On Circular Writing

I have been asked, once, in the past for any creative writing exercises that had been subjected to which had a lasting impression on me. Suffice it to say, the only exercises that I have undergone are through a high school creative writing class that was more about keeping the mutinous cretins in the room from exercising their right to use words that referenced nether regions and unspeakable acts that was course du rigeur in their high forms of art. On my own I have put thought to exercises that could possibly chip away at the time we spend thinking of that most beautiful of sentences, and, being inert until it descends upon us only to be completely unnoticed by the reader. Writing is difficult juggle of voice, description and action, urged along by a narration, only fractions of which will become apparent to the reader. The writer's unwritten contract with the reader is that he will give resonance, or make sense enough to drive the reader's curiosity, and if this is broken the reader is perfectly entitled to put the book down. How does the writer prevent this from happening? 

The main crux of anything is meaning. Without an inspired logical chain of events instilled in the reader's mind, the writer cannot perform the duties of his office. But logic is a bitter medicine that must be hidden in foods or dissolved in sweeter drinks in order for the pill to metastasize and take hold. Above all else, meaning holds the absolute position. 

If one understands what they want to say, and can put it down in simpler language and paint in broad strokes, then this proposed exercise has salience--it is entirely procedural in nature, and works best in small sections to affect the development of ideas into digestible text that the writer has full license to return to again and again and cause it to evolve without angst directed towards the nature of what he has created. In concise terms, circular writing derives from a statement that can be as simple as a single clause. Marrying it to creative writing would begin thusly: "He went to the store for milk." 

Here we are deprived of any proper nouns--the reader can fill in any noun with any possible blank, as the writer has only given a vague canvas. However, motion has been retained. Supposing that the reader understands English, there is not a single incomprehensible element to this sentence. Although in this stage the reader does not know how it is implied that the subject went, or specifically what kind of store it was he went to, these values can be transcribed in their absence. What must then be provided by the writer is to use this base to ultimately make a final sentence, paragraph, page or full work. With something this general, it is best applied to an eventual form that is small. If this constitutes the beginnings of something much larger, while doing so is entirely possible, it is more conducive to the development of the form to break up individual events into a quasi storyboard outline. Soon this sentence can evolve in the following way: John walked down the black path in the wintertime, where each step was uncertain when taken, but left a sure record of what had passed in the footprints left behind. He was walking to the ShopCo--the unfortunately named chain store whose arrival in town some two years ago had supplanted every smaller business in no time at all. They were close, loathe to shut their doors to any weather, and had milk, which is specifically what John was on his way to buy.

With this, regardless of its unartistic trappings, we have a paragraph that fulfills all of the conditions left by the structural sentence. Our "he" is now a "John," the store now has a name and a rough contextual significance, and we know what John is on his way to get.

This process would be better instructed through first rewriting the clausal sentence into something with proper nouns, i.e. John went to the shopco for milk. This can then be rewritten to: John went down the black path in winter to the shopco to get some milk. We now have several elements that can be expanded upon. The writer can say simple things, and sketch general ideas that he is envisioning in his mind's eye, and realize that as separate elements, these things can be individually expanded upon for heightened understanding or depiction in the reader's interpretation. Things like "the black path" might be better left untouched for a more ominous and percussive effect in the style. They may be expanded to reflect a more florid style of writing, such as--"John scuttered along the dappled blacks and whites of the path that stretched across the bower of his childhood memories."

Once again, taken from notes on a piece of paper I found

Every country absorbs industrialization into its own tradition. This applies to nationalism as well. Or acquisition of knowledge. How would Hegel approach this concept?

Individual acts: how do we decide to industrialize?

1. Desire. But where does it go? Who has it? Does the possessor become the actor?

Societal elements prior to industrialization and after. National industrialization vs. localized/focused/isolated.

Why does the corporeal understanding of state-self, coincide with marked industrialization?

1. At the point of national industrialization, we are corporeal. We have an understanding of who we are in words, and have more commonalities to differentiate us from those who oppose us.

2. Because we have reached a stage of collectiveness, we have a body of myth which defines us. The largest element of this is language. The second largest is reality. At one point reality was larger. Language supersedes that at the advent of thought, which makes our environment descriptive.

It is through description that we attain understanding. The final product of understanding is knowledge. This marks the departure of our cogitative, human selves from nature, as our interactions with it become more and more proactive rather than reactive.

Why does technology come about at all?

- Initial tech is reactive—we did not know of clubs or contusions, but we observed these phenomena and described them in terms of our own understanding of them. This enabled descriptive processes that in turn enabled “advancement.”

- Advancement is use of the descriptive faculty of human thought to test understanding in the face of a new desire. This new desire can be: urgency, curiosity, or general necessity.

Why did irrigation technology come about?

-Perhaps the exact formation of that epistemological construct cannot be illustrated in the absolute, but a sort of the aforementioned can be conjectured. Technology advances in differing degrees depending upon strengths and forms of desires, determined by descriptive existences determined by the environment. Someone living in the desert would be more driven in cultivation tech due to his understanding of his environment versus someone living in a rich forest with a strong curiosity in that field. The resultant development, even if treating an identical desire as its object, will differ again depending upon descriptive understanding resultant from that environment.

Look at the differing paths taken by cooking alone—satisfying a basic need to eat, but transformed drastically based on environmental obstacles to realizing that desire as parsed through descriptive faculties. This brings me to my next point: the collective impetus.

In order to maximize survival—a fulfillment of desire at a controllable degree—humans will congregate and adapt where this is most realizable. This brings about the emergence of society—a body where scarcity of satients can be offset by collective action. This collective action is essentially a developed tech that relies on varying degress of ingenuity.

The Godless Temple

There was once an hour that gathered its minutes like a wave- events burgeoning into a solitary point of focus, a crest erected atop its head so as to establish some momentary status, a glimpse or single tick of importance. Like all waves, however, a divergence is eventually reached which results in a separated rolling into an inevitable placidity. And it was in that marked point in time that man --for all of the glory of his species, the thought and histories that lifted him out of the mire-- fell off his pedestal and was sent careening back into the world of the beasts.

This moment, precious though it was, is a casualty of living memory. The cities and literature, however great, had been concealed by ages of neglect and growing illiteracy. What remained of man had been sent on a race to reclaim the glimpses of their glory, fighting among themselves to free mortared stone and shattered vase from the muck, that eternal downward descent into the terrestrial brain which would not speak its secrets.

Of the things found, none were as they should have been. At best, the existence of missing parts to a whole could be conjectured but never found. Ideas were tattered rags in a world where warmth was found in acquiring immediate sustenance while the intellectuals shivered and died in the shade of the mind. In a world where no practical use could be devised for the cataclysmic weapons that had a habit of surfacing from every which corner of the world, those who forgot morality first ruled over their neighbors.

Sending a Plate of Eggs to Hell, and Other Happenings

I hardly have time to write any more--both the time constraints from being in grad school, and the terminal quotidian boredom that that lifestyle brings make it nearly impossible to examine both what I am doing, and to put it to candidacy as something interesting enough for this blog.

I was randomly writing in the library after doing research for one of my final papers last month. I took a 15 minute break to rest my eyes, and dump the stillborn contents of my brain so as to prevent them from impeding any further thought. These very same contents came up in conversation the next day, and I was asked to type them out as they were--which I hope accounts for how incomprehensible they are at times. Anyway, I didn't have anything to do with them before now, so I figured that I'd just toss them on here so they didn't go the wastrel way of my other aborted efforts.


- On Excising Argument Structures From Simple and Complex Texts:

This is as much a criticism of essay writing and argumentative form as it is a meditation on how to distill the essence of argument from the academic fester of preponderance and the aegises of obscure terminology.

The introduction must clearly state the argument in terms that are not bound specifically in the discipline, even if the explanation relies on understanding sciences that purport to have logical weight upon the fulcrum underlying the issues in contention. Why "must?" -- In looking at what academia as wrought upon academics--where once there were disciplines that were definite and their objects many, now we bear witness to a clustering of offshoots and cross-pollination where the sciences have become specialized to differentiate or separate the modern phenomena from that which has come before it. In order to be plain about these terms--especially things like "structuralist," "constructionist," "normative," et al., where meaning and application change across disciplines-- they must be strictly defined. Even within one discipline there are are multifarious meanings based on differing contexts, and/or by a misconception held by the author. Even though philosophers like Wittgenstein lament the lack of added meaning through added words: each additional word breeding misconception, the problem of misconception tends to be endemic in the one word alone.
This seems to break with logic at first glance, but Wittgenstein's system is consistent: "what cannot be said clearly we must pass over in silence." If the word itself is wrong, ignore it. All too often, however, there is a pervasion of incorrect usage which in turn can be so damaging as to start a school of thought that represents an offshoot. we cannot "pass over [them] in silence" because the author has already erred and disseminated that malignant seed into the literary world. It is, however, inevitable, and this is why languages evolve as they do. As an ultimate consequence for any sort of standardized methodology being perpetrated by a technocracy, or an academic elite, we see the rise of academic and technocratic languages that come into forbearance out of juxtaposition with the ever-evolving languages around us. (lit. because there is a gap in intellectual language and standard language--to be extremely general-- we see a different stratification of class and a privatization of information by intelligentsia, who are a statal entity in the academic institution. The removal of specialized language is akin to the liberalization of the means of production, and, as in the typical socio-economic portrait of the worker alienated from labor, so too is this the democratic citizen alienated from knowledge). If we admit to this kind of entropy that is in the sway of corpuscularianistic elements of influence and uncertainty of change, how can we sustain any standardized academic language regardless? The answer to that lies in three things: a general de-academization, the knowledge that is the object of that process (and, moreover, what constitutes knowledge), and a temporalization/

conditionalization of the language for consumption.
This gives me three tasks to address, all detailed above. The initial item to address in this structure is that of epistemology. The nature of knowledge is the only thing that remains consistent across generations and cultures across measured time (this is different from experiential time, which has to do more with elements of a societal center that have a greater tenacity in the face of measured time. Example: 60 years have past since the 47 consitution was put into effect in Japan. The conditions of that document for the Japanese are still very real: to a certain extent the conditions of that document have not changed at all-- compare this with the 60 years that America has experienced. There is no comparable constant as X that can be set as relative to Y=time. We therefore have a larger sense of time sense on a massive localized scale). The idea that the Inca, Indus and Mycenaean civilizations all reached a golden age is indicative of an abundance of proper knowledge that was in-line with a zeitgeist that took the most of their ages(as in condition of lebenswelt), locations and great men. In comparing what each civilization thought to be "correct," however, there would be several lacunae in between certain things that, in abstraction, were shared, yet they were valued differently and held different roles in their societies. (It ends here, but what I was trying to get at in the end is that in the face of natural law, there are different qualifiers for what is true, what is right. Yet in putting those things into a teleological system with the goal of our baser needs-- food, shelter, society (law, god, science), what is perceived as "right" and "wrong" is never constant when put into particulars, only when put in a certain degree of abstraction. But unless we are in positions of abstraction, how often does knowledge occur in abstraction? We are students and therefore can say things like: "food and shelter are needed to form society." But I wonder if farmers in the Tigris-Euphrates thought the same things, or whether they thought in total specificity-- our task (what we are farming, how we are doing it day to day) is necessary for survival. (Food is a bad example because it's inconsistent with what I'm about to say next, but the general idea applies) How convenient is it that we can see through history--eternally (all time, all at once)-- and derive fact where fact may not apply. We're playing a colossal game of connect the dots, and repeated occurrences alone yield consent.

     Just to break the flow of what was started in the post below (although it is relatively in a parallel line of thought) I was inspired by the Paul Krugman op-ed piece on the NY Times website entitled "Failure to Rise," to post a piece from one of my famous poets.  Krugman, an economic pundit, should by all accounts stick to presenting the facts on the developments behind Geithner's bill--the topical bailout and how its travails less resemble tribulations of political processes than they do those of the literary hero cycle.  

So why then, in the last paragraph of the piece, when Krugman writes: 

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach — a feeling that America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic challenge in 70 years. The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, oblivious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.

...is it so startlingly effective?  For astute readers, the last two sentences will stick out like a pair of emotional thorns.  It is a quote from William Butler Yeats's "the Second Coming."  The prose is frighteningly conducive to the argument, even though it is outside of its formal construction.  

The poem that I chose is one by Dylan Thomas-my favorite poet.  Perhaps I should have taken more time in selecting one that is more conducive to another argument, but that will have to wait until another time.  Here is "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," as presented by poets.org: 

Do not go gentle into that good night, 

Old age should burn and rave at close of day; 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 

Because their words had forked no lightning they 

Do not go gentle into that good night.  

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 

Do not go gentle into that good night.  

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  

And you, my father, there on the sad height, 

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 

Do not go gentle into that good night. 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Moral Jigsaw in the Public Sphere

     I will preface this by apologizing for the rough causal logic and argumentative structure that will come into play here-- I am not at the point where I can distance myself experientially (and thus emotionally) from the events which inspired the subject matter at hand.  Perhaps this caveat should in turn serve as a lesson to the academic necrophagi: consider whence the break in emotion and interpretable stimuli (and subsequent stigmatizing of the former) began.  I would place it with the advent of the naming of the rational and empirical schools.  One can look at the old histories from Herodotus and still very much sense the "I" as a necessary element to what is historical narration.  It is with good reason.  If arguments concerning the standpoint of the narrator (both in spacetime and on a moral grid) are going to come into parley, the introduction of the self leaves little to doubt. 

     I make much mention of the double-standard between normative statements and aspirations to intellectual objectivity.  When writing on the nature of sciences, to paint a static picture of its elements so that its discursive parts do not swallow each other, the poetica of the narrative is sacrificed for the sake of the understanding of the reader.  This should preclude the necessity of prose entirely-- ideas can be communicated through annotated bullets then, with illustrations of the claims made in end notes in a flow chart.  

     To give you a heavy-handed view of the composition of the entire painting of the contradiction: the normative element of in the paradox dictates that the self should be absent, as should florid prose, illustrations of thought/introspection, etc.  This is defined as a "should" statement--things that are naturally happening are to be overcome, and the end-product is an piece that can be consumed by academics.  The actual element of the paradox is that the self necessarily exists within the process of thought and creation.  It is the crucible that smashes sensory data into neutrinos of abstract thought, and then synthesizes idea.  

     Excluding the self from the process at all is a lie; even alluding to it obscures the origins of the writing.  It is this attestment to objectivity that confuses the reader when it is present: Iris Chang's "the Rape of Nanjing" comes to mind, where the book reads like a historical fiction, but still relies on fuzzy math and fuzzy statistics, as well as makes use of very broad, racist statements.  

     The Pepys and Hachiya Diaries for the London Fire and the Hiroshima Bombing, respectively, serve as good examples for the self in the phenomenon.  The self is stated through both the diary format, the narrative structure, and the fact that the preface of both indicates that these are actual diaries, not just an adoption of the narrative to manipulate the reader's skepticism.  

Because I do not expect many readers--this blog being strictly to force myself to write-- I will return to this at another time.

Eternal Recurrence

-Mass Effect Spoiler Warning-

After deliberately taking many days to poke every stitch of fabric, every lance of the needle that went into its creation, I have finally gazed upon Mass Effect in its full physique. For everyone else who has looked forward to this as much as I had, the final moments of the game open up a great empty hole within you, and you know that it will be years before the final games come together, and you can relax. The climax of the game was equal parts Star Wars and 20,000 Leagues under the sea- the overeager technologies of the Citadel races invite the destruction of the reapers, and are saved by humanity in the end. Humanity is rewarded a seat in the council at the end, and all seems well -not unlike the procession at the end of A New Hope. But I wanted to take this time to discuss what the entirety of the game opens up as far as the sequel is concerned. Here are some key points that I'd like to point out:

-It is the Normandy, an Alliance ship, that lances Sovereign, not a citadel ship. It is to be assumed that humanity will be at the head of a lot of political motions at the beginning of the next game, some of them foolish. There are too many clues in the game about humanity being a headstrong, and avaricious race to be ignored. Although humanity has earned a seat in the council, there are still two games for it to prove its worth to the rest of the council races. Humanity will use its position as the race that saved the galaxy to get motions passed.

-The Reapers are still at large. The AI on Islos mentions that Sovereign was probably a contingency for the Reaper invasion. Although this isn't 100% certain, as far as we know, Sovereign's job is to watch the progress of "life" and call in the reapers from darkspace via an organic slave (in the case of the game), or through activating the Keepers to open the citadel relay directly. Both of those options failed, and Sovereign is dead. The reapers will probably have another contingency plan.

-The Citadel is now compromised. Now that the council races are aware of the Citadel's true purpose, it will probably be evacuated and studied carefully. We will probably see a new capital being built, along with a separate relay -not unlike the one on Islos.

-The Protheans have made Shepard aware of other beacons that may or may not be out in the galaxy. The Citadel races will want to find them to find a better way to combat the Reapers.

-There are still many races that aren't part of the Citadel, and will be jealous that Humans finally made their way in.

-There's another problem: What is considered canon in the game? There are some people that will play through with Ashley, Wrex or Kaiden dying. There is also the issue of who you select to serve on the Council.

-You still haven't seen any of the home worlds of any of the races.

-Reapers have the power to control the will of organic life, but exactly how far that power reaches is still unknown. Sovereign's ability was different depending on the proximity to his being.

-There's too much mentioned about the Terminus system to leave it alone. Something along the lines of "giving the Terminus system a common enemy."

-Shepard is named "Shepard" for a reason. If anyone's going to save the Citadel races (or at least humanity) it's going to be him, not the government.

Okay, What I'm about to write now is about 50% instinct, 50% based on facts found in the game.
The major question that is on my mind is, "How are the Reapers going to come back?" I don't think bioware will re-enact the Sovereign scenario and plant another giant reaper ship somewhere to possess someone. But I do see there being more dormant reapers in the universe. I haven't read the Mass Effect novel, so I still can't comment on this but, as far as I know, the means by which Saren procured Sovereign are still unknown. Meaning that Sovereign could have been a dormant ship that just decided to awaken one day. I think that's going to be the case here as well, but under different circumstances.

I have this gut feeling that the basic flow of good and evil in this game is going to be similar to the star wars trilogy. In the first game, you rise up, blow up the death star, and get a medal. There's still the empire to contend with, but the most pressing danger has been suppressed for now. The next game will see the true danger reveal itself, scatter the alliance, and end with Shepard at a surrender. Finally, the third will have Shepard fight back to the top, simply put.

Taking this framework, here is how I see the next game running:

It's a year after the events of the first game. Humanity has taken the reigns of the council, and is exhausting its resources -human, financial, and capital- to scour all corners of the galaxy for remaining Prothean artifacts. There are research teams at Islos researching the Prothean ruins to attempt to create their own mass effect drive, so as not to rely on the one at the citadel. Although there is still much research activity at the Citadel - so as not to rely on the Keepers (I think we'll see the two Keeper scanner guys from the first game again) and finally grasp the real Reaper technology- there is work on a new galactic hub underway.

Shepard and Ashley are at a memorial service for the people who died in the conflict in previous game. (I have a strong belief that Ashley will survive into the second game. She's too strong of a character, and important to the development of humanity to kill off. She's essentially a racist God-lover, who fundamentally believes that humanity is right in everything. I think we'll see more people like her, such as the Terra firma candidate for office in the first game (I think he'll be back and have won.) Both of them lament the fact that the former Captain (forgot his name) is getting out of hand on the Council. He's too strong, and only knows how to use the military to enact every bill drafted at the council. His word is absolute because everyone reveres the Alliance, and its military is burgeoning. There is no free government any more, and people are too afraid of the humans to do anything. The galaxy is practically under martial law, and what's more, the military is expanding the borders of the citadel government into the Terminus Systems through forceful territorial expansion.

Meanwhile, the otherwise boorish and uncooperative races that occupy the Terminus System are being wiped out by skirmishes with the ever-adventurous Alliance. Planets are being taken over to serve as research bases, and the individual gangs, cartels, and other ruffians are being scattered. Suddenly, a figure appears, banding groups together to fight back against the Alliance military. Terminus races have grown to hate the Alliance, and joining this guy seems like a good idea for everyone. The most striking feature of the terminus military is its fleet of titanic destroyer ships that seemed to have come out of nowhere (The implication of course is that these are the dormant Reapers that have influenced the Terminus races to hate the humans and unite against them).

It's at this point that I think that the council will make a stupid, cocky decision, and lose to the Terminus fleet. Shepard will flee the military with whoever he's banded with at the time, and try to find a way to stop the Reapers.

I think that the reapers wont aim for the citadel this time, but rather try to capture the other mass relays that the Citadel races built through the Prothean design. It seems a bit repetitive to have everything focus around the citadel again, thereby necessitating either damage to the citadel, or some other unforeseen condition. Regardless, all of the races will be scattered in the conflict, and we'll probably begin to see the Reapers terminate all organic life. The second game will see Shepard and co. using some Stone Fox tactics and making a big attack at the end of the game. I have this feeling that we're going to see everyone dress up like Quarians and use the Flotilla for an attack -Quarians are neutral, and would be able to penetrate the Terminus systems without drawing the attention that say, a Salarian, Turian, or now, a Human would.

There will probably be a lot of missions to visit planets and save colonists that were hit by an initial barrage. Also, considering the mention of the Protheans not being able to warn the other galaxies in the initial attack, I think you'll have to send word around and unite people while the attack is still fresh.

I expect to see a lot more Prothean contact, with either an AI, or equally likely, a Prothean scientist that survived the 50,000 years in cryo-stasis. It is through interactions with that character that the races will slowly begin to defend themselves, and form a new alliance through working together in the interests of organic life. Strange parallel, but I feel like he'll be the Merlin to Shepard's Arthur.

Anyway, that's all I want to write down for now. Discuss, and post your own ideas.