Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy Part 8 - Science of the HEA

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy

Part 8

Science of the HEA

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series are indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

This post might fit very well into the series indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

Today, let's look at happiness as a scientific phenomenon.

Mostly, today, scientists (grad students at least) are making "original" contributions to the body of human knowledge by doing statistical analyses of data long ago collected.

Some original studies, though, have been going on for decades, and still collecting data.  Recently, Harvard reported on such a long term study of humans.  We'll get to the Harvard study below, but first consider whether "science" can have anything to say or do about "happiness."  Science studies absolutely everything about the real world, so if it can't study happiness, does that mean happiness isn't of the "real" world?

You can't "experiment" on humans but you can "study" behavior, and you can collect and analyze what humans SAY about this or that, and how a particular individual's assessment changes with time.

Nobody knows if this is because of age, per se, or if humans are actually changing. 

Self-assessment is tricky, and science seems convinced that it is impossible for a person to assess themselves accurately (yet doctors still rely mostly on what people say about where it hurts or how they feel).

People are studying, and "correcting" statistics for, a phenomenon called "The Flynn Effect" which identifies reasons for differences in I.Q. measurements between 20 year olds, and 80 year olds.  Do we really get stupid as we age?  Is that why we seem to "mellow" out and become happier with our lot?  There is so much to know!

--------quote-------
 Thus it appears that people in 1950 were a lot less smart than they are now, that is if you define intelligence in IQ scores. How is that possible? According to the Flynn effect theory, the increase in IQ scores can in part be ascribed to improvements in education and better nutrition.
--------end quote------

But the gap seems to be narrowing, or measurements are improving.  Nobody really understands this while we still use I.Q. tests for college entry evaluation.  Grades and social involvement -- and parental contributions to the university -- all figure into "who" gets educated, but they also track who gets well fed.  And we also have a raging argument about what, exactly, constitutes "healthy" food!  Nobody really knows, but certain opinions get huge promotional money pushing them into general awareness because there are products for sale based on those opinions.

There are, at least right now, no products to buy to boost your HEA score.

In Fantasy, of course, there is the magic love potion.  Find something else to write about!

A good science fiction romance could be crafted around such a discovery, but you'd need to study neurology and psychology to craft such a story.

Standardized "tests" of I.Q. have been relied upon to distinguish one type of human function from another, but even that is changing as various sorts of intelligence are identified as different from one another.

In other words, science is finally acknowledging that such a thing as Talent actually exists, distinguishing one person from another.  Emotional Intelligence, mechanical, mathematical -- different parts of the brain are responsible for producing different sorts of effects on human behavior.  The map still has "Here Be Dragons" around the edges.

Nobody knows if children can be raised to develop parts of the brain that were underdeveloped during gestation.  Education and training do change brain development in humans, but studies are also showing new brain cells are constantly produced, even into old age.

See this Forbes article, also well covered by the BBC:

The Brain Can Give Birth To New Cells Throughout Life, Study Finds

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2019/05/26/the-brain-can-give-birth-to-new-cells-throughout-life-study-finds/#58b4cf4763c9

So can Talent be infused by training?  Is I.Q. a "Talent?"

See Part 7 in this series on Soul Mates and the HEA for a theory of how Soul and Spirit figure into human consciousness.

When you put it all together, we are only beginning to discover how MUCH we just plain don't know.  That area, the Unknown, is the province of Science Fiction -- and Fantasy thrives there, too. 

On Quora, I found a Question ...
Is someone with an IQ of 130 typically aware that they have gifted intelligence?

...and thoughtful answers ...

https://www.quora.com/Is-someone-with-an-IQ-of-130-typically-aware-that-they-have-gifted-intelligence

...that might help you sketch out the Characters for a (really hot) Romance, involving body, soul, and I.Q., wrapped in a package of Talent.

This one addresses self-awareness -- or in writer's terms, Internal Conflict.

Who you think you are vs. who other people think you are is a Conflict.

--------quote--------
Is someone with an IQ of 130 typically aware that they have gifted intelligence?
Emmanuel Brun d'Aubignosc
Emmanuel Brun d'Aubignosc, Self Employed IT
Answered May 11 · Upvoted by Lauren Adele, MBA Psychology (1999)
No.

An IQ 130 (SD15) is higher than 98% of the population. It is quite high, but not genius level either.

People with an IQ of 130 are intelligent enough to understand the scope of what they don’t understand, to have an idea of how little they know. Therefore they have a tendency to feel stupid more than anything else. Doing IQ tests might be a validation, but they will question them too.

I talked to someone who scored 155 on WAIS IV. He always insisted on that he isn’t that intelligent!

The more one knows, the more they are aware of how little they know. The smarter one is, the more they are aware of how little they really do understand. Only idiots think they are smart.

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

This may not be objectively TRUE -- but it sketches out an opinion  your readership may hold firmly.  That gives the writer a springboard into a dynamite plot.  "You think you're so smart!  I'll show you!  So there!"

So clearly "intelligence" (whatever that is) does not guarantee an HEA, and in itself, doesn't "make" people happy.  Neither high nor low scores correspond to happiness. 

Related Questions
Could you list differences between moderately gifted (I.Q 130) and profoundly gifted (I.Q. 160)?
What is it like to have an IQ of 130?
How do I tell if somebody is intelligent?
Do people with 140 IQ see normal people (IQ 100 to 130) as stupid?
How can they tell how smart you are from an IQ test?
What are the characteristics of someone with a 125-130 IQ?
Is the difference between IQ 190 and 130 as big as between 130 and 70?
What are some signs of intelligence?
How can you increase your IQ?
I'm an elitist. What is wrong with thinking that smart individuals should only associate with other smart people?

Notice how none of the questioners are linking I.Q. to Happiness.  Why?

Is there a link nobody has noticed?  Could you create a hypothesis to use in a novel?

Which brings us to Harvard University's long term study.  This one went for 80 years searching for a scientific answer that (as far as I know) everyone already knew.

Science is like that, you know.  After centuries of argument, science declares to be true what everyone knew all along.  What everyone knows is "folk wisdom" or "old wive's tales."  What science knows is to be understood only by the high I.Q. individuals among us.  Right? 

Here's what Inc. Magazine said about the Harvard study.

https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/harvard-spent-80-years-studying-happiness-we-now-know-1-key-habit-that-makes-people-happier-the-problem-most-people-never-even-try.html

Harvard Spent 80 Years Studying Happiness, and We Now Know the 1 Key Habit That Makes People Happier. (The Problem: Most People Never Even Try)
If you're not happy, at least now you have a roadmap.

----quote------
Over time, it's turned into one of the most extensive longitudinal studies ever, and has revealed a trove of insights. Perhaps the most famous and useful insight is this oft-repeated quote by Robert J. Waldinger, who is the current head of the study:

"The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period."

That's wonderful, right? But how do you fix your life if you don't happen to have good relationships?

An 'epidemic of loneliness'

To be honest, this is what's bugged me about this study for a long time: the clarity of the answer with no real guidance on how to get there.

Because it's one thing to say if you want to be happy, nurture good relationships.

And it's another to suggest that with a straight face in the context of the "epidemic of loneliness" that Americans largely feel today, in the words of more than one writer.

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

Considering the divorce rate, the delay in the current generation of marriage and children, and from the 1960's and 1970's, the breaking of communities by moving high I.Q. workers employed by corporations from city to city to climb the corporate ladder, and current increase in lifespan, it's no wonder we have about 40% of the population living in loneliness.

------quote-------
A few alarming statistics from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, just to back this up:

40 percent of Americans say they "sometimes or always feel their social relationships are not meaningful."
20 percent describe themselves as, "lonely or socially isolated."
28 percent of older adults live alone.
From a pure physical health perspective, researchers say loneliness is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

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

We have a generation of adults (book readers) who have not had the part of the brain responsible for "bonding" properly nurtured and developed as children.  They have done OK for themselves, but have not been able to teach their children how to "bond" and form steady, solid, rooted communities.

And now the advent of social media is shifting relationships and bonding online, to the virtual world.

Is that a good thing?  Or crippling?

Is it a part of the brain that is underdeveloped, or overdeveloped?

Or is it a component of the complex Soul (described in Part 7 of this series)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/soul-mates-and-hea-real-or-fantasy-part.htmlthat is starved, over developed, under developed, or impaired? 

What part of us BONDS?  What part of the human being is responsible for relationships?  Are we just primate bodies jerked around by pheromones?  Or is something else going on? 

Pick an answer to one of those questions and build a world around that premise.  It will generate a long series of complex Romances. 

The blush of First Love, the Romance condition, is an activated radical condition where all the parts of the human being (body and soul) are energized and able to break apart and reform into something new, emitting the energy of formation (e.g. children).

Somehow, Romance has been blunted, shunting aside, starved for energy in this new, dawning, culture of A.I. 

Explain that and solve the problem - see if Love can conquer that All.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Transformative? Permissionless Use Of Distinctive Body Parts, And Other Images

Cover art issues affect authors. We can learn from the woes of other artists.

For instance, there is the case against a mix tape recording artist who appears to have borrowed part of the  distinctively decorated, largest organ on a man's body in such a way as to suggest (at least to the man in question's friends and family) that the man was intimate with her.

Beware of using other people's tattoos in cover art!

Link to Hollywood reporter article by Eriq Gardner:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/cardi-b-face-lawsuit-distinctive-tattoo-album-cover-1234057

Link to Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz original article, penned by legal blogger Brian Murphy:
https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102fpy6/the-man-with-the-tiger-and-snake-tattoo-redux

Link to Lexology article:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5c9c232c-38f5-4c27-a19f-b779c6e3d304&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-08-30&utm_term=
 
The lady's lawyers claim that her use of his tattooed back skin was transformative, because she only used
part of it, and put it between her legs. The kicker --for her-- is that a "Transformative Use" defense is only useful if defending against a claim of copyright infringement.

Please read the articles to see what *is* being litigated.

And then, there is the case of the digitally altered woodpecker... in which a woodpecker was digitally placed in a digitally darkened and deepened hole where no actual woodpecker had gone before.

The complaint was that this was a derogatory display of fake news, designed to call attention to a competitor's product's shortcomings, as Jeff Greenbaum, blogging about Advertising Law for the law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz (again!) explains.

However, the woodpecker does not have standing to sue for being shown in a false light. To see the offending woodpecker, check here: 
https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102fpy4/planning-to-use-digitally-altered-photos-of-your-competitors-product-in-your-adv

Lexology version:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=af5b35d9-8d37-424f-a496-e4655a3b287e&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium

Authors are more likely to make "Transformative?" use of a meme, than of a rival author's cover art, but --word to the wise-- the rules for exploiting memes are a-changing.

Legal blogger Aaron P. Rubin, writing  for Morrison and Foerster LLP's Socially Aware blog (about the law and business of Social Media) explains about the different layers of liability, and the importance of a platform's Terms Of Use to would-be exploiters of other people's memes, created from yet other people's copyrighted film stills or photographs.

Original link:
https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2019/08/20/the-meme-generation-social-media-platforms-address-content-curation/#page=1

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ceab05f6-7bbf-4bf4-aae4-6b78dd267f49&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-08-22&utm_term=

Finally, for today, authors and their friends in particular should be aware of their biometric privacy rights.
Legal bloggers Dotan Hammer and Haim Ravia, writing for the lawfirm Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz cover the case against Facebook's photo tag suggestion tool.

Original article:
https://pearlcohen.com/news/2019/09/01/ninth-circuit-certifies-privacy-class-action-against-faceboo/

Lexology article:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e387c728-2994-4597-9b03-dcde8294484f&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-09-05&utm_term=
 
Might you be part of the class and not know it?  Being tagged is annoying enough without Facebook tools suggesting that one should be tagged based on robo-face-recognition.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Deep Time

The September 2019 issue of the SMITHSONIAN magazine contains two articles I found especially interesting.

"The Homecoming": An ancient skeleton of an Australian aborigine is returned to his people for ceremonial reburial. This individual, known as Mungo Man, lived about 40,000 years ago, one of the oldest specimens of Homo sapiens found outside of Africa. Previously, conventional wisdom maintained that the aborigines had migrated to Australia at most 20,000 years ago. Current estimates place the arrival of human inhabitants between 47,000 and 65,000 years ago. By contrast, the earliest known Egyptian pyramid is less than 5000 years old.

"Saturn's Surprise": The water ice that makes up the rings of Saturn is raining down onto the planet, so that the rings will eventually cease to exist. They may disappear in "only" 100 million years—eons compared to the length of time anatomically modern human beings have existed, about 200,000 years, but a minute fraction of the estimated 4.5-billion-year life of the solar system.

Yet another SMITHSONIAN article delving into relative antiquity, "The New Treasures of Pompeii," reports the latest investigations of a Roman city destroyed by a volcanic eruption less than 2000 years ago, in 79 A.D. That's nothing compared to the age of Mungo Man but a long time in the perception of most Americans, for whom the 400-year-old Jamestown settlement seems ancient.

Both the article on Mungo Man and the one on Saturn highlight the vast expanses of time (contrasted with a single human life, anyway) covered by the history of our species and the unimaginably longer history of our solar system, not to mention the universe as a whole.

How would an immortal alien, or even one with a lifespan measured in millions of years, regard us? Would we be able to communicate with such an entity at all? Mark Twain, in a passage included in the posthumous collection LETTERS FROM THE EARTH, sardonically compares the lifespan of the human race in the context of the history of the cosmos to the thin layer of paint atop the Eiffel Tower, with the tower representing the age of the universe. Twain asks how we can believe ourselves to be the pinnacle of creation. That's like believing the entire tower was built for the sake of the skin of paint on the top. Maybe an incredibly long-lived species would see us that way. On the other hand, maybe a million-year-old intellect would view tiny, ephemeral creatures with compassion.

The immortal, cosmic, transdimensional entity in Stephen King's IT (the second half of the film adaptation comes out this week) finds human beings interesting enough to torture and feed on. Let's hope that if similar entities exist and we eventually meet them, they will have matured beyond a sadistic appetite for the fear and pain of lesser beings.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy Part 7 Is The HEA Balderdash

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy
Part 7
Is The HEA Balderdash? 

Previous parts in Soul Mates and the HEA are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

That index also contains links to posts discussing the HEA in the context of other subjects we've tackled here.

Today, let's look at some real-world views of the mystical element we call Soul.  Previously, we usually approach "Soul" as a binary proposition - either Souls are "real" in your built world, or there is no such thing as "Soul" in your built world.

In other words, as with entering a video game, you choose this or that trait, and throughout the game, stick with that choice.

But as we've noted, the readership most hungry for the payload a good Romance delivers, the HEA, is the very readership that thinks the HEA is balderdash, and thus the whole Romance genre is just balderdash.

I was in a casual discussion the other day with 3 men who were fans of the action-superhero-films, and devotees of Game of Thrones.

The shared, main complaint of this non-Romance reading audience was simple -- how come there is so little dialogue in action-superhero films?

One thought it was because dialogue is only exposition -- that's not the reason as you know if you've followed all the posts here on Tuesdays.

The reason that, over the last 15 years or so, the amount of screen time allocated to dialogue has steeply declined is simply that to afford the spiffy special effects, the film must hit it big in the non-USA market.  As someone on Twitter noted recently, you can't read subtitles while watching an action-film and enjoy the action.

Romance's "action" (plot-movement, change of situation, and character arc) all happens in words-spoken, in dialogue, and mostly in sub-text (dialogue that carries meaning other than what the dictionary says the words mean).

That's why we have a few heroic films like ROMANCING THE STONE,

and the Indiana Jones films, and so forth, and they do attract wider audiences, but Romance as such has a firm presence only in Comedy (which is, by the way, where Science Fiction started to break into wider audiences).

So there is a growing audience for the simple Romance where the guy gets the girl, and that's it.

To enjoy an action-romance film, the audience does not have to accept the HEA as either goal or distant possibility.

But the payload the disillusioned, cynical audience wants is the HEA-made-REAL.

We have discussed Believing In The Happily Ever After, and those posts are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/index-to-believing-in-happily-ever-after.html

Each subset of the audience is looking for their own, unique, convincing premise to let them revel in the reality of a Happily Ever After lifetime.

With more and more people living to and beyond 100 years, ...

See the Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-advantagesand-limitationsof-living-to-100-11558361828

...today's writer has so much more material to work with, to illustrate what happiness in marriage is, and how things work out in the long-long run.

"Ever After" is not about your 30's or 40's -- it might be about your 80's but more likely you won't understand "Happily" at all until after 100.

Now why is that?  And what good is happiness if you don't understand you have it until you're about gone?

The concept of the HEA is built on the concept of Soul Mates, which can't exist unless you postulate Souls plus some sort of structure for the Soul.

"Mate" implies that all souls have something missing that can be supplied by the opposite-number, the mate, like a key in a lock, two parts that make a whole.

So already you see in your world building process that postulating A Soul is not enough to drive a Romance.  You have to create some sort of structure from your amorphous Soul.

Luckily, many mystics through all human existence have come up with many theories of what a human is, and what part of us distinguishes us from animals.

Most pet owners are convinced their animal has a Soul - or whatever awareness it is that humans have of Self.

This theory is part of the theory of Soul-structure you find in Jewish Mysticism.  Animals have Souls, yes, but the structure of the animal's soul is different, simpler, than the structure of the human soul.

In Jewish Mysticism, the human body all by itself has a Soul, the animal Soul, absolutely essential for a human to live and with the goal of staying alive, but we also have a G-dly Soul, with the goal of reconnecting with the Source of all Soul.

So humans are bifurcate creatures?  Mysticism goes on to theorize five distinct levels of our non-material (no length, no breadth, no depth, no mass, can't be detected by physical existence)  structure, and our Souls exist on each of these 5 levels.  Each level of Soul has a name.

Here's an article that sets this out with extreme simplicity.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3194/jewish/What-is-a-Soul-Neshamah.htm

As a writer building a world, you might not want to copy any particular, existing, mystical system.  Your Aliens might believe in some other system (which might be true for them, if not for humans).

But here is a quote to study from the article What Is A Soul Neshama.

--------quote-------
Five Levels

But it is the human soul that is both the most complex and the most lofty of souls. Our sages have said: "She is called by five names: Nefesh (soul), Ruach (spirit), Neshamah (breath), Chayah (life) and Yechidah (singularity)."2 The Chassidic masters explain that the soul's five "names" actually describe five levels or dimensions of the soul. Nefesh is the soul as the engine of physical life. Ruach is the emotional self and "personality." Neshamah is the intellectual self. Chayah is the supra-rational self—the seat of will, desire, commitment and faith. Yechidah connotes the essence of the soul—its unity with its source, the singular essence of G‑d. For the essence of the soul of man is "literally a part of G‑d above"3--a piece of G‑d in us, so to speak.

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

So you see, merely establishing whether Soul is real in your built world may not give you the plot that derives from that theme.  Plot requires conflict, but mere eternal conflict isn't a Plot -- plots have structure, just like Souls, and the plot's structure demands a beginning, a middle, and an END.

Souls, we know by definition, are "eternal" and thus don't "end."

The Happily Ever After "ending" can't be an "ending" at all since it is FOREVER by definition.  Ever-after = forever.

Here's a question to answer to generate a theme.

"Is Ever After Unchanging?" 

As we've noted in previous posts, the mystical theory is that Souls enter manifestation through the dimension of Time.

As I said above, the reason science can't design an experiment to identify a "Soul" and thus prove or disprove the structure of the universe, is that Souls as described in mystical thought, have no height, depth, width, or mass.

However, mystical thought postulates that Souls enter manifestation through the dimension of Time, which means Souls Exist.

In this system, we know that G-d does not exist, since "exist" means ride along the timeline one moment after another, subject to the laws of Time.  The concept G-d includes the postulate that this primal Cause is not subject to anything, least of all the created universe.

G-d creates Time, from outside it.  This is a notion that is very hard for a creature subject to Time, counting the years to 120, too conceptualize.  Nothing is exempt from Time.  Well, yes, exactly - no thing.

This is a fundamental axiom in the Visualization of the Cosmic All used by many people to make decisions, even about what to have for dinner.

It is worth pondering just how abstract, how fundamental, these axioms are because when you build your artificial world, you must depict everything and everyone (human and Alien) in a way that is consistent with your most abstract axiom.

Conflict arises to drive plots when two Characters in your built world disagree about their axioms.  What is an axiom to some is a mere postulate to another, subject to disproof.  Wars have been fought over this - and in fact, are being fought right now over such notions.

You can create a Fantasy world, or an alternate-reality, using the Souls notion, and the different ideas about the structure of the Soul.

But once you have included Soul, and defined it with its structure -- not in your narrative or exposition but just in your worldbuilding so you can keep your world consistent, weaving an aura of verisimilitude for your readers, -- then you can create Soul Mates.

If Souls have no structure in your world, there would be no mates, and no conflict. Each individual would be sovereign and in isolation, unable to Bond with others, and therefore unable to conflict.

Souls created for high drama will be dynamic, learning, growing, changing, both continuously and in leaps-and-bounds, discontinuously.  (like real people).

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

So once you've included Soul in your world building, you give your Souls a structure that allows for "mating" and a part that drives the Character to find a mate, allows a Character to identify a Mate, then you have a Theme and Plot-Worldbuilding integrated set of postulates.

Now, if you can get your skeptical reader to suspend disbelief and empathize with a Character for whom Soul is an axiom, you can tackle the next part of "Happily Ever After" that your reader has problems with.

Most people who reject the fictional worlds with a thematic structure that allows for an HEA, do so because the HEA itself is an idiotic notion.

HEA requires both an eternity (a Soul)
 and a specific definition of Happiness.

Some readers reject the HEA as realistic because they don't know anyone who has lived it, or found it, or even heard of someone who is persistently happy.

In fact, the absence of real-life examples of an HEA couple is the biggest stumbling block.  Only children, teens who haven't lived long enough to observe the real-life absence of happiness or ever-after-to-a-hundred-years, actually believe in the HEA -- in "if I could just find my Soul Mate all my problems would be solved and I'd be happy."

Many cynics choke on the definition of happy.  The lifestyle depicted in many novels, the hopes and dreams as stated by the young and inexperienced, would be unendurably boring.

Boring?  Happiness?

Well, yes, by definition it's all over, no conflict, no giant projects, no Cause To Die For.  What an empty, boring life.

Would you be happy if you never had to wash another dish?  Ironing.  Mending.  Planting, reaping, washing, churning butter -- we used to work so hard, and one by one these daily chores have been lifted off our tired backs.  But are we happy?  No, now it's carpooling, PTA meetings, office work, ever-available-by-cell-phone.  We are not happy doing nothing.  And we're not happy having nothing to complain about.

So what is happiness?  You can't craft an HEA without a working definition of happiness, but your Characters may "arc," may start out the novel with one definition and travel a curved trajectory through the plot to end up with another.

Readers who can't abide the concept of Soul often also have no concrete definition of happiness.  To convince such readers to enjoy suspending disbelief, the writer has to supply both, or risk the novel being labeled balderdash.

The same mystical source that defines the Soul as structured into 5 levels, also solves the problem of why, in our everyday existence, we can't nail down a definition of happiness.

We know it when we feel it, but it is always an emotion that just evaporates on impact with the next life challenge.

Romance is an interval (a Neptune transit to your natal chart) when Neptune casts a glamour over the world, blurs the rough edges, and softens the impact of events.  People remember it as the happiest time of life, but it is a defined interval, not "ever after."

The honeymoon will inevitably end, and reality come crashing in.

OK, so when building your world to exemplify a theme having to do with the HEA, how do you define happiness?

Does happiness exist?

What happens to people when they are happy?

Neuroscience is pursuing this, taking interesting photos of the brain's circuitry.  But is "happiness" just the stimulation of the pleasure centers?

Many reject the HEA simply because "ever after" implies unchanging, and thus, as noted above, boring.

Humans crave change.  We play videogames and keep score because we need to do better each time, we need to count how many times, and change things.

The mental condition dictated by brain development during the college years is the unstoppable urge to "change the world" because it's all wrong, it's not new and modern, and we have to make those old people change.

To that developmental stage, all change is good, whether it is an improvement or not.

You can't have human happiness unless there's change, which means happiness can't be "ever after."  Eternal happiness would be hell.

So what exactly is happiness?  

It is obviously not a property of the physical, human (primate) body which has a pleasure center in the brain, but gets addicted, or goes stark-raving-nuts if that pleasure center is CONSTANTLY STIMULATED.

So happiness is not necessarily pleasurable, at least not to the body.

Note again the linkage between Soul Mates and the HEA is what this series of posts explores.  And we have come to a nexus where the two must connect.

That connecting nexus is the definition of happiness.

Perhaps "happiness" is not a phenomenon of the physical body, but rather a phenomenon of the Soul?

Because Soul is eternal, and only part of the complex structure of the Soul is subject to Time, true happiness, once achieved, is by definition eternal, or "ever after."

Once you've got it, you can't not-have-it.

The definition of happiness may contain the notion of eternity.

Now consider the bifurcate structure of the Soul discussed in the article quoted above,
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3194/jewish/What-is-a-Soul-Neshamah.htm

--------quote--------
Two Souls

The Chassidic masters speak of two distinct souls that vitalize the human being: an "Animal Soul" and a "G‑dly Soul." The Animal Soul is driven by the quest for self-preservation and self-enhancement; in this, it resembles the soul and self of all other creations. But we also possess a G‑dly Soul"--a soul driven by the desire to reconnect with its Source. Our lives are the story of the contest and interplay between these two souls, as we struggle to balance and reconcile our physical needs and desires with our spiritual aspirations, our self-focused drives with our altruistic yearnings. These two souls, however, do not reside "side-by-side" within the body; rather, the G‑dly Soul is enclothed within the Animal Soul—just as the Animal Soul is enclothed within the body. This means that the Animal Soul, too, is vitalized by the "part of G‑d above" at its core. Ostensibly, the two souls are in conflict with each other, but in essence they are compatible.4

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

Suppose we can't figure out "what" happiness is because happiness is a state, or experience, or property of the "G-dly Soul."  Experiencing happiness, the G-dly Soul within the Animal Soul induces a vibrational response in the Animal Soul.  And that response is all we have to examine.

We are trying to figure out what happiness is, when all we have to examine is the effect of happiness.

The G-dly Soul fused to the Animal Soul is the source, and it is the G-dly Soul's experience that causes the Animal Soul to feel happiness.

-----quote-----
A soul is not just the engine of life; it also embodies the why of a thing's existence, its meaning and purpose.

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

Maybe happiness is the achieving the G-dly Soul's meaning and purpose, the reason that unique individual was crested.

Or maybe it isn't having achieved that creates true happiness, but the score, the tally, we rack up along the way, like in a video game or any other engrossing, immersive, enthralling endeavor.

This image of the Soul's Quest being an "ever after" dynamic, ever-changing yet perpetual happy experience is presented in an article here:

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1303062/jewish/Help-from-the-Past.htm

The article provides a useful notion for plotters:

--------quote--------
All the souls of these generations have been here before. And they come with their baggage—both good and not so good.

But there is a distinction:

The good the soul has collected is eternal. It can never be uprooted, it can never fade away, for it is G‑dly, and G‑d does not change.

But the bad is not a thing of substance. It is an emptiness, a vacancy of light. As the soul makes its journey, through trials and travails, through growth and renewal, that darkness falls away, never to return.

Know yourself only as you are here in this life, and the challenges of our times are beyond perseverance.

Tap into the reservoir of your soul from the past, and find there the unimaginable powers of millennia.

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

Think about that.  GOOD is eternal.  BAD is dispatched, never to return.

That is score-keeping, that is measurable progress, that is what humans are designed to become engrossed within.

We wash one dish, set it in the drainer, and wash another, and keep score by how full the drainer is.

Or today we load the dishwasher, wait for it to cycle, take the dry dishes out and put in the rest of the pots and pans waiting on the counter.  Little by little, the kitchen comes into order, ready for the next meal.

The futility of all that stems from the lack of a COUNTER on the wall, to count the number of meals served vs the number that must be served, so we can see progress toward a goal.

We do it in stitching quilts, each stitch permanent vanquishing of scattered bits of cloth, and the progress toward a coherent pattern.

Happiness for humans is scoring progress toward the G-dly Soul's objective, a score kept by the Animal Soul, and a celebration, a high-five, between the two.

Every good deed, every bit of goodness our Souls have brought into the world over many lifetimes is progress, measurable progress toward the goal because Goodness is permanent while the bad is ephemeral.

So all the good you did in previous incarnations is part of your score in this incarnation.  And what you do now, will be part of your score next time.

Racking up that score, continuing to increase it, to do good deeds every day, is happiness.  You can increase your score by teaming with your Soul Mate, raising kids, working toward good causes, helping the helpless, or serving the meals every day, keeping bodies alive.

That is one usable theory that generates whole bundles of themes.  The HEA is not about achieving a static state, but rather is about achieving the dynamic state of increasing the good in the world.

See if you can come up with a system of axioms and postulates - say for your Aliens to live by - that has the ring of verisimilitude this one does.

By using different definitions of "good" you can generate lots of themes, and many Characters in conflict with each other -- none of whom are villains!  Everyone is increasing what they consider good in the world -- they just disagree on what is good!

But before you launch that conflict, be sure you have a resolution of it in mind.  "Good" may be as difficult to define for the modern reader as "happiness" is -- and Soul, and ever-after.

Both plotters and pantsers ...
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/targeting-readership-part-16-plotters.html

...can use the method of knowing the resolution to the conflict before starting to write the novel.  As you write, using either crafting style, you will find that the resolution point itself may shift, change, and morph, requiring lots of rewriting.  Both styles require you to stop writing when the conflict has been resolved.

Consider that if happiness is, by definition, a property of the G-dly  Soul, then "mate" is likely also a property of the G-dly Soul.

Possibly, the Animal Soul's experience of cementing the Soul Mate bond is by sharing the G-dly Soul's happiness.

Now, if the reader's axiom is that there is no Soul, and thus no bifurcation into G-dly Soul and Animal Soul, and no structure of G-dly and Animal souls which could mate with another such bifurcate soul, then all of this is balderdash.

Your job, as a writer, is to make these notions real, tangible and immanent.  The best way to do that in fiction is to use symbolism.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/index-to-theme-symbolism-integration.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Big, Big Theft

Happy long Labor Day weekend!

As some of us celebrate the honor and dignity of an honest day's hard work, and a workman's desire for fewer days of hard work, spare a thought for hard working individual authors, artists, musicians, photographers, songwriters and film makers who give so much to our culture... perforce.

The first six large-font, double-spaced (therefore easy reading) pages of a well-written complaint against Spotify do the heavy lifting in showing how Big Money, Big Government, and Big Tech conspire to rip off song writers and musicians.
https://musictechpolicy.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/eight-mile-style-complaint.pdf

The rights owners at Wixen Music Publishing have a similar problem with Pandora, which is allegedly publishing and distributing lyrics apparently without any knowledge as to whether or not their alleged source has the rights to provide those lyrics.
https://musictechpolicy.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/eight-mile-style-complaint.pdf

(Aside for authors: it is not a good idea to quote lyrics.)

Lyrics to a song are similar to captions for an audio book.  Having the rights to play a sound track does not necessarily confer the rights to generate accompanying text.  Allegedly, Amazon also is into that kind of thievery.
https://apnews.com/e2078e81c5ca42a9bcde6aeea678b129

There is also, of course, petty, petty theft in which Everyman, his/her/their family members and his/her/their dog is engaged when it comes to photographers', actors', and film makers' rights....
https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2019/08/20/the-meme-generation-social-media-platforms-address-content-curation/#page=1

Lastly, little things add up to something major when it comes to the loose and lawless Internet Of Things.  As legal bloggers Cameron Abbott and Karla Hodgeson, writing for K&L Gates warn, many of those smart devices in your homes are back doors for interlopers who want your data.
https://www.cyberwatchaustralia.com/2019/08/interlopers-in-things-iot-devices-may-be-used-as-backdoors-to-your-network/

Apparently, The Fancy Bear is a big, big cyber thieving problem!

Happy days!

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

Biology and Free Will

The September issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC features a short piece titled "Why You Like What You Like." It explores the biological basis of likes and dislikes, attraction and repulsion. It cites the discovery that the Toxoplasma organism can make rats unafraid of cats and may possibly cause "increased anxiety" in humans. Other examples of biological influences on tastes and behavior include genetic links to aversion to broccoli, preferences in sexual partners, and conservative or liberal political tendencies.

The author expresses dismay at the realization that he's been wrong all this time in believing "my likes and dislikes were formed through careful deliberation and rational decision-making." The findings detailed in this article don't come as that much of a shock to me. It seems like an obvious truism that most of the time we "can't help" liking or disliking things or people. As for political, philosophical, or religious tendencies, our genes may predispose us to see the world a certain way, but surely they don't totally control our choices. The article itself acknowledges this fact, because "embedded within your genome, there are many potential versions of you." The science of epigenetics has revealed many environmental factors that influence the way genes are expressed; chemicals, protein interactions, and even the microbes living inside us can affect our DNA. Those influences still imply that we don't have the conscious control we think we do, though.

"There are biological gremlins driving every action and personality trait that you assumed were of your own volition." Again, I've never assumed my personality traits were chosen by my "own volition," and I doubt many people think that way. Personality comes as part of the start-up package. Moreover, "driving" doesn't necessarily mean "controlling." After this somewhat pessimistic summary of the evidence, the author acknowledges that very fact and assures us we aren't "destined to be slaves of our DNA." With heightened awareness of how genes and other biological factors shape our minds and behavior, we may develop more efficient ways to change the traits we consider undesirable. So he does allow room for free will. So do the scientists who maintain that consciousness itself is an illusion, by the very act of making that claim. For an illusion to exist, there must be a mind—a consciousness—to embrace that illusion.

Even at the mid-twentieth-century heyday of the "blank slate," radical malleability of human character, environment-is-destiny position, one of the primary fictional exemplars of that belief, BRAVE NEW WORLD, allows for free will. At least one character conditioned from the moment of conception to fit into Huxley's utopia of programmed happiness questions his society and its culture. Our ability as authors to write interesting stories would be severely limited if we and our readers believed our characters couldn't have any freedom of choice.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Index To Posts About Using Real World Headlines In Fiction

Index To 

Posts About 

Using Real World Headlines In Fiction

The best advice (ever) on involving "the media" in your fictional story is in the screenwriting series, SAVE THE CAT!  and consists basically of the warning DON'T INVOLVE THE MEDIA.

This is also true of using media headlines as a springboard into a story, and quoting them historically in a story set decades ago.

On the third hand, captivating an audience that lives in contemporary reality with a story set elsewhere/elsewhen (as in Science Fiction or Paranormal Romance) requires a broad awareness of what's going on in the world, and what is of primary concern to your readers.

Mostly, readers come to Romance to "get away from" the harsh edges of Reality, but if you deliver a point of view or reframing of reality that helps the reader return to reality with new strength, you will get word of mouth advertising.

We have discussed the use (and abuse) of headlines and media-narrative in many posts, mostly involving theme.  Many of these posts on the Media Headlines are embedded in series of posts about integrating various writing techniques into a seamless whole (so readers can't tell you are using a "technique" at all.  Craftsmanship should never be apparent, or it is very bad craftsmanship.

So here are posts scattered among various series of craftsmanship posts, that discuss what you can do with current media headlines, how to rip a story out of the headline to captivate a specific readership.

Theme Worldbuilding Integration Part 6 - Use of Media Headlines
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 4 - Understanding the Headlines You Use For Springboards
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 8 -- Guest Post by Flying Pen Press on Headlines and Titles
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

Reviews 9: Sex, Politics and Heroism
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/reviews-9-sex-politics-and-heroism.html

Depiction Part 1 - Depicting Power In Relationships
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

Depiction Part 2: Conflict And Resolution
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

Reviews 10: Shadow Banking in Fantasy And Reality by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/reviews-10-shadow-banking-in-fantasy.html

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 23 - Mastering The Narrative Line
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_86.html

Depiction Part 19 - Depicting The Married Hunk With Children
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-19-depicting-married.html

Worldbuilding For Science Fiction Romance Part 2 - Imagine An Impossible World
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/10/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Scam And Comply.

Victoria Strauss's  "Writer Beware" blog has a comprehensive list of scammers preying on writers. One should bookmark it.

https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2019/08/from-philippines-not-with-love-plague.html?fbclid=IwAR32_XrsidyeVPfyMvrQwYzgfiXsjHzPYGIoQhXGURZHxchOSG6d8pT1Cws

That same part of the world has also taken no small part in ebook piracy.
https://entertainment.mb.com.ph/2018/04/23/fight-against-piracy-continues/

While membership of the Authors Guild may not help writers (much) against piracy, apart from advocacy in all the right and powerful places against all aspects of copyright infringement, Authors Guild can assist members to recognize and avoid bad publishing contracts and disputes with publishers.

https://www.authorsguild.org/member-services/legal-services/

When acting like a bed bug and biting your gigantic host, it's always good to anesthetize them first. Here's the compliance part, which is actually about non-compliance.

Legal blogger Craig L. Cupid, writing for Baker Hostetler has written a three-part blog series about the DMCA and the requirements with which companies must comply in order to merit Safe Harbor protections.

Original:
https://www.copyrightcontentplatforms.com/2019/08/part-1-companies-are-not-complying-with-the-safe-harbor-provision-of-the-dmca/#page=1

Also
https://www.copyrightcontentplatforms.com/

Craig L. Cupid makes the points:

"Three rules associated with these requirements are recurring issues not being addressed by OSPs:

1. OSPs must provide the Copyright Office with their full legal name, physical street address and any alternate names affiliated with the platform.
2. OSPs must register a designated agent to receive copyright infringement notices. The rules require that the agent’s full name, address, phone number and email be publicly accessible on the OSP’s website and that the identical information be provided to the Copyright Office for display in its DMCA directory.
3. OSPs must write, post and implement a repeat infringer policy to govern the takedown process for users who recurrently post copyrighted materials."

Does EBay do #2?  Does Amazon?  Does Facebook? How many times have the copyright owners amongst our readers gone to an OSP site and been given the run-around instead of finding a clear link to a fully named person who is copyright agent, with full contact info?

Another big host, Amazon, is in the news for acting like a flea market.

Bill Bostock, writing for Business Insider, reported this week on the bootleg copies of George Orwell's "1984" being sold by scammers who claim copyright over their versions, and include gibberish and horrible gaffes presumably from a much-relied upon internet translation app.  "Faces" into "Feces".

https://www.businessinsider.com/1984-sold-amazon-text-replaced-gibberish-2019-8

Bill's is a very interesting take on the topic. Highly recommended.

Another sizeable establishment is allegedly attempting to trademark the definite article. That would be the word "The".  (Application No. 88571984).

Alex Nealon, blogging for the law firm Banner Witcoff, reports on Lexology, and also on the Patent Arcade blog about The Ohio State University's quest to patent that word, presumably in the limited context of clothing.

http://patentarcade.com/2019/08/university-attempts-to-trademark-the-most-common-word.html#page=1

Wouldn't "The U", as the University of Miami is known, want to challenge that trademark grab?
Hopefully, someone will tell them.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

Pre-Human Civilizations?

Could some other species have built a civilization on Earth long before we evolved? Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, considers that possibility:

Are We Earth's Only Civilization?

If a society of intelligent, nonhuman beings existed before the Quaternary period, 2.6 million years ago, mainstream geology tells us no material evidence of them would remain. "Go back much farther than the Quaternary and everything has been turned over and crushed to dust." Then how would we know about their civilization? The preservation of fossils and artifacts, even if that hypothetical nonhuman society had flourished recently enough to possibly leave such relics, depends on sheer chance. Schmidt speculates about how we could know they existed, as a thought experiment exploring what evidence, if any, from our own society would survive millions of years in the future. He suggests plastics, changes in sedimentary nitrogen patterns (from using so much of it as fertilizer to feed our population), and the appearance in sedimentary layers of "rare-Earth elements used in electronic gizmos." Above all, our intensive burning of fossil fuels should leave evidence in the form of shifts in the balances of carbon and oxygen isotopes. Schmidt wonders, if our own Anthropocene epoch is in the process of depositing traces in the Earth's bedrock, "might the same 'signals' exist right now in rocks just waiting to tell us of civilizations long gone?"

The article concludes, "By asking about civilizations lost in deep time, we’re also asking about the possibility for universal rules guiding the evolution of all biospheres in all their creative potential, including the emergence of civilizations." Could guidelines for such "universal rules" help us predict what we may find on alien worlds?

While Schmidt and the author of the article don't believe such a nonhuman culture actually preceded us on this planet, the possibility is interesting to consider. And since it's hard if not impossible to prove a negative, especially regarding events so unimaginably far in the past, we can't be sure one didn't exist. Unless time travel were invented, we would never have any contact with the builders of such a civilization or even know what they were like. That is, unless we somehow found long-buried structures such as the vast city of the extinct Elder Things in Antarctica in H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness." These creatures arrived on Earth when the moon was young and became extinct long before advanced terrestrial life evolved. The Elder Things also coexisted with giant penguins, and interestingly, the fossilized bones of penguins about the size of human adults have been found in New Zealand. They came along much too late to be alive at the same period as the Elder Things, though:

Giant Penguin in New Zealand

Suppose we discovered an abandoned city like that, miraculously having avoided being "crushed to dust," inhabited only by monstrous, amorphous shoggoths that survived and continued to reproduce after their creators died off? Hmm, I wonder what we could do with tame shoggoths. . . .

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 9 - Conquest In Romance

Worldbuilding From Reality

Part 9

Conquest In Romance

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous parts in this series are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

Every world you build to showcase your story has to include the basic cultural elements anthropologists have identified in human cultures from time immemorial.

That doesn't mean your Aliens have to be Human!

It means you, the writer, has to explain to your reader why your Alien culture lacks this or that element common among humans, and what that absence means.

Spock on Star Trek is the most obvious example, and was created around exactly that formula -- "Human Minus One" -- in his case Emotion.  From that Character, all of Vulcan culture and history was fleshed out.  The necessity for that became obvious when the marvelous one-liner hit the air -- where Spock identifies a Romulan visage as reminiscent of his father.

One of the elements in human cultures has always been Religion -- or some sort of notion about supernatural forces interacting with "real world" elements.

Humans imagine.  If your Aliens have any imagination, they have something that fills the niche of Religion (organized, institutionalized, or not-so-much).

But not every Alien culture has to use (or blame) Religion for sexual behavior.  Not every Alien culture has to integrate Romance and Sexuality.  Sex may be completely irrelevant to Romantic attachment for an Alien.  If so, you have to explain how that happened to a species, and illustrate what it means in relationships with humans.

Alien Romance is a gigantic field that has barely been explored, certainly not mapped, and leaves everything wide open for writers.

There is one rule of writing craftsmanship you must meet, even when exploring Alien Romance with or without sexuality -- your worldbuilding must be internally consistent enough to seem like Reality.

OK, our everyday Reality isn't very consistent, but it does keep reverting to well known norms.  If you're going to create verisimilitude enough to transport readers into an Alien culture that does not have sexual arousal during Romance, you need to keep your worldbuilding rigorously consistent.

Worldbuilding, we have established in other series of posts on this topic, is rooted in a Theme.

Just like Spock delineates the theme of Emotion Is Not Logical in Star Trek, so your Alien delineates the theme of your entire world by what that Alien Culture has that humans do not -- or what the Aliens lack that Humans have.

One variable is all you get to play with in a work of fiction where you are departing from everyday Reality.  Just add or subtract one, and only one, element from the world your readers know, then pursue the way that affects everything that happens in an ordinary, regular Romance genre novel.

Suppose you want to rip a notion from current media headlines, from the media's current narrative, and create an Alien Romance from that topic.

One prominent narrative topic in 2019 is a second wave of challenges to Roe v. Wade and a woman's sovereign control of her body.

I'm pretty sure you can find marriages ending in divorce over this massive philosophical divide.

It is entirely possible that abortion is one, perhaps the only, issue that Love can't Conquer, even though it can Conquer All Else.

I do see our everyday reality as a place where love conquers all, and can even conquer this one, horrendous, topic.  But it is easy to imagine a fictional pair, head over heels into an epic Romance, ripped apart by this one topic.

Does a man have any rights over a fetus he fathered?

Does the Law have any business trying to criminalize any actions for or against abortion?

In the USA, we have the constitutional division of Law and Religion -- we can't make laws governing religion.  But in the 21st Century, that division is becoming blurred.

Take for example, a pregnant woman who is addicted to drugs (some bad stuff - heroine etc.).  What is her legal obligation to the fetus?  To the newborn baby, born addicted, and thus suffering a life-long set of health issues which, very possibly, the State has to pay for?

Where do the mother's rights leave off and the baby's rights begin?

The answers to those questions are THEMES.  Take a stance one way or another, state the theme in one sentence, and select every element of story, plot, character, setting, conflict, etc. to illustrate, explain, or challenge that theme.

Theme is philosophy and religion distilled into a platitude, aphorism, or folk wisdom.

So when you build a world from Reality, you start (whether you know it or not) with a theme, some idea about what Reality is or is-not.

Those who start with the concept of Soul Mates are inherently starting with the concept of Soul as a reality in their built world.

What is a soul?  Where does it come from?  Where does it go?  Can souls die?  Can souls be destroyed?  Or do souls learn?

Each of those questions is a brick you build into your world's edifice whether you know it or not.  We all make assumptions about our everyday Reality, but rarely do we articulate those assumptions.  So your Characters, likewise, may have many assumptions about Souls and how they slip into or out of Manifestation, and have no clue why they believe what they believe, or why they are willing to die for a cause.

There are women who will commit themselves to die trying to give birth, and others that prioritize themselves over an unborn fetus.  Both sorts of women are courageous, heroic, and completely believable to your readership.

In fact, one sort can transform before the reader's eyes into the other sort, and the transformation can be completely plausible.

Many women on one side or the other of this divisive issue hold their position because of Religion -- some from adopting a Religion later in life, others having been raised to certain strict standards of right and wrong.  But today's readerships are maybe more than half atheist, and that half divides pretty much along the same line (risk life to give birth vs. my life is more important than potential life).

So entire philosophies of "Who Am I" questions are woven into the themes you can use to feature a conflict over abortion.

Historically, abortion has been an issue that shatters the mood of romance, but today's readers and writers are gradually exploring Romance that deals directly with spouse-abuse, with rape and incest, and even abortion.

And all of these relationship issues are super-charged by Religion.

People on any side of one of these issues point to Religion to justify their position, while the people on the other side point to Religion to nullify their opponent's position.  Sometimes, they both point to the same Religion.

If you're writing Alien Romance, your aliens might have no regard whatever for an unborn fetus -- or even for an infant less than 5 years old.  Some human cultures don't name a child for a long time after birth.  So Aliens who think like that would be plausible to everyday readers.

In Paranormal Romance, you might have ghosts, demons or angels who actually know what a Soul is, and how decisions implemented during mortal life determine fates in the afterlife.  They might be allowed to tell mortals, or perhaps be prevented from telling.  Plot driving conflicts can arise over the refusal to tell -- or disbelief of what has been told.

So to craft either an Alien to love your human Character, or a Supernatural Being to love your mortal, you need to choose an answer to the questions that define Soul.

Are Souls real?  Does every human have one?  Does your Alien have one?

Are Souls necessary for Romance to happen?

The answers to those questions are THEMES.  You build the answer into your world, and that integration gives rise to your main plot conflict.

Whatever your answer is, there is a Character in your story who takes the opposite stance.  That creates your integrated Theme-Plot-Character structure.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

To lure your reader into such an explosive story context and deliver the promised Romance, you need to study up on the World's Religions.  Chances are much of what you think you know comes from news or online articles.  That is necessary information as it tells you what most of your readers think they know -- thus lays out the plot which your conflict will generate.

People act on what they think they know.

Characters can act on what they think they know, but to tell a story, that Character must "arc" -- or learn something the reader didn't know, and begin to act in a distinctly different way.

So study the solidly orthodox, strict, version of several religions, and contrast it with the vastly more popular, more relaxed and accepting version of that religion.  For example, Catholicism vs. Tent Revivalist vs. TV Evangelist.

You might also study the Law, and the history of laws on a particular topic.

It can lead you into many topics, and sorting them out can be difficult.

Themes designed to support a long series of large novels can be "nested" one inside the other, to produce what some call the "braided plot" and possibly use several viewpoint characters.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

But to nest themes, they must all relate to a single, overall, or envelope theme.  All the questions you answer have to be about the same topic.

Take "conquest" for example.

A Master Theme might be, "My Way Or The Highway"

Sub-themes could be answers to such questions as "Who Am I?" "How Does A Human Choose A Way?" "Do Humans Get A Choice?" "Is Running Away From Home Better Than Running Toward A Goal?"

Each of those sub-theme areas could split and split again to eventually come down to something small enough to fit into a single novel.  Together, they could make a series or a life's work.

Philosophy behind novel themes can be very abstract, and start with things about the notion of a God who is the Creator of the Universe, the master architect.  Does the Divine force take a personal interest in individual humans?  Is that different from interactions with Aliens?

Would a Ghost be able to hold direct dialogue with the Creator of the Universe?  And then tell a human?  Or perhaps a fetus?

Would a Creator still have any power over the Creation?  Note how the Bible's story of the Tower of Babel shows without telling what happens when the Creation challenges the Creator.  What if the Creator hadn't been so gentle in Conquest as to just mess up the ability to communicate?

Some answers to these questions in the context of Romance Genre will inevitably lead to all the issues of human sexual relationships, and thus to how human law attempts to codify morality.

But what about Divine Law?

The Hellenistic Greek gods didn't lay down laws that they, themselves, abided by.  They operated, like the Roman gods after them, basically on whim, and under the thumb of the biggest bully god.

Humans developed Law as a concept, but only very gradually, over many generations.  What if your Aliens don't have the concept of Law, as Star Trek's Vulcans don't have emotion?'

Not all of modern Earth lives under the Judeo-Christian concept of a Creator who has told us His Laws (10 Commandments, 7 Noachide Laws, or 613 Commandments).

The 10 Commandments and the whole set of 613 Commandments given in the Old Testament are considered to apply only to Jews, while the 7 Laws given to Noah apply to all humans.

But overall, the concept is a Divine Creator explaining how Creation works to his Creatures.  And it is a contract. If humans do this, then the Divine will do that.  Our deeds don't cause the Creator to act.  The Creator's word of honor on the Contract is the cause of the consequences of our actions.

Our real world is currently built on the aspiration to make Laws that fill in the outline given to us by the Divine.

Even atheists agree that most of those boundaries around human behavior make for civilization to function to the advantage of most (if not all).  

The USA is founded on the idea that government can't infringe on personal sovereignty.  Each human is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (though there was a big argument over happiness or merely the pursuit thereof.)

Most of the Founders who framed the legal structure of the USA were Christian, and some were Christian mystics.  A lot of their subconscious assumptions became infused into that legal structure.  When they separated Church and State, they were thinking mostly of  various Christian churches, not freedom from Religion, not valuing pagan religions the same as Christian ones, and certainly not accepting the Jewish way of looking at the world.

But today, the USA is a dynamic and creative wellspring mostly because all these varieties of belief systems co-exist, interact, and even conflict.  Our differences are our greatest strength.

Yet, today's politics seem bent on conquest, not co-existence.

The political lines are being drawn as Men vs. Women, with sovereignty over the physical body at stake.

Does the father of your child have the legal right to force you to risk your life giving birth to his child?  What if your husband raped you?  In some religions that's not possible.  But civilization could stand or fall on that exact issue.

When does a woman have a right to an abortion?  When is a woman required to have an abortion?

Can human law be crafted (and enforced) to govern these decisions?  And if so, then what happens when men go to war over women?

Could the Gender War be settled by Conquest -- of either side over the other?

Are any of these questions even relevant to what is really going on with the US Supreme Court deliberations on Roe v. Wade?  I'm sure they're deliberating whether to take this or that case that would challenge the precedent.  If you're writing futuristic romance, you have to guess whether, in your built future world, Roe v. Wade still stands, and if not, what replaces it?

Here is an article that may give you some ideas of where Roe v. Wade is most vulnerable to being modified, or where the 2019 States attempt to craft anti-abortion legislation at the state level might be stopped by the Supreme Court.

Freedom of Religion is baked into our legal system, and most people think that all Religion is inherently anti-abortion.  Many Christian sub-divisions hold that no matter what (rape, incest, dire health collapse of the mother), no pregnancy may be terminated voluntarily.  So most people, even atheists, think that the only issue Religious people have with abortion is to prevent women from having abortion.

If you are pro-choice, you therefore must be anti-Religion.

That is the unconscious assumption.

However, the opposite is the case.

In Judaism, there are circumstances where a woman is required to get an abortion.

Yeah, who would think it?  But an adult woman, especially one with other children to raise, is absolutely not permitted to continue a life-threatening abortion.  Beyond that, different Rabbinic authorities hold that some other circumstances (such as psychological issues), may also dictate the necessity of an abortion.  Nobody can force a woman, no matter the risk, to have an abortion -- but sometimes, to comply with the Creator's Will, she must choose to do so.  A person who commits suicide is governed by the same laws that pertain to one who is a murderer.  Suicide is considered self-murder, and continuing a truly dangerous pregnancy would be suicidal.

Some of the current State laws being tried out would prohibit the practice of this religious requirement to save one's own life.

Here are two articles - one on the legal implications of abortion, and one on suicide.  Put them together and generate a lot of themes.

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/What-Jewish-law-really-says-about-abortion-590448

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4372311/jewish/Suicide-in-Judaism.htm

Another Jewish view holds that the Soul descends into the unborn fetus gradually, and over time.  That line of thought also holds that the Soul continues to descend after birth, as the body develops all the way to sexual maturity (12 or 13 years).  Does the degree of presence of a Soul have anything to do with the choice of abortion?

What about robots, A. I., will Souls descend to inhabit machine intelligence?

As a writer, consider the incredibly dramatic irony of these opposing views:
Religion requires abortion vs. Religion prohibits abortion.

Right now, this Earth is not in imminent danger of running out of humans. Other species are endangered, so it could come to us very soon.  Or colonies on other planets would place a much higher value on new children.  Artificial wombs will solve a lot of this problem, but will such children acquire souls?

Also note the birthrate in the USA has slacked off to where some official notice is being taken -- perhaps it's time to worry?

Nothing shatters the mood of a Romance novel like murder, death, blood sprayed on the walls, rape, abusive beating -- all the ugliness that goes on in our everyday reality.  Yet, writers are artists who love a challenge.

Can you build a world where one side or the other triumphs in conquest of the other side in these Religion vs. Politics debates?

Can you build an alien civilization where a refugee from the shattered Earth can find Romance and safety?

If you build your world out of unrelated bits, a hodgepodge patchwork world, it won't be a work of Art and will not communicate your theme clearly.

So try starting with your true, most deeply held, belief about Life and Souls.  Weave a powerful Romance, and drive the Characters to an accidental pregnancy.  Will Romance turn to Love and Conquer even this immense problem?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Like This

My heading needs punctuation, but whether it should be an exclamation mark, a question mark, a full stop, or ellipses... I leave it to the editor in your head.

Legal bloggers Madara Me Ika and Ieva Andersone for Sorainen discuss the pros and cons of having a Facebook Like button on European websites.

Original article
https://www.sorainen.com/publications/what-to-consider-when-embedding-an-fb-like-button-on-your-website/

Lexology article
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=68692895-6017-4083-9b9e-a6d9d1a84bf1&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email+-+body+-+general+section&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2019-08-13&utm_term

Most website owners know (or should know) that when the embed a "Like" button on their site, they are responsible for transmitting their visitors' data to Facebook without their visitors' knowledge or consent. In the case of Europe and the legal case under discussion:

".... every visitor’s personal data is transmitted to Facebook Ireland. Indeed, it is important to note that the data of every visitor, without their knowing it, and whether or not they have their own profile on the Facebook social network and whether or not they click on the “Like” button, were transmitted to Facebook Ireland."

As the bloggers explain, Facebook defends itself by pointing the finger, and saying the legal equivalent of, "they're doing it, too!"

Check out the Sorainen links to find out whose buttons may be just as dodgy.

Could you, as a website owner, be sued for force-feeding cookies to your visitors? Legal blogger  Christian M. Auty, for Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP gives a surprising answer for website owners with a European presence.

Original
https://www.bclplaw.com/en-GB/thought-leadership/gdpr-privacy-faqs-is-there-a-private-right-of-action-for-failing.html.

Lexology version
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d7cdd227-8c3f-4e66-9218-e5414388a821&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-08-13&utm_term=

Of course, you have to be a big-enough fish, or it's not worth it.

For readers who would like to know more about shadow profiles (profiles on people who have neither joined nor consented nor agreed to the TOU or TOS of a site, but have nevertheless been "collected" and potentially monetized), read here or here or here.

Warning: click those there (or "here") links, and you will be showered with cookies.

Author Martin Hendry, blogging on behalf of  boutique intellectual property solicitors Virtuoso Legal shares his top ten Intellectual Property Infringement surprises from July.

Original
https://www.virtuosolegal.com/ip-top-10-july-dark-horse/

Lexology version
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cd32a7eb-edae-4c13-8308-f3317ce1e096&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-08-13&utm_term=

My favorite of the surprises was the result of the model vs the paparazzo case. What's yours?

All the best,
Rowena Cherry