MSU English 213

Final Paper

These coincidences are insane!

If the saying “all that is past possesses our present” is true, it should be able to survive a good testing. Though it sounds good and I initially want to agree with it, I am a critic at heart. Throughout the semester we have read about what awful things can happen if you test the gods and I’m not about to make an example out of myself. I decided to wait until a clear chain of events would provide me with evidence that all my past possesses my future. I tested it and it’s true. Once I decided on this course of action it took me less than an hour to prove myself right.

Serendipity provided for me in the form of the wrong library book. I am beginning to suspect there is actually no such thing as “the wrong library book”. For the better part of a week my car was in the shop being picked over by mechanics with a fetish for perfection and was left to walk about Bozeman. I’m still unwilling to bike around the town of Bozeman due to my experience of being knocked off my bike by a truck several summers ago. So I chose to leave my modern technologically convenient mode of transportation for the use my own feet and of course the occasional cab ride or lift from a friend. I’ve noticed that walking everywhere fills my head with an uncommon amount of thinking in which I recognize the wild coincidences plaguing my existence. If my car had never hemorrhaged oil and required emergency maintenance then my Madeline mission with Elizabeth for her memory symposium would never have taken us by the library. If I had not been hit by that crazy woman in a rental I would have had my bike for transportation instead of rides from friends. If I had not been walking around for a week I might not have been aware of the marvelous coincidences which lead me to my experience proving the class theory true. Elizabeth didn’t have her library card and asked me to check out a book for her. It turned out to be the wrong book for her but it was certainly the right book for me.

Walkabout, by James Vance Marshall, connects perfectly with our classical lit themes in both form and purpose. A brother and a sister, white and from the south, are lost in the Australian outback, an area twice the size of Texas with 35,000 people and only two roads. A native on his own walkabout, performed as a means of passing into manhood, comes across them. While the older sister comes to terms with her own prejudices, the younger brother embraces his new reality. Death and change are clearly the themes of this journey. Both dieing and killing are examined from a moral perspective. In addition, the book is filled with classical references like Spartan rigor on page 56. Examples of Ambrosia and Metamorphosis are found on pages 25 and 76 respectively.

What struck me most about the connections between Walkabout and our class material is the description of the two siblings with their guide, where the kids differ but the book parallels with our material. The kids are described as being as many as 100,000 years apart from their guide based on an evolutionary position. This division between American and Aboriginal youth is as great as the difference between the Greek gods and the Greeks who worshiped them. The Greeks expressed their free will unless a god would take interest in them then they would no longer control their own destiny. The guide takes it on himself to keep the two lost Americans alive and to deliver them to safety. When the guide dies, the brother and sister bury him. The narrative describes the guide’s wishes for a proper burial which involves a platform and an above ground resting place. Despite the language barrier and the truly massive cultural barrier, both the American children and their guide have clear expectations on respecting the dead. This makes me see Creon’s burial refusal as all the more offensive.

I’m filled with questions which tell me more than their answers possibly could. What are the chances that the first thing after concluding my own walkabout would be for me to get my hands on a book with the very same title? How many things had to happen perfectly for this situation to occur as it did? Why would it take less than an hour from my project concept at your wifes meeting to an almost devine realization of my goal? Honestly, these coincidences are getting out of hand. They can’t be natural.

Our past possesses our present as both the answer to the question and the questions themselves. Our pasts are perfect for our reality and could have happened in no other way to bring us to the moment we are in. Every story, every record, and every bit of language is a puzzle piece to the world we live in today. They may fragment ever smaller and smaller through the ravages of time but their picture remains whole as long as we see how the pieces fit. This Greek mythology and literature is not a bunch of loquatious hokey-pokey but rather our herritage. Every character in every story we have examined has in their actions and language what we experience today and that will not change until humans are no longer human. Though most books would have accommodated my plan, this book was a perticularly profound fit. I’ll have to thank Elizabeth for correctly finding the wrong book because, honestly, what are the chances?

Genius of Pythagoras - by Cromwell Productions

Pythagoras may be know by everyone all over the world for a geometric law but he could be known for so much more. He was the son of a wealthy man and spent his childhood learning everything possible about everything he could. He was described as having a thirst for learning never satisfied. Unlike most of the thinkers he met, Pythagoras tried to tie together the truest elements of religion, science, mathematics etc to create an ultimate philosophy, Pythagoreanism. Pythagoreanism is a description of how Pythagoras thought and learned; it is a description about a way of learning.

Pythagoras traveled to Egypt to learn more. He was captured along with most other great thinkers then in Egypt and taken prisoner to Babylon. His knowledge soon led him to educate the children of the Babylonian Elite. When Pythagoras returned to his home of Samos, he tried to set up a community with the principles of truth and simple living without the ravages of war. He succeeded in creating a community in Croton, a small town in Italy. His community lead a peaceful lifestyle emphasizing science, philosophy and art and encouraging a strict vegetarian(vegan). Everything in his commune was shared. Sadly, Pythagoras' community was destroyed when their neighbors sought more farmland.

Plato used the works of Pythagoras based on the success of his commune and used them to study. Plato said "Pythagoras was as essential to philosophy as Prometheus was to mankind when he gave them the gift of fire." None of his works survive in their original form. We have only the interpretations of others, such as Plato, describing their importance. Pythagoras' work played a huge role in Plato's Republic. However, Aristophanes made fun of Pythagoras' communal ideals in the play The Assembly of Women so not everyone thought well of Pythagoras' ideas.

The most astonishing thing in this documentary, in my mind, is the relationship Pythagoras learned existed between the length of a string on a lyre and the sound each string would produce. Consequently, music could then be broken down into mathematics and led to the saying that "things are numbers". That reminds me of The Matrix how the entire world is made out of numbers which Neo can see.

Metamorphoses

The 5 lines I picked come, obviously, from Pythagoras in Chapter 15.

Although the gods were in the distant skies,
Pythagoras drew near them with his mind;
what nature had denied to human sight,
he saw with intellect, his mental eye.
..
"O mortals, don't contaminate your bodies"

Persephone's pomegranate seed doesn't clearly articulate the issues about food for a mortal from a mortals perspective. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid argues Pythagoras' view of not eating meat as a thing humans don't see. Amidst all of the struggles humans undergo, the ethics of veganism are expectations too great for humans. How can one be concerned with the soothing and relaxing nature of a bath if they are in a river and expected constantly to tread water least they drown? Well Pythagoras saw through the distractions of a human life to a system of eating much like the gods in which the suffering of others was not required. That Buddha did this almost 2,000 years before and Pythagoras probably studied a little bit about the religion shows that things which are important enough will come around again. I particularly liked the argument for humans not to "devour your own laborers". If you eat an ox, it can no longer plow your fields as a friend.

"Those who need to feed on bloody food are savage beasts: Fierce lions, wolves, and bears, Armenian tigers." The disassociation which, with the dawn of agriculturalism, has distanced humans from all other animals through some asinine sense of superiority, dominion through destiny, is reversed in this argument. Ovid says Pythagoras' views humans who eat as not only equal to animals but equal to the carnivores, traditionally the dirtiest and most offensive of animals. Carnivores eat flesh so I think the connection is justifiable. I've lived with someone who I could only describe as a Hyena. Without overtly saying so, the connection between the blood of humans and non-humans is so strong towards the end of the Pythagoras passage that it creates a sense of cannibalism as the result of eating the flesh of other beings, an incredible taboo throughout most of the world. The passage ends "those souls are kin to your own souls; don't feed your blood upon another's blood." This sense of kinship is alluded to throughout the section and only in the last sentence is it mentioned aloud and therefor it is the last thought remaining to the audience. A very tactful use of persuasion. Good job Ovid!


Reading List with Amazon links

• Diet For A New America, by John Robbins. You've heard of Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream. Well now you've heard of John Robbins. This book should be read by anyone who eats food in America or is American. 1/3 devoted to the food animal industry, 1/3 to the nutritional impacts of animal food, 1/3 to the environmental impacts our diets. Environmentalists eating meat need to read this book. Anyone concerned with long term health needs to read this book. I xeroxed some pages from this book for my grandfather who promptly threw them out. Later, at his survivors meeting, they gave him a handout consisting of most of the same pages. Some of us can't see through our own bias for the information we need but this is without question one of the greatest sources of health information(the bibliography is phenomenal) that belongs
• Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer. Definitive modern work on the philosophy of animals, their rights, our eating them, hypocrisies in diet and a diet of hypocrisy. Peter Singer is one of the top Philosophers of our time. If you would prefer short essays on a variety of topics, read his book Ethical Life. Ethical Life is my favorite book of essays.
  
• Vegan, the new ethics of eating, by Erik Markus. A wonderful look for a non-vegan into the world of being vegan. Answers for some more obvious questions which most people might be afraid of asking a vegan. Cogent and honest. Available for free download through the authors website.
• Obligate Carnivore, by Jed Gillen. This book examines what it means to be vegan with respect to cats and dogs. Am I still a vegan if I feed my cat non-vegan cat food? Is a dog that eats vegan any healthier than a dog who doesn't? Am I responsible as a vegan for the diet of my pet or, as a pet, is my pet exempt from my vegan lifestyle? Stimulating information for a good debate. Read this book. It's short too.
• Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser. This book examines the science and economics of food in America which is now so far removed from nature you will frighten YOURSELF into going organic and preparing your own food at home. Luckily, organic produce and other organic foods are easily purchased at local grocery stores and cooking is easy. If you ever have any cooking questions about anything, please ask me. Now a major motion picture you can rent. The movie misses several major areas of the book but does an incredible job covering the rest of the material. The movie is literally pregnant with major stars in every scene and the material from the book they cover is performed with such incredible skill you will be as amazed by the story as you are by the issues it covers.
  

Lysistrata and the Bacchae

I see these plays as having two parallel themes which are interwoven between each other, providing a stimulating view of the two works. Love and Madness can each define the other, love is a kind of madness and madness an emotion just as removed from reality as love. While in Lysistrata love is used as a weapon against the madness of war, in the Bacchae, Madness is the weapon and love is the target. Comedy and tragedy often use love as a teaching tool, comedy using love as a reward and result for doing the right thing, a reaffirmation of the current social strictures, while tragedy uses love by removing it as a means to show how great a void it leaves behind and what great sufferings can occur through connections with love. My understanding of these plays beyond the surface level of entertainment and enjoyment is through a detailed analysis of my cat, evil kitty.


Evil, Evil Kitty, Evil Cat.
While I write this, she is sitting on my lap. She is both muse and teacher. She is not "my cat" but rather I am "her person". I feed her and clean up after her. I pet her and keep her warm when she is cold. I play with her and entertain her. She owns me.

While I am obliged to care for her out of my love for her, she does not reciprocate my love in the same way. While I love touching her, she hates it. She likes bitting me and I barely tolerate that. She has taught me love very often involves blood and pain. She has also taught me scarring is always both physical and mental. Lastly, she shows me a capacity for infinite forgiveness is required to balance out the predatory instincts of someone who kills for fun.

My obligation to Evil forces me to examine love and madness in Bacchae and Lysistrata as measured against her. The madness in Bacchae of Pentheus' sporagmos at the hands of his own mother only compares to Evil Cat killing a pregnant mouse and arranging the five baby fetal mice along with the gallbladder into a perfect equilateral triangle five inches on each side. I will not post a picture of something that graphic. Several of my friends witnessed. They didn't learn anything from it; they reacted with incredible revulsion. I questioned why my cat would be so ok with killing a pregnant mouse. Perhaps she didn't know it was pregnant and thought it looked particularly chewy and delicious. I've seen her around kittens and she teaches them every possible way to misbehave. I've seen her teach kittens how to open every type of door and cabinet, remove a drain from a sink, tear toilet paper off the roll and tear the cardboard roll down too, chew laces and hide shoes, destroy anything made out of paper, and generally cause mayhem. Evil Kitty understands the importance of the next generation. Perhaps she was surprised to find baby unborn mice, with tiny formed feet and head and eyes, and arranging them into a triangle was some form of burial of which I am not aware. The only way this type of sporagmos can be performed without madness befalling the executor is to live without fault. There can be no fear of retribution. When you don't ask questions about what you do, when you live in certainty, only then can actions such as fetal geometry or the sparagmos of your own son. Dionysus takes away our ability to ask questions, or in this case not to ask questions, and prevents us from recognizing our level of comfort with what we are doing. While this may not matter for casual events, something like sparagmos requires a level of lucidity which Dionysus purposefully takes away. Now I don't know if that means my cat would feel guilty for catching a mouse if she were drunk, but I don't think she'd be capable of it. I don't want to find out either.

Love in Lysistrata is a weapon. Do what Lysistrata says or the men don't get any fun. Well, I've turned the tables on Evil. She knows she has to be nice to me or I won't want to feed her. She purrs cuddled in my lap, she rubs her head against my ankle, she licks my hands and face while I'm laying down, and she lets me rub her and touch her for a few seconds before viciously attacking my arm. This behavior is amazing to everyone who knew this cat back in new york. Most of them didn't believe she could be rehabilitated from mostly feral to the trusting playful kitty she is now. When I introduce new people to her, she takes to them almost instantly because she sees that I am not threatened by them. While giving love is important, accepting love is even more important and difficult. Accepting love can often mean the changing of ones ways. Modifying preexisting patterns to accommodate some new requirement is one hallmark of real love. While changing occurs, it must be a change which unifies and brings together people who would other wise remain different. Lysistrata does more than end the warring of the Greek city states, she unites the women and appears as one of the first feminists in plays. Her character may be performed a bit over the top but it is genuine. Love must be genuine the changes made in its name to remain. I know Evil Cat loves me and I know she knows I love her. I feed her not out of obligation but out of love and I see her recognize that every day.

While Plato's Symposium can be discussed in many ways, I will in place of mere notes express my own arguments and positions. But first, some notes.

• Socratic Irony, a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant
• Kachina Dolls. While mentioned as an example of a window within a window, I think our professor may have been confused. Kachina dolls are representative of ancestral spirits which act as a conduit between humans and gods. It is important to note they do not represent actual gods and, if they did, we as a non-native group would not be allowed to know this. While the Hopi are very open with Kachinas, the Zuni are not. Pictures of Zuni Kachina dolls are considered sacrilegious and teachings to non-natives are generally prohibited.
  
  a picture of Kachina dolls
  
  
  i believe our professor intended to use Russian Nesting Dolls as an example of the Frame Within a Frame
  
• A man and woman made philosophy. Who were they? Phil and Sophie
• Rhetoric is almost an anagram of Erotic. For internet fun, use an Anagram Generator. I find it particularly interesting that with this generator, the first anagram for 'Michael Sexson' happened to be 'Lexicons Shame'. Read wiki for a definition of lexicon.
• Probably a test question: Why did Aristophanes present at the symposium later than expected? A: Because he had the hiccups
  
• The Lover is the Erastes and the Beloved is the Eromenos
• Reasons for homosexuality 1) love must be on the same level and women were considered inferior 2) politicians wouldn't be burdened with wives/family
• Probably a test question: On a physical level, Socrates is the Erasstes and Alcibiades is the Eromenos but on an emotional level this is reversed.
• Love, the pursuit of wisdom.
  
• Angelina Jolie was mentioned as a paragon of beauty. Last December she received Maxim Magazines "Most Awesome" award.
  
• Do something that makes someones life more interesting. Damnit! This is going to take some work!