Waaaaaaay back in the pilot movie, G’Kar sought to “obtain Lyta’s genetic material” because there were no Narn telepaths and Commander Sinclair took down a Dust dealer.
The wheel turns, does it not? Feel free to talk about the episode and all those leading up to it…
Great episode. Obviously arc heavy but even some nice little things that added flavor. I liked Bester describing what it’s like to be on the sleepers. We learn that there’s always a background hum in a telepath’ mind when they’re around other people, and how strange it feels for them to be without there powers. It’s hard to imagine what telepathy would really be like. Even with the analogy of walking with one eye closed, we have no frame of reference to really know what telepathy is like, let alone what it’s like to then lose it.
I know I’m the favourite.
“Crap printing is universal.” True, but at least it wasn’t printed in comic sans.
Yeah, the Bund reference ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund ) was a bit anvillicious, but it gets better. What was Blondie’s reply to Sheriden? “I was just following orders.” Subtle, JMS; so very subtle.
Regarding Bester having a somewhat understandable point of view, there’s something that JMS said (I think it was in a commentary) about his approach to writing Bester: “The monster never sees a monster in the mirror.” I stuck that one right in long-term storage as an excellent rule of writing. Humans are masters of rationalization, and almost always can think up a “good reason” for whatever we do, no matter how vile.
As for who the second Narn in G’Kar’s vision is, I can’t find anything really official, but IMDb lists the actor as playing “G’Quan.” If this is true, it completely fits with the Vorlons’ fondness for religious imagery and authority figures. If Kosh wants to give G’Kar a revelation, who better to appear as than Narn Moses?
I plan to post something tomorrow about dust and telepathy and religious experiences. There’s some intriguing neuropsychological possibilities here.
Okay, now I’m at my desk and can look over the research literature and make sure that I’m doing this right. Here are my thoughts on dust, telepathy, and G’Kar’s spiritual experience.
Naturally, my first thoughts about G’Kar’s experience involved the use of entheogens (psychoactive chemicals that are used for the purpose of triggering inspiration or bringing about a desired spiritual state) such as peyote or LSD (and the associated historical speculations involving ergot). I’m not familiar enough, though, with that research. I do, however, have some familiarity with the neuropsychology of religious experience, and “Dust to Dust” opens up some interesting possible areas for thought, focusing on three adjacent brain areas: the right temporal lobe, the right temporoparietal junction, and the parieto-occipital region.
In research involving the neuropsychology of religious experience, activity in the right temporal lobe has been associated with spiritual phenomena. Michael Persinger examined cases of right temporal lobe epilepsy, and found that some (not all) patients experienced intense religious experiences (an example can be seen in this video featuring neuroscientist VS Ramachandran: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry8wwV50ylQ ). In Persinger’s further research involving artificial stimulation of the RTL ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet ), some participants experience a powerful spiritual presence when their RTLs are “zapped”.
The region where the temporal lobes join the parietal lobes (the temporoparietal junction) have also been implicated in moral and religious phenomena. Right temporoparietal junction activity has been known to trigger out of body experiences, and this region is also connected to “theory of mind” (the ability to infer other people’s mental states). When this region is temporarily “deactivated”, people become less able to take others’ thoughts into account (for example, moral decisions would be based only on consequences, ignoring mental states such as intent, so they can’t understand the difference between a murder and an accidental death). People with chronically underactive “theory of mind” are also less likely to believe in God (atheism is disproportionately common among those on the autism spectrum, for example, and “theory of mind” disability is one of the characteristics of autism).
D’Aquilli and Newberg (before the death of Eugene D’Aquili) used neuroimaging technology to examine the brain functioning of religious people as they engage in spiritual practices. Mystical experiences are associated with activity in the temporo-occipital region. This region of the brain is involved in perceiving unity in stimuli (for example, if one of my students walks towards me, I do not perceive it as a jumble of anatomical structures, but as a single human). This fits well with the subjective experiences of mystical states, as they often involve a sense of “oneness.”
So, put all of this together, and here’s my thought: It makes sense that a drug that triggers telepathy could bring on spiritual experiences, if we see telepathy as a super-enhanced version of “theory of mind.” Instead of making inferences about another’s thoughts, the telepath truly does know what the other is thinking. So telepathy could involve the functioning of the right temporoparietal juncture. If dust triggers activity in that brain region (yes, I know that in the episode we are told that it activates the “latent telepathy gene”, but epigenetic phenomena like that function by altering existing physiological processes such as brain activity), then just like an epileptic seizure that “spreads” from its point of initial activation to adjacent brain regions, dust could trigger activity in the regions next to the temporoparietal junction, namely the right temporal lobe and temporo-occiptal region. Assuming that Narn neurology is close enough to humans, it then makes sense that triggering these regions would put G’Kar in a mental state that is conducive both to religious epiphany and to Vorlon telepathy.
Whew. Okay then. Now back to grading papers.