This reads like a torture scene in an Iain M. Banks Culture novel, where people are plugged into godawful simulations that last a lifetime. Please, just make it stop...
I Am the Ghost Here
41–50 of 80 posts
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#42[dead]
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#43I have a sibling who moved away and comes back from time to time and I miss them. So this resonates for me. Plus the whole dysfunctional asian family with culturally assimilated kids dynamic.
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
My mother-in-law has ranted many times about how they don’t teach cursive anymore. She doesn’t know how to use a computer. I think you raise a very interesting (and likely very controversial) thought to explore. My quick opinion is that we can only teach so much. And the list of things that could be taught is forever growing. We need to be pragmatic about priority.
I just hate we optimize putting info into computer (typing vs cursive), but now computers can just read writing, so why are we so focused on typing? Just make computers adapt to humans, not train humans to accommodate machines.
Typing is easier for most humans than writing, and it's not like writing is any less artificial.
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#45Honest question--is Michelle a real person the author is recounting events about or is this some kind of literary device? Maybe my brain isn't working today but I gave up halfway through this without getting it.
> Honest question–is Michelle a real person the author is recounting events about or is this some kind of literary device? Maybe my brain isn’t working today but I gave up halfway through this without getting it. Its explicitly fiction, so “real” is…perhaps not the right word. I think the story is intended to be read literally as fiction; its a fictional world where “puppeteers” that can somehow temporarily exist wit…
I literally just noticed its fiction.
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
My mother-in-law has ranted many times about how they don’t teach cursive anymore. She doesn’t know how to use a computer. I think you raise a very interesting (and likely very controversial) thought to explore. My quick opinion is that we can only teach so much. And the list of things that could be taught is forever growing. We need to be pragmatic about priority.
I just hate we optimize putting info into computer (typing vs cursive), but now computers can just read writing, so why are we so focused on typing? Just make computers adapt to humans, not train humans to accommodate machines.
I agree — but then, I teach & remediate handwriting. Nowadays, more and more of my work is to teach humans to do what computers have learned to do: namely, to read, cursive, whether or not they write that way too.
Kate Gladstone author of READ CURSIVE FAST https://nationalautismresources.com/read-cursive-fast/
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#47Honest question--is Michelle a real person the author is recounting events about or is this some kind of literary device? Maybe my brain isn't working today but I gave up halfway through this without getting it.
I read it as the story of someone whose brother (Jeff) has multiple personality disorder, where Jeff's personality split to build a Michelle personality that was capable of standing up to and meeting not only his parents' expectations, but his sister's (the narrator's), as she also approves of who Jeff is as his Michelle personality. The bit about Michelle being a puppeteer is how Jeff self-reconciles having a separate personality "in control"; the bit about rich children being able to afford puppeteers is how Jeff reconciles how effortlessly the rich children at Stanford seem to be able to achieve success. The bits about Michelle stepping outside, about being contactable directly after Jeff disappears, are literary devices.
Jeff disappears from his parents', sister's, and wife's life, because none of them accept Jeff + Michelle as an integrated person, someone whose anxiety and depression is unacceptable to them (unacceptable to any of them) but neither is his attempt to pull himself together and become happy and well-adjusted (acceptable to his wife, unacceptable to his parents, acceptable to his sister but only on the condition that he make amends with his parents). Danny is Jeff's true biological son, and when the narrator thinks that she sees Jeff "pulling Danny's strings," what the narrator is really claiming to understand in the end is that she isn't capable of trusting that anyone can be genuinely happy in-and-of themselves, that the projection of happiness must be a front, intended to meet roles and expectations, and not from a genuine inner source.
The story is a tragedy, but not about Jeff. It's a tragedy about the unrealistic expectations often fostered in immigrant families (including the narrator's failure to land a rich husband or build a life outside her parents' conflict management issues and control), and how these expectations can wreck family life.
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#48I believe Michelle represents amphetamines, which something like a quarter of university students take[1]. The upbeat and outgoing attitude shift and confidence. The drive and ambition to found your own company. The total rejection by conservative parents who don’t understand how positively life-changing it can be. This story has hit so eerily close to home.
https://www.michigandaily.com/research/adderall-used-24-univ...
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#49I believe Michelle represents amphetamines, which something like a quarter of university students take[1]. The upbeat and outgoing attitude shift and confidence. The drive and ambition to found your own company. The total rejection by conservative parents who don’t understand how positively life-changing it can be. This story has hit so eerily close to home. https://www.michigandaily.com/research/adderall-used-24-uni…
The fact that the sister doesn’t like Michelle, but she likes her brother when Michelle is inside him. It feels like a little betrayal to learn that the person you like to talk to might only act that way when they’re using amphetamines. To me it makes no difference if the person has altered the dopamine and serotonin levels in their brain with diet and exercise or if they did it with a pill. If they’re a happy, successful and well adjusted human then why would it matter?
Re: I Am the Ghost Here
#50Interesting read, but did not understand the author's message or what was going on. Was it about addiction, MPD, trans discovery? Unclear, to me at least. Poor writing I think, unless the ambiguity was the intent.