Self Image And The Tree of Life by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Self Image And The Tree of Life

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Many Paranormal Romance novels include the premise that Long-Lived or Immortal Beings walk among us.  Some are scary and some are yummy hunks.

There is something sexy about the Immortal, or near-immortal.

Check out the TV Series LUCIFER --
https://www.amazon.com/Lucifer-Complete-First-Season-Various/dp/B01G43HC66/

Here you have fallen angels, angels on a mission, certain they know their father's Will, then not so certain.  They have powers. They lose powers. They walk as mortals, get hurt, get confused, do wrong, experience remorse, struggle to complete a mission -- and just plain struggle.

Many viewers see Lucifer, himself, as the prime hunk - but others see some of the other Angel characters as riveting.

We find an Immortal, then wonder about ways to kill him.  In the TV Series Lucifer - a dagger is presented that can destroy body/soul/ -- even an Angel can be destroyed.  Uriel is destroyed by Lucifer using that dagger, and it is Uriel who brought the dagger to Earth to use, perhaps, on their Mother.

Vampire and Werewolf Romances often turn on the premise that the Supernatural beings strewn through our everyday world, hidden by subterfuge or magic or just human inattentiveness, are long-lived and/or Immortal.

The everyday reader is familiar with the idea that Souls (if they exist) are Immortal.  There is an "afterlife" -- and/or rebirth, reincarnation.  These are not within our everyday experience (except perhaps the Meet Your Soul Mate experience), so they make great "What If...?" premises for fiction.

The Tree of Life, in the Garden of Eden, is the source of fruit that confers eternal life.

Vampire and Shapechanger novels often explore the advisability or dubious value of "eternal life."

Which side of that argument you prefer to take, in fiction or in real life, may be a function of your Self Image.

What entertains us, and what writers put into their fiction, comes from deep in the unconscious -- sometimes of an individual, but often of our culture or even Humanity as a whole.

Artists depict
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html
that non-verbal information about individuals and whole cultures (sometimes humanity as a whole) -- whether the artist knows it or not.  Usually, the artist does not know it -- at least before creating the work of Art, and often for decades afterward.

Reading what you wrote thirty years ago may reveal what you thought and felt back then -- but it also illustrates how you have changed.

Once you grasp that living a human life means CHANGE - you have a clue to what "Immortal" may mean, and why it might not be all good.

Your Self Image changes because your Self changes.

This is clearly depicted in your Astrological Natal Chart and the tools Astrologers use to evolve the potential at birth into the possibilities of today.  The "Self" changes.

If the Self Image does not change to match the Self's own evolution, psychological difficulties emerge.  Those difficulties will be externalized by each individual depending on how they are situated in "life" (e.g. waiting tables in a failing greasy spoon or sitting in the Oval Office).

Sometimes we become saner with time.  Sometimes we become less sane with time.  Sometimes we can handle everything life throws at us. Other times we cave in, get wiped out like a Surfer riding a tsunami.

The Art of Astrology is about figuring out which times are which, and what the available options are -- and how to update the available options list.

Writers don't have to know Astrology to use it in crafting a Character and the plot of the Character's story.

Here is the Index to Astrology Just For Writers.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Whether aware of it or not, all humans "know" Astrology -- we hear the still small voice prompting to do or not do; we feel great or depressed; we take risks or avoid them; we blurt out inadvisable remarks or keep silent.

Since your reader has had this experience, you must depict your Characters as either having and heeding that gut-feeling, still-small-voice, or being deaf to it.  There will always be Characters around your main Character who hear that voice.  We often call it Intuition - or other less admiring terms.

In March, we discussed an Interstellar War/Action series by Dave Bara

in which the main character (a Marty Stu type Character) is the most Intuitive around, and his Military uses a scientific method of measuring Intuition to rank people.

Intuition can be treated as a science fiction element, as can precognition (see Jean Johnson's series
https://www.amazon.com/First-Salik-War-3-Book/dp/B01HH3OWRO/

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/03/reviews-31-dave-bara-lightship.html

In the Art which the writer creates, the writer's Self Image will be the key.

As in music, notes are selected to go together, creating a "key" and all the notes in a sequence have to be in the same musical key.

A novel is like a symphony -- and the novel composition is as formalized and set as the structure of a symphony.

The "key" you write in is your Self Image.  Your "Voice" as a writer is like a singer's voice.

Developing your writer's Voice takes exercise and training, strong breathing muscles, strong vocal cords (which get strong only by exercise), good vocabulary, command of grammar and syntax, and above all an "ear" for emotion, and an "eye" for reality.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/reviews-3-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/02/cozy-science-fiction-part-2-style-and.html

We've talked about developing your writer's Voice for years on this blog, but have seldom touched on the elements of your self-image that you inadvertently reveal in your fiction.

Most of what you reveal comes into your fiction via Theme.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

You may consciously think so-and-such is the theme of this novel, but the dialog and plot events speak of a different theme.

Likewise in the Worldbuilding that we have explored extensively -- how the fictional world you build has to be constructed of the elements of your target audience's real, everyday world.  This is especially critical for self-publishing authors.

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

Theme must be integrated into every element in the framework of a story -- every clever bit of dialogue or Character backstory, every detail of furniture or Alien Creatures, must be selected by the Theme.  Any stray bit that does not bespeak the Theme will jar the reader out of the story -- or get blue-penciled by a great editor.

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

So, since Self Image is the basis of all Themes you actually write (as opposed to what you think you are writing), that deepest self-image shapes everything in a story -- the World, the Characters, the Story, and the Plot:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

And all of this integration, the nails that hold your fictional work together, come from your people-watching, critical observation of science, funding for science projects, politics, and every aspect of human behavior.

All of these elements you share in common with your target readership are filtered through the lens of your self-image and their self-images.

 The self-image quirks you have in common make your fiction "resonate" with your audience -- meaning they will recommend your novels to their friends.

So we've been discussing the components of a writer's self-image, where to get them, how to hone, define and strengthen those components, and how to discover which components the writer has in common with the target readership, for years.

Bit by bit, we've been building an image of self-image.

Self-image is the "key" you write in, sing your song in, and the color palette you paint your pictures in.

Know Thyself.

Are you an Immortal Soul on a journey through life, or on a vacation?

Do you inhabit your body -- or are you just your body and nothing more?

Do you have a Soul Mate?  Have you found (and maybe lost) your Soul Mate?

Have you been loved -- and known it at the time?

Have you experienced Life at its fullest?  Have you had the "time of your life" on some vacation, or perhaps at an awards ceremony where your triumphs were celebrated by people you didn't even know?

What moments have you lived that your readers also have -- or have not -- lived?

What do you know that your readers need to learn?

Where do you find out what your readers already know?  And where do you discover what your readers don't know that you can explain to them?

Many readers gravitate toward Science Fiction to meet "Alien" Characters, and to walk that mile in Alien moccasins, to feel what it is to be Alien (i.e. not human).

The closest we come to that experience is meeting someone from a different culture, a human who just functions from a different set of assumptions about Reality and the Human Condition.

Popular Science articles, such as appear all over the internet, explaining publications in Peer Reviewed Journals (and often misinterpreting those publications in order to get 'clicks') are one great source of discovering what your prospective reader knows is fact.

If you know that the reader's firmly accepted facts are incorrect, you can leverage your knowledge into Conflict and Plot that everyone will be talking about.

The art of contradicting is commercial art.

Does your self image include the archetype Skeptic?

Where does Self-Image come from?

Science is in hot pursuit of answers to questions about Human Behavior, just as other scientists are pursuing longevity, the Fountain of Youth, and even Immortality.

Here is a bbc.com article ...

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170118-how-east-and-west-think-in-profoundly-different-ways

...about the contrast between Eastern and Western civilizations, and the attitudes toward "self" that prevail in Collectivist Societies vs. attitudes toward "self" that prevail in Individualistic Societies, and how geography may play a part.

Each type of self-image, collectivist vs individualistic, produces entire spectra of political and philosophical systems, attitudes, and movements.  So maybe this is the master key to the essential dichotomy in human history?  Maybe there really are two kinds of people?

The Skeptic would view this article with the question in mind, "How do you prove that Collectivists differ from Individualists?"  In other words, what proof is there that these two concepts are mutually exclusive, either/or choices?

The non-critical thinker would simply accept this decree as truth -- after all, it is the result of doing science.  What idiot would question whether science is reliable (after all these centuries of it being proven correct?)

Here is a quote from the middle of the bbc.com article:

----------quote----------
When asked about their competence, 94% of American professors claimed they were ‘better than average’ – a sign of self-inflation

--------unquote---------

Taken out of the context of this article - reduced to a factoid - this statement might be interpreted to mean that 94% of American Professors are self-deluded.  Some might conclude that being American means being deluded.

But think about it.  You get to BE a professor by being way-way-way above average.  You have to get a Ph.D. before you even start on a professorial career -- and "Ph.D." is defined as someone who has contributed something new and original to the sum total of human knowledge -- to the basic wealth of all humanity for all time.

The average person has not done that.  So professors are not "self-inflating" their importance.  Their importance has been hard won by impressing a jury of peers and producing something nobody has ever produced before.

Despite that shaky hole in the article's reasoning, there might actually be a usable point here, if your objective is to create a Science Fiction Romance story.

------------quote------------
‘Weird’ minds
Until recently, scientists had largely ignored the global diversity of thinking. In 2010, an influential article in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20550733
reported that the vast majority of psychological subjects had been “western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic”, or ‘Weird’ for short. Nearly 70% were American, and most were undergraduate students hoping to gain pocket money or course credits by giving up their time to take part in these experiments.

The tacit assumption had been that this select group of people could represent universal truths about human nature – that all people are basically the same. If that were true, the Western bias would have been unimportant. Yet the small number of available studies which had examined people from other cultures would suggest that this is far from the case. “Westerners – and specifically Americans – were coming out at the far end of the distributions,” says Joseph Henrich at the University of British Columbia, who was one of the study’s authors.

-----------end quote---------

In other words, "science" the touchstone of reliable facts, was doing it all wrong.  Therefore, they got wrong results.  (Why? Ask yourself that? Why were they doing it all wrong? Remember: Follow The Money.)

Now the study has gone to look at Japan where a government decision caused people to move to a deserted island that Japan had claimed -- fearing the Russians would come snatch it if it were deserted.  So, the article points out, this island, Hokkaido, was Japan's version of America's West (remember this is a bbc.com article).

--------quote-----------
Few people living in Hokkaido today have ever needed to conquer the wilderness themselves. And yet psychologists are finding that the frontier spirit still touches the way they think, feel and reason, compared with people living in Honshu just 54km (33 miles) away. They are more individualistic, prouder of success, more ambitious for personal growth, and less connected to the people around them. In fact, when comparing countries, this ‘cognitive profile’ is closer to America than the rest of Japan.

Hokkaido’s story is just one of a growing number of case studies exploring how our social environment molds our minds. From the broad differences between East and West, to subtle variation between US states, it is becoming increasingly clear that history, geography and culture can change how we all think in subtle and surprising ways – right down to our visual perception. Our thinking may have even been shaped by the kinds of crops our ancestors used to farm, and a single river may mark the boundaries between two different cognitive styles.

-------end quote--------

And the conclusion is that Collectivist thinking is a survival trait acquired by those who grow crops that take large numbers of people to produce (rice), and Individualistic thinking is a survival trait acquired by those who grow crops that thrive with fewer hands (wheat).

The implication of this article -- really, go read the whole thing as I excerpted it out of order -- is that socialism vs the American Republic style of independence and self-sufficiency is an either/or choice based on which is more likely to produce survival and more children who survive.

It's all about The Tree of Life -- or survival of the fittest.  The fittest to survive may be determined by how vital dependency on others is due to environment.

But it is an either/or choice.

If you make such a choice, it becomes the keynote of your self-image -- both the fact of which option you selected, and the fact that you bought into the idea that the options differ and a choice must be made.

The determination that a choice must be made rests on a philosophical view of the universe which is very Aristotelian, very zero-sum-game.  The validity of the argument that something is "wrong" with society when some people are so much richer than others depends on the zero-sum-game model of life, of the fight for survival.  In that model of the universe, the only way to get that much richer than others is to suck all the wealth up into your coffers -- because there is a limit to the amount of wealth that exists.

In the Collectivist model base, the idea that there is a "pie" that gets "sliced" and "fair" means everyone gets the same size slice, proceeds naturally from the assumption that "you didn't build that" -- that whatever you have, you have it because of other people's hard work, and your individual contribution hardly matters.

In the Individualist model, if there isn't enough to go around, you just make some more, and if you make some more, then it is yours to keep.  The Individualist model means that you aren't dependent on the contributions of others, but rather you support others by giving 10% of what you make voluntarily.

Either you must depend on "everyone else" --- or you must depend only on "self."

That, too, is an either/or choice which is a false Hobson's Choice.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/05/theme-conflict-integration-part-2.html

The article presents this view of the universe, which is vastly prevalent among your readers, as if it is a firm, and immutable fact of reality.

The Skeptic asks, "Is it?  Is it, really?"

Non-humans from way out in the galaxy somewhere may never have thought of this dichotomy, or even of the process of dividing the world into dichotomies.

As a science fiction writer, you should look around for other solutions to the mystery of why different human populations ascribe to different classes of self-image.

Through millennia, humanity has produced many answers to that question.

As I mentioned above, Astrology is based on a world view that is very useful to writers because, whether they know it or not, your readers are familiar with the Astrological model of the universe.

It is a model based on balance of opposites.  The zodiac is depicted as a circle, going all around the Earth (even to the night-side).  We are in the middle of a globe of stars.

The circle is divided into 12 sections or "houses" -- (the old, classic zodiac of 12 signs which isn't "real" anymore as the Earth and Sun have moved).

Because it is a circle with 12 sections, each section has an equal and opposite section.  They all meet in the middle, (Earth is the center point in a natal chart).  Each House has an opposite.

The meanings that have been experimentally discovered for each of the Houses shake down into 6 Houses representing the inside of the person (psychology or Story) and 6 Houses representing the world outside of that person (politics, world affairs, or Plot).

For example, the First House representing self-image is opposite the Seventh House representing other.

First House represents Self, Seventh House represents Spouse.

Fourth House represents Home, Tenth House represents Career.

It is not an either-or choice, but a choice of method of balancing and integrating opposites.

So by Astrology - well known to the Ancient Egyptians and probably even before that - Individualism (1st House) does not exclude Collectivism (7th House), but integrates and balances it.

Likewise, the current feminist issue of Work (10th & 11th House) vs. Home&Children (4th & 5th House) is not an either/or choice, but a choice of methodology of balance.

Astrology is an empirical science, a method of indexing and storage/retrieval of information gathered by experience over many centuries.  Like all old wive's tales and herbal remedies, some is worth paying attention to because it is correct, and some is plain nonsense.

Whether you know it is called Astrology or not, you already know most of the information codified in Signs, Planets, Houses, Cusps, Aspects, Progressions, Solar Arcs, and all the rest.

You learned physics by dropping your food off your high chair tray.  You learned astrology by screaming for Mom to pick it up.

If you found Math useful in understanding physics and falling objects, you will find Astrological symbolism useful in understanding human behavior well enough to write about it and convey your wisdom to the next generation.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Incarnations of Lucifer

Coincidentally (if there ARE coincidences in this life, especially in the realm of popular entertainment—maybe there's a trend here), two current TV series feature Lucifer in person: The long-running SUPERNATURAL, in which two brothers hunt monsters, fight demons, and save the world multiple times; the newer program LUCIFER, in which the Devil goes AWOL from Hell, runs a Los Angeles night club, and works as a civilian consultant for a female homicide detective. Aside from the teeth-grinding implausibilities of the show's versions of police procedure and the work of a therapist (Lucifer's psychologist), I'm enjoying the latter program very much for its characters. The flippant, hedonistic Lucifer has a core of deep-rooted morality, skewed though it may be. This Devil doesn't tempt people to sin. As the (unwilling) ruler of Hell, he punishes evil. When he encounters a Satanist cult in one episode, he rejects them with contempt. His main superpower in human form is to compel people to express their deepest desires. Lucifer in the SUPERNATURAL universe, on the other hand, is unrelentingly evil and, having been freed from the "cage" in which he was imprisoned, is presently roaming the Earth (played by Rick Springsteen as a rock star whose body the Devil has inhabited) with dire prospects for humanity.

In the world of LUCIFER, angels and demons (fallen angels) take physical form by producing fleshly constructs for the purpose—or at least that seems the usual method. Lucifer's mother, on the other hand, becomes corporeal by taking over the body and persona of a dead woman. In SUPERNATURAL, celestial and infernal beings visit Earth by possessing the bodies of living human "vessels." The difference is that angels have to get the host's permission (and demons often seem to destroy the vessels they occupy, judging from the typical outcome when a possessed person is exorcised). Both series postulate a dualistic universe. Good and evil seem to clash on an equal footing. Moreover, the very definitions of "good" and "evil" appear ambiguous. In SUPERNATURAL, many angels have no compunctions about sacrificing human lives in the service of what they conceive as the greater good. As for God, He has been simply absent for most of the series until the climax of last season. Even the highest-ranking angels had no idea where he went or why. In LUCIFER, God seems like the archetype of a strictly authoritative parent, at least as viewed by Lucifer and (by the opening of this season) his unfallen brother who's tasked with returning him to Hell. Both of them portray their "Father" as an inscrutable tyrant.

The universes of SUPERNATURAL and LUCIFER are dualistic in another sense, too. In each, the male Deity has a female consort. In SUPERNATURAL, she's opposite and equal, God's sister, the primal Darkness, co-eternal with Him. In LUCIFER, God has a wife, the Mother Goddess of the universe. However, they're not equal; He has the power to consign her to Hell. God's power doesn't seem unlimited, though, because He has ordered the angelic characters and Lucifer to return her to the infernal realm, and He doesn't take direct action when this command isn't obeyed.

These programs differ radically in their approach to spiritual and metaphysical issues from the older series TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, one of my all-time favorites, far more conventional in its treatment of God, supernatural beings, and their interaction with humanity. One thing I like very much about TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL is that its angels were explicitly portrayed as another species, a separate creation from us, not the spirits of dead people as in the misconception that stubbornly persists in popular culture. The angels in SUPERNATURAL (but apparently not most of the demons) and LUCIFER also clearly belong to a different order of being from humanity. Why do these newer series depart so far from the orthodox depiction of celestial entities as purely good, as in TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL (not to mention the older program's consistently happy endings)? Has a fundamental shift in cultural attitudes toward spiritual matters occurred in the intervening decades? Or, more likely, has the extent to which the viewing audience will accept iconoclastic treatment of such topics changed, maybe from the influence of boundary-pushing cable programming? Also, TV programmers are always looking for something new to grab the public's attention, so the stretching of boundaries from the simple, financially driven motive of novelty-seeking may partly account for the difference.

The image of God presented in these two current series may strike many viewers as blasphemous. But despite their unorthodoxy, I'm encouraged by the fact that two major networks think it's worthwhile and profitable to offer programs that grapple with issues of ultimate metaphysical significance.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 14 - Depicting Cultural Shifts by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction

Part 14

Depicting Cultural Shifts

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is the index post with previous parts of Depiction.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

A friend mentioned watching the new TV Series Lucifer, where the Devil asks what is the one thing you want -- and the plot unfolds from that choice.

I've started watching the show BEFORE Lucifer about a school for young magicians, THE MAGICIANS (which is fairly well made) so I've seen the trailers and the beginnings of Lucifer.

I thought the concept interesting, but in the context of what viewers now will understand about the world decades hence,  I am looking for what KIND of spouse they will imagine for themselves later.  What will the young teens watching these two shows conclude about "happily ever after" and "soul mates" later on in life?

Personally, I expect that in a few decades they will have thrown off most of the ideas presented in these shows, and in most fantasy novels, just as prior generations have. We, as humans, don't believe everything we're taught, especially not by parents or authority figures.

In the meantime, though, a great deal of (easily dramatized) headline material will be created by these viewers as the mature.

Here's one way to look at this whole spectrum of Marketing Fiction in a Changing World -- a subject we've discussed at length in these posts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

Remember how people always say,  "I'm doing all I can" which essentially dismisses the petitioner as irrational for wanting more than "I can" -- saying I'm the helpless one and that's too bad for you.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-9-depicting-hero-by.html

OK, watching NYPD Blue season 1 from the 1980's I see a pivot point in a related attitude to the helplessness of "I'm doing all I can -- so how dare  you ask more of me!"

Today, absolutely everywhere, we hear the phrase "been taught" or even just "what we teach kids in schools."  Some politicians want to beef up the Department of Education because "what we teach kids has to be controlled so they'll behave properly" -- and other politicians demanding to dismantle the Department of Education and  "let" localities decide what to teach kids.

The unconscious assumption behind that language is that "permission" is required. Never in human history has humanity as a whole accepted "permission" as a limitation.  That's why we have Heros (to depict) and Villains (likewise to depict).

We have internal conflicts because, as a whole, humanity just does not "believe" what we are "told" or "taught" to believe.  We learn it, parrot it back for the test, then discard all -- or at least a few of us discard.

And among those few who discard what they've "been taught" we have major internal conflicts, sometimes psychologically crippling conflicts that cause what appears to be "irratic" or "irrational" behavior, temperamental outbursts and so on.  The subconscious retains some of what we've "been taught" no matter how the conscious discards it.

The subconscious can be reprogrammed though, and that happens with a great deal of DRAMA in life (Pluto is Drama, remember).  Dramatizing those lessons reprogramming the subconscious is what fiction writers do -- and it is the core material for Romance which is why Love Stories must be woven into most other genre fiction.

In truth, Love does Conquer All.  Exactly how that happens is what we write about.

So historically, schools have been putting all LEARNING into the same category as "what I can't do."  You can only do "what you've been taught."

Our current culture depicts kids and the adults they become as VICTIMS of "what they are taught."

Kids and even adults are victims so it is up to the Educators (who implicitly know best) to be sure that kids "are taught" only "right" things.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/science-teachers-grasp-of-climate-change-is-found-lacking.html

What has climate change to do with Romance?  Well, along with the unconscious assumptions underlying the dilemma of "what to teach them" (because if you teach wrong, they will suffer and it will be your fault, see last week's post)  we have the matter of teaching "you can't win" and there is no "Happily Ever After" so don't even try.

"You can't win" is taught by demonstrating authority, and telegraphing "allowed" as the key.  Authority must "permit" or "allow" or "provide" -- authority must act first or you can't "have" anything.

"There is no Happily Ever After" is transmitted the student's real life experiences of divorce, job loss, and the constant din of "it is not your fault; the system is broken."  You can't win because you're not permitted to -- permission is everything.

Here is last week's post on Authority, Responsibility and Power in Alien Romance -- how these nebulous concepts are essential to worldbuilding that can cradle a hot Romance.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/05/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-13.html

That "no such thing as Happily Ever After" carries over into what passes for adulthood these days, as people lose jobs to technology and "are doing all they can" to "find a job" and can only "do all they can" which is limited by "what I was taught."

It may be time to entertain the notion that the HEA is possible, but only to those with a Hero's attitude that if you are doing all you can, and it isn't enough, do what you can't anyway.

The whole idea of making college free telegraphs that the real objective is to be certain there is no such thing as a well educated adult running around in the world.

You can't "get an education" -- it isn't an object to be acquired.  It is a condition of the brain, created by exercise.  That exercise is not acquired by "being taught" but by "learning."

 You can learn to live Happily Ever After, but you can not be taught to do it.

Educated adults point out that permission to Live Happily Ever After is not necessary.  You have to do "more than you can" -- a successful marriage requires each give more than 100%.  

Humanity has talents distributed along a curve -- and only 1% are CAPABLE of a university education beyond Bachelor's.  If you try to put everyone through University, it will become grammar school, not University.  Those who want to "get an education" will be happy with their diploma from such a school -- those who want to "learn" will go elsewhere.

That 1%  that can not be kept from learning because they need no permission ignores the "all I can" limit and just does things regardless of whether they "can" or not, regardless of whether they've "been taught."

You can't TEACH that 1%.  What you think means nothing to them.
So perpetuating the idea that you "can't do" what you "have not been taught" is an attack on the 1% by the 99%.

So here's an idea to check out by watching old stuff on Amazon Prime or Netflix.

The 1980's (Reagan) era was a turning point in HEROISM.

Captain Kirk of Star Trek was a 1960's phenomenon popular with people born in the late 1940's -- people who grew to college age seeing their parents succeed against all odds, and thus convinced they, too, could succeed against all odds.  They just needed to learn  how, not to "be taught."

Kids born in the 1960's became 20-somethings in the 1980's experiencing families (and kids their age's families) that were more loosely constituted (sometimes parents lived together, not married), increasing divorce rate, both parents employed (that was rare in the 1950's before "labor saving devices" made "housework" less than a full time job), and families being moved across country as the Dad "climbed the corporate ladder."  Neighborhood friends, school friends, extended family -- all temporary.

Kids who turned twenty in the 1980's "knew" from experience that all personal ties are merely temporary, so don't invest your heart in other people.

The cell phone, Facetime, text chat, and so on, changed all that and today's children hold friendships no matter where they are physically.
Here's the essence of TV Drama popular in the 1950's and 1960's (Star Trek) and 1970's.

THE GOOD GUY WINS BECAUSE HE IS GOOD - NOT BECAUSE HE'S A GUY.

The feminist movement (1970's) destroyed that whole philosophy (fiction themes are philosophical statements) by blaming "winning" on "guy-ness" not on "good-ness."

So women learned to become "bad-ass" in order to win because goodness doesn't win.

Then another generation tackled the whole "goodness" thing with the idea that everything is relative and "fairness"="goodness" because fairness means everyone gets THE SAME THING regardless of their personal merit.

The concept of GOODNESS that drove the 1950's got thrown in the toilet.

Then GOODNESS was replaced with Political Correctness -- the values of which are reflected in the TV Series Lucifer where "Lucifer" is the the protagonist, who always wins.  Everyone else is the "problem of the week."

In the TV Series The Magicians the theme is stated as Magicians can't do anything about real world problems.  Goodness, and Power, are not part of "the real world."

Political commentary on TV "non-fiction" news often states that  "Race is important to Democrats, so therefore Hillary must win the Black vote."  Or some variant on "must win the XXX vote" where XXX is whatever block of voters they are trying to trick you into thinking "are all the same."

In our new 2016 reality there can be such a thing as a "race" all voting as a Bloc.  And it's not racism to say "they" all vote the same way.

A Theme for a novel series might be rooted in the concept that the phrase "win the Black Vote" is racist.  It's based on the idea that all members of a group are identical to one another.  All the "isms" make that assumption -- good novel themes come from those unconscious verbal habits.  That gives you the "internal conflict" for your main character.

And it is objectively true - can be measured by statistics.

Why do the stats show there is a "woman's vote" and a "black vote" and a "Jewish vote?"  WHY????

Because there really IS.

How did that happen?

Maybe by forbidding kids to read the entire textbook before going to Class 1 of the course?

Or perhaps by forbidding kids in grammar school from teaching themselves and defying "the teacher" in every particular and making the teacher PROVE what they are teaching before the class, and not simply parrot what they learned in Education Classes?  Just because it's written in a book doesn't make it true. Prove it.

Teachers teaching today WERE TAUGHT that they can only do "all they can" and so 99% of them don't dare do anything beyond that.   The remaining 1% of teachers are making waves,  big time.

Authoritarian is the word for what has changed our culture.

To "depict" that Cultural Shift in a way that has verisimilitude enough to carry your reader into your artificially built world, you need to know what it was "before" -- what it was in transition -- and what it is "now" relative to your story.

Here's a clue - about reducing stress on the beleaguered victims who are "being taught" instead of learning.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/solutions-for-stressed-out-high-school-students-1455301683

Then you need to explain that change to your reader.

One great way to grasp this idea is to watch the British TV Series, Downton Abby -- that starts in a 'before' culture and depicts the shift into World War I, and the gradual rise of socialism in the UK that changed the whole class-based, landed gentry culture of the 1800's.

Note the relative ages of the characters.  The elders were raised in a before-culture -- the adults are striving to maintain it -- the children are throwing off the traces and running wild into "the future."  And all are righteous about their beliefs and attitudes..

So, in tracing the cultural shift your reader understands, look for old fiction where THE GOOD GUY WINS BECAUSE HE'S GOOD NOT BECAUSE HE'S A GUY.

A good theme might be, "There never was any sexism, and there is no such thing as a 'women's vote' and never was."  Everything in your reader's reality (and yours) says that is nonsense.  Convince the reader otherwise.  The technique known as the "twist ending" is where you suddenly "twist" the fictional reality you've invented back into something resembling the reader's everyday reality.

Look for old fiction where the difference between THE GOOD GUY and THE BAD GUY is that the good guy is GOOD and the bad guy is BAD.  No shades of gray.

Shades of gray in theme material was injected in the 1970's and 1980's as viewer's real-reality shifted from "black and white."

That pivot point in development is important to understand.   It happens so gradually that the Characters don't notice until one day they wake up and the world has changed -- they can't talk to their grandchildren anymore.  New world. New language.

Depicting that generation gap lets you give your Worldbuilding a dimension that feels like reality to the reader.  It is verisimilitude.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-2.html

That post has a link to Part 1 -- and it's about depicting Verisimilitude.

What is good and what is bad can be a matter of thematic argument among the characters in a work, but GOODNESS always wins.

The writer's job is to show the reader (not tell!) the mechanism of reality (of the build world this character lives in) that CAUSES goodness to win.

The entire HELLENISTIC CULTURAL attitude underlies our modern USA culture -- teaching that winning is good, and that in order to win someone has to lose.

Today's school sports custom is to deny that there is such a thing as losing.  This will create a huge cultural shift, and perhaps we will see that as the current turning-18-year-olds vote.

The Hellenistic culture survives in that two-valued Aristotelian "logic" that divides the world into black and white.

Remember in the heyday of the Hellenists, the world was flat, on the back of a turtle, and if you sail to the edge you fall off.  This week, they discovered gravity waves as predicted by Einstein, when they observed two black holes colliding. This is not an either/or world, at the particle level or at the moral level.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com