Invitation to a Beheading

and the hard problem of consciousness

I remember realizing the hard problem of consciousness at around 6 years old. I was playing with Barbies beside the bookshelf my grandfather built me and It just struck me, all at once, that everybody had their own mind and that that made a lot of minds in the whole entire world.

It was one of those ideas that scared me so much as a child that I sort of walked back from it, in my own mind. I think perhaps, this mutual obsession is one of the things that draws me to Vladimir Nabokov so much.

My Argument

After finishing Invitation to a Beheading, I think it's a book that is about being misunderstood. About having a rich inner life and being surrounded by people who don't seem to swim in their own minds or question their own lives or, perhaps even worse, do but refuse to admit it. I don't think this is a particularly unique argument either. A Calling for Charlie Barnes, which I read a few years ago also seemed to be pointing at the same idea. A solipsistic notion that you are the only real person in the world. However, Nabokov rejects this idea by the end, diverting from pure solipsism into something more hopeful.

The Framework that Landed

I first formally started exploring the "hard problem of consciousness" after reading The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter. I used to go to Codex books on my lunch break and look through the shelves. I believe I bought it there, reading it before work on the treadmill, on the elliptical before work and during lunch. It cracked my brain open in a way I didn't even know was possible, stretching my brain to begin exploring the basis of computer science, physics, and other areas I'd written off In college.

There's so much crossover between it all, hence my obsession with interdisciplinary thinking.

The humanities are often asking these questions around consciousness, "why" and "who" and "how."

Why am I who I am? How did I become me? Who is I? And so many fields tackle this same question in their own way. Cincinnatus, the main character in this book, has been committed to death for "gnostical turptitude." He is simply too fuzzy to be comprehensible to the others. I feel this way often, in certain environments and I am fond of deep conversations and I love asking other people questions to get at the thing under the things that they're saying. I'm also fascinated by people that choose not to crack open like that. I feel like I don't know how not to.

The Dissent

And maybe the book isn't about being misunderstood. Monsieur Pierre, one of the characters holding him captive and I believe the one who is set to complete the execution, tries to love Cincinnatus. Tries to spend time with him and be kind. They bring him things to read and eat and let him have visitors from his life. But right after Pierre shows him that his living quarters are "almost exactly like yours. Only I keep them clean and decorate them... I decorate them as best I can."

Or this gorgeous declaration from Pierre...

"But, If I have made such a close study of you and--why keep It a secret?-- have grown fond, very fond of you, then you also must needs have grown to know me, grown accustomed to me--more than that, grown attached to me, as I to you. To achieve such a friendship--that was my first task, and It seems I have performed It successfully. Successfully. Now we are going to have tea. I can't understand why they don't bring it." (162).

I guess the Interesting thing In all of this to me Is that Cincinnatus becomes an object of study to the people around him and he feels as If none of them know him. As If he's being left out of some cruel prank or show that everyone else Is In on except for him.

The After

But, spoiler ahead, the ending Is so beautiful. Nabokov's endings are always so beautiful. Cincinnatus realizes that he can simply get up and move. That he can decide on something new for himself. That he can choose a different life, and choose to seek out "beings akin to him," and with this poignant optimism, Implies that they are there.

I feel like this. I've worked on myself a lot over the past few years. I've choosen to be optimisitic. To be Intellectually curious. I created a rule that I follow more than I don't that I "won't complain." I have learned knew disciplines, done my best to work hard, and acted on faith. And the beings "akin to me" are often very old people whith the same obsessions and curiousities. And they are strangers I've found on the Internet who believe In challenging oneself and ones world view.

And I guess Instead of just trying to write down all of my thoughts, I've created Hot Literati Into a collection of lessons on how I arrived at this place.

This Isn't my favoritie Nabokov by any means, but It definitiely makes me remember what It Is I love about his work.

this Is my #hotliteratihomework for the Invitation to a Beheading course.

Take It here and share yours when you finish!! <3