jack

As children, we're often first taught something by going through the motions of doing it, even if all the heavy lifting is actually done by our parents. If done well, this can be a very uplifting way to be introduced to a new concept; to get to play at it, and go through the general steps in a top-down way, without having to get each intermediate step right. (If done badly it can be very dispiriting, if you want to see if you can do it right, but someone just swoops in and does it for you before you can try.)

Digression on boardgames

This is something that's occurred to me in the concept of teaching people board games. For instance, in teaching someone MTG, especially to geeks, you fairly quickly need to move on to knowing at least a subset of the rules you interact with regularly, as there's lots of rules, and if you don't know them and just try to learn individual situations piecemeal, you're constantly bitten by special cases where your teacher says "no, it does [thing you didn't expect]" and you don't know why.

However, when introducing the game, I think people are often too regimented in explaining the rules. I think it's often better to say something like "each turn, you play a land, cast a creature (paying for it with the land cards you have), and then attack with your creatures", and letting the beginner get an idea of how a game normally goes and why it's fun, before explaining "you can play a land after a creature, but it's normally worse to do so, and you can cast multiple spells a turn if you want to", etc, etc.

Sometimes you really need to explain from the bottom up, but sometimes going through the motions without knowing the detailed rules is enough to give the flavour of the game.

Narnia and LOTR

The reason for this post, is I sometimes feel Aslan and Gandalf are doing that: they both vary in power level, typically being "somewhat stronger than whoever they're facing", partly for in-world reasons, and mostly for plot-reasons.

But I wonder if it's also because doing "just the minimum necessary to win the war" means that everyone else gets the experience of winning (mostly) through their own effort. Which is horrible if you think of it as real life, letting everyone die to make a point, but makes a lot more sense if you think of it as a warm-up before deciding who goes to heaven.

But several people have said they don't think that's consistent with what Aslan and Gandalf actually do.

(Dumbledore doesn't even have an excuse of being God, he really doesn't know best, he just acts like he does. Often because there's a good in-world reason for manipulating everyone, but also because that's just what Wise Mentor Figures do, even when it's blatantly counterproductive.)

In Prince Caspian, there's a bit where the children are trying to find a way across country to join Caspian before his army is overrun, and their way is blocked by a steep gorge.

They conclude the only sensible plan is to follow the river downstream to the conflux with the great river, where they know there's a crossing quite close to where they're trying to go. However, Lucy sees Aslan in the distance and realises He wants them to go upstream.

When I first read it, I just glossed over this bit confused, but now I think it's an obvious allegory for people knowing what God wants them to do, but not living up to it.

However, even now, this just doesn't seem to make sense with the context of the book.

* Forget "which way along the river". Even if only Lucy saw him, whether the others find this suspicious or not, why don't they rush to where he was in case he's still there? That seems the immediately obvious thing to do, whatever he was trying to tell them.

* If you follow the geography, you realise that what they really want to do was find a place they can cross the river, which is what they eventually find, but (partly my fault), I didn't quite get this from the dialogue, so I couldn't see why they would ever go up the river if they've just said down is the way to where they're going.

* If they want a crossing place, is there any reason other than divine revelation why it's more likely to be upstream than down?

* Later on, one of the older Pevensies makes a comment implying they saw going downstream as "easier", implying they made that choice because they didn't have the determination to go upstream. But if they were tired, I couldn't see why they'd wrongly prefer to go downstream: when I'm tired is exactly when I'd want to take silly risks like "go upstream in case there's an easy crossing place that will take us right to our destination" instead of "go round the long but safe way".

It may not make much difference practically, but the difference seems to be, were the Pevensies supposed to know that upstream was better even without Aslan? Or to know deep down that it was better, but not have the moral fortitude to follow through with it, for some reason?

For that matter, Aslan never says that He's leading them to a way across. For all they know, Aslan is leading them to something else entirely, letting Caspian et al die.

Now, they know Him well enough to trust him at this point. I may not agree with the Narnian theology in the real world, but I think I know that according to the narrative, the "right" thing to do is always to trust Aslan. But "trust in God" encompasses a wide variety of difficult choices.

Is this supposed to be a case of "you know you should do X, but you're scared it won't work, or you'll be embarrassed, or you'll let everyone down" and God tells you to do X? I think that's what most revelations are supposed to be. Or is this supposed to be like Abraham and Isaac, "do this apparently horrible immoral thing because God says there's a good reason for it but won't tell you what it is"?

I think people disagree about the latter even within Abrahamic theologies.

I don't think that's the choice Lewis is trying to present, but because there's not enough logistical and geographical explanation, it feels like it might be, even though I think Lewis intended a simple "they knew that was the right thing, but failed to do it anyway" parable, he just failed to give them a reason to know it was the right thing.

My link about the question of Susan came up in the pub last night. Some thoughts hopefully of interest are percolating and may surface at some point. (Also see livredor here.)

However, one I am (apparently) contractually obliged to relate. Health warning: do not attempt to describe refinements to this point of view to sonicdrift when she is carrying hot and/or staining liquids because it breaks her.

"It's a shame they didn't go back to England, grow up, set up Stargate Command, and return after a few hours of Narnia time with modern weaponry. Or return just long enough to swipe some submachine guns from a bunker[1]."

(Of course, in the books, the idea of returning at least long enough to plan is raised, but correctly in my opinion, discarded because they realise the wardrobe won't let them play those sorts of games[2])

But just imagine it! The Pevensie commando team, fading camouflaged across the landscape, and ambushing the witch at the height of her power, Peter leaping from the trees with a Sten gun in each hand.

"Go ahead, Tilda Swinton! Make my day."

Of course, there's still the necessity to match the characters up. My first instinct was:

Peter Pevensie <-> Jack O'Neill.
Edmund Pevensie <-> Teal'c.
Susan Pevensie <-> Samantha Carter.
Lucy Pevensie <-> Daniel Jackson.

Peter and Edmund and Jack and Teal'c are the warriors. Peter and Jack are the leaders, the boldest, the battle hardened. Teal'c and Edmund have been through the most, which gives them a sort of gnomic certainty.

Susan and Sam are the most rational, sensible ones, sometimes forced to be too serious. And let their hair down with the youngest member of the team, despite being friends with the oldest.

Lucy and Daniel are the youngest, most inexperienced, most impulsive, curious and intelligent members of the team, and somehow the heart, the ones the story has been about from beginning to end.

However, I can see other mappings too.

[1] Not sure what was standard WWII infantry weapons, despite a brief check on wikipedia.
[2] My reading a book about a magical world and *not* immediately wanting to set up a series of experiments to study it is a major event, I think I need to consider that later.