(no subject)

[gfish]

Moving sucks, but it is pretty much done. I'm all the way back in Seattle, and have updated all my location fields to reflect this.

So, to distract me while I try to tetrissokoban my workroom into shape, a question:

You're trapped with an alien who only communicates via mythological analogy. What story from our cultural heritage do you tell them? Gilgamesh is taken, obviously.

Comments

[arjache.livejournal.com]

Am I trying to communicate something specific?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

No, just trying to build a common framework, to share the stories you consider important the way the alien has been sharing theirs.

[arjache.livejournal.com]

Man, how would I choose? I might pick something from Doctor Who, or Batman. Or the story of Icarus (including the bit with the minotaur), or the Velveteen Rabbit, or maybe I'd try to recite them the poem about Abou Ben Adhem (http://www.bartleby.com/41/524.html).

I wonder if it'd be pretentious to tell them some of the stories in my own head. I suppose since they're all a product of my own enculturation they might serve the same purpose.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hadn't even thought about the possibilities in Greek mythology...

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

You could always pick something from Star Trek: TNG.

[arjache.livejournal.com]

That's so recursive my brain hurts.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Seems to be a good starting point, though? As in, "this is the situation we're in".

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Darmok. :)

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

I would be tempted to just tell stories from my personal life. Brooka at 7-11, her slurpee cold! Brooke, her head in her hands, brainfreeze. Joe with Brooke at 7-11, his mouth laughing!

Or fairy tales I suppose.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

..on the theory that the mundane details of my life would seem as exotic as anything else to an alien, that is, I'm not suggesting that I am worthy of enshrinement in myth and legend.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Suuuuure you're not.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Now, I might be suited for enshrinement in a one-act play for the Royal Short Attention Span Theatre. "Brooke! An orange adventure! Shiny things served at intermission."

[adularia.livejournal.com]

I would attend such a play. For the shiny things, of course.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I prefer eating things with a matte finish.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Chekhov and Terell, at Ceti Alpha 5, their ears hurting.

[solarbird]

This reminds me of some Star Trek episode. I should start there.

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

Rashomon!

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

Because, lots of sci-fi is written with aliens whose motivations and psychology are basically human. I think this is unlikely, and would like to get concepts like subjectivity and the unreliability of memory memory on the table if they're going to be dealing with humans.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

Whether or not I would want the aliens to know that depends a great deal on the situation — starting a negotiation be describing oneself as unreliable seems like a bad plan. Also, faced with an alien to whom subjectivity and the unreliability of memory are foreign concepts, how do you even yell the story of Rashomon?

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

I'm also not sure you can declare in advance what rhetorical moves would be advantageous in dealing with an alien intelligence. But maybe I should just hand over a copy of To Serve Man then?

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Thor in Utgard, lifting a cat's paw.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is how an entity which can only communicate by mythological analogy comes to have a mythology in the first place.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

That was always my problem with the episode, too.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

ditto. Or a language.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

But it's such a pretty episode! And it's practically the only one where they tried to deal seriously with language... at all. But yeah, Darmok = story win, linguistics fail.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

'coz screenwriters are more in love with their ideas than linguistic realities?

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

"Little bunny Foo-Foo hopping through the forest/
pickin' up the fieldmice and BOPPIN' 'em onna head!"

Complete with bopping.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

The story of how Rabbi Hillel the Elder converted a man to Judaism while standing on one foot.

[adularia.livejournal.com]

Any version of the fire-stealing myth.

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

I like this idea.