Reader Discussion Topics Part 2/3
Last week, I posted the first of three parts of a set of reading group discussion questions, presented to me by Jane Friedman. Since her specialty is dealing with the business of getting writers in touch with their readership, I decided to answer them with as much detail as I could. The following is the second part of the results.
As before, the questions I was asked are marked with bold text, with my answers following immediately afterward.
Before I present these answers to the questions provided, though, I know that I'm a verbose writer and I do apologize. My reason for writing so much, though, is the same for how I present things when I'm talking in person: the process of writing or speaking is itself a process of discovery. As I write or say things, I come to realizations that had never consciously occurred to me before. I type at a quite significant rate, so my writing style and my speaking style are almost identical (though with more opportunity for revision in the written format), and so, just as with speaking, I will often write something out before I've consciously considered it fully.
In other words, the moment of the written word is also the moment of pure inspiration for me. Possibly even revelation.
I share this, as well as the sources above for more information on the subject, because you can do it too, and I want to help you become a better writer, a better speaker, a better person.
Do you think humanity in the story actually understands the magnitude of the opportunity it has been given, or are many people simply trying to recreate familiar lives inside a new environment? And if humanity is given safety without necessarily being forced to change, what ultimately makes genuine change possible?
"Humanity" is simply too big a descriptor for me to appropriately address it: in my fictional view of humanity within the Man from Rock Bottom universe, humanity's specific defining feature, actually, is their diversity of ideas. Within the universe presented in the book - and hopefully the books to come - we have more cultures, more languages, more religions than any other species, all in a desperate effort to make ourselves more unique by creating new cultures to which we can then conform.
On the flipside of this, the rest of the Pan-Galactic Republic actually likes having the presence of humanity because we also produce more creative works than any other species, more literature and film and art. In The Man from Rock Bottom, this is briefly pointed out by Gret when she pitches a copy of George Orwell's 1984 at Trinidad Del Toro's chest, and later on when she discusses the lessons learned from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 with Thomas Delmonte Cerveau.
Can survival itself become a kind of prison if a person never discovers purpose beyond staying alive?
This, I think, is a good explanation of what happens to people who suffer from a variety of mental illnesses, either congenital or induced. Usually both, since we've all got our "stress lines," the places where we have tendencies to crack when put under just the right kind of strain.
Personally, I suffer from anxiety, sometimes to the point of full-blown attacks, which I counter with a great deal of physical exercise and keeping my mind constantly engaged, such as with the writing of fiction. This means that I have a very hard time not defaulting to fight-or-flight when I'm shoved into a corner by the vagaries of life. Over time and with sad personal experience I've learned how to pull myself back, to think objectively, and to slowly reason out my next course of action. To break down big problems into steadily smaller pieces (this is the foundational idea behind Behaviorism and its more modern [and less mechanistic] derivatives, incidentally) until they become a series of multiple manageable steps rather than a single overwhelming situation.
At what point can protection become limitation?
That's one of the questions I actually addressed in my weekly blog, for those with an interest.
To provide a summary, though, I talk about dystopias, and how all too often the reason for the creation of such horrific places is because of genuinely good intentions. Specifically, the belief that free will is the source of misery, as is mentioned in the novella The Grand Inquisitor, which can be found inside the book The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and which I just finished reading a few days before writing this response (the novella, that is - it's about a third of the way into the book, and it took me quite a bit more time to get through the rest of the novel, which was quite a slog). In that novella, the Grand Inquisitor wants to protect humanity by taking away free will as much as is possible, even if that means sacrificing himself as the one who knows the truth of what is being done, while everyone else is allowed to feel fine just doing what they've always done, wallowing in sin and feeling self-satisfied. The concept of doing something for "the greater good," a lethal trap for morality.
Similarly, in the book We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which I haven't started yet (as of this writing) but have read about with significant interest, since it's apparently the book that inspired Orwell to write 1984, the government of the story's enclosed panopticon city-state want to protect its citizens from dissenting ideas, and will even go so far as to surgically modify their brains to make them more able to fit into the unnatural society presented.
In the second book in this universe, The Man in the Wasted Lands (still in progress of being written as of this blog posting), the character Karkrimmon Deeray, Prophet-King of the Dragons, will address this situation directly by describing the Pan-Galactic Republic as an "anti-dystopia." In other words, a governmental state where those in charge do everything they can to educate their citizens responsibly, to provide them with all the tools and information they need in order to make informed decisions, and then as much as possible to stay out of the way and let them progress, stepping in only in situations of serious injury to others, either to their persons or to their potential for free will.
He'll also freely admit that it's an ongoing work in progress.
What do you think is the difference between helping someone and trying to control someone's healing or development? And was there a particular reason you felt that the person offering this kind of guidance needed to be an outsider rather than another human being?
In the chapter "Scintillant Camor Saves," this happens during Scintillant's discussion with his intended torturer, John Martin. Right in the middle of our foxy protagonist doing his best to guide Martin, Martin interrupts him with a personal realization of his own, which is accompanied by a confession of his guilt that serves as part of the healing process for the wounds he has inflicted on others - and, as anyone who has studied the martial arts will realize, when we injure others, we also injure ourselves.
(That, incidentally, is partially based on a quote from Frances Reed: "We may forgive those who injure us but we can never forgive those who we have injured irreparably." Irritatingly, I can find this quote readily enough, but actually finding information about Frances Reed is proving nearly impossible - if anyone can find out about this author, please contact me, because I am quite frustrated in my endeavors at this point.)
That's not something weird and mystical, by the way: that's basic physics, that every action is resisted by an equal reaction. Every time you bring force to bear on someone, you are hurting yourself at the same time, and though you may redirect the damage over a wider area, making the overall effect seem less, it builds up over time. The same is true of emotional injury: what you bring to others will similarly be brought to yourself. Which, incidentally, is why the martial artists who live the longest are the ones who are the most gentle, the ones least likely to ever resort to violence except in the absolute worst-case scenarios, and even then only just enough to restore the upset balance.
(This, I suppose, is why it's so very easy and fast to study "hard" styles, but the "soft" styles take many long years to effectively develop.)
Far better, then, to guide rather than use direct force for control. Present your case, then step back and let your audience make their own decisions. You cannot force enlightenment, and if you try, you will destroy yourself and the ones you were trying to help.
As for using an outsider, embodied in the person of Scintillant Camor, I do think it's easier to explain ourselves to someone without preconceived notions, or at least that we perceive as not having them. For me, I'm very slightly autistic (among my many other trials - they never seem to come in ones or twos!), so I tend to see everyone as at least a little bit alien, including myself. This means I have a hard time really deeply connecting with groups or organizations or social movements, but I can so easily focus on the individual right in front of me, listening without passing judgement. Probably more than what most people find comfortable, which is why I try to maintain social distancing as much as possible; that and because I care very easily and very deeply, and that can lead to my being hurt just as easily and just as deeply.
Do you think sometimes we need someone outside our own culture, community, family, or way of thinking to reveal things about ourselves that we are too close to see?
Sometimes the phrase "get them out of themself" is used to describe helping someone to view their situation objectively as part of making life changes that will enhance their personal growth. If we stay within our simple comfort zone, we will never progress. The process of growth hurts, and it's very scary, but it's also necessary if we ever want to achieve our fullest potential...whatever that might be - you'll have to assess yourself to answer that particular question (which, naturally, has multiple answers even for a single person).
Where do you see the balance between individuality and unity in the story? How do you prevent “unity” from becoming conformity, while also preventing “individuality” from becoming complete isolation from everyone else?
See my answer above regarding King Karkrimmon Deeray. Of course, since I prefer to write action whenever possible, he'll be dropping these pearls of wisdom while protecting a human reporter and her camera operator (I recently learned that this person is called the "engineer") from a mass invasion of Sunflower City by a horde of hideous monsters from the Wasted Lands of Earth right in the middle of their interview. But that's another matter.
Honestly, I don't know if we can effectively create a perfect utopian ideal place. I mean, just look at the name, "Utopia": it's a Greek pun, meaning at once "Eu-topia," or "the Good Place," and also "U-topia," for "no-place." A good place that doesn't exist, and possibly can't.
Why would such a situation be so? It's because of the need for balance. If you've ever juggled plates, or walked a balance beam, or any of a number of other actions with a simple outward appearance, you know that there's all sorts of effort going on under the surface (heh, which inspires me to break into song).
Too often, dystopias result because their creators decide that everything has to be Just So, with strict rules and harsh regulations. Even with an effective society, going too long in a single direction can lead to stagnation and decadence, or applying the rules too literally or too liberally, or generally seeing the tradition as more important than the living government, a background entity to provide stability and a platform for fair play, while also allowing its citizens the opportunity for personal development.
Of course, in my fictional universe this is made a whole lot easier because "future-modern" healthcare has advanced so much, the typical human is going to live two or three centuries without any additional enhancements, and potentially a great deal more if they start earning money to pay for more treatments and such - that's "effective" life, by the way, during which the person is able to have full mobility and use of their various faculties. Just that simple adjustment, giving people a little more time, makes an absolutely massive change in the overall outlook of the typical citizen of the Republic.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebVideo/MinecraftCivilizationExperiments presents some interesting social experiments, by the way, which I forgot to include in the blog posting on dystopias. I highly recommend you check out the videos on the subject, if you've a mind and a little bit of time to spare.
Do you think a person has to reach their lowest point before they can truly understand themselves, or can transformation happen without experiencing that kind of crisis? And looking back now, has the meaning of “Rock Bottom” changed for you since you finished the book?
Yes. And yes.
Do you think the characters have to earn their place in that universe, or is belonging something they deserve simply because they exist? And perhaps more importantly: What do you hope readers who have ever felt like outsiders take away from that idea?
Yes.
...all right, I'll give a few more details to that one.
This is tied very directly to my religious ideas: oddly enough, I don't believe in Hell, or in Heaven, as the rest of the Christian world understands the concepts. That would assume that there is some cosmic "pass-fail" system out there, where if you're a few points under the line, it's off to eternal fire-and-brimstone, no take-backsies, no court of appeals.
What I believe in instead is that we all go to a place that suits us best, where we can be with people who suit our personal temperaments best. Of course, as anyone who's visited certain neighborhoods will quickly notice, the people who live somewhere can turn the most paradisaical of locales into a living horror, or the most run-down and neglected of neighborhoods into a place of peace.
I found this out when I was working in the American Deep South, where the term "other side of the tracks" was very literal, and typically sharply drawn across racial lines, a situation that I believe is still extant. I could walk through poorer neighborhoods, and sometimes in just crossing the street I would see one side where the houses were beat-up, the walls and signposts scrawled in graffiti, the street lights deliberately broken, and then on the other there would be neatly kept little houses, run-down from age, but pleasant and well-maintained for all that.
In the richer neighborhoods, the difference was a little more subtle, since such neighborhoods tend to have nosy neighbors who will report you to the Home Owner's Association for lowering property values, requiring more conformity to avoid losing your place, but no less noticeable. Some of the houses and estates would be sterile, straight lines and sharp delineation, tailored lawns and immaculate driveways. Others would be "lived in," with the occasional child's toy on the grass, spots where overenthusiastic play had left scuffs and divots in the grass, beds of flowers with little thought for structured order, but only a desire to see the blossoms in all their chaotic splendor.
The short of it: we divide ourselves up according to our personal inclinations, our personal desires, our personal ambitions. Then we find others, or should find others, who feel the same way: a people to whom we belong, related by ties of ideals rather than blood. We all have a right to achieve a fullness of joy, to our best ability to understand and appreciate whatever that might be. That means that we should all have the right to "be" as one of the fundamentals of society. At the same time, however, I don't believe we have the right to hold others back from their pursuit of joy, from finding a place where we can stop being an outsider, but find our peace. By the same token, though, I don't believe we have the right to force people to progress, even if that's manifestly the "right thing" for them to do. Though, of course, the option to do so should be constantly presented, just in case someone's personal situation changes.
In a post-scarcity future, like that presented in The Man from Rock Bottom, this is an actual material possibility. In our world, where and when we are right now...that I don't know. I think the principle underlying the idea is sound, but the application is, as I said above, a work in continual process.
If a reader finishes The Man from Rock Bottom and asks you, “What should I actually do with this message in my own life?”, what would you tell them? What does the author of The Man from Rock Bottom believe is worth being brave for?
Review yourself without trying to lie to yourself, and honestly consider where you are and where you would like to be. Build your "center-self" on a firm foundation. Then go out and serve others.
That's very vague advice, and I know it, and I'm sorry, but it's the best I can do without actually being able to talk the matter over face-to-face. Then again, perhaps that wouldn't be a good thing, since being around someone else might lead to awkward feelings or the temptation to try and present yourself as more - or less - than what you really are.
In the story, the Man is regularly pretty down on himself, suffering quite heavily from imposter syndrome, among other difficulties and outright disorders. Yet he's still the protagonist of the story because he tries his best to assess himself as honestly as he can, and then press on with his job as he understands it regardless. Even presented with the threat of a messy demise, he focuses on the living creatures he's trying to help rather than on himself, and that's what fits him into the role.
Here's an example of what I mean, taken from Chapter 0 in the book - though as you read, please bear in mind: I suffer from thalassophobia, and most especially from a fear of sharks in deep, dark water. Which is probably why I made use of this scene to define the Man on his first appearance.
Oh, and of course the monster, black widow sharks, do come from here originally: https://thundercats.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Widow_Shark - that thing scared the bejeebers out of me as a kid!
Now, on with the show:
As he stood, the light of his lamp falling on him fully, Barika saw with a start why the animals around him had been so protective: there was a wide, half-oval tinged in darkening crimson dotted across his body from hip to shoulder, front and back. Bite marks. The mystery of how he’d survived such a bite was at least partially revealed, however, by the strange armor plates visible through the holes in the hazmat suit. They pulsed like something alive, glistening wetly, and, as she watched, extended tiny tendrils that were already hard at work sealing up the tears in the heavily faded beige-yellow of the man’s suit.
“Black widow shark,” he said by way of explanation, seeing her wide-eyed concern, then dismissing it as though such an encounter were commonplace. He had faced one of the monsters of the wasted lands, and…”
“You’re still alive,” she almost whispered.
“Yeah,” he admitted with a shrug, his helmeted head turning away, bashfully avoiding her gaze even as he sank back down, worn out. “Not much choice.”
Following the line of his softly glowing visor, Barika blinked: curled up right next to the camp light were two children, brother and sister, judging from their family resemblance. An assortment of critters were cuddled up close beside them as though in a family-friendly animated feature.
Next week I will be finishing out this three-part series, then adding a little extra from another short conversation with Jane Friedman that turned into something a bit more substantial, and an upload of a reading discussion guide for those who'd like some starters on how to talk about the book with others.
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