Probability and Simplicity

In An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, the protagonist puts forth the idea that relationships are predictable mathematically. That is, you can graph a relationship and figure out, based on the Dumper/Dumpee dichotomy, how a relationship will end. I think that the proposition is supposed to be ridiculous...and maybe it is. But I've sort of found that relationships do have a sort of predictability. Obviously I don't have a lot of experience to back this up, but we always seem to go for what's different. If you pathalogically fight with everyone, you'll go for the person that doesn't fight back, that gives you a raised eyebrow and a simple question when you try to shout them down. If you're quiet and meek and people generally look past you, you'll go for the person that pulls you out, that actively looks at you.

Of course, I haven't finished the book so I'm not entirely sure what John Green is getting at, so there will be more on that when I finish the book.

I just finished Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson and I have to say that it was pretty fantastic. Upon finishing it I didn't have the reaction that I usually do after watching movies/reading books/seeing tv shows about high school and adolescence, which usually goes something like this - "This person has obviously been middle aged their whole life. High school was nothing like this." Instead it was interesting and funny and real. Teenagers getting drunk wasn't the END OF THE WORLD. There was no "this is what I learned, so can I not be grounded" conversation. I thought that the main character was someone I could have known in real life. It wasn't heavy or self-conscious, but it still managed to say something about the complexity of decision-making when you don't even know who you are yet. And it didn't hit you over the head with anything.

Young adult literature can do that. It often has something to say that it slips in under your radar, something you don't even notice is being said, but makes you feel better once you've read it. It is empathetic, when done correctly. Satre doesn't know everything and you can't live your life based on Joyce and Nietzsche. This seems unrelated, but it isn't. Because I know literature snobs (whom I love dearly) who are miserable. Because they seem to miss this point. There is a kind of beautiful, paradoxical complexity in the simplicity of cartoons, young adult literature and McDonalds.

Of course, I'm not sure I can tell you what that means. What it means to me is that things stripped down to their barest bones are often easier to understand. There hard answers to Yes or No questions and that we won't get anywhere if we can't see that. Harry Potter presents us with what seems like the obvious answer to a question - is this worth fighting for? - and shows us the heroism behind it. For good people it seems obvious. Of course you fight for people who are oppressed. But there is a heroism behind that that is important to understand. From what I've read of John Green (Looking for Alaska and about 60 pages of An Abundance of Katherines) the dramas and tragedies of adolescence are important, however inconsequential they seem in retrospect, because they are what make us. We are a combination of the events we've experienced and the things we've learned, though they may be intangible and impossible to articulate.

McDonalds french fries and chocolate milkshakes are delicious and they might be awful for you, and contain all sorts of incomprehensible things that clog arteries and upset your digestive system, but that's not really that important. Sometimes its better to enjoy the simple things because complications create distractions. And that turns once beautiful things into irrational, improbable things that don't really exist.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is beauty in the little things that make the big picture. And that when you stare too long at the big picture, it starts to disintegrate.
This isn't to say that life can be broken down into its simplest parts. Life is in the gray and impossible to understand in its entirety. I only mean that perhaps, by looking at things simply (i.e. hungry people need food, sick people need doctors, slaves need freedom) we can reach the more complicated stuff (how to achieve all of these things, why people do or don't help, how we can get more people to help). Examining the existential, nihilistic, and abstract ideas that may or may not have built humanity, and which can never be used or proven, doesn't seem like a good use of our time. The meaning of life doesn't matter. What matters is that we're here, and we've got to do something with it.

(Disclaimer: I like obscure Russian writers as much as the next guy. Tolstoy is a personal favorite. Victor Hugo and I go way back. My next projects include James Joyce's Ulysses [for class] and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged [not for class]. But its not life building philosophies or anything. I like to think i get something out of everything I read.)