Hands Off! Laissez-Faire. Not My Problem. Do We Have Collective Responsibilities for the World Around Us?
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Author Archives: Bonnie McCune
What Is Real and What Is Not? Hallucinations, Creativity, and Lives Well-Lived
I rarely read nonfictio
n, believing that fiction exposes the truths about life and humans better than a scientific approach. One book I inhaled recently, though, was Hallucinations, by neurologist Oliver Sacks. While the book is fascinating on its own, illustrating the phenomenon evidently can be experienced by nearly anyone and caused by birth, injury, drugs, disease, or insomnia, I was especially intrigued by its use in writing and other creative endeavors.
When I took college philosophy and psychology classes, students continually debated the definition and reality of, well, reality. For example, how do I know that the color blue I perceive is the same color blue that you do. In short, how do we know what is real and what is not? Certainly this question slops over into religious faith. Of all the ideas of an afterlife, how can we be sure of heaven, ancestral spirits, Nirvana, or seventy-two virgins?
In short, we can’t. Scientists may have ways to measure, probe, evaluate, but absolute certainty is beyond even them. Throughout Hallucinations, Sacks reiterates the complexity of the causes of hallucinations. The impacts, however, are complex and enthralling. All our five senses can be affected. Because we interpret external sensations for our internal view of life, hallucinations can be a metaphor for all of humanity’s misinterpretations of one another and our values.
War is a prime example. No, let’s take social media as an example. Every simpleton with access to the Internet and the media delivered by it feels perfectly free to state his opinion on every matter under the sun, as rudely as he wishes. While I may believe that Trump’s opinions about immigration deserve no consideration, lots of earnest individuals seem to disagree with me.
Who’s to say who is right and who is wrong? We are able to respond only for ourselves, although we may believe otherwise. If I apply this theorem to writing, I open myself and my work to an infinity of possibilities. Alice in Wonderland, Hunger Games, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Catch-22, every work of fiction is predicated on “what if?” Frequently fantasy and imagination play a big role in creation.
Hallucinations approximate this condition. (I have difficulty distinguishing among hallucination, delusion, and illusion. All seem to be individual responses to what’s out there in the physical world, or reality, as it could be termed. So I’ll just use ‘hallucinations.”) Sacks may not have intended his volume to be a workbook for writers, but that’s one interesting application.
Even more interesting, writing is a way to share our realities. Here are some quotes from famous people that seem true to me, perhaps even real.
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All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions. Leonardo Da Vinci
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There is no truth. There is only perception. Gustave Flaubert
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We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. Anais Nin
Sadly, Dr. Sacks passed away recently. He left a legacy of his books, insights and thoughts. Sample them at http://www.oliversacks.com/ and http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/oliver-sacks/all/1
Is Sexism Ever Justified, Even When Trying to Combat Reverse Discrimination?
I had a woman writing prof in college who claimed women couldn’t write convincingly about male characters, but men could create female characters quite well. (Think Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.) Since that time I’ve searched book after book with memorable characters to see if that holds true.
I’ve some resentment toward men who presume to write strong, full, sensitive ladies. Shouldn’t women be writing about women? Opportunities for women writers are limited enough as is. We’ve a harder time getting published, our incomes are less, we receive less critical acclaim. Men make up only about 35 percent of fiction readership. Despite 80 percent of sales being romances, primarily written by and about women, and most readers being female, our interests are relegated to lower importance than men’s.
So why on earth should women read a male author pretending to be a woman?
Because he’s good, damn good. I recently finish Nick Hornby’s Funny Girl. Marvelous. Perhaps best known for About a Boy, successfully translated into film, Hornby often gets mislabeled as “lad lit” or facile. These denigrations ignore his skills. His style flows with nary a hitch, allowing him to convey complex themes and concepts as tastefully as swallowing a spoonful of honey.
Then, of course, there are his female characters. In his newest book, the personas are predominantly men. But you can’t get a more appealing, thoughtful, humorous heroine than Sophie, who shows Hornby’s remarkably close attention to the traits and perspective of women. Meaning she seems to think my thoughts.
So I guess it’s time for me to get over my bias against male authors writing about females. Like any type of discrimination, to prejudge a group limits our own knowledge and enjoyment.
“When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.” British author Ian McEwan
How can love survive? Many think love happens willy-nilly, but some authorities believe they should control the emotion.
Love at first sight. Many of us, at least the very young and very naïve, believe it happens. But whether love occurs with the speed of lightning or following long and complex efforts at a relationship, most agree romantic love exists. Being humans our expressions of love, our fascination with romance take many forms, most of them relatively harmless. We shower gifts of jewelry on our beloved, share preferences in food and wine, proclaim our feelings on social media. We search for examples of love in films, music, art, and enjoy emotions vicariously.
Recently on opposite sides of the globe, however, authorities are intervening in physical demonstrations of attraction. First up, Vietnam, where the Publishing and Printing Department is cracking down on “clichéd, useless, obscene and offensive” works that are “poisoning” the youth. This same claim has been used off and on in the U.S. during various censorship battles. Furthermore, “government needs to regulate an activity related to culture and people’s way of thinking so that it can benefit people.”
If only. If only all of humanity could agree on a method to truly benefit people. Unfortunately, down through the ages, this activity always seems to include punishing, even destroying those who don’t concur with authorities, like Nazis and various religious fundamentalists.
Let’s move on to Paris, where the city is removing locks from the Pont des Arts and other bridges on which star-struck lovers have attached fixtures as symbols of their relationships. A book and film started the craze in about 2006, and thousands of visitors adopted the fad. However, now sections of fencing on bridges are crumbling under the weight, posing a safety risk as well as “degradation of property heritage,” not to mention problems associated with graffiti, pickpockets and street vendors.
At least in this example of anti-romanticism, official action carries some weight. The equivalent of some 20 elephants to be accurate.
Other cities face the problem ways different from removing locks. In Rome city officials created official spots—steel posts with chains on the bridge—to eliminate damage to the infrastructure.
I’m not optimistic either activity will control the interest in and demonstration of romance. Humans are nothing if not creative. We’ve been dodging censors for millennia and finding creative ways to express emotion even longer. However, the attempts at restraint are ever-changing and as entertaining as the many paths of love.
love, censorship, Paris, Vietnam, locks, bridges, books, romances
Bonnie McCune, author 