Final Exam Notes

These are the notes off the blogs that we looked at in class today. I put all of them on one blog so the notes were easier to view. Good luck on all your final exams!

• Group 1: How many versions of myth are there? -infinite
• Group 2: Who was oprah compared to? -Zeus
• Group 3: Where did group 3 get their title of their presentation, The Shameful Truth? -the title of the magus' silent film
• Group 4: What was the saying that ended group 4's presentation? -"Thats all folks!"
• Group 5: What was the song called that played during group 5's credits? -White Wedding by: Billy Idol
• Group 6: What were the different characters in group 6's presentations? -Pirate, Irish, Viking, Cowboy, Egyptian and Chinese
• Every answer is a form of death
• When a young person dies, it is an occasion to mourn. 
• The Ritual of Adonis
• The story of the Ritual of Adonis can be found at this website: http://www.bartleby.com/196/79.html

• Logos= the peoples Word
• the creative word
• Fiction= to make
• Sacri= sacred
• HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
• We end where we begin

• Chapter 45, page. 311 The Magus
• "All that is past possesses our present"
• The precedent is behind every action = All that is past possesses our present
• A person carries their past around with them all of the time they must only focus on the present and the future

• Masque
•  certain type of theatre- plays put on in peoples houses
• Quotidian
• usual, customary, everyday, ordinary
• Collective Unconscious
•  the collective is collective, impersonal; collects and organizes personal experiences in a similar way that each member of a particular species collects their experiences
• pass from a personal unconscious to the collective unconscious
• Taoism
• the mechanism that everything exists; the word Tao means way, path or principle

• Eliade 
• Speculations on Man and God: The Ultimate Reality - Chung Tzu and the Butterfly

• "Once upon a time, Chuang Chou dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly fluttering about, enjoying itself. It did not know that it was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he awoke with a start and he was Chuang Chou again. But he did not know whether he was Chuang Chou who had dreamed that he was a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly dreaming that he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is called the transformation of things.

• Something becomes a sacred action when it is in remembrance of the divine

• THE END OF THE END

• The journey up is mythology

• In the god game, everything is fiction.

• Orpheus and Eurydice- Eurydice and Orpheus get married. Soon after Eurydice steps on a snake and dies. Orpheus goes to the land of the dead, he plays his guitar and convinces Hades to give him back his wife. Hades says yes but on one condition Orpheus cant look back to see if his wife is following him. Of course right before he is out of the underworld Orpheus looks back and sees his wife but she returns to the underworld forever.

• Discovering the Truth About Santa: I can't remember when I learned the truth about Santa. I just remember asking my parents if he was real and they told me that if I believe in him then he is, and if I don't then he is not. This made me mad because I wanted a real answer. Every year we still get presents from Santa and I like that because it keeps the myth alive.

• The Bhagavada Gita
• I am reading this for one of my other classes that I'm taking. The situation that started the war was over which son got the throne when their father died. The king of the land was getting old so his oldest son was supposed to take over the kingdom but he was blind, so the younger son took the throne. The blind older son was upset about this and tried to take back the throne by trying to kill his brothers family. He succeeded in getting the kingdom, but not in killing his brother. Both families fought and tried to out smart the other. At one point a member of each family gambled. The person that lost would have to go into the woods with their family and live in exile for 15 years. The youngest son's family lost and was sent to the woods. After 15 years they were supposed to get the kingdom back but when the time came the blind older brother would not give up the throne. Then the war began. Arjuna (the warrior in that video we watched in class) is the son of the youngest son. This family is know as the good family and the other family is evil. Arjuna is a great warrior and Krishna (God) is telling him that he has to fight in the war. Arjuna does not want to fight because he does not want to kill his own family members. Krishna tells him that he is supposed to fight because that is his duty as a warrior. Also, that when a person dies only their body dies, there soul lives on. Death is only a part of life. Throughout the Gita Krishna make many arguments to make Arjuna change his mind about fighting. This ends up to be a pointless act because Krishna is God and he is the one that decides who lives and who dies. Arjuna eventually ends up fighting in the war and his family wins the battle.

• All reality is fiction

• The end is always frustrating
• The tibetan book of the dead is a book about the rituals humans have to perform to get to the land of the dead.
• The Swerve- Written by Stephen Greenblatt
• The book is about a man that finds the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, in a library. The man that found the book ordered it to be copied. The manuscript was a poem talking about the idea that the universe functions without the help of the gods, that the religious fear was damaging to human life. Also that matter was made of small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in different directions. The manuscript described the way things were, it was the creation of the modern world.

• Death is a problem for the family. The world will not concern the person anymore, the spirit of the dead will return back to where it came from.
• All of life is a preparation for death.
• Read: The Movement of Death as Described by the Upanishads found in the Eliade book.
• Myths help us realize what we are supposed to do when a person dies.

• Eschatology- last or final events of the history of the world or of humankind; a belief concerning death, the end of the world or the ultimate destiny of humankind
• Metempsychosis- the soul can never be destroyed or killed
• Parabola- quarterly print magazine about the study of the myths, rituals, symbols and arts of the worlds spiritual traditions; the story which is told to illustrate a certain point and deconstructs the point which is wanted to be known
• The transmigration of the soul- Eliada
• The person you thought would help you in a time of need didn't. This is the side of the parabola: the attack on the structure of your expectations

• Gasang Ist Dasein- song is existance

• The Story of the Ant and the Grasshopper

• We are here in order to see, hear and say things. The grasshopper enjoyed the summer and played the fiddle rather than preparing for winter. The ant gathered food for winter all summer and had no fun. The moral of the story is that hard work pays off.
• Cicada
• The muses taught humans how to sing. The people sung forever and forgot to eat, drink and sleep. The people died from starvation. The god felt sorry for these people, so he decided to turn them into cicadas so they could sing forever.

12/6/11

    Final Paper

Freedom and Determinism

        Life is a constant act of making decisions. These decisions are made according to a person’s freedom. Occasionally a person’s actions are based on a previously determined circumstance. Determinism is the theory that all the actions we decide to make, everything that happens in life, are all determined by what has previously happened (Freedom). Everything that a person does in their life is, without exception, determined. Freedom, on the other hand, is the idea that a person has freedom if and only if, that person could have done something otherwise (Freedom). A person is held morally responsible for any and all actions that they take. There are three main positions on the debate of freedom. The first, hard determinism, says that determinism is true and because it is true, no human action can be free. Second, libertarianism states that all human actions are free, so determinism is completely false. Lastly is the idea of compatibilism, which says that freedom and determinism can work together (Freedom). John Fowles’ famous protagonist from The Magus, Nicolas Urff, was cast into a labyrinth specially built for him. While Nicolas quickly learned that those around him were following scripts, he remained confused about the presence of reality, acting in a play that he did not know existed. Was Nicolas free to make his own decisions during the God game? Or, was he a pawn, fated to commit to another’s will, with no real freedom?

        “The Lord Byron School, Pharoxos, Greece, requires in early October an assistant master to teach English. Candidates must be single and must have a degree in English. A knowledge of Modern Greek is not essential” (pg. 20 Fowels). Nicolas accepted the job in Greece to get away from Alison’s inquiry for marriage and the dreary England weather. “I began to hum, and it was not a brave attempt to hide my grief, but a revoltingly unclouded desire to celebrate my release” (pg. 48 Fowels). Four days after leaving England Nicolas found himself in beautiful Greece. As quickly as Nicolas fell in love with the idea of Greece, he began to hate it. His only release from the dull, “claustrophobic ambience of the Lord Byron School”, was to go on walks in the mountains of Greece (pg. 51 Fowels). Nicolas was overwhelmed with the beauty and simplicity of nature and Greece and began writing poetry again. This of course did not work out and he found himself returning to the mountains and taking in the beauty of the landscape. 

        In the natural landscape of the Grecian countryside, Nicolas was lonely and was searching for someone independent and different to interact with. Time and time again, Nicolas made an obvious attempt at gaining attention from the mysterious beings that lived in the villa. After taking a relaxing swim at the beach of a hidden village, he stumbled upon a towel that was laid out on the beach, on which rested a a familiar book, “one of the commonest paperback anthologies of the modern English verse”(pg. 69 Fowels). He assumed it was a woman’s and immediately wanted to find her. He was addicted to the idea of a physical relationship and he was always seeking a person to be with, needing constant admiration from women, without which he could not function. Aware of the feeling of being watched Nicolas read the marked passages that were only to familiar to him and the book’s owner, and was delighted with the shared knowledge that he and the mysterious woman possessed. While Nicolas was constantly and purposefully putting himself in situations hoping that an admirer would arrive, Conchis was exploiting this behavior to set a trap which he knew Nicolas would fall into. Conchis knew that Nicolas would wander the country-side, and eventually be drawn to the beach, and the book smelled of perfume which ignited Nicolas’ desire for affection. This fabricated curiosity got the best of Nicolas and he eventually made his way to Conchis’ door step. “Before anything else, I knew I was expected. He saw me without surprise, with a small smile, almost a grimace, on his face” (pg 79, Fowels). Nicolas needed the feeling of acceptance and he loved the idea that someone was out there waiting for him to make the right move. His longing for the perfect woman made him vulnerable to Conchis’ plan, and when he was given a reason to believe that she existed, he quickly decided he would do anything to find her.

        Nicolas needed temporary companionship and he needed appraisal. It was his own narcissism that consumed him and caught him in the labyrinth of Bouroni. 

“The events of the week-end seemed to recede, to become locked away, as if I had dreamt them; and yet as I walked there came the strangest feeling, compounded of the early hour, the absolute solitude, and what had happened, of having entered a myth; a knowledge of what it was like physically, moment by moment, to have been young and ancient, a Ulysses on his way to meet Circe, a Theseus on his journey to Crete, and Oedipus still searching for his destiny. I could not describe it. It was not in the least a literary feeling, but an intensely mysterious present and concrete feeling of excitement, of being in a situation where anything still might happen. As if the world had suddenly, during those last three days, been re-invented, and for me alone” (pg. 157 Fowels). 

Driven by the idea of fate bringing him in contact with a beautiful woman, Nicolas became more and more interested in coming back to Bouroni every weekend. That first weekend at Bouroni, Nicolas happened upon a beautiful woman. “I had to know the owner of that young, intelligent, amused, dazzlingly pretty North European face” (pg. 157 Fowels). Nicolas fell in love with the beautiful woman, not knowing who she was, but that she had to have been the owner of the book on the beach. This idea swept Nicolas off his feet. He was lured further into the labyrinth every weekend by the dazzling woman’s secretive life and sensitive personality. Because of her he lost all sense of reality, becoming more and more lost in the labyrinth every week. When he finally realized he was being tricked, it was to late. He had dug himself into a deep hole that he could not climb out of.

        Nicolas’ story was one already told, and his entire destiny was to follow the pages that had already been written for him. Conchis knew of Nicolas’ past so well that he could determine the rest of his life. “All that is our past possesses our present.” (pg 311, Fowels). Freedom is the opportunity to do otherwise, the ability to act otherwise based on an accurate and thorough understanding of the situation. The question of whether a person has freedom to do as they choose or if all of their actions are determined, is a question that has been asked for centuries. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, God, tries to convince Arjuna, the warrior, why he should fight in the war. This act of convincing Arjuna turns out to be pointless because Krishna is God and he decides what happens. He tells Arjuna that he has already killed everyone and Arjuna simply has to be the instrument in the war and act out the part Krishna has created for him.

“Though continually performing all actions, his refuge is in me, and through my grace he attains the

eternal, imperishable home. 

Having surrendered in thought all your actions to me, holding me supreme, depending upon the yoga of intelligence, be ever thinking on me.

For thinking on me, you shall by my grace sail past all obstacles; but if, falling into egoism, you pay no heed, you shall perish” (Verses 56-58, Johnson).

Krishna is the puppet master and Arjuna and all the other warriors are simply the puppets on the end of the string. They are forced to act out the role Krishna had designed for them.

Not only does the question of freedom and determinism arise in religious texts and books through out history but the question is prevalent in todays modern society. The media and advertising companies lure people into doing things these corporate powers want them to do, such as what to buy and how to vote. The common people are tricked into thinking what the big corporations want them to think. In a way, this could be thought of as determinism because the companies are running the peoples live and telling them what to do and what not to do. Like Conchis and Krishna, the corporations are the puppet masters and like Nicolas and Arjuna, the rest of the common people are puppets on the ends of the strings. These people are given the impression that they are free to make their own decisions, but in reality, they are subject to many forces beyond their control. Unfortunately, there is no clear or easy answer to the freedom and determinism debate. Personally, I don’t believe we will ever be able to answer the question. I don’t think we will ever know whether we are all puppets or if we are truly free to do as we choose.

Work Cited

Johnson, W. J., trans. The Bhagavad Gita. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. Ch. 18

Fowles, John. The Magus. Boston: Little, Brown and, 1965.

"Freedom and Determinism." Career Account Web Pages. Purdue University. Web. 06 Dec. 2011.           

              http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~curd/Free.htm.

In Class Presentation

10 Questions

Krishna showing Arjuna his true self

1. Think of a number from 1 to 10
2. Multiply that number by 9
3. If the number is a 2-digit number, add the digits together
4. Now subtract 5
5. Determine which letter in the alphabet corresponds to the number you ended up with (example: 1=a, 2=b, 3=c,etc.)
6. Think of a country that starts with that letter
7. Remember the last letter of the name of that country
8. Think of the name of an animal that starts with that letter
9. Remember the last letter in the name of that animal
10. Think of the name of a fruit that starts with that letter

Are you thinking of a Kangaroo in Denmark eating an Orange?

http://www.mathnews.uwaterloo.ca/Issues/mn8901/MOW2.php

• The website above is where I got the 10 questions game

• I compared The Magus to the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna, is God and he tried to convince the warrior Arjuna to fight in the war, but all the trouble of trying to convince Arjuna was pointless. Krishna had already determined what Arjuna was going to do.

12/1/11

"I knew that at last I began to feel the force of this super-commandment, summary of them all; somewhere I knew I had to choose it, and every day afresh even thought I went on failing to keep it. Conchis had talked of pints of fulcrum, moments when one met one's future. I also knew it was all bound up with Alison, with choosing Alison, and having to go on choosing her every day. Adulthood was like a mountain, and I stood at the foot of this cliff of ice, this impossible and unclimbable: Thou shalt not inflict unnecessary pain" (pg. 641, The Magus).

At the end of the book Nicolas finally realizes what he has to do. He understands that Alison is the one for him and he must win her back. He knows he must wait for her and choose her over all others. Nicolas separated himself from Alison and England. He traveled to Greece in search of something better but found Conchis instead. He went through the initiation of the God game that Conchis created to make him change. After making it through the game and he went back to England to find the girl that he turned away in the beginning. By accepting his destiny he had transformed.

After all this time
In class today we started the individual presentations on the final papers that we wrote.

• The Ritual of Adonis
• http://www.bartleby.com/196/79.html

• Insidious- intended to entrap
• Despot- a king or ruler with absolute and unlimited power

11/29/11

"Had the trial happened? Had anything ever happened? But the savage pain in my arms told me that everything had happened.
And then, out of that pain, the sheer physical torture, I began to understand. I was Iago; but I was also crucified. The crucified Iago. Crucified by... the metamorphoses of Lily ran wildly through my brain, like maenads, hunting some blindness, some demon in me down" (pg. 530 The Magus).

Iago

Iago is one of Shakespeare's most complex villains. In the beginning of the play Othello, Iago seems to be pure evil but as the play moves on you realize that he is not an immoral person, he just lacks all sort of feeling. Iago became envious of Cassio's newly acquired position. Iago feels that he is the only one worthy of the position. He cheats, steals and kills until he gains the position he desires. Only a person that does things without feeling or thinking of the consequences can commit such terrible acts.

Nicolas feels like he has been the trickster throughout the God game but at the trial he is shown that in actuality, everyone has bamboozled him. Nicolas realizes that he hasn't been the one running the show and this bothers him a lot. He is so caught up in how smart he is and how he thinks he can never be fooled, that he lets Conchis and all of his followers deceive him. Niclolas' narcissistic personality exposed him to ridicule and put him in a vulnerable spot. Being so smart, he could not comprehend the fact he was tricked. The "truth" about Lilly was so devastating. Nicolas explains that the idea of Lilly raced through his brain like the maenads. The maenads were the followers of Dionysus. These people were often in a state of a delirious craze which occurred from being quite intoxicated while dancing around. These people would lose all sense of self control. They would shout uncontrollably, engage in sexual activity, and even sometimes commit the ritual of hunting and tearing animals and humans to pieces. Dionysus' followers became possessed by him and would lose all sense of reality, which apparently Nicolas felt like. He could make no sense out of what had happened to him for the last couple of days. He was drugged multiple times and only had what Conchis and others told him, to believe as reality.

11/22/11

"Once more my mind wandered, in a grey silences of the night, not to Julie, but to Alison. Staring out to sea, I finally forced myself to stop thinking of her as someone still somewhere, if only in memory, still obscurely alive, breathing, doing, moving, but as a shovelful of ashes already scattered; as a broken like, a biological dead end, an eternal withdrawal from reality, a once complex object that now dwindled, dwindled, left nothing behind except a smudge like a fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper" (pg. 441, The Magus).

Alison was sent to Greece to show Nicolas what he actually wanted but he didn't realize it. He seemed to enjoy his time with Alison while she was there, but I don't think he wanted to accept the idea of liking Alison better than Lilly/Julie. The plot of the play took a sharp turn when they decided to "kill" off Alison. Now that Alison, in Nicolas' eyes, was truly gone, he couldn't stop thinking about her. He was confused about how he felt about her. He thought she was just another girl to mess around with but finding out that she was dead was difficult for him to deal with. I think this was a pretty crucial event to happen in the book. It made Nicolas regret how he treated Alison. They made her fake death seem like it was his fault. It was interesting how much her death made Nicolas think about the times he spent with her and how much he would actually miss that.


In class we presented group projects.