Evolving Systems course, week 8: a parable of change?

By the end of the last class, we spent some time talking about Butler’s prose. Last night while having a conversation about narwhals (and how if narwhals ran the world, everything would be much more peaceful) in the hallway, Meredith and I somehow managed to start talking about Parable of the Sower. It was then I realized that though the book has somewhat of a doomsday warning feel to it (society is on a slippery slope to nowhere, better make changes now or perish!), I was never really that frightened when reading it. I am not sure whether it is the fact that the book is set only fourteen years from now so it seems almost likely to happen (or not likely at all? – I cannot decide),  or that after the fifth rape and third cannabilistic event I was desensitized.That would be an issue with Butler’s style with me. However, it may not be that. We might all be desensitized to the violence in Parable of the Sower because we see so much everyday on the news and in smaller, subtler ways on our own streets (Anne mentioned the homeless people she frequently sees on her way to work). The hidden and outright violence behind all of these occurrences has changed our reactions to fictional violence (and everyday strife). Maybe this is part of the slippery slope Butler is warning us about?

 ps i know of an interesting study that links the existence of evidence of violence on streets (broken glass, etc) to more violence.

 Ha, people aren't born good or evil, they're born neutral. It is not until they are presented with options, acted upon, and interacted with do they develop a "good" or a "bad". Sure, if the child has a genetic tendency for violence (was that even proven?) or alcoholism (definitely proven), or if the mother does drugs whilst pregnant, they are have already been pushed in one direction before birth, but that makes me think about how good and bad are all relative. Anyway, I firmly believe that humans are intrinsically neutral, but lazy, and by lazy I mean they take the path of least resistance (which might not be considered "lazy"). Most will take the easiest path to survive. Key word: survive. If that means stealing your food instead of working for it, so be it. Stealing is generally considered "bad". There are about 1000 examples of how doing something "bad" is easier than doing something "good", and that is why we see "bad" so often in the world. Humans = lazy, bad = easy, humans = bad. It's not our fault, oh wait, it is. Is it? But all we want to do is survive! this is what is called a "moral dilemma". 

"I could not take the cookie becuase mommy told me not to but being hungry for cookies is sooo hard *takes cookie*"

"I could not borrow my friends homework becuase cheating is bad but I couldn't possibly stay up past 3 AM again. *cheats*"

"I could not steal this mans money but I have to buy drugs or I'm going to feel terrible *steals*"

"I could not steal this mans money but I need to provide for my family *steals*"

The last example is where the dilemma part comes in, and it is something we see in Parable. I think this would be an interesting thing to talk, most likely argue about, in class, because everyone has a different morals+survival+laziness line. For some people, it never changes ,and for some, it changes all the time, and that is something we see in Parable as well.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about what evil could be, or how it can be defined.  I have come to the conclusion that I think that evil is most definitely a cultural creation that varies due culture.  What can be labeled at “evil” or “devious” in one culture may be normal for another.  For example certain groups of people practice cannibalism. In the Untied Stated that is punishable my law and is considered by many people to be wrong.

Well, I really don't know if we are born evil or good.  The first reason, if following in logic sense, of human reaction should be need for survival. The reason may also be the goal, which is success to live longer and better. In that sense, we are born more like good. But if you say that we are born with good nature and evil nature, that makes more sense as a comprehensive answer to all human beings' nature. After all, there are many people, if given sufficient food and comfort, would like to help others and some would see others' pain as fun.

About change, I have a link for an advertisment of US campain.

Despite the politcal intention inside or outside of US, this advertisment talks about the result of change and the use of warning.

Change itself occurs every moment, and with a series of reasons (that we can find), certain results turn out. And people would like to predict the result, because they want to control the direction of everything and don't want these things to trigger bad results. And people want to make such prediction to warn us now, that what we should do and what we shouldn't do.

But there is always another explaination for the cause and effect: Predestination. It said that no matter how you want to change the process or details in the big system, you can't change the result and the fate is designed at the first place. It sounds disappointing, but also relieving. We don't have trials to prove these assumptions. In a lot of books of time travelling, some of the writers also express this idea, that even you can change the said-to-be key factors of one event, you still can't turn the wheel of fortune.

Another thing about the Parable of the Sower, is the historical heroism.(I don't know if it is the right word for it.) It states that the history is always changed, or the important events are always decided by the heroes, not the people or everyone in the society. In this book however, it shows a power of individual which might be able to change the history. Lauren is a normal girl. She is not the president of Unite States, and she is not Jesus who have the power from God. If she is able to assemble people and create a great change in this world, it might show that a single person can have the ability to change the world, or affect the wheel of fortune. How does that sound....

 So, last Thursday we discussed human nature, and attempted to categorize people as either good or evil. It pains me to say it, but we cannot classify people so simply. Humans are overwhelmingly a shade of grey, to which the black and white of good and evil do not and cannot apply. We defined evil as the willful desire to harm someone/something. I would like to add a lack of remorse to our definition of evil, too. Unless an individual is sociopathic, he or she cannot deliberately harm another person without feeling pangs of regret. If you have lived in Western society, you surely have heard The Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This principle of morality can be found in the Apocrypha of Jewish texts - Tobit and Sirach - as well as faiths from around the world.

I have shamelessly gleaned supporting quotes from Wikipedia:

Buddhism: "One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness hereafter." (Dhammapada)

Hinduism: "One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self. This, in brief, is the rule of dharma. Other behavior is due to selfish desires." (Anusasana Parva, Section CXIII, Verse 8)

Judaism: ""Do to no one what you yourself dislike." (Tobit)

Why did I post this multicultural Golden Rule? Because it is evidence that humans who differ significantly in culture and religion still share an intrinsic moral background - respect for human life. Thus, I find it difficult to believe that many people are truly evil, because the majority of individuals are bombarded from a young age with messages that promote human dignity.

I suppose this raises the question: What about babies and children who are too young to comprehend morality? Are they evil? And I suppose I must give an answer: NO!

I want to redefine "evil" as "selfish behavior," because I believe many people intermix the two. Selfishness is simply valuing oneself over others, and we are all guilty of it at some point. Selfishness is occasionally essential to an individual's survival, when selfless, magnanimous behavior isn't feasible. For instance, a hungry baby wakes up and wails during the middle of the night, awakening its exhausted parents. Is the baby evil? No. Selfish? Yes. For a baby, whose reasoning skills are equivalent to that of a slug, being selfish provides him/her with a meal. Does it matter that the parents must survive the following morning on 4 hours of sleep? No; the baby's survival is guaranteed.

In addition, the baby is already learning the moral skills necessary to function among people. Think about it: a few months after birth, the baby already mimics the facial expressions and verbal intonation of those around him/her. Babies learn through mimicry. After mimicking sounds, what's the next step? Memorizing behaviors, such as altruism and kindness. Due to humanity's intrinsic social nature, a baby is conditioned to become a moral person - one who isn't evil - simply by living among people.    

Why me? Seconds before I post this reflection, I see this appear in my Google Newsfeed: www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/25/pennsylvania.infant.homicides/

Never mind. People are evil.

I think the best part of Thursday's class was our attempt to define evil. Is it really something we can define? Can we really capture the essence of something so dark and abstract in mere human words? Honestly, I think the closest we can get is to scratch the surface with some examples and attributes. One thing I did want to mention, though, is how someone said evil is demonstrated in Parable - by the pyro users. I don't think it's the drug addicts themselves that are evil. They're driven to do things that we may call evil by a substance that alters their brain's chemical functions. I think it's unfair to say that the users themselves are evil - they're trapped ina vicious cycle of evil themselves, if you think about it. Slaves to a substance. So that brings about a question for me: if evil in the book is sybolized by drugs/drug usage/drug-induced acts, where exactly is the "evil"? Are the drugs evil? Or is it like Bingqing proposed, that humans are born evil and are shaped by their environments, and drugs just facilitate the evil's prevalence?

Otherwise, I think we should go back to day one of the class and do a word-association thing with evil as we did with evolution - first three words that pop into our heads when we hear the word "evil" and see how our subconscious defines it, seeing as we can't seem to define it when we think about it on purpose.

Butler's novel really got me thinking about the future of cultural change. Is this what we are headed to? I had always thought that we were constantly improving, and now I'm beginning to see that maybe its not that we are improving, but just changing. A lot of the warfare that was going on in Butler's novel is not something that I can't imagine. We aren't that far off, there are parts of the world that situations similar to this are happening. I just hope that people aren't evil enough to allow this to happen.

I think that one individual can have a very strong influence on a culture. A culture is a whole group of people and although every person contributes something to the group, it takes one strong leader to really influence all the people. In Parable of the Sower, Lauren's followers were all different. Each person contributed something, however, it was Lauren that guided the people and kept the community together, allowing it to evolve and become strong.They all looked to her for guidance.

My thoughts from Tuesday class:

All I know is subculture. I do not define myself in terms of geography or ehnicity. Is that enough? And if the culture I follow isn't the dominant culture, am I recoginized? I am a treated like some lesser being? A cultural minority, to go to extremes (perhaps)? When do we define a minority and majority? And how can we stand any of the awful things we do to each other based on... on anything, really. How do we stand it? Why can't we just... chill with each other? Not to an extreme degree (ha ha, I read science fiction, I can imagine what will happen), but just an overall sense of "Oh hello, that's different, but as long as you're not hurting yourself/others senselessly, then that's fine". Is it because we still have the instinct to fight for resources hardwired in us, to chase off what could harm whatever equilibrium we've created? How did we get so many mental and emotional (since we've already talked a little about cultural) permutations from one little idea we like to call humanity?

In the book, Lauren told her friend she foresaw the burn down of the town. And her friend ask her why she thought things like that. Then Lauren replied, she just wanted to get prepared so that she could survive. Her response reminds me of our discussion on why we predict. I think Lauren very well answered that question, that is we predict in order to get prepared so that we can survive. As Butler mentioned at the beginning of the book, "the only lasting truth is change", the inevitable change creates a sense of uncertainty and insecure. After finish reading the book, I felt like a tiny dot hanging in the air with nothing to rely on. That's the feeling caused by the constantly changes in the book. And knowing that Lauren was prepared does make me feel better.

Another interesting thing brought from the book is the continuity in cultural evolution, which I thought might be useful for the prediction of the future. We can't predict changes, but we can certainly predict continuities, which sometimes can contribute hugely to the evolution.

 Parable of the Sower takes human actions and traits that we see in everyday life and it takes them to a whole different level. It definitely makes humans reflect on the type of affect our actions will have. Also, Octavia E. Butler makes Lauren's life comparable to ours in certain ways. Like, for example, gated communities. I grew up in a gated community. The community was gated because years ago (before I had moved there) the area was more dangerous than it is now. We had a large number of illegal immigrants around and there were also one of the two major gangs of the town lived right up the street. Things are different now though. Life around my old community is nowhere as dangerous as it was 12 years ago. But, back to my point. The whole gated community idea made the book more relatable to myself and my life. Or, also like what I mentioned earlier, we can make connections between our lives and Lauren's life by relating human traits, politics, economy, and other problems that are brought up. So, say poverty for example. I'm sure everyone in the class has seen some type of poverty. Well, Butler takes the poverty of today and transforms it and takes it to a whole other level in Parable. But still, the idea of poverty is relatable enough so that we can actually imagine the possibility of it evolving into the level it is in the book.

Parable of the Sower does a great job of making us think twice about the way we're living, and how that way may be harming the future of our civilization. To answer Anne's prompt; the novel shows us not only how a human culture can become something so drastically different that it may cease to be humane. The novel shows the devolution of the California culture due to several, or just one massive, changes within their environment. This devolution can be seen in the murder, rape, and pillaging that is constantly reported by the protagonist.

Something that we brought up in class about this subject was the idea that with freedom comes the opportunity to do wonderful things, such as voting or marrying whomever you want to. But with this power, people can do major harm. Just like how Lauren knew how to kill someone because she was so hyper-empathetic, she could do it swiftly and without a second thought. While it was necessary to her own survival, to protect herself and others, it illustrates how a certain power could be used to harm.