Discovering Mythos

Last Post

2005-12-13T14:48:00.000-08:00

And I'm off to the final as soon as I finish typing this. Hope everyone does well on them and I'm looking forward to seeing the last presentation. I had a rather insane semester and yes Mick I am glad I finally decided to take this class. It was something relaxing and enjoyable that I could turn to in the middle of my 12hr day. So, I had a yet another wonderful class with Professor Sexson, good luck everyone and have a great holiday season!

Group Presentations

2005-12-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

Just to let everyone know I have been trying ever since the presentations to upload the pictures onto my e-journal and as of yet have not managed this feat. I appologize and promise to continue trying for the rest of finals week. And great job everyone! Truely creative and exciting presentations this semester!

Second Half of Paper

2005-12-13T10:23:00.000-08:00

Originally my paper was to have consisted of two parts. First the dual images of sin in Biblical and Classical literature and then the parallel figures of Eve and Pandora in their respective mythologies. My opening paragraph concluded with this "In addition an examination will be made of the first woman in Biblical and Classical mythology and the role she has played in the downfall of humanity. This woman is seen in the dual figure of Eve and Pandora. They are the mothers of the human race in their respective traditions as well as responsible for all the evils that have since befallen their children. " However I didn't realize that the really interesting subject was that of Eve and Pandora and instead wrote four pages on sin before becoming aware that I had run out of space and time. I still think this would be a fascinating topic and so am posting the few notes that I actually got onto the computer from my notebooks before the paper was due.

Frye writes of the clear connection between the Garden and Woman. Before Eve came, Adam was not alone for he was complemented by the feminine in nature.
Because Eve was a second garden, taking the place of the garden in Adam's affections, when she became responsible for sin and the Fall, the garden as nature was thereby also associated to evil, si and corruption. In addition, man was given dominion over the 'weaker' woman and nature. His attitude towards both then becomes one of superiority and control. This can also be seen on a historical basis; the falling out of humankind wit nature as men move away from living in harmony and in the cycles of nature as hunter/gatherers to seeking mastery and control over earth(and in connection women) through agriculture.

“Through Adam’s fall, we sinned all”. Adam’s sin, however, was no merely eating a forbidden fruit, it was also the failing of listening to a woman, his wife Eve.
The traditions that give us the figures of Eve and Pandora are sparse and contain large gaping holes. What must be remembered is that both stories are completely open to interpretation. It is the interpretation that has been widely accepted in a patriarchal society that is my concern.
The twin stories of Eve and Pandora can be seen as the domination and submission of the Mother Goddess to the Father God. Pandora herself was in fact a Goddess, a fact that Hesiod may well have known but completely ignored when he wrote his Works and Days. Through this literary work the male in Hesiod and Zeus sujegate the female who is Pandora by tearing her from her state as goddess and forcing her into a role of not only a mere mortal woman but also degrading her as the woman responsible for all the ills in the world.

In the beginning man lived in a perfect world. But through two women, Eve and Pandora, who indulged in characteristically human (and female) traits of curiosity and a hunger for knowledge, the whole world was plunged into darkness and pain. If this sounds melodramatic, it is only to emphasis the weight history and reflected society has placed on these two.

As these two are the women the question first arises as to what man was before women. (complementary) Man is then not only complemented/ companioned by women, he is also completed by her. Both Biblical and Classical traditions would have it otherwise and Eve and Pandora become not the other half of a whole but an extra gift added on. Both women are referred to in this manner with Pandora being in Hesiod’s Works and Days a literal gift. After Prometheus stole fire form the gods to benefit humanity, Pandora was designed as an evil gift that was to be “the ruin of mankind”... In both Genesis and Works and Days there is the question of what was man before God(s) gave his woman. Like the philosophical questions of whether we would recognize good without its opposing evil or light without the contrast of dark, what was male without female? In truth, nothing. Female is the opposing dynamic to male in all cultures, yet because of the strength of Genesis 3 over Genesis 1, we forget that also in the beginning God made them, male and female. This concept is overpowered by the vivid imagery of Eve being made from Adam’s rib and the later casting out of the garden and Adam being given dominion over his wife.

“the subordination of women was part of divine punishment” Almond Philip BS580.A4A8

The story of Pandora is of the lessening of a great goddess by the dual patriarchal figures of Zeus and Hesiod so that she is by divine will made subordinate to men and Gods alike
Ultimate reversal, trampling even of women and Goddess worship.

Although we blame Eve for mankind’s fall, it is Adam’s fall and Adam’s parallel in Christ who will redeem humanity through his death. This concept, as seen in Romans 5: 12, ignores the power of the feminine as witnessed through Eden, Eve and finally Mary. Although it is the men in this patriarchal society that take all the credit, nothing they have done could be accomplished without the backing of women, down to Mary’s meeting with the Master in the garden and having the belief that the other apostles failed to have.

Sin: a trangression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate
Deliberate disobedience to the known will of God
Original sin: the condition of sin that marks all humans as a result of Adam’s first act of disobedience

Whether or not these stories are true is irrelevant. What is important is that they were written and read and that this view of women has permeated our culture in a unique way.
Paradise Lost 4:714-15 717-19

The story of Eve is “at the heart of the concept of women in Western civilization” John Phillips

End Times

2005-12-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

I know everyone(i.e. the Western World) has always felt this about their own time, but doesn't 2000 seem like a perfect turning point for humanity? Doesn't it seem like after 2000 years of growth and development it is time for something to happen? A particular trend in Europe throughout the ages was that of millennialism. This is the belief that the world would end, all the sinners would go to hell, and Jesus would return to rule over a paradise filled with the chosen elite, the martyrs whom the world had previously scorned. For people of this belief, certain years held special import, like the 666 or perhaps 2000. The numbers of a system we ourselves created is enriched with a sense of mystical energies and coincedences making a certain date extra special. This comes of course from the natural desire to see the precident of myth in every action. Within that system though, shouldn't something have happened on 2000? It's such a cool number and the turn of an entire 2000 year period... My parents weren't particularly alarmed when Y2K finally rolled around but I was positive my computer would explode or crash and I would lose all of my saved computer games. When it didn't happen, (although I was glad I wouldn't have to rebuild my characters all over again) I must admit I was a bit disappointed. Nothing happened and the world continued on. It always has but we still always expect it to end.

P.S. In case anyone is wondering, the next apocalypse due date is in 2012 when the Mayan calander ends. I'm looking forward to that too.

Last Ch. of Calasso

2005-12-11T12:33:00.000-08:00

"With the alphabet, the Greeks would teach themselves to experience the gods in the silence of the mind, and no longer in the full and normal presence, as Cadmus himself had the day of his marriage."

The closing lines of Calasso's Marriage are not about the loss of the gods but about the full integration and absorption of God into Man. True the gods no longer walk among us but that is because they are now part of us, one with us. This is, to me, more uplifting than anything else. There is a longing for the days when the gods feasted with men, as friends if not equals, but what we have now is... what we have and we cannot bring back the 'good old days' and knowing that the gods are not completely gone, simply scaled down, is reassuring.

What will come next? Vico talks of a cycle, that after these days of chaos there is nowhere to return but back up to the Age of the Gods. But if the Age of the Gods was accomplished through the lack of writing, and the mythical made imminent through the superstitions of the uneducated, can our civilization come again to a similar place? To have that return suggests some great catastrophe. It sometime seems as though a people's belief system cannot be complete without some form of literal eschatology. How can humankind survive for any period of time without destruction, either by nature or brought about by ourselves? It doesn't seem possible that we can continue living this way without some change as dramatic and destructive as an apocalypse.

I once read a book by psychologist/astrologer Barbara Hand Chow about end times. Her theory was that humans as a whole have suffered through so many catastrophes taht we hold a collective fear/belief in the end of the world. This belief leads unconsiously to self-destructive behavior; after all its not such a bad thing to pollute the earth when everything is fated to be destroyed anyway. That is what is so uplifting about the concept of realized eschatology. If the world has already ended only we haven't realized than the only thing left for us to do is our lives in the best way we can, in a manner most respectful and caring to our world and most beneficial to our society. Then again I am an optimist and have recognized my tendency to try to end on a hopeful note.

The Future of Sin

2005-12-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

This question of the future also ties into my paper on sin. Through the literature the concept of sin could be seen to evolve on a parallel course with culture and society. As man moves from collectivist to individual, so too does the focus of sin shift from the community(with the sin of one affecting all) to the individual(where each one is responsible only to himself). My next concern is to where we as a society are moving on to? What new paths with the conception of sin take? The interesting thing that I see is the trend to drop the idea of sin entirely. In this 'new age' people are tired of constantly being told they're going to hell to burn for eternity because of some thing that they did. Additionally we have an American world that encourages the choice of the individual to whatever he damn well pleases with a noticable decrease in self-control and self-monitoring. Gone are the days when children should be seen not heard and they have been replaced by teenagers with credit cards who are putting their parents in dept long before college bills come in. This reaction to the centuries of heavy guilt and sin is rather extreme but to be expected. We are always rebelling against the previous generation and there is a natural striving towards balance which has been missing in this last millenium of sin.

The Truths of Suffering

2005-12-10T12:02:00.000-08:00

Valerie Dowbenko
Professor Michael Sexson
English 212
December 9, 2005

The Truths of Suffering
The rise of Christianity and its domination over Europe enforced the cultural view of humans as evil, dirty and ‘sinful’. From dust we came and to dust we shall return but dust, and thereby nature, are stained with sin and must be transcended. However influential Christianity may now be there is more than one view of sin which will be examined here. From the Biblical tradition comes the relatively new concept of original sin and also the earlier tradition of sin as disobedience to God. In Classical literary traditions is the view of sin as the dishonoring of significant persons and the belief that sin is ignorance. Accompanying these four concepts of sin is the role suffering plays in each.

With hundreds of years of development and theological hindsight, it is now possible to see the spread of sin through the ancient Biblical world; the actual concept of sin was not nailed down so to speak until the beginnings of Christianity. Looking back in history through the Hebrew Bible it is possible to create a definition of sin as it would have been for the ancient Israelites. To sin was to “do what was evil in the sight of the Lord”. I Samuel 15:19.5. Every misfortune that could befall a person or nation came about as a result of this evil-doing. If great calamites and misfortunes came upon a person, it was clear that they had sinned again the Lord. It was extremely important to know the laws laid down to Moses and obey them to the letter because otherwise God’s wrath would be upon the sinner. In the case of Judah’s sons, Er and Oram, the punishment for being “wicked in the sight of the Lord” was death. In later years when the Israelites had God-anointed kings, the entire nation was punished for the sins that one. Sometimes, like in the case of King Jeroboam, the punishment was delayed for a few generations and so the actions of a ‘bad’ king were visited unto his descendants.

This harsh justice creates many moral dilemmas and such questions are addressed in part by Job. The idea that pain and suffering are forms of punishment were previously established in the Hebrew Bible but by the time of the Book of Job, questions were being raised such as why innocents suffer. To such a question there are few if any satisfactory answers.
The later Christian traditions redefine sin, making it harsher than the older version of retributive justice but also offering an escape from suffering and death. Original sin developed; the idea that man is innately tainted and evil, sinful from birth. Suffering was no longer a specific punishment but an overarching world condition of pain for all humanity because of one first sin that Adam committed. “…Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.” Romans 5:12. However with this universal suffering came a cure in the form of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Romans 5: 18-19 All are born stained but people can be baptized and whipped clean of the original sin, accept Jesus Christ as savior, and be redeemed before God.

The Classical tradition is a different matter entirely. While the Israelites and Christians produced one final condensed collection of writings on their beliefs—the Bible—the Classics have no one main theological source. Two themes of sin emerge in the Classical traditions. The Greeks lived with capricious and vengeful gods and of course all lived or died at their whim. To sin against the Gods was not so much to disobey them (although that of course was bad) as it was to dishonor them. Mocking or challenging the gods quickly led to one’s downfall but few rules were laid down as stringently as they were to the Israelites except this one: always honor and respect the gods, your parents, and strangers. Disregarding any one of these three brings pain and misery upon the sinner. It is this sin that trapped Orestes. His dilemma in the Oresteia is the one of balancing those three elements of honor to avoid sinning. The obvious example of this is the focus of the play: the question of how to honor one’s parents. Orestes was confronted with the responsibility of honoring his father by revenging himself upon his mother, except his mother too was a parent. The role of the gods is problematic considering how many must be placated. Someone will end up angered by Orestes actions, an unavoidable sin. The third law comes in when Orestes pretends to be a stranger to invoke the ancient laws of hospitality then abuses this privilege by killing his host who is also his mother. He is bound by Apollo to kill her or face another terrible punishment for the sin of disobeying the gods and failing to honor his father. It is quite a bind he is in and shows the tangles of life and the complications that come simply because we are human.

The other Classical sin was ignorance. To forget or not to know oneself was a grave fault. As humans we are naturally ignorant of many things and it is that ignorance that makes us sinful. We have forgotten how to live and how to be. It was believe that at birth a baby remembered all and knew all. As that child grew they were educated away from those memories and gradually forgot all they had known. Culture in this way perpetuates the sin of forgetfulness by not only forgetting but re-programming children to believe certain things and know a certain way. The wrong deeds enacted by humankind come from the lack of knowledge and memory on how to behave properly. Life becomes a purposeful search for knowledge and truth in an attempt to be free from sin.

In both Biblical and Classical mythology, sin has two forms. The first is as an active choice. One chooses to do what is wrong before the Lord, to commit a murder, to turn away a stranger. When narrowed down to the person taking away all the outside influences, consequences or reactions, it is their choice to sin or not to sin. Continuing on in time from Aeschylus to Socrates, from the ‘Old’ to New Testament, sin moves beyond action into a state of being. It is permanent and unchanged by any action or passage of time. Man is intrinsically sinful. This is either because he cannot remember or because of an ancient wrong. It remains that part of being human is to be tainted with sin. There is no escaping this as there is also no escaping the consequence of sin, suffering. It follows that because to be human is to be sinful, to be human is to know suffering. It is comforting to believe there is a greater purpose to our pain, whether that be that we suffer to truth or we suffer to prove ourselves to God; but it is still suffering.

Suffering is a Human Condition

2005-12-07T11:44:00.000-08:00

Suffering is a human creation. It is the curse of humankind, the constant, unending pain that plagues us in every aspect of our lives. Ever since the creation of man (Biblical direction here) a key component to every story is dissatisfaction and inharmony. The garden isn't a story without a snake. This is a characteristic of the human condition: that we all need (require) dissonance, rebellion, dissatisfaction to create any real stories or feel we have lived life to the fullest. That is what makes each story. Beautiful, happy, rich people make boring stories without some trauma in teh equation.
There are so many ways to suffer and we're coming up with new ones each day. At the same time, suffering is what drives us to better ourselves and our world. Dissatisfaction with myself is what motivates me to seek out new challenges and ways to improve upon myself. For me to be in a state of stagnation or stasis is to be suffering.
Imperfection and suffering go hand in hand and are both products of a fallen world. Does that mean that Eve and Adam were perfect? If they were, does that then mean that there is a perfect state to which we may return? I hope not. Heaven sounds like a dull place to me if it is really just harps, clouds and dead relatives. I have also said many times before that perfect people are boring. So it's not so much perfection that drives me on up achievement and excellence. In that case, my idea of heave would be a place of struggle and constant striving for that excellence in all aspect of being. It would be a place where no one is ever satisfied though joy is taken in every new accomplishment and there is always something new to learn. Hell then (while also being here on earth and other people) is static, dead time, the inability to learn new things and improve oneself. I think heaven then would be achieving truth without suffering to it. For now we do suffer to truth; and I want truth. I want knowledge and wisdom and if required I will suffer as much as it takes to achieve my goals.

2005-12-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

From the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/books/05nort.html

December 5, 2005
350 Years of What the Kids Heard
By DINITIA SMITH
Before Harry Potter there was "Slovenly Peter."

Written by Heinrich Hoffmann and published in Germany in 1845, it is one of the best-selling children's books ever, translated into more than 100 languages. And what a piece of work it is. A girl plays with matches and suffers horrendous burns, on all her clothes "And arms, and hands, and eyes, and nose;/ Till she had nothing more to lose/ Except her little scarlet shoes." A little boy who sucks his thumb has his thumbs cut off by the Scissor Man.

And in the difference between Harry and Peter lies the lesson of children's literature, said Jack Zipes, general editor of the new Norton Anthology of Children's Literature, published this month by W. W. Norton & Company. "These works reflect how we view children, and something about us," said Mr. Zipes, 68, a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, in a telephone interview from Minneapolis.

The anthology joins the 11 other definitive compendiums by Norton. It is one of the first modern, comprehensive, critical collections of children's literature. And it is intended not for children, but for scholars.

"It's a huge event, a real arrival of children's literature in academic studies," said John Cech, director of the Center for Children's Literature and Culture at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Although the academic study of children's literature is an exploding field, there are only a handful of Ph.D. programs in children's literature in English departments. One purpose of the anthology, said Mr. Zipes, is to encourage departments to add courses.

The anthology, 2,471 pages long and weighing three pounds, covers 350 years of alphabet books, fairy tales, animal fables and the like, and took Mr. Zipes and four other editors four years to compile. Some stories are reprinted in full, sometimes with illustrations; others are excerpted.

In it, the editors trace the history of juvenile literature from what is probably the first children's book, "Orbis Sensualium Pictus," an illustrated Latin grammar by Johann Amos Comenius published in 1658, up through works as recent as "Last Talk With Jim Hardwick," by Marilyn Nelson, which came out in 2001.

Most early children's books were didactic and had a religious flavor, intended to civilize and save potential sinners - albeit upper-class ones, since they were more likely to be literate. As today, publishers were shrewd marketers of their wares. When John Newbery published "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book," in 1744, he included toys with the books - balls for boys, pincushions for girls.

It is striking in the anthology to see the way certain forms cross cultures. Lullabies, for instance, have a nearly universal form, with elongated vowels, long pauses and common themes of separation, hunger, bogeymen, death - as if singing of these terrors could banish them from a child's dream world. One stunning entry is "Lullaby of a Female Convict to Her Child, the Night Previous to Execution," from 1807. "Who then will sooth thee, when thy mother's sleeping," the mother sings. "In her low grave of shame and infamy!/ Sleep, baby mine! - to-morrow I must leave thee."

The book traces the evolution of various works, including "Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top" from its origins as an African-American slave song, "All the Pretty Horses." That version ends with the horrifying image, "Way down yonder in the meadow lays a poor little lambie/ The bees and the butterflies peckin' out his eyes/ The poor little thing cries, 'Mammy.' "

The editors write that attitudes toward children began to change in the mid-18th century. In 1762, in his revolutionary work, "Émile; or, On Education," Rousseau wrote that children are intrinsically innocent and should be educated apart from corrupt society, a view later taken up by the Romantics. In the mid- to late-19th century, with the rise of the "isms," as Mr. Zipes put it - Darwinism, Freudianism, communism, Shavian socialism - children were recognized as people, and their literature became less heavily didactic.

Schools were established for the lower classes, and increased literacy created new markets for books. This was the golden age of children's literature, of Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll.

Throughout the text, in editors' notes and introductions, are tidbits about the hidden messages in the literature. "London Bridge Is Falling Down," say the editors, contains coded references to the medieval custom of burying people alive in the foundations of bridges.

But children's stories, especially fairy tales, have always been hiding places for the subversive. "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" by Frank Stockton is a condemnation of cowardice and social hypocrisy; "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde, a critique of the aristocracy.

In the late 1960's and early 70's, as the anthology demonstrates, children's stories began to be rewritten and children's literature was approached in a different way. Black writers like Julius Lester and Mildred Taylor came to prominence along with Latino and Native Americans authors. Nowadays, the boundaries between adult and children's fiction are disappearing. Nothing is taboo. Included in the anthology are both Francesca Lia Block's story "Wolf" (2000), about rape, and "The Bleeding Man" (1974), a story about torture by Craig Kee Strete, a Native American writer.
There is also a hefty selection of illustrations that parents may remember fondly - Sendak's wild things, Dr. Seuss's goofy animals, Babar the elephant king - as well as comics and science fiction, officially bringing those genres into the canon. The book also includes the full text of the play "Peter Pan," never before published in the United States, as far Mr. Zipes knows.

Notably absent, however, is Harry Potter. That was because the cost of excerpting the Potter books was too high, Mr. Zipes said. Besides that, he said, "the Harry Potter books are very conventional and mediocre."

"The plots are in the tradition of the schoolboy novel," he said, citing "Tom Brown's School Days," which was published in 1857.

Mr. Zipes called the Potter books, "the ideological champions of patriarchal society," adding: "They celebrate the magical powers of a boy, with a girl - Hermione - cheerleading him. You can predict the outcome."

Never mind, though. Harry Potter is doing just fine.

2005-11-29T20:29:00.000-08:00

The biggest question I have about the Oresteia is what it would have looked and sounded like to watch a performance. I know no one can answer this question - actually I would encourage anyone who wants to because I'm sure with some imagination you could come up with something fabulous. But that is my question. Especially in relation to the chorus, did they sing it, shout it, simply speak it? It is so hard to look back in time and wonder, not that it's hard for my mind, I can come up with tons of images of what it might have looked like, but it's hard on my curiosity which is dying to have a way to discover the answer.

Praise to Allah

2005-11-08T19:15:00.000-08:00

I wanted to tell Abdulmajeed that I love those songs you sent to Professor Sexson. I thought they were very beautiful and I enjoy listening to them. If you have any other suggestions of similar music or similar artist I would love to know. Thank you for sharing those songs!

All for Humanity

2005-11-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

A Brave New World. I would recommend this book because it is disturbing. At first it seems almost silly, as well as unbelievable, but as one continues reading it becomes distressingly clear that there are some truths here about the condition of man. I can see how it relates back to Miranda's words: the initial sense of wonder when the savage leaves the pure innocent world of nature for the sparkling and glamourous world of men is presented fully in this book from that concept in the play. It was not a book I would want to read over again but I am glad I read it and one of my favorite passages comes from the ending.

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to line in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”
There was a long silence.
“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.

All the Time in the World...

2005-11-07T19:26:00.000-08:00

Shortly after being initiated into the mysteries of time, I went out and bought a new watch. I guess my busy lifestyle wore out my old watch; it simply stopped working one day. Of course I have had that watch since about age 13 so perhaps it was it's time to go. In any case the Saturday of that week I spend about two hours in the mall going from store to store examining watches. At first I was very insistent that my new watch have numbers on the face. I wanted a nice watch, not a cheap one but couldn't find one to fit my specifications. I have this theory that the more expensive a watch becomes, the less identification it has on the face. My grandparents bought me a watch for graduation that has absolutely nothing on it except the two hands and I am terrified to ask how much it cost. But seriously, go into any jewelry store and check out the watches. As the prices climb you can see the numbers get smaller, then change to a combination of dots/dashes and numbers, then just dots/dashes, then only four dots/dashes and finally nothing at all. At first I was really annoyed and frustrated but as I continued to look, I realized that whether or not my new watch actually had numbers on it didn't matter since I can't read time on a watch anyway. Yes, I admit it. I can't tell time. There's something about a watch face that completely baffles me. Ask me the time and I will sit there and count 1..2..3 and then 5...10...15...20. Once I did an experiment and found that if I reverse and invert all of the numbers on a clock face, it takes me just as long as with a normal face to figure out the time. Quite frankly, if I really want to know what time it is, I use my cell phone. So then why, one might wonder, am I so obsessed with the need to always wear a watch?

To answer that I must digress for a few moments. Humankind is ever in search for the answer of 'who am I?' and 'why am I here?'. There are very important questions - or at least they are questions we spend much of our time pondering. (The later question I will discard for now, much too complicated.) Different activities in life help us answer this question, like in college where we gain a major and learn our particular areas of interest and our strengths and weaknesses. There are many different ways to go about the question of 'who am I?' and I personally find it important to first look at the question in terms of it's position and physical form/container, that is to say, 'where am I?' I cannot always answer the question of who I am. That is a constant never-ending adventure and quest which will only end when I die (ok, not really but that depends on your own belief system). But it gives my life stability and structure to be able to say 'where' I am.

Now the question of where I am is answered in two parts. The first is space. I am sitting on a rolling chair on the second floor of the library with my hands on the keyboard watching people go by. I can feel the shape of my body and the confinement of clothes and physical objects around me, the currents of air. I know where I am on campus and I know where campus is in Bozeman, I know where Bozeman is in Montana and I know where Montana is in the world and I have an idea, defined by science of where the world is in the universe. No matter how far out you go, I still exist in this space.

It takes however, three points to triangulate one's position. There is my own self, there is the space I exist in and the third coordinate is time. In order to find myself I must be aware of my placement in both space and time. And the best way to do that is with a watch. A digital clock will not work. A watch face you see, offers a two dimension projection of whatever dimension time is comprised of. I'm not going to argue right now that time is a separate dimension from the physical, suffice it to say that I believe in time as a distinct plane that we move through without constant conscious recognition as we do through air. A clock is a compass, it shows the position of oneself within an hour in a 12-hour cycle. The details that my cell phone tells me that it is 7:54pm do not matter as much as my own mental recognition and placement in the time continuum. I can let the projection of my watch overlay the turmoil of time and that projection acts as a map showing me where I exist within the domain of time. (anyone see Mummy Returns where the boy activates the map? That's kind of the mental picture.)

I probably don't have to wear a watch. But it makes me comfortable. It tells me where I am. After moving through time for a while, I finally picked out the perfect compass. It is actually too expensive to have numbers, although oddly enough it has the 15, 30, 45 and 60 min. markers along the rim. But looking at it lets me know, if not why I am here or who I am, where I am positioned in the grand scheme of the universe.

P.S. As I was about to post this I finally noticed that even though I wear my watch from the moment I get up in the morning to when I go to bed and look at it constantly during the day, I never adjusted it to daylight savings time. I guess that proves my point about not being able to "tell time".

Dionysius

2005-10-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the help of SuperMick, I finally managed to rescue my pictures off of my camera. I am finding the ones relevant to the class (as well as the ones that I think are cool) and will be putting them on my blog. So enjoy!

The Curse of the House of Atreus

2005-10-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

Valerie Anne Dowbenko.

Valerie means 'strong'. Anne with an 'e' (no relationship whatsoever to that other Anne) modifies Valerie so that my name becomes 'strength with grace', (although the 'with' could be a 'through', I haven't researched that enough.) And Dowbenko means 'club'. Big thick stick you hit people over the head with.

Interesting, isn't it. But I never went any further. Then today I had a converstation with one of my professors and as I was explaining my name to him, it all came together. My given name, the name that my parents carefully picked for me, is who 'I' am. It is all that I can become and that I aspire to be. And my last name, Dowbenko, is my family name, what is passed down to me by generations of dead (and some living) people. Now some might call this a heritage, other might call it a curse. And if you place both halves of my full name on a scale, 'Valerie Anne' balances out 'Dowbenko'. My name, my name, balances out the centuries of all of the records and memories and deeds of my ancestors and their collective name.

So what does this mean? Well, let's take the negative side of families first. Consider the wieght, the immense burden of hundreds of years of history pressing down from the past onto the current individual who must now bear up all those ancient traditions and expectations, as well as dealing with the curses particular to each family. I am thinking, of course, of Zeus and his family curse: for the son to rise up and overthrow the father. But Zeus found a way to rise above this curse and remain in power. And I, through the power of the words that form the core of who I am, can rise above those centuries of tradition and pain and suffering and turmoil and anger that is passed down through the generations. "...escape from the conditioning factors of the time-bound influences inherited from parents and transmitted to progeny." (Frye 127) The question of nature vs. nurture still does not change the fact that it is predominately through the family that personality is developed. Or the curse upon the females of the earth, that all women turn into their mothers. But I have been granted the opportunity to rise above the mistakes and failings of my family past. Through words, I have been granted extraordinary power for what determines a thing, what is more powerful in the knowing and possessing of a think than its name?

Now those unusual people who actually have a 'normal' family (instead of the disfunctional one the rest of America has) are wondering why I must be in opposition to those centuries of history. Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past... as well as the fact that some traditions are good ones and our elders do have wisdom to impart to the newest generations. And to that I would say that my name gives me the power to choose. I can transcend my family history and traits but I can also accept the parts that I would like. I am not caught in any kind of mold or shape but can create for myself the mold that I would choose to flow into (and since this is a fun self-esteem boosting image for me, use the analogy of molten gold being poured into the mold. Only I have created the mold even as I am poured into it.)

In this manner I will hold myself accountable for my mistakes and not some woe passed down through the ages because an ancestor taunted the gods. And since I have the tools, the words of power with which to change the repeating motifs in my family history, I will also thereby be freeing my own children and all future generations to come.

...Don't bother me, I am thinking

2005-09-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

"...the gods were still there, intact, but man's relationship with them was taking on the same spareness and pathos as that between daughter and father, servant and master, lover and beloved, husband and wife." "With all the cosmic scaffolding that had stood between gods and men having thus collapsed, life seemed the more buoyant and resplendent, but lonely too, fleeting and irretrievable." (p108)

And it all narrows down to the individual. Of course it does, especially in this culture, one of adoration for the 'individual'. But that is what it comes down to. Erase all the ceremony and pomp and circumstance and it's left to just the bride, the sacrifice standing there at/on the altar. 'I', Iphigenia, takes the center stage; but it is a lonely center stage with none to share with. Everything is reduced and simplified and focused upon that individual... which then means all comes from the one, all grandeur and beauty comes, like a fountain from the earth (Genesis 7:11), from within. Yet there is another source of water, of life, the rain. Water above and water within in the Biblical diagram of the world. Gen 7:11 "the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened." When the world was created all was formless and chaos and water. Then the waters were separated out so that they rested above the dome of the heaven and deep within the earth. Man resided above the waters below him and God/s below the waters above. There are two sources.

Transition: The Muse. Tabula Rasa. Is this the meaning of the muse? I have never taken it as such. Are men only blank pages to be written upon? Nonsense! Inspiration is to fill, to animate, to influence, to arouse. That the muse is there, and that it may even be necessary that she be there, does not imply that man on his own cannot create. The muse sparks the creation but she does not create it. Can we do without her? Perhaps. Do we want to? No. Meanwhile, our model is collapsing and we are left with not merely the individual, but the gods as well. The structure between them has dissolved but they both remain. There is grandeur, beauty, poetry in the human soul as well as without. "To look into the light is the sweetest thing for a mortal" because there is the complement to the soul. There are two sources for the light/water/life and they come from both within and without.

Now a moment there I perceived a problem for on a scientific level, water is not above and below, it is a cycle within a whole contained system. If one jumps up to that scale however, one finds that the earth itself is an individual and that there is still a higher source: the sun. In fact viewing the earth from such a distance, whether you see the earth scientifically or metaphysically, as a planet or, say, Gaia(Classic) there is still this outward and inward between the intelligent earth or the earth with a molten core and in both cases, the lifegiving sun. We do not live on a dead planet and that life comes from both within and without as it does for the individual member of humanity.

Ok but now I have trapped myself for this has led to a duality and those greatly annoy me. One, two, three and aiming at the middle of the bullseye we get the simple but irritatingly immovable black and white. Yet I see here, at this particular moment, a duality: within and without as I have reiterated so many times through this musing. The middle ground, because for my own peace of mind I must have one, might be the interaction/communication between those facets. Of course this might go to a spiritual level where there is a recognition that as above, so below and that each is in fact a reflection of the other so that there is no duality, simply one and a mirror... but then which is the reflection? Are the god/s our creation or are we, in fact, a quasi-reality in their mirrors?

"He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee. "And what do you think he's dreaming about?"
Alice said, "Nobody can guess that."
"Why, about YOU!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?"
"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.
"Not you!" Tweedledee said contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"
"If that there King was to wake, " added Tweedledum, "you'd go out--bang--just like a candle!"

2005-09-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

Because I am very frustrated, I feel the need to rant for a few moments. My appartment is too small. I have a studio one block from campus at a perfect price, all utilities excepting electricity paid and IT'S TOO F***ING SMALL! Why, you ask? Because it won't fit all of my books. I can only fit one measly bookcase and five or six piles on the floor. It's inhuman to ask any college student to try and exist such a small supply of books. In writing the previous blog I was stumped several times by my inability to reference my books. I needed Alice in Wonderland and Gaia and both of them are at home. When making my book selection I thought, now why would I ever need my Alice? And here I am at 11 at night hitting the walls and keyboard in frustration because I don't have my Alice! Intertextuality: a blessing and a curse. There is no greater puzzle and joy for me than to play with this concept but at the same time, what is one to do when I haven't read all of the books in the world and I don't even have the ones I have read right here at my fingertips to use when I need them? Ok, I feel a tiny bit better and I have a lot of work to do. Please forgive my momentary outburst.

Disclaimer:

2005-09-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

I realize this is a class on Bible studies and therefore can be a tricky area to manuever about in. I write a lot of opinion mixed in with actual knowledge and I know I am not always clear about which is which. I also don't know if anyone would find my opinions on a topic offensive. With pictures it's clear that there are nipples and lots of flesh showing and a warning can be put up but in my writing I don't know what people might find insulting or offensive. So if I ever do write something that you find totally out of line, please write me and tell me so that I can examine what I wrote and try to tone it down. I'm hoping that this won't actually happen but I want to make sure that I don't ever majorly upset anyone. Personally, I am most interested in journaling the places that ideas in this class take me and I don't always examine those places before commiting them to cyberspace.

Who Wrote the Bible?

2005-09-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

I found out right at the beginning of this semester that I'm coming from a rather backwards position on this question. While it apparently came and still can come as a shock to many that the Bible was not written by Moses, I was surprised to learn that Moses was once thought the author of the Bible. Actually I think it's a neat idea. I took Holy Communion and Bible Studies as a child but I honestly don't remember much of it. (The pictures mainly:) Not the point here. So the Bible was most probably in the beginning an oral tradition as all ancient stories were. Through the ages as language, civilization, and writing developed these ancient stories were written down. Not all at once however, each generation wrote down the stories that were most pertinent to their own time and conditions, and at the same time edited the previous editions to fit the "modern" views. Current (relatively speaking) Biblical critics can now look at the Bible and identify four main authors or perhaps transcribers could also describe them. They are J - the Yahawist, P - the Priest, E - the Elohist and D of Deuteronomy. In addition R is the editor who put all of these together, R coming from Redaction which means edit.

So how do we tell them apart? Genesis 1 and 2 are the clearest examples of the two distinctive styles and signatures of J and P. The most obvious signature is the use of God's name. J addresses God as the Lord God or Yahweh Elohim while P says only God. Then we can also see that P's account is one of ritual and is administered as though the priest to the alter. "God said and it was and he saw and it was good. P also does all the geneologies, very into the importance of tracing one's ancestory.

In my opinion, J is the interesting one. P says "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them". It is J who specifically states that man was made first and woman second. J also is an earlier writer than P by...950BCE vs 550BCE. By about four hundred years. J's God "formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life". Lots of interesting imagry here. First you have God being close enough to earth to be forming man from the very ground itself. I also find nostrils to be significant (although of course interpretations will vary) because in J's writings the smell and scent of the sacrifice is an highly significant event. This is a personal interpretation, but J's writings (and no I haven't read the Book of J but I will) coming from an earlier time period, seem to suggest a time when God and angels did walk upon the earth. J's God is so much more personal and right there with Adam and Eve than the God of P who is more transcendant, who is above and beyond and past human comprehension. J's God keeps a very close eye on his creation and feels sorry for having created man when, right before the flood, he sees the wickness upon the earth.

There's a lot to look at in the Bible. More than just the stories and methaphors. Like any book, it can also be important to examine the author, think about the location and time and environment and edcation and conditions around them that caused them to write as they did.

Underlining thoughts to an underlined sentence

2005-09-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

"...the authority of the voice of reason in a hysterical society, but reason depends on consciousness, and consciousness is a defensive and filtering mechanism, excluding other forms of psychic activity, such as fantasy or dream, which are functional in literature. It is also in the interests of every social contract to reduce these non-rational psychic activities to un-reality." (Frye 24)

Now I have grown up in a Western society very much shaped/contaminated by the opinions of Plato and Socrates, one of which is the concept of dualism. 'Healthy mind in a healthy body'. This concept then implies a split between mind and body. Descartes was also responsible for this when he stated "I think, therefor I am". The concept of 'I' in the west, whether it is recognized or not, is that 'I' am a being within 'my' body. For instance when you go workout on, say, the elliptical machines in the gym, you are exercising your body while most likely also working on your mind by reading or studying or watching TV. A person is a 'dual' being made up of body and mind.

So that's one concept. (And this does all have a point, I'll make it shortly.) The other concept, one that is finally gaining influence in the west, is that of holism. I am. Not 'I think therefore I am' or 'I exercise therefore I am' or a million other statements that separate out facets of being. Instead there is simply, I am.

Tying that back to the sentence, I understand that some mechanism is needed to distinguish fact from fantasy. As Prof Sexson said, it is likely that Biblical prophets were bipolar or had some such disorder and if they lived in our day, we'd probably just dope them up. However we need that 'psychic activity' because it is part of the whole individual. On a psychological level, we have to dream in order to resolve our inner conflicts which might otherwise destroy us from the inside. On the level of the psyche, we have to dream to express the light and dark of our soul. I think people underestimate literature. As 'it is in the interest of society' to downplay and even at times degrade psychic activities to un-reality, we find a loss of the magical and the mystical in the world. I think that many in our society have forgotten why books are so important. They are important because "literary works communicate in mythical wholes". They reopen those doors hidden under the waters of our subconscious to where we can access our collective histories and myths and so restablish our principles of being. And as countless past Sexson classes have shown me, mythical wholes are what enhance and exhalt this human race.

Frye or Die!

2005-09-15T19:27:00.000-07:00

Starting with the basics... ok don't stone me or anything, but I rather like Frye. I'm not admitting to always understanding him, but I'm having fun reading him. Here's a trick, start reading the book from the intro. It gives a totally different context of where he is coming from vs. just opening the book and instantly being inundated with "centripetal" and "centrifugal". Which, by the way, the first being one's own relationship to the words and putting them together to make sense and the later more of a intertextuality take wherein we are bringing outside knowledge in from multiple sources and applying it to the words. I'm keeping them separate by letters; the 'p' force is directed in upon the center and the 'f' force is going out from that central focal point into the world. (And the way I'm remembering this is that the f-word goes out and gets a lot of people involved vs the p-word - think 'personal' - is focused and centered on the inner.)

Moving on we find the four levels or categories... I'll write on them later.

Lightbulbs also can wait until I'm feeling more like actually thinking critically.

Lets see, I enjoyed on page 18 when he talks about the mob mentality and the loss of individuality through a battering of the consciousness with rhetoric. "The semi-autonomous monster". In ancient Rome, the man who controlled the mobs had power on a level with the man who controlled the armies. After all, the Roman legions were spread out across the empire while the mobs were within the city of Rome itself and politicians always had to keep an eye on that entity.

Familiar physics concepts on pg 21, "the observer alters what he observes by the process of observing it". My first thought when reading this was Schrödinger's cat, one of my favorite physics phenomenon:

"We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox: the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed.

We know that superposition actually occurs at the subatomic level, because there are observable effects of interference, in which a single particle is demonstrated to be in multiple locations simultaneously. What that fact implies about the nature of reality on the observable level (cats, for example, as opposed to electrons) is one of the stickiest areas of quantum physics. Schrödinger himself is rumored to have said, later in life, that he wished he had never met that cat."
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci341236,00.html

Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

I'm totally into a web show called RedvsBlue, a on-line series based on the game Halo, and they have a link to a store selling shirts for Hurricane relief. The store is also going to donate all money they make this month to relief funds. So if you're a Halo fan or like RedvsBlue, this is one way to help out. Fight the Flood!

Another link is here, basically guidelines to donating and different organizations putting together relief aid. There is a warning about charity fraud, always a good thing to remember. Well enjoy your weekend everyone! I'm about to begin mine with a nice long nap and am very excited to finally get some sleep.

Fellow Journals for Convenience

2005-09-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

Allison Carroll
Chrissie Henning
Danielle Urick
Emily Kuipers
Holly Krings
Kelby Fischer
Maggi Edgar
Mick Leslie
Rae Ann Hahn
Ryan Scott
Sunny Rae Yocum
Sophie Hoopman
Evelyn Marie Malinowski
Abdulmajeed
Cassandra Gates
Brenna Kelleher
Amy Fuhrmann
Eric Rundquist
Kelly Stoll
Serena Maxwell
Ruth Wilgus
Brandon Spevacek
Colby Park
Aspen Hougen
Jennifer Van Dyke
Adam Thane
Johnny Nehring
Clinton Shearouse
Sandra Pack
Eric Rundquist
Claire McGinty
Rachel Gilman
Brett Irigoin
Jillian Brunsvold
Collin Salisbury
Bryan Kelly
Spenser Ward
Jayne Hilsinger
Sadie Tynes
Ed Shanley
Spenser Ward - updated
Laura Kebschull
Andrew Bunning
Clint Shearouse

Beginning Times

2005-09-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

Hey all,
Just writing my first blog entry, making sure everything works.

Still working out a way to approach the Bible (and this class) as my mind is currently caught up in philosophies than literary critiques. Right now I'm working my way (more or less) through thoughts of Origen of Alexandria, who was the "first systematic theologian and philosopher of the Christian Church. Earlier Christian intellectuals had confined themselves to apologetic and moralizing works." Much of his work has been lost (think devestating lost of the Library of Alexandria) but enough remains to know his views and influence on the development of the Christian Church. What I am mainly interested in are his views on free will and the transmigration of souls or metempsychosis.
Here's an acceptable (or at least interesting as it crosses geographical and religious borders) definition of the terms: http://www.bartleby.com/65/tr/transmig.html
And also a comprehensive link to Origen himself: http://www.iep.utm.edu/o/origen.htm It's worth scanning through, especially Section 3. Nothing in-depth, just enough to maybe get you interested.

Clearly this is rather far away from Frye, I'll get to him in my next post. He deals with words and the information we are recieving from certain words and word structures and word pictures. The methods of communication through text. Obviously what I just wrote is rather simplistic but I need more time with Frye to really comprehend him - assuming that's possible;) Right now, in the beginning, I'm starting with where I am and over the weekend I'll move into what I'm learning.