>>> Item number 20823 from WRITERS LOG9311B --- (217 records) ---- <<< Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1993 16:16:54 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: ESSAY: Nov. 12, 1993 a rambling tink dedicated to nearly everyone, but with special attention to jc, randy, nikki, and me. My heart is about to break, my mind staggers uncertainly, and I must write, trying to capture at least parts of that confusion in the disorder of my words. With a hope, and a skip, and flutter of fingers on the keyboard, a ramble I will go. Too many issues, too many directions, too many thorns scratching at half-healed scars in the list that I have chosen to spend so much time on. At times, the rewards are great enough to justify the gamble of investing so much of myself in these people that I have met through a new medium (twenty years old, but still young and untested in the history of human relationships). Those occasional payoffs, as in any gambling, can easily create a psychological and emotional dependence which may be mistaken for a problem by those who would prefer that I stick with their costly vices. We have so few terms and ways of talking about those ways of life that engage our hearts and minds which are positive and affirm the goodness found there. Habit has become associated with rutting drudgery or chemical escapes from life, hobby trivializes, and joy - ah, joy is an unknown ephemeral ghost to so many focused on business and consumption. A few quotes from Bradbury's "Zen in the Art of Writing" - not a book of techniques, not terribly focused, but alive with one man's soul shimmering over the black and white pages, trading quips and heartaches for a while with those who read... from the preface: "Yell. Jump. Play. Out-run those sons-of-bitches. They'll _never_ live the way you live. Go _do_ it." "And what, you ask, does writing teach us? "First and foremost, it reminds us that we _are_ alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. "So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all. "Second, writing is survival. Any art, _any_ good work, of course, is that. ....... "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." Re: QUERY Antaeus (that mythical wrestler) stood on a block of feldspar recently and threw down my world in the close embrace of his strong arms. god, that was beautiful, jc! The internal satisfaction and pride, the social interaction (whether real or imagined cannot change or wither that glory), and that illusion that grows and nurtures the soul, in dreams aloft and safe from the slings and arrows of the outrageous world we are condemned to suffer for this time. Randy then played counterpoint, a flute lightly caressing the deep notes into trills of joy and light, pushing higher into glee. [to my readers: If you skipped these, go read them. please.] But the bass tones beat a somber march in jc's SOCIAL: Is this for real? - Caps, I agree with most of what you have to say, but I wish you - wouldn't generalize about men and women. I recently had to drop a class - because the professor kept repeatedly making anti-male observations, - always phrased as sweeping generalizations, though he claimed outside of - class that he was only speaking about "most" men. - It really sucks to be told that because you're a man, you must be - emotionally immature, obsessed with sexual conquest, out of touch with - your feelings, pathologically competitive, over-aggressive, incapable of - true, open friendships, and doomed to wield a poisonous, destructive - sexuality. It *TRULY* sucks Shoggoth when you've just stopped telling - *yourself* these things after twenty years of being brainwashed into - thinking you'll have to follow in the steps of a sexually abusive father - and grandfather -- and someone else comes along and wants to tell you - these same things, and you have to sit there and take it all for a grade. there is a mythos, born of small minds and the search for simplicity, that people can somehow be reduced to easy patterns, frozen and unchangeable. it is a strange mythos, since by its very claim, there could not be the variety and wide spread multiplicity of humanity that can be observed everywhere - there would only be a set of plains running apes, happily performing the same actions as their ancestors in unfaltering ritual that cannot be changed. Perhaps it is like the organic chemist looking at the ingredients for bread. Careful analysis shows that there is an insignificant quantity of yeast, and large amounts of flour, water, etc. Obviously, the massive amounts of flour, water, and other materials will not change very much, and the yeast should be ignored since it is such a tiny proportion of the whole. Personally, I think the yeast is the most exciting part of the process. How does a person, steeped in a culture and society, wrapped tight in psychological patterning by close relatives and friends, stifled by mores, rules, and all the rest of the control mechanisms built up over centuries - how does this person still, regularly and often spontaneously, manage to break loose and become a new person, a better person, a different person than has ever been seen before? I think one of the answers lies in a subject we have a great interest in, for I believe that language, in particular metaphor, is one of the subtlest and most powerful tools that any individual has for reshaping and releasing themselves for their own lives. Let me see if I can say this clearly. The outside world, whether immediately experienced or relayed by intermediates, comes to us powerfully patterned, ordered, and filtered through a personal set of metaphors, of linguistic "handles" if you will. Our actions, whether in response or initiated to cause responses, are selected, aimed, and understood in terms of such sets of metaphors. In so far as these metaphors are passed on to us by our culture, society, and acquaintances, the control mechanisms may and do keep us in line. But one of the glories of humanity is that we can review, re-order, and invent metaphors of our own. That whole linguistic process of matching external experience with internal representations is not frozen, cannot be frozen, and we can control it. We can, in short, break free from the common metaphor set and use our own set, for good or bad, experimenting with imposing our own order on that blooming, buzzing confusion known as life. Even more powerfully, we can choose to share our metaphors with others. Whether through short one-phrase metaphors ("the medium is the message") or such lengthy metaphoric fantasies as start with "Call me Ishmael", we can and do spin metaphoric webs of meaning for those around us, and in writing, for those far away and down through time. That metaphoric "soup" of the greater communal reality has recently been splashing through a new set of pipes, the internet and its relatives. The technology is almost 25 years old - 1994 has been declared the "anniversary" year for it. Some people wonder just what this technology has to do with society and humanity, looking on it with the same kind of fear and distaste as the monks looked at the printing press, claiming that this mechanical monstrosity must squeeze out all good, since it lacks proper illuminated capitals and the friendliness of human lettered print. I will grant, the internet provides a greater threat to those who would impose their metaphors on others without granting them equal opportunities to respond, to criticize, to comment, to contribute alternatives. It is a threat because the medium was designed for equality, with every participant potentially able to contribute. Those who would prefer to silence others correctly see this as a major threat to their domination. If we look at the hierarchy of human needs, netting does little for physical needs such as food and shelter, although it may provide a route for information about ways to satisfy such needs. It also provides little in response to the needs for safety and security, unless being able to send out warnings and call for help should be counted. Some recent experiences with information going worldwide from sites of natural or human catastrophe indicate this ability should not be ignored. Love and belonging, being "one of the gang," is something that the net can begin to provide. Perhaps the most important impact here is not for the many, but for the few - the unloved or uncared for exceptional person, who can reach out through the net across the world to those who understand and share those special characteristics. No longer need a genius be isolated in a small town, or a prophet hidden in his own land. Esteem - honor, rank, fame - surely these needs can be met to some extent through the extension of society in the internet. Again, the minority perhaps more than the majority will gain by using this medium. Self-control - the need for decision, for challenge, for control - is certainly at stake in dealing with society through the internet. From the primary struggle to decide how much time and effort to spend on face-to-face interaction versus mediated interaction to selection and exploration of that greater world some call cyberspace, there are challenges aplenty in the frontier of the mind. Understanding - the thirst for information, for closure, patterning, truth are relatively high on the scale of needs, meaning that until other needs are met, most people will not be greatly concerned about these. But this is perhaps where the internet makes its greatest contribution, allowing information to be collected and spread more easily and effectively than ever before. And as I noted before, the impact on rural and isolated parts of humanity may be the crowning glory of this medium. Artistic needs - there is beauty in the internet, although it harder to see than in previous kinds of art. the interactive games, the prose, the interpersonal play that is springing up and being created - I see these as signs that art is well and alive, even in the relatively limited prose medium now available. Personally, I am rather pleased that so far the "mass media" with its limited sources being fed to the masses has not translated well to this medium, and I hope we can maintain the "grass roots" approach to using it. Self-actualization - this, according to the theory, is the person transcendent, in charge of themself, independent, responsible, and all the other glories of humanist philosophy. I suspect that such a person would see the internet as another medium, with certain strengths and weaknesses, for interacting with other people. Since I have never been too sure what this humanistic deity was like, I'm not sure how the need for self-actualization interacts with the internet. I have no conclusions today, no pithy insights, no way to sum up the ranging thoughts and tie them off. Instead, I have a search which I am happy to share with others, a driving hunt for ways to make a greater tomorrow in company with friends, seen and unseen, alive and dead, real and fictional and unborn, whose words are the lens through which I know the world and am known by it. Would you join me in a toast to the unending hunt? tink