Title says it all, really.
Well, conditioned is such an intentful word. Or atleast is is when I think about a certain series of books!
I suppose what you might be looking for is how someone can simply take a series of inclinations and...kind of cause a inertia towards a certain set of conclusions/certain set of behaviour. A kind of hijack - ie, a readyness to go in a certain direction, a bit like a readied avalanche, and in what ways others can trigger those primed avalanches with words.
Well, we all go to the same schools and consume the same media. It's only the fine points that differ.
I think the westerosi obsession with rooting out the secretly misogynistic/wrong-thinking authors in fiction is a great example of how readers are conditioned.
Books like PoN don't really add anything new but they leave you asking questions without providing answers.
Evidence of a diseased soul trying to spread its poison? Maybe, maybe not...
- Western narrative structureAnd don't forget antecedents of scripture (myth that is believed) and myth (scripture that is disbelieved).
- The Prophet narrative
- Tolkien
- Herbert
- Philosophic/Psychological antecedents
under two snarky posts.Objectively so.
And don't forget antecedents of scripture (myth that is believed) and myth (scripture that is disbelieved).
Glad you revived this thread Madness, it disappeared under two snarky posts. :)
As a fantasy reader, I feel heavily conditioned by the Return of the King/happy ending. Wonder if Bakker is just going to kill everyone. Something more Comrac style.
Conditioning is a major part of the human mechanism in general. Most of the times we do it to ourselves. It's how we create a sense of self, despite being not one entity, but a very complex system of different parts. Our short term memory convinces us that we are usually in the right and our long term memory compresses data by association making memories even easier to manipulate. Even our sensory image of the world isn't objective, but we perceive it as the only one that can be. As every other system we need a purpose, thus we convince ourselves we are special, different, unique etc.
Our parents condition us. We share their moral code, their image of humanity, their religious believes, their traditions or even their habits. The same thing goes for the rest of society and we still haven't talked about intentional conditioning :P.
Conditioning does the funniest things. We think we are a species that love freedom. Yet our society has so many written and unwritten rules that you can't name them all even if that all you do for a whole day. We give away our freedom for security and comfort every day, and no one seems to notice. We submit to another's will and call it democracy. We think we are moral creatures yet it's in our nature to search and find shortcuts to our goals. Heck, some of us even think we are something other than a type of monkey and that there is a holy pervert in the sky (what is holy ffs) that watches our every move and judges us accordingly. We think that a word can describe a complex socioeconomic system and that this system is the same as long as it bears the same title. We think that every day we make conscious decisions when in truth we decide once for every type of problem and then recall that decision when a similar situation arises. I could go on forever ... but i won't since i've just taken my pills ;D.
Anyway, to answer the question i think it depends on age and prior conditioning. If a person has an already formed personality conditioning happens through confirmation bias. You get the safety of your believes served along with something new. Since most people in our culture are subjects to very similar conditioning, it's not that hard to find that common, safe core belief and build upon it. Of course, younger people are more receptive to bigger changes, thus we have school which has authority, so the books must be right.
That's why i love so much the exceptions to the rule. The best books i've read, i couldn't complete on the first try. This also happened to me with the DTCB, it was so alien that it offended me on a subconscious level, so i put it down after 100 pages, but i somehow kept thinking about it, and i mean actually thinking, till one day i picked it up again and kept reading and reading till the end of the trilogy. I later realized that what had initially offended me was simple honesty, it was making me feel uncomfortable about myself and we don't like that, do we ;)?
As a fantasy reader, I feel heavily conditioned by the Return of the King/happy ending. Wonder if Bakker is just going to kill everyone. Something more Comrac style.
Some things are so very subjective. I completed the return of the king decades ago, i was probably 13 or 14 at the time and it was an awful feeling. You saw a happy ending, i saw the end of beauty. A world becoming somehow less, the begining of decay. Lol i was a weird boy :P.
I felt the end of RotK was depressing too. The end of an age, the passing of magic and entire races et al.
Definately felt conditioned to enjoy TDTCB because of my positive experiences reading ancient epics as a child. The language Bakker uses stirs me.
Lol, you're going gold here but I'm going to be a knob and try and bring it back to the thread. I don't know how cultures-not-mine perceive these books but all of these things go into determining our associations. Our parents in this sense have determined not only our perception and reaction to content, but the way in which we speculate and the things we speculate about.
Aside, for the obvious example, we are conditioned to read a certain way, for instance, because Bakker mentioned years ago that Dune and LOTR were heavy antecedents to the series and this was reinforced by the presence of obvious parallels, which even now condition my future speculation. Or even more obvious we are conditioned to know that the "Nonmen are False" and "the imperative to invade Earwa" are Inchoroi additions to the tusk they inscribed humankind's oral beliefs onto as we go into TUC.
I don't think these are incoherent or even incorrect thoughts. I would question bearing on the topic at hand but you are sketching a pretty decent frame for anyone who might not be familiar with these constraints to the content in discussion.
Well, this is an interesting point for notation because Bakker's books have been translated into over fifteen other languages. There are a number of members reading and posting from all over the world. We aren't all so similarly conditioned, though everything now in the world can bear an overarching mark of carbon copy corporations.
Definitely, we form a sense of homogenous group in that we're all SFF readers, who have been conditioned by reading the genre.
Lol - wish fulfillment. It is interesting because I've met both extreme pessimist and optimistic persons here; most everything in-between. In fact, some of us must fit the confirmation bias example you mentioned above, where we're seeing echoes of our preconceived comfort-beliefs in Bakker's "uncomfortable" content.
Though, I was a little of both.
I felt the end of RotK was depressing too. The end of an age, the passing of magic and entire races et al.
Definately felt conditioned to enjoy TDTCB because of my positive experiences reading ancient epics as a child. The language Bakker uses stirs me.
I think I'm predisposed to expect fantasy to end with the disenchantment of the world. Tolkien, Earthsea, you can't go back to Narnia when you get too old.
Sorry for going OT, it's just that to me the title didn't say it all. I found the general idea pretty interesting but i couldn't find the scope. I mean, reader is not that specific, are we talking about readers of the SA, of fantasy, of literature, reader in general? The same goes for the conditioning part. Are we talking about conditioning our beliefs or our expectations? So i improvised :P.
My opinion is that the differences between social groups are so noticeable because there are so few of them compared to how many preconceptions humanity shares as a whole. For example Christians and Muslims fight over who is right in his interpretation of God, but both share the belief that there actually is a God, an afterlife, judgement, angels, demons, good, evil, etc. Most writers that actively try to use conditioning for the purpose of gaining popularity, begin from the pillars of belief that most of us share or have learned to tolerate, and build from there.
Pessimism and optimism, hmmm. In my view those traits don't have much to do with the ideas in the SA. It might appear so in the beginning but i think the meat of the book has to do with introspection and acceptance. The way we function isn't good or bad, it just is. The problems arise when we try to categorize it with current morality and we find it lacking, so we pretend it isn't there. That actually is bad. I personally think that we are beautiful. The world that we are part of is beautiful. Life is beautiful. It's just that we went looking for meaning and managed to find the opposite. When the distance between what you are and what you think you are is so vast, you can't be truly happy and most of all you can't become that something that you want to be, because you don't really know what you really have to change.
Anyway, i went ot again, sorry (but not really :P). I agree that there is always confirmation bias, and i am sure the same thing happened to me. I may have gotten angry but i eventually gave it another chance because subconsciously i was half there already. Maybe it was something i read, something i heard or something i ate ;D, i don't know, but i am sure that there was something.
Now if we are talking about conditioning expectations Bakker does it all the time. There are fantasy stereotypes, sci fi stereotypes, even historical and religious stereotypes and Scott uses them all. The smart thing about the way he does it is that he doesn't try to be original. He just uses them as tools, he doesn't really seem to care what we think about what he does with those tools.
Abercrombie for example uses every stereotype there is and then simply adds a minus in front of the whole equation. So everything feels familiar because you get the exact opposite of what you expected but also original because you get a different outcome from what you are used to. Bakker used Dune and especially the God Emperor as inspiration (among many, MANY other works), but despite the similarities between Leto and Kellhus i don't dare predict what the latter will do. Hell, when Meppa first appeared i was certain Scott was trolling the Dune readers. And while he deliberately does that and often (the bastard ;D), most of the time he uses something as a tribute and not to intentionally condition us. For example the Dunyain are obviously a reference to Tolkien, but besides that they have little to do with the Numenorians. You learn fast not to expect that kind of shit in his books the first time you realize your expectations were so far off the mark that you feel really stupid ;).
Of course when we read the books we condition ourselves because slowly but surely we start to understand how he thinks a little better, so we formulate expectations, not based on stereotypes, but on the character of the author, kind of like with Kafka as well.
Just to chime in, as I'm in a bit of a hurry - in linguistics and communications theory the kind of conditioning described in the first post is called "presupposition". And every reader comes to a book with a lot of presuppositions and you can get a lot of interesting reactions if you decide to go against those presuppositions.
I felt the end of RotK was depressing too. The end of an age, the passing of magic and entire races et al.
Definately felt conditioned to enjoy TDTCB because of my positive experiences reading ancient epics as a child. The language Bakker uses stirs me.
I think I'm predisposed to expect fantasy to end with the disenchantment of the world. Tolkien, Earthsea, you can't go back to Narnia when you get too old.
I think I'm predisposed to expect fantasy to end with the disenchantment of the world. Tolkien, Earthsea, you can't go back to Narnia when you get too old.
That's probably where it's going, degenerating from higher to lower orders. But is that not a popular fantasy trope that Bakker will try to disabuse us of? Maybe Kellhus brings about the ultimate ascension, not just of himself, but of all of humanity/nonmanity ( :P ) as well. A marrying of the Outside to the Inside, so everyone's reality is as they perceive it. Everyone's a god. For reals.
Sorry for going OT, it's just that to me the title didn't say it all. I found the general idea pretty interesting but i couldn't find the scope. I mean, reader is not that specific, are we talking about readers of the SA, of fantasy, of literature, reader in general? The same goes for the conditioning part. Are we talking about conditioning our beliefs or our expectations? So i improvised :P.
Neat. I was more talking about the pessimism and optimism of the readers about the world after reacting to Bakker's content. I do like the idea of the themes growing towards the bold though. I've always wondered how Bakker can offer catharsis at the end of this.
I think this is all necessary notation. My question becomes how does he know which references to rely on most that will be recognized by the majority of readers. I mean, we are a minority, and we still don't come closer to recognizing his antecedents but the ones that people seem to agree on provide much depth for reading.
But... what about the expectations that are fulfilled?
Well, I honestly believe that something like this hasn't really happened ever before in history.
I mean, we can probably count the number of authors who wrote series while the internet was available for fans to continuous speculate as the series is being written and who had fans that actually did. Are any of those series a comparison for TSA? Probably not.
There are a number of other thoughts that make this situation anomalous but you get the idea?
But this is one of the main reasons to have the SA forum. It takes a hivemind to anticipate Bakker and I still expect to be surprised on most counts.
That's probably where it's going, degenerating from higher to lower orders. But is that not a popular fantasy trope that Bakker will try to disabuse us of? Maybe Kellhus brings about the ultimate ascension, not just of himself, but of all of humanity/nonmanity ( :P ) as well. A marrying of the Outside to the Inside, so everyone's reality is as they perceive it. Everyone's a god. For reals.
Neat. I was more talking about the pessimism and optimism of the readers about the world after reacting to Bakker's content. I do like the idea of the themes growing towards the bold though. I've always wondered how Bakker can offer catharsis at the end of this.
I find it interesting that you seem certain there will be catharsis at the end of the series. Besides, these things are so subjective. Your catharsis and mine might be in complete opposition.
He doesn't really know, he just guesses. That's why he picked the crusades as the main reference in the first trilogy, even those that haven't studied it know about it. Then there are genres. Since his book appears to be fantasy, he goes for the most recognizable series there is (LOTR). Fantasy readers usually also read a little sci fi on the side and Dune is a very well known series, there has been a movie, a couple of series and it has an audience that is very dedicated. Most religious references are form Christianity so again, they are easy to spot.
Then there is philosophy. Most of his recuring references are well known. There is Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche (i always forget a consonant in that name...) among others. He also applies system theory which has replaced the mechanistic approach in the study of practically every complex system there is (including humans) and is already a century old. There is also some physics in there. Anyway, what i am trying to say is that he uses tools from a lot of different backgrounds, but most of them are well known to those that have even a passing interest in those subjects.
There are certainly more antecedents than those, but what's more interesting is how he combines everything together and what is the resulting product. Usually when writers use such references (especially from philosophy or science) they don't really alter the meaning, the same doesn't apply for Bakker. For example he uses Nietzsche to death, from his view on morality to the analytic process of thinking etc. Does it seem to you that he agrees with Nietzsche's views?
I mean even mostly direct references to other works, like the Kellhus Leto parallel are treated in such a way that you are left helpless, because there are always some fundamental differences. Leto may look and actually physically be a monster, but he values morals, and he bets the farm on empathy, choosing Duncan for his ubermench project, not pure logic. Kellhus is amoral and doesn't even feel empathy. There is also the small matter of the image they want to project. Leto wants to appear as a tyrant, he wants to be that stain that will always remind humanity the true face of tyranny. Kellhus lacking morals only cares about immediate results, and those are easier to accomplish with the benevolent God card.
The most frustrating thing when you try to guess is that negation is another thing that doesn't work with Bakker. So Kellhus is pretty antithetical to Leto, that does not mean his long term plan isn't well meaning. Even the lack of empathy is handled in an ambiguous way. Kellhus doesn't feel empathy but he certainly can emulate the process through logic, not just for appearances, but also for himself. We can see it in his thoughts sometimes. And if there is a character i hate in the books, it's Kellhus, so there is certainly bias, but i still can't summon enough conviction to predict the worst about him, he is that well written.
I phrased the whole thing badly (damned language barriers), i was talking about the individual reader, not a community of any kind. Let's say that you read Kafka for the first time. Well, your brain is royally screwed, but the next book by him will be less alien. You have condition yourself to expect some things now, so it's a smoother experience.
The same goes for the SA, there are already five books from this series alone, so every Bakker fan has conditioned his brain to expect things like monsters with penises on their foreheads and such. And this goes beyond superficial stuff. You know that Scott truly believes in the ignorance of the unconscious mind, he has drilled that in to you so many times by now, so you expect to see it applied to his characters actions (with a few ubermench exceptions of course)
iirc, I had a substantial opening post and at the last minute deleted it because I wanted it to be more open ended, capable of going in all different possible branchings of how people might varyingly interpret it. If I had left in my opening post, it would have limited and focused the potential discussions. I was striving for unconditioned!
Lol... You are smarter than you give yourself credit for. I know people who read Bakker who wouldn't know any of those things you just mentioned but still think Bakker is epic and love what they seem to understand about his writing.
No, but in the sense that I'm actively trying to discover how these antecedents inform the future narrative...? Plus, why should it matter what Bakker thinks of these things, unless you're talking about his views informing his usage of these concepts.
The story gains depth, the more one knows about these antecedents.
Hegel and Machiavelli are both huge influences on TSA and Bakker's use of their writings seems consistent with their writings but those aren't necessary to understand Bakker's usage of those same concepts.
I'm confused...
Especially, because none of these things influence anyone, except we who recognize them. We aren't the average readers.
Sure, sure. But my issue is that knowing these parallels, and further ones, I am unable to discard their influence on my speculation. I am conditioned...
Again... it's not about failing to anticipate him. It's appreciating how we're conditioned and how he might use those conditions to toy with our perception of his narrative. Or any narrative? Or socially? However, far you want to take it.
Well, lockesnow disagrees with you about the ubermench exceptions...
But I don't think you're speculating as to what Bakker can do with the conditioning you highlight... or again, any narrative, culture, society, etc. I understand the aspects expectations and learning to read "Bakker" vs. "Kafka." It's like what you wrote in the writing thread and it's the same reason fan fiction is easier to write. Bakker's established all these little conditionings - Caraskand, Momemn, Mandate, Nonmen, Sranc... etc, etc, every pronoun he's got in there, plus the complex patterns, etc. Hell, "mimicry of" Dune, LOTR, Nietzsche, Plato; fulfilling any of those expectations of parallels, reinforce the idea that he will continue to pattern his narrative from those sources.
So... I'm just not sure what you are trying to say? Are we disagreeing? Is this a difference in how we think an author will apply these concepts (I would argue that few authors understand this thread more than Bakker)?
Just to chime in, as I'm in a bit of a hurry - in linguistics and communications theory the kind of conditioning described in the first post is called "presupposition". And every reader comes to a book with a lot of presuppositions and you can get a lot of interesting reactions if you decide to go against those presuppositions.Ah. Maybe that's why I was taken as giving the wrong reply to it. That strikes me as something else, really.
Lol... You are smarter than you give yourself credit for. I know people who read Bakker who wouldn't know any of those things you just mentioned but still think Bakker is epic and love what they seem to understand about his writing.
Not really. We have an instinct to compare and categorize everything unconsciously. Some times it's useful, most times not so much. The fact that those things interested me led me to appreciate Scott's books. Others appreciate it for the epic story, or for the depth of the characters, or for the prose. Interests and preferences aren't an indication of intellect. A person can be incredibly smart and not give a damn about philosophy, i've met such people in my life.
Yes, motive changes the purpose of the reference, if you know both, you can anticipate more accurately. For example, Herbert doesn't agree with Nietzsche, but Bakker uses both. If you think he is closer to say Herbert, you can make some guesses about why he uses Nietzsche.
Some times it's the opposite. This knowledge limits your imagination. A good example is David Lynch. Have you seen Lost Highway? It's a very surreal representation of a mundane story. As long as you don't know that story, there are infinite possibilities in your head. I've read theories from people that didn't know what was actually happening that were amazing.
Hegel and Machiavelli are both huge influences on TSA and Bakker's use of their writings seems consistent with their writings but those aren't necessary to understand Bakker's usage of those same concepts.
I'm confused...
I've been constantly reading books since i was five. I am not trying to boast, i don't even think it was a healthy obsession, especially when i was very young. The reason i am stating this is to give you perspective for what i am about to say:
There never was a book that touched me in the way this series has. It really changed me. When i tried to figure out why, i came to this simple conclusion:
If you look at each part separately there is almost nothing new in it. I've seen most of it before, be it philosophy, physics, religion, fantasy, sci fi etc. But seen isn't experiencing. When it comes to ideas, you can read something and think you've understood it, but you've only grasped the outline of a theory. Bakker doesn't tell us theories, he tells us stories, with characters that are so honestly written it's almost painful. We empathize with them, so we experience those ideas. When you live through something you don't have to read about it to understand it.
Especially, because none of these things influence anyone, except we who recognize them. We aren't the average readers.
Yes those influences are in fact limiting us :P. I will instinctively use Hegel to attempt to explain the metaphysics, when in reality there are infinite ways to interpret them.
Again... it's not about failing to anticipate him. It's appreciating how we're conditioned and how he might use those conditions to toy with our perception of his narrative. Or any narrative? Or socially? However, far you want to take it.
Depends on the reader i guess, and how much weight he assigns to every discernible influence. Personally, i assign more weight to philosophy and science, so what ever knowledge i have in these two categories that seems to be reflected in the text conditions me far more than the rest.
Well, lockesnow disagrees with you about the ubermench exceptions...
Lol, i knew this morsel was hard to pass. I am inclined to agree with Locke to a degree, but let's not go completely OT again. I've done it enough already :P.
No i don't think we disagree, the type of conditioning that requires you to know the author is self inflicted, an expression of our natural aversion to the unexpected. The type of conditioning that requires you to know the narrative tools of the author is deliberate and stems from the author himself. It's just that Bakker uses those in a meta way, meaning that he knows that we know, so he proceeds to screw with our brains and our expectations.
I think the individual pieces he uses are more telling than what he actually thinks about their works individually. But I've often thought about TSA as philosophy and, somehow, I don't think this stacks up as a piece of strictly philosophic work.
Absolutely, Bakker's mash and embodiment of these ideas is amazing to behold. So should be any "good" writer's works?
Haven't and I get it. Absolutely. So how does this affect your conditioning? How do you react to the limiting knowledge?
Lol... you're making an argument for being unconditioned. They may limit us. They may not. They may limit us because we know they come before us and so don't think he mirrors the real-world antecedents... they may not.
In this case, we are conditioned. How do we use that to our speculative advantage?
A balanced breakfast? See together we have no blind spots, no antecedent agnosia. And I know there are a number of literature texts, psychology, language... Many times I'm exposed to another piece of the mosaic and I reread TSA again and find the world reflected in the narrative.
Bakker plays so many games, we need the SA noosphere. How much does Bakker see?!
OUR, the reader, cognitive mistake, is to except Kellhus, but we really shouldn't. It's my opinion that this natural inclination of the reader to leap to this conclusion that Kellhus is excepted from a cognitive failing simply because Kellhus is aware of the failings of others, is a feature that Bakker leverages against us.
I view the SA as applied philosophy. Not exactly a new theory, but a simulation of the application of existing theories.
Yea, i believe that a writers best weapon is always empathy, everything else is secondary if you can't convince your reader to immerse himself in your books. Dostoevsky is another example of this. The more detailed and honest characters you offer to the reader, the easier is for him to adjust his thought patterns to those of your characters, so there is that too.
Haven't and I get it. Absolutely. So how does this affect your conditioning? How do you react to the limiting knowledge?Lol... you're making an argument for being unconditioned. They may limit us. They may not. They may limit us because we know they come before us and so don't think he mirrors the real-world antecedents... they may not.
In this case, we are conditioned. How do we use that to our speculative advantage?A balanced breakfast? See together we have no blind spots, no antecedent agnosia. And I know there are a number of literature texts, psychology, language... Many times I'm exposed to another piece of the mosaic and I reread TSA again and find the world reflected in the narrative.
Bakker plays so many games, we need the SA noosphere. How much does Bakker see?!
You answer yourself :). Conditioning is a very useful tool, because it allows specialization which increases efficiency. Variety is also very important because it allows for more possible outcomes or alternate routes to the same outcome.So, the limits imposed by conditioning can be bypassed with variety and cooperation, but a conditioned person has an aversion to different viewpoints. What i think makes all the difference is awareness. A person that is aware of his conditioning can use reason to become more accepting of different points of view.
So how does this affect your conditioning? How do you react to the limiting knowledge?
...
How do we use that to our speculative advantage?
...
How much does Bakker see?!
Nah, MG. Too soon. TUC is going to be like the latter third of TWP. All Caraskand, Consult-style. I am pretty much convinced that Dagliash will be taken with nary a loss... and then.... the Consult will strike. Especially because:
Helm's Deep, Rohirrin, Gandalf/Daglish, Nonmen Chariots, Achamian is simply too juicy a trifecta for Bakker to pass on ;).
I'm sure Bakker needs help in figuring how to end his story, so I'll help a brother out ... :P
My money is on the Dunyain - they're going to open up a can of whip-ass after the Consult defeats Kellhus, and then they bring Kellhus in for reconditioning ( read: punishment ) to avert this "Blip" in their designs ... or perhaps simply a debriefing with this whole story just being part of his path to become truely self moving. Keep in mind, there's an entire society of Kellhus' hanging around.
Or I could be completely off and they ship Aka packing deeming outside affairs a tedius distraction ( or even better, commit him to the chain gang of defectives - where students can learn how to immune themselves to socery by reading the muscle reflexes involved with cants ).
Also love your notion about becoming immune to sorcery through reading faces, I don't know how it would work, but it sounds damn cool.
I'm sure Bakker needs help in figuring how to end his story, so I'll help a brother out ... :P
My money is on the Dunyain - they're going to open up a can of whip-ass after the Consult defeats Kellhus, and then they bring Kellhus in for reconditioning ( read: punishment ) to avert this "Blip" in their designs ... or perhaps simply a debriefing with this whole story just being part of his path to become truely self moving. Keep in mind, there's an entire society of Kellhus' hanging around.
Kellhus defeating the Consult is just the midpoint of TUC, the next fight is corralling Kellhus!