Oft-Mentioned Resources for My Students

There is no doubt that I teach my mythology and philosophy classes with a heavy emphasis on personal meaning and relevance.

One of the reasons I enjoy being an adjunct rather than a full professor is because I am able to bring more "real world" experience to the classroom, hopefully to the benefit of the students, who must experience real challenges outside the shelter of the campus.

My own life experience, and the testimony of the many students whom I have had the honor to know and converse with about their own challenges, shows that life is sometimes a disorienting, difficult and dark journey. Many students, whether new to school, or returning, bring their own amazing, illuminating stories of struggle and personal growth.

I am deeply humbled by the bond I have formed with these students during the past 15 years as an adjunct. (I think after all these years that this is the only job I do anywhere near well.)

In the course of our discussions, I have often mentioned resources for them to consult. But not so often listed them. I thought I would capture a few of them here:

The Artist's Way - The official site of Julia Cameron and her important work about creativity and psychological growth. When I experience particularly dark emotions, the practice of her "morning pages" (at any hour) is very helpful in a way I cannot explain at a rational level.

Care of the Soul -- Official site of Thomas Moore, whose work I always find deeply reflective and meaningful.

In particular, I recommend his wonderful book, Dark Nights of the Soul. I have been listening to this book on audio again, and it is amazing how different sections of it are even more important to me now after teaching my mythology class. I have taught the mythology class unconsciously using Moore's expanded idea of the "liminal" experience and rites of passage; both he and I being heavily influenced by the work of anthropologist Victor Turner. All of life contains times of disorientation, sometimes at intense levels. This is not theoretical darkness. It is unique darkness for your own life, and it will hurt. From this idea and experience I have formulated my own humble notion of "generative darkness," into which we reach as we stand at its perimeter, to pull out as if from a grab bag, some great gift for the next phase of our life. (Moore's comments on sentimentality in religion have also given me new concepts with which to frame my own disorientation and unhappiness with the "sentimentality" practiced by those who chose to interpret my mother's tragic death for me, and who choose to avert their eyes from certain dark aspects of reality highlighted by the likes of Darwin and Schopenhauer.)

MichaelGelb.com -- website of author Michael Gelb, whose work had a profound influence on my during my darkest days at Computer Associates, a company where the delta between the teachings on management and the actual culture, at that time, was at least a light year.

In particular, Gelb's book "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci" opened my mind to the notion that we swim in a vast sea of life variables, many of which we are free to take notice of and act upon if we simply choose to. (WWLD? -- What would Leonardo do?)

Speaking of Computer Associates' dysfunctional culture, Jeff Gee was a good-natured teacher there who helped me survive the place as long as I did. His book "Super Service" was just one of those works that again taught me to become aware of the control I had over so much of my life.

For the theoretically minded, who like to take a structured, abstract approach to their own actions, there is no greater work than "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," by Stephen Covey. Again, in an unexplainable moment of serendipity, the worst boss I ever had sent me to a management class where this book was only casually mentioned. I sought it out, and it completely changed my life. Its first chapter on being "proactive" is now required reading for my philosophy students.

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck -- the ancient lesson that life must be difficult if we are to grow, taught in a modern context.

Man's Search for Meaning - by Viktor Frankl. The great work about his survival in a Nazi concentration camp and the lessons he derived from it, which would form the basis for his theory of "logotherapy." (He has a great influence on Covey.)

Learned Optimism - an important work about cognitive therapy by Martin Seligman. His formulation of pessimism as based upon judgments we choose to make (or not make) that problems are "pervasive, permanent and personal" is, well, powerful.

The Soul's Code by James Hillman. A fascinating reflection on destiny and character, rooted in the ideas of Jung and Plato. (He was the mentor of Thomas Moore.) I intend to read more of his works.

Creativity and Madness Blog - a new resource I am exploring of late, which features thoughtful posts and links to additional resources and events.

The Supreme Court Nominee, and the Context, are Both Disturbing

If a Republican president . . .

• lashed out at television news networks, radio hosts and others for their coverage of and opinions about him
• questioned the legitimacy of the information on the Internet and the utility of the devices that provide it
• had his agencies seek to reclassify Internet Service Providers for the purposes of greater regulation and control
• and THEN nominated a friend and fellow law professor to the Supreme Court who said that the exercise of free speech is dependent on how the government calculates the social costs of that speech (!)
  

. . . would there not be great wailing, gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing across the land?

Would there not be ponderous statements from Senators about "deeply disturbing" revelations about the nominee that raise concerns about her qualification to serve on the court, and the president's overall intentions given a series of unseemly statements from the bully pulpit against political dissent?

(Let's leave aside for a moment the even larger context of the president's youthful associations with all sorts of "revolutionary" Marxist thinkers, his government taking more and more control of automakers, banks, insurance companies, etc., and his apparent disinterest in the tyranny of and crushing of political dissent by statists such as Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Castros, etc. Ex-communist James Burnham's maxim that for so-called liberals "there are no enemies on the left" seems more apropos than ever.)

Hypocrisy in politics is nothing new, nor is it restricted to the Democratic Party. However, when the people with "good intentions" are running the show apparently, tyranny, even in creeping soft forms is deemed impossible. Right up until, as the French Revolution showed, they're not running the show anymore, and their heads are in the guillotines.

But, civility and courtliness will prevail, because after all, they're all friends and colleagues in Washington.

So, Elena Kagan will be confirmed, and the creep of soft tyranny will continue.

Thoughts on Another Semester in Mythology

I'm completing my students' mythology final examination today, for them to take tomorrow.

It was an ambitious class, taught mostly from a psychological and spiritual point of view. It was all about our struggle with darkness, and its power to transform. I think I either frightened or bored the students sometimes with this talk. I dwell on this mystery all the time.

It helps to know every civilization shared the same struggles, even as it puzzles about the ultimate source of being. That is what I take away from this class, in brighter hues each time. Science goes its own way, to greater and greater reductionism. But for humanity, myth illustrates the absolute mystery of existence.

More Analysis of Presidential Rhetoric

Obama’s Good and Bad Words - Victor Davis Hanson - National Review Online

Columnist Notes Uptick in Presidential Negativity

I think Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal makes an excellent point. The contrast between Barack Obama the campaigner and President Obama the Manichean is dramatic. He has become, as noted below, his own Saul Alinsky, demonizing his opposition at every turn, from the State of the Union on.

Perhaps this is because VP Joe Biden, who would traditionally play this political role, is too much the happy gaffer. Or perhaps it is because this is the President's true nature; something he really enjoys, and reflects his true beliefs -- post "Hope and Change."

Such "internal demagoguery" as I call it, is surely the stock in trade of totalitarians such as Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, who use it to justify their seizure of property and suspension of rights. But our country has its practitioners as well.

I stepped back from political journalism years ago because of my own tendency to take it, and make it, much too personal. It's a kind of radioactive madness that infects many in political life.

MI6 Guy on Torture and Terrorism

Can't say this argument is without merit. Some of us do not consider ourselves over-the-top, chest-thumping Nathan R. Jessup conservatives.

Heroes and Death, Post-Einstein

Thanks to Cablevision's recent PR war with WABC New York, I got to watch free on demand movies yesterday on Cablevision, and took a break from my routine to watch the latest installment of the Star Trek movies. "The Future Begins."

Time travel is central to the film. A hackneyed idea at this point, for sure. And the film features all the usual chronological confusion as a result. (A palatable parataxis for the sake of the story.)

Something about time travel in this film, however, in combination with another classic Star Trek idea, left me intrigued. The other idea is that of the unbeatable Kobayashi Maru test, which Kirk legendarily hacked at the academy.

The film features a conflict between Kirk and Spock, the designer of the test, over Kirk's cheating. Spock accepts death logically, and the test is meant to show all cadets what that experience is like. (Which is questionable given that everyone knows it's a simulation.)

However, the important point is that Kirk refuses as a matter of principle to ever accept defeat. To the point of "cheating death."

This got me thinking about science fiction heroes post-Einstein.

In the ancient Gilgamesh Epic, Gilgamesh also refuses to accept death. He goes on a quest to find the secret to eternal life, only to be told by Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian version of Noah, that he can never achieve it. Later, shown the secret by the ferryman of the dead, Gilgamesh watches it slip through his hands; stolen by a snake. Presumably, the story reflects the wisdom of accepting death.

Kirk, as a hero and representative of the values of our culture, uses every trick available to him to cheat death. Which includes exploiting the power and paradoxes of relativistic physics.

Ironically, he is aided by an older and wiser version of Spock, himself a time traveler, who has somewhat "lightened up," from his old self. Spock has multiplied himself in fact, to live two lives, via time travel. Logically, it would seem, he could do that again. Which made me wonder if a science fiction story exists using multiple (more than two) versions of people created via time travel.

Maybe I am reading too much into the story. But it interesting to think about the evolution of the hero story in our time; an age in which mastery and possession of nature seems so much within our grasp.

This is not Indiana Jones, for example, who faces and accepts the dominance of forces beyond his comprehension. This hero, Kirk, aided by men of science Spock, McCoy and Scott (a brilliant relativistic physicist) takes heroism in a completely new direction. Still cleverly solving problems, like so many other heroes. But also, exploiting the most basic mysteries of the universe to escape mortality.

This movie series has already "cheated" its own death by introducing this plot. As I looked at Captain Christopher Pike in his wheelchair at the end of the film, not as hideously deformed as he was in the television series, I recalled the dialogue of the film that an alternative future had been created for all the characters.

Personally, I would look forward to more of these films, with these characters, taking old plots in new directions, or creating new plots.

But the more significant question for me is, what will a generation of heroes that looks like this young Kirk say about our expectations as a culture? This is not the wise, ironic Kirk of the television series or the earlier films. This is a young man of science, full of good intentions and a sense of justice, but also hubris against the most basic forces of the universe. Will more myths and heroes of this type follow? And what will the culture be like that favors these stories?