WilfGehlen - The Quest

ISO the "answer to life, the universe, and everything," or "to see a world in a grain of sand."

ab initio, start with Moby-Dick and construct the universe. Or, more modestly, find the literary and philosophical connections between Herman Melville and Albert Camus and see what that says about anything else.

I first started this quest on my blog at http://massolit-gehlen.blogspot.com. The blog is quite linear, one book leading to the next. The discovery phase, as opposed to the writing phase, is anything but linear, with many false starts and blind alleyways. LT has opened discovery for me in many new directions. In this topic I would like to project these discoveries onto the main thread of the quest.

MASSOLIT refers to the literary society invented by Mikhail Bulgakov in Master and Margarita, appropriated not for emulation of its institutional obscurantism, but for exploration of Bulgakov's definition and revelation of Truth. One such Truth, "all men are good," is particularly perplexing, counterintuitive, and perhaps impossible to accept. So, are all men good?

Reading List (active edits)

| Frankenstein, the uncanny valley, what is a man?
v-Moby-Dick, no place like home
v-Siddhartha, this place is home to me
v-The Trial, the only fear is fear itself
v-Waiting for Godot, qui a pete?
v-Endgame and . . ., not with a bang
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . one, two, skip a few
| . . . Ulysses, follow the yellow brick road
| . . . Vile Bodies, who's minding the cabal
| . . . Bird Skin Coat
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Loved One, A Handful of Dust
| . . . War and Peace, broad-hipped Natalya, historicity
| . . . . . . Russian Thinkers
v-Notes from Underground
| . . . The Icon and the Axe
v-We (Modern . . .), Notes from Underground realized
| . . . Soviet Heretic
| . . . Prisoners of Power
| . . . The Crying of Lot 49, to see a world in a postal stamp
v-Master and Margarita, Homeless, the historian
o-The Myth of Sisyphus, I think, therefore I am . . . quite miserable

Fascinating quest Wilf, I look forward to following you on your journey. You've got a great list of books there!

I will be following, fascinated, as well.

Beginnings are notoriously tricky, especially when you don't know what's next. Still, Non, je ne regrette rien. Nietzsche, I think. If not his published words, then his private thoughts. Or maybe Vaucaire. Well, in order to arrive, one must take the first step. So, here goes.

For your consideration, all men are good. Let's break that down. Good, what is good? Man, what is man? Is, what is your definition of is? All, every last one? No exceptions? Please, we need exceptions. And let's get back to is. Is the is that appears between "man" and "good' the same as the is between "what" and "definition?" And I see a few other is's in there. This path is becoming mega-cyclic, fast. I'm hopping off before my head starts to spin in this maelstrom of these (few) words.

Words are part of the problem. Language represents thought patterns that have proved useful to date, but may not capture thought patterns that have yet to exist. Exposition depends on words to express the thought and, where the word does not exist to match the thought, a neologism must be created. A new word that does nothing, in itself, to explain the thought. Literature provides the glimmering of a solution, conveying images beyond the sum of word meanings. Sharing common thoughts which are shared, which are common. Exposition relies on linear reasoning to convince the logician in us. Literature encompasses the whole, nonlinear, multidimensional reality that is in us and is us. Literature is the hope.

So, are all men good? This thought is presented by Jeshua during interrogation by Pontius Pilate, as related by Mikhail Bulgakov in The Master and Margarita.
Pilate: "So, then, Mark Ratslayer, a cold and confirmed torturer, the people who, as I see," the procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face, "beat you for your preaching, the robbers Dysmas and Gestas, who with their confrères killed four soldiers, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas -- all are good people?"
Yeshua: "Yes."
Earlier Yeshua told Pilate, "There are no evil people in the world." About Ratslayer, "Yes, he is [a good man], but he's an unhappy man. Ever since good people disfigured him, he's been cruel and hard." Yeshua was sure that he could turn around Ratslayer with a few words. Pilate made sure he had not the chance.

Is Pilate a good man? Is Ahab a good man? (Obligatory reference to Moby-Dick). How can good people disfigure another human (Ratslayer)? Why does a good man (Ratslayer) need to be turned around?

This is not about trying to convince anyone of the truth of this, that, or the other. That would be too linear. But rather to discover what some have written about this, that, and the other so that, now and again, one may hear the ring of truth.

Excellent post. Wow. Really got my head spinning. Your remarks on Literature and language are absolutely in line with my own thinking

Wilf, are you familiar with the work of Iris Murdoch? I particularly recommend Under the Net and her nonfiction work: Mystics and EXistentialists. She shares many of the same views on language that you articulated in your post. Let me find you a quote:

Only very simple things can be said without falsehood. The whole language is a machine for making falsehoods.

Highly recommended as additional baggage on the quest.

More cogitations eagerly awaited.

There are dualisms all round us
We are in the midst of dualities: good and evil, God and Satan, mind and body, yin and yang, energy and entropy. What are these? Human constructs, all. Are they useful? Perhaps. Definitely as pertains to good, because it frames the question of this thread, are all men good?

Good and God, evil and the devil, a few selections from literature; at random, because my search is random; circumscribed, because my reach is limited.

"Without me, time and space would freeze to crystalline perfection. . . . It is I who trouble the waters. I trouble all things. I am the spirit of life. . . . Did I not launch man on the most marvellous adventures? It was I who gave him history." Satan, on himself, in H.G. Wells, The Undying Fire.

". . . who are you, then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good." Epigraph in The Master and Margarita, quoting Goethe, Faust.

"Kindly consider the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? Shadows are cast by objects and people. . . . Do you want to skin the whole earth, tearing all the trees and living things off it, because of your fantasy of enjoying bare light? You're a fool." Woland to Matthew Levi, former tax collector and disciple of Yeshua Ha-Nozri in Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita.

Oh, tell me, who was it first declared, who first proclaimed that a man only does rotten things because he doesn't know his true interests. . . . all these theories for explaining to mankind its true, healthy interests, with a view to it, in striving of necessity to achieve those interests, immediately becoming good and noble, they are in the mean time, in my opinion, nothing but algebra! . . . two twos are four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death. . . . I agree that two twos are four is an excellent thing, but if absolutely everything is to be praised, then two twos are five is sometimes a really nice little thing too. Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground.

Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too! Bakunin, The Reaction in Germany.

"For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Prince Hamlet, to Rozencrantz and Guildenstern, in Shakespeare, Hamlet.

I see a pattern developing here, but not by itself, certainly. I selected these quotes, sought them out in some cases, so the cumulative effect has my hand on it. So be it; be aware of it.

I like the reference to "crystalline perfection" by Wells. It brings the energy/entropy dualism front and center, aligned with good and evil. According to a mathematical interpretation of entropy, crystals have a high degree of entropy because of their high degree of symmetry. Look down any of the edges of a cubic zirconium and all look the same. All frozen in time. Add energy, stir things up, and the entropy decreases as the energy increases. Look at ice melting and the ice melt has thermal currents going this way and that. Zamyatin, in We, has more to say about energy/entropy and how it relates to good for mankind. Save that for later.

That's enough for now. Need to think on it a while.

>6 tomcatMurr: Murr, thanks for the tip. The experienced traveler knows to pack everything he will need for the trip, but no more.

Ahab has his humanities!

The casual reader likely knows Ahab as the villain of Moby-Dick, the tyrannical captain of the whaling ship Pequod who takes his ship and crew on a voyage of revenge that ends, for all but one, at the bottom of the sea. He is monomaniacal in his quest to kill Moby Dick, the white sperm whale who has nearly killed him by biting off his leg. The quest seems outrageous, his responsibility for the death of 30 seamen reprehensible and unconscionable. Ahab's First Mate, Starbuck, turns on him, "Vengeance on a dumb brute that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."

Ahab plays the villain in this novel, but is he a bad man? Is there a way to see him as a good man?

Ahab is described as a great man: "a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab." Peleg refers to him as "god-like," a term applied later to Moby-Dick. But hubris leads to Ahab's downfall. He deifies lightning and thunder and takes them as his ancestors. Then lightning strikes him down and scars him for life, externally but moreso, internally. The insult from Moby Dick further challenges his deity, so that he must find resolution more than revenge. "All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. . . . If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me."

Ahab is damaged, deranged. He would "burst from his state room . . . in horror." He can find solace only with Pip, the cabin boy driven mad when abandoned alone at sea. Ahab is no longer in control: "what cozzening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me . . . recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?" In modern ethics, such dementia might excuse the behavior.

Even in this condition, near the end, he can see his wife and child in Starbuck's eyes as they stand face to face. He forbids Starbuck to lower for Moby Dick so that he may return to that "far away home." As Captain Peleg revealed to Ishmael before the Pequod sailed, "stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!"

A tragic hero, not the villain.

yes, I agree. I have never seen Ahab as the villain, but as the tragic centre around which the book revolves. He is Lear-like in his obsession and his hubris.

Revolving around the tragic center is evocative of the whirling finale of Moby-Dick, as Ishmael is drawn towards the center of the whirlpool formed by the sinking of the Pequod. I expect to come back to Moby-Dick from time to time.

I recently attended a brain science lecture which was amazing in that it identified which part of the brain is active when making moral judgment. This very localized region becomes specialized for the function of recognizing the behaviors and motivations of others and judging them good or bad. A child of 3 has little development in this area, a 7-year old is quite developed. Soon we may have a scientific basis for knowing how we tell good from bad.

Moreover, when this part of the brain is zapped with a magnetic pulse, moral judgments can be altered. What was previously considered reprehensible, was now more tolerable for some, and vice versa. (Other, historical methods seem to have had a similar effect).

Puts me in mind of Prisoners of Power, a science fiction novel of a dystopia where radio (electromagnetic) waves were used to control the population. There the manifestation was crude, generalized brain pain. They just didn't know what they were doing. They could have made everyone, each and every one, love one another, without knowing the source of the power, without feeling any pain, becoming homogenized with bliss. Sounds like what we all want, no? Oh, except for D-330 in We.

Another talk in the series with brain science was on human and computer intelligence. We think not only with the cognitive part of the brain, cogito, but also with our eyes, hands, mouth, imagination, story telling. (The last certainly bears on the literature aspect of this quest).

Our attempts to have computers think started with symbolic logic (solving equations). Computers are good at this, it helped us get to the moon, but it doesn't really help us directly in our day to day life.

The next phase was robotics, where machines interacted with the real world in some of the same ways that we do. The limitation was that they were not autonomous. Some level of control was required, possibly at a high level ("Guzub Jr., make me a Three Planets").

The current phase indues the computer with the ability to think more as we do ("Guz, what makes me want a Three Planets tonight?). Guzub II, the machine bartender of Anthony Boucher's short story, Q.U.R., would be able to respond with today's technology. (After hearing enough sob stories over the bar, of course). And that is because computer scientists are considering more than the brain, but the brain along with our sensory intelligence, and our connections through our senses with our culture, our stories, our literature.

Wilf do you believe computers will eventually have inbuilt some form of intuition? Or will their 'reasoning' always be built on probability?

Could a computer eventually 'write' an equal of Moby Dick for instance?

Hey zen. My belief is irrelevant, computers can now be indued with something that is nearly indistinguishable from intelligence. Developments in the last month provided a demonstration that a computer could at least write a literary criticism of Moby-Dick, if not Moby-Dick itself, as yet.

(On a side note, I am re-reading Frankenstein for this thread, which is rife with imbued and indued).

Descartes and Turing both had something to say about machine intelligence(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/). Descartes asserted that machines have not the organs to interact with the world to have true intelligence. This is the core of the lecture I describe in 12>. We also think with our eyes, our hands, our ears, our mouths, our language, our stories. Computer scientists are now creating models of these organs for the next generation of computers.

A student lost function in her hand through a repetitive strain injury. She found no impairment in any of her studies, except for one. Some lack of motility in her hand seemed to interfere with her ability in higher mathematics. Go figure.

Our 'reasoning,' it seems to me, is linear and logical and not well adapted to the real world, which is probabilistic and exponential. I associate this disconnect with Camus' concept of man's sudden realization of the absurd, the satori, the Zap! where we realize the world doesn't work in the same way that we think. As you have discovered, "cause and effect uncertain here." Computers may help.

Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face . . . I called on him to stay.

Victor Frankenstein's creation never had a name, a name that could have connected him to humanity and forestalled all the excesses that ensued from his dissociation from society. That is, not the name itself, but the naming, connecting the giver of the name with the named. Herewith let me bestow a name on the creature, or the wretch, so called. The latter is suggestive of Ralph, or Reg. Let it be Reg, then.

We are looking for a villain, an indisputably bad person to serve as counterexample to the assertion that "all men are good." Reg certainly seems the villain, murdering Victor's brother, William, Victor's best friend, Henry Clerval, and Victor's childhood sweetheart and wife, Elizabeth. On close examination we realize that Reg is not a person at all; in most aspects a super human, but still, not human. He has his own ethics, which we may examine from time to time as it relates to the human species.

Consider Victor Frankenstein, then. His hubris in bringing Reg into the world, then abandoning him to a sociopathic existence; his cowardice in not speaking up at the trial of Justine, accused of murdering brother William; his indirect responsibility in the deaths of William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, and his father. In short, his hubris and his failure to take responsibility, leading to the deaths of those he loved. These should condemn him as villain and failing the test for goodness.

Well, Victor does take responsibility at the end. After his father's death, he pursues Reg to the end of the earth, intending to dispatch the wretched Reg to the shores of the nether world and beyond. He starts this pursuit with rage and revenge in his heart. He continues this pursuit to his own death, at peace in his heart for a short while at the last. Victor's death breaks the only link between humanity and Reg, who is last seen heading northward away from civilization.

And Victor's hubris is not what the casual reader may remember. He does not have a god complex. Victor's mentor, chemistry professor M. Waldman, inspired him to take up the mantle of the modern scientist, traveling the path smoothed by the ancient alchemists. "So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein--more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation." Not a god, and standing on the shoulders of giants.

Waldman later says directly to Victor, "The labors of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind." Then, from Victor, "I expressed myself in measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his instructor . . ." Later, in starting his research, Victor says, "I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect, yet . . .I was encouraged that my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success." Not a god, but a dedicated researcher.

When Victor's work is nearly complete, he says, ". . . every day showed me more plainly how well I had succeeded. But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines . . ." Not a god, but a slave to forces beyond himself. Where Reg thinks of himself as Adam, with no Eve, ejected ignominiously from the garden, Victor thinks of himself as the fallen angel of the garden, willing good but effecting evil.

Finally, Frankenstein has made a tremendous impression on Captain Walton, who rescued him from an ice floe, "How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated, and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence." Frankenstein at one point says to Walton, "Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."

And where does Frankenstein get such wisdom? Partly from Reg, who spoke with Victor on the mountain above Chamonix about his self-discovery, aided by the cottagers, ". . . sorrow only increased with knowledge. Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!"

Is there any villain, any bad man in all this devastation? Neither Reg nor Victor seem to qualify. Reg might have it as all mankind. "Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all mankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the savior of his child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on."

Reg had a major defect, his physical appearance. He related well with the blind cottager, but when the son, Felix, returned, Felix instantly attacked Reg. Even Captain Walton was revolted by Reg's physiognomy, "Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily and endeavored to recollect what were my duties with regard to this destroyer. I called on him to stay." With understanding, an encounter with Reg could be tolerated.

William was also revolted on first sight of Reg "Let me go, monster! Ugly wretch! You wish to eat me and tear me to pieces. You are an ogre. Let me go, or I will tell my papa." Reg was not bent on killing him until William identified himself as a Frankenstein. Why did William instantly reject Reg? From his words, because of cultural myth, the bogeyman, fear of the unknown instilled at an early age. We think in part with our common, cultural stories, and these influenced the reaction of the villagers, the cottagers, the rustic, and Victor Frankenstein. Given their stories, their reaction was a given. With a different set of stories, they might have been more accepting of Reg.

ETA corrections to typos.

Wilf - you are already getting to some interesting areas in this thread.

I mentioned both 'reasoning' and 'intuition' in my post above, as the difference between the two interest me.

Computers may get us further towards better understanding (of what? - not sure) by their ability to better measure in exponential & non linear fashion, but does intuition allow humans to make quantum leaps - sometimes right sometimes wrong, which computers could not, even with their processing abilities?

Not sure I have a firm opinion or even if this makes sense...But I keep coming back to intuition versus reasoning (versus belief too, I guess).

I am interested (as well) in Jung and his view of the collective unconscious, which he said is reflected in the archetypes which we create via myths. Is Frankenstein's monster possibly one of these mythic creations?

Hmm, have to look some of this stuff up. Meanwhile, I consider the symbolic logic, A=B, B=C => C=A, of computers to be the equivalent of reasoning, which makes up so little of what we actually are and is so 1950's re computers.

Intuition is the rest of it, the organ thinking, which allows us to create a conceptual model of how the world works. And part of that is the set of stories that are part of our common culture, our myths. In Frankenstein, William was scared of the ogre. In my day, we were scared by Frankenstein (or Reg, as I have called him). Is this part of a collective unconscious? That's what I'll have to look up.

The point of the lecture is that this is what the next generation of computers are starting to do. Intuit the answer, sometimes rightly, sometimes not. What I wonder is what will happen when the computer makes an intuitive leap that is correct, but which is wrong according to our intuition. Will we be able to adapt and keep up? Or will we be stuck with our buggy whips in hand?

It's interesting that the Germans have a word for "taking joy in the misfortune of others," Schadenfreude. Is this a collective unconscious?

Very interesting stuff. What happens if the computers out intuit us, and turn round and try to destroy us, as in the Terminator movies? Is this a groundless fear on my part due to my technoluddite nature? or is this a real possibility?

I'm also interested in this reason and intuition dichotomy. Dostoevsky (and the Slavophiles in 19th century Russia) were convinced that reason was overrated, and looked for other forms of thought to supplement it. I wonder myself whether reason isn't tied up with language (think of the logical syllogism), and intuition as a supra-linguistic faculty.
it's very often when language is at its most 'unreasonable' and 'illogical' in poetry, for example, that it arrives at truths reason cannot get to.

Whose agenda, exactly, was the Terminator carrying out? Not their own I expect. And for Terminator as samurai, we can get our own Terminator to go up against their Terminator. Battle of the Terminators, in the iron cage!

I'm following up on this Jungian angle. My only previous exposure is the Forward he wrote to Suzuki's Zen Buddhism. Jung's personal unconscious sounds very much like the organ thinking of Descarte. I don't yet know about the collective unconscious, but it seems important. I'd be glad to hear other's take on the CU.

Language is certainly tied up in this and some study language in order to get at the essence of self. The body of literature that stands up over time should provide explicit insight into the human condition. Popular literature should have something implicit to say about our collective unconscious. So, Moby-Dick and Twilight. I am concentrating on the former, but should we neglect the latter?

Wilf, collective unconscious caught my imagination as well. It is one of the most interesting of Jungian concepts (which is saying a great deal as he had so many fascinating things to say), but hasn't had a great deal of publicity.

I am sure this is partly because Jung never really explained it satisfactorily.

It raised its head again when I was listening to Rupert Sheldrake on the radio a few months back. He is a proponent of a kind of Lamarckism, whereby a species learns from what its members do almost as they do it.

It struck me that this theory (and potentially the Lovelockian GAIA theory - although I need to do more research into this), could be connected - in theory at least - to collective unconscious.

It is in fact one of the topics I wanted to research this year via LT.

By the way, it was also Jung and his work on psychological types which got me interested in intuition.

He distinguishes between introverted and extroverted intuition.

He describes introverted intuitive types as something like '... cranks, seers & mystics..."

I think there are quite a few of us on LT...!

I never would have thought to compare Moby Dick and Twilight, or rather the Twilight Saga as a whole. Still, It's an interesting concept.

Yes, I think Twilight does have something to say about the colective unconscious and the human experience: The perfect lover, the perfect friend, love and nonviolence, reconciliation. The romantic hero, Edward Cullen, in particular is ideally masculine while at the same time being gentle,, loving and protective. He is the very opposite of Capt. Ahab who, having lost his masculinity, has lost as well his human capacity for love, compassion and forgiveness. He lives only for revenge and is willing to kill all those under his command, his care, in order to carry out that revenge. Ahab truly is the monster Edward long believes himself to be.

Melville uses an image, a symbol, that is the sea. Meyer uses more viseral, erotic symbols, vampires and werewolves. Melville's sea remains vast, incomprehensible, hostile. Meyer largely demythologizes vampires and werewolves, removing their menace by making them seem the norm. *shakes head* And of course there's the whole masculine vs. feminine dicotomy. She has a female werewolf, after all. And Edward is handsome and romantic rather than threateningly sexual, like Dracula. It would be interesting to compare and contrast Dracula and Capt. Ahab and then compare and contrast both to Edward.

All men are fundamentally good. For some, the intersection between experience and character is such that they choose to reject their fundamental nature and instead embrace, er, the dark side.

Hey Cat, I'm wowed. I don't agree with everything you say about Ahab, but there's a lot of room for disagreement in Moby-Dick. And I can't disagree with anything you say about Twilight because I haven't read it. The reason I brought it up is because of how active the group is on LT. I may get to it after dipping into the jungian waters.

Just went to a performance of Pirates!, a send-up of Pirates of Penzance. The audience loved it. I loved it (after the first scene). I know many G&S fans who would hate it. Louise Kennedy (Boston Globe) hated it. All her readers loved it. I thought it was the Disney version of PP, but I haven't seen the enthusiasm of this audience at any G&S production. I bet that in their day, their audiences were equally enthusiastic. A slight shift in the collective unconscious perhaps.

Got very interested in Jung some time back, but my Kurtzweil reading machine went on the fritz, and I've not been able to get back to him. You might want to look at Joseph Campbell too, though. I know there are those who poopoo him, but some of his ideas are very much worth considering, if only as thought provokers.

Remember Campbell on myth from long ago, before I started to read a couple of years ago, so I never got to him. Could have stepped along that path after reading Watts, but went with Suzuki instead. I have a date soon with Evelyn Woods, then all things will come.

Saw Kurzweil last year with his reading machine, a cell phone with scanner, ocr, text to talk, translator. Amazing. Maybe I'll put off Evelyn and go with Kurzweil.

Jung (and Watts and Suzuki) talk about non-duality (Nichtzweiheit, those Germans have a word for everything, even if they are compound words), so as much as I might like to embrace the dark side, I am thinking that my arms would enclose . . . Nothing.

Sorry for the delay. Computer crashed...as usual. *sigh*

My Xerox/Kurtzweil Personal Reader is ancient. Would love to get a modern model, but really need the flatbed scanner type. Can't hold my hand steady enough for a handheld camera or scanner.

Spoofs, take offs and send ups are interesting. That is, it's interesting and rather disheartening how many people don't grasp that a spoof *is* a spoof. Then again, some people just don't have any sense of humor.

Hi Wilf, i just discovered your thread. I'm as far as message 7, scanned the others and do not see you coming back to 'all men are good' - I've been thinking about this and what you say made me think a little more. I cannot argue with your analysis, in fact I giev a lot of time to such anlysis, but it makes me wonder where to go from there? Such analysis sometimes strikes me as similar to the difference between quantum and newtonian physics - how understanding the minute doesn't help with larger scale mechanics, as I understand it. I do feel language may disguise misunderstanding as understanding, but we may also challenge that if we know it -- no it may not lead to perfect understanding, but then what would that result in? And communication may go beyond language and also beyond single sentences into a history of shared communcation and experience by which to measure it.

Anyway -- what I really want to say is that I realised as I read you that regardless of what men are or good is etc -- that what I immediately take Zamyatin to mean is that all men believe they are good, the phrase, and my world view, cause me to privilege this meaning over any other, this may be obvious as what he is saying, but what is most important often seems to get hidden and then disregarded in the obvious. In fact beyond this it then says to me to consider all actions as therefore motivated out of a wish for some good, basically to therefore think of all action as somehow understandable (but perhaps never wholly understood) -- this makes a lot of sense to me as it fits with humanistic psychology, especially Rogerian which I have a great interest in. A sort of synthesis which does not dismiss analysis.

I read We in grad school. Fascinating book as I recall, especially considering it was published in 1911 IIRC. Haven't read Notes From The Underground though. Will put it on my To Read list.

Haven't read Frankenstein in donkeys years. Can't recall any redeaming qualities about Victor, just arrogance and hubris in the beginning and selfpity as the story progressed. Always felt sympathy and empathy for Reg. I agree about the non-naming dynamic. If Victor had named the new entity, the naming would have bound him to the entity morally as well as giving the entity a recognizably human-based identity. Perhaps I'll read it again...

21> Hey zeno man, "General Lemarque is dead."

There's an interesting take on genetics that can be confused with Lamarckian evolutionary theory. Humans are rare or unique among mammals in being able to drink milk into adulthood. This lactose tolerance increases survivability, but would come into play in a serious way only after animals had been domesticated. A culturally induced evolutionary force. You might want to read Prisoners of Power to see where CUEF might take us.

29> Tony, this is a real quest, not a directed study, so I have only a fuzzy idea of where this is headed. The question of good/bad came up in literature and I am looking for an answer in literature. For a variety of reasons, I think such an answer will be more robust than a Gedankenexperiment (with apologies to the ancient Greeks).

I hope that a series of comments on my readings in the format of Nietzche's aphorisms may light the path. I have started using bold headings in these types of comments. See Frankenstein, above, for example.

Finally, there are other issues which deserve touching on, at least. What is man to be judged good or bad, is there good and bad, what does it mean to judge another man. I can't answer these questions, but maybe the answer is out there (points "out there" in literature land).

ETA corrections to quirky htmllings.

Wilf -- I'm a big fan of heuristic research. What I was suggestign was not intended as a thought experiment and I didn't think that was what you are doing. Judgement was not part of what I was seeing as good or bad, more a sense of rightness to the person doing what they are doing (Hannibal Lecter may have such a sense when he deals his own twisted idea of justice).

You know... Maybe "judge not lest you be judged" isn't just a touchy-feely apherism. Maybe it's a universal truth.

Good and evil are real, at least to the extent that most of the books I have read in the course of my life boil down ultimately to the conflict between the two. If they hadn't a reality in the human psyche, they wouldn't form the basis of the imaginative project. At the same time, to judge another is implicitly to judge oneself.

If I believe the other is good or bad, then ipso facto I must have a clear, incontravertible lock on what good and bad are. If I have this, then I must be omniscient, perfect in my sight and discernment...I must be the equal of God. Can there be a greater hubris, a greater blastphemy? I have set up an idol to worship, to rival God himself, and that idol is myself. How then, if I recognize myself to be not God, can it be permissible for me to judge another? For, when I judge another, I judge myself and in so doing idolize myself.

I don't remember all the philosophical termenology, but there must be a word for this self setting up as a god. In any case, no matter how you look at it, such a setup is unhealthy in the extreme. It destroys the very esance of the self and of the fundamental relationship between the self and the outside world.

So, it's not a question of not judging to keep from being found lacking or something of that kind by another, by God. Rather, it's a question of not judging in order to maintain the very integrity of the self. We know that good and evil exist, but we must not judge between them, must not, so to speak, taste of the fruit that would give us the clear, sharp discernment of God to distinguish absolutely between them. We must merely be human, merely do what we believe to be right, to be good. We must choose, but in our choice we must trust to our conscience, to God's guidance, however it is we perceive the guiding force, not to positive, incontravertible proof. Good and evil are not relative, yet in a very real sense they are unknowable.

I would recommend Man and His Symbols by Jung in this vein. In it Jung discusses archetypes shared by us all since time immemorial via the collective subconcious at great length. It's a very fascinating book.

Thanks, David. I ordered Man and His Symbols as well as The Portable Jung from the library. Should have them in a few days. Donno why I never thought of that before. Not too bright, I guess. :P

This is a very interesting discussion. I am enjoying it immensely. I think Tony has the key to some of Cat's questions: We all believe our own actions to be good.

I think this is right. Even very evil people are convinced that what they are doing is not evil, perhaps. Do human beings deliberately set out to do evil, as opposed to doing things they believe to be right or desirable for themselves?

Regarding the naming thing in Frankenstein, it has always seemed to me that the most powerful myth in the Bible is the moment when Adam names the animals. When I heard this story for the first time in my early childhood, it struck me that Adam was the real creator of the world, by naming everything in it. This is a hugely powerful myth, at least for me. All my research in linguistics has convinced me that something does not really exist unless there is a name for it.

Regarding your remarks about the uncertain nature of your quest, Wilf, I 'd like to share this sonnet by Auden, which comes from a long cycle called 'The Quest':

The Way

Fresh addenda are published every day
To the encyclopedia of The Way

Linguistic notes and scientific explanations
Text books for schools with modernised spellings and illustrations.

Now everyone knows the hero must choose the old horse,
Abstain from liquor and sexual intercourse

Look out for a stranded fish to be kind to.
Now everyone thinks he could find, had he a mind to,

The way through the waste to the chapel in the rock
For a vision of the triple Rainbow or the Astral Clock,

Forgetting their information comes mostly from married men
Who like fishing and a flutter on the horses now and then.

And how reliable can any truth be that is got
By observing oneself and then just inserting a not?

Just a quick note before I dash to the bus. Got a copy of Man/Symbols last night at the library, DX. Looks promising, so many illustrations for a type of book which normally doesn't contain any. I guess for the symbols, duh.

Discussion question in undergrad psych--what defines you, that is you personally. My answer was my name, general puzzlement ensued. But I didn't mean my legal name, but the name that was me, perhaps a tautology, but my core. The dwarves in LOTR had a secret name for themselves and for the things they delved for deep in the earth. Kept secret because knowing gave power over the named. Tolkien knew his myths.

The Buddhist says, the finger points to the moon, but is not the moon. I would add, wrong finger! (Aside, seeing Buzz Aldrin tonight, who at one time couldn't avoid pointing his fingers at the moon).

Thanks for the Auden, TM. Truth in poetry. Talk about the collective unconscious, that quote is over the top unconscious!

29> Tony, just reading a little about Rogers on the Wiki. Sounds a lot like Camus in some respects, with a theraputic purpose. Definite row to hoe. Let's hear more.

Jung is amazing. Here is Lanzaro on Jung:

The term "dark side" has reached popular awareness trough [sic, Italian pronunciation] the Star Wars series, and the films borrowed the term from Jung, through the influence of Jungian scholar Joseph Campbell on director George Lucas. Jung often referred to the dark side as "shadow", and he believed that not only individuals, but also whole nations, communities and groups had shadows that had to be encountered. He felt that the shadow has typically been demonized and "made evil," rather than viewed in a philosophical and more fair or equitable light. (The Shadow and the Groundhog)

So we have Cat's Campbell, pop culture, good/evil. Rick Moranis as Darth Vader instead of James Earl Jones. The Shadow knows. Bulgakov must also have known.

ETA format correction.

Jung gets into some pretty obscure places in his search for answers.

I recall that he researched both the gnostics and the practitioners of alchemy as he believed they were part of an unbroken line which saw the value in attempting a unity of opposites.

Can't remember the last time I've been involved in such an interesting discussion. Thanks, guys!

RE: naming: The resolution of The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams involves naming, or renaming and thus re-placing forms (Plato). One of my alltime favorite novels BTW.

Cat, the connections here are serendipitous. Charles Williams was the person who more than any other influenced Auden's return to Christianity. It was through his influence that Auden became an Episcopalian in the 1940s, all part of his quest for a system to believe in, a quest that also included Jung and Freud at one point.

Also, on an aside, it was Williams who commissioned Auden to edit the Oxford Book of Light Verse, so we have Williams to thank for this brilliant book. The only Williams I have read is War in Heaven, but it was so long ago I have very little memory of it.

The discussion on Jung is very interesting. He always seemed to me more realistic than Freud, who is mostly hogwash, as far I can tell.

In Chinese Taoist culture, it is very bad luck indeed to point at the moon.

It's been ages since I read The Nicomachean( sp?) Ethics. But, yes, each person is actuated by and strives for the good, as he perceives it. Perceptions can be deceiving though. Can't quite remember, but IIRC Aristotle is of opinion that one must be trained to distinguish the true good from the false, (self)destructive good.

I got interested in Williams through Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and the Inklings. He wrote seven novels IIRC of which I've read three: Many Dimensions, The Place of the Lion, Descent into Hell. I want to read the others, but haven't yet found them in accessible format. They must be, I just haven't found them yet. That he is responsible for Auden editing that volume sounds familiar...

Lewis is also responsible for my finding George MacDonald. And, it was Macdonald's books and later Tolkien and Owen Barfield who led Lewis back to Christianity. There was also a vague connection between Lewis and T.S. Eliot... Can't quite recall Auden fitting in there, but I think he must have, maybe as a friend of Williams'?

Very glad I'm not the only one who is less than impressed with Freud.

Er... Sorry I don't actually say anything substantive...

Where T.S. Eliot is, so is Auden, basically. Yes, you are right in your summary of the main idea of the Ethics. It's this idea that Dostoevsky especially attacks in his depiction of characters who specifically and knowingly act against their own best interests.

Fraud, I call him. Lot of nonsense.

What inspires you?
Just had an inspiring evening with a mini-tour leading to the Grand Tour. Time to get inspired, Cat, and Jung will lead the way.

First, I've heard of Jung forever, but only in the past few days have paid any attention. He is totally unconscious! What literature does he like? Faust and Thus Spoke Zarathustra are at the top of his list. So, I'm going to the concert tonight, featuring Buzz Aldrin narrating Holst's The Planets, and I'm starting a re-read of TSZ while I'm waiting for dinner. Forward to the concert, what's the first piece? Also Sprach Zarathustra by Strauss. Shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The music was just over the top inspiring.

Then there's the message. 40 years since first landing on the moon. I have said elsewhere that our rational mind is good at solving the equations for going to the moon, but not for guiding our life day in and day out. Tonight it was obvious that our rational mind didn't take us to the moon, it was our inspirational mind that did, right out of our unconscious.

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. JFK, 1961. Plain words on the page, but inspirational seeing and hearing.

The determination and brilliance of those in the Apollo program inspires me to follow their example--to work hard in pursuit of a noble goal "for all mankind," and never accept that any dream is too big. H. Chaurasia, student, today.

These are more than possibilities and dreams for the uber mensch. They are the reality.

Noble goals aside, the race to the moon was politically driven. Showing superiority in space was a tactic in the cold war that perhaps kept a real war on ice. But as soon as the Russians dropped out of the race, we lost interest as a nation.

And that long string of successes came on the heels of disaster after disaster, turned around by? Dr. Werner Von Braun. The conventional wisdom was that our Germans were better than the Russian's Germans, so we got to the moon first. As Tom Lehrer once sang, Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown/ Nazi, Shmatzi, says Werner von Braun.

The best and brightest, dreaming and achieving, to boldly go where no man has gone before, using technology originating with the rocket bombing of London. We are both these sides. Out of the dark side, then "to the moon, Alice!"

The concert closed with John Lennon's Imagine.

Imagine all the people/ Living for today . . .
You may say that I'm a dreamer/ But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us/ And the world will live as one

Living out of our unconscious, personally integrated, integrated across society, as one, but not identically one, definitely not Zamyatin's one state.

#38 - Hope Rogers is of interest, I don't want to preach about that sort of thing, it informs most of my approach along with a few other humanist therapists and a few philosophers and poets, so hopefully its a view reflected generally in my posts. I am interested in Jung -- as I understand it a big difference between he and Freud is that he doesn't advocate a system of therapy as such, more like he makes comments on a good way to approach therapy and I like that, though it leaves me wondering what it was he was approaching in his own work.

The Jung books arrived today, fast work even for Perkins. Donno if I'll get to them tonight though.

Great post, Wilf.

Just a few pages into Man and his Symbols, I've already found something interesting. Jung speaks of the bush soul, how a primative tribesman might believe that there is a part of him, a soul, that is housed in an animal, a tree etc. That animal would then be the tribesman's brother. The point being that each man has, potentially, several souls or parts of himself, housed outside himself, connecting him with the world around him.

Similarly though not identically, George MacDonald has Mr. Raven say in Lilith that each man has a bird self, and an animal self, and even a reptile, fish, tree and cristal self, any of which might come to the fore at any given moment, in response to any given stimulus. Jung seems to be saying that these selves are projected outside, fragmented from the psyche while MacDonald seems to think they are all integral to the psyche. Both agree as far as I can make out, though, that they need to be integrated, MacDonald thinks IIRC the lower must be subjugated to the authority of the higher, in order for the psyche to be whole and fully functional.

It's something of a PITA to find and scan the passages in the print books so as to show you guys... I'll try to remember to do it tomorrow.

BTW it may not be coincidental that Lilith is a dream vision...

Donno what all this may be worth, but it struck me as interesting.

Taking a short break, just got Gilligan's Island, the first year, research material for my blog. Meanwhile, I will be continuing with Jung, finishing MHS, re-reading Faust, Part Deux, finishing Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Now where can I fit in Brothers Karamazov?

Wilf, the mind boggles! What possible topic could you be coming up with for your blog?

And what about Dusty's Trail and F Troop?

Ah, Larry Storch, who put the F in F Troop. Forrest Tucker as an ersatz "Skipper," the delightful Melody Patterson. Delightful. Yes.

And not forgetting the Hekawi tribe, a last-minute replacement for the Fugawi tribe, which undoubtedly couldn't get approval from the censors. They continue to be memorialized in an annual sail off Nantucket. No casino, though.

Took a miss on Dusty's Trail.

Don't want to put undue pressure on myself to say what it will be in any detail, but I am viewing GI to extract Sartre's existentialist human condition and Jung's collective unconscious. Then we'll see what happens.

Wilf - sounds like great fun.

If you are familiar with Jung's personality types, or the more refined, structured Myers Briggs build on Jung's types, you might like to take a punt on the different personality types resident on GI.

By the way I read somewhere an interesting take on how some of the Star Wars characters fitted into the Jung archetypes Obi & Yoda as father figures, DV as the 'dark father' etc. Can't remember where I read it, but interesting how some of the pieces of pop culture which really come to be part of the zeitgeist often have resonance with Jung (although up until recently I believe it was Freud who was seen in the background of all such things - maybe times are changing...)

Thanks for the tip, zeno.

It looks like Jung invented many of the psych terms we are most familiar with and which resonate with our world view--e.g., complex, extrovert, introvert. Seems to me this popular resonance is important. If you construct abstractions that only other experts relate to, they have not been validated for the real world. I'm glad that Jung wrote a few accessible works later in life.

It may be that comedy writers have the most success in tapping the collective unconscious. If they don't, it's immediately obvious--their writing isn't funny. Anyway, that's why I'm looking at GI now, and previously, elsewhere, Albert Brooks' movie, Defending Your Life. "Dying is easy, comedy is hard."

Hell is--other people!

And so ends Sartre's No Exit. Well, not quite. With this statement Garcin comes to realize fully that he and Inez and Estelle are in hell, trapped together forever, face to face in a single room, each singly and in combination dishing up hell for the other. But after this realization there is still one scene left for this eternal triangle to play in Act I of forever after.

After Inez once more comes between Estelle and Garcin, Estelle stabs her repeatedly with a knife. Inez fights off Estelle but laughs at the same time, realizing that, being dead, she cannot be killed again. To drive home the point, she stabs herself, "regretfully." The ultimate conflict resolution available to the living is not available to these three. Realizing that their fates are linked forever, Inez laughs, then Estelle, picking up on "forever," laughs, followed by Garcin . "Forever, and ever, and ever."

Silence, self-realization, collective realization follow, then Garcin closes with, "Well, well, let's get on with it. . . ."

How they get on with it we do not know. There is “no exit,” but is there also “no hope?” The three have been put together for a purpose, but they know not the purpose, nor do we. Is this hell, or a purgatory? Garcin has repeatedly offered up hope that all is not lost:

Also, we mustn't speak. Not one word. . . . And that way--we'll work out our salvation. Looking into ourselves.

And now suppose we start trying to help each other. . . . Alone, none of us can save himself or herself; we're linked together inextricably.

It hasn't worked yet, but they have all eternity to work it out. And for us? We too have to work it out. The same issues, but the incentive is less intense, and we have less time. Good luck to us all.

Hell is--other people! Part Deux

The Three Inseparables, Garcin, Inez, Estelle, at first can tune into their remaining earth connections, allowing us a glimpse into their past lives. Inez looks on her empty room, where she sucked the emotional life from her lover, Florence, and drove her to turn on the gas, killing them both in the night. The room goes dark and she loses all connection when the room is rented. Estelle looks on her own funeral, seeing few tears and an absent husband. Later she sees her friend Olga romancing her, Estelle's, latest flirtation. The scene goes dark and she loses all connection when Olga reveals Estelle's secret--her murder of her infant daughter, the suicide of the father, her lover. Garcin looks on his wife, who suffered his mental tortures, but still clings to his memory. And on his newspaper colleagues, who discuss his cowardice in fleeing the war. Garcin's connection goes dark when his wife dies, the war ends and his colleagues forget him.

They each are relieved of the extra baggage which confounds the issues which brought them to this place. They are left only with their essence, which they have to face, which the others will force them to face. Thus they can begin their task in earnest.



Garcin's cruelty to his wife and Inez's cruelty to Florence show they come from the same pod. They completely understand one another. When Garcin tries to absolve his cowardice through Estelle, Inez sees through the ploy and exposes Estelle's modus operandi of ingratiating herself to the male. Garcin realizes that it is Inez whom he must convince that he is a good man. He cannot trust Estelle, she will say whatever he wants to hear. So when he has a chance to escape the room with Estelle, he cannot leave Inez behind, still thinking him a coward.

Can Garcin convince Inez? She who is "all dried up . . . a dead twig, ready for the burning." That eventuation is not found in No Exit, but perhaps we can borrow a similar story line from Master and Margarita.

Pontius Pilate interrogates Jeshua and finds a philosopher and healer, not a religious subversive. He is about to "invite" Jeshua to his seaside villa, away from hated Jerusalem, to talk together at their ease. But a last bit of evidence intervenes. The chronicles of Matthew Levi implicates Jeshua as an advocate of the downthrow of Caesar. Against this accusation, Pilate is powerless to act without compromising himself and so allows Jeshua to be executed. With this act of cowardice, Pilate's name is inextricably linked with Jeshua's story, which lives in the memory of man for millennia. This memory torments Pilate during all this time, even as Garcin expected to be tormented as his story of cowardice lived on. Pilate's torment is relieved only when his story is told by the Master, when Margarita turns to him with compassion, and when Jeshua absolves his name of cowardice: "It never happened."

Can Inez ever say to Garcin, "It never happened." Can we say to him, "It never happened." To those on earth, Garcin's act of cowardice is long forgotten, as if it never happened. Estelle knows, but her unconcern makes that knowledge irrelevant, as if it never happened. It is our absolution, and Inez's, that matter.

That's why Confession and Absolution are so important to both the spiritual and the mental health. I've never understood why that's so hard for Protestants to grasp.

Hell is--other people! Part Soixante-Neuf
Garcin is a puzzle. He acknowledges that it is his mental torture of his wife that earns him entrance to this little room, but he subsequently ignores that little fact to dwell on and on about his cowardice. Cowardice doesn't even make it to the Big Ten List of Things You Shouldn't Do and Expect to Avoid Hell.

Meanwhile, his treatment of his wife is despicable, but would be condoned or overlooked in many cultures. (I don't know about Sartres'). And it pales in comparison with Inez behavior, which drives her partner to murder/suicide, and Estelles' behavior, which drives her lover to suicide. Garcin's wife still dotes on him long after his death.

Why is Garcin consigned to this room? Why is he so concerned with his cowardice?

Cowardice is not living up to the expectation of others. In time of war, one can get executed for desertion, but we have come to realize that persons may reach the limit of what they can do, and then will not live up to those expectations. Shell shock, PTSD are some names that apply. General Patton had to apologize publicly for slapping a soldier who didn't live up to his expectations. Garcin would do well to emulate Joseph Heller's characters Yossarian and Orr, but there appears to be no library in their little room.

My takeaway is that Joseph Garcin, like Joseph K., was trapped in a life of fear--fear of what others think of him. These Josephs can no longer work out these fears on earth, to lead their life as they would choose, taking full responsibility for their choice. We who still have time to do so should work at breaking out of the chains of "being-for-others."

Living for others is a good thing up to a point. I agree, though, that when it reaches the point of becoming the person's defining characteristic, and the focus of the person's selfawareness and pride, then it becomes destructive both for her/himself and for those around her/him.

Have you ever read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis? There's a character in that story who has become convinced that her life is totally for her husband, and yet, she is so overbearingly protective of his interests and even his health that she eventually destroys him. Lewis particularly disliked women of this type, and gave other examples in other books. But the woman in The Great Divorce is the most fully drawn IIRC. In such a case, living for others has become no more than a cover for consuming selfishness and pride. It sounds like this is what you're describing in Garson. By focusing on his cowardice, he can focus on himself; whereas focusing on his cruelty to his wife would shift the focus outside himself.

Are you sure Hell is other people? Are you sure Hell isn't oneself? An obscessive, unhealthy, exclusive concentration on oneself? In such a concentration, even selfloathing can transmute into a kind of possessive, self-protective pride in one's badness. And, there is no room for anything other than the self. As I said before, one turns oneself into one's own idol, one's own god in the absorbsion of self-contemplation. it doesn't matter where Garson is or who else he is with. He is trapped, largely by his own desire to be so, within himself.

Cat, This being-for-others is new to me, making the connection only after reading No Exit for about the seventh time, thinking there was a connection with Jung, but finding it where I started, with Sartre.

I think of what you're describing with Lewis' character as "doing for others," or "living through others," not being-for-others. If I am a being-for-others, my self worth is only what others think of me. Robert Audi has put it this way:

Sartre gives us a brutal but familiar everyday example of our experience of being-for-others in what he calls "the look." Someone catches us "in the act" of doing something humiliating, and we find ourself defining ourself (probably also resisting that definition) in their terms. (http://mythosandlogos.com/Sartre.html)

Garcin doesn't define himself as a coward, he feels uncertain as to his true motives for running. It is through his colleagues that he acknowledges this definition and it is through Inez that he seeks escape from this judgment.

To Garcin, his treatment of his wife is not a visceral concern. He recognizes that it was wrong, wrong enough to have exacted the punishment of hell on him, but he makes no effort to address this wrong. In her eyes, he could do no wrong, so in his eyes, he was fine (for this issue, at least).

This was probably why he lifted her from the gutter in the first place -- to provide himself with a rose-tinted mirror. But, as with Estelle, he did not truly believe what the mirror showed him.

And for us, who are not Garcin? Hillel says it using slightly different words than Sartre, "If I am not for myself, who will be? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?"

I will have to revisit Master and Margarita with the concept of being-for-others in mind.

ETA format correction.

Wilf, oops. I didn't make the distinction between being or living for others and being or living through others. Excellent point.

Even so, there can be value in seeing oneself as others see one. Our own motives aren't always clear to ourselves, and we don't always realize either our own strengths or our own weaknesses as clearly as do others. At the same time, it can't be healthy to define oneself exclusively by the opinions of others, since their experience is necessarily different from one's own. To go back to an example you have used: One man's perception or even definition of cowardice might not be accurate when applied to someone else. Thus, each individual needs to have a solid sense of self against which to weigh the opinions and judgments of those around him. relying exclusively on either the inner sense or the outer responses can seriously warp the self-perception. At the same time, as you point out, it is necessary to choose carefully which others and their responses to accept as valid. It is certainly very easy to fall into the trap of only accepting favorable, adoring views of oneself and rejecting those which reflect one rather more completely. I guess it's a matter of balance.

"Commonsense is fundamentally immoral, for the natural morals of mankind are as irrational as the magic rites that they evolved since the immemorial dimness of time. Commonsense at its worst is sense made common, and so everything is comfortably cheapened by its touch."

"The second result [of the defeat of commonsense] is that the irrational belief in the goodness of man (to which those farcical and fraudulent characters called Facts are so solemnly opposed) becomes something much more than the wobbly basis of idealistic philosophies. It becomes a solid and iridescent truth."

Vladimir "Vladushka" Nabokov, of the St. Petersburg nabobs, "The Art of Literature and Commonsense," in Lectures on Literature.

Literature raises us above the common, expresses our ideals in the highest, allows us to see deep within ourselves, to see the good in all of us. This is the greater reality.

At least according to the nattering nabobs of (non) negativity.

ETA yet another format correction.

Sorry, I'm confused. Are you in favor of or opposed to the proposition that Man is fundamentally good?

That's the question I found in literature and which I'm trying to answer through literature. Nabob has an agreeable take on the question, but I don't want to accept that as the answer just on his say so. After all, this quote is from a lecture on literature, not from literature.

John Updike suggests that the Nabokov family name derives from the word nabob, so I don't view its use as pejorative. Just having a little fun. As with the twist on the quote from Agnew, RIP.

I'm tending toward the good after thinking about Garcin in "No Exit." But I'm concerned about Inez. She's says she's rotten to the core. But so was Crabby Appleton, supposedly. There is hope yet it seems.

She says she's rotten to the core, but that doesn't mean much. People seldom see themselves clearly.

I lean toward the view that Man is fundamentally good. Then again, I've always been something of a cockeyed optimist. But, you know... If man weren't worth saving, Our Lord wouldn't have bothered coming to do it.

and which Lord would that be?

As an animist I wonder whether we could also make more mention of the little local gods that inhabit the sundry nooks and crannies.

They appear all too often overlooked.

Sorry, guys. It occasionally slips my mind that not everybody is Roman Catholic. When I say Our Lord, I refur to the Lord Jesus Christ, Second person of the Most Holy Trinity, who was incarnated for the express purpose of redeaming Mankind.

A word to the wise: Before mocking my faith - in case you're planning to do so - please pause to consider that it is possible I may find your faith as repulsive as you find mine. While I do not set out to convert anyone or to belittle anyone's faith, at the same time I do not tolerate having my own faith belittled. Actually, I don't really expect that to happen here on LT, because everyone here seems really pleasant and friendly, in a word, nice. But, an astonishing number of people seem to think it's perfectly acceptable to say all kinds of vile, hateful, utterly vicious things to you when they find out you're Catholic. And I just want to establish that I don't take that sort of garbage lying down.

on the other hand, I find any kind of faith deeply offensive. Especially when people constantly thrust their faith under my nose. If you have faith, that's great for you, but please don't parade it around where it is likely to cause offence.

refur to the Lord Jesus Christ, Second person of the Most Holy Trinity, who was incarnated for the express purpose of redeaming Mankind. Typos apart, this kind of language induces dry vomiting and heaving on my part.

Keep it to yourself. Seriously.

I readily apologize for any typos. However, on the rare occasions when discussing Our Lord or other matters of faith is appropriate, I'll do so. You needn't read my posts, if they distress you.

So in other words, you're quite happy to continue to be offensive to someone, but not happy to tolerate offensiveness in others.

Well, you gotta admire the consistency of your double standards, I guess.

Your Lord, maybe, but certainly not mine.

This discussion just lost all interest for me.

I don't understand. Do you want me to deny the reality of my world and who I am because your worldview is different? Yet at the same time, you are not about to deny the reality of your world and who you are. So, is it I who practices double standard, or you?

Cat, I wouldn't dream of mocking your faith.

I think I was teasing a little about your apparent certainty. That to me sounds very strange.

Your uncertainty on the other hand, as you and Wilf have grappled with these issues, is very interesting and I have been dropping in regularly to read this thread.

Tch! Tch! Let's be friends here. There are other threads at the Happy Heathens, where I drop in from time to time, or at one of the pros and cons where one can exercise (sic) one's demons.

I see this thread as exploring philosophy through literature, by a close reading of the text (Nabokov's directive). Dogmatic assertions, even when aligned and well-intended, do not contribute to the discussion because they lie outside the domain of consideration in the realm of belief. To understand an author's meaning, I try not to bring a preconceived notion of what that meaning is, from popular opinion or the critical analysis of others.

I'm off on some light reading (or re-reading, rather) of Doc Smith's Skylark series, where I will explore some philosophical insights that were mere glimmerings in previous readings.

Cat, I don't want you to do anything except quoting scripture at me and saying Our Lord, when he is quite unequivocally not my lord. Think you can do that? Please?

I'm not asking you to change or deny your worldview, just asking you, nicely, not to assume that others are as delighted with it as you are.

is that ok?

THe discussion on this thread has been very interesting, as Zeno said, and I would hate to see it collapse into an argument over reason versus faith. As Wilf, says, I can get my kicks persecuting Christians in the Happy Heathens group.

Exploring philosophy through literature. A worthwhile and fascinating endeavour indeed.

Where were we?

Right, Tom Cat. You *are* asking nicely, and I'll try very hard to remember.

As to certainty, LOL To think of me sounding certain about God! When I concede that he exists, I'm usually extremely pissed off at him. Certainty and faith are, for me at least, very far indeed from being synonymous.

I don't really know if one can be certain. Isn't that what Philosophy is all about? Degrees of uncertainty?

so how is the quest, wilf?

Hey Murr, thinking has slowed for the summer, the buzzing of the bees has a hypnotic effect. I'm off to Mystic, Connecticut tomorrow to reconnect to my roots in Melville with the public reading of Moby-Dick.

Meanwhile, I am finishing a review of the Skylark series which which I find remarkably philosophical. Previously I have treated it as light reading, but giving it a close reading a la Nabokov provides commensurate rewards. I will report here as well.

Hope the humidity blanketing your summer has lifted.

Both philosophies and religions have informed and deformed literature throughout history - as Murr says just above the examination of the interaction is valuable. Much Western literature (esp. going back to "canon") requires a modicum of understanding of Christianity, in particular. Understanding a fair bit of modern/postmodern, esp. European lit, requires some historical background and is helped, sometimes, with understanding a bit of Marxism as well as philosophies that piled on afterwards. And, for what little it's worth, w/out being a believer in much of anything except for a generic sort of Mahayana Buddhism, a good deal of my favorite poetry has not just been written by Christians, but inspired by their faith (Hopkins...yes old mad Wm Blake, John Donne, TSEliot et al. Trying to understand, to a modest extent, the world view and faith that informs their works IS important to me. But i believe and assume that some degree of understanding can be obtained w/out "faith." One reason i was a religion major w/out being "religious" for several semesters before becoming a geographer.

(Of course you can go into the way back machine and start w/ the Greek dramatists - i was only taking the most obvious and near at hand examples. I also have a few "pet" poets who were serious practitioners of Zen - the pre-WWII Japanese agronomist/near monk Miyazawa (tr in a Future of Ice) being my favorite (and as best i can tell very little known in the west - judging by the 6 copies on LT)

Back early from the Moby-Dick marathon at Mystic Seaport, but still reinvigorated with all that is Moby. The overnight stint was too much like camping out, especially with the rain drumming on the tarp over the whaleship Morgan. The Morgan is still being refurbished, dismasted, like Ahab's ship in the typhoon off Japan.

On the way to Mystic we passed a sign for the Pequot Reservation, the tribe who now own and operate the Foxwoods Casino. Apparently a vestige of them remain, contrary to Melville's thought, now extinct as the ancient Medes.. The mercenary owners of the Pequod, Captains Peleg and Bildad, "The Fighting Quakers", would be proud. As Bildad says to the crew as they depart Nantucket, Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, men; but don't miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts.

Actually, the Medes may still be alive in the present-day Kurds, like dinosaurs and birds, though this is disputed. The Kurds' lawyers must not be as good as the Pequot's in establishing their continuity.

One quote which stands proud in the reading:

Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. . .

If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which has spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind!

This may best capture the spirit of this thread.

I was thinking of T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday in connection with another thread. The link between this poem and his religious conversion is omnipresent in lit-crit, but give me a break, the title is Ash Wednesday, what more do you need to know? I consider the secondary literature suspect in its scholarship. By talking with Eliot directly, I might learn something of his religious beliefs, but probably not much. I certainly couldn't pass along anything worthwhile to someone else. So what of a commentator who has never met Eliot?

In thinking you* know Eliot because of what you read about his religious conversion, you place limits on what is actually there in the text in front of you. Eliot was a convert, but that is not all he was, nor was his conversion necessarily like another's conversion. So what does any of that have to do with Ash Wednesday?

I am less interested in what Eliot is saying, from his context, than in what I am hearing, from my context. If Eliot can speak to me, as a Mahayanan Buddhist**, then he has a universal appeal and what he writes touches directly on the human condition. If you needed to be Anglican to appreciate the later Eliot, then he would be preaching to the choir only.

So, I prefer to read Ash Wednesday not only from the perspective of "no faith", but also from the perspective of ignorance about Eliot's faith, preferring ignorance to suspect knowledge and replacing faith with concern regarding the human condition.

* that is, the Americanism, you, an indefinite pronoun.
** I am not really a Mahayanan Buddhist, but I did appreciate Beatrice Suzuki's book on the same.

Took some time off for light re-reading of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark series. Found more there than I remembered, a close reading bringing out a bit of philosophy. Reviewed here at Nos. 18-21.

Amazing blurring of the line between hero and anti-hero, with the anti-hero coming out on top, saving all mankind, actually, without giving up any of his anti-hero characteristics. Puts me in mind of Shane, a bit, but Shane tried to leave his gunfighting days behind him. Smith's DuQuesne is rock solid villain from beginning to end. But in the end we need him desperately.

DuQuesne shines only in the last book of the series, Skylark DuQuesne. In previous reads this was my least favorite of the series, but it really stands out in elevating the anti-hero. The writing still sucks, though. You have to have a history with Smith to get through it.

What happened to the quest?

My recent reads of The Master and Margarita and criticisms thereto have clarified my thoughts on the quest. As with Frank Norris' Presley, my stay in the San Joaquin Valley has allowed time for these thoughts to coalesce, under the dynamic pressure of the forces of nature.

So, soon to emerge from my ice cave, but meanwhile, here's a titbit from Slaughterhouse Five:

Rosewater said an interesting thing to Billy one time about a book that wasn't science fiction. He said that everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov, by Feodor Dostoevsky. "But that isn't enough any more," said Rosewater.

And this, by Carrie Fisher:

Instant gratification takes too long.

This is what it is to be human. The desire to "dream things that never were" and "to say, 'Why not?'”

Wilf - are you still considering the relationship between the thoughts of Jung and Schrodinger? Seems like an interesting connection to me, although I know very little about S.

I do know he had original things to say about entropy which is a nascent interest of mine.