Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Counseling vs. drug therapy

In his early days of research Sigmund Freud actually fed and clothed a few of his patients so he might continue his work with them.  The first psychoactivve drug synthesized was in the 1950s or so, Reserpine, from the herb rawolfia reserpina which had been used for centuries by "medicine men" in primitive cultures. I dont believe that counseling or talking alone can do the job although there is much value, for example in Sheldon Kopp's "If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him" and in cognitive therapies which trace back to Siddhartha Gautama in 5th century BCE (your glass is not half empty but half full)

No text or music is without genre

I realize that people poke fun at Postmodernism and there are computer programs to generate meaningless essays in Pomo language, but surely there must be some nuggets of truth to be found in Derrida.  People poke fun at Marshall McCluhan and yet he was the first to coin the term "surfing" years before the Internet was invented. Actually this morning for the first time in two years I logged into http://express.paltalk.com to help my friend Karzan K. Ks find the 40 Kurdish rooms and all morning long I have been listening to popular Kurdish tunes. Many paltalk rooms are like disc jockeys playing a certain genre of music. Anyway as I realized that all of the Kurdish music is, understandably, of the same genre and very similar to Turkish and Egyptian and Greek music, my thoughts returned to what Derrida says about no text being genderless and it strikes me that we may learn much from the realization that in music too, all country western, rap, heavy metal, etc sounds similar because it partakes of a similar genre and yet when we take the time to become familiar with some certain genre then we realize that there are differences and pieces we prefer OVER others in the same genre.... and one may say the same of classical music which, to a child, perhaps sounds all the same until they learn to distinguish between Bach, Mozart, etc.

No text or music is without genre

I realize that people poke fun at Postmodernism and there are computer programs to generate meaningless essays in Pomo language, but surely there must be some nuggets of truth to be found in Derrida.  People poke fun at Marshall McCluhan and yet he was the first to coin the term "surfing" years before the Internet was invented. Actually this morning for the first time in two years I logged into http://express.paltalk.com to help my friend Karzan K. Ks find the 40 Kurdish rooms and all morning long I have been listening to popular Kurdish tunes. Many paltalk rooms are like disc jockeys playing a certain genre of music. Anyway as I realized that all of the Kurdish music is, understandably, of the same genre and very similar to Turkish and Egyptian and Greek music, my thoughts returned to what Derrida says about no text being genderless and it strikes me that we may learn much from the realization that in music too, all country western, rap, heavy metal, etc sounds similar because it partakes of a similar genre and yet when we take the time to become familiar with some certain genre then we realize that there are differences and pieces we prefer OVER others in the same genre.... and one may say the same of classical music which, to a child, perhaps sounds all the same until they learn to distinguish between Bach, Mozart, etc.

Mental illness

Dr. Theodore Rubin wrote an autobiographical account of his years of residency at a NY State Mental Hospital, entitled "SHRINK" and he states there that one is safer in the halls of that hospital than one is in the streets, for the most part... although he relates an anecdote about a doctor who was describing to interns in a flippant manner the nature of a group of catatonic patients, and he was waving a finger in front of the face of one patient and SUDDENLY that patient bit the doctor's finger completely off... suggesting that though cataonic, the patients had some awareness of what was being said and had sufficient feeling to feel affronted.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Essay on Love

Posted on November 23rd, 2007

 

Several years ago, a dear friend wrote me and asked me to speak on love.

 

Here is my reply:

 

We do not have to worry about how to tell when it is love, for Love tells us.

 

The touchstone of true love is a lifetime of shared commitment. Failure of this test does not mean that we have not loved or cannot love, but passage of this test is proof positive of love indeed.

 

Years after we had parted and gone our separate ways, I told my beloved from my college years, "as Robert Frost once said, home is where, when you go there, they have to let you in, and I know your heart is home for me, for whenever I come to you, I know that you must let me into your heart."

 

We need to be needed and we need to need.

 

We may look to many songs and poems to learn different aspects of love.

 

One old song says "Love is a many-splendored thing" while another says "falling in love with love is falling for make-believe".

 

There is even a song which says, "when I'm not near the one I love, I love the one I'm near."

 

"Better to have known love and lost, than to never have known love at all".

 

There is love of neighbor, love of country and love of God.

 

There are selfish and selfless forms of love. There are selfish loves which smother and destroy and there are loves which give life and meaning both for the giver and the recipient.

 

We see love as instinctive in infants. There is no child which does not love its caregiver, no matter how flawed or abusive they might be.

 

We love because we seek love in return. The love we seek is a validation of our own self-worth, that someone would care if we were not here. The essential message of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life," with Jimmy Stuart, is that the world would not be the same place had we not passed through it.

 

In the movie version of Brideshead Revisited (from the novel by Evelyn Waugh), Sebastian, a tragic alcoholic, has found and taken in someone even more tragic and helpless than himself. Sebastian explicitly says that anyone must be in quite a sorry state to need the likes of a Sebastian to look after them. Yet, Sebastian finds meaning and self-worth and validation in this relationship where he feels needed.

 

To love is to find value, worth. To be loved is to have value and worth.

 

Aristotle said: A friend is another 'I'

 

There is a love which strikes us unexpectedly, like lightening on a stormy night, like the song "some enchanted evening, you will see a stranger, across a crowded room" or the song "strangers in the night, exchanging glances, lovers at first sight".

 

There is a different sort of love which grows through years of shared experiences, which is the love that is possible in arranged marriages. Mohandas Gandhi and Kasturbai were married at the age of 6 and spent a lifetime together. Gandhi, in old age, wept inconsolably when his lifetime companion, Kasturbai, passed away.

 

We see such a love expressed in the song from "Fiddler on the Roof," "Do you love me?"

 

We do not choose our parents, and yet we love them. Sometimes we do not choose our life companion, and yet we grow to love them through shared experiences.

 

We may even learn of bizarre loves as in the movie "Kiss of the Spider Woman": A complex and universal story of friendship and love, "Kiss of the Spider Woman" explores the enforced relationship -- through imprisonment -- of two men with radically different perspectives on life. Molina is a flagrant homosexual window trimmer convicted on a morals charge and Valentine is a clandestinely-held revolutionary who has been endlessly tortured by prison authorities in a non-specific Latin American metropolis.

 

Definitely, love is quite necessary and required for life. An infant will die without some form of love, even if only a feigned love by some nurse caretaker. Experiments in nurseries indicate that if an infant is fed and cleaned, but never given affection, that it grows sickly and dies. I know this only from reading, and cannot personally vouch for the scientific accuracy of this observation.

 

Various religions speak of love. The Bible says somewhere that God is love.

 

The Psalms say "how blessed is it for brethern to dwell together in unity / it is like the oil running down the beard of Aaron". This passage from the Psalms speaks of the sort of love found in monasteries, which is not a sexual love. One sees an analogous love in the military between comrads-in-arms who have seen many battles together.

 

That love which the world spends most of its time discussing is the love which draws two people to share a life together. For the vast majority of us, that love is heterosexual love, which draws us to someone of the opposite gender, yet for a sizable minority in the world such love is for someone of the same gender.

 

Most of us know what it means to live with another person in one fashion or another. Most of us have lived with parents, siblings, relatives. We share the daily tasks of eating, sleeping, cleaning, working and recreation.

 

It is possible to live with someone without loving them and it is possible to love someone without living with them, but the highest expression and test and proof of love is your love for someone you live with daily.

 

In the delightful play "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder, a young man, about to marry, expresses great anxiety about what they will find to discuss each day, for the thousands of days that constitute a lifetime of marriage. Years later, that same character laughs, because what seemed a problem was never really a problem at all. There were always plenty of things to talk about.

  

Thornton Wilder won a Pulitzer price for the play "Our Town". It is quite possible that Thornton Wilder was gay. I have read that, after his death, it was revealed that Wilder was a homosexual, a fact he kept hidden during his life.

 

Karl Maria Kertbeny (or Benkert) [Hungarian] Coined the word "homosexual" in 1869.

 

Karl Maria Kertbeny (1824-1882)

 

Karl Maria Kertbeny was a Hungarian writer who is remembered today mostly for coining the term "homosexual" as a replacement for the pejorative term "pederast" that was used in the German and French speaking world of his time. Though he claimed not to be homosexual himself, Kertbeny said that his sense of justice made him cry out against sodomy prosecutions. Kertbeny argued that homosexuality is an inborn disposition, so laws like Paragraph 175 that punish it are unjust.

 

Kertbeny's writing career produced many books, but almost nothing of literary merit.

 

I mention Thornton Wilder's sexual orientation simply because so many writers, artists and philosophers have been gay and yet have written works which influence our understanding of what love is.

 

While we are on the subject of Thornton Wilder and his play, "Our Town," take a look at this excerpt from an article on AIDS and the terminally ill:

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by regarding Our Town

...anybody who's living with a terminal or a chronic condition is forced to look at their own mortality. For a lot of people who successfully go through the adjustment process and aren't stuck in it, it's real freeing to begin to savor each moment of life, to see fully all the colors that are there, smell fully all the smells, taste all the tastes, hear all the sounds, feel all the feelings you can. It gets back to Thornton Wilder's play 'Our Town' about this girl who was part of a community but who then dies. She comes back as an invisible spirit and watches the townsfolk, her former neighbors. And she see how very little actual living the people do when they're caught up in the middle of it, how they all just kind of sleepwalk through life.

(end of quote)

 

 

I don't think that sexual orientation makes a big difference in one's capacity to love another during a lifetime of cohabitation. There are both straight and gay couples who are successful in committed love relationships, and there are many of both orientations who are failures (and some who are chronic failures).

 

It is difficult to speak about love without speaking about sex. It is perhaps easier to speak about sex without love than to speak of love without sex.

 

It is easier to make a lover out of a friend than it is to make a friend out of a lover.

 

It is rare in any relationship for two people to love each other equally. There is usually one person who loves more and another who loves less. Sometimes, in life, you must make a conscious decision and commitment as to which role you wish to play.

 

======================================

 

Compare a line from e.e. cummings poem :

 

Quote:

your sex squeaked like a billiard-cue

chalking itself, as not to make an error,

with twist spontaneously methodical.

 

..... with this line from Wallace Steven's poem "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle":

 

Quote:

If sex were all, then every trembling hand

Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.

 

====================================

 

In the 1980s I lived and worked in New Haven, Connecticut (near Yale University)....

 

Japanese Sushi restaurants were beginning to gain popularity in the USA, but there was only one such restaurant in New Haven at that time.

 

The two restaurant owners were a somewhat portly middle-aged man of Irish ancestry (who was gay), and the chef, who was a much shorter, slender Japanese man (also middle aged). They were lovers who had lived together for many years.

 

I went to the restaurant often, and got to know many people well there (customers), and also the Irish owner....

 

Im' sure that most people perceived them as quite an unlikely couple to share life together.

 

One day, the Japanese chef returned to Japan for a visit. After several weeks returned to his life (and companion) in New Haven...

 

I had some talks with the owner (the Irishman).... about various personal things...

 

He told me that one day he asked his companion "Do you love me?", and the chef answered... "Love? ...

Love!...

What is this talk about love?....

We are CONNECTED!"...


What is love (reformatted)

HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM A LONG DISCUSSION with a woman in her 20's at the end of a 3 year courtship which would not result in marriage:

William: There is a wonderful silly movie here "What Love Is" a comedy, 
with some impropriety... but also some wisdom.
There is one "dumb blond" who is like a Sufi master Nasrudin, a wise fool.
Her first line is "I wish I lived in a world in which EVERYONE EXCEPT me 
was enlightened,.... so that each and every day, I would learn wonderful amazing new things.

But.... her second line, later, explains what LOVE REALLY IS...
She tells a man who has a broken engagement, "if you REALLY LOVE her, then your love is NOT dependent upon marriage, or even ever seeing her again even if you NEVER SEE her again,.... you will love her, if you have what love TRULY IS

Listen, WHENEVER someone so ARDENTLY desires some outcome, that they become PETULANT over its denial,.... then there is an EXCELLENT chance that IF ...

IF they were to gain their goal, they would become bored
you know the problem is that we people are selfish .we dont want to be in love we want to be loved!
They would lose interest.
Or, like the old song "falling in love with love" with the IDEA of love, 
being in love with love-- falling in love with love is falling for make-believe

We romanticize our notion of what a love relationship would be

In the moon-lit forest of D.H. Lawrence "Sons and Lovers", when the boy and girl seek the fragrent rose bush blooming in the moonlight

That evening, that rose-bush, is ROMANTACIZED love.... but it is NOT love in a daily working relationship

Just as books like Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh ROMANTACIZE the notion of young love between two males or any number of other movies and novels that ROMANTICIZE the notion of a lesbian love, or a homosexual male love.....
the fiction, the dream, the vision, is far different from the daily reality

India stresses the difference between a "LOVE MARRIAGE" and an "arranged marriage"

Maiden: so I decided not to take everything so seriously. and simply enjoy presence or absence of people

William: yes, very zen-like

Maiden: also I decided to fall in love with my own life.

William: live the moment
yes, fall in love with your self, your life... you should watch 
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

There is one scene where "the wise Martian" explains to the 
earth-person that, the meaning and purpose of life is SIMPLY TO LIVE
and derive pleasure from THE GIFT OF PURE BEING
Maiden: If I love my life. I will improve.
I can be what I desperately might search in a lover, couldn't I?


What Is Love?

HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM A LONG DISCUSSION with a woman in her 20's at the end of a 3 year courtship which would not result in marriage:
William: There is a wonderful silly movie here "What Love Is" a comedy, 
with some impropriety... but also some wisdom.
There is one "dumb blond" who is like a Sufi master Nasrudin, a wise fool Her first line is "I wish I lived in a world in which EVERYONE EXCEPT me 
was enlightened,.... so that each and every day, I would learn wonderful 
amazing new things. But.... her second line, later, explains what LOVE REALLY IS... She tells a man who has a broken engagement, "if you REALLY LOVE her, thenyour love is NOT dependent upon marriage, or even ever seeing her again even if you NEVER SEE her again,.... you will love her, if you have what love TRULY IS listen, WHENEVER someone so ARDENTLY desires some outcome, that they 
become PETULANT over its denial,.... then there is an EXCELLENT chance 
that IF ...
IF they were to gain their goal, they would become bored you know the problem is that we people are selfish .we dont want to be in love we want to be loved! They would lose interest or, like the old song "falling in love with love" with the IDEA of love, 
being in love with love falling in love with love is falling for make-believe We romanticize our notion of what a love relationship would be But in the moon-lit forest of D.H. Lawrence "Sons and Lovers", when the 
boy and girl seek the fragrent rose bush blooming in the moonlight That evening, that rose-bush, is ROMANTACIZED love.... but it is NOT love in a daily working relationship Just as books like Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh ROMANTACIZE the 
notion of young love between two males at Cambridge (or is it Oxford) or any number of other movies and novels that ROMANTICIZE the notion of a lesbian love, or a homosexual male love..... the fiction, the dream, the vision, is far different from the daily 
reality India stresses the difference between a "LOVE MARRIAGE" and an "arranged 
marriage"
Maiden: so I decided not to take everything so seriously. and simply enjoy presence or absence of people
William: yes, very zen-like
Maiden: also I decided to fall in love with my own life.
William: live the moment yes, fall in love with your self, your life... you should watch 
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
William: There is one scene where "the wise Martian" explains to the 
earth-person that, the meaning and purpose of life is SIMPLY TO LIVE and derive pleasure from THE GIFT OF PURE BEING
Maiden: If I love my life. I will improve.  Maiden: I can be what I desperately might search in a lover. couldn't I?

Know thyself!

I said to myself "Self (for we are on a first name basis) how long have we known each other?" And Self answered "Are you addressing ME? Who are you to speak to me in this fashion, anyway?" And it was shortly after that when I defriended him.

A Perfect Day For Bananafish

http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html  

Verse Number 71 --LXXI 
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, 
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit 
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

How interesting! In J.D. Salinger's short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in his fanciful musings with a child it is stated that the bananafish has consumed 78 bananas and is so bloated that it is trapped and will die. The Psalms says 3 score year and 10 (70) are the years allotted to a man, perhaps four score and what is beyond that is toil and travail. Job is said to have died "old and full of days."  

http://www.miguelmllop.com/stories/stories/bananafish.pdf   

"Well, they swim into a hole where  there's a lot of bananas. They're very 
ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I've known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas." He  edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. "Naturally, after that they're so fat they can't get out of the hole again. Can't fit through the door." 

NOTICE the imagery of a narrow passage through which few can fit.  http://bible.cc/matthew/7-14.htm  Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. COMPARE with the camel who cannot pass through the eye of the needle and Balaam and his donkey who try to pass a narrow way but an angel with a sword blocks their path (which is the only other passage in the Bible that speaks of a narrow way.)

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Plato's Theatetus - What is Knowledge?

I watched with great interest a documentary on the Oppenheimer trials to permanently revoke his security status and suggest that he was unpatriotic because he expressed misgivings about development of the H-Bomb. The next day, I was trying to remember the name Oppenheimer. I was in Citibank when suddenly it popped into my head, so I exclaimed "Oppenheimer." There was only one customer near by, a male in his 50s. He looked at me, puzzled. I explained that I had watched the documentary and was trying to recall the name. He said "why would you even care about such a thing?" This is the typical reaction of the world to someone who has had a certain kind of education; a bewilderment as to why anyone would want to think, to question, to know. Who cares if during the Cold War America thought it would be a patriotic idea to bomb our way across the Soviet Union, continue through China, and kill 300 million people to make the world a safe place for democracy. I am currently reading J.D. Salinger's chapter about the dialog with a taxi cab driver concerning where the ducks in Central Pond go in the winter. The Holden Caufield's question is typical of the intellectual and the cab driver's reaction is typical of the average anti-intellectual American "Who cares and if YOU care you must be crazy."

The testimony regarding the H-Bomb made me realize that perhaps America did have a serious intention of bombing its way across Russia and into China, killing 300 million people to rid the world of the ideological threat of Communism. I am rather fond of Russians and Chinese but it does occur to me that after World War II America had a unique window of opportunity to exterminate various ideologies which are now possibly a threat to world peace. It even dawned on me that in theory if Hitler had WON the war, he would have gone on homogenizing the world BUT perhaps after a few centuries the Nazi Reich would have crumbled and the survivors would have enjoyed more peace and harmony than we now enjoy. But as we know Hitler was defeated, Israel was plunked in the middle of Arab nations and Arab cultures became a force to be reckoned with... or perhaps even a force which is too late to reckon with. So the ultimate result of the Allied victory may one day result in World War III or Armeggadon but the victory of Hitler, as evil as he was, might after several centuries have resulted in centuries of world peace.

Oppenheimer felt blood on his hands and complained to Truman and Truman said "Look at all the blood I have on my hands" and refused to ever see that sissy scientist again. Yet for years journalists always spoke of physicists as BRILLIANT physicists... there were never any ordinary run-of-the-mill physicists, only BRILLIANT ones.

http://turingmachine.org/remedios/picture11.htmlEach sentence which enters our mind, enters with an explosion of thoughts, of memories, like a holiday fireworks display. And yet, it is bad 
manners, and poor style, to ramble on in such a stream of consciousness. 
If I am to respond properly, then I must pick and choose sparks from 
that expanding sphere of fire or, I suppose embers is a better word for 
them by the time they fall into my grasp, for they have cooled down a bit, and reorganize them into some respectable, linear, thematic sequence, or syllogism (of the A implies B, B implies C, Aristotelian variety, train of thought, line of reasoning). ---- In Mexico City, they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled "Bordando el Manto Terrestre," were a number of frail girls 
with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had taken her away from nothing, there'd been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her 
ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, 
anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on 
superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or
marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of 
deliverance no proof against its magic, what else? 

-- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, end of Chapter 1

One can only truly be happy by explaining to others in detail exactly how and why he is happy. Robert Ornstein in his book "Multimind" calls this T.W.I.T. (acronym for The Western Intellectual Tradition") namely that we cannot fully experience anything until we share it in narrative fashion with others, which is why Homer's Epics are as you find them, people passing time asking strangers for their stories and anecdotes. Now if we did not all share this flaw of T.W.I.T. then no one would ever share anything because each of us would be a self-sufficient island unto ourselves.

The novella "The Crying of Lot 49" is a great place to start. Gravity's Rainbow is more daunting. But one can become pleasantly lost in a page, a paragraph or even a sentence: Pascal's macrocosm and microcosm. The microcosm of quantum frenzy builds up to the regular and predictable clockwork motions of galaxies. Kant was the first to realize that a seeming star may be a distant galaxy. e.e. cummings ended one poem "any illimitable star."

William, you wrote earlier: The next day, I was trying... to remember the name Oppenheimer. I was in Citibank when suddenly it popped into my head, so I exclaimed "Oppenheimer." There was only one customer near by, a male in his 50s. He looked at me, puzzled. I explained that I had watched the documentary and was trying to recall the name. He said "why would you even care about such a thing?" 

The discourse that is usually engaged in when one is standing in a line as customer in a public establishment (if there is any conversation at all) consists of something that is somewhat relevant to the situation that one is in. It generally consists of what is known as small talk, which plays a constructive and beneficial role in human society. 

I would therefore interpret the above individual's comments relative to that. You blurted out a name when you were not engaged in a conversation with anyone, which means you were talking to yourself. That is generally behavior that is demonstrated by those who are not in complete control of their faculties (i.e., crazy people) :) That you blurted the name of a famous scientist, and then proceded to discuss a documentary you had watched the night before, does not change this fact :) 

You were acting somewhat eccentrically in relation to the social setting that you were in. We all do this at times. However, i don't think it's valid to assume that the person who reacted to your atypical behavior was anti-intellectual.

William replies: but, he did seem puzzled as to why I would care about Oppenheimer's name ... I suspect the majority of Americans are anti-intellectual. A math professor who loves jazz was travelling in Hungary, on a bus, and all the passengers were kind of mocking them. But suddenly, when asked their profession, and they answered professors, a hushed silence of awe fell over the entire bus and they were treated with respect for the rest of the trip. My professor friend commented that this would never happen in America.

Actually the fellow in the bank spoke with a heavy European accent so he was most likely not American. When I was in my 20s, after SJC, in New Haven, teaching myself modern Greek and giving free English lessons to Greeks, they all thought I was crazy to engage in an endeavor which would not result in money or sex. They wanted to learn English to make money. I wanted to gain a fluency in Greek to know what it is like to be bi-lingual.

People who had intellectuality are forced to employ it to defend their positions. Such irony! It is like Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons who steals all the television networks and then uses the medium of television to decry the banality of television, much as those fundamentalists who yearn to return to the 7th century use all the latest internet and media technology to proclaim their message.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy observes: only the Theaetetus offers a set-piece discussion of the question “What is knowledge?”

I would venture say that knowledge is a process and not a product. The Gods do not love wisdom for they possess it. Plato likens the process to a weaver at his loom with shuttle skittering through the warp and woof as they separate and conjoin. A Jewish notion of dialectic is called pil-pul http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=318&letter=P The Mishnah says (B. M. i. 1): "If two persons together hold a garment in their hands, and one of them asserts 'I have found it,' and the other likewise says 'I have found it,' and the first one says 'It belongs entirely to me,' and the second likewise says 'It belongs entirely to me,' then each one shall swear that not less than one-half of the garment is rightfully his, and they shall divide the garment between them." ... NOTICE IN THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE THE NOTION OF SEPARATION AND JOINING - The pilpulistic method of study soon degenerated into sophistry. It was no longer regarded as a means of arriving at the correct sense of a Talmudic passage and of critically examining a decision as to its soundness. It was regarded as an end in itself; and more stress was laid on a display of cleverness than on the investigation of truth. This new development of the pilpul is ascribed to Jacob Pollak, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century and in the beginning of the sixteenth. This pilpul par excellence was pursued especially under two forms. In the one, two apparently widely divergent halakic themes were placed in juxtaposition, and a logical connection between them was sought by means of ingenious and artificial interpretations and explanations, but in such a way that the connective thread between them appeared only at the end of the treatise: this was the "derashah." In the other form an apparently homogeneous theme was dissected into several parts, which were then again combined into an artistic whole: this was the so-called "ḥilluḳ" (analysis, dissection). The treatises following this method of the pilpul in both of these forms were called "ḥiddushim" or "novellæ" (original products) because thereby the most familiar objects were made to appear in a new light.

Penelope preserved her purity by unraveling what she wove each day.

... started me thinking that the question "what is knowledge" is related to the question "what is intelligence" (with the obvious A.I. implication) which is related to the broader question "what is consciousness." Yesterday I read that Wittgenstein was dissatisfied with Socrates in the Theatetus --- when I google on WITTGENSTEIN THEATETUS ,, I find some thought-provoking links : http://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/theaetetus.html(But is this not word magic? -- Why should the word 'knowledge' be taken as proof that there is a Form that corresponds to that word, the single meaning, the only meaning, of that word?)

As I read the following excerpt from the above Wittgenstein link, I am reminded of "apophatic theology" which holds that one can only speak of "what is not" which is related to the Vedic notion of "neti neti" (not this, not this), also apophatic, peeling away at reality like an onion --- EXCERPT: Statements of truth versus plausible remarks

What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic ... (Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: a Memoir, 2nd ed. (1984), Letter No. 9)

Is that all we do in philosophy -- make more or less plausible remarks?

What do we mean by 'plausible' other than: what I am inclined to take/treat seriously (rather than regard as "unacceptable" [to what -- my imagination?] or absurd ["idiotic"]), or what I find "believable", "credible", or about which I might say: "It may be that way" or "Well, it really might be that way, you know"?

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft2199n7gn%3Bchunk.id%3D0%3Bdoc.view%3Dprint Excerpt: Plato may have in mind the sort of progression that Aristotle writes of at the beginning of the Metaphysics : from individual perceptions (random individuals), to the experience that results from a multiplicity of similar perceptions (small groups), to the science that discerns the principle common to all such perceptions (distinct flocks). Alternatively, the picture may be a reference to the method of collection (which was alluded to at 147d). The single birds may be individual knowledges that have not yet been related to others, as when we do not yet see that our knowledge of Socrates and our knowledge of Theaetetus belong together within a knowledge of the species of human beings. The small groups may represent various knowledges of species that have not yet been discerned as embraced within a genus, as when we recognize the species of human beings but do not yet see its relationship to other animals. And the flocks may represent our knowledge of genera. On either explanation the aviary appears to illustrate the progression of knowledge from individual perceptions to universal kinds.[38] ======
The aviary is empty at our birth, and the knowledges that we acquire through learning are birds that we capture for the aviary. When we first catch one and imprison it, we may be said to "possess" it, but we do not actually "have" it until we catch hold of it again (197c-e), that is, make use of it. The modal has the advantage over the wax block that it can account for knowledge that is latent rather than actual. But it has the disadvantage that it is no longer possible to match knowledge against perception—the birds do not seem to refer to anything outside the aviary. This does not seem at first to be a disadvantage, however, for Socrates' examples are no longer concerned with perceptual knowledge but only with mathematics. It is as if we have now moved beyond pistis to dianoia on the Divided Line. But the model cannot be assimilated to the doctrine of recollection, because it posits a mind empty at birth and filled entirely by empirical means. In fact the suggestion that we learn mathematics by having it handed over from teacher to student (198a-b) flies in the face of the Meno .

Tutor William Pitt, around 1968-69, gave a Friday night lecture about the Alan Turing machine which strikes me as something apophatic in the sense that the TEST of the machine's success in emulating human consciousness rests upon the gradual inability of human interlocutors in dialog with the machine to distinguish the machine from another human. === EXCERPTS from previous link: Socrates replies that true opinion cannot be the same as knowledge, because jurors can be persuaded to have a true opinion about something they have not witnessed, whereas only eyewitnesses have knowledge (201b-c). ====== Plato prepares us in advance for the fact that the wax modal can be made to converge with the aviary model.

I would like to throw into this mix the following two disparate sentiments 1) man is the measure of all things and 2.) Anselm's notion that God is a greater than which nothing can be imagined. -- Suppose the 1970s movie "Demon Seed" could come true and a super-computer could be constructed which is self modifying, self perpetuating and achieves a meta-consciousness and a meta-wisdom which far transcends human comprehension. Now man is no longer the measure of all things but a creation of man which transcends man, and the thoughts of AI are far greater than what the human mind is capable of. So what is natural (human consciousness) becomes artificial and inferior while what is artificial (AI) becomes natural and normative. Notice that in "Demon Seed" the scientists ask the computer, Proteus, to tell them where oil may be found under the ocean and Proteus refuses on moral grounds that humans would cause more harm than good if they drilled for oil under the ocean.

Symbolically (or allegorically) man partakes of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and thereby unwittingly exiles mankind from paradise. But now we can easily imagine how man unwittingly partakes of the fruit of technology to 1.) create weapons or cyclatrons that bring about Earth's demise 2.) create monsters through genetic engineering which cannot be put back in Pandora's box (Heisenberg speaks of this in an essay for the lay reader on Quantum) and 3.) create an intelligence and a being which renders humans obsolete in the best-case scenario or in the worst case renders natural man as a pest to be exterminated by his own creations which now transcend man.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Samsung Epic 4G

$149 at Sprint 120 Water St. Near Maiden Lane with touch screen AND keyboard
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

If threads did not wander there would be no tapestries

http://turingmachine.org/remedios/picture11.html  

Each sentence which enters our mind, enters with an explosion of thoughts, of memories, like a holiday fireworks display. And yet, it is bad manners, and poor style, to ramble on in such a stream of consciousness. 

If I am to respond properly, then I must pick and choose sparks from 
that expanding sphere of fire or, I suppose embers is a better word for 
them by the time they fall into my grasp, for they have cooled down a bit, and reorganize them into some respectable, linear, thematic sequence, or syllogism (of the A implies B, B implies C, Aristotelian variety, train of thought, line of reasoning).  ---- 

In Mexico City, they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled "Bordando el Manto Terrestre," were a number of frail girls 
with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had taken her away from nothing, there'd been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or 
marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else? 

-- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, end of Chapter 1 

Thursday, May 26, 2011

The American Agenda behind the H-Bomb

In the documentary on Oppenheimer's trial, the testimony regarding the H-Bomb made me realize that perhaps America did have a serious intention of bombing its way across Russia and into China, killing 300 million people to rid the world of the ideological threat of Communism.  I am rather fond of Russians and Chinese but it does occur to me that after World War II America had a unique window of opportunity to exterminate various ideologies which are now possibly a threat to world peace. It even dawned on me that in theory if Hitler had WON the war, he would have gone on homogenizing the world BUT perhaps after a few centuries the Nazi Reich would have crumbled and the survivors would have enjoyed more peace and harmony than we now enjoy. But as we know Hitler was defeated, Israel was plunked in the middle of Arab nations and Arab cultures became a force to be reckoned with... or perhaps even a force which is too late to reckon with.  So the ultimate result of the Allied victory may one day result in World War III or Armeggadon but the victory of Hitler, as evil as he was, might after several centuries have resulted in centuries of world peace. 

Your Inner Journey

Oh, wow, BECAUSE of the topics of this thread Facebook is now peppering my page with ads for ADHD, "Your Inner Journey" , "Comprehensive Behavioral" and "Why People Do That" ... regarding Oprah... I always liked her. Some people seem to despise her. She MUST have SOMETHING going for her to have become the 3rd most powerful/wealthy woman in the world and last for 25 years. I recently started to re-read Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" which I first read when I was age 15.  I can see how that book revolves around self-awareness and depression. I know that World War I hastened the development of things like the Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory simply as a way to cope with several hundred thousand people who had to be drafted, trained, sent overseas and then diagnosed for resulting traumas. When I was a teenager I assumed that feeling miserable, useless and depressed was just part of life. I knew a teen in the 1990s who spent months in a psychiatric hospital and frequently complained "I am a teenager I am supposed to be having fun and feel happy why do I feel crappy it must be somebody's fault" and then all the testing suggests bi-polar or ADHD.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Jesus for President

Whenever we elect a president or prime minister we act as if we expect that one person to solve many problems. Yet the solutions involve complex interactions between legislative and judicial bodies, media, unions, financial and academic institutions, etc. If Jesus Christ ran and were elected then we would have a theocracy. Is it a Christ figure that we seek in our leaders?

Disappointing Political Candidates

Perhaps those who find four years too long find no president which pleases them and perhaps they are displeased because they expect the impossible. Jesus seemed to offer a certain "platform" and did Jesus deliver on the campaign promises and if not does the fault lie with Jesus or with his constituency?

Zen Masters and Poetry

Zen masters are also admired for their ability to compose poems. I met Seung Sahn founder of Choge Zen centers and he has a book of poems. The Blue Cliff Records of Koans has poems, I think, but I will have to grab the copy off my shelf to be certain.  Seung Sahn was an old man but had affairs with at least three American women who all, strangely enough, became Zen masters which is not a transmission which is bestowed casually. I tripped up Seung Sahn once at a public meeting with one question: "It is said that Siddhartha Gautama deliberated for several days whether to preach to the world or retire to seclusion; had he retired what would your practice now be."   The audience let out a slight gasp.  He did not answer the question really but did seem irritated by it.

Six year term of office

I recently listened to a Charlie Rose interview with the president of Mexico who serves a SIX year term.  Four years seems too short. It is wasteful to campaign every four years. A six year term might be more practical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felipe_Calder%C3%B3n 

His English is impressive. During his presidential campaign Calderón stated that the challenge was not between the political left or right, but a choice between the past and the future. Moving toward the past would mean nationalization, expropriation, state control of the economy, and authoritarianism, while the future would represent the contrary: privatization, liberalization, market control of the economy, and political freedom.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

J.D. Salinger

Norman Mailer: "Salinger was the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school."
Hemingway and Faulkner occasionally took snide and snarky potshots at each other. Authors and artists can be petty. When I came across Mailer's remark today I reflected on other works like "Franny and Zoe" and "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish" and decided that Mailer's observation was inaccurate. Apparently for a period Mailer and Henry Miller rented apartments in the same Brooklyn brownstone and as they passed one another in the hallway each would think of the other "oh, he will never amount to anything." I read that "The Death of a Salesman" was written in 6 weeks. Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage" was written in 10 days flat. Various novelists say they can complete a novel in six months. Annie Proulx worked six months on her short story "Brokeback Mountain."

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Boycott Traitor Trump

It was irresponsible for Trump to PRETEND to have ambitions for the White House for a few weeks just to get some free publicity at the publics expense since every minute of media coverage costs in time and money and the false bid for office distracts from serious candidates. I think a national campaign should be mounted to boycott Donald Trump as a traitor to the nation's best interests.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Milk

I spent 3 summers on a dairy farm when I was 8, 9, 10 ... Most of the milking was done by a milking machine. The last several cups had to be milked by hand. There was always a fly or two falling into the pail. That milk was poured through a filter. The farm family drank raw milk. My mother would never let me taste it because I was a sickly child although she had grown up on a farm and drank raw milk. In the final decade of the farm's operation ALL of the milk when from the cow STRAIGHT into a cooling tank. A truck would come from the dairy every other day to empty the tank and take it to the dairy where it was then pasteurized. 

Pynchon on Leopold's Congo

Here is that Pynchon passage on page 317 of my paperback edition of Gravity's Rainbow: Oh, no. Colonies are much, much more. Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, and enjoy the smell of his own sh-!-t. Where he can fall on his slender prey roaring as loud as he feels like, and guzzle her blood with open joy. Eh? Where he can just wallow and rut and let himself go in a softness, a receptive darkness of limbs, of hair as woolly as the hair on his own forbidden genitals. Where the poppy, and cannabis and coca grow full and green, and not to the colors and style of death, as do ergot and agaric, the blight and fungus native to Europe. Christian Europe was always death, Karl, death and repression. Out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the Metropolis, nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marble statues, noble thoughts. . . . No word ever gets back. The silences down here are vast enough to absorb all behavior, no matter how dirty, how animal it gets....

+++

New meaning of IMF - I Maid F'er

If THIS doesn't go viral in the tasteless and tacky world of cyberspace then "God didn't make little green apples and it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime."

If you believe in aid to Africa then won't you please post this all in your status and keep it for one hour?

Ingratitude

For me low presidential ratings are not so much an indication of some president's lack of ability but rather a measure of America's limitless capacity for ingratitude. If Obama were wise he would decline a second term and let someone else, Republican or Democrat, be clown for four years.

The word BOOK means RELIGION in Tibet

I watched a documentary about archeological finds of Bon manuscripts in Tibet dating from 1000 years ago when Buddhism replaced Bon. In the Tibetan language apparently there is no distinct word for "religion" but rather they use the word "book." I am reminded of the Qur'an's phrase "people of the book." Anyway, any book is sacred, even the books of the "heretical" religion being replaced, so instead of destroying the books they place them in a cave. I was reminded of all this by your comment that the Wolof phrase "to pray with" is the same as "to be Muslim."  I reposted the link to your newspaper article and received one "like" so far.  The CNN news yesterday mentioned that one couple was so into Facebook that they named their baby girl "Like."

Monday, May 16, 2011

Switching from Windows to MAC

As far as I can see... switching from Windows to Mac involves 1.) differences in key combinations ... the ctrl key becomes on the Mac a key with an APPLE logo on it, so ctrl-C ctrl-V for copy and paste become Apple-C Apple-V .... and to force close a program rather than bringing up the task manager with alt-ctrl-del you click Apple-options-Esc (or is it Apple-ctrl-esc) .. but anyway you may GOOGLE SEARCH and ask how to do something on a mac and it will tell you.   Next, realize that whatever you do in a browser in the "cloud" will be the same. Facebook will be the same, and Google, and Gmail. Many of the applications you use will be on the Mac such as Excel, Word, etc.  One cool thing about Mac is the FINDER... e.g. suppose you want to change some configuration in Airport Extreme ... or lets say you want your Chrome browser.. you simply key what you want into FINDER and it brings it up for you and launches it.. you do not have to crawl to some folder hidden in Programs....   You do not deal with a pesky thing like the Registry... When you download a program for installation you simply drag it to the Programs folder. To UNINSTALL a program you simply DELETE it from the Programs folder. Supposedly you do not need an anti-virus on the Mac. I installed the free Sophos antivirus. I did use the Safari browser to search something and it automatically launched a program which said I should give it permission to do all sorts of wonderful things to my Mac (with no option to decline) so I did the Apple-option-esc forced shutdown thing (which is what I do on Windows with the task manager) ...   There is a backup drive which will do a real time backup.... and if you lose something important (or minor) you may restore to some previous state and there will be no need to reinstall programs....

There are various reasons to go with Windows, MAC, and Linux.  If you want reliability and quality for free then you go with Linux which is open source (Windows and MAC are proprietary).  Windows XP (which is no longer supported) was one of the most stable versions of Windows but Vista was an abortion. Windows 7 is much better than Vista. All computers are now 64 bit as opposed to the old 32 bit. Windows 7 maintains a Programs folder for 64 bit apps and a Programs_86 for 32 bit legacy apps. There are problems uninstalling programs which is why there is a $40 third party program that DOES uninstall Windows 7 programs... which kind of sucks.  Apple MAC is more expensive and very proprietary but offers better dependability and support. I suspect that there is something Linux like underlying MAC because there is a TERMINAL program (which you launch by going into FINDER and keying TERMINAL) and from TERMINAL you enter very linux like commands which include the VI or VIM text editor. Perhaps I am mistaken.  IF you depend upon something like Intuit Quicken or Quickbooks then you may have problems getting the same thing on MAC. You may have to use something which lets you REBOOT the mac into a Windows mode, which is inconvenient. Of course if you can afford a Mac Book Pro and have a genuine need for it then you will enjoy a light notebook which give 8 hours of battery life. I have had a a 6 year old Mac Book for all of 2 weeks so I am hardly an authority. But you may google up tons of articles on Mac.

Why I am a Heretic

Everyone likes gold, but only those who REALLY like it dig deep for it. Reading all sorts of different books is one way to "dig for gold."  Now someone like Hans Kung dug SO deep that he is banned from teaching theology in a Catholic university (which means that he moved his office from the theology department to the philosophy department.)  Kung is like someone who has climbed Mt. Everest and is texting to us down at sea level to say what the view is like at sunrise. But only those who climb Mt. Everest themselves can actually know what its like. I was raised with absolutely no religion by Protestant parents (in name only) who never took me to church even once. It was in the St. John's Great Books program that I was first exposed to writings about religion. After I graduated, I began to teach myself modern Greek. Then I began regularly attending the only Greek Orthodox church in New Haven (St. Barbara's).  Then I entered Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Monastery in Jordanville NY for 3 months, was unhappy there, and went to Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline MA where I was a novice for 13 months and came to realize that I was not cut out for such a life. I remained Eastern Orthodox for 20 years but became disillusioned with myself feeling that I could not be what I was expected to be and in part I was disillusioned by the Old Calendarist Greek bishops who kept breaking away from each other and accusing each other of heresy.  I divorced my first wife of 13 years (partly my fault and partly hers) and married a not-so-religious Filipina who gradually became extremely religion and took lifetime vows as a third order Sister of Charity. She developed several serious autoimmune diseases and had a kidney transplant. For years we have lived as brother and sister. I personally gradually experimented with many religions and then rolled my own (like rolling a cigarette) which has some elements of Hinduism and some Buddhist/Jain/Sikh/Sufi elements. I came to understand a lot about Roman Catholicism. I would possibly consider becoming Roman Catholic. I would never seriously consider joining some Protestant denomination for the simple reason that I have done very well making my own religion and feel in no need of help from Joel Osteen et al.  I lean towards Pelagius and Steinbeck's understanding of Pelagius which he illustrates in his novel "East of Eden" by which I mean to say that each person possesses within themselves all that is necessary to avoid evil if they really desire to do so.  If there is a Judgment and a Hell then I deserve condemnation in hell on the basis of my heretical beliefs. I prefer God's justice over mercy. As Krishnamurthi said "Truth is a pathless land."

Jaroslav Pelikan and Hans Kung

I recommend the five volumes (in paperback) by Jaroslav Pelikan "The History and Development of Christian Doctrine" (or some title like that I am doing this from memory) http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/decemberweb-only/12-27-42.0.html  Pelikan was raised as a Lutheran I think. His five volume history is scholarly yet very readable for someone with no formal training. Pelikan is unbiased and without agenda. It is known that over the years Pelikan began to favor Eastern Orthodoxy in his personal spiritual life.  The other book I would recommend is Hans Kung's "Religion for the Third Millennium." Pelikan quotes Paul's verse (which follows) but give a very clever spin to it by understanding "faith" as "doctrine" or "dogma" 1 Corinthians 13: Faith, Hope, Love
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. ---  For me one of the most important things Paul said is "God places his treasures of gold in earthen vessels."  Those earthen vessels are human beings with all their strengths and weaknesses. I personally like to say that "Paul was not the sock-puppet of the Holy Spirit" and by that I mean perhaps what Karl Barth meant when he wrote that the scriptures are individuals giving an account of their personal experiences of the holy, but the scriptures themselves are not to be conflated with that holiness. If 1,000 people witnessed some event they would give 1,000 different accounts which would share a lot in common but would not be identical. In the 2nd Epistle of Peter (ch. 3:16 I think) Peter said (paraphrasing from memory) "Paul has said some things which are difficult to understand and those who lack the foundation of a proper understand twist and distort such passages to their own destruction (as they do with many other scriptural passages.)  When the apostle asked  the Ethiopian eunuch seated in a chariot reading Isaiah "do you understand what you are reading" the eunuch answered "how may I understand unless I have someone to guide me."

More on salvation, faith, and the Roman Catholic Church

Thanks everyone for making good points!  Someone who has been a good friend for 40 year posed this question to me which is why I posted this note. The question as I recall  was "do Roman Catholics believe that salvation comes by faith alone."  There is a long avenue which runs from the north to the south of Brooklyn and I used ride the length of it on the B38 bus. I marveled that literally each and every block would have at least one store front church and some blocks had as many as THREE. One sign mentioned that the church was founded by Bishop Elizabeth Brown (I am making up some similar name.)  Basically most if not all of those churches were founded by people with little formal theological training. I am certain that in many of those store front churches if one were to "come to the rail" (at a certain point those who believe are invited to come up front) and confess that Jesus is Lord and ask Jesus to enter their lives as their "personal Savior" would simply be considered "saved." In other words it is a fairly simple and immediate matter of speaking a few words. When I was a kid and used to hide in the woods and smoke, I found a match book from Billy Graham that had literally had a FORM to fill out on the inside of the match cover stating "I accept Jesus as Lord" and you were supposed to mail it in.  Now... the point I would like to make is that IF someone were to attend a Roman Catholic church and approach a priest and inquire about becoming a Roman Catholic, then one would schedule a series of classes or instruction. One would become a "catechumen" which I think means listener.  The Eastern Orthodox liturgy (mass) has a "Litany of the Catechumens" which the deacon says which instructs the non-baptized to leave the church. Only those who have been baptized remain.  Someone preparing for baptism might conceivably be advised to read the 900+ page catechism (which is available on line.)  I will ask some priests how many weeks or months it takes on the average for an adult to be ready for baptism. Once baptized a convert would be encouraged to come to confession several times a year at least and to attend mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.  No one is really GUARANTEED salvation in this life. The goal is to remain "in friendship with God" which means trying to sin as little as possible and to examine one's conscience for offenses and also to do good works of charity and mercy (e.g. I was in prison and you visited me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink... etc) but the ultimate judgement of God is a mystery to humans and no human knows the day or the hour. There is a parable in which some people come to labor in the vineyard from the early morning to the end of the day. But as the day passes more are called to labor in the vineyard, and there are some who come to work only during the last minutes. At the end each is paid one penny. Obviously, that "penny" is salvation. Some worked towards it all their lives. Others sought it only in the final weeks or days of life.  A Orthodox Jew once asked me privately if it were true that Hitler could have been baptized and forgiven all his sins. I explained that in theory someone who did the most monstrous of sins could in theory repent, believe, be baptized and be forgiven. Hitler was baptized a Catholic as a child I believe. The point I want to make is that baptism may sound like a magic wand but in reality it is God who offers to each soul the gift of faith and it is each individual soul which makes a free will choice either to receive that gift like the seeds which are sown some in rocky places, some in sand or gravel, and some in rich moist soil and only some of those seeds mature to bear fruit. The point is that not every monster would suddenly think to be baptized at the last minute and be saved.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Salvation by Faith Alone

Someone asked a good question regarding Catholics and whether it is true that they suggest more for salvation than a simple profession of faith.  It is true that the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox reject the notion that someone may be saved by a simple profession of faith.  Martin Luther developed the 5 "solas" as an innovation in the 16th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_solas .... so we may feel certain that such notions did not exist before Martin Luther. One of those "solas" is "salvation by faith alone." If one looks at the Epistle of St. James it is very obvious from the verse "show my your faith without works and I will show you my faith THROUGH my works" and "faith without works is dead" that James did not share such a notion.  Luther did not care for the Epistle of James and wanted to toss it out of the Bible.  We need only look at the writings of Maximus the Confessor in the 6th century who said:


"Do not say that 'mere faith in our Lord Jesus Christ can save me.' For this is impossible unless you acquire love for him through works. For in what concerns mere believing, 'even the devils believe and tremble.'  "  


It is obvious from looking at 6th century theologians like Maximus and the entire Philokalia which spans 70 authors from the 4rd century to the 11th century that there is no hint of Protestant notions of piety.  If all that was necessary was a profession of faith then why would the desert father have left the cities to live in the deserts in celibacy and fasting. They could have stayed in the city had a wife, sipped there beer and chatted about their faith in Jesus.   

 

 

Newt Gingrich was on an interview on television this weekend as a possible presidential candidate. The journalist pointed out that Newt is on his third marriage and was caught in an adulterous affair just as Clinton was going through the Lewinsky scandal.  Gingrich said "Yes, this is true, but I have ASKED GOD FOR FORGIVENESS."    Well, that is typical Protestant rhetoric.  You live exactly as you please and then when it is convenient you sob and say your sorry and ask God for forgiveness and that makes everything all better.  Yes, people can make mistakes, but they must CHANGE THEIR WAYS and reform and not return like a dog to their own vomit.  There are actually Protestant denominations who believe that baptism by water is unnecessary since faith is all that is necessary. We see in the Book of Acts that the eunuch in the chariot asked for baptism by the waters edge. The first 1000 years of Christianity were all about baptism by water. The Protestant Reformant  gradually resulted in many changes in the most basic things.  


No one FORCED Martin Luther to take life vows of poverty and chastity as an Augustinian monk.  Luther voluntarily made the vows and then did not have the courage or discipline to keep them so he rewrote religion to suit his own weaknesses.  Perhaps some of the "works" that Catholics and Orthodox require may seem extraneous or superstitious, but to me it is obvious that mere lip service to some faith or belief or whining and sobbing for forgiveness and saying you are a "changed person" are worse than useless for they are dangerous as they lull us into a complacency rather than motivate us to take action and do something about our problems. If you are an alcoholic, then stop drinking. If you are overweight then stop eating. If you are a fornicator/adulterer then stop with those activities. SHOW that you are truly sorry by the WORK and ACTION necessary to change. But don't just say you are saved by faith alone because Christ did it all for you an paid your substitutionary atonement on the Cross, because that doesn't work. Salvation by faith alone is a diseased notion which does more harm that good. If someone has seen fit to life a contemptible life worthy of damnation then they should just accept the damnation that they have earned and not try to talk their way out of it.


Ways of sinning

Well, of course, sin comes in many forms: gossip, backbiting, envy, pride, sloth, gluttony, greed ... and St. Paul said something like "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory" and Paul described himself as chief among sinners.. at least this is what I remember without googling. In face, there is an ancient wisdom that comes from the first century of Christianity and also from Jewish teaching to "avoid even the appearance of wrong-doing" because if you appear to be doing wrong, you will tempt others to judge or be scandalized. So if I see a door ajar in the apartment building, I do not go near or touch it, because someone might assume that I was about to enter... instead I call building security and they come and see that everything is ok.. and that is their job... and now there are witnesses. And of course there is the sin of pride. The icon of the Ladder of John Climacus shows how spiritual ascetic strugglers fall from the heights simply because they lose their humility.

My money, your money, our money

I knew a Protestant minister's wife (phi beta kappa in math and theology) with two gorgeous 10 year old girls. She explained that she intended to keep them SO BUSY with activities that they would never have time to even think about sex, drugs, sin, etc.  I thought to myself "It doesn't work that way" but I just nodded and said "Good idea!" She was a very confrontational person who always wanted to demonstrate her moral superiority. One day she challenged me asking "do YOU ever pay part of your step-son's tuition" and I said we have no concept of "my money" and "your money" ... I just gave whatever I had to my wife and since she is a CPA I felt she would use it wisely.  The preacher's wife's face dropped and her mouth opened. She was hoping for a gambit to shame me into feeling inferior.  She mentioned another time that one of her tactics to gain converts was to SHAME them into conversion.  I asked her what would happen if a Roman Catholic began to attend her church and asked to join, what would be done to receive them. She said that of course they are NOT Christians so they would have to be baptized, but she said FIRST they must produce a number of credible witnesses to testify on their behalf that they are already leading a virtuous and respectable life. I am not making any of this up.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Free-fire zones

Last night I watched Pamuk Orhan, Turkish Nobel Laureate, talk with Charlie Rose for an hour. I was exhausted but I didnt want to miss the interview. I think Pamuk was imprisoned for writing fiction which mentions the Turkish holocaust. When someone cautioned Hitler against genocide Hitler said that Turkey did it and no one noticed. During World War I there were German soldiers in the area of the Armenian genocide and they were ordered to take no photos. But one soldier took a great risk and made photographs of the Armenian genocide. The term "battle field" is ironic because for centuries the battles actually took place IN FIELDS (the sort that cows inhabit) and they took place between forces in uniforms and there was an obvious distinction between combatants and civilians. But in Vietnam a woman or a child could be the enemy which I assume is why there were "free fire zones" which I assume means that one may shoot anything that moves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-fire_zone Now I would imagine that some women and children were shot and you would consider them as "innocent victims." When our great hero McCain blaket bombed Hanoi do you imagine that any innocent people were killed. When Dresden was fire-bombed were any innocent people killed. How about Hiroshima. War is hell.

Does the punishment fit the crime?

Eliminating nations is not about punishing individuals or revenge but rather about eliminating the source of an ideological meme which is like a cancer spreading from generation to generation....  If every terrorist had his clan or town destroyed...  well, we know they are suicidal so they do not care about their own life so the death penalty does not deter them, but the destruction of their own clan, their own town, their own city, whether or not that deters them, once you run out of cities, you run out of terrorists...  and then you have an entire nation like Pakistan which harbors bin Laden, and a nation like Afghanistan which produces a huge percentage of the worlds opium,... its not about hate or revenge, it is proactive cauterization to eliminate a problem at its source... it is about actions having consequences...  One U.S. representative http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162795,00.html Tom Tancredo actually spoke publicly about nuking Mecca.  For every Osama bin Laden that you assassinate there are 100,000 baby Osama's rocking in the cradle of those nations. How many centuries of terrorism can the non-terrorist nations endure? You will not conquer small numbers of terrorists with traditional warfare, conquest, occupation. It will just go underground. Germany conquered France and France surrendered but the resistance just went underground.  Cancer is treated with chemotherapy and radiation therapy which almost kills the patient but it kills the cancer at its source and hopefully the patient recovers.  Now if one representative, Tom Tancredo, was willing to make a public statement then that tells me that 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000  people silently hold the very same thoughts.  If Pakistan does not pay for its crimes then why should it hesitate to perpetrate them generation after generation.  I say destroy the cancer of the world at its source and hope that the world recovers. North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan are like cancers. If you do not destroy them then one day they will surely destroy you and they will feel that they have done a good deed. They will have no bitter taste in their mouths. You cannot easily know the hideout of a terrorist but you can know their nationality. Desperate diseases call for desperate remedies.

Facebook problems reading post history

Will, I shall try to research your problem. Off hand I would suggest to 1) reboot your machine  2.) try a different browser... i.e if you were using Windows Explorer then try Firefox.. or if Firefox, then try Chrome or Safari...  (always try to have several browsers installed) .... next I would suggest clearing out your history and cache... I don't know off hand how to explain that... I can muddle my way through it..the goal is to be doing a fresh read from the Facebook server rather than from cache memory on your local drive. There are buttons on browser to FORCE a re-read... I have noticed various bugs in Facebook on various issues...  please feel free to ask more questions...  some problems simply resolve themselves with time, after some hours or days...  I personally have the habit of copying, pasting and reposting my own comments to posterous.com so they will feed into several other blogs and microblogs... so that is one way to keep track of what one has written... 

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Desperate Times; Desperate Measures

My father served as part of the American occupation forces in Germany after their surrender. Whenever they reached a new town they pitched their tents on the town green. There were ONLY children women and elderly/infirm males.  One elderly professor had a young, attractive wife. Each day the professor would take his wife from tent to tent and if anyone gave a tin of K-rations then she would enter the tent and gratify their desires. These were not wicked people. In a time of prosperity they would have been quite respectable. But when one is starving one sometimes makes difficult choices. In France one family lived in the basement of their bombed house. Grandparents, parents, siblings and one beautiful teenage girl were all in one room. There was a sheet in one corner and a cot behind the sheet. One American soldier would come each day with food and then take the girl behind the sheet. Again these were decent people who were in desperate times. One can only know the temper and metal of one's character when one is IN some desperate situation. Everything else is idle speculation.

Name, Rank, Serial Number

NAME, RANK AND SERIAL NUMBER... that suddenly strikes me like a clap of thunder and lightening... under the rules of engagement that is all the information one is expected to reveal to the enemy when taken prisoner. Surely that assumes that torture will not be used. I write in haste since I am doing urgent things like coffee and shower... I think that torture is monstrous and genocide using the right sort of weapon yet to be invented can be a merciful and humane last resort if it causes no suffering and offers reasonable hope of a lasting peace and the greatest good for the greatest number...

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The golden chains of who we are and what we represent

Walt Disney created a cartoon with the song "whose afraid of the big bad wolf" and some anonymous person in a bar in Greenwich Village scrawled on the wall "Whose afraid of Virginia Woolf" which inspired the  title of the play/movie. The author had to get consent from the Woolf family to use the name in the title.  Now 100 years from now, we shall all most likely be dead. So why should we particularly fear being thought ill of for some less than brilliant paragraph. It has occurred to me that I have been totally free to write whatever I please precisely because I am a nobody and am not attached to any academic institution, political party or organized religion. Imagine Billy Graham and Mick Jagger are walking along the beach one day discussing their lives. Suddenly Mick Jagger is convinced of some truth in Billy Graham's life and in turn Billy Graham is convinced of some truth in Mick Jagger's life. Are EITHER of them free to pursue their new-found conviction without damaging their public image. If tomorrow Pope Benedict feels some conviction about reincarnation and the Dalai Lama feels an urge to convert to Catholicism, are they free to follow such inclinations? We are tied to our public image and what we represent. It is said that Camus approached a Baptist minister and asked if he might secretly be baptized. The minister said "No. Baptism must be a public declaration." But every word we post swirls into the search engines and remains there for who knows how long?

Tragedy part 2 continued...

If we really wanted to make this interesting, we could give our madman a weapon of mass destruction. He could tell you that if you refuse to choose, then he shall destroy the entire world together with all humanity and human culture. If we allow this, then you place yourself in a Christ-like position, as savior of the world, if you choose, at the price of taking sin upon yourself (for it is said that Christ literally became sin taking upon himself all the sins of all mankind, past present and yet to be born).


Now remember, Oedipus hears a prophecy that he shall kill his father and marry his mother, and when he discovers that it has come to pass, he puts out his own eyes.

One instructive assignment would be for you to write this as a story, and compose the dialogue which transpires between parent and child.

Sometimes, life itself is our cruel captor, forcing upon us terrible choices. Consider the expectant mother who is told that her fetus is seriously abnormal and the child will be born into a dreadful, pointless life of suffering and misery. You are then offered the choice of terminating the pregnancy or giving birth to the child.

I personally knew a man in his eighties who was diagnosed with cancer. He had the choice of undergoing very uncomfortable chemo and radiation therapy, in the hope that he might gain several extra years of life. He chose instead to take his one year of life expectancy, in relative comfort. During that year, he was able to do a little traveling, eat well, take a drink or two.


While you are pondering your predicament with your madman, I will now tell you what Milan Kundera says about Oedipus.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unbearable Lightness of Being (TUL0B)- page 177

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiently that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.
I am always mindful of Socrates point that no person willingly desires what is bad. Everyone by nature desires what they deem to be good (even madmen).

I am also always aware of Plato's Euthyphro problem: "Is the good good, ipso facto, by fiat, simply because God loves it, OR is there something objective, some inherent quality, in the nature of Goodness that inspires God to choose it. God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Sarah asks Abraham to father Ishmael. Madmen try to play God, but God never plays the role of madman.

Another movie I am going to suggest for consideration in this exploration of tragedy is Indecent Proposal. I shall mention more about that movie later, and it will be a SPOILER, so, forewarned is forearmed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Did they really know
TULOB page 176 -

Then everyone took to shouting at the Communists; You're the ones responsible for our country's misfortunes...

And the accused responded: We didn't know! We ere deceived! We were true believers! Deep in our hearts we are innocent!

In the end, the dispute narrowed down to a single question: Did they really not know or were they merely making believe?

...

Is a fool on a throne relieved of all responsibility merely because he is a fool?

...

It was in this connection that Tomas recalled the tale of Oedipus:

Oedipus did not know he was sleeping with his own mother, yet when he realized what had happened, he did not feel innocent. Unable to stand the sight of the misfortunes he had wrought by "not knowing," he put out his eyes and wandered blind away from Thebes.

When Tomas heard Communists shouting in defense of their inner purity, he said to himself, As a result of your "not knowing," this country has lost its freedom, lost it for centuries, perhaps, and you shout that you feel no guilt? How can you stand the signt of what you've done? How is it you aren't horrified? Have you no eyes to see? If you had eyes you would have to put them out and wander away from Thebes!

The analogy so pleased him that he often used it in conversation with friends, and his formulation grew increasingly precise and eloquent.

I will now turn to what Milan Kundera says about Oedipus in The Art of the Novel

Afterwards, I will try to gather my thoughts and bring some of this to bear upon our original question regarding the nature of Tragedy (ancient, Elizabethan, and modern) and the connection between Tragedy and Deity, fate, destiny, predistination, necessity, chance and freewill choice.

Since each post is limited in string length to something like 100,000 characters, I shall continue this in a new post.

(continued as post #14 "The Art of the Novel" - Milan Kundera below)

Curiosity as the highest insubordination

Aren't you slightly curious about what Kundera has to say, and where this inquiry might lead in the minds of various readers who take up the challenge? My suspicion is that it could be quite rewarding for some, say Mono.

But the secret to success is to hold our judgment in abeyance and not jump upon one detail in isolation and make some judgment or pronouncement regarding it. We must try to see the forest for the trees, and not commence to chopping wildly at the first tree we encounter which does not suit our fancy.

Even if it is the case that what I write each day is wrong or foolish or in bad taste, at least I make an extreme effort each and every day of my life to think hard and write hard and at least try to come up with something new. There must surely be some socially redeeming merit, earning me an "A" for effort, if nothing else. And when we crawl out on that limb, ever day, trying to come up with something new, we face criticism from many. It is a risky business to try and be original. But, at least, it is a business, if only monkey-business. It is preferable to idleness and burying our one talent in the sand, like that fellow in the parable.


Perhaps, one day, there shall be a mighty Judgment Day in cyberspace, and a virtual Shakespeare or Socrates will float down from heaven, click on our profiles, one by one, and sort each and every post in the scales of a balance, the worthwhile and interesting on the right, and the vacuous and trivial on the left. And on that fearful day, shall we see those ill-fated words "You have been weighted and found wanting" being traced by some divine finger upon our monitor?

Here we are, arch-enemies, dueling in cyberspace with our light-sabers. The fate of the entire universe is at stake! But which of us is Darth Vader? The real key to victory does not lie in chopping off one hand, because the cyborg surgeons just sew on a new, better hand. Anyone who feels like it may post in this thread, and single out one sentence or paragraph or comment, and disagree with it, and disagree violently. But the real victory will not be for someone to take their hachet and chop down one tree in the forest, and fashion it into a fancy coffee table. The real victory will be with the person who posts one single link. And that link will point to their entire work, where they do it right, the way Sitaram should have done it but failed, analyzing tragedy and fate and necessity and freewill from ancient to modern times, in one breathtaking night of power where we soar up to the highest heaven of heavens and bargain with Moses, and soar down to the lowest hell to learn unspeakable mysteries. Yes, imagination is the highest form of blasphemy. But I shall share in their victory, for my poor thoughts and failures will have served as their jumping-board of inspiration.


This is kind of a fun thread, is it not? We allow our minds freedom to wander far and wide over many things.

But then, Nabokov warns us that "Curiosity is the highest form of insubordination."

Mono, what do you say, since you are in on this.... shall we continue with our inquiry and allow our minds to range freely over the centuries, over all the many volumes in Borges "Library of Babel", or... is this curiosity of ours too insubordinate?

I will grant you that my what-if scenario does not fit the classical definition of Tragedy, and I do not claim that it has the makings of a literary masterpiece. It is an exercise, to get people to think long and hard about what is really important to them. Even silly mental exercises can lead to profound results, occasionally. As a teenager, Einstein imagined himself riding on a beam of light. Some people might see that as preposterous. But somehow, his armchair experiment led him to his more serious theories.

I just did a google search on : "sophie's choice" tragedy 

and I come up with over two thousand links where people have chosen to speak of it as a tragedy. Perhaps it is not a tragedy by classical definition, but nevertheless a number of people have used the words tragedy to describe it, and you must admit, my example bears more than a little resemblance to the scenario in "Sophie's Choice". My example, by design, bears some resemblance to Oedipus, since it involve incest and self-inflicted blindness, and murder (patricide), if you add in the option of world destruction.

Perhaps the tragedy of Tragedy itself is that it has evolved into something second-rate for the general consumer public. Music becomes Muzak. 

Which work do you feel most worthy to be called a modern Tragedy? I am sure there are several worthwhile candidates to consider. Perhaps Death of a Salesman

Which movie in the past 50 or so years comes close to a classic definition of tragedy (and no fare citing movie version of Shakespeare or Sophocles)?

After all, this is just a thread, not stone tablets coming down from Mt. Sinai. We are just having some fun, at least I am.

These posts get into the search engines and potentially attract a wide audience of readers. Even poor posts of foolishness, like mine for example, can be good showmanship in the sense that they lure unsuspecting readers with poor taste to the forum, but then, little by little, they wake up to the foolishness of what I write, and move on to be genuinely educated by the posts of the truly knowledgeable. Think of it as Plato's Noble Lie, which ultimately makes good citizens out of everyone.

"The Art of the Novel" - Milan Kundera

(a continuation of Milan Kundera on Tragedy from post # 11 above)

We have seen what Milan Kundera says about Oedipus in The Unbearable Lightness of Being(TULOB). 

Oedipus is a figure who becomes aware of his crime and then seeks his own punishment of self-inflicted blindness.

Now, let us look at what he says about crime and its punishment in The Art of the Novel (TAOTN).

Kundera discusses the Comic and the Tragic in the world of Kafka.

We may see Kafka as that elusive fellow which Socrates spoke of in the Symposium, the one who is master of both Comedy and Tragedy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Art of the Novel, Part 5 "Somewhere Behind" - page 106

(In The Castle) it is a small consolation to the engineer to know that his story is comic. He is trapped in the joke of his own life like a fish in a bowl; he doesn't find it funny. Indeed, a joke is a joke only if you are outside the bowl; by contrast, the Kafkan takes us inside, into the guts of the joke, into the horror of the comic.

In the world of the Kafkan, the comic is not a counterpoint to the tragic as in Shakespeare; it's not there to make the tragic more bearable by lightening the tone; it doesn't accompany the tragic, (the Comic) destroys (and annihilates the Tragic) in the egg (while it is still inchoate and nascent) and thus deprives the victims of the only consolation to be found in the (real or supposed) grandeur of tragedy. The engineer looses his homeland and every body laughs.

(Sitaram experiments with adding a soundtrack of applause and laughter to Silence of the Lambs)

Quote:
Originally Posted by TAotN, Part 5 "Somewhere Behind" - page 105

Raskolnikov cannot bear the weight of his guilt, and to find peace he consents to his own punishment of his own free will.

In Kafka, the logic is reversed. The person punished does not know the reason for the punishment. The absurdity of the punishment is so unbearable that to find peace the accused needs to find a justification for his penalty: the punishment seeks the offense.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s70778.htm

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Bible as Shakespeare before Shakespeare

David Zane Mairowitz: Well of course Jews in Prague at that time are Jews anywhere in Eastern Europe at that time who were always considered to be the outsiders and did not have all the rights that non-Jews had, and couldn't work wherever they wanted and so on. And for someone like Kafka, who immediately accepts the moral judgement of society against himself, if somebody points to him on the street and said, 'Dirty Jew', instead of defending himself, he takes that upon himself. One thing we know about Kafka is that he was always fascinated by animals. You find animals in his stories all the time. Of course he transforms himself into a cockroach and a dog, and a mouse, and so on. And a lot of this has to do with real epithets that were used against Jews at that time on the streets. Someone would see a Jew and say, 'You dirty dog', or 'You're nothing more than a cockroach', or something like that. For Kafka, this became a kind of literal condemnation which he accepted into himself. OK. 'You point a finger at me and call me a dog, the next thing I have to write is a story about a dog,' in which a dog has human qualities; or he transforms himself into a cockroach. A lot of this has to do with the anti-Semitism that was absolutely rampant all around him at the time.

...

the mythical Bible, that is, the (Old Testament) is a huge book of stories where man is ... totally rotten, it's not at all like the New Testament. In the Bible you see no-one is saved, the (essential nature of man) is to fail, to be evil; David is an adulterer... So I think Kafka knows about that but he has the freedom that Jews have (this is my opinion of course, it's not at all something that I can theorise in a way that would be orthodox). I think there's a kind of freedom that Jews have because there's no dogma. You know, the Bible is Shakespeare before Shakespeare; it's just a mass of Macbeths, of King Lears, of Richard IIIs, but it's a vision of mankind which is absolutely merciless, and so it's true to reality. So I think that it gives Jews the freedom to look at human beings as being tempted. They're tempted beings. They're not saved, they're tempted.


http://spurious.typepad.com/spurious/tragedy/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Abandonment - Blanchot:

The tragic heroine is thrown against necessity; she is abandoned to what she cannot know and cannot determine. Freedom, necessity: the former breaks against the latter. The grandeur of tragedy lies in her rebellion. She is dashed to pieces - but for a time, she brought herself into a splendid freedom. 
...

Hamlet is a mutation of the violent revenge tragedy, a play focused on dilemma and not revenge. Its protagonist does not have the reassurance of the mastery of thought or of action; Hamlet vacillates – not because he is planning perfect actions; when he acts, he does so rashly and his actions miscarry. Nor is it to give him time to think for he allows thinking to fall back to that region where decision is impossible, to a madness of indecision, a yes-no without resolve. 

‘To be or not to be …’ Hamlet longs for death, but he fears hell; he will not take his life for fear of what will happen to him after death. But if he cannot make an alliance with death, he cannot live, either. He cannot open a path to resolute decision; he does solitary combat with the absurd. 

...

Hamlet ‘understands that the “not to be” is perhaps impossible and he can no longer master the absurd, even by suicide’. ‘Hamlet is precisely a lengthy testimony to this impossibility of assuming death’; ‘To be or not to be’ is a sudden awareness of this impossibility of annihilating oneself’. Hamlet cannot escape; to exist, not to exist are each as impossible as one another. In the third act of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet cries ‘I keep the power to die’; Hamlet does not have this power. Freedom does not triumph over fate, but is overwhelmed by it. 

...


What can be retrieved of Greek tragedy today? Schelling and Hölderlin understood each in his own way the fatedness of the tragic for our age. 

‘Our age’: but what does this mean? Schmidt, to whose excellent On Germans and Other Greeks I am indebted here, gives a clue: Kant argues that limits do not merely belong to human experience but are its condition; then it is possible to write what might be called a ‘tragedy of reason’. See the opening sentence of the first Critique with the reference to the ‘peculiar fate of reason’.


By the way, take a look at what L. James Hammond has to say about Tragedy and "the desire to die".

http://www.ljhammond.com/cwgt/02.htm#33

Oedipus' Tragic Choice

If you did choose to do the exercise of the "what-if" scenario, and if you chose self-inflicted blindness, then it seems to me that you choose to imitate Oedipus in his horror at the thought of incest. Why does Oedipus blind himself. Does Oedipus have a choice?

For me, the greatest tragedy in Oedipus is that he chose to blind himself when he could have chosen to get on with his life.

If I were in the what-if scenario, I would definitely choose incest over blindness, and if faced with the choice of blinding myself vs. the destruction of the human race, I hope I would have the courage to preserve the human race at any personal cost to myself.

Hamlet resists the temptation to harm himself, and in the end, he gains revenge and justice, even if it costs him his life.

There are honorable and valiant ways to sacrifice ourselves, and then there are tragic and selfish ways.

Is this a personal attack? I feel you are singling me out unfairly, and I think I have something to offer to many people. My "what if" scenario is hardly any different from the "Would you..." thread, and the "Have you ever thread..." except that mine has some useful purpose behind it, whereas those threads are motivated by amusement and idle curiosity. I posed the scenario to dramatize that Oedipus blinding himself is possibly of his own free will, and possibly the most tragic aspect of the drama, rather than the fated incest and patricide.


What I notice is that you never post anything positive towards me, but you do post things which seem negative or critical. Is it really the case that you personally feel that I contribute nothing worthwhile to anyone in what I write?


Your first post to this thread seems to be saying that I have "poor taste". If someone posted that their favorite novel is one that you dont care for, would you tell them they have poor taste. America is a nation that dines at McDonalds and watches sitcoms. Poor taste is not a crime, and perhaps to understand classic tragedy, we must see it in the context of the poor drama of today.

The Bible is about things like Lot impregnating his daughters, which is incest. And Oedipus is about incest and patricide. I am merely trying to explore via a "what if" scenario, what people would choose if their back is against the wall.

Obviously, you and I are not equals, for you have the power of a moderator, to ban, to delete, to lock threads. For that reason alone we cannot really argue as equals.
So why is it, since you have such power, that you sometimes exert yourself to stress your own tastes values and beliefs? Is that the function of a moderator. We didnt get along together in your monthly book club, so fine, I stay clear of that since that is your territory.


Am I in some violation of forum rules?

I do not inquire into your personal life, nor do I inquire into any other forum members personal life. It seems to me to constitute a form of ad hominem.

If I my contributions are not welcome here, then I would appreciate it if Admin or Logos would contact me and explain. 

But with all due respect, I do not feel that it is appropriate for any forum member to inquire into the age, gender, marital status, address or other personal information of another member.

If you want to punish me for standing up for what I feel are my rights of freedom of expression, then there is little I can do about it. But I feel that it is a loss to at least some forum members who have thanked me, if you single me out and make me feel unwanted and uncomfortable.

What more can I say?

Please explain why my gender or marital or parental status has anything to do with my posts. No one is forced to read my threads, and as Logos mentioned once, anyone is free to place a member on ignore. I have never tried that option.

I am trying to be fair and civil and respectful to others. So forgive my candor.

his entire thread has to do with Tragedy (ancient, elizabethan and modern) in relation to fate, destiny, predestination, necessity and freewill, and it arose because of my involvement with another thread in Sophocles.

It is perfectly reasonable for me to point to a modern work like "Sophies Choice" as an example of something we call "tragic". It is perfectly reasonable for me to pose a general what-if scenario to the general readers (which, by the way, is totally impersonal... I do not single out any individual and cross examine them).

In what sense to Sher's posts relate to the questions and problems raised in this thread? It seems to me that Scher is not even interesting in these issues. If someone has some profound point to make about tragedy, or fate, or necessity, or murder or incest, it seems to me that they should be able to do so without bringing it to a personal level.

I am a work now, but I would like to discuss these matter in a civil fashion at some later point in time. 

I have my reasons for feeling as I do, and I shall discuss them at a future point, if I am given that opportunity.

Thank you for your time and interest and giving me the benefit of the doubt.

I realized that it would be intellectually dishonest of me to pose the scenario and not answer it myself. So I did answer it. If it were EXACTLY as I posed it, I would choose incest over self-inflicted blindness because things like incest and rape scar emotionally, but CAN be overcome... whereas blindness or chopping off someones hand is permanent....

I think Oedipus made a mistake to blind himself rather that get up, dust himself off and move on...

I thing Jeremy Irons made a mistake to not pick up and move on....

I think the victims who survived the Holocaust who did not move on made a mistake, and rabbi Harold Kushner for one agrees with me, and offers cogent reasons.

People who choose suicide, based upon some religious belief, are tragic... I think it is closely related...

Whatever your problem... it is better to make the choice that allows for survival, for moving on...

Unless your choice means that the human race as we know it will end... in that case, it is tragic if you choose your personal health and survival over that of your species, or your nation.

Suicide bombers choose the "self-inflicted blindness" side of the coin every day, around the world, and see themselves as saints and martyrs. I cannot see the point of putting out your own eyes, when it won’t change the past. And I cannot see living in a room like Jeremy Irons, staring at a photo day after day, when the deed is done.

I realize this will come as a shock to all of you (and you will think I am making this up) but there is actually a major religion in which the holiest prophet marries a 6 year old and consummates the marriage when she is nine (but this is not pedophilia by any stretch of the imagination) and that same prophet receives a divine command, from on high, that his adopted son should divorce his wife, so that the the father might marry her (but by no stretch of the imagination is this incest.) My mistake is not turning to religion to learn good, wholesome family values. Hey, fair is fair. If you are going to step forward as a model for how everyone should think and feel and impose that upon me and every else, then it is only fair that I hold up for everyone to see the culture and heritage and values which produced such a fine moral specimen. Woah! And while we are on the topic of divinely revealed scriptures. What did old daddy Lot do in Sodom and Gomorrah when the sodomites came to abuse his two guests? I will TELL you what daddy Lot did. He said "I have a young daughter here, and I will give her to you to do with as you like. Only do not harm these guests." Hmmm... now how do you fit that into your reasoning about what decision parents make?! I would be interested to see how you wriggle out of this one! And Lot was the ONLY ONE to escape, with his two daughters, from the destruction. Ah, but then those wrong doing kaffirs have corrupted the scriptures. We really should keep our distance from that can of worms.

You know, anyone with even the smallest smidgen of intellectual honesty, reading the above paragraph, would concede that I have really put a totally different spin on this whole issue.

And as for Schers remark that "this is no game thread", well... I am a bit confused. You mean it is "OK" for this forum to have threads where people gratuitously gossip about drug experimentation and adultery, for no purpose other than idle amusement.... thats OK, BUT ... If you are discussing literary works where the topic is drug addiction, or incest, or rape, or pedophilia, and such points WOULD NOT be gratuitous, but would have some conceivable socially redeeming value, .. why then it is "NOT OK"... Er? How do you figure all that?


And I am glad you know me so well that you can say what a good description of me is. I guess ad hominem is something that one only gradually outgrows.


Of course, Jesus said it is better to pluck out your eye or cut off your hand, than to go to perdition, which is probably why we see so many one-eyed fundamentalists.

I suppose the real value of this thread will be to analyze me. I am sure there are many who feel eminently qualified.

Well, I can’t fight city hall. Sorry to have bother you all. I shall post no further in this thread.


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