The Human Connection
The unimaginable is usually imaginable….
For a long time, whenever I used to read something on the lines of “..and unimaginable horrors fell upon them..” I used to scoff. People used the term ‘unimaginable’ a little too lightly. Then, I began reading science-fiction, mostly Asimov, that happened after a reader compared me to him. I had to read his work to know. Where was the similarity? I started with I, robot. I was smitten. I ended up finishing the entire robot series. It was awesome.
Then, somehow, I came up to the unimaginable condition again. I don’t remember now how. And I remember thinking, nothing in this universe can ever be truly unimaginable, because once it reaches the conscience of a human mind, it becomes imaginable.
Again, during the time I was reading Mr. Asimov‘s stories, I realized most of what he wrote, had to have, in some way, some connection to us. Even the robots, the aliens, somehow behaved humanly, in all their monstrosity.
Fast forward to the previous year, my trainer asked me, the entire class, to tell him what they’d do if they were gods. People talked about knowing it all, seriously, I said, I’d like to destroy stuff, then make stuff again, and keep doing it. Differently. Because well, it’d be fun. Some people had issues with that. They talked about guilt, wouldn’t I feel guilt, for killing that many people? I countered they had no idea about the psychology of God. I’m not sure if I said that in my head. But the point here is, that, anything we think of, any extraterrestrials, any gods, anything, we would be humanizing them. We would give them human reasons for doing stuff. Which I think is something that can’t be not done. Because, the reader, needs to have a connection, something he could root for, or scorn.
So, now that I am at the end of this, I have no idea how I am supposed to end this. Really. I could I think end by saying that I might try something, truly imaginative, like, the parallel universe of Asimov’s ‘The gods themselves’.
I think I will end at that.
