[Fis] Murakami and Swift

[Howard Bloom]

brilliant, karl.  brilliant.
with warmth and oomph--howard


-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Javorszky <karl.javorszky at gmail.com>
To: fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Fri, Mar 26, 2021 6:23 am
Subject: [Fis] Murakami and Swift

Murakamiand Swift                                                                                       2021 03 26 These last, long weeks being very much conductive to stayingat home, one would address the task of reading a long novel or two. HarukiMurakami’s “1Q84” and “Killing Commendatore” touch on subjects that are, inthis person’s opinion, worthy of discussing in this presentscientific-intellectual debating society. Let us put Murakami in a connection with Jonathan Swift. TheIrishman has presaged with his “Gulliver’s Travels” massive changes in theperception of royalty, authorities, rules and conventions. Although KingCharles II was tried and executed in 1649, the Restoration twelve years laterhas eradicated the positive connotations to getting rid of a ruler. Up toGulliver, it seems that the common understanding has continuously accepted thereligious-mythical connotations of political force. The belief in authoritiesand their possession of transcendent powers has been the unspoken background ofthe idea of a functioning society. Swift has challenged the prevailing meme, bysubstituting it by a narrative, where Kings are minuscule, pompous dotards. Theslogans of state get deflated if the common cause is reduced to the conflict ofopening up the breakfast egg on which end. You can’t adore a God-Emperor if heis that naïve, completely lacking common sense and decency. Laughing about amighty ruler is a necessary step towards guillotining the formerly mighty same.As a medicine, Swift’s Gulliver has the characteristics of a depot forte. Its effects establish themselvesalmost imperceptibly, over a long time period. It took over three generationsfrom Gulliver to the French Revolution.Murakami appears to me to exert a similar influence oncontemporary thinking as Swift had. It may take another generation or two to beable to speak in rational terms about his ideas. Like the ideas brought home byGulliver from his Travels, the ideas expressed in 1Q84 elicit in their reader asmile and a wonderment, ending in a relieved realisation: this is only aphantasy, a tale, a story; this is nothing real. Swift has stated, although notexpressis verbis, ·      Kings come in all kinds of varieties;·      There is no unified, general rule of how Kingsare to be;·      Kings maintain their rule by earthly methods ofpower and by elaborate memes;·      Almost anybody has more common sense and decencythan the Kings.Murakami does the same work of destroying, levelling andsalting intellectual empires by stating, in the guise of an elaboratecloak-and-dagger sci-fi mystery phantasy:·      Realities come in all kinds of varieties;·      There is a specific variety of non-standardreality, which people (not: Murakami) call metaphysics;·      This parallel reality is actually merged withthe common reality, deviating visibly from that only in specific circumstances;·      There are rules and axioms and protagonists inmetaphysics very similar to those in common reality (“physics”);·      If we had different sensory organs, we couldperceive parts of the other (“metaphysical”) reality, possibly losing someperceptions of the normal reality (if we could sense the Earth’s magnetism, wemight not be able to distinguish some colors: we would live in a differentreality);·       The densityof relations in the other variant influences actual facts in this variant (thedensity of charge in the parallel world of relations causes an actual lightningin the world of realised facts; the density of desire causes space to conflate/mergeand people to synchronise/co-resonate);·      Both variants are subject to identical axioms ofinner consistency of the sequel being a deduction/corollary of the present:both worlds have an inner logic, which deviates only partly from the logic ofthe parallel world;·      Time is a recurring element; one who remembersis partly identical to one who is perceiving/had perceived;·      The continuity is not really continuous, noteven for one and the same individual;·      Aside from one global clock, about which we donot speak, there are local clocks which run at differing speeds;·      It is possible for the two worlds to merge and todisunite without any problems, the worlds can /and do/ exist alongside eachother;·      The moral of the story on the example of theprotagonist heroes is, that a full, ideal life includes the knowledge andability to surf both waves and to connect with one’s alternate selves, be theselaterally or temporally distinct. Well, of course, a phantasy is aphantasy. Thank God, thank our Kings, thank our Schools we can well recognise aphantasy from hard-core reality. Heaven forbid establishing Murakami’s unifieddual space-time concept as a credible and sensible idea of which the time hascome. Murakami’s idea of the parallelworld appears to me like a smear, lubrication, veil, packaging cellophane foilor skin. It is well attached to the surface of the factual world, and agglomeratesonly at times into such droplets or crumplets which modificate the actualthings, all the while dramatically influencing the properties of the thingsthey lubricate and separate at the same time. One would hope that time andpatient research will bring to the surface such rational words, connected byrationally imaginable relations, which support the vision of two narrativesrunning concurrently: one details what are the facts and one details what arethe expectations, based on the facts so far. The two rhetorical strands couldsupport Murakami’s vision. In case one had such a story to tell, about factsand expectations based on facts, one could call that what Murakami calls theQ-time/space also the information contentof the story. This point makes the literary work a suitable subject for asubmission to FIS. Happy and healthy Eastern to youall!Karl  _______________________________________________
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__________________________Howard BloomHowardbloom.nettrailer for BRIC-TV's 66-minute film, The Grand Unified Theory of Howard Bloom,  https://youtu.be/rGkOkChazUQ Best Picture, Science Design Film Festival. Best Documentary Feature, Not Film Festival, Italy. Now available  on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft, Vimeo, Vudu, and Fandango.
Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic),  The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (“Wow! Whew! Wild! Wonderful!” Timothy Leary),The Mohammed Code (“A terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam.” David Swindle, PJ Media), andEinstein, Michael Jackson & Me: a Search  for Soul in the Power Pits of Rock & Roll ("Amazing. The writing is revelatory." Freddy DeMann, manager of Michael Jackson and Madonna), Best Book of 2020, New York Weekly Times.A Quartz Magazine ProFormer Visiting Scholar, Graduate Psychology Department, New York University, Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Current Kepler Space Institute Senior Scholar.Founder: International Paleopsychology Project. Founder, Space Development Steering Committee.  Member Of Board Of Governors, National Space Society. Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society. Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project.
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