Thoughts : The Catcher in the Rye

Well, I cannot hope to approach the sophistication of some analyses of this book after a single reading, but Holden is a fascinating character. It's wonderful how he manages to encapsulate a strange paradox of existence. He is trying to avoid the phoniness and sins of adulthood, deeply critical and condemnatory of these qualities in others. Yet, hypocritically, he is a compulsive liar himself, needlessly deceiving a mother of a yearmate that he meets on the train. In many ways, he is just as phony as the adults he despises; trying to lie about his age to buy drinks is another example. As a construct, Holden could represent a contradiction in all of us, that we make excuses for our own failings but have no qualms about passing judgement on others. Sometimes we put others down because their faults cause us to be uncomfortably reminded of our own. We can choose to realise that we ourselves are flawed, or as Holden does, run from self-reflection and maturity.

Holden has another quality that makes him easy to identify with, a fear of change. He does not want to leave the realm of childhood, but it is clear from his actions and thoughts that he has left it irrevocably. He longs for a past, predictable and stable. While I doubt any of us can claim to relish uncertainty, we have to keep up with the tide, adapting to circumstances lest we be left behind.

The complex interplay between loneliness and Holden's cynicism is wonderfully depicted. A second paradox of being. Holden desires company, but is unable to appreciate it when he has company. He arranges to meet Sally and ruins the date. Perhaps he looks for company of a very specific nature, looking for it in various people, unable to determine what he is missing. I think it has to do with Holden's tendency to idealise and condemn. When he is alone, he is free to believe that the next encounter will be just what he's been waiting for. But when he is right in the thick of it, he cannot ignore all the flaws and irritating qualities of others that so glaringly present themselves to his judgmental notions.

A final quality that I found noteworthy was Holden's desire to be unique. His red hunting cap as a representation of this. He wears it as a way of indicating that he is different from the rest somehow. Taking comfort in the fact that he is different, and in that difference, somehow superior to the rest. We all believe this about ourselves quite easily. To think that we alone make decisions of our own volition while the sheeple around us are subject to the forces of society. It's a belief that consumerism exploits, to make you think that you're making the choice when in fact, you're making the same choice as hundreds around you. Our individuality should be a source of wonder, but it should not grow at the expense of our regard for the individuality of others.

The world of the Catcher in the Rye is not a beautiful one. Holden chooses to notice what he wishes and most of the time, he focuses on the negatives. No one is perfect, so everyone seems to have given up trying. Perspective does change a lot of how we live our lives. Our world in its entirety is both beautiful and horrific, awesome and awful. Depending on what we choose to observe, consider and internalise, we can come away with vastly disparate experiences. 

Notably, Holden's world is also a Godless one. To me, that explains why the Catcher in the Rye remains so captivating and Holden so identifiable decades after the book was published. The world remains, as it was then, largely a Godless society. Only when the Kingdom comes will we look back and find that Holden's incisive comments, his conflicted being and his disillusionment no longer seem relevant or necessary. I am of the belief that God alone can never disappoint our hopes in social interaction, He alone can allow us to express our true selves without inflating our egos, He alone gives us assurance in the face of change and He alone enables us to live out authentic lives, without a shred of phoniness.

Inflectional Advantages : Adjectives

In the inflected Romance languages, the adjectives follow the nouns in case, gender and number, which helps to associate specific adjectives and nouns in the sentence. I feel like doing away with this and simply associating nouns and adjectives syntactically. For no apparent reason whatsoever, adjectives will follow the nouns they describe directly. So instead of saying 'the red car', it will simply be reversed as 'the car red'. Once again, this is another idea that I've gotten used to from studying Latin, although of course the inflection agreement doesn't necessitate that adjectives follow their nouns.

While Eldawnian adjectives do not have to agree with their nouns, they are nonetheless, inflected, but following a different system. The Eldawnian declensions for adjectives have to do with the degree to which the adjective is possessed. To demonstrate, I'll use 'satoru', which means warmness. Just to note, this word is from the same family as saton, the sun. Satoru is the base adjective, which corresponds to the idea of warmness is its abstract form. The positive declensions are satogu, satodu, satobu, satogru, satodru and satobru, simply employing the three voiced plosives and [-r-] for the various inflected endings. Negative declensions are made by adding an [-m] to the positive declensions.

'Shicwen' means water, so the phrases I will use as examples will all revolve around water and its warmness. 'Shiraen' will be a temporary stand in word for sea, for the comparative examples. Typing out declensions with such a limited vocabulary just looks weird after awhile; all the repeated words with slight variations boggles me. On that note, boggle would be quite interesting; just try and find the other endings and you're set with a couple of words.

Anyway here they are; remember that [-u] should be pronounced like the [u] in 'but', not 'blue' :
shicwen satogu : (Descriptive) the warm water/the water is warm
shicwen satodu : (Moderate) the warmer water/the water is very warm
shicwen satobu : (Superlative) the warmest water/the water is excessively warm or the warmest
shicwen satogru ra shiraen : (Equative) the water is as warm as the sea
shicwen satodru ra shiraen : (Augmentative) the water is warmer than the sea
shicwen satobru ra shiraen : (Extreme) the water is much warmer than the sea

The descriptive, moderate and superlative cases can be part of a sentence, or statements in themselves if used alone, as indicated by the [/]. In the equative, comparative and extreme cases, the [-r-] indicates the comparison and the noun that is appended to the adjective could be viewed as part of the adjective itself, which is why both follow the initial noun. 'ra' is a particle used to indicate which objects are beings compared to each other. Next, the negative declensions :

shicwen satogum : (N. Descriptive) the not-warm water/the water is not warm
shicwen satodum : (N. Moderate) the not-warmer water/the water is not very warm
shicwen satobum : (N. Superlative) the not-warmest water/the water is not excessively warm or the warmest
shicwen satogrum ra shiraen : (N. Equative) the water is not as warm as the sea
shicwen satodrum ra shiraen : (N. Augmentative) the water is not warmer than the sea
shicwen satobrum ra shiraen : (N. Extreme) the water is not much warmer than the sea

Of course, the last case is the abstract, which is satoru itself. When this is used with a noun, it would be part of a question. shicwen satoru? : 'What is the warmness of the water?' To which one of the twelve statements earlier would be an appropriate response.

I suppose it would be possible to think of this declension system as an extension of the English warm, warmer, warmest. Alright, that's all for adjectives at the moment.

Inflectional Advantages : Nouns

Learning Latin entails getting used to its inflected nouns, adjectives and verbs, which takes quite a lot of adjustment. The only two languages I was relatively familiar with were English, which is sparingly inflected, and Chinese which is really not inflected at all. But after a little practice, the inflection system does seem to be quite useful. It frees up syntax and reduces ambiguity for one, and on the other hand, it's just a different way of expressing the same idea. I've decided to adopt a couple of inflections. Once again, I'm going to make them regular since there really isn't any reason not to within the setting of Eldawn.

At the moment, I have a total of 5 cases for nouns. The nominative, ablative, dative, possessive and instrumental cases. The nominative case is used for both subjects and objects within a sentence. For example, 'John' and 'the food' in the sentence : 'John ate the food.' Eldawnian will follow SVO, so the subjects and objects are distinguished by syntax.

The ablative case is used for a noun from which another noun is obtained from or moved away from. For example, 'well' in the phrase : 'water from a well', and 'school' in the phrase : 'John returned from school.'

The dative case is used for nouns that have something given to or moving toward them. For example, 'Jane' in : 'John gave the flowers to Jane', and the 'school' in : 'John was brought to school'. It's more of a merger between the dative and lative cases.

The possessive is quite simple; just the noun that owns the other noun. 'Jane' in 'Those are Jane's flowers.' It also conveys characteristics, for example 'day' in 'light of the day'.

Finally the instrumental case simply indicates what an action was done with. For example, 'spoon' in 'Jane drank the soup with a spoon'.

There are clearly many more ways to relate nouns than these, so I many still add cases or find other ways of expressing them. For now, these are the five standard cases. Nominative nouns end with an [-n] or an [-s]. There are quite a number of genders and classes, but they aren't too hard to follow since they are regular. Nouns ending with an [-n] are material natural nouns, for example, the sun, the mountain, the stream and the sea. These can be masculine [-on], feminine [-un], locative [-in] or neuter [-en]. The next class is the material artificial nouns [-s], relating to humans. For example, the chair, the clothes, the building and the human body. Once again, these have masculine [-os], feminine [-us], locative [-is] and neuter [-es] versions. The third class is that of abstract nouns, noun tangible nouns, for example, love, truth, time, light and force. These nouns end with [-ls] and can be masculine [-ols], feminine [-uls] or neuter [-els].

A last classes are the verbive nouns, which can be either the subject or object. These nouns are based of verbs and could serve as epithets or nouns in their own right. Verbive subject nouns are for example, a fighter, a singer, a writer or a sculptor. These end with [-v_s], where once again the gender of the noun will decide the final vowel of the word. The verbive object nouns are nouns such as the loved, the enlightened or the spoken. These end with [-zh_n].

To decline a noun, simply drop the consonants after the final vowel and add the case endings, regardless of the class and gender of the noun. The endings for the cases are as follows :

Ablative : [-dz], Dative : [-rets], Possessive : [-ach], and Instrumental : [-sij]

If you haven't noticed already, all these endings are affricates. This is simply to tie in with the script that has affricates all ending with a straight downward stroke, without rising upward again to reach the next letter. In Eldawnian, affricates are reserved for these grammatical cases. 

So just to give an example, I'll break down the word 'saton', from the previous post, which means the sun. Saton is a material natural masculine noun, hence the ending [-on]. When it is declined, it will be : satodz (from the sun), satorets (to the sun), satoach (of the sun) and satosij (with the sun). The declined nouns always come after the nouns they modify. Atols is light, [-ols] indicating that it is an abstract masculine noun. Atols satodz would therefore mean (light from the sun) and atols satoach would be (light of the sun). Oh, just to reassure you, genders will be entirely logical, based on either actual gender, or on the mythology. Atols and saton are both masculine because of Eldawn's mythology.

The last thing to note is the lack of a plural. This is something I've decided to incorporate from Chinese. Instead of a plural form, there will just be a numeral before the nouns. This reduces the number of inflections needed, and still works perfectly well. I'll talk about numerals in a future post.

Linguistic Discombobulations : Eldawnian Script and Phonetic Selections

I wrote about two and a half thousand words, then stopped dead because I felt compelled to give the names of people and places in the world a proper meaning. Once again, Tolkien is a wonderful example, with multiple names in various languages and their meaningful cultural backstories. To generate meaningful names, I had to create my language proper. As a result, I went back to do more planning and can't go ahead with the story.

At least I have a decent diversity of languages to draw on, having grown up in an English speaking environment with Chinese desperately skimming above the passing grade expectations each year. I'd started teaching myself Latin from Wheelock's Latin back in January, and I've got a rudimentary sense of how its inflections work. I don't want my language to be an English clone of course, so I've decided on a few key features that are not characteristic of English.

I've been mulling over this for 2 full weeks of my spare time now, and good grief languages are complicated. There was a particularly helpful site that I used as a resource after I had come up with some basic ideas for Eldawnian. Eldawnian is certainly not the language's final name but for lack of a better term, that's what I'm calling this for now. The website was 'The Language Construction Kit'; quite an eye-opener.

The script that I designed for Eldawn has actually been around for awhile, I probably came up with it in 2011. It was designed with the intention of using very fluid cursive. There would be very few breaks where the pen comes off the page, and no inconvenient crossings with 't's or dots with 'i's. One issue is that its letters do admittedly look very similar, like Tolkien's Tengwar, which some people have found hard for practical use. However, I'd like to point out that cursive characters in Latin script can also be quite hard to decipher, but we get by because we recognise the words without having to read all the letters individually.

Well here it is, the script with the current phonetic values that have been assigned to it for Eldawnian :

There are 24 consonant characters, which are angular, and 6 vowel characters, which are curved. This totals 30 characters that I felt would link up with each other easily. Just so you can see how it works, I've written saton, the word for sun, with the letters linked up. I do hope that I'll be able to turn this into a proper font so I can type it out someday.

The phonetics have been given according to the IPA, or the international phonetic alphabet. If you want to read up more on the confusing field of phonetics; and realise that English is terrible with spelling, then do check it out. Alternatively, have a listen to 'The Chaos' by Gerard Nolst Trenité. The letters in parentheses are how I intend to write these words in Latin script. I know it's butchering the IPA, but for most people who aren't familiar with it, at least that will be an approximation of the proper phonetics that's easily accessible.

It's quite clear to see that my consonants are organised by type for the most part. The plosives are all in the first and second row of columns three to five. The fricatives are in row three and four of columns three to five. The affricates are on the bottom left. These three categories are neatly split into voiced and unvoiced pairs, differentiated by the double stroke in the middle of the stem. I have the nasals above the affricates, n and m. I've put in one unvoiced nasal, the pair with m, but I'm at a loss as to what words to form with it. It could simply represent the sound of breathing. In case you're wondering what an unvoiced nasal sounds like, this one is the 'h' in mhmm. Yeap, that's not very noticeable. The 'liquid' sounds, as I call them, are on the double looped consonants to the right of the arrangement.

The sounds ts, dz, y, ɕ and ʐ are not found in typical English as far as I know, which may pose pronunciation problems. But why follow English sounds? I am racially Chinese after all. Those sounds pop up in Mandarin, with the exception of dz, which is simply a voiced counterpart of ts. 

I do realise that all of this is extremely neat and artificial, but to be honest, I don't feel the need to come up with irregularities. The language of Eldawn, like the whole world itself, is in it's infancy. Language rules were not set, and could be set logically once an authority was established. There was no systemic and etymological baggage to compensate for, perhaps people would have thought : 'If we're going to standardise things and have a formal language, lets do it clearly and correctly.' The early irregularities would be weeded out and the regularities enforced. The irregularities could of course persist in colloquialisms, but for formal vernacular, a standard regular system would have been adopted, certain sounds would be selected for the way they fit into the script and distinguished themselves for use.

This script is used by both the major societies of Eldawn, the Filial and the Radiant Wings. I haven't decided who makes it up yet, but I'm leaning towards having the Radiant Wings do so. The Filial might have had a pictogram system at first, which I have yet to come up with. Following this, the phonetic script could be used in the same way as pinyin is used with Chinese now.

Thoughts : Temporal Speculations

A venture into special relativity has precipitated an unnerving analysis of the nature of time. Is there any absolute time running independently of an observer, or do we, by our perception, define time? When I say 'High school lasted two years.' I am really saying that high school lasted for the same amount of time as it took for the Earth to orbit the sun twice. A day? The same duration as the revolution of the Earth about it's axis. Well, now we have better clocks, more accurate measurements. So we can define time in terms of the properties of the caesium atom under exact conditions, but really, is that any less arbitrary? It may have less variation, but we are in essence, defining time by a regular unit of change in the natural world. If we considered the day as the definitive unit of time, then we could just as well say that the vibrations of the caesium atom were varying in duration instead of the progression of the day.

Have I then arrived at the conclusion that perceiving time can only be in terms of change? Perhaps, but the change that we define time by must have specific characteristics. Change can be slow, as in the growth of a redwood tree over centuries, or it may be fast, as on that hot summer day of Chapter 7 in 'The Great Gatsby'. So that unit of change that we measure every other change by has to be regular. This also implies that if we cannot perceive change, time does not appear to pass. Clearly, if no energy is being transferred or no particles were journeying on their Brownian paths we could not tell if time was passing. If so, what is time? The observation of change? Does time not exist apart from the understanding of an observer?

In that case, the absolute situation has shattered into a bewildering multitude of perspectives. By the conclusions of special relativity, the only clock that runs regularly to myself is my own. I would see moving clocks in any direction tick off slowly compared to my time. If time is an observation of change, then that means the world in motion is changing more slowly than a stationary one. So every particle, every quanta, every consciousness, is changing at different rates in different perspectives. What an awful subjective mess.

Does change also have to be permanent for time to pass? If a change can be reversed in exactly the same way that it was developing forward, did it change at all? The reality before and after the change would be identical for all practical purposes. Did time pass at all? Did it pass backwards? We would not be able to tell without the ever-present arrow of time and entropic increase.

Of course another point to raise is the role of the observer. If the observer defines time, then did time pass before it could be inferred or observed? In Eldawn, did time begin when Eleyon first stabilised and began a process of irreversible change? In the empty field of the ether, time would pass forward and backward as easily as space until there was a mind, a mind that learned and hoped, a mind that gave time a direction. Perhaps this is what we mean by God existed from the beginning, for the beginning was only defined when God manifested.

This also fits in with the psychological perception of time's passage. When there is no apparent change in our lives, time appears to pass slowly, or not at all. After many months of performing the same routine, we aren't going to look back on that phase and feel like it took a long time. It would seem compressed, nothing changed in that time, everything that transpired could be summarised in a quick description of daily repetition.

On the other hand, if change is rampant, so much seems to have happened in a short span of time that we perceive that period as taking longer than it actually did. We recall details, expressions and gestures with a burning intensity that extends the subjective experience of a reminiscence.

All the mysteries of the world that may never be solved by the odysseys of human endeavour. The more we know the less we understand.

Perspectives : Romans 5:12 - 21

This week's passage could be summarised an explanation of how the original sin of Adam lead to the sin and death of the world. The Mosaic Law amplified effect and severity of sin, but this only serves to demonstrate the overflowing grace of God through Christ that surpasses all condemnation.

There was a large focus on how Adam's sin resulted in the transgressions and deaths of many. In light on my recent readings into Islam, I had to raise the question : 'Why is it that the original sin is hereditary?' In the introduction to Islam that I read, it stated that Muslims do not believe that Adam's original sin condemns us collectively to divine estrangement. According to Islam as I understand it, each individual's own sin results in their separation from God, rather than it being inherited from Adam's initial transgression. So why then, does this sin of Adam's carry such enormous weight in Christianity and Judaism? The discussion may have answered some parts of this question.

Clearing something out of the way, why aren't we looking at Eve in all this? After all, she took the fruit first. A point was raised that Eve never heard the command not to eat of the tree directly from the LORD. When the command is given in Genesis 1:16 - 17, only Adam heard it; Eve was not yet created. Also, I have a little misgiving about how clear Adam was in telling Eve the sole command. When Eve quotes God in Genesis 3:3, she's already got it slightly wrong, with an embellished 'and you must not touch it, or you will surely die.' Talk about a game of Chinese whispers, the first two human beings can't even get it right between them. Or perhaps this is just a translation issue. Anyhow, the point is that Adam was the one who suffered the culpability since he had clear explicit knowledge that the fruit was forbidden.

Alright, back to the issue of hereditary sin. Does that make sense? Why wasn't the effect of the sin confined to Adam and Eve? Why did God not welcome the innocent infants of Cain and Abel back into the Garden of Eden to be tended by angels? They did not make the conscious decision to rebel against God as their parents had. Is it fair that they should suffer for their parent's transgressions? A good suggestion was made to consider the case of children who inherit the debt of their parents. The children were certainly not responsible for the financial troubles generated by their parents, but they are somehow held accountable for the debt even after their parents are long departed.

Let's take it as though Adam had a huge debt to repay, a debt that his children inherited and continue to be plagued by to this day. What exactly makes the penalty this enormous? The answer may lie in the relationship between knowledge, clarity and expectations that God has of us. Earlier in Romans, we discussed how the Mosaic Law held those who studied it to a higher standard, because they were aware of the specified requirements for sin and sacrifice. The Gentiles are given a little leniency in a sense, because the law was never revealed to them in precise detail. Well, as Jews are to the Gentiles, Adam is to the Jews and the rest of us. I doubt an instruction could be much clearer than : 'Do not eat the fruit of this tree.' Not to mention it was a single instruction. What's more, Adam had all the comforts of life; he had no work to do, perfect health, an abundance of nature and a loving wife. We could hardly blame Adam's error on a childhood trauma or a broken family. So it should follow quite logically that God had high expectations of Adam, possibly higher than what He expects of the Jews who know the Law.

Nonetheless, I would be wary about judging Adam to harshly. After all, there's no telling what any of us would have done in his position.

Another issue was how Paul resolves misgivings about the role of the Law. The Jews rested their assurance on the Law, they stood on a platform of pride supported by their rituals and appearances. In this passage, Paul reinterprets the role of the Law as a magnifier of sin and its effects. So far in Romans, Paul has been harsh on the Law, somehow that sounds oddly ironic now that I'm typing it out. He's told the Jews that their ritual is useless if it covers a faithless heart. He's tried to break that confidence in the Law by showing it does not bring life, but only judgement and condemnation. The Jews may have been left wondering what all the minutiae of the Law was for, given that they were no better off than the common Gentile in Paul's new worldview. At this juncture, by reinterpreting the role of the Law, Paul is able to reconcile the Law to righteousness by faith in full. The law was given that we might recognise the full severity of our sin, and after that, more importantly, the immensity of grace that Christ's sacrifice embodies.