Questions, Intuitions, Revisions: Telling and Re-Telling Stories About Ourselves in the World A College Seminar Course at Bryn Mawr College

A story is a familial 'hand-me-down', a garment of words that, with adjustments in shape and size, is made to fit its next inheritor. Every story told is irrepressibly retailored during its next reading or recital, because, for each of us, perception is colored by the context of cultures: micro-cultures, such as family; macro-cultures, such as country, race, and religion; super-cultures, such as membership as Homo sapiens on planet earth.

Stories are re-cast when we've grown past them to a point where they no longer hold true meaning, no longer can be told with impunity in the face of new knowledge. Our motivation in reshaping stories is to be able to take what is still valid from the past and port it to the present in some useful form. Knowledge seems to be born and reborn in the present, where it holds relevance by virtue of our current, collective abilities to frame it somehow.

We re-frame stories repeatedly, in order to locate and display the emblems that powerfully represent essential properties that identify us. The realities harbored within us become less literal as they emerge in space and time, based upon who we are now; the reorganized fantasies of our present are more real, more applicable, than the realities of our past.

Discontinuity arises when we recast long-cherished truths. Perhaps our reluctance to do so comes from a lack of confidence that we can safely juggle the relationship of past to present. There can be social or political risks and consequences when we strip away that which is comfortable and familiar, as was the case for the narrator of FLATLAND, who wound up imprisoned for pitching an alternate version of reality. Whatever the root cause, we use devices to effect change – to make the need for change both visible and palatable , e.g., the use of satire, such as in both THE ORDER OF THINGS and FLATLAND.

Each of these writings reflects our world as viewed through the creation of another world that is highly exaggerated. With magnifying glass held so far that the focal point inverts the image, both reorient our reality upside-down, inside out, and freshly different from what we had taken for granted. The message is that our reality is an illusion. We get to re-shape our world, our story, as a result of new insights delivered through the discovery of a fresh perspective. Just as with fairytales, it is the use of symbolism to get closer to discovery, closer to truth.

In Foucault's THE ORDER OF THINGS; the media is the message, and the message appears to be that style matters. The irony is in how he has chosen to write – an endless braiding and brocading of thought upon thought, literally taking our breath away in the task of reading one sentence.

As for content, Foucault is saying that unrelated sets of knowledge, such as biology, economics, and linguistics, use a common process by which each evolves. Each "episteme" – knowledge produced during a period of time – has, for its period, a common way of exploring and questioning what is known across these different disciplines, just as the Chinese bevy of unrelated animals became connected when they were assigned alphabetical ordering.

We're in a continuous cycle of transformations and regenerations –from what we know, to what we question about what we know to what we discover, which causes us to discard, retain, replace, reshape. It's not just about discarding fallible answers, it's about digging to enable new ways to question, new patterns to emerge. "The problem is no longer one of tradition, of tracing a line, but one of division, of limits; it is no longer one of lasting foundations, but one of transformations that serve as new foundations, the rebuilding of foundations. What one is seeing, then, is the emergence of a whole field of questions, some of which are already familiar, by which this new form of history is trying to develop its own theory..." 2

If that is the case – from metaphor to metonymy to synecdoche – where do we shape shift next?

1Source: Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault - October 25th, 1982. From: Martin, L.H. et al (1988) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock. pp.9-15.

2Source: The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), publ. Routledge, 1972. Introduction, by Foucault.

Redefining a way of thinking is not an easy task, but the true challenge comes in expressing your new insight. Some might feel compelled to re-tell a story because they want to get their new idea exposed to the masses. They want others to be enlightened just as they have been. This is seen in Flatland when the square, once given the knowledge of other dimensions, wishes to share his information. He joyously declares, "Even to Women and Soldiers should the Gospel of Three Dimensions be proclaimed." (1) The truth was so apparent to him that he wanted to share it with others. In Foucault's forward, he seems genuinely excited to be revealing "a positive unconscious of knowledge" (2). He entitles his forward, "Directions for Use" and attempts to break down his ideas in order for people to understand them. He discusses his example of classification, a quote from a Chinese encyclopedia, in a light-hearted manner making the text enjoyable to read. He's trying to get the reader interested and drawn in to his idea.

Another purpose for expressing a new concept is to give others a new or different way of thinking. The article "Recycling the Universe" has little verified proof to suggest its theory is correct, but simply laying it out there gives people the opportunity to think about it. The new idea about the origins of the Earth is so extreme that without this article, many would never give it a thought. Foucault gets the cogs in our minds turning about different ways of classification and order and how they affect our thoughts and actions. In Flatland, Abbott gets his audience to think about the same things using sarcasm. The class system in Flatland is so utterly ridiculous that it makes us think about our systems of classifying people today. In Flatland, women are straight lines on the bottom of the ranks. They are forced to use separate doorways into their houses, are kept from an education, and must constantly be in motion or singing in order for people to know where they are due to their deadly capabilities (1). They are referred to as the "frail sex" and said to be "wholly devoid of brainpower" (1). Abbott makes the treatment of women so blatantly wrong that everyone can see it. However, women today are still treated in some ways like lines in Flatland. Abbott also gives us a new way of thinking by introducing the idea of multiple dimensions including ones that we have no way of recognizing.

Advantages of re-telling a story include expanding your mind and changing the world as you know it. Foucault talks about how completely new ideas drastically changed the world from the classical society to the modern one (2). He calls this the "history of madness." (2) In Flatland, once the square knew about Spaceland and other dimensions, his world was never the same again. Even after being in prison for seven years, he still held firm to his vision. Having your world change can also be a negative effect of a re-telling. If no one else lives with you in this new world, it can lead to isolation. Once you come out with a new way of thinking or a re-telling, there is no going back to the way things were. At the end of Flatland, the square was literally isolated in prison. He sees it as martyrdom for the truth (1).

Avoiding this isolation is one reason someone might not re-tell a story. This isolation would result if their new idea wasn't accepted and they were scorned or punished. Foucault seems to suggest that the reason new ideas aren't accepted is that people are so stuck within boundaries of order and classifications instilled in them by society. They are unable to comprehend the new idea within their known limits and therefore reject it (2). This is more concretely seen in Flatland whenever new ideas about different dimensions are introduced. The king of Lineland rejects the square's image of Flatland, just as the square at first rejects the idea of Spaceland and the sphere rejects the idea of any higher dimensions (1). They are unable to transcend the bounds of their senses and the order of society to admit to anything more being able to exist. In Flatland itself, the class structure is so strict that it rejected the idea of using color as identification when it was revealed that women could be mistaken for the circle priests (1).

Another reason people might reject a re-telling is if there was no physical evidence or proof. This also goes to their need to stay within certain boundaries. The theory put forth in the Recycling article, has no real credit to many because there is an obvious lack of solid evidence. In the end Mr. Turok even admits, "We know that we are faking what we hope eventually will be a complete and fully consistent mathematical theory." (3) In Flatland the theory of the women is that "feeling is believing" (1). Even the nobles' use of sight recognition is still dependant on their senses. They are not willing to accept the notion of other dimensions because it is not something they can physically prove and therefore they reject it.

The success of a re-telling of a story or innovative idea is essentially dependent on the audience's reception. This depends on the "codes of culture" that establish the basic order of man (2). The stories by Alcott and Foucault both discuss the consequences of re-telling a story. At the same time they are themselves re-tellings of traditional ways of viewing the world.

Sources
(1) Abbott, Edwin. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. 1885; rpt.
New York: New American Library, 1984
(2) Foucault, Michael. Preface and Forward. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1966:rpt. and trans. New York: Vintage, 1973. ix-xxiv
(3) Monastersky, Richard. "Recycling the Universe: New Theory Posits that Time Has No Beginning or End." The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 7, 2002.
(4) Many ideas also taken from class discussion

Things were extremely dull in Flatland. We were settled in our pentagonal houses and the class system we had established in our two dimensional world although it provided some security and safety was stifling. One may wonder that we did not have more "intuit"ers who dreamed of other possibilities, other worlds. And in fact, I myself wondered that I had not wondered more, and especially after my discourse with my Nephew and the intervention of the Sphere from the Third Dimension and with much time on my hands, being imprisoned.

And then a phenomena occurred. It often rained in Flatland and the rain came from the North. As was aforesaid, it helped us to determine North from South. But one day, and I don't yet comprehend where the cold came from, we sensed a change in the air, even in the most temperate zone. (It is rumored from my connections in Spaceland that a butterfly fluttering it's wings in China may have contributed to this change in our weather... but these are things I do not comprehend or understand, not know what is a butterfly, or even China... having some comprehension of fluttering, because of the motion of our females).

And suddenly, particles of white substance fell from the sky above us. Falling on us and obscuring parts of our selves and our homes. Breaking us apart with whiteness.
I tried to view these particles with my eye and gradually as I fixed all my concentration on them, became mesmerized by their spectacular geometry. Before me were mirrors of my fellow citizens and myself, joined together in fantastic formations, beautiful and delicate and intricate. Triangle upon triangle, Circles with intricate and glorious perimeters, subdivided beautiful empty spaces, squares and smaller squares.
I watched in awe, as the cold prophetic white particles melted before my eye. And with my notepad, I began to sketch. There seemed to be a method here that was up to now never considered. I sketched my neighbor the triangle and began to subdivide him.
I broke him into smaller and smaller pieces, and then smaller still all contained within himself, all similar to himself, and I formulated that this dissection could extend infinitely! I traced the perimeter of one of the small white flakes in my mind. I measured it and then measured it with a smaller measure... and then with a smaller measure still...
And I was impressed by the infinite potential and dignity of each individual citizen of Flatland.
And I recognized, that this too could go on infinitely for other shapes within the confines of a circle, the area being the same, but the perimeter infinitely growing and growing in size! And as it could go on exteriorly, it could also implode interiorly.
I looked around in awe at my world quickly vanishing in white. A line who happened to be sleeping nearby was broken up by the flakes that lay flat on her so that segments of her seemed to disappear.
I then broke up a line mentally, by taking away a segment at intervals, and then smaller intervals and smaller intervals until the tiny fragments mimicked the dust that fell onto our plane that day and I recognized that this too could extend infinitely. And from this I deduced a new dignity of the line and it's infinite beauty and capacity to regenerate.

And I began to conceive of a very different Flatland, in which triangle and circle and square united in whole new societies of glorious repetitions and evolutions spiraling and twisting all over our plane and this manifested itself, in my thought, in a system of individuals who cooperated with each other magnificently and without condescension or confinement as to class or gender. The possibilities were so overwhelming, and I was so ill equipped to deal with what I was seeing, that for many years afterwards, I was unable to speak!

Note: I visited a few sites on fractals and then started to think
what if it SNOWED in Flatland. Not being a mathematician, I feel like a
primitive who has never seen fireworks!! And partly because Edwin Abbott was a schoolteacher and not a mathematician either, I had the courage to play with the idea.

Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. New York: Dover Publications Inc. 1992.
Lorde, Audre. "Transformation of Silence into Language and Action." Diversity and Community at Bryn Mawr College: Readings for First-Year Students. 2002.

Walking down the streets of New York City I see men with long beards and ratty, plaid shirts preaching, and passing out pamphlets, saying that they have seen the light and know that the world is coming to an end. Watching the news we hear of another child who says that she was abducted by aliens. We hear about cults that end their lives because G-d told them to. I look at signs plastered to walls with pictures of the new Messiah. What do we think when we hear about these people and see them walking down the streets of our neighborhoods? Crazy? Or enlightened? When a person stands above the crowd, writes an article, say something to the public, she is putting herself on the line and will be deemed crazy or enlightened.
In Abbott's Flatland we hear of a man who has a supernatural experience and is pulled out of his own dimension. He can float on top and see into his world. Then, he is pulled into another dimension that he never could have imagined existed. Back in his own dimension he tells of the more complex dimension and is scorned and thrown into jail: Crazy!
Another story: men in dark suits, short hair, and thick glasses, sit around a table and talk of the universe. One man says, "The universe is going through an endless series of rebirths." Another man says, "an unseen parallel cosmos hovers only a tiny distance from our own visible universe, and the two periodically collide and rebound, regenerating all of matter in process." A third gentleman says, "Our visible cosmos is like a three-dimensional sheet that exists in other dimensions, of which we remain totally ignorant." These men are the scientists of the new millennium, they sit around tables and speculate about the shape of existence, they speculate about things that cannot fit into the human mind and what do we say? Genius!
One more: a man says, "The unconscious of science is always the negative side of science- that which resists it, deflects it, or disturbs it. What I would like to do, however, is to reveal a positive unconscious of knowledge: a level that eludes the consciousness of the scientist and yet is part of scientific discourse, instead of disputing its validity and seeking to diminish its scientific nature." This same man takes on the task of writing "a history of madness...the history of the Other- of that which, for a given culture, is at once interior and foreign, therefore to be excluded [so as to exorcise the interior danger]..." This man says that madness is something within us that we do not understand, something that we try to cast out of ourselves but something that is natural to humanity. It is something that cannot be analyzed out of existence by scientists because it "eludes the consciousness of the scientist." These thoughts scare us and we envision monsters frothing at the mouth, eating our insides, and not being able to expel them. This man tells us things about ourselves that we do not want to hear. He does not travel outside of our dimension to see in; he travels inside the deep realms of the human mind and looks out through the tainted, splinter glass of the human eye. Do we call him crazy, in defense of our sanity? Or is he a genius because he understands that the only way to see a person is not from the outside, looking through a one-sided glass, but to look at a person from the inside?
These are three examples of people who have told stories, who have opened their minds to the public to be dissected and judged as genius or as crazy. All three have innovative ideas that can either be accepted or rejected by society. When people put forth these ideas they are exposing themselves to society, they are vulnerable. If they are accepted they are secure and able to continue their thought, their art, their work. If they are rejected they are left in the cold, alone, and wondering if they should continue their thought or believe a society that says they are crazy. At the end of Flatland, A-square, left to live the rest of his days in jail says, "I cannot honestly say I am confident as to the exact shape of the once-seen, oft-regretted Cube... all the substantial realities of Flatland itself, appear no better than the offspring of a diseased imagination or the baseless fabric of a dream." When one has been told that he is crazy does he believe or does he listen to his instinct? Does one blame an unaccepted innovative idea on a diseased imagination'? Or does one continue writing though locked away in a cell, hoping that one day this 'diseased imagination' will be read and finally loved? Do the shaggy men in plaid shirt live for the day when the world will end? The children, now grown, who were told the aliens were only dreams, dance when they hear that a UFO was found stranded in the midst of a desert. We live for acceptance; we struggle for love, and are willing to sacrifice dignity for the moment when a girl in the crowd shouts above the mass of dissenters, "Yes! You are right! You are a Genius!"

Flatland and Why We Change Our Stories

People everywhere have been telling stories since time began. Not only do people tell stories for entertainment, they are also told for learning purposes. Children were taught by stories. We learn about our relatives and ancestors through stories passed down over generations. We also learn about each other and ourselves from stories we tell and are told. Stories change for many different reasons. One of these reasons is that the world changes and we revise theories. The world used to be "flat". It was discovered that the world is actually round, and the story changed. New things happen that change the old stories that were once told. Also, stories tend to acquire a "whisper down the lane" quality, where the story changes a little each time it is told. Perhaps our memories aren't inclined to remember every minute detail of an experience. Maybe we want the story to be different in our own subconscious. This we do not know. What we do know, however, is that stories do change.
We change stories because we ourselves change. The stories of our lives are constantly changing. New experiences are constantly happening. We meet new people often, and we see new faces on a daily basis. We are changed by those around us. Different people have different effects on us, and help us to think in new ways. These new ways of thinking create new stories.
We often revise stories. Revision is a necessary part of storytelling, as it is in opinions and in life. As we change as people, and our opinions and views of life change, our stories are revised to fit our new selves.
Flatland is a story about the changing of stories. The square, at the beginning of the book, only knows one way of life. He is stuck in his two dimensional world of lines and angles. He has never heard of the word "up". When the sphere comes and takes him to new worlds, he originally is in disbelief. He visits the one dimensional world and finds all of the people along one line, as points. He cannot fathom that these people do not understand that they can move in more than one dimension. This is ironic because he does not understand that there are more than two dimensions. He changes his story to include his new life with the knowledge of a third dimension. With this knowledge, his mind is expanded to other things. He now believes that there is a fourth, fifth, sixth dimension, just waiting to be discovered. His story changed to allow for the changing of his surroundings. He is more open minded.
The story of the point is very sad in Flatland. He is in his own little world, the only being in his existence. When he hears the square try to inform him of his sad state of existence, that there is much more out in the world besides himself, the point believes that it was his own self that said that out loud. He is the only being in the world, so therefore he is the only person who could be speaking. The point cannot change his story because he is too ignorant. If he did change his story, his life would be enriched with knowledge.
Stories change as we change. To change is an important part of life, and we revise ourselves as time passes. The stories of our lives are constantly being changed. We are always updating ourselves. To change a story is to make it better. It is about having an open mind and the willingness to accept new things.

Your Perspective is in Another Dimension

It seems that here on our three dimensional Earth, small children are encouraged to make discoveries about the world around them, yet adults are ostracized if they try to do the same. Perhaps this contradiction exists because children are only capable of discovering what adults already know, and adults are expected to accept the truths they discovered for themselves as children without questioning their validity. There exists an unwritten rule somewhere, perhaps it's in another dimension, that imposes conformity, lest complete disorder erupt if one dares to question the only way of life that everyone knows and accepts. Therefore, adults fearing that they will not be understood and therefore will be ostracized from society will often suppress their childlike eagerness to make and spread new discoveries.

Why then, are some people willing to risk being misunderstood by all of their peers in their zeal to share a new idea? Failure to properly explain one's ideas certainly is a deterrent against sharing them. At times, A. Square could barely explain to himself exactly what Spaceland was, so explaining this concept to others became an even more daunting task than if he had completely understood what he was talking about. Most new ideas, though, aren't developed so that the person doing the explaining understands everything in the first place. When asked, "Where is this or that theory come from?" (Foucalt xiii) there might not be a clear answer. After all, "questions like these are often highly embarrassing because there are no definite methodological principles on which to base such an analysis." (Foucalt xiii)

When one is absolutely convinced, however, that one has an idea that will completely revolutionize one's world, the thought that other people aren't equally aware of the real truth is unbearable. Therefore, a brave person will do as A. Square did when he discovered and accepted the idea of a third dimension; he will try to change the world. The key word, though, is "accepted." One can be told of a completely different way of thinking and then one can dismiss it without another thought as utter nonsense. However, if one can actually be convinced that something outside of what one is used to exists, then this knowledge is too powerful to be contained. It is so difficult to conceptualize and believe a radically new idea that if one can actually do it, one will be overwhelmed to the point that sharing this new information will become a priority. A. Square was so amazed by the existence of a three dimensional world that he was moved to, "go forth...at once, and evangelize the whole of Flatland." (Abbott 77)

People don't just listen to new ideas and with an open mind, as A. Square and many others with the goal to "evangelize the whole of" (Abbott 77) wherever they happen to live, have discovered. Rather, it is common practice hold fast to one's beliefs because it is comforting to know how one's world works. If someone tells you that everything that you are used to and have taken for granted isn't how the "true" world really is, shock, disbelief, and utter denial will inevitably be your reaction. Without proof, how can one believe an outrageous theory? Indeed, A. Square only believed in Spaceland once he was transported there.

It is nearly impossible to accept a concept that is so abstract that even imagining it is a struggle. A. Square of Flatland is yet again the perfect example. He knew his place in life, understood how his two dimensional world was constructed, and was comfortable with his pentagonal house and linear wife. Before he accepted Spaceland as a reality, he tried in vain to make the King of Lineland understand that there is more to the world than one dimension. The King vehemently opposed his ideas as nonsense which frustrated A. Square. Ridiculously enough, A. Square was just as unwilling to accept the idea of Spaceland as the King of Lineland was unwilling to acknowledge Flatland. This complex, which would be seen as ironic in whichever dimension you live, explains the conundrum that telling and re-telling stories presents. Everyone is eager to spread new ideas, and those who are not afraid of the violent reactions that mirror their own, will follow through with their intentions. Yet at the same time, everyone seems to hold the mantra of "seeing is believing," (Abbott 54) in equal esteem to the desire to spread ideas that can't be proved.

Perhaps everyone with a new idea expects that everyone listen but at the same time, knows deep down that accepting an equally radical idea from someone else is never going to happen. It seems that all people like to understand their world. When their state of existence is challenged, their comfort zone is broken, and then there will never again be a place that feels exactly like home.

Works Cited:

Abbot, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. 1884. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1992. pp. 54, 77

Foucalt, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Vintage Books. pp. viii

In the novel Flatland, these ideas are portrayed through the story of the narrator, a square. The narrator lives and has always lived in a two-dimensional world. He lives in flatland, unaware of the existence of a third dimension and space land. Then one day, he visits space land, realizing that a world other than his own exists, and the ground on which everything he knew had rested is shaken. His ideas about the world are completely revolutionized by his experience. When he returns, he tries to share with the rest of the inhabitants of flatland his experience of three. He feels compelled to retell others stories about space land because he feels the need to convert the others' worlds that are now so different than his to ones more similar. However, he is thought to be insane for having a view other than the conventional/accepted one and is imprisoned. It seems to the reader as though Abbott, through this story, is making a social critique on how humans are so rooted in the ways they are familiar to, in their regular order (as a result of their rigid belief in common ideas), that they believe that anything which they are not familiar with does not exist or is wrong. Abbott may be, through square's reaction to his new discovery and through the reaction of others, commenting on how we are too comfortable in our own ways, too certain of what we "know", that we do not even consider new ideas that are different that ours or ones that have no context for. This last idea, about not believing what you have no frame of reference for, is brought to our attention when square's wife says, "Feeling is believing." (Flatland, 54). Here, feeling means feeling familiar with something, in other wards having a context for it, allows us to believe it. This sets the stage for two questions which Abbott poses to the reader and which he answers. They are: What is the price one pays when one retells a story in a way others are not familiar with? What then motivates people to retell stories?. Abbott's answers to these questions can also be found in the plot. His narrator in Flatland feels the need to make others understand him by attempting to make others understand his experience in space land, an experience that has literally changed his world and that has ostracized him from the others for there is no way he can re-integrate himself into the two dimension world again. He risks however being even more ostracized as a result of his having radical ideas; he risks being called mad and put into jail because having different ideas can lead to chaos. What's most interesting is that Abbott presents in this novel a two dimensional world, a notion which the reader is unfamiliar and uneasy with. The reader thus through his/her difficulty to imagine a world that he/she has no context for understands what the author is commenting on. The reader in the beginning feels that the narrator is possibly mad because he believes that he lives in a two dimensional world. In this way, Abbott is directly asking us to look outside of ourselves.

Foucault in the Order of Things also questions what we "know" and take for granted. He starts of his preface by describing his reaction to a definition which he has read in a Chinese encyclopedia, which differs from what he is familiar with. This leads him to the conclusion that we limit ourselves to our own knowledge of things and that anything other than that is impossible. This leads him to question the process by which we classify. Classification according to him is a "linking together of things that are inappropriate" (Foucault, xvii). In the preface, he examines different example of how classifications, leading him to the conclusion that classifications which we do not question are arbitrary. At one point he says, "What is the ground on which we are to establish the validity of ... classification with complete certainty?" ( Foucault, xix). Foucault also says that the system of classification was adopted in order to establish order and that this system sets boundaries that prevent us from attempting to understand what others have to say. In fact, Foucault says that "the history of madness would be the history of the Other" (Foucault, xxiv). The preface initially seems like a justification for the form of the body of The Order of Things, a glimpse of which the reader sees in the foreword, in which the author describes how he is going to write a history of science that is different from what most readers are familiar with. It is underneath, however, a social critique of how we are too comfortable with what we "know' and how we think of what we know, with out question, as absolute. Foucault wants to show readers that if others have a vision of the world, in a manner other than that which we are used to, he/she is labeled mad. They, who see the world differently and who try to communicate to others their visions, out of need to be understood, can not be reintegrated into society because their world is so different from that of the rest of us; their visions are so radical from our certain ways, surely he/she must be mad. They are believed to disrupt the order of things. This is what Foucault believes to be the price of retelling a story, alienation from the rest of society.

In conclusion, both Foucault and Abbott believe that the price that one pays for retelling a story, in a way others are not familiar with, is possible alienation. They both however also agree that humans feel the need to retell stories, despite of the fact that they are aware of this price, because they feel the need to be understood.

The biggest factor in causing people to change their stories is experience. There is a strong urge to tell new stories, even when the consequences are drastic. This is definitely the case with our little anonymous Square in Flatland, whose experiences in different worlds cause him to see the universe and his world in completely new ways and land him in prison.

Before visiting Lineland, the Square has no idea that he is living in a world of dimensions. He is outraged that the Line does not understand his story. Perhaps Abbott is telling us that this need to tell stories and to be understood is an integral part of the human condition. At this point, the Square's story changes because he has new knowledge that there are other worlds out there, however boring and frustrating they may seems, and he now knows that he and the other citizens of his land are not alone.

The Square's story changes yet again with the introduction of Spaceland. He goes from accusing the Sphere of being a "Fool! Madman! Irregular!" (Flatland, 64) to treating him as a master and a God-like figure. Not only has his story of the Sphere changed, his story of his entire world has changed. He comes to realize that there are so many unknown possibilities out there, and that there very well might be a forth dimension. This is something that the Sphere cannot comprehend because he does not have the same experiences as does the Square. Like the Square, the Sphere is aware of dimensions, but unlike the square, he has not been through the awesome eye-opening experience of realizing that there is so much more out there. He does not have the ability or the resources to comprehend such concepts, and his story never changes.

The Square now has a completely different story. He sees his own world as dull and depressing because he now has the story of Spaceland, where everything is three-dimensional, new, and exciting. He cannot restrain telling this new story, and he seems to go crazy and illegally tells it until he is eventually thrown in prison. This is because the States of Flatland refuses to let anyone speak of Spaceland or try to describe other dimensions. Perhaps this is to prevent the chaos of a collective changing story. People are generally very reluctant to change their stories; they need proof. Even the Square's story did not change until he gained the experience and thus the necessary proof. If everyone's story changed, everyone might go as crazy as the square. Flatland would cease to function and would be thrown into complete chaos – but then again, the Square may simply be going crazy from the inability to tell his story. This need to tell our stories seems to be inlaid in all of us, and the chaos is not necessarily bad. Often, in the real world, lives are sacrificed for the sake of changing stories; however, this is not always the case. Collective narratives change all the time; without changing stories, we would still be living in previous centuries or millennia.

The square's story is changed by his experiences of visiting new lands. In his case the consequences are drastically unpleasant to say the least, though this is not always true with the re-telling of stories. Like the Square, we all have an undying need to tell our stories so that the world can progress in a healthy way.

People are funny creatures. We don't like change, especially if it involves shifting our paradigm. We will do anything to avoid having to change our stories, even if it means ignoring new information or hanging on to ridiculous ideas. We're constantly being taught new things, but we keep telling ourselves the same stories over and over, like A. Square, since we're scared of change.

Actually, the Square didn't tell himself the exact same story repeatedly; he changed it at little based on the limited information he had, as people do. He perceived of 'thickness' before other residents of Flatland and included it in the story he told to us, but he didn't understand what it was or its application to the greater story. His understanding of three-dimensions is similar to that of a child who understands that things move in certain directions, but not the concept of vectors. He is capable of dealing with the world he sees, but not of expressing the 'truth' of the world in the right terms because he doesn't have the right terms or the right concepts.

When he gets the right terms and concepts to change his story, however, he does a very human thing and rejects them at first because it's easier to stick with the story he was telling than change his story to fit with what her knows. He violently resists the knowledge of three dimensions the Sphere is giving him, because he is unwilling to change his story of the world to accommodate more dimensions. Most people refuse to change what they believe at first, afraid that the new knowledge they are gaining will throw out the old story they know. Eventually, though, both Square and people learn that adding knowledge to their stories doesn't cause the old stories to disappear; they become part of the new story, as the two-dimensional story became part of the three-dimensional one.

Finally, the Square assimilates the knowledge of the three-dimensional world into his story and tries to spread this knowledge to others in Flatland. The circular priests stop him, because they have the same reaction to his new understanding as he originally did: fear. Unlike him, though, they not only fear having to change their stories and concepts of the world, but also the possibility that the Square's knowledge will challenge their power and control of their world. They won't allow that, so they prevent the Square from sharing his knowledge with the rest of Flatland. The priests' behavior is quite like that of the Catholic Church dealing with Galileo (maybe that's what the author had in mind?). Free thinking is a challenge to an autocratic system that requires firm belief in the rulers to survive, and belief is not fostered if it is revealed that the leaders had been getting the story of everything wrong for centuries. Besides, the priests in the story showed themselves to be masters of propaganda anyway, so it is unlikely that a changes story is a task they want to deal with spinning; it would be way too much work. The Square was sacrificed in the name of the status quo, like many a great story-changer before him.

So people do change their stories, even if they don't like to. The problem is, working at a rate of one changed story at a time is pretty slow. That's part of the reason the Square was so easily thwarted by the priests; a lack of mass media made his idea hard to spread. We are living in an age where stories change constantly, or should, at least, depending on the willingness of people to change. The possibility is there, though, and so our stories will change, even if we're scared to change them.

"There is nothing more tentative, nothing more empirical (superficially, at least) than the process of establishing an order among things; nothing that demands a sharper eye or a surer, better articulated language..."(xix) If one is ever changing, order comes second. Our impulsive nature is more prone to chaos rather than keen and cautious awareness. If the ground below our feet is not stable, there has to be a reason. The reason for a new story! But the past is still present in our changing world; it is passed down through generations. Each mouth it passes through creates the same story with a new twist.
When there is a change the true original form is lost forever. With the Universal Color bill, it was so that shapes without angles would be shaded a specific color. Therefore, women and priests were painted half red and half green. Walking down the street anyone would be easily confused as to whether they were accosting a priest or a woman. This was a benefit for women, but the demise of the priests due to the know status of the two extreme stations. By introducing these new colors, the priests and women were not looked at the same way again.

The inhabitants of Flatland were exposed to one and only one story: one past, one present, one future. If one is born and lives their whole life in flatland, what else would they be aware? Understanding is limited when one grows up learning of only one place, the place in which one live. In the case of Flatland, it is extremely difficult to allow for understanding when the inhabitants of flatland do not know other "dimensions" exist. A make-believe story, a fairy-tale perhaps, might be able to convey the existence of life elsewhere. The problem is that the narrator tries to send out a message in such a rational, logical, mathematical way, the way in which he interprets it. However, the majority of the populace of Flatland cannot process such immense amounts of knowledge in one gulp. What comes across as radical and absurd thought of the narrator, will in the future as more and more heads turn curious or intrigued by the possibility of other dimensions.

Although he verges on hopelessness, the narrator's role in sacrificing himself to give others the understanding he possesses is a necessary one. It is in our nature to evolve, and as we do, the way in which we describe ourselves also evolves. Evolution of a species depends on the location, setting, climate, language and culture. The narrator had witnessed hands-on the lands near and far and could identify the differences among his people of Flatland and others. Why should he remain silent, a story needs to be told.

Monsieur Square: I cannot stay long. As you know, I remain a prisoner for my radical beliefs about other dimensions.
Michel Foucault: I have been inquiring about the same sort of thing. Because I have tried to conceive of a dimension or place in which there could be "open discourse" between all sciences which would be free flowing and not tied down to causality or identities. Because one (causality) is too hard to pin down and the other (subject) is too rigid. You see I don't believe that anyone has the last word on anything.

Monsieur Square: Hmmm. That is rather what I had hoped for from the Sphere at the point where after sharing in the Sphere's revelation of the third dimension, I began to wonder about a fourth, or possibly a fifth. Things are rather partitioned out and classified quite distinctly in Flatland. A triangle is a triangle you know. And an Isosceles remains an Isosceles.

Michel Foucault: Well, that's very interesting... beause I see that you come from a world rather different from my own and yet somehow similar.

Monsieur Square: Yes, my world exists on a rather predictable plane of two dimensions. Clear cut roles are assigned to each two dimensional character in terms of class, gender, roles in society. Even the shapes ofour houses are dictated by practical requirements for safety and security. Things were rather ho-hum until I experienced a puzzling intervention of a being from another dimension.

Michel Foucault: I wonder what the significance of that intervention at your particular time in history may have in terms of all forms of knowledge and awareness available to your from your particular point in perception. And how such an intervention may have been differently understood and interpreted epistemiologically in yet another time.

Monsieur Square: Well, I will tell you. It certainly gave me a scare at first. And I scarcely believed my own experience. But I was transported out of Flatland and floated above it and was able to see it in an entirely new way and I saw that it existed on a plane somewhat like the top of one of your tables in Spaceland.

Michel Foucault: Fantastic!

Monsieur Square: Yes. And from this new vantage point my vision was no longer obscured so that I could really see the shapes of things and the shapes inside of the shapes. Because before all I could see was an edge of sorts and senses of an angle here and there. Before that my perception of the class system, our forms of reproduction, our assignments of roles and the doctrine of "Attend to your Configuration" made perfect sense. But now, it no longer does at all. I see no point in attending to any Configuration that the Circles endorse. Except to maintain the status quo and continue to suppress exploration!

Michel Foucault: "Strangely enough, man – the study of whom is supposed by the naive to be the oldest investigation since Socrates – is probably no more than a kind of a rift in the order of things, or in any case, a configuration whose outlines are determined by the new position he has so recently taken up in the field of knowledge."

You are on to something here.

Looking over the period of time in which you perceived this new insight, which led you to suppose other new insights, has a coherence which might (at least regarding Flatland) seem obvious. And this also probably contained changes and "mutations" which were necessary to push you forward.

Michel Foucault: I also believe we ought to attend to everyone's configurations and so attend to none. It seems to me that instead of tiny cubicles and rooms of egos and identities associated with knowledge, it would be far better and serve more of a purpose to find the innate order of things which exists in all of science itself.

I guess my equilateral friend, we can think about what we configure and what configures us?

Monsieur Square: Certainly my configuration has altered since I started to perceive these new possibilities.

Michel Foucault: Since Man is so young on the planet and in the scheme of Time, it seems he will reinvent himself over and over again as his knowledge increases or changes. Ah yes, I speak of another dimension. In which we change our configurations. I am excited to think about where this may finally take you and eventually all of Flatland.

Monsieur Square: For now, it has taken me straight to prison.

Michel Foucault: Be thankful you don't have a nice roly poly head.

50% Carl Sagan and 50% Not Carl Sagan: I have been enclosed in a space capsule and was floating above space, much like Monsieur Square here.l.. when the interior of my space ship exploded. There is a 50% possibility that I am alive and a 50% possibility that I am deceased. Anyway I found a nice spot to land in the blue dot parking lot.
How are things on our good old speck of dust?

Monsieur Square: What on earth do you mean?\

Michel Foucault: You don't look like Carl Sagan.

50% Carl Sagan and 50% not Carl Sagan: When the light of your planet lit up my electrons they started to swerve... and now I am quite another being. The act of observing me has changed me somehow you see.

This is the story of the story we chose not to tell.
Born of the first writing exercise on the second day of classes of our first semester here at Bryn Mawr College, each student of CSEM produced a fairy tale. In our own section, the McBride section, we delighted in reading each and every story, and when the time to prepare for the Fairy Tale Symposium, it was generally agreed that we would present a particular story which had moved every reader deeply. Come symposium night, however, minds were changed. It was decided on short notice that this would not be shared after all. The vocal and articulate members of our class expressed concern that the story was too emotionally charged for a general audience, that we as responsible storytellers were not prepared to handle the potential results of re-telling this story. So the story went untold. This is a perfect example of why stories are not re-told. If content is too difficult, or cannot be understood within a measure of comfort by the teller, it is not an affective story and will not be told.
However, not telling the story also felt wrong. Again the vocal members of our class expressed a need to honor the writer's courage and her story as well. It was even said that holding back the story was possibly an error - for we chose not to expose others to the challenge we felt ourselves instead of allowing for the story to do it's work, whatever that may have been. This is an example of the potential cost of not sharing a story. The ability to find common ground, in the broadest sense, to understand one another is lost when a story is censured.
What would have been the right thing to do? What could we do to fix this situation? Ideas began to pour forth. A re-telling of the story was created through the cooperative efforts of a number of students with a mind to satisfy their own need for more subtle, symbolic language as well as to honor the tale with the same degree of respect they felt for the author.
As a result, the story was re-born in a body that the tellers felt a measure of comfort with: and I believe that is the key. The audience is taken by the hand of the storyteller to the threshold of their own imaginations.

The word planet comes from the Greek term for 'wanderer' because planets appeared to drift among what seemed to be a fixed background of stars. So, according to the Greek definition, Quaoar and Pluto are both planets, but then so are all the countless asteroids and pieces of assorted debris. Pluto...has always been a misfit, but [one astronomer] has long argued that it should remain a planet because it has its own moon and atmosphere and appears spherical....whether Pluto is called a planet [another astronomer] considered a meaningless question. 'It's like deciding to call Australia a continent and Greenland an island,' he said...

'I think Pluto is happier as a Kupier Belt object,' [said the first astronomer]. It gets to go from puniest planet to king of the Kupier Belt'....

The International Astronmical Union has rules for what you can name objects....Anything found in Quaoar's particular neighborhood must be named after a creation deity...If it were closer to Pluto, they would have needed to name it after another mythological deity associated with the underworld."

{Now: doesn't THAT account give another spin to the "strange categories" of Borges' encyclopaedia," w/ which Foucault begins his discussion of The Order of Things?

Anne

"It is necessary to appreciate the dislocating sweep of Darwin's achievement. The discovery of natural selection, the austere logic of reproducing systems, was only Darwin's first step....He showed how selection united ..the physical and the mental into a single fabric of intelligble mateiral causation. If one could accept the price....: our cherished mental life was a naturally selected product of organized matter, just one downstream consequence of the uncaring immensities of time and chance....

no comporimise was possible between the need for ideological affirmation and the logic of Darwin's worldview. As he explained, in a world governed by physics and seleciton, humans are a "chance," like other life forms "a mechanical invention"; there is no "necessary progression"....Most disturbing was his recongition that because natural selection gave a contingent, materialist explanation for the existence of the moral capacity, it removed any divine or cosmic endorsemnt of its products.....

Darwin went further than his contemporaries because he was less bound by the compulsion to make the universe conform to his predilections. While others rapidly turned aside, his stoicism in the face of bitter imaginative vistas allowed him to persevere along logical paths to some of the coldest places human thought has ever reached.....The will to know must have been singularly unbending in a man for whom even God's banishment or death was incidental to finding the truth....

This is a little different than where we are heading (telling stories in order to produce new ones)...so stay tuned! Anne

IN RETELLING THESE TWO STORIES, I FOUND THAT I HAD TO REREAD, REPLACE, REMOVE, AND REDEFINE, MUCH OF THE INFORMATION, IN ORDER THAT, THEIR TELLING MADE SENSE TO ME, THE READER.
WHAT LESSON AM I LEARNING HERE? IS IT IN THE REREADING, THE REPLACING, THE REMOVING, THE REDEFINING, OR FROM THE KNOWLEDGE WITHIN THE STORIES THEMSELVES.
FLATLINE, MADE IT VERY CLEAR TO ME HOW IGNORANT I WAS TO THE KNOWLEGDE OF GEOMETRIC FIGURES, TRIANGLES, SQUARES, HEXAGONS, I HAD TO RESORT TO ANOTHER SOURCE, ANOTHER BOOK TO HELP MAKE CLEAR THE MEANINGS OF THOSE FIGURES. I THEN HAD TO REMOVE THOSE FIGURES AND REPLACE THEM WITH HUMAN FIGURES. THOSE FIGURES, I THEN PLACED INTO A SOCIAL STRUCTURE THAT CLEARLY SHOWED THE CONNECTION OF THE GEOMETRIC FIGURES AND THE HUMAN FIGURES.
THE WOMEN OF FLATLINE HAD NO DIMENSIONS. A STRAIGHT LINE AS DEFINED HAS NO DIMENSIONS, NO DEBTH IN THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE, SHE IS ACCORDED EVEN LESS. AS WOMEN, THEY ARE NOT EVEN GIVEN ROLES, OR PARTS TO PLAY. THEY WEREN'T GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO DEVELOP THEIR TALENTS, THEIR GIFTS AS WOMEN. THE MEN WEREN'T AWARDED MUCH MORE. THEY SEEM DESTINED TO REMAIN IN THEIR ROLES UNTIL DEATH, WORKMEN, SOILDIERS, ARTISANS AND THE NOBILITY.


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