August Hardy Super Blog
“Are you connected with yourself?”
I’m a sucker for good horror movies, movies that put you on the edge of your seat, make you think, and maybe even make you lose your lunch. The Japanese film Suicide Club does all those things, and the only thing preventing me from recommending it is the insane amount of gore. You must have a strong stomach. But beyond that, the film examines the role of the connections that make up our identities, and what happens if you become disconnected from yourself. While it works much more deeply as a critique of modern Japanese culture, it still pertains to our discussions and us. How much of our identity is “independent”? Could we exist without others, and how much should our relationships and actions define us? Does doing something change us, or simply express who we are objectively?
To quote The Hangover, “I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack.” I don’t know what it is that made me something of a loner, an introvert, but I am. Maybe it was my father’s work schedule, and his not being around for my swim meets. Maybe it was being placed in advance classes, and being ostracized by the older kids. Maybe it was being smaller than everyone else throughout middle school, or maybe it is just my nature. Regardless, deep connections are not something that I seek with regularity. I can get along fine on my own, and in many cases people simply can’t understand me; I’m different.
I’ve always sort of felt like I don’t belong, that I just can’t relate. Once in my 8th grade math class, I answered a problem faster than my teacher thought possible. I couldn’t explain to him how I arrived at the answer, but as he tested me with problem after problem I consistently blurted out the answer faster than he believed he himself could. He kept pressing, “How do you get that?” “I see them,” is all I could say. I’m far from a savant, but the way that my brain processes information, arrives at answers, is just different. I skip entire steps working out problem sets. I take convoluted and circuitous routes in the car because I think they’re faster (even if I’m disproven). It can’t be explained. One final example. My roommates like to encourage me into conversation late at night. My filter usually tucks himself in long before I do physically, and without him I usually make garbled and nonsensical statements. “Don’t stop talking,” my roommates say, “if you do you may start making sense. That wouldn’t be any fun.” In many ways I just don’t feel like I connect.
Tying this back in to the readings, I feel in some ways like Zeely. I feel like the “free spirit in any of us trying to break loose.” I feel like a tall, gawky girl who hasn’t found her counterpart in the world yet. I never thought of myself as adrift; I thought I was content. But thinking of Zeely, she was adrift in her own way. She seemed perfect, but beneath her calm exterior was a tide longing for the shore, a half looking for its whole. She was doing great, but upon introspection saw her loneliness, and hoped to save Geeder the same fate with her advice. She recognized that Geeder was “very much the way [she] was at [her] age” (95). I think Geeder explains Zeely best when she exclaims, “you are the most different person I’ve ever met” (108). But Zeely held onto her differences. She wore her robe and stood aloof of other children, children who misunderstood her certainly but also never had a chance to come to know her. So to me she was encouraging Geeder to dream, to be free, to be her self, but at the same to find someone to share it with. To add others to her wolf pack. But would that be compromising her self?
I see the same themes running in The Amber Spyglass. Will and Lyra have a certain disconnect from others. Lyra confused by her conflicting, ambivalent parents. By watching her father kill her friend Roger, her mother drugging her and a cave, the examples go on. Will had an absent father as well, and had to support himself as well as his ill mother. Maybe this is best looked at through the lens of the mulefa. Mary Malone begins to live with them, and one of her earliest observations is their dependence upon one another.
When she saw how [the net-makers] worked, not on their own but two by two, working their trunks together to tie a knot, she realized why they’d been so astonished by her hands, because of course she could tie knots on her own. At first, she felt that this gave her an advantage – she needed no one else – and then she realized how it cut her off from others. Perhaps all human beings were like that. (Spyglass, 128)
Human beings in a way are unique. We no longer need (in the sense of survival) the flashing schools that fish cling to or the rumbling herds that protect grazers. Our scientific progress has allowed us a certain amount of independence. But the simplicity and beauty of the mulefa society is unparalleled. Pullman seems to assert that scientific progress in many ways is anathema to conscious beings. The subtle knife heralds the doom of the multiverse, and coincides with other “advancements” in the different worlds. But the mulefa world didn’t experience a similar event that went counter to Dust. Maybe that shows their superiority. The simple creatures and their sense of community makes them superior because they need each other. I think of all the social, digital ties that connect us. Facebook, Twitter, e-mail unites us. Yet it simultaneously isolates us. We can’t work together or properly relate anymore. Dust ties all things together in the novel, and that is when people are complete. Doesn’t Mary reflect upon the disconnect she felt after leaving the institution of the Church? She cut herself off from community and was the worse for it until she found something else to tie her to everything, everyone.
I guess what I’ve learned through this is to not be alone. At the beginning of class I defined a spiritual journey as something personal. And it is, deeply personal. But isn’t that entirely entangled in how we relate to others, how they relate to us and how we all are tied together and change each other? During our final discussion on The Amber Spyglass, we discussed what defines us. John asserted that one’s self, his/her real identity, is independent of others. And there is truth in that. “We are what we do when no one is looking,” is a statement I take to be true. But we can’t discount what makes us that person. We are also what we do when people are looking, and when people are asking, and when they are giving and they are receiving and talking and growing and learning and hurting and helping and blessing, cursing, leaving, staying. We are what we do, and that largely involves others. If we think about helping the poor and downtrodden we aren’t generous. We become that when we start getting our hands dirty and mud upon our knees.
To conclude, I recall something I recently read on Mark 1:40-45. Here is the text:
40 Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” 41 Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” 42 As soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed. 43 And He strictly warned him and sent him away at once, 44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” 45 However, he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the matter, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city, but was outside in deserted places; and they came to Him from every direction. (NKJV)
I never considered this text in this perspective, and I wish I could find my source, but the author looked at this and points out how Jesus and the leper in a sense switch places. In those times the leper was ostracized, probably lived in a leper colony, and if he ever entered town he likely had to wear a bell so that everyone would know to stand clear. Jesus meanwhile moved freely. But following his healing, the roles reverse. Jesus can “no longer openly enter the city” because of the crowds. It is for a very different reason, but to help this leper the Son of God had to change in a way. He had to take upon himself part of his condition. Not just relationships, but even those momentary encounters can be life changing, and so much more so than anything we can do individually.
icons on the left to see existing comments.
0 General Document comments
0 Sentence and Paragraph comments
0 Image and Video comments
I really like how you are starting with a question— it makes me think about how I connect with myself, in a way preparing me to read your story like John and Dorothe prepare us for discussion through meditation.
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment
Thank you so much August, for trusting us with who you really are. I’m really honored to know you.
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment
I don’t think you need to say “Tying it back to the reading.” It’s clear that you are, so from a strutural standpoint, I think your words are more powerful if you SHOW the reader that you connected and embodied the readings without telling us that you are now drawing conclusions.
Do you want to elaborate on your rhetorical question at the end of the paragraph? You don’t seem to answer it in the next paragraph, so you may want to consider how best to place the question so it packs the most punch.
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment Hide Thread Detail
New Conversation
So glad you’re connecting with this portion of the reading — really adds to depth to your ideas.
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment
I think this is a very veyr powerful paragraph, I love what you’re doing with the actions in the series near the end — it reads really well, in my opinion. I think this is a great way to end the paper, if there’s a way to tie up your thoughts with something so personal and tying in a lesson, maybe switch with the scripture analysis (which I also think is effective!)
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment Hide Thread Detail
I will look into switching this, I think you’re definitely on to something though
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment
I think you can, like I said, readjust your paragraphs to end with a thought a little bit more personal.
I really loved this, August. Well done.
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment
General Document Comments 0
