Playing Into the Sterotype

William Gibson has taken the easy way out with All Tomorrow’s Parties. He has played perfectly into the stereotypical science fiction novel, which must have been simple, techno geek that he is. So, he likes technology—we could probably go so far as to say that he’s obsessed with it. So why then, is All Tomorrow’s Parties written with a obsessively pessimistic outlook on this technology that he supposedly loves and respects? If he loves technology, where does he get this dystopia of what we are going to become from? While he is playing into this stereotypical sci-fi genre, he’s taking the simple route, the one where humanity falls into chaos. When he created Rei Toei, he played on the innate desire of humanity for perfection, but in doing so, he unintentionally implied that humanity in its natural state, with its imperfections, is useless. And, while we are in pursuit of this perfection, we are destroying ourselves. Gibson isn’t challenging himself by stepping off the beaten path and finding the potential happy balance between nature and technology. We don’t need another sinister, chaotic portrayal of where the world is headed, with technology at the helm. What does it do for us, make us feel depressed when we read a very feasible scenario for our planet? That’s how I felt when I read this novel. What’s the point? Instead, lets see a scenario where there is a natural balance between the preoccupation with achieving perfection, and the appreciation of things that aren’t perfect, but are instead original and beautiful that way. Show us how to achieve that, a feasible utopia, and then I will be impressed. I don’t want an unoriginal novel, full of unoriginal, copied gadgets; I want something new, something inspiring- I want something more.

Hey Nostradamus! and the Capacity for Evil

"I believe that what separates humanity from everything else in this world - spaghetti, binder paper, deep-sea creatures, edelweiss and Mount McKinley - is that humanity alone has the capacity at any given moment to commit all possible sins" (Coupland 3).

The opening sentence of Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus! sets up an important theme: the capacity we all have for evil. Everyone has the ability to commit violence, as we see many times throughout the novel. In the school shooting, a group of students in the cafeteria kill one of the gunmen by laying a table flat on him and jumping up and down, crushing him to death. Jason, who, as Cheryl says, is generally "gentle" and "forgiving" (p.28), throws a rock at the head of one of the gunmen, killing him. Heather gets so frustrated and angry at the psychic, Allison, that she says, "I'm ready for murder" (p.184). Barb wants so badly to have a baby with Jason that, when a man in Las Vegas seems to get in the way, she murders him.

These people are not psychopaths or serial killers; they are average, "normal" people. And yet there is this darkness that comes out of them when they are pushed to the brink. As Cheryl says, "We're all equally on the brink of all sins" (p.34). We all have the potential to commit violent, savage acts at any given moment, because of the underlying darkness that exists within us all.

Coupland, however, is not saying that all of humanity is evil. We must realize that darkness is there, for otherwise we are being naive. But the fact that we all share this trait of always being just one step away from evil, this "capacity for slipping at any moment into great sin and eternal darkness" (p.33), makes us the same. It makes us equal.

This quotation from Chery sums up this topic nicely:

...the sun may burn brightly, and the faces
of children may be plump and achingly sweet,
but in the air we breathe, in the water we
drink and in the food we share, there will
always be darkness in this worl d.

(p. 42)

There will always be darkness in the world, for there will always be this darkness in us.

Is Religion Being Taken Too Literally?

Religion is a big aspect in the lives of many people. Since I was raised a Catholic, and spent nearly 13 years of my life at a Catholic school, religion is definitely a part of my life. But after reading Hey Nostradamus I realised that sometimes people take religion to literally. The view of religion is beginning to become a fundamentalist view. Once someone has this view they start to believe that only their beliefs are the correct ones and that everyone else is bound to hell. They also begin to look down upon people who are not religious. These traits are not good ones to have and they are far from religious. The effect of taking religion to this drastic literal level actually accomplishes the opposite of what is intended.

The character Reg from Hey Nostradamus is a prime example of taking religion to a negative level. Reg wants everyone around him to be religious, not only in the way they are but in the way he wants them to be. He shuns people that do not follow his ideal type of person. Therefore the only person he did not shun is his eldest son Kent, because everyone else does not fit into his ideal mold. He is unbelievably stubborn and close minded. By taking religion to his level, Reg is left alone and hated by everyone. It is not till the end of the book that he realises how wrong he is. In realising this he does not loose his sense of faith he simply develops a deeper understanding of compassion, understanding and forgiveness, which are basically aspects of religion.

Having a character like Reg helps Douglas Coupland inflict more doubt into people because it shows the audience the negative affects of a fundamentalist view. It is very important that Coupland does inflict doubt because religion is not meant to be taken that literally. Religion is ultimately a guideline on how to live our lives as good people. When taken too literally, like with Reg, the outcome is not positive. The more doubt that can be inflicted on people the less fundamentalist views there will be and the world has a potential being filled with more open minded accepting people. Yes, this does sound cheesy, but a chain effect will happen and it could possibly become the case.

Why I don't like Poetry

Poetry, I don’t get it! I don’t get it and really, I don’t think I ever will. I came to this conclusion reading select poems from Margaret Avison’s collection of poems and I’m alright with this. I’m okay with not spending my time delving into the intricacies of one person’s take on a simple yellow hydrant like in her poem “Cement Worker on a Hot Day”. In actuality, that type of poetry goes against what I think language is about. I think that language is a tool, to get meaning across to other people, not an end-point in and of itself; to marvel and confuse other people. There is a place for it in the world, like all art, but just not in my world.

I think that’s what poetry really is, art. It is language that is taken beyond its utilitarian function as a tool and gone beyond that to become its own entity, to become the end instead of the means to an end. I think that to really understand a poem one has to know who is writing it and why they’re writing it; the context. Because we don’t usually have this information readily available this makes poetry a rather inefficient way of communicating.

As long as people keep this in mind, that poetry is a form of art, we can enjoy it for what it is. If one goes too far, however, and takes it too seriously then we have lost the purpose of the art.