Adult Literature vs Children Literature

A few years back, I stopped reading. I was then studying Literature- stuff like Gothic Literature, Chaucer and Shakespeare. And I stopped reading.

Adult fiction refused to continue its appeal to me. I loved King Lear, a story of a distressed old king abandoned by his daughters except for one, and Angela Carter's maniac, sexy retelling of fairytales like bluebeard. Over the years, I read a little Raymond Chandler, Vonnegut, Irving, Borges, Rushdie, Calvino, Malouf- and some others in the magic realism vein. But I couldn't find the charm in Austen, nor in the prattlings of modern women's fiction, or deep, serious books about people suffering the sufferings of others. So I stopped reading.

Then came the Harry Potter shock. Adults, ahead of me in literary tastes, picked up the books meant for their 9 year olds and fueled a multi-million dollar industry. And fueled other children books. Suddenly children fiction became the next hip adult fiction. But then kids always knew this. They knew why Harry Potter was good. They knew why Narnia was good. They knew why Alice in Wonderland was good. Stories.

Who would have thought it was so basic? Stories. Yes, adventure in far off lands, strange people, familiar types of people, and a spyglass onto the world. Yet most adult fiction failed to attract readers. People dropped out from reading 10 books a month as a child to 1 book a year from 14 onwards.

Others converted to non-fiction or magazines where the stories in National Geographic or The New Scientist were more bold, less belly-gazing. Dullness, introspection, gravitas was the order of adult fiction.

Then Dan Brown came along. The Da Vinci Code, with its heady mix of intrigue, conspiracy, art and secrecy across countries had been done before. But its popularity baffled the critics who forgot people loved good yarns, who didn't understand why Harry was loved by adults and blamed it on lure of witchcraft. The very same critics who hated Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and called them anti-christ and trash. I look at the book charts and Dan Brown is up there since last November.

But Harry Potter isn't so well written as Lord of the Rings. Da Vinci Code isn't so well written as those literary books that are frequently recommended but never finished. We know those times, where we go to library, forcing ourselves to read a classic, the hundreds jumping out at you from the shelves, but then you despair and go to borrow a book on cooking instead.

Adult fiction needs to refind its audiences, and make them feel excited reading again- stories that make us think. When writers start writing stories again that will excite, thrill and make us feel for the characters- I will start reading again.

Ambiguity (Andre Bazin)

Vital to Bazin's film theory is his conception of reality. In reference to this, Andrew describes the phenomenological notion of reality accepted by Bazin:

…Bazin would be obliged to say that the real exists only as perceived, that situations can be said to exist only when a consciousness is engaged with something other than itself. In this view reality is not a completed sphere the mind encounters, but an “emerging- something” which the mind essentially participates in. Here the notion of ambiguity...is more than a result of human limitation. Here ambiguity is a central at­tribute of the real. For Marcel and Merleau-Ponty, there can be no complete knowledge of a situation, but instead a more and more sensitive response to the mysterious otherness which consciousness engages. Thus ambiguity becomes a value, a measure of the depths of the real (Film Comment 64).

To Bazin the “mysterious otherness” is reality vis- a- vis the film image and the “more sensitive response” his mise- en- scéne style. Therefore the presence of ambiguity, frequently mentioned by Bazin, fortifies the essential and inherent complexity of reality and perception.

About Ego death

Ego death is a change in one's sense of self-control.

Zen theorist Alan Watts often equates ego with the controller, which AI theorist Marvin Minsky would call the homunculus. Ego is the controller homunculus. Above all, I perceive myself as a controller, a cybernetic steersman of my thoughts and actions. Normally, we feel ourselves to be free entities wielding the power of control. But in the mystic altered state, this ordinary sense of freedom and power is cancelled out. Our freedom expands into insanely unrestrained freedom, but this freedom no longer is perceived as being in my control. My loss of the feeling of being a controller is the loss of the ego's power: ego death. Rationality also keeps pace with the experience of suspension of ego's control.

In the intense mystic altered state, rationality combines with a radically freed and innovative imagination to form what transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber calls 'vision-logic' -- a powerful concept and powerful mode of cognitive processing. Vision-logic enables you to feel, comprehend, and see that the ego's power to control might not really be its own source, but rather, a result of a deeper level of control that entirely precedes your control. Not that this deeper control happens prior to your control along the time-axis, but rather, it thusts forth your control from a hidden place that is beyond your control. Ego death is not only a feeling of cancellation of ego's power-to-control, but a rational understanding of the way in which ego's control can never be powerful in the way we usually assume and feel.

Mystic egolessness is a more advanced and powerful way of not having an ego. The mystic both has an ego and does not have an ego. He "has" an ego in that the cognitive structure of the ego and the general cognitive structure that is the egoic mental model of the world, remain intact and present if the enlightened mind chooses to use them. He "does not have" an ego, in the sense that his mind is not centrally identified with the ego structure anymore. The enlightened mind knows that the ego is only conventionally conceived of as the center, origin, and controller of all mental activity.

Once the structure of ego is built, it is preserved and you retain all the benefits of it, as a tool. In the schizophrenic mind, the structure of ego is not preserved -- it is effectively dissolved, destroyed, at great loss. The mystic mind advances through the ego and preserves the ego for its use; the insane mind destroys its ego and therefore loses the ability to use the ego. It is very bad to 'lose' the ego in the sense of destroying it. You only want to lose your ego in the sense of wiggling out of identification with it. You can only healthily lose your ego by constructing a mental conceptual system that is more integrated and consistent and true than the ego. Without a solid new foundation, you cannot leave the old accustomed foundation. It is not enough to find that the ego is (partly) false, you must identify and comprehend the true nature of the mind, self, and world, and their relationships. You must build a new world before leaving the old world, and even then, you must not destroy the old world -- just loosen it. Even the master engages his egoic structures almost all the time throughout the day -- but he knows they are largely based on invalid logic and on dreams taken as waking reality.

Watts focuses on enlightenment through taking frustration (about poor control) to its full development. Then you understand the true nature of control, through wrestling with it. Underlying all this wrestling with self-control is a deeper source of control that trumps our control. You learn to mentally see this prior or deeper level of control: the ground of being, from which emanates our every thought, choice, and mental tension. The only way to "trust" and "stop controlling" is to discover and clearly conceptualize the nature of self-control, and its relationship with the ground of being, or "the great Tao that flows everywhere". Then you realize that all your controlling has always been, by its very nature, flowing from a source beyond your control. Then, you are logically, conceptually forced to see that trusting is the only possible action, because you have always been at the mercy of the Tao, that intrudes even into your decisions. This isn't the very clearest wording possible, but it's how Watts describes the essence of enlightenment in _The Way of Zen_ and in the essay "Zen and the Problem of Control" in _This Is It_.
The Tao's control underlies all our sensation of lack of control and self-struggle, our inability to force and restrain our own thoughts, and our inability to silence our own mind. Watts portrays the method of Zen as "enlightenment through the complete frustration of control".

To completely unbind cognition in every way, completely and 100%, would be instant chaos. If your self-control were to fragment completely, you would die of a heart attack (that is, a mind-core breakdown). Perhaps cognition can only be mostly-loosened, not completely dis-integrated. Fear the complete disintegration of cognition. Hypoth: if cognition completely disintegrates, then you are not only metaphysically helpless; you are thoroughly incoherent and have no chance, no way to be coherent. Can loose cognitive binding completely suspend, completely loosen and remove all mental-construct binding? That is the sheer chaos, sheer insanity of which they are afraid -- even prayer to Jesus couldn't save you if your mind completely shatters. MC loosening -- cognitive loosening, vs. cognitive shattering. Want to make cognition rubber, not shatter it, not merely fall apart completely. That is the feeling for most people -- that's the worst, not that you'll retain force of will but sans accustomed code of behavior, but rather, you'll lose force of will along with code of behavior and along with every other type of mental structure as well -- lose your mental structure entirely, in all ways. That the accustomed structures and guiding forces, guiding systems are not merely disengaged, but actually quite beyond the ability to remember them -- "lost" control in the sense of being unable to find any accustomed cognitive structures. So that you literally don't know what you're doing; amnesia, replaced by sheer chaos, entirely unable to conceive of anything but sheer randomness of cognition. That's the worst possible fear.
the transcendent mental model coagulates, congeals, drops into place, flips into place - both by literally seeing and feeling it, and by rationally understanding it in detail, if your rationality is advanced. (in fact, rationality is required, to enable feeling it). The more you can reason about ego death, the more you can experience ego death. The more you can reason about unity consciousness, the more you can experience unity consciousness.

http://www.egodeath.com/egodeath.htm

Let's Talk About... '2046'

It would be easy to like Wong Kar Wai's '2046'. I mean, if you knew the type of person I was. But let's be truthful here. In 'The Mood for Love' the prequel to '2046', he dangled a pretty object de memorie in front of us: nostaglia of true love and lost causes. I loved that film.. (i'm such a sentimental old bird) - and there are few moments of brain pleasure- in the richness of the visuals and the slow burn of the film.

'2046'- In '2046', WKW has created a equally sumptuous spectacle of couture decadence and futuristic slapdash and sparkling tiffanys. But You, my dear audience, like me, has been submitted to a cotton wool peep show- WKW has only been indulging his sci-fiction fetishism and women as objects de art (normal when the director is male) masquerading as a unique vision of a true artist. The version drags us around as he (as protagonist Tony Leung- the racy paperback writer) examines his writery blockage (physical ressurection as room '2046') in the past. This is his private joke of his own inability to remove the first movie and a diegesis of the execution of that exorcism. We are really watching that process. Nevertheless, it is entertaining.

WKW has dispelled the illusion of the suffering artist in Tony Leung for a commitment phobic ladies' man. We see the wittier, cranky and crass side of WKW in his wry narrative and physical dialogue. I had a few laughs listening to the chinese narration along the way. ('I fell in love with a delayed-reaction automaton' is not half as funny in chinese.) WKW has matured in his vision of his cinema- and no longer willing to settle for mood and feelings. There are also pretty optical effects and reflections which reminded me of watch advertisements. Nevertheless, WKW is playing it indulgent and cuts close to being reflexive. He has fallen deep in love with his own work- That's the interesting thing about watching WKW's movies, everytime he shoots a still of a actor smoking gratitously, there's this danger about him subverting his own movie by making us too aware of the intricacies and technicalities of that scene. I always think he's going to fall flat with the audience, but I end up liking it. There's hardly a plot, it's episodic and totally difficult to sit through. You grow lumps in your bottom. I'm telling it straight. But you end up liking it- cause you are probably a visual orgasmic seeker like I am.

Let's Talk About... "Noise and Thoughts"

There's an inverse relationship between noise and the number of thoughts generated these days. These days, nobody is alone. I'm one person who cannot function intelligently when the television volume is up. I think I would have to blame not television's programming, but rather the easy availability of such media for the weakening of our thought systems. It seems the world's culture (just those afflicted with first world status) has lost the ability to create new cultures- in fact, the culture we have now is a rehash of old thought systems spanning thousands of centuries. The noise generated, the number of media competing for your attention is like a crying baby bawling its lungs- and it may seem like the most important thing at that moment- but is it? Silence has created the richness of paintings, poetry and music. Noise has given us reality television, variety shows, and a incessantly talking culture.

I just like to *wave* to those people who put TVs on buses and programme advertisements to be broadcast 2 levels higher- you got your audience- but you got them in a hyponotic, zombified state by putting them in a womb of sound. You sold your orange juice, but culture's all gone down the drain. Put yourself out of the pot by tucking in earplugs now.