The Book of Meanings

What a strange narrative is Invisible Cities. Without having started reading just based on the index and title I knew the novel would be complicated and entreating, and it has been. I’ve only begun and already feel every line in this book has a figurative meaning. Most books compose allegories as a whole but Italo Calvino seams to have hid a meaning behind every phrase. The main title suggests an allegory that we have to clearly search thought our reading. My goal in these blogs will be to look out for the title’s meaning or perhaps the entire book’s allegory.

Although I have just started reading I feel the book’s true meaning is that the cities Marco Polo describes are imaginary or “invisible”. All the descriptions the explorer gives have much deeper meanings and it feels like the descriptions lack importance. The story is actually happening, Marco Polo is telling Kublai Khan what he thinks he saw, what Marco Polo or the author are is trying to illustrate, I don’t know. There is a hidden agenda in each city and so far just  a few have become obvious.

“As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands” (pg. 10)

The excerpt above appears ‘coincidentally’ in "Cites and Memories 3". The true meaning of these "Cities and Memories" is simply how Marco Polo is starting to ‘remember’ everything he has seen in his journey. For his memory is now being able to reconstruct how these cities looked like. “a city that no one having seen it, can forget.”(pg15). We can conclude that these cities are perhaps the explorers memory starting to work out every detail. But if these are not really memories then what do they mean?

In "Cities and Signs" it feels like the Calvino is suggesting that as readers we must be alert for any symbolisms or other literary devices he will use. He even uses the chapter title to tell us to look out for “signs”. “The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things.” (pg 13) The excerpt is a clear “slap in the face” for us to wake up and discover the meaning of Calvino’s cities. He does it again in "Cities and Signs 2" “The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind” (pg 19). These declarations are clearly meant for us, the readers, to really comprehend the messages in the novel the author is trying to get across. To what point will these messages continue and will they help? That I do not know

I am intrigued for the allegory of this story might be the best part. Are they all one city? And what do the cities mean?

The New Idea in Town

I was surprised to read on what appear to be the most important reliance in humans: ideas or “memes” as Dawkins calls them. I’ve heard of evolution being applied to other aspects of human life like vocabulary and other tendencies but the author makes some surprising conclusions. “…if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved into the common pool.” (p. 199) These statements surprised me because they are related to my previous blog. Humans don’t want to have children, they want to change the world and by world we mean culture.

Dawkins explains that memes are ideas that “it’s spread will depend on how acceptable it is to the population of individual scientists”(p. 194). So it seams that memes are based on fecundity but not on how many or how effective they can be but as how people accept them. Therefore it is correct to assimilate the meme with a virus. What our author misses to emphasize is how important these ideas really are and what they do to the human population. In Darwin’s case we can see how a ‘little’ book can change the understanding of living things forever. In effect, the human populous now has driven its scientific development into expanding and developing new ways in which the theory applies instead of taking creation as an explanation. So this brings me to the question this chapter emphasizes are memes more important than genes? Yes they are, they spread more effectively, become big parts of people, and they change drastically anything they come in contact with. It’s only if an idea would be removed or deleted completely that the difference could be felt. This situation occurs in God Is Dead by Ron Currie Jr, with the hope of recovering the American culture the U.S government takes desperate action by forcing the population to completely forget a war. “ When the men came I held the pills under my tongue. When they left I spit it out… “Does any one else remember?” “Not around here,”” (God Is Dead pg 174) And just like that an entire population changes their entire personality. A little change in the hinges and the clock starts working differently.

How can something that doesn’t physically exist change so many individuals? The only explanation might be humans are now in control of their lives “We alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.” (p201) 

Humans Override Their Genes

The Selfish Gene continues to amuse me. Something that I’d never had explained to me is altruism between animals. Dawkins has already explained that cells and some bacteria cooperate, but now he’s taken into explaining how members of the same or even different species help each other called symbiosis. He says that most animals form alliances in which they benefit mutually by forming herds, beehives, or packs.

Dawkins uses the great example of a flock of birds to explain how a species cooperates with each other. He describes the situation in which birds call out for danger to save their flock. These birds have evolved to call out these dangers, flocks that didn’t have the danger call died out. Yet there is a danger faced by the caller, he now attracts the attention of the predator, consequently birds with subtle cries have survived. This situation reminds me of the typical bank robbery as seen in the movie The Town. Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) leads his gang into the bank to steal the vault’s contents. This gang could be taken as group of predators and the bank employees are the prey or a nest being attacked. The caller would not be the employee that sounds the alarm because he or she is already in danger and by calling for help he or she is only trying to save their life and job. The “caller” would be someone who sees the bank robbery from outside and can choose to inform others by screaming or just keeping quiet and maintaining her safety. What I am getting at is: humans no longer participate in the life goal of propagating their genes they just want to live a happy life. No longer will every single person tell you their life goal is to have children.

Is our dream as humans to avoid being animals? It might be, after all isn’t ‘being an animal’ an insult. I don’t know about you but considering myself part of the Darwinian theory makes me disheartened. How can our entire life’s purpose be to procreate and create other survival machines? We have so much time to live and be about and what it comes down to is we must continue the prosperity of our genes. Not only have we changed our objective but also it seams as if evolution itself has become stagnant. I wonder if this natural process really has stopped and hope that Dawkins addresses it in future chapters. It doesn’t look like it’s continued working, lots of unhealthy, fragile, and genetically weak people continue reproducing with no limitation. With the help of medicine and just a great standard of living there really is no natural selection. Darwin’ theory might be still working in some aspects like physical attractiveness between sees, aside from this there are no contributing factors to how gets to have a children and who doesn’t. 

The New Biology Textbook

As I’ve read on, I realized how much I have learned with just a few pages of this book. Looking back into what the actual biology textbook has taught me, this book is more effective and it hasn’t used a single image. With simple metaphors of: binders with loose pages, pieces of tape, and even the crew of a boat, I’ve learned much more than with the 1000 page textbook we use in biology class. With simple metaphors and informal register as a reader I feel almost as if Dawkins is taking me personally through a journey of genetics, almost as if he was a narrator in a documentary.

“The ‘book-case’ in a cell is called the nucleus…This metaphor will take us quite a long way. When it finally breaks down I shall introduce other metaphors.” (Pg. 22-23)

Although the metaphors were introduced last chapter, Dawkins has taken a much more informal register in this section. He hasn’t made the mistake of making it familiar, nevertheless you can almost feel like it’s a conversation. What’s even better is how he has taken the time to explain what he will do further on, however this might be necessary for him to maintain his reader alert of what he is attempting to explain. To keep us readers even more alert, Dawkins or maybe his editor has even highlighted important terms by placing them in italics. “The opposite of a recessive gene is a dominant gene” (Pg. 26)

The author’s style is quite different from anything I’ve read. Although it is not considered rule, Dawkins breaks the barrier between author and reader. To my understanding there is no such rule of a “fourth wall” as there is in theatre, but it is a very strange for him to suddenly ‘talk’ to the readers. “To be strict, this book should be called not The Selfish Gene nor The Selfish Chromosome, but The slightly big bit of chromosome and even more selfish little bit of chromosome”(Pg. 33) A reference to the own books title is something I had never seen read before. But what surprised me even more was how bold his writing was.

“It was created inside one of our father’s testicles, shortly before you were conceived. It had never existed before in the whole history of the world.”

When read this seams quite bold to appear in a book without using more scientific terms, yet the subtlety in this Englishman’s writing makes it seam natural, it is natural after all. Yet this proves that for true learning things must be said upfront. I just hope that this book decreases in specific terminology and goes more into the impact of what is being written. 

Darwin’s Evolution, Remixed

I’ve started reading The Selfish Gene, and the first thing to know is: Don’t judge this book by its title. I predicted this book was going to be a series of scientific terms to prove a new theory of evolution written by the author, boring. It turns out this book is much more than that. Author Richard Dawkins is able to explain evolution in a simple way by using metaphors and plain wording. The author develops his opinion by bending Darwin’s theory to his fit.

“Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable” (Pg. 12)

Dawkins reconstructs the reader’s understanding of the evolution theory by starting from the begging. The way he is able to start from the true beginning of life is marvelous. What seams different in this book is how the writing is contracted. Instead of starting with a mild introduction, Dawkins starts with his re-adaptation of the theory and then continues to prove it, or really just explain it to us. Seams as if the author is writing a scientific paper: thesis, experiment, and then the findings. Although it seams odd, the scientific writing style feels right and gives the writing a great feel.

“It is no good taking the right number of atoms and shaking them together with some external energy till they happen to fall into the right pattern, and out drops Adam!” (Pg. 14)

The satirical humor in this book is fantastic, it certainly makes this book entertaining. In the excerpt Dawkins uses absurdity to make creationists look dumb. Although the author knows not many people today believe in creation, he is targeting some religions that continue to do so. He takes creation and demonstrates that is “improbable” that out of the nothing man came into existence. Using Darwin’s theory as his base, Dawkins is able to make his point on how creation is based on the stability in chemical bonds and not just the spark of god. He goes on to explain how mutations may be good, the same as a mistranslation from Hebrew to Greek in the bible.  “…Septuagint could at least be said to have started something big  when they mistranslated the Hebrew for ‘young woman’ into the Greek word for ‘Virgin’…” (Pg 16)

The subtle attacks on the bible aren’t all that makes this book great. The simple explanations with the use of metaphors is what makes a complicated subject so easy. “Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from sealed the outside world communicating wit it by torturous indirect routes, manipulating by remote control. They are in you and me…”(pg. 19) Instead of explaining with complicated vocabulary how organisms have become colonies, Dawkins uses a machine as the perfect explanation to how we are. I look forwards to more of these awesome metaphors.