Religion has always been a part of my life.
My dad was a perfect example of a born-again Christian when he was a kid. He used to get into all sorts of trouble - you name it. He then was pursuing a certain young lady, and she was involved with the church so he kind of just fell into it - much like Cheryl and Jason's story in Hey Nostradamus! She only joined Youth Alive because Jason was there, but ended up being more into the group and into religion than Jason ever was.
So my dad got into it the same sort of way... and I'm glad he did. He needed something to turn to, something to hold onto, something that gave him hope. He has stuck with his beliefs throughout his whole life, even the hardest times. He never ever pulled a Reg on my sisters and I though; we've never had God crammed down our throats or drilled into our heads. He educated us as much as he could when we were young, and now he allows us to make our own decisions... which I am forever grateful for. We don't even go to church. We have before, on Easter or Christmas some years, but it's never been a huge influence. It's been there, but nothing too extreme.
My dad threw out all his non-Christian music, and didn't hang out with any non-Christian people really after that either.
I can't even imagine doing that! I can't imagine devoting that much of myself to Christianity. I wouldn't even call myself a Christian for that reason... how can I be? I've never read the bible, I don't go to church, I don't sacrifice anything for God. I can't really wrap my head around it enough to do so. I do pray once in awhile, I have donned a cross around my neck, and I do believe in God... some form of God. I sacrifice for others, I would do anything for my friends and family, but the motivation is different. Coupland's novel made me cherish my dad's lenience. Even though he is really into his religion, he allows me to choose for myself without making me feel guilty or worthless because I don't agree with him. I have the perfect amount in my life. The guidance I need at times, without some hardcore extremist forcing me to believe. I would be much less likely to believe if somebody told me to. I thank God I don't have to deal with that.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Hey Satan!
A guy I used to be best friends with grew up a Muslim. His parents were devout Muslims, and he practiced to a certain extent as well. Somewhere along the line though he started questioning and doubting his religion. He couldn't find any answers until he went to see a priest. From then on he started to believe in God and Christianity. Great! Good for him, he seemed happier, he had some sort of understanding and even a fascination with his religion instead of living in uncertainty. I was happy for him.
Pretty soon though, he got really frightened: his parents, his sister, his whole family is going to Hell. Simply put, in his new-found religion, people who don't accept Jesus as their savior go to Hell, and well, there's no Jesus in Islamic faith. In his mind, all of his loved ones were now doomed. It became a HUGE problem in his life.
We grew apart for one reason or another, but I never really thought about his situation again until after reading Hey Nostradamus! His doubt turned into a complete shift of values, which turned into a mind-blowing revelation about Heaven and Hell and the people he loves. I have never taken religion to that extreme in my mind... but then again I am not a religious extremist.
By the same logic, and from a Christian standpoint, the majority of people on Earth are already checked in for eternal damnation. That doesn't seem right. Christianty as a whole seems more and more to me like 'Youth Alive!' Members are automatically regarded as VIPs by some divine being. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Catholics - they all have their own views on the afterlife... who decides which is right and which is wrong? Why is there a wrong answer? I guess these are questions of faith, faith in one's own beliefs. How about this one: If Christianity is about love and compassion, acceptance and forgiveness, how can it damn everyone who doesn't believe in God? It's a conditional compassion. What about the people who have never heard of Jesus? What about the wars that have been fought over this and many other religions? Where does a person (or army) draw the line? I could go on and on.
Coupland has accomplished his goal: he's instilled some doubts in me. I'm not doubting my own faith however, I'm doubting faith in general. I don't have answers, just many, many more questions... but what is literature's purpose if not to raise questions? I don't think the answers even exist.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Douglas Rocks
Douglas Coupland’s book, Hey Nostradamus is one of the best books that I have ever read. The way that Coupland presents his religious theme is commendable; he can somehow show the flaws and highlight the strengths of religion at the same time. Coupland presents characters that anyone can relate to, no matter one’s background, this being a major strength of the novel.
The way the book was written, one gets a real sense that the characters have a personal relationship with their religious beliefs. The characters, in each of their respective chapters, examine and intensely reflect upon their beliefs, allowing us to experience their personal and spiritual evolutions. Each of these chapters lets us have a glimpse inside a specific character’s head showing us their doubts, fears and affirmations. This lends a reality to the characters which helps us relate to them because everyone knows what it is like to question ourselves and our beliefs.
Douglas Coupland is using his characters to control the reader’s emotions. By making his characters tap into their doubt he gets us to question our own beliefs; he’s trying to create a resonance between the reader and the characters in the book. By having each part of the book dedicated to one character and their paradigm at a time, we get to devote quite a bit of time exploring one character’s world-view. Taking a look at the world from four different perspectives increases the probability that the reader’s paradigm will be addressed. From this we follow the characters into a re-examination of their beliefs and therefore our own.
This story has made me re-examine my own way of looking at religion and its effect in people’s lives. This is a hard thing for a novel to do illustrating the skill of Douglas Coupland.
The way the book was written, one gets a real sense that the characters have a personal relationship with their religious beliefs. The characters, in each of their respective chapters, examine and intensely reflect upon their beliefs, allowing us to experience their personal and spiritual evolutions. Each of these chapters lets us have a glimpse inside a specific character’s head showing us their doubts, fears and affirmations. This lends a reality to the characters which helps us relate to them because everyone knows what it is like to question ourselves and our beliefs.
Douglas Coupland is using his characters to control the reader’s emotions. By making his characters tap into their doubt he gets us to question our own beliefs; he’s trying to create a resonance between the reader and the characters in the book. By having each part of the book dedicated to one character and their paradigm at a time, we get to devote quite a bit of time exploring one character’s world-view. Taking a look at the world from four different perspectives increases the probability that the reader’s paradigm will be addressed. From this we follow the characters into a re-examination of their beliefs and therefore our own.
This story has made me re-examine my own way of looking at religion and its effect in people’s lives. This is a hard thing for a novel to do illustrating the skill of Douglas Coupland.
An All Too Common Occurance: The Accessibility of a High School Shooting as Subject Matter
Douglas Coupland’s decision to use a high school shooting as a central idea in Hey Nostradamus! is genius. This tragic, previously foreign and shocking concept has become a cultural reference, one that is understood and recognized. Similarly, “Chick flicks” (or lit!) sprung from the likes of Pride and Prejudice, and what once must have been a little known concept has formed its own niche as a fictional genre. High school shooting is now just as familiar; Columbine has expanded into a well-known tragedy. Like “chick flicks”, where you don’t have to see the movie to know that boy meets girl, there’s a conflict, and they get together at the end, you know immediately from the mention of “high school shooting” in the novel’s description that a handful of alienated teenagers decide to get revenge and make a point by massacring their classmates. This familiarity, the way high school shootings are now globally recognized, makes Coupland’s decision to use this theme as a vessel for the messages he is trying to get across a brilliant one. Yes, it’s pretty sickening how this scenario is now internationally identified, not only itself as a whole, but its individual parts as well: estranged students, their reaction to their isolation, their destruction- but that’s what makes this topic so perfect for Coupland’s cause. He has chosen a perfect medium to appeal to the widest spectrum of people, to pique the interest of the general public, in the way that a compilation of essays with the same purpose couldn’t. By making the high school shooting a central aspect, he can almost guarantee the general public’s interest- a massacre in their own backyard? Looks interesting…
Once he’s captured interest on a large scale, he can easily get his messages across; the need for open minds, the call for reducing cynicism, and increasing doubt. By choosing a fictional high school shooting to play on reader’s emotions, and giving them something they can relate to and recognize, Coupland displays his views perfectly, and he has chosen the ideal method to do so.
Once he’s captured interest on a large scale, he can easily get his messages across; the need for open minds, the call for reducing cynicism, and increasing doubt. By choosing a fictional high school shooting to play on reader’s emotions, and giving them something they can relate to and recognize, Coupland displays his views perfectly, and he has chosen the ideal method to do so.
Technology More Harm Than Good?!
By reading All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson we get a little insight into our possible future. This made me think about whether technology is all good and beneficial. Of course we would not be able to do half the research the we do and have the amount of knowledge that we possess but it can also cause problems.
In the novel Rei Toei is created as being the perfect woman. She is stunningly beautiful and sweet. Men fall in love with her even though they know that she is unattainable. But this is the problem because although she exemplifies this perfection she is not real. She is simply a series of digital images. What good is it creating something that is so perfect that is it impossible in the real world. Being in the presence of such perfection will make everything else seem inadequate. Nothing that is real will ever been good enough. No other woman could ever live up to the same standards as Rei Toei.
What good is it having this creation when it will just make the real world more difficult. Wrapping ourselves in a digital world is not a good idea because its not real. This form of technology definitely has a negative aspect because it prevents us from living what is real because real is hard. It allows us to take an easy way out because we don't have to face the hardships that we are surrounded by.
Another harmful part of technology is presented in a 2006 movie called Idiocrasy with Luke Wilson. This movie shows the world 500 years into the future. Although the movie is quite ridiculous is shows the effects of technology on human intelligence. There are outstanding machines and programs that are invented but as a consequence no one can think for themselves. Machines can do anything and everything so there is no need to even use the brain. As obscure as this thought may sound it is not that unrealistic.
Already we are creating things that prevent us from using our full mental capacity. Things such as spell check and calculators minimize the amount of work we have to do. This technology makes things faster and simpler but i already notice that i cannot spell well and i cannot do mental math. Then again why would i even bother if i have something that can do it for me? These things are minimal but the more creative that we get with technology the less work we will have to do. Therefore the technology that William Gibson is so wrapped up in may cause end up causing us quite the amount of harm.
In the novel Rei Toei is created as being the perfect woman. She is stunningly beautiful and sweet. Men fall in love with her even though they know that she is unattainable. But this is the problem because although she exemplifies this perfection she is not real. She is simply a series of digital images. What good is it creating something that is so perfect that is it impossible in the real world. Being in the presence of such perfection will make everything else seem inadequate. Nothing that is real will ever been good enough. No other woman could ever live up to the same standards as Rei Toei.
What good is it having this creation when it will just make the real world more difficult. Wrapping ourselves in a digital world is not a good idea because its not real. This form of technology definitely has a negative aspect because it prevents us from living what is real because real is hard. It allows us to take an easy way out because we don't have to face the hardships that we are surrounded by.
Another harmful part of technology is presented in a 2006 movie called Idiocrasy with Luke Wilson. This movie shows the world 500 years into the future. Although the movie is quite ridiculous is shows the effects of technology on human intelligence. There are outstanding machines and programs that are invented but as a consequence no one can think for themselves. Machines can do anything and everything so there is no need to even use the brain. As obscure as this thought may sound it is not that unrealistic.
Already we are creating things that prevent us from using our full mental capacity. Things such as spell check and calculators minimize the amount of work we have to do. This technology makes things faster and simpler but i already notice that i cannot spell well and i cannot do mental math. Then again why would i even bother if i have something that can do it for me? These things are minimal but the more creative that we get with technology the less work we will have to do. Therefore the technology that William Gibson is so wrapped up in may cause end up causing us quite the amount of harm.
All Tomorrow's Parties: The Not-Too-Distant Future?
William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties is about a futuristic world, but one that is really not too far into the future. The new technologies described in it, the dystopic society where capitalism and consumerism have gone to the extreme, and the merging of various cultures into one are all a little foreign to us, yes, but still foreseeable. This makes the novel realistic, for it is not hard to imagine such a world.
There are numerous examples in the novel of the combining of cultures, such as "Dirty is God"(Gibson 67), the restaurant that serves Mexican food while playing Japanese music. This is simply an extension of our current "global village" idea, of bringing the world closer together. The Internet is supposed to do this; it gives us access to news and information from around the world, allows us to chat and communicate with people from distant countries, and serves as a universal database, where anyone with a set-up can access the same things as anyone else.
Ironically, what was meant to bring people closer together has in many ways alienated us further from each other. People spend hours alone in a dark room staring at a computer screen instead of interacting with "real" people. We can send e-mails instead of seeing others in person, or even instead of hearing their voice over the phone. This cold alienation is evident in Gibson's novel, in the dystopic society he depicts. The world he describes seems very detached and cold. It is a world based even more on capitalism, consumerism and technology than our world today, but it is not so far exaggerated that we cannot fathom such a place existing. The Lucky Dragon convenience stores, for example, which are the same worldwide, are only a slight exaggeration of our 7-11's and other globalized companies.
Even the major advancements in nanotechnology in the novel are not inconceivable. In last Monday's Vancouver Sun, the headline on front page article read, "Welcome to the world of nanotechnology." The story is about advancement in the science being made at a new facility in Alberta. "It's reasonable to say it's the next technological revolution," one of the physicists says in the article, adding that it could take as little as ten to forty years. This is not referring to the exact advancements Gibson describes, of course, but the idea of nanotechnology creating major changes, and soon, is evident.
It seems that Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties shows us a highly possible future. His "tomorrow" could come sooner than we think.
There are numerous examples in the novel of the combining of cultures, such as "Dirty is God"(Gibson 67), the restaurant that serves Mexican food while playing Japanese music. This is simply an extension of our current "global village" idea, of bringing the world closer together. The Internet is supposed to do this; it gives us access to news and information from around the world, allows us to chat and communicate with people from distant countries, and serves as a universal database, where anyone with a set-up can access the same things as anyone else.
Ironically, what was meant to bring people closer together has in many ways alienated us further from each other. People spend hours alone in a dark room staring at a computer screen instead of interacting with "real" people. We can send e-mails instead of seeing others in person, or even instead of hearing their voice over the phone. This cold alienation is evident in Gibson's novel, in the dystopic society he depicts. The world he describes seems very detached and cold. It is a world based even more on capitalism, consumerism and technology than our world today, but it is not so far exaggerated that we cannot fathom such a place existing. The Lucky Dragon convenience stores, for example, which are the same worldwide, are only a slight exaggeration of our 7-11's and other globalized companies.
Even the major advancements in nanotechnology in the novel are not inconceivable. In last Monday's Vancouver Sun, the headline on front page article read, "Welcome to the world of nanotechnology." The story is about advancement in the science being made at a new facility in Alberta. "It's reasonable to say it's the next technological revolution," one of the physicists says in the article, adding that it could take as little as ten to forty years. This is not referring to the exact advancements Gibson describes, of course, but the idea of nanotechnology creating major changes, and soon, is evident.
It seems that Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties shows us a highly possible future. His "tomorrow" could come sooner than we think.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
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.
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