Slide Guitar vs. Guitar Solo

There was time a time when country music was a four letter word for me. If I was accused of listening to anything with a slide guitar and bad lyrics I was ready to punch that redneck in the mouth. As far as music was concerned my tastes could be summed up with a quote from Jack Black's School of Rock "It doesn't matter if it is good, it only matters if it rocks!"

I owe my love for classic rock and drum and guitar solos to my dad. Some of my fondest memories growing up was when I happened to be riding with him and we would listen to the classic rock station. Anything from AC/DC to Deep Purple would send him into a trance. He would put his hands through the steering wheel and keep time on the dashboard. He never missed a beat.

But, as I got older, my tastes began to change some. I began to look forward to, not the guitar solo but a particular line of the song. This was a monumental change for me. This became a problem, if anyone is a serious student of classic rock, you know that its not necessarily Wordsworth penning those lyrics. A lot of times it is drug induced free association. Don't get me wrong, I like to drop acid and shoot heroin with the best of them, but when it comes to poetry I am looking for something a little deeper.

It began with Johnny Cash. I was introduced to his concert at Folsom Prison. I listened to his lyrics and his rebelliousness. This guy seemed to embody the emotion of the guitar solo. It was slippery slope from there, Willie Nelson was the gateway to Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and George Jones. Slowly, I began to discover contemporary bands that claimed these men as influences and my music catalog would never be the same. Bands like Wilco, My Morning Jacket. Singer songwriters such as, Ryan Adams and M.Ward.

But, what is it about these guys? For me, I believe it is there ability to tell a story. I love a good story. I'll take it from anywhere in any form. A friend, Newspaper, Novel or Short. What I was given when I discovered this music was morality, decisions, family problems or just plain murder. There is a certain amount of wisdom that these guys impart to the listener.

What do you do when a girl breaks your heart? Whiskey

There is something profound here.

Brief thoughts on Anger

When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear. - Mark Twain

I’ve been thinking about the emotion called anger, usually leading to the desire for revenge for a perceived injustice. This blog is just sort of haphazard collection of random thoughts on the psychology of it. It is one of the seven deadly sins. What makes us insult, gossip or complain about someone else? Perhaps we are insulted first. But suppose we don’t want to confront the person. We give them the ‘silent treatment’. We choose not to talk to them. We said something and now the person has avoided us, avoided looking at us, or won’t talk to us. This is annoying. What have we said? Why do people put others down? That is interesting. We make the conscious decision to demean someone. We talk about someone behind their back? Is this a catharsis? Does it make us feel better or worse? We’ll blackmail and manipulate. Example: we’ll feign being hurt to get the other person to feel bad or show compassion. We con another; we’ll steal something from the person that angered us. We’ll deliberately say things ‘under out breath’, so the other will hear the grumblings and yet we retain plausible deniability.

What is most interesting is this: haven’t we noticed that some will aggravate ‘in order to’ entice anger - and when there is anger, we then patronize. We say: calm down, I was just joking. This is designed to make the other not only feel angry (unpleasant) but petulant. This gives the manipulator the foothold to point out how they’re acting like a child, thus provoking more anger. Also, there’s the person who knowingly says or brings up something that will provoke others besides himself: the one who stirs the pot. What drives this person? Or suppose we find out that someone’s wits aren’t as sharp as another, who excels at insult. The only weapon may be to fake cry. And what a weapon!

Think about the tactic we use when we apologize! Isn’t there a way we can say we’re sorry and use it as a weapon? We’ll say it too much: or, we’ll say it to make the other feel like they’re letting an issue linger too long, which gives us the opportunity to patronize them on the art of ‘letting go of the subject’, or ‘dropping the subject’. We’ll wrong someone knowingly and when anger is provoked, we use the word ‘sorry’ like a panacea. Any further discussion is evidence that the other ‘won’t drop it’. After all, if the person is sorry, they’re sorry, and that’s the end of it. How about the nit-picker, the perfectionist, the one it is impossible to please? Or - even more interesting: the slacker whose sloth is on purpose, and is designed to get a rise out of the criticizer!

Or what about the person who is scolded - rightly - for laziness? This person can then begin to help too much to prove how their previous sloth was justified. This then begs the patronizing question: do you want my help or not? Then there’s the evasive one: the one who is not confrontational and yet puts a burden on everyone around her - she will not argue with you, nor confront you, nor cause any conflict. The fight will happen and instead of settling it will ‘admit you’re right’: not because you are right, but because they know that’ll hopefully make you feel to be a ‘know-it-all’, which sets up the perfect opportunity for the ‘victim’ to lecture you about whatever it is the fight or issue was about.

There’s the more direct kind of anger: picking on others, being a bully, abusing, threatening, slamming or throwing things around, road rage, yelling, ignoring. Seneca - stoic philosopher - thought rage a temporary madness. That’s why the Romans always beat the Germans: the Germans were mad, the Romans tactful. Aristotle saw some utility in it: it prompts some to answer an injustice. Kant thought someone who was never angry was ‘unmanly’, as did Hume.

The Classical Music of Today

I have always had a private passion for movie scores, the background music in a movie, today’s classical music. If done properly, it is absolutely arresting. Some scores will always be remembered with the movie and can’t be appreciated without the movie. This depends, though. In my case, the ‘Farewell Duet’ in the movie Edward Scissorhands is just breathtaking. In this case, I make no associations between the music and the movie, since I discovered the music first.

I feel things that no other kind of music can arouse: the xylophone, the high accompanying chorus, the staccato strings, the rising and falling of the central theme. I feel like I’m being carried up the crest of a tidal wave and gently sat down on the shore of my own private island, and awaiting me is the Fountain of Youth or that Something I’ve been searching for my entire life, that Well at the World’s End, beyond the frontier, that Undiscovered Country. It starts off quiet, slow, brooding, lifted and carried by the horns, and the flutes are its laurels, sprinkled with the chorus, and then it settles back down, only to be whisked away again, as if on a magic carpet out of an Arabian desert of the spirit, and onto the roof of some enchanted castle. More importantly, I feel like the old ache I’ve felt, a pain (the pain we hide) is - for only a moment - touched by an invisible hand, and I taste the beginning of what it means for ‘every tear to be wiped away’.

There is also the movie Conan: The Barbarian. Again, the music! Set aside the movie for a moment. The music! It was conducted by the great Basil Poledouris. Listen to the ‘Anvil of Crom’! The drum beats rhythmically, the bard’s stirring prologue, and then that HORN, that majestic HORN! I wish with Nietzsche I didn’t have to write this blog, but for some angel to sing it! Then it shifts. The drums cease. A melody enters lead by the strings and carried by the horns and lifted to a peak and then descending. Oh how Dionysus is shaken and fluttered! The deep has been opened up. But it is tempered and transformed by that melody, as if to say: this steel being forged in the fire is forged for a reason, the crafting of a beautiful blade, a sword that you alone were meant to wield, to slay the monsters you alone were meant to slay.

Oh, and then Poledouris’ ‘Riders of Doom’, music that strikes like lightening in a clear sky, that overwhelms like an avalanche. The floodgates of the spirit of the muse are opened! The high horn is the switch! The chorus! Oh, the chorus! Ancient Greek Tragedy! Womb of music! Odin! Zeus! Sophocles! The wrath of Achilles! War! Fury! Wrath! The symbols clash! The drums are beaten! I stand before the music like one standing before an overpowering might: awe, tears, fear, terror, tremendous terror! I think of the titanic forces of the spirit and music releases it like a ferocious lion out of a cage. I feel energy, a life-force, like I’m merging with a great power, a muse, and I’m riding it like a Pegasus - I’m lead to the gates of Hades and I soar over the dead like a glider swoops down over fields of corn in wide open spaces! Passion! Passion! Words are like broken toys! Just listen! Whereof I cannot speak I must remain silent.

Or, how about Alan Silvestri’s ‘No Words’, which dovetails into “Small Moves”, from the movie Contact? The orbed electric piano hovers over an abyss of unspeakable beauty, and the music echos our anticipation; we rise and rise as if coming up over the edge of a huge cliff, and we see it! No pretension. It is not loud: just the soothing tune of a tender piano. This streams gently over to “Small Moves”. The music evokes a void. It warms us like a blanket and the wonder is so engulfing we just gaze. The uninterrupted beginning is broken by a delicious splash of strings. Then it stops: the piano enters like a woman gracefully walking on a river. All of the music comes together like a flock of seagulls. We are on the beach of our consciousness, looking out onto the ocean we shall all one day have to cross, and one day! - cross over into . . . Well, you know.

Einstein and Relativity: Part 2

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity. - Albert Einstein

Now we come to the much more interesting - yet challenging - Special Theory of Relativity (STR). Lets focus on the first point we should keep in mind.

Imagine a juggler on a pier (Adam), and imagine another juggler in a boat traveling 5 mph away from the pier (David). Suppose they are both juggling eggs. We thus have two frames of reference: the one on the pier and the one on the boat. What is interesting is this: ‘relative’ to both frames of reference, Adam and David’s eggs are moving in the same way. Even though the boat is ‘moving’ and the pier is ‘stationary’, both Adam and David can both say they are stationary. Why? Because Adam and David are in different frames of reference. And the laws of physics stay the same in any and every moving frame of reference.

Look at it this way. You’re driving down a superhighway going 80 mph. You look out the window as the asphalt and the trees race by. But then your attention shifts to inside the car: everything seems to be at rest relative to inside the car. Suppose you have a quarter and you drop it in your lap. Relative to the frame of reference ‘outside’ the car, the quarter actually traveled 80 mph! But relative to the frame of reference ‘inside’ the car, the quarter didn’t go anywhere - it just gently landed on your lap. But if you roll down the window and put the quarter an inch outside the window, it doesn’t any longer fall straight down (as it is did on your lap, and as it would do if it was just an inch inside the window): it is sucked outside the car, careening along the side of the road.

All of this is really cool, and it’s been known since Galileo. But Einstein asked a very simple question: how does ‘light’ play into all this? Remember, that light travels 186,000 miles per second! Lets put Adam and David in a rocket ship. Suppose Adam raced along at 60% the speed of light; and David sped along at 90% the speed of light. According to Einstein, both Adam and David would still measure light passing by them at a constant rate of 186,000 milers per second! No matter how fast you go (and even if you're standing still), light goes by you at the same speed. Isn’t that strange? How is this possible?

Lets look at this more closely. What is speed, exactly? It’s a measure of the amount of distance you cover in a certain time. Since the speed of light is constant, something else has got to give, something else has got to change. And what is it that has to change? TIME! Time, according to Einstein, begins to actually change. A paradox is this: if Adam is traveling in his rocket ship 80% the speed of light, and David is traveling in his rocket ship 50% the speed of light, the time for Adam and David would be different!

To test this groundbreaking hypothesis, Einstein began asking questions about something called ‘simultaneity’. What does it mean for two events to happen at the same time? Can two events happen at the same time for David, and yet those exact same two events NOT happen at the same time for Adam? Yes! Einstein concocted a really cool thought-experiment that is now very famous. Lets explore it!

In our minds, lets imagine a railroad track with two poles erected on one side (an equal distance away: lets say 20 feet away from each other), and another pole placed at their midpoint. Suppose Adam stands at the midpoint with what is called a ‘right-angle mirror’. This mirror allows Adam to see both the left and the right poles at the same time (without having to turn his head!). Next, imagine that a bolt of lightening strikes both of the poles at the same time, and Adam is able to see this using his handy-dandy right-angle mirror. To Adam, the light (from the lightening) travels toward him over the same distance (he is at the midpoint) at the same speed (185,000 miles per second). So far so good.

But now Einstein wants us to focus on David, who is coming down our railroad track on a train. Einstein asks: how would David experience the bolt of lightening hitting the two poles? Does the lightening hit both the poles at the same time to David, like they did with Adam? Hanging out of the train window, David is also armed with his handy-dandy right-angle mirror. As the train passes by the midpoint (where he can wave to Adam who is on the ground), David sees the bolt of lightening hit the pole he is moving toward first (pole A), and then he sees the bolt hit the pole he moving away from (pole B). Why? According to Einstein, it’s a matter of distance - the light coming from A doesn’t have to travel as far as the light coming from B: the train is moving toward A!

Einstein picks the point of view of David who is on the train. Remember, everything is relative to a frame of reference. To Adam, he is stationary and the train is moving past him. But to David, he is stationary and the poles are moving past him. So, Einstein ponders: the lightening would have needed to strike A first and then B (to David) ‘in order that’ Adam see the lightening strike A and B at the same time. This allows the light time to catch up to Adam in time, in time for Adam to see the poles struck at the same time.

To Adam’s frame of reference, the poles WERE struck at the same time; to David’s frame of reference, the poles WERE NOT struck at the same time. But to Einstein, there is no privileged frame of reference! And therefore Einstein concluded: TIME IS RELATIVE (play the soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey in the background!).

Here we come full circle. According to STR, the faster you move, the slower time moves. So what follows! The faster your movement (the closer you got to the speed of light), the slower your clock would tick. But remember what Einstein said in his General Theory of Relativity! Space and Time aren’t two separate realities: there’s just one - space/time. Therefore, not only would time go slower (in your frame of reference), you would actually begin to SHRINK, relative to an observer outside your frame of reference.

All this begs the most fascinating question in the theory: what exactly would occur, what would it be like, to ride a beam of light? This is impossible - at the speed of light, there is no length! You’d shrink to nothing, and time itself stops ‘flowing’ (but don't tell that to Captain Kirk!).

Einstein’s fame exploded when he applied STR to Mass and Energy: E=MC2. So, what does that mean? If you take any object, there is contained in that object ‘energy’. That ‘Energy’ is equal (=) to that object’s Mass multiplied by the speed of light ‘squared’ - that’s a lot of Energy! After all, the Energy that explodes from an Atomic bomb is just the energy exploding from one teeny tiny atom! And, thus, if Mass contains Energy, then Energy has Mass! For example: this means the Earth is struck by 4 and 1/2 ‘pounds’ of sunlight every second!

Summary: Einstein was a beast!

Einstein and Relativity: Part 1

“Imagination is more important than Knowledge.” Albert Einstein.

Have you ever wondered what the General Theory of Relativity is? In this blog, I'm going to put all this prolixity in my own words. Essentially, it is a theory about gravity. For a long time (and thanks to Newton), people thought of gravity as a force. We toss up a ball, it reaches an apex, and then it seems like some force pulls it back down to us. A force made the apple hit Newton on the head. A force keeps us on the ground so we don’t float out into space.

Think of the orbit of the moon around the world, or any moon, or any orbit for that matter. Suppose you tied a 5-foot rope to a ball and then set the ball down beside you: there the ball would sit, with the rope dangling from your hand, and yet (remember) connected to the ball. Suppose further that you pick the ball up using the rope and start to rotate faster and faster. The ball would begin to ‘orbit’ around you. In this analogy, gravity is the rope. Newton would say: the earth’s gravity is greater than the moon’s, and that’s why the moon orbits the earth - in the spirit of Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, the Earth through a lasso around the moon!

Or, do you remember the ride at the Roller-Coaster Theme Park that spun around at a high speed? We would press our backs up against a mat around the perimeter of the ride, and as the the ride would spin faster and faster we would feel more and more pressure up against the wall. Newton would also like this analogy. That’s why everything on Earth stays on the ground: the Earth is spinning very fast. Airplanes actually ride gravity like a surfer catches a wave: they don’t actually defy gravity, but use it, harness it, to become airborne.

Enter Albert Einstein. Einstein changed everything. For instance, up until Newton, everyone thought of Space and Time as two distinct realities. Space was understood using the metaphor of a spatial container (Newton) or particular points on a graph (Leibniz). Time was understood using the metaphor of already existing dominos, and time’s ‘flow‘ was understood using the metaphor of the point during which the domino falls and hits the one in front of it.

But not Einstein. According to him, there aren’t anymore two distinct realities: Space and Time - there is just one: space/time. And space/time should be understood using the metaphor of a fabric, with space and time interwoven together. Think of a trampoline. If you stand in the center, there’s a big hollow there. Now, think of our solar system. The sun is in the center of a huge, space/time fabric that is like the fabric of a trampoline, making a huge hollow. The reason why the planets revolve around the sun is because they’re making revolutions along the space/time fabric ‘because of’ the hollow.

Every single object - ants, trees, you, me, cell phones, Obama, mites, spiders - make tiny hollows or dents in the fabric of space/time! Everything stays on the Earth because the Earth makes the biggest dent in space/time compared to anything else on Earth, and the dent is big enough to do this.

Lets go little further in understanding something else. If the metaphor of a fabric is accurate (and it probably is - it’s had a near perfect history of predictive value), something else is possible: wormholes. If Einstein’s theory is right, there are dents in this fabric everywhere; but what if a part of the fabric at one end ‘folds over’ and meets the ‘underside’ of another part of the same fabric? And what if at that point of mutual contact, we could travel - instantaneously - to another part of space/time literally billions of light years away? There would be paradoxes, and I’ll get into those in more depth later. But quickly: the moment you arrived there - according to the theory - everyone you knew would have been dead for a while. And yet: if you went back through a second later, you would have aged a second, and perhaps everyone else would have aged 50 years. So, what to you took a second, took for them 50 years. But this gets into the Special Theory of Relativity, which is a little harder to understand, but I’ll get to it in the next blog!

It could happen to you...

Romantic Comedies have always been a guilty pleasure for me. You name it I will watch it. Failure to Launch, How to lose a guy in ten days, Music and Lyrics, Two weeks Notice, While you were Sleeping, and so many more. These movies appeal to me because I legitimately think they are funny. Part of the Romantic Comedy formula is to have a secondary character that seems to balance the ever swinging pendulum of emotions of the main characters. Also, who doesn't want to see the couple end up together in the end? I think it appeals to a certain side of of most people. I think most people want to have a similar experience in their own life, fiction or not.

My one complaint about romantic comedies is they often times step into overly fictionalized world and ceases to resemble the world at all. It becomes cliche' and predictable and dull. The story no longer becomes interesting.

But, I want to distinguish a certain romantic comedy from the rest of the pack. You've Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan I believe quite possibly is the best in this genre. I assume most people are familiar with the story so I will not give a full summary but suffice to say that it is a fairly modern, technological love story.

The reason why I believe this movie stands apart from the rest is the writing. It is wonderfully written and encompasses the audience. Nora Ephron, the screenwriter, pays attention to detail in dialogue. She spends time on the nuances of emotions that are connected with relationships. This is what stands out from this film. For Example;

Joe Fox: Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.

Kathleen Kelly: What will NY152 say today, I wonder. I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it connects. I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: You've got mail. I hear nothing. Not even a sound on the streets of New York, just the beating of my own heart. I have mail. From you.

This movie, I would consider among some of the great love stories, Pride Prejudice, The Taming of the Shrew, etc. These stories for me, are exceptional in how they communicate romantic love. But, more importantly they tell a story. Real people interacting with real people.

This movie and the few stories I mentioned earlier communicate truths that I believe we want to be true. That "Love" will conquer all. Personally, this idea makes me want to throw up. But, part of this is also appealing. The idea that there is something larger that I can participate in. Someone else to participate in life with. This movie, in my mind, accurately captures this. Not in a overly cheesy manner but, accurately, with some drama thrown in for the fun of it.

Yes, this movie has a typical Hollywood ending, but, let's be honest, who doesn't want the Hollywood ending with the person you are convinced is your other half?

Hypocrite: from the Greek, hypokrisis - play acting

Take a look at this link: http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-dems-in-2005-51-vote-nuclear-option-is-arrogant-power-grab-against-the-founders-intent/

Biden: "I pray to God when the Democrats take back control we don't make the kind of naked power grab you are doing."

And then they did. The English statesman Edmond Burke once said: "Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing." I don’t know how long this video will be up, but it just shows how hypocritical politicians are. They promise one thing and deliver another. Right now, the Democrats have the majority in the House and the Senate. Okay, that’s fine. They’re voted in, and this year there will be another vote. But look at what the Democrats are doing: they’re using this majority to push through Health Care Reform, Obama’s Health Care Plan and all that it entails. Remember, as long as Democrats have the majority in the Senate and the House, Republicans can’t filibuster any bill. I know filibustering has been abused, but when it’s used properly, it’s democracy in action.

In 2005, Republicans also had the Senate and the House. This 51 vote majority was used by the Republicans to avoid the filibuster to get their agenda going in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this collection of clips, Senator Obama (not what the founding fathers would have wanted!), Senator Clinton (Bush needs to restrain himself!), Senator Reid (we need the filibuster when one party controls the House and the Senate! it’s a check on power!), Senator Schumer (this is a constitutional crisis! no more checks and balances!), Senator Feinstein (the majority has tyranny over the minority!), Senator Biden (it’s the arrogance of power!), and Senator Dodd (a tyranny of the majority!), all show their posturing.

What is interesting here is not especially the reasoning, but the naked hypocrisy. Flash forward to February, 2010. The Democrats are in the same exact position the Republicans were in. You can basically play the video, and place all their criticisms on the Republican administration then on the Democratic administration now! If they don’t, they’re hypocrites. And if the Republicans don’t admit they were wrong then when denouncing Democrats today, they’re hypocrites. Do we need the filibuster or not? Who is allowed to have both Houses of Congress, the Republicans or the Democrats? Who would the founding father side with? The filibuster is obviously good, but they both abuse it, and we all know they know what they’re doing. They use selective moral outrage, and their righteous indignation flares only when it suits their party! Burk was right: they don't want to do what's right because they don't want to deal with the cost.

Hurt Locker: a tentative review

I just saw the movie Hurt Locker and I’ve noticed something peculiar about the reviews. By and large, the lion’s share of the bad reviews are given by veterans. On the flip side, the reviews that praise the movie to high Heaven come from those who are not veterans. I don’t make the distinction to put a spot light on useful criteria for judging movies to be good or bad. But it is an interesting distinction. Veterans, for the most part, couldn’t swallow the movie. The movie is - and ought to be - pigeonholed as a war movie, but it says farewell to the John Wayne-type war movie. It’s pitched as a movie depicting things ‘as they really are’.

It moves away from the symbolism and art and harrowing character studies of Apocalypse Now, and further away from the sprawling Deer Hunter, checkered with big-wig Hollywood heavyweights. Hurt Locker fell more into the category of a Saving Private Ryan set in modern day Iraq, without the melodrama. You could almost put it on par with Platoon. All the same, Platoon dealt with the turmoil of betrayal and rivalry in a group (a microcosm of the Vietnam situation as a whole), and Hurt Locker deals with a character who uses the war like a drug. In fact, he has used to the drug so much, it’s hard for him to get a high anymore.

The movie focuses on an expert bomb defuser, his puzzling stoic nature, his friction with his comrades, his vigilantism, and just the horrifying flavor of war in general. As to my own experience, I wasn’t drawn to the character. My gut told me the character just didn’t exist; for all that, I would have accepted it in another context. But here, he struck a discordant note against the seeming realism. In a movie like Apocalypse Now, more an allegory about evil and human nature than war in general, I could swallow Duvall’s bravado in the midst of falling bombs. His was a character representing a symbol of a certain type of soldier, itself an element in understanding the entirety of the allegory. But if Duvall’s character had been in Saving Private Ryan or Deer Hunter, it would have been an artistic gaffe. The apples and oranges need to stay in their own baskets.

This is the error I see Hurt Locker responsible for. William James (Renner) is a character that doesn’t ring true. The macho nonsense and bombast just aggravated me. Lines like: “If I’m going to die, I might as well do it comfortably.” Or: the scene when he blocks his view from his comrades out of some twisted aim to look like this silly renegade. Or: when he called his ex-wife and son, and said nothing - tiresome. Or: the overdone ‘crouch in shower scene with all your clothes and kick around in frustration’ scene - uninspired. As art, I couldn’t stomach it. I tried! The praise heaped on this movie has been enormous. My idol-critic Roger Ebert has endorsed it with an enthusiastic 4-star rating.

Ebert likes Renner’s character. To each his own. I’m not denying the movie had suspenseful scenes. I especially felt unnerved during the sniper battle, but when was I supposed to be unnerved with the scene involving the bombs in the car’s trunk, I was again distracted by a lack of realism. Why not just get everyone out of there and bomb the car to smithereens? Why risk Renner’s life? Why the middle finger when given a direct order to back away from certain death, at least a certain death that would have been felt by a normal human being in a real war? Ebert says there is no gung ho in the movie. Really? That seemed to embody Renner’s character. The character Sanborn was the realist in the movie I guess we’re supposed to side with, but then all the interchanges between him and Renner weren’t realistic. I think they needed to be for this movie to be a success.

I say all this tentatively, because I want to trust the reviews over my own sentiment. I know when I like a movie, and I can tell pretty clearly when that’s going to happen. But my experience watching this movie was exasperating, having a larger-than-life character in a movie that’s supposed to be representing the real thing. It would be like having the skeletal Tyrannosaurus Rex from Night at the Museum make an appearance on Jurassic Park. So, I am open to correction from anyone who thinks I judged this movie unfairly!

Shaw and Chesterton debate: a commentary

The great literary critic George Bernard Shaw is a Socialist, and the journalist and philosopher G.K. Chesterton is a Distributist. This is a commentary on a debate they had on their views.

I do not think that a community arranged on the principles of Distributism and on nothing else would be a perfect community. All admit that the society that we propose is more a matter of proportion and arrangement than a perfectly clear system in which all production is pooled and the result given out in wages. But what I say is this: Let us, so far as is possible in the complicated affairs of humanity, put into the hands of the Commons the control of the means of production--and real control. - Chesterton in Do We Agree?

Shaw begins the debate by noting a problem in Capitalism. The issue here is called ‘the distribution of wealth’. Capitalism, according to Shaw, distributes wealth unfairly. For example, there are people - under the Capitalist system - who get filthy rich on the shoulders of workers who work for destitute wages. This, to Shaw, isn’t how wealth should be distributed. Shaw - in a fit of hyperbole - proclaims that the only punishable crime should be the crime of distributing wealth unfairly. If you give someone 50 bucks and they want more, kill him! And if I receive 50 bucks and I have 55, kill him! Of course, Shaw is exaggerating, but we get the point.

Chesterton sidesteps Shaw’s humor and gets right to the kernel. Shaw’s Socialism depends upon the alleged key premise: that the ‘means of production’ are owned by the community. But Shaw means something peculiar when he says that. The community doesn't really own the means of production at all; rather, the means of production are owned by the State, and the State equally distributes 'the product' among the community. What Shaw means by 'own' is that the community actually 'is' the means of production. In actuality, Shaw wants to place the 'ownership' of the means of production in the hands of the government, ensuring equal distribution of that product throughout the community.

In spite of that, Chesterton wants to put real ownership and control in the hands of the community, a real control over a means of production of a particular product. In Socialism, however, there is no control of the means of the production by the community. And here is where the whole point turns.

On the one hand, Shaw proposes to fix the unequal distribution of wealth by giving the government power over the means of production, and the government then redistributes its products equally among the community (leaving the community with no power over the means of production). On the other hand, Chesterton rebuts by saying this: we shouldn’t redistribute wealth by Shaw’s strategies - we ought to redistribute power! This is actually a penetrating point. If power is decentralized, if power is redistributed among the community by a just government, then the means of production are in the hands of the community, and the whole ideal of redistribution of wealth follows without any of the dire consequences involved in Socialism!

In Shaw’s response, he makes the peculiar point that wealth is all there is to distribute, and so we can’t redistribute power at all. Regarding wealth, Shaw begins to provide a loose definition of what Capital itself is: spare money leading to spare food, which is good for only a certain time before it goes rotten. When the food is rotten, the spare money leading to its consumption is useless. But as long as spare food is unnecessary, Capital remains a mere figure. With this in mind, Shaw notes an alleged contradiction between the preaching and practice of Chesterton’s Distributism.

Hasn’t Chesterton called for the ‘nationalization’ of the coal mines? Yes, he has. Isn’t that a contradiction? Isn’t that shifting over to the government the means of production? This doesn’t seem to be redistributing power into the community, does it? Also, Shaw asks Chesterton to define more closely what he means by the means of production. As for the coal mines, the community obeys a manager under Capitalism, and obeys the government under Socialism. In either case, a product - coal - is produced, and equally distributed throughout the community. Thus, the ends of Socialism and Distributism are one and the same. And if coal mines need to be owned by the government, the same logic should lead Chesterton to believe that everything else should be owned by the government.

Shaw then makes a point about ownership. Shaw wants to abolish it. The reason he wants to abolish it is because he wants to take away the possibility of the owners being able to use it to harm another person. For example, if someone owned a gun, they’d be more inclined to use it, and the possibility is there that he would use it to harm or kill. After all, the gun belongs to the owner. Shaw wants to take away that possibility, and make property owned by the government. The person who doesn’t produce more than he consumes, who doesn’t pull his weight in the community, who lives like a parasite, ought to be punished just as harshly as the murderer. The fear of punishment would be incentive enough to get the Socialism ball rolling.

In Chesterton’s response, he first makes a point on Shaw’s point about ownership. Shaw thinks we shouldn’t inflict harm on others because the products we own aren’t ours: they’re the government's. Chesterton thinks we shouldn’t inflict harm on others because the products we own would be inflicting harm on things we don’t own: other people.

Regarding the question of the coal mine, Chesterton wonders how Shaw missed that there are exceptions built into the Distributist structure. The coal mine just happens to be one of those exceptions. Distributism has no problem having the exceptions owned by the government. Coal is - in this case - on the same level as the distribution of postage stamps. Chesterton wants to hand over to the government all those means of production which either can’t or won’t be privately owned. And all which can and will are distributed.

Shaw’s last counter is long and passionate and goes over his allotted time. Shaw asks why the coal mine is an exception. Chesterton, no doubt, would respond that it is an exception because no one would want private ownership over a coal mine, just as no one would want private ownership over postage stamps. One wonders what Shaw would say to the point that the government could and might act just as savagely and unjustly as a private owner, a landlord. Strangely, Shaw says the government wouldn’t have that kind of power. Why not? And to Chesterton’s point about people having an instinct to be private owners, Shaw claims the instinct may be in the country but not in the town, a more urban part of society.

And now we come to Chesterton’s final statement. People in the town do have the instincts of private ownership, it’s just that in the town they have no choice but to work for the State. The instinct becomes suppressed. It would be like outlawing beer because the few drink it excessively. Without the wind (the State) the redistributed windmills (the community) wouldn’t be much worth; that is why the State needs to make the windmills (redistribute the power the wind can have). Shaw’s position is the same as saying that because there is wind, there is no need for windmills! In Socialism, men and women are the means of production, owned by the State: in other words, they are slaves. In Distributism, men and women are landlords, private owners, themselves their own means of production, for not wealth, but power has been redistributed.

An alternative to Socialism and Capitalism?

When Mr. Shaw refrains from hitting me over the head with his umbrella, the real reason--apart from his real kindness of heart, which makes him tolerant of the humblest of the creatures of God--is not because he does not own his umbrella, but because he does not own my head. As I am still in possession of that imperfect organ, I will proceed to use it to the confutation of some of his other fallacies. - Chesterton in Do We Agree? : A Debate between George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton.

This is a delightful debate because Chesterton and Shaw were both geniuses, comedic, stylistically unorthodox, paradoxical, and best friends. Their philosophies were worlds apart, but their friendship continued strong until Chesterton’s death on June 14th, 1936. One day, the transcripts of a debate (the debate happened in 1928) were rescued and we have a record of one of the many debates they participated in together. Not only is it a joy to read because I’m in love with their personalities and style, but the substance of the debate was as relevant then as it is today.

Partnered with Hilaire Belloc (British historian, poet, writer), Chesterton lead a political crusade in favor of a view called Distributism, an economic theory that keeps all the virtues of Capitalism without the vices, and shunned Shaw’s particular brand of Socialism (there are so many types). The achilles heal of Capitalism, according to Chesterton, is the corporation, an evil Chomsky regularly denounces. The corporation is a kind of socialism, and so this sort of unbounded Capitalism leads to a certain kind of socialism: the corporate kind. Without getting into the minutia, what ends up happening is that the corporations get in bed with the government: they’ll scratch the government’s back if they scratch theirs. A corporation can fund campaigns, pay for ads, and other things. Representatives from corporations can meet with, say, Senators and agree to finance their campaign if they back the corporation's politics and so on and so forth.

Chesterton - a Christian - thought that government and the economy should be fashioned in a way that promoted Christian values. It just so happened that the economic system Chesterton thought did this the best was Distributism. The crucial concept in this debate is ‘the means of production’, which is the lynchpin of an economic system. In Capitalism, the means of production are controlled (predominately) by the rich, the corporations. In Socialism, the major means of production (banks, schools, hospitals, factories, plants, manufacturers, and so on) are directly controlled by the government (with shades of gray thrown on whatever is owned and how much control there is on what is owned). In Communism, (and I am open to correction here) all means of production are owned by the government.

Distributism is distinct from these philosophies. Chesterton laid much emphasis on how capital should be distributed. Private property should be distributed as widely as possible. Thus, the government that makes that happen is good, and the economic system that could arise would be the best. Farms, businesses, plants, factories, hospitals, schools all need to be privately owned, independently owned. In this case, we’d have not bureaucrats, not government officials, not corporations, but individuals, individual families owning the means of production.

Distributism, therefore, draws a fine line between good and bad government intervention. The bad kind tries to own all the means of production. The good kind tries to arrange things in such a way where the government doesn’t own any means of production: that is because it is arranged in such a way that it is all privately owned. Chesterton thought this route was the most realistic option to tackle issues like poverty. The society that produces poverty is the one that doesn’t care, because it can’t care. We look at the homeless man with disdain and wonder why he can’t just find a job! Then we come to see that - in most cases - he is lazy, doesn’t want to work, is uncivilized, and isn’t fit for society anyway. But Chesterton wants us to imagine a different society, a society where poverty can be almost done away with; and if it’s still there, it’s not anymore the fault of society: the fault is put squarely on the individual.

In that society, we have towns and villages all evenly distributed, all fairly apportioned. Anywhere we have a cluster of people we’d be sure to find families who were responsible for the means of production for a certain good or service upon which the village or town as a whole depended. The poor would be a class that would soon deteriorate, because it would be a society in which the distribution of capital would be about the same. No one would be extremely rich (only useful in a purely capitalistic society) or destitute (the practical outworking of socialism and communism and corporate socialism - a.k.a. Capitalism).

Greed would have less incentive, and the value of thanksgiving and sharing could be an option. If we think of free trade, the incentive to put, say, factories overseas to import the goods for a cheaper price would almost disappear. We wouldn’t cut off trade, but the amount of goods and services domestically made would increase, and we would have many prospective exports, like China. The jobs of the middle class (a class which would gradually replace the rich and most of the poor) would be more secure and there would be a greater allegiance to nationalism rather than the corporate bottom line. Patriotism would increase (perhaps?). What use and need or want would we gain from the flood of illegal immigrants pouring over the border? They’d run not into blind, greedy entities encased in skyscrapers, but village outposts, families, knit together by family loyalties and allegiances.

I haven’t read too much on this philosophy, but it appeals to me. I plan on reading Chesterton's book, An Outline of Sanity, in which this framework is explained in detail. The first thing I’ll do though is this: in the next blog, I’ll see how Chesterton stands against Shaw’s socialism, examine the points where they clash, and see what I like the most. I’ll then work out in more detail exactly what the ins and outs of Distributism involve and entail.

Ladders ascending through Clouds

"But now you will ask me "How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?" and I cannot answer you except to say "I do not know!" For with this question you have brought me into the same darkness, the cloud of unknowing where I want you to be!"
The Cloud of Unknowing

I’m sorry, but I had to blog again. I had to write!

The Cloud:

I had a brief encounter with Christian mysticism that kept me from continuing my study of metaphor. But it could be relevant. I had been doing my usual rounds at Barnes & Noble and, by chance, my eye landed on the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing. I’ve read bits and pieces and every time I read I'm affected. But already being in the frame of mind to study metaphor, I thought of this metaphor of the Cloud that a mystic chose more than 6 centuries ago.

The author’s main point is that love is more important than knowledge, for not only does love take us straight through the Cloud of Unknowing and into divine love, love (agape) - by nature - humbles, whereas knowledge often leads to conceit. Not only that, but knowledge actually leads us to a chimera. The intellect takes us to the land of concepts; but God’s deeper essence is beyond concepts. This is the subject of Rudolph Otto’s main thesis in The Idea of the Holy, a study into the relationship between that part of God’s essence which concepts cannot capture and the arousing in us of Numinous awe, which spawns in the pagans a particularly religious consciousness: the kind that leads to fear and worship of the dead, a belief in spirits, animism, sacrifice, magic, ghosts, and so on.

The intellectual route seems to land us in images, for, after all, the main role for concepts is to stimulate the mind to understanding, and understanding is almost always escorted by the imagination. The images should always be viewed as a substitute, a footstool, a ladder, a means to an end. To get past the Cloud of Unknowing we almost have to put everything discoverable about God by the discursive intellect into what he calls the Cloud of Forgetting. This forgetting is the ‘dart’ that punctures through the Cloud of Unknowing and into God’s love.

I think that a cloud is a good metaphor to use. Perhaps the Cloud of Unknowing is what is called a ‘high cloud’, and the Cloud of Forgetting a ‘low cloud’. In love, we rise above a mesocyclone of doubt and tornados are the brief fits of passion that befall times of doubt and anxiety. Through perhaps a thick layer of Mammatus clouds we rise a little higher! Love carries us above the darkness and into the edges of what is called ‘cloud iridescence’, rainbow colored clouds of feathery silk. The sun is close.

The Ladder:

We are like purchased slaves, like servants under contract to the unholy passions. And because this is so, we know a little of their deceits, ways, impositions and wiles. We know of their evil despotism in our wretched souls. But there are others who fully understand the tricks of these spirits, and they do so because of the working of the Holy Spirit and because of the freedom they themselves have managed to achieve. - The Ladder of Divine Ascent

I’ve also bumped into the metaphor of a ladder. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard wrote under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, who was based on a real person, a monk from Greece, an abbot who authored a book called The Ladder of Paradise, or sometimes called The Ladder of Divine Ascent. I thought it was interesting that the greek word for ladder is ‘klimax’, which is similar to ‘climax’: the ladder could be where we get the concept of growing suspense until a climax. The interesting thing is that the book was the first to be published in the New World, published in Spanish in Mexico. The name Johannes Climicas can be translated into either John the Ladder or John the Climber: I prefer John the Climber. His ladder had thirty rungs and his main point was that the key to the monastic life (which was his immediate audience) was trouncing the passions. Their proposed reward?: the Heavenly vision, a state not unlike nirvana, a mystical union with God. This is why the treatise is popular in the East; in fact, as far as devotions go, it is in the East what The Imitation of Christ (Thomas a Kempis) is in the West.

Climicas claims that we can climb to God via the 30 rungs with the Holy Spirit’s aid. It should ring a bell where Climicas himself borrowed his metaphor: Jacob’s ladder. In Jacob’s vision, he saw a ladder leading to Heaven. Climicas’ ladder has 30 steps (steps vary in other cases), because Christ lived 30 years just prior to his earthly ministry. The first 23 steps deal with overcoming the vices, the last 7 steps deal with attainment of the virtues. Kierkegaard used this pseudonym because the author was supposed to be hunting for God, climbing for Him, perhaps through The Cloud of Unknowing, and has not yet found him: the main point is that - again - the discursive intellect is impotent to bring one union with the divine. Faith and love alone give us those wings. As far as the book itself goes, it is very readable with very practical advice, both clear and profound, with topics as diverse as the vices of Talkativeness and Silence, Slander, Despondency, and Exile (even Meekness), and the virtues of Stillness, Faith, and Humility. To give a sneak peak - on the vice of Unmanly Fears: “Cowardice is childish behavior within a soul advanced in years and vainglory. It is a lapse from faith that comes from anticipating the unexpected.”

I think the metaphors of the ladder and the cloud are good ones and they’ve helped a ton. I’ll keep these in mind as I study more on metaphor in general.

Language and Metaphor

I want to talk about metaphors. They’re everywhere and indispensable to thinking or saying or writing about anything. There are many theories of metaphor, but I want to seize on one. According to this theory, metaphors are initially created by poetry. Owen Barfield thought that it was poetry which was responsible for the creation of new metaphors. Now, why would we want to create new metaphors? Well, metaphors are the chief birthplace of meaning. Just as Socrates called himself a midwife for knowledge and ideas, poets are midwives for meaning.

It is the job of the poets (or those blessed with a cutting edge imagination) to probe for pristine metaphors. When this happens, new meaning is breathed into an idea or a word, and language is refined. To Barfield, what makes poetry (or prose verging on the poetic) distinct from prose is the metaphors it uses. Poetry (or, good poetry) will be using live metaphors (and striving after new ones), and prose will be using dead metaphors. Ordinary prose, in the opinion of Barfield, is a sea of dead metaphors which were once alive.

We might see the point better if we looked at an example. In a certain poem, Wordsworth called a woman a red, red rose. Not just a red rose: but a red, red one. In prose, the words are meant to denote, to point to an object out there. In this case, that is impossible because a rose is not a woman and a woman is not a rose. That is why it is a metaphor. But if it doesn’t denote, how is it meaningful? It is still meaningful because it was never meant to point to an object. If it is meant to point at anything, it is meant to point at meaning, and we can’t talk about a metaphor doing that without being metaphorical again.

The role of the metaphor is to appeal to your imagination. When you imagine a red, red rose, what do you think of, what associations arise? A rose is beautiful. A rose is full of life. In grasping a rose you risk getting pricked. The rose has been a symbol for secrecy (Rome), for love. The color red has been a symbol for guilt, pain, passion. And you can plumb the depths as far as you want. What associations arise with beauty, life, secrecy, love: the tree keeps branching out. No matter when your adventure ends, your understanding of a woman (or, at least the woman Wordsworth had in mind) snowballs.

We can do the same thing in any metaphor (or, similes). We can meet a true genius in Homer and feed off his metaphors for a lifetime: “He fell upon them like flames of fire from every quarter. As when a wave, raised mountain high by wind and storm, breaks over a ship and covers it deep in foam, the fierce winds roar against the mast, the hearts of the sailors fail them for fear, and they are saved but by a very little from destruction--even so were the hearts of the Achaeans fainting within them. Or as a savage lion attacking a herd of cows while they are feeding by thousands in the low-lying meadows by some wide-watered shore--the herdsman is at his wit's end how to protect his herd and keeps going about now in the van and now in the rear of his cattle, while the lion springs into the thick of them and fastens on a cow so that they all tremble for fear--even so were the Achaeans utterly panic-stricken by Hector and father Jove.”

Knowing that this is the office of metaphors can mushroom your appreciation of Scripture. Dead-ends in proper exegesis happen when we mistake the metaphors for ordinary prose, and so mistake appeals to our imagination to probe for more and more meaning with appeals to look at whatever object we thought the word was denoting, or pointing at. The Psalmist, instead of telling us that Nature worships God, tells us that the trees clap for joy. Instead of telling us that God is holy and just, the writer of Hebrews tells us that God is a consuming fire. He is the father of lights, a shepherd, a gate, a vine, a father, a husband, a son, a rock, a refuge, a fortress, a hiding place. Hell is darkness, an unquenchable fire. Heaven is bespangled with gold, other precious medals, gems, pearls, emeralds, gates, foundations, and so on. Jude on godless men: “They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.”

Metaphor is at the root of all language. The remarkable philosopher Wittgenstein was guided by it when he changed the climate of philosophy: twice. At the beginning, his blueprint was that of a picture, and just as a picture represents the pictured, so language represents the world. Feeling dissatisfied with that, he exchanged the metaphor of a picture with that of a tool: words aren’t any longer things that represent, but things we use - learning a language becomes learning how to do and fix things with words. At first, the meaning of a word is found in what it denotes; then, the meaning of a word is found in how it is used in a particular language-game.

Lets try to look at the most prosaic sentence we can think of. Say: the book is on the table. Is that metaphorical? It’s used literally, but it contains dead metaphors. The word ‘book’ comes from the Old English ‘boc’, meaning to document or charter! This leads us to the realm of documenting and chartering. ‘Charter’ (related to sailing out on a voyage) comes from the Latin ‘charta’, meaning ‘paper’. And ‘paper’ comes from the Latin ‘papyrus’, which means ‘paper-reed’. And what is a reed?: a plant, tall and slender. Do you see how buried beneath the word ‘book’, we discover its lineage, and how 'book' itself is a distant metaphor, a dead one.

Or, let’s look at: The animal is sleeping. That seems literal enough. The animal denotes an object (as did the book), but the word ‘animal’ comes from the Latin ‘animalis’, meaning ‘having breath’: another metaphor! And ‘sleep’ comes from the Old English ‘slaepan’, meaning ‘to be weak’. ‘Weak’ comes from the Old Norse ‘wikanan’, meaning ‘to bend’. It’s amazing! It’s everywhere. As C.S. Lewis explains: “It is a serious mistake to think metaphor is an optional thing which poets and orators may put into their work as decoration and plain speakers can do without.”

There is much more to this subject, but I’ll stop here and write more on it later.

Sucking the Marrow

If we know anything about literature, I’m sure we’ve heard of the famous Walden, or, Life in the Woods, by Henry D. Thoreau. The whole scene becomes a symbol for what Emerson was groping for in his essay Self Reliance, the call for independence, non-conformity, and the avoidance of a hollow consistency. Follow your instincts! Emerson muses: “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his.” Sure, you may be wrong. But that is not the point. We, of course, desire to know the truth, and it is to be cherished when found. But in the meantime, we are also humans. Better to be a passionate human in error than a broken clock blundering on the right time.

On July 4th, 1845, with the permission of Emerson (Walden was on his land), Thoreau built a cabin, and began the experiment of living life, which continued for a little over 2 years. I’m not especially interested with the critics who call Thoreau’s experiment a sham because he didn’t experience bona fide isolation (he was within walking distance from Concord and received visitors). I think these criticisms miss the point: the crux was to become a symbol, a visible symbol - not to amputate himself from society, but to wrench himself out of joint: not to break, but to sprain. A man will learn to live with a missing limb; but the dislocation of a joint vexes until put back into place.

I am more interested in the content of the book itself, distancing itself from the genre of undiluted autobiography, but embracing an exaggerated poetic license. But I don’t judge this as a vice. Thoreau builds on this license to construct a work of art, of literature. If nothing else, the book is a chronicle of a consciousness to the second power. Thoreau finds in the otherwise ho-hum vista of Nature a kingdom of wonder and excitement. And it's not only the content but the way in which it’s written: Thoreau draws upon a wealth of metaphor, mythology, and literary pizzazz to recount his experience.

Let us look at some examples. Thoreau reports in his chapter on Sounds: “I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.” A sumach is a shrub or a small tree with a reddish hue, able to grow clumps of fruit. I can imagine the sumac tilting against its neighbors while the wind gently flutters, the wind and the humming coming from the mutual contact of pines, while the birds chant intermittently, and all this at dusk when you seem to “grow in those seasons like corn in the night.” Thoreau would have been referring to Indian corn, which grows more briskly on warm summer nights than at any other time. Thoreau referred to this metaphor copiously: it called attention to the way his spirit grew, that it was a warm summer in his spirit and that tending to these beloved sounds made his spirit swell like Indian corn in the warm summer night. This is just one example. The book is bursting at the seams with such imagery. Let’s look at more!

“Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumblings, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my mediations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway.” - once again, in the Chapter Sounds. The subtlety and delicacy of his awareness is profound. And you can’t fully appreciate the quotes without running into them when reading the chapter as a whole, like how poet Owen Barfield in his Poetic Diction described the ‘felt change of consciousness’ that accompanies the reading of poetry: I need to be actually ‘passing’ the coil of wire between the poles of a magnet to generate an electric current.

“Men frequently say to me, ‘I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially.’ I am tempted to reply to such, - This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?” Apart from the validity of the reasoning (which is irrelevant in this context), we meet the sensibility of an individual, the delicious musings of a particular man, apart from the rabble. As Pascal said before him, the eternity before us and the eternity after us hem us in! The evanescence of whatever aid comes from contact with other men is like a vapor. It is not permanent. It is a momentary mist that is here today and gone tomorrow. Thoreau sought to seize upon the eternal things, the things that our Spirt can suckle on. As C.S Lewis said: “Whatever is not eternal is eternally out of date.” The mass of men throng around the clamoring fog, lose their bearings, hit the age of 40 or 50, and wonder why they feel this gnawing sense of desperation.

As Thoreau says in Where I lived, and What I Lived for: “Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.” Long ago we were changed into men! In Greek mythology, King Aeacus (of Oenopia) has his kingdom obliterated by a plague. He enjoined Zeus to repopulate it. How? A gathering of ants swarmed an old oak tree and Zeus transformed the ants into men. These are the men that populate Concord. In the Illiad, Homer compared the Trojans to cranes (elegant, long-necked birds that dance to court their mates) assaulting pygmies - “As when there is a clangor of cranes in the heavens who avoid winter and unspeakable rain, they fly with clangor toward the streams of ocean bearing slaughter and fate to Pygmaean men.” Clout upon clout! Error upon error.

All this to say, Walden is filled to the brim with wonderful insights and insightful wonders. Some during his time were critical. Robert Louis Stevenson called it a “womanish solicitude; for there is something unmanly, something almost dastardly” in that way of living. Even Emerson was apprehensive: “I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting this [that is, lacking ambition] instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party. Pounding beans is good to the end of pounding empires one of these days; but if, at the end of years, it is still only beans!” But I disagree! He was misunderstood. Thoreau lived Emerson’s reverie. Stevenson segregated the letter of the deed from the spirit. Literarily, the book is a tour de force that rivals anything done by Emerson or Stevenson. The only difference? Thoreau lost himself in the main character of his own work. This isn’t any less artistically praiseworthy than Heath Ledger losing himself in the character of the Joker. While Emerson saw the frontier of his vision, Thoreau navigated it, and then told us what he saw! Did they even bother to read the book?

Visions and Madness: William Blake

"There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott." Wordsworth on William Blake

The Romantic poet, artist, and philosopher William Blake will always continue to fascinate me. His life is filled with wonder, but a wonder mixed with some ghastly visions. Blake actually claimed to ‘see’ things in the spiritual world, and his paintings capture the images he claims to have beheld! For example, the dominant model of the universe at the time (straddling the 18th and 19th century) was Newton’s: all events are interlocked with each other, and every event is connected with every other event via cause and effect. An analogy Newton would have loved is that which compares the Universe to a clock. In a clock, ever gear and lever is related to all the others; if one moves, they all move. In the same way, every event in the universe is related to every other via cause and effect: every event can be tracked back in a causal chain beginning with the first event - Newton would have called that event the ‘creation event’.

Blake actually thought that all events were random: his vision revealed that the cogs (the same as my ‘levers’ and ‘gears’) of the universe were all out of joint: that Newton’s universe represented not the state of affairs now, but in Eden - its harmony shattered by the Fall. Which provokes the question: what are these mysterious bizarre visions?

Blake had these visions since he was a child. When he was four, the little Blake was playing around his house. All of a sudden he claims to have seen God put his head up against the window to look at him! Of course, this frightened him and he ran away screaming. A couple of years later, he saw angels perched on the limbs of a tree: they were luminous and the tree shined. Beset by all these visions, Blake began to paint what he saw. In letters, he would write enigmatic things like the following:

“[The town of] Felpham is a sweet place for Study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden Gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, & their forms more distinctly seen; & my Cottage is also a Shadow of their houses. My Wife & Sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace... I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my Brain are studies & Chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life; & those works are the delight & Study of Archangels.”

His philosophy of art was queer and yet it resonates with me. The imagination is the key to spiritual things, the key to knowing the highest things. The Enlightenment milieu would have scoffed at that: they want Reason! Yet for Blake, imagination is more exalted than reason, and art in general is the product of imagination. To give a snippet of Blake’s method, let’s say we want to read Revelations chapter 12 and meditate on it - unless our imagination is kindled the ‘revelation’ remains words on a page. Look up Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun (seen as a tattoo on the killer in the movie Red Dragon) to see his vision: or the famous Ancient of Days, which is a meditation on Daniel chapter 7.

His prose are even off the wall. Instead of saying ‘and’, his sentences are loaded with the myriad ‘&’s’. Why?, one wonders. There’s also a choppiness and yet you can detect a flow, but it’s the flow from a stream no one treads. Look at this: “I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's. I will not Reason & Compare; my business is to Create." Or, if you want Blake not abiding by the principles of grammar, what about this (dissenting from Newton’s particle theory of light and the parallels it had with the aesthetic sensibilities of the time)?:

“a Line or Lineament is not formed by Chance a Line is a Line in its Minutest Subdivision[s] Strait or Crooked It is Itself & Not Intermeasurable with or by any Thing Else Such is Job.”

Excuse me? Another otherworldly vision of Blake is represented by The Ghose of a Flea. It’s so strange, and yet shocking, or even astounding, that his imagination had put him in touch with such visions. The thing that makes one pause is this: was he really a madman? What if some of them were, well, true? In the future, I might delve into his poems Songs of Innocence or Songs of Experience, each containing droves of images and metaphors, a literal banquet for the famished imagination.

Out of Mind, Out of Sight?

“The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.” - R.D. Laing “The Politics of Experience

I recently came across an insight from Ronald David Laing that I found very interesting. In a book called “The Divided Self”, the Scot psychiatrist Laing puts forth a maverick understanding of mental illness. Usually, we tend to think of a person with mental illness as out of touch with reality, psychologically rotten, or out of their mind. Laing, on the other hand, thinks the exact opposite.

According to Laing, in terms of mental illness, there are two types of people in the world: the secure person and the one who “cannot take the realness, aliveness, autonomy and identity of himself and others for granted and who consequently contrives strategies to avoid ‘losing his self’". A secure person, for example, is a person who has come to terms with his or her own peculiar view of the world, with his or her own mind and the way it perceives the world, whether or not this involves what society would call a ‘mental illness’. The other kind of person is the vast majority of people, people who have striven to become normal by molding themselves onto society’s expectations for, say, socially approved behavior. Their unique, idiosyncratic mind is suppressed to appear ‘normal’.

Think of Thoreau’s famous maxim: most men live lives of quiet desperation. This ‘quiet desperation’ seems to a symptom of something that the course of humankind has been unable to excise. But then we meet people in the everyday, workaday world. They don’t appear to be in despair. Exactly, says Laing: they are asleep. They don’t appear to be in despair because they can’t take the ‘identity of themselves and others for granted’. By this, I think he means that they can’t come to terms with how they really feel about themselves, and that these despairing feelings might actually be a window to the universal human condition of desperation. They tend to waive off such feelings as unnatural and unhealthy, and we have what William James would have called The Religion of Healthy Mindedness in his Varieties of Religious Experience.

But Laing is saying that mental illness, the quiet hours of desperation, are portals to the human condition: that the person who accepts the unusual ways these feelings manifest themselves in his consciousness is the person who is secure in who he or she is. Thus, extreme illnesses such as schizophrenia or psychosis are not illnesses at all: they are gifts given to particular individuals that enable them to see a part of the world that is really there!

The people society thinks are psychotic, according to Laing, are those that society can’t put to sleep. The schizoid hears what others are deaf to and perhaps these voices tell the truth. I think of St. Paul in Romans 7 as he struggled with his divided self and how dealing with this division, accepting it, lead him to truth.

How do you listen?

With the invention of the iPod listening to music has become a lot easier. Prior to mp3's, listening to music was a cumbersome pastime. To listen to a particular album, one needed to remove the record, tape or CD from its sleeve or case and place it on its player. After you completed all of these overwhelming tasks you listened to the entire album, rarely skipping a song because of the inconvenience of it.

Of course I am exaggerating, but, there is a part of this that I feel is true. Before I had my iPod, I carried around my CD case. It looked like a family picture album. I, every morning would take to CD book to my car and removed at the end of every day. I desired to have all of my music with me at all times. I never knew what type of mood I would find myself in, on any particular day.

But, the day arrived, I received my very first iPod. I was to never be the same. My life changed. I now reflect on my life as Pre-iPod and Post-iPod. It was a watershed moment in my life. I now had everything that I could possibly want to listen to on something no larger than an index card.

With this Ipod, I could now go seamlessly from the Beastie Boys to Beethoven to Nelly depending on my mood or fellow passengers in my car. With this invention, it changed the way I listened to music. I could now develop my own soundtrack to my life.

So, how do I listen to music now? Well, I still listen to albums and a bands full catalog but now I
find myself developing themes. Creating a musical essays in my head based on certain songs. For example, I have listed some songs below that I think could be an example of a dating relationship. The beginning of the relationship to a possible break up.


Cupid- Sam Cooke
The Lovely Linda - Paul McCartney
Hallelujah I love her so- Ray Charles
September- Earth, Wind and Fire
Let's Stay together- Al Green
I Still Miss Someone - Johnny Cash

I think about music and its ability to cross boundaries, to communicate complicated emotions. So my question is, has technology ruined art, and specifically music, or opened it to a whole new world of interaction?

Dostoyevsky: the role of the Church and the State

Matt Damore

In Book 2, Chapter 5 of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece The Brother’s Karamasov called ‘So be it! So be it!’, we find a very interesting debate between Ivan Karamasov and Father Zosima. Ivan is very intelligent and is the vile Fyodor’s second son, between Dimitri and Alyosha. Father Zosima is the very wise and renown mentor and teacher of Alyosha, who presides over a monastery as an elder. The setting is the monastery, where Fyodor, Alyosha, Ivan, Miusov (Fyodor’s cousin), the monks, Father Zosima, and Dimitri (who is running late) are going to attend.

Ivan, Dimitri, and Fyodor have chosen the monastery as a possible place to settle a dispute that has arisen between Fyodor and Dimitri. Dimitri’s mother had left him an inheritance and yet Fyodor has stolen it and claimed it as his own. What I want to focus on is not the hopeless dispute, but a debate that begins when Zosima leaves the monastery to meet with the townsfolk, continues after his return, and is finally resolved. The debate is spurred on by an article Ivan had written on whether the Church should subsume the State and take on the role of punishing crime and making laws.

Ivan’s reasoning is that if citizens knew they were not just disrupting the harmony of society but offending God as well, there would be more deterrence. In other words, Ivan doesn’t believe in the separation of Church and State. The Church should be able to cast criminals out of society. According to this theory, crime would begin dwindle more and more. Miusov retorts by calling Ivan’s position Ultramontanism (literally ‘beyond the mountains’), the position that the Pope has ultimate power. But one of the monks points out that Miusov has it backwards: it’s not that the church becomes the state (Rome), but that the state becomes the church.

Zosima disagrees, though, with Ivan’s reasoning. Remember, Ivan’s thesis is put forward because he thinks it’ll deter more effectively. The criminal is less likely to steal, say, if he knows he steals from God rather than from the State. But Zosima underlines the notion that conscience is the only real deterrent. This leads to another one of Ivan’s points.

Without immortality everything is permissible. The reasoning is this: if man didn’t believe he was going to live forever, his criminal acts in the here and now would have less condemnation from his conscience. But if he believed in an afterlife, that his acts here and now have consequences there and then, man might have less reason to break laws and be criminals. What is interesting about this debate is the way Zosima - skilled psychologist as he is - probes into Ivan’s heart and motives for why he puts forth the thesis he does. Ivan believes things with the head instead of his heart; inside, he is a man with deep problems about the idea of faith, and Zosima even suspects that Ivan is using his intellect to put forth a thesis he doesn’t believe himself to be ironical.

We come to see that not only is Zosima a spiritual mystic and an elder at a monastery, but that his mind has been trained to debate Ivan on his own ground. The spiritual man is to be attuned in all his faculties because of his faith and his knowledge of his self because of his love for God and his neighbor. If the state became the Church, Zosima argues, the physical part of man is excommunicated or punished; but true reformation can’t happen unless the individual conscience is stung by a person’s sense of sin. This is Zosima’s counter-thesis: the individual conscience is the best deterrent. By the end of the civil debate, Ivan respects the elder and receives his blessing. While Ivan is admittedly intelligent, it extends only to the head and abstract principles. Zosima’s intelligence extends throughout his soul from a lifetime of faith, with an extensive knowledge of human nature due to his own soul-searching and his obedience to God’s commands: to love God and his neighbor.

To love is to know. That is the mystery of knowing the things of the spirit.

Donnie Darko and the Philosophy of Time Travel

Matt Damore

Jake Gyllenhaal plays the insomniac Donnie Darko in the movie Donnie Darko. This is director and writer Richard Kelly’s debut, and what a debut it was. I actually saw this for the first time with Matt Johnson, and I remember while it was playing looking over at him and knowing that we were watching something unique, something that we hadn’t seen before. The most interesting part of the movie to me is the philosophy of time travel that pervades the story.

In the movie, a character nicknamed Grandma Death wrote a book called The Philosophy of Time Travel. Near the beginning of the film, Donnie is led away from his bedroom and outside the house where he meets a 6-foot tall rabbit with a demonic looking face. The rabbit informs Donnie that the world will end at a certain time. While Donnie was out, a jet-engine inexplicably landed on Donnie’s bedroom, which would have killed him had he not been lured away by the rabbit.

But where did the engine come from? If you remember, both the rabbit and Donnie put there hand on a liquid-like substance that acts like a wall between them. Well, what is that? Why do we see Donnie at certain parts of the movie with what are called wormholes coming out of his chest? What is that dark, ominous cloud that forms above Donnie’s house near the end of the movie? Why is Donnie dead at the end and his girlfriend Gretchen not know him? Obviously because the jet engine killed him; but why show earlier in the movie him avoiding the jet engine to talk to the rabbit about the end of the world?

Well, Richard Kelly has the answers to all our questions. Let’s see if they satisfy.

What really happened right when Donnie left his bedroom to talk to the rabbit and the jet engine fell on Donnie’s bedroom? According to Kelly, around that moment (some time after Donnie got out of bed and before the engine fell) there was what is called a Tangent Universe that split away from the Actual Universe. Keep in mind that now that this split has happened, everything in the Actual universe is duplicated in the Tangent Universe. So, for example, we now have the Donnie in the Tangent Universe, and the Donnie in the Actual Universe.

Kelly got this notion from geometry. If you remember, scientists picture space/time as a curve, and so we can represent the universe as a circle. A tangent is a straight line that skims one point on the curve. In essence, at that particular point that the Tangent intersects with the point on the Curve, the jet engine falls on the bedroom, leaving only the Donnie of the Tangent Universe. But guess what? The Tangent Universe is essentially unstable. That means the Tangent will eventually re-collapse into the Actual Universe. The time of the re-collapse is what the rabbit meant when it was telling Donnie about ‘the end of the world’: it was giving the exact date of the re-collapse.

Donnie’s task now becomes what Kelly calls The Living Receiver, whose job it is to ‘close’ the Tangent universe manually. If he doesn’t, when the Tangent Universe collapses, it takes the Actual universe along with it and both universes are destroyed!

By virtue of the Tangent universe, Frank (the rabbit) can communicate with Donnie only through the medium of what is called The Fourth Dimensional Construct (water), which is the liquid-like substance that always separates Donnie from Frank. Those who die in the Tangent that would have lived in the Actual universe are Frank and Gretchen. And those that prod Donnie along with his mission are his science and english teachers. The ultimate mission for Donnie is to be killed by that jet engine, technically called The Artifact.

So, let’s tie these loose ends together. Donnie is lured out of his bedroom by Frank the rabbit. Frank the rabbit is from the future. Which future? The future of the Tangent Universe only. Why? To warn Donnie about the end of the world, the collapse of the Tangent Universe into the Actual Universe, and the destruction of both if Donnie isn’t killed by The Artifact. The movie from then on is the run-up on the Tangent timeline up until it hits that exact point on the space/time curve of the Actual Universe, the point at which the jet engine is supposed to fall on Donnie and kill him. However, Frank has the other role to play as Donnie’s sister’s boyfriend. In this manifestation, Frank is the Present Frank that is destined to be killed by Donnie in this Tangent Universe, but alive in the Actual One. Frank the Rabbit came back from the future to fulfill his role by being killed as Present Frank (Donnie kills him) in order to ensure the re-collapse of the Tangent Universe into the Actual One.

Donnie’s break from the Actual Universe into the Tangent One and Frank’s time travel all use elements from The Philosophy of Time Travel. It’s primarily based on the phenomenon of wormholes, shortcuts through space/time, tunnels that would take you from one point in space/time and immediately teleport you to another point. It is these wormholes that allow Donnie and Frank to travel as they do, and that answer those questions we puzzled over earlier. Such as: just what was that tornado doing hovering and forming just above Donnie’s house? Well, it was forming just at that time because that time was the point at which the Tangent Universe was re-collapsing back into the Actual Universe; and in the Tangent Universe, Donnie’s mom and sister were flying in a plane while it was sucked into the twister, disconnecting the engine, which sent it tumbling down onto Donnie’s room killing Donnie in the Actual Universe, since the engine traveled through a wormhole from the Tangent Universe (in which the twister engulfed the plane) to the Actual Universe (in which the mom and sister are safe in their house).

Donnie is killed, the Tangent Universe re-collapses, saving the Actual Universe from peril. Make sense?

Remembering a Forgotten Classic

Matt Damore

Science Fiction might be my favorite genre of film. In particular, I want to focus on a movie that came out in 1998 called Dark City. The film stars Rufus Sewell (The Illusionist, A Knight’s Tale) as John Murdoch, who has lost his memory. It’s not too long before Dr. Daniel Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) calls Murdoch to warn him about a mysterious group of people (called The Strangers) who are on his trail!

The Strangers have the mystifying power of psychokinesis, the power to move things with the mind. Come to find out, Murdoch also has this power. The story is about Murdoch finding out who he is, who The Strangers are, and trying to remember whether he really murdered people, which is the reason why a relentless detective (William Hurt) is hounding him.

The city at night is freakish, as all its citizens fall into a coma, and the entire cityscape transforms, and the identities of everyone are altered. We later come to discover that The Strangers are extraterrestrials on the verge of extinction, bound together by a collective consciousness, who use corpses as parasites in order to soak up their memories: find out how humans survive so they themselves can. But Murdoch poses a threat to The Strangers’ plan, since he is also endowed with their powers.

While everyone was comatose, Murdoch awoke, and being the anomaly he now is, The Strangers implant one of their own with Murdoch’s memories to find him! The adventure leads to the edge of the city at a billboard which we find is a portal to outer space, the portal The Strangers used to enter the city.

But then the real surprise comes. Don’t read any further if you don’t want to know. Through the portal, we come to find that the city (Dark City) isn’t on earth at all; it is a floating environment in itself, protected by a force field. Later, Murdoch is held hostage by The Strangers underneath the city to inject into him their collective consciousness, believing Murdoch to be the last piece to their puzzle ending their experiments. Dr. Schreber, however, and against the wishes of The Strangers, injects Murdoch with the false memories necessary to inform him of his entire life, which enables him to tune his psychokinesis to a point. He defeats The Strangers, and uses his powers to make a landscape which is a copy of Shell Beach, his home town, after learning his wife has been hopelessly assimilated into The Strangers’ collective consciousness.

Murdoch finally reveals why The Strangers' experiments in learning the humans’ adapting abilities have failed: they had been searching in the wrong place - the mind. They ought to have been searching the human heart. In the new Shell Beach, a copy of his wife is there waiting for him, with new memories, and with a new name (Anna, rather than Emma), and they begin their relationship again.

What a movie! It’s amazing. I highly recommend it, especially after you find out it was influenced by German Expressionism, a movement dabbling in the Fantastic. It is quite an achievement to create a city organized and created by various memories, a cityscape which literally morphs in response to the psyche.

The Island of Dr. Hitchcock!

It turns out Martin Scorsese’s new thriller is a salute to the master of suspense himself: Alfred Hitchcock. Opening today, the movie Shutter Island is Scorsese’s latest film. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio (this is their 4th reunion), the movie centers around a mysterious and disturbing insane asylum and the two cops sent there to investigate a particular inmate who has managed to escape. But strange things begin to unfold about the watchmen of the Island itself!

Little did I know, Scorsese is a member of a non-profit organization called The Film Foundation, which fights to preserve the integrity of old, black and white films, and which has brought to the attention of critics the memory of forgotten directors, and has also restored numerous forgotten gems from the early 20th century. For instance, at one point, they tried to fight against making black and white films colored for modern audiences, but to no avail.

The Hitchcock films Scorsese has restored are Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt and Suspicion. What is interesting is that all these movies begin with the letter S. Now, when Scorsese makes a movie dripping with Hitchcock stylistic themes, he makes Shutter Island, beginning with the letter S!

Shutter Island is adapted from the book by Dennis Lehane, released 1954. What else came out in 1954?: Dial M for Murder and Rear Window! - Hitchcock classics.

Another factor here is that a couple years ago Scorsese worked with a Spanish movie producer to shoot a short film during which he found 3 missing pages from a Hitchcock script that had been lost up till then!

In Shutter Island, we have - among other scenes - a shower scene (Psycho), a scene where people are hurrying up a tall building (Vertigo), and a hurrying up a rocky crag scene (North By Northwest), intentionally put in as a tribute to the master.

Matt Damore

Of last year

In honor of the Oscars on march 7 I decided I would give my personal movies of last year as well as what I think should win.

Movies:
Inglorious basterds
Public Enemies
District 9
Up in the air
An Education
A Serious Man
Watchmen
Away we go
Zombieland
Up

And the winner is....

Why you ask? First this movie was written and directed by the Coen Brothers. In my opinion, they are some the best story tellers alive right now. A Serious Man is the story of a professor who watches his life unravel before his eyes. The Coen Bros are masters at dark comedy. As the viewer you are laughing at the pain of the main character because that is the only response left for the viewer.

I am continually impressed by these men. I was first introduced to them through their film Raising Arizona and was immediately hooked. I was sold on their storytelling and dialogue through one simple line, "Edwina's insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase."Absolutely hilarious, inappropriate and sad at the same time. I can't think of a better way to communicate this emotion.

If you are familiar with the Coen Brothers work then the themes you are familiar with. A man overwhelmed by his circumstances and responding in equal parts naivety and anxiety. But, they are able to keep this topic fresh.

I also recommend Fargo, Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing, Burn After Reading and No Country for Old Men for a survey of their work.

Matt Johnson

You can't handle the Truth!

Have you ever thought about the notion that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? This is John 14:6 and it is one of the first verses I was ever taught to memorize. But then I started to dig a little. These self-ascriptions are very interesting and these concepts in themselves could preoccupy a scholar for the rest of his or her life. What I want to focus on is Truth. And I’ll be brief. After investigating this from an angle I’ve never seen before, it’s somewhat of a thrill to inject new life into such a boring sounding concept.

Jesus is the truth. Now, I am no scholar. But I decided to find out how this word ‘truth’ might come to have more meaning for me. In Greek mythology, Truth is represented by the goddess Aletheia, a virgin, dressed in white, perhaps to suggest purity. Because she was hard to find, legend has it that she hides at the bottom of holy wells waiting to be discovered by only the most dogged of seekers. Curiously, Aletheia is the daughter of Cronus, the god of agriculture, justice, and strength. Yet agriculture jumps out at me the most. In agriculture, food is produced through farming. The food will come only if the field is tended to. What I find interesting is that the daughter of Cronus was the goddess of truth. It’s almost as if myth was teaching us that Truth is only produced after the field is tended to, only after there is a farming process. And until then, Truth will remain hidden.

Interestingly, the Greek word for truth is Aletheia, which actually means ‘not hidden’. In essence, Jesus is the naked truth, the wisdom without the veil. Even Martin Heidegger noticed the power of Aletheia. Aletheia is contrasted with another Greek word called Leth, which (in Greek mythology) is one of the five rivers that flow through Hades. If you drink from the river Leth, you forget everything and have perpetual amnesia. In Heidegger’s philosophy of art, he saw Art as an avenue through which Truth lies unhidden, disclosed, not forgotten. In Orthodoxy, even Chesterton says that we’ve forgotten who we are. Empty rationality and common sense means that we forget that we’ve forgotten, that we’ve drunk again from the river Leth. But all that we call Art, ecstasy, and passion means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

Matt Damore