Sam Griswold
Tony Prichard
Writing in Context: Parasites
May 21, 2010
“Adjectives on a typewriter, he moves his words like a prizefighter. The frenzied pace of the mind inside the self” – the song “Shadow Stabbing” by Cake
The author of the text went away from his Hulu window to attempt to write something, setting down his fingers on the keys one by one to push out the first sentence before his mind became apathetic to the idea of starting the process. He was not thinking of creating a text when he looked at the blank page, he simply thought of filling the space and letting whoever was not there give their judgment. Keep in mind, when it comes to fiction or even clever investigation of non-fiction, writing is not simply to state an obvious story perhaps containing a moral or lesson to be learned. Rather, it is the details, the authors writing “voice” and what that voice says and does not say. In the Science is Fiction movies, even the facts of nature were given in a new light that showed playfulness, wonder, and even grotesqueness, all because of the words, style, and music it was shown with, the choices of the person who made it. But back to the author, how does he begin this descent into a voice, is it precise and focused process? Or is it something that comes naturally to everyone as they write? Maybe the best way to find out is to keep watching him write.
As the text spilled out, he wondered things like how much time should he spend narrating or how much time to spend on the characters. He tapped one of his feet as memories came flooding to the tip of his mind, giving him tools to express himself that others would understand. However, not once in this process did he ask himself why he was writing, which is interesting when you think of how in childhood everyone always why to everything. It is as if writing needs no explanation, and that writers are those people who have something to express and simply must express it. To be redundant, why ask why? Humans are social creatures, writing is another form of communication, why does there have to be a complex reason to want to write? Well, because most of the time stories show something in life that we would not notice normally. Again mentioning Science is Fiction, there was a conversation in class where one of the first things mentioned was how everything can be thought of as a story, everything can serve a function whatever we use that function for. This made me think of the name “Science is Fiction” itself, what allows science to be fiction, what is the transforming component? I think that this question can be answered by the word “purpose’ (not to be confused with porpoise, as in the porpoise of life). Stories allow science to be fiction because they give the ordinary a different purpose, they separate it from being something we have little reason to care about and turns it into something that amazes or applies to us. Perhaps there is a need in us to think of the world as “different” (add hand gesture here), like how in the movie The Fantastic Mr. Fox the main character needs to be the greatest thing ever, only we need to notice what kind of story we are in.
The idea of how much in control he was of this little world he had created suddenly occurred to the author. He could look at the rules of grammar and (after choosing how carefully or loosely to follow them) create something familiar, as he had created the room around him out of the pursuits and interests of his life. But in writing, he could explain these things, why the unmade D&D character sheet was slouching out under a pile of books on Taoism, or what the handwritten letter from his father sitting on his desk said. I would like to point out now (although rather late) that this kind of mentality can be applied to more forms of communication than just writing, I say writing simply because it is common and because it commands respect with its permanency. But in all communication I have to wonder if the author is right or not, how much control do I have over the worlds I create? In my psychology class we talked about conditioning and what it means to be shaped by your environment and genetics, both of which no one has any control over. So can I say that ME, the real individual that makes me different than others is writing this or is it just my conditioning? Maybe conditioning creates this individual, but the idea still remains that they are both there, inside me, delivering my view in a way that is conditioned to be understood if somewhat biased, but also the voice that comes with it. Perhaps communication is like the “Other” that was referred to in The Vampire Lectures by Lawrence Rickels, and as I communicate I invite the “real” me into my conditioning allowing me to get this effect. It certainly seems like I would desire for this to happen, but maybe I am being deceived and am inviting in even more conditioning, how deep does it go? I cannot tell the difference whether my thoughts are my own creative output or the combination of many ideas I’ve heard put together by my brain and my life so far. Maybe the only way to notice this is to pay attention to what I think and what I do when I’m thinking.
The author sat back from his hunched over position, his shirt sticking to his back because of the warm conditions of the room. He was not sure how long he had been working, and as he looked back at his work realized that he had actually forgotten some of what he had written. His story had taken him deeper then he thought it would, in his haste to put it down before he lost some of the energy that had made him start in the first place. He ironically picked this moment to ask whether he was using enough voice (because he could not do that in the paragraph about the self). Going back to look at a story is interesting, you think about what made you want to say that, what were the conditions around you (of course in this case it is easier for me to see this), and what traits the story has, but this is where I start asking questions. Drawing from a conversation with acelessthan3 on plurk, I discovered a story could be described as a mental existence of things based off the physical existence of a person, but when it is put down on paper, film, etc. it could be described as a physical version of a mental existence. What does this duality give stories? I think that it gives it a very intangible trait, like how a pun has a dual meaning that gives a point and a joke about the way language works, only in this duality I do not get the punchline. To again quote ace again, “The story is different from the author. The story is different from the words you read”. After writing and deleting a couple times, I realize I have no idea what this trait could possibly be, it could be how writing is encompassing of human qualities, animal, intellectual, etc. but it could also be something as simple as how stories do not ignore any part of life or death (unlike how I tend to “skip over” things or be “lost in thought”). . However, I do not think either could give it justice, stories simply are, going back to why people create these, I think I will add to make something that no one can completely define Maybe that is what makes stories puns in the first place, they give you a lesson/character/process to enjoy but do not tell you about something beneath that. Perhaps an “other” that Rickels was talking about, we desire a greater meaning from the story so we invite it in without truly knowing everything it is, and once we see it we want more of it like a true vampire relationship.
Parasites, vampires, and wild animals. I am the author and the author is me. I invited him in to see what I look like when I make a story and if that reveals something about thinking about life in the context of another story. I like the idea that we are all like the characters that we connect to, it puts books and movies on the same level as living (not to downplay either of them, learning from the minds of others can be more rewarding, that is what school/this class is for). Of course this entire system could be the conditioning I referred to, we set up communication as one of the most important thing because then it is easy to get rewarded as texts and conversations are everywhere. Still, maybe it is a good system, maybe it is this way because it promote what I have been talking about (if I have been talking about anything at all), some hints at purpose, the individual, and some things that we really do not know about unless we talk about how much we do not know about them. I am a parasite because I learn how to tell stories from other people, I am a vampire because I am invited in to think that making texts will do something, and I am a wild animal because what I say still depends on ME: that is what I mean by I am the author.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Nature: An American Cultural View
When I think of “nature” or the words “saving the environment” I always imagine some picturesque setting of giraffes walking across a plain with a sunset behind them set to music. This is caused by seeing this image over and over, in National Geographic, movies set in Africa, the show Planet Earth, etc. The reason I think this occurs is because most Americans are unsure what to feel about nature in real life. The theme of “natural beauty” means a complete ecosystem of animals, meaning that for our cultural purposes animals construct our sense of nature. America is not famous for the animals in it except in the national parks, and a lot of people do not see those, especially since some of the most famous places are cities like New York or Los Angeles where the idealistic nature is completely absent from. The effect this creates is that people think of nature as something that is far away and while pretty, too savage for civilization. The animals in our culture are then thought of as not really a part of nature but not equal to humanity either. The question of how we should feel about nature is answered by investigating the laws that govern it, how we value the life of animals in America and how they are equal to us, and the ways our culture first misleads us into being confused about these.
Do people think of the laws of nature as good or evil? Certainly we accept the idea that those laws exist in the world, but since we do not apply them to ourselves could they be considered a necessity? In nature there is death and the struggle to survive, something that is not accepted as in human culture except in the most extreme cases, so the morality of this system seems very ambiguous compared to human values. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay called “Nonmoral Nature” in which he discusses how nature does not follow a strict code of morality. In one section he writes, “Our failure to discern the universal good we once expected does not record our lack of insight or ingenuity but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms.”. In other words, nature is not good or evil but simply an effective system for the survival of each creature, which shows that maybe our rejection comes from a lack of understanding. However, this view does not mention that a species keeping itself alive by competing is a kind of morality in the long term, and the death involved is no different than how we kill creatures for our nourishment. Even if our way is clean and no as bloody as a lion attacking its prey or a parasite attacking a host, the end result is the same, profit for the winner. So even if we look at the animals in nature as having a blunt system of survival of the fittest, we cannot deny that our own survival still requires this morality of humanity being part of the system, even if we are at the top.
Even if animals have a system similar to ours, the differences between us and them are obvious, more specifically in intelligence and ability to communicate. Some animal rights groups fight this problem by revealing how similar animals are to us in hopes of showing the connections man still has to the rest of nature, most of the time not for a large scale changing of culture, but teaching an important lesson nonetheless. In The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan, he quotes Peter Singer, the author of the book Animal Liberation, which argues for equal rights for animals among humans. Singer argues by writing “If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans for the same purpose?”. This brings up the theme of how humans value their own even if animals prove to be as smart as those who are mentally retarded. With this logic, even if we cannot communicate with animals they still deserve respect beyond admiring them on television, in a zoo, or in a park. Advertising how interesting the rest of the animals that are left are is not the same thing as connecting to them, using them for simply entertainment, even if they are in their natural environments is still exploiting them and not providing the equality Singer asks for. Unfortunately, this view knocks us off the pedestal our culture has put us on, and says that we are just like the rest of nature. The lack of animals causes this to not be communicated in our culture, which makes animals even rarer making a cycle that leads to people worrying about humanities problems more because they are always visible.
Another question that reveals the confusion of what to think about nature is how do we value animals in relation to ourselves? And by value I do not mean respect, I mean how much do people think that other life is worth in comparison to our own? According to television, many of the preserved parts of nature with lots of animals look fine, so why should effort be put in to value them? At the very least they will always be on TV. The value we place on the animals we do come into contact with (even their meat) is important because it reveals the judgments we as a society make on the value of life, and how much effort is taken to justify looking down on other animals as subservient to us and not a part of nature. How we treat the real animals reveals our cultural confusion of how to treat nature, because if we treat “normal” animals badly how can we expect to know what nature is? We can see with the way fast food companies treat their animals sometimes animals are not worth as much as our convenience, but other times like with endangered species they are worth vast amounts of money. Since we elevate ourselves, it would make sense that we would elevate some animals to not being in the rest of nature, but instead chosen servants of our food industry. Michael Pollan wrote a book called The Omnivores Dilemma discussing normal Americans choices about what they eat and the truth behind it, including some sections about the morality of eating different foods. In one section he discusses the killing of chickens in the classic small farm way by writing “…the pile [of chicken guts] offered an inescapable reminder of al that eating chicken involves—the killing, the bleeding, the evisceration.” which means that the graphic reality of eating meat is still bloody despite the way it is packaged. Although Americans do not necessarily dislike animals, our lifestyle still ends up with their mass deaths so how can we gain a respect for them and thus a concept of nature in America? Or to look at it on a larger scale, our lifestyle hurts nature in the same way, as we have a hard time respecting nature as a majority of our efforts and economy in life ends up being a metaphorical slaughterhouse toward the natural world. If we looked at animals on our level we would have to change our entire lifestyle in order to manage for them, and that would end up making ordinary living more difficult, so the question of how much animals are worth is really asking how much our society now is worth. Eating animals and using them for our purposes are part of our culture, which while it can be immoral, is also part of our national identity and past. So in order look at animals on our level, we would have to abandon many of the traditions which make this country itself, showing another reason of why it is difficult what to think about nature.
Where does the cultural confusion about the way to deal with the destruction of nature come from and why is it wrong? Even television and media do not explain how it could be so deeply ingrained in our culture. The answer is that we view ourselves as being completely separate from nature, transcending it with our intelligence and creating something that is better: civilization. Even religions put us first, for example the bible says that man was made in god’s image, alluding that he had the divine right to rule to begin with, and is above the rest of the animals. Some can even argue that the Darwinian view supports our expansion by the concept of “survival of the fittest” which we apparently are. However does survival of the fittest have to mean that other species do not survive at all or survive only for our benefit? Even though American culture has the argument of being successful for mankind, the concept of our success is built on the assumption that the ecosystems we cleared away were not as important as our expansion. John Berger wrote an essay called “Why Look at Animals?” in which he discusses the lack of animals in our culture. He ends the essay by writing “This historic loss [of ecosystems with animals in America], to which zoos are a monument, is now irredeemable for the culture of capitalism.” which addresses how our way of life itself is an affront to connecting with animals. This notably points out how our economy reflects wanting to see animals but yet not really save or preserve nature, revealing how even though it is pointed out that while nature is made to be a precious commodity in our culture like in movies like Avatar, this image comes from a consumer culture which is destructive creating confusion. The entire image looks like this: humans consider ourselves rulers of nature, and while we want to rule fairly this also means we get more than a fair share and we are supported by a culture and economy which supports nature on one side (“being green” is more popular then ever) and exploits on another. All of this causes confusion of what to feel, whether it is blessed for a life of comfort or guilty for taking part in this contradicting society.
Going back to the question of how we should feel about nature, there are a lot of ways to think about it, even ones that I have not discussed. For example, thinking about nature not through the animals in it, but through nature being areas that lack humans in it as most residential areas do not include a lot of plants and animals. However, I have chosen to discuss nature this way because when we view animals, they are seen as fascinating, even deer are viewed with awe when seen living close to people. This awe comes from both an understanding of their rarity and a desire to understand how and why animals act and think compared to us. Viewing animals makes people more connected and interested in nature, so the treatment of animals and the way they behave in America reflects our realistic values of nature compared to how we feel about what is far away from us, and allows us to question what we feel about nature by viewing our part in it.
When I think of “nature” or the words “saving the environment” I always imagine some picturesque setting of giraffes walking across a plain with a sunset behind them set to music. This is caused by seeing this image over and over, in National Geographic, movies set in Africa, the show Planet Earth, etc. The reason I think this occurs is because most Americans are unsure what to feel about nature in real life. The theme of “natural beauty” means a complete ecosystem of animals, meaning that for our cultural purposes animals construct our sense of nature. America is not famous for the animals in it except in the national parks, and a lot of people do not see those, especially since some of the most famous places are cities like New York or Los Angeles where the idealistic nature is completely absent from. The effect this creates is that people think of nature as something that is far away and while pretty, too savage for civilization. The animals in our culture are then thought of as not really a part of nature but not equal to humanity either. The question of how we should feel about nature is answered by investigating the laws that govern it, how we value the life of animals in America and how they are equal to us, and the ways our culture first misleads us into being confused about these.
Do people think of the laws of nature as good or evil? Certainly we accept the idea that those laws exist in the world, but since we do not apply them to ourselves could they be considered a necessity? In nature there is death and the struggle to survive, something that is not accepted as in human culture except in the most extreme cases, so the morality of this system seems very ambiguous compared to human values. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay called “Nonmoral Nature” in which he discusses how nature does not follow a strict code of morality. In one section he writes, “Our failure to discern the universal good we once expected does not record our lack of insight or ingenuity but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms.”. In other words, nature is not good or evil but simply an effective system for the survival of each creature, which shows that maybe our rejection comes from a lack of understanding. However, this view does not mention that a species keeping itself alive by competing is a kind of morality in the long term, and the death involved is no different than how we kill creatures for our nourishment. Even if our way is clean and no as bloody as a lion attacking its prey or a parasite attacking a host, the end result is the same, profit for the winner. So even if we look at the animals in nature as having a blunt system of survival of the fittest, we cannot deny that our own survival still requires this morality of humanity being part of the system, even if we are at the top.
Even if animals have a system similar to ours, the differences between us and them are obvious, more specifically in intelligence and ability to communicate. Some animal rights groups fight this problem by revealing how similar animals are to us in hopes of showing the connections man still has to the rest of nature, most of the time not for a large scale changing of culture, but teaching an important lesson nonetheless. In The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan, he quotes Peter Singer, the author of the book Animal Liberation, which argues for equal rights for animals among humans. Singer argues by writing “If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans for the same purpose?”. This brings up the theme of how humans value their own even if animals prove to be as smart as those who are mentally retarded. With this logic, even if we cannot communicate with animals they still deserve respect beyond admiring them on television, in a zoo, or in a park. Advertising how interesting the rest of the animals that are left are is not the same thing as connecting to them, using them for simply entertainment, even if they are in their natural environments is still exploiting them and not providing the equality Singer asks for. Unfortunately, this view knocks us off the pedestal our culture has put us on, and says that we are just like the rest of nature. The lack of animals causes this to not be communicated in our culture, which makes animals even rarer making a cycle that leads to people worrying about humanities problems more because they are always visible.
Another question that reveals the confusion of what to think about nature is how do we value animals in relation to ourselves? And by value I do not mean respect, I mean how much do people think that other life is worth in comparison to our own? According to television, many of the preserved parts of nature with lots of animals look fine, so why should effort be put in to value them? At the very least they will always be on TV. The value we place on the animals we do come into contact with (even their meat) is important because it reveals the judgments we as a society make on the value of life, and how much effort is taken to justify looking down on other animals as subservient to us and not a part of nature. How we treat the real animals reveals our cultural confusion of how to treat nature, because if we treat “normal” animals badly how can we expect to know what nature is? We can see with the way fast food companies treat their animals sometimes animals are not worth as much as our convenience, but other times like with endangered species they are worth vast amounts of money. Since we elevate ourselves, it would make sense that we would elevate some animals to not being in the rest of nature, but instead chosen servants of our food industry. Michael Pollan wrote a book called The Omnivores Dilemma discussing normal Americans choices about what they eat and the truth behind it, including some sections about the morality of eating different foods. In one section he discusses the killing of chickens in the classic small farm way by writing “…the pile [of chicken guts] offered an inescapable reminder of al that eating chicken involves—the killing, the bleeding, the evisceration.” which means that the graphic reality of eating meat is still bloody despite the way it is packaged. Although Americans do not necessarily dislike animals, our lifestyle still ends up with their mass deaths so how can we gain a respect for them and thus a concept of nature in America? Or to look at it on a larger scale, our lifestyle hurts nature in the same way, as we have a hard time respecting nature as a majority of our efforts and economy in life ends up being a metaphorical slaughterhouse toward the natural world. If we looked at animals on our level we would have to change our entire lifestyle in order to manage for them, and that would end up making ordinary living more difficult, so the question of how much animals are worth is really asking how much our society now is worth. Eating animals and using them for our purposes are part of our culture, which while it can be immoral, is also part of our national identity and past. So in order look at animals on our level, we would have to abandon many of the traditions which make this country itself, showing another reason of why it is difficult what to think about nature.
Where does the cultural confusion about the way to deal with the destruction of nature come from and why is it wrong? Even television and media do not explain how it could be so deeply ingrained in our culture. The answer is that we view ourselves as being completely separate from nature, transcending it with our intelligence and creating something that is better: civilization. Even religions put us first, for example the bible says that man was made in god’s image, alluding that he had the divine right to rule to begin with, and is above the rest of the animals. Some can even argue that the Darwinian view supports our expansion by the concept of “survival of the fittest” which we apparently are. However does survival of the fittest have to mean that other species do not survive at all or survive only for our benefit? Even though American culture has the argument of being successful for mankind, the concept of our success is built on the assumption that the ecosystems we cleared away were not as important as our expansion. John Berger wrote an essay called “Why Look at Animals?” in which he discusses the lack of animals in our culture. He ends the essay by writing “This historic loss [of ecosystems with animals in America], to which zoos are a monument, is now irredeemable for the culture of capitalism.” which addresses how our way of life itself is an affront to connecting with animals. This notably points out how our economy reflects wanting to see animals but yet not really save or preserve nature, revealing how even though it is pointed out that while nature is made to be a precious commodity in our culture like in movies like Avatar, this image comes from a consumer culture which is destructive creating confusion. The entire image looks like this: humans consider ourselves rulers of nature, and while we want to rule fairly this also means we get more than a fair share and we are supported by a culture and economy which supports nature on one side (“being green” is more popular then ever) and exploits on another. All of this causes confusion of what to feel, whether it is blessed for a life of comfort or guilty for taking part in this contradicting society.
Going back to the question of how we should feel about nature, there are a lot of ways to think about it, even ones that I have not discussed. For example, thinking about nature not through the animals in it, but through nature being areas that lack humans in it as most residential areas do not include a lot of plants and animals. However, I have chosen to discuss nature this way because when we view animals, they are seen as fascinating, even deer are viewed with awe when seen living close to people. This awe comes from both an understanding of their rarity and a desire to understand how and why animals act and think compared to us. Viewing animals makes people more connected and interested in nature, so the treatment of animals and the way they behave in America reflects our realistic values of nature compared to how we feel about what is far away from us, and allows us to question what we feel about nature by viewing our part in it.
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