Natural?

My favorite food boy Alton Brown is quoted in Wired this month on natural and genetically modified foods:

Every bite that goes into our mouths has been genetically engineered, which is not to say that what we eat is unnatural. Odds are we wouldn’t have broccoli if some farmers in Italy hadn’t spotted a naturally occurring mutation in cabbage that they liked and cultivated. The way I see it, if something can happen in nature, it’s natural. Here’s the tricky part: Unnatural things can get into nature and change the order of things. Is that bad? We’ll see.

What, indeed, is natural? I’ve had students recently argue that heterosexual sex is right because it’s natural. Well, isn’t cancer natural, too? We do everything we can to fight that, but still cling to the notion that what is natural is correct. I would argue that humanity prides itself on being unnatural — i.e., noticing something about our environments that we want to change and inventing the technology to do so. Are those who argue for a natural way of life ready to give up their technology?

Isn’t It Ironic?

Well, maybe, but probably not. Zoe Williams’ article from the Guardian (leave it to the Brits) examines this popularly misused word in our ironically post-ironic culture. From the article:

But irony as part of the British literary tradition doesn’t, generally speaking, commence with Romantic irony, but rather with the device that has its roots in Socrates, viz, saying the opposite of what is true in order to underline the truth. So, from this you’d trace a line from Chaucer, through More, Sidney and Milton, arriving at Swift and Austen, where you can see a pleasing bifurcation of irony’s literary use. Austen uses irony as a means of being understated. Swift, by contrast, uses irony for polemical purposes, conjuring grotesque images ironically (babies being eaten, mankind enslaved to the morally superior horse) in order to state his case (that the Irish were starving, that humanity was going to the dogs) ever more forcefully.

It seems that her overall point is that irony is a trope of judgment strategically used to make a point about an issue or situation, from feigning ignorance about an issue to get your opponent to say something stupid, to a split perspective that allows one to hold two opposing views simultaneously (sounds more like a rhetorical question), to a Swiftian satire that implicates dominant ideologies and policies through a vehicle of fun, to the language of dissent. It seems to me that one problem with irony today is that people just don’t get it — many seem to be so literal-minded that any sophisticated arguments employing irony are lost. OK, I have to teach now, but I’m not done here, yet. . . .

White on White

Well, we are one step closer to the complete homogenization of America. From the NYTimes today: “‘Whether you call it revolution or evolution, the big companies now have the opportunity to be even bigger and stronger,’ said Blair Levin, a former top official for the commission who is now an analyst at the investment bank Legg Mason.” It seems that the F.C.C. wants to strip any dissonant voices from the harmony of American media by giving fewer and bigger companies, like Time/Warner and Viacom, more control of the airways while simultaneously making it nearly impossible for smaller companies to even compete.

The NYTimes continues:

The change was a victory for the major networks, raising the cap on the maximum share of the national audience one company can reach with its stations to 45 percent from 35. News Corporation’s Fox television subsidiary and Viacom’s CBS division already own stations reaching about 40 percent of the market.

For more, see “FCC Plan to Alter Media Rules Spurs Growing Debate” and other reports from MoveOn.

White on White

Well, we are one step closer to the complete homogenization of America. From the NYTimes today: “‘Whether you call it revolution or evolution, the big companies now have the opportunity to be even bigger and stronger,’ said Blair Levin, a former top official for the commission who is now an analyst at the investment bank Legg Mason.” It seems that the F.C.C. wants to strip any dissonant voices from the harmony of American media by giving fewer and bigger companies, like Time/Warner and Viacom, more control of the airways while simultaneously making it nearly impossible for smaller companies to even compete.

The NYTimes continues:

The change was a victory for the major networks, raising the cap on the maximum share of the national audience one company can reach with its stations to 45 percent from 35. News Corporation’s Fox television subsidiary and Viacom’s CBS division already own stations reaching about 40 percent of the market.

For more, see “FCC Plan to Alter Media Rules Spurs Growing Debate” and other reports from MoveOn.

The final irony

‘Isn’t it ironic?’ You hear it all the time – and, most of the time, actually no, it isn’t. Hypocritical, cynical, lazy, coincidental, more likely. But what is irony and why did pundits think it would die two years ago, after September 11? Zoe Williams meticulously, sincerely, unironically, hunts it down.

Well, maybe, but probably not. Zoe Williams’ article from the Guardian (leave it to the Brits) examines this popularly misused word in our ironically post-ironic culture.

It seems that her overall point is that irony is a trope of judgment strategically used to make a point about an issue or situation, from feigning ignorance about an issue to get your opponent to say something stupid, to a split perspective that allows one to hold two opposing views simultaneously (sounds more like a rhetorical question), to a Swiftian satire that implicates dominant ideologies and policies through a vehicle of fun, to the language of dissent. It seems to me that one problem with irony today is that people just don’t get it — many seem to be so literal-minded that any sophisticated arguments employing irony are lost. OK, I have to teach now, but I’m not done here, yet… .

The final irony

Every bite that goes into our mouths has been genetically engineered, which is not to say that what we eat is unnatural. Odds are we wouldn’t have broccoli if some farmers in Italy hadn’t spotted a naturally occurring mutation in cabbage that they liked and cultivated. The way I see it, if something can happen in nature, it’s natural. Here’s the tricky part: Unnatural things can get into nature and change the order of things. Is that bad? We’ll see.

My favorite food boy Alton Brown is quoted in Wired this month on natural and genetically modified foods.

What, indeed, is natural? I’ve had students recently argue that heterosexual sex is right because it’s natural. Well, isn’t cancer natural, too? We do everything we can to fight that, but still cling to the notion that what is natural is correct. I would argue that humanity prides itself on being unnatural — i.e., noticing something about our environments that we want to change and inventing the technology to do so. Are those who argue for a natural way of life ready to give up their technology?

Shelley’s Satanic Poet

Shelley, in his A Defense of Poetry, begins by making a distinction between reason and imagination: “Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole” (109). Shelley likens reason to analysis and imagination to synthesis; reason examines the workings of particulars, and imagination — while keeping the particulars in mind — offers a more holistic view. Poetry, states Shelley, expresses the imagination and is entwined with the origins of humanity (109). Shelley exalts poetry as the bearer of humanity’s most profound truths; these truths speak of a universality, disregarding time and location, of order and beauty that legislates the world. Poetry keeps humanity human.

A Defense of Poetry illustrates the zeitgeist of Shelley’s time. He saw the beginning of the nineteenth century as a time of rebirth from the tyrannies of the “grosser sciences” that continually seek to keep humans slaves, separated from imagination and its expression (134). Such tyrannies — the products of “reasoners” and “mechanics” — keep the imagination stifled and fettered in the shackles of rationalism and familiarity (131-4). When the rational faculties are emphasized over the creative faculties, then humanity loses sight of eternal truths and concentrates only on the acquisition of temporary pleasures and utilitarian fortunes. Yet, states Shelley, only when balanced with the imagination can science and its products be a boon to humanity, for the useful “strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to the sense” (132). Far from a technophobe, Shelley remained cautious about scientific advancements that overshadowed the creative spirit. A society based on the “selfish and calculating principle” could only produce external values which effaced the spirit in lieu of quantifiable materials and measurable wealth (135). Shelley’s dystopian vision, ostensibly not unlike our own society almost two-hundred years distant, could only be ameliorated by the work of the poet.

The poet eschews the monotonous, quotidian world through an ability to defamiliarize. Like distorting the sunlight and all it shines upon, the poet “makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos” (137). A verbal magician, the poet transforms the mundane into the fantastic through imagination. The poet stimulates the observer’s own creative impulses to produce new materials for knowledge, power, and pleasure; the poet’s creations inspire the mind to mold a reality and order based on the good and the beautiful (134-5). The good, then, has its genesis in the exploration of the creative impulse; i.e., an emancipation from the prison of stifling familiarity can only lead to the good.

Indeed, the implications of that last statement exemplify Shelley’s vision of the poet and explain the Romantics’ propensity to venerate Milton’s Satan above his God. Shelley suggests that because he perseveres despite adversity and continues even though his efforts will only lead to more suffering, Milton’s Satan “as a moral being is far superior to [Milton’s] God” (129). Satan challenges God’s dominance and authority; God casts Lucifer and his followers out of paradise, but Satan still attempts to thwart his nemesis by influencing His creation. Satan, therefore, introduces imagination into the world by convincing Eve to ask questions about God’s law, asserting her own creativity and self-reliance. Satan, then, illustrates Shelley’s goodness and beauty by stimulating the imagination in his hearer: Eve. Through Satan’s ministrations, humans were able to make their own choices and assert their own creativity and individuality on their world.

Shelley’s poet introduces difference into the world. Poetry is divine in that it provides the seed for all of humanity’s creations: religions, institutions, politics, philosophy, and technology. Difference produces dialectic; anthesis (predicting Hegel) produces synthesis. The imagination exists within this synthesis, helping to make the products universally important. The pleasure poetry produces in its observers stimulates the imagination, leading to more expressions of eternal beauty and goodness. Each sysnthesis is an innovation — a revolution — a new way of knowing the world and perceiving the truth (114-5). Shelley suggests that “a poem is the image of life expressed in its eternal truth” (115). The poet’s expression demonstrates this eternal truth better than the didactic versifier or pedantic priest; the poetry itself influences the moral health of humanity (117-8).

While Shelley’s philosophy of the poet may be a positive, liberating belief in an intellectual capacity, the political implications would probably result in a French Revolution every twenty years or so. Rather than interpreting Shelley’s Defense as a pragmatic manual for life, it should be considered as an intellectual manifesto. Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses asks “What kind of idea am I?” suggesting a twentieth-century interpretation of Shelley’s heresies. They are both suggesting the same thing, are they not? Rushdie calls for freedom from the thoughtless acceptance of religious faith and a trust of one’s own voice and how it responds to and with humanity’s polyphony. Shelley seeks similar ends. He repudiates Descartes’ ascetic vision of the “little world of self” and seeks to reconcile the poet’s place within society (128). Also like Rushdie, Shelley heretically states that while Jesus’ vision contained the “most vivid poetry,” his followers, seeking to codify and dogmatize, quickly distorted and effaced his poetic principle in an effort to create a practical institution (125-6). How does one institutionalize a revolution anyway?

Shelley, recalling Vico, suggests that the poets were the first harmonizers — the first creators of society:

Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet: that is, the second poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion and political conditions of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it: developing itself in correspondence with their development. (130)

The poet produces and is produced by his/her society. The great poets synthesize their present age and point to the future ages. Their expressions are representative of their age and also of all time. These poets keep the poetic principle alive within their listeners, instructing through their/our imagination. They legislate humanity by keeping it human.

Rolling Along

From today’s Corinth Tattler: “Sisyphus, legendary founder of our fair city and lover of Anticleia, was condemed to eternal life rolling a stone up the hill in the realm of Hades. He accused Zeus, well known father of the gods, of abducting Aegina, vacationing daughter of the river-god Asopus. The god of the heaven and the earth denied the allegations: ‘Aegina Who? No! Ridiculous! Sisyphus is in hell for capturing and torturing Thanatos; no one could die. He had to be punished for this outrage.’ This issue has sparked much controversy among the citizens of Corinth. Many suggest that Sisyphus got what he deserved, while supporters and friends hope for his return one day. Also implicated in the debate is the sun god, Apollo. Apparently, according to the son of Zeus, Sisyphus had approached him about how to kill Salmoneus, Sisyphus’ brother, with impunity. Naturally, the sun god was shocked and sent Sisypus away. Yet, many witnesses state that the legendary founder of Corinth claims Apollo told him to sleep with Salmoneus’ daughter Tyro for a more fitting revenge. Charges are pending in this case, but, if convicted, Sisyphus may incure an additional punishment, like barbed wire being wrapped around the boulder, or a demon whipping him mercilessly while our founder struggles with his rock. The feud between Sisypheus and Salmoneus is well known amoung the citizens of Corinth, but the causes still remain a mystery. Presently, Sisyphus is serving his eternal sentence in Hades. The Lord of the Underworld could not be reached for comment.”

The Lessons of Hell

[quote]You must crave sunlight soon. —Anticleia to Odysseus[/quote]

[quote]I am no superman
I have no reasons for you
I am no hero, oh that’s for sure
But I do know one thing:
It’s where you are is where I belong
I do know, where you go
Is where I wanna be —DMB, “Where Are You Going?”[/quote]

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]erhaps the darkest moment in Odysseus’ journey home is his visit to the Underworld. Here the dead speak, whether the literal ghosts in the Homeric version of the afterlife, or the metaphorical shades from Odysseus’ past; the hero must meet and learn from their experiences if he is to continue his journey and complete his tasks successfully. Hell, here, may be interpreted as Odysseus’ own descent into his troubled mind to search for meaning in his harried wandering and to figure out what is destination should be. At his lowest point as a man and hero, Odysseus looks inward — away from the living — in order to see just how he fits into the world of the living, how he got to the position he’s in, and what he can to extricate himself from hell.

Appropriately enough for him, Odysseus finds himself in hell after he has been in one place for a year: on Aiaia with Circe. After prompting from his community, the men that are (un)fortunate enough to be on Odysseus’ journey with him, he realizes that he has been neglecting his responsibility not only to them, but to his larger community back on Ithaca, and to himself. Yes, the time with la belle dame sans merci has been pleasurable, but the journey must continue. The irony here is that Odysseus sees himself as the conquerer of the vile temptress, but in the end she turned him into a pacified lion that his men first encountered on Aiaia. In effect, she has rendered him as impotent as the wolves and mountain lions that lay “mild in her soft spell” (X.230-1). In his idleness, perhaps a manifestation of his own lotus in his passion for Circe, he has forgotten his desires for home, family, and kingdom. For this, Circe is a witch as Calypso will soon become in her offer of immortality, perhaps Odysseus’ greatest temptation.

It seems the hero’s path does not include these women, but must be found within Odysseus’ troubled mind before he can return to the right women: Penelope. His quest for who he is must continue by first traveling out of the world of life and into the shades of his past. He has the answers, but he doesn’t yet have the ability to divine them. That takes the darkness.

He first encounters Elpenor in the underworld, a grim reminder of his neglect as a leader of his men. Odysseus lets Elpenor die alone on Aiaia, then left without seeing to the latter’s honor in a proper ritual of respect. Next, Odysseus meets the seer Tiresias, the very ghost he journeyed to see for some guidance, yet Tiresias’ advice seems a mixed blessing: “One narrow strait may take you through [Posiden’s] blows: / denial of yourself, restriant of shipmates” (XI. 118-19). Does denial mean that Odysseus, the man skilled in all ways of contending, must deny the aspect of himself that is the trickster, the guileful Odysseus that seems to be his modus operandi, or that aspect of himself that might long to tarry with beautiful gods? Aren’t both aspects of the hero? Which is the true Odysseus that he must deny? Aren’t both equally part of himself? It seems that Odysseus’ desire to survive and return to set his lands in order dominates his personality, at least on a conscious level. Or must he deny that which he truly craves but would unman him in that to satisfy his own desires he must sacrifice his responsibility as a leader?

As a leader, Odysseus must speak for a community that he represents. A microcosm of that community travels with him in the form of his shipmates. Yet, this crew, like children, must be watched constantly — a task that Odysseus is not up to. In fact, they drive him to exhaustion at two crucial points on the journey: when they first approach Ithaca with the help of Aiolos’ bag of winds that Odysseus ties to the mast in order that he can sleep. The crew is suspicious of the bag — perhaps Odyssues hides some treasure — they open it, letting the maelstrom lose to set them back years on their journey. The second time proves more fatal: Odysseus falls asleep on the Isle of the Sun which gives his men the opportunity to kill and eat Helios’ cattle, thus dooming them to death. It seems that Odysseus fails in accomplishing Tiresias’ second directive while on his journey.

Perhaps the two directives are linked through one character flaw of Odysseus? In both instances, Odysseus does not inform his crew of the danger: he does not trust them enough to tell them about the bag of winds, nor does he warn them not to touch Helios’ beeves. In both cases, Odysseus is only concerned with Odysseus and treats his men like idiots. He does not consider his community, essentially condemning them to death. Had he trusted them — denying that part of himself that is the loner — he might have been able to save them. Odysseus seems to learn this lesson eventually. He returns secretly to Ithaca, and only by trusting others is he able to defeat the suitors and restore his house.

Odysseus’ inability to rely on assistance other than his own polymetis (versatility) and polytropos (many twists and turns) distances him from the community that is his ultimate goal to rejoin. The warrior has to be self-sufficient, often having to make agile decisions in an effort to stay alive, yet during times of peace, one must maintain a relationship with others around him in order to function from day to day. During war, humans kill each other — no need for trust; during peace, one must trust in order to be a member of a thriving community. It seems that Odysseus’ trust only in himself is that part that he should deny. While it might have worked in the Iliad (and that too is debatable), it can no longer function in times of peace.

So, if war is the destruction of community, then peace must be the building of community. Where does this begin? Ah, back to women. After meeting the ghost of his mother who died during his absense from Ithaca, Odysseus encounters the shade of Agamemnon who tells about his wife’s (Clytemnestra) perfidy: her taking a lover while Agamemnon was away, and her lover killing Agamemnon while the latter was bathing. (It seems irrelevant that Agamemnon was an idiot who seemed to deserve what he got, but that’s an issue for another essay.) Agamemnon warns Odysseus about women: “Let it be a warning / even to you. Indulge a woman never, / and never tell her all you know” (XI.513-15). With this in mind, Odysseus should “Land your ship / in secret on your island; give no warning. / The day of faithful wives is gone forever” (XI.433-35). While Agamemnon’s advice is sound in avoiding the wrath of the suitors, his reasons for giving it do not apply. While Clytemnestra may have been an unfaithful wife, and perhaps for good reason, Penelope has remained faithful, something Odysseus’ mother has just told him. Here we have the parallel that has been maintained explicitly throughout the epic between Clytemnestra and Penelope: the unfaithful versus the faithful wife. A further comparison could be made with Menelaus’ wife Helen, who seems to be a cross between Clytemnestra and Circe, and book III vividly illustrates the contentious relationship that she has with Menelaus. It seems that a faithful wife should not cause her husband any grief (not to mention providing him with a male heir), something Odysseus does not seem concerned with.

Finally, in an expression that one might consider the motto of the Odyssey, Achilles gives Odysseus some final advice about life and death. When Odysseus tells Achilles that the latter should “not be so pained by death” because he is remember as the greatest Argive warrior, Achilles answers pointedly: “Let me hear no smooth talk / of death from you, Odysseus, light of councils. / Better, I say, to break sod as a farm hand / or some poor country man, on iron rations, / than lord it over all the exhausted dead” (XI.577-81). Life is what happens before one dies — one’s reputation means nothing in the face of grim death. Coupled with his mother’s advice about “craving sunlight soon” since all that exists in the underworld are insubstantial bones that the pyre consumed long ago, Odysseus leaves the underworld seemingly ready to embrace life once again.

If indeed Odysseus’ trip is a metaphorical descent into his own troubled psyche, the shades, then, must be memories, or allegorical projections of Odysseus’ character. Perhaps it’s ultimately these memories of the past, ghosts of those he used to know, shades of the person he used to be that he must deny. We are all shackled to our past by spectres of who we were, but we shouldn’t let that keep us in hell, unable to live our lives, to travel the roads that lead to something more. Perhaps life’s lessons are accessible to us all, but maybe we have to be at those low points in our lives in order to realize them, yet we cannot stay there long. We might not know where we’re going, but we can’t do it alone for long. Home seems to be something that begins with two, and a responsibility to deny those parts of one’s self that will not let this happen, at least according to the lessons in Homer.

Poor, Confusing Elpenor

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ear the end of his stay with Circe in Book X of the Odyssey, Odysseus and crew prepare to leave Aiaia and head for the Underworld. It wasn’t his idea: Circe told him to go to hell. Well, what does he expect? He hung out with her for a year, ate her food, shared her “flawless bed of love,” and one day — from the prompting of his men — decides to leave, and fairly urgently judging by what happens to Elpenor.

Apparently, this idiot climbed up on the roof of Circe’s barn, or some other obscure part of her house, and proceeded to drink enough wine to cause him to pass out. There he slept, like a drunken little piggie, all night, until the voices of the crew preparing to leave woke him up. Maybe he was still drunk, but he stirred and fell off the roof — probably forgot he had climbed up there “to taste the cool night” — breaking his neck, and killing himself instantly. A true hero’s death, no?

In all their hasty preparation to get out of town, no one saw Elpenor fall, nor did they miss him at all. Instead, they sailed straight to hell; only then did they encounter his shade. Odysseus seemed surprised as he listened to his dead oarsman’s sob story. The latter asks Odysseus to return to Aiaia — apparently Circe’s island is on the way to hell — and give him a proper burial: “Heap up the mound there, and implant upon it / the oar I pulled in life with my companions” (XI.87-88). Now, I’m not one to knit-pick (OK, maybe I am), but you’d think they’d miss one of their oarsmen. Maybe Elpenor had halitosis, BO, or some other execrable quality that the rest of the men found offensive, so he had no friends, relegated to spending time on roofs with bottles of wine. Maybe he was too stupid to have any friends. Yet, if he made it through the Trojan war, he can’t be too dumb.

Anyway, I’m just wondering what this episode is doing in the text in the first place. It spans three books, X-XII, and just seems to be an afterthought — another repetitive incident to annoy students and professors alike.

I will assume that since Books IX though XII are narrated by Odysseus, the Elpenor episode is important to his journey and personal growth somehow. Perhaps the Odysseus that forgets Elpenor on Aiaia is not the same one that returns to bury him after chatting with the Underworld’s grim gathering of shades. Maybe seeing the shade of his dead crewman, even someone as seemingly insignificant as an oarsman, struck Odysseus in a way that seeing the heroes of the Trojan war doesn’t. Or, seeing Elpenor in the same state that Achilles and Agamemnon are in finally makes him realize that death is the great leveller. No matter one’s position while alive, everyone comes to the same place eventually. Therefore, everyone deserves to be treated fairly and humanely while alive. This lesson is similar to the one that Gilgamesh eventually brings home to Uruk.

Sounds good, and I wish I could believe it, but much of Odysseus’ subsequent actions suggest that he does not learn this lesson, or is still learning it as he travels home. Sure, he returns to bury Elpenor, but lets Circe talk him into traveling past the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and other perils as well. This he does without even seeing if there was another way, knowing full well that his men would be eaten by Scylla, perhaps swallowed by Charybdis, and lose their lives on the Island of the Sun. However, we do see the integral parts that the swineherd and cowherd play in Odysseus’ subsequent battle with the suitors; had it not been for them, Odysseus might not have been victorious.

Poor confusing Elpenor: you’ll be remembered as an idiot who fell off the roof, but one who became important after Odysseus’ life lesson in the underworld. Any other ideas about Elpenor?