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Always from the same height
Oct. 22nd, 2022 01:44 pmPhilip Pullman's His Dark Materials series is one of my most formative works of fiction, and one of the things I've always appreciated is that it rewards rereads, and different elements come to the fore depending on the age in which you read it. I read the first book as a teenager, and certain elements didn't make sense to me until many rereads later, in adulthood.
One such aspect is a thing the series says about learning. Its protagonist, Lyra Silvertongue, gains the ability to read an 'aletheiometer,' a device which allows her to ask questions (about future events, about hidden or secret motives — basically questions about things that she would not be able to figure out independently) and receive a true answer. She's a child, and she learns to use the aletheiometer without being taught — the knowledge just happens to her, in much the same way as toddlers learn to walk, and talk. (I mean, obviously it takes effort and repetition and mistakes for toddlers to pick up these skills, but they aren't consciously aware of this effort and it's not something that we remember in later periods of our lives.) All other characters who can read aletheiometers learnt do so as adults, using books, with painstaking effort, and they're not as fluent at it as Lyra.
However, at the end of the trilogy, Lyra loses her ability to read the aletheiometer. This loss is tied explicitly with her transition to adolescence, and impending adulthood. She is told that she will be able to learn to read it again, but never in that effortless way — it would be a life's work of scholarship, and constant, conscious effort.
As a child, this always struck me as pointlessly cruel, and although I understood that Pullman was making a point about the differences between childhood and adulthood learning, I always hated that Lyra had to lose her special supernatural power. However, once I became an adult myself and experienced these stark differences in ways of learning (even of the same skills!) my perception of this narrative choice of Pullman changed.
All this by way of preamble of something sparked by one of the responses to yesterday's Friday open thread: a skill that I learnt unconsciously in childhood, and then had to relearn in adulthood with much effort, and trial and error. I'm referring to the ability to build a habit of regular exercise. Because at least one person mentioned that they'd be interested in knowing how I managed this, I've decided to write a post on the topic. Obviously what worked for me is not going to work for everyone, but it may possibly be helpful to some.
( Cut for discussion of exercise habits, no discussion of body image, weight loss or related topics )
One such aspect is a thing the series says about learning. Its protagonist, Lyra Silvertongue, gains the ability to read an 'aletheiometer,' a device which allows her to ask questions (about future events, about hidden or secret motives — basically questions about things that she would not be able to figure out independently) and receive a true answer. She's a child, and she learns to use the aletheiometer without being taught — the knowledge just happens to her, in much the same way as toddlers learn to walk, and talk. (I mean, obviously it takes effort and repetition and mistakes for toddlers to pick up these skills, but they aren't consciously aware of this effort and it's not something that we remember in later periods of our lives.) All other characters who can read aletheiometers learnt do so as adults, using books, with painstaking effort, and they're not as fluent at it as Lyra.
However, at the end of the trilogy, Lyra loses her ability to read the aletheiometer. This loss is tied explicitly with her transition to adolescence, and impending adulthood. She is told that she will be able to learn to read it again, but never in that effortless way — it would be a life's work of scholarship, and constant, conscious effort.
As a child, this always struck me as pointlessly cruel, and although I understood that Pullman was making a point about the differences between childhood and adulthood learning, I always hated that Lyra had to lose her special supernatural power. However, once I became an adult myself and experienced these stark differences in ways of learning (even of the same skills!) my perception of this narrative choice of Pullman changed.
All this by way of preamble of something sparked by one of the responses to yesterday's Friday open thread: a skill that I learnt unconsciously in childhood, and then had to relearn in adulthood with much effort, and trial and error. I'm referring to the ability to build a habit of regular exercise. Because at least one person mentioned that they'd be interested in knowing how I managed this, I've decided to write a post on the topic. Obviously what worked for me is not going to work for everyone, but it may possibly be helpful to some.
( Cut for discussion of exercise habits, no discussion of body image, weight loss or related topics )