Space & time in dreams
I had an interesting dream this morning that might be related to a new Crash Course series I'm watching on Myth. Or at least my writing about the dream is related to that.
They started, exactly where I would have started, with Creation Stories. They're not finished with the topic -- they've only covered some stories from the Fertile Crescent and the Americas, nothing so far from South Asia or the Far East. These stories tend to start with chaos or water or, in one case mud, and then a god shows up to convert the chaos into Earth. The Greek versions are a bit more metaphysical but in general these myths exist not so much to explain "existence" as the place where they lived. And this includes the Genesis story. Since this sense of "creation" is rather more limited than what I'm interested in, I guess we have to go easy on them for not explaining where the gods came from, or the seas or mud or chaos.
I was impressed that they ended the episode with The Big Bang story. In many ways this secular creation myth is very similar, and not any more satisfying from a metaphysical perspective, than the other stories. How that plasma suddenly came to be is as much of a mystery as what the Jewish god was doing before "Creation."
Anyway, my dream. I was listening to the radio news until the radio shut off less than 10 minutes after the hour (I have a new morning routine I'm still testing, with my radio coming on just in time for the better national news episode, and then shutting off, a bit after an hour, when I should get out of bed. Or that's the plan.) Less than ten minutes after that I woke up needing to pee -- my true morning alarm. So I know that the dream I had took less than 10 minutes in awake time.
I was walking down the street shopping or window shopping, can't actually remember the details, but then ended up going into a cafe for a meal and sitting at a counter. I was sitting at the corner with a prissy little man to my right facing perpendicular to me. As I was finishing up my meal -- again I don't recall much of the meal itself -- a large man carrying a burger on a plate and a glass of beer sat to my left. As he was sitting down, a waiter came up behind him with another glass of beer and I thought that doesn't look promising, and was glad that I was about to leave. Oddly, the waiter leaned over me to give the beer to the guy on my right. I don't recall paying, but as I was about to leave I decided I should use the bathroom (I did need to pee) and walked to the back of the cafe just in time to see someone enter the only restroom. I stood awkwardly near a couple of busy tables waiting my turn. As I waited, the rear door would occasionally open for a minute and I could see out into the hotel -- the cafe was in a hotel, it seems -- and I had a perfect view up the hotel's grand staircase, which doesn't make much sense if you try to draw a floor-plan. I glimpsed a handsome and well-dressed woman, flanked by two exemplary children, approach and then ascend the stairs. I recall being impressed by her perfect form in quite high heels.
I then got access to the bathroom but don't recall actually using it (possibly a good thing) and then I walked through the cafe again and was about to exit through the front door onto the street when I realized I didn't have my backpack (I almost always carry one) and I couldn't recall if I had it when I came in or not. I walked over to the counter and the entire area had been cleared, but there was a black bag on the floor under the counter. I picked it up, but it clearly wasn't mine. I then noticed that it was only one of about four black bags, some quite large, all sitting where the prissy little man had been. I wondered if he could have walked away without them (they blended in very well) and I wondered if someone had noticed my backpack, so I stood where he had been sitting waiting for a waiter to come by. Instead the prissy little man, irate looking, came walking toward me -- but behind the counter? -- obviously thinking I was messing with his stuff. I ignored this and asked if anyone had noticed my backpack... no one had, so I left. And that's when I woke up.
In our dreams we create space and time. We then build a set for our stage and populate that set with a cast of characters playing elaborate roles. We create small or grand plays and we do it not in "real" time but outside time or possibly in the interstices of time. In any case it happens faster than anyone could describe it.
If we are indeed gods as we sleep, is it any wonder so many people can't help prolonging and augmenting that state with opiates and the like? (At least that's my understanding of what taking opiates is like, and also the reason I've been so determined to avoid them. Not out of strength but from acknowledged weakness.)
Same ole, same ole
Despite liking the space and having a pretty good veggie sandwich, I'm back at the Market Street Pete's because the WiFi on Pine was almost as slow as at the Bank Cafe. Too bad.
Trying to process the Trump election while reading a book about the Holocaust is either a bad or a very good idea. Still not sure which. But it certainly does get me thinking.
A lot is being made here about Clinton winning the popular vote. Fair enough. But the difference is still tiny and I don't actually doubt Trump's claim that he could have won the popular vote if he had campaigned more in California and New York. But it's really even worse than that.
Trumps core constituency are the people who feel disenfranchised, left out of the New Economy and the New Values of our Brave New secular world. Many of these people don't vote at all. I would be willing to bet that if everyone was forced to vote, the popular vote would be way in Trump's favor.
And it isn't just white men who bash gays or women or Jews or any other "privileged" group they feel they have social permission to attack. This is something people -- mostly, but not entirely men -- of color can participate in as well. Hate does a surprisingly good job of bringing people together.
By coincidence, I was rereading something I wrote about Ayn Rand in my previous blog (here) that is worth rereading with Trump in mind. It would be so sad if Nietzsche was again to be used to make the world an even worse place.
Which brings me back to... The Brothers Karamazov. I bet you thought I was going to say The Magic Mountain. Start with Lizaveta (who Google doesn't even include in the list of key characters). I still maintain that she represents the Russian, Orthodox Christian, ideal of goodness in the novel, so of course she is raped by Fyodor and then dies giving birth to Smerdyakov, who represents the new man unrestrained by traditional values. He longs for, but lacks the opportunity to participate in, bourgeois success. The new, Godless, Russia (Foyodor) rapes and kills traditional Russia (Lizaveta) and spawns Smerdyakov the striving man without values or restraints.
I've been watching this series of videos since they started and am having so much fun. I don't remember how many of these courses I've followed so far, several literature ones, history, parts of the chemistry one, and some others. What seems to be different about Philosophy is the community of philosophy nuts in the comments. Like me, most of the commenters are watching not so much to learn something new but to participate in a conversation about topics we rarely get a chance to talk about. Sometimes it seem like half the comments for one episode are in anticipation of what is coming next. We went nuts in anticipation of Kantian ethics -- how often does anyone get a chance to say that? The shear number of Kant puns was something to see.
I accused us of acting like fan-boys and got the usual hostile internet response, which is actually pretty funny. About the same thing is happening on another YouTube channel with military history, the difference I think is that military history seems to be a more common interest in the world at large. (When guys geek out about military history I always think of Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy, but I can't think of a philosophical equivalent.) That there are so many people out there who know and care about Kant (and are so eagerly anticipating Nietzsche) is a pleasant surprise.
The problem with the Crash Course Philosophy series is that it is not going into the detail we would like. And the presenter just had a baby so it's unlikely that he will jump in with a user-requested extension of the course. Our only hope is that sleep deprivation will drive him to reconsider the very nature of our perception and existence.
YouTube travel
I also use YouTube to live vicariously though others, something that saves me a lot of trouble and expense. I'm subscribed to one couple traveling around the U.S.A. in an RV, a couple building their Tiny House, a couple sailing around the world, and, as of last night, a second couple also sailing around who just completed a transit of the Erie Canal -- something I've thought of doing -- and are currently stuck on the Hudson due to engine problems with their sailboat.
I suspect (but it would be great to know for sure) that as many people watch these videos and think, "Wow, what a lot of trouble and expense" as think "Now that's something I want to do next." This is especially true, I think, for the Tiny House series. What a lot of work it is to build (yourself) even a tiny house. The guy is an electrician, which meant that he was qualified to do all the electrical work himself, but he also took the opportunity of being his own client to add every electrical feature he had ever imagined. The house is wired like a space ship. I can't help but think how I would do it all differently, and more simply, but the thought of doing all the work he's doing also makes me think, just, no.
I fantasize about gutting my apartment and starting fresh -- a much simpler task than building a Tiny House -- but the thought of how much debris would go to the dump and of how little of an actual improvement it would be in the end, makes me sure I would never actually do it.
A Century of Wisdom
As was the case with Musicophilia (obviously) and Doctor Faustus, A Century of Wisdom is largely about music. With Doctor Faustus in mind, it is particularly interesting how important Beethoven was to Alice -- even in the camp. Especially in the camp. While Doctor Faustus is about the "taking back" of Beethoven's 9th, A Century of Wisdom is about the survival of the 9th even under the worst circumstances.
I'm close to the end of the book now and there has still been no mention of religion as such. It seems that music has taken the place of religion in Alice's life -- something that makes much more sense to me personally. Religion frequently uses music -- from Bach to chanting -- for it's own purposes, but one has to wonder which has primacy in this relationship. (Another question I would like to ask Temple Grandin, besides how she visualizes music, is if her appreciation of music was similarly affected by the sheep dip chemical reaction that killed her religious feelings?)
This is awkward, but there's something else one needs to say about Alice's experience of the Holocaust: For almost everyone else, life in the camps terminated, or at least suspended, their "normal" life. Alice and, to a lesser extent, Victor Frankl lost their freedom, but not their avocations or even their vocations. Their lives, in the most important sense, continued in the camps. And this was especially the case with Alice. Even in the camp she continued teaching and performing. After the war, while living and teaching in Israel, she didn't talk about her past -- to the extent that most of her students had no idea that she was a Holocaust survivor. In the book we at least get an account of her experience and of how she tried to protect her child from the reality of his situation (which reminds me of the plot of Life Is Beautiful, though I never saw the film).
She claims that, after the war, her reasons for not speaking of her past were that she didn't want her son to remember, and didn't want any special consideration, but I have to wonder if she also felt a sort of survivor's guilt, not just at having survived but at having had such a freakishly mild experience of the Holocaust. In her place, I would not have wanted to compare experiences with survivors from other camps.
Does this matter? Yes and no. Her experience and her insights are as valid as anyone else's. But when you consider the questions posed by The Sunflower, I would include her in the class of people who would be in no position to forgive because they hadn't really been there. This is a little unfair, as I said, she lost her freedom and also her mother and husband, but she didn't have to face the full brutality of the camps. She had glimpsed the "elephant" but didn't actually come face to face with it.
