retrospec | Literature Review

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Catcher in the Rye, in English. Retrospec sent me this one a while back, but I had to read this thing in high school. World lit. Hated it then, but apparently it's important now.

It bothers me that I'm starting to understand it on a re-read. Holden has absolutely everything going for him, but chooses to try as hard as he can to not engage with society around him. Back in high school, I thought it was just a morality tale, a spook story for kids, scare them into figuring their lives out or turn out like him.

And then we all get dropped into a situation where it would be so easy to do exactly what Holden wishes he could. To decide that this life doesn't matter, and turn yourself deaf-mute to the implications. But even that wouldn't get him what it wants, would it?

Question one is, what keeps you going? Keeps you paying attention to the world around you?

Second question comes back to Retrospec's latest game. Anybody else get a jigsaw puzzle?

"Turn him to any cause of policy, the Gordian Knot of it he will unloose, familiar as his garter."
Henry V, Act 1 Scene 1. The Archbishop describing how much Henry has changed as soon as he had to take the throne, going from a layabout of a prince to a sharp statesman of a king. It's really just a framing scene, telling the audience about the time that passed between plays. Odd quote to pull out.

So the last question is, what does that mean to anybody else?

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...It's scary, isn't it?
Getting Retrospec in the first place, and realizing all these things... like that there weren't always chocobos, or that blue and green were supposed to have existed all along. If I accepted that knowledge as the truth, I had to accept that I'd been completely out of touch with reality before without having any idea... and if I didn't, I had to accept that I was out of touch with reality now and had no way to get back to it. It shook me up, but my brother and a lot of my friends were here too, so it wasn't really a difficult choice. "I was delusional before, but I'm seeing clearly now"--that's unnerving, but it's a lot better than "I'm delusional now, and there's nothing I can do about it."

But now there are even different groups of people on Retrospec remembering things differently. And there's not exactly any straightforward way to find out who's right.

You can only act on the information that you have. It's one reason to keep on learning things, but reminding myself of that fact is what keeps me from being frustrated at the people not on the app.

It's harder when it's literally your identity that people are remembering differently, though. But the same thing stays true. You can only act on what you know, on what feels true to you.

How are you handling it all?

Ha
I never thought to get frustrated with them.
I think I sometimes get stuck halfway between pity (which sucks) and envy (which sucks).

idk. I'm handling it, I guess. It's mostly not too big a deal. My employer and my brother and most of my friends still remember things the right way (or the same way I do, at least), so... it could be worse.

I understand that feeling. I've never quite wished that this responsibility wouldn't have found me. But maybe that I wasn't so keenly aware of the situation we're in.

That it could. There's some kind of implication that I can't work out as to why this is happening to you at all.

...I wonder.
When it comes to individuals, in general it's like some people remember them always being how they are now, and some people think they suddenly changed to be like that and that they used to be different.
But does that encompass everyone...? That is... is it a neatly divided Group A (who remember everyone and everything being as they are now) and Group B (who remember many people and things having been different)? Or is it, like... Person C thinks that D, E, and F used to be different, but G, H, and I are normal... while meanwhile, J thinks that D, E, and F are how they should be, but G, H, and I seem weird? ...And various other combinations of things being normal or abnormal.

Personally, I feel like everything's normal except for the part where some people keep saying it isn't. But it might not be that cut and dried for everyone.

The balance between individuality and the social self. The stand alone complex. How can you prove that something exists, when there is no social 'proof' of it? It's finding the balance between what reality actually is. Is it what the majority says is real? Or is it what you personally know to be true? In a world where everyone is connected, it's that much harder to trust what you know on your own.

Both can be true. But you're going to act on what you really believe to be true, even if you try to say you believe otherwise.

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