Philosophical Underpinnings of Loki: Episode 4

As noble and true Plato's Republic seems to be, there is a dark side to it, for Socrates' expresses the need for a "noble lie" which carries a lot of weight on how to organize his static state. The noble lie appears to be a marriage lottery but it's actually a way to control the …

Faust’s Unlikely Guide

Many great characters have a guide. Homer was Virgil's guide, Virgil was Dante's guide, Morpheus was Neo's guide. Both Morpheus and Virgil were men of cracked faith, spoiled by what they didn't know, disillusioned by revelation. It's interesting that Faust's guide wasn't Dante. Nor was the great Earth Spirit Faust's guide because he was unworthy …

Dissonance in The Deep (Writing Sample from Undercurrents)

The angel rose from his throne, spread his wings, and shot off into the darkness, further, and further, past the dying stars and floating asteroids. Until the gravitational pull was no more, he shone his light into the darkness, but he saw nothing. He strained his eyes and shone brighter, but it was folly, for …

Converted into Original Chaos

Dante's Inferno has an extraordinary passage where Dante likens Christ's harrowing of hell to the pre-Socratic Empedocles' cosmic forces of Love and Strife. The Inferno passage is: Now I would have you know: the other time that I descended into lower Hell, this mass of boulders had not yet collapsed; but if I reason rightly, …

Reason’s Peevish Blame

Before the story of The Castle Otranto, the story that started gothic literature, there is a sonnet tucked away. It's Romantic in its implications for it warns us of reason's peevish blame. That reason, science, mathematics, don't always cut to the heart of the matter. Oh! guard the marvels I relateOf fell ambition scourg'd by …

Keats on Negative Capability

The advantage of Negative Capability is that your identity isn't an obstacle. You can step outside of yourself and not be Stephen or Helen, be wrapped up in one's biology, or psychology, or social/environmental situation, but as a pure human being untainted by the products of what made one. If this is truly possible is …

Plato on the Madness of the Muses

It might be so if madness where simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. ... The third kind is the madness of those who are possessed by the Muses; which taking hold of a delicate and virgin soul, …