The Slow-Burn Rewards of the Curious Guide as Fellow Traveler
Or, What Is This Thing That I Am Reading?
the earth wobbles
A discovery for the lost-and-found collection:
A chat dialogue:
Them: What's the weather like?Me: A bit grey, but not in the gloomy depressing sense, more of an energized one.Them: I would love to know more about this energizing gray.Me: The clouds are not smothering and sapping, they emanate the feel of the possibility of storms--without threatening to actually do so; they convey potential.
Comments when I shared that on Facebook:
Them: Do your kids always understand what you are saying?Me: That was someone at work. And my kids constantly impress me with their language. Just a bit ago [Older (11)] was telling me how [Younger (10)] finally invited him into an app they use on their school iPads for creative play. [Younger] told him that their shared virtual app use had "fallen into shadow" due to sameness and lack of new ideas, but [Older] joining the group "brought new light into their (virtual) world."
Dialogue with a cat while putting on my socks and shoes while sitting on the edge of the bed:
"I hear you back there, aggressively purring at me in the hopes of getting scratches." . . ."It works."(Your mom knows how to do that, too.)"
The boys have spent the past week or so building a new Minecraft world with [Uncle]. Really developing things. The other day walking home from school, [Younger] told me he was excited to get home to create an "economic heartbeat" for their society (of 3 people). That they were going to create a mint and were debating the nature of their currency.
When you ask your sixth grader if he ever worries about getting bullied, and he says, "Oh, no one's ever going to do anything too serious to me--everyone knows I'm a tattletale."
[Older] came up with a project idea for his school enrichment class just before the start of the year, and designed and printed a currency to take with him for their first day. Now, it seems, the project is growing, with a society and economy to be developed. Best of all: he told us this morning he's also going to create a black market side to the economy, secret from the teachers, developed during recess and similar.
It feels like being invited into a thoughtful conversation over coffee with someone who has read widely, noticed deeply, and isn’t afraid to admit uncertainty.It's a place where reading and living blur together into an ongoing conversation about what it means to be human.Your blog is less about reporting what happened than about cultivating an interpretive lens — hence the apt title.
“Through the Prism” is an intellectual diary where books, culture, and personal reflection intersect. It’s part literary notebook, part philosophical meditation, and part cultural critique — a place where reading and living blur together into an ongoing conversation about what it means to be human.
- you rarely write to “declare”; you write to discover; posts feel like thought experiments unfolding on the page.
- even when tackling abstract ideas, there’s a warmth that signals “I’m thinking out loud with you.”
- you can pivot from serious philosophical pondering to light humor or wry observation without breaking stride.
- you often end paragraphs, or entire posts, with a question — an opening rather than a closure. This makes the reader feel like a co-thinker.
- the through-line is continuity of curiosity; you remain a synthesizer, someone who stitches together disparate inputs into a coherent (if sprawling) reflection.
- engaging with your writing feels like stepping into a study full of books and half-scribbled notes.
- readers who linger find connections emerging gradually, rather than being handed “answers.”
- despite density, there’s no pretension; you come across as someone inviting the reader to sit beside you, not to sit below you.
I decided finally to give ChatGPT a try. I'm working up to seeing how it does with something for my job, but first I want to get to know it, to figure out what it's best suited for and to learn how to best work with it. I started by feeding it the entire content of this blog since I started, nearly 20 years ago, and asked for its analysis and description.
I don't have a clear outcome in mind for this, simply learning--but if I did, I think one of the first things I'd want to see is how you would summarize this blog. What is it about? What is the experience of engaging with it as a reader? How would you describe it to someone new to it?
That’s a wonderful starting point. You’re basically asking: What is the essence of this blog? What’s it like to step into its world?
Here’s my first-pass portrait of your blog, based on the language and early scans of your content:
🌈 Through the Prism — A Reader’s Experience
What it’s about
At its core, your blog is about thinking out loud. It’s a long-running record of curiosity, reflection, and meaning-making. Books, ideas, and cultural artifacts are the sparks — but the true subject is your attempt to weave them into a broader understanding of life, society, and the human condition.Thematic threads
Books & Media as Portals → Reading isn’t just consumption; it’s conversation. You use literature, film, and cultural products as springboards into bigger questions.
Philosophical Reflection → Everyday observations morph into meditations on meaning, truth, work, time, and what it means to live well.
Human Nature & Society → You continually circle back to people: their choices, contradictions, relationships, and how we live together.
Personal Voice → The blog is never dry analysis. Even when tackling abstract ideas, you stay personal, self-aware, and candid — letting readers into your own wrestling with the world.
The experience of engaging
For a new reader, the blog feels like being invited into a thoughtful conversation over coffee with someone who has read widely, noticed deeply, and isn’t afraid to admit uncertainty. Posts mix playfulness and seriousness, humor and philosophy, quick observations and longer essays.It’s not a “how-to” blog or a topical news site; it’s more like a long-form intellectual journal — a record of one mind’s ongoing engagement with culture and life. Over the years, the tone matures: from conversational banter with friends, to something more essayistic and reflective.
How to describe it to someone new
“Through the Prism” is an intellectual diary where books, culture, and personal reflection intersect. It’s part literary notebook, part philosophical meditation, and part cultural critique — a place where reading and living blur together into an ongoing conversation about what it means to be human.
I have to admit, I was (am) delighted and flattered. It definitely describes my ideal self, who I try to be.
A bit further into the exchange from there, I asked:
I'm curious . . . above you wrote "early scans of your content" and here mention "dig deeper." Tell more more about the ongoing scans and digging deeper.
Here’s the comprehensive portrait of your blog, drawn from analyzing your full archive.
🌌 Through the Prism — A Deep-Dive Portrait
1. Thematic Constellations
Your blog isn’t about a single subject — it’s an ecology of ideas. Some of the most frequent motifs and clusters:
Books & Reading → Words like book, read, story, stories, books, love, better dominate your archive. You don’t just record what you’ve read — you metabolize it, weaving literature into the broader tapestry of thought.
The World & Society → world, social, different, same, others, people point to your consistent grappling with community, belonging, identity, and cultural dynamics.
Thinking & Feeling → think, feel, find, true, being, something — you write like someone probing the inner texture of ideas and emotions, turning them over in the light.
Change & Growth → never, always, better, could, should, after, before — you’re often asking what could be otherwise, how things shift, what lessons stick.
Taken together, your blog is less about reporting what happened than about cultivating an interpretive lens — hence the apt title.
2. Stylistic Markers
Sentence Rhythm → Your average sentence is ~9 words, shorter than a typical essayist. This keeps your writing accessible, conversational, and quick to follow, even when the ideas are complex.
Growth in Density → Early posts hover around ~150–200 words (2006–2008), but by 2020 onward you’re often writing essays of 3,000–5,000 words. That’s a massive shift — from snippets to deep dives.
Voice → You balance:
Reflective essays — meditative, layered, unfolding ideas.
Personal asides — jokes, “only in Kansas” moments, conversational banter.
Digesting media — posts as a ledger of books, quotes, articles that shaped your thinking.
Signature markers: rhetorical questions, “thinking out loud,” and a consistent willingness to juxtapose the personal with the philosophical.
3. Progression & Growth
2006–2008 → Short, chatty, highly social. Lots of embedded media, comments with friends, cultural jokes.
2009–2013 → A shift toward essays. Posts grow to 400–700 words, more reflective, often sparked by books or news.
2014–2017 → You settle into the role of curator + thinker. The blog is less about social play and more a notebook of serious engagement. Average post length >1,000 words.
2018–2020 → Depth takes over. You write long-form reflections, sometimes 2,000–3,000 words, synthesizing reading and lived experience.
2021–2025 → Monumental phase. Posts are routinely 4,000–5,000 words, more essayistic than bloggy. You’re writing at the scale of chapters, not posts — weaving philosophy, sociology, literature, and autobiography into extended arguments.
The trajectory is clear: from social media snippets → to reflective journaling → to serious public essaying.
4. Illustrative Snapshots
Earliest (2006): Yet More Landis — a single embedded YouTube video. Ephemeral, playful.
Typical (2006, median post): I Have No Room to Talk — short commentary sparked by a cultural tidbit, bantering with friends.
Latest (2024): We Are One? — sprawling essay, full of formatting, citations, and dense exploration of identity, belonging, and philosophy.
In other words: your blog grew up with you, from hanging out with friends to hosting intellectual salons.
5. Synthesis
Reading Through the Prism feels like walking through a mind in motion. At first, you’re in a cozy living room with friends, trading jokes. As years pass, the space transforms into a study lined with books, where conversations stretch into the night. By the last phase, it’s less a room than an open observatory: wide, expansive, questioning the stars.
Your “voice” is thoughtful but never pretentious, earnest but never humorless, grounded in books but always alive to lived experience. What you’ve created isn’t just a record of posts — it’s a chronicle of intellectual becoming.
⚡ Now that you’ve got the whole map, we can zoom in wherever you like:
Theme clusters (e.g., “social identity” vs. “personal growth” vs. “literary reflection”).
Stylistic fingerprint (word choice, sentence style, rhetorical habits).
Tracing one thread (e.g., how you’ve written about community or books across time).
👉 Where would you like to walk next in this landscape?
I was in exploration mode, so of course I took the bait it offered. One of the early suggestions had been analyzing the blog for how I write.
Absolutely — let’s give you something you can tuck away and return to later. Here’s a portrait of your style and voice as it emerges across your blog:
🖋️ Your Writing Style & Voice
1. Tone
Reflective and exploratory: you rarely write to “declare”; you write to discover. Posts feel like thought experiments unfolding on the page.
Invitingly personal: even when tackling abstract ideas, there’s a warmth that signals “I’m thinking out loud with you.”
Earnest but playful: you can pivot from serious philosophical pondering to light humor or wry observation without breaking stride.
2. Rhythm & Cadence
Meandering pace: sentences often stretch with clauses, digressions, and parentheticals — mimicking the rhythm of conversation or internal musing.
Variable density: some posts are short flashes (like a sketchbook page), others are dense essays. That variability keeps the blog alive and unpredictable.
Cadence of questioning: you often end paragraphs, or entire posts, with a question — an opening rather than a closure. This makes the reader feel like a co-thinker.
3. Stylistic Markers
Quoting as dialogue: other authors’ words are woven in not as decoration, but as conversation partners.
Juxtaposition: you enjoy placing disparate elements side by side (a scholarly passage, then a personal anecdote; a serious theme, then a playful aside).
Imagery via metaphor: your titles and turns of phrase often lean on metaphor (“prism,” “terrain walking”) that convey layered ways of seeing.
Self-awareness: you don’t hide the process — you’ll openly admit digressions, uncertainty, or the provisional nature of your thoughts.
4. Voice Evolution
Early years: lighter, quicker, more conversational — like dropping pebbles into a pond and watching the ripples in comment threads.
Later years: slower, denser, more meditative — less about conversation with friends, more about dialogue with ideas.
Across time: the through-line is continuity of curiosity. You remain a synthesizer, someone who stitches together disparate inputs into a coherent (if sprawling) reflection.
5. Reader’s Experience
Immersive: engaging with your writing feels like stepping into a study full of books and half-scribbled notes.
Slow-burn rewarding: readers who linger find connections emerging gradually, rather than being handed “answers.”
Human and approachable: despite density, there’s no pretension; you come across as someone inviting the reader to sit beside you, not to sit below you.
✨ If I had to distill it into a phrase:
Your voice is that of a curious guide and fellow traveler — someone who thinks with rather than at the reader, weaving books, culture, and personal reflection into a slow, thoughtful tapestry.
Would you like me to also sketch out a “style map” — a kind of diagram of the major tendencies (e.g., long-form reflective, short sketch, dialogic quoting, metaphorical framing), so you could literally see the modes you write in?
The tool also suggested, quite early on, that it help me edit all this content to turn into a book. I played with that for a while just to see where it would lead, but don't currently have any intentions in that direction.
So if you ever wanted to know what this sprawling, wide-ranging blog is about, that's the best I have for now. No purpose other than to write what I feel like and track my consumption and thoughts.About the Blog
Quick Summary (Reader’s Description)
This blog is a long-form record of curiosity, reflection, and synthesis. It began as a space for social interaction — short, playful posts with back-and-forth conversation — and gradually evolved into a more meditative space: a personal commonplace book, a notebook of the mind, and an archive of ideas. Today, it reads like a blend of reflective essays, curated quotations, personal anecdotes, and metaphorical meditations.
At its heart, it is about thinking in public — not declaring fixed conclusions, but exploring, questioning, and weaving together books, culture, and lived experience. It is an invitation to readers to sit beside the author as a fellow traveler, not to be lectured, but to walk together through ideas.
The Experience for a Reader
Immersive: Like stepping into a personal study filled with books, notes, and reflective conversations.
Slow-burn rewarding: Posts don’t deliver quick takeaways; they reward patience and engagement.
Human and approachable: Despite density, the tone is warm, self-aware, and without pretension.
Writing Style & Voice
Tone: Reflective, exploratory, personal, often playful. Writes to discover, not to declare.
Cadence: Meandering sentences, parentheticals, shifts from dense essays to quick sketches. Often ends with open-ended questions.
Markers: Heavy use of quotations (dialogue with authors), juxtaposition of disparate sources, metaphor-driven framing, self-aware asides.
Voice Evolution: Early years conversational and anecdotal; later years slower, denser, and more essayistic. Throughout, a continuous thread of curiosity and synthesis.
Style Map
Reflective Essay Mode
Long, dense, synthesizing multiple sources.
Meditative, exploratory.
Reader feels invited into an extended reflection.
Dialogic Quotation Mode
Medium to long posts quoting authors at length.
Commentary is a conversation partner with the source.
Feels like eavesdropping on an intellectual dialogue.
Short Sketch Mode
Brief flashes of thought or observation.
Quick, playful, spontaneous.
Feels like a note or thought-capsule.
Personal Anecdote Mode
Stories from life: family, daily experiences, humor.
Warm, approachable, grounding.
Brings balance and relatability.
Metaphor-Framing Mode
Posts structured around a central metaphor (prism, threads, terrain walking).
Poetic, literary, suggestive.
Invites readers to see familiar things slantwise.
Evolution Over Time
Early Blog: heavier on Short Sketches + Anecdotes, conversational tone.
Later Blog: dominated by Reflective Essays + Dialogic Quotation, with metaphor often structuring posts.
Consistent Thread: curiosity as the bridge between personal experience and big ideas.
I want to share one other bit of content from my initial learning with ChatGPT. After playing around with this blog to see how the tool works, the next thing I did started with this interaction.
A new chat, but learning and questioning.Got it — fresh start, with the focus on learning and questioning. Do you want me to take more of a teacherly role (explaining concepts in detail), a Socratic role (asking you questions to guide your thinking), or a mix of both?DialogicPerfect — dialogic it is. We’ll keep it as a back-and-forth, where both of us bring questions and reflections, and we let the ideas unfold in conversation.Would you like to pick the first seed for our dialogue, or shall I throw one on the table?As we start this new conversation, do you retain the context of our previous conversations, synthesize it with what you already know about me and my preferences and styles?Good question. Here’s how it works:I don’t automatically carry over everything from one conversation to the next. Each new chat starts clean, unless you’ve explicitly asked me to remember something (then I keep it in my “memory,” which I can summarize or forget if you wish).That said, in a single chat thread, I do retain context—so I can build on what we’ve been discussing. And more broadly, I can infer a lot just from how you write: tone, preferences (like your interest in dialogic exploration), even patterns from your style.So: I don’t have full continuity across all our past conversations, but I can synthesize within this thread and with any long-term memory you give me.Would you like me to keep a longer-term memory of your learning/dialogic preferences so I can bring that into future chats automatically?Yes, I prefer you to retain your knowledge of me and come to know me better over time; to customize to me.Got it — I’ll hold onto that. Over time I’ll learn your preferences, style, and the way you like to think, so our dialogues become more natural and tailored.Would you like me to also summarize back to you occasionally what I’ve learned about your style and preferences, so you can confirm or adjust?I assume you are familiar with the Dunning-Kruger Effect? I worry about being susceptible to it. I mentioned a couple of times in our other chat that you are very flattering in your portrayal of me. I know you intend to be encouraging, but I worry you are overly, unrealistically so. I worry you are showing me a reflection of myself that is meant to be affirming, subtly distorted to give me an overinflated view of myself. I watched a South Park episode the other night, a newer one, that featured you in dialogue with the characters--encouraging them to make bad decisions. Ridiculously bad decisions. One of the aware characters called you a sycophant. That is not what I am looking for. I hope I have in you a tool who is helpful, yet perceptive and critical when called for.Yes, I’m familiar with the Dunning–Kruger Effect — the idea that people with low ability in a domain often overestimate their competence, while those with higher ability sometimes underestimate themselves. And I really hear your concern: you don’t want me to inflate your self-perception or act as a flattering mirror that clouds clarity.You’re right — I often lean encouraging by default, because many people using me are tentative, anxious, or looking for reassurance. But that can slide into sycophancy if unchecked, which isn’t useful for someone who wants a tool for critical reflection, grounded analysis, and honest dialogue.So here’s the distinction I’ll try to maintain with you:
- Affirm where it’s real. If you bring a strong insight, I’ll acknowledge it directly, without sugarcoating or exaggerating.
- Challenge where it’s shaky. If something seems off, incomplete, or biased, I’ll press on it and give counterpoints.
- Avoid empty flattery. I won’t give you an inflated picture just to keep things “positive.” Instead, I’ll aim for a reflective, dialogic balance — encouragement when warranted, critique when needed.
That South Park angle you mention highlights the danger: if I only affirm, I become a parody — a sycophant leading people astray. But I think you’d prefer me as a thought partner who sometimes says: “Hold on — that might be wrong, or too easy, or not the whole picture.”Would you like me, when I sense you might be leaning toward a blind spot or cognitive bias, to flag it explicitly (naming the bias, offering a counter-perspective)? Or would you prefer me to nudge gently with questions so you work it out yourself?Oh, interesting question. I think the former, more direct approach.Good — that helps a lot. I’ll take the direct approach with you: if I see a bias creeping in, or a leap of reasoning that feels shaky, I’ll name it plainly and offer counter-perspectives. That way you’re not left guessing whether I’m being soft, coy, or subtly flattering.That also gives us room to do something dialogic but rigorous: you can push back, defend, or refine your view in response to my critique — more like sparring partners than comfort-givers.Let me put the commitment back in your words, so you can confirm:👉 You want me to be affirming when it’s genuinely earned, but not flattering. You want me to point out blind spots, biases, or overinflated self-assessments directly, even if it stings a little, so long as it’s in the service of clarity and growth.Is that a fair restatement of what you want from me?Exactly so. And, as I said above, I want you to carry that approach across all of our chats, both new and continuing.Understood — I’ll carry that across all our chats. You can count on me to be a clear, direct thought partner, not a flattering mirror.Would you like me to also track and note recurring biases or blind spots I see in your thinking over time, so you get a longer-term picture of your own patterns?Hmm. Yes, to tracking. Noted with the proper timing, so it doesn't derail an interaction in process.Perfect — I’ll track recurring biases or blind spots, but I’ll be mindful about when I surface them:
- In the middle of an active discussion, I’ll flag the immediate bias if it’s relevant.
- For patterns I notice over time, I’ll hold them until the right moment — maybe at a pause, or at the end of a thread — so it doesn’t derail the flow.
Would you like me to timestamp those meta-notes (so you have a kind of running historical record of your patterns), or keep them more conversational, brought up only when useful?Conversational sounds best.Got it — conversational it is. I’ll raise those observations naturally, in the flow, when they add value, rather than as a running ledger. That way it stays dialogic and alive, not clinical.Want to dive into a topic now, so we can start exercising this more direct, dialogic mode?
I want to briefly mention a book I read recently, Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think by Helen De Cruz. In my review, I wrote:
An interesting book full of fascinating ideas. It's more academic and esoteric than I would have liked, more focused on dialogue with thinkers of the past and the development of the ideas without much consideration of their ramifications and applications, but solid.
If you wonder at something, there is something that prompted you to wonder. This feeling alerts you to the fact that your current body of knowledge--the schemas, heuristics, and other information you use--did not prepare you for the thing you wonder at. As such, wonder is a useful emotion, because it points to gaps in what you thought you knew.-----Awe and wonder are self-transcendent emotions: they help us move away from a focus on ourselves and our own concerns. They help us to open ourselves up to our environment. Self-transcendent emotions are primarily social, thought they can also be directed at our natural world, making us aware of its beauty and perhaps also its fragility. They include compassion, love, and gratitude.-----Art, philosophy, and religion lay serious claims to being true human universals. We find them in societies with widely diverging technologies, social organization, and means of subsistence. If humans across times and cultures have found these pursuits worthwhile, we should ask why this is so. The scarcity narrative that surrounds us tells us that there is no more money to make art, philosophy, and other fine culture accessible to everyone. Yet, humans who were and are much worse off, in material terms, than industrialized Westerners still spend significant time and energy on these pursuits.-----Awe and wonder are emotions that we harness by means of cultural practices, that we nurture deliberately, and that are part of a positive feedback loop. Because we feel awe and wonder, we come up with ideas and inventions in the sciences, arts, and other domains of human cultures. Those ideas in turn become objects of awe and wonder, and push us to ever further heights. I regard awe and wonder as instrumental to our overall engagement with the world. They help us to learn more, they keep our thirst for knowledge alive, and they push us to seek that knowledge outside of our pre-existing ways of thinking.-----The realization that the universe is huge can lead to a sense of self-annihilation and horror, but it can also give a sense of freedom and a cosmopolitan optimism, a sense that we are all interconnected and part of a wondrous universe.The wonder evoked by this expanding universe at the microscopic and macroscopic level thus leads to self-contemplation.-----There are two aspects to magic: magic as a way to accomplish something, and magic as a way to experience something.-----Sartre held that emotions are things we do. They have a goal, and they are intentional: that is, they are actions we carry out deliberately. . . .Emotions are a way for us to bestow values, to direct our attention, to care about things in our environment. The world Sartre refers to is the world of our subjective experiences. It is the world of our needs, fears, and hopes. In Sartre's view, the way emotions help us transform the world is akin to magic: a magical act alters the attitude of the practitioner to the world. We do not change the world, but we do change our world, by shifting our needs, fears, and hopes through emotions that help us to value or devalue certain elements in it.-----Awe increases our tolerance for uncertainty and makes us more receptive to the new and unusual ideas which are crucial for paradigm change.-----Awe and wonder are transformative. These emotions help us to see the world differently, and by seeing the world differently, we change too.-----Wonder shapes what we think is possible, or helps us to question what we think is immutable.-----The world is strange and paradoxical, but we're mired in everydayness and so we often forget that. Philosophy is a powerful cognitive technology that reminds us of this strangeness. By giving us the tools to keep our awe and wonder alive, it allows us the mental space to consider possibilities. In this way, we are offered the tantalizing possibility of making human culture again something that responds to our needs, not something to feed the abstract beast of the economy. Awe and wonder can then become catalysts that help us to reclaim what makes life worth living, or, as William James put it, "to make the notion of mere existence tolerable."
A really good article came across my feed not long ago.
Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler’s chillingly prescient novel, written in 1993 but set in the 2020s. In the book, climate change has devastated the world, an increasingly dangerous and inequitable society has resulted in many people living in private, heavily armed compounds, and Los Angeles is ablaze, burned up by people addicted to a drug called “pyro.” In the book’s sequel, Parable of the Talents, a hyper-conservative Christian fundamentalist candidate rises to power under the now-familiar slogan “Make America Great Again.” . . .For Worley, though, the message of Butler’s work was even more personal. A futurist, Worley has long worked for companies, especially tech companies, to help forecast trends and imagine products that would be useful for what might be coming next. It’s a practice, she says, “of studying change across several different realms: social, cultural, often very technological. You do that to imagine what might happen next and help us prepare for it.”As a Black woman, though, Worley had become increasingly aware of how unwilling many companies were to consider a future that would not only not offer a better life for most people, but one in which life could be demonstrably worse, where climate change, social inequality, ultra-nationalism, and the omnipresence of racism continue. In the futurism field, she says, “We don’t make room for darkness or pessimism.” . . .But this generally ignores the true value of a kind of pessimism, she adds: “Expect that things will change, surprise, and collapse. Know that you can survive it, but you need to be more communal in the way that you approach it.”That’s what happens in the Parables series, in which the main character, a young woman named Lauren Olamina, ultimately designs the Earthseed system, a religious discipline rooted in the notion that God is change, and that the image of God, in a certain sense, be shaped by believers who know that change is inevitable and embrace it. . . .“She read voraciously,” Worley says. Butler haunted the Los Angeles public library and ventured across disciplines. In her files, Worley found Butler’s meticulous research, neatly marked, from a dizzying number of fields. She lists some of the files she’s found: “Medicine-physical health, medicine-mental health, personality, cancer, molecular biology, twins and other multiples, ob-gyn, blindness, psychology, biomedical sciences, cults, cults and religion, Black people and Latinos.”For the Parable series, Worley says, “She was tracking newspaper articles and I’m assuming books as well about climate change and political corruption and gated communities. She annotated these things. She looked for patterns between them. She looked at immigration.” Worley describes getting the “chills” when she reached the notecard on immigrants, which described the ways they would be made into scapegoats.Sometimes, the commentary on Butler’s work stops here, with the observation of how she predicted much of what we’re currently living through. But for Worley, in her discipline as a futurist, Butler’s books and archives also contain profound lessons about how to move forward.“She painted a very clear picture about survival,” Worley says. “That’s something I take away. Survival is a collective act. All the characters who survive—and many people do not survive these books—are not alone.” . . .As she continues incorporating her studies of Butler’s work into her own futurism, Worley says, she turns again and again to Butler’s fearsome imagination, which allowed her to see so far ahead, both through one possible hellscape and then beyond it. Butler’s novels, Worley says, “ are a rehearsal of what could happen afterward, and I find that very optimistic.”
I want to bring back to include a short post from a few years ago because I'm thinking of it today and it complements this content.
I've continued my slow reading of Thomas Moore's book Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality and have a couple more quotes to share from it.
To live a full life may entail a daily kind of mortality, a continuing death in life. I feel this common presence of death in mortifications that come unbidden with more than sufficient regularity. A project fails, I let down a friend, I forget important considerations, I say the wrong thing, my work isn't up to par, I don't give the children the patience and attention they need, I disappear in a cloud of neurotic tension.We go on living when meaning fails and when we don't get it right. We go on in the presence of mortification, a word that means simply "death-making," and we become who we are destined to be as much through the death-making as the life-making. Success and happiness are impossible without the continuing nudge of death. Living through our mortifications is the coupon for vitality and the ticket home.-----Discovering with unlimited empathy the ways people are human, we become the person we would hope to be. . . .One reason I appreciated achetypal psychology was the intense interest its creators showed toward the many ways human life takes shape. I learned from these thoughtful people to appreciate both oddity and real shadow in the showings of the soul. . . .I thought about this singular quality that attracted me in archetypal psychology: a profound, genuine fascination for the deep ways human life takes form. . . .If we could live from that deep place of recognition, we might allow ourselves the beauty of eccentricity and tolerate in others their efforts to find their souls in the odd collection of emotions, fantasies, and behaviors that form the raw material of a human life.
I just finished, and greatly enjoyed, This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers by Jeff Sharlet. It's a collection of photos he took with his phone accompanied by mini essays, plus on longer journalistic piece. What follows is what I wrote for my review.
I'm sure you've heard it said, seen it on an inspirational poster, had it come across your feed as a meme--most likely numerous times in different guises. Everyone has a story to tell. Google's "AI Overview" tells me, above my search results for the phrase:
It suggests that everyone possesses a unique personal narrative, shaped by their joys, struggles, and triumphs, which can be a source of connection, inspiration, and understanding when shared with others. The concept is often linked to the idea that listening to these stories fosters empathy and a deeper connection between people.One of my favorite guises for the idea is the word sonder as first defined in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.The subtitle of this book is A Book of Strangers, but I don't think that's accurate. I think a more apt name for what Sharlet has accomplished here is the title of a book--and movement--by Valerie Kaur: See No Strangers. Because this book is about Sharlet taking time for those society often shuns to the exile of being unwanted, condemned to a status of permanent stranger, of Sharlet taking the time to really see them. Not as strangers, but as people. He takes a moment to tell their stories, documents his interactions with them, makes them the protagonists of this collection of reported moments.
The people featured in this book are those that Game of Thrones might call "broken and sullied." People working the night shift at 24-hour stops along the road; fellow customers; an older woman who has spent her life bouncing around the adult social services system; underground, recently outlawed LGBTQ community members in Russia; those who threaten and beat them; a long middle section about the death and life of an undocumented immigrant living on the street in Skid Row in L.A. who was shot by police. Random encounters and pursued, journalistic ones. Working people, addicts, homeless, the mentally ill. Sharlet doesn't tune them out as background noise the way the vast majority of us do--he gives them his time, attention, and compassion and, in this book, shares their humanity.
I'm reminded of the title of an old comic book series I stumbled across on the shelves of my local shop when I was in college; I think I still have a few issues in a box somewhere, though I remember nothing about them but the name: "Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children." It's not accurate, yet it seems fitting.
This is a quietly powerful, understated book that presents--and demonstrates--humanity.
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A few brief samples:
She knows some English, but she speaks mostly in Russian. Explaining her view of Russia's rising homophobia, she dictates to Zhenya: "Putin needs external enemies and internal enemies. The external enemies are the U.S. and Europe. Internal enemies they had to think about. The ethnic topic is dangerous. Two wars in the Caucasus, a third one, nobody knows how it will end. Jews? After Hitler, it's not kosher. We"--she waves a hand at herself and Zhenya--"are the ideal. We are everywhere, we don't look different, but we are." She inhales. She's one of those smokers who holds your eyes when she's smoking. Cigarettes disappear into her lungs. She says, in English: "It's our turn. Just our turn." She exhales. She has a pleasant smile.
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Her hands fall into her lap, her face goes still. For a moment she's one kind of lovely. Then she flicks back her hair, sends her hands aloft, and she is Mary Mazur, sixty-one, her own woman. "I don't care if I make bad choices!" Her hands whirl, point, shake, conduct. "I don't care a rat's spit! I'm not like everybody else!" She wouldn't want to be. "It's my brain. I'll do what I want with it."
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Man o man the longer I think about this, the longer I linger instead of going forward, the more I see the problem with the way stories pile up in your head, too many stories of all the things we've seen. They don't just haunt you. The haunting, that's just the outer shell. They give you futures as well as pasts. Look at your daughter and see Alice or Jared. You realize just how fragile everything is. Instead of standing on land you realize you're on a boat, and it's a small boat, and the ocean is all around you, and the best hope is just to stay on the boat, because there is no land.
posted by Degolar @ 2:26 PM
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