Miscellaneous Chatter > Literature
Satoshi Itoh - Harmony
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: jamesA01 ---
In one of the ThreePoundBrain threads I raved about this book and encouraged Bakker and everyone else to read it.
Instead of spoiling it, I'll just assure you that it's both a great piece of fiction and incredibly relevant to the concerns of the ThreePoundBrain crowd.
It's basically an elaboration of BBT, only it's not Bakker writing it, it's a Japanese SF author who died in 2009 and had likely never read Bakker. The novel was finished as Itoh lay dying in a hospital ward from cancer. It was the last work of a young talent that sadly left us too soon.
I really really want to get some discussion going on this book. It presents a real challenge, not to BBT per se, but to the pre existing cultural metaphysical defaults that unconsciously affect our interpretation of it.
To be blunt - Harmony is how the other side of the planet grapples with the same reality that Bakker stumbles across. There's no 'heroic lone overman grapples with the cursed knowledge" shtick, there's no weeping for our precious souls. Instead there's a more, shall we say, practical engagement with the problem.
And this is what you'd expect from a culture that never believed in the self in the first place. Isn't the delusion of the self one of BBTs main findings? How come we never talk about the fact that eastern metaphysics, while being no match for science, at least never fell for many of the impoverishing delusions that we in the west are crying over losing?
I might be being a bit rude here, and maybe I've made a fool of myself and there is something about BBT that I don't understand and so this is a false equivalence. Either way, it's still a great novel that's worth discussing. I'm excited to see what you all, and hopefully Bakker, will make of it!
The kindle edition is on Amazon.
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Callan S. ---I'll put it onto my list of looking into's.
The TV show 'QI' suggested eastern culture would have gotten alot further if they hadn't had such awesome pottery - if they hadn't, they'd have to have worked with glass alot more - made glasses - made microscopes - etc. They were so far ahead that if their china wasn't so great, they'd be even further ahead.
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Madness ---I'll also work to pick it up. I remember reading your comment and it being harder for me to find here.
--- Quote from: jamesAO1 ---And this is what you'd expect from a culture that never believed in the self in the first place. Isn't the delusion of the self one of BBTs main findings? How come we never talk about the fact that eastern metaphysics, while being no match for science, at least never fell for many of the impoverishing delusions that we in the west are crying over losing?
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I think you tread many of your own connotations here, james. People maintain a variety of conscious states the world over, both imposed on them by their culture and their history and come to by self-practice. I've noticed Buddhist states get mentioned regularly at TPB. Still curious as to what you were alluding to outside of Harmony?
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: jamesA01 ---Well there is an undeniable trend in western culture over the past few decades towards eastern ways of thinking. Many scientists, quantum physicists for example, say that the Buddhist view of reality is closer to their findings than anything else.
Buddhists were always suspicious about the self, they knew it was a fiction from day one. They are also less trusting of the sense data of consciousness. It's ironic that it was the West, with its blind faith in the self and empiricism, that came to create the science that undid its own previous religious assumptions.
I think the reason that BBT is so hard on us is because we grow up in a culture that doesn't even need to prohibit discussion of the impermanence and falsehood of the self because it can't imagine it. We view our selves as on a progressive path towards greater and greater maturity and enlightenment, yet BBT implies this is crap. We thought we were special, transcendent beings who step outside nature, and for whom external reality is an instrument to be shaped by our will. Yet if I read BBT right, these processes are all due to external causes.
Even if you're not a creationist, you still likely believe in the religious concept of creation without knowing it. Think of all the secularists who extort the beauty of art and culture, the way we mythologize the imagined selves who produce it. Yet BBT implies that our notions of authoring anything are a load of crap. There is no originality, and our thoughts are not our own, they are in fact sourced from our brains and the network of language and memes that circulate. We are deluded all the way down. It just seems obvious that for Buddhists and other eastern traditions, these pompous follies that we cherish were not there in the first place. That's why I think it's so humiliating for us, because we think of ourselves as superior to the rest of the world, yet our greatest accomplishments in science and technics are now undoing our very identities. It's like developing the worlds greatest pistol then shooting yourself in the foot with it.
As further proof of this here's a post that Graham Harman made:
A blog reader claims to have found this in a Japanese travel guide to the United States:
Popular “Polite Fictions” in the U.S.
– We’re all equals.
- You are interesting.
- You and I are individuals.
- We’re having fun.
Not only is that hilarious, it's further evidence that our culture is based on assumptions that are unique to us, not universal, and frankly bullshit. Obviously, I am not saying that Buddhism is the truth or any match for scientific inquiry. But it does prove that humanity can and has lived without so many of the culturally specific quirks that BBT does away with.
We can bend over backwards trying to prove that science is now telling us how to be interesting happy equal individuals but it's utter crap. Our culture developed the tools that humiliate and destroy its most cherished narcissistic fallacies! I think this is delightful and just want to rub salt in the wound!
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Meyna ---Well said, James. The crushing blow for me is that, even with the illusion laid bare in front of me, I cannot hope to own my thoughts.
--- Quote ---'You cannot see the darkness that precedes your thoughts, but unlike most souls you know it exists. You appreciate how rarely you are the author of what you say and do…' He raised his shackled hands for a clap that never came. 'I'm impressed, Mother. You understand this trick the world calls a soul.'
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What can I do but embrace the illusion and enjoy the ride? 8-)
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