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.
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
.
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.
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.
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.
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
). 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
, 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
), 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.
