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Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

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Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#141

Post by stakkur »

Around second grade, something odd happened to me: I discovered I had a photographic memory. For a while I was a trick pony who could read an entire book page once then recite it verbatim. I couldn't understand why other people couldn't do this.

Then, a year or so later...it stopped. Not all at once; it became gradually harder and harder to do it, and one day I realized the ability was gone.

As all of this was happening, I happened to read Flowers for Algernon. It gripped me, and for many years I was afraid that the same thing was happening/would happen to me...I'd gradually become 'dumber and dumber' until I couldn't do anything. It scared the hell out of me.

As an adult in my 50s, I sometimes have random episodes of 'photographic' memory--I'll recall a page from book I read years ago, or an entire conversation from high school. I can't control it--it's entirely random. Seeing this book again brings back a mild echo of that anxiety I had about it. To this day, I just can't read it again.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#142

Post by nobody9999 »

sslapec wrote: post #99

My elder brother is mentally challenged due to lack of oxygen when he was born. I had this idea a few years ago of how would he experience the world if he'd suddenly become healthy. How would he deal with his previous life, etc. I once mentioned my thoughts to my boss during a lunch and he told me there's already a novel about it. That's how I've discovered Flowers for Algernon.

>My elder brother is mentally challenged due to lack of oxygen when he was born. I had this idea a few years ago of how would he experience the world if he'd suddenly become healthy. How would he deal with his previous life, etc. I once mentioned my thoughts to my boss during a lunch and he told me there's already a novel about it. That's how I've discovered Flowers for Algernon.

I have a close relative with signficant dementia.

Which, in this case, really is like a reverse Flowers for Algernon. The person in question was incredibly smart, well educated, erudite, resourceful and very successful in her chosen field.

She was always my go to person for career advice, as she had both the experience and the cognitive skills to insightfully analyze circumstances and make cogent, relevant recommendations.

As she declined, she was still compensating for her partner's declining capacities.

But that's all gone now. Some part of her is still in there (honestly, I hope not too much as she'd be incredibly angry and unhappy with her cognitive decline), but she's no longer able to express reasoned ideas or even have a normal conversation (she might answer a question if you ask and she might not -- and even then it's difficult for her to express herself except in the most basic terms) with other people.

And that fills me with sadness because I've lost that wonderful human who was a part of my life for so long.

It may seem cruel, but it feels almost worse than if she'd died. Her body is there. Some small vestige of her personality still exists, but the person I knew is gone.

I still love her and my family and I make sure she knows she's loved and gets the care she requires, but I mourn the loss of the woman she was. :(

I read Flowers for Algernon (FFA) as a child and was quite troubled by Charlie's story arc. Especially as at the peak of his abilities, he really turns into an arrogant asshole with little patience for the idiots (as he perceived them) around him.

I wasn't glad when Charlie's decline happened, but I was struck with the compassion and caring of the science team who did this to him.

That opens up some ethical questions, but I'm sure those will be addressed elsewhere in this discussion.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#143

Post by quacked »

stickfigure wrote: post #135
sandworm101 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have known lawyers who struggle with aspergers. I was at law school with a man who had tourettes. He had to take his exams in a separate room due to his outbursts. Ive also met professionals with obsessive compulsive disorder so bad that, in the past, they might have been locked up. Mental illness, even mental disability, does not preclude as many vocations as most people think.

I don't think the kind of mental disability described in Flowers For Algernon fits in the same category as aspergers, tourettes, OCD, or mental illness (as we typically use the term). I suspect Forrest Gump does not actually exist.

My two siblings have "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome", and I do not. (All three of us were adopted, each from different families.) I grew up with them and Flowers For Algernon resonates very deeply with me, as it is very closely analogous to how they grew up.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#144

Post by dontbenebby »

stonogo wrote: post #134
dontbenebby wrote: post #98

I tire of seeing this book stanned, and I'm gonna take a pause from working on this Beamer presentation to say why. I wrote an essay about being twice exceptional a while back[0,1], and no one has ever made any substantial effort to make up for the wrongs from that period, instead treating a string of precarious, low paying, but "prestigous" roles as some kind of reward instead of a series of scams to enrich folks ri…

Sorry, the thesis here is that you don't like this book because someone didn't hire you?

The thesis is I no longer enjoy the things I used to, because I don't think learning new skills and abilities is useful, and the art I used to enjoy now reminds me of the time I wasted due to lies my teachers told me about shitty first drafts[1] or other creative nonfictions.

(I can't tell if you're making an extremely local reference, or just a lucky troll, but either way, salud. You... "tricked" me. You win the prize.)

[1] https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%...

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#145

Post by dontbenebby »

psbp wrote: post #80
johnny_reilly wrote: post #55

This book changed me. I was an idle eight year old, and my school didn't give us homework to do. So my father decided to set me homework of his own devising, which on one occasion was reading Flowers for Algernon. I was moved by the story of a man who had little natural ability, straining to make the best of what he had. Then becoming smarter than everyone around him, and then what follows. There's many things to tak…

I was always insecure about my intelligence and I remember coming away with this same idea from the book. Life is really just a series of experiences. You don't need to meet a certain standard or qualify yourself in order to have positive experiences or to have an impact. We often place so much emphasis on comparison and measuring our success/potential that we miss the whole process of living.

Agreed, there are people who follow metrics and those who are studied to generate new ones. (Strive to be in the latter category.)

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#146

Post by AlwaysRock »

blader wrote: post #43

Ted Chiang wrote a short story inspired by Flowers for Algernon ("Understand") that explores what might happen if a guy just never stopped getting smarter: https://web.archive.org/web/20140527121332/http://www.infini... I love Flowers for Algernon, but Understand is my favorite short story of all time.

I agree. IT feels like the continuation of the Flowers story that I wanted in a rereading.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#147

Post by dontbenebby »

cowtools wrote: post #125
sandworm101 wrote: post #120

I always hated this story. For me, the underlying theme is one of class and social structure. The illiterate man is lifted above his situation by science. He is then hammered back down. This is a story about how science cannot change the underlying "natural" state of a person. It is a lesson for scientists about not messing with god-given realities. I also don't like the linking of one's job to one's intelligence. Th…

I don't think there is a single point in this comment that I agree with. >This is a story about how science cannot change the underlying "natural" state of a person. I don't think that's necessarily true. In the setting of the story, current the state of the art prohibits this. But It doesn't really comment on whether that's a fundamental limitation. The purpose of having the protagonist descend back into retardation…

> I think in the real world you'll find the mentally disabled working menial jobs for little respect or pay.

Often because people here, on this site, think any policy that would put them on a different path is akin to communism.

(Read up on places like "Good"will, where folks from Brooklyn or whatever come to pick up things given under coercion less you get fined for improper trash disposal, at stores where the disabled are paid less than minimum wage under similar sorts of logic that lead to the holocaust.)

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#148

Post by taeric »

rayiner wrote: post #116
taeric wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that has been fairly heavily disproven. That language defines culture. I meant my anecdote to be that I grew up in America, and didn't see this behavior at large. Outside of movies. Completely agreed that it is an interesting topic.

That’s a different point—you can’t conceptualize an orange if you don’t have a word for orange. OP is making the opposite point: you don’t have a word for orange if you don’t have oranges. The absence of a clear word (much less several) for a “nerd” stereotype might reflect a culture that doesn’t create that categorization. Coming from south Asian culture, for example, we don’t really have a similar concept either.

I get that. I question that you don't have some archetypes, as well.

That is too say, you might not have oranges, but you still have citrus fruit.

And again, coming from southern us culture, we didn't have direct images of the stereotypes, either. That is largely a movie convenience for story telling.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#149

Post by geysersam »

_qfi9 wrote: post #128
gwern wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with any superintelligence story; they are by definition hard to write without being superintelligent. As Vinge was famously told, "you can't write this story. No one can." If a chimpanzee could write a story about a human expert of any sort, the other chimpanzees wouldn't understand it: it would either be gibberish, or dumbed down to superficial analogies that give an illusion of understanding. ("…

we can know certain things about things that are smarter than us. perhaps even smarter than a post singularity intelligence, for instance, we are "computationally" equivalent to a turing machine: a tape with symbols on it and a head that reads and writes symbols to the tape according to rules. the natural generalization of a turing machine to infinity would be a hyper turing machine: an infinitely wide tape and infin…

> we are "computationally" equivalent to a turing machine:

Why do you think that?

We know of modes of computation different from Turing machines, quantum computers. There's nothing saying there might not be yet other kinds of computers currently undiscovered.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#150

Post by canes123456 »

SamBam wrote: post #74
blader wrote: post #43

Ted Chiang wrote a short story inspired by Flowers for Algernon ("Understand") that explores what might happen if a guy just never stopped getting smarter: https://web.archive.org/web/20140527121332/http://www.infini... I love Flowers for Algernon, but Understand is my favorite short story of all time.

I adore most of Chiang's work, but Understand is one of my least favorites. Fun premise, yes, but it reads to me like much less mature sci-fi, like something written by a teen about what being super-smart would feel like.

I feel exactly the same way. I believe it was the first story he wrote and it really shows.
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