There’s a theory of education called “learning thresholds” which I wrote about for my post-grad certificate, back when I was treading the academic path. It’s an idea I use widely in my professional life today, for reasons I’ll get to.
A learning threshold is a point on a learning curve where a paradigm shift in thinking is required. Not only do you have to learn new knowledge to cross the threshold, but you have to accept that the new knowledge alters or invalidates most of your old knowledge.
“Christian mythology gave us a millenia or so of cultural dark ages. I wonder sometimes if scifi mythology will be even worse.”
Examples of learning thresholds:
- the shift from Newtonian to quantum physics.
- the concept of object oriented programming.
- use of perspective in image making.
As an educator, learning thresholds are a very useful way of understanding where studemts will struggle, or even rebel. It takes a high degree of ego control from a student to admit that knowledge they hold is “wrong”. Not all students cross the threshold.
As a writer and journalist, learning thresholds tell me where the attention of my readers is. For instance, if I write about how Donald Trump uses socialist ideas to appeal to his voters, I’m hitting a learning threshold. The idea is true, but quite contrary to the more simplistic idea of Trumpism many folks hold.
We’re compelled to debate learning thresholds, as a way to cross into deeper understanding of the issue. Many people will insist the idea is wrong, “TRUMP’S NO SOCIALIST!” But if the idea was simply wrong, it would just be ignored. It’s because it represents a learning threshold that we give it our attention.
What are the learning threshold’s for science fiction?
On one level, science fiction is a genre of entertainment media, that tells stories with sciencey bits. Space rockets! Robowarriors! Hyperdrives! It’s a Will Smith movie you watch on Netflix, or an Arthur C Clarke novel you loaned out from the library when you were ten. Billions of people engage with scifi, and most don’t need to know any more than this.
But, if you start to dig more deeply into science fiction, especially if you start to think about making it, you’re going to encounter another way of thinking about scifi. Like all threshold concepts, it’s an idea that can only really be grasped if you’re willing to let go of your old understanding.
Science fiction is our modern mythology.
I’m not going to argue the case for scifi as mythology here. You’re either on it, and you’ve read Tolkien on mythopoeia and the other arguments in favour, or it’s an idea you’re not ready for. That’s the nature of learning thresholds – you have to cross them, nobody else can do it for you.
But I will look at some of the reasons why the idea hits resistance:
- It requires an expert knowledge of mythology. Myths aren’t nonsense stories from the past. They were the formational narratives of the cultures that our culture evolved from.
- If scifi is a mythology, it’s doing a lot more than entertaining us. Consider the strange, outright cult like obsession that follows The Matrix. Swallowing the Red Pill has become the 21st century equivalent of seeking redemption by eating the flesh of Christ the Saviour.
- Future humans will almost certainly look back on our mythology of space craft, aliens and warp drives as just as crazily wrong as all the mythologies that came before it.
Will we one day worship the Best Science Fiction of The Year anthologies?
My recent list of “scifi novels to rewire your consciousness” got the same comment about 200 times on various forums where it was posted.
What’s the Bible doing on a scifi list? What’s the Bhagavad Gita doing on a scifi list?
If you’re asking that question, and especially if you’re angry or confused by it, you’re standing at the threshold of a deeper understanding of scifi. If it seems totally obvious to you, congrats, you already passed to the next level. Ten years ago I was studyng scifi writing at Clarion, and even though I knew of the idea, I didn’t really get it.
What I find fascinating, and a little bit terrifying, about scifi as a mythology, is how quickly it’s metastisising into a belief system of religious proportions. It took centuries for a some fantasy stories written by a Mesopotamian princess to be raised into a the holy text of the Abrahamic religions. In a matter of a few decades scifi has given birth to transhumanism, with a growing army of adherents convinced they have a shot at eternal life in silicon heaven, if they can just make it to the Rapture of the Geeks.
Christian mythology gave us a millenia or so of cultural dark ages. I wonder sometimes if scifi mythology will be even worse.
Damien Walter 