Some thoughts on Lyotard’s Modern Fable:
Lyotard raises some interesting questions. Are we just energy? Is all life just a complex form of organizing energy? Is this what Lyotard is proposing? Strange idea, but it almost explains the existence of life. It’s hard to look at life in a rational sense. It’s just so unbelievable… following the current beliefs of science, all of life happened out of chance over billions of years. No reason, no purpose, it just… happened. With this idea it sort of makes sense. If you look at living beings, animals and plants, it does seem that they are great containers of energy. All forms of life spend their time trying to harvest and process sources of energy, and then they reproduce so that the cycle can continue. With life, systems of energy have found a way to immortalize themselves barring a cataclysmic event that kills all life. Smart… If “energy” was intelligent and conscious, and it had been tasked to perpetuate its cycle, it couldn’t have done much better.
But, haven’t humans been striving to create a disaster of epic proportions? Ever since we evolved our intelligence, we have been making bigger and better tools to use against our fellow man. Now, we have enough nuclear bombs to “bring the sun to the earth” and destroy mankind, and possibly all life. What’s going on here? Has our theoretical “energy” failed in its design of life? Or is that the greatest accumulation of energy? Probably not. I think that the best form of energy would be the “grey goo” idea where nanobots reproduce repetitively and drown the world in little machines. Those little robots that teach themselves how to walk have this potential. They could create “the matrix” idea, where machines gain consciousness and take over humans. Is this where technology is leading? We have web 2.0, where the consumer has an active role in designing websites like wikis. We could be headed to web 3.0, where the internet designs itself.
So this is getting a little radical, let’s move on to the real radical. What is this concept of otherness? I still feel fairly confused as to the concept of the Other and how we relate to it. The biggest concept that I have found in the text is that Otherness is related to anonymity. The authors describe how graffiti is an example of Otherness through street artists. They are able to express ourselves in complete anonymity, and they do so in a way that displays their inner Other. If anonymity is a way to unearth the Other, it could serve to explain the booming popularity in anonymous internet chat rooms and such. Countless cyber sites exist that run on anonymity, forums and gaming and… plurk. Such websites seem to be a way for people to let their inner Other out. So, is this how we find the other? How do we become the Other? Do we even want to become the other?
I feel that the Other seems to be like the Id from Freudian psychology. It seems to be the inner instinct, the irrational wants and desires that the Super Ego strives to control with reason. Within the realm of anonymity, the super ego realizes that there will be no repercussions for actions done while anonymous. It determines that it can let the Id off the chain and let it roam free and say what it wants while they are hidden with anonymity. This may explain the vulgar content of the internet, pornography and such. Perhaps it is healthy to unleash the Id every once in a while, or perhaps releasing oneself of self control is unwise.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Blogging again... The Ticket
So I feel like the YouTube with the weird old guy had a lot to do with my last blog. In the last one, I talked about the concept of “the word” introduced in The Ticket that Exploded. A section in Burroughs’ book says that “the word”, unconscious mental dialogue, is ingrained in humans to the point where we can’t get rid of it even if we consciously try. I expanded on that idea, saying that good music (but only wordless music) enables us to rid ourselves of “the word” for a few seconds. The old man in the YouTube video has an opposite reaction. He says that music for him tells stories, and brings words to mind. But when he hears traffic in the city, it is just noise. He does not hear words, there is no meaning to the random horn and engine sounds. The old man seems to like the sounds of traffic, perhaps for this reason. He expressed that city noise relieves him of “the word”, and it maybe gives him peace and mental rest. This really follows along with my proposal in my last blog, that humans enjoy a temporary freedom from “the word.” It seems that this is the reason why some thrill seekers search for a rush of adrenaline, for in that time they are free from any mental dialogue and their minds revert into a primal survival mentality.
Later in The Ticket, we come upon a scene where two fish men explore the concept of time travel (after sex of course). They refer back to the concept that I have dubbed “the word” in their talk.
“Well time is getting dressed and undressed eating sleeping not the actions but the words… what we say about what we do. Would there be any time if we didn’t say anything?”
“Maybe not. Maybe that would be the first step… yes if we could learn to listen and not talk.”
This notion can explain why people seek to escape “the word.” Maybe we feel that when we are constrained by “the word” then we are also constrained by time. To break free of “the word” could have the feeling of conquering time. If I remember times when I have been I precarious situations where I have broken free of “the word,” those moments seem to have a small distortion of time. Animals don’t have the power of “the word”; do they have the same sense of time as we do? Do they think in grunts and squeaks, as opposed to words? It’s irrelevant, yet an interesting thought.
In parts of The Ticket, Burroughs compares “the word” to a virus or an addiction (is this why we watched the vaccination cartoon?). This idea is radical, yet it is somewhat possible. Humans never sat down one day and decided to think. Our thinking came to us through emotions, and then we assigned the emotions words to communicate them. But we had no say in the matter. We can’t decide to not talk. “The word” invaded us just like a virus, ever to remain in our conscious and unconscious minds.
Burroughs takes it one step further. The plot (at least what I could find between the mess of unrelated scenes) of The Ticket is that the Nova Mob is going to destroy the world by using “the word.” They travel through people with addictions and they use “the word” like a plague to try to overload the world and “grey goo” the planet out of existence. I think it’s something like that, maybe not. It’s a cool thought though. Could the virus of “the word” be the end of mankind? Weird. Maybe Burroughs’ style of writing is an example of what happens when the Nova Mob gets their goal and corrupts the world with an overload of “the word.”
Strange thoughts here, my own ideas make no sense, but this book really doesn’t either. I think that the reason this book is hard to read is that we can find no purpose, no moral lesson that the book is striving to teach. Every book that I’ve read before has had a reason, some hidden message. I feel that Burroughs must have some message hidden in all the gibberish, but besides these wacky ideas I can’t really find one.
Later in The Ticket, we come upon a scene where two fish men explore the concept of time travel (after sex of course). They refer back to the concept that I have dubbed “the word” in their talk.
“Well time is getting dressed and undressed eating sleeping not the actions but the words… what we say about what we do. Would there be any time if we didn’t say anything?”
“Maybe not. Maybe that would be the first step… yes if we could learn to listen and not talk.”
This notion can explain why people seek to escape “the word.” Maybe we feel that when we are constrained by “the word” then we are also constrained by time. To break free of “the word” could have the feeling of conquering time. If I remember times when I have been I precarious situations where I have broken free of “the word,” those moments seem to have a small distortion of time. Animals don’t have the power of “the word”; do they have the same sense of time as we do? Do they think in grunts and squeaks, as opposed to words? It’s irrelevant, yet an interesting thought.
In parts of The Ticket, Burroughs compares “the word” to a virus or an addiction (is this why we watched the vaccination cartoon?). This idea is radical, yet it is somewhat possible. Humans never sat down one day and decided to think. Our thinking came to us through emotions, and then we assigned the emotions words to communicate them. But we had no say in the matter. We can’t decide to not talk. “The word” invaded us just like a virus, ever to remain in our conscious and unconscious minds.
Burroughs takes it one step further. The plot (at least what I could find between the mess of unrelated scenes) of The Ticket is that the Nova Mob is going to destroy the world by using “the word.” They travel through people with addictions and they use “the word” like a plague to try to overload the world and “grey goo” the planet out of existence. I think it’s something like that, maybe not. It’s a cool thought though. Could the virus of “the word” be the end of mankind? Weird. Maybe Burroughs’ style of writing is an example of what happens when the Nova Mob gets their goal and corrupts the world with an overload of “the word.”
Strange thoughts here, my own ideas make no sense, but this book really doesn’t either. I think that the reason this book is hard to read is that we can find no purpose, no moral lesson that the book is striving to teach. Every book that I’ve read before has had a reason, some hidden message. I feel that Burroughs must have some message hidden in all the gibberish, but besides these wacky ideas I can’t really find one.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Ticket that exploded
I’m not so sure about this book. This whole style of writing is completely foreign to me. It seems to be just a stream of consciousness from a corrupted, possibly schizophrenic mind. For the first five or so pages it was super easy to read. I found that I could read a paragraph, then zone out as I read the next one, and jump right back in and not have to reread. I really liked that conveinience, but it didn’t last. Soon, the unrelenting sexual refrences grabbed hold of me. I really don’t understand what the deal is there, is that really necessary? Im not opposed to sex, violence, or vulgarity in a book, but this is just over the top. It seems that the characters in the book are constantly bombarded with homosexual impulses and it keeps them in a state of constant orgasm. There are several instances in the book of semen being collected, but no purpose is apparent.
There is one concept that stood out to me. The author asks the reader to silence their inner word. “Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting your sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organinsm that forces you to talk. That organism is the word (Burroughs,49).” Upon testing the challenge, I found that the author is indeed right. I cant achieve ten seconds of inner silence. I cant even achieve two seconds. Now for an interesting observation: when I try this experiment with music in the background I can reach the three or four second mark. Perhaps this is the unspoken goal of music: to enable inner silence. I think that precious short moments of inner silence can be attained in other ways too. Meditation comes to mind. Also, moments of fight-or-flight reaction create inner silence where one experiences no conscious thoughts. Perhaps that’s exactly the emotion that extreme sports athletes are shooting for. Ive noticed in my own such moments that for those precious few seconds, everything is put on hold. The only thing that matters in that moment is the reflex to whats happening.
Its funny to have found this idea in a book that seems full of the opposite. The author’s style of writing seems to center on an endless stream of words, an information overload where the reader is lost and must try their best to decipher a plot out of the madness. Perhaps I’m missing the mark, but I have trouble finding any other meaning in The Ticket That Exploded.
There is one concept that stood out to me. The author asks the reader to silence their inner word. “Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting your sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organinsm that forces you to talk. That organism is the word (Burroughs,49).” Upon testing the challenge, I found that the author is indeed right. I cant achieve ten seconds of inner silence. I cant even achieve two seconds. Now for an interesting observation: when I try this experiment with music in the background I can reach the three or four second mark. Perhaps this is the unspoken goal of music: to enable inner silence. I think that precious short moments of inner silence can be attained in other ways too. Meditation comes to mind. Also, moments of fight-or-flight reaction create inner silence where one experiences no conscious thoughts. Perhaps that’s exactly the emotion that extreme sports athletes are shooting for. Ive noticed in my own such moments that for those precious few seconds, everything is put on hold. The only thing that matters in that moment is the reflex to whats happening.
Its funny to have found this idea in a book that seems full of the opposite. The author’s style of writing seems to center on an endless stream of words, an information overload where the reader is lost and must try their best to decipher a plot out of the madness. Perhaps I’m missing the mark, but I have trouble finding any other meaning in The Ticket That Exploded.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Fantasy, Soul, and the Next Dimension
I feel that in our studies of writing small, the material presented is all connected by the theme of a fantasy. Perhaps the smallest writing is done in the comfort and safety of our own brains. Beyond writing, we can create our own worlds in our minds, thousands of tiny realities that exist only when we tell them to. They follow the rules we give them, and we can change those as we please. It’s strange that we tend to break only one rule at a time. Donald Duck allowed himself to be out of scale to his perfect little world, but was offended by the tree that was proportionate to him. He bent the rules for himself, but nothing else. He even pretended that he fit into that world as a tiny milkman, but then broke the rule again to play the weatherman.
Fantasies also connect into the higher dimensions. It seems that the upper dimensions are defined by all possible existences and universes, just as if one were to combine all the fantasies ever had. I guess that the dimensions are limited by our imaginations. Expanded dimensions result when we imagine possible imaginations. It’s not so easy to imagine imaginations, and therein lays the Pataphor. Translate the saying “think outside of the box” to mean “think in the next dimension,” or “think through the box,” or “think of the other boxes.” By going outside the 3D box, one must enter the higher planes of the fourth dimension, just as the unaware flat and entered the third dimension by walking in a loop. That movie really has me thinking.
Are our fantasies limited by our senses? We’ve reached ten dimensions, but still found only five senses? What’s with that? Could our imaginations be considered a sense? What even defines a sense? It’s just like the Matrix; could everything just be a fantasy? One of the other bloggers mentioned dreams. Why don’t we consider dreams real? We see, hear, and feel stuff that we find very real (I haven’t smelled or tasted in the dreamscape, yet). The only reason we label the dream as not real is because we wake up from it, and rediscover our other two senses. If we are forced to define reality as what we can find with our five senses, then we have to allow for the possibility that we could “wake up” someday in another world with six senses. Neo in the Matrix was fooled by the world he sensed up until he took the red pill.
Maybe the next sense, as it connects to the fifth dimension, is time travel. It would seem that Morel and the fugitive on the island feel that the images are conquering time in their immortality. Could the soul really transfer to the images? I feel that it would not. The soul needs moral choice. The images are stuck in an endless loop, every movement is predicted and the same as the last week. The soul cannot exist under those conditions. The soul needs spontaneity; it needs more than just existence. The castaway on the island showed soul by falling in love with Faustine. She showed none, unable to react. If there was a soul in the images, it would have died of boredom. Morel tried so hard, but never created a soul. The soul is like the fifth dimension, all possibilities must exist, and the soul gets to choose one.
One of the major concepts in The Invention of Morel comes when the unnamed man is stuck in the machine room because the wall recreated itself. He asks, “And what if Morel had thought to photograph the motors--?” Here, Morel is playing God. He has broken into the next dimension, creating an eternal existence. However, what he lacks is the soul. The moral choice ceases to exist and this immortal island has only one existence to choose from. Morel has broken the laws. The important lesson in the concept of the dimensions is that they require soul. The little flat ant had the choice to take the extra step that put him on the other side of the newspaper and therefore into the 3rd dimension. The soul exists in the ant, because it had that moral choice and creativity. Morel’s images do not have that choice, they are stuck in a loop just like the broken record that plays “Tea for Two” and “Valencia.” The record has no soul. To have soul, the record player would need a DJ to provide the choice and select the song it wanted. Morel’s images are just robots, but robots that have broken the natural laws and are immortal. So in a way, Morel didn’t quite make it to the fifth dimension, more like 4 ½ dimensions.
It surprised me that the unnamed man on the island didn’t see this. He seemed to lose interest in Faustine, but then regained it all in full force. He made the moral choice in the 4th dimension to immortalize himself in the next dimension, but his reproduction has no soul.
Skyler Mavor
Fantasies also connect into the higher dimensions. It seems that the upper dimensions are defined by all possible existences and universes, just as if one were to combine all the fantasies ever had. I guess that the dimensions are limited by our imaginations. Expanded dimensions result when we imagine possible imaginations. It’s not so easy to imagine imaginations, and therein lays the Pataphor. Translate the saying “think outside of the box” to mean “think in the next dimension,” or “think through the box,” or “think of the other boxes.” By going outside the 3D box, one must enter the higher planes of the fourth dimension, just as the unaware flat and entered the third dimension by walking in a loop. That movie really has me thinking.
Are our fantasies limited by our senses? We’ve reached ten dimensions, but still found only five senses? What’s with that? Could our imaginations be considered a sense? What even defines a sense? It’s just like the Matrix; could everything just be a fantasy? One of the other bloggers mentioned dreams. Why don’t we consider dreams real? We see, hear, and feel stuff that we find very real (I haven’t smelled or tasted in the dreamscape, yet). The only reason we label the dream as not real is because we wake up from it, and rediscover our other two senses. If we are forced to define reality as what we can find with our five senses, then we have to allow for the possibility that we could “wake up” someday in another world with six senses. Neo in the Matrix was fooled by the world he sensed up until he took the red pill.
Maybe the next sense, as it connects to the fifth dimension, is time travel. It would seem that Morel and the fugitive on the island feel that the images are conquering time in their immortality. Could the soul really transfer to the images? I feel that it would not. The soul needs moral choice. The images are stuck in an endless loop, every movement is predicted and the same as the last week. The soul cannot exist under those conditions. The soul needs spontaneity; it needs more than just existence. The castaway on the island showed soul by falling in love with Faustine. She showed none, unable to react. If there was a soul in the images, it would have died of boredom. Morel tried so hard, but never created a soul. The soul is like the fifth dimension, all possibilities must exist, and the soul gets to choose one.
One of the major concepts in The Invention of Morel comes when the unnamed man is stuck in the machine room because the wall recreated itself. He asks, “And what if Morel had thought to photograph the motors--?” Here, Morel is playing God. He has broken into the next dimension, creating an eternal existence. However, what he lacks is the soul. The moral choice ceases to exist and this immortal island has only one existence to choose from. Morel has broken the laws. The important lesson in the concept of the dimensions is that they require soul. The little flat ant had the choice to take the extra step that put him on the other side of the newspaper and therefore into the 3rd dimension. The soul exists in the ant, because it had that moral choice and creativity. Morel’s images do not have that choice, they are stuck in a loop just like the broken record that plays “Tea for Two” and “Valencia.” The record has no soul. To have soul, the record player would need a DJ to provide the choice and select the song it wanted. Morel’s images are just robots, but robots that have broken the natural laws and are immortal. So in a way, Morel didn’t quite make it to the fifth dimension, more like 4 ½ dimensions.
It surprised me that the unnamed man on the island didn’t see this. He seemed to lose interest in Faustine, but then regained it all in full force. He made the moral choice in the 4th dimension to immortalize himself in the next dimension, but his reproduction has no soul.
Skyler Mavor
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