Thursday, October 7, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
To say that, “There is no permanence” is making a powerful statement about the human struggle. The quote reminds me of another by Napoleon Bonaparte that read, “Glory is fleeting, obscurity it forever.” Both men have first hand seen the malleability of man’s impact and man’s struggle. Both saw everything they had ever worked for, everything they had known, taken from them, whether it be by a flood or military coup. The idea that nothing that humanity does or will ever do will have a lasting and permanent impact on the world we live in is daunting. Utter lack of permanence means that no points are given for effort, or even success. All things are equal in the eyes of destruction. The flood that destroyed all of humanity in Utnapishtim’s story no doubt destroyed the good and the wicked because they were all human. The lack of permanence in the world means that all work of humanity is lost at some point, which certainly pokes a hole in the majority of people who claim to live to leave a lasting impact on the world. It would be pure nihilism to think, however, that just because finality will destroy all work, no effort should be made at all. Certainly an effort is made every day by the vast majority of humanity to act like humans and function beyond just procuring basic necessities. So what then, drives all people to get up every morning? The answer is twofold, it comes in the form of embracing temporariness and it comes from hope.
There is no science beyond instinct. Nobody actually knows what tomorrow brings with full certainty, or whether tomorrow will come at all. Anyone who claims to know is acting out of some faith. In this case faith is a good thing. One must have faith that we will all wake up tomorrow if humanity is to continue to function. One must hope that tomorrow will come and that our lives will be the same as we left them when we went to bed the previous night. With a lack of permanence comes a lack of guarantee of anything really. I highly doubt the people of Sumer expected Enlil to be hypersensitive to the “noisiness” of humankind and whimsically bring upon them an apocalyptic flood. However even if there is the prospect of complete annihilation, as there is today for example, with the ever looking threats of nuclear holocaust or even those who believe in the Biblical flooding parable, life goes on. With the hope for tomorrow and the embracing of today, life goes on. In the face of mortality, Enkidu finds meaning in life in extrapolating satisfaction out of the joys of the life he lived. More specifically, he is commanded to find particular meaning in relation to his civilized enjoyment, in all of the great things the harlot gave him in spite of the curse of the knowledge of mortality. Although in modern days, appreciation of life and self validation of existential meaning doesn’t normally come through eating “bread fit for gods” and drinking the “wine of kings.” However, this moment of mortal reflection for Enkidu serves as a perfect metaphor for the meaning of human life. The conspicuous lack of permanence and tendency towards chaos of the Earth is the civilized knowledge imparted upon human beings. We are human because we can recognize these things, and yet we live with them in civilization with the knowledge that our lives really are not under our control. It’s exceedingly difficult to then pinpoint exactly where all of humanity derives it’s meaning. I believe that it is the job of each individual to determine their own purpose for living with the fact that not only all of their earthly work, but they themselves will no doubt perish to eventually be lost in a sea of anonymity. The common thread, although loose at best, can be characterized as finding satisfaction in those things accomplished even if in slight or short existence. As well, for me at least, there is a hope that drives forward progression. Perhaps there isn’t any permanence to life or any of its travels or endeavors, but there is life nonetheless. To not make an attempt at finding meaning beyond nihilism would be to denounce one’s own humanity and lay waste to the gifts and wondrous facets bestowed upon humanity by nature. Meaning requires acceptance of the knowledge, and the living of life in spite of it. Joseph Campbell put meaning interestingly when he said, “I don’t believe people are looking for meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” The emphasis on the value of living and just of sucking dry the fruit of life given to us is a good way to imagine the human experience.
Creating order out of the chaos that manifests itself in a total impermanence is probably the hardest task of all. It is a task that requires the combined efforts of everyone on Earth as there has to be order for humanity to function, as Hobbes and many other’s including myself would argue. Order is a task that requires an embrace of a purely human creation, society. In an entropic world, things such as governments, laws, structure, dictate order as much as they may appear to stifle individuality and are necessary in this endeavor. The search for immortality must come from within them then. Society is the place where civilization exist. It is where the only means of becoming immortal through stories or fame can exist. Through the embrace of these means is where the only immortality can be found. Although a story can be erased, there are thousands of native myth’s every year that do when cultures dye out or its story tellers are long forgotten, the permanence of the story in Gilgamesh is an interesting lesson among the message of mortality and impermanence. The fact that the Utnapishtim survived, and tells the story of Sumer before the great flood, and that Gilgamesh is revered in the final paragraph of “The Return” for writing down the otherwise dead and forgotten peoples is significant. The writers of Gilgamesh certainly intended to immortalize Gilgamesh through this story and the experiences that he brought with him.
In my head I imagine human progression as an asymptotic graph, however not a perfect curve by any means. It is one that skips, falters jumps and flat out dead drops straight back into chaos repeatedly in history, and one that will do the same endlessly in the future. To push towards that asymptote however is the purpose of humanity. Be it a self indulgent and self created destiny of mortal beings, humanity hopes that it’s progresses can one day lead to better things and greater advancement. As vague as that may sound, it’s a real ambiguity. There is no permanence. Tomorrow is unknown, but humanity must face it with the utmost resolve, optimism and desire to explore lest it have no meaning at all. Tomorrow must be approached with the same natural, human wonderment that caused our ancestors to venture out of their primitive dwellings, to hone fire, to venture west, and to push past our Earthly realm and beyond.
There is no science beyond instinct. Nobody actually knows what tomorrow brings with full certainty, or whether tomorrow will come at all. Anyone who claims to know is acting out of some faith. In this case faith is a good thing. One must have faith that we will all wake up tomorrow if humanity is to continue to function. One must hope that tomorrow will come and that our lives will be the same as we left them when we went to bed the previous night. With a lack of permanence comes a lack of guarantee of anything really. I highly doubt the people of Sumer expected Enlil to be hypersensitive to the “noisiness” of humankind and whimsically bring upon them an apocalyptic flood. However even if there is the prospect of complete annihilation, as there is today for example, with the ever looking threats of nuclear holocaust or even those who believe in the Biblical flooding parable, life goes on. With the hope for tomorrow and the embracing of today, life goes on. In the face of mortality, Enkidu finds meaning in life in extrapolating satisfaction out of the joys of the life he lived. More specifically, he is commanded to find particular meaning in relation to his civilized enjoyment, in all of the great things the harlot gave him in spite of the curse of the knowledge of mortality. Although in modern days, appreciation of life and self validation of existential meaning doesn’t normally come through eating “bread fit for gods” and drinking the “wine of kings.” However, this moment of mortal reflection for Enkidu serves as a perfect metaphor for the meaning of human life. The conspicuous lack of permanence and tendency towards chaos of the Earth is the civilized knowledge imparted upon human beings. We are human because we can recognize these things, and yet we live with them in civilization with the knowledge that our lives really are not under our control. It’s exceedingly difficult to then pinpoint exactly where all of humanity derives it’s meaning. I believe that it is the job of each individual to determine their own purpose for living with the fact that not only all of their earthly work, but they themselves will no doubt perish to eventually be lost in a sea of anonymity. The common thread, although loose at best, can be characterized as finding satisfaction in those things accomplished even if in slight or short existence. As well, for me at least, there is a hope that drives forward progression. Perhaps there isn’t any permanence to life or any of its travels or endeavors, but there is life nonetheless. To not make an attempt at finding meaning beyond nihilism would be to denounce one’s own humanity and lay waste to the gifts and wondrous facets bestowed upon humanity by nature. Meaning requires acceptance of the knowledge, and the living of life in spite of it. Joseph Campbell put meaning interestingly when he said, “I don’t believe people are looking for meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” The emphasis on the value of living and just of sucking dry the fruit of life given to us is a good way to imagine the human experience.
Creating order out of the chaos that manifests itself in a total impermanence is probably the hardest task of all. It is a task that requires the combined efforts of everyone on Earth as there has to be order for humanity to function, as Hobbes and many other’s including myself would argue. Order is a task that requires an embrace of a purely human creation, society. In an entropic world, things such as governments, laws, structure, dictate order as much as they may appear to stifle individuality and are necessary in this endeavor. The search for immortality must come from within them then. Society is the place where civilization exist. It is where the only means of becoming immortal through stories or fame can exist. Through the embrace of these means is where the only immortality can be found. Although a story can be erased, there are thousands of native myth’s every year that do when cultures dye out or its story tellers are long forgotten, the permanence of the story in Gilgamesh is an interesting lesson among the message of mortality and impermanence. The fact that the Utnapishtim survived, and tells the story of Sumer before the great flood, and that Gilgamesh is revered in the final paragraph of “The Return” for writing down the otherwise dead and forgotten peoples is significant. The writers of Gilgamesh certainly intended to immortalize Gilgamesh through this story and the experiences that he brought with him.
In my head I imagine human progression as an asymptotic graph, however not a perfect curve by any means. It is one that skips, falters jumps and flat out dead drops straight back into chaos repeatedly in history, and one that will do the same endlessly in the future. To push towards that asymptote however is the purpose of humanity. Be it a self indulgent and self created destiny of mortal beings, humanity hopes that it’s progresses can one day lead to better things and greater advancement. As vague as that may sound, it’s a real ambiguity. There is no permanence. Tomorrow is unknown, but humanity must face it with the utmost resolve, optimism and desire to explore lest it have no meaning at all. Tomorrow must be approached with the same natural, human wonderment that caused our ancestors to venture out of their primitive dwellings, to hone fire, to venture west, and to push past our Earthly realm and beyond.
Friday, September 24, 2010
From The Odyssey to Star Wars, the idea of a hero is one that stays consistent no matter the author, story or time. The works in question all have the presence of a hero in common, and just as important, their authors were all people. That significance is not that other stories without heroes may have been written by aliens, but rather that the hero is something that humans seem to naturally conjure up when stories are told. The hero seen in Luke Skywalker or Odysseus doesn’t change, there’s a very similar process and set of attributes in each character. The hero is someone who rises above what is expected of human ability through some extraordinary power, strength or quality otherwise unique to the character. Drawing on Joseph Campbell to address the commonality of all works, all of the heroes in the pieces in question, and in a majority of hero based works through the history of literature, go through what Campbell referred to as “The Hero Cycle.” The most important part of the heroes adventure and the most common theme is what he calls the “transition of consciousness.” A process that primarily involves the hero be taken out of their element, where perhaps their superhuman abilities are now moot, where they are generally uncomfortable and hurled into the unknown. From this they gain new perspective from the world they dared not venture into before and find a new “consciousness” from the experience which they otherwise would never have had.
From the technical sense that Campbell lays out, the characters in the pieces in question can be considered heroes. However modern society has warped the meaning and definition to put more significance on certain aspects of heroism. For example, sacrifice, especially in a nationalistic sense, dictates a large part of what modern society here in America considers heroism. What better example of a modern hero than the firefighter or the soldier, someone who has put their well being at risk, or perhaps gave the ultimate sacrifice to a cause greater than themselves. Sacrifice, especially in an altruistic sense, lends itself to be implicitly associated by modern society as heroism. Most importantly, that sacrifice in the name of that cause, especially the “ultimate sacrifice,” what Lincoln called the “last full measure of devotion,” is considered by many as of the utmost valor and the most heroic of any act. I think however, the general conduct of a hero can be applicable in more than one sense.
Joseph Campbell’s concept of a shift in “consciousness” after undergoing some kind of journey is particularly representative of the idea that the important piece of heroic action in the adventure is the way in which the unknown is faced and ultimately dealt with. The hero displays an "archetypical" model for learning from the discomfort of life. The heroes ability to face the unknown is what is looked so highly upon by those who admire them. The manner in which a hero learns from their journey is a process in finding individual truth outside of his or her own element, and a process that authors of heroic myths have been preaching to humanity since ancient Mesopotamia. It is a process meant to be looked at with admiration, and responded to by readers with emulation. Brecht’s quote then, “Unhappy is the land that needs heroes,” reflects the idea that a hero is a role model. That he or she is an icon in which society, an unhappy one in Brecht’s view, looks upon for guidance to face things more bravely than they would have before and for inspiration to go beyond their element. Brecht’s “happy” society would not need such aesthetic and glamorous motivation to perform the necessary task of maturing and facing the unknown in life.
The exclusion of women from most popular heroic works is unfortunately not surprising by any means. Misogyny in literature is well chronicled and is not different when talking about works about heroes. In my view, however, there is nothing that would logically stop a woman from achieving any of the parts of the hero cycle. It’s absurd to think that a female could not undergo the psychological shifts that a hero undergoes which define the heroic novel in an abstract sense. Where women get left out of the picture in the heroic canon of literature is when the “warrior” is the central hero. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to think that a majority of heroic stories involve some sort of battle or feat of physical strength or test. The role of physical conqueror is not the traditional role of women in society, especially according to the norms of the previous centuries of written works. Hopefully, modern society will either overcome this stigma, or create a greater wealth of heroic works in which the adventure calls for a great sense of psychological “hurdling”, if that's what it will take to create more diversity in the literary body of heroic works.
From the technical sense that Campbell lays out, the characters in the pieces in question can be considered heroes. However modern society has warped the meaning and definition to put more significance on certain aspects of heroism. For example, sacrifice, especially in a nationalistic sense, dictates a large part of what modern society here in America considers heroism. What better example of a modern hero than the firefighter or the soldier, someone who has put their well being at risk, or perhaps gave the ultimate sacrifice to a cause greater than themselves. Sacrifice, especially in an altruistic sense, lends itself to be implicitly associated by modern society as heroism. Most importantly, that sacrifice in the name of that cause, especially the “ultimate sacrifice,” what Lincoln called the “last full measure of devotion,” is considered by many as of the utmost valor and the most heroic of any act. I think however, the general conduct of a hero can be applicable in more than one sense.
Joseph Campbell’s concept of a shift in “consciousness” after undergoing some kind of journey is particularly representative of the idea that the important piece of heroic action in the adventure is the way in which the unknown is faced and ultimately dealt with. The hero displays an "archetypical" model for learning from the discomfort of life. The heroes ability to face the unknown is what is looked so highly upon by those who admire them. The manner in which a hero learns from their journey is a process in finding individual truth outside of his or her own element, and a process that authors of heroic myths have been preaching to humanity since ancient Mesopotamia. It is a process meant to be looked at with admiration, and responded to by readers with emulation. Brecht’s quote then, “Unhappy is the land that needs heroes,” reflects the idea that a hero is a role model. That he or she is an icon in which society, an unhappy one in Brecht’s view, looks upon for guidance to face things more bravely than they would have before and for inspiration to go beyond their element. Brecht’s “happy” society would not need such aesthetic and glamorous motivation to perform the necessary task of maturing and facing the unknown in life.
The exclusion of women from most popular heroic works is unfortunately not surprising by any means. Misogyny in literature is well chronicled and is not different when talking about works about heroes. In my view, however, there is nothing that would logically stop a woman from achieving any of the parts of the hero cycle. It’s absurd to think that a female could not undergo the psychological shifts that a hero undergoes which define the heroic novel in an abstract sense. Where women get left out of the picture in the heroic canon of literature is when the “warrior” is the central hero. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to think that a majority of heroic stories involve some sort of battle or feat of physical strength or test. The role of physical conqueror is not the traditional role of women in society, especially according to the norms of the previous centuries of written works. Hopefully, modern society will either overcome this stigma, or create a greater wealth of heroic works in which the adventure calls for a great sense of psychological “hurdling”, if that's what it will take to create more diversity in the literary body of heroic works.
Monday, September 20, 2010
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