Fiction and Conchis

I think that fiction can belong in one of two categories: useless and useful. The useless category is filled with brain numbing works that don't do you much good except to let you escape from thinking. The second category is of fiction used almost like a weapon, its engrossing and vivid, but sneakily forces you to think about reality. I don't think fiction can be discredited. It can be specifically tailored to connect a far larger audience emotionally to a subject than a nonfiction personal experience generally could. Most of what we "know" of even science is pure theory and hypothesis (based on a few key known facts) just as all fiction is based on some aspect of reality.
Conchis doesn't hate fiction either ("I do not object to the principles of fiction. Simply that in print, in books, they remain mere principles.") he objects to fiction that hasn't been brought alive. He objects to the useless fiction. It's just as Lily says about a repeated bit of Greek "Just the sound. She said "when I first arrived, I couldn't believe it. Thousands and thousands of little black squiggles suddenly alive. Not past, but present"." The specific words of fiction don't matter, the importance of fiction lies in the emotions and thoughts it provokes. Lily had no assigned meaning to the words she spoke, but she nonetheless gained overall in terms of thought.

Also, I found this link to the effect of fiction coming alive on the author (John Cheever). It stoked me into thinking about the effects on Conchis of all the charades that he put on...

Thoughts from Class

I enjoyed the end of the Magus. For one, it wasn't a definitive end. If it had ended either way (with he and Alison together or not) it would have gone against the entire grain of the book. The entirety of The Magus is one huge mystery, the majority of what we do know stems from being told what is not true (versus being told straight truths). Secondly, Nicholas states near the end that he feels that he is finally free (eleuthera) from "their" watch. Our whole lives we've witnessed the pattern of human life, we can predict the outcomes of interactions between people fairly easily. All his time spent and decisions made on Phraxos were heavily influenced by Conchis; his life didn't follow a pattern we could anticipate because he wasn't under much of his own willpower. At the end however, he feels free of this erratic influence. In the final few pages we can finally use our history of witnessed interactions to decide what will happen next as he is finally under his own control. He slips back into the pattern of normal human life, because people can't exist without following a pattern of living laid down before them. Nicholas had no less freedom to live his life under Conchis as he did without Conchis.

Education

Classes based on last minute rote memorization to be spewed up on test day are great, but the real learning stems from the classes that we will remember for longer than it takes to get the desired grade. The classes that are loosely structured so that you have to work to fill in the blanks are the best: the free response chemistry test, the biology lab that you must create a procedure for, the seminar based on texts that every aspect of life. It doesn't have to be just art and philosophy classes that encourage you to think about and change how you live, there are successful biology and chemistry classes that accomplish the same thing. It's not about the subject so much as how it is taught. I think that there isn't enough emphasis on the importance of professors creating situations in their classrooms where students must synthesize their knowledge and use that as a base to create from. True learning comes from applying your knowledge, not just storing facts.

Dillard

The general idea of each of the ten subsections are pervasive each of the other sections. This parallels our lives, where no interaction we have is completely separate from another. The headings aren't enough to let us make these connections, the vignettes following give context. I don't think that these subheadings are the only ones that could be used either. I think Dillard's point is that everything is connected, babies and evil and clouds, by life and death, by a 'god', but mostly through ourselves. Gerrit mentioned this idea that our universe doesn't exist without us. Our unique combination of past interactions has sculpted this present universe that no one else has.

All the statistics and numbers scattered throughout this story are incomprehensible. They're so extraordinarily large that we can't truly comprehend. To sandwich two ideas: imagine 138,000 people, then multiply that by all your singularity, importance, love and complexity. I think that these numbers show us the difference in faith of concrete things versus faith in the intangible. I always thought numbers were concrete, but I'm starting to think they belong more in the world of the intangible and indescribable. When I'm reading this novel, with all the concrete images, and then these outrageous numbers appear, it just makes them seem ridiculous.

I don't find this novel depressing, I find it terribly interesting. I wield this shield of scientific curiosity that keeps a barrier between my emotions and the gain of knowledge. Just as religion supplies some people with a shield not to have to face the unknown, I wield scientific curiosity in order to not have to face my emotions.

All Dillard wants is the why of things, as everyone does.

Books in Threes

In The Magus, when Nicholas first spends the night at Bourani, Conchis selects three works for him to read. A book of pictures of women, the bible, and ghost stories. These books reminded me of The Secular Scripture, where Frye speaks of truth, myth, and fable. The book of women is truth, the bible is myth, and the ghost stories are fable.

And here's an explanation of the last line.
http://www.fowlesbooks.com/ourjohn.htm

Coincidence? I think not.

I don't believe in coincidence. I think that coincidence, luck, serendipity (whatever you call it) is simply a way of trying to come up with an explanation for the unknown. Just as believing in a god explains away the unknowns of the beginning of the universe, believing in coincidence explains away the occurrences that repeat in our lives. There is no fate. There is only a series of decisions that people make that intersect occasionally. The present - coincidences - are nothing but an accumulation of the past - people's decisions-.

REVISION: Coincidence isn't something you can believe in. Luck and serendipity are what I'm referring to. Coincidence is just two similar occurrences and a component of luck and serendipity.

Past Possesses Present

            Some humans try to add helpings of reason and fate to their lives. The reality is that the only true purpose in life is to follow the instincts that evolution has honed over millions of years. To survive and reproduce. We can add in chimeric meaning, but in reality life only exists in order to create more life. 

            In the night sea journey, the first half of how the past possesses the present in that these instincts are what drive the main purpose of these sperm’s lives (the second half of this possession of the present comes in the form of the sperm’s heroic journey. It’s a journey that is repeated throughout the myths, legend and fables of every culture, and also repeated throughout our own lives). They have thoughts of other purposes and in changing fate, but in the end, instincts from the past beat out all other options of the present. The “something beyond consciousness” that the sperm speaks of is this primal urge to do whatever it takes to reproduce, to pass millions of years of information on to the next generation. The success of a species is dependent on learning from the past, both genetically and mentally as well.

            Heritage and tradition are sort of the condensed version of genetic evolution. Over millions of years, organisms have changed as mutations occur in their DNA and the most successful change proliferates. This works the same with traditions as well. Over thousands of years, the traditions of humans have morphed as more successful and popular changes occur and are incorporated into the culture.

            However, I think that the traditions of society have recently started regressing instead of progressing. People spend so much time on technology that they’ve lost integral communication skills and the ability to be mentally and physically at peace without distraction. We’ve lost an appreciation for family. We’ve become self centered and greedy. These mutations to the genome of tradition are radical. The addition of technology could be a paradigm shift of our heritage to greater success, or it could be the beginning of the slow decline of tradition.

            Either way, we’ve stopped paying attention to the past. We still carry the physical instincts of our species, but our heritage is slipping away. The genome of tradition is eroding and we need to fix that in order to keep diversity of culture alive.