Social Norms

If I were just sitting on a couch one day and suddenly was ripped away from my normal environment and life and thrown into another time period to a place where I would be constantly in great danger, I’m pretty sure I would have a nervous breakdown. The shock of time travel, combined with the terror of living in a place where people can beat and control me, would definitely be enough to send me “over the edge”. Dana, remarkably, is not only able to control her panic, but she is also able to concentrate and think through her actions enough so that she manages to protect herself and her identity from harm.

Aside from the fact that she is forced to think clearly at all times in antebellum south in order to survive, Dana also adjusts quickly to her environment under the pressures of social norms. As the story progresses, Dana assimilates more into the life of a true slave. It seems to me that she willingly makes these accommodations, in order to be accepted by the other slaves of the household. There is clearly a clique of slaves, and Dana must abide by certain social norms in order to fit in with this group. Indeed, at first, she faces immediate judgment by other slaves for her unusual clothes and educated speaking ability. While hints of her former personality occasionally shine through her new “slave” self, Dana struggles to keep herself very similar to the other slaves. Dana wants to stay sleeping in the attic with the other slaves. She accepts the demeaning role as Kevin’s “personal” slave. She eats and does chores with the rest of the slaves. Dana has no reason to please her co-workers, yet she changes herself under the pressures of social norms to fit in with the rest of her apparent class in this society.

The power of social norms influences all of us, all the time. Kindred is an extreme example of a person acting under societal pressures, yet its extremity is what renders us able to view this pressure so clearly. Butler has managed to take a woman from one reality and place her into an entirely different reality, while having her “fit in” with both realities. Because the realities are quite contrasting, in order for Dana to live comfortably in both, Dana must be the one to change herself to fit with reality. How she changes herself is clearly dictated by the unspoken rules of society, which shows the undue pressure people are burdened with by social norms.

Defining Reality

In the middle of the night, as you stare into the darkness of your room and hover on the edge of dreaming, it may seem plausible enough that your world is an illusion. Overly philosophical minds might even take that into their daylight hours in conversation with friends or park-bench poetry. When the moment stops being right, however, it is an idea from which is easy to walk away.

So I'm going to take a moment to discuss some "real-life" instances where reality has been shaped by the people in power. I will do this with ideas blatantly ripped from discussions in my sociology class!

Have you ever heard of the term 'reification'? It means thinking of something as a concrete object that really isn't a concrete object. Like 'society'. I've heard people say that "society tells us to do" this or that, even though it doesn't really. Our parents tell us to do this or that, or we figure it out by watching specific people in our daily lives. There is no such thing as 'society'. It is just a term used to abstract the way things currently are. Making it into a concrete thing, though, makes it seem a lot more unchangeable than it really is.

When we reify things like occupational positions, it can have severe impacts on the identities of individuals. As Randall Collins says in his 1979 essay "The Political Economy of Culture", 'the term position is only a metaphor (although it is widely accepted and taken for granted) for the seemingly object-like immutability of a collection of behavioural patterns'. A doctor has a particular set of duties, but those duties don't always have to be grouped together into one occupation. And who decides what credentials you need to be a doctor, in any case?

Things aren't the way they are just because things happen that way. At some point, someone had to define what a doctor was. How they are defined, and what credentials you need, and how the financial system works in relation to your job, keep some people out of the occupation and make it easier for others to get in. Things like this create some of the class identities and individual identities that sometimes we consider unchangeable.

All you have to do is look at different places around the world to see that these identities don't have to be one way or another. The powerful are powerful because they have "the capacity to form alliances and to impress others with a given definition of reality" (Collins) that favors themselves.

If you think about it, various 'cultures' themselves are different ways that reality can play out. Yet we take cultural constructs for granted as if they were unchangeable, taking the words of 'society', of those parents and individuals I mentioned earlier who say this or that.

You know why doctors are the way they are? Because that's how lots of people define a doctor now. We uphold culture. We create reality. It doesn't have to be as disorienting as Inception. Everyday, we are being manipulated into thinking of something as 'normal' that doesn't necessarily have to be that way.

Want to be powerful? "Form alliances" and then form your own "given definition of reality". The possibility to change things is a lot more plausible than we often think.

More about Authenticity

There has been much talk in class and on the blog of authenticity and how we measure it. Some have proposed levels of authenticity, others have found certain standards for authenticity or reached the conclusion that no one object or idea may be more authentic than another. Personally, I believe our quest for authenticity closely parallels our probing for absolute truth. I think were better off accepting that we not going to find anything of the sort in the near or distant future. In The Man in the High Castle, Tagomi shares a thought that efficiently argues the point I want to make. “We really do see astigmatically, in fundamental sense: our space and our time creations of our own psyche” (233). Its all about perception. Whats authentic to one person is not neccesarily authentic to another. Take Tagomi's Colt .44 for example. He fires it and kills several members of the SD. I think this is enough to warrant its authenticity, no matter its date of manufacture or “historicity”. Interpreting this quote more broadly, the malleability of reality allows us as readers to understand how several narratives in this novel that contradict each other can simultaneously exist. The end of the novel reveals the truth of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy as a distinct facet of the reality of the novel but we must not discount the initial reality we are introduced to. We know from Tagomi's experience with the piece of jewelry that he can move from two very different reality. Which one is true? That's really not important nor is it possible to answer. I guess there both a little true and a little false. What's important is that they seem to exist in the novel and that's enough to satisfy me.

Inspired Authenticity

When Ed McCarthy brought a collection of EdFrank jewelries to Childan, Childan thought to himself, “With these there is no problem of authenticity.” (147) At this point, Childan was dubious as to whether any of the artifacts he previously owned was indeed historically significant as they claimed to be or was a mere imitation. So, it would be proper to think that EdFrank jewelries were authentic since they didn’t claim to be what they were not. However, we know that both Frank and Ed were previously employed by W-M Corporation, the same company that was shipping imitations of Americana to Childan’s store. In that sense, the jewelries that they made were produced by hands that had become skilled at replicating art. Their creation of art must have been inspired by the art that they had been imitating for so long. So, I could not help but be a little skeptical when Paul said, “It is authentically a new thing on the face of the world.” (176)

That line of thought, in turn, made me question the authenticity of just any piece of art. Can we ever really create something entirely original? Every artist learns art from older pieces of art; most artists name a role model they look up to. Even a simple blog post we write is inspired by the books we read or the authors we like (or by the models decided upon by our education system and style guides). So, can anything ever be entirely new and authentic? And if it is not entirely authentic, is it fake? Does that suggest a scale for authenticity? For example, if I write a story that sounds a lot like something written by my favorite author, it might be considered less authentic than one that doesn’t sound so familiar. So, could there be different levels of authenticity? Like different layers of reality?

Once again, it is up to us to decide our own standards for authenticity, or to decide that there is perhaps no absolute authenticity. Either way, we all choose, consciously or unconsciously, our own personal truth about authenticity.

Alternative Reality

In the Man in the High Castle we see the thin line between supposed-reality and true-reality and how closely related the two can be. When we first started reading the novel we thought it was effective because the alternative reality was so similar to our reality. There were cars, adequate technology for the time period and the fundamentals were the same it was just the social and cultural difference that we really picked up on. What really made this novel uncomfortable and eerie was the fact that we were able to connect more so with the alternative reality within the novel. Because of this, we are sent into a tizzy about what to believe. Which is were the central theme of authenticity once again comes into play. We do not know which life is truly authentic; whether it is the world where the axis won the war or the allies. Both are legitimate in our minds because of their similarities, but because of their differences we are able to stay at a distance and not shy away from the novel. For Juliana and Mr. Tagomi the world in which the allies win the war becomes authentic because they witness it .

Then, the world that Childan and all of the other characters live in is just as real, and since only two characters truly saw the “real” world and are not blinded by this “alternative reality” how can we say which one is reality and which is the alternative? If this was a majority wins situation, the axis power’s rule should be “reality” for this novel. But this pushes the idea of what reality is and if there can be two separate realities operating simultaneously. How can this be? Well, we cannot prove that it cannot happen. And its important because we can study both of these simultaneous realities to gain more knowledge. It allows us to understand and think critically about history and what could have been. This kind of knowledge or understanding can aid decisions in the future and allow us to see things from other perspectives. One thing we can take out of this novel and all the other ones that we have read is a base understanding and acceptance of multiple perspectives.

The Placebo Effect

I wrote my last blog post on the issue of authenticity and “historicity” and this post deals with the same topic because I feel that it is extremely important throughout the entirety of The Man in the High Castle. As I was reading the novel and thinking about historicity and authenticity, a scene from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince popped into my head. The morning before the first Quidditch match of the year Ron was extremely nervous. Harry, who had won a bottle of Felix Felicis (liquid luck), saw how nervous Ron was and decided that he needed to do something about it. He pretended to slip some of the Felix Felicis into Ron’s drink and Hermione saw and thought that Harry had poured in some of the real thing. Hermione proceeded to tell Ron not to drink it, but of course, Ron did anyway. Ron, believing that he had liquid luck on his side, performed extremely well during the match and Gryffindor won. Harry did not tell Ron and Hermione until later on that he had not actually given Ron any of his Felix Felicis; Ron had played extremely well all on his own.

It was due to the placebo effect that Ron had been able to build up his confidence enough to play as well as he did. Ron believed that there was “authentic” Felix Felicis in his drink and therefore he benefited from its effects although it wasn’t really there. The placebo effect is an interesting way to look at authenticity. If we believe something is real, then to us, it is. This effect has been shown to have validity outside the realm fiction as well, especially in the field of medicine. Many times, to conduct research on the effects of a drug, a control group will be given a placebo pill and told that they are taking the real thing. Often this group will benefit from some of the positive effects of the drug although they aren’t actually taking it. Just because the control group believes that the medication is authentic, they actually get authentic effects from the placebo medication. This shows the extreme power of the human mind to control how we feel both physically and mentally.

It seems that the placebo effect can be applied to anything that we believe is authentic, but that actually isn’t. Just as in that case when people believe that a medication is real when it actually isn’t and therefore still experience the effects of the actual medication, we can believe that an object is historically authentic and then to us, it is. Everything always comes back to this idea of perspective. Everyone has a different idea of what is authentic and different things will be authentic to different people.

Even the fake is real

This afternoon I boarded the Amtrak bound for Utica. I have made this trip before, as well as many others on the train and never have I had a conversation like I did today. It was just a “how small can the world be?” type of moments, like seeing a someone you know on vacation half way around the world. Thinking that the reading assignment for Kindred was due by Tuesday, I got a head start on the reading the first few sections. As I pulled the book out of my backpack the guy sitting next to me immediately asked, “How far into the book are you?” No other questions asked. I told him that I haven’t started yet and he said he just finished it for a literature class he was currently taking at University of Buffalo. He happened to be a sophomore enrolled in an English 101 course, and I told him that I was taking a comparative literature course currently focusing on the truth and lies in stories and the authentic and fake. He found it so interesting, and seemed almost jealous that I had the ability to take a course like that.

I asked him what the story was about, and he said, “I did not end up finishing it, but I had no idea what was going on, what was real and what wasn’t, so that would be a perfect read for your class.” I have not read far enough to make conclusions, but so far it seems as if it is comparable to The Man in the High Castle in a sense that towards the end of the book the reader’s interpretation could have been flipped and reversed the plot. What if the Grasshopper Lies Heavy story was the truth in the story? And the lives the characters were living was the fiction in the story. It is interesting to think about, and I am excited to see if Kindred evolves as a story in the same way Man in the High Castle does.

In regards to the authentic and the fake. It seems as if people want to have the authentic because the way they feel while having it, or wearing it. A sense of confidence. For example, somebody wearing a fake is probably the only person aware that it is fake because an observer would not notice on the street that a watch is not authentic. Fakes are so "real" looking today that even the fakes seem real.

Ritual Solidarity

After reading past posts about the importance we put on the authenticity of objects such as signatures and items used by specific people, something we have discussed in sociology caught my eye. Flipping through my pages of notes I came across our lecture on ritual solidarity and the importance of objects within ritual solidarity.

The Durkheim theory of ritual solidarity states that a heightened sense of solidarity between people is created when taking part in a ceremony of sort that contains lots of people close together, doing a predictable and ritualized activity and all focusing on the same thing. Ritual solidarity is seen in everything from fans at a sporting event to a religious service. We, as humans, gain a certain emotional high from this ritual solidarity. This “enhanced emotional state” is very, very enticing to humans and it is what causes us to return daily, weekly or annually to the same place for the same ritual.

As Randall Collins points out, the most important reason for why we return to such rituals is because of symbols. During rituals, certain symbols are “charged” with the emotion of the people. This symbol is then taken by people back into their ordinary lives and continuously reminds them, or “re-charges” their memory, of the ritual. An example of these kinds of symbols is a crucifix necklace. By being brought to a ceremony and by being a main focus during an individual’s experience, it will remind people of their “emotional high”.

I think that this is important, because it is what causes us to put extreme importance on the historicity or authenticity of objects such as a persons autograph or an object that person once used. These objects are more important than “fakes”, because they hold and are “charged” with the emotion of the circumstances surrounding the object during a certain point in its existence. Objects that are deemed “fake”, in our eyes, don’t hold the same kind of charged up energy that their authentic brothers have. This is what opens the door to how easily we are fooled by “fakes”. If we believe an object has this charge emotion, then we can believe that any object is authentic.

Free Will and Alternative Realities (Mr. Baynes's Perspective)

On his travel back to Germany, Captain Rudolf Wegner (better known to the reader as Mr. Baynes) reflects on his actions and the dystopia that he lives in. Although Captain Wegner was successful in warning General Tedki about Operation Dandelion, he is not optimistic about the world’s future. Captain Wegner delves into a deep discussion about individual actions and their overall effects:

“Whatever happens, it is evil beyond compare. Why struggle, then? Why choose? If all alternatives are the same…” (pg. 246)

Yet, in just the previous chapter, Mr. Tagomi visits an alternative world that is very different than the world that Captain Wagner contemplates. Also, in the next chapter, the reader learns that the world in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is the “real,” while the world that all characters live in is “fake.” Captain Wegner’s ideas conflict with the ongoing theme of the book—individual actions do matter and one change in an event can influence the entire make-up of the world.

Captain Wegner later sprinkles some hope when he talks about an alternative world:

“On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and bad alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components." (pg. 246)

The characters in this novel are conscious of these alternatives. I point this out specifically in Captain Wegner’s case because although he does not experience a revelation in the same way as Juliana and Mr. Tagomi, he does acknowledge how the world could be different through his thoughts. Captain Wegner is interesting due to his stance on the matter. The two quotes I provided seem to butt heads; the first quote opposes free will, but the second quote speaks of alternate realities. Captain Wegner does not use the I Ching to guide his life, but still struggles with theses concepts of free will; this a common motif weaved into the text of the book.

METACLASS

As I revisit the novel, Man in the High Castle, to find quotes for the outline, I stumbled upon another potential line of foreshadow (someone mentioned another one earlier in the blog). When Frank Frink consults the oracle on becoming a jeweler he receives a convoluted response that involves both good fortune and doom. He reflects, “You can’t have good fortune and doom simultaneously. Or...can you?” (51).

This quote reminded me of our debate in the first few weeks of class on ignorant bliss vs. truth. At the very end of the novel, when Julianna discovers the truth of the Grasshopper Lies Heavy, she has a different opinion on the revelation than Hawthorne and his wife do. On the one hand, Julianna is thrilled to discover the truth and claims to be lucky because she finally knows her reality. The last paragraph of the novel portrays a romantic into-the-sunset ending for her, in which her life appears to be blissful and at balance. On the other hand, Hawthorne and his wife are distraught by the truth and refuse to admit it to themselves. Mrs. Abdensen goes so far as to comment about Juliana, “‘Do you know what you are? This girl is a daemon...She’s terribly, terribly disruptive,’” (258). The very same truth caused both bliss and pain. So again, the answer comes down to perception, which implies ambiguity.

I’m starting to think that Truth, Lies, and Literature is a meta-class that forces us to question our own reality and thoughts by reading novels so that we feel distant from ourselves. Thus far, what I have taken away is that we can only question without expectation for a definitive answer, because I’m starting to think that there are none. However, in questioning is where we learn our own answers.

We have talked in class about how when the I Ching actually gives a true prediction, it is true because the oracle’s predictions are so vague that users can interpret them based on what they feel is true. Dick seems to support this idea. When Frank Frink gets an answer from the oracle that contradicts itself, giving him a good omen and a bad omen, he decides that the good omen was about Edfrank Jewelry but the bad omen referred to “something deeper, some future catastrophe probably not even connected with the jewelry business” (p. 51). This could refer to anything, especially in a world with such potential for nuclear war. Therefore, when Frink decides this refers to a Third World War, this comes from his own personal fears and not from a direct communication by the oracle.

At the end of the book, Juliana and Abendsen ask the oracle why it wrote The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. They receive the hexagram that means “Inner Truth.” If I had been in their place I would have decided that it meant that the themes of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy were true, or as with The Things They Carried that the truth was emotional rather than literal. But both Juliana and Abendsen immediately decide that it means everything in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is the truth, the Axis powers lost the war, and that their reality is false. I feel we have to assume that Juliana and Abendsen make this interpretation because they have had previous suspicions, perhaps similar to the experience Mr. Tagomi had with the Edfrank pin. Juliana and Abendsen are reading the I Ching like we read The Man in the High Castle in this class. The truth we pull out is based on what we already know or believe. I think that if we as readers can take from The Man in the High Castle that we should question our reality, it is not because this is what Dick is telling us directly, but because we have found reason in our lives to question our realities.

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination." John Lennon

One particular section of the novel, The Man in the High Castle, that I found especially enlightening was towards the very end of the work when Julianna Frink is about to reach the writer of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Although I have sadly forgotten the novel back at Hamilton during Fall Break, I can paraphrase one of the thoughts she has in the novel. Essentially, she mentions that it is her belief that her reading of Grasshopper is the correct reading; no one else's interpretation comes close to matching her own interpretation. I feel as if this is important to mention because of the true irony located in her thoughts at the precise moment she has them. In fact, she is on her way to visit the author of the novel. By standard thinking, we might presume that the author has the most correct interpretation of the 'correctness' of interpretations. This idea seems to represent the fact that it is nearly impossible to determine if an interpretation is correct or not; we can only rely on our own thoughts and what we make of the text.

Another question that I thought of when I finished reading the novel was how forged this fake reality of a world was. No one seems to question the influx of fake historical goods and the constant supply of these great artifacts from the past. Furthermore, Abendsen doesn't seem to be a hard figure to kill, if the Nazi's really wanted him dead. Abendsen is listed in the phonebook, I wonder why the Germans can't just bomb his location-it would hardly be the worst of anything they've done. Instead, they rely on a spy attempting to find a woman to court Abendsen-it all just feels too complicated when a bomb could easily wipe out the address. Thus, it seems that Abendsen may be in fact living between both worlds and able to save his own soul by focusing completely on the true reality, the reality of his writing. Thus, he can escape by consulting his own reality.

The Allegory of the Cave by Plato seems to illustrate this scenario that the individuals of The Man in the High Castle live in perfectly. In the Allegory of the Cave, prisoners are chained up in a cave and forced to watch shadows on a wall in front of them. This scenario is the reality for these prisoners. They have watched from birth and believe that everything that they witness is the actual world. Eventually, someone breaks free from the chains and climbs up into the world, our world. There, they can see the light and realize that all their lives they had been living in this fake reality. Abendsen, in a sense, seems to have gained this knowledge. Yet, Plato would argue that he is not doing enough to convince the people of the false reality. When the chosen philosopher-king has made his way up to gain knowledge, it is his duty to go back down into the cave and convince the rest of the prisoners that they are living in a false reality. Yet, the prisoners will not easily accept this information and will more often than not attempt to kill the bringer of true knowledge.

And finally, as Stephen Colbert assures us, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Reality > Illusions ?

I definitely agree with Alyssa’s point that having an escape can bring you happiness. However, after reading The Man In The High Castle and Cat’s Cradle, I think that having an escape from reality creates a form of destruction rather than happiness. At some point, the escape stops being temporary for that person and becomes the actual reality, which can be dangerous. For example, in The Man In The High Castle, the characters consistently consult the I Ching for advice. On the surface, the I Ching provides some kind of relief and joy because they don’t have to worry about particular situations; they are able to behave accordingly to what the I Ching tells them. But after some point they become so reliant on it, that they are unable to view reality. As a result, when the Frank, Juliana, and Tagomi find out they’ve been living a false reality, their personal realities are destroyed because what they thought existed was never there. Trapped within the illusions from the I Ching, the characters are unable to acknowledge their false reality.

In Cat’s Cradle, the citizens of San Lorenzo use the religion Bokononism to escape their poverty stricken lives. However, they emerge themselves within the religion so much that they are unable to think and behave for themselves without the guidance from Bokononism; their reality is Bokononism and the lies it provides. After ice-nine has destroyed the world, the remaining survivors immediately look to Bokonon for counsel on how to continue with their lives. The citizens comply with Bokonon’s advice by killing themselves. This inability to distinguish reality from Bokononism resulted in the demise of the people.

From reading The Man In The High Castle and Cat's Cradle, we should acknowledge that escape from reality causes more harm than good. It may be possible that reality is more pleasant than the illusions we create.

In every book we have read so far, there is always some sort of reference to an escape from reality. This made me wonder, is reality really that bad? In some cases no but everyone has those days when its just too much to handle. Having an escape is justifiable, to some extent. What Im trying to say is that its not ok to go through life in a complete fantasy world but its ok to have something that gives you a temporary escape from the harness that life can sometimes bring. Like Dick talked about in The Man in the High Castle, “Perhaps if you know you are insane, then you are not insane. Or are becoming sane, finally.” You are only crazy if you don’t realize that you are living in a fantasy world. In other words, you are free to escape reality you just cant forget the “truth.”

The reason that having an escape is justifiable is because what good is it to go through life miserable? Your not doing any good for yourself, your community, or the world if your burnt out and depressed. Having an escape allows you to find happiness even in your darkest days. I think being happy is one of the keys to life. If and when all else fails, your still happy then that is the only thing that matters. That in and of itself implies that you have led a successful life. That’s my opinion of course; at the end of it all when your asked, “well are you happy?” and you can confidently answer “yes” then you have lived a good life.

Foreshadowing?

Just something I came across as I was looking back into our reading: When Paul says, “An entire new world is pointed to, by this [the pin]” (p. 176). Is this foreshadowing of how the pin will later point to a “new world” (actual reality) when Mr. Tagomi tries to connect to it, or am I reading too much into this?

Relics & Artifacts

Our class discussion regarding the role of art in The Man In The High Castle prompted me to re-inspect the passage where Paul is describing his “certain emotional fondness” of Childan’s pin (p. 175). Paul notes the differences between a relic and an artifact that I think could add to what we said about the role of art in this novel. A relic can be defined as surviving memorial of something past, such as the ancient medieval shinbone that Paul describes. An artifact is something made by human beings; the pin made by Frank Fink that Paul and Childan are discussing. Paul notes that the shinbone has more historicity than the pin, so one could possibly assume that the shinbone therefore is more “authentic.” However, Paul goes on to discuss authenticity on a level of individual feeling, and “wu.” Through a relic, one can “experience awareness of wu” by looking at the object (p. 176). In this case, the wu is solely within the viewer. An artifact accomplishes much more because the artificer had wu, which he allowed to flow into the piece. Wisdom and understanding are no longer just within the viewer, but strengthened by the wu of the artificer. By contemplating what a certain artifact may “satisfy…we gain more wu ourselves” (p. 176).

Paul therefore connects relics to historicity, and artifacts to a deeper human emotion. What then is more authentic, the relic or the artifact? This is strikingly similar to the quandary in The Things They Carried with the two types of truth; happening truths and emotional truths. I suppose then that each is authentic in a different way, and as we decided in The Things They Carried, it is up to the individual to decide which they believe more. We may choose to believe the relic because we know the definite facts behind the object. Or we may choose to believe the artifact, because through contemplation, we may gain completely new insight that gives a stronger sense of emotional truth. Or maybe we don’t have to choose; we can believe both. Despite what we choose, we still understand that art is very influential in what is deemed “authentic,” even if that definition of authenticity begins to shift.