SF Trajectories

Dr. Bruce Lipton, website:  http://www.brucelipton.com who wrote the book, The Biology of Belief, has a compelling view of the unconscious.  I don’t know if his view is based on the work of other scientists, or if it is completely his, so forgive me if I don’t give credit where it’s due.

He believes that the unconscious is a tape that tells us how to behave for the million or so circumstances that we encounter every day.  We use our unconscious 99 percent of the time.  For example, when we drive through a traffic light and later wonder if the light were red or green, it is because the car is driven by our unconscious.  

This is a wonderful tool.  Unfortunately, it is also a hindrance, because it is the reason we fall into patterns that are destructive.  The reason we repeat the same mistakes over and over and over and over is because we are simply playing the program that was built inside of us.  I know many of my million or so astute readers will know of Jung’s collective unconscious and wonder how that fits in.  I don’t have a clue.  But let’s put Jung aside for the moment.

Unfortunately, according to Lipton, is that all the psychological, and all the new (and not so new) age therapies are useless.  The reason why they don’t work is because they cannot change the unconscious.  These programs do not have a record button on that tape.   Affirmations don’t get recorded into the unconscious.  Neither does positive thinking.  Forget them.

Lipton does have an answer.  He says, “A variety of energy psychology modalities, such as Psych-K, Holographic Repatterning and BodyTalk, are among the variety of programs that can be found on the web.” Also, the Buddhist technique of mindfulness is helpful.

I think one could dabble in another way.

Lipton mentions that the unconscious is formed by the age of six.  During this time, our EEG waves are delta and theta.  We’re in a hypnogogic state and learn by copying the behavior of our elders and peers.  After age six, the waves change to alpha.  Theta is still produced, during REM sleep.  

Is that the record button?  Can I induce delta and theta waves on me to change my unconscious?  That’s fascinating as only a mad scientist like me would think.  The one way that this could be done would be to use a mind machine such as the Proteus:  http://www.3pounduniverse.com/Proteus_Mind_Machine_p/mm4.htm

What would be the result of prolonged delta wave exposure?  Would the brain be entrained into a sympathetic rhythm?  If so, then a door could be opened and the unconscious reached.    If I were to focus on specific thoughts, affirmations I suppose, then I could change the tape.

Or go insane.  Who knows?

One of the very first books on writing that I read was “How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy”…or something. To be honest, I don’t remember much of it. For some reason, however, I do remember Isaac Asimov explaining to us how he wrote a story. What he did was to start at the beginning and continue writing until the story was over. At the time, I took this as The Good Word. After all it was from The Good Doctor. How could I go wrong?

So I wrote stories that began on a whim and continued through plot turns and twists that went nowhere. Most of the endings were ambiguous. The characters had no real motivation and conflict came from an arbitrary sentence that I wrote on the spur of the moment. Even after I cut most of the chaff, I still didn’t have a plot. That is when I discovered the outline.

According to Robert McKee, the author of “Story”, the outline is the tool invented by writers centuries ago to organize the elements of a story. It is a tool that the writer must master. At first, the outline seemed to box me into a corner. It forced me to stick to the structure of the story, and that was just uncreative. Until my epiphany.

We know that a story is a plot. And a plot is a coherent structure. Of course, there’s much more to it than that, but without that framework, a writer has nothing. And that horrible outline that was boxing me in the corner was the face of Grim Reality staring me in the face and saying, “You don’t have a plot”. And creativity was still there, but it was forcing me to obey the laws of structure.

What has evolved though, is something in between. Although my friend Chris seems able to stick to one from beginning to end (sometimes), I certainly cannot. I think the best path is somewhere between a stream of consciousness free-form and adhering to an outline. When I finished the first draft to my novel, it had about 75 thousand words. That didn’t seem like a lot, but it was a fair amount to start. Much of the novel was free-form, you could say. It evolved as I wrote it. It was the only way to figure out what I was going to write about.

When I outlined what I had written, it turned out that I needed to strip 20 thousand words from the story. My short novel had become a novella. From there, I re-outlined the story using my first draft as the basis. I now have an outline that is coherent and has a good plot. But without that first draft, I never would have anything to work with.

Of course, everyone is different. But everyone needs to outline sometime in their story. But what about the Good Doctor? I don’t know. All I can say is that he probably did it in his head. What he called creativity and intuition was maybe just a logical structure forming in his unconscious. I don’t know. It’s just a guess.

Years ago, I was at my college library when I ran into a friend, named George. George was a painter. He was returning a book on a famous artist (I can’t remember the name). I asked to see the book and he showed me a few of his favorite paintings.
“What do they mean?” I said.
George gave me a big smile. “Whatever you want. You put your own interpretation on the painting.”
I remember my frustration. I didn’t know why, but his answer never sat right. It was years later, years of staring at paintings in total misunderstanding when I realized why I felt this way. I realized that I wanted a painting to mean something. In fact, I wanted every bit of art to mean something. I wanted the artist to tell me something that I didn’t know.
Isn’t that the point of art? To show me a new perspective? I didn’t want the artist to tell me that it’s up to me. I can do that on my own without looking at a painting.
And what does this have to do with writing?
I think the same problem in painting applies to what are called “ambiguous endings” in stories. The ambiguous ending is the author’s way of allowing us to put our own interpretation on the story. When we finish the last sentence, we each will have our own unique view of what just happened.
In reality, what I think happens is that we turn back to the beginning and flip through each page, searching for the cause that brought the conclusion of the story, only to find cause and effect ending with nothing more than a strange ending. It’s like quantum superposition, where, before measurement, an electron or other subatomic particle exists in this weird ethereal state of all measurements being equal. We never know the outcome. And we feel cheated that we spent this time only to have our hopes dashed by an empty ending. It makes me wonder if the writer is afraid to stand out in front of other people and say, “This is what I think.” Are we now just quantum superpositions?
But life is uncertain, you say. Life is just like an ambiguous ending needing one’s own interpretation. First, I and most other people don’t believe that idea and I think it’s quickly fading into the history books under “20th Century Philosophy”. Second, why the hell do I want to read about that? I want someone to at least attempt put structure to our lives and to try to figure out a reason for this whole damned situation called Life In The Universe As We Know It.
Especially with science fiction. For God’s sake, SF is out there on the cutting edge and one of its noble goals is to search for our place in the universe. Putting an ambiguous ending on the story doesn’t help with that at all. In fact, I would say it is laziness, pure and simple.
I need SF that–makes my eyes pop and my jaw drop and my mouth try to say “Wow!” but I’m too stunned to speak–the moment I reach the last sentence. Nowhere in that is a furrowed brow that says, “Huh?”