Falsification in Literature, also some meandering thoughts

"One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous."

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Truer words have never been spoken. Yes, hello paradox, I see you there. So much of human experience is characterized simply by what's convenient, yet highly questionable from an ideological framework. I'm getting far away from my more pragmatic book and film reviews. I normally don't deal in matters of truth, per se. It's a tired, yet necessary concept. I tend to circulate not so much around the truthfulness of an argument or an issue, but rather, the quality of an issue; that is, the very essense of the thing--that which makes it interesting.

The following is an incoherent little slightly edited tidbit from a paper I wrote a few months back. Enjoy it if you know what I'm talking about,cause I sure as hell don't.

Is literature just an artfully crafted, romanticized lie? What may be discerned from its expansive archives, if fiction is a simple forgery? With theorists assigning their own agendas to the genre, and various authoritative efforts having been made to blur/eradicate the boundary between fiction and reality (If we want peace, we must prepare for war,) it's getting harder and harder to pin down anything that's significant. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes, “Our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgments are the most indispensable to us, that without granting as true the fictions of logic, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live…". Aside from his distinct ability to diffuse and complicate matters of binary logic, Nietzsche makes the argument that falsification is the primary means of human understanding. If this elusive philosopher’s assertion has any implications on literature, it may be reflected in the critical works of reader-response theorist Wolfgang Iser.

In his faithful attempt to describe the reading process, Iser touches upon the notion of falsification; he writes, “As we read, we oscillate to a greater or lesser degree, between the building and breaking of illusions. In a process of trial and error, we organize and reorganize the various data offered us by the text.” As Iser describes it, reading is the process of narrowing down possibilities in order to achieve a different perspective. While the concept of falseness may itself superficially trivialize literature in a way that does little justice to the art, Iser has pointed out the all too real consequences of the written word. Iser says, “What at first seemed to be an affirmation of our assumptions leads to our own rejection of them, thus tending to prepare us for a re-orientation." And, while Iser tends to depict the reader as both a passive observer and an active participant in the reading process, the impression left upon the reader is ultimately what makes literature significant, and it is an impression created through falsification.

A little unrefined, and I suppose it is a bit of a stretch connecting Nietzsche and Iser, but hey, it's all relative. I think what I was getting at is that literature (and life in general) is a process in which one narrows down possibilities. Iser does suggest that there is a little more to the reading process other than falsification. There is a kind of new perception acheived from reading a work. Then again, is that anything special? We're a different person with each tick of the clock; we achieve, in varying degrees, new perspectives every single moment of our life. Plotwise, it seems like literature winds down in terms of events, narrowing down every single possibility until there is only one kind of text before us. A work tends to set up certain rules for itself, gradually eradicating all possibilities, until there is only one left. The ending, no matter how ambigious or anticlimatic, is still the ending. There are no more words for the reader to decipher. Side-note: Doesn't it seem like everyone who tells you to broaden your horizons really means 'your horizons should be the same as mine, because I'm a whole lot better than you.' It's just code for 'you should think like I do.'

But back to falsification. From what I understand, science works by means of falsification. Sir Karl Popper wrote: "Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks." I regards to literature, it certainly isn't a matter physical experiments, but rather observation by which the reader comes to know the work. I think this notion is very much appropriate in relation to the brevity of human experience. I suppose the real question is, by what criterion in every day matters are we assessing what is patently false? I'll go ahead and quote The Weather Man here, because I think it sums up what I'm saying pretty damn good :

"I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they got reduced to one, to who I am. And that's who I am, the weather man."

pills, pills, and more pills

American culture has become such that we have a pill for all our problems. Whether it's prozac and all its other strange variants for depression, or viagra and cialis for erectile dysfunction, the pills we are given not only alter our brain chemistry--they also alter our way of life. If you're sad and unsatisfied with your job or family life, you can be sure that you can find a doctor that empathizes with you, and you'll get a pill to keep you in line. It's the antithesis of the American dream. Whatever happened to the olden days when you just drank your problems away and died of liver disease?

Depression has become an epidemic because of the way people live their lives in the modern world. Genes and brain chemistry aside, isn't there something a bit unnatural about working 80 hours weeks, most of it probably staring at a computer screen? Look, I don't have a problem with drug use. What people do in the privacy of their own homes is none of my concern. The problem is that people are making their profits off of unhappiness. No one has any incentive to actually solve the problem. Pharmaceutical companies will keep selling it as long as we keep coming back for more, and doctors will keep prescribing it as long as they keep getting kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies, and our discontent is effectively anesthetized without us ever having to address the problem. Sure, they recommend therapy, but the system is inherently designed to perpetuate depression, not cure it. Depression is demand, and demand is profit. Look, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. This is economy 101 pragmatic material. Money is all these companies care about. To them, we're all just faceless consumers--victims of the new (mis)information age.

Outliers

What do The Beatles, undoubtedly the most popular band of the 20th century, and Bill Gates, founder of the software company Microsoft, both have in common? Aside from being tremendously accomplished in their respective fields, both The Beatles and Gates were given an extraordinary amount of opportunities. In fact, their success is mostly a consequence of chance, according to Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers: The Story of Success. In 1968, Bill Gates was given unlimited access to a time sharing computer terminal through an extremely unlikely set of circumstances. This allowed him to become considerably well versed in the language of computers and it gave him a distinct advantage in his field. Similarly, The Beatles were given nearly unlimited stage time as the house band for a strip club in Hamburg, Germany, a kind of prospect virtually unheard of for most musicians. The pay wasn’t great, but the experience was priceless, because it allowed them to progress both as musicians and showmen. Without these lucky breaks, the influence of both Gates and The Beatles would be unknown to the world’s populace.



Bill Gates, The Beatles, and really all successful people of this caliber are what Gladwell calls “outliers”; that is, extraordinary people on the fringes of society. In Outliers, Gladwell churns compellingly through a number of stories about successful people with an unmatched cultural and behavioral expertise. The underlying theme of all these stories is the role mere circumstance plays in the success of extraordinary people. The author also uses sports to illuminate an important lesson: it takes not only hard work and determination to be successful, it also takes a strong network of support and a whole lot of favoring circumstances. Canadian hockey leagues, for instance, strongly favor players born at the beginning of the year, merely because the cutoff date for eligibly in age class leagues is January 1st. Gladwell argues that by subversively excluding the younger boys, a great amount of talent has gone untapped. Outliers puts a continuous emphasis on family background, upbringing, geographic origins, and cultural legacies in relation to the habits of prosperous people.



Gladwell explicitly states that Outliers is not a work of instructional literature. It is not meant to be taken as a book that reveals some untold secret in regards to the habits of successful people. For instance, it’s no secret that if you do something a lot, you will become somewhat of an expert. That’s just conventional wisdom; however, Gladwell actually calculates the amount of time it takes for one to become an expert in a certain area. The data shows that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice in virtually any cognitive field for one to become a master. Outliers is a work of argumentation, and ultimately, it is a critique of the flawed societal institutions that play an integral role in determining who becomes successful.

Gladwell plays detective throughout Outliers, gradually unraveling the various, intricate patterns of success, and thoroughly debunking the myth of the self-made man. The book presents readers with the notion of practical intelligence; that is, the ability to get what you want from the world. Practical intelligence is acquired, as opposed to our traditional notion of the intelligence quotient, which is though of as inherent. Gladwell makes the argument that IQ is simply not as important as other factors in relation to success. The author makes this concluding statement: “The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.” This is a statement of hope and unbridled optimism; it means there is no big secret to being a successful person. The calculation is quite simple, really. It takes hard work, determination, and, for lack of a better word, luck. The ultimate message of Outliers is that successful people are not inherently better than others; any hardworking, passionate, and relatively bright person can be successful, given the right set of circumstances.