Reflection 9: HMV & Prometheus and Bob.

It's funny that life, in its very simplistic form follows a cycle, a circular pattern. Every fall, trees lose their leaves only to blossom again in Spring. Regardless, let's admit it: Nobody likes circular processes. We do not like finding ourselves in the point where we started, despite all travel/effort/energy we put in the process.

We adopted linear Newtonian logic for that purpose- it made life and problems break down into 3 managable components: (1) Identification of the problem, (2) Trial/Error, (3) reaching a conclusion. The linear approach he adopted made him run into all forms of problems in identifying the problem, hence he faced all kinds of problems including the GRANDMOTHER FUNERAL example on page 74. How plausible is the application of a linear logic for a vicious cycle, OR life? Or perhaps the real question is what kind of a logical sequence (or pattern) do we need to follow in going about looking for answers to our questions?

Near the end of the class, I kind of managed to kind of get a sense out of what I read the night before, and I have to admit it really was a legitimate mindf***. I think Dr. Hogarth, and others did find the real (or scientific) explanation (about the TX) but settled for a completely different explanation (His Master's Voice) because it brought about a higher degree of comfort. The task of the scientists did not give the Manhattan Project kind of success, though it could have. It boiled down to scientists building a different (spiritual) explanation. If it really does boil down to our choice on what we'd like to believe and what we'd like others to believe, it requires a degree of manipulation power in the hands of the scientists...which by virtue of being scientists they automatically receive. So, it really does come down to what Aaron pointed out in class: it is not science that's evil. It's the scientists. What kind of scientists are legitimate enough to be attached such a degree of importance? On pg. 160 there's an account for the Christian physicists over the physicists following the Zen tradition or Buddhist physicists. (Please see emily's post for more on this). Dr. Hogarth draws a parallel between the closedness of the Christian religion and the closedness of the signal from the stars. This automatically legitimizes the "His Master's Voice" narrative for it automatically becomes a proof for the existence of a Master in possession of a voice. Cool. Science then automatically becomes a means to reach His Master, or to understand His Master closely...by putting humanity on the otherside of the receiver line. This, however, is not a very well constructed argument for His Mater's Voice interpretation is still our personal, subjective reflection of our longings. We filter the information through the lens of our sub-culture, as a human. So, if we rule out what makes us fundamentaly human: morality, ethics and language we can then perhaps not filter the information that is being given to us...we can receive it all as a whole. I guess this is what I mean by self-annihilation- not selflessness but rather nullification of "self" concept. Perhaps even stripping the notion of self property away. Or being so devoted to a cause/purpose that one forgets his/her individual role in it.

So can scientists mute a side to themselves by doing science? Do politicians numb a side to themselves by doing politics? Do philosophers mute a side to themselves by philosophizing? Do priests shut a side to themselves by preaching? I think all these questions have a very economical answer: It depends. Are they suicidal-- prone to killing some of their humanness to pursue a purpose they see fit? If that's the case, no wonder we refer occupations as "vocations" as if they are going to take us somewhere.

Near the end of the class I tossed out the implied meanings attached to "His Master's Voice" as in considering the human civilization on a lower level on a hierarchy. So in that sense assuming that the human civilization is on the caveman status relative to the aliens, our first encounter would resemble something like this:

-- In case you are not familiar with the series: Prometheus is an alien who tries to educate Bob, the caveman. Following is the first tape: the Encounter.

Not A Thing-Process Response

So...His Master's Voice, where to start?

I am really exhausted after devoting my day to understand this book, and I could not figure out the place this book has in the framework of alien-human encounter of our syllabus, simply because it is very ambigious in the text. One other problem I found with the book was...it was simply too realistic. The time-period, setting and the pre-text are all too familliar to me as a reader to consider it sci-fi. Then again, by changing only one dimension of the current world I guess we are presented an alternative reality. I cannot wrap my mind around a lot of things in this book, so I will try and talk briefly about each and hopefully we can talk about them in class. I will save my ideas on "denial," "information control" and Communication patterns to our class discussion. Here are rest of the things I feel like discussing tonight:

1. Can science have answer to moral questions?
A theme I saw implicitly throughout the book. On pg14, Hogarth says that: "in various fields one can acquire knowledge that's real or the kind that only provides spiritual comfort-and those two need not agree." I found this approach rather unsettling. Human beings for the most part find comfort in reaching a solution i.e. finding the answer. If there are 2 different answers to same question, why ask the question in the first place? (Coincidentally, there is also a TED Talk on this very topic, and the speaker has an absolute Yes as his answer to this very question. Then we are left with question of cultural imperialism. )




2. Civilization as accidental- and occidental.
Lew executes very solid arguments on various things throughout his book including his account of human existence on this planet being a mere statistical possibility as well as the existence of civilizations. So, from that perspective this is a pure critique of Hegel and all others that believe in the universal truth and the metanarrative of a pre-determined fate for civilizations. Math argument- an acultural approach- sounds plausible but I would argue that civilization in and of itself assumes a homogenous population, at least in linguistic perspective. "Orient" in that sense would not account as a civilization. Such an approach to the Civilizations  is oversimplistic. Their existence falls in between what we perceive as real and artificial from our subjective perspectives.

Manifest Destiny: Reflection

In class, Professor Jackson pushed us to define Manifest Destiny, which actually turned out to be pretty difficult. Throughout American history, what ever we happened to be doing. Manifest Destiny seemed to be an appropriate characterization of our actions. From the Pacific Coast expansion to the Cold War, Manifest Destiny wasn't so much a justification of America's actions and attitudes, but a sort of lens through which all actions could be interpreted as common sense. Again, not a specific justification, but the persistent justification over time of different actions all related to expanding some aspect of the United States.

I think this lens formed as a result of the American Experiment. Whatever e did, it had to be different from the Old World. Whereas they were accidental, the inevitable product of the forward march of time, we were intentional. America was blessed with the chance to do things differently. I think the "Empire of Right" was formed around the idea that because we're different, we couldn't possibly screw up, and any missteps were just painted differently, as something we meant to do.

I especially like the way different authors have projected Manifest Destiny into their created futures. In many of these visions (Speaker for the Dead, Martian Chronicles), Manifest Destiny has come to characterize a global phenomenon. It could be a simple consequence of population expansion, but characters in both books have to question the right of Man to take to the stars. I liked the feeling of awkward silence in Martian Chronicles. Because the Martians had died before most settlers arrived, the question was never formally resolved. The mothers knew there was something wrong about their children playing in the ashes of the dead cities. Spender obviously had a problem with the easily foreseeable future. The story of the first hot dog stand on Mars illustrates this clearly. The mere presence of a Martian causes the guy to try and justify himself, as if he's guilty. I'm sure that human colonization on Mars would have proceeded, Martians or no, but I think Bradbury captures some of the discomfort that the practitioners undoubtedly feel.

Manifest Destiny

(a blast from the past, I know)

I had always thought about Manifest Destiny in terms of American expansion to the Pacific Ocean. That's all, really. The amazing thing I learned from reading Stephanson's book is the nuanced manifestation of Manifest Destiny, and its extension into recent history. Now that I think about it, Manifest Destiny is not connected to any single era, but instead follows us through time, even as we change, from the pre-WWII isolationism to the push for global democracy. Something in every era just feels like Manifest Destiny.

What really strikes me is that we are by no means through with Manifest Destiny. The war in Iraq could certainly be framed as an attempt to export our American ideals where we can no longer expand our territory. Like the Puritans, we tend to look down upon the land outside our borders, but still expect the world to change around us in our image.

I really wonder what Carl Schmitt would think of Manifest Destiny. The Schmittian framework was outlined in relation to the Old World state system, "the dichotomous Other of the 'New.'" Does Schmitt's theory apply to a state so opposed to the Old? The stability characteristic of Europe does not seem to have extended to the United States. Yet another time where I would love to poll Schmitt. Too bad he's out of touch.

Phil is (still) Phil, but is Phil human?

Any linguistic prescriptivist would tell you we've gotten lazy. We split infinitives, we end sentences with prepositions, but one thing we've gotten away with (with which we have gotten away) for far too long is our sloppy use of the word "humanity." We throw it around with little concern for the consequences. I can't even pretend that those consequences have been minor. As Carl Schmitt put it:

To confiscate the word humanity, to invoke and monopolize such a term probably has certain incalculable effects, sch as denying the enemy the quality of being human and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity.

Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p 54

I think we can all get to that. But what if there is an "other" to compare ourselves against. Were that the case, humanity would be an acceptable concept according to Carl Schmitt's framework. That by no means simplifies matters. Grass gives us the opportunity to consider the implications of "human" as an almost moral classification.

One could diagram humanity until the Singularity, but I doubt we would ever reach a satisfying conclusion. We have a hard enough time dealing with differences between homo-sapiens that for all our talk of the search for intelligent life, I don't think we are ready to have our already fragile models, philosophies, and theologies broken wide open. In the event of "contact," I think we will all find a little bit of Father Sandoval in ourselves.

While Grass got me asking questions, it didn't give me good enough answers. If God created "very small beings" similar to microorganisms, how can we know who is the virus and who is the antibody? Can we really say that the Hippae are evil based on a single word they trampled into the floor of a cave? Earth would be screwed if aliens landed in the middle of a GWAR concert. Yeah, they probably are evil, but it wouldn't have mattered if Grass had been left on its own. Without humans, the baby "good" foxen would have been able to escape to trees and survive and there would have been some balance in the ecosystem. Also, if the foxen hadn't killed ALL of that one predator, then the bad Hippae would have been kept in check to some extent. These last are just a few miscellaneous quibbles, though.

Reflection 8: Civil Rights vs. Human Rights- Which One Would You Prefer?

Ever since that Star Trek vignette we saw in class I have been thinking (and yes, that indicates how slow of a thinker I was in analyzing this), and I thought I should probably blog about this. Especially after Thursday's class in which we went in all directions from questioning Phil's humanness (to which I will come back later), to my comments on [child]/ [human] development and to why we (humans) hop on other animals (i.e.horses). I think it is about the right time I flesh out everything that's going on in my head: What's human? Are human rights racist, or these rights -as the UN puts it- "universal?"

It was one of those things that I could not wrap my mind around here in the U.S.; the distinction between the civil and the human rights. In Europe -and more closely in Cyprus- we talk about human rights. The most inalienable rights a human being can have: right to life, property, speech etc. The rhetoric changes on this side of the Atlantic, and people discuss civil liberties. Are we talking about the same thing? Are Europeans lacking a sense of civil rights? Or are Americans lacking -as some scholars put it- a "culture of human rights?" If we are talking about the same thing, why are my rights of pursuit of happiness not protected in Europe, whereas they are protected here?

I think Americans were always a step ahead- or rather more civilized when it came to forming a legal covenant which would protect rights of its people. Civil rights and liberties existed long before the horrors of World War II. And hence, Universal Declaration on Human Rights...and European Directive on Human Rights. UK, for one, lacked an actual "Bill of Rights" document until 1998. So, the human rights notion is a rather new concept whose need was felt soon after the WWII. When you look at the rights protected and how they are protected and from whom they are protected, both the civil rights and the human rights are more-or-less on the same page. By calling them human rights, perhaps we underline the oneness and the wholeness of human race. Civil rights on the other hand...almost require something more than being human- it expects you to be part of the civil society to grant you those rights. I believe it was depicted in Ray Bradburry's Martian Chronicles in the "Taxpayer" story, about a man who protested after he was not put on a shuttle to Mars crying he "was a taxpayer!" I am not entirely sure if civil rights > human rights in practice, but it sounds about right to me in theory.

In law, we have two approaches to this dilemma: relativist (egaliterian) and the universalist debate.
In Speaker of the Dead terms this would be the Ramen vs. Varelse debate. How do we assess the humanness, or worth of an individual/group to decide who is what? I mean we can always put people to monitor others for their proneness to humanness or not. Yet, one thing could always prove things wrong and that is the human's (self's) willingness to identify or not with something they are externally labelled for. Take homosexuality for instance: As long as one refuses (or choses not to) come out, they can always stay as straight and pursue a miserable (or something along the lines) life. There could be external obstacles hindering individual's gender preference but the point is clear: we might never know. Whereas if one choses to come out, then how we categorize him changes from "straight" to "homosexual." Not in a racist or discremenatory manner, but rather in a "stereotypical"manner: fast and discreet, allowing people to form clear linkages beween the reality lying before them, or (in a way) to make better sense of themselves. So we might consider one ramen, but that does not change the individual's own "varelseness," sexuality, religious believes or humanness. I think I will put on a liberalist hat for a moment and say: it is the knowledege that originates and ends within itself that would matter to the self/individual at the end of the day and nothing more. There might be a whole crazy world out there, but what matters is keeping the inner (self) safe. You could be a varelse and lead a ramen life or vice versa...or simply be forced/expected to life such lives. Regardless of the outcome there will be rules to be followed, and laws to abide.

So, to what extent can the civil rights work then? It assumes a form of participation into the civil system whereas the human rights merely requires getting out of your mother's womb (in most cases, you have rights even while you are in there). I do not know which one is more racist (or discriminatory) for these days even if no laws are passed with discriminatory intent, their application is conducted in discriminatory manners. An example could be the French laws regarding African Female immigrants coming into the country with their headscarves. Even though the laws in place are not specific to these women, they are the ones getting discriminatory approach by the French law enforcement officials. Coming back to the problem with the human rights...I would say it should be the means and the ends. Because i think it would be too scarry to use human rights as means to another ends.  Schmittian says whoever uses humanity as a reason is cheating. Then again, whoever is not using humanity as a reason is also cheating. Maybe we really do need a moral dictator/ God/meta-narrative to enlighten the right path for us, because we just don't get it. Or we should just wait until the robotic uprising...



Flight of the Chonchords: The Humans Are Dead

Almost Familiar Aliens

 At the very beginning of the book, the only thing I could think of was the English aristocracy going fox hunting for pleasure. The foxen showed empathy, a trait we are rather fond of identifying as a human characteristic. I guess the thing that stood out most for me in Grass was identifying what makes us human and what constitutes anti-human (or alien). It then boils down to finding a lowest common denominator between us and them, between I and the other. However, it is rather difficult when survival of species becomes a cause of concern.

What is human in relation to a number of others? Speaker of the Dead has a 4 category distinction which we might find useful in identifying our stance in relation to all other species. However, with such a distinction we are making a biological argument. "We are different species," though may be valid, can be considered a rather weak distinction for we might have equal psychological qualities or skills like compassion.

Take away message? I think there were a couple: Never underestimate the power of a determined woman and compassion for all! Oh and let's stop riding horses people.

What is Grass?

When my Mom asked me what I was reading over Spring break I tried to describe Grass to her. The best I could come up with was something like, "It's Dune, but written by a woman." While I will stand by that comparison until something better comes along (I haven't come up with anything yet), I think Sheri Tepper deserves more credit. I read Grass, however, and feel that this novel would be the most appropriate to hold up next to Dune. You've got a displaced family, a strange planet, and most of all, and a mysterious link between the planet's unique ecology and some phenomenon affecting all of mankind.

I've been wondering about what makes this book feel more feminine (?) than others. It's not just the fleshed out relationships, as most authors can establish those connections. I think it has something to do with the way Tepper handles discord in those relationships. Speaker for the Dead had it's own disfunctionalities, but Tepper was willing to venture deeper into the minds of those in conflict. It would be nice to go over this in class some.

I also noticed that I had an easier time reading this book as a fantasy work than science fiction. All of the other books we've read this semester left me thinking about what would happen if Man met some variation of an intelligent being from another planet. Each, in a way, presented a case for mankind's reaction. The science fiction novels we've read and movies we've seen have all been thought-experiments. The aliens on Grass resemble the mythical beasts of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings more than, well, "aliens." Those other works have been concerned with mankind's relationship with aliens (or their leftovers) as told through the perspective of main characters. I would say that Grass is mostly concerned with Marjorie. She isn't just the main point of view, but the story itself. We do get a few indirect mumbles from Father Sandoval of how the Church will react to the lifeforms on Grass, but humanity's response to another living intelligent species does not enter into the story.

This book is filed under "almost familiar aliens" in the syllabus, but for me, the aliens are different enough that I found it easier to resolve them as fantasy elements. The enthrallment of the riders resembled the effects of the One Ring. The foxen brought to mind those giant sentient eagles. The "evil" Hippae, in my mind, were corrupted, rather than mutated. And finally, the "science" in Grass came too late to convince me. Whereas Card worked science into Speaker for the Dead from the very beginning, I couldn't help but think that if Sanctity really wanted to find a cure, they would have sent down scientists disguised as ambassadors. After all, it took one woman just a few days to get the solution, one woman who would have probably arrived at that relatively simple conclusion had she been told what Sanctity knew all along.

If science fiction works are thought experiments, then Grass is one with too many unique parameters to be useful as such. I think. Maybe? Does that make Dune fantasy? Feel free to poke holes in my logic. I'd like to know what you think. This argument is all very new, and I would be surprised if I didn't change my mind a few times during the class discussion.

All this aside, I really did like Grass. I think it would make a great miniseries.

Imagine America. Now, Imagine Better.

I left Thursday's class heartbroken. I was sad to witness my classmates' perception about USA being better than any other country. I guess, if I was an American (American as in white & male) I might have found something to relate to, and agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, coming from a minority community in a small island with an identity crisis of its own, I know the dangers associated with wearing a nationalistic attitude and the consequences of expansionism. I am the daughter of a refuge mother, who used to sleep to the sound of flying bullets in her refuge camp. "Human beings can learn and understand without having experience" says J.K. Rowling, "They can think of themselves into other people's experiences." We can also think of million ways to think how to exterminate the other or render the other invisible. Story of America is one which shows a different reality. "What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality" said a Greek Philosopher once, and in my opinion this is the story of America: America allowed people to imagine better than they used to before.

America did not have to do anything to change anything in the world. Just by virtue of its presence, or its existence it devastated science, geography and revolutionized how people made sense of the world. Isn't this the modern dilemma in world politics? Mere presence/ existence of one group of people can lead to most brutal conflicts, or extermination projects. America was the New World, the revolutionary mode of thinking, holy land for people believing in another place at the end of all oceans. The world as people knew it came to an end and a new stage was set for a new order. Refusing to believe in America was not an option as more and more evidence was found on its existence. It could not be eliminated to protect the status quo of the Old World. Then when it was least expected, The New World faced a threat emerging from the Old World in form of "communism." The New World was not going to let Old World have things its way...she had to convince Old World that the New World was better and more promising. Old could never get any new-er. New World on the other hand can never be revolutionized by a Newer world. We truly hit the end of history with the conquest of America for we had nothing left to explore, nothing left to discover.

Manifest destination could now only be up into the skies, as we (as humanity in its broadest terms) tries to seek out more "New Worlds." Yet, do we want newer worlds? How much more can we take our worldview be revolutionized by discovery of life/ land suitable for life in another galaxy/universe? We can refuse to know or even better refuse to learn to remain morally neutral (!?) in relation to such a world. Anyway, I will conclude my post with words of J.K. Rowling again..."we have the power to imagine better." We just need to accept our "inescapable connection with the outside world."


- Excerpts taken from J.K. Rowling's speech at a Harvard Graduation Ceremony.

Shorts

I really like short story collections. My favorites include stories all in the same world. This way, the author has the freedom to take his or her ideas in many different directions. They can start a dialogue that would get old in longer form. With these advantages come the corresponding challenge of threading these pieces into a compelling story, a cohesive metanarrative (no, not that kind of metanarrative). The reader is treated to more than two dozen distinct snapshots of life on Mars. This all works for me because I am sometimes more drawn in by world-building than storytelling.

Ultimately, the Martian Chronicles manages to paint a not so much impressionistic, but fractal picture of Mars. What I mean, is that the reader can step back and look at Mars all together, the gestalt. At the same time, zoom in on a story and you find details, but those details often lead to further questions that could go on ad infinitum. For example: You read the whole book, and have a sense of the history of Mars and its interactions with people from Earth. Zoom in on the story of the hot-dog stand, and you get more of the story, but now wonder what's up with those fragile cities, why give away the land like this?

Every author leaves things for the reader to puzzle over, but The Martian Chronicles consists almost entirely of these puzzles. Even the meaning of the title changed as I read. By the second story, I thought it was about the indigenous people of Mars, the Martians. A few stories in, it was clear the "Martians" were all but gone, so the Martian in Martian chronicles must simply refer to the planet. At the end, Bradbury turned the humans into the eponymous "Martians."

Everything in Martian Chronicles is colored by Martian telepathy, it seems. Do the trees really sprout over night in "The Green Morning?" While every character in the collection was familiar, they reacted to the Martian surroundings somehow. I think the only static character Bradbury gives us to lean on is the Earth. Everywhere throughout the book, the Earth is characterized by some sort of decay, whether racism, suffocating moral police, or nuclear winter. Although, it must be significant that Mars starts and ends in states eerily similar to Earth (think the familiarity of "Ylla" and the emptiness of "The Million-Year Picnic).

God's favorite type of human is caucasian (?)

Just like Americans, German Third Reich followed a "divine" mission of expansionism, or Lebestraum. As a consequence we had Hitler. Even though Germany gave up its expansionist approach in foreign policy, American Exceptionalism is still around after so many years. It seems that such a notion continuously die and resurrect, gets revived and always gives the Americans the upper hand. Seeing American success as part of God's plan must have been appealing for all those who were fleeing religious oppression in Europe. America did not treat people from different religions unequally ( I'm excluding the anti-semitism of 1940s and current Muslimophobia). Of course religious people fled to God's garden, and God's "timing" was so perfect in revealing America, to save his good (and bad) followers. The names hiding beyond the Manifest Destiny idea changed, but the American exceptionalism remained the same.

On pg. 40 Stephenson writes: "Christianity, democracy and Jacksonian America were essentially one and the same thing, the highest stage of history, God's incarnate plan." If we are so able to personify God, call him "him," and assume that he makes plans for us, I'm curious what his plan has been for Africa or elsewhere? Did God simply abandon the East to come settle in the West? Or is God's favorite type of human is caucasian? We are left with a condition as a consequence: "America" as a state of mind...a political religion. As America moved from its isolationist policies to become the leading actor in world politics, it never left the state of being "America." Evangelizing other regions slowly became inevitable. It remains so to this day. Allow me to use NATO Expansion as an analogy for American Manifest Destiny.

There is an argument made about NATO expansion which says: "if NATO does not expand, it might as well just dissolve."* So if America did not follow expansionist policies, would it have disappeared?
My only comparison is the Ottoman Empire, which also followed the will of God in spreading the religion of right across Middle East, Euroasia and Central Asia as well as sieging Vienna. In this case, Ottoman expansionism also became its downfall. It expanded to an extend, which slowly dissolved into nothing. I do not know if there is something distinct in the stories of two state of minds: Being "American" or being "Ottoman?"


(*)   Peter Duignan, NATO: It's Past, Present, and Future (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2000), 77.