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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="DE-AT">Murakami
and Swift<span> </span><span> </span>2021 03 26<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">These last, long weeks being very much conductive to staying
at home, one would address the task of reading a long novel or two. Haruki
Murakami’s “1Q84” and “Killing Commendatore” touch on subjects that are, in
this person’s opinion, worthy of discussing in this present
scientific-intellectual debating society. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Let us put Murakami in a connection with Jonathan Swift. The
Irishman has presaged with his “Gulliver’s Travels” massive changes in the
perception of royalty, authorities, rules and conventions. Although King
Charles II was tried and executed in 1649, the Restoration twelve years later
has eradicated the positive connotations to getting rid of a ruler. Up to
Gulliver, it seems that the common understanding has continuously accepted the
religious-mythical connotations of political force. The belief in authorities
and their possession of transcendent powers has been the unspoken background of
the idea of a functioning society. Swift has challenged the prevailing meme, by
substituting it by a narrative, where Kings are minuscule, pompous dotards. The
slogans of state get deflated if the common cause is reduced to the conflict of
opening up the breakfast egg on which end. You can’t adore a God-Emperor if he
is that naïve, completely lacking common sense and decency. Laughing about a
mighty ruler is a necessary step towards guillotining the formerly mighty same.
As a medicine, Swift’s Gulliver has the characteristics of a <i>depot forte. </i>Its effects establish themselves
almost imperceptibly, over a long time period. It took over three generations
from Gulliver to the French Revolution.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Murakami appears to me to exert a similar influence on
contemporary thinking as Swift had. It may take another generation or two to be
able to speak in rational terms about his ideas. Like the ideas brought home by
Gulliver from his Travels, the ideas expressed in 1Q84 elicit in their reader a
smile and a wonderment, ending in a relieved realisation: this is only a
phantasy, a tale, a story; this is nothing real. Swift has stated, although not
<i>expressis verbis,</i> <span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 39pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Kings come in all kinds of varieties;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 39pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>There is no unified, general rule of how Kings
are to be;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 39pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Kings maintain their rule by earthly methods of
power and by elaborate memes;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt 39pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Almost anybody has more common sense and decency
than the Kings.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Murakami does the same work of destroying, levelling and
salting intellectual empires by stating, in the guise of an elaborate
cloak-and-dagger sci-fi mystery phantasy:<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Realities come in all kinds of varieties;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>There is a specific variety of non-standard
reality, which people (not: Murakami) call metaphysics;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>This parallel reality is actually merged with
the common reality, deviating visibly from that only in specific circumstances;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>There are rules and axioms and protagonists in
metaphysics very similar to those in common reality (“physics”);<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>If we had different sensory organs, we could
perceive parts of the other (“metaphysical”) reality, possibly losing some
perceptions of the normal reality (if we could sense the Earth’s magnetism, we
might not be able to distinguish some colors: we would live in a different
reality);<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><span> </span>The density
of relations in the other variant influences actual facts in this variant (the
density of charge in the parallel world of relations causes an actual lightning
in the world of realised facts; the density of desire causes space to conflate/merge
and people to synchronise/co-resonate);<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Both variants are subject to identical axioms of
inner consistency of the sequel being a deduction/corollary of the present:
both worlds have an inner logic, which deviates only partly from the logic of
the parallel world;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Time is a recurring element; one who remembers
is partly identical to one who is perceiving/had perceived;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>The continuity is not really continuous, not
even for one and the same individual;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Aside from one global clock, about which we do
not speak, there are local clocks which run at differing speeds;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>It is possible for the two worlds to merge and to
disunite without any problems, the worlds can /and do/ exist alongside each
other;<span></span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt 36pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>The moral of the story on the example of the
protagonist heroes is, that a full, ideal life includes the knowledge and
ability to surf both waves and to connect with one’s alternate selves, be these
laterally or temporally distinct.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt 18pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt 18pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Well, of course, a phantasy is a
phantasy. Thank God, thank our Kings, thank our Schools we can well recognise a
phantasy from hard-core reality. Heaven forbid establishing Murakami’s unified
dual space-time concept as a credible and sensible idea of which the time has
come. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt 18pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Murakami’s idea of the parallel
world appears to me like a smear, lubrication, veil, packaging cellophane foil
or skin. It is well attached to the surface of the factual world, and agglomerates
only at times into such droplets or crumplets which modificate the actual
things, all the while dramatically influencing the properties of the things
they lubricate and separate at the same time. One would hope that time and
patient research will bring to the surface such rational words, connected by
rationally imaginable relations, which support the vision of two narratives
running concurrently: one details what are the facts and one details what are
the expectations, based on the facts so far. The two rhetorical strands could
support Murakami’s vision. In case one had such a story to tell, about facts
and expectations based on facts, one could call that what Murakami calls the
Q-time/space also <i>the information content
</i>of the story. This point makes the literary work a suitable subject for a
submission to FIS.<span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt 18pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Happy and healthy Eastern to you
all!<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt 18pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Karl<span></span></p>
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