Subject to Time

In class, we talked about how we can tell whether we are in the past, present, or future. Since there is a lag between events and the perception of those events, it would be impossible for humans to realize the present if it actually existed. Even assuming that humans had immediate perception to the world of their senses, it could still be fallacious to claim that the moment of their current perception is an objective present.

In philosophy, two common paradigms of time are designated as the A-series and B-series. The A-series is a tensed theory of time, postulating an objective past, present, and future. In this construct, tenses such as ‘was’, ‘is’, and ‘will be’ reflect an objective temporal reality. The B-series purposes that there is no definite past, present, and future. According to B-theorists, there is merely a series of events which occur earlier and later than one another. Thus, tenses in ordinary language are merely used for convenience. For example, ‘Bob used to work as a lawyer’ simplifies the meaning of ‘Bob worked as a lawyer at an earlier time then the utterance of this sentence’ in order to communicate the idea easier.

Although the competition between these theories is largely a matter of semantics, the B-series seems to be a more accurate reflection of human knowledge about time than the A-series. Although people desire to see their current consciousness as the present, there is no way to tell whether their perspective parallels anything outside of themselves. Perhaps their future selves also currently exist in a different dimension. Perhaps their earlier selves are actively living in the temporal space typically referred to as past. Without an objective view of the temporal path, it is impossible to determine whether the moment we perceive to be present is actually unique in its illumination.

Outside of the constraints of human consciousness, there may not even be a linear progression from earlier to later. Throughout history, people have imagined that earlier events contextualize current events. Could it not be the case that later events create a context for current events? Even in our analysis of other people, it is just as easy to tell where people came from as where they are going. From a perspective outside of the time scale, it may be just as relevant to analyze life backwards as forwards. Could the one-dimensional construct of time be wrong altogether? Could each time-perceiving agent manifest their own construction of time? Does time even exist? Investigating time seems to lead to more questions than answers.

Rucker's Cartesian Demon

Even with the profound escalations in human knowledge and ability Postsingular purposes, Rudy Rucker demonstrates human inability to answer certain pressing philosophical questions. By highlighting the limitations of human knowledge within the context of incredible human achievement, Rucker displays the limitless nature of investigation into metaphysical and epistemological ideas. Indeed, future technology and epiphanies may merely clarify the impossibility of answering certain questions.

Specifically, Postsingular forces the reader to question their knowledge of and access to an external world.

“What actually happened was that the Big Pig, for reasons of her own, threw Jayjay into a profoundly convincing hallucination that seemed to him, to last a full sixty years. During the six or seven hours that Thuy was gone, Jayjay lived out an entire simulated life, full of incident and emotion, the sim life ending with death by virus at the deeply hallucinated age of eighty-four” (Postsingular, 290).

Although this occurrence is specific to and contextualized within Postsingular, it has implications that intellectuals have wrestled with for ages. For example, as an underpinning to Cartesian skepticism, René Descartes purposed a similar story about a delusion caused by a demon.
"I will suppose some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment" (René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy: First Meditation).

Inevitably, the philosophical implications of doubt about external world knowledge are not unique to Postsingular or the science fiction genre in general. But by developing a story to suspend disbelief about the possibility of extended delusions, Postsingular makes the question all the more interesting. In general, science fiction postulates philosophical questions in specific, evolving, and unique stories to contextualize the concept with names, personalities, places, and emotions. By creating concrete variables to engage the concept, science fiction literature enables the reader to understand and synthesize the information more explicitly.

Through the character development of Big Pig and analysis of Jayjay’s life, Rucker is providing a name and personality to the Cartesian demon, analyzing the content of a delusional life, and investigating the emotions involved in this dilemma. Ultimately, he unravels the same epistemological dilemma: no one truly knows whether the world external to people is merely a figment of their own, or someone else’s imagination or simulation.

The Politics of Technology

Although technology could be able to potentially give people incredibly easier access to exponentially more resources and allot people incredible more universal knowledge, it may not be able to rid humanity of power hierarchies and economic inequality. For the majority of people in America and many other places in the world, basic needs have been adequately met and exceeded. Of course, without needing to worry about the amount of water, food, and shelter, people focus on the aesthetic appeal of their resources, create artifacts for psychological desire instead of biological need, and develop artificially high standards of living.
Although our current economic situation has slightly reduced the average amount of resources consumed by individuals, the wave of technology should eventually develop even more objects of psychological desire to compete over. Although we may be able to cure diseases, restore body organs and tissue, and create a virtual reality in the future, technology alone will not prevent inequality. Even in the virtual world of Postsingular, there was still a battle over scarce resources.

“Vearth had an active cash economy, with the cash standing for computational resources. You needed money to buy or rent a simulated house, to view a show, or to get new clothes. And if you paid Big Pig a certain monthly fee, your personal reality was rendered in higher resolution than was other people’s” (Postsingular, 291).

As artificial intelligence improves, it will be important to evaluate and moniter the politics of distributing new technologies. People should not allow the ruling class to horde tools of physical and social evolution.

Closed Eyes

By observing and emulating others, we interpret the proper uses of our senses at different times. Although learning from others is a valuable skill, it often leads us to take unecessary applications for granted. For example, people have learned to keep their eyes constantly open when they are awake even when they are not navigating the physical universe. While this habbit does not seem to harm people physically in any way, it may be worth our while to question this common habbit.

Perhaps we have developed so strong of associations to keeping our eyes open in our waking state and eyes closed in our sleeping state, that our bodies react negatively when we break those norms. Some people sleep with their eyes open (usually due to short or weak eyelids) and usually become irratated by dry eyes (netwellness.org). This is an obvious reason not to sleep with our eyes open.

But there does not seem to be as obvious of a consequence to staying awake with our eyes open. Because of the association with sleep, some people might feel like they would not be able to stay awake. But this could probably be overcome by practice. This may cause sleeping difficulties, since there there would be less physical differentiation between visual images during times when people want to stay awake and visual images when people want to fall asleep. But this could probably be prevented by changing the content of the visual imagery when eyes are closed to make a different type of distinction.

A benefit may be enhanced memory for information. Prominent cognitive psychology research indicates that imagery improves recall and recognition on auditory recall tasks. For example, closing ones eyes and creating visual images of words while listening to word lists increases recall of those words. Thus, closing ones eyes during a professors lecture and creating images of the professors words may help the student remember the information.

Another possible benefit would be easier access to abstract ideas. Without a physical environment to guide our perceptions and consequent ideas, people would be forced to form images from their imaginations. Since human imagination is not limited by the laws of the physical universe, this would help people think outside of the physical realm and entertain metaphorical and pataphorical ideas more easily.

Although there may be more potential defects to closing eyes when awake, these potential benefits support experimenting with the idea. While the status quo allows us to function, it may not be the best way to strive, improve, and evolve as human beings. There is really nothing to lose; one could simply open their eyes.

Dissociative Human Identity

In The Filth, Slade becomes confused about whether doppelgangers are impersonating him or he has parapersonas within himself. Although his character persevered through a unique form of brainwashing, the implications of his psychological struggle apply to ordinary human psychology.
Typically, people get scared of people who are eerily similar to them in the external world, but long to have their internal voices conform to one personality. By attempting to develop the self as a united individual, people seek to distinguish themselves from a chaotic external world. To stay sane, people squelch frequent internal dialogue from drastically different voices and perspectives.

But without conscious effort to unite our personas, emotions, and inner voices, people may not be as stable as they like to think. Perhaps the reason why were so scared of people with dissociative identity disorder is that they reveal an element of all human's psychology. While some people's identities are more separeted than others, everyone has different personalities within them and engage in internal dialogue. As I write this, I am thinking from different perspectives, drawing from different experiences, and summarizing information from multiple inner voices. In stream of consciousness, human thought is not organized or linear. In contrast, our free consciousness elicits spontaneous and random ideas and emotions. In order to transform these jumbled ideas in a thought process that represents a single mind, one initially needs to make an effort of will. Eventually this thought organization becomes second-nature and people forget how they ever created the linear network of ideas in the first place.

But even when we attempt to unify our inner voices and conform to one thought patter, can we ever truly eliminate the distinct personas inside of us? Perhaps part of the reason why we seek solidarity and kinship with other people is to learn how to improve the relationships between different personas in ourselves. As a reflection of our inner relationships, external relationships demonstrate our self-worth and likeability. By maintaining stability in our relationships with other people through family units, friendship, and other social connections, people learn how to unite their inner families, develop friendships between their different personas, and navigate their inner social world.

Just like Slade, people seek to discover a common theme within themselves to attain a single vantage point to view the world. But we should be careful not to sublimate important personas within ourselves in order to consolidate ourselves.

Changing Personas

In class, we discussed what happens to people when they enter a virtual world (such as a television show, movie, or video game) and what happens when they exit. Although we explored surrounding ideas, we never came to a satisfying answer to this question. And perhaps there is no logical or rational answer to this question.

Proposed solutions depend on philisophical perspectives of being. For a materialist, the person is not literaly transported into another realm when they are interacting with different medias. They are merely reacting to the visual and auditory rays and waves from the physical apparatus. For a dualist, a persons soul could literaly depart and exist within the story created through the medium. Since the body and soul have such a close assosiation within this metaphysical paradigm, occurances within this alterior universe could affect the persons body. For example, when a persons soul feels the weight on a characters emotion in a movie, the body could sense this burden and react through crying. An idealist might claim that a person could fully engage and exist within the virtual universe and return to their bodies later on in order to achieve physical goals.

Whatever happens, there seems to be degrees to which people are transported into the technological worlds. The senses of an imaginative person in a dark imax theatre with surround sound will be more embedded in the technological sensory world than a person in a light room surfing channels on a small, low-defintion television.

Ofcourse, the degree to which a person is transported into another world does not necessarily correalate with the complexity of the technology which creates the other universe. A good book for an avid reader can transport an individual further from their original supposed reality than a movie based off that book since reading inspires people to create their own unique mental imagery. Often, this process of translating words into pictures allows the reader to escape their physical setting to enter the author's literary world.

No matter what actually happens and to what degree, the person can never return from any encounter with an alterior universe without changing their perspective, although it could be very subtle.

Double-edged Sword

The Novel The Filth is an exaltation of repessed desires. It portrays a world in which people act considerably more on instincts than today's society and considerably less on systems of ethics. In disollution of a supergo, violent and sexual fantasies escaped the imagination of the individual and manifested themselves in the physical realm. Perhaps the novel predicts the physological, political, and relational revolutions of the future, in which secret and dark fantasies are openly sought and fulfilled. But this book is not purely a degradation or warning about a future society; it is mostly an exploration of the qualities of latent mental and emotional desires.

The contextualization of The Filth's thematic ideas in prophetic literature and related ethical and metaphorical revalations lays a framework for discussion about the graphic novel's central themes. Although unique in its combination of mediums and harsh rhetoric, The Filth expands upon a vast, evolving collection of literature and media about the opression of people.

In The Shawshank Redemption, Red (Morgan Freeman) discusses the psychological stages of life in prison. At first, he admits, people have a repulsion to the system that took away their freedom. But over time, they become accustomed to the system and cope with it. Eventually, Red intonates, people become dependent upon the prison constructs. But even without the precise confines of a secured prison in the 1950's, individuals and societies utilize artificial references, frames, and scales to embed human behavior in certain habbits, routines, and supposed duties that benefit the greater good. Likewise, we become dependent on our social contracts and conceptualization of relationships to limit certain social behaviors.

To introduce his novel Amusing ourselves to death, Neil Postman discusses the accuracy of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley's dystopia novels. In Postman's comparison of the writers prophecies, he writes, “Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think” (Foreword, vii).

Although Postman makes a credible argument for his intended purpose (to point out the recall effect in delegation of mental imagery to physical apparatuses), he assumes a mutual exclusion between two symbiotic mechanisms of oppression. Although a Big Brother is indeed not required for a society to opress itself, the government will naturally fill the void that people leave for it. Thus, pain and pleasure play comlimentary roles in opression of groups of people. By seeking pleasure purely outside a polticial realm, people force the governmental leaders to research theories, predict outcomes, and create policies and laws among a smaller groups of people. Likewise, the pain perpetuates pleasure because it uses up the majority of individuals mental energy with information that conforms to social norms within a production paradigm. As a consequence of this increased power, the leaders seek further control over other people. In order to attain sufficient information about people to implement coercive strategies, the government uses technologies to investigate private behavior.

In today's society, particularly American culture, people safeguard themselves from thinking about or contributing to important political decisions by distracting themselves with trivial information. Whether watching scripted reality television, reading about the latest happenings in the lives of Paris Hilton or Brittiny Spears, or obsessing over games where men play with different shaped balls and hit each other, society has revealed that it has an infinite appetite for triviality. As people feed their appetites, the government fills a larger and larger void, making more and more decisions, controlling more and more of the infastructure of society. Although information about local government decisions, international relations, and military activities are often open to the public, they typically choose not to learn about these subjects. For example, a survey after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and subsequent declaration of war against Iraq indicated that the majority of Americans thought that the individuals who hijacked or attempted to hijack planes were all from Iraq, even though the majority of them were from Saudi Arabia. As in Huxley's prophecy, the government did not have to hide this information from the public in order to gain support for their political agenda; the government could rest assured that people would voluntarily choose to ignore such information.

Through another allotance of society's ignorance, the government designed and implemented homeland security laws that allow private organizations to listen to phone conversations, check physical and virtual mail, and maintain intimate records on individuals private lives. Although some of these privacy statutes are being overturned, the fact that they were implemented is a sign of increased delegation to authority.

As these real world examples illustrate, pain and pleasure are both tools of our opression imposed by the government and by ourselves. As Grant Morrison intended, The Filth depicts the revelation of both of these prophecies together. Through images, dialogue, and symbols, Morrison develops a unique example of how pain and pleasure can be complimentary forms of opression.

Depicted throughout the novel in sex scenes and pornography use, The Filth exposes latent mental and emotional fantasies and desires. By indulging their biological urges constantly, people distract themselves from important poltical decisions and often delegate the rational and logic of their personal decision making to the Hand.

As a representation of self-imposed fate, the Hand acts as an internal moral code and external enforcing agent in the novel. With sophisticated technology, the Hand moniters the everyday lives of individuals and coerces them to become more efficient and productive. Through sophisticated technology, human operatives, and fear mongering, the Hand dictates the every day behavior of individuals within the society and symbolizes their self-imposed fate.

An ardent example of this is the Hands intervention with Slade's phone sex habbits. While he is watching pornography, the Hand directly calls him and asks "have you thought about reducing your teleophone bill? I notice you've been calling a lot of seedy sex lines during peak times when its more expensive"(The Filth, 66). By invading Slade's privacy to help him economize on his pleasure-seeking habbits, the Hand is inducing submission through pleasure. Although this indirectly causes strife (Slade's frustration with the invasion of privacy), the support of fulfilling desires shows how the authority is using people's biological instincts against them to repress their rational thought.

By specifically exploring the politics of sexual desire's manifestation, The Filth contributes an important dimension to the literature and media about mind control. Similar to the prophecies of Huxley and Orwell, the characters in The Filth delegate their superego to an organization that imposes fate on them. Ironically, the revolution against personal repression creates a vaccuum for an external opression. Indeed, The Filth demonstrates that pain and pleasure can symbiotically opress the masses.