Anorexia? Not Quite.

Thin Cities. What in the world does thin cities have to do with all of the other cities? Out of the two times I have read about them, I have not been able to comprehend what the hidden meaning is.  Many times fashion and society has popped into my head, but that just doesn't make sense.  On pages 49-50, I thought that the thin cities had to do with anorexia.  Anorexia is a disease of the mind and it ends up destroying you.  On these pages, there are words like abandoned, catastrophe, young women, and mirrors.  It all relates to fashion and the disease.  To make it more obvious, the title of the city is THIN cities.

"...or many young women, slender, not tall of stature, luxuriating in the bathtubs or arching their backs under the showers suspended in the void, washing or drying or perfuming themselves, or combing their long hair at a mirror." (page 49)

That passage supported even more my idea of thin cities representing anorexia.  The women were obsessed with themselves. Isn't that the main reason why anorexia exists? I was so excited that I had understood this type of city until BAM! The rest of the page completely threw me off.

"In the sun, the threads of water fanning from the showers glisten, the jets of the taps, the spurts, the splashes, the sponges' suds." (page 49)

"I have come to this explanation: the streams of water channeled in the pipes of Armilla have remained in possession of nymphs and naiads." (page 50)

"In any case, now they seem content, these maidens: in the morning you hear them singing." (page 50)

These passages all explain joyful memories.  Anorexia isn't joyful. It usually makes the person depressed because they know they are fighting for their own life.  Unless the person is on something, anorexia does not bring happiness to a person.  Additionally, the mythological creatures are not known for being depressed and ugly, but instead happy and gorgeous.  A nymph is a beautiful female that is always joyful and is usually heard singing.  They are divine spirits that animate nature.  Naiads are a type of nymph that are found mostly in water.  My idea of what thin cities is about was wrong.  What other explanation could there be? Is it a mental or physical explanation? Perhaps both? What does thin cities have to do with the rest of the cities? For now it is unclear in my mind, but hopefully not for long.

Invisible Cities Really Loves Other Stories

I have actually come to enjoy this novel, unlike most novels assigned for english.  I don't know if it's because I have an obsession with analyzing things or because it strangely has a connection with many different stories.  Like I mentioned in my previous blog, the first chapter is very similar to do with the movie Inception.  I kept reading and the second chapter also has a lot to do with Inception. The way people see things due to their memories and desires has always been a favorite topic of mine.  I guess that is why Inception has been one of my favorite movies.  The author uses such creativity throughout the film to relate each mentality.  Invisible cities can be used to explain each mentality and why they are so similar.  Italo Calvino does it in an entertaining way so that the reader doesn't get bored.  Not once throughout these two chapters have I thought to myself:

"Wow. Why is Mr. Tangen telling us to read this? It doesn't really catch my attention."

Another story this book is very similar to is Dante's Inferno.  For starters, there are two main characters throughout the whole book just like Inferno.  One character is basically the host of the whole book, Virgil and Polo, while the other character is the one discovering new things about himself, Dante and Khan.  Thinking about it more carefully, the book also relates to ourselves.  Dante explains the consequences of our behaviors in the long run.  By showing each different circle of hell, we realize that each action has a consequence more severe then the next.  This book encourages us to behave and live by society's rules.  Calvino explains how the human mind works.  He mentions desires and memories, amongst other things, and how they affect the choices we make in life.  This is some what similar to the Selfish Gene, but Calvino is not as biased as Dawkins.  Additionally, he explains who we really are in an interesting way instead of like a biology textbook. Mr. Tangen also pointed out an interesting fact today in class while analyzing the first italics in chapter 2.  One of Dante's circles of hell are mentioned in the book, but in a very subtle way.  

"At this point Kublai Khan interrupted him or imagined interrupting him, or Marco Polo imagined himself being interrupted, with a question such as: "You advance always with your head turned back?" or "Is what you see always behind you?" or rather, "Does your journey take place only in the past?"(page 28)

Thinking back on Inferno, there is a circle where future tellers are punished.  Their heads are turned backwards so that they cannot see what is infront of them, only what is behind them.  

Both authors realized that the past is important.  The past and future are one since they always affect one another.  One cannot exist without the other and therefore they are like a circle.  The past causes us to see the future in new ways. I guess that is why God punished the future tellers and why Marco Polo always thinks of his past while on his journeys.  

Memories, Desires, and Knowledge

Invisible Cities.  Just by looking at these two words the idea of what the book may be about comes to mind.  The title is ironic because there cannot be an invisible city and it's an allusion to "Emperor's New Clothes".  This makes me wonder whether the story will be entertaining with dark humor or if it is a book that teaches us an important lesson.  Looking at the table of contents, I realized the answer immediately.  All of the cities listed have names like Cities and Memory, Cities and Desires, Cities and Signs, etc. It is clear that the book has a life lesson. Maybe it will help us discover who we really are, just like The Selfish Gene.  The name of each city in the Table of Contents helps us realize the true meaning of the title.  The cities are invisible because they are in our mind.  There is no other explanation. 

While reading the book and analyzing every single word, I realized that the cities are listed in order of importance.  City of Memories is the first city listed in the book.  This page expreses the fact that we take everything around us for granted.  We see everything that surrounds us all the time, so we don't pinpoint the objects in our memory.  "...he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, at that time." (page 7) With this last sentence on the page, it seems like Marco Polo is insulting us.  It's as if he is saying that we are too blind to realize the beauty and unique city of our memories. Reflecting back on the past, none of the objects around us stand out. I think Diomira is the first city listed in the book because it is the birthplace of all the cities.  "...September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman's voice cries ooh!,.."(page 7) September represents the starting of a new year and the woman could be giving birth.

"When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city." (page 8) Desire is the key word in this sentence to understand that memories are the birthplace of the next city. "Desires are already memories." From that sentence, Polo beings to talk about the first city of Desires. There are two forms in describing desires.  The first is that we would like what we do not have. That is why, in this city, the people trade with each other and marry the women from the other sections.  Another idea of desire is picking the path that you want to follow in life.  After following the chosen path for a certain amount of time, we start to want the other path.  We believe that the opportunities may have been better and that the path we chose was a waste of time.

The past is a very important detail in Invisible Cities.  The past affects how we see the future and the present.  It affects our desires, memories, and the different signs we see in life.  Depending on what our past has been like, we create our own world.  The world that was never given to us and therefore desire.  It is made up of positive memories and things that we wish had happened.  In section four of Cities and Memory, I interpreted that memories are altered, contain secrets, and unusual things happen in our memories.  This reminded me immediately of the movie Inception.  The main character creates his own world of his desires.  Unusual things happen like the moving of buildings, moving of the city, dead people being alive, etc.  It explains the relationship between memories and desires perfectly.

In the end of the chapter, Khan has an interesting conversation with Marco Polo.
"...shall I be able to possess my empire, at last?"
and the venetian answered: "Sire, do not believe it. On that day you will be an emblem among emblems."

After reading this dialogue between the characters a couple of times, I realized the true meaning behind the conversation.  Many times we ask ourselves:
"When will we understand everything and know that we are wise and contain a lot of knowledge?"
I have asked myself many times in difficult subjects in school like math.  The truth is, we will never realize the knowledge we have conquered and possess.  We live by it so it has become a part of us.  We create our experiences, and we learn from them.  We are already full of knowledge, we just have not realized it yet.

Nice Guy vs Self-Centered Guy

"Nice guys finish last." page 202

This is the perfect phrase to begin chapter 12.  We read half of the chapter in class and during that time period we came across the game Prisoner's Dilemma.  The game is basically used to describe how animals would act in a situation.  There are two options in this game, cooperate or defect.

Cooperate: (v.) to work together willingly

Defect: (v.) to disagree with the other person and not work together

In the game there is a banker and two players that will either defect or cooperate with the other.  In this game there are four possible outcomes:

1. Both players play the card cooperate so the banker pays them each $300.  This reward is referred to as the reward for mutual cooperation.

2. Both players play the card defect so the banker fines each player $10.  This reaction is called the punishment for mutual defection.

3. One player plays defect and the other plays cooperate.  The banker pays the person who defected $500 for causing the temptation to defect and fines the person who cooperated $100 for being the "sucker".

4. The same as the third outcome, but the other way around with the players.

I honestly find this game to be ridiculous. It is the perfect guessing game for Dawkins to use to support his statement that all humans and animals are selfish.  The players can either be selfish or kind with the each other but the prize makes them think through what their official choice should be.  Since being selfish has the biggest reward, why not be selfish?  That is how the animal and human world works.  This game not only explains life, but how society came to be.  The low and middle class were the suckers while the high class were the people who tempted.

On page 207, Dawkins uses the birds from chapter 10 to support the fact that Prisoner's Dilemma is constantly played between species.  If both birds cooperate with each other, they will take each other's ticks off and therefore end up clean.  If they both defect, they will not achieve anything and will continue to have ticks on them.  If one bird cooperates and the other bird defects, then the bird who cooperated will have the dirty work of taking the ticks off of the other bird.  The bird who defected would achieve being clean and would not have to do any of the dirty work.  Therefore, the bird who cooperated will suffer because it would not have achieved anything and remain with ticks.

Meme: Process or Gene?

"We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation." (page 192)
Imitation: (n.) something copied from something original

The name of the new gene, Meme, first came from the Greek root 'mimeme'.  The shortened it to Meme because Dawkins wanted a monosyllable that sounded more like 'gene'.

"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches."(page 192)

With the example Dawkins gives of the scientist passing his ideas to his colleagues, it sounds like meme is more of a process and not an actual gene.  It is an idea that spreads from one person to the other.  Yes, it spreads from brain to brain, but how does that make it an actual gene? It replicates itself and imitates other ideas in order to come into play.  Wouldn't a perfect example be of my opinion of what meme actually is? It spreads from my blog to maybe somebody else's blog.  When someone reads this entry it enters their brain and replicates the idea and passes it on.  Is Dawkins trying to say that genes go through the process of meme? I feel like he hasn't left very clear what meme actually is and how it affects us interms of our genes.  Just by the way he refers to meme, it's so confusing on what it actually is.

"If it is a popular tune, its spread through the meme pool may be gauged by the number of people heard whistling it in the streets. If it is a style of women's shoe, the population memeticist may use sales statistics from shoe shops." (page 194)

From this quote in the book to his definition of what a meme is, here is my personal definition:
 Meme: It is a process in which something popular, like an idea, is passed from one organism to another.  This may also occur in one organism interms of their genes.  Genes may use this process inorder to pass an idea from one gene to the other.  By doing this, the various genes in the body can pass and agree on one idea.

Collection: (n.) a group of objects that are kept together

I guess memes work because of the different collections.  In his example, there was always a population.  There were women, men, people, and even genes.  So meme clearly cannot work without there being a group or collection of something.  Realizing this helped me support my previous blog even more.  Only by not being 100% selfish can a group coexist.  If everything in the group was constantly selfish, then the group could not work together and would eventually fall apart.  Additionally, isn't sharing things not being selfish?  I don't believe in what Dawkins is trying to make us see.  Does he dislike everything in the universe so much that he feels the need to say that everyone and everything is selfish? Is he so obsessed with science, that he has come to the wrong conclusion? I firmly believe he needs to rethink what he is writing and what he believes we are.  In the last two chapters I have just read, there have been various facts and examples that have led me to believe that we are not selfish.  Someone's conclusion on scientific facts is wrong. Science is not saying we are selfish. It is simply saying that we put ourselves first sometimes, but we also care for others.

Selfish vs Caring

Chapter 10 "You Scratch My Back, I'll Ride On Yours"
I believe that the title of this chapter summarizes it perfectly. In a way, it describes the partnership the different species have with each other and between themselves.  All the animals need each other in order to survive.  They will use each other, benefit from each other, and maybe even destroy each other in the process of survival.  An individual specie cannot survive alone.

The following terms helped me understand the chapter better:


Effect: (n.)  something brought out by a cause; a result
This word is found on page 168 and it is used to describe the result of what may happen to an animal due to their actions.  For example: "Nevertheless the act of calling seems, at least at first, sight to be altruistic because it has the effect of calling the predator's attention to the caller."


Social: (adj.) living together in communities or organized groups
Social is used to describe a particular group of animals.  Social animals are the type of animals that stick together and help each other out in difficult situations.  On page 171 he uses the word social to describe a couple of insects.  "The honey bee is just one example of a highly social insect. Others are wasps, ants, and termites or 'white ants'." "The exploits of the social insects are legendary, in particular their astonishing feats of cooperation and apparent altruism."


Cave Theory: (n.) "It is from the latin word 'beware' and it used to be used by school boys to warn for approaching authority."(page 169) Dawkins uses it to describe the reactions of camouflaged birds.  Here is the explanation he gives: "A hawk flies past in the distance.  He has not yet  seen the flock and he is not flying directly towards them, but there is a dancer that his keen eyes will spot them at any moment and he will race into the attack.  Suppose one member of the flocks sees the hawk, but the rest have not yet done so.  This one sharp-eyed individual could immediately freeze and crouch in the grass.  But this would do him little good, because his companions are still walking around conspicuously and noisily. Any one of them could attract the hawk's attention and then the whole flock is in peril.  From a purely selfish point of view, the best policy for the individual who spots the hawk first is to hiss a quick warning to his companions, and so shut them up and reduce the chance that they will inadvertently summon the hawk into his own vicinity."


Never Break Ranks Theory: (n.)  This theory is pretty much self-explanatory.  Dawkins uses this theory to explain animal behavior when being attacked.  In terms of pigeons, hawks usually go for the odd spotted one.  If the odd pigeon separates itself from the group, then it is an easy target for the predator.


Mutualism/Symbiosis: (n.) a relationship of mutual benefit between members of different species

On page 181 Dawkins states that it is commonly used different species have many "skills" they can offer in the partnership.  He uses the cooperation between Aphids and Ants as an example.  "Aphids have the right sort of mouthparts for pumping up plant sap, but such sucking mouthparts are no good for self-defense.  Ants are no good at sucking sap from plants, but they are good at fighting.  Ant genes for cultivating and protecting aphids have been favored in aphid gene-pools." (page 181)

These key words explain how the animals coexist together to form the universe.  I have started to disagree with Richard Dawkins on the subject of how selfish we actually are.  Yes, according to science, our genes have made us this way, but then how can he explain the Cave Theory or the Never Break Ranks Theory? The information he gives the reader does not really make sense.  If we are so selfish then why would a bird hiss to his companions in order to protect them? Yes, the bird benefits from doing so, but I am sure that there are other possibilities.  Our actions do not really make us selfish.  Yes, we put ourselves first, but we also care for others around us.  I would like to change what I have said in my previous two blogs.  According to science we are selfish monsters, but it does not have to be this way all the time. If we always take time to care and protect others, we are not always what Dawkins wants us to believe we are.  We can eventually change our "selfish survival machine" status to "caring organisms that sometimes put themselves first".

The Gene God

"We are survival machines, but 'we' does not mean just people.  It embraces all animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses." (page 23)

Reality just became a little more comforting.  Humans are not the only bitter tyrants around in the universe.  What happened with the preferred stable things of the universe? I guess the universe doesn't really control how stable we are.  According to science, our genes do that for us.  They are the things that make us survival machines, not our "monkey see, monkey do" past.  At least, this is what the next quote made me  understand.  

"The evolutionary importance of the fact that genes control embryonic development is this: it means that genes are at least partly responsible for their own survival in the future, because their survival depends on the efficiency of the bodies in which they live and which they helped to build." (pages 23-24)

If this is true, can we ever stop being survival machines? Can our genes change or evolve and turn us into something completely different? In the end, can we stop being selfish? According to Dawkins, no. We will never stop being selfish.  It is to be expected in any basic unit of natural selection.

Natural Selection: (n) According the Darwin's theory of evolution, it is the process in which organisms best adapt to their surroundings or environment.  This process is done so that the organism can achieve in surviving.  Once the organism has adapted, it can pass the genes to their offspring.  Therefore, that organism will survive in the future while others who have not adapted will die.  

Immortality.  The one thing that shows the difference between Gods, super heroes, and humans.  Imagine what life would be like if everyone and everything was immortal.  It would be pretty cool, not mentioning the fact that the world would be overpopulated.  The Earth would look like the home of bunnies and rats. New organisms by the month! So, I guess everyone and everything being immortal isn't such a good idea today.  I always though it would be awesome to figure out that something is actually immortal.  Something factual like an actual person or animal.  I was definitely not thinking about genes when the idea popped into my head. Think about it, genes are passed on generation by generation.  They almost always have the exact same info unless adaption is 100% necessary.  They are not destroyed by the obstacles they must constantly pass through in their survival machine or body.  Like Dawkins says in page 35, "... genes are forever." So face it guys, we will never ever stop being selfish.  It is in our genes and genes never die.  They go on for millions and millions of years, and if something does go wrong their offspring takes over.  Then once again that gene lives for millions and millions of years.  

"The gene is the basic unit of selfishness." (page 36)

"It is differences that matter in the competitive struggle to survive; and it is genetically-controlled differences that matter in evolution."

My opinion has definitely not changed from my previous blog about chapter 2.  Sorry guys! Unless we find a way to change our genes or to "fix them", we will always be selfish organisms roaming around the earth.  The only comforting news about this is that we are not alone.  We have each other and even animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses are frowned upon in the eyes of Richard Dawkins.