Pondering.....

[Chig]

This is just early free flow thoughts.... maybe just a poor idea... dunno.

First off, I like to think in terms of positive outcome....

It seems that all of us came together for one major project, we could move mountains.  Tell me what kind of mountains you would like to move.   How would you make this planet a little better?

Next

What kind of stories do you like?

Do some of you remember sometime ago an animated cartoon, in which several animators were given the final frame of the previous animators cartoon, and told to animate their own short... then they were all put together in one animated film?   What would that be like if we had similar directions with a movie in which each of us are given an act and a minimalist story bible, and the last five seconds of the scene of the act which proceeded our act.   Maybe there might be directions, such as include this piece of music... or convey this emotion.... but let artistic license rest primarily on the owner of the act....

what do you think?

[SydTheSkeptic]

Geoff, my students are reading that LeGuin piece next week.  Last year, it raised the most interesting questions about the nature of happiness which set us off on a class-wide inquiry that took us from Plato to Dan Gilbert and the science of happiness (incidentally, there were two happiness gurus who committed a double-suicide just a few months before).    

One of the coolest things that came from it was the idea that arose of there being some kind of cosmic balance that exists whereby one person's happiness depends on the misery of another (someone unknown somewhere in the world). I don't necessary ascribe to that belief, but my students reflected on how they never thought about poverty being necessary in order for there to be abundance.  That lead them to explore the idea of justice as being more about "balance" and the rest of the year just took off from there.  It was awesome.  

[Geoff]

Syd, I was sure you knew the author because she has written some novels that are very popular with the age group you teach. Odd coincidence--or meaningful nudge--that you are teaching this very story next week.

My anthology (Black Water, edited by Albergo Manguel) includes a few paragraphs from LeGuin about the story. Did you know that 'Omelas' comes from her habit of reading reading road signs backwards? Salem, Oregon in this case. The full essay is in LeGuin's book The Wind's Twelve Quarters and is entitled 'Variations on a Theme by William James.'

I read a basically sympathetic but unflinching history of positive thinking in America pretty recently. The expression "thoughts are things" which I've been seeing a lot recently was originated by a journalist in the 1880s who killed himself in 1892.

I read separately that Martin Seligman, a psychologist you possibly talk about when discussing the science of happiness, helped the military devise its "enhanced interrogation" techniques. (Putting prisoners in "stress positions" turns out to be an effective way to induce what Seligman calls Learned Helplessness.)

But there is no doubt in my mind that Seligman's insights have done a lot of people a lot of good. And, I think, Seligman was originally offering his research to the military to teach soldiers how to bear up under interrogation, how to avoid Learned Helplessness.

Does this support the idea in LeGuin's story that there is a necessary dark side, an inevitable victim?

[SydTheSkeptic]

I have to read it again this weekend, but there's the child in the cell that is kept in miserable conditions.  As you know, a rite of passage for the young in Omelas is to have them bear witness to the child's state and they're told that happiness in Omelas is dependent on the child's suffering. Then there's the ones who walk away from Omelas and the question as to why.  LeGuin leaves that to the reader.  Do they leave because they can't bear the child's suffering?  Are they "free" of the burden by having chosen an uncertain future? I vaguely recall that the imagery LeGuin paints conveys the sense that those who walk away are walking into darkness.  What does that mean?  Why leave instead of save the child?  These are such cool questions students come up with on their own. They make connections to Biblical stories and the notion of civic responsibility.  Their discussions are fascinating, and oftentimes, I'm taken aback by some insight I've missed even though I've read it numerous times. These are socratic seminars so students come with annotated notes and questions and the teacher merely observes and takes notes (if I were a part of the discussion, it'd be all too obvious how much smarter they are than me).

I did know about the origin of the Omelas title.  And yes, Seligman...known as the happiness guru by last year's students.  

What do you think is the answer to your question about there being a necessary dark side (an inevitable victim)?  Do you think so?

[Geoff]

I think that I do believe there is a necessary dark side, but "dark side" maybe gives the idea an unnecessarily gothic tone.

Your most spontaneous friend is probably not your most reliable friend. Every human characteristic contains a mix of positive and negative elements. I probably got that idea from a misunderstood scrap of Jung a long time ago. But I also remember from high school English class Mark Anthony talking about "the defects of [his] qualities". The good fairy can't bless you in your cradle with all the virtues. Specific strengths are linked to characteristic weaknesses. 

I once had to write and lay out an issue of an environmental newsletter because the real editor was having an operation. I got exposed to "Life Cycle Analysis" or "Life Cycle Assessment"--LCA at any rate. The idea is that you can't straightforwardly assess the environmental impact of anything without taking a very broad look. A very fuel efficient engine may be made of materials that can only be found in ecologically fragile areas, or that cannot be recycled at the end of the engine's working life. An LCA assigns scores to every phase and you add them up for a final total. Within a given LCA you can say such and such a process or machine or material is more or less environmentally sound than another. But there is no perfectly weighted LCA system so you end up choosing among the many different scales or combining several of them and taking an average.

GB Shaw once said that oppression is never vanquished, it is shifted to another shoulder.

It's not considered a classic story like Omelas but I think some of your students would love "And My Fear Is Great..." by another science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon. It's about an adolescent punk achieving emotional maturity by learning how to manage a reality that is morally contradictory, ultimately incalculable, and not amenable to simple solutions.

[lima]

a shadow cannot exist without light... 

[ThatGirl]

"...and not amenable to simple solutions."- Geoff - All true challenges in life and nature itself must be recognized for this quality or they tend to be misunderstood; imo.