Power and Russian Dolls

I don’t know if a matryoshka doll is a good metaphor for metaliterature. Maybe not, but metaliterature has a sort of “matryoshkan” feel to it, because its writings about writings, like a doll inside a doll.   Let’s say Invisible Cities is a three doll Matryoshka, meaning we have three levels of understanding the book. The first doll, the big doll containing the other two, is  literal understanding. We see Marcopolo telling Kublai Khan about the cities he has visited, cities are cities, Marco Polo is Marco Polo, and Kublai Khan is Kublai Khan. Then there’s a second understanding on these objects. Maybe Marco Polo represents something else, and so do Khan and the cities. In the second doll, (figurative understanding) Marcopolo is the representation of knowledge, and hence power, because his words control the actual power which is Khan. And the cities are the way to control Khan, meaning the way to power. And in the third doll now relates directly to the reader. The reader is Kublai Khan, and the writer Marco Polo. The cities are life, and what we understand in this next level, is that the world is just as the writer portrays it, meaning he has control over our world, and yet the reader was infinite power of interpretation.

“At this point Kublai Khan interrupted him or imagined interrupting him, or Marco Polo imagined himself interrupted…”

This sentence proves that the reader can never be sure of the writer’s intention and the writer can never guess what the reader will think. This is because when we read we look at the story from a vantage point

“My gaze is that of a man meditating, lost in thought--I admit it.”

Therefore, we use our memories to recreate what the writer portrays. So our relationship with the text is very private. The writer is impotent towards our interpretation, and it can never go ahead of everybody to guess what people might get out of his writing. “…the emperor wanted to follow more clearly a private train of thought; so Marco's answers and objections took their place in a discourse already proceeding on its own, in the Great Khan's head.”

Upon understanding this, the story takes an entirely different turn. We are now reading about reading. Italo Calvino was writing about writing. Inside the third matryoshka is ourselves, and now we have to figure out how the meaning of the book applies to our life. 

Zaira-Bogotá

Comparing Zaira and Bogota is quite irresistible. As soon as I read that the invisible city consists on “relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past” I thought about my own city, and how this description applies perfectly to it. My father once said Bogota is an old man. He didn’t explain any further, but with time I have come to understand this metaphor thoroughly. Much like Marco Polo’s signs and emblems, this metaphor became primordial to me when attempting to understand the city, because as said in the book “emblems,…once seen cannot be forgotten or confused.”

Therefore, Bogota is like Zaira because “the city however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the antennas of the lightning rods… every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”

We see this in the streets of Bogota, where things are ever changing, but space is absolute. The buildings on the streets, publicity and bars might have changed, just like an aging man’s skin wrinkles. However, the streets- the space- where memories locate remain. The man’s body is the streets, superficially changing, but in essence the same. In Bogotá there are few places today you can walk by and are exactly the same they were twenty-five years ago. But every street is a setting for infinite memories. “A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira’s past.” Same case applies for Bogota. Bogotá is a nostalgic old man, whose memories are distant and beautiful because he was young in them. Every citizen has a special relationship with space, and no matter how much it has changed, it can still see it as it rests in its mind. My mother, an especially nostalgic woman, has often flashbacks while driving, where she sees the streets of Bogotá as they were in her youth. This goes to proof that everyone has its own version of Bogotá. To understand this city, we must look at its past. 

Colombian Children: Mutators

The term meme is very abstract and hard to comprehend when we don’t have an actual example of it. Since nearly everything, a jingle, a word, a picture, and idea is a meme it’s hard to wrap your head around such a broad concept. I understood what a gene was, or at least that’s what I thought, and if the meme was the cultural equivalent of the gene, then I would just have to apply the same characteristics of a gene into an idea. Dawkins explains that perfectly in page 194, but only one sentence brought a tangible example to my mind of what a meme is, more precisely two.

“At first sight, it looks as if memes are not high fidelity replicators at all.” Pg.194

The first things that came to my mind where a jingle and a song that have obstinately fixed themselves in my mind for the last thirteen years or so. The first was the jingle for Colombian margarine “La Fina”, and the later the song “Quando m’Innamoro” made famous in Colombia by The Sandpipers. I thought that if these two had prevailed in the meme pool for such a long time (mid seventies to now), considering faster communication often shortens the lifespan of memes, they must be good memes. There’s only one explanation to that, and it has to do with them no being high fidelity replicators. Both the jingle and the song have not survived in my, my mother’s, father’s, family’s and friends’ mind in their original shapes. The two memes have consistently mutated over the years, but these mutations have assured their survival.

As a child of four I felt sneaky and funny when singing,

“La Fina, la más cochina,

la que se orina en la mesa y cocina.

La Fina a todos nos gusta más,

Sobre todo al perro Nicolás.”

The last part varies between that and “el perro de Tomás”. Evidently this would not be the original jingle, as no sane (or competent for that matter) publicist would advertise their product as being filthy and urinating on the table and the kitchen, much less that this was of the liking of a dog. But the change in the lyrics made the jingle more appealing, funnier. It caused endless laughter in my mother’s kindergarten peers as it did with mine. If it weren’t for this mutation, the meme wouldn’t have prevailed as easily. Ask any Colombian (or Bogotano at least) five year old, and they’ll know the children’s version (ironically more obscene than the adult version) and not the original one.

The exact same situation applies to “Quando m’Innamoro”. The survival of this meme in its original form was very improbable, for it is a song in Italian, making it hard to learn for the Spanish speaking audience. Nevertheless, the melody being apt for any pair of ears stuck on the mind of every adult, teen, and child of the early seventies in Bogota. An ingenious mind decided to adapt the lyrics to ones more attractive, per se.

The original chorus goes:

Quando m'innamoro
Io do tutto il bene
A chi è innamorato di me,
E non c'è nessuno
Che mi può cambiare,
Che mi può staccare da lui.

The meme nevertheless survived in Colombian minds as:

Cuando me enamoro

Voy al inodoro

Y hago lo que tengo que hacer.

Se abren las compuertas

Sale un submarino

Y se oye una gran explosión.

As we tend to stick with what we have learned in our childhood, and because the majority of Colombians do not speak Italian, the later is the meme that has survived in our minds.

These kinds of mutations occur all over the world and in every kind of existing meme. The former are examples of how the replication process is not exact, but that the survival of an idea is the sole justification of its existence. If it weren’t for that change, or that bit, the idea simply would not be present. 

The Gene Conspiracy

Vocabulary Chapter 3:

DNA: a molecule made of nucleotides that stores genetic information.

Longevity: a long individual life; great duration of individual life

Fecundity: the quality of being fecund ; capacity, especially in female animals, of producing young in great numbers

A gene: any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection

Allele: an alternative form of a gene (one member of a pair) that is located at a specific position on a specific chromosome. These DNA codings determine distinct traits that can be passed on from parents to offspring

Mitosis: normal division of a cell into two new cells, each one receiving a complete copy of all 46 chromosomes.

Meiosis:  a special kind of cell division, taking place only in testicles and ovaries, in which a cell with the full double set of 46 chromosomes divides to form sex cells with the single set of 23 (all the time using the human numbers for illustration).

Point Mutation:  single base substitution, is a type of mutation that causes the replacement of a single base nucleotide with another nucleotide of the genetic code.

Inversion: When a piece of chromosome detaches itself at both ends, turns head over heels, and reattaches itself in the inverted position

Cistron: a sequence of nucleotide letters lying between a START and an END symbol

Gene pool: Genes of the population in the long term.

Before reading Chapter 3 of The Selfish Gene, the reader is prone to get a wrong impression on Dawkins’ theory. One (me) might get the impression of reading a Science Fiction novel that describes a world of candid creatures who think they own their destiny. They are sure everything they think is true, and carry on arrogant lives when in fact there is a sub world of selfish genes controlling every aspect of their life, using them as mere tools to prolong their existence. The naïve creatures fight each other, care about the other, and have stupid ambitions of power and wealth, all the while genes are laughing at their own creations for their dreams of greatness, and thinking they are their own masters. However, paradox lies in all of this: although the genes repudiate the way things have turned out for their puppets, they must fight hard battles for their existence, because the presence of those creatures on earth is the only thing that assures theirs.  The novel, of course, would be titled “The Hidden Battle: Survival Machines” or something like that.

Well, as it turns out, there is no gene conspiracy in nature, no conscious microscopic beings laughing at us while keeping us alive in the pursuit of bigger ambitions. As Dawkins says, “Genes have no foresight. They do not plan ahead. Genes just are, some genes more so than others, and that is all there is to it.” (Pg.24)

Chapter 3 is full of relieving explanations for the dreamy reader, like me. Although we continue to be survival machines, this reality is no longer preoccupying or apt for a Sci-Fi novel, but rather it explains some important aspects of our existence. For example, what is the relationship between our body and our genes?

 “Genes do indirectly control the manufacture of bodies, and the influence is strictly one way: acquired characteristics are not inherited…A body is the genes' way of preserving the genes unaltered.” (Pg: 24)

also

 “The evolutionary importance of the fact that genes control embryonic development is this: it means that genes are at least partly responsible for their own survival in the future, because their survival depends on the efficiency of the bodies in which they live and which they helped to build.” (Pg. 24)

Dawkins expands on the characteristics of the genes.

"The life of any one physical DNA molecule is quite short—perhaps a matter of months, certainly not more than one lifetime. But a DNA molecule could theoretically live on in the form of copies of itself for a hundred million years." (Pg. 35)

Genetic information is therefore the only thing that matters. Information is what survives, changes, and makes every living thing on earth. We are just the physical representation of this information, their survival machine. And because “the gene is the basic unit of selfishness.” (Pg.36) and we the representations of these genes, beings are consequently selfish.

Our selfish nature is reflected on our behavior, as will be further explained in the next entry. 

A Dash of Perspective

Vocabulary Ch.2:

Stable thing: a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name.

Primeval soup: chemical conditions of the seas before the coming of life.

Replicator: molecule with the property of being able to create copies of itself.

Survival Machines: robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.

Humanity never ceases to amaze me when finding ways to put its existence in different perspectives. First they use numbers. There are 6,840,507,003 people living in this earth, theres a total of 1,740,330 existing species, imagine the number of individuals wandering around, and you, my friend are just one tiny speck of dust in the midst of eternal filthiness. Our existence is reduced even more if we talk in spatial terms. The size of our earth, our neighboring planets, "our" solar system, The Milky Way, and infinite space, represent dimensions so grand, they are hard even to imagine. Nevertheless, Richard Dawkins has proposed the most eye opening, ego diminishing way of perceiving our existence. That we are survival machines for selfish molecules looking to prolong their existence. That the preservation of these genes is "the ultimate rationale for our existence" (Pg.20) 

Well, this saves a whole lot of reflection on the purpose of life. As we and every other species in this earth is ultimately just a survival machine for replicators (genes). 

Upon understanding this and henceforward, very simple terms sum up life and history.

Where do we come from? Primeval soup.

How did things come to be the way they are? Cumulative mistakes in the replication process.

Where are we going? Wherever these mistakes take us.

I find Dawkins' selfish gene theory simultaneously baffling and comforting. Comforting because any explanation is comforting, as is Creationism, or Reincarnation, they all provide an answer. Whether true or not, is irrelevant, what is the truth anyway?  I find it baffling, because when a survival machine can acknowledge that it is a survival machine, then it has discovered the meaning of its existences, meaning it is no longer just a survival machine for selfish genes.

Let me expand. In his book, Dawkins arguments that every living creature in our planet is but a survival machine for selfish genes. As I said before, Dawkins puts our existence in a different perspective. Now I do not know if pigs, ferns, or yeast knows they are mere survival machines, but I’m going to assume they don’t. Yet humans do, and if it is true then we have come to know the reason why we exist, backed up with scientific facts!

By trying not to play God, he ends up doing just that. Because the fact that he claims to know the reason we exist, rips us of our condition of survival machines, and gives us the power to play with it.

Without wanting, (or perhaps he did) Dawkins joined the group of human beings that claimed to be a superior species. 

La Raison d'être

The reason as to why Voltaire wrote Candide is simple, he was mad. The nature of satire, as in most of literature and art, lies in feelings. Therefore, to write a work of satire shows sense and sensibility.

The fictitious component of the book consists solely on the characters, the town of Westphalia and the castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh.
The rest nevertheless is all true.

The earthquake of Lisbon in 1755

Leibniz's Monadology,

The Seven Years' War,

Prostitution,

The Inquisition,

South American Colonies,

Etc.

Voltaire felt strongly about those events. To think we live in the best of all possible worlds when thousands are dying, or starving, or raped is just senseless.

Satirical writing is a punch bag for the enraged author, if the author is blinded or not by his fury is irrelevant, because satire is not impartial; it’s supposed to express sincere, individual opinion. This book review of Candide from the year 1759, shows the reception of the book wasn’t as it is today. The reviewer concentrated on minimal details, while completely skipping the point of the book.

The little sentence that ends the book, the one about working on the garden is what ties up the entire work.

Voltaire is not an optimist, nor a pessimist; in fact when he says “but we must go and work in the garden” he is criticizing the entire notion of having a life philosophy.

The message of Candide is to work to make things work, work to keep boredom, vice, and poverty away. To work in the garden means to reject ignorance, to inquire, to use our free will for our own benefit.

Voltaire is a defender of life. But he is not naïve, and he teaches in the book to face issues because they will continue coming, regardless of what we think, regardless of what we say. 

A Moral Change

In the introduction of the latest edition of a Clock Work Orange, Anthony Burgess says:

“There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters.”

To that he adds

“When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory.”

In my readings, I have noticed this is true. Following this premise, and being that Candide is a novella, a moral change is therefore expected. Although I thought Voltaire would have made Candide stubbornly stay faithful to Pangloss’ optimistic philosophy in the act of ridiculing human obstinacy, I was proved wrong. Finally after the Dutchman’s rip off had been added to his list of disgraces, Candide says “Oh Pangloss! A scandal like this never occurred to you! But it’s the truth, and I shall have to renounce that optimism of yours in the end.” (pg. 86)

Now I know it’s too hasty to predict a moral change yet, but for the first time experience shows Candide that he has to be less naïve. Later in the same page, after Cacambo asks him what optimism is, Candide answers “It’s the passion for maintaining that all is right when all goes wrong with us.”

This reminded me of Ellie Wiesel and his book Night, where he clearly changes his mind on absolutely everything. After what he experienced, the belief of God is futile, and humanity disgusts him. This shows that experience is stronger than influence, and that there is no stance in life that can’t be proven wrong with occurrences.

A moral change in Candide would imply that Voltaire believes people can change, and so his view on life is not all that pessimistic. But if later in the book we see that Candide’s philosophy hasn’t changed at all, then we can assume he feels the same way about humanity, that there’s no possibility of rehabilitation, that we are bound to our beliefs.