daisy, daisy, give me your answer do...
Last night during her speaking engagement @ book people, Camille Paglia had mentioned that Emily Dickinson practically invented science fiction in her poem, "safe in their alabaster chambers (v. 1861)"
Afterwards, while she was signing my copy of her new book, I asked her if she would take the time indulge me for a comment and a question...
My comment was that I thought she should give Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley credit for inventing science fiction, to which she absolutely agreed, and clarified what she had meant to say, which was actually a reference to what is written in her commentary on that poem in her new book, "Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's best Poems" ...the actual quote from her book is, "Dickinson's apocalyptic tableau of earthly devastation against an infinite skyscape prefigures the genre of intergalactic science fiction." (my italics, for emphasis) So, Miss Dickinson actually pre-sages the Olaf Stapeldon-ian tradition in sci fi, eh?
I asked for her to forgive me if I framed my next question clumsily; but I related some of this background info:
I helped clear copyright permissions to printing a course packet for a Plan II/Classics Dept class @ UT, called Myths of Violence & War in Ancient Modern Cultures (which included material from Dr. Thomas Palaima & Bill Broyles, and a symposium called "How War Changes Lives"). This class compared ancient lyric poetry like the Iliad & The Oddysey to Vietnam era war protest songs and other, more recent music which has dealt with contemporary issues such as gang violence or serial killers. As I recall, some of the major similarities between these pieces which were explored in this course was that they deal with the duty of citizens to voice their conscience concerning ethics in situations of violence, war, and death in general... and that there is a corresponding difficulty of the warrior or convict returning home to civilian life. And not to get too far off-topic for this post, but the American Civil War is perhaps a better direct comparison to the Trojan War... however, wherever&whenever a conflict is set, the basic themes are similar: how can we all experience the camaraderie shared between warriors, which is so rarely paralleled in civilian life (how many of our civilian co-workers would throw themselves on a grenade to save our lives?). In war, we find a true expression of an equation proving that the "superior person" is one whose individual action meets the need of the collective (as above, so below) and vice-versa (I might also suggest that it is notable that there are still non-violent hunter-gatherer societies in the world).
So, I reassured her that I appreciated her extensive discussion of aesthetics; and I had to ask if she thought that there was a way that modern media and our culture in general could explore ethical issues without seeming moralistic in this Orwellian Age of Terrorism and tyrrany. Her response was that I had just crashed her HAL 9000 (at which point, she actually started mimicking HAL's slowed-down voice, "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..."). Then, she cut me off, saying that I was bringing up matters that would take up an entirely different lecture to address... to which I inquired if she might consider exploring the issue further at some later date.
However, she had already said a couple of things in her speech that evening which seemed to relate: first, that parents need to take more responsibility to educate their children (schools and churches don't seem to be able to do the job, so parents must take up the slack)... and in fact, she also mentioned a couple of times that her partner had recently given birth to a child, so she now realizes that Spongebob Squarepants is the best thing on television!
Here is the first quote that I found online from Paglia, which pertinently addressed ethics in anything near the context in which my query addressed (I will have to peruse my copies of her books at some length, later):
“We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.”
And even though she defends free thought in general, I had wondered if perhaps it would be difficult for the provocatively tongued (and catholically raised) Paglia to sound anything but moralistic when discussing ethics in such an amoral world? For clarification and eleucidation of this issue, q.v. The Fallacies of Moralism and Moral Aestheticism (after Friedrich Schiller, Leonard Nelson, Camille Paglia, & Robert Hughes)":
` ` Although Camille Paglia defends aestheticism, she does not defend moral aestheticism and is aware of the difference. In aestheticism proper art is merely independent of morality. In moral aestheticism it replaces morality. It is true, however, that, just as moral rigorism tends to moralism, aestheticism tends to moral aestheticism. Thus, Paglia says:
"Mademoiselle de Maupin demonstrates how the aesthete's infatuation with the visible is at the expense of the invisible or ethical. The aesthete is an immoralist....He [D'Albert, a character in the novel] says, "It is a real torture to me to see ugly things or ugly persons."....Here are the origins of Wilde's aesthetic, with its arrogant exclusiveness. The old or ugly are valueless to the poet of the visible world. D'Albert makes the high Greek claim, "What is physically beautiful is good, all that is ugly is evil." The Apollonian is always cruel. Only Dionysius gives empathy. Aestheticism invests in art objects the affect withdrawn from persons" [Sexual Personae, p. 410.]
Paglia's frequent moral judgments in Sexual Personae can be confusing unless it is kept in mind that morality and aestheticism do not exclude one other -- only morality and moral aestheticism do that. ' '
--
In my pursuit to create a forum to discuss radically different ethical positions with recognition and respect to one another, I will ponder and otherwise further research this information again at some length before I proceed... but one of my guiding inspirations does come to mind immediately:
The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu: Chapter Eighty-one
Truthful words are not beautiful.
Beautiful words are not truthful.
Good men do not argue.
Those who argue are not good.
Those who know are not learned.
The learned do not know.
The sage never tries to store things up.
The more he does for others, the more he has.
The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.
The Tao of heaven is pointed but does no harm.
The Tao of the sage is work without effort.
Afterwards, while she was signing my copy of her new book, I asked her if she would take the time indulge me for a comment and a question...
My comment was that I thought she should give Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley credit for inventing science fiction, to which she absolutely agreed, and clarified what she had meant to say, which was actually a reference to what is written in her commentary on that poem in her new book, "Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's best Poems" ...the actual quote from her book is, "Dickinson's apocalyptic tableau of earthly devastation against an infinite skyscape prefigures the genre of intergalactic science fiction." (my italics, for emphasis) So, Miss Dickinson actually pre-sages the Olaf Stapeldon-ian tradition in sci fi, eh?
I asked for her to forgive me if I framed my next question clumsily; but I related some of this background info:
I helped clear copyright permissions to printing a course packet for a Plan II/Classics Dept class @ UT, called Myths of Violence & War in Ancient Modern Cultures (which included material from Dr. Thomas Palaima & Bill Broyles, and a symposium called "How War Changes Lives"). This class compared ancient lyric poetry like the Iliad & The Oddysey to Vietnam era war protest songs and other, more recent music which has dealt with contemporary issues such as gang violence or serial killers. As I recall, some of the major similarities between these pieces which were explored in this course was that they deal with the duty of citizens to voice their conscience concerning ethics in situations of violence, war, and death in general... and that there is a corresponding difficulty of the warrior or convict returning home to civilian life. And not to get too far off-topic for this post, but the American Civil War is perhaps a better direct comparison to the Trojan War... however, wherever&whenever a conflict is set, the basic themes are similar: how can we all experience the camaraderie shared between warriors, which is so rarely paralleled in civilian life (how many of our civilian co-workers would throw themselves on a grenade to save our lives?). In war, we find a true expression of an equation proving that the "superior person" is one whose individual action meets the need of the collective (as above, so below) and vice-versa (I might also suggest that it is notable that there are still non-violent hunter-gatherer societies in the world).
So, I reassured her that I appreciated her extensive discussion of aesthetics; and I had to ask if she thought that there was a way that modern media and our culture in general could explore ethical issues without seeming moralistic in this Orwellian Age of Terrorism and tyrrany. Her response was that I had just crashed her HAL 9000 (at which point, she actually started mimicking HAL's slowed-down voice, "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..."). Then, she cut me off, saying that I was bringing up matters that would take up an entirely different lecture to address... to which I inquired if she might consider exploring the issue further at some later date.
However, she had already said a couple of things in her speech that evening which seemed to relate: first, that parents need to take more responsibility to educate their children (schools and churches don't seem to be able to do the job, so parents must take up the slack)... and in fact, she also mentioned a couple of times that her partner had recently given birth to a child, so she now realizes that Spongebob Squarepants is the best thing on television!
Here is the first quote that I found online from Paglia, which pertinently addressed ethics in anything near the context in which my query addressed (I will have to peruse my copies of her books at some length, later):
“We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.”
And even though she defends free thought in general, I had wondered if perhaps it would be difficult for the provocatively tongued (and catholically raised) Paglia to sound anything but moralistic when discussing ethics in such an amoral world? For clarification and eleucidation of this issue, q.v. The Fallacies of Moralism and Moral Aestheticism (after Friedrich Schiller, Leonard Nelson, Camille Paglia, & Robert Hughes)":
` ` Although Camille Paglia defends aestheticism, she does not defend moral aestheticism and is aware of the difference. In aestheticism proper art is merely independent of morality. In moral aestheticism it replaces morality. It is true, however, that, just as moral rigorism tends to moralism, aestheticism tends to moral aestheticism. Thus, Paglia says:
"Mademoiselle de Maupin demonstrates how the aesthete's infatuation with the visible is at the expense of the invisible or ethical. The aesthete is an immoralist....He [D'Albert, a character in the novel] says, "It is a real torture to me to see ugly things or ugly persons."....Here are the origins of Wilde's aesthetic, with its arrogant exclusiveness. The old or ugly are valueless to the poet of the visible world. D'Albert makes the high Greek claim, "What is physically beautiful is good, all that is ugly is evil." The Apollonian is always cruel. Only Dionysius gives empathy. Aestheticism invests in art objects the affect withdrawn from persons" [Sexual Personae, p. 410.]
Paglia's frequent moral judgments in Sexual Personae can be confusing unless it is kept in mind that morality and aestheticism do not exclude one other -- only morality and moral aestheticism do that. ' '
--
In my pursuit to create a forum to discuss radically different ethical positions with recognition and respect to one another, I will ponder and otherwise further research this information again at some length before I proceed... but one of my guiding inspirations does come to mind immediately:
The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu: Chapter Eighty-one
Truthful words are not beautiful.
Beautiful words are not truthful.
Good men do not argue.
Those who argue are not good.
Those who know are not learned.
The learned do not know.
The sage never tries to store things up.
The more he does for others, the more he has.
The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.
The Tao of heaven is pointed but does no harm.
The Tao of the sage is work without effort.