Drain Brain
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: “What the fuck just happened? is the true question of all philosophy.
Head cold. First snow of the year. And strange days at the Brain.
This post was intended to simply notify everybody of a couple additional posts I had made in the limbic basement. First, there’s “Parmenide’s Hinge,” a failed prospectus for the failed dissertation attempt I made prior to Truth and Context. I actually stumbled across it searching through some old files for an ancient short story I had written (back to that in a moment). The reread blew me away, not only because I had completely forgotten about it, but because it happened to end, I mean literally end, with the question I had answered for another short piece, this one new, that I had written in response to a philosopher named Ray Brassier, whose excellent Nihil Unbound I have been using as a guide book for my safari through some of the more recent Continental philosophy. It still freaks me out how I could work for years on a question that I had forgotten.
Meanwhile, after weeks of intense back and forth on the comment board, the blog essentially falls silent. Except that it isn’t silent. The numbers are up (TPB now has literally twice the traffic it had even several months ago), but nobody seems to be posting. Since I let my temper get the best of me on a couple of occasions the last two dust-ups (Murph! Where did you go, brother?) I worried that maybe my thin skin was scaring potential commentators away. So I decided to check out what everyone seemed to be reading… I never realized that WordPress had so many tools for dowsing traffic.
Two big surprises. The biggest one has to be my review of Infinite Jest. In a matter of five or six weeks it’s managed to become one of the most viewed pages on the blog short of the main page! Don’t ask me how – or why. It makes me think I should do more reviews!
The most significant surprise, however, is that my short reply to Ray Brassier is getting hundreds of hits. Then I get a couple of emails from friends out in the philosophy world telling me about the buzz the thing appears to have created. It almost seems like the rest of the blog has gone quiet in expectation. So I get this crazy Doctor Frankenstein feeling, that all these years I’ve been toiling in isolation, fearing as much as hoping that the world would discover my ‘work,’ only to wake up and find that my basement laboratory had been broken into!
It’s all good, I know. It’s what I wanted to happen. But stay tuned: with any luck, you’re about to find out what happens when a fringe crackpot engages a foundational cultural institution.
But meanwhile, back to that short story I was looking for, “The Judas Tree.” I thought some of you might find it interesting to read something written before The Darkness that Comes Before. And then I made the mistake of reading the bloody thing – and realized why I had sworn off short-story writing altogether way back then. Peee-yewww! And once again I found myself two people sitting in one chair: the marketer saying, “Good God, man, who would buy any of your books after seeing that shite?”; and the decent human being saying, “It would actually be good for some people to see how much writing was more a matter of work and craft than something you just lucked into at birth!”
Usually the decent human being wins out in these episodes, but I have been very, very hard on the marketer of late. And let’s face it, he’s the guy who pays the bills.
So I’m trying to think how I can have it both ways… And fire up the comment strings in the process!
Three Pound Brain 
I think any current fan would not be driven away by reading some of your early non-professional work. Speaking as a fan myself, I’d love to see anything you’ve written.
If your concern is driving away potential new fans then perhaps you can set up a separate mailing list for these types of things.
Quite a few non-fans swing through these parts as well, though. A mailing list strikes me as extreme… Maybe I should just do what I do with the philosophy: create a sub-subforum?
It strikes me now though that I should concentrate on getting something up that actually displays the appeal of the series. More atrocity tales, only not so esoteric as “Four Revelations.”
I agree with more atrocity tales. And if the forum here is a good place to hammer out the final versions of them then we all win!
More atrocity tales, yes. Your philosophical arguments are at their most accessible to me (with zero philosophical training) when they are couched in your fiction. While I find the ideas fascinating, I’m often tripped up by the jargon in your more technical postings. But obviously, based upon the comments, that’s not representative of your blog traffic as a whole.
Not even close. I’ve been thinking about the battle with obscurity that I continually wage lately… In AA terms, philosophy is my ‘substance.’
I’d love to see the tale about the formation of the Consult.
In the meantime I read the non-fantasy stories, incredible stuff.
It is hard for me to see you writing something really bad, but perhaps a self-critique on your own work and the lessons you learned going into TDTCB might work?
Also, as far as reviews, curious on your thoughts about Murakami.
I’d love to see the tale about the formation of the Consult.
Yeah, seems pivotal! Also would like to see the refugee years of the Dunyain cult and their original formation for much the same reason.
I think a Dunyain tale would have to be post TUC though, I get the feeling the true nature of that tale figures into the ending.
Damn! Prolly right!
The problem is that I’ve kept the Consult under wraps so long for TUC…
“I’d love to see the tale about the formation of the Consult.”
I’d like to see that only if has some weird gimmicky-frame, like Shauriatus and Aurax reminiscing over coffee breaks or something.
One of the big dangers I laid out for myself, was the danger of ‘going baroque,’ growing ever more whimsical with the world as I grew ever more weary, jaded, what have you. So I literally have a NO BAROQUE sign hanging over the entire SA universe. I think this is one of the reasons why I enjoy other people having fun with the world. Like I say, FIVE stories, and I will open a Fan-fic sub-page that will, I shit you not, get thousands of views over time.
The easy solution would be to post “The Judas Tree” with something I’ve completed, do a kind of “Look, Ma!” comparison thing. But “The False Sun,” is all I have done, and it could be taken to be a major ‘world spoiler.’
Murakami’s on my list of possibles… Definitely. Never read him before. Maybe even a Valente book. World War Z would be fun (i’m just finishing it now).
Yeah, I’d be real leery of posting spoiler-type material before its revealed in the main text of the series. At the very least, you may want to couch anything like that you post with warnings to that effect. I’m still not sure if it was good that I read that interview posted over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist a while back that contained what I considered to be a pretty significant “world spoiler” (unless that had already been explained in something I’d missed in the actual text of the series). Don’t get me wrong; it was a really cool “Oh, shit!” moment. I’m just not sure if it will ruin something for me down the line.
Two thoughts:
“So I’m trying to think how I can have it both ways… ”
You could write an introduction like Neitzche’s “Attempt at Self-Criticism” introduction to The Birth of Tragedy. Hahaha… talk about setting an intimidating precedent.
“So I get this crazy Doctor Frankenstein feeling…”
Frailty, thy name is Zeitgeist.
I find myself channelling the old Kraut too much as it is! The older I get, the more I feel like I understand him.
Regarding the philosophy stuff: good! I’m probably your biggest philoso-fanboy and hearing that others are starting to pick up on it pleases my ego to no end.
As for posting the story you think is a stinker: don’t do it. It’s one thing to watch a surgery (the rewriting process of Four Revelations) and quite another to drag up a saponified corpse from the brackish waters of your hard drive. We all want you to be commercially successful and if you think it might hurt, don’t do it.
Though for those of us a million light years away, evidence of hyperdrive capability being possible is very desirable. If not desperately.
Yes, odd analogy, that’s why I need a hyperdrive!
The cringe I had while reading it literally turned into a cramp. Never knew bad writing could give you a charlie horse.
I’d say that I’d prefer to read another Atrocity Tale to keep us going until that Heavenly day when the Unholy Consult rains down from the Celestial sky ( next year please!). I don’t think I would publish something I was uncomfortable with in your position; the thing is, you can place as many disclaimers as you like, if people don’t like it’s still going to stick in their mind, even though you told them it might be shit.
Maybe if I posted both stories in sub-pages, one dedicated to crapola, the other for stories with possible spoilers…
Sub-pages seems to be my answer for everything these days.
Posts like “The Myth of the Vulgar Cage” and “Doughnuts for the Heart, Broccoli for the Soul” are what made me a fan of this site.
I also come here with the hope of learning something. I have very few college credits and not a single one came from a literature or philosophy class (mainly out of the fear that I would have to write papers and I have terrible anxiety when it comes to writing). While a lot of the philosophy specfic posts go over my head, they keep me busy on Google or Wikipedia for hours.
Personally, I would love to see more reviews.
Prior to you posting your review of Infinite Jest, I had started reading the novel a couple of times, but had difficulty with it. Upon reading your review, I became convinced that the novel just wasn’t for me. I haven’t picked it up since. I will maybe get around to it one day.
What about a Three Pound Brain book club?
I like the idea of a book club, but I’m so colossally disorganized it would have to be something informal, where we all agree to like, just read something. Maybe it’s time to figure out how to use the polling tools.
Here’s a thought: how about a sub-page devoted to fan-fic… Anyone have anything they might be interested in submitting? If I can get FIVE stories, I’ll do it! Satire most welcome!
Sounds like you could use an assistant 🙂
+1 for the fan-fic page idea. Not sure I could muster the courage to submit something but possibly….
I think Happy Ent over at Westeros would prove illuminating in this regard. He’s already written a few pieces, including a hilarious one when WLW didn’t arrive from Amazon.de
Someone should let him know. He’s the one who started that Westeros thread that someone linked a while back, isn’t he?
I’m all for posting the short story.
As for the commenting silence, it may have just been a result of the “Four Revelations” discussion running its course. Those posts had comment threads numbering in the dozens.
To be honest, I quite like taking an hour out every morning, doing this. I never thought I would, but I do. Parenthood, man. It really rewrites your personality.
Hey Scott – I really hope you do post the short story. As a writer very interested in the genesis and evolution of ones writing – it would truly be a thrill. If you decide to not publish it – I have been trusted with other secret knowledge – particularly that of Rezchairos – *wink wink*. Well, just in case – Ricky.cisco@gmail.com
Rezchairos… Hmm… I think I need a different clue, Ricky.
And here we have it: definite proof that Scott has NOT gotten around to reading my book yet! (Bastard…)
I’ll note on the speculatives – well, generally in reading it’s like a thin line, graphed over time. You start reading and the grounds the author dipicts kinda swell that line like a baloon, fattening it. Then as the author makes thier point or outlines the highlight, the balooned line over time thins down again as we condense many grounds into some kinda conclusion. In attempting to read the speculatives, that balooning stage just kept growing, and growing and growing. Atleast for me – I just felt after awhile I am genuinely not containing all the grounds being presented, let alone getting on to a point. It feels kinda like trying to remember fifty different eight digit numbers you’ve just been told. Or maybe that’s an exageration. But they often leave me, right towards the start, feeling I’m not genuinely able to tackle them. Too steep a cliff for my likes.
EVERYONE has problems with my philosophy. Philosophy PhDs as much as dropouts. This is why this recent flurry of interest has the psychic significance it does for me: it really is the case that I’m ten years ahead or I’m seeing things that only exist in my bean. All I can say is that it feels clear to me. And as with the “Rhapsophy” piece, the interpretative side of my thought, ‘afferentialism,’ seems to let me slip into the belly of some very difficult positions. The problem is the gestalt: it’s like TDTCB, where you need to follow the story to know the world and you need to know the world to follow the story.
To be quite honest I rarely post anything inhere, mainly because I’m insanely deterred by the whole philosophical discourse. Your hardcore fans posting a lot in here (Callan and Jorge? 🙂 most surely have some of the same interests as you, philosophy and fantasy, and while I do share the same interests I’m waaaay below you guys when it comes to actually understanding that #%it 😉
Like you’ve said loads of times, you picked your genre very deliberately because you want to challenge those readers; I’m pretty sure that they’re challenged, quite a lot, I just don’t think a lot of them share the same hardcore philosophy you do 🙂
Just a thought!
That’s why I started burying the shite. It really is a specialized language – something designed to sort. The idea with the books is to put the two poles in communication, to funnel tricky-dicky rumination through narrative mayhem. The tightrope. Everything. Everywhere. Especially, it seems, here at TPB.
Regarding your early work: why not use the awesome powers of the Intertubes and self-publish? Package them up somewhat, ask a low enough price and I bet people would be willing to put money in your pocket for them (I certainly would). For added value, you could do something like Tobias Buckell did with “Nascence” (a collection of 17 early short stories which “failed” in his own opinion, in the collection he wrote up a critique of each story explaining why he thought it failed and what needed to be better to make it work) or Joe Abercrombie with the promised enhanced ebook edition of “The Heroes” (which will contain a 20K words planning document and lots of notes).
I love the idea. The problem is that I only have one!
You only have one short piece of fiction outside TDtCB? You really should post it then, even if in a separate folder. I for one would be fascinated to read it (and trust me, I’ve a solid million words of flat-out unpublishable fiction).
I’ve been accused of the same!
I still lurk! 🙂
I prefer the term ‘skin-spy’ 😉
But are you doing so forcefully?
Fan-fiction? That’s a sordid dare.
I’ll take you up on that offer, but where do I submit it to? (Publicly posting it here would be obscene.) Also, I warn you… no matter how cringe-worthy the old piece of your is, I can assure whatever I come up with will be 100 times worse. And it would probably feature Ajencis and the High King of Kyranea having an esoteric discussion.
Awesome! I’ll set up a page where stories can be posted as comments. Then I’ll devote a sub-page to the story and trash the comment. This should minimize the translation issues for me – everytime I move from documents to wordpress I have to fuss endlessly it seems.
I don’t think I could write it, but I’d love to see a story about someone recruiting one of witches who makes whore-shells into the Swayal Compact.
I’d read that for sure. The world is deep enough that there’s all these nooks and crevices to explore and exploit, that’s for sure.
True enough – I think the dragons are fascinating story-fodder as well. Wutteat refers to the Inchoroi as his makers, but I find it interesting they don’t have the same hunger for sex and violence.
-Sciborg
That sounds sexist, man…
The fan-fic idea is good for no other reason than the certainty that Happy End would not be able to resist.
Well let him know! I’ll drawing up the page and the ‘official announcement’ shortly.
It’s sort of a “Summon Ent” D&D roll/spell isn’t it?
First off, thank you for replying to my previous comments, Mr.Bakker. I appreciate it very much. Since you’ve said I’m better off posting here than writing you an email, this is going to be a rather large post (sorry in advance for that).
I actually think you should continue posting your philosophy writings here (it’s some publicity), despite the fact that many of us are not that deep into philosophy. I for one have a certain passion for it, one which I haven’t indulged much and I have to do it sometime. You could say I am barely knowledgeable, but I love how your writings get me running for a dictionary to understand what the whole dialectial thing means. Keep up posting philosophy, I don’t think you’ll lose any of your readership. Especially if any of them have read the Prince of Nothing with all the philosophical quotes and ruminations in it.
I aslo love the idea for the fan-fiction, supporting it a lot. I would be happy to read Jorge’s fan-fiction about Ajencis and the High King. So do it, Jorge!
And now to the main point, which was originally intended to be in an e-mail. It’s going to be really personal, so bear with me.
I feel a special kinship with you, Mr.Bakker and let me explain why.
When I first heard of your trilogy and about Kellhus I thought that it was not possible. I did not believe it was possible that an author, whom I’ve never met and heard of, to come up so precisely with the same ideas and thoughts that I had. The homo-superior idea mixing with the fact and idea that we are all ruled by emotions, history, culture (conditioning). It was spot on. And this coincidence really, really unbelievable. Naturally such curiosity led me to reading your interviews and more coincidences started coming up. Psycho-social trauma and intelligence have a fun way of mixing, especially when it comes to creativity, don’t they? Having experienced that in my childhood and teens, which by chance and luck led me to the realizations of how humanity is (stated above) and the idea of becoming better, mastering yourself and learning to master others. Then came Nietschze with his idea (among others) of the homo-superior and just hit the bull’s-eye. And I some point I found myself actually pursuing an ideal, which was basically what you called the Dunyain. Crazy, I know, but when people are young… you know how it is. After all this, finding that you exist blew my mind. It turns out it’s a small world isn’t it? So, without any further ado, I jumped in your books and they were far more than what I have expected and they expanded my world-view greatly which is a thing that doesn’t happen so often. I mean – I expected some things (obviously), but many more were grand surprises. I thought I discovered a sliver of gold, and what I got was a gold mine…
I feel kinship because of the same idea we had and I feel kinship because of the things that led to that idea. I realize this is just a cartoon of the real thing and possibly utterly wrong, but I just wanted to get it off my chest..
In short I feel like Kellhus walking in his father’s footsteps, just to find that every probability was already thought of and stumble into the Thousandfold thought of his father. For that, I thank you.
This might not appear to have much sense, but I’m baring my fucking soul here, guys.
I just watched the movie Krull, and its been years since i’ve seen it, but was amazed at the similarities between the “Slayers” and the Consult… now mind you to me the Consult is like the Slayers tweaked out on meth for like idk 4 or 5 millenia. The Slayers weren’t a race of lovers but give’em a few millenia with some meth and I guarantee they got some fucked up sexual problems. But hey you like minded people actually go and watch the movie and tell me that the “Beast” and his posse the Slayers aren’t like the Consult… convoluted fuckers flying through space fucking up worlds and shit. Oh and Scott I recently finished “Introduction to Consciousness” by Susan Blackmore, that you recommended to me this summer and it put me “close” to par with your philosophy of consciousness. Actually it made this web sight more enjoyable now that I’m more educated on the “hard” problem of life. Whereas the only hard problem I’m finding right now is whether or not to use my lighter to open this beer or stop being lazy and go and get the damn bottle opener. Also finished my reread of “Thus Spoke Zarathrustra” by GOD, j/k Nietzsche for you less humorous bastards. And I have a quick question… Is the idea behind the whole SA a continuation of Nietzsche’s Zarathrustra, and by that I mean Zarathrustra claims he is laying the ground work for the Ubermensh, and you follow it up with the a story about the Ubermensh (Kellhus); So essentially is your work, in some sort of fashion, a continuation of Zarathrustra’s foresight of what man could be? Also “Outing the It” lecture was pretty wicked for a nerd like me, made my finishing of Zarathrustra more enjoyable this time around.
cheers
bran
Any chance at a gander of more of your readings pre-or-post Darkness would make for a lovely read, I think. Smack that marketing side about a bit and share – current fans would enjoy the opportunity, and I think anyone would be interested in seeing the development of craft over time these glimpses would allow, certainly, even if it’s not what you might consider “professional-grade”.
But an opportunity for more atrocity tales? Now that would make for some quality reading.
Love the aphorism of the day,
Of potential interest, from today’s issue of Nature:
“A lot of people thought the sense of self was hard-wired, but it’s not at all. It can be changed very quickly, and that’s very intriguing,” says Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.
Ehrsson’s work also intrigues neuroscientists and philosophers because it turns a slippery, metaphysical construct — the self — into something that scientists can dissect. “We can say if we wobble the signals this way, our conscious experience wobbles in this way,” says David Eagleman, a neuroscientist who studies perception at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. “That’s a lever we didn’t have before.”
“There are things like selfhood that people think cannot be touched by the hard sciences,” says Thomas Metzinger, director of the Theoretical Philosophy Group at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. “They are now demonstrably tractable. That’s what I think is valuable about Henrik’s contribution.”
“We can say if we wobble the signals this way, our conscious experience wobbles in this way,”
I can see how you wobble, buddy, as you say that.
They used to have psychology experiments where subjects were tied down to tables and really made to think they were going to die, before ethical procedures for testing were written up.
The ethics here are more sublime – will it catch up in ethical procedure terms? Humility seems a strange ethic, but he’s inventing a lop sided “I’ve got your ‘I’ figured!”. Hopefully in future it’ll seem as stupid as some medieval science which designated certain races as being lesser to other races (I think stuff like that occured as a ‘scientific evaluation’ at some point).
“We can say” indeed! Reduce yourself while you reduce others, pompous fool!
I don’t think I’ve ever invoked the phrase ‘pompous fool’ before. Hmmm. Anyway, if you look at when an art galery restores an art work, it’s painstaking and great care is taken. Here – it’s like something cheap and disposable is being worked with.
Not sure what you’re saying here.
Modern research standards dictate that you have to completely disclose to the participant if the study might put them in any physical or psychological discomfort.
Perhaps it would have been helpful for me to give some background: this was a nature article profiling the work of Dr. Ehrsson which involves putting people in VR goggles and having their brains remap their ‘position’ to a different object: a mannequin for instance. This allows (some) people to have controlled out-of-body experiences including the extremely surreal ability to shake hands with yourself.
I’m actually jealous. I (really) want to try this out! Apparently, he can also make people believe they have a third arm or think they’ve shrunk to tiny size.
Also, if you’ve ever wanted to feel the fear before getting stabbed by a knife in a completely safe environment, apparently Dr. Ehrsson’s lab is the place to go.
I’m not sure tweaking a mind would produce any discomfort. So the ethics of disclosing discomfort kind of miss the mark.
Maybe it’s not a biggie – maybe its tweaking a mind at no more than the low levels literature does *stabbing pointing finger at no one in particular here*.
But imagine a painter, having worked on his canvas, leaves for a smoke break. Now you add to the canvas. When he comes back, he feels no discomfort. And lets say he doesn’t notice, or more to the point, can’t notice your addition and keeps painting.
The wobbling of the canvas is adding to it. Perhaps only in subtle, small ways. But unless your blunt and gross in thought…
Or so I hypothesize. As well as being hypothetical, it may be so abstract sounding that it seems outside our morality and nothing to do with it, even though in the hypothesis it’s wobbling the very stuff that’s the fundiment of our morality.
Anyway, I hope it’s clear my ire is at that researcher. Since he’s not here, that’s fine to do 😉
Maybe I rushed – if it’s about changing external stimulous with VR goggles, this isn’t the same as directly affecting the deeper layers. Far more records of whats occured, for the brain to work with. With all the talk here of neuro science, I assumed wobbling was being done at a more intimate level.
Scott, Any chance in sending book to you for an autogragh?
Sorry, borock. I’m just too much of bonehead. One glimpse at my office and you would understand. Multitasking that comes second nature for normal people (as far as I can tell) is just pure stress for me.