Dwayne=Neitzsche

In 2006's instant classic, Little Miss Sunshine, the character of Dwayne, an "angry" and resilient teenage son, represents and/or demonstrates many aspects of Neitzsche's life and philosophy. Please keep in mind that all my information on Neitzsche so far is derived from a lecture series I've been listening to... I haven't studied too deeply. This allusion is made clear in the film by a large banner of Neitzsche's face hanging over Dwayne's bed. Neitzsche emphasizes the idea of physiological health (probably because he was a sickly boy growing up in Victorian society and constantly reminded to be "good" aka clean, un-adventurous, and well-mannered). The power of one's will to go on was most important... suicide is an ultimate failure... "man would rather will nothingness than not will". Dwayne is stuck with Frank, his suicidal uncle, to share a bedroom. Here the writer? director? brings in a nuance of ultimate defeat versus extreme will. Dwayne's extreme will is exemplified by his vow of silence, among other exercises, until he becomes a pilot. The life Dwayne creates for himself can be seen as ascetic and reclusive. Neitzsche, at some point, identifies scholars as the "new priests", with a will towards truth and life of ascetic study. Dwayne's goal to become a pilot also remains significant, as Neitzsche also remarks on "sick air" (being stuck in a pointy Victorian house all day with fussy women is enough to make the air seem stale and sick), and to be outside, dirty and dangerous, is a healthy freedom. For Dwayne, flying through the air would seem the ultimate escape from the sick air of his dysfunctional family.

Interconnectedness

In a recent flurry of study (more wide than deep) I have come across what might seem like a slew of unrelated topics. At first I was concerned that I could not pick a more narrow subject to investigate, and that my various resources would limit my organization. Through a great series of incredible conversations, though, I found my methods working for me very well indeed. In my organic approach to study, my brain has become cross-pollinated into a web of interconnectedness. A great CD series on the "Philosophy of Western Religions" has talked me from Hegel to the process-philosophy of Whitehead (two of my favorites!) I finally learned a little more about Keirkegardd and Nietzsche, and think that the philosophy of religion is something I'll be investigating more in the future. The Anglo-Saxons, the limbic system, the cerebral cortex, and Darwinism are all hot topics posing challenging questions in a modern mind. I often read many books at once--- starting with around six, and sticking with about two until the end. A book that's stuck for me recently is The Bible: a Biography by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong has written numerous titles on topics within religious studies. After studying Through the Narrow Gate (a personal biography illustrating her life and struggle with the church-- as a girl, as a nun, as an atheist-- and her discovery of a new sense of faith and new life in scholarship) and a History of God in classes, I have come to appreciate her clear but engaging writing style and objectivity. The Bible takes one on a journey through the history of Judaism and Christianity, with the canonical oral and written works of each tradition (how they developed, how they were used and by whom in various time periods and cultures) as the barometer of what are now two established "world religions". Armstrong writes about the spiritual zeitgeists throughout the history of Judaism into Christianity by investigating different interpretations on the same texts we ruminate over today. Seeing the bible how one may have seen it in the 16th Century (sola scriptura-- scripture alone-- the value of the Word of God over the heirarchy of the Church-- Luther, anyone? or in Jewish-Spain--Lurianic Kabbahlism), the concept of Gospels in the 1st and 2nd century-- numerous from various traditions to those selected in the 4th century into the canon more recognizable today, or the creative effect destruction and diaspora had on the writing of scripture and Torah. It will be nice to make an outline of each time period and group discussed once I finish the book. Stay tuned.

In other news, so far I've learned best, soaked up the most information, when listening to lectures of those with British accents. Today I learned, though, that the well articulated Indian accent is very engaging as well. In a lecture on the life of Charles Darwin, Chandak Sengoopta reveals what inspired Darwin to come to his early conclusions about the "origin of the species" and the "struggle of existence", and what those discoveries meant to the failing student turned scientist. The lecturer did a good job of pointing out where Darwin's discoveries end and where the adoption of his ideas towards further study began. In his time, Darwin's theory on "evolution" was on a very philosophical level... he did not investigate the matter on extremely technical (or anatomical/biological) terms yet. It was a bringing together of different ideas on population, selective breeding, and what we now know as genetic mutation in his travels through the Galapogos that resulted in Darwin's theories. Interestingly enough, he became reclusive after marrying his wife, and shared his innermost thoughts and work with only a select few. He was, therefore, astonished and fearful when he recieved a letter from a slight acquaintance that stated very similarly the same points Darwin had set to make with his upcoming book. The two ended up binding together their work to be published, though the namesake of "Darwinism" stuck.

Has any reader out there read Sense and Sensibility? I am listening to it on cassette in my car. It is fascinating to trace how the social climate has changed, and where you can still see traces of the lives of Austenian women today. If this Elanor were part of any social circle today, she would be considered a gold digger searching for a sugar daddy... if I'm reading (well, hearing) this right.

Emoto's Emoting Water Crystals

The Hidden Messages in Water, by Masaru Emoto, poses an intriguing study on the effects of music and language on crystallized water. What grabs me from this book, though, is the way in which Emoto writes. I find my critical analysis of his work falls into my cultural bias. This work is translated from Japanese, and I am curious to learn the differences between Japanese and American research styles, along with discrepancies between languages. Emoto lacks factual information, specifics, and references-- his descriptions of people, labs, and "support" are very general. Meanwhile, his hypothesis lacks documented record of scientific evidence, relying on instincts and subjective conclusions to make his point.

What Emoto is concerned with, though, is not the scientific inquiry I am used to here in "the West". The purpose of his work is spiritual, and concerns matters of the soul. His conclusions about the effects of varying stimuli on water are all of a transcendent and philosophic nature. That all matter is vibration, to Emoto, is a matter of the heart. Rather than exploring implications in the realm of quantum physics, He philosophizes about fundamental truths and the meaning of the cosmos.

My expectations to find a scientific, non-fiction piece of writing about some science experiements were not met because Emoto's work is implied to be of a spiritual realm, and in this vein he finds relavancy and significance in his work. I can sense an underlying worldview that, to me, is distinctly asian. I plan to finish the book, and look into the similarities between Emoto's philosophy's about water and its similarity to Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism-- they all resonate within the work.

left brain right brain

So the second chapter of my book on myth is exploring different research within cognitive psychology concerning memory and analysis. Essentially, the authors imply that our "left" brain, bound to analysis, automatically searches for and creates an explanation for previously unexplained events. It's function is to discover why an effect occurs, to discover a cause. The dawn of writing (and therefore recording) infinitely increased our great capacity store data, and we no longer rely on our memory to hold information. What I thought, then, was we don't need myth in the same way as was needed it, say, during the time of the ancient Hawaiians.

This saddened me in some way. My first response and implication was "well if "science" can explain "causes", the left brain has a more accurate response to the question "WHY", and if myth was previously a response to the question of causation, and myth is deeply tied to what are considered religious beliefs of a group, then both religion and myth become obsolete in the face of literacy and science." My world vaccumed into itself, and I was alone in its cold calculation. But then I got to remembering...

On our trip home from St. Louis, we passed a mega-church with a giant billboard sign reading "TRUTH". I felt angry at the sign, shoving itself into my line of sight, claiming its intellectual authority over all other possible notions of truth. Narrow, aggressive, and finite, it spoke to me of something near the opposite of God. This sign, to me, resembles the notion of religion and/or myth existing only as an explanation, only as a cause, only as a reason why to this complex, curious, inquisitive world. But myth (like most forms of effective communication) utilizes devices like redundancy and embellishment to effectively convey important information to generations after generation. Perhaps Hawaiians from the XXXXX? century thought a big chief of the underworld caused the explosive fire of volcanoes, and now we believe clashing chemicals instigate the eruption-- but what is important lies beyond this detail. In the case of myth, what is important is that the volcanoes happened-- the myth effectively encodes information through devices of embellishment and story telling to warn its future generations that this big mountain might blow! This is an overarching theme of the book-- that myth was and is deeply important to people, and it addressed a whole range of issues concerning reality. What I came to, from my spout of uncertainty, is that the places in which religion or myth did try to explain phenomena don't matter nearly as much as the intangible reality of something deeply sublime and beyond the materiality of our world that is so often urged through myth, and lies at the essence of a religion. What science answers is wonderful, but what God means is Love. A deep emotional quenching, comfort, compassion, a never-ending wellspring of love does not exist in the material, and cannot be measured, collected like data, or memorized. It is rediscovered, each rejuveinating moment, as we realize we were dead upon the grace and joy of rebirth. What I feel that sign should boast is "LOVE".

Mind and Myth

When they Severed Earth from Sky; How the Human Mind Shapes Myth, by Elizabeth and Paul Barber, is my newest book of interest. I am reading it as a potential comparison with some ideas discussed in The Sacred and the Profane; The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade. This standard classic by Eliade discusses the way Time, Space, Nature, the Cosmos, and Human Existence are perceived, understood, shaped, approached, and experienced by religious (wo)man. The sacred (or venerable, religiously affiliated, holy, divine, numinous, wholly other, mysterium tremendum, majestas, mysterium fascinans...) is all that the profane is not. The profane refers to all that is not sacred, a natural reality, or what we might liken to "secular". I have not yet finished The Sacred and the Profane, but I think the descriptions of religious (wo)mans' experience of the sacred will inform my reading of When they Severed Earth from Sky.

It is estimated that we share the same human brain of those living 100,000 years ago. Writing developed about 5,200 years ago. Myth, the Barber's infer, exists as a time capsule into our "pre-historic" (pre-literate) ancestors. As a way to keep important information within the collective memory of generations, myth crunches information and enhances memorability to encode important messages and experiences. Basically, the authors see myth functioning in the human mind as a way to communicate history.

I find this prospect interesting, as it combines linguistics with cognition to understand how myth functioned for prehistoric wo-man. Cognitive psychology has taken on an influential role in understanding the religious mind in the past few decades, and I am primarily interested in investigating the connection between cognitive psychology and the sacred to understand how and why our experience of the sacred is necessary, its function and reasoning in groups of people throughout history, and what role it plays in the contemporary wo-man. I seek the connection between all people-- an experience of the sacred-- cross-culturally and cross-historically. I want to understand how the sacred functions in individuals and groups of people, and form a working hypothesis as to why the sacred pervades each civilization (and beyond civilizations! in pre-history!)