Rhino Stampede, Robots Rebel

As I read “RUR” the other night the magic of my mind visualized the play as if life on stage as I had viewed “Rhinoceros”. I remembered very well the sound of rhinoceros played to mark the existence of rhinoceros stampeding all over the stage. This time around the robots revolutionise against their human creator, the ratio of human to robot being 1:1000!

I could agree no better than Berenger for not wanting to conform and becomes a rhinoceros for human is superior than animal as proof in “RUR” when robots become so intelligent that they rebel against human, be so human that they eradicate the human from the face of the earth.

In “Rhinoceros” the human defy the super force that created them and become so inhuman, whilst in “RUR” the robots defy the human creator and become so human.

Fancy that, stumbling into something that I would never dream of researching had it not been for this assignment. And just as I am into the momentum of finalising this research I have to stop for the massive packing, moving office to Putrajaya next week, drenched my energy towards the end of the day.

It's Never Too Late

I have just finished reading "RUR" that stayed me awake till the wee hour of the morning. Helena and Domin resemblance the couple Berenger and Daisy in "Rhinoceros". Both couples are facing conflict of human transformation, in "RUR" robots into human while in "Rhinoceros" human into rhinoceros.

Distance Learning...At the End of Journey?

Five years ago, the strong message that surfaced from the sessions that made up the three-day 7th SEAMEO INNOTECH International Conference that I attended from 6 to 8 December 2000 in Manila, Philippines had me scouting for places to further my study immediately as I came back. This was my first ever-international conference that I was given the opportunity to attend by my division, Malaysian Examination Syndicates where I am currently attached.

Dubbed “Knowledge Networking in the World of Learning,” the conference brought together some 400 educators from 18 countries to share experiences and insights on the interplay of knowledge and technology where education is pervaded by the new and changing tools of information and communication.

I was very impressed as well as highly motivated during the opening ceremony when Philippine Senate Education Committee Chairperson Teresa Aquino Oreta in her keynote address spoke of her plans to modernize basic education through a series of information technology projects in Philippines. Senator Oreta sponsored the raining of school officials on instructional leadership and educational applications of technology.

The clearest focus of a majority of conference presentations was electronic learning in its various forms. Among others are Michael Churton, Director of Distance Learning, of the University of South Florida, focusing on the implications for human resource development of new distance learning technologies, Sean Loiselle of Lotus Asia discussing how knowledge management is changing the way we find and share knowledge, learn from it and apply it in everyday lives and John Mulhern of the University of South Carolina laying down standards for continuing teacher education which cover context, process, content and evaluation.

Today, with those educational applications of technology I am able at the comfort of my office when time permits me out of my official duty to browse the Internet in continuing my education, searching in a never-ending story in the borderless world of knowledge. At the end of the day, as said by Mahatma Gandhi, quoted by Amalina the girl who scored 17 A1’s in her SPM result, satisfaction is not in the achievement but the process towards achieving it. That is the beautiful part of my life as a distance learning student, a life long learning that I heard first time from Michael Churton. It is not the marks that mattered me the most now but the process of forever acquiring new knowledge, new skills, experiencing the good, the bad and the ugly throughout.

And the last three days for the last 36 hours, at the tips of my fingers I searched the world not only for the course EDU 3234 Reading and Project Work for Teaching Literature in ESL Contexts but also for BB1 2417 Public Speaking and EDU 3230 Content-Based Second Language Instruction.

Where do I begin this journey? And will there be an end to a journey of educating oneself?

From Human to Rhino and Now Robot Wants Its Soul

So much I have read and experience of “Rhinoceros” for the last few weeks, the beautiful part was the greatest opportunity of viewing the play last 8 December 2005. Here I am can’t be getting enough of my time exploring deeper and deeper into “RUR”.

It surprised me that this Czech playwright Karel Capek from the Czech word for “forced labor” or “serf” coined the term robot. Capek used the word Robot in “RUR” which opened in Prague in January 1921, which was exactly 40 years before I was even born. “RUR” is a play in which robots are mass-produced by an Englishman, Rossum. The robots in the very beginning are meant to make a better life for human beings but finally rebel and wipe out humanity and start a new race of intelligent life for them.

The evidence in similarity between “Rhinoceros” and “RUR” is that both are transformation into another entity of the origin they exist, from human to beast in “Rhinoceros” and from machine to human in “RUR”.

This is quite an achievement for me considering the fact it was only yesterday I stumbled into “RUR” and for the last few hours researching further on it. And as for “The Adding Machine”, I am still trying to figure out how best I can map the three great work of literature together, one of absurdism, the other expressionistic and this one a sci-fiction.

Adding On to "RUR".

Though yesterday I made a point not to look further for information on “RUR” or “Bury the Dead” but curiosity gets much of its way over me today. Lo behold “RUR: Rossum’s Universal Robots” is much too interesting to be ignored, to be compared to “The Adding Machine” and I can leave “Rhinoceros” to its original reason, coming out with the position paper. The author name is not Katel Capel as written in Brandeis Adult Learning Institute’s Course Descriptions, its Karel Capek, the most important Czech writer of the first half of the 20th century, the co-inventor of the word robot, a novelist, playwright, journalist and translator.

I guess I am getting my flow now, my optimal experience as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow Theory”, a Russian psychologist who won the Thinker of the Year Award in 2000. He is chiefly renowned as the architect of the notion of flow in creativity whereby people enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. Mr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.” On the rare occassions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.

By the way, I was introduced to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi by my former Assistant Director Head of the unit where I work, Mr Shahril bin Mohd Kharib who is now one of the Director at Special Education Department, Ministry of Education.

I Found Not Only Merton...

I spent the entire morning searching for Thomas Merton and it was very interesting activities of skimming and scanning plus hyper speed-reading of him and his work. I kind of enjoy myself to the fullest in such limit ness of time, reading through his work and getting to know him. Such complexity in gaining the ability to see God, Merton an Englishmen became a Communist, then a Catholic, later a Trappist monk and finally A Zen Buddhist before he died.

There is four other literary works that I can compare “Rhinoceros” with namely Elmer Rice’s “The Adding Machine”, Katel Capek’s “RUR”, Archibald Macleish’s “JB” and Irwin Shaw’s “Bury the Dead”. “JB” is too serious for me but I like “The Adding Machine”. I haven’t explore “RUR” and “Bury the Dead”. May be I would not due to the time constraint.

A Course Descriptions for Timeless Issues in Drama of Brandeis University’s Brandeis Adult Learning Institute Bali selected five plays to be studied that shared a common theme: societal changes or pressures that impact on humanity.

“The Adding Machine” deals with the replacement of an employee by a machine.

“RUR” introduces robots that take over the men who created them.

“Rhinoceros” reflects the “herd instinct”.

“JB” based on the story of Job raises the issues of evil forces beyond the control of righteous man.

“Bury the Dead’ an anti-war play, concerns soldiers who refuse to be buried.

This is quite a load for me to begin with after “Rhinoceros”. I need to get a copy of “The Adding Machine”. And more caffeine…

Catching up with Time

What a great relief as we sang the song “I’m quick and smart as I can be, Try and try but you can’t catch me” that marked the end of the theatre performance for the assignment EDU 3202 Theatre in TESL, evaluated by Puan Juridah Md Rashid last Saturday on 12 March 2005. "Mouse Deer and Tiger" adapted from Aaron Shepard’s Reader's Theatre "The Adventures of Mouse Deer" was a great success for the four of us considering the limited time we had to produce the play as it should be produced in the real theatre convention. At the end of the performance I was glad that all the research done not only for EDU 3202 Theatre in TESL but also for Dr Edwin’s EDU 3234 Research and Project Work for Teaching Literature in ESL Context has been very useful towards the production of the one act play we had performed.

Yesterday I re-embarked on Dr Edwin’s assigned tasks of which I had chosen “Rhinoceros” by Eugene Ionesco. I guess the position paper would be easier in compared to the research paper by the fact that I have yet to research another work of literature to compare “Rhiconeros” with. As I went through all the information I had compiled for the past few months I came across Thomas Merton who wrote “The Rain” inspired by “Rhinoceros”. Well, that would be a good beginning for me this week, to research on Thomas Merton. Who is he?

"It Is The Tragedy..."

Joyce Cary, a British author who was born in 1888 and died in 1957 said “It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn’t know – and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.”

And how true is Joyce Cary…

At the first glimpse of the instruction “…1 section and 1 question…” I knew without having to look into the question, it would be going to be a long dreaded two hours of my life in the examination hall. There I was, regretting every moment of not reading seriously of the essay by George Orwell before the examination, merely scanning through. I was so focused on understanding the literary criticism and it did not occur to me how important to not only read all the essays in the module but to know at least at a very minimal level the background of the authors. Oh my God, I was panicking and who is George Orwell? And I seriously read E.M Forster “Two Cheers for Democracy”.

Well I was left with no choice but to give the best shot I could in my own ways. As a consolation, to begin with, before I started reading the essay I told myself, I knew the basis of criticism: Deconstruction, Reader-Response, Archetype, Feminism, Psychoanalytical, and Marxist. I should be focusing myself to one of those criticisms in writing my thesis statement and thus my writing through out.

Once decided, all that I wanted to write was the instability in thinking between the character and his judgements on having to shoot the elephant. I would love to explore the mind of the character between his repressed memory and the racial memory of the collective unconscious. The setback was I did not read the essay before the examination and wasted too much time reading and mentally responding to the essay during the examination instead of writing my answer. My own repressed memories were way too much for me to handle within that time limitation.

Well, since I could not get what I would like to write within those 2 hours, then I would have to like what I will be getting from Dr Edwin of my answer to his question.

"Rhinoceros": Stepping Out of the Box

It was very interesting to be reading Jeff Snyder’s “Good Men Make Good Rhinoceros” considering the fact that he is an attorney working in New York. Snyder is also the author of Nation of Cowards - Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control. The first thing that struck me when I read the first few paragraphs of his writing was how this great play of absurdity, “Rhinoceros” by Eugene Ionesco was even the interest of a lawyer in practice. Relating the September 11 tragedy in New York, Afghanistan war, Iraqi war and the presidential of Bush pertaining to war, Snyder felt it is worth to revisit this play with the idea of “coercive conformity of behaviour and opinion that is required to mobilize society and its resources for war”.

Synder’s writing gave me an understanding about the idea of conformity in a philosophical perspective. Concluding his writing “…how well “Rhinoceros” potrays the human condition or sheds light upon current events is best left to the reader” indeed is stimulating especially to such inexperience reader of great literary work like me.

Quotes That Ease Me

I think it is probably better to be awake, sober, and drug-free. I suspect those three conditions are probably helpful. But beyond that, I just have to feel like writing. I'm not one of these people who go to the desk every single day and writes. I wait until my head gets filled with stuff and I have to get it out of my head. -- Edward Albee

And I have become less productive… for now.

As for my writing process, I generally follow the advice I give newer writers - try not to polish up front. You have worked yourself to death. Keep going, keep going. If it's poorly written, too bad. Keep going. When you have an end, you've got something whole. Then rewrite, rewrite. Polished incomplete things wear you out. -- Alice Childress

But I have yet to arrive to my thesis statement...

I enjoyed the time I was writing. It was a fun, creative time. No one expected anything from me. I wasn't being strategic in any way. I wasn't trying to set up myself as a writer. I wasn't trying to leverage into a new career. I just wanted to write for its own sake. -- Margaret Edson

Or else what will I be doing if not for this task?

Writing is a tough job. Consider me. With my background, I can't get a play produced. I couldn't get Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for My Father, and You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running - my three most successful plays - produced. -- Robert Anderson

Then that explains my difficulty...

It was a great struggle to get people to accept anything but kitchen-sink drama. My play didn't fit any categories. -- Arthur Miller on why his first play, The Man Who Had All the Luck failed in 1944.

Thank God!