Monday, August 31, 2020

Ends, Means, and Intentions: a Memoir.

Kresten must recognize that, insofar as he is in the Wrong, he waives any right to a retaliation on his own behalf, and I am charged with employing whatever means are necessary, to an extent which he defines by his own actions, in bringing him to Justice, and that no seeming excess of force or wile in this project could ever possibly reflect upon me, and any attempts at a retaliation upon his part, while he persistently refuses to atone for the injuries against me which he so shamelessly confesses to, will only aggravate his debts towards me. This much must be made unmistakably clear: so long as he remains within the Wrong, there can be no levelling with him, for to become his equal is to stoop to his level, that of Being Wrong, yet to accuse me of having stooped in such a fashion can only be a permissible affront insofar as my modus operandi was unnecessary or unjustifiable in the imperative task of supervising his rehabilitation, which was my only reason and my only excuse for restoring association with the scoundrel. It follows that, insofar as I was steadfast in this rehabilitation project, regardless of his consent, for he has waived that pretense, too, any such accusation against me constitutes an unwarranted offence, for I continue to represent that Higher Purpose at work in remedying him and the situation he has created about himself, the former agent to be equated with the latter agency, for this situation was contrived to be a mere instrument of that ego. It is impossible for me to err as he has done, for so long as the intent is purer then any violence whatsoever is justified, insofar as it is either necessary or conceivably so from my finite point of view. To project an Equality upon us is only to enable utter savagery.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

This Can't be a Coincidance: [sic]

You know an irony I noticed? Okay, so naturally you’ve heard by now that racial tension is a popular meme nowadays, swaying the currents of politics and policy alike. One would imagine that, in appeasing all parties concerned, and with the hopes of nullifying any potential damage portended by the propagation of the racial meme, mass advertisers would seek to represent a variety of people(s) in their commercials and, for the most part, this they have done, yet not without one blaring shortcoming: a seeming overabundance of uniracial couples.

(I must add, ere I inscribe this, that Microsoft Word, amidst its ample embarrassments, recognizes the word “biracial” but not “uniracial”, as though the former were peculiar enough to merit a word and yet the latter were entirely commonplace and self-evident.)

The peculiarity of this is underscored by its obviousness; very often, the couples featured, at least in American commercials, are apparently African American, yet this is a bizarre statistical anomaly, since only approximately 13.4% of the United States population is listed as “black”, implying that a heteronormative pairing between any two “black” people is technically astronomically improbable, not even one per cent, if one considers first the probability of being born an African American and secondly the probability of finding an African American partner, divided by two in order to account for gender.

Now: don’t get me wrong; even my next-door neighbours are a well-to-do black family, and they have never, to my mind, impressed themselves upon me as bigots, even inviting their non-black friends over from time to time and going out of their way to converse with me. Yet one must nonetheless suspect some element of foul play, almost as though an archaic custom of breeding were decisive in one’s choice of mate.

The same, of course, cannot be said for any majoritarian classification; in so far as any person is part of a majority, it is a matter of common sense that most probably, though not exclusively, he or she should find one’s self involved with other members of the same majority; heterosexuality itself follows this pattern, though it remains highly regulated on both the legal and the civilian levels, to a Draconian extent, in spite of myths about the personal advantages of that agon we call heterosexuality which formed the basis for so many classic tragedies.

Yet the meme persists, and it is almost as though consumers have grown so accustomed to it that they come to not only expect it but to demand it indignantly. Profiling played an unforeseeable role in the public reception for the 2017 film Death Note, an adaptation of the hit Japanese animated and manga series. Anime fans, in spite of having seen a markedly pale-faced anti-hero throughout thirty-seven episodes, nonetheless complained that he was portrayed in the film by a Caucasian actor. Similar complaints were lodged against J.K. Rowling for the casting of Nagini in the 2018 film The Crimes of Grindelwald, even though there was never any reference made within the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts lore that precluded the possibility that Nagini might have resembled a Korean woman whilst in her human form.

There are, of course, arguments at once defending the propagation of uniracial couplings whilst denouncing casting choices which defy archaic ethnic prejudices, yet all of these arguments are either banal or so ridiculously remote from daily life that they serve only to enable the banal whilst empowering the pretentious. The simplest contention may be summarized in that trite adage “it’s easy for you to say,” implying that the luxury of seeing one’s own likeness frequently portrayed in media entails a certain responsibility to accommodate those parties whose likeness is less often celebrated.

Yet there are almost too many remonstrative counterarguments to be made against this. The most obvious is, of course, that no likeness is so deceptive that one would literally mistake the man on the screen for one’s own reflection; even dogs, who are supposed not to self-identify with their own reflections, (though I doubt this) would be smarter than we are if one were to imagine that anyone sharing a melanin type with one’s self is an extension of one’s own, autonomous identity. Furthermore, to classify people based upon melanin type would be to laugh boldly in the face of the oceanic variety of peoples and ethnicities who happen to share either eumelanin or pheomelanin in common. While we all are taught to profile, from a young age, and this essay in itself is made possible by access to this encultured habit, it does not excuse the cynical presumption that people WILL profile to such an extent as to make life-changing decisions accordingly.

Perhaps, as Edgard Varese put it: “[one] is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.”


[({Dm.R.G.)}]

To Kresten Taylor: August 31, MMXX.

To Kresten:

 

All I have to say, now that I am to think upon the matter once again, (for there never really goes by one day that I don’t think upon it) is that you have some neurotic nerve to accuse ME of harbouring self-interested motives in a matter where the facts themselves already speak so boldly in my favour. YOUR actions produced a situation so infernally corrupt that I could not have dreamt it up, much less produced it of my own accord. I need not even make a claim against you, since the only verdict is so unequivocal. Even our modern stories must abound with men, of higher quality than even I am, who contend with you and people like you. No rational adult would dare say of such a man that he merely pursues his sovereign interests at the expense of his competitor, nor that he’s moved by envy, like a crab within a bucket, whenever his own good will is stepped on by his lesser brethren. All the World is allied with me, though it may not know it yet, for it sleeps in its own false awakening,  and all the facts themselves, God’s Very Truth, protest against you, whether silently or given voice by saints and scholars. That any decent standard SHOULD favour me over you, rather than letting the scales swing your way, is unequivocal, incontrovertible, and obvious. My every minor failure, as well as each disappointing victory, both now serve as a reminder from my God that nothing will atone for what you’ve done until YOU have atoned. Even success itself is an escape, as well as its pursuit, for Life Itself is shameless when Her Life is mute. I should have had the dignity to watch you crumble silently into despair. I but did you the courtesy of voicing what you were too blind to see, and you, so addled in the mind, would not face facts, for you had fabricated far too many lies, believing you could paint the Halls of What Must Be to look like What You Have Created. The record shows now that I’ve NEVER USED ANOTHER TO MY PRIVATE PURPOSES, nor will I be accused of doing so by YOU, of all the damned who walk this Earth. My purposes were always civil, public, and insured. My moments of private despair should have been mitigated by a Public Justice.

Dmytri.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

Sunday, August 30, 2020

After After Virtue:

For a scholar who professes a belief in that an innovative society is the most effective one, Alasdair MacIntyre seems extremely resistant to innovation in the defence of his own work, standing by his breakthrough publication After Virtue for nearly forty years. While he contends that any credible counterargument would have already been presented to him by now, there is nothing within his ethic which precludes the possibility of being sheltered from the Truth.

The simplest means by which to prove him wrong is to describe Life in three parts: fitting in, standing up, and standing out. We start our metamorphosis by attempting to “fit into” an established social order, in spite of personal moral scruples, hoping that by doing so successfully we might appropriate an appreciation for its norms, thereby bridging the gap between the inner and the outer.

Yet what we find is that social life is intrinsically Absurd, so all such ventures are Sisyphean. In the process, we learn one of Life’s few known constants: that we must “Stand Up for Ourselves”. It is by acquiring this virtue, upon which all other virtues are contingent, that we are able to retain our dignity when we inevitably fail.

The Third Stage is a reintegration, but not, as in the case of a bildungsroman, into a Society, but rather into Ourselves. Recognizing that we shall never “fit in”, yet that we cannot escape, we learn to exist within a Society which contradicts us while retaining our dignity in the contradiction. It is because the only constancy available to us is in this act of standing up on behalf of ourselves and our own views that the Individual comes to take precedence over all illusions of status and social value. Because courage is always necessary, the conscience becomes a Universal.

The examples corroborating this narrative are so multifarious that I might fill an entire book of my own with them. Suffice it to say that, of the few men whom MacIntyre references who articulated this intuition, his scholarship misrepresents them. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, in spite of doctrinal differences, arrive at one and the same conclusion. Yet in spite of citing many of Nietzsche’s own favourite sources MacIntyre dismisses Nietzsche, and MacIntyre’s philosophy might be considered symptomatic of Nietzsche’s first stage with very brief intimations of the second. Regarding Kierkegaard, conversely, the kinship MacIntyre seems to feel with his fellow Christian is overshadowed by a dubious negligence of the finer points of Kierkegaard’s work, especially regarding the Knight of Pure Faith and the inevitable disparity between internal and external life.

Ultimately, MacIntyre’s philosophy is a doctrine of conformism. While he is effective in disarming certain forms of conformism, exposing them for what they are, such as political “protest”, (which is, after all, no more than an attempt to adapt the external to the internal) he also propagates and reinforces various modes of conformity which are even more disastrous, simply because adapting the internal to the external is even more barbaric and demoralizing. (Even George Lucas, another great modern student of mythology, intuits the authoritarian consequences of forcing people to agree in spite of partisan reservations.) Both responses are failures to live with the inherent contradiction between the internal and the external worlds, which Albert Camus called the Absurd and which Carl Jung established as the imperative for psychological individuation.

MacIntyre’s scholarship is fundamentally typical; he forgets Camus in favour of Sartre, just as he forgets Jung in favour of Freud, shamelessly identifying each individual only as representative of his respective group, for that reduction lies at the heart of MacIntyre’s sociology. In demonstrating an unwavering allegiance to the Analytical School, professing its blessings openly, he does not avail himself of the blessings of its opposing school(s), and it comes as small surprise that no convincing antitheses to his admittedly partisan presumptions have yet reached his desk.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

There is No Anti: Thesis.

Look closely. It does not say “educators against racism”, but rather “educators for antiracism”.

That is an extreme distinction. One “against racism” might think to never judge a person by the skin but rather by the “content of one’s character”, (now that should sound familiar, now doesn’t it?) the other just might overlook the character in service to the skin, presuming upon one’s own character in doing so. The former wouldn’t dare to even take the homely details into serious consideration, knowing well both the internal contradictions in that “logic” and all the external consequences; yet the latter might suppress that scruple, saying, “contradictions in such logic are the Way of Nature. Our work is not ascesis but the proper use of evil, in contending with a Greater Evil Still.” One would not admit a student based on race, nor class or background, nor ethnicity or culture, save that culture which the University professes. But the other says: “There are no ‘students’, truly, only Groups. We owe our debt not to the ‘individual’, his ‘character’, nor any such archaic fiction, but rather to every race, each class, and every ethnic group, that our figures should reflect our best ideal projections.”

One opposes truly, inwardly, believing in the Inward, seeing past the Outward, shrugging off the skin, insisting: “I refuse to see, since in perceiving surfaces I blind myself to Substance.” Yet the other says: “the Surface IS the Substance. There’s no character but in the Context of a Culture. Change the culture; only thus are you exempt from its conviction.”

Again raised from the dead are two Greek men, “alike in dignity” (ostensibly). The Platonist insists on Martin Luther King; yet Aristotle speaks for Malcolm X. One seeks transcendence to the plane of racial colour-blindness, knowing that is the extent of virtue, for to force one’s wisdom on another is to force one’s love upon another, tantamount in all respects to rape. Yet the second seeks reform in turning the opponent’s weight against him, like the judo master, saying “it is not enough for us to think. We have to act, and our action must affirm.”

Hence once again we see the tragedy unfold: the noble teacher and the wayward pupil. Plato’s wisdom is usurped by Aristotle’s arrogance. Instead of standing to the side of racism, we must stand for its antithesis. Yet in so doing we stand with it, for the opposite is but the obverse side of the same token. The non-racist who will stand AGAINST the evil knows that, like most mental problems, it will vanish once the consciousness of it is altered, since most problems are mere problems of the mind. Yet the “(anti-)racist” who stands FOR ANTITHESIS will stoop to any level of depravity once having settled with his scruples; for the antiracist, it is either “us” or “them”, and if THEY sway the outcomes in their favour, WE’LL fight back.

Hence even the non-racist is the scapegoat of the anti-racist. Yet have I not turned the anti-racist too into a scapegoat? Are we not contending, both of us, to see which is the Traitor to Our Cause? Who has become our common enemy? Which of us truly is the one who’s tantamount to “racism”? Is it the pious introvert or the neurotic, overactive extravert?

 

In Truth: it’s neither. For the careful contemplation of this problem shows us that there never was “a racist”, nor was there a “race”. There was only Projection, and the most that one could do was to take that projection back. Hence Plato wins, for victory is in the Mind.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Saturday, August 22, 2020

SOL!LOQUY:

 That which I found most repulsive in Kresten,

as had been a common curse amidst my peers,

was his abuse of language in the service

of his own self-aggrandizing narcissism,

to the detriment of all his enemies, including his accusers,

of which I’ve been solitary party,

forced to stoop to his appearance as I too used words

to make myself look better and to bring his faults to light,

though in the realm of words I made this enterprise in spite,

for I had only the conviction I was right,

borne only from the knowledge of my own sincerity,

and whether he believed his lies or not,

at least mine might give rise to higher clarity.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

I'm Still Not Afraid of You:

You confess that this would benefit me, yet you do not do it. You cannot deny that this has hurt me, yet you make no reparations. You, of all people, are in no position to decide whom to EXCLUDE from the common welfare. My victimhood is the validity of bearing witness, my suffering is the decisive factor, and my healing is the end in and of itself. There is no fabric between this World and my Perception of it, simply since there is no posture you’ve attained from which to claim a Higher Objectivity or Office. Outside of me, there can be nothing else, for I speak on behalf of every other sufferer upon this Earth in speaking out against our Common Source of Suffering. No evil has existed except that which seeks to stall our healing and prolong this suffering, and any calculations you attempt to make in weighing whose is greater only does the lot of us disservice. If you can predict what I will say, you must know it already; if you know it, you have no excuse not to agree. There is one narcissism, and it is that which seeks to shelter itself from this plight. There is one heroism, and it is that which seeks to undo it. In facing me, you contend with all who came before me and with all who’ve yet to come. Choose your words carefully.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Derrida and Orwell versus the Modern Utilitarian Reader: CAGE MATCH.

People who read for information, rather than the ample other reasons people read, are immediately noticeable. These men (usually male) devour books without decorum, just to wash them down with articles they find online. Their information is presented in a stew of knowledge, kept warm within the oven of a wisdom which is totally pragmatic, literal, and martial. If they have an inner life, they seldom show it; if they’re shown their inner life, they publicize this same exposure as betrayal, well before the private information can turn public. What they serve may be seasoned with wit, but it is poisoned with manipulation, and the culinary breadth of knowledge they profess remains wanting of depth and taste, so much so that the “privileged” palate notices, but most eat it up.

The Orwellian Theory of Language and the Derridean Theory of Language are not one and the same, but neither are they rivals, much less mortal adversaries in a moral war.

Orwell contends that Truth is literal and metaphysical, that it can be observed within the physical domain, (though not all metaphysical reality can be, at least outside of Orwell’s universe) and that there is a practice of its faithful presentation through verbal representation. Words, to Orwell, carry meanings which phrases do not, and by accounting for these meanings carefully one can deduce not only what words mean within a phrase, but also what they’re MEANT to mean and the intent of the man using them.

To Derrida, however, words don’t hold a stable ground in metaphysical or physical Reality. “Truth” is a function of language itself, a futile gesture in a world devoid of any Truth intrinsically. All that words do is seek to represent some PART of a Reality which ultimately can’t be fathomed verbally, and in the careful use of words we dress each other up in lenses which are always skewed to serve some partial point of view.

Both men are seeking the same thing, apparently: one to undo the lies of politicians by pursuing Truth and its most faithful rendering, the other to undo the lies of culture and philosophers by severing Truth from the World, reducing it to merely partial renderings which constantly must be unfaithful, by their very nature.

Between these two camps walks the modern ideologue, seeking to salvage Orwell’s optimism in an age of post-Derridean confusion, preaching “field meanings” and reprimanding propaganda. To the reader who reads purely for political utility, words MUST carry specific, Orwellian meanings, as well as even more deviously Orwellian histories of (and possibilities for their further) misuse. The moment that one reads “too much into” them, one has “read too much”, and this indulgence is a sin. Utilitarian representation protects the proletariat; disinterested learning serves the bourgeoise.

Yet the Derridean contends, ambiguously, that it is impossible to “read too much”. Utility itself is suspect in manipulating language just to push its own one-sided picture of the “Truth”; circumlocution and euphemism are by no means peculiar to Deconstruction.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Saturday, August 15, 2020

Sexual Conclusions, from Years of Study, Trial, and Error:

 

1.                Sexuality is regarded as a right.

a.  Our understanding of ostensibly archaic institutions requires us to consider a sociological context wherein this was not so. Furthermore,

b. Our assessment of the Present Day must reflect not only threats to Life as punishments for (expressions of) sexuality, but also threats to Sexuality Itself.

2.                Homosexuals endanger themselves willfully.

a.  Barring the existence of a social institution which requires modern people to account for their internal sexual feelings and marital goals, sexual identity, except as an internal phenomenon, is a choice. This is not merely a choice of WHICH identity to have, but rather whether or not TO have a sexual identity.

b. Since homosexuals, therefore, CHOOSE to be homosexuals, either by self-identifying as such or by becoming thus identified through expressions of their sexuality, then, presuming upon two premises, they are willing to risk their lives to express their sexuality, presumably willing even to die for it, though preferring not to. This implies that a sexual drive, whether or not it is conducive to reproduction, is just as valuable to human beings, subjectively, as is Survival. The two premises are:

                                       i.    That the risks are not exaggerated by homosexuals, and

                                    ii.    That they are lucid about these risks at the moment of becoming homosexual.

3.                Considering, therefore, all the restrictions placed upon sexuality, whether or not these are life-threatening, which becomes secondary according to the will of the sexual person, we must conclude that homosexuals are not exceptional to “oppression”, and as such it is impossible or unfeasible to identify an oppressor. Both historical examples and contemporary examples abound with regards to the subjugation of heterosexuality, whether it is an accounting of Puritanical punishments for marital infidelity in prior centuries or something as pathetically recent as the Bill Cosby trial.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Chuck, Jimmy, and the Illusion of Alternatives:

As much as I enjoyed Breaking Bad, it did leave me in a ditch when it came to finding characters to root for. Once the initial excitement of Walter’s Nietzschean Individuation wore off, I could no longer defend his actions, and that left me with no moral recourse, since by the end of the drama every supporting character had either become (or in some cases remained) helpless or had been turned into an instrument of Heisenberg’s will.

Jesse was too often employed effectively as an accomplice; Mike was too easily converted from one boss to another. Skylar became Ms. Heisenberg. Little by little, every upstanding character was assimilated into Heisenberg’s Empire, the only exception being the only character who literally could not stand up to him: Walter Junior. There were no Mulders, Coopers, or Skywalkers in the Breaking Bad universe. Hank Schrader was our most immediate contact with the Law, and his character was both comical and tragic. Gustavo Fring, the idealized businessman, was more murderous than Heisenberg himself was, at least up until Season Five. In context of all of this hypocrisy, Saul Goodman became my favourite supporting villain only because of how unabashedly corrupt and duplicitous he was.

 

Coming into Better Call Saul, it was this Goodman whom I expected to see. Instead, I got Jimmy McGill: an attempt at a three-dimensional character with a checkered past and an eccentric individualism which ended up casting him as the perpetual underdog anti-hero. Yet there was always a character foil in Jimmy’s Universe who became the first truly heroic character whom I could root for, and no: it was not Kimberly Wexler. Have you guessed it yet? It was Chuck.

 

The series has not even been as brutal towards Jimmy’s brother Charles McGill as the fans have been. There is an entire reddit thread devoted to venting frustrations about Chuck on principle. Yet why all the hatred?

Simply explained, Chuck is a “villain of the sow”. His role as antagonist is purely relative to Jimmy’s point of view. If Jimmy is regarded as the “Hero” of the story, however absurd his heroism may be, then Chuck functions as the “villain” insofar as he serves one narrative purpose: to stopper Jimmy.

In this sense, Chuck’s “vendetta” against his brother is not a vendetta at all, since there is no ulterior motive. Chuck has nothing to gain PERSONALLY by interfering with Jimmy’s attempts to become a lawyer. The satisfaction he derives from each successful attempt to blindside and outwit his criminal counterpart is only overshadowed by his extreme gravity and frustration in having constantly to do so, an aggravation which is exacerbated by the inexplicable inability for even Chuck’s most fervent admirers and friends to demonstrate the same tenacity.

Clearly, Chuck’s role is that of a PURELY moral character; his only motive is his explicit motive, which is to prevent his brother from becoming what we all should know he will become: Saul Goodman. Yet how can the most ardent fans of Breaking Bad blame him, then? And for what would this blame be?

Chuck’s means are often no less Machiavellian than Jimmy’s, though he always ends up accounting for his deeds before the end, within the very Court of Law that functions as his sanctum, expecting nothing less but for a jury of his peers to understand why his methods were necessary. In this sense, it may be argued that Chuck was “forced” into duplicity and dubiousness by his NATURALLY duplicitous and dubious brother, and this is a probable analysis. It’s not that Jimmy specifically strong-armed Chuck, but he never failed to produce a set of circumstances wherein Chuck had no recourse, just as Skylar had no recourse in dealing with Walter’s narcissistic criminal antics. At any rate, there really can be no excuse for Chuck NOT to have done as he did, just as Skylar had no SENSIBLE alternatives. Both were bound by moral necessity, and to hold them in contempt, to project ulterior motives upon them, and to pardon their aggressors is to do something even more devious than the aggressors themselves had done, since it is to imply that moral obligation and, as such, moral authority, are arbitrary.

So why would people “hate” Charles McGill? Clearly, if Jimmy forced Chuck to stoop to Jimmy’s level, though only to such an extent as it was necessary to forestall Saul, then it cannot be said that Chuck “created” Saul Goodman; rather, Saul Goodman epitomizes all which Chuck sought to prevent, and, since Chuck is absent throughout most of Saul’s rise to power, it cannot be contended that Saul was the product of a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Jimmy did not break bad as the result of Chuck’s attempts to prevent this break; Chuck simply never had the capacity to prevent the inevitable.

Why was this transformation inevitable? Simply put: because of us. WE are the sorts of people who allow such evil to fester daily, and our capacities not only for enabling it but also for seeking the deaths of its most natural enemies, all within the lucidity of the omniscient audience who cannot deny the objectivity of the natural enemy’s account, are precisely that manure which buries the truly Heroic Quest whilst giving life to the Nihilistic Tragedy. Chuck McGill did not create Saul Goodman; we did, and we are so proud of our creation that we protect it like parents.

 

It is for these reasons that, in dealing with criminal masterminds, we must be extremely careful not only to temper our involvement, but to censor our accountability for it. Chuck never stoops as low as Saul wants him to stoop, but he still must stoop low enough for Chuck to look at least MARGINALLY bad, enough to appear unqualified to judge of Jimmy. Yet if we recognize that Chuck’s decisions are NOT his own, but rather the products of an objective Moral Order, we pardon that Order’s most pious followers, instead of simply continuing to enable its most devious deviants.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Ten Years Later: in Case You Still Don't Understand *Inception*.

 Inception: what is going on?

 

Question One: what are Inception and Extraction?

 

Extraction:

 

The film Inception takes place in a fictional modern-day universe wherein the science of shared dreaming has been perfected, producing some morally dubious possibilities for certain agencies.

Extractors essentially make their living by doing to a human mind what hackers do to a personal computer. By connecting a sleeping subject to a mysterious and unexplained device via wires, they are able to enter into the subject’s dream. Such devices are often transported in briefcases for purposes of secrecy.

The extractor’s work requires him or her to delve into parts of the dreamer’s subconscious mind wherein the dreamer stores secrets of which even the dreamer may be unaware. Often, this is a risky enterprise, since the subconscious mind, in this fictional interpretation, has a built-in defence system akin to an immune response system.

 

Why the Dream Hates You:

 

Once the extractor has infiltrated the dreaming subject’s mind, he or she is liable to be detected as a threat. This is manifested most clearly as suspicion and aggression on the part of the dream characters, who might go so far as to unify against the extractor in an attempt to eliminate the invading agent. For this reason, extractors are valued not only for their know-how but also for their ability and willingness to function expediently and efficiently under stress. It is also implied that some dreamers have more developed subconscious defences than others do.

 

Inception:

 

In case all of that was not hard enough to wrap one’s head around, there is a theoretical variation to this practice called “inception”. Whereas an extractor functions as the sort of hacker who simply “extracts” sensitive information, the inceptor’s work is to “incept” information, meaning that the inceptor plants an idea WITHIN the Unconscious Mind of the Dreamer.

Given the dangerous and puzzling nature of this enterprise, it is usually marginalized as only theoretically possible, even theoretically impossible. Even seasoned extractors, such as the film’s supporting characters at the story’s inception, (pun intended) doubt that inception is possible.

 

Leonardo DiCaprio Does the Impossible:

 

Be that as it may, the leading hero, portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, insists upon inception’s possibility. The reason for his conviction is explained near the film’s climax in the extended flashback recounting his life with his wife.

Both the protagonist and his wife partook in shared dreaming, using the technology to build a Virtual World together. The consequence of this was that his wife did not wish to leave the Dream World to return to “Reality”. In an attempt to cure her fixation upon their Shared Dream World, the protagonist incepted an idea in her mind. By spinning a top in a safe within her unconscious mind, he instilled within her the notion that the Dream World was not real. The top itself was her “totem”, an item meant to help her discern Reality (Waking Life) from Dream. So long as the top would not fall, she would question her own Reality, since the top is supposed never to fall in the Dream World.

Tragically, the result of the hero’s groundbreaking experiment worsened his wife’s condition. Unable to shake the persistent feeling that her world was not Real, she ended up concluding that her surroundings, in Reality the Waking World, were a falsehood, and she concluded that by committing suicide she would wake up.

 

Question Two: Who is Fischer?

 

The advantages to extraction in corporate warfare may be inferred. There is no theoretical limit to the breadth and depth of information which may be extracted from a corporate executive and used by his or her rivals. Keep in mind that this film was written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who explored similar power dynamics in The Dark Knight (also therein using Asian business moguls as the rival agents, for nebulous reasons we have yet to extract.)

That is all well and good. But simply IMAGINE how powerful one would be if one could PLANT an idea in the C.E.O.’s head as well!!

While the rival corporation’s business interests remain vague and nebulous, they are also secondary to the story’s themes. This is all we need to know: they want Fischer to dissolve his father’s company.

Fischer’s reasons for refusing to end his father’s legacy are explained fairly early on. Haunted by the thought that he had disappointed his father, Fischer is motivated to prove his father wrong, perhaps hoping subconsciously to make his father proud. It is this emotional motive which lies at the root of an entire Industry’s obstinance. In Christopher Nolan’s epic, even multinational corporations may bend to the will of one man’s father complex.

It is for the purposes of reversing this complex that the Inception Team is assembled. Spearheaded by the protagonist, this team’s task is to plant an idea in Fischer’s Subconscious Mind: that Fischer’s father wanted Fischer to individuate, to become “his own man”, and to leave his father’s legacy behind.

As the team navigates Fischer’s military-grade psychological defences, (an imaginatively satirical incarnation of the powerful man’s Caesarian insecurities,) attempting to instill within him a notion which even therapy fails to convey, the protagonist must come to the same conclusions about his own life. While Fischer is haunted by the psychological ghost of his father, the protagonist is haunted by the memory of his wife, who takes on superhuman power in his own dreams. Ultimately, both men must come to terms with their pasts and to put the past behind them; the protagonist’s ability to see through the illusion created by his grieving memory enables him to successfully incept Fischer.

 

Dreamers are Like Cakes:

 

We have almost universally had the experience of “false awakenings”: episodes in a Dream wherein we believed we had woken up, only to discover that, like many members of the millennial generation, we were not as awake as we believed we were.

The phenomenon of “false awakenings” of this kind is often explained by analogy to architecture (hence the parallels to architecture are predominant throughout Nolan’s narrative, as they are throughout most of his most successful films). In this interpretation of the Subconscious Mind’s Structure, Dreams have “layers”, and in waking up from one Dream one simply ascends by one level.

When the Inception Team first infiltrates Fischer’s Mind, they have to incept him yet AGAIN, entering into a Dream Within a Dream, so as to gain access to his Deeper Mind. It is only upon this Level that an Idea, once incepted, might be considered practically irretrievable. At the very least, it will satisfy their quota.

The dramatic impact of this trope cannot be overstated; as the would-be Inceptors dive deeply and more deeply into Fischer’s Unconscious Mind, defences become more developed and battles longer. This is in large part owing to temporal displacement.

 

Why It Takes So Long:

 

It is well-known that we tend to experience longer stretches of time in a Dream than it takes for us to dream that dream from the perspective of Waking Life; a few minutes of sleep in Reality may be experienced as years of Life to the Dreamer. (This theme is also explored in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life.)

In the case of Inception, especially the inception of Fischer, the deeper you go, the more happens. While only a few minutes pass on a higher level, as many as ten years pass deep down. In the time it takes for one van to finish its transit from a bridge to the underlying water body, the Inception Team fights an entire war and comes to psychotherapeutic terms with a widower’s grief and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

 

The Inceptor Comes Home:

 

The protagonist’s motivation for joining the Inception Team is as part of a deal with the business moguls. If he succeeds in his mission, he is permitted to return to his home country without being extradited for his illegal activities as a former extractor, thereby reconnecting with what little family he has remaining in the Real World: namely, his children.

 

This threshold is past without incident, but one snag continues to haunt viewers. The film’s closing scene shows the aforementioned top spinning, yet we don’t see it fall, though it appears ready to. This is commonly misinterpreted as a “cliffhanger” ending. Will the top fall? Did the hero return home? Is he still Dreaming?

 

Why the Top Doesn’t Matter:

 

Fixating upon the top is tantamount to the protagonist fixating upon his wife. Why? Guess.

 

You guessed it: the top was NEVER HIS TOTEM. It belonged to his wife, and, if he has truly moved on, then that top holds little meaning for him. Similarly, if WE have moved on WITH him, then we should be able to shrug it off as a red herring. However, Nolan’s genius is in this: that if we continue to identify the hero only by analogy to his wife, then we confuse the top for HIS totem, the crowning factor in whether or not HE returned to THEIR family.

 

So: what was the hero’s totem?

 

The prevailing theory is that it's his WEDDING RING. Though it is never alluded to verbally, viewers noticed that he only wears it while he is in a Dream.

 

When the film’s closing shot shows a close-up of his hand spinning the top, the top itself is a decoy. What is significant is not his wife’s totem, which he promptly abandons, but rather his ring or, more specifically, the lack thereof. The ring has vanished. Our Hero has come to terms with the fact that his wife is dead. He is free to live.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Read More Books:

When someone like Derrida advises his students (the entire world) to read more, he is not saying that one will get more information out of books, but rather that, in books, one will get out of information. It is in this specific, phenomenological encounter that the illusions created by popular forms of media are most effectively shattered; even personal experience functions as merely a mouthpiece for propaganda until it is written down and incisively analyzed.

It follows that I am terrified in meeting millennials who piously insist that they can get the same sorts of “information” out of internet articles as they can out of books, and my dread is aggravated when these same upstarts label me a “Luddite” as I fumble to articulate my flabbergasted indignation. The pejorative is not even as injurious as that trend which it represents, one which is content to pass ignorance off as intelligence, to seek “information” at the expense of “knowledge” and “wisdom”, and, even in blatantly ignoring these distinctions, to profess that they are no worse off, simply because they disown their superiors and, by so doing, suicidally surrender their access to superior powers of mind.

What does it mean to say that books are at most tantamount to articles online? It is not only to ignore the modes of distribution, the institutions which empower them, and the natural strengths and weaknesses of each form of technology, past and present. Already we can see the intrinsic contradictions in an argument which pretends towards consistency: the institution isn’t criticized, but ignored, as though one could rebel against it by pretending that it does not exist, thereby invalidating the rebellion; the technology of the present is presumed to be superior to that of the past, though the term “Luddite” refers to a specific history.

Yet the true tragedy is in the margin by which one falls short of even modern developments in thought itself. If, for instance, we were to acknowledge the rather recent adage that “the medium is the message”, we should be forced to conclude that, insofar as such an adage is valid and true, the simple fact that books are NOT computer articles means that their respective messages are mutually nonexchangeable. The tradition of reading books is specific unto itself, as is the tradition of writing them; how can a mind, then, conceive of the experience as something so easily substituted?

[({DM.A.A.)}]

The Next Level Down: the Author Praises his Own Autobiography. (The Birth of the Speculative Metafiction.)

The Next Level Down:

 

By beginning with a fictional account of nonfictional, autobiographical events, I set the stage for a new form of metafiction, one wherein both the fictionality of the account and the author’s own fictionalizing bias are redeemed as one, since it is in the ACCOUNTING of the events, rather than the events themselves nor the quality of the account, that the work takes on serious philosophical implications. Whether or not Drake is a reliable narrator is just as dismissible as whether or not I am; the integrity of the work is not in the point of view but in the clash.

If I may attempt to simplify this by expounding upon it at greater length, it is so: that there are several layers to a metafictional narrative. In this instance, the base layer, which has its life and death outside of the work itself, well before conception, is comprised of the Facts Themselves: Events within My Life. These events become Experiences which are “mine”, and upon them I might comment, albeit subjectively. Then there is the author’s attempt to represent those events, More or Less As They Happened, as events within my fictional narrative. These are conveyed, for the most part, through the voice of my Protagonist, (Drake Andersen) who presumably shares my point of view and acts as mouthpiece for my ego, yet since he is quite clearly an invention of the fiction he absolves me of responsibility for voicing them.

Beyond these layers of abstraction we arrive at the first truly “fictional”, however realistic and inspired, facet: the Conversation. By setting up the play as a Dialogue betwixt my fictional Protagonist and a nebulous Deuteragonist, the latter at least as dubious as the former, I create a world which can bend to my creative will. Because it is a work of fiction, since the Dialogue never transpired as I have transcribed it, I am absolved of accusations of libel, even as I expound upon Events from My Life. Yet the genius herein is not confined to the mere masterful concealment of autobiography. By setting up a fictional dialogue about nonfictional Events, I resolve a conflict between two warring extremes alike in dignity and in futility.

The autobiography, as well as the transparently autobiographical fiction, come under a storm of contemporary derision owing to their presumably “biased” nature. They are also considered more symptomatic of neurosis and maladjustment than of craft and vision; not only is the writer reduced to a mental case, but the act of writing itself is treated as though it were the foremost symptom.

On the obverse end, there lies the realm of Pure Fiction and Fantasy, one which is so surpassingly synonymous with neurosis that the critic does not even bother to laugh. Once the Author ceases to write “what he knows”, it is presumed he knows nothing, and his flights of fancy are deemed irrelevant to practical and ethical life.

In this way, all modern fictional forms are ostensibly doomed, unless they become artillery for popular propaganda and/or vehicles for subversive information. Fight Club can be read in the same manner, in this sense, as the Anarchist’s Cookbook or the Communist Manifesto, and Harry Potter is “about” slavery and elitism.

Yet something is redeemed in my metafiction, though it never pretends to serve any “practical function” and it cannot be convincingly accused of being a mere “vehicle” for (anti?-)Marxist Propaganda. As I have said, and as I shall now decode: it is not in the QUALITY of the ACCOUNT that the narrative redeems its fidelity, but the ACT of ACCOUNTING. It is ironical and paradoxical, though satisfyingly and brilliantly so, that the single most objectively redeeming aspect of this layer-cake of context is that top layer which was prepared, as icing is, in nearly utter independence of the Facts Themselves: the Conversation.

All of the play’s remaining contents might be presumed to have “happened”, though perhaps “not as the Writer or the Hero have recounted them”. Yet about the Dialogue no contest can be made except for an aesthetic plaint, which in itself appeals to bias on the critic’s part. The Author never seeks to convince you that either Drake or Jackson EXISTED, nor that they ever met at a café and reflected upon these autobiographical Events, nor that this meeting serendipitously carried them, by an invisible hand, through a misadventure which in itself connected the History to the Present and left them both as self-aware protagonists in the very Drama they were analyzing. What I have achieved is transparently not the ACCOUNT of such a relationship, but rather an extraction of its essence from SIMILAR Relationships in EDUCATED Life. The Conversation could never have transpired between uneducated men, nor educated old men; it HAD to be between college dropouts. It is precisely for this reason that the Dialogue appeals to my target audience, composed almost entirely of such youths.

Ergo, the problems of fiction are resolved at the very height of fiction. Drake’s constant musings upon his Life, more or less a direct report about Events from My Own Life, are in and of themselves dubious, as are Jackson’s counterpoints to his musing. Yet it is precisely BECAUSE these takes upon the same events contradict, coupled with the fact that Jackson barely has a public story of his own, (though he clearly demonstrates the agency necessary to produce one) that their dialogue is Rich with Context and Subtext; I can praise it without praising myself, for I have simply dreamt up this Dialogue, and I cannot claim to have produced it in Actuality. Even as the Author, I act as an astonished witness, though I don’t pretend towards humility in BEARING witness to the process. The verisimilitude and factuality of either my take or Drake’s take on the Events is beside the point, as are the clearly improvised events of Pure Fiction; what matters is that everything is ACCOUNTED FOR by SPECULATION, and that Speculation serves a transcendental purpose outside of the work.

 

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Art, Life, and Reality:

I find it incredible when people say, “oh, video games are not REAL. They are simply an escape.” It’s not just video games which are subject to this sort of treatment. Films, television shows, and even books fall under similar attack. One might even drag music into this, given its recorded or synthesized nature; after all, many of those media I’ve listed often INCLUDE music, far more often than not. One can hardly hope to become a professional musician yet to avoid those dramatic forms.

So, the question naturally arises: if these things are not “real”, then what IS Real? Morpheus insists that Reality is more than sensory perception, as does Plato, but supposing we disenfranchise the heroes of both film and philosophical treatise, what remains, and who remains to speak upon it with authority?

The plainest and most redundant response is: “well, Life. LIFE is Real.”

Oh? “Life?”

That I cannot contest, since I only recall that which I’ve seen whilst I have been alive, or so I think. Yet what sort of a “Life” is one devoid of Art? Certainly, it’s not one that I would have known, but if I had to fathom it, perhaps I could.

What Life, then? Would it be that “Life” wherein my ability to reproduce depends upon the size of my triceps? Or that “Life” wherein my right to eat is governed by the expediency with which I can clean some stranger’s plate of leftovers? Is it that “Life” wherein I lose a thousand dollars’ worth of musical equipment in one day, all because I stored it in a locker on a college campus?

Maybe that is not YOUR Life, but I have no reason to think YOUR Life is governed by a higher Cosmic Order. You might say, regarding Life, that I’m a “loser”, yet that only serves to prove my point: you see Life as a Game. To you, Games are not mere “escapes”; they are the ESSENCE of Existence. Your mistake is in believing this: that since LIFE is the Game, then Life goes on without games, and it’s far more satisfying AS a Game than games are in and of themselves. Yet this is false and foolish. Life is not a Game, but rather it’s a sum of games; if it is greater than this sum, it’s only by their virtue that it can be.

Do not get me wrong: I do not mean to say that Life is “boring”. Life, even at its most banal and absurd, may be considered exquisitely interesting, yet it is only AS interesting as our means for EXPRESSING it. The life of the skinny dishwasher who lost his trumpet to a crook might certainly be transformed into a fascinating interactive experience, but only with sufficient Craft and Vision. It is Art which RENDERS Life rewarding, and whenever Life is INTRINSICALLY rewarding, it is only rewarding insofar as that reward can be consummated within its representation in Art. Art is not an “escape”. Life is not something to BE escaped, and Art is an integral pillar of Life which renders attempts to escape unnecessary and futile.

What would such an escape attempt be? One such attempt would be to burn one’s copies of World of Warcraft, publically, as a testament to one’s “newfound freedom”. Freedom to do what? Certainly: not to play World of Warcraft. Yet why presume that Life will automatically offer anything of surpassing value, reward, and “reality” in Warcraft’s absence? One might always give up the simulation for that Reality which it seeks to simulate. Yet if Adolf Hitler had been addicted to World of Warcraft, perhaps we would never have seen a second World War!! (Let us just assume, for the sake of argument, that that was, as the Russians might put it, an “unfortunate” sequel.)

The simple fact that games appeal to an Intrinsic Drive does not ensure that their alternatives will satisfy the Human Soul more fully. Often, it is not the war game which is an alternative for the war, but rather the opposite is so. The true escapists are not those who collect virtual achievements, but rather those who seek achievements in the “Real World”.

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature by contending that Human Life was intrinsically absurd and that we ought to live “without appeal”, whereby all activities are theoretically neutral. The professional World of Warcraft player and the professional gymnast are relative in Camus’ view. His conviction was so pious that even as a Nobel Laureate he maintained that his Life had no overlying Meaning. He even went so far as to prophesy his own premature death; the story goes that he declared a car accident to be the most absurd way to die, weeks prior to his fatal crash. That this might indicate that there’s a God is not out of the question; that such a God must surely have a Camusian sense of humour is unequivocal.

Life is a Joke; that’s why we have comedians to celebrate it. Yet to live a Life in protest of comedy is to sap it of its intrinsic humour. So it is with Art, and so it is with games. The ascetic rejection of video games is merely a neurotic sublimation. It is tantamount to those violent protestors who, in the name of Justice, Peace, and Non-discrimination, slay police officers with prejudice. They may be indiscriminate in WHOM they kill, but WHAT they kill is the target of their own prejudicial hatred.

Yet this is not even the root of the problem: the root lay in the notion that one COULD have “Justice” outside of a Justice Department. Oh? Is that so? Can one find Meaning outside of Literature and Language? What sorts of Achievements did Camus unlock before it was Game Over for him? If Life is LIKE a Court, a Novel, or a Video Game, or if, as Jordan Peterson contests, those are “like” Life, then it is poorly written.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Friday, August 7, 2020

BLOWHARD:

SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFu5O-oPmU

It’s somewhat ironic that Blow concludes his lecture with an Alan Moore quotation about the magical quality of language, especially written language, only to subtly deride the discipline beforehand and far more explicitly so afterwards. I am reminded of what the late Roger Ebert said of Blow’s writing for Braid: that it read like a fortune cookie. For the first time, I agree with Ebert, whereas I did not bewail his passing at first, the latter chiefly as a result of Ebert’s insistence that video games would never become an Art Form. Jonathan Blow disproved this with his own work and these lectures, yet the nostalgia which I feel for both is only as strong as my nostalgia for the time within my life wherein I encountered them, a strange period of Soul-searching wherein the works of J.K. Rowling, Alan Watts, and Kahlil Gibran did far more than Braid did. If ever I loved Braid, (a love which might be substantiated by Steam’s testimony that I ran it for 133 hours total over the last seven years, more so than any other product I purchased through the service) it was only because I felt that games COULD someday rival books.

The limitations and the “linearity” of language are hardly absent from any other mode of human expression. Video games themselves may be atomized as lines of code, and if computers attained sentience they would probably see them in that fashion. Coding, in itself, is an extremely linear task, both for the programmer and for the computer, regardless of how many while loops and function calls are woven into it, and this fact accounts for the tendency for the most skilled programmers to become some of the least flexible personalities alive. The term “linear”, of course, was a misquotation of Blow, one of several ham-fisted and naïve attempts to equate him with the late David Foster Wallace. The term that Blow uses, however, is even more incriminating of the fact that Blow is a natural programmer, albeit an unusually flexible one, and that his approach to language is so rooted in programming language that he has mistakenly reduced the former parent to the latter child: “serialized”.

This at first ambiguous term may be translated fairly simply to refer to two qualities intrinsic to the use of language: its conformity to grammatical laws and its conformity to trends in usage. Every word is understood by reference to a number of denotated meanings, each of which may invoke a spectrum of connotated meanings, and each meaning is inferred by a sort of process of elimination which takes place, largely subconsciously, according to the context of the usage. For instance, the word “bus” means one thing in the phrase “come and ride the bus” and another in the phrase “please bus your own dishes”, and yet another in the phrase “be sure to bus your reverb to a separate audio track”. In each phrase, the denotative meaning of the word “bus” might be inferred from its juxtaposition with other words, such as “dishes”, “ride”, and “reverb”, and it is from this context that we might infer its connotative meaning as well. Yet this atomization of language is only a superficial reduction of it, and to insist that these are the confines which doom literature to an archaic obsoletion would be tantamount to saying that anything produced on a computer can never amount to the Heights of Music, since Music is composed of twelve notes whereas code is only a series of ones and zeroes. It must be immediately obvious that the very simplicity of binary code is precisely what lends it its diversity, since any positive integer, including 12, (1100) can be expressed as a sum of values, each of which is an exponent of two. So it is that the very simplicity of the word “bus” lends this word its efficacy as a vehicle for meaning, even within this present sentence, wherein I boastfully but subtly advertise this fact. Not only is it convenient that the word “bus” contains only three compartments, each of which is a different letter, the sum of which swiftly convey one syllable, by avenue only of the lips, throat, breath, tongue and teeth. It is also uniform in all of its meanings, so that beyond any denotative avatar its Spirit remains the same: a vehicle for transporting something.

At this juncture, we arrive already at two salient facts: one is that a single word, by manifesting as multiple avatars, can carry multiple meanings at once, thereby illustrating multiple dimensions which operate in tandem. The second fact is this: that if one wished to reduce any word to its most basic, quintessential meaning, stripped of all incidental definitions, it would require MORE words in order to define. Splitting the atom which is a word, we release literally untold energy. By blowing up the bus, we release a fire upon the road along which it travels.

Consider thus this phrase: “I had to find another means to bus because the server was down.” Who or what was or is “the server”? Does that word “server” refer to a waitress who would not bus my food because she felt too “down” to work, or was this simply a device used to host internet connections, the result of whose malfunction I could no longer use an online synthesizer to bus my audio? If I wished to infer the meaning of “the server” by reducing it to “one who serves”, I have simply expanded the field of meanings to include anyone or anything who or which, for any reason, “serves”, presumably my purposes.

This analysis may in itself corroborate Blow’s claim that language is “serial” in nature, though it also establishes its use beyond its merely mechanical utility. The apparent vagueness of poetic language, as opposed to scientific language, ensures that, insofar as we attempt to “express that which cannot be expressed”, we end up expressing only that which had YET to be. Even the phrase “express that which cannot be expressed” expresses a contradiction which computers cannot compute, simply because it is NOT as literal as the mind of a robot or a jilted programmer. Even a machine which can calculate the probabilities for any sum produced by rolling a six-sided die, an eight-sided die, and a twenty-sided die, within mere minutes, cannot “express that which cannot be expressed”, nor can it comprehend that expression, in itself an expression of itself, without returning an error message. Poetry does not conform to the laws of non-contradiction, nor to the principles of theoretical physics.

Furthermore, it is precisely the vagueness of certain phrases which contain layers of overlapping meaning, such as “the server is down”, that renders language that much more rewarding once its meaning is unriddled, like a puzzle in the game Braid. When Hamlet delivers a monologue or Joyce depicts an otherwise banal scene in Finnegan’s Wake, the mind is accosted at once with multiple layers of meaning, interwoven artfully and alliteratively, and it is precisely this musical juxtaposition which creates, in Huxley’s words, the impression of “living in multiple worlds at the same time”: a believable summary of the Human Condition. If Braid meets Huxley’s standard for High Art, then so do Shakespeare and Joyce, and that is why Ebert would sooner have sacrificed the works of Blow than the works of the Bard of Avon.

It may be true that the number 432 may be reduced to multiples of 3 and 2, only the first two prime integers. It may also be true that 432 waves per second, expressed as sound waves traveling through air and hitting the human eardrum, can be summed up, in musicological terms, as the characters “A4”. Yet critics contend that the more recent definition for “A4”: 440 waves per second, is the more “modern” definition, and audiophiles would retort that this “modernity” only underscores the loss of an ancient harmony which was embodied within the mathematics of Pythagoras. This note, henceforth called “middle A”, may be heard in theoretically infinite contexts, but it would only be within the confines of very particular constraints that even the most modern human beings might recognize it as “music”. These constraints do not deprive the pitch of its value; they lend it that value, and to operate within those constraints masterfully is to compete with the finest programmers and Chess Masters. The same can be said of any word in any language, though this is especially true of English, for reasons too expansive for me to go further into. While the word “bus” might, outside of English, mean something else, (in Latvian, for instance, it means “will be”) we are not concerned with what it might appear to signify for Martians, and unless we are writing in Latvian it will probably retain its proper applications, though beyond that its applications may again appear endless. Now that our bus is packed, it can transport us anywhere in the Known Universe.

David Foster Wallace might have distrusted language for its “linear” presentation, yet the fact that he wrote in English to address this problem, not just as a thesis but as a poetic exercise which in itself tested the thesis, proves that language can express anything which the writer intends to, presumably because it is out of language that the intent arises to begin with. That his novels lack classical coherence might be a testament either to his literary genius, one which he shares with literature, or to a lack of cohesion in his life, which would certainly explain his suicide.

It may be true that games and films can simulate bodily experiences in a manner which requires far less abstraction and imagination. Yet it is precisely because they require less of imagination, that internal technology which has now been supplanted and usurped by external technology, that they are subject to far more critical confinements. Watching a film may feel like being “trapped” within the setting for the scene; playing a game, I might just as easily be motivated to conclude a level as to start it, especially if by concluding it I escape an environment which no longer interests me. While any of these complaints might just as easily be applied to a peculiarly boring passage in a novel or treatise, the fact remains that I can change my impression of the book’s contents by thinking about them; I cannot, however, do that to an image on a screen or a sound in the stereo, and while the words on the page retain their constancy, my imagination may nonetheless lend them a realism to rival that of the video game or the film, yet this internal World I have created from the Words retains a malleability the other media surrender.

It is perhaps for this reason that books are seldom adapted to other media, and when they are adapted the original outshines its adaptations. The Harry Potter games are fun and at times exquisitely interesting, but they hardly stand out as testaments to what video games CAN be, and alongside the books they seem like a sickly parody; most children, if they had requested the book and received the video game instead for Christmas, would be devastated. The movies are a bit better, but nothing beats the books. The same can be said even of The Lord of the Rings. It may be true that Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King won el(e)ven Oscars, and I would contend that it deserved them. Yet even one of the best films of all time cannot capture the rewards of penetrating Tolkien’s prose; even to the child, the Shire feels more real on paper than it does on screen, and I doubt that even a trip to New Zealand would reverse this. While it may also be contended that The Godfather was a poorly written novel but a magnum opus on film, the shortcomings of a writer do not reflect upon writing. It is only when we see both literature and film at its greatest, such as in The Lord of the Rings, that we must confess that one greatness does not eclipse the other, and the more recent interpretation could never take the place of the original manifestation. Blade Runner may be a lauded science fiction film, but it will never blow my mind in the manner that seven of Philip K. Dick’s books did, and though Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? might have been the least impressive of the eight books I have read by him, it pales only before those other seven.

The magic is not in the limitlessness of the medium, but rather in the ability to work within the limitations of the medium, thereby transcending expectations. One does not EXPECT to be dazzled by print on a page until one has read Harry Potter, and even then how can one know that the ending of The Man in the High Castle would put one in a state of couch lock that even psychedelic drugs could not produce, though they might have inspired the writer? Even Prince Hamlet, a play, is sometimes best enjoyed on paper instead. The genius is not even confined to the native tongue. Rereading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in Spanish, I am constantly impressed by how well I recall the story, so much so that even in a language which remains foreign to me I can unriddle what is going on according to what little Spanish I know and what I can recall when my memory is jogged. The limitations of any ONE language’s grammatical forms are often overstated. Though not all puns hold up in translation, some work almost better in Spanish, and in reading the translation I feel as though I am mediating between two worlds; just as the Hogwarts Express conveys students to and from school, the train of translation conveys me between two Schools of Expression, yet the Fictional Universe remains the same, alive with its renewed mystery now that it can no longer be reduced to comprehensible English prose and poetry. While I do not have the satisfaction of slaying robots or flaming Gnorcs, the wonder is incomparable, and let’s not forget that, no matter how well-designed Nier: Automata and Spyro the Dragon were, they were as much imaginative simulations as a novel is. (Anything more would be terrifying.)

Not all ideas must be expressed linearly, but all narrative ideas will be understood linearly. When I began writing this essay, I already knew what I wished to say; the task was in organizing it. Yet nearing the end of it I revisit my first paragraph, and what was at first a fairly arbitrary introduction makes narrative sense as foreshadowing a thesis, only because I understand it now in the context of what follows it. Human beings always must do this, for in spite of our transcendent aspirations we are caught within time’s constant flow. Perhaps Braid successfully simulated a system which could bend the rules of time and space, yet I still remember it as a story in six chapters, just as King’s Quest VII was; fate has a way of ending up linear. Braid did not achieve more in terms of defying common sense than James Joyce did in Finnegan’s Wake; both works take advantage of familiar patterns redefined in unfamiliar ways, leaving much to the manipulation of the puzzle-solving mind, though ultimately the puzzle must arrive at a solution and the story must go on. The difference: Joyce’s prose remains Mysterious afterwards. Even if Joyce’s only motivation for writing was to show the world his own facility with language, the seventeen years he spent developing Finnegan’s Wake was no mistake. As for that moment wherein Blow claws at Heaven in mockery of the “misunderstood Artists” who bewail the stupidity of their audience, I must only say that I relate with the Artists. In discussing respect for players and the role of Artists, let us not forget how disrespectful it is to disconfirm someone’s most fervent and unique Vision of the World and how it ought to be. Its uniqueness serves its legitimacy.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]