Taking a Trip
Earlier today, I posted this GSG NaNo Gaiden Podcast episode that references Travis S. Taylor, and some of the things he said at a recent Huntsville TEDx conference regarding quantum mechanics, perception, the way the brain works, and the possibility that your thoughts could have an impact on the universe around you. And when you combine that with some things that have been going on in my personal church service, my work search, my writing, and what I’ve been reading from Michael Moorcock, hearing from Merlin Mann podcasts, etc… well, let’s just say that I seem to be picking up a lot of the same vibe coming from several disparate sources. It has me tripping out a little bit.
And, yeah, Taylor’s speech could be interpreted as total vindication for Battlehymn being harder science fiction than I may have originally thought, but that’s a little beside the point. I’m going to take the space here to work through this for my own edification, though I heartily expect everyone else to kind of skip this.
RAMBLING DISCOURSE BEGINS… NOW!
How to start this out? I picture a hand of cards. I’ve been dealt a number of cards this week, and I’m going to go through them each in turn.
The first card is that old saw from The Phantom Menace that Taylor references in his TEDx talk – “Your focus determines your reality.” I’ve always kind of agreed that was true, but in a very subjective “how you interpret your inputs helps you change your outputs” sort of way. I’ve never thought that was true in the way that people refer to the “law of attraction” from The Secret or whatever. It’s there, and I’ve always sort of given it the nod and move on treatment. Sure, it’s true in a certain way. Next…
Next card – I’ve always believed that the role of a storyteller was an important one in society. Quoting Andrew Breitbart (yeah, that’s right, Breitbart), “Hollywood is more important than Washington. It can’t be overstated how important this message is: pop culture matters.”1 Because pop culture reflects, influences, and can change the culture’s attitudes about things.
Moorcock says the following in “Death is No Obstacle”:
MM: You put your villain in a black hat, in some way or another. You put a sign on him. Because you’re dealing in traditional liberal virtues like honesty and charity, the villain is always representative of specific vices: greed, selfishness, racism, refusal to play fair. For me, when I was writing these, they were very much like mediaeval morality tales. Virtue defeats vice.
CG: Was there a professional code, like the American Comics Code, that prescribed that?
MM: No, it’s simple optimism. I believe that that is the point of writing popular fiction. My job as a mythologist in fiction of this kind was to affirm liberal democratic virtues. I couldn’t write today’s violent, cynical comics. These little moral fables are absorbed by millions of children, and it’s important to be careful what sort of ideas you’re giving them. The myth of cynicism is much more dangerous that the slightly more humanistic myth of liberalism, but cynicism is easy, much easier to produce. And so often passes for realism.
I believe morality and structure are very closely linked. The moral of a story is implicit in the structure. The choices of the characters make that move the plot along are the choices of the moral fable, for good or bad. 2
Right, got it? Pop culture matters. Cynicism is easy but dangerous. And your focus determines your reality.
Third card – faith and hope. This last Sunday, we went to a special fireside at the church – a youth standards night where we talk about the importance of holding to certain standards of personal behavior and righteousness. And the last talk was from our local Stake President (In Catholic terms, I suppose this is equivalent to a Bishop? Responsible for a number of local congregations? Is that right?). He didn’t talk a lot about the standards, that was covered by earlier speakers. Instead, he talked about hope, and how hope was necessary, and how we needed to practice being hopeful. Which was interesting, because hope has always been a really difficult concept for me. Faith? Sure. Got a good understanding of what that is , what’s required, how to develop it, etc. Hope? Uhhhhhh… I guess so? Maybe? Why is this separate from faith again? There’s confluence there, some overlap, but if they weren’t separate concepts, and separately important, they wouldn’t be separated in the scriptures the way they are. It’s always those three – faith, hope, and charity. Faith – I have a clear idea of what that’s supposed to look like. Charity – I know what that’s supposed to look like. Hope? Buh? But it’s one that’s been sort of knocking around in my head for months not a few. So… the importance of not just having hope, but of practicing having hope.
Fourth card – it’s ALL matter. Taylor says that we’re all energy – quantum vibrations, etc. IF Einstein is correct, and matter = energy, then it’s all matter as well. And that’s something my own church has been teaching for over 100 years. In May 1843, Joseph Smith said the following, now recorded as LDS canon in Doctrine and Covenants 131 7-8.
There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;
We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.
Incidentally, the first time I heard about “dark matter” – something that had to be there, was provable because of the way gravity works, but we were unable to see, my mind went straight to that snippet from the D&C.
Last card – the quantum entanglement of your mental and emotional state. IF what Taylor is saying about your mind being a quantum computer is correct, and IF what he’s saying about quantum entanglement is true… if it’s all matter or energy (and the two terms are probably interchangeable), then what you think LITERALLY does change your reality. Your focus, your thinking LITERALLY has an impact on things, and it becomes possible through a combination of mental / spiritual practice and actual physical effort in the real world to have an impact on the universe around you that should result in your predictions about your self and your life coming true. More to the point, the impact that a writer has on the culture, and therefore the individuals in it, and therefore their perception of reality, and therefore REALITY ITSELF… And that’s the point where I just tilt my head a little and assume the confused puppy expression.
Change your mind, change the world. That’s what I’m hearing. Think better, live better. And yes, it sounds like it’s super-trippy, new-agey, and I should be really into crystals or something. But it’s been a consistent message coming for the last few weeks, and especially the last few days. I read a rather annoying article about how science fiction was supposed to be “challenging”, which I interpreted from the tone of the piece as “challenging to all the idiots out there who enjoy things like traditional western civilization” on Saturday. I heard this from my Stake President on Sunday. I got the Michael Moorcock book in the mail on Monday. I heard the Travis S. Taylor talk late last night on a Tuesday.
Eventually, the message gets through. But you still have to go write / work / lay pipe.
1. Andrew Breitbart, Righteous Indignation 97(2nd ebook edition, Grand Central Publishing, April 2012)
2. Colin Greenland, Michael Moorcock: Death is No Obstacle 48-49 (Savoy, 1992)
