Arthur C. Clarke Makes His Last Orbit Around the Sun

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Clarke’s Third Law. Arthur C. Clarke, 1973.

Harken the words of Sir Arthur C. Clarke! What a fascinating man, indeed. The hard science fiction writer, futurist and inventor has been a giant in the scientific community for decades. A beacon of science and technology, Sir Clarke’s influence on the scientific community, and humanity in general, is unparalleled. I was fortunate enough to run across Clarke’s writings during college. I’d always known and loved 2001: A Space Odyssey because of the film by Stanley Kubrick. Most of all, I enjoyed his writings for their relevance and ofttimes prophetic nature. In 1962, Profiles of the Future was published in book-form. Here’s what my Bantam paperback edition published in 1964 says on the back cover:

“‘Contact with extra-terrestrials.’
‘Artificial breeding of intelligent animals.’
‘Machines which can duplicate everything including themselves.’
‘Human immortality.’

No! This is not the world of science fiction! This is how we will actually live in the year 2100 A.D. when gravity will be controlled by man, when robots will probe the secrets of earth’s interior, when machines will be more intelligent that the most intelligent human beings!

This is the wonder world of the future as seen by Arthur C. Clarke, the distinguished author and scientist. Here is a brilliant, fascinating prediction of the next one hundred fifty years of Man.”

In the above mentioned work, Clarke refers to a “global library” to be available to all by 2005. Whether or not Google directly references Clarke in their Google Books Library Project, he’s ostensibly in the background, providing inspiration for new paradigm shifts in thinking.

Most importantly, he inspires mankind to strive for something greater. There is nothing impossible! Whether his predictions were off-the-mark, or right-on is not as important as his vast influence on the scientific and literary communities, and humankind in general.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke died in his home in Sri Lanka of breathing complications on 19 March 2008; merely days after he’d reviewed the final manuscript of his latest work, The Last Theorem, co-written with Frederik Pohl.

Filed under: Literature, Arthur C Clarke

Meme Games: Fun With Haikus

Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry consisting of seventeen syllables in three lines of five, seven and five syllables. They generally do not rhyme. Here’s an example:

One man

and one fly

waiting in this huge room.

-Issa

Nature is often the subject of Haiku. Comparing time and place with an intense image or observation seems to be a trend. Modern Japanese Haiku seem to push the traditional boundaries, using more or less syllables per line.

Given the English language can compress information–syllabically speaking–compared to the Japanese, many American poets suggest a 2-3-2 form in order to get at the essence of the traditional Japanese Haiku.

In the comments section of this post, I’d like to see some of your Haikus, traditional, modern, or a mix of both. Be creative and really look at the world before you submit them.

Here are three that I have written (in the traditional 5-7-5 manner):

Looking at the Wall,

Shadows dance like stars at night;

Let us see the Sun!

Stand in oppression.

Ignore the light from afar;

Puppets dazzle mind.

Hypnotized in trance,

Eyes dead to universals.

Laugh and sing and dance!

Filed under: Literature, Haikus

Aldous Huxley's Belated Birthday Greeting

Huxley drawing by Don Bachardy, Los Angeles, 1962

Alright, so I don’t want to have to wait another year to basically say that Aldous Huxley has been an immense impact on my life. His birthday was yesterday, 1856.

Brave New World impacted me heavily as a child and I think that my current interest in the trends in science–the idea that science has become a conquering machine (alla Descartes; cf. his Discourse on Method Book Six), i.e., technological and ultimately sophistical rather than simply inquiry. Aristotle noted that science should be in the form of an attempt to understand the physical world (cf. his Physis), however, that idea has long since gone awry and most noticeable of this is the idea that technology is somehow equal to science.

But this is going away from the subject. Huxley means a great deal to me and because he touched me so early in life, I will share with you an essay I wrote about Brave New World waaaay back in ninth grade (freshman year of high school) for my English GT class. I will note that I recovered this essay a few years ago from a disk I used in high school from an old Macintosh machine. Evidently, I did the cover page at home (I tended to print very lavish cover pages as opposed to the minimal textual norm) and have since lost it, given there have been several new machines flowing through my house since then. Anyway, so to make a long story short, I don’t have any recollection of what the essay was called. So, I’ll just call it “Huxley Essay.” Yeah. And here it is:

“Huxley Essay” — circa 1995

What separates human beings from other mammals? Both have minds, instinct, capacity for knowledge, and most distinguishing, choices. But man began with a little something extra, something that delegates guilt, expresses powerful emotional feelings, restores faith, and creates a conscience; that something is the soul. Through technology and science, man uses his drive for knowledge to create mechanical and chemical objects and science related formulas, all this to ease the difficulty of life. Once this is done, man begins to get selfish desiring machines called computers to do all the work for them, programming the machines to do as man wills. Once man has developed enough technology, his leaders begin to hold back information, because with knowledge comes power, and to keep this power, man must restrain man; is technology the pathway to digression?

WAR

During World War Two Adolf Hitler seized control of Germany as a whole by keeping the Germans at distance with the truth. Hitler controlled the BBC radio lines throughout the entire country, filling it with Nazi propaganda and false news reports that always favored the Germans. This increased Hitler’s political power and the morale of his soldiers, giving him the upper hand in the war. George Orwell published this same theory fictionally in his future-fantasy classic, 1984.

“And somehow or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who coordinated the whole effort and laid out the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence” (Orwell 38).

Orwell used this same basic principle to not only give false news reports (of a false war), but also to falsify life itself, erasing history and creating a history in accordance with Big Brother. 1984 used the motto; “War is peace… Freedom is slavery… Ignorance is strength” quite frequently in the novel (Orwell 7). Orwell used “War is Peace” to support the nature of power over the weak in the novel. Explaining that with a constant state of war, there is greater peace in the community as everyone unites to become one strong force and forget any petty arguments. The state can also control the public easier and ration their needs. “Freedom is slavery” gives a need for control and “Ignorance is strength” strives on stupidity to control.

U T O P I A

An overwhelming drive exists between the thoughts of the common man and the nobility of the exceptional, through which an entire realm of absurd intelligence that is marked by the futile as insolence and ambiguity is compensated. Social class and physical stasis embellish the thoughts of the weak and degenerate. The idea of inferiority surpassing the physical superior is beyond insipid and falls under the inane category of impossible. This is all considered by our standards to be an absolute absurdity, but it occurs currently; has occurred in the past, and will most definitely dominate the future as we know it. The path to digression is absolute, for with the growth of man comes the growth of mentality. This drives man to corruption, for there is an underlining climax to the growth and definition of mentality: corruption. The denouement is only the end of mental salvation, however. It is the beginning of menial civilization. “BNW is a benevolent dictatorship: a static, efficient, totalitarian welfare state” (Pearce, 8).

Power under any circumstance involves the progression of the mind, the mind being human, and the human being instinctually selfish. In this post-Darwinian society that we live in, mankind has realized that there is something more to life than evolution, that something happens to be the soul. And, as modern scientists have come to theorize, the soul is but a gateway to the mind, and the mind has overwhelming potential for brilliance. Thus, the conquering of the mind can only be rendered by the mind itself.

To conquer the mind takes absolute precision. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, seems to do a brilliant job of describing just how to do so. In his world, life begins with the chemical manipulation of the brain. This tampering of the mind is the simplest solution. Although Huxley takes it further, utilizing basic manipulation and the theory of collectivism to establish unity in his world. They are taught to need one another, to want what they’ve got; they are taught happiness.

Once the mind has arrived at a certain point, it searches for power. To gain this power involves conquering the feeble minded. Once this is done, the mind moves on to creating the feeble minded, and then it has total control. Once it has reached this point, it must retain stability and ensure the succession of future generations to follow in its footsteps. This is the point at which (the only conceivable) Utopia is met. However, upon realizing this, Utopia seems not to be the perfect community, but only a lie.

THE H E R O

The use of the hero in BNW employs the basic concept of realism aligned with the fanatic views of the Utopian landscape. It agrees with the denial of such a place, and provides a dwelling for true humanity. The meaning of the hero is not to prevail in the end, but to suffer the consequences of humanity, to be human and become corrupt and conform, and to show true humanity realize this corruption and give in to its painful punishment, the absence of life. The only way to truly be alone was to become nothing, to die. John killed himself in the end, not to give up, but to truly prove his humanity, his truth.

The only way to justify the hero’s role is to understand the reasoning behind its origin. One must evaluate not only the occurrences in BNW, but also the logic behind them. John suffered the ultimate pain, death; but he chose this fate, something that the people in the “Other Place” could never do. John was truly human and was truly human up to his death. This is why he was the hero in the novel. Huxley used him as the symbol of all truth and humanity in BNW; and considered it lost and found the same through the course of the book. The outstanding quest that John faced was evident and vital to the basic ideals and theories of the novel.

In BNW Huxley centers his hero among the outcasts of society, a hero among nonconformity, a hero against conformity, and a hero who lacks the qualities of his future Utopian land, but sustains the quality of true intellect. This ensures the establishment of conflict throughout his novel, and he is the man who proves to the reader that what is marked, as a Utopia is completely wrong.

This hero, John the Savage, cannot conquer the powers that be; and he does not prevail in the end, for John gives in to the conformity, but when he realizes this, he hangs himself. Huxley’s hero is corrupted in some sense, and in another he prevails and gives some definition to the novel. John symbolizes all that is good in the “real world.” John is a true hero.

When John emerges from the savage land he is confused and misguided as to the truth of the world of Mustopha Mond. He was brought up to believe that the “Other Place [was a place where] everybody happy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one belonging to every one else…and the happiness being there everyday…” (Huxley 129). And when he heard the news that he was to see this “Other World” he leapt up to grasp the very idea, his eyes lighting up in a most astounding manner, “O wonder! How many beauteous goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it” (Huxley 141).

John ventures to the “Other Place” and finds that it is not quite what he had in mind. Sure there was no pain, all happiness, and all clean and attractive. But it lacked one quality that was vital to him and his fellow old-worlders: truth. No true happiness, true lifestyles, or true attractive. London was only a world of robots programmed to do what Mond wanted them to do for the rest of their brief life. His confusion erupted further when Lenina continued to attempt to seduce him; and although he was very attracted to her he would not give in to her vast attempts at taking him. “The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands away from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm’s length… ‘Whore! Impudent strumpet’” (Huxley 198). John grew to hate the “Other Place” and ventured forth to change it. But he failed as Mond repeatedly denied him any of his intelligible logic, as he attempted to warn the inhabitants of what was becoming of them, as he continued to deny any sexual connotation, without love and promise, to Lenina.

R E L I G I O N A N D S O M A

The advance of technology defaces religion and creates a world absent from God. To gain total control of a community the leader must retain all ideas that might catalyze thoughts and create individualism. By doing this, the leader must diminish god altogether because his people must worship their leader. “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness” (Huxley 240). Mustopha Mond definitely rids the world of god by saying this to John the Savage. This is the definitive, crucial part of the takeover of society.

However, without god, man cannot have faith, an important value of humanity. Without faith, one must argue whether or not retaining a soul is even possible. “A gramme is better than a damn” (Huxley 54). This quote refers to “Soma” the drug used in BNW to cure the ailing of boredom, any amount of pain, or uncomfortableness. Like religion (Christianity being my prime example), Soma gives some sort of hope and cure to problems that the people of BNW go through. However, this breach of hope is only temporary, for permanent problems are not even a threat or a thought away to the society. “Ending is better then mending” is a similar quote that provides a sense of temporary satisfaction (Huxley 52).

R O B O T I C

I n d I v I d u a l s

Individualism brings about an important issue when analyzing the future of our world. Technology has already begun to downgrade past creative outlets. Computers assist drawings, where the hand used to be the key tool. Will movies become strictly computer generated in the years to come? What about radio (techno, industrial, electronica, etc.)?

Without individualism and the ascension of collectivism, come robotic non-human beings under the control of the leader. “Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough” (Huxley 265). This lack of empathy provides obvious non-human qualities and presents a society that resembles the tribal frightenment and digression posed in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The processes of digression resemble that of BNW, but on a smaller scale. Young boys isolated on a remote island, lacking any inhabitants other then swine, try to develop a government fairly, but only end up in war and ignorance. Certain themes flow through the novel that relates directly to the society in BNW. Society without hope: Lord of the Flies depicts a society who is trapped and isolated on a distant island; they’re morale is lost when their only hope for rescue is gone. The society deteriorates morally and socially, and anarchy reigns. Rules are broken, and thus, chaos is served. The beast within: human instinct, wrath, corrupts and encompasses the minds of the imaginative after hope has been stricken from them. Temporary pleasure: the boys would rather hunt and kill and have fun then focus on preparation to be rescued.

Huxley attempts to conceive the evolution of the world as a neurotic self-centered, government of fascism, ruling a community of infantile subhuman followers. This community thrives on “unity” and “stability” and abolishes individualism altogether, propagating collectivism, enhancing the powers of the leaders, and preparing them for world dominance. Science and technology elude the minds of the weak, decreasing any hope of perpetration of retaliation. This enforces confusion that withholds courage and desire to wreak havoc in the world state to achieve the life that they deserve to live.

However, none of this really matters, for the inhabitants of BNW do not actually live, for they are programmed how to live, as if they were mere cyborgs under the control of the programmers.

“Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled” (Huxley 231).

This quote, spoken to John the Savage from the leader, Mustopha Mond, proves my point justly. He wants to keep his superiority superior so he demolishes the capability of learning, escalating only his brilliance so that he can keep a firm grasp on his community. “The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- 8/9s below the water line, 1/9 above” (Huxley 230). This is a perfect model, spoken by Mustopha Mond, to evaluate the true desires of Mond in his endless battle to keep control of his world.

Although this seems somewhat twisted and sick, the paradox of digression through evolution of technology is only a step away. In modern society, our scientists have come up with magic potions and spells to cure the ailing, supernatural flying machines to conquer neighboring lands, and super intelligence machines linked to anything and everything conceivable. This constitutes the very fabric that our world has been threading for centuries, the cures for: war, famine, hardships, etc. Huxley’s world engages in no war, is superfluously satisfied, and diminishes hardships altogether. A world of epoch proportions is this BNW, a seemingly Utopia of perfection, save one important factor: individualism.

Our current world status formulates a postulate including the realm of science and the realm of creativity; for without the latter, what would be interesting in this world? Knowledge is power, and to gain power one must limit the amount of knowledge given to the weak. This is done out of instinct, however, is it just? Will the downfall of our society be the corruption of the human being’s instinctive prowess? Technology seemingly only helps that statement; Huxley may have a critical point that we as human beings should begin to realize.

Filed under: Literature, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Long-Haired Geeks

Why is it that every time I go to a used bookstore, there’s always a long-haired geek in his mid-twenties, yabbering on and on about some sort of Fantasy Cycle, consisting of Halflings and other equally hideous creatures, only some mutant God would have the sense of humor to create? And alone, for fuck’s sake; laughing and giggling with himself like some sort of depraved acid flashback. These same lowly beings are the absolute cream of the coffee shop crop. They flaunt around like wild animals in the darkness, playing live-action Vampire, leaving D&D to the younger breed. But in the wee hours of the night, that perpetual hour of stillness, they content themselves with flippant desires of abstract cool. Anti-name brand labels and facial hair abound as their inflated egos engulf everyone and everything in their immediate vicinity.

Er… Now that I think about it. I’ve been known to play a bit of D&D, and just recently I started playing LORD (Legend of the Red Dragon) again on a Telnet BBS. Oh yeah, and there was that time I read the entire Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in an Internet chatroom. Urg. Well, at least I’m not using Vampire LiveRoleplay as a means to get laid! Yeah, and all that.

Filed under: Literature, Pop Culture, geeks, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Journey to the East and Knulp Discussion.

Hermann Hesse was born this day, 1877, and to celebrate his birthday, I’ll post what I wrote after reading Journey to the East and Knulp, respectively.

"Journey to the East" by Ronnie Landfield, 1994. I am unsure of its inspiration, but it seemed appropriate.

Journey to the East

“Where are we really going? Always home!” — Novalis

Hermann Hesse’s synthesis of characters real and fictional, a League of artists if you will. Their goals remain individual in theory, but ultimately remain for the group–the whole. The League creates a paradigm of spirituality: artistic and beautiful. The tale surpasses that of any novel concerned primarily with a metamorphosis of sorts–a becoming. Instead, it relies on the amalgam of Eastern and Western thought: Eastern philosophy–the One, the culmination of all things–and Western methodology–that of art and Platonic idealism, literature and early twentieth century Europeanism.

We follow H.H. in his travels with the League. His personal goal is irrelevant, as irrelevant as the troupe who found their Bible to be the adventures of Don Quixote, or the scholars who sought Arabian magic, or the men who wished to plant strange trees in Holy lands. What is relevant is the goal of the League as a whole; said best by H.H himself: “For our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times.”º And what better way to acknowledge this home of the soul than to understand and practice the philosophy of the servant Leo: “the Law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long” (Hesse, 34). This, the philosophy of Jesus, the remarkable concept that a man thrust into existence can never understand, and the miserablism of the Übermensch will never attain.

The skeptics who did not understand the importance of faith: of attaining something higher than reason, called the movement such names as “the Children’s Crusade”ºº to show that it was not to be taken seriously. But in order to sustain, the League must perpetuate its first principle, and: “…never to rely on and let [itself] be disconcerted by reason, always to know that faith is stronger than so-called reality” (Hesse, 54). These skeptics are all the men of despair: they have refused to live the faithful life of a servant, humbling themselves to greatness and nobility. They have become something dreadful–they have not awakened.

And I realize I have not awakened. And my problem is that of H.H.: uncertainty.

“Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.” — The Servant Leo (Hesse, 111)

End Notes:

ºHermann Hesse, The Journey to the East, trans. Hilda Rosner (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1972), 27.

ººIt should be noted that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. writes a book entitled Slaughterhouse-Five: Or The Children’s Crusade some thirteen years later. More on that in a future post.

Knulp

The Way into the Village

As I perused a few of Hermann Hesse’s watercolors (he did something like 3,500 watercolors!), searching for something that I felt Knulp would have seen, I began to reflect on the story I cherish so dearly. I’ve read it before, but before I read it with blind eyes. It was simply a tale of wandering–a man who died young, but died happy, amidst his final recollection of his past. I found him to be like Job when God proposed to him life and death, covenant and waywardness. I found it ironic that Knulp was a wanderer, much like the Wild Ass which roams the countryside full of hedonistic rage and folly. I found solace in the notion that a homeless tramp would be endearing to God. Did he suffer as Job did? Did his faithful nature save him? It seems that Knulp did roam the countryside, but he did so as a glimmer of hope: he provided that idea that all men strive for. The carefree tune a musician finds in sweet harmony; the wayward flower which blossoms amidst a gloomy woodland; the man who projects the philosophy of good. Amongst his reflections, Knulp considered places he’d been and women he’d swooned; people he’d affected and joyfulness he projected. As a philosopher he was never dogmatic; he only spoke of the ideal: the good–and insofar as one might stride another path, Knulp would prove a guide in spirit–perhaps simply with a whistle, or a crudely written poem–but he would always allow the man to walk on his own. And now I think he was a man of God: as he mentioned the sitting of Christ with the innocent, young children, where he complimented them on their humbled nature. Or perhaps it was his goodly nature not to give into bestial lusts–an honest man, wavering no principle for temporal pleasure. And what of his reflections on pleasure? His understanding of beauty? He spoke of all things beautiful as those that leave us with a feeling of “sadness and fear” for all things good must surely perish–all things beautiful must decay. This Socratic understanding of love that it is a (lover) longing for something (the beloved)–and once attained, is no longer loved. The lover is endlessly searching for its beloved, as Aristophanes projected (perhaps not for the right reasons) in his tale of the one half, searching for the other–his origin of man. Much the same, Knulp sees that all good things die–and that all good things are good things isolated from other things: they have their own souls, and each soul is new. For what would be pleasurable of a thing that remains beautiful always and never dies?–and a thing much like the rest? One would grow tired of it. And as I reflect, I see it a sad truth that love is something that is forever unattainable, that glimmer in the sky one finds only in his peripheral vision, that exotic flower atop a mountain never trekked by man, that simple philosophical truth which binds us all together. Knulp’s simple answer to the complex problem of The Good is as follows: that man feels happy when good deeds are done, and guilty when bad deeds are done. His attitude is pure and innocent–his existence permeates with joy. What does it matter that psychology defines sociopaths as finding good in bad things? Perhaps it is as simple as Knulp states, much the same as Socrates reflects when he continually perpetuates this idea that all things go to The Good–that some are merely misguided. Knulp’s passion for living–and living for good–justifies his folly, his waywardness, his wandering. A traveler is only shallow if he does not reflect on his travels. Hesse painted his reflections–in this one I see Hesse on the edge of his hometown–while Knulp reveled with God in his.

Thank you Hermann Hesse, for providing me and so many others so much inspiration.

Filed under: Literature, Travel, Hermann Hesse, Journey to the East, Knulp

Long gone, yet still a little prince…

The little prince, drawn by Saint Exupéry himself

It is Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s birthday today. He would have been 104 years old. Despite being one of the greatest author’s I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, he lived an extraordinary life as well. Most of us know him for The Little Prince, however, most of his other novels were related to his life as a pilot—an extremely lonely, beautiful, adventurous and strenuous life all the same. These books show us the fantasy of being a modern-day wanderer while sticking to the reality of flying at the same time.

The wandering theme—something I’ve grown accustomed to throughout the years in my readings of great novels, show us the beauty of being human, the fantastic experience of the seeker, and the desperation of really living life to its fullness. Going back to The Little Prince; we find that this very same theme applies. However, unlike many adult human beings, the protagonist in question seeks only to find experience with his immediate environment. He finds every aspect of his surroundings interesting and vitally important. He looks at the world through the eyes of a true wanderer: he finds beauty in all things. If only we could also find similar beauty in the things we see and feel and experience in our own lives. Now wouldn’t that be a most extraordinary happening.

On that note, a quote from The Little Prince:

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.”

Thanks to Richard Howard’s translation.

Filed under: Literature, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince