16 posts from June 2009

While hanging out at the library today, I finished most of Jon Cogburn's Philosophy Through Video Games, one of those books that makes me wish I was still teaching History and Philosophy to Computer Gaming Majors at Champlain. It gave me numerous ways to make connections between the General Education History requirements and the discipline, something that I think altogether too many General Education History classes lack.

Cogburn uses his ample experience in computer gaming to reveal how small is the leap between the games we play and the philosophy we think. How, for example do philosophers ask us to think about the definition of the self, and who is the self when we each can be, through the medium of computerized immagination, many different selves. Are we our facebook page? Are we our avitar? Are we our profile? Another chapter deals with the way that computer games structure themselves ethically to either reward or punish people who play with certain tendencies. One obviously could not win in World of Warcraft by following the teachings of Ghandi. In the game Bioshock, the programmers have decided to let the players try on different ethical "selves" to see how they compare. These moral frameworks could be used as a great tool for talking about who establishes the rules of any given society and how those rules affect people with different levels of moral consciousness. If you were creating a game, would you set it up so that players had an equal or better chance of winning if they adopted moral codes different from those used in "the real world"?

Another issue that is given an engaging treatment is the discussion of reality itself. We all know that a bat experiences reality differently than we do and we must at somepoint in time, ask if our experience is the authentic one and the experience of the bat is the modified version. In short, we would be naturally inclined to think of the bat's experience of reality as "distorted" from normal in certain ways. But what if the bat is actually in better touch with reality? Or what if we were to some day, for one day, experience the world with ALL of the observational tools of all living things? Would we, forever after, think of ourselves as "blind" or "legally blind"? If so, what does this say about the meaning of the phrase, "The REAL WORLD"?

Cogburn goes deep into the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Descartes, Nietzsche, Berkely, etc. This would not be an easy introduction to these works but if it took a focus on computer gaming to get someone interested in exploring them further, I would highly recommend it.

Question for Comment: What is your favorite computer game? Is there some philosophical reason why you find yourself interested in it more than others? 

“The relationship between a husband and a wife is like a garment; if a garment is torn, it can be mended. The relationship between two brothers is like a limb; if a limb is broken, it cannot be repaired.” – Chinese Proverb taken from the Romance of the three Kingdoms

A few weeks ago, while browsing through the “free books” section of a local library sale, I came across a pristine set of the two volume Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a classic 1300 page novel written in 14^th century China. Perusing through it, it seems to be an almost endless testosterone laced tale of military valor, intrigue, adventure, swashbuckling, and feudal conflict. Definitely a switch from reading Jane Austen as I have been lately. Imagine a teenager playing World of Warcraft for a year and then creating a novel from the narrative. Anyway, in one particular story, the warrior Guan Yu attempts to reunite with his brother and sworn overlord Lu Bei. In chapter 27 of the epic, one reads of Guan Yu’s seemingly unlimited tenacity as he overcomes numerous obstacles to fulfilling his desire to live up to his filial ideals to his brother. The chapter is entitled “Crossing Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals” and for all intents and purposes, the chapter title tells you about all you need to know about the story. Pity the man or army who stands in the way of Guan Yu as he seeks to fulfill his duty to his sworn brother. (incidentally, as the quote at the top of this page indicates, the relationship between men is primary in the Confucian world view and ethic.)

 You can read of the original vows made between the brothers in the first chapter of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms below:

“Fei said, "There is a peach garden in the rear of my estate, and the flowers are now in full bloom; tomorrow, we should conduct a sacrificial ceremony to heaven and earth. We three should become brothers, joining forces with a common purpose, and later we will be able to accomplish great deeds." Xuande and Yunchang both responded in unison, "An excellent idea!" The following day, they prepared sacrificial offerings such as a black bull and a white horse. The three of them all burned incense, and performed double obeisance. They all took an oath, saying, "When saying the names Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, although the surnames are different, yet we have come together as brothers. From this day forward, we shall join forces for a common purpose, and come to each other's aid in times of crisis. We shall avenge the nation from above, and pacify the citizenry from below. We seek not to be born on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. We merely hope to die on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. May the gods of heaven and earth attest to what is in our hearts. If we should ever do anything to betray our friendship, may the gods in heaven strike us dead." Having completed the oath, Xuande was declared to be eldest brother, followed by Guan Yu, with Zhang Fei as the most junior brother.”

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms/Chapter_1#Map

From my limited understanding, the story of Guan Yu “Crossing Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals” is a story of a Confucian determination to live up to filial obligations and in many respects, it mirrors the fealty that one sees evidenced in Count Roland as he takes on any challenge and fights any foe on behalf of Charlemagne in the French epic Song of Roland. You can see Guan Yu “riding alone for thousands of miles” in this famous mural.

So, where is the connection? Last night, I watched Zhang Yamou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, a contemporary story about a modern day Japanese fisherman who determines to go to China and record a particular Chinese Opera of the same title on behalf of his estranged son who has liver cancer. I am not exactly sure of all the connections between the plot line of the movie and the plotline of the opera and the plot line of chapter 27 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms but on the surface it seems as though the theme has to do with the demonstration of one’s respect for filial ties, be they between father and son or between brother and brother.

In the story of Guan Yu, he goes through a series of obstacles and challenges as a result of his commitment to Liu Bei but in the end, arrives at the destination only to find that his brother is not there. The whole chapter, all its passes, all its skirmishes, seems to have been for nothing really. Similarly, in the movie, the fisherman Gouichi Takada’s, son dies before the father gets him the video he hoped to give him. Similarly Takata fails to reunite Yang Yang, the orphan with his father in jail. In both the ancient Chinese novel and in the movie, the mission is a failure. But on another level, the attempt itself is what may matter most. Chapter 27 of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, celebrates Guan Yu’s feat, honoring him not for what he accomplished but for what he sacrificed and attempted.

His seal hung up, the treasury locked, his
courtly mansion left,
He journeyed toward his brother dear, too long
from his side left.
The horse he rode was famed for speed as for
endurance great,
His good sword made a way for him and
opened every gate.
His loyalty and truth forth stand, a pattern
unto all,
His valor would frighten rushing streams and
make high mountains fall.
Alone he traveled lustily, this was death to meet
his blade,
He has been themed by myriads, his glory never
will fade.  

I suppose we all have relationships that have at some point in time been severed. And perhaps we may never fully accomplish our wish to reunite them. This story is all about what we are willing to try even if we are quite sure that we will fail. For maybe there is something honorable in attempts and something that can inspire others in trying.

This entry is dedicated to my brothers Andy and Tim and my sister Faith. May we always be friends.

Question for comment: What failure in your life serves as testimony that “at least you cared”?

"People with Asperger's want contact with other people very much; we're just pathetically clueless at it, that's all." Donald Morton

If you start out with the assumption that what you are going to watch in this movie is a caricature of a mental/emotional condition and not the condition itself, there can be much to be gained from it. There are aspects of the main characters' behaviors that are inappropriate (although I suppose that is often the point when trying to look at the difficulties that people with high functioning Aspergers or Autism face). For a variety of reasons, the movie is a paradox as it might be used to help children understand people with "outside-the-bell-curve" conditions but for a variety of other reasons, it is not really a kid's movie. It has entertainment value as a caricature but perhaps a well-done documentary will serve more effectively as an educational tool.

I suppose it should be said that the characters in this movie make all the same ethical, relational, moral, and life mistakes that all movies seem bound and determined to have their main characters make. Only in the case of people with certain disabilities (differing abilities) the mistakes are probably even dumber. It is not that people who are different cannot find people to love and be loved by. It is simply that the particular individuals in this movie do not know THEMSELVES well enough to be diving into intimacy as deeply and quickly as they do. They betray a greater lack of honest understanding about themselves than any functionaing relationship can handle.

"There is one difference between us," she says, "You want to be normal." And much depends on this difference. Which is why one asks, why have you moved in with someone who is so fundamentally different than you? I suppose the answer is that her particular form of the condition leaves her almost completely at the mercy of impulses.

 The movie makes sure that everything comes out right in the end but after living with theese challenges for any length of time, you wonder if they really could in real time. That will be the strike against it. It attempts to show how lack of knowledge of oneself and of another person can lead to painful heartwrenching trainwrecks in relational/emotional life. But it somehow fixes these trainwrecks up in short time and lets the characters charge right into another round of tragedy without learning to really show down and learn.

But, that said, it does assemble an intriguing lot of characters and gives each of them a different assortment of the symptoms of their condition and if you could just watch the parts of the movie where syptoms are highlighted, it would be interesting fodder for discussion.

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!”

I realize that I have reviewed Jane Austen’s Persuasion before but after reading through it again with the boys, I feel the need to add another layer of thought on it. I fear that my altogether-too-cynical-sometimes charges have affected my viewpoints on a number of matters and it may turn out that you readers will wish I had left well enough alone. Grin. I will just say that I am not sure I agree with my interpretation here when I was done but I found it interesting and so I shall leave it as is.

The psychological truth that seems to be manifesting itself upon this latest reading involves the relationship between attraction as an emotional or physiological state and observation. In short the question that arose in the context of my most recent conversations about the novel have to do with whether our observation is as much affected by our attractions as our attractions are affected by our observations? Might it be said, for example, that Anne Elliot is attracted to Captain Wentworth because she observes that he is an honorable man with impeccable integrity? Or, does she see Captain Wentworth as such because she is attracted to him? Similarly, is Captain Wentworth attracted to Anne Elliot because she has a superlative character? Or does he will her to have such a character because he is attracted?

Do Anne and Frederick Wentworth give each other “free passes” on some moral and ethical and character issues because they want the relationship to work out while refusing to give similar quarter to other suitors and debutantes who they are not attracted to? Will they, as it were, “cook the books”? Do the two of them hold to absolutes on some occasions that they quite shamelessly discard when to not do so might jeopardize their prospects with each other?

Some examples may suffice.

Captain Wentworth makes it clear to Louisa that he has no use for people who do not “stick to their guns” and act in accordance with their convictions despite social pressures. "My first wish for all, whom I am interested in, is that they should be firm,” he insists. And yet later, when speaking with Anne about why he remained so distant from her and seemingly committed to Louisa Musgrove, he explains that it was entirely on account of his concern for his reputation as an honorable man in the public. Needless to say, he laces this explanation with numerous references to Anne’s superlativeness among all the women he has ever known and she seems to accept this explanation because it is consistent with her desire to always see him as honorable and herself as irreplaceable.

“Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or qualified. He persisted in having loved none but her. She had never been supplanted. He never even believed himself to see her equal. Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge--that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them. Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the loveliest medium of fortitude and gentleness

In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the attempts of angry pride), he protested that he had for ever felt it to be impossible; that he had not cared, could not care for Louisa; though, till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which Louisa's could so ill bear a comparison

There, he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way. . . .

From that period his penance had become severe. He had no sooner been free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of Louisa's accident, no sooner begun to feel himself alive again, than he had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.

"I found," said he, "that I was considered by Harville an engaged man! That neither Harville nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual attachment [speaking of Louisa and Wentworth’s]. I was startled and shocked. To a degree, I could contradict this instantly; but, when I began to reflect that others might have felt the same--her own family, nay, perhaps herself, I was no longer at my own disposal. I was hers in honour if she wished it. I had been unguarded. I had not thought seriously on this subject before. I had not considered that my excessive intimacy must have its danger of ill consequence in many ways; and that I had no right to be trying whether I could attach myself to either of the girls, at the risk of raising even an unpleasant report, were there no other ill effects. I had been grossly wrong, and must abide the consequences."

He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him were what the Harvilles supposed.”

"You who speak languages," writes Orson Scott Card, "You are such liars." As if to say “I have always loved you Anne, but being an honorable man who would never lead someone on or be perceived to, I would have married Louisa rather than seem inconstant”. One recalls that earlier in the novel, Anne had been precisely concerned that Captain Wentworth might be stringing both Musgrove sisters along in what was perilously close to a shameful manner.  His explanation for all these attentions covered marvelously and she does not seem to mind supporting the effort. “A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman!--He ought not--he does not," she had once said. It simply would not do if the reality was that he really had honestly ever been attracted to Louisa Musgrove. Truly noble men never lose their unflagging devotion to the women they first fall in love with, right? And thus the narrative that allowed for those attentions and attachments to be only a matter of duty resolve the problem perfectly.

It is absolutely true that at one time, Frederick Wentworth thought quite disparagingly of Anne Elliot for the way that she had been so completely influenced by the persuasive abilities of Lady Russell and her father. And yet he later is willing to accept Anne’s explanation that though not proud of what she had done, it should at least be seen in light of character strength and not a weakness.

“I mean,” Anne explains in her defense in the last chapter,

“that I was right in submitting to her [Lady Russell], and that if I had done otherwise, I should have suffered more in continuing the engagement than I did even in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my conscience. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion."

In short, “I am sorry that I dumped you because Lady Russell approved but would you mind terribly incorporating what I did into the eulogetic narrative you have constructed of me? Would you, dear Frederick, be willing to see it as some sort of good thing, for my sake?” What is happening here? What is happening is a process by which two people who have determined on being with someone they wish to regard as impeccably honorable, liquidate for each other the obviously reasonable judgments that have against one another’s failings in life.

One clearly sees this in the following rather humorous exchange:

"I was six weeks with Edward," said [Wentworth], "and saw him happy. I could have no other pleasure. I deserved none. He enquired after you very particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little suspecting that to my eye you could never alter."

Anne smiled, and let it pass. It was too pleasing a blunder for a reproach.”

She knows that his actual comment had been to the effect that she had altered almost beyond recognition. But she prefers the airbrushed version and lets it pass as the official history of his feelings towards her. And this is my point. Being attracted to Captain Wentworth, Anne Elliot will always chose to believe the best of his character, sometimes even to the detriment of accuracy. Not being attracted to her other suitors, Mr. Elliot for example; she is always inclined to suspect them to be worse than they appear and almost content to find out that they are. Other suitors have, as I sometimes say “permission to try but not to succeed” to impress her. Frederick Wentworth on the other hand, has “permission to try but to not succeed” to disillusion her.

And that is how attraction interferes with observation. But perhaps another illustration will help. When Anne considers the possibilities of marrying someone she is not attracted to, the obstacles that are created by differences of temperament, personality, or station are deemed insurmountable. She does not think that anyone should expect her to partner with someone who is obviously incompatible. But the moment that she finds out that Captain Benwick has proposed to Louisa Musgrove, her principle rival for the affections of Captain Wentworth, her core convictions about this matter alter somewhat.

“Captain Benwick and Louisa Musgrove!” she exclaims when she is told the news,

“The high-spirited, joyous, talking Louisa Musgrove, and the dejected, thinking, feeling, reading Captain Benwick, seemed each of them everything that would not suit the other. Their minds most dissimilar!”

But does she plan to go warn the poor Louisa Musgrove of the certain mistake she is making. Oh no! “ . . . He had an affectionate heart. He must love somebody” she says. And then you begin to see the rationalizing heart go to work on the struggling-to-remain-true-to-reason head:

“She saw no reason against their being happy. Louisa had fine naval fervour to begin with, and they would soon grow more alike. He would gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott and Lord Byron; nay, that was probably learnt already; of course they had fallen in love over poetry. The idea of Louisa Musgrove turned into a person of literary taste, and sentimental, reflection was amusing, but she had no doubt of its being so.”

In short, her attractions have harnessed up her observations and taken them for a ride. With regard to her own affections, she will assert that no one but her heart’s perfect counterpart will do

“More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him,--but she had been too dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place, (except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture,) or in any novelty or enlargement of society.--No one had ever come within the Kellynch circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he stood in her memory. No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the small limits of the society around them.”

 But when thinking about other people’s romances, she will allow a great deal of slack to be made:

"There is hardly any personal defect," replied Anne, "which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to."

What is perhaps most delightful, is how Jane Austen lets Anne Elliot’s self awareness peek above the surface of consciousness every once in a while. Austen will sometimes let the unconscious emotional self be spotted by her principle character in a way that one suspects she expresses through her characters. The following examples from the novel will have to suffice.

“Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing.”

“But neither Charles Hayter's feelings, nor any body's feelings, could interest her, till she had a little better arranged her own. She was ashamed of herself, quite ashamed of being so nervous, so overcome by such a trifle; but so it was; and it required a long application of solitude and reflection to recover her.”

“She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.”

 “No, it was not regret which made Anne's heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free. She had some feelings which she was ashamed to investigate.”

How she might have felt, had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth.”

It is hard to state my thesis more clearly than this last sentiment expresses it. If we are attracted to someone, it will affect the way that we see others. Our affective selves will color everything that is observed by our reflective selves, or so the theory I am prosing says. I suspect that this is what so many people find so delightfully amusing about Jane Austen’s characters sometimes. They play at the surface of consciousness, knowing and not knowing themselves at the same time and allowing some things to remain unknown for the sake of love and other things to become known for the same reason.

In the introduction to the novel that was written by Jane Austen’s brother Henry Austen, he explains how deft Jane, like Anne Elliot the character, was at being in the know and out at the same time. She had that combination of grace and wit that could intuit precisely what was going on (and had gone on) but that could help maintain the secret even from the conscious self, not to mention others. “Though the frailties, foibles, and follies of others could not escape her immediate detection,” Henry writes of his deceased sister,

“Yet even on their vices did she never trust herself to comment with unkindness. The affectation of candour is not uncommon; but she had no affectation. Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought, in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive or forget. Where extenuation was impossible, she had a sure refuge in silence. She never uttered either a hasty, a silly, or a severe expression. In short, her temper was as polished as her wit. Nor were her manners inferior to her temper.”

If this is so, if we all our observations are distorted by our affectations, how can any of us trust our judgments? One might well ask along with Captain Harville, "But how shall we prove any thing?" To which Anne responds,

"We never shall. We never can expect to prove anything upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin probably with a little bias towards our own [position], and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle.”

My hat is off to Jane Austen. She seems to be someone who could look into her own soul or into the lives of others or into the universe itself and find what truths might be helpful to the creation of a happy life . . . and make those observations conscious. Similarly, she seems to have been able to look into her soul or the lives of others or into the universe and when she found that which would bring pain or sorrow, leave what she found in such a way that no one would ever know she had ever found it.

"This," Anne Elliot says to Mr. Elliot, "is nearly the sense, or rather the meaning of the words, for certainly the sense of an Italian love-song must not be talked of.”

As if to say, I can only tell you what is appropriate to say and ask you to understand that there was more.

"But I am getting too near complaint,” she wrote as she was dying, “It has been the appointment of God, however secondary causes may have operated."

She was 42. To the last, affectation, desire, the longing for something, in this case, immortality, was influencing and dare I say persuading observation which, for all intents and purposes, would have left her crying out, “My god, My god, Why have you forsaken me?”

Question for comment: Would it bother you to discover that your emotions and desires affected your observations more than you think they do?

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is about a friendship, a family, and fate. It is about secrets and about the danger of trying to keep them for too long from too many. And it is about the process by which two friends, two children, and two parents come to see the truth at different intervals and times. Ironically, when an SS Officer is transferred to Auschwitz and brings his family to live nearby, the only window that can see the camp is in 9 year old Bruno’s room. He is, you might say, the first “to see” and his mother soon follows. In time, or rather by the end of the story, the whole family “sees”.

Some have criticized the movie for its implication that it would have been entirely possible to have lived next door to Auschwitz, and even, to have been married to the commandant of such a place or to have had such a man as a father, and yet not have known what was happening. To those who believe that those who deny knowing are merely excusing themselves, such a conception flies in the face of what they believe to be the case.And they have for that reason, objected to the central premise of the movie.

Everyone in this movie has secrets. The stormtrooper, Kotler, tries to keep his father’s objections to the Reich a secret. Commandant Ralph swears to keep the purpose of the camp a secret from all and insists on keeping his own mother and wife’s opposition to Hitler a secret. Bruno keeps his daily explorations of the prison camp secret from his family. The maid keeps Bruno’s secret a secret. Bruno’s mother intends to keep the nature of her husband’s work a secret from her children … and in the end, everyone pays because this eight year old kid and his parents are oblivious to the dangers of what he is doing.

Lastly, I think the most disturbing thing to me as I watched this movie is to realize how effectively a movie can shape and mold a person’s perceptions. As the movie draws to a close and you watch Bruno crawl under the fence in prison garb and join Smuel to go look for Shmuel’s father, you find yourself wanting to yell to him “Don’t! You’re a great kid and you could get killed!” But then you remember that the camps were entirely full of “great kids” (though in truth most children of pre-working age were killed as soon as they entered a camp like Auschwitz) and that the disaster is not about to happen so much as it has been happening for years.

Question for comment: Would anyone object if I just went to thinking more privately about the movies I watch and books I read?

Peter Burke in Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978) admitted that he had “too little to say about women, for lack of evidence.” This anthology of texts and manuscripts from the early modern period (1550-1700) is an attempt to rectify that. The editors have assembled an impressive collection of printed material from the period, drawing from legal documents, letters, religious texts, medical manuals, mother’s legacies, fiction, non-fiction writings, poetry, plays, and applied arts and music. It also includes a chapter of women’s writings in defense of women’s worth, if not equality.

 Early legal tracts, reinforced the idea of women’s inferiority and labeled “female” crimes that were punishable. These included witchcraft, infanticide, and scolding “suggesting that verbal violence by females was the equivalent of physical violence perpetrated by males.” Some of these early books on raising children insisted that women should not be educated in a way that would “interfere with their housewifery.” Unless their husbands had specific needs for their educations, the object of their reading should simply be to remind them of their religious duties. As I often tell my students, “The greatest weapon in the arsenal of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” and these texts capture a moment in Western History when women are just taking the Normandy beachhead of an argument that will take centuries to win.

For some understanding of what women in this period were contending with, consider the best selling misogynist work by Joseph Swetman (1615)

“Women have a thousand ways to entice thee and ten thousand ways to deceive thee and all such fools as are suitors unto them: some they keep in hand with promises, and some they feed with flattery, and some they delay with dalliances, and some they please with kisses. They lay out the folds of their hair to entangle men into their love: betwixt their breasts is the vale of destruction: and in their beds there is hell, sorrow, and repentance  For take away their painted clothes, and then they look ruggedly: their coifs and stomachers, and they are simple to behold: their hair untrussed, and they look wildly. And yet there are many which lays their nets to catch a pretty woman, but he which getteth such a prize gains nothing by his adventure but shame to the body and danger to the soul . . .  Many women are in shape Angels but in qualities Devils, painted coffins with rotten bones.”   Joseph Swetinan, Tue Arraignment of Lezt’d, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women, 1615

To “combat” this blatant misogyny, Protestant ministers might celebrate the virtues of Godly women and enjoin husbands to love and cherish their wives but there was precious little feminism to be found in the sort of Protestantism that would have transplanted itself to the American colonies. One of the more influential Protestant ministers during the period of American colonization was Thomas Gataker, who took the opportunity of the marriage OF Robert and Dorothy Cooke  to clarify where women and men stood in the family and society.  

“In this consolidation which we call wedlock is a locking together.,” he would write in a later tract,

“It is true, that man and wife are one person: but understand in what manner. When a small brook or little rivulet incorporateth with Rhodanus the Rhone, Humber, or Thames, the poor rivulet loseth her name: it is carried and recarried with the new associate: it beareth no sway: it possesseth nothing coverture. A woman as soon as she is married is called covert; in Latin iupta, that is, ‘veiled’: as it were clouded and overshadowed: she hath lost her stream. I may more truly, far away, say to a married woman, her new self is her superior: her companion, her master." Thomas Gataker, The Lawes resolution of  Women‘s Rights, 1632

In his sermononic advice to Robert and Dorothy, Gataker makes ample use of Paul’s teachings in his letter to the church at Colossea to establish in as many ways as he can the importance of establishing and maintaining a hierarchical relationship between husband and wife.

“Now in the next place as the Apostle beginneth with Married persons, Man and wife; so of the twaine here he placeth (f) the wives dutie in the first place. A course constantly observed both by (g) Peter and and (h) Paul, as hereto else-where, that they begin first with the wives dutie and so (i) passe on to the husbands; and that for two causes.

First to shew the inferioritie of the wife in regard of the husband; for we may observe that the Apostle beginneth ever with the dutie of the inferiour: (k) first the childrens, (l) then the Parents: first (m) the Servants, (n) then the Masters: and so first the Wives then the Husbands: the Womans first, then the Mans.

Secondly, to shew where dutie is to begin, on the wives part; it is to begin at the inferiour and so to ascend to the superiour. For * Love goeth downeward: dutie commeth upward.” It beginneth with the inferiour and so goeth up to the superiour. And this first serveth to admonish the wife to be forward in performance of such good duties as God requireth on her part; and not to straine courtesie and stand upon tearmes, as to say, Let him doe what he should doe, and then I will doe what is befitting me. Wouldest thou have him to to doe that that is his dutie? there is no way more agreeable to the word and will of God, more consonant to the course and order of nature, more likely to proove successefull and effectuall to that purpose and to have a blessing of God goe with it, then the carefull performance of they dutie to him, then which nothing is more forcible to draw dutie from him.”

The conclusions that he draws from the creation of this hierarchy are almost self-explanatory. If there is some conflict between a husband and wife, it is her obligation to reconcile herself to him. Her stream must be subsumed.

“The maine dutie, on the wives part is Submission; or Subjection. That the Apostles of Christ both (e) Paul and (f) Peter exact ever, on her part. . .  . it is a matter of Comelinesse and Decency.”

Gataker is relentless:

“Now where they be equals, there may be some question, some difficultie, whither shall have the prioritie, and they take it commonly, as it falleth out, or by turnes. But where there is an apparent inequalitie, there it is without question that the inferiour is to yeeld to the superiour.

Now here the Husband is the Superiour, and the wife the Inferiour, as the Apostle else-where prooveth, both from the Creation, and since the transgression.”

The consequences of ignoring this hierarchical approach to family management are almost too dire to consider Gataker continues:

“A masterly wife is as much despised and derided for taking rule over her husband, as he for yeelding it to her; and that not onely among those that be godly and religious, but even among those that be but meere naturall men and women. Yea it is the next way to bring all to wrack . For * where the wife maketh head against the husband; there is nothing but doing and undoing, and so all things goe backward, and the whole house runneth to ruine, as by lamentable experience too often appeareth.”

Gataker then pre-empts any argument that might be based on the relative superlatives of the wife’s merit by saying:

“yea though she be her selfe of a greater spirit, and in some respect of better parts, though she bring much with her, though the maine estate come by her, yet to acknowledge her husband, as God hath appointed him, to be her superiour as he is her husband and her head: (which acknowledgement is the ground of the dutie here urged; as the contrarie conceite cutteth of all conscionable carriage in this kinde) that she be willing a to weare the yoake and beare the burden that God in his ordinance hath imposed on her: and not onely avoide and forbeare, but even hate and abhorre the contrary, as a course abominable in Gods sight, odious in mans eyes, and prejudiciall to them both.”

Step by step Gataker eliminates conflict from the marital relationship by denying that the wife exists as a separate stream.

“We must nor therefore conceive it, that this Submission consisteth in a complementall crowching and courtesing, or the like, as as hypocrites place religion onely in ceremoniall observances:: but rather in a faithfull and carefull, in a constant and conscionable performance of such duties as issue and flow from the inward acknowledgement of that superioritie of power and place, that God hath given to the husband in regard of the wife .

And these duties may bee re-ferred, or reduced to three heads:

{

Reverence, Obedience, Assistance.

Gataker’s sermon is only just beginning. He has a great deal to say about the duties of men to their wives as well. And no point lacks its Biblical support.

http://www.usask.ca/english/gataker/gat_txt.html

 Obviously the reader will draw their own conclusions about the merits of Thomas Gataker’s exegesis. And they will be able to look at their own families of origin and draw their own conclusions.

Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts, Manuscripts, and Print, 1550-1700 is simply an attempt to establish that there were streams of women’s thought, reflection, passion, belief, conviction, perspective, and reason in the early modern period and that they deserved to be remembered. As though they were streams with names and not simply currents in the lives of men.

Questions for Comment: What are the implications for the future of this sort of faith in a society where women are, every year, graduating from colleges and graduate schools in greater numbers, taking more and more supervisory positions in higher education and business, etc.? How do women who find themselves in collaborative, egalitarian, or supervisory roles with respect to men at work maintain faith in a divine social order at home that may not reflect the way things seem to work in their work lives"? Would Paul advocate hierarchical relationships in families today if he were to write his epistles today? Are his positions consistent with the core teachings of Jesus or are they more reflections of his Hebrew and Classical education? Is it possible to take exception to these arguments AND maintain faith in other aspects of the text or is it simply an all or nothing decision that one has to make? Would Paul regard Thomas Gataker's exposition an accurate explanation of the social order he intended to impose on the church's families? Does Gataker's social hierarchy offend and yet "work" for some people? And if so, what are the implications? Is Western society in trouble for lack of application of this model? Should students of history be asked to consider this view of the family as an option or would it be a history teacher's responsibility to use class time to challenge it and force people to evaluate it in accordance with cultural assumptions about women's equality? If you had been sitting in Gataker's church the day he preached this sermon, what would your internal dialog have been saying to yourself as you left the church?

Zhang Yimou’s beautiful The Road Home took me,  threw me in the back of its wagon, and hauled me off down the road the moment that it moved from the stark black and white present to the glorious Fall colors of memory. This is a movie that recreates the experience of love at first sight better than anything I have ever seen. The world is bleak, barren, gray. We do not know it because we have never seen it in color. We suspect that the whole “movie” will be what it is. And then we see the beloved and the world is on fire with yellow wheat, flaming trees, red jackets, deep green fields, and an eternal sun backlighting everything.

The ancient Greeks surmised that the experience of love at first sight was a consequence of a separated soul finding its estranged half. Aristoiphanes is quoted in Plato’s symposium to this end:

"... when [a lover] ... is fortunate enough to meet his other half, they are both so intoxicated with affection, with friendship, and with love, that they cannot bear to let each other out of sight for a single instant."

The look on the face of Zhao Di is the picture of that experience.

The Roman philosopher, Seneca wrote in a letter that “love is friendship gone mad” but sometimes, it is a madness that starts a friendship. One gets that sense from the experience of Zhao Di and Luo Changyu in The Road Home that there is something almost miraculous in such moments. Something that cannot be understood by research and perhaps should not be attempted to be understood.

“Happiness is to be happy in love, unhappiness is to be unhappy in love, or to have no love at all” writes the French Philosopher, Andre Comte-Sponville, “It is love which keeps us alive, since it alone makes life loveable. It is love which saves; it is therefore love which must be saved.” I think this movie does that beautifully. It captures its energy, its looks, its joy, its heartbreak, its eternal power. I can only say that it left me in tears.

Perhaps the most profound thing about this story is that it is set during the time of China's great "cultural revolution" a time of immense conflict, tragedy, animosity, and even brutality. Everything in "the real world" is going from gray to black as everything in this young eighteen year old girl's life is turning a vibrant firey supernova. It is a perfect compliment to Anchee Minn's Red Azalea.

Question for Comment: When your life yurns bleak, drab, gray, and depressing, what memories bring you back to life?

"One of the few English novels written for grown-up people" Virginia Wolf about George Elliot’s Middlemarch

George Elliot’s Middlemarch proves two things. First, one almost HAS to have an unconventional life to obtain deeper insights into human psychology. Perhaps because people with conventional lives are somewhat excluded from the population of folks that act out their inner dysfunctionalities. The other thing it proves is that people with bad teeth never fare well in the plots of novels. I call this “Ork’s Law”. Poor Mr. Baffles seriously needed a summer camp with Emily Post and dentures.

I love the way that George Elliot (Mary Ann Evans) sprinkles her story with town gossips who must have plagued her own life like gnats. She includes the sort of clergymen that she must have liked (the kind that are kind and gamble a little) and the self-righteous Bulstrode, the sort of person she didn’t like (“Sanctimonious old icebergs waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity” as Mark Twain once put it.)

Middlemarch is set in rural England in 1830, the same year that the concerns of my Master’s thesis focused on. It traces the arc of a number of different lives, having no central hero or heroine, the web of the community itself being the hero and heroine. The various stories tell us about several different “couple histories” – How did they get together? How did they almost fall apart? How were they rescued from their decisions? And this may be the greatest beauty of the novel. It helps us to understand how and why the inscrutable decisions that people make when they chose partners are made. It gives hope for those who can look back and say “Mmm … I wonder if that was not a mistake” “You know what mistakes you have always been making, Dodo,” says Dorothea’s sister Celia of Dorothea’s decision to give up her estates and marry a son of a disinherited Polish nobody, “and this is another.”

 Nobody thinks Mr. Ladislaw a proper husband for you. And you SAID YOU would never be married again."

"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said Dorothea, "and that I might have done something better, if I had been better. But this is what I am going to do.

Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative. Presently she said, "I cannot think how it all came about." Celia thought it would be pleasant to hear the story.

"I dare say not," said-Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin. "If you knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you."

"Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily.

"No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."

“You would have to feel with me, else you would never know.” I suspect that we have all felt this way about some of the most important decisions of our lives. As I survey the various characters that George Elliot has created in this novel, it seems that in every case the instinctual desire to find a partner (any partner) attaches itself to some other current of longing in the personality.

Mr Casaubon seems to have realized that he needed a research assistant at just the same moment that he realized that Dorothea Brooke was single and in want of a better library not to mention a husband. Listen well to his proposal and you can’t really tell if he is asking her to be his wife or his secretary:

“I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you. For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the impression an added depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now referred. Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to you the tenor of my life and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to the commoner order of minds. But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental qualities above indicated. It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet with this rare combination of elements both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant hours; and but for the event of my introduction to you (which, let me again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident with foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages towards the completion of a life's plan), I should presumably have gone on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial union.”

For Fred, it is fused with a desire to continue a childhood friendship with Mary.

With Dorothea, it is fused with a desire to use her life to do some great thing for the world.

“Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women, feeling that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better. Still, she never repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry Will Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well as sorrow to him if she had repented. They were bound to each other by a love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it. No life would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled with emotion, and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she had not the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself.

Dorothea could have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should give him wifely help. Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done . . .

With Dr. Tatius Lydgate, it is fused with a vulnerability to suffering (it is Rosie’s crying that seems to totally unglue him from his intention to remain a bachelor Doctor in the cause of medicine). “I have no intentions of engrossing Miss Vincy’s whole attentions or endangering her prospects of marriage” Dr. Lydgate insists to her uncle but the moment he sees her bawling (and my friend and I may be in disagreement as to whether her emotion is sincere or a false pretence), he proposes as if he simply cannot, as a Dr., stand to see someone suffer without administering a medication, in this case, a marriage proposal.

Miss Vincey: Then you don’t care about me at all?

Dr. Lidgate: More than anyone. I want you to be my wife.”

This from someone trying to ignore her a few moments earlier. With Mary, it seems to be a simple desire to rescue Fred and see to it that he stays rescued.

  “When Fred was riding home on winter evenings he had a pleasant vision beforehand of the bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor, and was sorry for other men who could not have Mary for their wife; especially for Mr. Farebrother. "He was ten times worthier of you than I was," Fred could now say to her, magnanimously. "To be sure he was," Mary answered; "and for that reason he could do better without me. But you—I shudder to think what you would have been—a curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric pocket-handkerchiefs!"

With Sir James, his natural impulse to marry is combined with a desire to further the status of his family name and his family’s status. It is for this reason that he cannot understand Dorothea’s decisions:

“Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry his cousin—young enough to have been his son, with no property, and not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would not have married either the one or the other.”

Rosie obviously finds Dr. Lydgate a fine catch of a man but she desperately wants status as well. The status of a fine house. The status of fine clothes. The status of Dr. Lydgates family connections.

I think my point is made. We all probably marry because we WANT those benefits that marriage generally promises for all but we pick the persons that we do because of some deeper wanting – intensely personal to us like a “longing fingerprint” that combines, merges, and fuses with the mating instinct. This is why we all misjudge others for their marital choices and are so often misjudged. And perhaps why it is that mistakes are made. “One cannot be wise for other people,” says Dorothea. “I wonder what it is that makes us care for one another. When we do that is” asks Dr. Lydgate. I think it is the central question George Elliot is trying to answer. And the movie is long because the answers are as unique as we are.  

What is sad is how these stories progress from that moment of promise when the marriage begins. In each case, there is a story of difficulty and a series of obstacles to be overcome on the way. "Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.” Writes Elliot in the conclusion,

“Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic—the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world."

It as though we say “I wanted something, and I thought you would supply it along with the standard benefits of marriage”.  What happens as the disappointment of unfulfilled expectation descends on each of these marriages? Mr. Casaubon discovers that Dorothea is really interested in doing something good in the world, not simply in being his personal fan club. Dorothea discovers that Mr. Casaubon wants her to remain an intellectual kindergarder, perpetually fascinated with his eloquence. Indeed, he prefers it if she does not attempt to educate herself to be his equal. Dr. Lydgate discovers that Rosamond’s suffering is incurable as it is rooted in a desire for a never ending advancement of status he cannot afford. Rosamond discovers that Dr. Lydgate cannot purchase the status she desires while pursuing his dream of providing the world with progressive medicine. She has used his compassion against him in getting him. And now she discovers that it will not go away once she has.

This would be such a great book to read with a group of couples dealing with their own expectations and disappointments with each other. For it not only raises the issues, it provides several different approaches to resolving them or adapting to them.  

It just seems that we so owe it to our children to help them understand the deep longings of their own hearts, whether they be chosen or God given, so that when it comes time to chose someone, they will understand what the combination that will make them happy is. So that they will avoid the mistakes and the suffering of the people of Middlemarch.

“Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Elliot’s conclusion left me thinking about something that Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Gettysburg once said in a commemorative speech given at the battlefield many years later.

"This is the great reward of service. To live, far out and on, in the life of others; this is the mystery of the Christ,--to give life's best for such high sake that it shall be found again unto life eternal."

It was a matter, as I have said, of character. It was the soul of youth suddenly springing into the flush and flower of manhood. It was the force of the characters you had formed in the silent and peaceful years by the mother’s knee and the father’s side, which stood you in such stead in the day of trial. And so it is. We know not of the future, and cannot plan for it much, but we can hold our spirits and our bodies so pure and high, we can cherish such thoughts and such ideals and dream such dreams of lofty purpose, that we can determine and know what manner of men we will be whenever and wherever the hour strikes that calls for noble action. The predestination of God has given us in charge. No man becomes suddenly different from his habit and cherished thought. We carry our accustomed manners with us. And it was the boyhood you brought from your homes which made you men; which braced your hearts, which shone upon your foreheads, which held you steadfast in mind and body and lifted these heights of Gettysburg to immortal glory.

Question for comment: What was it besides marriage that you wanted when you married? What was it your partner wanted? How have you navigated the disappointments and the expectations?

I just got the opportunity to listen to Barak Obama's speech in Cairo June 4. I would highly recommend it as it sets a tone for a future based on possibilities rather than practicabilities, a future based on a chosen way of seeing the world rather than an inherited one. Naturally, the question will have to be settled: Can we really chose new ways of seeing the world, or must we endure the ones that we have earned by our past behaviors and mistakes? Obama's speech also asserts, without an argument, that the world can move forward without arguing about the validity of its episimological sources of cultural values because, and this is the lynchpin of the assumptions he makes, those sources (Bible, Talmud, Qur'an) are fundamentally, not in conflict about anything that "really" matters.

Though asserting that he was himself a Christian, in a number of places he made reference to "our Holy Quran". Rhetorically, it was extremely effective. But on a pure logical level, I can see it being fraught with difficulties. The question is, will people respond on a level of logic or a level of sentiment? I suspect the later. And maybe therein lies our salvation as we make our way forward. Can one argue for some things (peace, human values, non-violence) on the basis of an authority that - if read in entirety - ALSO rejects some of the same propositions that you are arguing for? i.e. the status of Jerusalem or the West Bank/Judea-Samaria?

“The Holy Koran tells us …”

“The Talmud tells us …”

“The Holy Bible tells us …”

President Obama makes a powerful argument that these sacred books all agree on certain things. But what of the differences? He advocates - by his silence - ignoring them. Regard them as authoritiative where the ends are consistent with a peaceful world. Neglect the aspects of their messages where those messages might lead to contrary ends. I think that is essentially the argument that he is making.

“Faith should bring us together” he says, " As the Holy Quran tells us, be conscious of God and speak always the truth. . . . Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad joined in prayer”

In several places, he made the argument that America and Islam are not based on competing assumptions and he said so with such authority that his tone of voice and assurance carried the argument. But I myself feel a need to think more on the matter.

"America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition," he said, "The freedom to live as you chose. These are not just American ideas. They are human rights and that is why we will support them everywhere.”

And it is at this point where the most interesting debate should occur. Are the Qur'an or the Bible or the Talmud really arguing that human beings should be given the freedom to live as they chose? Is a religion whose name MEANS submission, a religion of choice? Is the Talmud a record of a debate about what humans want to do? Or is it a record of people trying to discern in the minutest of detail what God wants them to do? When Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount "Anyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them is like a man who builds his house upon sand and when the floods come ..." is He advocating autonomy from divine command? When the Apostle Paul says "Have this mind in you that was in Christ ..." is his goal the autonomous individual, free to live as they chose?

Barak Obama has taken the approach that all sources of certainty can be regarded as equally valid and authoritative as long as none are. No one thus wins. No one looses. No one must admit to having been misled for a few hundred or thousand years.

It remains to be seen if this argument, made forcefully and diplomatically, and frequently enough, can carry the day.

Question for Comment: If we assume for a moment that major Western Religions are a Ven Diagram of concentric circles - each advocating certain assertions that are common and certain assertions that are exclusive, is there any reason to retain the exclusive elements if the result is irreconcilable conflict?

I just watched a documentary about the avant guarde stage director, Robert Wilson. Lets call a spade a spade. This guy is different. Maybe he is advanced guard. Or maybe his is too crazy to leave behind with any weapons. Its hard for me to tell. He obviously had and has all the marks of being on the autistic spectrum but his plan seems to have been to challenge the world to keep up with him, as though his goal were to make the world autistic, one paying theater goer at a time. I for one, probably am not going to be his biggest fan, but I admire his conviction that energy can eventually overcome oddity as I watched him throw himself into every nutso thing he seems to have wanted to produce. People pay to see his work. Maybe if for no other reason than his work is the result of a one man hurricane. Would you pay to see a real live tornado set down in the middle of a stage at such and such a time?

“He does not even conceive of not doing what he thinks should be done” said one commentator in the movie.

I tried to trace down some outside perspectives to get a glimmer inot the rational behind the absurdities I saw in the documentary and found this.

“Another technique Wilson uses is that of what words can mean to a particular character. His piece, I was sitting on my patio this guy appeared I thought I was hallucinating, features only two characters, both of whom deliver the same stream-of-consciousness monologue. In the play’s first production one character was “aloof, cold, [and] precise” while the other “brought screwball comedy… warmth and color… playful[ness]” (Holmberg 61). The different emphases and deliveries brought to the monologue two different meanings; “audiences found it hard to believe they heard the same monologue twice” (Holmberg 61). Rather than tell his audience what words are supposed to mean, he opens them up for interpretation, presenting the idea that “meanings are not tethered to words like horses to hitching posts” (Holmberg 61).

I think you can see why I might not like this stuff. I like to write. I like to communicate. I do believe that words are not “tethered to words like horses to hitching posts” but that’s why people who communicate well should WORK to make it happen more often. I don’t understand people who seem to WANT there to be incomprehensibility in language.

I found myself wondering as I watched if his work is all about normalizing autism.

“He is a perfectionist in many respects, never calling it quits until every single aspect of his vision is achieved. A fifteen minute monologue in Quartet took two days for him to light while a single hand gesture took close to three hours (Holmberg 126). This attention to detail certainly proves his devotion to the importance of lighting . . .  Wilson is also very involved with the props in his productions. He not only designs the props himself but often takes part in their construction as well. Whether it is furniture, a light bulb, or a giant crocodile, Wilson treats each as though it were a work of art in its own right. He demands that a full-scale model of each prop be constructed before the final article is made, in order “to check proportion, balance, and visual relationships” (Holmberg 128) on stage. Once he has approved the model, the crew builds the prop, and Wilson is “renowned for sending them back again and again and again until they satisfy him” (Holmberg 128). . . . Such attention to detail and perfectionism usually ends up with a pricey collection of props. Although they are meant to be this way to enhance Wilson’s shows, “curators regard them as sculptures” (Holmberg 129), selling from “$4,500 to $80,000” (Gussow 113).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wilson_(director)

Question for Comment: Do the words “avant guarde” make you want to attend a performance or save your money for something else?