Notes on Neil Gaiman's appearance at the Sigma Tau Delta Convention, March 2009

So, I went to the Sigma Tau Delta Convention in Minneapolis. Primarily to see Mr. Gaiman speak, and to support my confederates presenting papers. Though I felt like an ass, I took notes while he was speaking and wish to reproduce some of them here for you lovely internet people to read.

Note, this is just a regurgitation of my notes from the notebook. I'll have something polished put together after I sleep some.

• He mentioned a new project, but was (obviously) unable to comment. Sounds like a long short story or novella, from some other comments he made.
• He also mentioned a collaboration with Stephen Merritt on a musical (being done in "an incredibly lazy way.") I know nothing about it beyond that.
  
• Quotes that felt long while writing, but are very short in typing:

"Good stories...aren't found."

"Things are imagined before they exist."

"In the Beginning was the dream."

"I learned [from working in Journalism] to never believe anything I read in newspapers."

• The only rules for writers are as follows:

1. There are none.
2. Write.
3. Finish things.
4. Start again.
5. Don't keep rewriting it. Send it out now.

There was a very Salman Rushdie moment, in which he stated that the job of the writer is to imagine and to write things down. This is a very interesting thing, for as Mr. Gaiman noted in his talk, everything that isn't grown or "a rock" had to have been imagined, at some point. Every human artifact is the product of imagination.

On the whole, Mr. Gaiman was one of the best speakers that I've ever heard--I hate the term "charming," but he managed. Every so often, he'd have to pause due to the crowd's laughter, and he was fascinating to listen to. I must also state that any man who will sign books for upwards of three hours is worthy of any praise that can be heaped upon him--I stood near the end of the line (with my dog-eared copy of American Gods), and he only stood once to take a five minute bathroom break. The man was a goddamned machine. A hillarious book-signing android of some sort.

On "Watchmen"

It's been a while, perhaps I should work up a schedule of sorts.

I recently saw Watchmen, and have been thinking a great deal about it. While it was somewhat disappointing, it is probably the best comic book adaptation yet put to screen.

There were several thematic elements that I thought about more than others, so bear with me for a moment:

• The studio cut Laurie's (Silk Spectre II's) smoking. This might not seem like a major feature, but it was a defining feature of her character in the graphic novel: she was always trying to quit cold turkey, and something would always happen to break her resolve. It made her more human. This was cut by the studios, who have essentially decided that only foreigners and villains smoke.
• The decision to remove functioning electric cars from the back story was a poor choice: it allowed them to talk about fossil fuels (and American dependence thereupon), but it also removed the primary display of Dr. Manhattan's god-like abilities: he can create lithium at will, thus making its availability a moot point, thus removing the problem with electric vehicles.

This isn't a fanboy ranting about how "they changed it, now it sucks" (you would've heard more about how the script was unfair to Rorschach and Jackie Earle Haley, who played him, and might be the best of the performers in the movie.) There are narrative elements that were misused in the execution of the film.

Anyway, it was a good adaptation, and most of the cuts made to the story were very utilitarian. Those two points above, however, seemed problematic to me and did not have a satisfactory explanation or placeholder. It seems that, in an effort to be "topical" (fossil fuels) and "correct" (smoking), they injured the story.

Stopgap measures #1

No new content right now. I restart classes on Wednesday, so I thought I'd throw something to the people who read this to keep you entertained:

What I'm reading:
-Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delaney
-Catching the Big Fish, by David Lynch

Website of the moment:
TvTropes

Don't go to sleep.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

For a book that can't decide whether it's a how-to manual or a story, Little Brother is surprisingly good. I've read some of Doctorow's online writing, but this is the first of his fiction that I've sat down and read; I feel like I've cheated myself. I devoured the entire book in the course of a day (not surprisingly, it is young adult fiction. As I said, though, it is quite good.)

The basic premise is this--twenty minutes or so into the future a terrorist attack on San Francisco floods the BART tunnels and demolishes the Bay Bridge, killing thousands of people. The main character and his friends are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security. When the main character is finally freed (along with two of the three others,) he swears revenge.

The technology depicted is near-future, as reported by grinding.be, and the culture is believably constructed. At times, it seems like Doctorow might be using a strawman in the place of the Department of Homeland security, though it is an extremely well-constructed one and it doesn't really hinder the reading. The horrifying thing is that I'm not entirely certain that it's a strawman.

At its core, though, the story is a bit of a morality tale with a pair of good messages: Youth rebellion is healthy and serves an invaluable role when directed at the proper target, and information technology is a powerful tool.

I'd suggest everyone at least glance over it; the book was released on a Creative Commons license, and is available to read both online and for free download.

Free download.

What Happened

I realize that my posting schedule is irregular, but I've also been having computer problems the last few days. I might post something on operating systems, but I have a feeling that'll be a ways off.

Content follows shortly.

A thought on Rhetoric

This isn't a full post, but I wanted to write something today--if only to post more things this month than last month.

There are two processes that describe reactions to words--Amelioration and Pejoration. The first is when attitudes toward a word improve, the latter is when they degrade. For example, many curse words are ameliorating, becoming more and more acceptable in society-at-large.

"Rhetoric" on the other hand, has pejorated. Chances are that when you hear or read the word "rhetoric", your gut reaction is negative--because obviously "Rhetoric" is hollow and meaningless and meant to trick you. How terribly Platonic of you.

Aristotle defined Rhetoric as (roughly) "the power of determining for any given situation the best means of persuasion." I wish to point out that, while "power" is a translation of the original word, it is the best available translation. If you think about it, though, power is neither good nor evil. Power is, essentially, amoral. It is capable of being used towards evil ends, or toward good ends.

Moreover, I want to point out that when you are attempting to persuade anyone, you are employing rhetoric in one form or another. It isn't trickery, it's the honest application of a means to achieve a desired result--whether that result is a good one or a bad one depends upon what you seek to achieve.

Found Elsewhere #1

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."

--Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead
Tom Stoppard

Found in Comic Books #1

I realize that I just posted something, but I love this quote so much that I wanted to put it up.

Another day down the mines of our lives. We drink 'til we stink and smoke 'til we choke because that's how we get things done, you and me. Spending our lives making things and making things out of our lives, because anything else would be dull as hell and we're damned if we're going to sit at the other end of whatever years we get saying, well, what the fuck was that for? Years of scars, lipstick and tears, and every day the dawn comes on we turn our eyes up in surprise, saying, "There's that goddamn sun again."

Heavenside 98.3 FM

DON'T GO TO SLEEP.

--Doktor Sleepless, Warren Ellis

Rule Theory

I'm a big Aldous Huxley fan. This started about the time I read Brave New World (Junior Year of high school) and has continued onward from then. This is primarily because one of the central philosophical principles of my later life occurred to me while reading BNW.

This principle is as follows: It is through the rules a person adheres to that that person makes progress in life.

It might seem strange to you for someone who's a self-described anarchist to espouse the primacy of "rules." I'd point out that this springs from a misunderstanding of "Anarchism," but I'll play along, and explain that the problem might lie in your understanding of rules.

Rules are not simply boundaries and limitations; they are guides for systems to form. This is the principle of Emergence. Look at Chess--it is only through the presence of the dozen or so rules that govern the game that the millions of different arrangements for the pieces are possible.

The rules you choose to live by are what enable you to accomplish anything. If you accept traffic laws, probability dictates that you are much more likely to be able to make it from point A to point B. If you don't accept them, then chances are your movement will be impeded, either by solid objects in your path or the enforcers of those same laws.

By the same token, however, a rule has no existence if it is not accepted by anyone. This is related to an idea originating from Walter J. Ong, the most intellectually famous graduate of my college--words have no existence outside of the minds of people, the markings on the screen before you are not words, but the seeds of words that only blossom into existence when you take the time to read them.

The same goes for rules; if a rule is not enforced by one person upon another (even if the enforcer and the enforcee are the same person) then it has no existence--it is not ontologically valid. Only scientific laws can have any validity outside of their meaning for human beings, and that presupposes that they're right.

So, if we accept that rules are only meaningful insofar as they're enforced, what does that mean?

I'm not entirely certain, personally. I'm beginning to suspect that it means that ethical choices might also be aesthetic choices. But this leads me to ground that someone I respect has already covered, so I will let his words speak instead:

The nameless of which we are all part does dream form and the highest attribute
any form may possess is beauty, the nameless then is an artist. Therefore, the problem is not one of good or evil, but one of aesthetics. You may ask then “How am I to know that which is beautiful and that which is ugly, and be moved to act thereby?”

--Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

Of course, I don't mean "aesthetics" or "beauty" in a shallow sense--I am, first and foremost, insterested in the aesthetics of a good story. The rules you choose to live by are what defines who you are--it needn't be a conscious choice, but the things you will do and the things you will not do are (equally) your own, personal rules. They are the boundaries of the story you wish to tell and be the central character of.

Beyond that, it means that all "Laws" are subjective. They're rules we all agreed on, and continue to agree upon. If a law were to suddenly not be enforced, then it would cease to be meaningful--it is only through the consent of the governed and the governing that they exist. But because we enforce these rules on ourselves by choosing not to do certain things, that makes "the governed" the more important of the two parties involved in the process.

This is the root of my anarchism--people will break laws they do not agree with, and they will live by rules that are not enforced by an outside force. Therefore, theoretically speaking, laws are less important than the rules that people accept without coercion. If we could teach people to internalize the rules necessary for society to emerge from a mass of people, why have laws?

Of course, I admit that this is theory, and as unlikely as a mole of one element spontaneously turning into a mole of another. But the possibility is there.

The Nature of Knowledge

It would be wrong to say that Information is Knowledge.
It is also wrong to say that Knowledge is Intelligence.

So the question that plagues the more psychologically-focused philosophers remains: How do we know anything? What is "knowing"?

Consider: When Literacy was introduced, people did not say "the book says..." They said "The Truth of the Book is..."

This fits in with the legend of King Thamus, as told in Plato's Phaedrus, which states:

..this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

This runs counter to what many of us think of when we think of literacy--we believe that the information contained in writing can be "reassembled" into knowledge, which can be properly used with intelligence. To the ancients, this would seem like idiocy: If we don't know facts, ourselves, how can we be said to know anything.

This is the old "New Media are Evil" reaction--epitomized by the distrust of television, rock 'n' Roll, and the Internet. (Perhaps "Reductio ad New Media?")

But we can't say that there is no such thing as knowledge or intelligence, anymore, or that we are less intelligent and knowledgeable than our forebears. Instead, I would argue that we're more distributed. Knowledge isn't composed of "facts" anymore, but of the processes necessary for acquiring the desired facts.

A knowledgeable individual might have access to a larger number of individual facts than the average person. Nowadays, though, "knowledgeable" is getting closer to "intelligent": better able to correlate facts and discover new ones, able to allow the sum of what they know be greater than the individual facts that they hold in their memory.

(Note to self: Cease trying to be clever when using the words "New Media.")

Found on Youtube #1

I enjoy strange things; my friend Steve found this on YouTube. The video is actually extremely well put-together.

Note: I did not make this or have any hand in making this. When I post a video I had a hand in, you'll know.

Puzzles

I, like a number of you others out there in internet-country, am going into finals this week. I'm overworked and feel as if I'm entering the last, long stretch of a grueling race.

I usually try to choose subjects which complement one another--one of the benefits of Jesuit Education is the emphasis on epistemological interconnectivity. That is, the Jebbies like to think that there's a lot of crossover in between the various subjects. I wasn't sure I believed in it until I put a copy of the T-distribution diagram into my notes for Phenomenology.

It wasn't a fluke--I discovered that the bell-curve shape t-distribution was a perfect graphic match for the Phenomenological (specifically Husserlian) conception of time as it relates to human observers.

For those of you who are having trouble with this, I want you to think of a bell-curve, draw it out if you'd like. Divide it vertically through its tallest part. On the furthest right side, write "THE FUTURE." On the furthest left side, write "THE PAST." on the vertical line going right through the middle write "NOW."

If you were to remove the bell-curve shape, you'd have the standard idea of time. An axis stretching from what was to what will be, along which we move; a filmstrip that passes through our minds showing us the world around us.

This is not time.

Mentally add the bell-curve again. On the right slope of the curve write "protention" with a right-pointing arrow, and on the left slope write "retension" with a left-pointing arrow.

We protend--that is, we expect, we assume--that which has not happened yet. The dropped plate will fall to the floor; its destruction is protended more weakly, being further in the future, happening "after" the fall.

We retain--which is not to say that we remember--that which has just happened; we may or may not remember it at some point in the future, but it has not yet quite faded from our minds.

This has very little to do with the t-distribution, which is a tool for extrapolating probability based on the results of data taken previously. But the occurrence of that shape--the cresting wave that is, for me, both "Now" and "might be"--struck me as a fascinating occurrence.

Perhaps I'm just seeing illusory correlations, but they seem to be significant in some way, if not outright meaningful. And if they are not significant in the outside world (as the shape of the wave is not significant in the outside world) they are epistemologically significant, being inherent in the way people structure their knowledge of the world and of ourselves.

Speculation

At a loss for something to write on, but desiring to write, I return to a topic that I have tackled a number of times: the place of Speculative Fiction. I admit, it's something of a pet theme of mine.

For those of you not up on your literary terminology, Speculative Fiction (as opposed to Mundane Fiction) is the part of the book store where you find science fiction, fantasy, and usually horror. It also includes a number of works commonly put in the "Literature" section, such as the writing of Stephen King, Haruki Murakami, Franz Kafka, and other such authors that stray from a realistic portrayal of the world in their writing.

Now, one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson, has already given a lecture on the subject, but I wish to say more.

I was taught in the Jesuit Tradition, and one of my good friends (and I'd consider him a mentor, for even though he never taught a class I was in, I still learned a great deal from him) Brother Glenn Kerfoot, S.J., insisted that science fiction has a definite place in Catholic--especially Jesuit--Theological thinking. I took this idea, and expanded it outward somewhat, and found that it has a place in all thinking, but first I'll give you his explanation.

In short, the idea is that God constantly intervenes in the world. Despite the bad things, we can see the hands of God at work; the faculty for seeing this comes to us in the form of imagination. Therefore, by reading Speculative Fiction and exercising our imagination, we are increasing our capacity to see God's will at work in our lives.

I like this, but I understand that many of my friends are secular, so allow me to present to you an alternative explanation that leaves out metaphysical speculation:

We can agree that Speculative Fiction increases your ability to imagine, to visualize things that are not (in some cases, "are not as of yet.") Do you think that the Imagination is unimportant? There is no human endeavor which doesn't require a certain degree of mental flexibility; even digging a ditch requires you to imagine obstacles so that you can prepare for them. Therefore, reading Speculative Fiction is an important part of improving your mind.

The important part isn't the accuracy of the speculation--the most accurate picture of the future I've yet read was Stephenson's Snow Crash, which predicted Google Earth, the economic crisis, the rise of the megachurch and a dozen other things, but included full 3-D virtual reality for the internet and the collapse of the US government. It was a brilliant read, but it did not show the modern world.

It showed another way of conceiving events, and that is the important part.

Tribal Theory

In his essay, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, anarchist thinker Hakim Bey noted suggested that the fundamental unit of human society is not, and should not be considered to be, the nuclear family. Instead, he stated that the earlier model of the "Band" or "Tribe" is a more natural way of arranging things.

Personally, I think that Hakim Bey had a number of very good, well-thought out ideas. However, associating with him and his ideas comes with a certain amount of moral baggage with which I am not entirely comfortable. There are a number of inconsistencies in his thought which can easily be picked out, leaving something behind which can still be usable, despite the author's status as a nut-bar.

This idea of the importance of the "Tribe" in human culture shows up elsewhere. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s idea of the Karass and Granfalloon in the fictitious religion of Bokononism are a good example, as is the Japanese word "Nakama" (often translated as "friends" or "comrades," though this is a best-fit translation, and it is still not quite accurate.)

In my opinion, the Tribe is an ancillary social structure, not replacing but including the family. Your "social circle," your "clique," your "friends and family" form your tribe. It isn't an artificial thing, but an emergent group identity that comes out of your associations. Take, for example, the Beats--Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg, and co.--they associated with one another because they were friends, but developed a new group identity and common purpose over the course of their travels and writing.

Another, more modern example (and one only really understandable to some people in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area) would be KCDIY--a group of like-minded people in the Kansas City area--and this comraderie extends to the families of those involved. I'm certain that everyone has observed something of the sort.

Please note, however, that I'm not referring to corporations or businesses. Though a Tribe can form from people who work together, they are not a priori a Tribe. The reason I would give for this is that a Tribe is an emergent thing that comes out of a group of people; an identity that contains other identities; a shared loyalty to the same unspoken thing.

It is also my opinion that a consciousness of the "tribe" to which you belong is growing ever more important in the modern era. Look at Modernist Poetry and the works of the Lost Generation (examples given) for an analogy. As the world grows (metaphorically) smaller, each of us is forced to realize that we are but one among many, a truth that brings about a sort of nihilating alienation.

My belief is that a tribe can be a bastion for individual identity, taking refuge from the mechanistic forces at work in our society that work to erode us and put us in cubicles.

Useful Lies

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about education. This might have something to do with the fact that I need to apply to graduate schools. Also, several of my friends work as substitute teachers in schools in the area. But I've come up with a theory of education.

We are not taught facts: what we are taught is useful lies. Allow me to explain.

One of my professors takes a true/false survey of his freshman composition classes. He asks "can you begin a sentence with 'and' or 'but?'"

When they respond with "false," he replies "But you can. And you do."

Another lie is that we are taught to think of electrons, protons, and neutrons--the whole zoo of subatomic particles--are real things. In fact, these are just the most useful explanations for the equations. The physical sciences are riddled with such best-fit explanations; this is not to say that they are absolutely false, but it is not correct to say that they are absolutely true.

This brings me to the point of this post--that we are not taught real facts in schools, simply given ideas that allow us to function in the world until we're ready for the real ideas. Come on, think about it: how often have you taken an advanced class, only to find out that what you learned in the intro course "--isn't exactly true..."

But even though it isn't true, these lies are still usable and convenient in certain, limited situations. In physics, we first learn Newtonian mechanics, even though most modern physics has focused solely on disproving Newton, finding contexts in which his laws of motion don't apply. They're good for a starting point, and still apply in particular contexts, even though they're not absolutely true.

But I suspect that these useful lies are best when you're aware of their nature--you know that they're not absolutely true, but they're a means you can use to get through the problems you're faced with.

Thesis

This is a place for philosophy; for social criticisms; for theories; in short, a place for ideas.

As for me, I know what I consider myself to be. I think of myself as intelligent and as eloquent in writing. I might be wrong, I’m open to the idea.

What I put down here are not absolutes. These are my ideas, and I encourage you to take them as you would. Accept them or reject them, but think of them, at the very least.

This is not the news. This is not editorial. This is, quite simply, a collection of thoughts and seeds for discussion. It’s not about me, but I’m not going to filter myself out: like everyone, I come as a package deal with biases and neuroses, and I’m not going to pretend to be objective.

The title is a double reference. Heideggar wrote Being and Time, a cornerstone of Heuristic Phenomenology. Later, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness, a cornerstone of Existential Phenomenology.

This is Being and Context. I’m fascinated by how things are interconnected--how the world is discontinuous but not discrete. This is most likely a product of my education, and will be reflected in what follows.