Tao Te Ching

In my religion class, we read a few parts of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, and learning about Taoism interested me very much. I decided that I would read the entire book, and so I got the 1988 Stephen Mitchell translation from the library. I was already thinking that I wanted to read another religious text (I've already read the entire Bible, and learning about religions has made me curious to read other texts), so this fit well, and it was something I could read even in my tight schedule.

The Tao Te Ching is a great book, full of some wonderful insights into the way the world works and how, through wu-wei (doing not-doing, acting inaction, going with the flow, etc.), we can live in such a way that we bring about harmony in the world. It's really not something that can be easily explained in a few sentences, but rather something that needs to be read, experienced, and studied on one's own.

That being said, maybe this translation isn't the best to do that with. Reading the notes to each poem, I was shocked to see Mitchell admit that he had "interpolated" and "improvised" some of the stanzas in the book. I felt like this was a bad thing for a translator to do. I can understand wanting to make a book that the non-Chinese public will find more accessible, but to be honest I couldn't see why he changed the ones he did (especially since he provides the "original text" for these in his notes: why not just put those in, and explain them in the notes instead?). I don't really know what the best translation is, but I figure that I'll just read from different ones to get a better sense of what the words are supposed to be.

Rating: 6.3/10

Reading some of them reinforced a lot of the ideas that I have about the world. For one, there was a common theme of letting go of possessions, and not putting so much importance on material things. After all, if you treasure something, then it is more likely that people will try to steal it. It's a very different philosophy from that of America, which is why it was so refreshing for me. After a semester of Environmental Lit. showing me how our culture is ruining the earth and destroying humanity itself, it was nice to see that someone once thought about these things.

If you call something good, then you create evil. If you are saying that it is good, then you are implying that there is a quality called not-good to compare it with. This idea made me think about the paradox of God creating good and evil--if all he creates is good, why is there evil? Well, he actually calls things "good!" Evil didn't rise because he created that explicitly, but because it is a natural byproduct of goodness: by creating good, he created the possibility of evil.

There are tons of things like that in the book, and I don't think I could possibly summarize it all in a way that would satisfy me. Instead, I'll just recommend that everyone read this book and really think about what it says. Here's a site with some different translations:

http://duhtao.com/translations.html

The Future of Environmental Criticism and Earth Day (Non-Places vs. Nature)

Another book for my Environmental Lit class (I know I said My Year of Meats was the penultimate one, but I forgot about this one). The Future of Environmental Criticism, by Lawrence Buell, is a text about the environmental movement in literary criticism. Better yet, I get to talk about this in a post on Earth Day!

My teacher pointed out on numerous occasions that, in relation to this author, she comes from the opposing side of literary criticism. But she wanted to give us the entire picture, and so this book was assigned. Some of the things Buell argues for don't actually seem very good to me (such as his insistent desire that books about environmental subjects have to have a certain degree of natural description). He especially won my disfavor when I read his disapproval of Frank Herbert's Dune. He basically said that Dune didn't focus enough on ecological issues! Heck, many people criticize Herbert for putting too much ecology in his work. The entire Dune series is full of ecology!


Rating: 4.4/10

But there is one part of this book that got to me: the idea of non-places. In a world that is constantly churning out objects with interchangeable parts, eventually we came to a point where many of our buildings were the same, built after one model. The best examples are airports and fast food restaurants. We are familiar with these structures, but they don't have many things that distinguish one from the other. They don't have anything that roots them to a certain "place." When you go out into nature, it becomes very obvious that you are in a certain place by the idiosyncratic landscape, the changing climate, the kind of flora and fauna you encounter, etc. But with these non-places we construct, they are entirely the same. If you go on a plane, for instance, and don't look out of the window at all, it won't feel as though you've really actually gone anywhere at all, since the airports will be so similar.

True, this doesn't exactly apply to every non-place, but the basic idea is that these structures, which we are more comfortable with than the natural world which we originated in, don't give any specific feeling of being in a certain place, since you could get the same experience in any one of these buildings you go to.

For Earth Day, our class went outside, not really doing anything but enjoying being in nature, and talking about things pertaining to ecology or the environment. The idea came to me that for most of my life, I have been more comfortable with being inside than outside--more comfortable with non-places than places. I guess part of that has to do with my more Platonic mindset (dealing with more abstract ideas than with actual experience), but also because of the cultural leaning towards moving life into well-contained, air-conditioned and self-sufficient boxes.

Today, I had trouble reconciling this desire to be inside with my feeling that being outside is enjoyable. After all, it's weird to think that our ancestors didn't have these non-places we cling to now; they had to know their landscape more intimately than we ever will (we can just order things and have them brought to us, while they had to travel out to find them and then find their way back. Sure, we have stuff like that too, but not to the same extent: we have cars, after all, so we don't closely interact with--or even notice--our surroundings).

So I guess that's some food for thought this Earth Day (though I guess it's almost over).

Zelda 3DS: Master Sword

A recent article pointed out things we "may not have noticed" in the gameplay trailer for Zelda 3DS:

http://www.zeldainformer.com/articles/8-things-you-may-not-have-noticed-in-zelda-3ds

The only one of those that I felt was worth mentioning was the fact that we can see two different swords being used. (Though the fact that you can hit Green Chus with your sword is cool, I already noticed that, and it's not really that big a deal unless you're making a comparison between this and ALTTP.)

In the trailer, we see both a sword with a brown hilt and a sword with a blue hilt. The first is obviously either a wooden or bronze sword, most likely the first you get...but the second is most likely the Master Sword. This, of course, carries a lot of implications with it. After all, how many games have had the Master Sword without having Ganon/Ganondorf in them? One. Skyward Sword. And this one hardly counts, since Demise is basically the spirit that gets reborn in Ganondorf.

But there's something I want to consider: what if the "Master Sword = Ganondorf in plot" equation is due to change? I mean, I highly doubt it, seeing as the Zelda series is prone to repetition as far as the main villain's concerned...but Skyward Sword makes me slightly hopeful. Demise's demise left us with the truth that the villains in Zelda are all renditions of this evil, continually plaguing Hyrule out of this curse. So why shouldn't the Master Sword be used to stop other villains? Surely someone else could get the Triforce of Power and use it in the same way as Ganondorf.

Zelda 3DS, seeing as it is a sequel of ALTTP, is the least likely to start breaking from the formula, however. The Decline Timeline is pretty much all about getting Ganon sealed away and making him stay that way. While this timeline does include journeys outside of Hyrule and without Ganon, the Master Sword is not being used in these (it's not a plot point in the Oracles, so it doesn't count--and Ganon is in them anyway, once you link them). So it's very likely that another game in this timeline won't change this.

But I really think it's something Nintendo needs to consider, especially since seeing the Master Sword in trailers makes the fans automatically jump to the conclusion that Ganondorf will be the villain.

More gameplay:

http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/all-new-zelda-3ds-gameplay-and-details

New Zelda 3DS: A Link to the Past 2!

The above video is a first look at some gameplay of the first original 3DS Zelda game, due to come out later this year. It has been confirmed that it will be in the world of A Link to the Past, but for some reason they aren't outright calling it a sequel. It most likely is a sequel, but I guess a prequel could be possible as well.

Yesterday, it was discovered that a Spanish website, Xtrafile, listed Majora's Mask 3D for sale. Seeing as today was the next Nintendo Direct, some Zelda fans thought this might indicate that the long-awaited remake would be announced today. But instead, we got confirmation of an original title, as well as some gameplay footage and concepts.

Not everyone is happy with this, however. Some things to consider:

1. MM3D All those in Operation Moonfall (the fan-based petition for Majora's Mask 3D), for instance, were hoping to see the remake happen. I happen to be part of that. Does this make MM3D less likely to happen? At the very least, it might make another remake a low priority right now. After all, fans already have Ocarina of Time 3D, and The Wind Waker HD is coming later this year. More remakes wouldn't be good for their image. Nintendo's been doing a lot of remakes lately, and fans want a new game, so ALTTP 2 seems like a good way to go.

2. Graphics ALTTP 2's graphics, at least in my opinion, seem rather odd. Some people are complaining that it doesn't use the full potential of the 3DS, such as OOT3D did. Rather, it continues the 2D, top-down formula of most Zelda games, straying only slightly from the look of Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, incorporating more of the ALTTP art style. The big problem with this is that, while it isn't a remake, it sure as hell looks like one so far, since all we have to go by is the graphics.

3. Link Turns into a Drawing While this seems like a cool new concept at first glance...it's very strange. Especially because the camera angle changes drastically; this feels almost cruel, since it shows us basically the kind of angle we wanted the entire game to use. Can we be hurt while we're on the wall? Where does this ability come from? Why did anyone come up with this idea in the first place?

4. The Bones In the trailer, we see Link deflecting some bones thrown at him, and, in proper bad-3D-movie form, they fly up at the screen. Can we expect more of this gimmick?

5. The Map This game will use the original ALTTP map. This could be problematic, because this makes it even more like a remake. Not very many game series reuse the entire world map. Off the top of my head, the only ones I can think of are Okamiden and Pokemon Silver/Gold/Crystal/Heartgold/Soulsilver (and these had their own maps, with the original map being unlockable). I'm sure there are more games that do this, but it's not generally seen as a good thing. New games are supposed to be innovative, not repeat the same old patterns--and repeating the entire map is the worst way to do that.

6. The Magic Meter(?) Is it, though? Strangely, the green meter on the side goes down when Link uses his hammer as well as when he turns into a drawing. Weirdest of all, it goes down when he shoots arrows. Some have speculated that these are magical arrows, but as I look closely, I don't see any indication of that (no red, green, blue, or yellow light to indicate magic, nor any special marker on the arrow that would distinguish it from a normal arrow). Is this, instead, a stamina meter, like the one in Skyward Sword? If so, is the Zelda franchise going to be implementing this from now on? Because...that thing can get pretty annoying.

Overall, most people just want to see what the story for this one will be. Sequel, prequel, or, more intriguing, the same area in a different timeline? While this last one is least likely, it would be cool for Nintendo to use the official timeline to their advantage for once, perhaps giving a story happening in the Adult or Child timeline around the same time as ALTTP is taking place in the Decline Timeline. Perhaps they could use this formula for other games, letting us revisit maps from other games with new histories applied to them. While I bashed the idea above, I personally would be all for it. The fact that they won't explicitly say whether this is a sequel or not gives me hope for something more interesting, but I doubt any of my crazy ideas will be the truth.

UPDATE: Bill Trinen has confirmed that this game will be a sequel.
http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/zelda-3ds-comes-after-a-link-to-the-past-in-the-timeline

So, what do you think? Is Nintendo going the wrong route with this one? Are they getting back on track? Or is it too early to tell?

LFL #2: Charlotte's Web

From now on, I'll put LFL in the titles of posts about books I get from Little Free Libraries.

So, I returned The Dogs of Babel, and I saw that one of the LFLs had Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White. I'd never read it before (though I knew the story pretty well, having seen the movie), and I decided to actually see the original work.

Well, it's a children's book, so of course I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have if I'd read it earlier in my life. It's...okay. Very short, very simplistic, and very straightforward. I was hoping for there to be more areas where it diverged from the story I'd seen so many times before, but it didn't. It basically just has the plot points and a few minor things to help characterization. Beyond that, there isn't much to the book.

Certain things stood out to me, though. Charlotte is first thought, by Wilbur, to be bloodthirsty because of the way she sustains herself. Even though most of the animals in the story are able to speak, Charlotte's victims don't. We never see the bugs she kills screaming for mercy or bemoaning their fate. Yet, by the logic of the book, we should. It's interesting, too, that Fern can hear what the animals are saying very clearly, and no one else can. Perhaps all these things are simply what she imagines they are saying, a way of making sense of the things she sees them do? Plus, the animals do a lot of things that make them seem obviously intelligent, and yet the humans have never noticed any of these signs. Everyone assumes that Charlotte's words are a miracle, and not the spider's own work--why? I would think the spider would be the one to get more attention than the pig it's describing.

Rating: 3.2/10

My Year of Meats

The penultimate book for my Environmental Lit. class is My Year of Meats, a book about Jane Takagi-Little, a documentarian who works on a show called My American Wife! for Japanese television. In the process, she learns a lot about the meat industry, and uncovers issues that no one is willing to talk about, but which have a huge impact on everyone's life--including hers.

There is some pretty fun stuff in this book, especially with the cross-cultural dialogue between America and Japan. But it's also rather depressing, since the facts of meat production are pretty darn scary. The characters are great (my favorite, by far, is Akiko), though there are some that aren't given enough time (such as Sloan, in my opinion). I was satisfied with the first half of the novel, but the second half wasn't as great.

It's pretty easy reading, and I was pretty disappointed by the discussions we had in class with this book. So that probably colored the way I felt about it. But I guess that it's a good thing for a message like this to be written so accessibly. While I didn't think so highly of it after finishing it, it definitely still is a good book to read.

Rating: 5.6

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

Another book for school, but this time it's one for my science class. This book, like the title suggests, is about numerous myths surrounding the link between science and religion. Some of them are pretty broad, such as ones concerning the effect of Christianity on the birth of science, how Islam reacted to the influence of science, and how science hasn't necessarily secularized Western culture. But there are also some really interesting ones, such as the one it mentions on its cover (it is very likely that Galileo never spent a night in an actual jail because of that trial--and there is no evidence suggesting that he was ever tortured).

A lot of the myths are simply cases where the media or certain people have exaggerated things, and so the myth is loosely true. And that did annoy me sometimes. But overall, it did open my eyes to some cool facts about the history of science. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone and everyone, if only so these myths could finally die.

Rating: 7.4/10

Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

For class, I read Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, by David Abram. I really didn't know what to think going in, other than disappointment that it would be nonfiction. At this point, I don't think I could dislike anything I read for this class, of course, since the stuff we discuss is so interesting.

Still, the style of Abram's writing caught me off-guard. He uses an objective, third-person voice mingled with subjective first-person and second-person. Basically, he uses everything he can to form a book that both teaches and engages the reader. After all, it would defeat the purpose if he only used the objective perspective on his subject matter.

The basic point behind the book is to show how our society has lost touch with its roots. In other words, we have wrongly separated ourselves from the Earth (or Eairth, as he calls it once--with "I" always in the midst of it, as well as to recognize the fact that "air" is a part of the planet). We have wrongly decided that we are above and separate form animals. Abram tries to bring us back to reality, pointing out the way this division started, and the way our culture maintains the lie. I don't want to get too far into the things he talks about, because there's just so much that I can't explain as well as he can...and because I recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

Now, it can be hard for people to take some of his claims seriously (such as the Gaia hypothesis, which he firmly believes in). But that's okay. When you read this book, just throw away all preconceptions and try to appreciate the things he's saying. It really is worth the read.

Rating: 8/10

Scenery (or The Value System)

In my Environmental Lit. class, there was a concept that interested me the moment I heard about it early on in the semester, so much so that I couldn't help but make it the focus of the nature narrative I had to write. Simply put, it is the question of why we value nature, or the environment. We went through the reasons for valuing animals (such things as entertainment, companionship, work, education, etc.), and I think one could make the argument that we basically value the environment itself for the exact same reason: we can make it benefit us.

The real focus of the conversation was that, as a culture, we tend to go to the same places, the same landmarks, and take the same pictures, see the same views, and by extension, value the same things. We look at certain parts of nature because they are "scenic," or "beautiful." And once we find the best spots for such aesthetic pleasure, we make people pay to see them, thus commodifying nature. Of course, there's already the problem of commodifying beauty itself, which we've already done with art, but in this case we're commodifying beauty in something when beauty isn't the purpose behind it.

Nature doesn't try to be beautiful. Sure, there are certain species of plants and animals that do care about aesthetic...but only insofar as it affects their survival (either for mating, warding off predators, or attracting prey). Now, I'm sure there are some exceptions, but in general I think I am safe in assuming that plants and animals don't make art because it pleases them to look at it repeatedly and critique the art of others. That is simply a human phenomenon. And I don't mean to demean recreational art in any way. I love it too much to ever do that. But I think there's something wrong with our society when we look at nature and only think about how pretty it looks. When we only worry about saving the forests because they're a nice bit of scenery. When we save one endangered species only because it's cute. (And when some people think God must have made it, since it's so beautiful. You do realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that eye evolved on this planet, and so it's attuned to these sights...right?)

And I'm not a fan of intrinsic value. In fact, I think the very idea is bullshit. Unless we can find some objective standard out there that tells us the way things gain value, we have no reason to think that anything has value just for existing. For that matter, even if we had an objective standard, we would only be forced to question the validity of that standard, and the validity of its validation, ad infinitum. No, I'm not talking about nature having intrinsic value at all, since I don't think such value exists in anything.

What I am talking about, instead, is that this mindset--of only valuing nature for its beauty, or for the things it can give us, or the way it makes us feel, or the things we can do with it--is destructive. A point which is made very clearly in Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods, in which many planets have been inhabited and destroyed by the same headlong rush towards progress that disregards the needs of the environment. If we're going to live on this planet, we have to realize that nature isn't just a backdrop. We live in it, on it, and with it.

I don't think seeing nature as beautiful is bad in and of itself. What's bad is not realizing that there are more important aspects to it. Don't save the forests just because they're pretty; save them because they're an integral part of the environment. Save the endangered species because they're an integral part of the food chain and the ecosystem. We, also, are a part of the natural order of this planet. Too often we see ourselves as being above the rest of the natural world, apart from it. But that's not the case: we, too, are animals. Protect the Earth. Not because it's fun to look at, but because we are a part of it, and if it dies, so do we.