Opening a New World

When I read our blog topic for this week I had to chuckle a little bit.  This is a subject I have already talked at length about on my Facebook blog and it is a question that I have no hesitation in answering.  I can say with absolute certainty that reading the novel The Amber Spyglass, the third in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy defined my philosophical beliefs in several areas.  I originally began the series with The Golden Compass, Which is a well known and beloved children’s fantasy novel.  The first book is very light and entertaining, and I enjoyed reading it immensely.  I greedily grabbed the second when I finished it.  While the first book was light and presented a fun fantasy world dealing with the concept of multiple realities and the concept of identity being granted by a substance called “dust.”  The second novel began to explore more complex ideas, as the Author shifted focus to our world and presented directly the idea that the world as it is could reasonably have turned out in any number of different ways.  Things as simple as the English language could have evolved wholly differently based upon small decisions made in history.  Simple things like the word anbaric replacing the word electric (The word electric is derived from the Greek for amber, because it was noted that rubbing two pieces of amber together produced a static electric spark.  Anbaric uses the Arabic root word anbar, instead of the Greek electrum) word serve to shape Pullman’s idea of a world that is not dominated by absolute concepts.  He constantly sets the church as his opponent, but he is really railing against any institution that would seek to define reality in concrete and fatalistic terms.  In the end what really inspired me about the book was his message about coming of age in general.  He shows how many people in the world equate the ideal of innocence with purity and goodness but how this is a mistaken concept.  Rather, he states that we should be unashamed of growing up and that innocence is meant to give way to wisdom.  It is the opposite of the Genisis story which equates wisdom to sin.  It was thanks to Pullman’s story that I was able to reconcile my own beliefs on the nature of our existence as human beings.  I feel like it is because of this worship of innocence that many of our hatreds have been fostered.  The idea that experiencing new things or forming relationships with new people somehow taints our being is a concept driven by this idea that we should be striving to stay as close to our childhood identities as possible.  The idea that being good and pure is being as childlike as possible is absolutely anathema to my values, and it was a great boon to find a novel that could present this concept as eloquently as Pullman has in his trilogy.