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Literary Analysis of Three Excerpts I Like; of my Own Fiction

October 9, 2023

book, creativity, criticism, fiction, literature, writing

Ah, yes; another egotistical post. A bit like the one where I essentially reviewed my own work. But as there was value in that, there is value in this one, too. A literary analysis of three excerpts of my own fiction can be revealing to you for two reasons:

As a writer, it shows you how to critically approach your own work; why you like something, how it made you feel. Doing so helps you gauge your writing and move past the “first book” stage (with or without quotation marks).
As a reader, you get a “behind the scenes” of writing. Not only does this offer you unique insights in regard to the writing process, but – which is more important – makes you a better reader, too.

Naturally, in order for this post to be accessible to anyone, whether they have read the books or not, I have selected the excerpts in a way that they don’t depend on their context. Not too directly, at least.

anime image of woman and man. Literary analysis of three excerpts — If *The Other Side of Dreams* were an anime, Anna and Ahmed – the two main characters – would perhaps look like this, walking the streets of Rome on a summer evening

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Ethics or Morality: A Crucial Difference

October 2, 2023

Philosophy, Society

knowledge, philosophy, society

Let’s get this out of the way: There is no “god-given” definition of either ethics or morality (there’s a meta- element of irony here, as you can hopefully perceive). Most people might even use them interchangeably to refer to the same thing. However, there is a crucial difference between the two.

In most definitions, morality refers to a person’s moral convictions, what they consider right or wrong. Ethics, on the other hand, usually refers to systems of convictions; agreed convictions, in a way. For example, we might refer to “journalistic ethics”, that is, a commonly agreed set of practices and behavior that journalists should adhere to.

The proverbial plot thickens – there are never simple answers – because one’s personal convictions, their morality, is always a result of external factors; our environment, our culture, our upbringing. Perhaps some would like to suggest that our DNA pushes us in certain directions, but that, too, would be a result of external factors: We might be born good/evil (a huge oversimplification), but the externality remains, as our DNA is a result of our ancestors.

Ultimately, the debate “ethics or morality” is important – after all, that’s the whole point of this post, right? – because it refers to another crucial difference that, although contained in the one between personal/collective convictions, is easier to miss.

That difference is between knowledge and behavior.

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Digital Literacy and Old Age: an Irrelevant Correlation

September 25, 2023

Programming, Society

computer, ignorance, programming, society

There is a persistent but fallacious belief regarding digital literacy: “Old people can’t use computers”. Not only is this hilariously wrong, it also has some dangerous consequences that we’ll see in this post.

The truth is, you simply can’t… simplify things and treat any group of people as if they were a homogeneous lump. There are people who are old and can’t even turn on a computer, and there are people like Grace Hopper, who was recalled from retirement (twice!) to work on the US Navy’s IT infrastructure.

Obviously enough, there are many gradations in between, too. There are old people who perhaps can’t program but who can still use a computer. There are also old people who know how to turn on the computer, somewhat use it, but would be unable to troubleshoot it the moment something goes awry.

But all that isn’t very important.

Instead, what is important is to understand the dangers of correlating digital literacy to age – either old or young.

If you googled “old person using computer”, you’d get plenty of stock images of old people struggling in front of a screen, sitting next to a younger person, or holding a credit card and looking confused. Instead of perpetuating such stereotypes, here’s an image of Commodore Grace M. Hopper, nickname “Grandma COBOL“.

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