Her Dusty Musings

[Tabouli]

I've been musing about how to define Dust for Jenny for a few days.  Now I've seen Luke's fine efforts, mine might be redundant, but there was one angle Luke didn't touch on which is the more physics oriented/plot centred angle.

My thoughts are roughly as follows.

In Pullman's universes, a new subatomic particle has been identified... let's call it a dustatron (!).  Intelligent beings in various universes discover that 33,000 years ago, there was a sudden dramatic increase in the level of dustatrons found around human (and other intelligent creatures') remains.  On further investigation, they also discover that dustatrons cluster much more densely around adults than they do around children.  Most bizarre of all, they find that these dustatron particles respond to human thought patterns.  The effects of dustatronic force can actually be observed when people use the alethiometer, or get hooked up to Mary's machine.

The people decide that dustatrons have something to do with thought.  Presumably 33,000 years ago human beings suddenly started thinking in a way which attracted more dustatrons.  Moreover, as children suddenly attract more of them around puberty, dustatrons must also have something to do with sexual maturity.  They conclude that dustatrons are particles of "consciousness" or "self-awareness" in some way.

Now, Luke mentions a lot of things which don't all fit perfectly under "self-awareness".  However, I think it's as good a word as any, especially when you consider the whole Adam and Eve metaphor.  Remember that *before* the fruit business, they were "naked and unashamed".  Not at all *self-conscious*, because they didn't have any concept of morality, any notion that being naked was "bad" in any way.  God alone has a concept of right and wrong.

God then points out the Tree of Knowledge and tells them they may not eat it "lest they die" (I always wonder about this part of the story, inclining towards Douglas Adams' comment that saying "Oh, eat whatever you want but don't touch the apples" is a pretty good way of tempting *anyone's* curiosity, but anyway).  The serpent tells Eve this isn't true, and that if she eats the fruit it will *open her eyes* and make her as a God, *knowing good and evil*.

There's quite an emphasis on awareness, there.  So much so I'd hazard a guess that it may not literally be death but *awareness* of death God was implying.  If they eat the fruit, they will develop a sense of morality, be able to judge things as good and bad, will know that they will one day die.

Intrigued, they eat the fruit, and then their "eyes are opened", and they realise that they are naked, so they cover themselves with fig leaves.  The birth of a concept of sexual morality: to be naked is a "bad" thing, something to be ashamed of, something to be hidden.  God isn't happy, punishes the serpent, and, interestingly, condemns the woman to pain in childbirth (which is the direct result of our development of the large brain associated with our "consciousness" and "intelligence"), subordination to her husband (control of female fertility via monogamy?), and condemns the man to settle down and forge a pastoral lifestyle (tilling the fields and so on).  Then he gives them clothes (reinforcing the judgment of nudity as "bad"), a la house elves, declares them the possessors of moral judgment, and chucks them out of Paradise (the bliss of ignorance?).

There's a pretty heavy emphasis on developing a sense of moral judgment, isn't there?  Deciding for yourself, rather than living in ignorance and delegating ideas about good and evil to God (the higher authority).  Discovering shame, and guilt, becoming self-aware.  Which is exactly what Pullman was getting at.

Then let's consider what happens around puberty.  Adolescents are apt to be very self-conscious indeed, and also very conscious of the social rules of their society (hence their deep embarrassment about their parents).  Behaving in the "right" (or cool, or whatever) way.  And well they might be, because the penalties for breaking 'em is very high indeed in such ghoulish places as secondary schools.  It could be argued that they start to "think for themselves" to a much greater degree, rather than being happy to accept adult judgment.  Also, from being essentially egocentric, children typically become *much* more conscious of how other people perceive them.  All this gradually increases from birth, naturally, but there is a particular acceleration of this around puberty.  With sexual maturity comes sexual awareness... a child who might have run around "naked and unashamed" at 6 suddenly begins to wonder about his or her body (is it attractive? is it normal?) a lot more, and may become *extremely* secretive and self-conscious about people seeing it naked. Pullman touches on that as well, when Lyra suddenly realises she's shy about undressing in front of Will.  The daemon fixing shape at puberty could, I suppose, be construed as the fixing of self-identity.

(Of course, Anglophone society norms are changing rapidly due to the sexualisation of the media, dieting eight year old girls in crop tops and so forth, but let's not complicate things)

Essentially, what Pullman does in HDM is distill self-awareness into subatomic particles which cluster more thickly around a creature the more self-aware it/he/she is.  And calls those particles "Dust", giving them a physical existence which can be detected using special instruments (the alethiometer, the amber spyglass).

Er, did that make any sense?

Tabouli.

P.S. I did wonder whether Metatron was named with physics terminology in mind... postitron, electron... could he be suggesting a meta-particle or something?


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