The Lonely Lighthouse

I wasn't paying much attention to the internets when the great race debate started.  So, confused by ebear's post today, I did some digging.  What I found profoundly disturbed me.

I am not going into all of it.  But, there are several things that I just have to say.

First, the idea that understanding that we are all human beings is some kind of shallow cop-out offends me greatly.  In fact, we are.  And when we deal with people with whom we disagree or are angry, we can forget that they are also people.  We demonize them in our mind because (I think) that is the only way that we can justify the vemon that we pour on them.  That other person may be a complete bastard, or they may not, but either way, they are still a human being.  We may not understand them, and they may not understand us; there may be problems that don't permit us to ever be able to identify with where they are coming from (not neccessarily born of culture or race, maybe just born of personality), but, ultimately, to quote C.S. Lewis: 

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

I know that my faith colors my understanding of this situation.  I think that makes sense, it is my frame of understanding.  And in that frame of understanding, I think that my job in life is to love people (and love God).  That parentheses is not because it is less important but because it is less pertinent to the discussion and I REALLY don't want to bring religion into this anyway.  (Though, I guess I did, because in some ways, I can't escape how it frames the way that I perceive things.)

I'm not going to go into a long diatribe on what it means to love people.  I think, basically, you know what it means. 

Do I fail at loving people?  All the time.  As long as I am living I don't expect that I will always love everyone all the time.  I want to, but I am also selfish and self-preoccupied, and therefore sometimes it is inconvienent to love people.  Not an excuse, just an explanation, in complete honesty.

Anyway, preaching aside, I have to say that racism is something I have seen the uglier sides of all my life.  You wouldn't know it to look at me.  I am a thirtysomething white woman.  At least I'm not a man, right?  But I am married to one.  That makes me part and parcel to the inherent racism in society, right?

Before I go on, I think there are many wonderful people out there who had "normal" families growing up, who had "normal" parents, "normal" siblings, went to "normal" schools, and I am glad for them.  In some ways, I might even envy them.

I won't go into my homelife because it has nothing to do with racism.  But school?  Oh, yes.  Do you know what it's like to be a different color than most people around you?  Do you know how it tinges every word you say, how it makes you feel when YOU are called racist because you represent something to others merely by the color of your skin?  Do you know how it feels to never fit in?  To always be on the outside, and, even, making friends, know that ultimately, you are the token person of different racial stock?  Can you imagine how frustrating it is to have the majority of people around you telling you that you are the majority and an oppressor and what you owe them?

Especially when you actually just want to be a part of things.  When you want to understand.  When you desperately want to be accepted, but what you represent means that you will never find that acceptance.

For me it meant finding a place of peaceful co-existence.  Striving to be myself and taking pride in the fact that I was "weird."  (And I was so pale that girls would pinch my legs and insist I must be wearing stockings.)  I decided if I was different, then I would relish being different, I would be as different as possible, and I would never try to be alike with anyone.  (And, with my home life, my strange, one-blue-eye-one-green-eye, my own deep sense of not being quite right in the head, this wasn't hard.)

Surprisingly, this actually earned me some amount of respect.  It also carries with me to this day.  I may not always say so, but I identify with the outcast.  I identify with the fringe people. 

This has impacted my life decisions (and, some of them just make me feel that much "weirder": a wife at 17, a mother a few months later, who works in the church).  It has impacted my perception of the world around me.

But most of all, it has made me realize that you can make zero assumptions about people you meet (in life and on the internet), based on how they appear, even based on what they say.

Because underneath it, they are a precious immortal soul that if you were to see in ultimate perfected glory or corruption would make you grovel and cringe in wonder.

P.S.  Rereading this, I find that some people might call me a whiner, and think this is some bid for sympathy.  It's not.  Some people might say, "Oh, you had a small taste of what it is like to have people prejudiced towards you for a short period of your life, well, good!"  This isn't about that.  I know I have reaped benefits from my priviledged white status.  I know that there are much worse stories of people of all races and cases of oppression and abuse which make my "complaints" seem silly.  I'm not saying all this to wave a banner of poor me.  I'm saying this because people need to try to understand each other.  And I think it comes far easier when people are less concerned with being understood, and more concerned with understanding.  Othercentricity (is that a word?) is just counter to our human natures.  It is, however, the route to a life of love.

Someone recently asked me if I was writing novels because I enjoy it or because I want the satisfaction of seeing them in print.  I warbled a little back and forth at the time - who doesn't want to see their novels in print?  At the same time, I don't really have an audience (well, I do write to an audience, it just isn't listening, yet.)  I would keep writing even if I figured that I would never be published, because it is something I *must* do, but it would lose something in that.  I spent quite a while trying to figure out what that something is, and decided a few things.  After some more thought, I connected this to various other things and the result is the following bit of spouting off that I think expresses my current feelings on the matter (subject to change, of course).

Fiction, like all other forms of creative work, is to some degree collaborative. 

That is sort of the sum of it, but I want to go on.  Since this is my blog, I will.  :P

I remember when I read that JK Rowling didn't want a Harry Potter RPG because, basically, she didn't want people to mess up her characters.  Of course, fanfic also does that, and at this point there isn't much she can do about it.  But RPGs and fanfic are just outlets which one could try to control.  You can't control what someone else does inside their heads.  (Why would you want to?  Okay, sometimes I could see why you might WANT to.)  Nobody can stop someone else from engaging with your ideas and putting their own spin on them.

This goes to something I read authors talk about a lot - largely that the work they write isn't always the work other people read.  People come to art with their own perceptions of reality, their own morality, their own notions of standards.  They read into what you write.  They add layers you could not have added on purpose unless you were the most powerful telepath on the planet.  (Even then, it's sketchy.)

Reading, like the appreciation of (or interaction with, because let's face it, we've all read things we didn't appreciate) visual art, or movie-watching involves engagment.  How many times have you heard that you have to make your story matter to those who read it.? They have to give a damn about what they are reading.  That is engagement.  Engagement requires two sides.  If you are down to one side, you are just inputting into a void.

Books, movies, STORY that I love, those things must engage me on some level.  I interact with them, or if they don't engage me, they fall to the side (with the exception of War of the Worlds, which I will finish someday if it kills me).  When someone identifies with a character, the story's impact on them changes, but they also change the story - at least for them, and possibly for those whose lives theirs touch.

Not everyone makes up continued story in their head about their favorite tv shows, books and movies (though an awful lot do - look at the fanfic out there).  But, for those that do, those characters become more real because of the interaction of imagination.  That is a collaborative process.  Authors do not control what happens once others read what they write.  They simply put it down, and usually have to move on.  But the work takes on a life of its own after it has left the author's hands.  Its story is different for every person it interacts with, but in the lives of the people it engages, it has meaning.  It is a creative endeavor, which, once started, never has to end.  It can go on forever, challenging people, sharpening them, moving them.  It's a tool of power that is only limited by the scope of its audience - as is every other creative effort.

And that is a gorgeous thing to me.

Epic fantasy, like the mythological traditions it grew out of, relies on pattern recognition to give it significance. As human beings, we always instinctively seek the signal amid the noise, whether it’s there to be found or not. (This is really true of art in general, but it’s particularly a Thing in fantasy.) Which is part of why stories like this are so satisfying, or should be: unlike real life, there is one Chosen One (or a triumvirate of them; Three is also a pattern-significant number. Or Nine!), one Central Magical Thingamajig, one Final Battle, where it All Comes Together, etc. It all means something, maaaan.

Which started me thinking about genres.  For contrast's sake I took what I thought the definition of sci-fi was (story where technology interacts with and significantly impacts people's lives) and looked around to see if I could find anything that agreed or disagreed with that.  Of course, I found both.  (Isn't that part of the fun?  People disagree!)  But I discovered that Isaac Asimov agrees with me:  Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us, the possible consequence, and the possible solutions. That branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings.

And I got into this conversation with someone who said to me that sci-fi is futuristic and fantasy is based on the middle ages.  But, I think I disagree completely.  That is setting, and generally, elements of sci-fi include futuristic settings and elements of fantasy include historical settings. I grant that people will tend to consider futuristic works as sci-fi and historical works as fantasy because when they say they prefer one sort of story or the other, they are concerned with setting. There are elements to stories set in those times that appeal to them. If you go and pick up a sci-fi novel, and it takes place in Victorian England (Steampunk?), or 6th century India, you might well feel you have been gypped of your favorite science fiction elements. And some people who love fantasy would be loathe to admit that Babylon Five is fantasy, because it's full of aliens, and they want theirs with medieval knights and damsels in distress. So, I understand why genre classification might rely on setting in many people's minds.

But, I don't think that's the meter I would use.  There could totally be a sci-fi novel set in the middle ages (probably are some) and there could totally be fantasy novels set in the future (definitely are some).  I think that the ruler of genre classification is the aim of the novel or story.  Does it follow the mythological pattern?  Or is it concerned with the impact of technology on people or society (or both)?  Clearly there is crossover, and a novel or story could do both.  Right?

I'd been calling my current wip science fiction, because it involves technology and its impact on, people and society, and is in a lot of ways a "what if."  Even though there are zombies (sorta), there is no magic.  The setting is an alternate present, where technology developed in different ways, but in a lot of ways the world feels sort of old fashioned.  Some people might think because of the zombies and gothic feel that it is fantasy.  Yet, there is technology that we don't have and it shapes the world, the characters, the story.  Science fiction, right? 

As I was messing around with the plot, trying to figure out the climax of this blessed thing, I stumbled onto a complication which I thought was interesting.  I toyed with it for quite awhile, but ultimately discarded it because it was too big, too epic, and I didn't know why exactly, but I ddin't feel it meshed with the story.  I think the reason I fel that way, though I couldn't articulate it at the time, was because that was the fantasy part of my brain, trying to turn a fairly deceptive science fiction novel into a fantasy novel, if that makes sense.  Or maybe it is because I always want to blow things up to epic proportions.  :D

Anyway, just thinking this out.  Comments?  Thoughts?

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