Stories are, in many senses, didactic. That is, they serve a purpose to teach something. Aesop's Fables are the perfect example of this; they were stories created with the explicit purpose of teaching a moral or a lesson to whomever would listen. No fox ever flattered a crow into dropping the cheese it had taken so the fox could eat it, but the idea of the story is still useful.
When PaPa LaBas, Black Herman, and the rest of the crew bust into the gathering at Villa Lewaro, to levy their charges against Hinckle Von Vampton and Hubert "Safecracker" Gould, they tell a story. Ostensibly, the story is true; in any (Atonist) court of law, it'd have to be to convict them of anything. But, better than true, the story is there to teach a lesson. Through allegory, LaBas and Herman elaborate not only what Von Vampton and Gould have done in the past, but what they are doing in the present.
Their story is an interesting amalgamation of Egyptian mythology and Judeo-Christian religion and history. The beginning of the story, all about Osiris, Set, and Isis, and setting up the rest of the narrative, is interesting, but what particularly intrigues me is the edited story of Moses. In Judeo-Christian religion, Moses was more or less the savior of the Jewish people. He was born to a normal Jewish family but set in a basket on the Nile because "Pharoah gave this order to all his people: 'Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live'" (NIV, Ex. 1:22). For clarification, the story implies that this order was specifically given to boys born to the Hebrews, not actually all of Pharoah's people. Moses ends up adopted by Pharoah's daughter, yadda yadda yadda, and we fast forward to when he flees Egypt for killing a guard. He meets Jethro (sometimes referred to as Reuel), marries Zipporah, sees the burning bush, goes back to Egypt to free his people from the grip of Pharoah, brings them into the desert, sets up their legal structure, and inspires a new leader Joshua (interestingly, a more accurate translation of the original texts tells us that Jesus' actual name was probably also Joshua (Yeshua, to be precise); not important, but it always fascinated me that we could know that fact and still consciously ignore it) to bring the people to their promised land.
LaBas and Herman's version of the story is a little different (and to be clear, is what I am referring to from here on out unless I explicitly mention the Judeo-Christian narrative). Moses is again plucked from the river in a basket by Thermuthis, "the stubborn, self-indulgent daughter of a weak Pharoah" (174). Instead of being secretly Hebrew, Moses is now a man who sneaks off to the Domain of Osiris. He hears from the other worshippers of Osiris that the best sound could be found with old Jethro the Midianite and decides to study under him. He goes off, learns the songs, goes to leave, and is coerced into marrying Zipporah in order to learn Jethro's "family secret." Moses then sets out to learn from the actual Book of Thoth from Isis. He does this, returns to Egypt, and plays a show for the Egyptians with all that he's learned.
This is where the story gets particularly interesting to me. Going back to when Moses leaves Jethro, Jethro attempts to warn him that all Isis could teach him is, at least at that time, the bad side of the Book. Moses, just as Thor Wintergreen after him, has delved into forces and powers he neither understands nor really accepts. Thor stepped in with the Mu'tafikah only to be persuaded by Biff Musclewhite to give them up. A similar effect occurs when Moses plays his Egyptian show.
The show begins with Moses' announcement that the show "would be a dignified concert and that everyone would have to leave them old nasty-assed animal fetishes and 'rattlers' and all these other 'flesh-pipes' back home and that there would be no savage dancing" (182). He has come in belittling the beliefs of the people and appropriating their techniques to his own ends. This is important! But, "[t]he Osirians were furious. They knew this to be an Atonist trick and decided to disrupt the concert" (182). Moses has tipped his hand, and the Osirians will strike back.
The concert is set up, the people are herded in, and Moses begins to play. However, "[the songs] weren't coming across like the way they had at the old man's fireplace. They sounded flat, weak, deprived of the lowdown rhythms that Jethro had brought to them" (182-3). Moses' taking of Jethro's songs has left something to be desired. The people throw grain on the stage and hiss at him. Moses knows something is wrong.
Things go crazy when Moses tries to perform the songs and dances from The Work. "The ears of the people began to bleed. Some of them charged the stage and tried to get at Moses but the Atonist thugs beat them back. 1 Osirian priest could no longer take it. He and several others knew what Moses had learned and knew how it was using him" (183). Moses is confused that this Work, all this he learned from the Book, did not successfully make the people go crazy. Instead, the Osirians rise from their place in the stands, and, not knowing The Work that Moses did, were still able to fill the air with beautiful songs and calm the people. They begin to dance, and Moses is irate.
In LaBas and Herman's narrative, this part of the story probably serves to link Moses, Judaism, and eventually Christianity to Atonism. However, more than that, it serves to elaborate what exactly Von Vampton was trying to do with the Talking Android. The role of the Android was to infiltrate the ranks of the J.G.C.s, and make it look ridiculous or wrong from the inside out. This is exactly how Moses operates in this story; he, though supposedly independently, was most likely influenced by the Atonists to join the Osirians and learn their tricks. Eventually, he hits the jackpot, goes out to Jethro, and learns the most powerful force of the Osirians. Even better, he learns of the Book of Thoth, learns from it, and returns to Egypt to finish his secretly Atonist task. Using the most powerful force of the Osirians and the divine force of the Book of Thoth, Moses tries and fails to convert the Osirians away from their "uncultured" ways and towards Atonism. Likely, this is what would have happened if Von Vampton sent the Talking Android to Harlem to perform instead of Irvington-on-Hudson. In fact, the story hints at both the suppression of Jes Grew and its eventual resurgence; Moses unleashes a nuclear bomb on the Nile by misuse of The Work, quieting the Osirians as the Left Hand rises to equal power with the Right Hand. Yet, many years later, Herman and LaBas reference the creation of the Ten Commandments in Judeo-Christian canon by saying that Moses returned from communicating with his God one day to find his children "dancing before the despised Bull God Apis, the animal which carries the living spirit of Osiris" and that Moses "heard the 'heathen sounds' [...] he hadn't heard since the old days in Egypt" (187). That is, the Osirians, even under the titan of Atonism Moses had become, resurged, if only briefly; in the same way, Jes Grew was destined to wax and wane against Atonism as time went on.
What I find particularly compelling about all of this is the way it ties into the way we talk about stories/histories from the past. Looking back to White's interpretations from our packets, we say that history and fiction can and did blend together. Whether for purposes of morality or artistic license, in the past and in LaBas and Herman's story, truth and fiction are blended together both to tell how the past was and how the present is. Does this strike any of you meaningfully? I just thought it was fascinating to point out.
Tuesday, February 25
Thursday, February 6
False History
History. Old charts, drawers full of weathered documents, and stories passed down from grandparents to children. Usually, we think of history as a constant, a totality, a truth. History tells us what happened 100 years ago. If it's wrong, we find a new history that isn't. Overall, we'd like to think that we know what happened in the past; this is the 21st century after all! We might not have hovercars and jetpacks, but we can damn well figure out what happened on May 8, 1945. Right?
So, we take serious issue when official stories, the thing that should be a definition of historical truth, aren't right or complete. People love a good conspiracy theory. "They" hid the fact the moon landing never really happened. "They" are the secret force that runs the world. A man was able to fake his way to the post-game press conference at the Super Bowl in order to tell us that "they" were the ones who actually perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. Whoever "they" might be (the government, the New World Order, Reptoids), "they" are powerful. "They" thrive wherever the official story is not adequate.
When the official story is not complete, we seek the truth for ourselves. Think about the way perceptions about the American Civil War change as you grow up. From a young age, we talk about how it was "to end slavery," the North stepping in more or less from a moral high ground to end this atrocity. Then, you hit your teenage years, you start rebelling against the authority (internally and externally), and you reject this simplified story. In your mind, your elementary school teachers were sugarcoating a war that was more about states' rights and other factors in order to sell this story of good vs. evil that children love. Time goes on, you live with this idea, but eventually, you read up on it some more. It hits you; it really was about slavery. Sure, elementary school did sugarcoat it too, states' rights do play in too, but the war simply could not have happened without slavery. The whole thing is absurdly complex. Neither the original truth nor your rebellion were correct. You started close to, but not exactly at, the answer. You swung away in search of the "real" answer that teachers were "hiding" from you, only to swing past the answer and away from it again. And that's just the norm as its taught today (in the North).
So, this brings up an important point. When you compile a history to relay the truth of the past, you will cut out data, stories, and information that could potentially be relevant. There isn't enough space in the world to put it all together. So, how do you choose what you cut out?
Let's look at another example of history being twisted. In modern conception, it's become popular to almost fetishize a view of Nikola Tesla as a brilliant and put-upon genius. He was downtrodden by Edison, he was overshadowed by Edison, but ultimately he was so much better; Edison electrocuted an elephant! I mean, he literally hooked up an elephant to AC current in order to convince people that AC was dangerous! Tesla never killed any animals. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Most of the stuff this guy is talking about is, more or less, correct. But he's also not talking about a considerable amount of stuff that would make Tesla look pretty bad. He was a eugenicist. He didn't believe in subatomic particles. He thought Einstein was incorrect with his theory of relativity. He was convinced that at one point he received a transmission from Mars. So, in effect, we have essentially two very different people, who shared a name, story, and body. One was the guy who was the underdog to the goliath Edison, and one was the guy who was born in 1856 and died in 1943. (If this section interested you, you'll probably like to watch this).
So, how do we deal with this? Should we even deal with this? What does this all mean? In physics, we have what is known as the uncertainty principle, which specifically states that the more one knows about the location of a particle, the less one knows about its momentum, but which is commonly referred to as stating that the act of observing something changes it. More importantly, as someone who sets out to write a history, or some historical account, how do you deal with the fact that you will categorically be unable to tell everything that could be relevant to the story? And that by trying to tell it, you may very well be affecting perception of it to the point of creating a new, false version of it?
Say you set out to share with the world a presumably true story from the past, but as you go along, you realize you have come to an impasse. No matter how you tell the story, there will be things you leave out, leading to two problems. Firstly, what we saw in the Civil War example might occur, where your simplification or leaving out of data will lead someone to assume the entirety of your story is not correct and they will conduct their own, misguided research to find out what you were keeping from them. Alternatively, you might experience the Tesla example, where your simplification or leaving out of data will lead someone to (and this is very important) BEYOND YOUR WORK compose ON THEIR OWN an image of a story that, as it grows in popularity and notability, diverges more and more from the truth, until eventually it doesn't even seem like you're talking about the same thing anymore. How do you deal with this?
If we look specifically at the "Uni history" example we talked about in class, there was information "hidden" (or perhaps better said, "not disclosed") on official channels. However, nobody knows exactly what the truth is except those directly involved, which is probably for the best (it's their private lives, after all). In the absence of some "absolute truth," we swing away from the "official story," try to decide our own truth, and then we cause this two-Tesla separation between the real figure and the one in our heads. When somebody completely separated from the story looks in (say, an alumnus who is Facebook friends with somebody still in the school), they're shocked at the developing, being-created story, when, if they were here, it wouldn't be anywhere close to as big a deal as it seems on the place most of us use to vent our worst feelings about a sensitive issue.
The truth is, there exist things, stories, and ideas we'll never know fully. We have to settle for "close enough" at some point, and sometimes where we settle that is unsatisfactory. Further, if we try to push beyond "close enough," there's huge risk for those involved to be harmed (airing of dirty laundry, etc.). At the same time, this doesn't mean we can't or even shouldn't look beyond what we're told; what it means is that we should be careful not to be sucked into either the "it's not what they told me, so clearly it's ridiculous" or the "it's not what they told me, so clearly it's right" mentalities. Isn't that disappointing?
So, we take serious issue when official stories, the thing that should be a definition of historical truth, aren't right or complete. People love a good conspiracy theory. "They" hid the fact the moon landing never really happened. "They" are the secret force that runs the world. A man was able to fake his way to the post-game press conference at the Super Bowl in order to tell us that "they" were the ones who actually perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. Whoever "they" might be (the government, the New World Order, Reptoids), "they" are powerful. "They" thrive wherever the official story is not adequate.
When the official story is not complete, we seek the truth for ourselves. Think about the way perceptions about the American Civil War change as you grow up. From a young age, we talk about how it was "to end slavery," the North stepping in more or less from a moral high ground to end this atrocity. Then, you hit your teenage years, you start rebelling against the authority (internally and externally), and you reject this simplified story. In your mind, your elementary school teachers were sugarcoating a war that was more about states' rights and other factors in order to sell this story of good vs. evil that children love. Time goes on, you live with this idea, but eventually, you read up on it some more. It hits you; it really was about slavery. Sure, elementary school did sugarcoat it too, states' rights do play in too, but the war simply could not have happened without slavery. The whole thing is absurdly complex. Neither the original truth nor your rebellion were correct. You started close to, but not exactly at, the answer. You swung away in search of the "real" answer that teachers were "hiding" from you, only to swing past the answer and away from it again. And that's just the norm as its taught today (in the North).
So, this brings up an important point. When you compile a history to relay the truth of the past, you will cut out data, stories, and information that could potentially be relevant. There isn't enough space in the world to put it all together. So, how do you choose what you cut out?
Let's look at another example of history being twisted. In modern conception, it's become popular to almost fetishize a view of Nikola Tesla as a brilliant and put-upon genius. He was downtrodden by Edison, he was overshadowed by Edison, but ultimately he was so much better; Edison electrocuted an elephant! I mean, he literally hooked up an elephant to AC current in order to convince people that AC was dangerous! Tesla never killed any animals. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Most of the stuff this guy is talking about is, more or less, correct. But he's also not talking about a considerable amount of stuff that would make Tesla look pretty bad. He was a eugenicist. He didn't believe in subatomic particles. He thought Einstein was incorrect with his theory of relativity. He was convinced that at one point he received a transmission from Mars. So, in effect, we have essentially two very different people, who shared a name, story, and body. One was the guy who was the underdog to the goliath Edison, and one was the guy who was born in 1856 and died in 1943. (If this section interested you, you'll probably like to watch this).
So, how do we deal with this? Should we even deal with this? What does this all mean? In physics, we have what is known as the uncertainty principle, which specifically states that the more one knows about the location of a particle, the less one knows about its momentum, but which is commonly referred to as stating that the act of observing something changes it. More importantly, as someone who sets out to write a history, or some historical account, how do you deal with the fact that you will categorically be unable to tell everything that could be relevant to the story? And that by trying to tell it, you may very well be affecting perception of it to the point of creating a new, false version of it?
Say you set out to share with the world a presumably true story from the past, but as you go along, you realize you have come to an impasse. No matter how you tell the story, there will be things you leave out, leading to two problems. Firstly, what we saw in the Civil War example might occur, where your simplification or leaving out of data will lead someone to assume the entirety of your story is not correct and they will conduct their own, misguided research to find out what you were keeping from them. Alternatively, you might experience the Tesla example, where your simplification or leaving out of data will lead someone to (and this is very important) BEYOND YOUR WORK compose ON THEIR OWN an image of a story that, as it grows in popularity and notability, diverges more and more from the truth, until eventually it doesn't even seem like you're talking about the same thing anymore. How do you deal with this?
If we look specifically at the "Uni history" example we talked about in class, there was information "hidden" (or perhaps better said, "not disclosed") on official channels. However, nobody knows exactly what the truth is except those directly involved, which is probably for the best (it's their private lives, after all). In the absence of some "absolute truth," we swing away from the "official story," try to decide our own truth, and then we cause this two-Tesla separation between the real figure and the one in our heads. When somebody completely separated from the story looks in (say, an alumnus who is Facebook friends with somebody still in the school), they're shocked at the developing, being-created story, when, if they were here, it wouldn't be anywhere close to as big a deal as it seems on the place most of us use to vent our worst feelings about a sensitive issue.
The truth is, there exist things, stories, and ideas we'll never know fully. We have to settle for "close enough" at some point, and sometimes where we settle that is unsatisfactory. Further, if we try to push beyond "close enough," there's huge risk for those involved to be harmed (airing of dirty laundry, etc.). At the same time, this doesn't mean we can't or even shouldn't look beyond what we're told; what it means is that we should be careful not to be sucked into either the "it's not what they told me, so clearly it's ridiculous" or the "it's not what they told me, so clearly it's right" mentalities. Isn't that disappointing?
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