Showing posts with label bullying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bullying. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Depiction Part 32 - Depicting Brain To Computer Links - Online Bullying Prevention

Depiction
Part 32
Depicting Brain To Computer Links
Online Bullying Prevention 

Previous parts of this series on how writers can depict (eliminate details, sharpen symbols, transform "reality" as observed into enjoyable fiction) what the writer observes in their real world are indexed here:

Writers are born observers of "reality" -- people watchers who can spin a life's history from a few details seen on a shopper at a Mall.

It doesn't matter whether the tale spun has any relationship to the actual reality of that person -- it is a story, a potential possibility, a flight of imagination far more interesting than the person's reality.

Writers look at people -- and see Characters.

Getting good at the craft of writing means perfecting the ability to distinguish between people (readers, for example) and Characters.

We all look at people and see someone other than the person who is really there.

We all fill in the blanks, make wild and unsubstantiated assumptions, and then deal with the real person as if that person is actually the Character we have imagined.  All your readers do it -- and most people who do not ever read fiction do it, too.  

The human brain is hardwired to take shortcuts, to recognize patterns from a few real details then imagine the rest of the details to fit that pattern.

That's how viewers guess the criminal in a TV whodunit.  It isn't TV (or videogames) that cause us to learn to do that, nor is it novels.  We do it in all our life's endeavors.

Consider a hunter in a jungle -- gotta bring home dinner.  He's got to spot the game animal and kill it, then retrieve it before scavengers eat it all up.

How does the hunter sort the cluttered jungle mess into information?
Like distinguishing between people and Characters, we must learn to distinguish between data and information.

These skills are developed at the brain's circuits, synapses, and even the sizes of brain regions, are developed from infancy through maybe 20 years of age.  

A writer's depiction is information.  What is being depicted is data.

Today, there is a massive push on among (swiftly grown to vast proportions) Tech Companies to create Artificial Intelligence that can learn to depict!  
I'm not sure any of them knows that is what they are doing - rewriting the world  - but the analogy between what a fiction writer does and what a self-driving car must do seems crystal clear to me.
In childhood, we learn to understand our world (green jungle, concrete jungle, down on the farm, King's Court Aristocracy, street smarts, etc.) by internalizing an Archetype -- a pattern, a "template" of reality around us that we then keep plugging data into, trying to transform data into information.
The current war between and against Media News can be described as a war between "Reality Templates" -- one template describing a well governed world where life is tranquil, and another describing a well governed world where life is strife-conquered-daily.

Anything that challenges the compartments of the template (think Microsoft Powerpoint or Microsoft Publisher where you download templates divided into little boxes, then insert your own images and text which magically re-formats to be beautiful), is immediately rejected with a glaring and stubborn error message.

Everything in one Media News template rejects every single bit of content from the other Media News template.  It's wrong. It's evil to disturb or distort the template of reality because that is what allows either tranquility or strife-conquered.

The two templates are incompatible.  One belongs to, say, Powerpoint and the other belongs to, say, Adobe In-Design.  There is a lot of acceptable material overlap, but incompatibility produces a mess or nothing at all.

We live in a reality where some people have internalized one template, some people the other template, some people have switched preferred templates, and others are trying to invent new templates and promulgate them.

Humans seem to thrive on this jungle like lifestyle.  It is now called multi-culturalism where each template is a culture.

Can we expect A.I. (robots, androids, smart thermostats and autonomous cars and trucks) to master all our templates, mix and match them to create new templates, overlap them and use two incompatible templates at once while ignoring incompatibilities?

The single most distinctive trait modern primates possess is adaptability and nowhere is that more evident than in the homo sapiens species.  

We might be the most adaptable intelligent species in the universe -- or the least adaptable -- and many grand Science Fiction Romance stories can be spun against backgrounds built from either premise.

But to spin such stories, the writer has to create a "template" that is being used by a Character to sort the tangled jungle of data, the heaving sea of data, the firehose of data, into information upon which to act.

Information is critical for survival, while data is not so critical.

Think about "Big Data" -- the enormous product of the Internet is massive tangles of data, but it becomes useful only when Google sorts it for you.  That's why Google has become so dominant - they solved the problem of "how do I find what exists on this topic?" and then they solved the problem, "how do I get rid of this spam."

Both solutions were based on algorythms that "crowd sourced" data collection and used their proprietary template to sort that data into information, then sort the information into organized files that could be searched.

Some of you may not remember the ludicrous answers Google search first came up with, or the world where to determine if an answer was online you had to use at least 5 search engines stating the question in different terms.

Then social networking became a possibility, a mere glimmering of an idea.  Facebook probably was not the first -- there were many forums and email Lists, and so on before Facebook.

The Prodigy Forums and Fido Net connections were all based on the existing ways that humans formed social groups.

Family, city, town, county (geographical regions where everyone has something in common - the Old West's Barn Dance), plus idea based groups (the Masons, Churches, Knights of Columbus, Science Fiction Fandom), and political parties, -- readers of a certain magazine or newspaper -- or people who bought from the Montgomery Ward Catalog or the Sears Catalog.

People who owned race horses, people who were accepted at Court -- whatever binding a group had in common, very often economic success depended on being an accepted member of that Group.

We are hard wired to seek acceptance in a Group.  Primates are not loners, though as a Group we do produce individuals who go out exploring (Mountain Men, the pioneers who found a way across the Rockies, etc. around the globe).  Those loners will probably be the first to settle on Mars.

But socialization is our primary survival trait.  So while it is true that, "You didn't build that," it is also simultaneously true (different Templates sorting the data into information) that "The Group didn't build that."

Among all primate species, there has always been an uneasy truce between the individual and the group.  No group can survive without strong and independent individuals -- but no group can survive without taming, harnessing, civilizing the strongest of those individuals.

The process of taming and harnessing those individuals starts with Romance, and all its associated elements from the highest spiritual plane of soul mates, to the grittiest necessities of physical sex.

It is the FAMILY UNIT that "tames" the wild individual to the purposes of the Group, so that individual survival becomes identical to Group survival.

The root of it all is testosterone and related gender identity hormones, all working in harmony (or disharmony).  

We discussed some articles about the effect that being bested by a woman has on a man - or being bested by another man has on a man.  Conquering or being Conquered actually has a lasting, permanent and continually reinforced effect on behavior and self-image.

Here is an entry in this series citing scientific research about depicting the married hunk - the hugely gorgeous, testosterone perfected, male molded into a father.


And here is an entry discussing how to use what you learned in Part 19 to expand the romance to include Aliens.


What happens in that transformation of the wild male into a father can be viewed as a Template Replacement.  

Before replacement, the Male sees the world as one thing - afterwards, as another.  Same DATA, same world, arranged differently.  

You can do this to a blog on blogger.com by changing the "template" and suddenly all your words take on a different arrangement.  At one point in blogger.com history, doing a template transformation wiped out all the comments that had been made.  The exact same world just looks so different, and new meanings emerge.

Humans in our civilized jungle undergo several template transformations, but at increasing intervals. It is called "growing up."  

A lot of the template shifting occurs because of physiological brain growth -- as the capacity increases, more data can be arranged and rearranged into more templates, giving wider, bigger, deeper, richer pictures of reality.

The more that inner picture of reality aligns with the actual data reality pours onto us, the more likely that person is to survive to become a parent.  

The more conscious the child is of the process of acquiring, sorting, and combinging templates into a personalized view of reality, the more flexible the adult will be as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things changes what it takes to survive in the world.

It is possible the generation being born now, the generation that will regard your current W.I.P. as boring, antique, false because it is old fashioned, will live in an Artificial Intelligence world, a world crafted by and for A.I. and thus demanding humans adapt.

In every generation for the last few hundred years parents have adamantly refused to "let" their offspring do whatever new-fangled activity was now possible because of technology.

In other words, "good" parents prevent children from acquiring the adaptations that will insure their survival.  

Parents do that because we have survived dire threats to our survival only because of the adaptations  (the templates that transform data into information) we have internalized.  The goal of a loving parent, therefore, is to transmit the successful Template to their offspring.  

Because of the increasing tempo of change in the world (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock explains this), each recent generation has had to mix-and-match and create new Templates, new survival strategies, new ways to transform data into information that is actionable intelligence.

In the 1950's grammar schools forbid children to take ball point pens to school and insisted on teaching fine-motor-skills by using fountain pens.  The prior generation was forbidden to bring fountain pens and had to learn the proper way to dip a nib and not splash ink.

In the 1960's, college courses forbid electronic calculators and insisted students had to learn to do the calculations on a slide rule.  That insistence lasted fewer years than previous resistences to tool adoption.

And by the 1980's colleges began insisting each student must have a computer to log into the University's system.  Today live, real-time video courses are common, papers, grades, almost everything is done online.

When you choose the story you want to tell, you have to run up and down the sweep of history to find the decade that most vividly showcases that story.  Knowing the details of a historical decade is important, of course, but more important is understanding the connections among those decades.

It is not enough to depict the way parents resist the technology of their era, because you are writing for today's readers, and for tomorrow's readers.  Your story will have more verisimilitude if you explain (in show don't tell, not exposition) why these specific Characters are resisting whichever technology is swamping the development of their offspring.

Good parents have the objective of equiping their children to survive -- maybe also to thrive -- but to present grandchildren and great-grandchildren as soon as possible.  

Over the last century, there have been any number of books on how to raise your children.  Lately, there are more titles, not just because it's easier to publish now, or just because more people can read, or just because more new parents are so estranged from their parents that they have no source of reliable in-person advice, but because times are changing so fast.

New parents today know that whatever Template they acquired in childhood would lead their children to destruction because it is no longer valid in this world -- and change is accelerating in a direction that makes the truisms of twenty years ago deadly today.

So new parents go looking for books on raising children, new books based on current scientific research.

And of course, News Media interviews form a major source for stressed out, overworked new parents struggling to found a career.

The loudest thing new parents are hearing today is how Facebook Is The Source Of All Evil.  Facebook is rampant with Bullies.  Cyber-bullying on all the social networks is driving teens to suicide.


To me, this sounds just like the ban on ball point pens.  Ruination will be the result of allowing teens to access current, modern technology.

That is a result of sorting many dozen News Items through a Template of my own crafting, composed of a multitude of Templates I've mastered (if not adopted, just learned how to use so I can depict Characters who see the world differently than I do).  

Like ball point pens and electronic calculators, social media is something today's teens must master, not be protected from.  

But how does a parent who did not grow up on Facebook teach their child to stay out of trouble on Facebook?  You can see how the writer's mind transforms reality into a Plot Conflict and thematic statement.  The writer's mind poses questions nobody else is asking, nevermind answering.

What is cyberbullying?  Why does it happen?  What is the mistake being made, and what Template does a parent have to train a child to use, to avoid becoming a Bully or a Victim of cyberstalking?

Develop a theory that can supply answers to those questions and you will be able to extract, clarify and symbolize a THEME -- one large enough to support a galactic war and powerful Alien Romance.

Such a theme will be a statement of what the human primate really is, how it cam about that we survived to dominate this planet, and whether we are adaptable enough to survive in a galactic civilization.

There are thousands of such themes.  How do you find them?

Study people.  Invent Characters from them.  Find the Character's "story" and his internal conflict, then generate the plot that supports the story of his life.  

So we have a Character who we first meet as a teen of Romance-Susceptible age.

And we have a world of social media where Facebook Must Be Forbidden Because It Is Full Of Nothing But Cyber-Bullies.  Using Facebook turns you into a bully - it must be so because everyone on Facebook is a bully and generally, everyone isn't a bully.  Facebook must be at fault.  

Good parents must ban Facebook.  It is the root of all evil.

What will children raised under such a ban, ban their children from doing?

Is banning and preventing the best way to raise children to survive in a rapidly changing, A.I. world?

A first set of the Characters in your novel would affirm that thesis, and their Tempate would justify banning as a parent's duty because children are impressionable and can be harmed for life by a bad experience (which is a scientific truth we have to live with.)

Another, second set of Characters might reject the thesis out of hand, and their Tempate would sort the data stream into true and false based on the thesis that research comes out the way those paying for it demand.  It's not a "conspiracy theory" because nobody conspires with anyone to produce this behavior - it is intrinsic human nature to want to please your employer.

This second set of Characters might permit their children to do any sort of online thing the child wanted - including porn - and possibly online bullying, forming online gangs to beat the rejected child for the sheer joy of beating up on the weak.  After all, being beaten up is how you learn to hit back harder and become a strong adult. (that's a THEME)

A third set of Characters creating the conflicts in this novel-series might use a Template that was bigger, and required much more data to fill it up into a textured and nuanced picture of reality.

This third set might look at the natural growth stages of youth, look at the social networking scene, and use a Template which not only distinguished between data and information, but also distinguished between the Tool and the Tool User.

The first of the 3 sets of Characters (maybe 3 families?) would use a Template that arranges incoming data according to a picture of a well governed world where tranquility is the goal.  The way to craft such a world is, of course, to prevent children from experiencing strife and fighting their way to the top of the heap.  A fighter is relegated to the Template's compartment labeled Bully. All fighting is wrong and must be stopped by Authority (parental or governmental).  
Today, for example, there are a lot of STOP BULLYING campaigns. 

We all know (even the bullies) that bullying is wrong - but how many know why it is wrong?  How many know what in society has changed concurrently with the increase in bullying in schools -- and the advent of school-hall bullying leaping into Facebook and other social networks?  
Perhaps you know what is happening, but as a writer constructing a novel around a Conflict that is Resolved satisfyingly in the end (by Love Conquers All, to a Happily Ever After) you must also have a theory about why it is happening.

So lets back up to the science of what a primate is.  Basic Bonobo and Chimp behaviors include bullying.  

The most powerful and dominant male hammers his way to the top.  In other species, that dominant male acquires the top position by murdering the former top guy.

We adore werewolf romance where wolf physiology blends and sometimes dominates primate physiology, producing a pack led by an Alpha Male who recognizes and mates for life with an Alpha Female.

Romance loves a Bully!!!  

Why not raise our kids to be the best bullies on the block?  That's how you get to dominate the pack, how you get to mate and have lots of children, how we gain immorality -- by bullying, right?

But bullying is "wrong" and we must stop it.

Google up the plethora of images generated by the stop bullying movement.  It has become a cause -- alter human nature, don't master it.

We must expunge a behavior, not understand and harness it for the survival of the Group?  

Look carefully at the images you can find if you Google stop bullying meme.

They are about some figure with power and authority commanding those of lesser power or authority (adult to child for example) to go out and stop other people from bullying.  Or to alter your behavior so that I don't think you are a bully.  Nobody notices they are exhorting people to bully people into not bullying.

In that group of memes are also memes about those with issues pleading for others not to bully them because of those issues (weight, gender, ethnicity, a wide variety portraying their group as begging not to be bullied).

I see few if any memes noting that authority commanding bullies not to bully is bullying the bully into not bullying.  

What exactly is bullying?  And why is it wrong?  

The answers to those questions become your THEME.  There are hundreds of valid answers to both those questions.  If you are writing Science Fiction Romance using an Alien-Human couple, you have to invent the Alien physiology.  Consider primates incorporate the bullying behavior in all the species we know of -- what if your Aliens don't have the bullying gene?

At what age do humans begin serious bullying?

I'd bet it is sexual maturity.  Kindergarten kids jostle and fight for place in the pack, but until sexual maturity begins it isn't so much dominance behavior as it is currying favor with (parents, teachers) Authority.  

That jostling for position in the pack, tribe, or family becomes bullying when testosterone floods the virgin system.  Girls bully, too, but mostly other girls.  

In both male and female, bullying is a method of eliminating competition for a mate.  That's a THEME.  Or you could take the opposite statement as your theme -- that bullying has nothing to do with sex.

But consider that the worst bullies, alone or in packs, do it because they enjoy it, they get a physical endorphin payoff from making another human cower.  And they also love the feeling of power over others -- it is a rush.  

Some studies show how bullies become bullies by having been bullied -- as a way of getting revenge on their abusers, they abuse others who had nothing to do with abusing them.  

Thus, (THEME) parents who are too strict cause their children to become bullies because the parents have taught (by show don't tell) that Might Makes Right.

If you can force someone to behave as you prefer them to, then you are teaching them that in order to be able to behave freely, they must simply gain the strength to use that much force.  

One definition of bullying includes the idea that it is "bullying" only if the person who wields the most force (or authority) is using that superiority to alter the behavior of another, weaker person.  

PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE used to be the school-yard mantra that taught pre-teens not to bully.

Why wouldn't a natural bully actually bully?  Because early in the impressionable teen years when social acceptance becomes the major goal of life, PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE was shouted at them by mobs of other children, dripping contempt for punching down.

Fighting, and violence are just fine as long as it is kept between equals, each with the same chance to damage to the other.

Thus, if two toughs square off in a back alley, one with a gun and the other with a knife, they both throw their weapons aside and go at it bare knuckled.  The winner is honorable and the loser concedes.

Go read those articles on testosterone mentioned in the previous posts on turning a Hunk into a Father.  After certain definitive experiences, a man's testosterone level subsides -- losing a fight is one of those experiences, and losing a fight to a woman is emphatically more-so.

So the "bully" is formed from the childhood experience of fighting to the top of the pack in class, on the streets of the neighborhood, or just in the family or the orphanage.  The urge to keep on fighting a fight that's already been won is intrinsic in human nature.  So when testosterone surges in the teen years, it fuels the aggression of the male and sizzles through all the nearby females.

If the child has not grown up surrounded by other children who insist that a powerful person must never "pick on someone weaker" -- but may hammer it out with someone "the same size," -- then testosterone focuses that campaign for dominance on the weaker targets, the easier targets.  

Thus, with the understanding of how testosterone works in humans, we can understand why the oldest wisdom about stopping bullies simply is to stand up to them.  Beat the bloody hell out of a bully, and they will never touch you again -- if the bullying is testosterone driven.  
If the bullying is merely verbal - speak up, speak out.  
If it is physical, deck them. 

There is also the case of the weakest in a family or class learning the art of passive-aggressive bullying, playing the victim, framing others for their crime.  Wonderfully complex themes about the use and abuse of power lie in that.  

But consider carefully, how the world has changed, and the trajectory of change in the near future.  

Should today's parents ban the ball point pen of this age -- social media?

Are total permissiveness and total banning the only possible parental responses?  

They are the only possible choices for those who do not understand why teenagers are the way they are.  

Social media will have a worse impact on an 18 year old who moves out, goes to college, or joins the army if they have never been exposed to it during teen years.  But since social media never existed when these parents were growing up, they have no clue how to step their children through this adaptation.  

Think about what the teen years actually are for.  Watch elementary and middle school children in the school yard.  Watch the 7th graders and compare to the 4th graders.

The 4th graders run around, organize sports contests, climb and swing on the slides and monkey bars, and generally compete with each other to perform spectacular feats.

The 7th graders begin to spend their yard time standing around in circles, talking, sharing.  The girls start standing around in groups at a younger point than the boys, but they all end up grouping.  And then groups become rivals.

The early years are to develop a sense of self, of "I can do it," and the teen years are to develop socialization -- "Who Am I Among This Group" -- status, clothing, hair, sexual attractiveness, other-oriented thinking develops.

Young children have a circle of acquaintances, maybe from pre-school play-dates, through kindergarten, and then classes of 10 or 20 other kids the same age.

Generally, we now divide schools into elementary and middle-school to keep the naturally separate ages apart.  It's not developmentally healthy to mix too wide an age range -- never mind our great-grandparents grew up in the one-room school of all ages and one teacher.

So by the end of middle-school, children have a social circle of a few dozen people their own age, and even fewer than that older and younger.

The human brain develops gradually through the teen years, but critically.

A young teen can't do what an 18 year old can -- and the 18 year old is a crippled baby next to the 25 year old.

The purpose in the teen years is socialization, readying to join civilization.

The brain is being conditioned to the modern world (pre-agriculture, societies required different brain synapse configurations -- a person might never know more than 200 people in a lifetime).  

The teen brain is being wired to function, to adapt to, modern social requirements.

But the teen is driven by testosterone flooding a virgin system, prompting that system to develop aggressive tendencies.  (teens rebel against parents - it's what they do!)

So if you present your 12 year old with a smartphone, in about an hour or two, that 12 year old's social circle will have gone from 150 people total, of all ages, to hundreds of millions on Facebook.

That is way too big a shock for the human brain to adapt to.

Thiis is especially true if this teen boy has not had all his contemporaries circling around him shouting, "go pick on someone your own size." 

Not "don't pick on anyone, ever" -- but pick only on someone who can fight back in a way that will hurt you as much as you hurt them.

True, your 12 year old will "connect" first to others in his class, church group, family, people he knows -- but it is called a social network for a reason.  All the people in his class have relatives in other states -- in other countries, and they all have "liked" "pages" selling, purveying, explaining everything under the sun.

It is a culture shock situation -- overwhelming and horrible.  

It hits hardest on those teens who have been prevented from talking to strangers or otherwise walled and protected from the public square --- those without street creds.

THEME: proper parenting requires protection of helpless children even if that protection keeps the children from developing self-sufficiency, so children never grow up to become bullies.
THEME: proper parenting requires teaching children that they are responsible for the consequences of their actions.  Teach them to use tools, not to be used by tools.  The knife did not cut you; you cut yourself with it.


THEME: proper parenting requires gradual, stepped, programmed introduction of children into how to talk to, behave around, and interact with strangers, especially adults.  How to spot predators, how to disengage from seducers.  Proper parenting requires inoculation of children against predators gradually and systematically.

Now, consider all 3 sets of Characters with their different beliefs and different Templates sorting data into information.  All 3 sets of Characters identify their information as FACTS, and are dedicated to the reality of facts.

The three sets of Characters are fighting over control of a School -- say in a PTA Election, or a Board of Education Election (or even a Mayoral race).

Set just 50 years from now, you can weave in an Artificial Intelligence designed to run schools according to some world-wide agreed on (actually imposed by the U.N.?) nice-sounding but insidious curriculum.

How do the 3 sets of Characters vie for the attention of the A.I. -- how do they convince the A.I. the programming given to it is wrong, evil, monstrous, and setting humanity up for failure, death, extinction?

Worse, what if the A.I. already knows that's true, and is doing it to drive humanity (or at least the smartest ones) to extinction?

How can Love Conquer All and lead this group of 4 major conflicting elements (make it at least 4 long novels) to a Happily Ever After?  

Can the 3 groups (who loathe each other, of course) jointly convince this A.I. individual, and get this A.I. to go up against the swarm or gaggle of A.I.'s now running the world and enlighten them about why humanity is worth preserving (because we are capable of Love)?

Could the solution to countering a dictatorship of Artificial Intelligence be to directly connect human brains to machine intelligence, to communicate without words?  

To convince A.I.'s that humanity is worth saving, would you first have to expunge the bully-tendency from human nature?  Could that be possible?  Would you still have "humans" if they were incapable of bullying?  

Or are these Artificial Intelligences programmed in our image, to be bigger, stronger, faster bullies than we can ever be?

Presumably, an Artificial Intelligence would be the more powerful in a match up with a human, so any force the AI used against a human would (technically) by definition be bullying.

Would humanity, then, in logical self-defense adopt the passive-aggressive counter to bullying, sniping from the cover of being the victim?

Do we beg the A.I.'s to stop bullying us -- or do we beat the stuffing out of them?  

It is possible our entire food and energy supply will be run by Artificial Intelligence by then.  If we beat them into submission, they retaliate by turning off the food and energy we need that they don't?   White Mutiny?  Going on strike?  

Do the streets fill with robots demonstrating for equal rights?  

How can love conquer such a situation?  

Pick a theme.  Pick a time in future history.  Pick a Character and generate his opposition from his internal story.  What does he want to do, why does he want to do it, and who wants to stop him and why?

Can Love between a human and an A.I. actually resolve this problem?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Depiction Part 4: Depicting Power in Culture by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction
Part 4
Depicting Power in Culture
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
 
This post is about developing Rules of Engagement to depict a culture different from our own, yet thematically related in a way that allows the reader/viewer to walk into the story and see the whole thing as "real" even though the "world" you have built is truly alien. 

This skill-set of depiction arises out of the Theme-Worldbuilding Integration series.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

The previous posts on Depiction are:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-3-internal-conflict-by.html

In short: depiction is show-don't-tell brought into a high, subtle, "off-the-nose" artform. 

Depiction is the author being sneaky and not letting their own opinion leak through into the worldbuilding.  No two readers will assess what is depicted the same way.  But what they do assess is the part of the book they will remember longest.

That's why, when you go on social networks and try to get someone to help you remember the title or author of a book you halfway remember, and relate this vivid scene or starkly memorable character, what you get back is scattershot attempts to help, and not the book you are looking for.

The part you remember is the part you found in the depiction.

As a writer, you can't use depiction to make your point. 

But if you do not have a point, and you are not trying to make that point, most readers will get bored and drop the story in the trash. 

If you don't stick to the point you depicted on Page 1, and STOP once you've made that point (nail The End), if you let bits and pieces remain in the final draft that should have been deleted for use in another book with another point, you will get very angry readers giving you 1-star reviews on Amazon.

The clarity of "point" that most readers want has to be made off-the-nose.  It is via that point depicted that the reader enters this alternate Reality and rides with you to The End.

One of the issues that many readers have with Romance Novels is the HEA, the Happily Ever After ending that just is not plausible in their own everyday reality.  The lack of plausibility is often (not always) traceable to the depiction of the HEA. 

The HEA is the resolution to a problem that the reader believes can not be resolved.  The resolution of the conflict has its roots on Page 1, in the way the conflict is depicted.  Do Page 1 right, and the reader suspends disbelief and actually believes the HEA (at least for a few seconds). 

The Depiction series of posts on this blog is about mastering the techniques of depiction in order to create an HEA that is not a HFN (Happily For Now), and yet is absolutely believable by readers living in a harsh reality.

To that end, we are examining how to depict culture. 

Cultures are based on abstract ideas like religious ideas that the cultural pressures (peer pressure) make desirable. 

If you live the beliefs of the culture around you, you are taking the easiest path to developing Relationships.

In Science Fiction, we focus mostly on the individual who is an oddball, a maverick, an outcast, a 'drifter' type in a Western, a "First-In Scout" (an explorer with no ties to anyone).  We focus on the Loner who has no problem with being a loner.  And Science Fiction is mostly about depicting by stark illustration what value such loners have to society and ultimately to the culture.

The Loner is not always the person so unstable they are about to freak out and murder a mob of people just because they're angry.

The Loner is depicted as honorable, kind, just, and strong. 

Being a Loner is not the problem a Science Fiction Novel is written to solve.  The Main Character of a Science Fiction Novel does not experience being a Loner as a PROBLEM.  He/she is not "in conflict" with the situation of being alone. 

The Science Fiction hero's Loner situation usually comes about because of being at odds with the Establishment.  He's the Scientist who believes there really is life on Mars, or UFO's have visited Earth, or human activity really is not creating climate change, but natural forces of Earth itself are causing what we observe.

The Science Fiction Hero is the oddball, tin-hat crazy who turns out to be correct, and the plot-driving major conflict depicts his determined effort to prove he is correct -- or depicts his efforts to just get away from those who want to make sure he never proves he's correct.

His opposition has a "vested interest" (an emotional need) to know beyond doubt that this Science Fiction Hero's ideas are crazy, and thus untrue.

The HEA rejection mechanism is psychologically similar, so pay attention. 

The Powers That Be in our modern culture have that kind of "vested interest" in convincing the majority that the HEA is not possible.  The Universe structure which makes it obvious to us that the HEA is possible lies at odds with the Universe structure that gives the Powers That Be power over us.

Here are a few posts on the HEA.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/education-of-action-romance-hero.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-your-lovers-live-hea.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-love-sci-fi-part-vii-unconditional.html

So the typical Science Fiction Hero (this blog is about Science Fiction and/or Paranormal Romance, the hybrid genre), is alone, at least at or before the start of the story. 

What does it mean "alone?" 

It means not just having no family ties, or being free of obligations, debts, and other strings, but also it means being sovereign over your own mind, heart, body, and course in life. 

The Science Fiction hero is a person who has become a Strong Character because of being a Loner.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/10/strong-characters-defined-part-3-tit.html
Part 3 has links to previous parts in the Strong Character series.

So it is natural for the Science Fiction Hero to become the Most Desirable Hunk in the Romance heroine's world.  He's a REAL CATCH -- and unattached to boot. 

Why did it take so long for Romance to discover Science Fiction?  (it all started with Star Trek, you know, and the Vampire Romance)

So when you set out to build a world around your story, you hide the point deep inside the worldbuilding.  Your point, as a writer, is an unconscious assumption of your characters, and a given of their culture. 

You get to state your point baldly in a single sentence that takes up half a line at most -- and is placed near the end or actually at the end of the novel.  It is Blake Snyder's "theme-stated" beat (see SAVE THE CAT! trilogy of books on screenwriting.)  Your point is inside your theme and is depicted within the characters' culture.

In Science Fiction, you often have two or more cultures to play with, and usually they are at odds with one another creating the main external conflict.  That's how most science fiction turns out to be about wars.

So a culture that is the outgrowth of war has to have its most prominent identifying beliefs focused on the use and abuse of Power.

Remember Star Trek's Klingons.  A good day to die.  The relish of the fun of combat.  Social interactions based on dominance displays. 

The original depiction of the Klingons (designed to work in the tiny space allowed in a TV episode), was very comic-bookish, too cliche, too facile.

So as the popularity of the Klingons grew, we saw different foreheads, a more thoughtful explanation of their values, and development of the language by a fan, and the addition of culturally specific weapons depicting tradition.  The culture acquired a history, depth, and real people. 

And all of it is based on the combat stance in personal relationships.  So Klingon culture has a whole lot of rules about who can do what to whom, when and how much.

The unfolding of Klingon culture from a line-drawing sketch of something to oppose the Enterprise into a galactic dominating, swaggering, and mighty culture with real people, and a character named Worf who grew up in a human family is a good model to study for depiction of opposition, and for worldbuilding a culture in order to depict a "worthy opponent."

Note how as Star Trek developed, this formidable opponent was nearly destroyed, and was rescued by Kirk et. al., then became an ally of the Federation that Kirk represented.  That "arc" of development of the Relationship between the two cultures is DEPICTED, -- shown not told.

One could make the case that early Klingon versions were bullies, or the most admirable trait in Klingon culture was bullying. 

We discussed bullying in the Theme-Worldbuidding series:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-5.html

The anti-bullying culture subscribes to some simple rules of them to detect bullying situations. 

"Don't hit below the belt"

"Don't pick on someone smaller than you" (in size, power, reach, ability)

This picking on someone smaller than you is what Israel is depicted as doing to the Palestinians especially in Gaza.

See how easily depiction can be used to paint a picture which remains indelible in the mind long after a conflict is over?

The USA culture despises the Bully and righteously rejects bullying.

But how many Americans actually know what Bullying is? 

Most people don't think philosophically, or theoretically.  In life as in fiction, people want concrete, clearly defined edges to the ideas that form the world.

So they know what bullying is because they've seen it in school yards, or on Gang dominated streets.  Maybe they've seen it in domestic abuse.  They know it when they see it, but they don't analyze it to figure out what it is, and how to "depict" it in a Alien Culture (non-human culture).

Lifting out the essence of a concept like Bullying and using that essence to generate a non-human fictional culture is Art.  It is what Artists do for a living -- depict the world from a different angle than the reader/viewer has ever seen.  The artist does this to reveal an inner, hidden truth.

So conspiracies and International Intrigue, subterfuge and obfuscation make wonderful raw material for the Artist.

Remember how Leonardo DaVinci would look at a slab of marble, and see the statue buried inside it, then free that statue by paring away the dross?

That's what artists do -- take away the dross to reveal something hidden inside. 

So take the Middle East situation as an example.

Most people look at that mess and say Israel is a Bully -- because clearly they have a strong economy, high tech weapons, and can fend off the worst that Gaza can throw at them.  A few Israelis died, and thousands of Gazans died, so who's the bully? 

Obviously tiny little Israel is a horrible bully for keeping the Palestinian borders closed, and policing every movement they make.

That's Leondardo DaVinci's view from outside the block of marble. 

What does the artist see looking at this mess?

The artist sees the Gazans as the bullies. 

Isn't that startling? 

You can make the case that the Palestinians are more powerful than Israel if you understand the hidden connections and the history.  If you don't believe the history, you can't see the Gazans or the Hamas infestation in Gaza as the bullies.

The Palestinians have been made into a political football, or hot potatoe, by the much larger countries and factions surrounding the area.  They are the boxing glove worn by Iran and bigger countries in order to punch Israel without being hurt themselves.  They have been armed, deprived, and ginned up with religious fervor to be used as a weapon against a tiny country. 

Or so the argument goes.

Those who argue that Israel is the bully, say that Israel threw the Palestinians out of their homeland. 

Those who argue that Hamas and Palestinians are the bully, say that when Israel was forming as a State under U.N. Mandate, the Jewish refugees had no problem accepting the residents of the area as citizens of the new state.

But the Powers That Be in the surrounding countries lied to the residents to make them flee the new Israelis.  And then those Powers That Be refused to accept the refugees they had made homeless. 

There are conspiracy theorists who hold that those same Powers That Be planned to use those refugee homeless to attack and destroy the fledgling country Israel, a pushover without an army, populated by shell-shocked, starved people rescued from concentration camps.

Artists, especially those writing novels, love conspiracy theorists.  Such Drama!!!

Regardless of the actual motives of those Powers That Be, or even which countries they were from, the net result is a population of Stateless People, people not protected by a government, and without a land franchise of their own.

That population has grown, but as it has grown, it has not produced world class universities, patents, trade goods, intellectual property, or anything to add to the world GDP.  Trillions of dollars of the world's wealth has been poured into the Palestinian populace, and nothing has been added to the world Gross Product, the wealth of humanity. 

They are poor, and make a profession of being poverty stricken. 

So obviously anyone who attacks them is a bully. 

So what is a bully to do when the weakest kids on the block are given powerful weapons and attack as a mob?  Is the bully required (by cultural rules of engagement) to refrain from fighting back?  To refrain from self-protection?  To refrain from pre-emptive strikes to disarm?

The Palestinian situation makes a wonderful Situation to study for an interstellar war simply because the actual war is all about something totally different than Israel vs Palestinians.

What exactly it's all about -- aha, that's a matter for the Artist to chip away and reveal.  If you're stumped, go look again at the Klingons and the Romulans. 

Take this Situation, set it out amidst the stars of this galaxy, create different species, religions, billions of years of history, ancient ruins, Great Shrines of sacred planets,

Observe the Middle East melting down, and observe the techniques used to cause that to happen.  Look deeply into the religious wars, the many religious factions within factions -- there are as many flavors of Muslims as there are flavors of Christians, and Jews are no slouches in the flavors department.  A new faction seems to arise every week or so.

Are you looking at a religious war, or is the religious war an excuse to hold a good war the way the Klingons love to do?

How would Klingons (or Romulans) react to finding out they were someone else's patsy, a tool to hammer an enemy and escape retribution?

Which side is the bully and which the victim is a question few readers are comfortable pondering.  The reader wants you to tell them the answer.

There's a basic human psychology principle behind that reader preference.

People who bully in other areas of life become truly upset when they see what they think is bullying happening before their eyes.  They become upset because they can't look at themselves and acknowledge their own bullying tendencies. 

The psychological principle behind this is rooted in the subconscious.  What we hate other people for is the very thing we loathe so much in ourselves that we bury it deep in the subconscious. 

The Artist knows that when you see a flaw in someone else, it is because you have that flaw in you.  It's a reliable principle.  If you don't have that flaw, it won't irk you in others even when it is there.

So human cultures establish rules-of-thumb to measure or judge behavior objectively. 

You can tell a busy-body "Mind Your Own Business" by citing that cultural rule of privacy without getting personal, insulting, or obnoxious.  It's a generally accepted principle, not something you just made up.

The Prize Fighter waits for the guy he decked to get back on his feet before attacking again.  There's an ethical reason for that, and a moral one, but a referee enforced cultural rule. 

"Pick on someone your own size."  -- yes, you must fight, but only people who are an even match. 

One time there was a strike in Football, and instead of the scheduled match they televised a match between a professional team and a college team -- the college team got creamed.  And spectators didn't enjoy the sight.  They never did that again.

Do we enjoy such sights of uneven matches these days?

Check YouTube. 

There are a lot of Video posts by teens are of uneven matches.  There is that "trend" of walking up behind someone and sucker-punching them to the deck -- and it is done to older, more frail, or less fit (even handicapped) people.  The objective is to deck the other person WITHOUT WARNING, and that's pretty much like the old American Indian idea of counting coups by sneaking into another tribe's camp and stealing or marking their horses, leaving trace that their defenses are porous.

The message from the more powerful to the less powerful is "I am BETTER than you, so don't mess with me."

The message is MIGHT MAKES RIGHT.

That is the bully's message to the weak.

Is that now the new cultural mantra we all must live by?

Or do we still know that the weakest contestant in such a transaction is the bully him/herself.

Yes, bullies are cowards.  That's one of the oldest principles, and the origin of the advice parents always gave kids beset by the class bully -- just punch him back good and hard.  Deck him in front of his cronies.  That's the end of him because he'll react with cowardice not heroism.

Bullies are all about their Pride, so they focus on Who Is Right. (see the illustration at the top of this blog).  They do that because they are afraid they are wrong.  The Hero, the Strong Character (or one getting stronger) is focused on What Is Right, and always curious to find any error, misconception, or mistake.  The Hero is about correcting mistakes, and takes joy from each mistake found and corrected.  That's a hero.

Both Science Fiction and Romance are about heroes.  But very often, a combination of SF and Romance depicts a coward becoming a hero.  Many World War II movies depicted that character arc showing the flinching coward becoming a "real man" by finding inner courage.

On the TV Series DEFIANCE,


where several species of aliens have landed on Earth, each with their own culture and customs.  There is an alien culture where males are unquestioned in their (brutal) dominance of females. 
Exposure to Earth's ideas has given the wife of one prominent businessman some ideas about just becoming the boss.

She has framed him for crimes, had him imprisoned, nearly killed him in the street, humiliated him before other males of his species, used his son by her as a patsy and commanded the business interests behind the screen of his son.  She wants dominance in a MIGHT MAKES RIGHT culture that attributes its strength to dominating its women absolutely.

Their religious leader opposes her, and she frames him for murder of several women (wives of the prominent and powerful) and he is publicly executed.  She does this right in front of her husband.  The acting is absolutely superb and makes the show worth watching all by itself.

Now these are not "real" aliens, you understand -- they are Hollywood Aliens created to DEPICT a THEME.

At the inter-cultural interfaces among the various species, ideas cross over.  Each culture has its own definition of bullying, and of the value of the bully to a culture.

And yes, just as humans have a zillion cultures, likewise each alien species has different cultures.

The location is the USA, vastly transformed by destruction at the arrival of these aliens, and continuing threats.  The various aliens and all the different kinds of humans clash, and form uneasy alliances, and in some cases get along quite well.

The entire series is about Power -- who has it, who doesn't, what to do with it.

In the sparse, superficial language of Television Series, this series depicts Power In Culture.

The devastation depicted wipes the whole Israel/Palestinian conflict off the map.  The series doesn't give much about what's going on in the rest of the world, but clearly nothing that was going on is still going on.  Nobody turns up from China or a new Caliphate to take over the US, Canada and Mexico.

The focus is close up on a group of people (and non-humans) just trying to survive long enough to learn to get along.

And it's very much a "Strong Man" and "Gang" dominated society, very much like the "failed state" scenario we saw in The Balkans, and are seeing now in Libya, Somalia, some African areas, and Iraq, etc.  But Iraq might yet pull together something.

Still, DEFIANCE is a science fiction series depicting the failed state pulling itself together -- sort of.  It takes a really big bully to pull such a mess together. 

Is that why humanity is so well supplied with bullies?  Do we need them?  Is humanity's need for the bully-personality (cowardice and all) the reason God created so many bullies?  Or was that just evolution speaking?  All that is raw material from which to craft themes you can depict by using the culture you create for your characters.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 5

SIDE NOTE: my Vampire Romance novel set on Earth's Moon, (which is nothing at all like the Anita Blake Series) is now, for the first time, available in e-book, almost all formats. 

Here's the new paperback edition:

The Kindle should be linked there. 

Last week in Part 4
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-4.html

...we discussed how differently a writer sees a popular news feature story than a reader does.  One lens the writer uses to view Events is the Archetype. 

We had ended Part 3
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-3.html

...wriggling in delight at how generously the world responded to the incident of Middle School children reviling a School Bus Monitor then posting her reactions on YouTube.  A fund was started that collected hundreds of thousands of dollars for this elderly woman.  And we ended off with a great big, BUT to consider.

In Part 4 we began to analyze that BUT into something a Romance writer, particularly a PNR writer can use.

-------------QUOTE--------------
I see two sides in this "BUT" --

A) US/THEM -- we reject those children
B) MY GOD/ YOUR GOD -- money solves all problems

...and later ....
Strip this bus incident back to the raw basics, and you see PROPITIATION OF A GOD.  That's the basic archetype revealed (there are a lot of them in the incident; this is the one Romance writers can use.)

The children's behavior resembles the behavior of the Ancient Greek gods torturing a human,  for fun, just because they can.  They knew they could get away with it because of the laws saying the bus monitor couldn't spank them, in any way, physical or metaphorical.

Just like the Ancient Greek gods, the children had more power than they had maturity to handle.  (read Gini Koch's Alien series!)  They have the godly power of YouTube. 

---------END QUOTE----------

We discussed how these children's ill-behavior  -- dare I call them spoiled brats?  Nobody uses that term anymore, but it is so appropriate here!  -- is typical of the behavior of children who have not been well parented. 

Of course, I don't know these children or their parents so I can't say that about these individuals, but as a writer looking for a story springboard, I can definitely say this is exactly the sort of behavior one would expect in children of households with failed parenting. 

I took issue with the media's characterizing this behavior as "bullying" -- that is now a politically correct term, but a misnomer of exactly the same formula that I pointed out in the first two posts in this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration. 

The correct descriptive, the accurate term, for this kind of behavior is "spoiled brat." 

The typical spoiled brat is a child who has power over the adults in their life, who knows they won't be punished for anything -- maybe anything short of a certain line.  The spoiled brat can have anything they want without effort.  The spoiled brat has merely to demand something they want and it is theirs by right, by entitlement, and nobody has the right to make them work for it.

The spoiled brat is the Prince who hates his whipping-boy and misbehaves just for the joy of seeing the whipping-boy hurt.

The spoiled brat becomes a monster in the house.  The parents fear the spoiled brat's temper tantrums ever more as the child becomes larger and harder to control.

The parents cringe before the demands of the spoiled brat.

Failed parenting produces monsters worthy of a horror movie.

We're writing Romance here -- Romance about a single parent finally finding a Soul Mate.  Consider the complications to a Romance when the child the single parent is raising is a spoiled brat.  Spoiled brats bully those weaker than they are, and terrorize those stronger than they are.  They attack everything in sight like piranhas after warm meat.

Now consider two single parents each trying to raise a spoiled brat.  The opposite of the Brady Bunch, no?  Fodder for a TV Series, yes? 

This examination of an old news story from June 2012 is not an exercise in futility.  There is a point to all this, big bucks to be made.

If spoiled-brattishness comes from failed parenting, and we have a second, maybe third generation of people whose parents failed to parent them well now raising children of their own then it's no surprise we have an epidemic of bullying and other violent behavior in Middle Schools.  Even childhood obesity may be linked to failed parenting -- a baby (infant even) who gets something stuck in their mouth every time they yell, who gets their every temper tantrum over a toy propitiated with a lollypop, is not going to grow up into the self-control and self-discipline that says "no" to sweets when they experience a twinge of emotional discomfort.

The link between desire and satisfaction is forged in infancy.

The fictioneer's job is to raise desire in their readers and then satisfy that desire. 

A writer who can not delay their own gratification of the need to say something, to show something, to get to the orgasm, is going to cram exposition into the story for self-gratification, not the gratification of their reader.

There is a cluster of cognitive skills that can be acquired only by being well parented.

Delayed gratification of desires is one.  Connected to that is the awareness that others exist, and that there is real, deep, multi-level gratification to be had in gratifying others.

The parent bird who drops a worm into the baby bird's mouth does it for the frisson of pleasure gratifying that baby bird brings, not from altruism but instinct.

The higher mammals have to learn parenting by being parented. (remember the experiment with monkeys we mentioned last week.  Research it if you're not familiar with these studies.)

What's parenting got to do with Romance?

Romance is entirely rooted in the AWARENESS of another person.

A human who hasn't been well parented, at least in some regard, though not necessarily by those who birthed him, CAN be incapable of the awareness of another.

Psychologists use the term validation.  One of the highest forms of personal completion is VALIDATION by another person -- another person who knows what you mean when you say what you feel.  That makes you REAL to yourself in a way nothing else can.

ALIEN ROMANCE -- is all about the oddity of experiencing that VALIDATION not from another human being but from a non-human.  Or vice-verso, of a non-human receiving that validation from a human.

VALIDATION - psychological visibility.  Look it up. 

It is a universal human experience.  The failure of BONDING at birth, the failure of continuity in care-giver in the first couple of years, can disrupt the development of that part of the brain that processes this kind of information. 

As an aside, I once read somewhere that it is the consistence appearance of the caregiver's face over the infant's crib in the first year that develops the part of the brain that recognizes faces. 

All of these features of "humanity" are innate in the human animal, simply in the primate body.

The spoiled brat behavior we witnessed in that school bus monitor video could easily be explained by a failure on this very simple level, the physical body level.  

But humans are ever so much more than that.  The essential feature of humanity is the Soul, and those 12 yr old spoiled brats had human souls that weren't functioning very well either.

The nurturing of the Soul is likewise a function of parenting. 

If a human child is treated only as an animal, given food, clothing, shelter and basic survival skills (in our culture that's reading, writing, using an iPad), the body develops but the Soul doesn't.

The Soul can be walled off from the body, rejected, suppressed, shunned.  The Soul will scream with pain and frustration -- maybe at night, in dreams -- but it can be suppressed and ignored up to a point especially if Parenting validates the process by approving of it, or ignoring the presence of the Soul.  It takes a lot of pure, raw courage to acknowledge and welcome one's own Soul into one's body.  But without that process being completed in adolescence, how can a Soul find a Soul-Mate and a Happily Ever After life? 

How can a person raised with a callous between body and soul ever experience Romance that isn't merely lust?  The body lusts - the Soul Loves.  When the two cooperate, the Universe lights up with delight. 

Children estranged from their Souls would behave like Ancient Greek gods, gratifying whims. 

These spoiled brat/bully/cowardly little tyrants will behave like animals.

Ever seen a flock of ducks pecking the wounded duck to death?  I have.

The "wounded duck" was that bus monitor, and that pack of children tried to peck her to death.  I don't know why because I don't know those people -- even if I did know them, I wouldn't really know why.  One human can't judge another human.

But, a writer can see patterns that others don't notice.

What I see, that may be a big opportunity for some writer, is the rising tide of purely animal-based behavior.  Given my personal philosophy, I parse that as being easily predictable if there has been an erosion of the Soul nurturing dimension of Parenting as a general trend in our society.

If that thesis is correct, then it's not surprising that a huge number of people gave so generously to the victimized school bus monitor. 

You can't generalize human behavior.  We are all unique individuals, though we sometimes move in large packs -- as with the donations to this woman.  Yet I can see that if the thesis of a failure of Soul Parenting being widespread in our society is true, then it may be that Parents who are aware they are failing in Soul Parenting were moved to make up for their failure by making amends to this stranger woman who was a victim of Soul-crippled children just like their own children.

The archetype here is propitiation of the gods.  It is a need to avert disaster (or get something dearly wanted) by putting offerings of food or flowers or whatever (virgin girls into the maw of the volcano) at the feet of the THREAT or the SOURCE.

Many people who haven't studied the mystical schools deeply enough think (possibly because they're taught this in college courses of the Bible as Literature) that the "sacrifices" called for in the Old Testament are exactly like this sort of PROPITIATION exercise.

I'll give you a clue.  They're not.  They're the exact opposite, and one of the things that makes a stark difference between the Ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, etc and the Jews.  It's an absolutely day/and/night difference, but that's only discernible on the Soul level.  That's why mystical studies are so valuable to the writer of Paranormal Romance.  Love is of the Soul; Lust is of the Body.  Meld them into a cooperative unit, and nothing material can successfully oppose them.

The secret of understanding that difference is in the mis-translation of the words.  "Sacrifice" is the opposite of what the Hebrew word actually means. 

So, now, back to the beginning of this series.  Theme-Worldbuilding Integration.

In the school bus incident, we see cause for euphoric HOPE because "people" rejected the behavior of those children with kindness to their victim.

BUT!!!  (which is where writers get all their crazy ideas -- but!)

Slicing and dicing the kindness offered, we begin to wonder if maybe that out-pouring of kindness and sympathy was actually rooted in the same illness that produced the children's bad behavior.

A lot of people gave money.  That's a huge potential audience for a novel.  Remember in "targeting an audience" -- we learned to study the real world around our target audience and discover what's bugging them, then reduce that to a theme, and use the theme to create a world and characters (in whatever order; doesn't matter.)

So what theme can we extract that would address that readership?

Quote from Part 4:

I see two sides in this "BUT" --

A) US/THEM -- we reject those children
B) MY GOD/ YOUR GOD -- money solves all problems

A) Us/them -- generation gap.  Our children have turned into monsters.  They don't share our values.

B) My God/ Your God (Oh, God! George Burns, 1977)

We live in the 'Age of Enlightenment' where science has become our god.  Whenever we have a problem, we shovel money at science, and it produces a solution. 

Disease: vaccine
Obesity: weight loss drugs, diet/exercise regimens - 6 foods that take inches off you waist

Back at the beginning of the 20th century, (you can look this up; it's true) farmers had an excess of hogs, so a study was commissioned which showed a bacon-and-eggs breakfast was healthy, gave you energy for the day (we still have that "eat a good breakfast" mantra around), and presto bacon sold like hotcakes.  Always check who pays for a scientific study. 

Science has been so successful at solving our everyday problems (as evidenced by lengthening life-span!) that it has become our god.

There is a concerted, well funded effort to prove that the biochemistry of the brain can account for ALL human experience -- to prove that there's no need to postulate a Soul as a real thing to explain human experience of life.  By Occam's Razor, the simplest solution is the right one -- so if you can explain all phenomena (even out of body experiences) without postulating a Soul, then there actually is no such thing as a Soul, which means God does not exist. 

It's all relentlessly logical, and "enlightened" people who've come out of the Dark Ages, and live in the Light of Science rely on logic for their sense of reality. 

There is a philosophy promulgated in the 1700's saying  that Reason works so well, it clearly indicates that God is a silly superstition only the unenlightened (dark minded; stupid or evil) would accept. 

The idea is that one must choose -- Enlightenment and Reason OR Darkness and Superstition. 

This is what I call a False Hobson's Choice.  Read the February 2012 Review Column at

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2012/

In the Enlightenment view of the universe, (The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, a lapsed Mormon) Science itself has evolved from Paine's ideas into the god to be propitiated by shoveling money into its maw, just like virgins to the maw of the volcano or the Dragon. 

In that universe, the Soul is not real and thus children don't need their Soul nurtured, just the body.  The yearnings and promptings of the body are the guide to what is "right" and "human rights" actually means "bodily rights," exclusive of Soul Rights.

With each generation, the children become more of a Body and less of a Soul, progressively, a little at a time so nobody notices or complains.  Their god is science and their physical whims.  Fun is behaving like an animal, or herd of animals, and pecking strangers to death, shedding the elderly from the herd for the good of the herd.

In the opposite view of the universe, God is real, makes the Souls and the Reality that cradles them out of Love, and imbues the Soul with the capability to experience Joy, especially the joy of a Soul Mate.

The conflict is "Science As god vs. God is Real"

Themes can be intimate or hugely dramatic:

"Religious Conversion Changes a Person on the Soul Level."

"God is Pissed And She Is Coming!" (an old bumper sticker that says it all)

You can tell up close and personal stories of finding a Soul Mate and thus finding your Soul and seeing you've made monsters of your children.  Like a 12 step program, starting with admitting your complicity in monsterizing your children, you can ignite their Souls and rejoin them to their bodies, see them happily married. 

Or you can tell vast stories, Herman Wouk size stories, such as the story of Moses pulling a nation out of Egypt with 10 miracles, and a Voice speaking the Ten Commandments from a medium-sized mountain, making the hills dance.

The salient feature of the 10 Commandments story is very simple.  It's unique. 

There are a lot of religions in this world where a Prophet rises and says "God told me to tell you."  The gods of many nations only speak to their priests, or to one person at a time like the Greek gods who'd corner someone and torture them for fun. 

Many of the Native American spirits would speak to a favored person only when he was alone in the wilderness.  Even in Australia, the drill is to go AWAY from other people to find the spiritual pathway.  I couldn't generalize about Africa, which is multiplex.  Or India - whoo that's a complicated place. 

But of all the stories around the globe and through time, the only one I know of where the Identity reporting itself as Creator of the Universe actually spoke to more than a million people, a "mixed multitude" (i.e. Jews and Egyptians and other foreigners visiting Egypt who went with the Jews, impressed by the Plagues), spoke publicly to everyone all at the same time, is the 10 Commandments. 

Figure out what you think about this great philosophical debate (spoiled brats or bullies?).  Arrive at your thought by this process I've illustrated, bringing in everything you know about everything, distilling it all down to a single statement, so that thought will be your THEME.  The kernel of what really happened on that bus, and on YouTube, and why so much money was donated, will be your theme. 

Maybe it's, "Children will be children!" or "That woman deserved it; she's ugly."  or "YouTube is Evil for allowing that video to be posted." 

Or maybe it's something huge, like "That bus incident proves that government must control everything. We need a Federal Law against bullying."  Great story in a Political Romance!

Or something small and personal like, "My kids would do something like that.  I have to discipline them harder (or softer, or enroll them in sleep-away school, or whatever -- think Harry Potter for Adults.)

Find your theme, then find a character who believes it, and one who'll die to stamp it out.  Maybe the one who'll die to stamp it out is a kid bent on stamping out parental discipline. 

Pit them against each other in a conflict derived from their different takes on that thematic belief. 

Worldbuild their environment to showcase their issues. 

Toss in a couple more kids, shake don't stir, and write your novel.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com