Abstract:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Is the literature of the imagination then the \u201crepressed transcendental\u201d (Nelson 2001) or an act of rebellion (Le Guin, 1973\/1979)?<\/p>\n In Victoria Nelson\u2019s The Secret Life of Puppets (2001), she suggests that \u201cfantastic\u201d or grotesque imagery found in modern science fiction and fantasy literature and film is the cultural \u201csub-zeitgeist\u201d of the transcendental.<\/p>\n Wisdom is complexity understood and relationships accepted. It may be, as Nelson (2001) describes, transcendental, but fiction as art-making is not perforce spirituality or wisdom. The writers of speculative fiction push the boundaries, challenge the envelope beyond even Nelson\u2019s \u201csub-Zeitgeist\u201d (2000) explanation of the work of the fantastic, into Le Guin\u2019s acts of art that challenge assumptions.<\/p>\n What can be said is that within the realm of speculative fiction, inquiry into difficult questions often occurs, they are part of \u201cclassic\u201d science fiction and fantasy story-making. By placing speculative fiction in the context of Nelson\u2019s \u201csub-Zeitgeist\u201d of cultural gnosis, one runs up against the on-going conversation in popular society that I have titled: Art-as-Spiritual-Journey and the Path-to-Wisdom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jane Yolen on Herman Melville for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators first National New York conference in January 2000, subsequently broadcast for C-Span:<\/em><\/p>\n Or if Edgar Rice Burrows had written it? Me Ishmael, you Jane. A story about a feral child brought up by whales.<\/p>\n Or if James Joyce had written it? Ishmael. Ishmael. Yes. And Ishmael. Yes. Ishmael. Call. And yes, yes, call.<\/p>\n Or Tama Janowitz: Call me a cab, Ishy.<\/p>\n Or Isaac Asimov? Call me Ishmael-4000B.<\/p>\n Or Maurice Sendak? Ishy, once, Ishy, twice, Ishy eats fish soup with rice.<\/p>\n Or Ogden Nash: Call me fishmeal.<\/p>\n In other words, it\u2019s not the opening line itself, but what it portends and what it pretends to be about. Where it leads. Where it points; what it signifies; what it sets up. The opening sentence is the DNA of fiction, carrying all the genetic material for the story. Or as Jay Atkinson says \u201cWhen a writer opens a story, rolls down the white space and hits the first line, for better or worse, the narrative course has been fixed.\u201d (\u201cB\u201d is for Beginnings, Call Me Ishmael, para. 6)<\/p>\n The genre of what is currently known as speculative fiction covers a range of material from \u201cnear-future\u201d scenarios to fantasy fiction and, of course, science fiction.\u00a0 Such seemingly disparate story forms as the film Johnny Mnemonic<\/em> to the phantasmagorias of dark romance and gothic novels, the alternate realities of Tepper, the heroic fantasy literature of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and the science fiction world building of writers like Isaac Asimov, C. J. Cherryh, Le Guin or Poul Anderson all belong to speculative fiction.\u00a0 A large pool of material and none of it falls into the \u201cmainstream\u201d American \u201chigh art\u201d of realism.\u00a0 It remains (along with other \u201cgenre\u201d fiction) the literature of the masses \u2013 what would have once been called \u201cpenny dreadfuls\u201d, and is somewhat denigrated by \u201chigh-art\u201d critics as \u201cescapist\u201d.\u00a0 Speculative fiction is also the most extensively marketed form of creative narrative in existence.\u00a0 Fantasy, in particular, has become a commercial market of profitable, but predictable tales made for the grocery store rack.\u00a0 Le Guin (2001) says of commercialized fantasy, in an interview with Locus Magazine<\/em> in 2001:<\/p>\n Commercial fantasy?\u00a0 It fills a place that romance doesn\u2019t, because romance is so fixated on sexuality.\u00a0 …\u00a0 But a lot of romances are just emotional orgies.\u00a0 Commercial fantasy supplies the same reassurance as romance does, and a lot of the same familiar themes, but at least there is some<\/em> imagination, at least it\u2019s a slightly different world (para. 7).<\/p>\n Le Guin (2002\/2004) also describes marketing best sellers in this tongue-in-cheek manner,<\/p>\n Most best-sellers are written for readers who are willing to be passive consumers.\u00a0 The blurbs on their covers often highlight wrenching, jolting aggressive power of the text \u2013 compulsive page-turner, gut wrenching, jolting, mind-searing, heart-stopping \u2013 what is this, electroshock torture?\u00a0 (p. 230).<\/p>\n A good deal of speculative fiction is marketed to the lowest common denominator, and is hardly worth our attention.\u00a0 Le Guin (2002\/2004): \u201cFrom commercial writing of this type, and from journalism, come the how-to-write clich\u00e9s, \u2018Grab your readers with the first paragraph,\u2019 \u2018Hit them with shocker scenes,\u2019 \u201cNever give them time to breathe,\u2019 and so on\u201d (p. 230).\u00a0 Ang\u00e9lica Gorodischer (2004) suggests that fantastic fiction is not a respectable form of literature because,<\/p>\n Of course!\u00a0 Critics and academics are very prejudiced and closed minded.\u00a0 When a friend would see me with an SF book they would put on a face of disgust and ask, \u201cYou read that trash?\u201d\u00a0 Those people don\u2019t know what they\u2019re missing.\u00a0 A work is good or bad or mediocre, and that\u2019s all.\u00a0 Neither the theme of the work nor the genre in which it\u2019s written tell you anything.\u00a0 There are a lot of horrible SF stories and novels, those where the little green men with antennas appear and so, which are in fact trash.\u00a0 And then there are marvels like Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. Dick and others\u00a0 (p. 5).<\/p>\n Of more interest is the fiction of writers that take risks.\u00a0 In Victoria Nelson\u2019s The Secret Life of Puppets<\/em> (2001), she suggests that \u201cfantastic\u201d or grotesque imagery found in modern science fiction and fantasy literature and film is the cultural \u201csub-zeitgeist\u201d of the transcendental.\u00a0 Nelson (2001):<\/p>\n In the current Aristotelian age the transcendental has been forced underground, where it has found a distorted outlet outside the recognized boundaries of religious expression.\u00a0 As members of a secular society in which the cult of art has supplanted scripture and direct revelation, we turn to the works of the imagination to learn how our living desire to believe in a transcendent reality has survived outside our conscious awareness\u00a0 (p. viii).<\/p>\n Le Guin describes this genre (and her art) of literature in this way:<\/p>\n When art shows now and what, it is trivial entertainment, whether optimistic or despairing.\u00a0 When it asks why, it rises from emotional response to real statement, and to intelligent ethical choice.\u00a0 It becomes, not a passive reflection, but an act.<\/p>\n And that is when all the censors, of governments and of the marketplace, become afraid of it\u00a0 (Le Guin, 1973\/1979, p. 219).<\/p>\n Another writer, Sheri Tepper (1998) who writes from a base of social action states in a recent interview with Locus Magazine<\/em>,<\/p>\n I know there are writers who say they have no social responsibility except to write a good book, but that doesn\u2019t satisfy me<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve written all my life, but before 1983, with Planned Parenthood, I was a pamphleteer, a sermonizer, a speech-giver, a person who wagged her finger under people\u2019s chins and said, \u2018Now see here!\u2019\u00a0 (para. 8).<\/p>\n Concerning speculative fiction and escapism, Tepper (1998) says,<\/p>\n To me, fantasy has always been the genre of escape, science fiction the genre of ideas.\u00a0 So if you can escape and have a little idea as well, maybe you have some kind of a cross-breed between the two (para. 4).<\/p>\n In Tepper\u2019s novels, one encounters a mix of fantasy, and themes worthy of the \u201cgolden age\u201d: the early to mid 20th<\/sup> century writers when almost all science fiction was written from a technological \u201cgee-whiz\u201d engineering view that overshadowed plot and story.\u00a0 Tepper (1998) describes her art this way,<\/p>\n The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers.\u00a0 I have always<\/em> lived in a world in which I\u2019m just a spot in history.\u00a0 My life is not the<\/em> important point.\u00a0 I\u2019m just part of the continuum, and that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing.\u00a0 The history of life, and the history of the planet, should go on and on and on and on.\u00a0 I cannot conceive of anything in the universe that has more meaning than that (para. 9).<\/p>\n Is the literature of the imagination then the \u201crepressed transcendental\u201d (Nelson 2001) or an act of rebellion (Le Guin, 1973\/1979)?\u00a0 For consideration, Le Guin (2004) provides this insight,<\/p>\n So it may be that the central ethical dilemma of our age, the use or nonuse of annihilating power, was posed most cogently in fictional terms by the purest of fantasists.\u00a0 Tolkien began The Lord of the Rings<\/em> in 1937 and finished it about ten years later.\u00a0 During those years, Frodo withheld his hand from the Ring of Power, but the nations did not (p. 44).<\/p>\n Another science fiction writer, Andy Duncan (2001), from a different generation and temperament says of his art,<\/p>\n There is a great, almost mystical, yearning on our part for a Singularity to come around, but I don\u2019t foresee it happening.\u00a0 All these innovations, all these new things we\u2019re going to be implementing, are going to be implemented by the same old human beings that have been designing and implementing them all along, for good and for ill.\u00a0 I agree with Connie Willis and Orson Scott Card \u2013 he says, in a thousand years it\u2019s not like we\u2019ve discovered any new ways to be happy, enthusiastic, new ways to be cruel, new ways to be selfish, unconcerned about our fellow human beings (para. 5).<\/p>\n Returning to Tolkien (1966), he likens fantasy to the enchantment of \u201cFa\u00ebrie\u201d,<\/p>\n \u2026 we may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into the belly of the cold worm.\u00a0 But in such \u201cfantasy,\u201d as it is called, new form is made; Fa\u00ebrie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator (p. 49).<\/p>\n The jury will be out on the question of the nature, respectability and heart of speculative fiction for many more years and I do not hope to answer it here and now.\u00a0 What can be said is that within the realm of speculative fiction, inquiry into difficult questions often occur, they are part of \u201cclassic\u201d science fiction and fantasy story-making: questions concerning evil and goodness (Stoker, Lee, Rice) other worlds (Tolkien, McIntyre, Bradley), the other: the stranger (Heinlien, Vonnegut, Saberhagen), the nature of being (Shelly, Dunsany, Marquez) theology and the transcendental (Sturgeon, Paxon, Lewis, Herbert) the questions of mind and identity (Lem, Asimov, Silverberg, Dick), and those of race, gender, freedom and slavery Maybe it\u2019s so \u2013 this rebellion, I mean.\u00a0 I hope so because rebellions in our field are very healthy.\u00a0 But I think that fantasy is inserted in our cells, in the double helix. \u00a0\u00a0Sometimes it works and there appear works of pure, magnificent fantasy.\u00a0 Other times authors try to tame her and don\u2019t let her come out, but she\u2019s always there and she ends up doing what she wants.\u00a0 Not for nothing do they call her \u201cla loca de la casa\u201d (\u201cthe madwoman in the attic\u201d) (para. 7).<\/p>\n Gorodischer\u2019s (2004) prose in the style of urban storytelling tradition is evocative and musical to the ears, \u201cNow that the good winds are blowing, now that we\u2019re done with days of anxiety and nights of terror\u2026\u201d (p. 1).\u00a0 She creates her world of Kalpa, writing in a manner that easily falls with in the story-making tradition Tolkien wrote about when he said that fantasy, \u201cUncorrupted, it does not seek delusion nor bewitchment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves\u201d (p. 74).<\/p>\n Octavia Butler (2000), a science fiction writer of some note, makes this statement about her art, something I believe all the writers here quoted would agree upon, be they writing fantasy, science fiction or within another genre of speculative fiction,<\/p>\n That\u2019s what I want to write about: when you are aware<\/em> of what it means to be an adult and what choices you have to make, the fact that maybe you\u2019re afraid, but you still have to act (para. 5).<\/p>\n It does seem that one cannot have a discussion concerning art without coming to the question of spirituality (re: Nelson) and, perhaps, of wisdom.\u00a0 The literature of the fantastic seems, more than the \u201cmainstream\u201d genres of realism, to lend itself to this spiritual speculation upon the process of creative work and its product.\u00a0 Although one can make a case for the Grail stories of Eisenbach and Troyes in the troubadour era, the more relevant connection has its historic roots in the Romantic Era and the rise of the literature of the \u201cgrotesque\u201d in the gothic novel.\u00a0 This movement was a popular counter against the growing popularity of the Aristotelian view against \u201csuperstition\u201d in the rise of science in Western culture.\u00a0 Again, Nelson:<\/p>\n The Renaissance offered, like Late Antiquity, a rare moment of dueling equals, but on the heels of its attendant separation of reason and imagination (initiated by thinkers like Francis Bacon), episteme<\/em> won out.\u00a0 The subsequent rise of empirical science and the pigeonholing of intellectual disciplines during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would displace gnosis<\/em> from its role as the prism of truth through which to view the entire cosmos into merely one of many fictive prisms of imagination within the realm of art (p. 28).<\/p>\n Within this \u201csub-Zeitgeist of half acknowledged Platonic assumptions\u201d says Nelson (p. 29) lays the literature of the imagination, that of speculative fiction.\u00a0 As such, it may become a container for the exploration of philosophy and ideas in a manner that realism in the mainstream of American \u201chigh art\u201d literature cannot.\u00a0 It is somewhat ironic that the work of the \u201cfantastic\u201d, in Europe, unlike this side of the Atlantic, is acknowledged as a part of\u00a0 \u201chigh-art\u201d of literature in the works of Stansilov Lem, C. S. Lewis, and others, whose model was the Romantic Era\u2019s storytelling mode: the \u201cthird world of the marvelous, born in the Renaissance and revived during the Romantic Era as an aesthetic revolt against the eighteenth century\u2019s rising Aristolelianism\u201d (Nelson, 2001, p. 75).\u00a0 Peter S. Alterman in his 1979 essay \u201cUrsula K. Le Guin: Damsel with a Dulcimer\u201d has this further insight:<\/p>\n Science fiction and English Romanticism are both children of the Industrial revolution.\u00a0 The eighteenth century that saw the rise of the factory also saw the retreat of Christianity in the face of the onslaught by scientific rationalism; among the causalities of this \u201cwar\u201d was a complacent definition of man (p. 64).<\/p>\n While Locke defined the tabla rasa<\/em> the writers of the Romantic Movement\u00a0 \u201cjoined the colloquy, especially with Wordsworth\u2019s Prelude<\/em>, Coleridge\u2019s theories of imagination, and Blake\u2019s mythic theories of mental creation\u201d (Alterman, 1979, p. 64) to discourse on the nature of humanity.\u00a0 Romantic Era writers delved ever deeper into the dreaming grotto of myth and Mary Shelly \u201cwrote the first novel to define physical man in light of the new scientific and then-popular philosophical-psychological theories\u201d (Alterman, 1979, p. 64) and invented the science fiction novel. 1<\/sup><\/p>\n By placing speculative fiction in the context of Nelson\u2019s \u201csub-Zeitgeist\u201d of cultural gnosis, one runs up against the on-going conversation in popular society that I have titled: Art-as-Spiritual-Journey and the Path-to-Wisdom.<\/p>\n Painting and sculpture use the language of line, color, form, and perspective; while the fiber arts and fabric design use the tactile senses.\u00a0 While these are not spoken<\/em> languages such as poetry or literature use, they also are not purely intuitive or unspoken like that achieved in dreams or meditations. 2<\/sup>\u00a0 The idea I want to express here may be best described as this: the language of the mind operates on many levels, some are unspoken, some in languages like mathematics, music or English, and others in ways that cannot be spoken adequately.<\/p>\n The ancient world of the Mediterranean celebrated a mystery ritual each year during the month now called February at Eleusis.\u00a0 This was a very famous event celebrated for hundreds of years.\u00a0 There were ritual events and actions that the mystae <\/em>\u2013 initiates \u2013 could not speak of under penalty of death.\u00a0 These were the lessor mysteries, there were no laws concerning the greater mysteries because the initiate had no words with which to speak of them.\u00a0 (Mylonas, 1961)\u00a0 This is more than knowledge or even what has been called intuitive knowledge, it is wisdom.\u00a0 Maturana and Bunnell (1997) in their essay \u201cWhat is Wisdom?\u201d describe this aspect of human experience as:<\/p>\n Human wisdom is lived as a coherence between thought, feeling, and awareness of human action in the cosmos; it is innocent and effortless.\u00a0 Human wisdom happens in our animal living, in our participation in the wisdom of nature, and is not a human construct (p. 3).<\/p>\n We experience this in dreams, imaginings, in trance journeys, and in the practices of contemplation and ritual.\u00a0 We also experience wisdom in everyday life as a coherence between the multiple dimensionalities of\u00a0 \u201csystemic coherences\u201d (Maturana & Bunnell, 1997).\u00a0 Seemingly integral to the human experience, the idea of wisdom is such an intriguing part of inquiry in science and art that it has been discussed by several philosophers.\u00a0 Joseph Meeker, in his paper, Wisdom and Wilderness<\/em> (1981) states,<\/p>\n Wisdom is a state of the human mind characterized by profound understanding and deep insight.\u00a0 It is often, but not necessarily, accompanied by extensive formal knowledge.\u00a0 Unschooled people can acquire wisdom, and wise people can be found among carpenters, fishermen, or housewives.\u00a0 Wherever it exists, wisdom shows itself as a perception of the relativity and relationships among things.\u00a0 It is an awareness of wholeness that does not lose sight of particularity or concreteness, or of the intricacies of interrelationships.\u00a0 It is where left and right brain come together in a union of logic and poetry and sensation, and where self-awareness is no longer at odds with awareness of the otherness of the world.\u00a0 Wisdom cannot be confined to a specialized field, nor is it an academic discipline; it is the consciousness of wholeness and integrity that transcends both.\u00a0 Wisdom is complexity understood and relationships accepted (p. 1).<\/p>\n I would conclude from this brief reading that wisdom is a kind of knowledge that originates in encounter and \u2013 from knowledge of a place or thing \u2013 emerges from within an individuals\u2019 deeply felt experience.\u00a0 The work of Russian poet, Maria Volchenko (2003), may serve as an example of how a writer may use the unspoken<\/em> language of dreams and the unconscious to awaken pathways and inquire into a deeply felt experience, then find words<\/em> to express the insights gained:<\/p>\n LEAVING<\/p>\n From the Earth I weave<\/p>\n Through the downy leaves<\/p>\n Seeping into the night<\/p>\n Drafting, evoking<\/p>\n The image of smoking<\/p>\n I take flight<\/p>\n Putting off my shell so frail<\/p>\n Breaking the points of my trai<\/p>\n Behind I perceive<\/p>\n Someone left in pain<\/p>\n Imploring me, saying<\/p>\n Don\u2019t leave!\u00a0 (p. 1)<\/p>\n Is this, then, wisdom?\u00a0 No, wisdom is something more.\u00a0 Maturana and Bunnell (1997) suggest that:<\/p>\n We recognize a wise man or woman because their actions reveal both comprehension and knowledge.\u00a0 This happens in an awareness of relations that is only possible through accepting the legitimacy of emotions for the comprehension of the relational space that they live in every moment.\u00a0 And this is possible because the wise woman or man move in a poetic look which captures systemic coherences, and in their respect for emotions they see the emotions which are in every instance the fundament for human existence, and thus they can use their knowledge and comprehension in a manner that is adequate for the conservation of social living as part of the biosphere, community or cosmos.\u00a0 Thus, the wise man or woman clearly sees the fundaments of local behavior, and does not live in lies.\u00a0 And with such people human social living participates in the systemic dynamics of all existence in a manner which conserves well-being in a harmony among cultural, biological and cosmic domains – without ideologies, without religious truths, and without sentimentalities (pp. 8-9).<\/p>\n Fienstein and Krippner (1988, 1998) discuss \u201cliving mythically\u201d (1988) and using myth as \u201cmodel by which human beings code and organize their perceptions, feelings, thoughts and actions\u201d (p. 2).\u00a0 This is echoed in Starhawk\u2019s (1987) exploration of power and mystery, Truth or Dare,<\/em> when she says,<\/p>\n Mystery is what is wild in us, what is never predictable or safe.\u00a0 Older and deeper than domination and control, it is the immanent value of the beating heart, blood, breath, survival, life (p. 231).<\/p>\n Wisdom incorporates all the ways we encounter life and the things we keep in our lives that make them meaningful.\u00a0 We share our songs, our ambitions, our meditations and contemplations; we tell our stories, the personal, cultural and the fictional ones:<\/p>\n Myth, story, dream and laughter are the other roads that can take us to the enclosed chamber where the mysteries can be viewed.\u00a0 \u2026\u00a0 Mystery itself is what is common to us all: the pattern, the cycles of time, the body, the sense of place\u00a0 (Starhawk, 1987, p. 241).<\/p>\n It is no accident that these are also the favorite themes of the writers discussed within these pages, or that the works of power (as described by DeQuincey, 1848) are the works that explore the mystery and the depth of human experience.\u00a0 Meeker (1981) points out that \u201cWisdom cannot be confined to a specialized field, nor is it an academic discipline; it is the consciousness of wholeness and integrity that transcends both.\u00a0 Wisdom is complexity understood and relationships accepted\u201d\u00a0 (p. 1) and the other writers here quoted discuss wisdom as the mystery, the knowing of our animal nature, the\u00a0 \u201cAnd with such people human social living participates in the systemic dynamics of all existence in a manner which conserves well-being in a harmony among cultural, biological and cosmic domains – without ideologies, without religious truths, and without sentimentalities\u201d\u00a0 (Maturana & Bunnell, 1997 pp. 8-9).\u00a0 It is viewing the world, indeed, through the Dragon\u2019s Eye.\u00a0 The fiction writer may write with this view, the \u201cpoetic look\u201d, without ideology or sentimentality that would place his or her story-making into the realm of polemic or titillation (as all too often occurs), however, he or she must also write through knowledge gained and funneled through imagination.\u00a0 It may be, as Nelson (2001) describes, transcendental, but fiction as art-making is not perforce<\/em> spirituality or wisdom.<\/p>\n If the literature of imagination can be thought of as a co-creative act of mythmaking, particularly when a book achieves the popularity of a Tolkien, then its significance to our collective culture creating can be viewed though a very different lens.\u00a0 The literature of the imagination becomes, not merely \u201cescapist\u201d but a conversation between not only writers and their critics, but also with the reader.\u00a0 Le Guin (2002\/2004) speaks of a contract between writer and reader based upon trust:<\/p>\n A story is a collaboration between teller and audience, writer and reader.\u00a0 Fiction is not only illusion, but collusion.<\/p>\n Without a reader there\u2019s no story.\u00a0 No matter how well written, if it isn\u2019t read it doesn\u2019t exist as a story.\u00a0 The reader makes it happen just as much as the writer does (p. 230).<\/p>\n Within this lens of \u201ccollusion\u201d between writer and reader in speculative fiction one can find the experimentation with life choices, social criticism (often, of the highest order), exploration of the darkest fears and the brightest hopes of our time and place.\u00a0 Just as Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em> can be interpreted as a darkly erotic exploration of both repressed sexuality and the image of the (then epidemic) \u201cwasting disease\u201d (tuberculosis), so can Tolkien be viewed through the lens of \u201clooking back\u201d to an age prior to the ills of mechanized warfare that the author was (personally) confronted with in his lifetime.\u00a0 That Tolkien\u2019s Lord of the Rings <\/em>trilogy, with its vision of a world heartbreaking in its beauty, endangered by an overarching evil, and filled with a sad, nostalgic longing for a greater, more noble past, has influenced an entire generation is certainly a fact with no detractors today.<\/p>\n One final word on fantasy in narrative, again from Tolkien.\u00a0 Fantasy, says Tolkien (1966), is not to be confused with dreams (p. 41).\u00a0 Fantasy in literature comes from the story-telling tradition of fairy-stories, of folk tales and myth.\u00a0 It also is not \u201cagainst reason\u201d, on the contrary (Tolkien, 1966),<\/p>\n Fantasy is a natural human activity.\u00a0 It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of scientific inquiry.\u00a0 On the contrary.\u00a0 The keener and clearer is the reason, the better the fantasy it will make.\u00a0 If men were ever in a state which they would mot want to know or could not perceive the truth (facts or evidence) then Fantasy would languish until they were cured.\u00a0 It they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion (p. 75).<\/p>\n To place wisdom (and the search), and speculative literature within the context of inquiry, let us begin the discussion with Booth and Kennedy (2000) in their description of an attempt to include experiential learning, and the journey toward wisdom in their classroom:<\/p>\n Figure 1: Booth & Kennedy\u2019s \u201cLearning Journey\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The triangle below demonstrates the importance of all the three sides existing together in order to achieve the goal of meaningful learning.\u00a0 However, if one or more sides are missing, there is an increase in the student\u2019s inability to acquire meaningful learning.<\/p>\n The students\u2019 inability to transfer their acquired knowledge into wisdom and be able to demonstrate the transfer of learning, is caused by either one or more sides of the triangle that is\/are missing in relation to their goal to acquire meaningful learning\u00a0 (pp. 3-4).<\/p>\n This begins to look like a fairly textbook example for a practicum in classroom techniques along the \u201cline of learning\u201d from knowledge to wisdom (Booth & Kennedy, 2000, p. 3); but, is the journey so clearly exemplified?\u00a0 Or, is wisdom something more systemic as Bunnell and Maturana (2001) suggest? In daily life wisdom happens when one lives in the emotion of love that enables both knowledge and comprehension so that all actions and reflections arise in harmony with the coherences of the systemic medium in which one lives.<\/p>\n Comprehension happens in open reflection as one sees the local situation as participant of the systemic relations that constitute the world (cosmos, biosphere, culture) to which it pertains.\u00a0 This is a systemic look which grasps multidimensional configurations in multiple domains in an analogical manner.\u00a0 Knowledge, or at least that which we refer to as knowledge in this culture is different.\u00a0 Knowledge happens through a look that grasps the local linear coherences of any particular domain without implicating any systemic connections with other domains.\u00a0 Thus knowledge is always proper to the domain in which it happens, and it pertains to recognizing causal relations.<\/p>\n Comprehension and knowledge are thus both looks that grasp configurations of relationships; comprehension in a systemic view and knowledge in a local linear view.\u00a0 Both can only happen in a way of looking which accepts the legitimacy of what is seen, that is in a look of love.\u00a0 Any other emotion obscures vision, restricts intelligence, and one is unwittingly restricted to ones own prejudices (p. 7).<\/p>\n Bunnell and Maturana call this \u201csystemic thinking\u201d, and further describe systemic thinking as the \u201cpoetic look\u201d.\u00a0 The \u201clook\u201d that goes deeper, sees the world in a manner reflective of viewing \u2013 and experiencing \u2013 the systemic relations that constitute the world beyond the causal relationships that have created \u201ccausal linear thinking\u201d (p. 7).<\/p>\n In causal linear thinking one sees the regularities in closely connected processes.\u00a0 In focusing on a local look, one notices how the flow of changes necessarily results from the structural properties of the elements, and thus the notion of causality emerges.\u00a0 If a certain perturbation touches a particular structure, that structure becomes modified in a particular manner – thus A causes B.\u00a0 It is this kind of thinking that has enabled us to obtain many of the effects we desire, and it is in this kind of thinking that we have invented procedures, tools, and technologies.\u00a0 Linear logical thinking with the notion of causality enables us to engage in effective local action.<\/p>\n In our culture we are trained to focus on causality.\u00a0 Causality can always be found in a local situation, and irregularities can always be externalized – as random effects, or outside influences, or changed conditions.\u00a0 In effect we cannot prevent our own grasping of systemic connections, but we can rationalize them.\u00a0 An observer who lives immersed in the local linear rationality will treat those analogic systemic relationships that he or she grasps in an unconscious poetic look as if they too corresponded to linear logic.\u00a0 That is, if one believes all thinking is causal, then all that one has grasped must be given a causal rationale.\u00a0 In linear causal logic we are trained to look for \u201cthe reason\u201d for any circumstance we do not like, for any unhappiness or conflict, so that we may change that.\u00a0 Thus in this logic anything irregular or undesired is a \u201cproblem\u201d implying a \u201csolution\u201d\u00a0 (p. 7).<\/p>\n One may infer that in the marketplace of ideas, the literature of explanation, and by extension, that of journalistic \u201crealism\u201d in American literature is the result of causal, linear approaches.\u00a0 A problem is presented in Ch. 1 and with a certain regularity of plot and device, explained, then expiated by Ch. 10.\u00a0 All that follows is then denouement.<\/em>\u00a0 As Nelson (2001) suggests,<\/p>\n For a broader view, it is important to look at how the displaced longing for the transcendental functions in the larger framework of a mercantile society like ours, which values art primarily when it manages to achieve the status of economic commodity \u2026 This is a subject on which Walter Benjamin had something worthwhile to say: that the Patron to who twentieth century artists must make flattering obeisance is the middle class.\u00a0 Paradoxically, in literature this obeisance is also (and especially) performed by works of fiction depicting poverty, violence, exotic cultures, and the like, all of which serve as Object to the Patron\u2019s Subject.\u00a0 \u2026\u00a0 Here is your mirror, and there is your shadow; both images serve the consumer\u2019s needs (p. 84).<\/p>\n In the literature of the imagination, the unexpected happens, the ideas and dreamscapes of alternate reality ebb and flow in ways that temp one to play with different ways of thinking.\u00a0 The writers of speculative fiction push the boundaries, challenge the envelope beyond even Nelson\u2019s \u201csub-Zeitgeist\u201d (2000) explanation of the work of the fantastic, into Le Guin\u2019s acts of art that challenge assumptions.\u00a0 When we approach story-making in this way, we can agree with Le Guin (2004) when she says, \u201cit is possible to believe that our narrative fiction has for years been growing, slowly, vaguely, massively, not in the direction of fad and fashion but as a deep current, in one direction \u2013 towards rejoining the \u2018ocean of story,\u2019 fantasy\u201d (p. 43).\u00a0 When literature is commodified, marketed fantasy \u2013 speculative fiction\u00a0 \u2013 or realism \u2013 it takes no risks, it lacks the quality of De Quincey\u2019s literature of power and it becomes counterfeit.\u00a0 Reasonably literate humans can, and do recognize the difference.\u00a0 Samuel R. Delany (1979\/1996), in his essay \u201cScience Fiction and \u2018Literature\u2019 \u2013 or, The Conscience of the King\u201d said, \u201c\u2026 the only defense of anything is first to separate out what\u2019s definitely bad; when something doesn\u2019t work and leads nowhere\u201d (p. 443).<\/p>\n To look again at an example of music, I would like to refer to a paper by Thethys Carpenter and Brian D. Josephson\u00a0 (1992) called Music and Mind — A Theory of Aesthetic Dynamics.\u00a0 <\/em>In this paper, the authors maintain that music is a bit of a mystery, a mystery that has been approached by several different authors with differing points of view.\u00a0 The main point being that although we can make music by a set of rules encoded into a computer program \u2013 rules which are perfectly good ones in use by composers all the time, the electronic results lack that quality which makes for, in the words of the authors, \u201cwhile in some sense sounding like music, lacks, to an experienced listener, the quality of real music\u201d (Carpenter & Josephson, 1992, p. 2).\u00a0 Again, in the words of Carpenter and Josephson, \u201cWe are faced, then, with the existence of a phenomenon that is apparently at once very arbitrary (the latter in the sense of there being no clear reason for the observed specificity)\u201d (1992, p. 2).\u00a0 In other words, we know good music when we hear it, based upon our experience of music; and, we also know counterfeit based upon that same experience\u00a0 (see diagram below, \u201creal music\u201d a Dadaist counterfeit).<\/p>\n Music is a highly structured and complex language, one that may or may not incorporate human spoken language (as in opera or popular song), and is an ancient form of human communication.\u00a0 We also know story-making when it is real, when it describes and explores our universal experience of being human.\u00a0 Speculative fiction can, and does, create story from this deep experience of humanness.\u00a0 We can separate the real from the counterfeit, we know it when we see it, read it, hear it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Figure 2: Music and Counterfeit.<\/p>\n Reflection: \u201cfunding\u201d and the \u201ctruth\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The relationship between \u201cfunding\u201d and the \u201ctruth\u201d keeps popping up in this discussion; I wonder to what extent this permeates all of our efforts, at least in the Western cultures.\u00a0 It would be interesting to speculate on what alternative schemas might be like.\u00a0 Is it possible to frame this question as:<\/p>\n a) Establish a relationship (positive or negative) between \u201cfunding\u201d and \u201ccreativity\u201d, or perhaps \u201ctruth\u201d and \u201ccreativity\u201d.<\/p>\n b) Truth, as the oft misquoted adage coined by Keats goes, may be beauty, but in Western culture, it also seems to require the \u201cfilthy lucre\u201d to obtain.<\/p>\n c) If an alternative schema to this seeming impasse were to be formulated, how would the world of the artist or researcher be re-structured?<\/p>\n This reflection would seem, then, to point to future studies in questions of teleology.\u00a0 Although, a partial answer may be found toward the end of the dissertation, it will\u2013 by necessity \u2013 remain partial \u2013 for now<\/em>.<\/p>\n Herein, asking this question of how art became a commodity, may shed some light into three questions germane to this study:<\/p>\n a) How and where did this state of affaires begin?<\/p>\n b) And, perhaps, more importantly, what is meant by \u201cliterature\u201d itself \u2013 leading to:<\/p>\n c) The emergence of the key idea of \u201cauthorship\u201d itself \u2013 a idea that may seem obvious to us, in the 21st<\/sup> century, but was not the case only a short time ago.<\/p>\n This last concept, that of authorship itself<\/em> is, I believe, an important key in the understanding of this discussion, and a cornerstone in the idea of aesthetic inquiry.<\/p>\n The Story Woman laughed and said, \u201cTreasure is where you find it.\u201d\u00a0 The dragon had buried his hoard long ago.\u00a0 (What was the true treasure the dragon guarded so fiercely?)\u00a0 \u201cWell,\u201d says the Story Woman, \u201cDo you think you could find out by a simple question?”<\/p>\n The dragon snorted, and sent a cloud of sulphurous gas into the cavern \u2026 \u201cThe heroes were tasty.\u201d he mused, ungraciously, \u201cI miss them.\u00a0 Especially the royal ones.\u00a0 Nothing like an aristocrat with a jolt of prideful audacity and a pinch of arrogant cruelty to season the bones.\u00a0 Chase it with noblenesse<\/em> and you\u2019ve got a meal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s get on with this story,\u201d said the Story Woman, her stomach turning a little.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t really miss the aristocrats much and the metal-clad clanking heroes least of all \u2013 except as grist for another story.\u00a0 Still, eating them might be going too far\u2026\u00a0 \u201cWhat about all of those princesses and damosels<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I never<\/em> ate any of those!\u201d the dragon reared up, offended, \u201cI tried to educate them!\u00a0 But, then just as one started getting interesting<\/em> a damned hero would come clanking along, waving a sword, or a lance, and later, a bazooka or two\u2014well, what was a dragon to do<\/em>?\u00a0 It was self-preservation!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd, see where it got you!\u201d\u00a0 The Story Woman retorted, gesturing to the chains.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, that\u2019s not the whole story \u2013 now be quiet little human, if you want the rest!\u201d<\/p>\n The Story Woman sighed, \u201cvery well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid you think it would be short<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References <\/strong><\/p>\n Booth, C., & Kennedy, B. (2000).\u00a0 Are academics teachers or learners?\u00a0 The new academics as learner not teacher.\u00a0 Melbourne, Australia.\u00a0 R.M.I.T. School of Management.\u00a0 Retrieved May 10, 2003 from http:\/\/216.239.57.100\/search?q=cache:SR6kSrgIDagJ:www.alarpm.org.au\/wc5%269\/str_pp.html+Chris+Booth+%26+Beverley+Kennedy+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8<\/p>\n Gorodischer, A. (1983\/2003).\u00a0 Kalpa Imperial: The greatest empire that never was.<\/em>\u00a0 (U. K. Le Guin, Trans.).\u00a0 Northampton, MA: Small Beer Press.<\/p>\n Carpenter, T. & Josephson, B. (1992).\u00a0 Music and mind; A theory of aesthetic dynamics. In Proceedings of the Conference \u201cSelf-Organization as a Paradigm in Science.\u201d\u00a0 Kaieralautern, Germany.<\/p>\n Le Guin, U. K. (2001).\u00a0 Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin: A return to Earthsea.\u00a0 In Locus magazine, locus on-line September 2001.<\/em>\u00a0 Retrieved June 32, 2004 from http:\/\/www.locusmag.com\/2001\/Issue09\/LeGuin.html<\/p>\n Le Guin, U. K. (2002\/2004).\u00a0 A matter of trust.\u00a0 In The wave in the mind: Talks and essays on the writer, the reader, and the imagination<\/em> (pp. 223-234).\u00a0 Boston, MA: Shambala.<\/p>\n Maturana, H. R., & Bunnell, P. (1997).\u00a0 <\/strong>What is wisdom?\u00a0 Unpublished manuscript.<\/p>\n Maturana, H. R., & Bunnell, P. (2001).\u00a0 Reflection, responsibility and freedom; We are not robots.\u00a0 Learning Organizations: ISTC Journal on Systemic Management and Organization,<\/em> 1(2), 1-8.<\/p>\n Nelson, V. (2001).\u00a0 The secret life of puppets.<\/em>\u00a0 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.<\/p>\n Perilli, C. (2001).\u00a0 Sobre el poder de devastor y la violencia irracional.\u00a0 Tucuman, La gaceta<\/em>, 16 de dicembre 2001.\u00a0 Retrieved June 22, 2004 from http:\/\/www.gorodischer.com.ar\/translated<\/p>\n Starhawk, (1987). Truth or dare: Encounters with power, authority, and mystery. <\/em>\u00a0San Francisco: Harper & Row.<\/p>\n Tolkien, J.R.R. (1966).\u00a0 Tree and leaf.\u00a0 In The Tolkien reader<\/em>.\u00a0 (pp. 31- 120).\u00a0 New York: Del Rey.\u00a0 (original text published 1964, New York: Geroge Allen and Unwin.)<\/p>\n Volshenko, M. (undated MS).\u00a0 Leaving.\u00a0 <\/em>(R. Amacker Trans.), (p. 1) Personal correspondence, 2003.<\/p>\n Yolen, J. (2000).\u00a0 The alphabetics of story: Lecture for SCBWI New York 2000.\u00a0 Retrieved July 29, 2004 from: http:\/\/www.janeyolen.com\/auxiliary\/scbwi2000.html<\/p>\n Endnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n 1<\/sup> Although this \u201cinvention\u201d has been more popularly attributed to H. G. Wells, Shelley\u2019s work has both precedence and greater power.<\/p>\n 2<\/sup> I would like to refer the reader to Matthew Fox\u2019s many writings on this subject and its reference to the gaining of wisdom as well as knowledge through intuitive and meditative means.\u00a0 Fox\u2019s writing has much insight based upon the work of philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, Hildegard von Bingen, Thomas Aquinas among others.<\/p>\n
\n![\"Galatea](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Galatea-beginning-of-paper-214x300.jpg?resize=214%2C300&ssl=1\")
The Author Seeks the Dragon<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\nThe Sub-zeitgeist of Victoria Nelson\u2019s \u201cPuppets\u201d<\/h3>\n
![\"Kalpa](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Kalpa-Imperial.jpg?resize=254%2C400&ssl=1\")
(Le Guin, Tepper, Russ, Atwood, Cherryh, Delany).\u00a0 Less obvious inquiries find form and story in this realm as well: Ang\u00e9lica Gorodischer (1983\/2003) wrote Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire that Never Was[1]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a> <\/em>to explore story telling forms in oral tradition.\u00a0 There are stories and form that urban street storytellers use that reviewer Carmen Perilli (2001) describes as \u201cnothing more and nothing less than free men and women\u201d (para. 1).\u00a0 Gorodischer herself describes fantasy this way in an interview with Gabriel Mesa (2004) in the electronic journal, Fantastic Metropolis<\/em>:<\/p>\n![\"800px-Ogata_Gekko_-_Ryu_sho_ten_edit\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/800px-Ogata_Gekko_-_Ryu_sho_ten_edit-206x300.jpg?resize=206%2C300&ssl=1\")
The Question of Art, Spirituality and Wisdom: The Dragon Seeks the Author<\/h4>\nWisdom and Added Knowledge: \u00a0The Dragon’s Pearl is is Viewed<\/h3>\n
![\"900px-Hokusai_Dragon\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/900px-Hokusai_Dragon-300x300.jpg?resize=254%2C254&ssl=1\")
The knowledge added to the human experience by the artist isn\u2019t always obvious nor can it be quantified or even qualified in spoken language.\u00a0 By this I do not mean that it is intuitive or unconscious knowledge, but that it is performed or experienced in another language<\/em>.\u00a0 (The corollary in science would be the language of symbolic logic or mathematics.)\u00a0 For example, musical composition communicates in a specific language.\u00a0 Musical language in particular has been compared with mathematical languages as a \u201ccomplex and pure\u201d method of expression by various researchers in the hard sciences, recently by physicist Stephen Hawking \u00a0in an interview conducted at the White House Millennium Evenings March 6, 1998 and aired on C-Span.<\/p>\nWithin the Context of Inquiry \u2013 Seeing the World Through the Dragon\u2019s Eye<\/h3>\n
![\"diagram](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/diagram-3-300x210.png?resize=300%2C210&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n![\"figure](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/figure-2-full.png?resize=589%2C688&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nReflection 2: The Dragon\u2019s Invitation<\/h3>\n
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