When In Doubt, Defect

Chapter 12 of The Selfish Gene brings a very interesting theory on relationships between living things. This theory, which can be applied to almost every altruistic action towards another being, consists of two options for each participant (Cooperate and Defect) and four outcomes (CC, CD, DC, DD). This is the matrix chart for the "game":

As you can see, the four outcomes bring very different results for Player A. If Player A cooperates, A can win a moderate sum or lose a small sum; but if he defects, he can lose nothing or win a big sum. According to logic, Player A should defect: it gives him or her the best results. But should Player A step over Player B in case B chooses Cooperate and cause Player B to lose points, money or effort (whatever the case is)? In that case, What should Player A chose? This game can be applied in many situations in real life and the results can be extrapolated to see the severity of the players' actions; the best example is The Prisoner's Dilemma, created by Albert W. Tucker. 


This situation consists of two people. They are both suspected of collaborating in a crime and sit in different rooms to be interrogated; both obviously want to lessen their time in jail. The key to understanding this situation is that they can't speak to each other while this is happening and couldn't speak beforehand, either. The police agents invite both to DEFECT their partner by giving in evidence against the other and lessening their time in jail. If one defects and the other doesn't say anything about the story imposed on him (COOPERATE), the one who cooperated will get a big jail sentence, while the other will have his sentence shortened or get out unharmed. If they both cooperate, or stay silent, they both will get a moderate sentence. And if they both defect, they are both convicted of the crime but get a somewhat reduced sentence for giving in evidence.


This gets me to my point. What should we do in this case? Can we trust the other participant and cooperate for an equal gain, but risk the defection of the other? Or should we betray others in search of a big reward? I guess this is a very solid theory not only on human relations, but also of other living things' relationships. By playing this game in class, I could see that most people who were betrayed once, never fell into the trap of cooperating another time. The exception was Camilo, who after being betrayed by Connor, kept on cooperating even after Connor had chosen defect.  

Science in a Fun Way

Personally, Biology isn't one of my favorite subjects of all time, and I don't have a good time trying to understand the small details of it, like what does the mitochondria do or the process of photosynthesis inside a plant cell. I prefer to learn about something that I can relate to and can see the results of, like natural selection or the theory of evolution. This is why I have been able to understand (at times) the explanations in chapter 3 of The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. 

I have heard, from other people who have read this book, that it is very difficult to understand and that it is very monotonous and boring. I agree with them in the way the book can render you to close your eyes little by little, and later realize you have lost your time because you have not taken in anything from what you have read while you were unconsciously day-dreaming while scanning the words on the page. That could happen. But what is true is that the metaphors and applications of the theories of evolution that Dawkins utilizes causes the reader to be able to relate and understand the text better. The strategies the author uses certainly help me understand the things he writes about, which without these examples, could be just a big mess of letters for all I can see. For example, the analogy where Dawkins uses a boat race team to explain the intricacy of building a competent living thing on page 38 helped me clear up the terms and relationships he had been talking about on the pages previous to the metaphor. 


When I received this book for the first time, I thought it was going to be another novel with a strange form and weird content, like Invisible Cities or A Simple Heart. In fact, the first pages we read in class seemed like it was going to be like I had imagined; apparently, I was wrong. The Selfish Gene is a scientific novel, but it is not written as a scientific report or as if it was the finding of the century. It has a very strange style and tone. As I see it, it is written in order to be read by as many people as can get its hands on it, not by an exclusive community of biologists and geneticists. The author's use of the word "you" creates a relationship with the reader as for him or her to think that Richard Dawkins was right there with the reader explaining the rise of the genes and its survival machines. The book also includes some exercises in which Dawkins involves the reader, which I think is great in helping his audience get a better grasp on what his book is talking about. And lets not mention that it also helps the reader stay awake!

Important Words in The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, is a scientific research book about the evolution of genes and its role in the lives of living things. Dawkins introduces many terms, many are related to biology, and I think it is important to know them. We defined them in class.

1. Gene: replicator with high- copying fidelity. Any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection. 
2. Altruistic Selfishness: a concept where acts that are seen as purely being for the good of others, are really selfish and done for the survival of the organism that did the act. 
3. Acquired Characteristics: traits that are gained or changed throughout a living thing's life, but are not passed on to the next generation since they are not embedded in the animal or plant's genes.
4. Body: according to Richard Dawkins, gene preservers.  
5. Proteins: chain of amino acids.
6. DNA: nucleic acid that contains the genes of living things.
7. Allele: rivals for the same slot on a chromosome.
8. Mitosis: a process where a cell divides into two new copies, each with 46 chromosomes.

Is This The Real Life..

Calvino has touched the topic of reality on several occasions in the book. First of all, his cities (or Marco Polo's cities) don't seem very realistic at all, to be honest. Who would believe that a city where "there is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks" exists, especially in the eleventh century or whenever Marco and Kublai Kahn lived? (75) This takes me to think that these cities are made up, or are a product of the emperor's or the merchant's wildest dreams. After all, Kublai and Marco do tell to each other of cities they saw in their dreams many times throughout the book.

The part of Invisible Cities where reality is most played with is in of the encounters between Polo and Khan. The dialogue between both characters shows they start to question if they really do exist, if the things surrounding them are really there. Kublai says: "I, too, am not sure I am here, strolling among the porphyry fountains..." to which Marco replies: "Perhaps this garden exists only in the shadows of our lowered eyelids, and we have never stopped:.." (103). As seen, Calvino expresses the idea that our lives, the world we know, might only be a dream of ours; and that maybe, one day, we will wake up from it and live an entirely different life. 


Reality sometimes can seem like an illusion, an illusion created by our own stubborn minds. We chose what we believe in just because we don't want to believe in anything else than our own views. This is seen in Invisible Cities in a conversation between Kublai and his loyal companion, Marco. Kublai starts to list different things that undoubtedly exist in his empire, such as stonecutters, rubbish collectors, and many other things. He then says he never thinks of them, to which Marco responds "Then they do not exist" (117). This conversation shocked me quite a bit. It made me think of my own perspective on what the reality I am in is.  This is a very deep analysis on society and human behavior. In some ways, our reality is like a  very big video game with almost infinite levels. We chose where to go, what to do, and that is what we think the game is all about. But what we don't notice are the things we don't do, the places we don't visit, so we don't count them as a part of our reality. That is why we have to take into account the things we don't see or experience ourselves, just for the knack of knowing our environment better.

So Much Pressure

A recurring theme in Invisible Cities is the role that decisions take in our world. We make decisions that cause an impact on our lives and other's lives every second. Sometimes we think some events are insignificant, but even the smallest of our judgements can change a lot in the world. This is what I interpreted that Calvino wanted to say in some parts of the book. 

In one part of the story, Italo Calvino imagines Marco Polo in an event that happened to him on his journey. He was on a city square, looking at someone that was "living a life or an instant that coud be his; he could now be in that man's place"(29). He continues to describe that if Marco Polo had "long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square". This is the importance of decisions. If even the smallest of Marco Polo's paths in life had gone just a bit different, he could have ended up in the position of that man in space and time, or even in the position of any other person in the world, or another entirely different position. There are stories of people who decided to wake up two minutes late on a work day and if it hadn't been for those two minutes, they would have been in the site of an accident, or people who missed a speeding bus by an inch, an inch they had lost while tying their shoes. These decisions saved these people's lives, and Marco Polo's decisions made him stand where and when he was that day. This is what Italo Calvino is expressing here: the impact of our decisions, no matter how small, can go a very long way.

This theme is also seen in a description of a city, Fedora. Marco Polo describes the globes in a building in the center of Fedora:

Looking into each globe, you see a globe city, the model of a different Fedora. These are the forms the city could have taken if, for one reason or another, it had not become what we see today... every inhabitant visits it... imagining his reflection on the medusa pond that would have collected the waters of the canal (if it had not been dried up),... (32)

 The role of decisions is perfectly portrayed in this book. The globes with the other Fedoras represent roads not taken, paths that could have been but aren't real because of some thing or another. This is exactly what decisions and judgements are. I believe the building with the globes are an excellent metaphor for looking at the decisions we have made. We must stop and ponder at the globes with the realities that could have been if we would have taken another road, but we must live in the present we chose, because it is the one that convinced us most. We can not live in the past, it is another reality than what is occuring around us. 

Invisible Words

Here are the words I don't understand from the book, along with the page number they are in and their definitions:

1. Braziers: a metal receptacle for holding live coals or other fuel, as for heating a room. (5)
2. Beseech: to implore urgently. (5)
3. Scepter: royal or imperial power or authority; sovereignty. (5) 
4. Chalcedony: a microcrystalline, translucent variety of quartz, often milky or grayish.(12)
5. Languish: to lose vigor and vitality. (16)
6. Jutting: an extension beyond the main body or line. (53)
7. Stridor: a harsh, grating, or creaking sound. (21)
8. Quarry: an excavation or pit, usually open to the air, from which building stone, slate, or the like, is obtained by cutting, blasting, etc. ( 47)
9. Chaste: refraining from sexual intercourse that is regarded as contrary to morality or religion; virtuous. (52)
10. Balustrade: awkward or unwieldy. (73)
11. Estuary: that part of the mouth or lower course of a river in which the river's current meets the sea's tide. (61)

Brazier

Tricky Language

I have noticed that language has been brought up several times in chapters two and three of Invisible Cities. Marco Polo, at first, doesn't know neither the language spoken by Kublai Kahn nor the languages spoken in the cities he has visited. He tried very hard to learn Kublai Kahn's language but as seen in page 39: 

"... and yet when Polo began to talk about how life must be in those places, day after day, evening after evening, words failed him, and little by little, he went back to relying on gestures, grimaces, glances." (39)

Here is the issue with language. There has always been the idea that spoken dialects like ours can't describe ideas, situations, objects, etc. entirely and with very accurate perspectives. That is why there are so many languages: humans can not settle for one and continue to develop new tongues in order to get a better grasp on the description of things. The use of language depends on perspective; you will never find two people's description of an object the same. This is hinted at in the book when Marco Polo says:

"No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it." (61)

Marco Polo says this because the description he gives and the words he chooses have nothing to do with the object (the city). He described the city of Olivia in one way, and when Kublai Kahn or anyone else travels to that city, they will draw their own conclusions about it and explain it in other ways. 


The perfect description does not exist. It is so hard just to find the words to write this, even harder for a poem or to explain how something works or how a person looks like. Language will always be an illusion; it doesn't exist but it helps us understand the world around us. 

The Not-So-Barbarian

I have started to read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, a Cuban storyteller that was raised and lived almost his entire life in Italy. So far into the book, it is a series of very short descriptions of many different cities, all of them unknown (to me, at least). But the part that caught my attention the most was the prologue, where Calvino talks about Kublai Kahn and his reunion with Marco Polo.


Kublai Khan was born in the empire of Mongolia in the year 1215. Being the grandson of the infamous Ghenghis Khan, logic would say he was a cruel and violent barbarian. Think again. Kublai Khan rose to power after his brother was killed, and he was characterized for being a very benevolent ruler. His clan, the Mongols, had conquered China and they managed it, as historians say, with land- hungry, apathetic rulers. Kublai Kahn was the exception.

Kublai Kahn

He was a ruler that broke the mold of his predecessors. He understood the people he leaded. He won the right to rule after defeating his younger brother in battle, and he was established as the fifth Great Khan in 1260. The fifth Khan changed his role from conqueror to ruler, and with that changes came many advances in culture in his empire. One of the great changes he made in the Mongol Empire was that he surrounded himself with advisers from different religions that were in his territory. This established religious freedom for all his subjects. He also created aid agencies, encouraged the use of the postal service, established paper currency, upgraded the roads in his empire and expanded waterways.  




His reign over the Mongol Empire coincided with Marco Polo's journey toward the East. Marco Polo was a young merchant from Venice who traveled with his uncle and father to China, where he met Kublai Khan. The details about his visit are very unclear, but it is known that Kublai Khan grew very close to Marco Polo and used him as a military advisor. At the same time, Polo took advantage of this opportunity and soaked in the cultural, economical and political advances from the Mongolian Empire. Unfortunately, Marco Polo's stories about China were not very well received in Italy; many people thought they were mad man's tales. 

Marco Polo and Kublai Kahn

The relationship between the Venetian merchant and the Mongol emperor is a very unexpected relationship, but it seems as if they trust each other a lot. They share everything with each other, including hopes, fears, dreams, anything that comes to mind. Their friendship will be something to follow throughout the book.

Work!

   What are humans for? Why are we in this world? Some might say to enjoy ourselves and live life as it were the last day and all that nonsense. I don't really believe in all this. My answer is: to work. And to work hard. Without any work, your life would be nonexistent. In fact, the human race would be long gone if they hadn't done any efforts. 


After reading the first paragraph, many of you will think I'm not thinking right. But stop and reflect on this thought. How did the world we know today come to be? How did all these things appear? The answer is from restless hours of hard work. The first humans to ever live on Earth, or at least the creatures at the bottom of the evolutionary chain we are in, didn't lie around and scratch their heads until food or shelter dropped from the sky. They went out and with a big effort, they got all of this in order to survive. We do the same today. We work hard for what we want and hopefully most of us don't rest until we get it. We are taught to do this since we are children, and the ones who don't do this are called spoiled and are not very well accepted into society.


   This topic is shown in Candide when Candide and Martin reach Count Pococurante's palace in Venice. Voltaire describes his palace as a very elegant, rich and majestic place to live, a palace where everyone only wishes to live at in their wildest dreams. But the Count sees it as dull and uneventful. Even though he owns some of the most expensive things in the world, he is not even satisfied with it. He describes the Rafael masterpieces he owns:

The color is altogether dull, and there is not enough modeling in the figures, which do not stand out sufficiently. (119)

   This man is an example of many things that Voltaire thinks that are wrong in this world, like materialistic happiness, aristocratic domination, etc. But I relate this with work. The Count most likely never worked for the money with which he paid for all of this. Therefore, he never really enjoys it. This is why work is so important for the human spirit. It gives men motivation and  pride to show that they are competent and are able to accomplish great things. I believe that this feature is deeply embedded in the human brain, and is one of the main reason besides necessity that we are what we are right now, a civilization so advanced and technological.

From Good or Evil?

As Martin and Candide discuss the benevolence of humans on their journey towards Bordeaux, it has made me wonder if humans are actually well intended. Martin says that humans come from "the forces of evil" (92), as he has not seen a place where humans don't commit horrible acts. Candide opposes him because he still believes there is goodness in the human spirit. 


This issue has been discussed many times and there is no concrete answer to it. As Martin puts it, 

I have scarcely seen a town which does not seek the ruin of a neighboring town, nor a family that does not wish to exterminate some other family. You will find that the weak always detest the strong and cringe before them, and that the strong treat them like so many a sheep to be sold for their meat and wool. (92)

Through Martin, Voltaire expresses his views on the society of his time. They are a little pessimistic, but entirely true. This quote is perhaps the most important quote in Candide up to where I have read. It questions our whole existence as a human race and explains why our world is like it is right now. 


Candide, in this case, is on the other side of the discussion. He still believes that people still have some good inside them. After all the evil he's been through, like the Dutch sailor scamming him or the hanging of Dr. Pangloss, and the horrible stories he's heard, like the old woman's story or the slaves' story in Surinam, he still thinks that humans are good creatures.


Personally, I believe that humans have both good and bad inside them. The issue is learning how to use them wisely. Bad acts are a lot easier to do than good ones, and that is one of the reasons why our world is so full of crap. 

Where to Find Happiness

A question every human being must wonder about. Happiness expresses itself through many ways, and Voltaire makes it a recurring theme in Candide. Every character has his own definition of happiness. 

  For Dr. Pangloss, almost everything was full of joy, everything from teaching the Baron's children in the "best of all possible mansions" the wonders of education to lying on the streets of Amsterdam with an STD. His optimistic views made this possible, since he saw only the good things in life and thought they happened for the best. 


Finding happiness for Candide was a whole lot different. For a very naïve guy, he had his definition of being happy very clear in his mind. When he is in ElDorado, he says that even though "... the house where I was born won't bear comparisons with the mansions of this country; but still, I shall never be happy without Lady Cunegonde..."(82). Candide's way of being content was very different from Pangloss' ways. He could only be at peace if he was with his childhood love, Lady Cunegonde, even though he was surrounded by all the riches he could ever imagine.


Is happiness really being in love with a person? Can it be found without the love of anyone? Or can you find happiness everywhere you go just by seeing the positive side of everything? Certainly, there are a  lot of other views on happiness, but these two are the ones that can be easily identified in Candide. As of my views, I agree with this quote:

"There is only one success - to spend your life in your own way." 

The New and Better World

In this part of the book, the old woman is telling her story on the ship towards the New World. First, she tells that she is the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina. This is a direct critique to the Catholic institution, since popes nor any religious official aren't allowed to marry nor have children. Also, the marriage with a nobility of Palestrina is shocking, since both areas of the world (Catholic Europe and Middle East) don't get along very well at this time because of the Crusades in the previous centuries. 

When the old lady's tragic story ends, she begins to doubt why she didn't kill herself after the horrible events in her life and why don't many other people do, since they also live such miserable lives. This is another clear defiance to Christianity, since suicide is forbidden in this religion and punished by spending eternity in hell. It also gives a shocking revelation to human life we had never thought of. Humans always want to know what is going to happen next, always want to grow and improve. Voltaire states, through the old lady, that humans love life and wish to enjoy it to the last straw. That is the true spirit of human nature, and quitting on life would be against it. That is why the old lady nor Lady Cunegonde quit on their tragic journey after being, almost literally, on top of the world. At some point, the only direction they could go was up, and they hoped for it so much they never quit on their sad life. 


Candide and his troops, along with Lady Cunegonde and the old woman, finally arrived to the New World, the one Candide said was: "the one where all goes well; for I must admit that regrettable things happen in this world of ours, moral and physical acts that one cannot approve of." He finally admitted that their world was not the best of all possible ones and that he didn't agree with Pangloss anymore; before, he had followed and agreed to his teachings like a blind man. 

The New World was a promise of a better world

An amusing part in the story (for me) was when Candide arrives to Buenos Ayres and meets the Governor of the town. He presents himself as Fernando D'Ibaraa y Figueroa y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza. This is a critique towards Latin American royalty at that time, because he describes him as being so arrogant and "on a pedestal" that everyone who met him wished to hit him. It is also amusing because he is from Argentina, and even now a days Argentinians have this reputation for being arrogant and with a huge ego. 


As far as I have read, the New World has been very grateful to their new visitors. It has given Lady Cunegonde a wealthy, aristocratic husband, the old woman a place to relieve herself of her past, and Candide a reencounter with an old friend from Westphalia. It is interestingly coincidental the fact that Candide has encountered so many people from his past life in the Baron's home. Who will he encounter next?

Irony in its Purest Form

This novel just keeps getting better and better. I have noticed that the irony in Candide is just top quality, and Voltaire makes us discover the irony in scenes we had heard of before but never related it to ironic situations. For example, it's ironic that a University, a place where knowledge and wisdom is supposed to be taught to make humanity prosper, suggests ceremonial human sacrifices as a superstitious act to prevent a second earthquake from happening. I won't go in to explain how absurd and anti humanistic these acts were, it is just a waste of time. Instead, I am going to compare this scene with a movie I saw a while back.

Wanted, with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman

Wanted is about a clan of assassins who, by reading the patterns in the fabrics created by their sacred weaving machine, pick out names of random people for them to kill. Their justification is that by killing the innocent people whose names come out, they can prevent these people from killing thousands more. They really don't know much about the people they kill, some may have never even said a lie in their whole lives, but they still go ahead and kill them to prevent the future suffering they might cause. 

When I saw this movie, I didn't connect it to irony or superstition, but I know see a connection with the University's absurd suggestion. Both institutions claim that with just a little suffering from innocent people (the University used Jews who refused to eat pork, a Basque who was accused of marrying his godmother, and Candide and Pangloss for speaking), a bigger portion of people might be saved from bad situations. Voltaire is a genius in the way he holds up a mirror to society and makes them realize that what should be a respectable and wise institution like a University suggests such a horrible thing just because of a superstition, and also blames society and the common people for following along to these terrible acts just because a higher authority says so.

What happens next is astonishing. Under the University of Coimbra's supervision, Dr. Pangloss was hanged in order to prevent a second earthquake. Death has been a recurring theme so far in the novel, and Dr. Pangloss always explains every death has "sufficient reason" to happen. For a man who believes so much in sufficient reason and all that nonsense, is it ironic that his death didn't have sufficient reason for it to happen? I shouldn't make fun of a man's death, but his was very particular. He always claimed every death was meant to be since the beginning, and that the sufficient reason was provided by the environment it happened in. His death, however, was caused by him ranting about illogical things, and there wasn't sufficient reason for him to be hanged, since it was just a superstitious act. I guess he abandoned his belief of the best of worlds right before he was unjustly hanged in this cruel and unforgiving world. It was like if an animal rights' defender was trampled to death by a cow. 

Constructive Criticism?

François-Marie Arouet better known by the pen name Voltaire (Yes, François-Marie is a man's name!)

   The novel Candide by Voltaire is a satirical criticism of European society in Voltaire's age. As I read the first few pages, I noticed it contains all of the four elements of satire: hyperbole, irony, absurdity and target. The novel is full of it, and its tone makes anyone doubt whether he is talking seriously or sarcastically. At every point of the book, you have to stop and think: Was that a true fact or a clever joke? Voltaire used these strategies to criticize the errors he saw in society. 

   For me, the element that I can most recognize in the novel is irony. He uses irony to criticize Dr. Pangloss' ideas. The narrative takes such unexpected and ironical turns that they are hard to believe. For example: How can such an "educated" and correct man like Dr. Pangloss, teaching to the most influential family of Westphalia, end up with an STD from the West Indies and sleeping in Holland's streets? Not only this, but the grandest irony of them all is that this happened in what he explained as "the best of all possible worlds". 

  After some research, I learned that this view of the world is called Leibnizian Optimism, which consists of believing that all is for the best because God is a benevolent deity. This view was taught by Dr. Pangloss to the Thunder-ven-tronckh children as their tutor. As said before, it is just simply ironic that a man who firmly believed in this would end up so bad off in the "best of all worlds".

   Another criticism I enjoyed was the part about war. He starts by implying that war is more about displaying one's power rather than using it. He says:

Those who have never seen two well-trained armies drawn up for battle, can have no idea of the beauty and the brilliance of the display. Bugles, fifes, oboes, drums, and salvoes of artillery produced such a harmony as Hell itself could not rival. (page 25)

   In this scene, Voltaire makes both armies look like just marching bands instead of brutal armies. Voltaire takes out the seriousness of battle and mocks them by stating this. He then goes on to say that all the casualties of the Bulgar-Abar war were just the result of a "heroic butchery" (page 25), and sarcastically says that the war liberated the world from nine or ten thousand villains. One can clearly see Voltaire's views on war. He thinks it is a dumb tradition with no clear or effective results, because he later says that after all the killing, both Kings were celebrating. 
   He later describes with brutal detail the image of Candide going through some burned down villages which were results of the war. Afterwards, Pangloss tells Candide that the Baron's country seat was burned down, but that everything was all right because it was avenged by burning another town. This gives us an idea of what Voltaire portrays about war. He hints that it is the pure degradation of the human spirit.