What I know now and why it matters

I'm going to start with the myriad of references to subjects unknown to me before taking this class:

Nestings
Kubla Khan
Concentric Circles
Möbius Strips
Blogging...
Klein Bottles
Alice
The edibility of youth
a Tale
Frames
"The farther in you go, the bigger it gets"
Chaos and Divinity are close
Fate

The list could go on quite a bit further, but I believe it has served it's purpose.  We have covered more subjects than I can stand to outline here, and I am grateful for every one of them!  What I have learned most in this semester is to never take anything at face value.  There is a deeper meaning behind almost everything, even if the author did not intend such a discovery to be made.  When Professor Sexson talks about John Crowley's interview about Little, Big he even admits that many of the questions he does not know the answers to, and was not thinking of them when he wrote it.  But the reader has the power to interpret the work in anyway they see fit and find meaning in it.

Everything is connected to everything else and there are no coincidences.  From Ashley's parents living on Edgewood, to Sydney taking on the role of Sylvie, everything is connected and inferences can be made between all observations.  I think it was Jennifer's project that really identified my new way of thinking; I feel initiated.  It was enforced when I had the surreal experience after Synecdoche, NY and Remember: Be Here Now.  I am going to remember this experience for the rest of my life and continue my search for fairies and deeper meaning in what I read and see.

That why this class was important to me, because it has truly made an impression on the manner in which I analyze what I read.  Learning about Tales and destinies and stories that save your life and concentric circles makes me see links between a story told almost 1,001 years ago, to a book about a 9-sided house written in 1981.  Such insight will allow me to keep a fresh point of view while I grow as a reader.  This class has also been important to me by opening up my eyes to a lot of other works i should investigate suggested by other students.

Basically I feel more connected to my surroundings and it makes me grateful to have taken this class and had this experience with all of the insightful and beautiful people who surrounded me this whole semester.  Thank you!

Remember

My experience after leaving our little showing of Synecdoche NY was one of the most surreal experiences of my entire life.  There was no specific incident that made my evening more interesting or intriguing than any other.  Accept I couldn’t help but continue to look over my shoulder.  Was someone following me, dictating what I do, and telling me I’m doing it incorrectly, even though it’s who I am?  Is someone whispering directions in my ear that I am not consciously hearing, but am nonetheless carrying out?

I felt apart of everything around me.  While I felt it could all be fake, I couldn’t help but appreciate my surroundings.  Even if they were completely staged by some unknown architect/playwright, they are my reality and all I have ever known.  My life is absolutely real to me, even if somebody else has scripted it.

If my surreal over the shoulder wanderings after Friday were not strange enough, THEN I went to Hastings the next day with my friend and she said she wanted to buy a book.  I immediately recommend Little, Big and they have one copy left.  She picks it up and we walk around a little bit more.  She’s an architecture student and so I thought the house in this book would be particularly interesting to her.  I offered her my copy but she said it sounded so interesting she wanted a copy for herself.

Whilst wandering around the New Age section I RANDOMLY picked up a book called Remember: Be Here Now.  It was a sideways book where the spine was at the top and you flipped the pages up, not to the left.  It was filled with dark brown papyrus and extraordinarily large nonlinear text and illustrations.  The description Amazon gives it is:  Describes one man's transformation upon his acceptance of the principles of Yoga and gives a modern restatement of the importance of the spiritual side of man's nature. Illustrated. What a worthless description…

As I randomly flipped through the pages, I felt I was reading a book about our class.  It never said “nestings” or “alice” or “recursive structure,” but it encompassed EVERYTHING we’ve ever talked about, and everything we could ever talk about:

While I feel this is a PERFECT example, this situation is not unique to this book; I think anything I read from now on will make me feel at least a twinge of what I felt when I randomly picked that book off the shelf.  Will it ever end? Sometimes I hope so, but I my initiation is complete and that my way of thinking has been utterly changed for the rest of my life.  Dammit.

Choice

I wanted to expand upon something I inadvertently said during my presentation.  Let's hope I can remember it correctly because it was quite insightful, and quite by accident:

"You gain some choice about your destiny when you accept the fact that you have no choice."

Or something along those lines.  What I was getting at was that it seems the characters who accept their fate, seem to have some semblance of control over it.  When Fadil Sanaan (Arabian Nights and Days) decided to follow his conscience and turn himself in, he accepted his fate, and therefore was able to make the choice.   Whereas Alphonse (Manuscript) had absolutely no idea what his fate was, or what the intentions of those around him were, he had absolutely no control over the situation.  He simply followed the path laid out in front of him.

My most poignant example comes from Little, Big when Daily Alice finally realizes her destiny, accepts it, and then asks for more time with her family, which is granted to her:

-->

“As she went up the Hill, she felt huge duties calling to her…The feeling was intense, as though she were being drawn in or swept away; she sat motionless in its grip, marveling and a little frightened, expecting it to pass in a moment… But it didn’t pass…She felt that she was dissolving helplessly into what she beheld, and at the same time had grown imperious enough to command it in every part…awed, yet for some reason not surprised as she came to know what was being asked of her, what she was summoned to… ‘No,’ she said in reply; ‘no’ she said, softly… ‘Turn away,’ she said, and the day did… ‘Not yet, not yet,’ she said, as the day turned away; ‘not yet, there’s too much to do still; please, not yet.’” (p. 285-286)

 It is my belief that Alice was able to push back the timeline of her purpose in life because she understand the ending was inevitable.  She understand and accepted her duties and understood she really had no choice in the matter.  By understanding this, she took some power away from destiny and was allowed a voice in the matter.

This mindset in real life would dictate that we have to accept we have no control over our lives in order to realize even the semblance of choice.  So which is better?  Accepting no control to have some control, or pretending you have full control when you have zero control?  Is ignorance bliss?

Names and Destiny

            

 

Since reading the Manuscript, I've wondered about the ability to change ones destiny by changing their name.  And after reading the Arabian Nights and Days I realized it's not so much about changing your name, it's about changing your identity altogether.

Ones destiny does not simply transfer with your mind or soul, your identity is imperative as well.  Gamasa al-Bulti was the chief of police until he freed a believing genie named Singam.  Singam accuses Gamasa of being corrupt and Gamasa, after some time, begins to agree saying he is “A murderous robber, protector of criminals, torturer of innocent men.  He had forgotten God until he had been reminded of Him by a genie” (p.43).  And so Gamasa killed the even more corrupt governor, Khalil al-Hamadhani.  When he was arrested, he did not fight or resist, he accepted his fate, for he wanted to die a good man and a good Muslim.  When he was beheaded he expected death, but instead was granted a new body, and a new identity, that of Abdullah the porter.

Abdullah the porter goes to live in the town of Gamasa, watching his own wife and child mourning him.  Eventually he ends up confessing to the crimes of Gamasa al-Bulti as well as the crimes of killing other corrupt men as well.  He is institutionalized and later rescued by Sahloul.  After being rescued, he spends his days under the date tree, with a new identity, as the madman.  He is very devout and wise and gives advice to those who seek it, yet he is not noticed due to his status of being insane.  This man changed his identity three times, each time changing the course of his destiny: “They had shaved his head and beard and he had twice been flogged.  Today there was no such thing as Gamasa, nor even Abdullah.  Today he was without identity, without name, filled with worries… his goal is beyond the cosmos” (pg. 93).

It was his fate to kill the governor as Gamasa, and it was his fate to die.  Gamasa died the day he was beheaded, and Abdullah was born.  It was Abdullah’s destiny to kill more corrupt men in the district, and to later confess.  He was sentenced to eternity in the asylum, and fulfilled that as Abdullah.  When he became the madman, he achieved the destiny of being a devout believer and a good man.  He had to change his identity to achieve that destiny, for Gamasa al-Bulti and Abdullah the porter could not be devout good men due to the evil acts they had committed.  In order for one destiny to reach fruition, a change of identity had to happen, and was possible.

            More support of this can be seen in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa and Little, Big.  When the gypsy chief met Leonor for the first time and told her that he already liked her, she knew that for her to have a new destiny, separate from her life before, she would need a new name.  Leonor was the girl who lived in the convent.  Her new name would allow her to follow an entirely new path, allowing for an entirely new destiny.  

In Little, Big Ariel Hawksquill says, 

“‘Gentlemen, Russell Eigenblick is the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, yes, die alte Barbarossa, reawakened to rule over this strange latter age of his Empire.’…

‘Do you mean to say, Hawksquill,’ said a third, more reasonably, ‘that Russell Eigenblick supposes himself to be this resurrected Emperor, and that…’

‘I have no idea who he supposes himself to be,’ Hawksquill said.  ‘I’m only telling you who he in fact is.’” (p. 346).

It doesn’t matter who one thinks they are, or what one thinks their purpose is.  It only matters what truly is.  The Emperor could have that himself an Emperor penguin, but that would not have changed who he actually was.  This differs from changing names because when Gamasas turned into Abdullah who turned into the madman, his identity changed, not just his name.  When Rebecca turned into Laura, her identity as the daughter of the Sheikh changed.  Russell Eigenblick was the Emperor, with a new name, not a new identity.  One has to change ones identity to change ones destiny, not just their name.

Arabian Nights and Days

When we examined the schedule for the rest of this class, I was disappointed that the Arabian Nights and Days was not on it, however I read it anyway because it lent itself to my research project on destiny and fate.  My next few blogs will be related to this book, but not necessarily destiny. 

This post was inspired by a quote from the madman in the Nights and Days.  He is explaining why he did not kill many important men who had done wicked acts.  He says "I was sorry that morning should come and the citizens should not find a sultan or a vizier or a governor or a private secretary or a chief of police...  I see them with their hearts full of shame and having experienced the weakness of man" (145)

He follows up and says "Woe to people under a ruler without a sense of shame." (146)

The idea of a ruler needing to contain certain qualities is not unique to any religion or nation.  Most believe those who rule us need to be intelligent and wise, passionate and kind.  But shameful was not an attribute I deemed necessary for a ruler until reading this passage.  When someone feels shame, they have negative erroneous beliefs about their inherent abilities and worth.  Why would we want a ruler to feel that way?  But if that ruler has done horrible things, such as Shahriyar did by slaying hundreds of virgins, shame is an appropriate reaction.  Shame makes us doubt ourselves, and doubt leaves to exploration of new ideas.

Descartes fully supported the idea of self-doubt leading to knowledge and wisdom.  His thought experiments involved many steps in questioning ones own thoughts, and he disregards to validity of preconceived ideas.  His final conclusion is "I think therefore I am."  The act of thinking is the only proof of existence, so does a ruler simply ahve to be able to think to be competent?  Absolutely not, for the necessary attributes to be a good leader are not found in everyone.

Another attribute that is not discussed in the Nights and Days is discussed by Plato in his "Allegory of the Cave".  He says that to be a good leader, you have to not WANT to be a leader at all:

"A city whose prospective rulers are least eager to rule must of necessity be most free from civil war, whereas a city with the opposite kind of rulers is governed in the opposite way."

A leader who has no desire to rule will be the best ruler because his personal emotions will not get in the way. He will do what is best for his people, not for himself.  That is a revelation that Shahriyar must come to at the end of this novel, whether to continue being a terror to his people, or to finally grow up and accept responsibility for his actions.

GEB Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Levels of Description, and Computer Systems

From the moment I received this assignment I was filled with trepidation.  I believe myself to be relatively tech-savvy in that I can operate all my devices, and generally troubleshoot if something is not working correctly with them.  However, open up the back of a computer or an Xbox, or a TV, and I am totally lost.  The hardware (electrical connections), and leveled software (programming) are totally lost on me.  My mind does not work in that way, with binary code software programming.  The closest I’ve come to understanding computer programming is when I took a Web Design class, and it was so far from my realm of knowledge that I found it mildly refreshing, but overall incredibly difficult.

Summary:

The beginning of this chapter starts out in not such an intimidating way, and speaks of ideas I can understand.  We all hold in our minds the ability to conceptualize one situation in multiple ways.  For example, when we watch TV, we know that we are seeing an image compiled of thousands of small dots, but we see it as one whole image.  This is the same manner in which we understand our own selves.  The human body we understand as one unit that works as a whole.  But it is made up of different systems, and all those systems are made up of tiny individual cells.  The human brain can hold all of these different perspectives at once, and still understand the whole.

I was then surprised to see an example I had talked about earlier in the semester in a completely different class.  When novice chess players and masters are asked to look at a board of legally placed chess pieces for 5 seconds, the masters can more easily recreate it from memory.  This is because they see the board in chunks, and can visualize the legal moves available.  Often their chunks can be misplaced on the board, but the chunk itself is correct.  However, when the board was randomly filled with pieces, with no essence of legality or reason, the experts were no better at recreating it than the novices.  This is because there is no ability for them to understand the origins of the moves.

Then the book gets into writing code for a computer, and I start to get lost.  What I understand is that it is written in many different levels (just like nestings, wait what?!).  There’s machine language (101111001) and above that is assembly language, which basically puts the machine language into chunks, like the chess masters.  Then there are programs to translate the languages between one another.  Above that is Boostrapping which allows programs that are not complete, to complete other programs.  This is like a child’s language development.  Once the child has enough language, it can use its language to acquire new language.

Then comes the operating system (Windows XP, Vista, Snow Leopard, etc), which is the level between the human instructions and the machine language.  The meaning of this system is to “cushion” the user.  The user doesn’t want to think (why would they?) of all the workings of the machine language (for good reason- cuz it’s complicated!!). They just want the machine to work the way it’s supposed to work.  When something goes WRONG, then they begin to realize how complicated and intricate the system actually is.  Many times it’s user error because the user has to be extremely specific in its orders, otherwise the computers will get confused, even if the user thinks he is being clear.

When “flexibilities” are programmed into the computer, such as allowing for certain types of misspellings, a user may simply work within these new rules, and still see the computer language as being entirely rigid.  We are also rigid in our understanding of the computer.  In the same way that we do not know why we are not producing as many red blood cells today, the computer is not “aware” of the operating system that is making it work.  A computer that can generate responses to questions does not understand that it is a computer, it is simply completing a function.

Hardware vs. Software.  Hardware is physical machinery, and software is programming.  A piano is hardware, sheet music is software.  Humans have this too.  Our brains are made of a certain number of cells and neurons, we cannot change that, it is our hardware.  However, we can, and do, change the way we think, and what we think.  This is because it is our software.

Weather is a good example of how we look at intermediate phenomena.  We understand weather encompasses many things; it is the higher level.  Then there are the molecules that make up the water and the air in the atmosphere.  That is the lower level.  The intermediate level encompasses our understanding of rain, wind, tornadoes, hurricanes, and snow.  The question is posed about whether or not there are other types of intermediate levels that occur that we don’t even know about, and if we did, would they help us understand weather even more?  The weather movements described are simply parts of a whole.  In the same way football players are individual players, but also members of the team.  They retain their individuality, but become slightly different when associated with the whole.

At this point the chapter starts talking about quarks (which my dictionary defines as any of a number of subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge, postulated as building blocks of the hadrons. Quarks have not been directly observed, but theoretical predictions based on their existence have been confirmed experimentally.)  I’m completely lost in the quarks section, I mean not a CLUE what it’s talking about… Luckily it’s only 2 sections of the chapter, so… moving on…

By using chunked models (humans are a collection of cells and molecules) we lose specificity in order to simplify an idea enough to understand it.  We chunk together our estimations of peoples behavior.  For example, if a joke is told, there are a few possibilities: to laugh, or not laugh.  The possibility that someone will go climb a flagpole is small.  Therefore we chunk together possible behaviors in order to be prepared, but we could potentially be losing site of behaviors that are not common, but are possible.

A computer can only compute what you ask it to.  But this idea is bigger than just “tell it to do something and it does.”  For we can ask it for something we do not understand, and it will tell us.  But we do not have to understand exactly the kind of answer it will give, for we don’t know.  In this case, it is telling us what we want to know, even if we didn’t know exactly what we were asking for.

The last big conclusion from this chapter is the “Epiphenomena.”  The author’s computer works very well with up to 35 users, but at 35 users, the operating time is incredibly slow.  So the author suggests to the computer programmer, just go into the program and turn 35 to 60.  This isn’t how it works though.  That’s like telling the runner who sprints 100 years in 9.3 seconds to do it in 8.6 seconds instead.  It’s simply a constraint of the physical makeup of the system.  The Epiphenomena is: a visible consequence of the overall system organization.”  Gullibility in the brain is an example, it is not programmed in, and cannot be removed, it is simply a constraint of the individual makeup of the person.

The last questions will be developed in later chapters: what is the difference between the brain and the mind?

What I have taken from this chapter is a better understanding of computer levels, as well as the similarities between the human brain, and human interaction, and how those relate to the technical memory of computers.  We are not so different.  And yet, I still feel we are worlds apart.

Saragossa conclusions

This picture is not super relevant, just cool

 I felt a summation of my thoughts of the Manuscript found in Saragossa would be appropriate.  I thought I would get into this book as quickly as I got into the Arabian Nights.  I truly enjoyed the Nights, and the style in which it is written and presented.  Knowing that the styles are similar, I was quite taken aback that I felt I was trudging, as if through mud, to finish the Manuscript.  Once I got to the section I was to present on, however, the story started to really interest me, perhaps because I could tell the end was coming, and as we've spoken about in class, for some reason we all desire closure of some sort.

My biggest shock came when I read that the hermit from the beginning was the Sheikh at the end, and I almost dropped my book! How can people be so deceptive in their presentations of themselves?  But when talking in our group on how we would discuss the final chapters in class, we examined how this is not a new idea.  People playing parts is an aspect of entertainment dating back hundreds of years.  Watching plays, and now watching movies, allows us to enjoy watching people play pa rts.  As far as the lying about it goes, I realized this is not new either, or at least not far from our realm of entertainment.  There's an entire day dedicated in the American calendar for playing pranks on others (April 1), so perhaps it was simply the extensiveness of this charade that really blew my mind.

Also, the talk of mirrors was quite intriguing, and how far the reference went.  There were of course the physical mirrors, through which the cabbalist and Rebecca saw their fated lovers.  But there was also a myriad of dualistic references throughout the novel.  The one that comes to mind the most is the geometer versus the entire story.  He was full of reason and numbers and logic, and insisted that there had to be natural explanations for everything.  Turns out in the end he was correct, but int he heat of the story, he was the odd one out who didn't believe in magic.  The "rational" vs the "mysterious" is a comparison that still plagues us as a society, only in a switched capacity.  Those who believe in magic and the supernatural can generally be deemed as crazy or eccentric, because everyone else has science behind them supporting them in their delusions of reality.

Who is to say who is right and wrong?  Where is the harm in allowing people to guard their own beliefs?  And who is to say that dressing up and playing a part is any less true then being "yourself" and "real life."  The idea of TRUE is entirely overrated.