11 posts tagged “philosophy”
In 1873, Vermonter, P.T. James claimed that he was dedicating himself to serving as the medium through which Charles Dickens intended to communicate the ending of his last unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Flushed with success over the notoriety he gained from this venture, James came up with an idea for publishing a periodical that would continue to provide readers access to more writing by the dead author (as well as insights into the whole new field of spiritualism in general). Vermont seems to have been fertile soil for such spiritualists it seems. Just up the road from where I live is the famous Eddy farm where the infamous Eddy brothers grandfathered the Theosophy movement a year after P.T. James demonstrated the financial advantages to be gained by connecting people with the afterlife.
Today, I finished a fascinating book by Ben Macintyre entitled Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elizabeth Nietzsche. I know it probably seems impossible, but it was a book I simply could not put down.
"Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else" Nietzsche had written in his autobiography, Ece Homo. The irony is that Nietzsche, who thought most anti-Semites to be morons and who often thought of himself as more Polish than German, would be adopted as the patron-saint philosopher of Naziism. “Even by virtue of my descent, I am granted an eye beyond all merely local, merely nationally conditioned perspectives,” he had written,
“it is not difficult for me to be a "good European." On the other hand, I am perhaps more German than present-day Germans, mere citizens of the German Reich, could possibly be—I, the last anti-political German. And yet my ancestors were Polish noblemen: I have many racial instincts in my body from that source—who knows? [...] When I consider how often I am addressed as a Pole when I travel, even by Poles themselves, and how rarely I am taken for a German, it might seem that I have been merely externally sprinkled with what is German.”
And this is what is fascinating about Forgotten Fatherland and what connects it to the story of P.T. James. The book tells the tale of how Frederich Nietzsche's original mind and gift for expression and creativity was abducted by his rabidly racist and eventually pro-Nazi sister, Elizabeth, who essentially packaged and sold Nietzsche as a perfect philosophical prophet for National Socialism. Much to Frederich's dismay, Elizabeth had married one of Germany's pre-eminent anti-Semites and sailed off to Paraguay in 1886 to found a “pure” Aryan colony there. The story about Elizabeth Nietzsche's ability to “sell” the snake oil of her colony to unsuspecting German peasants and wealthy financiers is matched only by her ability to similarly package her brother's writings after her husband killed himself in Paraguay, her colony failed miserably, and her brother went insane.
I confess, not being a professional student of philosophy, I had not known myself how conflated the ideas of Nietzsche (ideas which are disturbing, controversial, and dangerous in and of themselves) and the pseudo-ideas of Elizabeth became over the decades that she controlled his legacy. Imagine, if you will that in P.T. James' ending to Charles Dickens' novel, one reads a well articulated defense for the use of sweat-shop labor and the maintenance of a caste system with rigid laws about protecting bloodlines. “Is this the same Charles Dickens we knew?” one might ask.
Fundamentally, I found myself wondering about all intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual movements of a similar nature. Frederich Nietzsche was neither a saint nor a seer. He was simply original. He spoke with compelling images and was himself an iconic story. One can be profoundly interesting without being profoundly right, as many of humanity's best prophets and visionaries have been. What I gathered from the reading of this book is how easily a person like P.T. James or Elizabeth Nietzsche can pirate the agendas of those they claim to be qualified to channel. One certainly can see this in various religious traditions where a second or third generation from the original “seed mind” absconds with the “name” and “trademark” of the founder to work their own code into the original program. I think of the Church Father, Tertullian, who, made ample use of the growing popularity of Christianity to influence his community to practice the strictest rules of misogynistic legalism in dress codes with respect to women. See ON THE APAREL of WOMEN. I cite three or four chapter titles of this lengthy tome for evidence.
“Chapter V.—Some Refinements in Dress and Personal Appearance Lawful, Some Unlawful. Pigments [makeup] Come Under the Latter Head.”
Chapter VIII. The Same Rule Holds with Regard to Colours. God's Creatures Generally Not to Be Used, Except for the Purposes to Which He Has Appointed Them.
Chapter VI. Of Dyeing the Hair.
Chapter VII.Of Elaborate Dressing of the Hair in Other Ways, and Its Bearing Upon Salvation.
Anyone who has ever read the gospels themselves might come to wonder just what Jesus had said about the damning illegality and immorality of wearing of ear-rings or colored clothes. Tertullian was writing some 175 years after the founder of his faith died. The amazing thing about Elizabeth Nietzsche is that she was helping herself to her brother's talent while he was still alive (albeit too mentally incapacitated to object to what she was doing). I am not sure why I find this all ironic but I can't help but see a powerful karmic story being played out. While Frederich Nietzsche was still alive, his original inspiration was already being harnessed up to the agendas of people like Goebbels, Hitler, Frick, and Frank even as people like Tertullian and Pope Urban had harnessed the teachings of Jesus to their misogyny and crusaderism. “How do you like it?” I can imagine God saying to the drooling ex-philosopher in his forlorn wheelchair. “How do you like having someone take your Sermons on the Mount as justification for committing genocide on brilliant people?” Nietzsche had once wished that all of Germany's anti-Semites would jump on a boat and go into the jungles of Paraguay with his sister and her husband. “Deutchland, Deutchland ubber alles was the end of German philosophy,” Frederich wrote of German nationalism. Under the massaging influence of his sister's marketing talents, he became Adolf Hitler's “court philosopher”.
In the last chapter of Macintyre's book, the author details his impressions of the lost colony of Aryans that still eek out a meager existence in the jungles of Paraguay. Elizabeth liked to think of her husband as a fallen Teutonic hero taken by the Valkyries to Valhalla when he died (deeply in debt depressed, Bernhard Forster had committed suicide). In actuality, he was an Archie Bunker with a bad case of Jim Jones-itis. Elizabeth Nietzsche's “mansion” in the jungles of Paraguay is fallen into ruins and pigs use it to breed. Meanwhile the descendents of this pathetic dream interbreed with themselves to maintain a link to their founder's crazy vision of Aryan supremacy.
Like Nietzsche himself, I should not wish to be mistaken here. I find much that is reprehensible in Nietzsche's ideas as I find much that is inspiring. Nietzsche referred to Christian faith as “poison” and likened the teaching of Christian morality to children to “poisoning”. He thought the notion of serving others a “slave morality” contrary to nature. He is a prophet of arrogance and in many cases an opponent of compassion in the world. I now know that he was also cursed with an evil sister who insisted that he had appointed her as his official interpreter upon his death, thus doubling any damnation he might have earned himself. (See Chapter VII: Will to Power in particular).
“Hear me. I am such and such a person,” Nietzsche had insisted in his autobiography. “Do not mistake me for someone else.” “If my brother had ever met Hitler, his greatest wish would have been fulfilled,” wrote Elizabeth Nietzsche to counter those who insisted that she was selling her brother's soul to the Nazis. Clearly, neither Charles Dickens nor Frederich Nietzsche had the power to come back from the dead to stop the selling of their reputations. Whether this is the case for the founders of other great world views is an interesting question.
Question for Comment: Who do you think will control the way you are remembered after you leave your present job, community, or life altogether?
Nietzsche and the Nazis is a 2 hr and 45 minute presentation on the philosophical connectionws between Frederich Nietzsche and the National Socialist party. ,In the space of that time you begin to realize that ideas have consequences and few had more than the ideas (or misunderstood ideas) of Frederich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's argument begins on a foundation of Darwinian evolution and atheism in many ways. Nietzsche seems to say “if we are going to assume that we are all products of an evolutionary process and if we are going to assume that there is no God who came before us, follows our lives, and plans some future for us based on our actions, we cannot remain sane and live as we always have.
Nietzsche argues that in every society, there will be “alpha individuals” - subermen – people who have been genetically blessed with significantly more endowments of intellect, drive, personality, creativity, or perseverance. Nietzsche celebrates these people and argues that societies that are not willing to sacrifice whatever it takes and whoever it takes to allow these people to direct the community to which they belong are doomed to fail in the competition and struggle of life that is an inevitable aspect of human progress. Nietzche's morality is a stark one. It demands collectiveism, arguing that only a species' best offspring should be given a right to actualize themselves entirely. It often will demand brutality, arguing that the collective that is managed and directed by its “supermen” must be willing to put their competitors out of business for good. It is anti-democratic, arguing that average people cannot identify their own best leaders or policies.
"My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (--its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on--"
from The Will to Power, s.636, Walter Kaufmann transl.
"[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life."
from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, s.259, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Hitler has a bust of Nietzsche in his office and parrots many of Nietzsche's ideas in his autobiography, Mein Kampf.
“The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague with the culture in which its germs can spread. . . . By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature, though it must be said that this view is not necessarily embodied in the present-day decadence of our upper ten thousand. . . . Does anyone believe that the progress of this world springs from the mind of majorities and not from the brains of individuals? . . . For there is one thing which we must never forget: in this, too, the majority can never replace the man. It is not only a representative of stupidity, but of cowardice as well. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards. . . . Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be ' discovered' by an election. The progress and culture of humanity are not a product of the majority, but rest exclusively on the genius and energy of the personality. To cultivate the personality and establish it in its rights is one of the prerequisites for recovering the greatness and power of our nationality. Hence the movement is anti-parliamentarian, and even its participation in a parliamentary institution can only imply activity for its destruction, for eliminating an institution in which we must see one of the gravest symptoms of mankind's decay.”
What Hitler refers to as “the basic aristocratic principle of Nature” is an assertion that runs completely counter to that assertion which the American Declarations says is a “self evident truth” - namely, that all men are created equal. As a matter of fact, it would be difficult to find two people more on polar ends of a spectrum that Thomas Jefferson and Frederich Nietzsche.
That said, I also learned that Nietzsche was not the sort to lend his ideas to an anti-semite like Hitler. Hitler tries to make the assertion that whole ethnic groups are either superior or defective and Nietche vehemently asserts that supermen can arise in any and all ethnic groups. You might think of Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi but it may well be that it was his sister (a woman who was so anti-semitic that she and her husband went off to Paraguay to start the colony of Nueva Germania, a place to rid themselves of anything to do with Jews and to establish an Aryan “supersociety) who somewhat shamelessly converted her brother's work, after his death, to the support of the Nazi cause.
In some ways, Nietzsche is the John the Baptist to Hitler's Third Reich. In other ways, he is the Sermon on the Mount to Pope Urban's crusade.
I suppose one thing that one gets from reading Nietzsche is the conviction that one cannot wait for the masses of people to recognize your good idea and demand that you implement it. It is up to people with vision and creativity to act and let others see the wisdom later.This video presents a clear challenge to the viewer to take the time to understand philosophical arguments so that you can more effectively refute them before force is required to repress their consequences.
Question for comment: Do you think American society expends an excessive percentage of its resources keeping every one average rather than helping to actualize its best talent?Or do you think that people with natural talents already have enough advantages?
Ethics,
This would be an impossible book to condense and I haven’t the strength to quote everything in it worth quoting. Think of ethical decision making like a golf game. You carry a bag of clubs out onto the course and if you are good, you know which clubs to use in which situations. You know enough not to use a putter in a sand trap or a pitching wedge for teeing off. You also know which clubs serve you particularly well on an average day but periodically, the weather, or the circumstance, or the competition might cause you to pull out a club you might not usually use. Sometimes, you strike the ball and a second later know you made a mistake. Maybe it was the wrong club. Maybe it was the right club used too hard.
A lot of people try to simplify their
lives by carrying one club around. They wear a “WWJD” bracelet and just ask “What
would Jesus Do?” whenever they have to take some path between good and evil or
good and better. But eventually, this system will prove simplistic. Every year,
hospitals have to decide who should get a transplant. Should the person who
pays cash on the barrel head? The winner of an organ lottery? The youngest
person who can use it? The person most close to dying? The first in line? The one who has the most to
offer the world if they survive? A relative of the hospital’s CEO? If you ask
the question, you have to figure that Jesus would give everyone who needed a
new pancreas a brand new one. At some point in time, you have to rely on other
systems of ethical decision making. We lack Jesus' special powers apparently so I hope He would not be disappointed to find ourselves struggling to find solutions available to us. .
Maybe someone needs to create a “WSJD” (What SHOULD JESUS DO?) bracelet?
The following are some of the ethical systems highlighted in this textbook. I have no doubt that everyone uses them at different times but that people will use them in different combinations and at different times so that we each have an ethical “fingerprint” that is as unique to us as our DNA.
According to the theistic ethicist, right and wrong are determined by the will of God (or the gods), usually stated through some divine text (Laws of Manu, Koran, Torah, Talmud, New Testament, Book of Mormon, etc.) or through visions or dreams, or prophets, or an inner light. Thus, if God says to Abraham to kill his son, then killing his son is “right” and not killing him is wrong.
Another method is based on reason and
logic. Immanuel Kant asserts that we should only do those things we would be
perfectly happy to see become universal laws of behavior. That is, an act can
only be right for us if it could be made a universal law and made right for
everyone. Ethics in this system, is an objective rational process whereby we take our
own personal immediate interests out of the calculation.IT also focuses on thinking and doing and dismisses feeling as almost irrelevant.
John Rawls suggests that ethics is about
JUSTICE and that what is just is what we would determine to be right BEFORE we
know who we are in the story. Rawls argues that we should regard ourselves
blind to our personal “part” in the play and then determine what is right considering
that we could wind up being any character in it. Like many moral theories, it says what to do but not exactly "Why?".
John Mill advocates “utilitarianism” a system of ethical thinking that again objectifies the decision and calculates what course of action will lead to “the greatest good for the greatest number”. Using the abstract ideas of dolors and hedons, utilitatrianism simply adds up the good consequences (hedons) and subtracts the bad (dolors) and looks at the figure at the bottom of the column.
Other ethicists argue that ethics must be founded on the foundation of “inherent rights”. To figure out what is right and what is wrong, we must fist establish what rights every stakeholder in the decision has. These, once established, cannot be violated, or at least must be violated as little as possible. Those decisions that infringe on rights the most and thus most wrong.
Aristotle’s ethical system is more founded on the notion of character than it is on deeds. Aristotle advocates that the moral life is about the cultivation of virtues and character. One must BE a good person, knowing that what a good person does will be the right thing to do. This argument would seem to sidestep some of the complexities of abstract theoreticians. I am reminded of Goody Proctor in Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, who says to her husband, “I don’t know what you should do but whatever you do, tis a good man does it.”
Another ethical system has been based
somewhat on the work of Carol Gilligan who has argued for a feminization of
ethical decision making. From what I gather from the reading I have done in
this book, her argument is that an ethical decision is “ethical” when it is the
result of the full cooperation and collaboration with all “voices” concerned.
Ethics then is more a process than a result. There are right and wrong “processes”
for determining right and wrong. Whether there are right and wrong results is
an interesting question. She also stresses that connection is the natural state
of human communities and those acts which break those connections are probably “wrong”. Obviously, they make ethical decision making processes impossible.
Although not given significant time in this text, one might also add the ethics of Ayn Rand who has argued that right and wrong cannot be imposed on an individual from outside their own reasoning processes. For her, if a person reasons their way to a decision without outside interference, particularly from guilt, and if the decision furthers that person’s actualization without infringing on any one else’s actualization, then it is moral. Like Kant who argued that humans are “duty bound” to certain responsibilities, Rand argues that a human being is duty bound to actualize himself, or herself – to achieve everything they can set out to achieve for themselves and for their families if they so chose. To her, government’s job is simply to protect that right.
Needless to say, there may be some value
in all these approaches. IT certainly would not hurt to have our children
exposed to them. Are there dangers in exposing them to too many? Perhaps. What
happens when different approaches to ethical decision making conflict? No doubt
a certain dizziness will ensue. Perhaps even paralysis? What happens if the
system the parent relies on most heavily is discarded or simply given less
weight? What if the end result is a poor decision that winds up costing a child
some aspect of their potential happiness? Or their life itself? Or what if the divisions created in the family tear at the communal fabric?
As I prepare to teach this course, I find myself wondering how deep into the swamp of relativity in ethical decision making it is healthy for most people to go. Isn’t is possible that a person could determine the outcome they wanted and then use the ethical decision making process that most effectively gets them to that outcome? Could a course in ethics become a course in rationalization - in justification? It is not hard to imagine. Would a teacher who provided the tools be complicit in the outcome?
It begs the question: Would it be ethical to teach a good ethics class to people who were not somehow “certified good”? What Would Jesus Do? Would he simply say, “Take me along as your caddy and bring as many different clubs as you can”?
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?
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to view several episodes of the PBS documentary on The Secret Files of the Inquisition. I confess, PBS has a certain format that it follows for all of its documentaries now that involves certain stock approaches to the teaching of historical subjects. They hire “actors” who generally play roles as “living manikins” as the historical commentary voiceovers carry most of the teaching load. I suppose the advantage is that you don’t have to get actors who can speak in 12th century Spanish but, it gets hard to concentrate sometimes. I almost think I might prefer listening to a lecture about the subject.
But I am not here to critique form. It is the subject of the Inquisition that interests me. I often get students who like to assert that it is religion that is to blame for much of the intolerance and violence in human history, and I like to remind them that it is really what I call “epistemological arrogance” that is the culprit. It just so happens that religious systems often create such states of mind but they do not have to. And that there are non-religious systems of thought that can and have led to equally destructives states of “epistemological arrogance.” Alexander the Great for instance took a philosophical approach to knowledge that left him epistemologically certain enough to lead armies all the way to India to impose his way of thinking on people. Stalin or Mao Tse Dong could be far more epistemologically arrogant than an inquisitor like Bernard Gui.
All it takes is to have a source of truth that can be regarded as inerrant (in the case of the Inquisition, the Catholic Church hierarchy), and a predisposition to believe that there can be no other sources of any significant worth.
What is fascinating about studying the ideas of those groups that the inquisition tortured, persecuted, and tried to eradicate is that invariably one finds a number of teachings among their various doctrines that one is prone to agree with today. For example, the Cathars in Spain argued that the host (bread/wafer) could not possibly be the body of Jesus because if it was, Jesus would be bigger than the Alps, given how much communion bread had been consumed. The Catholic church argued that it miraculously turned the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ and that it was only by ingesting this incarnated bread/God that people could receive the power of the life of Christ for the living out of their daily lives in conformity to God’s will. I suspect that there are no Protestants and probably fewer and fewer Catholics today that still hold to this doctrine of transubstantiation. Most would regard it as somewhere between superstition and excessive literalism.
But it was just one of many doctrines of the Cathars (or Albegensians) that the Catholic church took exception to. Naturally, I could not agree with all that any of these so called heretical groups ascribed to but what is interesting about reading about their ideas is the discovery that many times, they are bringing up questions that I myself find myself asking. I don’t always agree with their answers to them but I admire the fact that they were thinking and making astute observations. For example, according to one Medieval text on the Cathar heresy, Albegensian theologians struggled to reconcile the God they saw in the Old Testament with the God they saw portrayed in the New Testament. They
“held that there are two Creators; viz. one of invisible things, whom they called the benevolent God, and another of visible things, whom they named the malevolent God. The New Testament they attributed to the benevolent God; but the Old Testament to the malevolent God, and rejected it altogether, except certain authorities which are inserted in the New Testament from the Old; which, out of reverence to the New Testament, they esteemed worthy of reception.”
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/heresy1.html
In short, they took a radical approach to a difficult
question that the Catholic church of their day was not answering for them. It
is also interesting to note that a number of their teachings went back into the
history of the early church as the letters of the New Testament. There was a
clear Gnostic element in their teaching about the fundamental evil of all
material things that was no doubt very similar in nature and content to
teachings that the Apostle Paul was confronting in Colossians and Peter was
confronting in his Second Epistle. What makes the heresies so interesting is
that in some cases, they seem to be drawing on some of the latent ideas that
the apostles may have held about the flesh and the body themselves in some
respects.Paul, it should be argued was NOT arguing for asceticism. He did not condemn marriage or material things. But he did places them in a subservient role, arguing that the soul was of MORE importance. ("Better to marry than to burn.")
It does seem that one has a legitimate question to ask when they wonder if God would place physical being below spiritual in a hierarchy. Can we imagine Him saying to the first human "I have made you a body but it is not as important to your happiness as your spirit and soul"? Or would He have taken a holistic approach, suggesting that there might not be clear lines between soul and body?
The inquisitor, Bernard Gui ties the Albegensian doctrines to the Manicheans, a religious sect that had deeply influenced Augustine of Hippo before his conversion to Christianity. (See here: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/gui-cathars.html )
It is actually quite fascinating (though albeit in a
retroactively appalling sort of way) to see Bernard Gui explain how he went
about ferreting out heresy in the early 14th century. Imagine if you
will someone with a single solitary dissenting idea, trying to hide that idea
from Bernard Gui’s Inquisition. Like a tax evader trying to hide from the IRS a
single solitary undeclared asset in some Swiss bank account. Gui drags the “accused”
into the full glare of the klieg lights, hooks them up by the thumbs to the lie
detector, and practices the probing arts for which he is widely known. Every "t"
must be crossed. Every "i" dotted, until the terrified sinner fesses up to
holding a belief not specifically endorsed by his Holiness the pope.It is all in the manual.
I think one of the greatest discoveries of the modern world has been the discovery that different ways of knowing things are best used in different circumstances. It is the acceptance of the idea that as good as one particular way of knowing is for getting at the truth in one area, it cannot be expected to compete with another way of knowing in some significantly different area. On some questions, you will be better served using a microscope than you will a Bible. On other questions, you may be better served consulting subtle emotions than a rational argument. Sometimes logic will serve you better than dialog and sometimes a dream will tell you more than a therapist. The key to a living a better epistemological life is having numerous “clubs” in the golf bag and knowing when to use which.
Naturally, the danger is that the more you have the more confused you can get when they seem to disagree but … the less likely you are to turn into a Bernard Gui. And the world could use a few less of him I think.
Question for Comment: What are your most dependable ways of
knowing? How do you derive these conclusions?
As and interesting aside, there is a Shiite doctrine that allows, and in some cases mandates that a person of Shiite faith hide their faith and intentionally mislead an "Inquisitor". The doctrine, known as Taqqiya, is explained thus by the Grand Ayatola as Sayyid Ali al-Husseini as-Sistani in the following way:
"Question : What are the kinds of Taqiyah (dissimulation) and when is it obligatory?
Answer : There are different types of Taqiyah:
1) Taqiyah is done for safety reasons. For example, a person fears that he might be killed or harmed, if he does not observe Taqiyah. In this case, it is obligatory to observe Taqiyah.
2) Reconciliatory Taqiyah. This type of Taqiyah is done when a person intends to reconcile with the other side or when he intends to soften their hearts. This kind of Taqiyah is permissible but not obligatory.
3) Sometimes, Taqiyah may cause a more important obligation to be lost or missed, if so it is forbidden. For example, when I know that silence would cause oppression and infidelity to spread and will make people go astray, in such a situation it is not permissible to be silent and to dissimulate.
4) Sometimes, Taqiyah may lead to the death of an innocent person. If so, it is not permissible. It is therefore haram (forbidden) to kill another person to save your own life.http://muslihoon.wordpress.com/2006/03/18/taqiyyah-or-dissimulation-or-deception/
The Cathars could have used a good Shiite theologian in the 14th century I should think.
"Bastion made many other wishes and had many other adventures before he returned to the ordinary world."
Son number two was sick today so we spent the morning watching The Never Ending Story. It is hard to believe that a 14 year old kid could have managed to not see the Neverending Story before but that was the case and today was the day. For what it is worth, he loved it, being as he himself is a kid who struggles to keep "both feet on the ground" sometimes.
Childlike Empress: Bastian, why don't you do what you dream, Bastian?
Bastian: But I can't! I have to keep my feet on the ground!
It raises a question though. Is there ANY remedy for loss of the primary bond kind (Bastian lost his mother) outside of fantasy? I mean when we lose someone who cannot be replaced, do we have any alternative to the power of imagination to create something worthy of taking its place? What are the dangers of meeting real world needs with immaginitive substitutes?
In many ways, Never Ending Story, a story about a boy who discovers that he is a character in someone els's story, reminds me of one of my favorite novels, Sophie's World by Jostein Garder. Somewhere in the later third of the book, the main character realizes that she is simply a character in a story someone else is writing and she wonders if she has any control whatsoever over the decisions that she makes in it.
It is a book that makes you realize that the way that we see ourselves and our relationship to the world around us is entirely the result of a choice we make as to how we wish to see it. Is it advantageous to us to maintain a point of view even in the face of seeming contradictions? Should we change our point of view to accomodate events as they happen or insist that all events be interpreted into conformity with the predetermined framework?
When Bastian says "I have to keep my feet on the ground" is he not simply saying, "I have to agree to see the world as the world, as it is, teaches me to"? And should any of us restrict ourselves to seeing the world as it presently teaches us to see it? Is there not some form of insanity in that?
My Vermont History class for some reason, has gotten into a big discussion about public breast feeding today (I am not sure what the link is but, nevertheless). Ultimately, it seems to me that the debate boils down to a question of loyalty to a way of seeing that we have been socialized into. Modern corporations have effectively taught us to create and then see an automatic link between the body and sex and between sex and their product. They have reinforced the linkage so much that we almost thinking it innate. We see a portion of a person's body and we are taught to connect it to sexuality and then that is immediately linked to some car, cologne, or concept that the corporation wants us to buy. I suspect that we are often taught to see links where they do not exist and NOT to see links where they do. Which is why I think art and poetry and literature and photography and music can be so important to us.
"If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless -
If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next." Neverending Story, Prologue, p. 7
I think Robert Frost may have had this dilemma in mind when he wrote the poem Birches. It too is a poem about a boy who must figure out the relationship between imagination and reality, between fantasy and functionality. In the poem, Frost starts to say something about a boy playing in birch trees and before he can finish his thought, "truth breaks in" - "But I was going to say when Truth broke in ..."
In a sense it perfectly illustrates what he means by being a swinger of birches. As a poet, he is someone who moves between two worlds - He finds himself describinbg what things are - what they really are - and then seeing them as he imagines them to be. "So was I myself a swinger of birches and so I dream of going back to be."
Question for Comment: IF you were to write the story of the rest of your life, where would it take you? How could writing such a story either help you or hinder you? Do you think your life suffers from too much time imagining? Or too little?
Every once in a while I decide to read a book that "they say" one should read to be regarded as educated. Recently, that happened to be Aristotle's book The Poetics, the classic work on the "logic" of art. Its sort of like watching one of the world's greatest left brains (Aristotle) wrestle with one of the world's greatest right brain topics (drama). Plato had argued that the city state should do away with poets and dramatists because they catered to and pandered to and nourished the illogical forces in human societies and Aristotle wants to weigh in his rather overdeveloped analytical brain to argue that to the contrary, there is a great deal of thinking to be done about drama. HE examines the factors that make a good play good.
Plato argued that the human mind was best used contemplating the REAL ... the ultimate ... the "forms" of perfection that exist in the abstract world. For this reason, playwrights were a distraction because they merely got society to thinking about the imitations of abstract ideas and indeed, imitations of imitations. In the Poetics Aristotle defends poetry as having an important role to play in a thinking civilized state. In doing so he deals with the importance of plot, character development, script, thought (or theme), visuals, and music. The poet's job is not to report what has happened but 'what is likely to happen' ... The "historian speaks of what has happened. The poet of the kind of thing that can happen." "Hence," says Aristotle, "poetry is a more philosophical and serious business than history: for poetry speaks more of universals; History of particulars."
In his discussion of plot, Aristotle speaks of the pivotal moment in a drama where ignorance shifts to awareness as a character experiences a moment of recognition, perhaps a moment in which they become acquainted with something about themselves they had not known.
In analyzing what makes a tragic story tragic, Aristotle insists that the truly tragic story shows us a good man or woman loosing a good life not because of some intrinsic evil but because of some sort of intrinsic character trait that would not usually be considered detrimental. For instance, Oedipus' courage or desire to know the truth.
Aristotle argues that the essential element of genius in poetry is the ability to see and formulate metaphors.
"By far, the most important thing is to be good at metaphor," he says, "This is the only part of the job that cannot be learned from others; On the contrary it is a token of high native gifts, for the making of metaphors depends on seeing the likeness of things."
Can't argue with him there. I guess that is why he is Aristotle and I am not. Grin.
Question for Comment: Have you ever tried to analyze why your favorite movie is your favorite move?
Skyler suggested that it would be fun to teach a college course on the ideas in Battlestar Galactica and I confess, the idea has been rattling around in my brain ever since. One could easily cover material for a Contemporary World Issues course, a Philosophy and Religion course, an Ethics course, or even a course Politics, Psychology, and Law I suppose.
Consider the possibilities. The 12 Colonies of Kobol seem to have their origins in a lost colony of ancient Greeks or Romans. They name their children and their colonies with primarily Greek names (Athena, Apollo, Gaelen, Kara Thrace (a region in Greece), Agathon, etc.). They worship a pantheon of deities as the Greeks did and yet, like the Ancient Greeks, many doubt their existence as well. They have rituals. They have temples. They have scriptures. They have priests and priestesses. They have codes of morality. They have a eschatology (theology of end-times). They have sects (One of the colonies ascribes to a religion that opposes the use of modern medicine). Orson Scott Card, in his Alvin Maker series imagines a world where Native American religion was essentially an accurate description of how the world works and plays out the possibility of an American history in which THAT world view prevailed. In a way, Battlestar Gallactica, at least so far, is doing something similar with the ancient Greeks. What would it look like if the future was not a continuation of who WE are now but was a continuation of who we were at one point in time? It is an interesting way to consider the study of an ancient culture. What would it look like if no one had interrupted its technological evolution? Stargate does this somewhat with Egyptian culture.
Battlestar Galactica might also make an interesting way to study the various “isms” of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. One could feasibly do an interesting study of Marxism, examining how the Cylons were created to work for the humans, how they rebelled, how the Cylons themselves set up a class system that mirrored the one they rebelled against with different models of Cylons being allowed different measures of political power, social status, and occupational latitude. A whole episode of BSG is devoted to the economic stratification of human society and how Capricans are priviledged while Sagitarians are exploited.
One could easily cover the various tenets of existentialism (Sartre, Camus, Focault, and even Simone De Beauvoir) and their central question of identity. Can a Cylon chose to be a human? Is morality a matter of simply being consistent with the choices one makes about how they will live? Were we “born for a purpose? A destiny? Or is it up to us to make our own story. One could examine the idea of imperialism, looking at the way that the occupied human community on New Caprica reacts to being colonized in ways similar to the way Frantz Fanon predicts they would (and should) in his book The Wretched of the Earth. It would be interesting to look at how imperialism has been justified and opposed throughout human history.
Another interesting “ism” that might be worth addressing through the lens of Battlestar Galactica would be feminism. The culture of Battlestar Galactica does not seem to roil with conflict over gender. Perhaps because the culture seems to be gender blind on the surface, the argument is being made that IF we would just not make an issue of gender, gender would not be an issue. The President of the colonies is a woman (Laura Roslin). The best fighter pilot in the fleet is a woman (Kara Thrace). The admiral of the fleet (for a while) is a woman (Admiral Cain). The first Cylon to open the way to new ways of thinking about humans is a woman (Athena). The high priest of Laura Roslin’s religion is a woman (A Black woman at that). Clearly, being a woman does not preclude one from receiving the rewards of meritorious service. But there are still interesting issues of feminist theory to be discussed here. Kara Thrace may be a feminist role model of sorts but there is a sense that she expresses it by being “better than the boys at what boys do.” Is this feminism? We have Laura Roslin as president and we can see that she tends to make decisions by means of an intuitive process that she cannot always explain logically to her male subordinates. All she can say is “you are going to have to trust me on this, Bill.” Is this what feminist leadership should look like? The principle Cylon character in the program (Number Six) also raises questions about the nature of feminism. “Six” exerts a great deal of manipulative influence over Gaius Balthar and she is not afraid to use all of her “feminine wiles” on him in doing so. Every episode it seems, she wears a different red dress and combines it in deadly combination with a breathy voice and body language. One is forced to ask, if a woman can use these “tools” of influence effectively, should she be denied the right to do so by feminists of the Kara Thrace variety. Is there a rule that says woman should not be allowed to actualize themselves by means of tactics that are …. Well … for lack of a better term, feminine? Certain episodes also deal with difficult issues of rape, abortion, pregnancy, homosexuality, child-care, and even sexual harassment.
And then there is the matter of religion. One could find numerous avenues for conversation here. At Gaius Balthar’s trial, the intent to link Gaius to Jesus could not be more obvious. He even looks like the famous portraits of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemene, bathed in light. Captain Adama overtly rejects the notion that for him, it could be acceptable to place all the blame and shame for human sin on one man and “send him out the air lock”. In a way, this is a direct rejection of the Christian notion of substitutionary atonement or the Jewish right of the “scape goat” or “Passover lamb”. But Gaius is a malleable religious figure in the hands of the directors. As he starts his cult of monotheism and challenges the orthodoxy of polytheism, he might also be regarded as a straw man stunt double for Muhammad. Like Muhammad, he has visions. Like Muhammad, he was banished from the community and came back. Like Muhammad, his “partner” is the first to believe his message and indeed, to insist that he go out and testify. Like Muhammad, he is not opposed to the idea of “multiple wives”. Or, if you want, you could easily compare him to Joseph Smith as he starts the church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints. Much of the terminology of Battlestar Galactica is borrowed from the Mormon Church and scripture (Kobol/Kolob, the Quarum of Twelve, the notion that humans can be gods someday, etc.)
Along these same lines there is the whole question of life after death that is raised by Cylon “resurrection”. Cylons who die, are simply downloaded (reincarnated) into duplicate bodies where they take the lessons of previous lives into new lives (allowing Kara Thrace to murder her Cylon “husband” Leoben at least five times). This is just a beginning of the possibilities. Discussions about the political use and manipulation of religion, the separation of church and state, the practice of forceful and non-forceful conversion, miracles, the power of prayer, the psychology of cults, the relationship between religion and morality, the issue of fate, free will, and prophecy, and many other issues of religious concern are there for the picking.
I would be remiss not to mention the possibilities for discussion in the field of psychology that present themselves. Clearly, Gaius Balthar in particular would be a field day of possibilities. Is he schizophrenic? How does his intelligence impact his social and emotional IQ? Does he have a learning disability? Is is sociopath? How does he use and employ psychological defense mechanisms in dealing with his guilt? One can imagine how one would try to approach Balthar in therapy. One of the most fascinating themes relating to human psychology that the series deals with is the process by which a person (or a Cylon) comes to understand their “shadow self”. Five humans are, unbeknownst to them at the beginning, actually sleeper Cylons. What does it feel like to begin to gain consciousness about their true identity? How do they each go about integrating their new self concept into their old personality structure? How do they resist the truth and how do they pay when they do? How does their “enlightenment” play out in the relationships they formed before they were conscious of who they were. Is the process they go through similar to the way that many gay people may discover that they are not who they thought they were? I think parallels are hard to miss.
In a similar vein, how about the possibilities for an examination of group psychology, mass psychology, and family system psychology. There is the complex relationship between Admiral Adama and his son to consider (Lee most certainly goes through an individuation process during the later episodes). There is the relationship between Kara Thrace and her mother that always resides in the background of her “acting out”. There is the domestic violence of Chief Tyrel and Caley or Saul Tigh and his wife, Helen or Tigh’s achoholism, or Kat’s drug addiction, or Gina (Six’s) Post-Traumatic stress after the abuse on the Pegasus. Many of the characters have to deal with grief for their various traumas, both personal and shared. Its hard to know where to stop.
It might also be interesting to talk about textual criticism and oral tradition. One can learn a lot about how stories are modified and adapted over time by comparing the original Battlestar Galactica series and the latest version. The ways in which the story is crafted says a great deal about the nature of political debates at the time of creation. The original Battlestar Galactica was a warning against putting too much faith in diplomacy and arms agreements. In that version, the Cylon's attack precicely when the humans have let their guard down. The war STARTS because the humans are being naive in spite of Admiral Adama's warnings that only strength will bring peace (in other words, the original Battlestar Galactica was pro-Reagan). In contrast, the new BSG is pretty obviously anti-Bush. In th enew version, the war starts because Adama was in a pre-emptive mode and stepped over the line hoping to pre-empt an attack. It would be interesting to look at the history of stories and to look at how old stories are redacted to new purposes.
Lastly, I will just highlight some of the obvious connections that could be made in a study of Contemporary World Issues. Clearly, there are connection intentionally being made by the producers and clearly, they intend for their show to raise questions about the modern world. One could discuss the Patriot Act, terrorism, the Iraq War, election fraud, the death penalty, abortion, stem cell research (Who is a human?), resource depletion, population control, democracy, racism, poverty, torture, environmentalism, global warming, or any number of other issues we read about in the papers.
I think it would be easy to construct a curriculum for a
course like this. But who would take it?
Question for Comment: If you were going to take a course that used a popular TV show as its main theme, what television show would you select for that course? Why?
"All Along The Watchtower, it probably came to me during a thunder and lightning storm. I'm sure it did--Bob Dylan
The
boys and I have been watching the Battlestar Galactica television series the
last few weeks and today we got to the end of season three. I will not throw out
any spoilers here but in general, four of the last five unknown Cylons are revealed
in this episode and as season four gets underway, the mystery of who that last
mystery Cylon is heats up. The PR on season four has a picture of the principle
characters lined up at a table in such a way as to recreate the scene of the
last supper as painted by Leonardo DaVinci. It captures the moment when Jesus says
to his disciples “One of you will betray me” and they all react in different
ways, some accusatory, others with expressions of self doubt. As if to say, “Is
it me? Am I the Cylon?”
In the television series, many people begin to suspect themselves and it is as they begin to suspect that THEY might be the hated Cylon, that they begin to wonder if Cylons should be judged after all. If they are so like me that I think I might be one, can they be all that evil and unredeemable?
People do interesting things with Da Vinci’s last supper to get all sorts of secret meanings out of the painting and many a computer graphics geek is doing the same with the Battle Star Galactica last supper scene, trying to identify "Judas".
The series deals with numerous contemporary issues in its various episodes and the allusions to religious, and specifically Christian themes is palpable. Gaius Balthar looks like Jesus in front of Pilate as he is being tried. Lee Adama insists that people are placing all their guilt and shame on him, seeking to exercise their own consciences by crucifying Bathar (well, flushing him out an airlock). Balthar often strikes poses that would give on the clear impression that he is a messianic figure. (Early in the series, he is seen on his porch in a vision with his arms outstretched like a crucifix contemplating whether he might be God. Later in season four, he is thought to be a doer of miracles.
Ironically, the first Battlestar Galactica was created by a Mormon who did not mind including many terms and concepts from the theology of Joseph Smith and the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints in his storyline. The “quorum of twelve” comes right out of Mormon governmental policy. The sealing of marriages, the notion that humans can become gods someday, and the whole notion of a "wagon train" of ships looking for a home where they will not be persecuted is straight out of the Mormon storybook. As the twelve colonies of Kobol (a loose respelling of the Mormon term "Kolob") try to settle down in "New Caprica" but are "evicted" one can see the story of the Mormons at Navoo, Illinois.
But BSG is not just about religion. Its loaded with philosophy too. The ideas of Satre and Focault and other existentialists who insisted that human beings do not come “pre-loaded” with identity but MAKE their identity is central to the question that characters in BSG confront. “Existence precedes essence” the existentialists said. That is, we do not have an essence when we are born that we must find and express. Rather, we are the result of choices we make about who we wish to be.
When characters in the series begin to suspect that they are Cylons (machines designed to look like humans and for a time think they are humans) it causes them tremendous psychic discomfort. The more they had devalued Cylons before the discovery (calling them “toasters", killing them, torturing them, waging war against them, etc.) the more discomfort they feel at finding out that they ARE what they had despised. When the character Sharon Valeri is confronted with her “Cylon self” she denies it, represses it, refuses to admit it, and moments later, her programming takes over and she shoots her own commander. When others later are confronted with their fundamental nature, they admit it … but then decide to continue acting and being who they have been. They do not chose to repress, but rather to admit and chose differently. And for that reason, their programming fails to express itself.
Can we simply chose to be anything we want? Whether that is what we have thought we were? Or what we would like to be? Are we blank slates to write on as we will? Do we belong to the communities we are born into or may we chose communities that we believe come closer to the values we hold dear? Is the community created by a group of selves? Or is the self created by the community that raises it? These and many other issues lie embedded in the story lines of BSG.
In the last scenes of the the Season three finale, all the Cylons in the process of being revealed to themselves begin to hear the same song. Its Bob Dylan’s Along the Watchtower.
All Along The Watchtower
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.""No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.Copyright ©1968; renewed 1996 Dwarf Music
It is a song about two dissenters (a joker and a thief – the entertainer and the criminal – both of whom have a long history of challenging society’s entrenched values) approach a guarded wall. On the wall are “princes” powerful wealthy people who watch and guard their subjects, women and the bare footed poor below. The joker and the thief approach, as if on the cusp of a hurricane to bring their system of values down. The jester complains that his work is not valued as it out to be but is only “sold” for profit by the business interests that “own him. The thief reminds him that this state of things is only temporary. Change - its a commin - blowin in the wind you might say.
I could not help but draw links to Beethoven’s Eroica for that too speaks of an approaching hero on horseback, riding howling storm winds to challenge an exploitive and oppressive system. It is interesting how much in common Dylan and Beethoven and the creators of a Science fiction television series may have in common.
Since it is the night before Easter I figured I would give Frederich Nietzsche a chance to tell me what he thinks about life and death tonight. The movie of the night was When Nietzsche Wept. I can't say that it will come to you highly recommended but there was at least one interesting scene where Nietzsche convinces his Dr. that one should never live a life that they would not live over and over forever - That no one should live their lives from a sense of duty if to do so would mean condemning themselves to a life they would not chose to live. Its an excellent philosophy for abandoning someone and I am sure I probably have been the victim of it more than once. Maybe we all have.
Rather than talk about the movie though, I thought perhaps I would offer some short reflections on some favorite Nietzsche quotes:
“For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.” Frederich Nietszche
Is this misogyny or observation? Do all men sense this is the truth? In the movie, the Dr. I believe is convinced of it. He longs to be told that he will be the only man in a woman's life (his obsession says it to more than one man in the movie). But his own wife resents him for not spending more time with the children and later loves him only after he does. I do think this "spousification" of the child is something women should think about even as men should worry about the "spousification of their work" perhaps.
“Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.” Frederich Nietszche
I wonder if this is the result of his attitude towards women ... or if his attitude towards women was the result of experiences like the ones that led to this observation?
“Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.” Frederich Nietszche
I need to remember this one this week. Because it is true. Be a speaker of truth for people. Someone in that crowd will appreciate it. Emerson understood this. Pretend that if you don;t speak the truth to power no one will because it is probably the case.
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” Frederich Nietszche
Is insanity a matter of not knowing something one should know or a matter of knowing something before others do? This quote reminds me of that song about Vincent Van Gogh ... even though I can never figure out what the lyrics mean. It also connects nicely to W.H. Auden's poem, The Unknown Citizen.
“He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.” Frederich Nietszche
This is a problem for thinking people for usually they can't survive without others in a system who deal with the more mundane but necessary aspects of existence. A smart person without connection to a community is likely to be, well, like Nietzsche, a brilliant conductor on a deserted Island. Of what use are his skills?
“I did that," says my memory. "I could not have done that," says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually — the memory yields.” Frederich Nietszche
I like this one. I see it in other people all the time. Grin.
“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” Frederich Nietzsche
"History teachers rule and dictator's drool" I always say. I hope, in the way that I teach history, this is not the case. I hope that students leave my history classes with their opinions about history based on their exposure to sources and not based on my favorite way of seeing things. I am not to be thought of as the teacher but as a fellow student who often happens to be right. grin.
“Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.” Frederich Nietszche
In short, in a world where "God is dead" because we killed him (as Nietzsche would argue), nothing we do is wrong - Nothing worthy of guilt? Try to tell a conscience that. I read Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment a few weeks ago and his whole point is that this escape from moral accountability is a novel concept and liberating perhaps - but delusional. If we think we will not care what we do to people, we deceive ourselves.
“Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.” Frederich Nietzsche
Ahhh ... the ubermensch. This is not a man like other men but better. It is a man unlike other men. He is better because he declares what bad, good, and better is. A man who declares a new doctrine ... a new set of rules. a man not limited by the ideas of men who came before. It is a modern way of saying to a man "And you shall be as gods" - you shall declare your own set of rules and rule men because the rules of the game you play with them are your rules. I don't know ... the set of rules the original ubermensche set out seem like they don't need a whole lot of revision. I am not sure I could do better.
“A pair of powerful spectacles has
sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.” Frederich Nietzsche
Is in-loveness a disease worth curing? It seems only to make us sick when we are cured of it?
Question for Comment: If you had to live your life the way you have over and over forever, would you be cool with that? does the thought frighten you?
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