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jackshoegazerThe last major assignment for my English class is a research journal. Today, with much coaxing (I gave out five of the twenty suggestions) the class compiled a list of possible topics and people started choosing. I was going to do Creationism/Intelligent Design because I am truly baffled by it. (Seriously, even if there is some great Creator/Designer, how does that fit into Science? It DOESN'T. It doesn't matter one little bit who or what created the processes that made everything, the fact is that the processes exist and those can be scientifically observed. The giant tinker in the sky cannot.)
However, I think I'm going to go off-the-wall a bit and do mine on Atlantis. Since the only real evidence for actual Atlantis is a little blurb in one of Plato's notebooks, I'm going to try and run in the metaphoric/metaphysical direction, concentrating on why people love to believe in some past Golden Age or Eden. What does it mean and what does it say about our psychological make-up.
The idea of a golden past, a missing center, is especially interesting to me as I wrap up The Crying of Lot 49. I was unenthusiastic earlier, but the last half or so has gelled in a very beautiful way. It shares a theme or at least a vein with Foucault's Pendulum and several other books I've read in that the central mystery is never actually spoken of, it is only mentioned in metaphor. The whole narrative dances around it, like a bird that flies past your head so close and so fast, you only catch a fragment, but somehow you know what it is.
The esoteric aspects of many religions and spiritual traditions are like this as well. The idea of God or one's Holy Guardian Angel, or the Tao, are concepts so huge, so all-encompassing that they cannot exactly be grasped by the mind. The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. If you can think of God, that is not God, but a concept of God. The "reality" is always bigger, so their literature dances around the main mystery, it hints and jabs and feints toward it, leading you nearer and nearer, but it is like a bright light at the edge of your vision - you can feel the heat and your surroundings are illuminated but you never quite see the light itself. If you ever manage to look directly into the sun, it is blinding and the image fades and you spend the rest of your life trying to recapture that image burned in your retina.
On a more mundane note, while discussing the global-warming/carbon/petroleum/apocalypse issue in sociology today, I equated the battle between corporations and the green/renewable movements to the good guy and the bad guy battling it out in a speeding train that's headed off a cliff. Eventually one of them has to win - either we switch to renewable energy or we burn the oil up until either we run out and civilization collapses/climate change kills us off. If the good guy doesn't win, we're going off that cliff. I thought that was a good metaphor. I'm sure someone else has used it but I invented it independently. I'm tired of inventing things independently. I once wrote a story for a 6th grade Don't Drink/Alcohol is Bad program only to discover later it was the the plot for a Family Ties episode.
However, I think I'm going to go off-the-wall a bit and do mine on Atlantis. Since the only real evidence for actual Atlantis is a little blurb in one of Plato's notebooks, I'm going to try and run in the metaphoric/metaphysical direction, concentrating on why people love to believe in some past Golden Age or Eden. What does it mean and what does it say about our psychological make-up.
The idea of a golden past, a missing center, is especially interesting to me as I wrap up The Crying of Lot 49. I was unenthusiastic earlier, but the last half or so has gelled in a very beautiful way. It shares a theme or at least a vein with Foucault's Pendulum and several other books I've read in that the central mystery is never actually spoken of, it is only mentioned in metaphor. The whole narrative dances around it, like a bird that flies past your head so close and so fast, you only catch a fragment, but somehow you know what it is.
The esoteric aspects of many religions and spiritual traditions are like this as well. The idea of God or one's Holy Guardian Angel, or the Tao, are concepts so huge, so all-encompassing that they cannot exactly be grasped by the mind. The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. If you can think of God, that is not God, but a concept of God. The "reality" is always bigger, so their literature dances around the main mystery, it hints and jabs and feints toward it, leading you nearer and nearer, but it is like a bright light at the edge of your vision - you can feel the heat and your surroundings are illuminated but you never quite see the light itself. If you ever manage to look directly into the sun, it is blinding and the image fades and you spend the rest of your life trying to recapture that image burned in your retina.
On a more mundane note, while discussing the global-warming/carbon/petroleum/apocalypse issue in sociology today, I equated the battle between corporations and the green/renewable movements to the good guy and the bad guy battling it out in a speeding train that's headed off a cliff. Eventually one of them has to win - either we switch to renewable energy or we burn the oil up until either we run out and civilization collapses/climate change kills us off. If the good guy doesn't win, we're going off that cliff. I thought that was a good metaphor. I'm sure someone else has used it but I invented it independently. I'm tired of inventing things independently. I once wrote a story for a 6th grade Don't Drink/Alcohol is Bad program only to discover later it was the the plot for a Family Ties episode.
