(no subject)

[hawkwing_lb]

Appendix to the addendum:

A wild, crazy not-a-theory: does the difference in attitude between fictions which embrace ambiguity/uncertainty and those which cleave to clear lines and certainty... perhaps reflect a tension between a (deistic?) view of an ultimately moral or accountable universe and a (agnostic?) view of an ultimately unknowable or unaccountable one?

...Okay, I shouldn't attempt to relate narrative and theme to philosophy, should I?

I'll stop now. Really.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Yes you should, else what are our brains for?

It's a nice chewy question, to which my answer is No. (First of all, I think you mean "theistic" rather than "deistic.") My version of religion is that there are answers, but we don't know them. Ineffable, and that. (Shut up, Aziraphale.)

OTOH, plenty of my coreligionists do believe in a visible, earthly dichotomy between the saved and the damned. They are, of course, wrong.

OTGH, somebody I can't remember has a theory that classical mysteries (Sayers, Christie, et al.) take place in a fundamentally knowable, nonhostile universe, whereas horror takes place in an unknowable, hostile universe. So yeah, maybe you're right at that.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

and my answer is yes.

Some people like answers. Some people admit that the questions are unanswerable.

You figure out who my sympathy is with?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I suspect I have an inkling... :)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Theistic? I guess I should concede the term: it was sloppy of me to say 'deistic' when Deism's an accepted religious subset.

But that's why I had brackets and question marks. I'm not sure if a clear distinction is justified - in fact, I'm not sure I can make clear distinctions, period. (Considering I was also using 'agnostic' sloppily, to indicate uncertainty about either the existence and/or the nature of god - and the, I suppose, moral/rational nature of the universe.) But I'm also drawn to a strong suspicion that there's at least a correlation between having a theistic view of a moral, knowable universe - or at least a non-hostile one - and the degree of no-good-answer ambiguity one tolerates in one's fictions.

It's a thing that occured to me to think about, anyway. :)

[spartezda.livejournal.com]

Strangely, I think my 'theistic view of a moral, knowable universe' actually lets me tolerate far more no-good-answer ambiguity in my reading (and not just tolerate, but really really enjoy). Because I definitely sympathize with the no-good-answers thing--there's a hella lotta questions I have that I can't answer--but there's also the underlying comfort of knowing eventually I will learn the answers (even if 'eventually' means 'post-death').

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Cool.

I wonder if I can ask you what you mean by 'more', here, though. Do you mean your outlook means you can enjoy more no-good-answer ambiguity than if you did not have this outlook? Or that you feel it gives you a leg up on enjoying no-good-answer ambiguity fiction over people who tend more to the 'ultimately unknowable/unaccountable' outlook?

(Full disclosure: I'm iffy over whether the word 'theistic' - every time I see it I do the I-don't-want-to-start-a-god-fight! reflexive twitch - belongs in the discussion over the moral/knowable nature of the universe and its correlation to ambiguity tolerances in fiction? But I put it there, 'cause moral and knowable seem to correlate to theism. Which is probably another discussion. Anyway.)

[spartezda.livejournal.com]

I meant personally, yes--knowing myself, I enjoy no-good-answer ambiguity more with this outlook than I think I would if I had the unknowable/unaccountable outlook. I can't speculate on other people's minds, which is why I'm really interested to see how others answer.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I'm an unknowable/unaccountable sort myself. No-good-answer ambiguity is the kind of fiction I engage with/enjoy it a lot more (even when it's doing its best to rip my heart out), and consider it much more a reflection of my experience of the world.

(Not to mention coming across some of the tougher ethical dilemmas in my fiction means I get a headstart on developing an argument on other forms of ethics before they come up in my life. Which, hopefully, they will not. But you know what they say about preparation.)

[katallen.livejournal.com]

Curious... because you're looking for a dichotemous(?)/non-ambiguous answer to why some people like one kind of story and some people like another... :)

In the annoying Sherri Tepper interview at SH, she divides fiction as being good story-telling (which she defines as having a happy-ending etc) as opposed to literary works (which she defines as having sad/ambigous ending and being hard to read). You can guess which ones she reads and which she scorns.

I think the limitation on what you're saying isn't that you shouldn't consider matching what kind of books people like to their personal philosophy, but that by reducing both fiction and people to only two groups, you'll end up with more outlying datapoints than concordant ones.

Or, of course, I could be being misled because people watching Farscape could be watching for the fun, puppets, and angsty romance rather than to see John-boy both adapt to his surroundings and *break* -- making exceptions not exceptions because they don't see the same story (Sherri Tepper might consider the end of Romeo & Juliet a happy one and therefore decide Shakespeare is a good storyteller) o.o

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'm not looking for an answer. I'm asking questions, and getting interesting responses, and then reframing my questions.

I don't believe in answers. Only better questions. :)

[katallen.livejournal.com]

I like answers - so much that I'm cool with there being multiple answers for any particular question. And when I run out, I redefine the question and find a few more :)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Cool. :)

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

How is it that the annoying Sheri Tepper interview makes less and less sense all the time?

[katallen.livejournal.com]

It's like an episode of certain TV series... actually stop and look at it and you enter a world of circular illogic and unreality. :)

[clarentine]

...in the sense, perhaps, that someone whose worldview is comfortable might be more open to exploring works that make them uncomfortable than will someone whose worldview is uncomfortable and who is therefore looking for comfort in their reading material?

That makes sense to me.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what makes sense. I'm asking questions to get the frames of reference to ask better questions. :)