Blogging Around

   The first blog I commented on was Derek's Matrix dialectic blog. He talked about the battle between between truth and utilitarianism, or Neo and the Matrix, referring to the movie. Although he did spoil the ending of the matrix trilogy, he also explained that there are flaws in both truth and utilitarianism, and that in life they must ultimately coexist.

My comment:

I really like this dialectic, because it moves beyond the surface level of the postmodern role of systems in our life, or the use of technology in the 21st century, and back to the roots of a long standing philosophical conflict. As you said, there is something innately and obviously wrong with the scenario where one patient is sacrificed to save five. The problem is that it is nearly impossible to describe what exactly the moral fault is. Or, in the case of the the matrix, what is it that is missing from a perfect representation of our world? Something is certainly out of place, but it's unidentifiable.

Utilitarianism has the reverse problem. It is easy to describe what makes up happiness- e.g. security, food, water, shelter, etc. But I at least have never come across a decision where it is apparent that one choice I make will lead to less overall happiness than another. There are two many variable and an infinite amount of time for them to play out. I may as well be looking at a mass of incomprehensible codes on a screen.

Deontology is easy to spot and apply in real life, but nearly impossible to describe. Utilitarian theory is simple to theory, but complex beyond solution in practice. Thus, as you said, life is a compromise between the two, a balance of logic and perception.

Thanks for writing about one of the most interesting aspects of The Matrix.

My second comment was about Anya's Metacognition of the Mashup. I was in her group so it was interesting to get a different perspective on the project. She talked about how the Mashup not only changed the way she perceived our topic, but also the way in which she proccesed information. She compared the project to an episode of Glee.

My comment:

Anya, I enjoyed reading your blog because it gave me a new perspective on the Mashup project. Although of I course I knew that we had managed to create a new message, I hadn't fully grasped that the concept we had created was not actually a sum of all of the different parts of our Mashup. Instead, like a musical piece, extra meaning is added in with juxtaposition and order.

If the order had been different, the Mashup would have been confusing, but also less insightful. And if a piece had been deleted it would remove much more meaning than contained within the piece itself.

This reminds me of the Matrix reading, where it was stated that in order for a thought to be false there must also be a true thought somewhere in that person's mind. This is what defines the falseness. In the same way, it was the contrast in our material that created the Mashup.

I thought the same was true of our group as well. I also hadn't realized this, but it was the sheer amount of discussing and quasi arguing which lead to the real insights. Nobody ever "won", or force a certain point of view. Instead, the project grew into an elaboration on the connections between our disparate perspectives. The group interaction was necessary to develop the thesis. This idead is contained within the thesis itself. "Independence shouldn't mean isolation."

Dialectics: Systems and Freedom

    According to Morpheus, the Matrix is an overarching cage built from all aspects of society, which systematically controls and suppresses humanity into a power source. But does the "system" of the matrix really take away freedom?

    The people in the Matrix seem reasonably happy, and America at least is unchanged. Neo talks about his right to a lawyer when he is being interrogated, and this most likely holds true for the rights of voting, religion, speech, assembly, etc. The residents of the matrix believe they are free, because the system fools them into thinking so.

    This is a common tool in business, where products like clothing with customized wording, or mix you own fountain drink stations "empower" consumers to chose their personal experience- as long as they pay the right price and go to the right company.

    Despite its irony, a constructed freedom like this can have actual validity. Someone in the matrix more choice in clothes, food, education, housing, entertainment, and basically every other aspect of human experience than someone in the wasteland outside.

     Morpheus and his crew are shown to be wearing threadbare, indistinguishable clothes and eating the same food each day. They must constantly be on the move and there is little time for relaxation. This is an abrupt departure from their flashy clothes within the Matrix or Ciphers steak dinner.

    So the system of the Matrix does give more choice. It just turns out that the choices are either fake or not well informed. Despite voting and buying, the people in the matrix have no freedom in whether they are ruled by computers and plugged into a machine. They cannot make the choice because they do not know it exists.

    Is freedom then, having sole control of our own existence? If this is the case then the Matrix certainly works against freedom. This is true for systems in general as well.

    Our government works so that the control over our own life is never actually in our hands, despite democratic elections. Instead it is at any time partially in either control of a few representatives or in the control of the majority.

    This control of the elite or the majority operates in business as well. The elite are the psuedo-monopolies, who exert control over basic prices and standards. The majority are what counts in order to make a profit, they exert the most demand and gain the most attention.

    I am thus forced out of control; I have to had over some of my freedom to those who make up the system. But there is a different definition of freedom as well. Freedom can also be measured as the availability of choices.

    Even if I have control I may not have much choice. This is the case in the world outside of the Matrix. The Matrix actually supports a wider range of choice, as I mentioned before.

    The same is true for large, systemized economies, where specialization of labor leads to options in employment and an open market leads to options in consumption. And government allows for you to chose a doctrine that perhaps you personally hadnt heard of, or werent able to fully work out; this is through the choice of elected officials.

    A system of culture or religion expose you to more beliefs  and experiences than you would have otherwise learned of, and allows you to chose a ncihe for yourself. At the same time though, these cultural and religious systems subtlely influence your perception, generally through peer pressure. They are also systems which reduce control.

    The question becomes what is freedom, choice or control? One is generally supported by well-managed systems, and the other is eroded no matter what.

    This question is relevant in the argument over small versus big government, or spirituality versus organized religion. It is echoed in the still ongoing process of industrialization, and in the struggle between sites like facebook and the concept of the internet as a random collection of indepedent blogs and isolated chatrooms.

    The definition of freedom, and its relationship to sytems, will have to be addressed at some point. Especially as we approach the technological growth neccesessary for a matrix-like program to exist.

   

Metacognition: Mashup

    Although I have worked on projects like the Mashup before, this was the first time I dealt with connecting various works and sources on such a large scale. I didn't know how to approach it.

    There were two ways to approach the project that I saw. Either we could plan out the structure of the Mashup carefully, or we could use sources where they seemed to fit with the flow, and hope for inspiration. We tried a combination of these methods at various times; I still do not have an overall preference.

    I did note that when we took the time to plan out our mashup, we created up a greater meaning to the project, with more diverse aspects. However, this drained time. For instance, we spent at least three hours over the course of our project in order to finally decide what the theme and sub-theme would be. The pre-structuring of the Mashup also hampered our realization of new ways to address the theme.

    This is where the uncontrolled creation based method was useful. Becuase we didn't care about including poor sources in our list of potential materials, we compiled a variety of viewpoints , from foreign policy to philosophy to teenage angst. Most of these did not appear in the Mashup, but it allowed us enough elements to chose quality segments that fit into our blog.

    On the other hand, when I tried to just write my portion of the analysis paragraphs with this "go with it" method, the results weren't as useful. Although my paragraphs were finished quickly they were poor quality and I needed to edit them several times to get them to the right level. This probably would have been the best method if time was not an issue, but with the limited time frame of our Mashup my initial uncontrolled method lost valuable time on editing.

   As I learned from issues like this, the emphasis on time for this project really changed the dynamic of my work.At first I approached the project idealistically. Yes, in a perfect world, the best way to create a Mashup would be to let the ideas flow and then slowly refine them, in order to create a final project that is as insightful and authentic as possible.

    However the high school world of weird schedules, random fieldtrips, and the approaching end of the year is not perfect. Pragmatism needed to come into play and so we had to plan out our Mashup before we knew exactly what was going on , tweaking it along the way. Luckily we were able to find a balance.

   I naturally resented being forced to counteract  excitement and idealism with a measure of pragmatic realism, but from this current perspective I appreciate it. As great as grand plans, authenticity, and ideals can be, without molding them to reality they have no impact at all. 

   
   

 

Reflections: A Middsummer Night's Dream

   If I had a choice in being either a playwrite or a director, I'd choose to be the writer. The script of the play contains the actual story, while the production crew merely tweak it. But when watching A Middsummer Night's Dream I realized how much a play can change based on what isn't written down.

   The most striking moment where I saw this was right after the workers had finished their play. Hippolyta picked up a flower, looked at Bottoms for a moment, and then threw it to him. There was obvious significance in this moment.

   And yet Hippolyta had never met Bottoms before. Instead, it was her counterpart Titania he met in the forest. The scene implied a connection between Hippolyta and Titania. This adds a whole new aspect to the play, as the fairy world and the mortal world could now be distorted images of each other.

   There is nothing in the script that speaks of this connection, or a least nothing that I could hear. Instead it was created through the decision of casting the same actors for both sets of monarchs, and by the moment at the end.

   Though the potential for this other level was clear in the plot, it did not have to come to fruition. But the director, or perhaps another member of the production staff, chose the direction the play would take.

   Other, smaller details also had major effects on the impact the play left. Early twentieth century clothes made the characters much more sympathetic than a toga would have. For me, the clothes reminded me of the struggle for women's rights that was started during that period, which was echoed in the play.

   On the other hand, I thought the clothes jarred with spoken language. They didn;t quite fit in. And that is why I still would rather be the writer. Ultimately the words of a play have the final say in how the play will direct itself. If you don't respect the context of the play, then it won't quite make sense.

   The best part of Shakespeares works is that these little inconsistencies don't happen very often. Shakespeare's work is often sightly fantastical to begin with, and yet it is grounded in the characters and their emotional narratives.

   It is this foundation which allows directors and actors to tweak the play in order to say what they want about it. The plays are realistic and human enough that each conversation contains many aspects of life, and it up to the theatre which they want to emphasis, and which they will leave in the background.

There are gaps to be filled by nonverbal suggestions and audience imagination, but throughout they must all be centered around the original structure.

Metacognition: The Short Story Process

My problem with writing is that I love reading. I've learned to tell when a story is well written and worth my time, as opposed to an unoriginal waste of paper. Unfortunately, this makes reading my own writing difficult.

I would never willingly read my fiction if it were another author’s work. If I were forced to, it’s likely I’d criticize the lack of new ideas or intriguing plots. To put it simply, my stories seem like they have been written twenty times already.

This is less important in blogging. My blog is supposed to reflect my perspective, which is slightly distanced from all other viewpoints. But a short story is more about generalities. And this is where the issue of unoriginality comes into play.

It’s true that I may notice this more than others would, because I typed the words in the first place. I know that I almost never find ideas which I feel urged to turn into story. I am less interested in anecdotal details of people and situations than philosophical concepts.

In my first attempt at a full story, I tried to use philosophy as a basis. Instead of giving my narrative the backbone it needed, however, the half referenced ideas just dragged the entire piece down. 

The story was so far gone that I couldn’t imagine reworking it, and instead started again from scratch. But I faced the same problem as I’d started with. There was nothing to write about.

            Because I didn’t feel any compulsion to commit my thoughts to paper, the words were slow in appearing on the screen. In the midst of this process I forgot one of the vital rules of writing; don’t be afraid to write a terrible first draft.

            I kept deleting entire paragraphs, and even started over after half of a page of work. Instead of pushing ahead, I continually looked back. I could not find a reason to just get the writing out.

            Looking back I can say that this was a huge problem, but not the root cause. Instead of planning out my story line, I waited for the story to come to me. Of course this didn’t work, and so I stalled and fixated.

            Instead, I should have planned the story out in the same way that Mr. Allen later showed us, with a description of the process the main character goes through in the book. The plot itself would still be contrived, of course, but at least the language would flow more freely.

            In fact I have decided that the best way to gain from writing assignments like this one is to focus on the style and details of the story. I shouldn’t expect that I have something important or original to say; I have only been alive for 16 years.

            But in the future, when I am older and more experienced, I may want to write something I have learned. While I don’t care much about my short story now, it will hopefully teach me good habits to use at a later date.

Change of Mind: Structure Vs. Narrative

   While structure is obviously neccesary to a bulding or a company, it is less obvious in a story. There do not appear to be levels or a method to a good peice of fiction, it just flows. This is why I used to believe that the structure of a story was created by the story's narrative, its flow.

   I assumed that a story was a string of observations which built apon each other sequentially, in order to get some sort of message across. At fist glance, this does seem to be the case. However, great writing does more than this.

   For example, in Heart of Darkness the narrative slips in and out of structural layers. There is the fabled exploits of Mr. Kurtz; they are retold to Marlowe by various characters, each story with a different perspective. The "harlequin" man is worshipping, while the station master is resentful.

   These problems with the consistency of this level of the story highlight how confused and lost Marlowe really is. He wanders around in confusion and, for the most part, apathy. He doesn't care about any causes for civilization or science, and yet he still cant see anything more than the hypocracy of the whole situation.

   Marlowe's story is another layer. However, these two sections of the book do not go in a specific order. Instead they intermingle to emphasize each other at the right moments. The garbled stories of Mr. Kurtz show Marlowe's state of mind, while at the same time Marlowe's mind shows us what is behind all of the fiction he is being told.

   One more layer which adds to this effect is the voice of the actual narrative, who provides the perspective on who Marlowe is now, and what his motives really are.The frame nararrator emphasizes how the Congo changes Marlowe.

   Heart of Darkness, however, is not actually a novel depicting this change. While the plot can be mapped out to follow a traditional narrative structure, it is instead about jumping from various levels of the story, to get the meaning behind each.

   I have figured out now that stories written for narrative often fall flat, either through irrelevance or a writers block. But with a developed structure, writers can get at deeper truths and draw on more sources of inspiration.

What If: Marlow is an Unreliable Narrator

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow is not the typical passive and omniscient narrator. As a character himself, he has difficulty telling his own story; he says it is like describing a dream. Thus the phrase "unreliable narrator" was used repeatedly in our class discussions.

Yet I at least assumed that Conrad only added this concept in as commentary on the way we exchange and process information. It seemed unlikely Conrad would have wanted any reader to take this unreliability to seriously because they might then discredit the entire book.

But what if Marlow is lying about his experiences, either to himself or to his crewmates? This assumption undermines any analysis of the book's events. On the other hand, it allows us to see Marlow  the character more clearly. If the events of Marlow's story are edited, then he must have had a motive for every word.

This brings up a couple of questions. First of all, why did Marlow start to tell the story in the first place? Marlow begins talking about the ancient Roman conquest out of the blue. He doesn't bother to actually compare it to modern colonialism, and instead just abruptly changes topics.

However, before he changes topics he mentions an idea being the only redeemer of conquest of a new territory. This, the, is probably the central to Marlow's goal in telling the story. Perhaps this is the idea in which the social climber at the station references, when he talks about Kurtz genius and his efforts.

Kurtz too attempts to use this idea to his advantage, with his brilliant essay on the proper way to civilize the "savages" of Africa. Kurtz clearly doesn't believe in this by the time he dies, and it appears that Marlow doesn't either.

For near the beginning of his story, Marlow talks about how meeting Kurtz "seemed to throw a kind of light." Yet his last words in the novel are "It would have been too dark-too dark altogether." From this contrast it seems that Marlow's story is really meant to tell his companions about the fading of light, the fading of enlightened ideals which occurs in Africa.

Thus I believe Achebe when he says Heart of Darkness is a warning about the Kongo. If Marlow does have motive, he seems to be telling us that it is in the Kongo that the lights of London, of civilization, fade into darkness.