Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wrapping Up The I-Search
I've spent a few days now hammering away at the very meaty research section of my I-Search project and laying out how I want to handle the My Conclusions and My Reflection sections, and I have had very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel very much in a bubble. I've been evaluating sources and analyzing survey responses to the point of going cross-eyed while also trying to reflect on and make sense of the project as a whole. Right now, I'm wondering if everyone else is moving in the same direction with this as I am. Is everyone else getting the same kinds of results with their surveys/interviews or have I gotten lost in the weeds and started taking my topic in the wrong direction. Voluntary human extinction strays a bit from the usual apocalyptic themes, and I wonder if I've lost sight of the larger goal. On the other hand, I am very proud of the amount of work I have done this far and excited by some of the things that I have found out. I am relived that this is all coming to end, but also worried about how my final massive pile of data will hold up against everyone else. Only time will tell I suppose.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Rhythms and Rituals in the Road
Somehow my first time through The Road I didn't pay much attention to this business of keeping the fire going. I think I was reading more for the adventure, but today I started thinking about this and just thought that I would throw out an idea: what if we view the fire symbolism from a more literal angle?
A flame is something that requires constant attention, constant stoking to keep it alive. So what does this do for the man? Sure we could see it as a symbol for hope, but maybe it just gives him something to do. Retirees often take up detailed hobbies to fill their post-career lives, hobbies that often grow to consume much of their time and energies. To some outsiders, these hobbies may seem meager, petty, pedestrian. Now we all do this to some extent or another, even us younger folk. I bet some of us in this class were at least partly motivated to go to college because we were drifting a bit after high school and, hey, this gave us something to do. And there isn't a darn thing wrong with this. If I wanted to be really bleak and existential about this, I could argue that all life is about is trying to find things to keep ourselves occupied, to keep us from noticing that hollow-eyed reaper whose sneaked up behind us and is about to whack us over the head with that hefty champagne bottle labeled EXIT STRATEGY. But I won't. But you probably get the point.
I'm sure the man loves his son. Of course he does. But I think that a large part of his obsession with the boy and his well-being is that it give him something to do. To care about. A purpose. Remember, this is a man who has watched his whole world die, seen his spouse give up utterly and surrender to suicide, and is carrying around a gun loaded with two bullets just for his boy and himself. This idea of giving-up can never be too far away from him. Trust me on this. When you're dealing with this kind of stuff, just having something to get out of bed for, little objectives and routines (like catching last night's Daily Show online or dodging the next pack of hungry cannibals) go a long way.
On a somewhat related topic, about religion again. I can't shake this impression that the man has the faith, but is a bit uneducated when it comes to the details. It's like he remembers the broader themes and impressions of religiosity but not the lessons or the morals. His approach is somewhat akin to a pagan discovering pages from a religious text, getting the pages out of order, and missing the overall context of the works. I really think he went to church regularly as a child (he may have been forced) but all that is left is the moods, the colors of the rituals, but precious little of the content. He invokes symbols (fire, ash personified as the Eucharist, angels, etc.) like crude mantras, techniques to center himself, to comfort, to try and inject meaning where perhaps none exists. If you're a child attending church regularly, what sticks out are the rituals. When you're young, it takes repetition to drive things home; that's what works. Kneel. Stand. Recite. Pray. Kick the pew in front of you and contemplate the topography of the finely-crafted crucifix decorating the back of the sanctuary while your parents go and receive communion. These can all seem boring when you're young. But rituals can provide conform later in times of need. The can help with centering. Rituals equal rhythm, rhythms help us divide measures into beats, separate time into quantifiable units and goals. They may also just give us something to do.
A flame is something that requires constant attention, constant stoking to keep it alive. So what does this do for the man? Sure we could see it as a symbol for hope, but maybe it just gives him something to do. Retirees often take up detailed hobbies to fill their post-career lives, hobbies that often grow to consume much of their time and energies. To some outsiders, these hobbies may seem meager, petty, pedestrian. Now we all do this to some extent or another, even us younger folk. I bet some of us in this class were at least partly motivated to go to college because we were drifting a bit after high school and, hey, this gave us something to do. And there isn't a darn thing wrong with this. If I wanted to be really bleak and existential about this, I could argue that all life is about is trying to find things to keep ourselves occupied, to keep us from noticing that hollow-eyed reaper whose sneaked up behind us and is about to whack us over the head with that hefty champagne bottle labeled EXIT STRATEGY. But I won't. But you probably get the point.
I'm sure the man loves his son. Of course he does. But I think that a large part of his obsession with the boy and his well-being is that it give him something to do. To care about. A purpose. Remember, this is a man who has watched his whole world die, seen his spouse give up utterly and surrender to suicide, and is carrying around a gun loaded with two bullets just for his boy and himself. This idea of giving-up can never be too far away from him. Trust me on this. When you're dealing with this kind of stuff, just having something to get out of bed for, little objectives and routines (like catching last night's Daily Show online or dodging the next pack of hungry cannibals) go a long way.
On a somewhat related topic, about religion again. I can't shake this impression that the man has the faith, but is a bit uneducated when it comes to the details. It's like he remembers the broader themes and impressions of religiosity but not the lessons or the morals. His approach is somewhat akin to a pagan discovering pages from a religious text, getting the pages out of order, and missing the overall context of the works. I really think he went to church regularly as a child (he may have been forced) but all that is left is the moods, the colors of the rituals, but precious little of the content. He invokes symbols (fire, ash personified as the Eucharist, angels, etc.) like crude mantras, techniques to center himself, to comfort, to try and inject meaning where perhaps none exists. If you're a child attending church regularly, what sticks out are the rituals. When you're young, it takes repetition to drive things home; that's what works. Kneel. Stand. Recite. Pray. Kick the pew in front of you and contemplate the topography of the finely-crafted crucifix decorating the back of the sanctuary while your parents go and receive communion. These can all seem boring when you're young. But rituals can provide conform later in times of need. The can help with centering. Rituals equal rhythm, rhythms help us divide measures into beats, separate time into quantifiable units and goals. They may also just give us something to do.
Friday, February 11, 2011
A Funeral Procession
This post started as a comment on Jordan's blog post entitled "The Road" (http://jwpuente.blogspot.com/2011/02/road.html) before it got out of control (yikes!) so please start there. It relates to the scene where the man kills a stranger on the road, part of a larger group guiding a diesel truck.
This scene really does feel like a turning point and seems to initiate a downward trend in mood (which was painfully bleak to begin with). When the man returns to retrieve what's left of their cart he sees the other man's remains, those that had had not been cannibalized.. He is haunted by the other man's death, the death of his brother. We're all related to some extent, but now that there are fewer of us in the world, this family connection is that much closer. Even though this other was a "bad guy" as the boy would say, the loss of life is regrettable. I think the ghost of this stranger stays with the man for the rest of the book, and is partly responsible for his darkening mood and the book's decaying tone.
I think all the world's ghosts are following them on this journey. The trip is like one long funeral procession, and they are gathering more and more lost souls along the way. They are heading towards the ocean in an attempt to find a warmer clime, and, I believe, in hopes of attained a kind of baptismal cleansing. And they carry these ghosts with them all the way. At one point, the man makes a flute for the boy. In the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a flute is used to enthrall rats and lead them into a river to drown. In the Bible, Jesus casts a group of demons known as Legion into a herd of pigs that drown themselves in the Sea of Galilee. Both of these last events represent cleansing in their own way, though they cleanse disease and evil, respectively, rather than sin. Either way, I think this journey represents a pilgrimage of burial. Burial of the old world. Burial of the human race.
There are lots of ways for an apocalypse to happen, but really only one way for an apocalypse to end. It ends when the survivors learn to let go. Let go of what was lost, let go of the dead, let go of the gone world. This story is about letting go. But sometimes that is a long, dark voyage.
So how the heck did I get here from my original topic? Oh well. There's something else I want to write about, something that I felt was the main "point" of the novel for me, but I'll get to that later when we reach the end of this book and I've gotten my thoughts together. I'll just leave it with this: I think the man is being punished. Thanks for reading.
This scene really does feel like a turning point and seems to initiate a downward trend in mood (which was painfully bleak to begin with). When the man returns to retrieve what's left of their cart he sees the other man's remains, those that had had not been cannibalized.. He is haunted by the other man's death, the death of his brother. We're all related to some extent, but now that there are fewer of us in the world, this family connection is that much closer. Even though this other was a "bad guy" as the boy would say, the loss of life is regrettable. I think the ghost of this stranger stays with the man for the rest of the book, and is partly responsible for his darkening mood and the book's decaying tone.
I think all the world's ghosts are following them on this journey. The trip is like one long funeral procession, and they are gathering more and more lost souls along the way. They are heading towards the ocean in an attempt to find a warmer clime, and, I believe, in hopes of attained a kind of baptismal cleansing. And they carry these ghosts with them all the way. At one point, the man makes a flute for the boy. In the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a flute is used to enthrall rats and lead them into a river to drown. In the Bible, Jesus casts a group of demons known as Legion into a herd of pigs that drown themselves in the Sea of Galilee. Both of these last events represent cleansing in their own way, though they cleanse disease and evil, respectively, rather than sin. Either way, I think this journey represents a pilgrimage of burial. Burial of the old world. Burial of the human race.
There are lots of ways for an apocalypse to happen, but really only one way for an apocalypse to end. It ends when the survivors learn to let go. Let go of what was lost, let go of the dead, let go of the gone world. This story is about letting go. But sometimes that is a long, dark voyage.
So how the heck did I get here from my original topic? Oh well. There's something else I want to write about, something that I felt was the main "point" of the novel for me, but I'll get to that later when we reach the end of this book and I've gotten my thoughts together. I'll just leave it with this: I think the man is being punished. Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Researching. Refining. Questioning.
Today, I have been deep into researching my I-Search topic, making interesting (and often disturbing) discoveries, and refining/revising my argument and thesis. The initial question that has been confounding me is just how should I be framing this paper? Should I be outlining a scenario for how the world might end? Arguing for an apocalypse? Justifying it? Trying to dismiss it? I know that my focus is on voluntary extinction, but how should I be confronting it? Weighing its pros and cons? Explaining why it is such a fantastic idea for us all to follow the dodo bird (I don't think it is)? I have been struggling with these broad questions, but with each hour of research, each new source discovered, each new angle on the issue investigated, I can see that amorphous blot on the horizon getting clearer. Slowly.
This is a difficult topic for me tackle: willful destruction. The milder voices supporting this argument are advocating birth control, a responsible end to procreation, while the more extreme ones are calling for mass suicide (by the way, if you have the opportunity to visit the website of the Church of Euthanasia: DON'T! SERIOUSLY!). My grandfather died last year which has inspired me to delve deeper into my family history, and, while I have no children and no current plans to have any in the perceivable future, the idea of a 100% end to procreation, whole bloodlines, families, dynasties, nations disappearing off the face of the Earth willfully is quite upsetting.
And one thing that has been troubling me is a more philosophical question. It's kind of like the old conundrum of "If a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" but instead the question is: if the world goes on, but there are no intelligent, sentient lifeforms around to mark it passing either on quartz watches or scrawled on cave walls, does any of it matter? Sure, dinosaurs and other lifeforms existed long before us, and others will after, but wasn't it always in the cards for humanity to show up one day? I guess this strays into the realm of religious, the argument between intelligent design and random chance, and I probably will not be coming to a solution anytime soon. But it's definitely something I have been confronting while trying to imagine a world without us.
This post has been more for my benefit than for anyone else, but I just thought I'd share...
This is a difficult topic for me tackle: willful destruction. The milder voices supporting this argument are advocating birth control, a responsible end to procreation, while the more extreme ones are calling for mass suicide (by the way, if you have the opportunity to visit the website of the Church of Euthanasia: DON'T! SERIOUSLY!). My grandfather died last year which has inspired me to delve deeper into my family history, and, while I have no children and no current plans to have any in the perceivable future, the idea of a 100% end to procreation, whole bloodlines, families, dynasties, nations disappearing off the face of the Earth willfully is quite upsetting.
And one thing that has been troubling me is a more philosophical question. It's kind of like the old conundrum of "If a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" but instead the question is: if the world goes on, but there are no intelligent, sentient lifeforms around to mark it passing either on quartz watches or scrawled on cave walls, does any of it matter? Sure, dinosaurs and other lifeforms existed long before us, and others will after, but wasn't it always in the cards for humanity to show up one day? I guess this strays into the realm of religious, the argument between intelligent design and random chance, and I probably will not be coming to a solution anytime soon. But it's definitely something I have been confronting while trying to imagine a world without us.
This post has been more for my benefit than for anyone else, but I just thought I'd share...
Friday, February 4, 2011
Selecting My Research Topic
Since I do not plan to cover this in my presentation, I thought I would take this opportunity to talk a little about my process for narrowing down my final research topic. Reading through the Slate article, I was mostly drawn to subjects that piqued my curiosity and personal interests rather than stray to the more "likely" scenarios. I was surprised that my choices favored the softer sciences (social, economic, political) rather than issues involving the physical sciences which we more closely associate with apocalyptic events.
I liked the idea of decadence destroying the world since we live in such a culturally divided time. The Rome comparison that is usually associated with this scenario is a bit too cliched, however. I would have loved writing a survey for this topic to find out people's opinions on where our culture is headed, and to see what some of their personal indulgences are (American Idol? Lord, I hope not). Ultimately though, I decided against this.
The Suburban Slums idea sounded fascinating because it's very topical. However, I did not really know how to approach this. I expected that it would rely too much on conjecture instead of facts or any legitimate hypothesis.
Laziness sounded like an interesting scenario, and for a while I considered blending this with the Ted talk that outlined a mental health epidemic leading to an apocalyptic event. I would have centered my paper around the subject of apathy (which is either a symptom of depression, of other illnesses, or a disease unto itself depending on who you ask) and the idea of society atrophying from pandemic-level disinterest. The disadvantage of taking this avenue is that I felt it would have strayed too far from the initial topic, and that it would have been too difficult to find supporting material.
I considered looking into the Biblical apocalypse because it would have made for fascinating research, but decided it would be too hard to remain objective enough when dealing with a religious issue.
My chosen topic is voluntary human extinction focusing in particular on an organization called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) that is advocating a complete, willful end to humanity's existence. What intrigues me about this subject is the sincerity of its advocates, the immediate emotional response I felt when reading about it and looking through the Movement's website, and the interesting research paths I could take. Much of the meat of this topic lives in people's reactions to it, their willingness to listen to the Movement's argument and, possible, to agree to go along with it. Much of my source material will likely come from news organizations and interviews, and I am really excited about exploring this angle. Also, this seemed like the perfect subject to allow the survey (the hands-on part of this hands-on assignment) to really shine. Gauging people's reactions to this extreme viewpoint, figuring out what they object to about it, what they can agree with it on and whether there is a middle road to find on the issue is critical to whether or not the Movement (or others like it) can succeed. Making this research the center of my paper and argument sounds like a great way to have some fun with this assignment, and I look forward to it. I am sure that results will lead to a few surprises.
Anyway, I thought I should get that out of my system here rather than in my presentation. It has been interesting to hear about everyone's chosen topics, and good luck with all your research. I am sure that fascinating discoveries will be made.
I liked the idea of decadence destroying the world since we live in such a culturally divided time. The Rome comparison that is usually associated with this scenario is a bit too cliched, however. I would have loved writing a survey for this topic to find out people's opinions on where our culture is headed, and to see what some of their personal indulgences are (American Idol? Lord, I hope not). Ultimately though, I decided against this.
The Suburban Slums idea sounded fascinating because it's very topical. However, I did not really know how to approach this. I expected that it would rely too much on conjecture instead of facts or any legitimate hypothesis.
Laziness sounded like an interesting scenario, and for a while I considered blending this with the Ted talk that outlined a mental health epidemic leading to an apocalyptic event. I would have centered my paper around the subject of apathy (which is either a symptom of depression, of other illnesses, or a disease unto itself depending on who you ask) and the idea of society atrophying from pandemic-level disinterest. The disadvantage of taking this avenue is that I felt it would have strayed too far from the initial topic, and that it would have been too difficult to find supporting material.
I considered looking into the Biblical apocalypse because it would have made for fascinating research, but decided it would be too hard to remain objective enough when dealing with a religious issue.
My chosen topic is voluntary human extinction focusing in particular on an organization called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) that is advocating a complete, willful end to humanity's existence. What intrigues me about this subject is the sincerity of its advocates, the immediate emotional response I felt when reading about it and looking through the Movement's website, and the interesting research paths I could take. Much of the meat of this topic lives in people's reactions to it, their willingness to listen to the Movement's argument and, possible, to agree to go along with it. Much of my source material will likely come from news organizations and interviews, and I am really excited about exploring this angle. Also, this seemed like the perfect subject to allow the survey (the hands-on part of this hands-on assignment) to really shine. Gauging people's reactions to this extreme viewpoint, figuring out what they object to about it, what they can agree with it on and whether there is a middle road to find on the issue is critical to whether or not the Movement (or others like it) can succeed. Making this research the center of my paper and argument sounds like a great way to have some fun with this assignment, and I look forward to it. I am sure that results will lead to a few surprises.
Anyway, I thought I should get that out of my system here rather than in my presentation. It has been interesting to hear about everyone's chosen topics, and good luck with all your research. I am sure that fascinating discoveries will be made.
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