Death Or Ice Cream – A Blast From The Past from August 2012

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This is not a post about writing, but it is a post about reading – or a post about fiction and reality, humanity and myth.

There is a way in which fiction forms our mind.  Shakespeare has, after all, been accused of inventing modern men with modern emotions.  Then, through the immense popularity of is plays, these character types, these ways to react to things… spread.

This is possible, though I don’t think it’s true, which is good because if it were it would make a very bad case against the bard’s legacy.  It is true that before Shakespeare there were fewer plays that were coherently organized around character types and character dilemmas that made sense to the modern man.

But I grew up in Europe.  I was taken to see art from the middle ages and before before I even had an idea of art.  I remember the medieval statues, their proportions all askew.  I don’t presume that Leonardo DaVinci and Michaelangelo invented the modern body and we all grew up to conform to it, and part of the reason I don’t believe it is that the ancients pictured bodies similar to our own.

Now, as with the argument with the Venus of Dusseldorf and whether it was porn or an accurate representation of women during the ice ages, it is possible to say that with Barbarian invasions, malnutrition and colder climate during much of the middle ages, it is entirely possible bodies had a totally different shape.  One does periodically meet a person walking around who looks like one of those medieval statues, just as one does, occasionally, bump into a woman shaped like the Venus of Dusseldorf.

In the same way it is possible that during the middle ages, while trying to survive, the idea of the individual mind and emotions counting for much fell right out of the culture.  (It was never as dominant as in our era anyway.)  Survival and times of scarcity always bring about a tightening of social norms to whatever the society considers “average” or “normal” behavior, sometimes with lethal consequences for the odd.  (One of the reasons it always puzzles me why Odds – people who don’t fit in our society – admire despots and societies of enforced poverty.)

Romeo and Juliet, and certainly Hamlet are not fully comprehensible unless we realize we’re watching the struggle of the individual against the group and that social obligations which were considered paramount.

But enough of Shakespeare.  As you know – or possibly, fortunate people that you are, don’t – you can say the words “William Shakespeare”, start me talking, provide me with food and water at intervals, and I’ll go on under my own power, with no audience interaction, for a day or two.  (Possibly more if my voice doesn’t give out.)

However, the fact that the very notion of Shakespeare having invented the modern human exists tells you with absolute certainty how much we’re aware of having acquired our notions of how the world should work from fiction, in all its means of delivery.

Fiction serves – or can serve – great purpose.  It can show things that otherwise can’t be seen in human life except in the very slow development of a whole life, clearly and in a minute, and through emotional delivery.  Concepts like deferred gratification or limited altruism (sacrificing for one’s kids) or even the ups and downs of a long marriage.

That is the problem too – It shows us what is slow and mostly internal as immediate and external.  Where fiction gives us odd notions – oh, all but the very “literary” sort, and that, I dare say might inform the minute moments of life, but will not (from what I read) give you a general thesis of existence (unless it is “Kill yourselves, all is lost” – the slightly more elaborate form of “Fly, all is discovered”) is the climax.  (You, the lady in the back row, stop blushing.  I didn’t mean that kind of fiction.)

Terry Pratchett whose works are, in a way, a meta-critique of our fables and stories pokes fun at this in (I think) Men at Arms (I always confuse it with Guards! Guards!) when they’re on the roof top and have a bow and one arrow and are attempting to hit the dragon on the “voonerables.”  The clinching argument is “There’s a million to one chance, so it’s a sure thing.”

Fiction operates on creating cathartic release.  As such, it requires a big climax for big stakes (or arrows) and a reward immediately after.  I try my best (because I have trouble believing it otherwise) to indicate there will be a long slog to set all right after the big climax, while still making it satisfactory to people.  But it’s not easy.  

I’m not criticizing literature (or other fiction) mind.  The other times I’ve written this sort of thing people get all mad and say “what do you want then?” – but I like literature fine the way it is.  I like the big climax and the big payoff precisely because they rarely happen in life.

On the other hand, it is important for the readers to remember that fiction is a representation, not the reality.  In reality, when you take the one in a million chance, there’s a good chance you’ll fail.  And even if you succeed and the dragon is gone, you still have to deal with all the crazy people who brought the dragon over and wanted to crown him king.  (The plot of whichever of the Pratchett books is mentioned above.  The covers I have are so similar I routinely confuse them.)

They’re not going to vanish over night; they’ll get up to ever more interesting stuff; and killing them is just not part of the game because it creates other problems.  (We all know what happens to societies that do that.)

So killing the dragon in real life would never be the all-encompassing solution it is in the Discworld  world (though Pratchett too hints at other issues, of course.)

There is a moment when I’m very ill – I don’t know if it happens to everyone – usually in the middle of the night, when I wake for a moment, and I feel the wellness below the illness.  (Just like when I’m getting sick, I feel the sickness beneath what’s as yet health.)

It doesn’t mean I’m well.  There will be days of feeling terrible still, and impatience with weakness, and sleeping far too much.  But it means I’ve turned the corner and I’m going to get well.

In real life it is somewhat like that, and when we throw fits and demand perfect and stark choices, we’re doing it because we want life to be a fairytale.  We want someone to offer us a choice between death or a bowl of ice cream with extra marshmallows, and we’re going to hold our breath until we get every last sweet mushy marshmallow.  We earned it, we deserve it, and we’re going to enjoy it.

I think this is part of human nature and fiction merely gives us an outlet for it.  In the same way I don’t believe Shakespeare invented modern humans, I don’t believe fiction invented the big climatic choice.  It goes back through our fairytales and legends – far back indeed.

But let’s remember that’s the only place it can be achieved, shall we?  The starkest choice you’ll get in real life is between sure death and less sure death (or whatever other evil you’re trying to avoid.)

So, you can choose between death and a bowl of ice cream that might be cyanide laced.  You can choose between letting illness take its course or feeling that moment of wellness and building on it, and taking great care and eventually after a lot of work, getting well. It won’t be easy.  It won’t be fast.  Recovery is not assured.

I’m an optimist.  I’ll take the chance.  And hey, cyanide tastes like almonds.

62 thoughts on “Death Or Ice Cream – A Blast From The Past from August 2012”

  1. Having started a beta of a single first person RPG less than 24 hours ago, one full of moral, or amoral, dilemmas, I wonder if such works also play the part of fiction in literature you describe.

    Like

  2. I had one of those moments in labor. Mine probably wasn’t really all that bad (I mean, it only lasted 10 hours or a bit more) but it was quite bad enough , and at one point I hit the, “this is never going to end, this is never going to stop, point. And something within me, something below my concscious self, roared up with a wordless, “Oh, yes, it is. And it’s going to stop soon.” And it got easier after that.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I had the same exact experience with my labors.

      But after the first one I was ready for the “I am going to die in agony and never even see my baby” phase and knew it meant the end of labor was near.

      Maybe that is what all the underlying feeling of dis-ease is about now. We are getting to the point where it can’t go on this way and is now ramping up to where it WON’T go on.

      Seems like death is the only possible outcome. But a glorious birth is very likely the usual outcome we just haven’t been involved in one before so it seems like death.

      Like

        1. I was so exhausted by the time I got to what should have been that point, then things went sideways, fast, and son was born c-section. Technically I was awake. Obstetrician had to had him off to the pediatrician to make sure his mouth, throat, and lungs, were clear (he pooped in the embryonic fluid, his first breath could have pulled it into his lungs). Baby and I were both “tagged”. Then dad got to go with them to the pediatric unit (with grandma tagging along). I didn’t get to hold him for half an hour or more.

          Like

  3. Alot of the people who think Shakespeare invented X or Y have not read Chaucer. Or any of the ancients. Shakespeare was deep in the traditions of Western lit, but just better at them.

    And frankly, a lot of this stuff goes back to Egypt and Sumer, and Sumer is just when people seem to have started writing this stuff down.

    I suspect that a bunch of hunter-gatherers from the dawn of time would include much the same kind of people you know from schools, companies, and Little League teams. Some of the jokes would be the same, too.

    There are big differences in how people act and react, from culture and tech and economic necessity or capability. But mostly we are the same.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. If there’s anything about what many call “the human condition” that Kipling didn’t write about, better than most and with more insight, I have yet to see it.

        Like

    2. Oh, the sweet spot that dodges the Casa Blanca problem.

      The problem with Casa Blanca is that all the stuff that they did first that was awesome, folks have since copied, and done better.

      Like

      2. That reminds me of reviews of the 2012 Disney* movie “John Carter” by those unfamiliar with Edgar Rice Burroughs, who spent the largest part of the reviews complaining about how derivative it was, how unimaginative it was, and how they’d seen everything in it before.

        from before their movies consistently sucked so badly.

        Liked by 1 person

            1. That one is actually defensible– Blizzard WAS developing a Warhammer game, Gamers Workshop did their usual BS, and goodness did they miss out.
              (Amazing how they keep doing that.)

              Like

              1. No, that would be if the reverse was true. These were claims that Warhammer (i.e. the older property) was copying Warcraft.

                Of course, people do make that claim about the reverse, as well. And there’s the StarCraft and 40K discussion – including charges and accusations about the Hydralisk and the revamped Tyranid Warrior (which look very similar), and came out at roughly the same time.

                Like

                1. No, I’m saying that they did lift game stuff from the game which was going to be for their IP, before they shot themselves in the foot. As usual.

                  Pointing to an aspect that folks usually ignore.

                  Which is just as protected as the idea of orcs being green, etc.

                  Thus, defensible.

                  Like

        2. Someone hears some of the music I listen to…

          “Oh, you must play $GAME?”

          “No. Not a gamer at all, really.”

          “But that music…”

          “Is from the 1950’s, and the game uses it, yes. It’s been available since before the game existed.”

          Liked by 1 person

          1. :laughs:

            Remember when the Johnny Cash movie came out?

            I utterly dumbfounded my DJ shop head by knowing all the words to all the songs on his brand new CD.

            Like

          2. Thats like a kid i was working with thinking the Lead Zeppelin immigrant song music they used in Thor was new and made for the movie

            Like

        3. I remember reading several of L. Sprague de Camp’s books and thinking, ‘This was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and he just filed the serial numbers off.’

          Like

    3. There’s a very good case that Shakespeare really did invent the introspective/modern human — in literature, at least. Clearly they (we) have always existed, but if there were similar portrayals previous to his milieu, they didn’t spark the “this is fundamentally who we are” awareness that he did.

      Another way to put it is that he didn’t invent humanity or change or discover human nature, but he did more or less invent the way we in the western culture now think about ourselves.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. I agree with S.Banshee and I also don’t think there IS such a thing as Modern Man.

    If you read through the Bible, people have been acting the same way, pursuing the same passions and falling prey to the same disastrous human flaws for over 3,000 years. If you want to call that history and not just ” literature” fine, but since literature, such as Shakespeare, quoted liberally from biblical sources, I’d say it counts. Any literature that doesn’t reflect human nature doesn’t resonate with people.

    The Epic of Gilgamesh had all the same sort of narratives that you see today as well. Very much pre Shakespeare.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. But that would mean that we’re not inherently superior to previous generations! Do you know how devastating that would be to smug moderns?

      Liked by 1 person

      2. just look at the Founders of America and compare them to any modern politician … well read, had an understanding of history and human nature and sacrificed for the good of their country … today there is not a single western world leader who fits that description …

        Like

        1. No. All of them think they’re superior by being “citizens of the world”. But such a thing never existed, nor can it ever exist. It’s impossible to belong to, or more importantly, answer to, all the myriad cultures of the world.
          So, what they are in fact is men without a country, who hate countries, civilization, and ultimately, humanity.

          Like

        3. Who is John Locke? The Reader thinks it would be fun to ask that of as many politicians as we could.

          Like

  5. You’re thinking of Guards, Guards with the dragon. Men at Arms is where Carrot finds definitive proof that he is the lost heir to the throne and then hides it where no one would think to look.

    Like

    2. Wasn’t familiar and looked it up — apparently it’s the Venus of WILLENDORF. (Unless Google has forgotten about the Dusseldorf one, which isn’t out of the question.) Also, turns out I was more familiar than I thought; I’ve known about those ancient figurines since way back in the day, but didn’t know any of them had such a specific name.

      I guess the archaeological interpretation is that these things represent something along the lines of an unattainable/greatly wished-for ideal? In times of starvation, the ideal is corpulent; in our times of excess, the unattainable-for-most ideal is looking like you haven’t had a lot to eat.

      Like

        1. I prefer to believe that some Time Traveller with a Universal Translator went back and played Sir Mixalots “Baby’s Got Back” at the neolithic societies near Willendorf for years on end…

          Liked by 1 person

        1. Venus of Dusseldorf redirects to Willendorf on my lookup, so the confusion must be common. (My search engine is Qwant, from France, if that’s a clue.)

          Like

          1. Brave Search does the same. And as others have mentioned, I was (somewhat) familiar with these figures (there are others) but unfamiliar with any names for them.

            Like

      3. I did hear of one researcher who looked at the figurine from several different angles and decided it’s what you would get if a bored and heavily pregnant woman were looking down at herself and carving a self-portrait of that angle.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. a quote from the Bruce Willis movie Last Man Standing … “After a while you stop hearing your bones break, your teeth rattle. You just concentrate on holding tight to that little part right at the center. The rest doesn’t matter. They’re gonna take the rest anyway.”

    Find that “little part right at YOUR center” and keep it strong so you can build up from that after they have done their worst …

    Like

  9. The clinching argument is “There’s a million to one chance, so it’s a sure thing.”

    The attempt to use long odds to create tension is one of the most overused in speculative fiction. It really doesn’t matter how many zeros you stick on the end: whether it’s a hundred-to-one, a million-to-one, or a hundred trillion googleplex-to-one, one you start tossing out those odds, you don’t make the audience afraid for your hero, you make the audience think, “Yeah, it’s pretty much a sure thing.”

    I try my best (because I have trouble believing it otherwise) to indicate there will be a long slog to set all right after the big climax, while still making it satisfactory to people.

    I will say that this is why I liked the original ending to The Return of the Jedi rather Lucas’s endless edits on that. In the original, we’ve destroyed the second Deathstar, killed both Vader and the Emperor. It’s clear that we’ve had a major victory, and, even though the Empire isn’t gone, it’s likely on the downward slope, and the celebration on Endor is well deserved.

    The revised endings, however, with the celebrations on every planet in the Empire, implies that, yes, the Empire did completely fall because of the events in Endor orbit. It makes it feel like it’s less a great victory in a war and more like we just killed the final boss in a video game.

    Like

  10. I think we should all thank Joe ‘the Pedophile and Thief’ Biden for destroying every liberal city in north America. He just single handily bankrupted every Democrat Strong Hold in North America. To the point, that some citizens are actually starting to think about voting republican for the first time ever. And the Democrat Mayors and Governors are getting pissed and demanding billions in aid that don’t exist. Maybe he’ll have another ice cream cone to celebrate. Every Snoop Dog now says he is for Trump. ROTFLMAO at the Democrats, as the old Mamma-San used to say, ‘He so stoopid’ it hurts his momma”

    Like

  11. “One of the reasons it always puzzles me why Odds – people who don’t fit in our society – admire despots and societies of enforced poverty.”

    Because those societies are Different. When you don’t fit in our society, obviously our society is wrong and needs to be Different. Therefore. . . .

    Like

  12. The “Background check on ammo purchases” law just got overturned in California. The AG asked the judge for a stay pending appeal, and was denied.

    😊

    So now there’s a mad rush by many to order from out of state mail-order vendors before a possible stay by the 9th Circuit. My apologies in advance if we clean out your favorite ammo vendor.

    😅

    Liked by 1 person

    1. On that note. We did finally score some 25-35 for the 1898 rifle. Haven’t shot it yet. Hornaday, does manufacture the ammo. Just does limited runs. They do not sell direct. Those that do sell it, won’t put one on a waiting list. So what one has to do is check regular to see if “in stock”. If so, order it, and hope order isn’t cancelled because too far down the list. Done this already 4 times, 5th time the charm. Not cheap. $110 for 30 rounds (~3.50/per plus shipping).

      On the other. Sigh. Really? Going to make replacing practice rounds difficult. Oh well hopefully have enough in the pond (boat accident, remember).

      Like

  13. The argument can definitely be made that fiction is bad for you. It sets up all sorts of false expectations.

    The one that gets me from obviously fake LitRPG: Once you get something, it sticks. For example, if I start out as weak then train like mad, my strength increases – and stays there. That doesn’t work in the real world. I work out and get buff (for me, not by any objective standard) then stop working out. It doesn’t take long for those gains to disappear. It’s very depressing, even though I KNOW that the books are completely unrealistic.

    Like

    3. Tell me about it. I finally got off my tail to work out because I could not get up off the floor without using something to assist me (X years ago). Went from having to use a table/couch/chair) to being able to get up off the floor without even using my hands. Gym went away. Then only a couple of years later, similar situation. Only didn’t need extra aids. At least I can get up using my hands. No matter how much I work on it, I cannot getup off the ground without using my hands. Just can’t my knees won’t let me. (Burpies? Forget it. Not happening. You youngsters will have 10 in before I get out of the plank on my knees, hands down, one leg up, then the other, to the final jump, hands raised. Getting back down, is almost as bad.) Then too I worked hard to get where my heart rate and breathing would be steady at not 100% intensity, overtime. Then, when hiking in Alberta (Canada) then Yellowstone, my legs didn’t hurt, but could I catch my breath? Oh hell no. 7000 and 8000 foot elevation, but still. (Getting old isn’t for sissies.)

      Like

Comments are closed.