An Analysis of Pain

Olivia Butler’s very dark presention of the future is interesting to me for two reasons right off the start. One: it’s in the not too distant future. Butler published this book in 2000, and it is only set in in the year 2024 I believe. It’s always interesting to read “futuristic” novels, that somewhat seem, I don’t know, ‘within our grasp’ for lack of a better term. Second: the ultra violent and disturbing imagery is fed to through a vehicle of pain, that vehicle being our protagonist, through who’s point of view the story is told. Due to her mother’s drug use during her pregnancy, our character suffers from what she describes as hyperempathy, where she feels pain from other others through observation, so much so she has even bled from the sight of her brother bleeding (faking*). Thus, not only do I as a reader wince at vivid descriptions of mureder and rape, but I also feel through my protagonists feeling. As she describes her condition in conjunction with the pain she views daily, my horror is amplified by the knowledge that her suffering is worse then mine. I hear and I feel, but she she sees, and, quite literally ‘feels’ all of the torment around her. 

So far the beginning of this book has offered a truly difficult analysis of pain. I wonder how our main character remains sane. 

Under the same circumstances my mind would surely fracture. 

Will they survive?

Since beginning our last assignment, I have been wondering how the colonization of worlds would work, specifically for the  medievalist. Historically, the colonizers do not typically build up a new society without the use of some “worker” group being forced to do a lot of the hard labor. Likely there’d be less of a caste system on this new planet that they inhabit and most people would be equal so how would they assign the people hard jobs? Without the use of robots it’s really hard to say how long this civilization will really last. Surely, it will be disproportionately lacking technological resources when compared to the other countries. It seems as though they have a lot of ideas of how society would be better without robots but personally, I think creating a new planet without them will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Another Utopia

2112 Part Two: The Temples of Syrinx by Rush

This being a day without text, I humbly offer one to the group.

You guys aren't ready for the level of nerd I'm about to unleash.

So "2112" is a 20:33 long track, the first side of Rush's 1976 album 2112. Which means it's 20:33 glorious minutes of utopia-building prog rock.
I didn't think it prudent to take up that amount of time in class so I opted just to share "The Temples of Syrinx," the song's introduction to the utopia.
The Priests control "The words you read/The songs you sing/The pictures that give pleasure/To your eye," and the unnamed protagonist initially thinks them extraordinarily benevolent. These Temples rise in each city throughout the Solar Federation as hubs from which everything is controlled. Life goes on relatively unimpeded. Sound familiar?

Long story short: the protagonist discovers an ancient guitar, plucks away at it (becoming a rock god not unlike Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson in the process), shows it to the Priests who dismiss him, is visited by an Oracle in a dream which shows him how awesome life used to be before the Federation, becomes a hermit living in a cave behind a waterfall: bedridden and suicidal, because he is but one person under an administration of oppression. The song ends with the phrase "Attention all Planets of the Solar Federation/We have assumed control".

FUN and UPLIFTING

And here is the whole thing for the adventurous among us (on your own time for goodness' sake):

2112 by Rush

Returning to the soil: A Song

Yes, peaches will be grown. Also, the ninjas are spacers.

What does it mean to be a robot?

We had a lot of class disscussion about caves of steel about what may or may not make a robot be human like.

It kinda got me thinking, do robots even want to like human, or is that just a desire we superimpose upon them? Maybe they disire something else entirely.

Side note: I am going to use Dr. M-B’s iPad to show a Short video from a Netflix series I binged over the weekend. By coincide Tim’s post is an episode from the same series, it’s very good and I encourage everyone to check it out. I would even go so far as to say Dr. M-B, you might even consider putting an episode on your syllabus in future renditions of this course.

Yogurt

            In the five-minute video we watched Yogurt take over as an all-knowing entity and claim Martial Law before setting the humans up in a paradise. I have some discussion questions to get us on track into thinking about how this Utopia can be plot, and some other things to ask yourself.

·     Though the Yogurt promised to keep the Constitutional Rights of everyone that stayed in Ohio, would the Yogurt declaring Martial Law be seen as an autonomous or constitutional?

·     Based on what we saw before the Yogurt departed Earth, would you say that the utopia relied on communal or individual power?

·     In our own government in present day, would a breakdown like the one shown in the video be necessary before we could create our own utopia or do something incredible like eradicate the national debt? 

·     Do you believe the humans in the video have enjoyed living in utopia so much that they will continue to follow the guidelines the Yogurt has created? What is their solution? Was the Yogurt's society a utopia or a dystopia?

(Love Death and Robots Ep. 6 "When the Yogurt Took Over")

Robots v Humans?

While reading Caves of Steel, it got me thinking about robots and how they compare to humans. I wanted to bring up a possible discussion question, do we think that this novel is trying to touch on the idea that robots are superior to humans? Do we think that it is trying to prove this or at least explore this idea through Daneel and R Sammy? They are different and have different abilities that can be compared, but they are definitely not your average "human" per say.

Here is a picture of some of the robots I thought of in my head while reading :)

 

The best utopia

Given all of the societies we have read about thus far, which society would you all want to live in and why? Also which society, if any, do you think Elijah or Daneel would be successful and fulfilled in living in if they had to live in a different Setting?

What Makes Man?

                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2e_M06YDyY

Upon reading the passage:

"Not as long as we don't understand what makes our own brains tick. Not as long as things exist that science can't measure. What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood. It's what makes us men.

"A robot's brain must be finite or it can't be built. It must be calculated to the final decimal place so that it has an end" (Asimov, 221).

I was immediately reminded of the remix "Seize the Day." Robin Williams' lovely speech in Dead Poets Society perfectly encapsulates this passage, and the song's overall message is one of tenacity, change, and strength in one's identity and beliefs. Daneel expressly tells Baley that he's exceeded and defied the Spacers' experiment due to his stubbornness, although his willingness to learn and listen enables him a growth in character to promote change and pioneering.  Truly, I just think that this song, when applied in a context like this, helps answer and assuage the common debate on what keeps us separate from robots/androids and makes humanity its own unique state of being that cannot be usurped or dismissed.

Character Development

Having finished the entirety of “The Caves of Steel”, I would like to continue asserting that Baley has a clearly defined arc in this book. While there are several scenes and quotes that I found supporting this, there is one in particular I would like to address. At the end of the novel, Baley says, “I didn’t think I would ever say anything like this to anyone like you, Daneel, but I trust you. I even—admire you. I’m too old ever to leave Earth myself, but when schools for emigrants are finally established, there’s Bentley. If someday, perhaps, Bentley and you, together …” In this passage he is essentially expressing that he has developed a strong relationship with Daneel, possibly even a legitimate friendship. He even leaves off the “R” when calling Daneel by name here, while he very pointedly used it earlier in the novel. While I will admit that he still presents a fairly gruff attitude here, I feel like that’s supposed to just be his personality, not a character flaw. He retains this grim manner throughout the novel, but when it comes to how Baley views robots, Spacers, and the world around him in general, I think it’s very inaccurate to say he doesn’t develop as a character.

Mystery Solved?

What did the class think of the culprit reveal? Were you surprised or did you predict it? Did Asimov’s writing style and/or worldbuilding help or inhibit the effectiveness of the reveal?

R. Daneel and character development

R. Daneel's monologue at the very end is a great example of the kind of lessons that can only learned through experience. R. Daneel learns that "the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good" which is a lesson that is impossible to be taught through words alone (270). Also, R. Daneel basically learned how to manipulate human beings in the name of justice. Daneel also seems to learn the concept of spiritual evil because he uses the word "sin" which is an impossible concept for him to understand because it means that R. Daneel was able to understand that evil is more than just a bad or harmful action (270). All in all, the robot finally started some character development though it happened at the end of the [first] book.