W

THE LITTLE THINGS THAT

MAKE A HUMAN DIVINE
Posted on December 24, 2013 by oneoverepsilon under Innite
AS JUST SEARCHING THE MEANINGS BEHIND NAMES, FOR
characters in my novelette. Its important (integral
really) that what I write is careful, and the names are important
symbolically. (I certainly do not feel the same about real life
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Unseen Beauty and Visible Innite Wonders of Life by Bijou
ONE OVER EPSILON
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names in reality are unimportant for me, they are attachments to
the past, and serve a ne purpose, but are not exceptionally
relevant.) However, when you start writing ction you (might?
well it happened for me) get a sudden change in perspective on
names. Its unlike the real social sphere. In a sense, a writer of a
novel is creating an imaginary universe. They are its deity. So
quite amazingly (to me at rst) it becomes a sensitive matter, a
matter of deep ontology, to create characters with meaningful
names, or cryptic names, or just names that have a special
emotional resonancefor you, the writer. They are your
creatures, and you owe them some sort of benevolence and
respect. Yeah, yeah. This is all a bit dopey and indulgent. A
writer is no deity, even in their own mind, in fact sometimes you
feel the antithesis of a benevolent demigod for the universe you
create. So what? Its how I genuinely, and unselfconsciously
connected to the story Ive been aching to forge.
Theres a good website here www.behindthename.com/ and I
came across Janani Dhinakarans blog, The Outsiders Journey,
and bang! It just gave me the inspirational kick to start a blog so
that I could ditch my overly introverted journal, and basically
unseen F/B pages (which are not great reads anyway) to start a
proper journal for my kids to (maybe someday) read. Oh boy! I
tell myself. This could be hard to write, and harder to read. But
thanks Janani, whoever you are. May we happily meet by random
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chance one day and not even know it, but feel the surge in lifes
connected continuous elds (giving us a little buzz somehow) and
re-radiate the mysterious happiness of the moment to all around
us.
It did not take much eort on my part to have Janani make this
divine little inuence in my life. Guess thats what makes people
all the more wonderful. They can touch anothers soul without
ever realizing it. Now all I need to do to thank her is get my
novelette going faster and be true to the imagined humanity of
the characters I have and will create. Thats all, p! s not too
much pressure being a ctional deity.
It was the tiniest impulse. Maybe the tipping point was just her
blog entry janinthesky.wordpress.com/2013/11/30/starry-night/
which did it? Gazing at the stars was so important for me as a
kid growing up in Aotearoa, I had my parents get extra windows
installed in my bedroom, so I could watch the stars as I feel
asleep. Pretty obvious resonance then huh? But Ive had loads of
tremendously insightful and achingly gorgeous moments
browsing the web, so why now? Ahhhh, thats a little secret I will
not yet divulge. Who really knows what ones motives are
though? Ive read research suggesting most people tell ctions
to themselves, stories they believe, to explain their actions, which
are (the psychologists tell us) very, very tenuously related to
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really what drives them.
Professor Sean Lane at LSU says that even being forced to
repeatedly deny something has a weired psychological backre
eectamazingly some people (which includes the mythical yet
undeniably impactful average person) can be self-deceived into
believing the lie in the denial. Heres a brief except from
ScienceDaily.com:
To explain, Lane cited the illusory truth eect, the idea that
hearing false information repeatedly will make it seem
truthful, simply because its familiar. His study takes this idea
in a new direction.
Theyre telling the truth, theyre denying, but later this thing
seems familiar, said Lane. Theyre confusing the familiarity
of the repetition [with the truth], not realizing that those
repeated denials are what makes it seem familiar 48 hours
later.
This means that telling the truth can actually lead to a false
memory. A man who repeatedly denies being present at the
scene of the crime, for example, might actually begin to
imagine that scene where it was, what it looked like, who
was present even if he was never there. It feels strangely
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familiar to him, and because the repeated denials have slipped
from his memory, he cant explain why.
False memory is a well-documented phenomenon, and Lane
has researched it extensively throughout his career. In a
courtroom, it can be disastrous. Through studies like this one,
Lane oers forensic investigators a deeper insight into this
bizarre behavior.
An accessible read on similar psychology is Daniel Golemans
Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception. Try
the NYTimes review of the book if you are in a hurry.
* * *
My mind has its own theory, about why Jananis blog inspired
me, and I believe it to be sincere, since I havent thought much
about it. I havent had time to repeat it to myself to believe it for
banal psychological self-delusion reasons. Its just this rst
theme for this blog which popped into my head (or should I write
out of my head?).
Ha! Maybe this is all ction. Thing is, if it is, I dont know it!
This entry was tagged characters, divine, humanity, inspiration, names,
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Of All the Pop Songs
3 thoughts on The little things that
make a human divine
Jaydei
December 25, 2013 at 12:36 pm (Edit)
Dear Oneoverepsilon,
I wish you the best in your novel. Keep me posted
-Janani
Reply
oneoverepsilon
December 26, 2013 at 3:30 am (Edit)
Yes, of course I will. Hehe would you oer to be a friendly
critic a well? (Im not my own best critic.)
Reply
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December 26, 2013 at 9:58 pm (Edit)
Why not! Also see http://nanowrimo.org/ and
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