Ooo. Highfalutin' title. I like it. Thinking lately about the two opposed kings which encamp them still, in man as well as herbs, grace and rude will. Here, Shakespeare is talking about that duality which exists in nature, brought about by, well, what? The erotic? The daimonic? The force that through the green fuse drives the flower? It's that force that drives human passion. When we integrate it into ourselves, into our society, it becomes a constructive force, love, creativity, etc. When we fail to integrate it, it becomes a destructive force, violence, self-mutilation, suicide. Both are connected with passion. It strikes me, just as it has other, smarter people, whose ideas I am ripping off, that when we are presented with the destructive manifestation of this energy, we in our Western, Judeo-Christian-cum-Hellenistic dualism, call it sin and castigate those, identifying them as evil, etc. "How could someone do that?" "Why do they hate us?" "Axis of evil," etc. It's this dualism that is the problem. We project our own inner demons onto whoever the baddie du jour is. Nazis, Commies, Al Qaeda, Iraqis, whoever. These would be the enemies of the conservative. Or, if you like, liberals project their inner demons onto fundamentalists, conservatives, Bible-thumpers. In both cases, labels are dehumanizing. You and I do it. Whoever you say "God, I hate those type of people," about. This constitutes a kind of spiritual violence, a psychological violence. Yes, this even applies to the socially awkward gaming nerds who occupied by room, until recently, at every break and lunch.
It is also this force that drives us toward learning, a thirst for knowledge, understanding. Isn't this, at its heart, a desire for communion of some kind? Of connection? To truth? To something beyond ourselves? Although, I suppose it can also be done for purposes of status, to measure up to some standard, internal or external, real or imagined. Rollo May brings up Oedipus in connection with this. He solved the riddle of the Sphinx (he had knowledge of man), he ruled the city in relative happiness and harmony, until the outbreak, (he had power). But he lacks self-knowledge. He does not know who he is. One reading of the story is that his relentless pursuit of the truth, even though it causes his downfall, is heroic. He strives toward self-knowledge, even though it has a high cost. The cost of knowledge today? The cost of tapping into that creative energy? It is true that the learned of each era have to wrestle with the demons of their era more profoundly than the simple. Is this a worthwhile struggle? Increased knowledge brings an increased sense of responsibility, but not always increased power to affect change (debatable). Increased knowledge brings increased fear and anxiety. Still chewing on how this connects to the driving force of Eros. I had this experience last night, tired from the day, changing channels, nothing but American trash on the television, none of it engaging interest, passion. None of it would make me anything but dumber for having watched it. Soooo, I pop in a DVD about the Romantic poets, something educational after a mind-numbing day, something stimulating. Then Karla comes home, who, I know would be bored to tears by it, so I turn it off. In her defence, the footage they've chosen to roll when some of the poetry is read is absolutely ludicrous. Romantic poetry doesn't translate well to the screen apparently. So there I am, leafing through Kubla Kahn , trying to remember old scribbled notes from college, and then I flip channels again, Karla comes home, and it's either House MD, which used to seem like a good show, but the formula is wearing thin, or America Has Talent, which is what Karla prefers, featuring the talents of David Hasselhof as cheesy at it gets, and Jerry Springer as the color commentary. How many more signals can there be for "dumbed down, consumable trash." I'm tempted to go off on a rant about how trashy insta-entertainment is incompatible with a life of the mind, yadda yadda, but then maybe it was my state of mind at the time. I was in high culture mode, and could brook no indignities, and she had just come from a youth meeting of some kind or other and wanted something brainless. Although I don't anticipate ever being in the mood for Hasselhof and Springer and the spectacle of the caricatures of actual people that perform on the show, and I do see this being something of a recurring problem, maybe I shouldn't make thaaat big a deal about it. over and out good buddy.
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