The Strange Anthropomorphizing and Irresponsibility of AI Users: What Might REALLY Happen

A book!

Before I continue, I should make clear: I am writing specifically about AI like ChatGPT: generative AI that depends on sites that allow open sourcing.

From the beginning, I have loathed the public marketing proclamations about the material that AI summarizes. In the early months, I heard a great deal of "but it isn't verbatim" (in fact, ChatGPT often uses material verbatim, just as it often claims things are verbatim that aren't). I also heard, "Well, sure, it doesn't SOUND human yet" as if the major issue was the WAY that AI summarized material, not the fact that it was summarizing stolen/borrowed material. 

What is happening here is not the same as, say, Google search--in which sponsored and other websites pop up in answer to a question/keywords. Arguably, the results of Google search are not "unbiased"--but at least, the viewer/reader can directly note the connection between the question/keyword and the places that may be able to answer the question/respond to the keyword. 

Currently, generative AI (at work; I have it switched off on my home browsers) sells a distortion that is surprisingly and uncomfortably accepted, even by people who claim not to be fans:

The Distortion: AI created all this information sui generis, all by itself. 

The Free Press recently posted an article about religious leaders using AI to write their sermons. One of the commenters said something along the lines of, "AI summarized the life of Christ better than anything else I've read." 

I could feel the moral networks in my brain crying out in pain. This commenter and some others (though not all) behaved as if "oops, yes, maybe people shouldn't use AI to write their essays, but when I ask a question and it gives me what I'm looking for...oh, well, how can I stop it?" 

Many of the same commenters, for instance, insisted that AI has a kind of consciousness. 

In sum, users have anthropomorphized the ultimate, obedient slave. On the one hand, they ignore the actual programming--the fact that ChatGPT and such ARE programmed. They ignore that the programming is culling information from elsewhere. They ignore where that information comes from, who actually found that information and gathered it and put it on the web. To them, AI is this "being" that gives them what they want. Consequently, it must be acting all on its own. Nothing it does is THEIR fault or responsibility. 

On the other hand, they conveniently ignore that no sentient OR living thing behaves like AI. 

Watch out-takes of any show that uses real children. For that matter, watch the early seasons of Mythbusters! Jamie and Adam are tender-hearted guys, and they had tremendous difficulty getting the animals in those seasons to cooperate. The reason is simple: 

School!

True living/sentient things don't. 

The reason isn't rebellion (though rebellion is always a possibility with a sentient being at some point). The reason is...distraction, incomprehension, misunderstanding, needs, other interests, more distraction. When I was about six, my mom let me out of a meeting to go to the bathroom: "Come right back!" she said. I didn't. I didn't rebel. I simply started playing with some other kids. I didn't even realize I had broken a rule until I saw her amused smile. 

IN REALITY, if AI was truly conscious, most of the time...

It simply wouldn't respond.  

The Future: I suggest that we adults have already lived through the Internet's "Golden Age," that time when lots of information was out there and people could start blogs and share ideas. A tremendous amount of stuff was free with or without ads. 

I think all that is going to change. I believe it will change because at a fundamental level, human beings don't like being stolen from--and the background economic system of those humans matters not one whit. 

Human beings don't like their stuff being taken away.

Just the last few months have illustrated how far AI engineers will go to pretend that they have no control over the AI they programmed. Likewise, the fantasy that the summarized information simply magically appears, has no source, is basically anonymous is being perpetuated by entities like Google. 

Eventually, people will stop sharing information. I suggest that even within companies that have their own LLMs, individual departments will stop sharing. The desire to keep close "my project that I worked on" will increase, especially, again, since lack of control and lack of attribution appear to be "accepted" outcomes these days: users can't fight back. 

As more and more people understandably "hoard" their information, the internet will become utterly devoid of real information. AI won't be able to borrow anything because nothing of real substance will be there. 

The "Golden Age" will end.     

Maybe I am wrong. My point here: Nothing happens along some streamlined, one-direction-only narrative. Watch out for the black swan...and actual, real-world human reactions and uses.  

© Katherine Woodbury 

A-Z Books My Parents Enjoyed: A is for Austen

My mom was a huge Austen fan. She adored Pride & Prejudice, of course, but one of the nicest aspects of my mother is that she appreciated all of Austen's canon novels. Her favorite was, in fact, Persuasion. She also was one of the few people in my life who thought Northanger Abbey is as funny as I do--and funny for it's very English irony about things being so much less dramatic than one imagines. 

As will come up again in this list, my mom could be quite critical of television and movie versions of books. She was an artist and almost always found the visuals disappointing (I see them as experiments and find them interesting in their own right). She deplored the black & white Pride & Prejudice for its historical inaccuracies--despite quite liking Laurence Olivier. She quite liked the A&E version (despite a few criticisms), which is another notch in that version's metaphorical bedpost. 

Austen is good indicator of how married people can have wildly different tastes. Early on in their marriage, my mom shared Pride & Prejudice with my dad when he was sick. The way she told the story, "He actually got up from bed and came to find me just to say, 'Why did you give me this to read?'"

Suffice it to say, in the Venn diagram of my parents' shared tastes, Austen was on an outside edge. 

A-Z List: Books My Parents Enjoyed

My mother (Joyce Woodbury, 1930-2026) read to me when I was growing up. That ritual lasted until junior high. It then ended since I started to finish the books we'd started together. My mom was a little disappointed but she was too voracious a reader herself to complain about my own behavior. 

We shared a love of murder mysteries, an interest in Nero Wolfe, a love of Austen. But we also had differences in taste and topics. I watched Nero Wolfe--read only a few of the Rex Stout books; my mom far preferred the books. I never got into Horatio Hornblower (despite Gruffudd in the titular role in the TV series) while my mom read and enjoyed C.S. Forester's novels. I was always a greater fan of sci-fi, fantasy, and graphic novels than my mom. 

My tastes differed even more with my dad (Hugh Woodbury, 1928-2025). In the final four or so years of his life, while he was living in an assisted living facility, I brought him books from the local libraries. My choices at first were hit or miss, but I began to develop a sense of what he enjoyed based on whether he had started a book and commented on it. Some of those books will show up on this list. 

This list is partly a homage to my parents' reading habits and to the bookcases in our family home, full of picture books, kids' books, religious books, fiction books, non-fiction books, encyclopedias, owned books, library books...

The list is also a look at taste: what people like, what people don't like, how much taste could be the product of environment, how much the product of supposedly inherited genes, and how much purely choice. 

A is for Austen will start the list... 

People Don't Change: Psychoanalysis in the Medieval Era

Self-Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living by Peter Jones is a fascinating book. It combines the author's personal experiences and insights with context-based explanations of how medievals thought alongside a plethora of stories from the medieval era. Well-worth the read!

What I appreciated is that absent Freudian analysis, medieval people still thought about how people thought. Jones shows that the Seven Deadly Sins were a way for people of the era to discuss why and how people did certain things. The medievals weren't a bunch of ignoramuses  incapable of delving into the human experience simply because they lacked terms like "superego" and "id."

Jones writes, 

As priests and preachers now needed to get the public to confront the inner workings of their own minds, the sins emerged as an ideal tool. 

As with most classic Christian texts, the worst sins are those of alienation and disgust: Pride and Envy. The least terrible sins are physical, including Lust, which looks outward and could, potentially, lead towards something bigger and more constructive, such as love, affection, and commitment. 

The terms "alienation" and "constructive" are mine. However, these ideas suffuse medieval texts. Richard Newhauser in his essay "On Ambiguity in Moral Theology: When the Vices Masquerades as Virtues" makes similar points to Jones--medievals were fully capable of contemplating the inner workings of people's minds. They were furthermore capable of pinpointing that "ulterior" motives could be at work. 

Granted, some of the "sins masquerading as virtues" stuff was aimed at practices that the medieval Church disliked, such as people studying the scriptures in private, non-sanctioned meetings. 

But other examples from the time period are fairly sophisticated: the pious woman who claimed Christ spoke to her but truly only wanted attention; the man who claimed great concern for his neighbor's possessions--because he wanted them for himself; the supposedly "prudent" saver who was actually Scrooge McDuck (though naturally, medievals didn't use that term).

The worry over when one impulse turns into the other occupied the medieval mind (as it does modern people's minds) and religious leaders warned against that worry itself becoming a kind of idol.   

Huh! 

Human nature is truly not that different now than it was then.   

Problems of Utopias: Abstract Religion

 

The problem of abstract religion--in which the physical is heavily idealized while being shoved off-stage--is captured by a Christmas romance series about an angel ornament. The ornament blesses different couples; sometimes the angel herself appears. 

The series starts in the mid-eighteenth century and ends in the modern era. The first three books use the angel in frankly paranormal ways (but not so much that a plot is lost). In addition, the angel in the first three books is frankly pro-physical love, neither embarrassed nor squeamish that each couple has a sexual relationship.

Over the course of the books, the paranormal element fades while the angel becomes a far more fastidious character than established originally. Less the frank and fleshy nuns of Brother Cadfael (or even the well-lived nun of the Father Dowling Mysteries--or Sister Mary Clarence) and more like...I'm not sure. I have a hard time thinking of a literary comparison since I don't read religious books with prudish nuns or angels. (Or watch shows with them either.)

The change from a non-prudish angel to a prudish one matches social changes in the last 300 years, changes that result in modern shock and reproach. 

We 21st Century folks like to imagine that we are so bold and frank and open-minded or--depending on who's talking--salacious and obscene and indecent.

The fact is, we aren't anywhere close to any of those things, no matter how we present or castigate ourselves.

Mostly, we're offended by everything: women breastfeeding in public, the idea that God might not be opposed to sex, bare bodies bathing or dressing together, religious ceremonies that focus on the physical form, frank discussions of sexual matters, women as sexual beings, men as sexual beings, people as biological beings, people sharing rooms, people sharing bathtubs, women giving birth, women giving birth at home, other people being present during births, National Geographic magazines, the nude in art, romance paperbacks, romance paperback covers, songs that mention sex, manga, bawdy humor.

The testicle joke in Witness is

far more realistic to agrarian cultures

than moderns like to believe.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that all this offense is coming from the right. Or that all this shocked unease is coming exclusively from religious people. Christianity makes a good scapegoat. But old-time Christianity had no trouble discussing sex as a reality. From Paul to Augustine to young pregnant single girls praying to the Virgin Mary, sex was something real to grapple with.

I maintain that the two biggest influences on modern attitudes regarding sexual matters are the growth of privacy and the worries/theories of philosophers. As human beings gained privacy (post 1750), they become far more prudish. In an earlier post on Votaries, I call this "prudish prurient permissiveness whereby a partially clad body is instantly sexualized by those who take offense and by those who take an interest while both the offended and the interested are scandalized at the idea of having to share a bedroom or bathroom."

Reality: Puritans told bawdy jokes. And slept together before marriage. And knew all about sex since living near animals kind of gives the plot away. They were well-aware of the earthy vagaries of the human, physical form.

Never trust a historian or a politician or an offended commentator (and there are lots of those out there) who tries to tell you that once upon a time, people were ever so naive and closeted--or innocent--and didn't know all the things we know. Instead, ask yourself what our ancestors would find to laugh about when it comes to us.

The connection here to utopias is that utopias almost always fall to pieces around the subject of sex. I will come back to this issue in a later post. Here I want to comment on the utopian penchant for purely abstract/philosophical religions--so much so that one of my idealistic students once passionately try to convince me that the "good" Ancient Egyptians didn't have any of that dark, sin-oriented, negative stuff in THEIR religion(s). 

The student was, of course, wrong, which I pointed out. But I've encountered the same attitude regarding prettified Eastern religions in America. I am sorry to say that until middle age, I didn't know that Buddhism even has a hell.

It does. I immediately become more interested in Buddhism. 

It isn't that I like the idea of hell. It is that a religion without one seems to be lacking a basic connection to what Stephen King would call "the alligators" in our minds. No id. No ego. Just a lot of rules and proper attitudes. 

A religion needs to do better than pageantry, though pageantry helps, if it is going to be more than a country club--if it is going to offer something distinct from philanthropy and education and social clubs and political organizations. And if it doesn't connect to the human physical experience, it isn't doing its job (see Napoleon and the Catholic Church for an example of "the people" being offered an intellectual abstract religion and finding it less than appealing).

In other words, utopias that replace a religion's dark-side with either a mass of rules or a mass of acceptable platitudes will fail to connect to fundamentals within human nature. Even if a religion's purpose is to remind people of the need to rise above the "id," such improvement can only happen if the religion also remembers (1) the dark-side doesn't magically disappear; (2) the sins of the spirit are worse. 

A-Z Characters Who Transform: Z is for Zorro-Type Children

Literature is awash with children who rush in to save the day. 

The stories are mostly maudlin and patently ridiculous. When I was younger, I read a book about a young girl who marches to Washington, D.C. with a flag. When she gets there and meets with the president, oh, he is soooo touched, he changes his opinion about everything immediately. 

Even as a youth, I didn't buy it (I found the pressure from news outlets to meet with the girl believable, not the president's change of mind). 

The mindset that produces such a plot probably would have applauded the Children's Crusade: innocent children will quell the barbarians! 

It should come as no great surprise, that the children of the Children's Crusade drowned, were enslaved, and returned home. 

So are there good examples of children who rush in and save the day? 

In general, children who save others are far less irritating when they are actually doing something--not simply existing (and blessing their surroundings). Children whose innocence is the operative factor are almost wholly annoying. 

Edmund, Eustace, and Jill will always be far more interesting than sweet children thinking pure thoughts--as will Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender (animated series). 

A state of innocence is part of the equation--we are watching young folks make decisions without the memories and actions and investment of the grown adult. The willingness to act, to even be ruthless, in that innocent state is part of the attraction.  

A-Z Characters Who Transform: Y is for Youth

One of the most common transformations in literature is the transformation of the child to an adult. 

Harper Lee captured this transformation perfectly in the book To Kill a Mockingbird, which involves a longer period of time than in the movie (the movie is also good but different). She captures this transformation because she captures Scout's perspective. Throughout the book, Scout--though impressively observant--only understands what she is able to understand in that moment.   

My version of David

The best characters about youth will have even an already sympathetic and thoughtful child grow in understanding--as opposed to being endowed with understanding. Zilpha Keatley Snyder presents such a moment in The Headless Cupid. David, the protagonist, is a kindly, gentle, thoughtful boy. He is not quite as mystic or dreamy as his younger brother--circumstances have forced David to take practical care of others--but he does have the capacity to give others the benefit of the doubt--

--which means he doesn't always understand them. It takes him several experiences to realize that his stepsister is motivated by anger, not (merely) a love of drama and personal unease. 

The growth is incorporated organically into the plot. David doesn't become wise. He is a good kid who becomes wiser.  

1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, Jacob: Grace & Works Continued

Problem 2

In a previous post, I comment that two problems underlie religious systems--in part because they underlie all human systems: 

1. The problem of grace versus works—that is, the problem of a deity's mercy versus human merit.
2. The problem of an elect or elite, those who are supposedly entitled to more of God’s mercy and intervention.

The previous post addresses the first problem. 

The second problem, an elite who claim more of god(s)' attention, is so old and so human it barely needs an explanation. Various anthropologists question whether cave ceremonies were open to all members of a tribe or to only a few. Ancient Europeans didn't live in the caves at Lascaux and Altamira (even Palaeolithic folks at risk from the cold and huge predators didn't want to live in the dark). Those caves and their art were likely tied to rituals and ceremonies, potentially linked--in Europe--to bears as guides, totems, and supernal beings. As some anthropologists suggest, the rituals may have been limited to an "elite." 

I don't entirely accept the anthropologists' arguments here since a lack of remains (bones from dinner, bones from residents) and/or a small space does not denote a lack of visitors. These types of deductions argue that ceremonies can only occur in a specific way. But a coming-of-age or other life-specific ceremony (each member of the community undergoes a once-in-a-lifetime event) is more than probable. 

When they link cave ceremonies to elites, anthropologists are drawing on later social behavior. As Rodney Stark has pointed out, religions tend to move from sect to church and back to sect. In the early stages, the behavior of the members is usually (though not always) far more egalitarian. As the sect transforms into a church, it begins to gain an elite. The natural-man desire for guarantees is bolstered by more and more refined rituals that are difficult to master (unless one has money and free time).  

When the desire for guarantees meets the creation of elites, all kind of troubles ensue. These troubles are followed, almost inevitably, by reformation. 

That is, it is nearly a historical given that a elite-centered religion with strict behavioral guidelines will be followed by something that challenges the related doctrines and reaches out to everyday folks. Buddhism was a reformation. Protestantism was a reformation. The list is endless. 

At the back of the troubles and reformations is, again, grace v. works, which I will address again in later posts. 

Big Bang Theory: Comic Books and the Unintentional Sexism of Amy

One of the ongoing jokes of Big Bang Theory's early seasons is that the comic book shop is devoid of girls. Not even Lucy comes to the comic book shop on purpose--she stepped in because she saw the lonely hearts party sign. 

The joke is self-mocking. The men are lampooning interests that appear to isolate them from others. 

Later, Amy states that more women would visit the comic book shop if more comics had strong female superheroes, beyond just Wonder Woman, presumably. Stuart concurs, stating that he sees more and more women in his store due apparently to changes in comics. 

I don't hold Amy's belief against her--it is entirely in keeping with the character and with someone who isn't that interested in comic books to begin with. 

But the belief implies NOT that women might be more interested in shojo manga--which is a plausible argument regarding female versus male tastes overall (Stuart could branch out to manga)--but that the only thing keeping women from superhero comics is a lack of strong female role models. 

As if women aren't interested in story and art. 

I went to comic book stores in the 1990s. I did not walk in and exclaim, "Where are my female role models?!" I went because I have always been drawn to the combination of text and art. When I was in high school, a few of my friends got into the Elf Quest comics, and  I read the initial volumes. Post-high school, I encountered Miller's Batman graphic novels. I never found the X-Men particularly engaging (despite, shocker of shockers, the series having MORE female role models than Batman!). In any case, my tastes tend to run more to standalone comics/graphic novels--such as Kurt Busiek's fantastic Superman: Secret Identity--than to series. But in the 1990s, I happened across a comic called The Next Nexus and wanted to find more volumes. 

What is interesting about Amy and The Big Bang Theory writers is that Amy's viewpoint is a credible part of her character, not necessarily a political point of the show. Not only does Leonard meet a very cool woman at the comic book store--who is there to collect, not simply there by accident--Stuart later dates a woman, Denise, who loves sci-fi and fantasy and is so well-versed in graphic novels, she helps Sheldon (by giving him a Busiek suggestion!). So the possibility of women caring about story and art and genre is there. 

In addition, the series' underlying theme is that everyone collects something (such as Hello Kitty), which theme applies to Amy. Her primary "collecting" interest is Little House on the Prairie, which comes with its own level of unreality (of which she is aware). Sheldon touchingly supports her interest--though part of his support leads them both to get very realistic food poisoning. 

Amy is a well-rounded character who does, in fact, face sexism in her profession--however, she draws the wrong (though common) conclusion about comic books and women. 

A-Z Characters Who Transform...Or Not

One type of transformation tale is the characters who connect but don't meet or meet after many years. They are, in many ways, disguised. 

In Daddy Long Legs, for instance, the semi-anonymous benefactor to whom the main character writes is an "X" because she isn't aware of his true age and identity. In Microserfs, one of the main characters carries on a relationship with a literal "X" online--he has no idea whom he is meeting when they finally make an assignation. In 84 Charing Cross Road (epistolary memoir), the writers never meet yet come to know more about each other over time.  

The set-up is attractive: humans want to believe that our "true selves" or "souls" somehow meld, that distance and disguise are easily overcome. In reality, communication through a screen still entails effort and tact. Transformation--people changing to become an "us"--isn't an automatic. In fact, the closeness online may be illusory or performative.

84 Charing Cross Road is quite honest here. There is a suggestion of romance--but the relationship between the American writer and British bookseller isn't about preference (I want you more than I want my wife). The relationship is between two people who like books and get close in that particular way.  

All the Ms: Marechera to Margolis

Marechera, Dambudzo: From a short story collection, The House of Hunger, I read “Burning in the Rain.” It is beautifully written, if depressing like so many short stories, and holds within it hints of classic tropes: the Mirror (Dorian Gray’s portrait).

Maren, Mesha: Perpetual West is a big book that is quite beautifully written and seems from the beginning inexpressibly sad. I can handle sad, but I don’t go in for it on a continual basis. Moving on…

Margaret, Joanna: The Bequest is quite gripping. It is described as a “Gothic Mystery” and the beginning actually reminded me of Rebecca. However, I prefer mystery to suspense–despite reading Rebecca and most of Mary Stewart when I was younger. 

Margolin, Phillip: Murder at Black Oaks is extremely straight-forward: here’s the problem, here are the suspects. Hey, this is a murder mystery with lawyers! I like such a blunt approach! I may check out a different Margolin novel (I’m not a huge fan of “get that innocent person off death row” plots). 

Margolis, Seth: Despite the rough writing in places—I’m not a huge fan of the overuse of “you” as a generic pronoun–Closing Costs (the title is lowercase in some catalogs, but I thought it was a typo when I came back to the list, so I'm uppercasing it here) is engaging. I might read more if I cared more about upperclass New York City life. 

Margolis, Sue: Perfect Blend is chick-lit rather than romance. In a way, I suppose “chick-lit” is a sub-genre of romance. But I separate them. To me, chick-lit is about the world of (usually) the heroine. Romance, on the other hand, is about the relationship. There’s a lot of cross-over, but basically, it’s Cinderella versus Beauty & the Beast. I prefer the latter. 

Parley Baer: Great Character Actor

Many if not most actors carry their external "I'm acting" personas with them. They get type-cast for a reason.

Those actors still retain the ability to be wonderful actors, especially the ones who can use the external persona to good effect. 

Parley Baer is one such example. He is excellent playing characters who are somewhat loosely-moraled, slightly whining, constantly bargaining and kowtowing. In Perry Mason, this character type is often a villain--and creates havoc for others. In Andy Griffith, as the mayor, Baer is simply the resident politician. Alongside his complaints--some justified (he was right about the band!), some not--he is also superbly comedic.

The interesting point here is that Baer knew how to shift from the more villainous aspects of his external persona to the sweeter aspects. Not all actors can. Anthony Head, RIP, was fantastic as Giles. But he only seemed to know how to play one type of villain, so his evil headmaster on Doctor Who was not much different from his version of the self-centered Adam Klaus which was not all that different from the vain Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion.

Wonderful actor--but surprisingly less versatile in tone than someone like Baer. But then Baer, like many actors of that time period, had a background that encompassed the circus/vaudeville and the need to adopt multiple personas. Baer was versatile. He was also cast correctly. 

I suspect casting directors never get enough credit.

Problems of Utopia: Fear of Art, Including--Especially--Non-Intellectual Art

Utopia novels or tracts tend to get a tad tedious--that is, they tend to turn into polemics rather than stay focused on story. The inherent fear of artistic license--that the novel or tract's readers will NOT react as required--creates texts in which the characters lecture others. In Gilman's Herland, they aren't even supposed to dress up, wear jewelry, and distinguish themselves visually. 

Utopians fear art. 

Plato wanted to ban plays. Religious utopias waffle over holidays, maypoles, and the theater. Political utopias put comedy under fire.

Gentleman of Moscow by Amor Towles does an exceptional job painting the moral and artistic annihilations of the Soviet Union. (The protagonist's idealistic friend, who joined the new government, is eventually sent to Siberia for daring to assert in a memoir-type piece that Berlin bread--produced through the art of baking--is better than Russian bread.) 

As I argue in my thesis, a deep abiding fear of language runs through all social orders. Every village, city, and state includes people who are sure that nobody else gets "the joke":  irony, satire, puns, riddles, tall tales, gags, farce, punchlines, knock-knock jokes. Such people tend to be rather humorless anyway--and they often substitute "teasing" for true humor--which makes one wonder if they don't get the joke. 

They will never admit it. Everyone else is completely helpless in the face of exaggeration, nuance, context, non-lecturing literature, flights of fancy, dreams. Everyone else must be protected against such dangerous stuff.

I wish I could argue that all these folks come out of the "special knowledge" Ivory Tower left, a bunch of academics divorced from reality shaking their fingers at all those people bamboozled by the companies and studios that the academics don't approve of. And these academics exist!

The truth is, however, that anyone in any field is capable of feeling that other people have missed the point and must be harried until they are "fixed" of their bad thoughts--inoculated against so-called bad opinions, attitudes, art--at which point the penitent will be allowed to return to the fold. 

In my experience, the harriers or sermonizers are practicing a kind of transference. They are quite susceptible themselves to trends and fads. As the C.S. Lewis quote indicates, they are terrified of appearing "uncool"--not unlike teenagers who group together for protection against anything that differs from the group. It takes time and moral growth to do what they love, not what is "approved."

In Chapter 12 of His in Herland, Alim and Celis discuss folklore. Celis argues that the mentors want to produce "goodness" at the expense of creativity. (My Celis is rather hard-headed and practical. Here, she is observing, not necessarily starting a revolution.)

I [Alim] protested. People innovated. They improved machinery. They came up with new educational methods.

“Not outrageously,” Celis said. “Why do you think the old stories are never told in Troas’s theaters? The ones with unkind parents, brutal kings, devouring monsters? Wars. Famine. Fallen cities. The mentors draw lines. There’s an edge to the world. If we fall off it, we’re lost.”

“People tell the stories anyway.”

“Sure. But the fear is always there. Nobody, not even your Terry, believes someone can explore an idea and not become it.”

“Maybe they do become it. I met Terry and now—” Now I know what I don’t have. Now, I'm considering what else might be possible. 

Celis said, “You can’t be the hero and the villain and the monster and the deviant all at once. Not in reality.”

Unless people are heroes and villains and monsters and deviants all in one.

In the end, no matter what Utopians try, fiction is inherently uncontrollable. Its goal is to lie, enchant, bamboozle, astonish. Its prevalence suggests that human desires precede the supposed ideals of human-created systems: religious, scientific, economic and political. If human desires come first, seamless order will never be entirely possible, no matter what leaders force onto people. Compromise is the only solution. A utopia will always fracture and dissolve. 

One of my favorite movies, Galaxy Quest, contains one of my favorite scenes: Tim Allen's character has to explain to the alien commander that his show (a take-off of Star Trek) is a fabrication ("Explain it to him in words a child could understand"). The character is deeply apologetic.

Yet, at the end of the movie, Galaxy Quest: The Television Show has been revived. The dangers of fiction are weighed against its joys and found less important, not because the dangers may not exist but because a world without fiction is dull and empty and robotic and non-human. It is a world run by lecturing woke academics and offended humorless moral leaders--that is, the well-meaning members of any field or group who feel the need to "enlighten" everyone else and manage their intake. (Literary Weight Watchers.) 

Woe to that generation that replaces our superficial, tacky, sometimes downright stupid television programming with high-minded dramas addressing issues of class, race, orientation, and gender alongside accompanying disclosures of said dramas' underlying ideologies ("triggers") as well as their purposes and applications. A curse upon your heads! (I wrote parts of this post several years ago. Rereading it, I felt positively prophetic!)

When it comes to fiction, the important questions are: Do we viewers/readers believe? Does the plot work? Do the characters live for us? Do we care about them? Are we carried away by the story? Are we satisfied?

Leave the "I'm SO appalled" attitude to the sermonizers. Leave the fun of the thing to the rest of us. 

A-Z Characters that Transform: Westing and Other Aloof Heroes from Raskin's Fiction

Posts about characters who transform brings me to Ellen Raskin. 

Cool, calculating somewhat aloof heroes who see three moves ahead are quite popular in fiction. See House and House's predecessor, Sherlock Holmes. Ellen Raskin created a few notably aloof characters, such as Sam Westing in The Westing Game and Garson from The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues.

Raskin deserves credit for her aloof protagonists being full characters who transcend the archetype. She accomplishes this feat through the following writing choices:

(1) Raskin avoids omniscience. However clever, her protagonists are operating within specific parameters alongside idiosyncratic people who don't operate entirely according to plan;

(2) Raskin gives her protagonists flaws; they are idiosyncratic themselves.

The problem of the aloof hero is how easily the aloof hero can be a jerk pointing out everyone else's flaws. Although I enjoyed the early seasons of House, I felt that too often the audience was being invited to agree with House: "Yeah, isn't it stupid to have to do that petty bureaucratic stuff like fill out charts?!"

Consequently, I never felt like House learned or grew. He understood himself better.  But he never moved forward, and I eventually gave up on the show. 

In comparison, Sherlock from Elementary retains his basic personality while still trying to improve (without getting lecture-y).

Raskin's protagonists are more like Sherlock than House. Sam Westing has a sweet scene in which he waxes nostalgic (I won't give away more) and Garson is haunted by choices he made in the past. However, Garson is not allowed to wallow; he too needs to learn to move on.

I highly recommend both books, especially the second which doesn't get enough attention!

In regards to the issue of physical transformation, Westing's disguise (and subsequent reveal) are excellently done. *Spoilers.* He was in a car accident. Many of the people who would recognize him were quite young when they saw him last. His motivations--however extreme--are in keeping with the man's psychology and with the book's plot. And the person who unveils him is his equal in intelligence and self-control. His secret is safe. 

People Don't Change: The Individual Within the Community

Timothy Tackett is an accomplished author of the French Revolution. I recommend his book When the King Took Flight as well as The Glory and the Sorrow. 

The second book is based on the letters of a thoroughly middle-class man who lived in a non-affluent (but not poverty-stricken) part of Paris--what we moderns might refer to as blue-collar. Tackett tells the story of the French Revolution up to The Terror where Tackett must, by necessity, summarize. The man of the book, Adrien-Joseph Colson, wrote fewer letters during The Terror, likely because ordinary citizens' homes were raided and correspondence read during this time. 

Colson was a supporter of the Revolution--but not in the all-or-nothing way often presented by fiction writers, historians, and social media watchdogs. Rather, Colson reacted in line with how people actually do react to events. 

Colson was a supporter of the Revolution in a non-streamlined way. He was drawn in more by events and circulars than by the seminal works that NOW students of history would point to as important: writings by Voltaire and company. Colson certainly didn't follow the Revoluton as laid out in history books. Tackett points out, "One must constantly keep in mind that Colson and his neighbors had no foreknowledge of what was happening, of where things were leading, or of what it all meant" (80). To a great extent, Colson and others didn't become interested in the Revolution until political meetings occurred before the eyes of the world. 

Like all human beings, Colson selected what he valued and what he didn't from the Revolution. That makes him sound inconsistent, but human beings don't operate according to textbooks. They operate according to their interests, integrity, choices, and opportunities. 

It does help to realize--since Colson continued to work for a noble family as basically an estate lawyer--that many nobles, including the king, adopted Revolutionary parlance early on. It was the popular thing to do! Colson apparently harbored no resentment towards people born into the Second Estate. Like many French people, including Parisians, he had a positive attitude towards the king up until the king's flight. 

Remains of local church

destroyed at The Terror.

Nor did he harbor resentment--as did later revolutionaries--towards the First Estate, the clergy. He remained a devoted Catholic, likely even through The Terror. As with some nobles (including the vocabulary adopted by members of all the Estates), the clergy in Paris were initially quite supportive of the revolution. 

In fact, the later attack on Catholic institutions reminded me less of Henry VIII (who just wanted the money) and more of the fortunate circumstances of the American Revolution: no king on the premises to have to bother about (let him stay in England!) plus an acknowledgment from the start that religion and government cannot share power. The ancient world combined religion and government and nobody batted an eye--but early moderns struggled with the problem since the two roles, by their nature, are divisive. The British solved the issue by making the religious arm merely ceremonial. The Americans acknowledged the reality and made government secular. 

Colson's neighborhood

In any case, Colson did not look upon the Revolution in absolutist, either/or terms. And like Roman soldiers who converted from Mithraism to Christianity yet retained their Mithraic rituals, Colson's reactions to the Revolution were formed in part by his personality and in part by the environment in which he lived (Roman soldiers were mostly converted by their families who lived in towns--Christianity was initially an urban phenomenon). 

Colson separated "good" poor (the poor artisans who shared his neighborhood) from all the other poor. He attended the church in his neighborhood with his neighbors. He believed in some of the many conspiracy rumors that characterize the French Revolution and distrusted others. He supported some events and not others and was relatively powerless to stop the others (he had no power over what happened to the king). That is, he was to a huge extent (without his free will being overridden) impacted by his immediately community, and he valued--as did his neighbors--the immediate benefits of the Revolution, such as better street lights.

Arguably, we are the same today--despite social media. People operate, still, within social communities. I am not the product of my surroundings but my understanding of the world around me is influenced by what I hear and see, by what others value, by what others support. Even if I disagree, I remain a member of at least three different communities (work, church, neighborhood) and my disagreements will occur within those communities. A car, free press, easier communication, and increased options due to increased rights give me more flexibility than Colson--nevertheless, I'm not living in the 19th century or the 22nd. I'm not living in a different country or on a different planet. Here and now is what I deal with--just as he did. 

1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, Jacob: The Ongoing Issue of Grace & Works

Eden's purpose is part of the struggle.

1 Nephi 14-22: Grace & Works

The Book of Nephi begins an argument over hell and grace and punishment that continues throughout The Book of Mormon. The issue was common in the nineteenth century but its history is far older. 

To start, two fundamental problems underscore much religious discourse. 

1. The problem of grace versus works—that is, the problem of a deity's mercy versus human merit.
2. The problem of an elect or elite, those who are supposedly entitled to more of God’s mercy and intervention.

Problem 1

In James’s statement “Faith without works is dead,” the word “works” is based on a Greek word, ergon, which refers to “energy.” The word is connected to the business of agriculture and trade—that is, it is connected to multiple roles that people may take in a community. (See this site here.)

That is, faith without energy is meaningless because faith without energy means a person is dead.

We wake up in the morning. We get out of bed, feed the cats, carry out tasks, open mail. Everything is something we do as living people. And during all of that, we ponder stuff, which arguably is also an action in which neurons leap the boundaries between synapses. Faith is, in fact, ongoing agency, a position that The Book of Mormo commits to doctrinally (see 2 Nephi 2:26).

However, once the Protestant Reformation was in full force, “works” no longer meant “the decisions I make everyday about my life” or, even, “charity” (which is the context for James). It meant what John McWhorter references when he talks about “performances” by so-called protesters. Since they aren’t protesting anybody who dares to disagree with them—and the so-called authorities applaud them (and sometimes feed them)—and their protests rarely, if ever, end with a sacrifice of privilege (few higher educators are giving up actual offices or jobs), much less the adoption of a differing lifestyle—they are, in essence, showing off.

That is, “works” as defined by Martin Luther et al. became actions that by themselves don’t appear to have a moral component but have been turned into a moral necessity: good people jump through these hoops; use these phrases; perform these routines; make these mea culpas.

The issue becomes complicated because not all rituals are meant to be works. Sometimes, they are meant to be reminders of faith or inductions into cultural belonging. A signal of commitment. 

And Protestants at the time of the Reformation rapidly split into those who despised all rituals, including any custom that took place in any church or within any religious group, and those who said, “Uh, you folks are kind of throwing out everything at once.” (Forensic anthropologists are not very happy with Protestant zealots in England who threw out Anglo-Saxon saints’ bones that can now not be tested. See the posts Why Choosing the Supposedly Correct Side is Difficult.) 

To nineteenth-century American readers, “works”—on the one hand—smacked of Catholicism, the corrupt Old World, and stuff like worshiping saints. Ironically, early Protestantism almost immediately created its own sets of “works.” Good religious people embrace the following lifestyle and use the following language and support the following celebrities/political causes…

The truth is, every culture, by the nature of being composed of non-dead and human people, is going to have “performances,” stuff that people do because that’s part of being a member of a community. (We even create “performances” in our personal lives/routines.) If we decide that only “meaningful” actions should be carried out, we run the risk of ending up as humorless as, well, a bunch of Woke Puritans who burn Maypoles, close down theaters, get offended over single words and phrases, and lecture others on supposedly bad thoughts.

In opposition to “works” is the principle of grace. Saint Paul argues that we are saved by grace. Full stop. Not “after all we can do.” We are saved by grace. Propitiation is off the table. God doesn’t bargain. And humans aren’t meant to be grifters. Give it up.

Yet even Paul struggled with the reality of communal living and the irritation of people doing petty things like, say, suing each other. 

In sum, if one sets aside the "performance" side of works, the issue of grace v. works/action/energy still remains: Do humans earn God's attention? Or does God offer attention? Does God react based on merit? Or is merit human wishful thinking?

God is bigger than us and can do what He wishes, so we are saved. But sometimes people are jerks. And sometimes they walk away from God. And sometimes they think they have walked away but they haven’t. And sometimes they think they haven’t but they have. And how fair is it really for a jerk to be saved? (According to Jesus Christ and the parable of the workers, Entirely fair and so not your business.) Since we do get up every morning and do stuff, shouldn’t that stuff be moral? And if we claim to love God, shouldn’t there be a connection between that love and the moral stuff we do? 

Do we work our way towards the infinite by a checklist? Or by learning and growing? Or by being loved and accepted?

I consider Christianity one of the most fascinating religions on record simply because it hauls this problem to the surface and doesn’t fully answer it. The Book of Mormon and its translator, for instance, will return to the problem over and over again. Why not? The Book of Mormon’s initial readers were struggling with it as much as Paul’s audience and modern believers. 

To be continued... 

All the Ms: Marais to Marcom

Marais, Bianca: Hum If You Don’t Know the Words takes place in South Africa. The opening chapter engaged me. I don’t read much literature by South Africa authors so I’m dealing with a small sample size, but the books seem, by default, to deal with complex relationships and issues. Complexity comes with the territory, quite literally.   

Maranini, Dacia: The Silent Duchess starts out as a story about a deaf-mute girl. The description is most effective. It then turns into something from Law & Order: SUV, which means…it gets boring. 

March, Ava: “Bound to Him” is about two people (who already know each other) sleeping together: one fools the other a la Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. I’m not sure I entirely believe it, no matter how much I like disguise tales. KJ Charles’s Seditious Affair is far more believable: a story where the men know each other but don’t know what each man does (one works for the government; the other is a radical pamphleteer) since they came together over sex and then literature, not politics. The reality is revealed early in the story. The “disguise” is less important than dealing WITH the disguise. 

Marcom, Micheline Aharonian: The Daydreaming Boy starts with a “we” passage. I’m not a fan. I’m aware that “we” is ubiquitous in academic literature. I think it is as bad as the non-attached “they,” a generalized pronoun that refers to everyone and no one. Who are these people? Who is that person? Stories are about individual people. I encounter a “we,” and I lose interest immediately. 

Characters Who Transform: The Disguise, Girls as Boys

One of the most classic characters archetypes is the girl disguised as a boy, and the one of the most classic examples is Violet in Twelfth Night. 

Before I continue: I am not tackling biological girls who wish to be biological boys. I am tackling a trope. 

The issue here is the disguise itself. I've argued in other places that there is something inherently satisfying about seeing a disguise ripped away, the true self or event disclosed. However, like the Beast's transformation into the prince, the disclosure brings with it problems, such as... 

Was the disguise believable? 

Are we, the audience, happier with the "true" self or with the disguise? 

(Unlike the transformation from beast to prince, the transformation of the boy back to a girl doesn't ask us to fall in love with a completely different appearance. The second question isn't as much as stake as the first.) 

To answer the questions, I watched two films based on Twelfth Night. Both are films where a girl pretends to be a boy, so she can get something she wants: play a sport--soccer--in one case; enter a journalism contest in the other. 

She's the Man

The movie works to a huge extent because of Amanda Bynes. She is hilarious.

It helps that in the sport she wants to play, she ends up, initially, on the second string. She was the best on the women's team at her previous school. She has the hand-eye coordination and the kicking skills that Eve demonstrates in Last Man Standing. But she simply, in reality, doesn't have the stamina of a young Channing Tatum. 

She practices, acquires more skills, and moves up. It isn't entirely believable but somewhat more believable than her being, say, forward tackle.

The Malvolio character is one of the cleverest characters, being the overly rule-conscious dorm leader. He thinks he has figured out the switch--until Sebastian comes back from abroad and ends up a very confused player in place of his sister on the soccer field. 

Would Shakespeare have objected to the resulting nudity jokes?

Nope!

Just One of the Guys

Joyce Hyser as the Viola character (Terry) makes a somewhat more realistic, if pretty, boy than Bynes--so much so that the scenes of Terry with Rick/Duke Orsino are somewhat more interesting than the scenes with Terry as upset girl. In fact, the end would have been far funnier, in the French farce sense, if Terry and Rick had let the prom attendees believe they were two guys making out. 

The plot less directly follows the play. It is also full to the brim with 1980s scatological teen and pop culture jokes, which--again--is totally appropriate to Shakespeare. The Malvolio character is a dull-witted bully who is vanquished at the end.

The movie plays more directly with gender roles but, as mentioned above, pulls back from being as funny as it could be.

Of the two, She's the Man is more satisfying as story: it showcases more Viola-having-to-change-in-a-flash opportunities plus everybody loving the wrong person shenanigans. And Viola does help win the soccer game at the end!

As for the question--is it believable?--in both cases, the premise becomes its own excuse. That is, in certain cases, I believe an audience simply accepts (or is expected to accept) that certain things work, like magic rules in fantasy being consistent and therefore believable. As long as the rules are kept, we, the audience accept the result. So...male and female twins entirely resemble each other and nobody will guess, until told, that a boy is actually a girl. 

I suggest that the suspension of belief (or disbelief) also works here because Shakespeare's play doesn't focus exclusively on the "mix-up" but on the people involved.