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Religion is to God as Sci-Fi is to Science

Limbo said:
My good sir. Decontructing sci-fi is not about tying it to a particular religion of a particular time and place, because then all you've done is pass the buck, in a way. It's about exposing the elements that are in ALL religions but in different costumes, different symbolic forms: the archetypes of the collective unconscious.
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Yes, I understood your post. That's why I replied to this point the first time you made it. I repeat - you got what was an example of which archetype wrong. Your analysis came up with the wrong answer.

You should think about that, if you have any concern whatsoever about whether or not this form of analysis has any value at all. And, if you do care whether it's got any value, then you should be thinking about exactly what you got wrong and working out why you got it wrong.

Of course, if all you care about if proselyting, then feel free to ignore the fact that your analysis was incapable of doing what you claim it does, and continue to hold it up as a wonderful tool.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Yes, I understood your post. That's why I replied to this point the first time you made it. I repeat - you got what was an example of which archetype wrong. Your analysis came up with the wrong answer.

You should think about that, if you have any concern whatsoever about whether or not this form of analysis has any value at all. And, if you do care whether it's got any value, then you should be thinking about exactly what you got wrong and working out why you got it wrong.

Of course, if all you care about if proselyting, then feel free to ignore the fact that your analysis was incapable of doing what you claim it does, and continue to hold it up as a wonderful tool.
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'Mormonism' is not an archetype. People who have never heard of Mormonism, who know nothing about the artists involved in a particular sci-fi story and what they intend, can still identify the religious elements, because they are universal, the archetypes are in us all.

So, I'll just repeat. Decontructing sci-fi is not about tying it to a particular religion whether it is Christianity, Mormonism, Judaism, Gnosticism, or Buddhism.

Of course there are sci-fi stories that draw heavily on one or another of those traditions as a source of inspiration. That is not what makes sci-fi myth, so it's irrelevant.
 
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Limbo said:
No, you guys have narrowed it so much you can't see what's right under your nose. You guys oppose traditional religion while engaging in secular religion at the comic-book store. If you would open your eyes, you would see that each is a shadowy reflection of the other. Maybe then you could see that God is in all, and put down the grudge.
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I haven't done anything with the term. The word has its roots in the Latin, meaning a bond with divinity. The last SciFi I read was the 4th volume of Appleseed. It wasn't divine, none of the characters or themes were divine, I didn't worship it, I'm not bound to it, I didn't go to a church to acquire it, no one wearing a big hat told me to read it, it didn't try to teach or enforce any morality onto me, and it didn't tell me what will happen to me in the afterlife.

I think what you are doing is finding analogies but that doesn't make them the same thing.
 
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MG1962 said:
Well science fiction has always been seen as a derivative genre, so thats a fairly accurate description
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Has it? I suppose one could argue it has its ancestry in being a derivative of the gothic genre but that is so far in the past can't see how it is relevant today. As for the genre of literature that is derivative of other genres, one only has to read the sneering excuses of "...but it isn't real science fiction..." when one of the literature genre critics finds one of "their" authors dabbling in science fiction.
 
Limbo said:
...snip... can still identify the religious elements, because they are universal, the archetypes are in us all.

...snip....
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Your sentence needed a few words adding to it to be accurate "...because they are to other people who share our culture universal, the archetypes are in us all.
 
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Plus I still don't know why you've singled out SciFi when you could apply this to almost any fiction.
 
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Limbo said:
If you sit on a couch all day, what is it your mind is doing? Reading? Watching TV? Listening to music? Surfing the web? SOMETHING is getting some sort of exercise. Even if it's your mind. There is some level of meditation going on.
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Of course. But calling that "exercise" in a context suggesting you're talking about physical activity would simply be misleading. Likewise, calling reading fiction "religion" in a context suggesting you're talking about worship is also misleading. In the end all it's doing is stretching the definitions of "exercise" and "religion" without bothering to justify why the stretched definition is valid.

Probably the ego-self, and its illusion of separation and control. The 'Clark Kent' aspect of us.
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Eating, driving, working at a job, physical exercise, shopping, home repair, vacationing, handicrafts, housework, sex, and a million other human activities also "worship" the same things. So why single out reading or viewing a particular genre of fiction?

I do disagree with him about that point. I think that myth should be read mystically, and I think people should be taught how to do that. It's clear that he believes it can be read that way, I think it can and should be.
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Okay, fair enough. But someone whose opinion you care about enough to have quoted him in support of your point, disagrees with you on that. So perhaps you are wrong, and there are sufficient benefits to other systems of practice for them to be worth pursuing also.

Do you expect people to agree with scholars and scientists about EVERYTHING they say?
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No, but it's customary to agree with the thing you're quoting in your post in support of your point, or else explain that you disagree and why.

Yes, I realize that. I am asking about the circumstances that took the society to "post" so that I have some basis for answering your question.
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Ah. Well, the story does not specify that. People who actually live in dark ages often don't know (or have much reason to care) how or why the previous civilization fell. They're concerned with their own worlds and their own lives. In fact, when I wrote the story I was deliberately avoiding two of what I regard as the biggest clichés of the post-industrial genre: characters who are strangely preoccupied with blaming previous generations for the current state of the world, and characters who are inordinately pleased with themselves for how much more sensibly the've learned to live now—and deliberately satirizing a third one, characters who perpetually lament the wonders of a lost age of glory. (Of course, those clichés come from authors using such stories, often clumsily, as social commentary about the present day.) The theme, such as it is, is about letting go of expectations, something that people struggle with in any age.

Here, you can read it and decide for yourself. I think you might like it, actually.
 
Darat said:
Your sentence needed a few words adding to it to be accurate "...because they are to other people who share our culture universal, the archetypes are in us all.
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Who share our culture? The archetypes are universal common denominators; are cross-cultural.
 
Myriad said:
Eating, driving, working at a job, physical exercise, shopping, home repair, vacationing, handicrafts, housework, sex, and a million other human activities also "worship" the same things. So why single out reading or viewing a particular genre of fiction?
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Partly because it is a particular genre that is very closely tied to science. Science has taken over functions that traditionally myth has performed for societies. For example the cosmological function. I shouldn't have to point out how important science is to our culture in general and atheism in particular.

The theme, such as it is, is about letting go of expectations, something that people struggle with in any age.
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Hmm.



Here, you can read it and decide for yourself. I think you might like it, actually.
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Maybe I will, maybe not. If the theme is detachment, I could tie that in to the concept of enlightenment. Maybe you are expressing mysticism in your own secular terms. Without reading it, I wouldn't want to say much more.
 
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Limbo said:
If you sit on a couch all day, what is it your mind is doing? Reading? Watching TV? Listening to music? Surfing the web? SOMETHING is getting some sort of exercise. Even if it's your mind. There is some level of meditation going on.
[...]
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HAHAHAHAHA!
 
Limbo said:
'Mormonism' is not an archetype.
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Yes, I still understood your post. I will continue to understand it, no matter how many times you explain it. I know what an archetype is. I have done plenty of textural analysis myself.

You can keep repeating yourself over and over and over, if you should so choose. That will not change the fact that you misidentified the archetypes. Your analysis was wrong.

You really should give that some thought, if you're even going to pretend to be vaguely objective about this.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Yes, I still understood your post. I will continue to understand it, no matter how many times you explain it. I know what an archetype is. I have done plenty of textural analysis myself.

You can keep repeating yourself over and over and over, if you should so choose. That will not change the fact that you misidentified the archetypes. Your analysis was wrong.

You really should give that some thought, if you're even going to pretend to be vaguely objective about this.
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After I posted my BSG take, you responded with, "Battlestar Galactica is actually based on Mormonism." As if that makes everything I said wrong somehow. I've tried to explain to you why Mormonism is irrelevant, and all you've said in response is, basically, "you're wrong".

If you think I've misidentified the archetypes, then please provide us with your own identification of them.
 
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Limbo said:
After I posted my BSG take, you responded with, "Battlestar Galactica is actually based on Mormonism." As if that makes everything I said wrong somehow. I've tried to explain to you why Mormonism is irrelevant, and all you've said in response is, basically, "you're wrong".

If you think I've misidentified the archetypes, then please provide us with your own identification of them.
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It's not irrelevant. BSG is deliberately and intentionally based on mormonism. It is not a mistake, or coincidence it was done on purpose. You failed to identify that even though it was so blatantly done.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Battlefield Earth
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The Psychlos are the 'demons' of the tribe of humans, the psychlos have a place in their mythology. As the tribe member who departs the realm of the known and encounters them, that puts Johnny Goodboy Tyler in the role of shaman initiate.

He departs the known, enters the unknown, encounters and overcomes the 'tribal demons', and returns with the boon. Pretty standard monomyth. Whether Hubbard intended it to be a Scientology thing or not is irrelevant.
 
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