interpret it the way it was intended.

And this is the crux of the gold mine: for every phrase or sentence or paragraph that we don't understand, numerous interpretations are available. And each of those interpretations sheds a different color of light on the object in question. Because of this, nondimensional characters, who only exist in nonphysical space, suddenly become as real as any one of us.

And for each of these interpretations, a new series of philosophical questions arises. It's like opening one door only to find three more waiting for you on the other side.

In communication, this is frustrating. In literature, this can be wonderful (or frustrating, depending on whether it's complex prose or just unclear writing).

So all this leaves me wondering, when do we get to the meat? When can we walk away from the branching and sub-branching of interpretation and be satisfied that we understand the meaning of any sentence?

Evolution and awareness

This entry was originally posted on 12 April 2004 at 11:03 a.m.

Sometimes i think that our downfall as a species is our awareness of evolution.

One of the things that seems to separate humans from other animals is a sort of meta-self-awareness and an awareness (if incomplete) of how we fit into the processes that take place all around us.

Over centuries, we've come to recognize the role of competition in survival. And maybe we've gone too far with it. Maybe, as a species, that sense of awareness has made us far more competitive and warlike than we need to be, like hyped-up chimps (one of the few warring species on the planet) vying for territory. Maybe we've become so sensitive to the idea of competition leading to evolutionary "success" that, when it comes to competition, we've crossed the line between benefit and self-destriction.

What a funny thing it is to be aware of evolution.

Adulthood

This entry was originally posted on 15 March 2004 at 2:11 p.m.

When i was a kid i used to think that there was some quasi-magical point in a person's life when they become an adult--and once they'd reached that point, they'd be confident, secure, and knowledgeable about the world. Over and above that, they'd know their place in life, what they were meant to do, who they were meant to be. If they knew an answer to a question, they knew it and if they didn't, it was no big deal; presumably, they knew everything they were supposed to know to do their job, deal with insurance companies, own a house, buy a car, balance a checkbook, and so on.

What an incredibly naive outlook on life! Not that it's embarrassing; at that age, simplicity and completeness are the only things that make sense. In reality, if there is any embarrassment, it lies with the "adult" for not ever really reaching that state. I think of all the supposed adults i've known in my life, and i have yet to meet one who doesn't doubt some facet of his or her being, who doesn't have regrets, who isn't confused about some major life issue. And suddenly, the older i get, the less confident, less secure, and less knowledgeable about the world adults seem to be.

And you know what? Somehow, i find some comfort in this.

Taking out the garbage

This entry was originally posted on 11 March 2004 at 2:23 p.m.

During my junior and senior years of college, i worked the late shift at the convenience store over on Busch Campus. We went through a series of managers while i was there. There was Peter, who was kind of a dreamer and wanted to go to graduate school for philosophy; Rey, who had been in the Navy or Marines (i forget which, but he'd been stationed on a ship) and was methodical, organized, and very strict; one guy, an out gay man whose name i can't remember but whose face is burned into my memory; and a girl about my age, whose name i also forget, who was bipolar and applying to Cooper Union during a sort of weird hypomanic state that was slowly creeping into full-blown mania.

One of the tasks i enjoyed the most at that job was taking out the trash. There was a gigantic (think eighteen-wheeler-sized) trash compactor outside the store; we'd fill one of those big, wheeled US Postal Service mail bins with all the trash bags from the shop and office, push the bin outside, toss all of the bags into the trash compactor, and run the machine. I loved it. I was in a pretty bad state psychologically back then, and taking out the trash afforded me respite from having to deal with customers under the shop's harsh lights, from all of the inadequacies and shortcomings and horrible things that were lurking in me.

It also gave me the chance to do a little daydreaming. I've always had an overactive imagination; for me, a walk down the street is usually much more. There's almost always some fantasy lying beneath my actions, some little daydream that i'm walking through while i carry out my tasks, something to keep me interested in what i'm doing. If i'm riding public transit, it's in some other world, where the subway trains are really giant worms with carriages strapped to their backs; if i'm driving to New Jersey, in my fantasy i'm piloting a little scout craft over an alien world; if i'm writing SPSS code on our UNIX system, i'm really typing in commands that control robots on some clandestine pirate mission. I'm just weird that way. Always have been, always will be, and i wouldn't have it any other way.

When i took out the trash, it was usually cold and dark outside, the sky full of stars, and the landscape Maritan-bleak. In my mind, when i took out the trash, it was on a little colony on some cold, dark, barren planetoid, where the few hardy survivors had already gone to sleep for the night. Maybe this says something about how i was feeling in general back then, but i look back on that little daydream with some fondness.

One night after i'd taken out the trash, the manager on duty--the artist (who eventually borrowed my copy of A Buddhist Bible and never returned it despite the fact that she'd had to stop reading it because she'd begun to believe she was the Buddha...) stopped me. "I know why you like taking out the trash," she said with a conspiratorial edge to her voice.

I tried not to furrow my brow. "And why is that," i asked.

"You like it for the same reason that I do: you like the smell, the reek of all that creation." She went on for a moment about how the smell of the garbage was symbolic of humanity, of all its virtues and failures. I wish i could remember exactly how she had phrased it, but there was a sense of completeness to her words, a sense that she was talking not about refuse, but about gold.

I listened to her words and understood that she was talking about something in herself, not something in me. And although she was wrong, i didn't correct her. I couldn't bear to tell her the truth; it felt too private, too vulnerable.

I wonder whatever happened to her.

More on literary theory

This entry was originally posted on 6 February 2004 at 4:20 p.m.

Okay, so maybe literary theory can be useful.

I say this only because i think it can be useful to use different lenses (Marxist, feminist, capitalist, structuralist, whatever) as a means of interpreting literature. That aspect of it speaks to the relativist in me: it's interesting to look at a text as a certain group would interpret it.

However.

The relativist in me also thinks that none of the schools of literary theory is superior--in terms of "correctness"--to any other. And herein lies the problem: as with other academic disciplines, the people who teach theory are bound to become specialized. This happens quite a bit--in archaeology, people often become so specialized that they can only talk about one aspect of a small set of geographically limited cultures within a single, short time period. Same goes for philosophy or psychology or criminology: people specialize in history/metaphysics/epistemology/whatever or they specialize in behaviorism/clinical/neuropsych/whatever or they specialize in policing/corrections/theory/juvenile justice/whatever.

The problem is, once you become that specialized, your specialty becomes your entire frame of reference. Everything you say, every interpretation you make, is based on that one perspective. I've known many people (academics and enthusiasts alike) who have fallen prey to that kind of tunnel vision.

If literary theory is to be taught, it needs to be taught within a context that it is sometimes useful to interpret a text through a certain perspective, but it is always important to experience literature directly as a reader first and apply whatever theoretical framework second. Furthermore, no one theoretical framework is going to provide all of the answers for any given text. If one is going to apply theory to texts, he must be willing to concede that other perspectives will have equally valid and interesting things to say about a text.

And finally, relativism aside, the notion that there is no such thing as a "good book" or a "bad book" is absurd. Writers write with different levels of skill. Some writers are excellent storytellers who write very clunky prose. Others write musical prose but can't tell a story. The rare breed can pull off both telling a story and telling it well. It is silly to assume that a reader will be nonjudgmental when it comes to basics like plot, style, theme, imagery, and technique. Just as there are excellent musicians or athletes, there are writers who excel at their craft (though they're few and far between, IMHO); likewise, just as there are musicians who aren't technically capable of performing complicated pieces, or athletes who who don't have the physical capacity to run a marathon, there are writers who have yet to fully hone their abilities.

Are all stories valid? That's another question. I lean toward "yes" on this one. A story might be utter crap, but that doesn't make it any less real or any less a story or any less valid than a masterpiece by some other author.

So this is where i stand on literary theory: it's not the be-all, end-all of literature. It's a tool, a set of filters to be applied in order to gain a new perspective on a text--but only after the text has been viewed with clear eyes.