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Academic Opinions/Papers/Discussion Thread
KridesBrideBritt
Posts: 25,781 jayfacer
So, I thought it might be useful to some of us that are in college to have a thread where we can post papers we are going to write or have written in order to bounce ideas and opinions off one another. So, please be nice and keep it somewhat...academic in here. B-)
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The topic: Choose one or more stories by Stanislaw Lem from his The Cyberiad and discuss how he uses the futuristic mode of science fiction writing to explore the ethical, political or technological problems of contemporary times.
The genre of science fiction is generally seen by most as a means of entertainment for the dreamers and discontent. However, science fiction can often highlight problems in societal structures and paths in which are dangerous to be taken. Two stories in Stanislaw Lem’s The Cyberiad highlight problems both in Communist societies and world society. The stories “The First Sally, Or The Trap of Gargantius” and “The First Sally (A), Or Trurl’s Electronic Bard” in turn warn the reader about the dangers of a collective mind and the ethical problems surrounding the mass production of art, or in this case, poetry.
A collective mind is first seen by the power hungry as an agency in which to both gain and keep the maximum amount of control. One ruler in the story “The First Sally, Or the Trap of Gargantius”, Ferocitus orders that everyone must be in compliance with his “Theory of Universal Happiness”, “It is well known, certainly, that one does not laugh because one is amused, but rather, one is amused because one laughs. If then everyone maintains that things couldn’t be better, attitudes immediately improve.” (pg. 34). The notion that in order for everyone to be happy is to put on an air of happiness relates back to the idea of Social Realism and propaganda. Hide the truth behind smiles and unity. This is not ethically correct and will also fail after a while. “The Theory of Universal Happiness” is just a smoke screen designed to keep Ferocitus’s subjects at bay. For a short time, if one an unhappy person sees everyone around her smiling and cheerful, then she will believe that she is not happy and will temporarily do everything in her power to fake happiness so she can eventually be happy, but this does not actually work when the happiness is mandated by law, propagated by propaganda.
Another problem with a collective society is the idea of collective intelligence and collective “labor”. In the same aforementioned story, the characters Trurl and Klapaucius trick the military-obsessed opposing rulers Ferocitus and Atrocitus to allow them to fuse their soldiers together into a two armies that function as one mind in order to beat the opposition with the line “Ideally, we would have a thousand hearts and minds molded into one heart, one mind, one will.” (pg. 37). Ideally is the correct choice of a word. In a collective mind that one can control, power and domination is just one order away. This, however, is rightfully not the case. The connection between the soldiers causes a disregard for orders because they have the access to a wealth of information and a combined brainpower to sift through all the information. The armies’ downfall can be explained in the line “Consciousness, it seemed, formed a deadly trap, in that one could enter it, but never leave.” (pg. 41). A parallel can be drawn to the real world population’s addiction to the internet. The internet is a collective database of information created to benefit and educate, but more often than not, is actually a detriment to individual progress. A person has access to whatever she wants to know about, in addition to having an endless supply of other persons to sift through the information but there is no real work being put forth to obtain said information. With just one click, she can enter another topic, but is then sucked into the endless wealth of facts and philosophies while losing the original purpose of her knowledge quest, which can be reaffirmed through Lem when “both armies went off hand in hand, picking flowers beneath the fluffy white clouds, on the field of the battle that never was.” (pg. 42).
While a collective mind may accidentally create a temporary peaceful society, it can also bring about machines and ideals that should have never been produced. While collectively preparing for war, “conventional as well as nuclear weapons were brought into battle trim, and cannons and atoms were subjected to the utmost spit and polish, as per regulation.” (pg. 39). During the Cold War, weapons were produced with great fervor because one side wanted to outperform and possibly annihilate the other side. Without an assembly of common goals, such terrifying and devastating weapons would not have been produced and revered.
An additional issue brought to attention through Lem in the story “The First Sally (A) Or Trurl’s Electronic Bard” is the question of individual poetic license and poetry used as a means of control and domination. The character of Trurl builds a machine to produce poetry and gain recognition through creating something perfect. By feeding his machine all the knowledge he could find on cybernetics, poetry, and history, Trurl was knowingly creating a super-educated device. In turn, Trurl created a dictator, with strong emotion, “tossing out all the logic circuits, he replaced them with self-regulating egocentripetal narcissist.” (pg. 46). By installing a central ego in hyper-educated machine, Trurl created a monster that in turn would and could twist others to its will. The machine craved power. The machine liked to trump on other true poets, where “Not a day passed without a suicide or a funeral; picket lines formed around the hospital [in which Trurl was being treated]; one could hear gunfire in the distance.” (pg. 55). Instead of praising the mechanical poet, organic poets felt threatened by the seizure of their art form by something created to mass produce beauty. Creation need to come through imperfection to be ethically sound, which isn’t possible when a poetic machine is programmed to spit out the correct answers by fixing the imperfections. At first, perfect may not seem terrible, but it loses the ability to be called human. When personal creativity is trumped upon, revolutions may break out and blood can be shed. An example of this is the notion of censorship. Prepackaged and governmentally approved “creative” entertainment, such as Social Realism, being spread caused an undercurrent of discord and hatred for those in power, just like the poets hate the mechanical poet and attempt to destroy it.
The idea of the perfect produced poet lends to the notion of control. Something is molded by intelligent people, or in this case Trurl, but the creation can break free of its creator, unable to be reined in, lessened, or destroyed. When Trurl’s attempts to dismantle his creation, “it noticed the pliers in his hand and the grim glitter in his eyes, and delivered such an eloquent, impassioned plea for mercy, that the constructor burst into tears, threw down his tools and hurried back into his room, wading through new works of genius…” (pg. 55-56). Trurl is unable to destroy his creation because it has evolved into something so perfect, so powerful, that it is physically impossible to shut it off.
A further connection to the internet can be drawn from Trurl’s inability to turn off the mechanical poet. The internet started off as something to help mankind. A string of information to make life easier, but has morphed into a whole different beast. The internet contains hateful messages and criminal activity, along with a host of other harmful ideals, and cannot be brought back to its original purpose because the creators cannot recall their creation since it has grown entrenched into modern society. If we try to disconnect it, we most likely will be unable to follow through because we will be struck by its beauty just like that in Lem when a mission was sent to silence the expelled mechanical poet by “It overwhelmed them with a few ballads, however, and the mission had to be abandoned.” (pg. 56).
The addiction of the internet is a global problem. It causes people to become wrapped up in the representations of things without actually experiencing the things encountered in the internet in real, tangible life. We sit, plugged in, without any regard to the passage of time or the responsibility to create and foster individuality. Instead, we feed off of and live vicariously through someone else’s creation that has taken hold of our life, trampling on our innate need to create and experience. Lem’s temporary solution for is mechanical poet is that “ruler from a neighboring star system came, bought the machine and hauled it off, asteroid and all, to his kingdom.” (pg. 56). Unfortunately, as the internet, is a global problem, it is most likely impossible to shuffle it off to another corner of the solar system. It must be a collective choice to ban the internet, but then in turn brings about the problem of collectivism and the squashing of a creation. This paradoxical solution is something that has adversely frozen humanity into just droning on in the internet; pour their souls into a collective body of knowledge that may eventually threaten the existence of a free society.
The threat of technology mingling with collective consciousness is a viable theme most often ignored by the masses but is quite often subject to debate within science fiction. The stories in Stanislaw Lem’s The Cyberiad discuss the underlying problem of technology replacing freedom of thought and expression through the creation of dictators and mass production of art and weapons for a common, misguided goal of power and control. Even though a solution to such problems may not be apparent, it is necessary that the growing intellectual recognizes that their society is not perfect, that they are not perfect and that the imperfections can be found in all forms of culture, even in a faraway land produced through science fiction. Science fiction is quite possibly the most accurate way to discuss societal problems because it is a way to both create a different environment and act out both problems and solutions through the means of advanced technology and advanced thinking, all while staying grounded in current times.
however, it will be a huge success if you post nude pics of yourself :-bd
Other than that, it looks good.
Do you think "fused with modern society" would work better?
And thanks thanks and thanks for reading.