On Flowers for Algernon

[Kyriakos]

I had reason to examine a motif in a story of mine i wrote yesterday. Basically the story is about complexity being increased. In a way it seems that, even if a person (you, myself, someone else) can become even more labyrinthine in his ability to think, in the end maybe this will not ultimately lead to better things for that person.
I was thinking of the story "Flowers for Algernon", and in way my own latest short story is a bit of the reverse of that, or related to the reverse. In Flowers for Algernon, the protagonist starts as being mentally handicapped. Then, taking part in an experiment, he becomes intelligent. At one point he is more intelligent than the scientist who conducted the experiment, and pretty soon he is miles ahead of the scientist. Then the problems begin.
He senses that, while his intelligence keeps expanding, at the same time it appears, in some other way, to be eroded. He tries to stop that, in ever more complicated equations. But it cannot be stopped anymore. The end of all this is that he becomes once more unintelligent, and the absolute end is where he is even worse off mentally than he was before the experiment.

So, i think too, that it is quite dangerous for one to seek multiplications of complexity in his consciousness. It will likely lead to disaster in the end. (let alone the fact that the other intelligent people will be, next to him, like the scientist in that story, and won't be helped by him, nor will they be able to help him).

Better to increase, in a natural flowing way, the complexity one can grasp, at the same time being always happy with how he is...

[cacian]

Basically the story is about complexity being increased. In a way it seems that, even if a person (you, myself, someone else) can become even more labyrinthine in his ability to think, in the end maybe this will not ultimately lead to better things for that person.
a labyrinth has an entrance and an exit. one goes in last as long as one wishes but then eventually one has to exit it. therefore what ever it is that was causing the delay of getting out is eventually solved by the exiting act.
so the idea of a labyrinth is simply a question of time. it is perhaps a bad idea to go in at the first place because one does not how long one will last inside it but then that is the only risk/tease about it . one manages to eventually after exhausting all possibilities . some get out quicker then others and some take a little longer.
that is what a labyrinth is.


I was thinking of the story "Flowers for Algernon", and in way my own latest short story is a bit of the reverse of that, or related to the reverse. In Flowers for Algernon, the protagonist starts as being mentally handicapped. Then, taking part in an experiment, he becomes intelligent. At one point he is more intelligent than the scientist who conducted the experiment, and pretty soon he is miles ahead of the scientist. Then the problems begin.
'Algernon' is a familiar name. was not the same name used in 'The Importance of Being Ernest'?
anyway this character was mentally ill but then he becomes intelligent upn science. this in reality is pretty far fetched because one is yet to recover from one extreme to the next.
the only time I think of a scientist in the lab is when he or she produces a human monster such Frankenstein, Hulk is another example, or the movie Avatar when the creature worryingly unusual.
so the idea that one goes in from bad to exceptional is an unusual case in literature.
anyway about intelligence one can only be as intelligent as another human being otherwise one is not human.
to be intelligent beyond a human capability is to be something else.
hence the IQ test. intelligence is measured according to another human.