User:Aryky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Few of My Favorite Themes

1) The interface between humanity and things greater or lesser than humanity. Why? Possibly because I have always felt that _Tonio Kroeger_ attraction/repulsion bind. Do I want to be more human? Less human? I don't know, and defining what that means to me and what I might want to be excites me. I would love to be able to live in the moment, but I don't want to lose the qualities that make me unable to do so.

2) The concept of faith - Faith is necessary to human life. We have evolved to be animals who can plan and think of a future. This has aided us in our evolutionary niche and allowed us to be extraordinarily successful. But the ability to conceive of the future, of patterns, etc. is also a horrible problem, leading to the need for faith, the ability to believe, against all reason, that the future will be alright, so that one can keep on living rather than just dying before bringing children into the world. The conflict between this faith and the alternate influences of reason and passion is fascinating, especially to me, as someone who is strongly influenced by faith, even if my faith is. . . non-traditional.

3) Sacrifice - Well, like everything else, this is a balance question. Given that no person is superior to other people, and everyone deserves equality, how can one balance one's own needs with those of others? Another endlessly interesting subject, and one that is particularly easy to explore in fantastic situations.

4) Narrative - I think this must be a second-level interest of mine - one that only developed because I had these other favorite themes and thus read a lot, in order to find things that dealt with them. And then I grew more interested in the process of narrative itself. Why is it that these things are best discussed in a fictive process? What does discussing things like these that don't have scientific or fully rational ways of talking about them mean? What does discussing anything mean? What is the role of fiction, of personal discussion? How does the use of language help us communicate? How does it hinder us? How are narratives framed? All sorts of scary-English-major kinds of considerations, alas.