Platypus of Truth

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...

All hail the return of the blessed season!

Why pulp? After all, there are so many great books out there, why bother with the low-brow of bygone era? Sure, there's a lot to dislike about pulp, particularly Edwardian pulp: the overt racism, the Social-Darwinism, awkward gender-roles, inconsistent quality of writing, and the endless assertions that "no, no, THIS was my greatest battle" at the outset of each new episode. You could level the same accusations at Homer, but almost 3,000 years of human opinion affirms that Homer is at a completely different level from "Moderately-Helpless Space Babes of mars." Pulp may have multiple virtues in its own humble way, but I think the one that looms largest is precisely the one that our age lacks: courage. Courage is the ability to do what one thinks is right in spite of fear. After two world wars and the shattering loss of Western cultural confidence in their wake, courage has almost vanished from among our everyday virtues. Sure, it makes good rhetoric durin...

Utnapishtim spoke to his disciple, and his disciple listened to his wisdom; the wisdom of the time before the Flood: "Did you not hear that the gods sent the Flood to ravage all mankind because they were noisy, oh my disciple? Were you told upon your mother's knee that the world bellowed like a bull and the gods called down the Flood to silence it? The storm riders were let loose to drown their noise, and the depths were opened to silence their bellowing. Seven days it rained, and forty days the tempest raged upon the face of the earth. The gods hid in the highest heavens, and all things upon the earth became as clay. Better a lion than the Flood. Better a bull than the Flood. Better a plague than the Flood. Is that what you were told?" "There is a truth in these things. For then men were greater than they are now, and they had ears that were open to the call of Wisdom, and houses that were open to the wind. But men grew tired of Wisdom, and they were c...

A Fragment from Thus Spoke Utnapishtim : Now Utnapishtim sat upon his rock and his disciple sat at his feet, and he begged Utnapishtim to tell him of peoples and places, and of all that he had seen since the coming of the Flood. And Utnapishtim smiled and said: "I can remember the coming of Arius and his sons, for I saw them from my mountain, oh my disciple. Were they not each the image of a god of war; red of hair and skin like new-cast bronze. Each carried a long spear and a well-honed sword at his hip, and they rode on chariots while their men drove the long-horned cattle behind them. Were not these the names of the sons of Arius: Hit, Cadmu, Persis, Ind, and Hy? Do I not know what the sons of Arius did at the great banquet they made on the day that they defeated the people of the two rivers?" "Know then, oh my disciple, that I saw it all. They made a great banquet upon the plain and each drank from the skull of a prince of Ur. There they slaughtered untold numb...

This year, I will be teaching World History I (prehistory to 1500). As such, I've tried to sketch out for the students the three broad phases of man and their most basic worldview. Any attempt to do this sort of thing is problematic at best, but high schoolers need something to start with, something foundational, before the process of deconstruction (and reconstruction?) can be done in college. The first is ancient (or pagan) man. Ancient man's approach to life was essentially tragic: hope, joy, and love were fleeting at best and the underlying structure of reality was rooted in pain and chaos. The best a person could do was to bear up nobly under the weight of suffering and turn it into some great act or art that gave meaning to existence. The second is medieval (or monotheistic) man. Medieval man's approach to life was essentially comedic: no matter how bad things get, they will be resolved for good in the end. If we're talking about the European Christians ...