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Hi!
I typically understand boundaries as moments of mediation rather than as clear demarcations… My own name “Mark” derives from Mars and Mars as god of War, makes pretty good mythological sense as the god assigned to boundaries and lines of de-mark-ation. ;^) But, alas, I see pretty much everything dialectically at this point in my life.
But I completely agree with what you’ve said here about the need for clarity — without it we don’t get digital watches or computers or science! What worries me, and increasingly, is the crack cocaine of Certainty (with it’s partner, Necessity) that infects both academic writing, but also (increasingly) society as a whole. That kind of certainty is at odds even with how we come to know about the world and ourselves. My context here is a chapter in AJ Ayer’s little Molotov cocktail “Language, Truth, and Logic” called “the Problem of Induction.” The problem is that induction always provides, at best, probabilities, right? The truth of any inductive statement depends on the data available to support it. Now, this is how science works — and one of the reasons why it’s self-correcting over time. What happens, of course, is that at some point the inductively confirmed truths become set in stone and are then used, deductively, to predict outcomes. Now, since the originals are themselves probabilistic, any deductions that follow from them also end up as contingent — but they aren’t always treated that way. What can happen is that the deduction that got you there is taken as imparting certainty and necessity to the end result — and that’s where crazy begins, whether in religion or politics.
Anyway, that’s the background radiation to my initial comments.
When it comes to mathematics then I’ve also come around to a contrarian position. :^) There’s a tendency, culturally and intellectually, to grant mathematics (applied deductively) the status of Platonic Forms, and to assume that the universe as we perceive it (& known inductively) is a mere approximation of those principles. I think this is precisely backwards. I think mathematics is the approximation and that the universe, which can only be known in terms of probabilities, is the reality mathematics attempts to clarify.
As long as math keeps this in mind, no problems. When mathematics is granted god-status however, you start to produce quantum flapdoodle.
I think this analysis applies perfectly to your description of alchemy here… the boundary layer between conscious and unconscious is never fixed and never clear — except when poor-old-consciousness remains fixated in order to avoid further growth… or the pain that can accompany listening to ones unconscious. :^) I’m reminded of Jung’s comment to the effect that it is the function of organized formal religion to prevent people from having religious experiences. ;^) Those formalized structures depend entirely on the (false) orthodoxy of fixed and clear distinctions.
Grin, anyway, that’s where my mind usually wanders off too when I think about this stuff!
Thank you so much for your comments here!!
Sounds right. There are competing narratives about “America,” right? That’d fit this I’d think. What do you think?
Hi Rickkar1,
That starts to get at the whole question of how we know when something is a metaphor! ;^)
I’ll confess that this idea has been running away with me a bit — some days I feel like a dog with a bone. I can’t put it down.
My working definition for metaphors (and for “myths”) has been that they are “relational narratives” = and that means “stories that put us into relation with something.”
So if that holds here, BigD democracy would be a story that puts us into relationship with something… in a sense our idea of “democracy” is itself a story that puts us into relationship with the rest of the people we live around — more academically I guess we could say something like “puts us into relationship with and provides the conceptual framework for the social context in which we find ourselves.” Something like that?
Could you say something more about what you mean by BigD Democracy?
hiho
Mark
Hi Stephen!
Lucky you! :^)
Right, this whole topic area… as you can see from my slightly more than geeky response this week… has driven me a little batty for years. There’s even a name for a key aspect of blurred boundaries in philosophy. It’s called “the problem of induction”… but no point in jumping the gun. :^) I’ll look forward to comments from our COHO colleagues.
Hope everyone is in good spirits this week!
Best,
Mark
Hey Sunbug!
Right? It kind of goes back to my Mythblast about leaky transcendence. It leaks into immanence in all sorts of unexpected places…. including attics.
But I think that’s a great way to illustrate both how the weird little treasurers emerge. For example, while digging through the basement I discovered boxes I hadn’t opened since THE LAST TIME I MOVED which was, like, 20 years ago (!). Gasp. Fortunately they were happy finds — some journals I’d kept when living overseas at the end of the 90s. That was fun.
However, if we’re talking about the attics of our psyche’s sometimes rooting around in there doesn’t turn up bits of gold, but those venomous toads that have been slowly poisoning pieces of our lives for years and years without having been discovered — the mundane can be hiding that stuff as well. All of which might be a reason why we avoid looking for the transcendent in the everyday — it might not be gold we’ll find at the end of that rainbow, but icky mud.
Whew… that was a rapid change in metaphors.
And this kind of goes to my point that maybe boredom can be understood as a protective device — a way that the ego can wrap itself in the mundane to keep the anxieties of self-discovery at bay? That’s one of my working hypotheses. What do you think? Do people take refuge in the mundane to avoid the extraordinary?
Back to my floorboard metaphor: you never know for sure what you might find under there. ;^)
Hi Stephen,
Nice to be back fishing for coho with everyone!
I like your description of the mythological blah’s as “doldrums”… that gets at it nicely. You’re aboard your own version of the Argo, you have provisions, you’re well armed and ready for the adventure, you’re out of sight of land on your way and then….. the wind dies and you’re just sitting there.
This happens all the time, doesn’t it? And you know, occasionally when you feel abandoned like that, and you endure it, you get the experience of the “dark night of the soul” — which is terrible and wonderful and, at least, reminds you that you’re still on the adventure. But that’s not EVERY TIME the wind dies. The world requires our attention in ways that our idea of the adventure doesn’t always meet. It’s…. what’s the right word…. icky?
Boring. Prosaic. Mundane. Tedious. Exasperating. Dull. Pedestrian.
Now that I think about it, there’s a great song in the musical Pippin that captures this.
We all feel like this sometimes.
You summarized the core idea here:
It’s not difficult to catch your excitement and renewed sense of enthusiasm, seeing the metaphor hidden in the mundane. But how is this possible? Are you suggesting that we can approach the dull, dreary, demands of daily life the same as we would the images in a work of literature, poetry, art, or even a dream?
Works of imagination are one thing, but to see symbolism in concrete, literal, physical reality? What is at work here – and why does it work?
Is this what Jung means by “living the symbolic life?”
Going back to my working hypothesis about how “myth” works makes sense of this dilemma I think. Myth is a kind of story, a narrative, that relates us to something and so any “myth” in itself isn’t a fact of some kind, but a way of relating us to the situation we find ourselves in. The reason we get bored with life, or with anything (and here’s another one of my working hypotheses… but I’m almost sure I’m right about this :^), is that we aren’t taking it personally and when we fall out of relation with something, we aren’t taking it personally anymore.
That idea of boredom is really powerful. (I should dig into this in my next MythBlast… Hmm.) Think about it. If it’s the case that boredom happens to us when we aren’t taking something personally, then:
- When we’re bored with politics, we aren’t taking it personally anymore.
- When we’re bored with our relationships, we aren’t taking them personally anymore.
- When we’re bored with religion, it’s because we aren’t taking our religious life personally anymore. AND
- When we’re bored with our lives…..
You get the idea. And so… what happens? Something happens that puts you back into relationship with the things you’d fallen out of relationship with. Moving, my example here, is so exhausting that you really don’t want to be in relationship to it anymore. Think about difficult times with loved ones, or with your own spiritual development… these can become so taxing that you just can’t bear it anymore…. so you fall out of relation to these experiences. They become less meaningful. They become boring. Zzzzzzzzzzz.
But then, if you look directly at the reality in front of you, and think about how you are in relation to it, you might discover the relational narrative, the story, the myth, that puts you back into relationship with that thing/experience/trial/etc.
There’s a link in all of this to Martin Buber’s ideas of I/Thou and I/It. Something to think about maybe as our conversation moves forward.
I’d say that when you find relational narratives to keep you in touch with your life, and with the world, you are living exactly that symbolic life Jung was getting at.
Ha, moves. I can’t escape it. ;^)
Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for this week’s jaunt.
See you next TIME. ;^)
hiho
M
Hey sunbug,
Rollicking good stuff all of that. And now you have me wondering about fear… going back to Kronos, I’m remembering that it’s Kronos who’s afraid, afraid of the child destined to overthrow him — which is why he eats ’em up… except for Zeus — and he ate a stone instead of his child?
You could make a mistake like that pretty easily if you were swallowing hard and fast without chewing… fearful of letting the new have even a moment of life.
So maybe we’re not just talking about the New overthrowing the Old but about the attempt of the Old to prevent the New.
Hm. I do that all the time. :^)
Oh, wait a sec! Kronos had reasons to be fearful of those lightning bolts (although Zeus doesn’t get those until later when Hephaestus hammers them out for him) BUT back to Sticky Haired Ogre!
Sticky Hair decides to NOT eat Prince Five Weapons after the young, not-quite-yet-Buddha tells the Ogre that he carries a 6th weapon — a thunderbolt — in his tummy.
Boom. Okay, too many coincidences. :^)
Oh, and I did what I usually do first –> went back and checked on the etymology of “petra” (stone). “Unknown origin but related to rocky ridges.” Whew. Wow… um….
Grin. Everyone sitting down?
My favorite online Etymological dictionary (etymonline.com) notes that the term petra is often
“Used of certain bones, especially of parts of the temporal bone.”
Oh good grief.
Okay, I’m over my head now. Somebody jump in on this!
Hey Jamesn!
Oh, I should’ve thought of Grandfather clock. :^) I can hear those keys jingling.
There’s something in here about that feeling of being aligned with the seasons — watching the geese gather here on Barton Pond every fall as they get ready to head south and, more, hearing them call out to each other and squabble all night long — but there’s also something here about the dislocations inherent in nature: the surprises when the seasons change suddenly, rivers flash flooding, volcanoes erupting. The seasons aren’t always smooth transitions and can disrupt our lives if we don’t take these disruptions into account. Maybe it’s the sickles, rather than the cycles, of time we need to keep an eye on. ;^)
Whew. There’s another one!
Thanks Stephen,
As always, good to be back!
I’m beginning to think that the worse the puns become, the more likely it is that we’re on the right track…. but let’s leave that to the Jungians out there. :^)
I think your musing here makes a lot of sense… or is the beginning of it. One of the most fascinating things to me about playing around with mythological symbol and discourse is the process of making it make sense to us… these are relational narratives so we have to figure out what they’re relating us *to*, whether they’re doing it adequately, and whether whatever it is they’re relating us *to* even exists. There are plenty of narratives that are meaningful to people and, yet, aren’t attached to anything. That’s the danger of all narratives — and why “myth” is so often used as a synonym for “lie.”
My standard procedure over the years looks just like what you did here: stick to the details, assume for a minute that they ARE true, and then see where they go to determine whether we’re on to something or whether we’ve followed a false trail. I especially liked your following young Zeus into the caves, hidden and nurtured by Mother Nature (here as Gaia) as preparation for confronting a dangerous and unresolved past. In the most mundane, and weirdly powerful, sense there’s nothing like a good long walk in the woods (or the jungle of city concrete) to help put one’s past in perspective. And yep, spending some time percolating (soaking? exploring? fermenting?) in the cave of the unconscious is a sure fire way to sublimate the demons still chasing us. Maybe once you’ve done that you’re ready to make the past upchuck a future that doesn’t belong to it?
And now I’m remembering Satchel Paige’s famous aphorism: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” That always seemed like good sense, on the one hand, and a terrible idea on the other.
I also like that parallel between Chronus castrating his father, but Zeus only feeding him an emetic and then, after a stint in Tartarus, giving him the cushiest gig in the Greek afterlife. That reminded me of Prince Five Weapons from Hero with 1000 Faces — who confronted the dangerous and lethal Sticky Haired Ogre, but then converted and gentled the ogre into a being worthy of receiving offerings. That’s certainly one way to purge yourself of the animosities and resentments, left over from old wounds, that can poison our futures. Hmmm.
There is one detail still tugging at the back of my brain. It might be nothing but: substituting a stone “swaddled” or wrapped to look like a baby? This still bothers me. Chronus was nobody’s fool, but apparently mistook a ROCK for one of his kids … while eating them?
I guess he didn’t chew — which suggests that a failure to “ruminate” about your future sets you up for a future that bites back.
Hmm. See what I mean about the puns? ;^D
Maybe some of our friends and relations in COHO have some thoughts about these wrinkles in the story line!
Wow, a nice week of some crazy punning our way to the rejoycement … and without putting our feet in our m(ou)yths. Thanks everyone for jumping into the mus-ation!
hiho
Mark
Hey Bug! Nice to see you.
Yeah, laughter lightens and seems to bring clarity with it… my working hypothesis here is that being ready to laugh at ourselves implies a willingness to recognize the limitations of what we thought we knew — the recognition that we thought we understood things firmly when we didn’t… and that comes out of Plato’s Cave, for me… the idea that comedy calls attention to the fact that the shadows we’re watching (and often taking for reality) are really just shadows.
“Lighten up” plays a big roll in Tom Robbin’s Jitterbug Perfume and, in what is my FAVORITE joke of Hegel’s (yes, his books are filled with subtle puns and word plays, believe it or not :), Hegel notes that the opposite of gravity is …. drumroll …
Levity!
More and more I’m thinking about certitude as a kind of drug that makes us feel secure. This certainty (as absolute certainty I mean) is a delusion… but wonderment shakes us loose from it. And then we laugh — or cry sometimes. :^)
Timegan, Time-again. Hopefully hystery is only getting started to balance off 4000 years of his-story. We can but hope!
I think that “re-Joyce” may get the gold star at the end of this thread!
Thanks Stephen so much! Nice to be back again.
So many ideas crowd in at once! :^)
I particularly like your observation that Hermes hides inside ambiguity. He’s the trickster: the kind of tricks that make you laugh when they happen to someone else and make you groan or cry (!) when they happen to you.
I’m always drawn back to Campbell’s observations that mythology puts us into the mode of the comical – the surprise realization that we weren’t as smart as we thought we were or that we didn’t see things as clearly as we thought we did. So maybe that’s at play here.
People always say things like, “say what you mean.” but I think we all know you can never say or write exactly what it is you mean. The words themselves never contain everything we need them to convey and we can never assume that the person reading those words understands those words in the same way.
I think puns remind us of this fact and we’re left to chuckle or groan depending on the degree to which we had forgotten it. 🙂
If I can go back to Plato’s Cave Allegory for just a second, the people casting the shadows (the shadows everyone else takes to be reality) are the political and economic elite, the shadowcasters in every political order. As has always been the case, it is the function of comedy, the court jester of our culture, is to call attention to the fact that the shadows are merely that, shadows.
As a rule we forget that the shadows we’re exposed to, in media, in popular culture, and even in the masks we wear in public, these are all just shadows of underlying, deeper truths. Comedy punctures this assumption and that’s why it hurts. We discover we’ve taken shadows more seriously than they deserve.
I’m looking forward to a lot of dangerous puns in here over the next week!
Hi Sunbug,
Some great observations here…. right, isn’t it the case that, psychologically, we’re always calling out for completeness in some sense?
There are a couple of dimensions to this. From a more obvious point of view Aristophanes’ story simply describes the experience when you find a “true love.” It’s like part of you was missing and you didn’t know it. That’s the power of the Romantic image for sure. But this also turns into a universal(-izable) principle, as you suggest. This same romantic experience finds analogies in all the other “erotic” (in the way I’ve defined it here) pieces of life — uncovering pieces of our pscyhe that were missing or hadn’t been in play — or resolved, say .
And so here too is the resistance to the erotic — a refusal to climb out to the edge of yourself so you see what you’re missing. I think Campbell nailed this part in the Hero’s Journey. It’s profoundly unsettling to challenge yourself: not merely what you believe but what you’ve taken to be your identity… we cling to that like nobody’s business… and hence the Buddhist observation about the relation between sorrow and the idea of personal identity. The ego always finds ways to protect itself from change — or dissolution in the Other.
To return this to blunt language, it’s always been amazing (but not surprising) that people can use sex to avoid intimacy. It’s a weird analogy perhaps, but we can also use endless categorization and “analysis” in order to avoid meaningfulness. Sometimes understanding our lives is infinitely easier than going out and getting the experience of living one.
One of the underlying secrets here, seems to me, is that wonder is a way to endure the anxiety. Wonder is, Aristotle noted, the beginning of all knowledge and the way we access the arche, the underlying principles of the universe.
Thanks for these thought-provoking insights!
