Magic Mountains and Existential Dilemmas

Many years ago, I heard a recording of Joseph Campbell talking about Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.  It was so moving and profound that I then read the book (a mighty effort through which I would not have persevered had I not had Dr. Campbell helping me along).  There are many elements of this complex work that were enlightening to me, but the one that sticks with me is the eventual descent from the Mountain and the return to messy, normal, chaotic life.

Several students of mine who are graduating are going through their own existential dilemmas.  A normal happening at the crossroads of introspective folk's lives.  I've been trying to articulate to them that while I do agree that, as Socrates tells us, "The unexamined life is not worth living", it is also true that we must find true fulfillment in living our embodied lives.  Just as simply living is not enough, neither is simply thinking.  One must endeavor to do both.

Go up the Magic Mountain, my friends - but do come back down and live out your lives too

Complete Chaos or Predestination?

As natural born storytellers, we are always trying to make sense of our lives.

On one hand, our path through life seems secure.  Every decision slowly but surely leading us inextricably to our current state.  Major life events were meant to be.  Goals are either met or were never suppose to be so that room could be created for other, different goals.

On the other hand, we are buffeted about by the winds of chance.  Why did I meet this person at this time in my life?  Why was I born at this place and this time and, as such, fell under these influences?  I could have been almost everyone had the wings of butterfly just been beating at a slightly different frequency.

Although seductive in their reductionism, I imagine both of these extremal solutions are not quite right.  Or perhaps I should say there are both perfectly correct.  We don't have an infinite number of pathways available to us, but neither are we predestined to be on the path we are on.  But it's just not satisfying to say, "Of the narrow cluster of life paths available to me, I am simply on the most probably given my circumstances."  Where's the fun in that?


I'm thinking in terms of a psychological analogy to Feynman Path Integrals:


Where there is some kind of macroscopic Planck's constant that bounds the possible likely paths of your life.

Love and Circles of Awareness

I found myself thinking about Joseph Campbell's three types of love recently.  When I looked them up to remind myself what they are, they were different from how I remembered them!

(his are agape — universal compassion, eros — sexual passion, and amor — romantic love)

The way I remember it is more like this:

eros/amor:  The person-to-person romantic/passionate love that the movies focus on
tribal love:  The love you have for friends and family; people you actually know and care about.
agape:  The universal love for all.

I think my thoughts on the three types of love is a conflation of my memory of my father explaining to me expanding circles of awareness (below, read from in to out)

and my memory of the Bill Moyers interviews of Joseph Campbell from back in the day.  Honestly, I like my misremembered version better.

Chess Rap

An oldie but a goodie!


From the 2020 "talent" show:

Video Creds: AT (soft giggles in background = icing on the cake)

Inspiration Creds:  Roman Pedan & Al Urim (Swampscott Chess Team circa 2004)

Ringing in the Year of the Rat

One of many benefits of being a multicultural household is we get to celebrate both Solar and Lunar holidays.

鱼 (fish): a homophone for surplus (餘)
             So you can carry the good stuff with you into the new year.

餃子 (dumpling): look like the silver and gold ingots of yore
             For wealth in the coming year

Family (家庭):
                Connecting the older generation to the newer one:

Stealing Bicycles, Now and Then

I've been running an under-the-radar foreign film club for a year now.  I've been sharing some of my favorite classics with a small cohort of students with the stamina to muscle through these gems.  All along, I've been fascinated to note my own internal new relationship to these personally formative movies, many of which I haven't seen in 25 years or more.  Mostly the changes in my reactions are due to being a Dad.

Tonight, on the one year anniversary of the club, I showed the de Sica's 1948 "Bicycle Thieves" and I had tears running down my face at the end.  This movie didn't even make my original top ten list!

The thing that struck me this time around is the complete and total emasculation of the main character.  He can't provide for his family, he is being crushed beneath society's uncaring heel, and his son's admiration is a spotlight on his inefficacy.  When he takes his son out to eat a meal they can't afford and he confides in his little guy "We deserve this because we are men", I heard his cry for help.  The pathos of his desperation resonated in me powerfully.

Then, in the final scene, as his own son reached out for his hand to comfort his father as father's tears came out, my own came out too...

Constructing myself to be constructed by others

Everything is a construct, isn’t it?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this fact in a science-y kind of way:  Mass itself coming from energies-of-relationships.  My own self being an ever-changing set of atoms and yet I keep actively re-arranging those atoms to keep my own identity the same (both physical and mental).  My sense of self is a construct too, but that is so hard to think about because I’m thinking about it with the construct itself. So meta…

 

Now, I’m turning my attention to more sociological constructs:

Married couples become more similar over time.  

Teachers tend to dress and act in similar ways. 

Men act “manly” or whatever because it’s what’s expected.  

Of course, some of this is baked in:  the couple that got married probably already had certain similarities that drew them together.  People who make teaching a profession probably have certain common personality traits.  Men, of course, are genetically and hormonally constructed in a certain way. 

Lately though, I’ve started to think about how much of who we are is also a social construct as well as being ‘baked-in’.  The people around us (or the people we choose to be around) have certain expectations of who we are/how we should behave.  Our tendency is to fulfill those expectations.  By fulfilling those expectations of others, I am constructing who I am, aren’t I?

Just like the molecules that make up my physical body are a construct in that I am not those things themselves, but rather how they relate to each other (you can make a lot of non-Kens out of the Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen in my body), my personality is also a construct in that I do not live by myself on an island:  I am how I relate to others…

I find this thought both exhilarating and scary. 

As I travel through life, I think I am forging a path but the path may be forging me…