Ten Years in the Making!

It's a nice feeling when a project gets finished.  It's an even nicer feeling when that project has been ten years in the making.  2002 was the year when Steve Mayo and I began to write our on-line commentary on Plato's Republic.  The idea was to provide students with a section-by-section commentary of Plato's text that would help them make sense of the fairly difficult philosophical concepts in the work. 

During the ten years that the commentary was on-line, we received hundreds of questions, comments, and requests for clarification from students and faculty members all over the world (from Latin America to Africa to the Australian outback to almost every state in the U.S.).  We also got a fair amount of praise from people who said that the commentary helped them to get through the text with far fewer tears than they might otherwise have had. 

Two years ago I took down the Sophia Project in order to create SophiaOmni, a publishing company founded upon distributivist economic principles.  Our commentary on the Republic came down with it, but Steve and I promised that we would rework what we had written and publish it through the newly established press.  That work has finally been done. 

The text of Plato's Republic, along with our section-by-section commentary, will be used for the first time in a college classroom this fall.  I can't promise that all the students in the class will be delighted about having to read Plato, but I know damn well that they'll be far better human beings for having struggled to make sense of the greatest ideas conceived by the greatest philosopher the world has ever known!

And that's got to count for something, doesn't it?

BOOK BLURB 

THE REPUBLIC is universally regarded as one of the most important works of philosophy ever written.   The text was written by Plato at the height of his literary and intellectual powers and treats subjects as diverse as politics, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, human psychology, family life, the role of women in society, educational theory, leadership, and warfare.   Some would say that the text is as relevant today as it was in the fifth century B.C. when it was written, providing a unique window into our own political and social lives in the 21^st century.

SophiaOmni’s study guide to THE REPUBLIC is unique in that it has been designed for the philosophical novice in mind.  Assuming no prior knowledge of the discipline of philosophy or Plato’s thought, this edition provides the reader with the tools he or she needs to read Plato’s work profitably.    Each section of the text has been divided topically and provided with clear commentary aimed at illuminating the major themes of the text and their philosophical significance.  References at the end of each section of the text provide resources for those seeking to delve further into any of the ideas presented in THE REPUBLIC.

Stephan T. Mayo and Michael S. Russo are Professors of Philosophy at Molloy College in New York.

ABOUT SOPHIA OMNI WISDOM CLASSICS

Great ideas endure forever.  SophiaOmni Wisdom Classics Editions are perennial works written by some of the world’s most provocative, iconoclastic thinkers, whose ideas continue to inspire and enlighten in our own age.  Each edition has been carefully edited and introduced by experts in the fields of philosophy, religion, or ethics to provide a helping hand to those who might otherwise be intimidated by the thought of reading great works from the past and set them on their way to a lifelong love affair with the pursuit of wisdom.

Plastic Conundrum

What is it? 

Why is it a problem? 

Why are we to blame? 

What can we do about it?

Read the post on Ecoblog

Reconsidering the 1970s

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I’ve always  had a real antipathy towards the 1970s.  Part of it undoubtedly has to do with the fact that I grew up during this decade and had to suffer through stagflation, the Carter presidency, and disco, which is justification enough, I suppose, for my hatred.  Compared to the magical 60s, the 70s also seemed like a downer, with none of the innocence and optimism of the previous decade.

But lately, I’ve begun to realize that the beautiful magic of the 1960s didn’t really end in January, 1970.  In fact the early part of the 70s contained much of the same spirit that made the 60s so much fun (woman’s liberation, the antiwar movement, student activism, and rock and roll).  The 70s that I’ve always hated, in fact, didn’t really begin until about 1977.  That’s when film began its precipitous decline with Star Wars and Jaws, two movies that are not bad themselves, but which signaled the death of the truly artistic film that had sprung up in the United States from about 1967 with films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate.   It’s also when music began to be corrupted by disco and every song had to be obnoxiously danceable, instead of something you listen to intently with your friends in your parent’s basement.

I’ve recently undertaken a project to study 70s culture, and amazingly I’ve discovered that most of the films that I love the most come from the come from the early part of that decade:  Lovers and Other Strangers, The Godfather, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Annie Hall, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Last Detail, Network, Patton, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s  Nest.  There was a grittiness and an authenticity to these films that has never been captured since on film and probably never will be. 

I’ve also noticed that many of the albums that I’ve come back to time and again over the years are also from this same period:  All Things Must Pass (George Harrison) Loaded (The Velvet Underground), Déjà Vu (Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young), Cosmos Factory (Creedence Clearwater Revival), L.A. Woman and Morrison Hotel (The Doors), Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen), Tapestry (Carol King), Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks (Bob Dylan),  Band on the Run (Wings).  Like the films of the early 70s, the music of that period had an honesty and integrity about it that I simply don’t find in later music.  Perhaps it was because the Viet Nam war was entering its most contentious phase or maybe turbulent politics of the times had something to do with it, but, whatever it was, there is a seriousness about the art of the early 70s that I think stands the test of time quite well. 

And even the decadence aspect of the early 70s, unlike what came later, is all in innocent fun.  As a case in point, watch the video I posted from 1973 featuring the Defranco Family.  The hair is atrocious, the bell bottoms are ridiculous, and the dance moves utterly and completely preposterous.  But when one considers what the country was going through in 1973 (Remember Richard Nixon?), there’s an innocent and joyful quality to the music that is actually quite impressive.

So the next time any of us feel like bashing the much maligned 1970s, we should keep in mind that what we really hate is the rise of the 1980s, which began the slick and superficial cultural decline in the United States that has not yet ended.  1977 started what Bob Dylan quite accurately referred to as “the age of masturbation.”  Before then, from about 1967 (the Summer of Love) to about 1976, we had what I would refer to as the age of infinite possibility – a time when it really did still seem like we could end war, poverty, disease, and racism.    We may not have succeeded in achieving these lofty goals, but you can hardly blame the polyester-clad prophets of the 70s for that.  They did their part; we’re the ones who have forgotten what these great visionaries of the past tried to teach.

On True Systematic Derangement

The following is an expert from Primal Regeneration by neo-beat writer Nicolo Capelli in which the author talks about the historic role of “systematic derangement of the senses” as the key to creative inspiration. 

In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley once famously wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”  In the same work, Huxley states the goal of mankind as to be “shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large.” 

Huxley’s view is that we human beings have allowed ourselves to view the world through the narrow and constricting prism of ordinary perception.  In The Doors of Perception, he posits that if we could but “cleanse” our way of looking at the world—to get beyond, in other words, the tyranny of our scientific, pragmatic ways of understanding reality—new possibilities that are virtually limitless would open themselves up to us.   The full potentials of our fantastic selves, in other words, would inevitably be unleashed.

So how exactly does one go about liberating his or her mind from its ordinary, mundane forms of perception?  Actually, this has been a question that has intrigued artists and writers for most of the 20^th century, but particularly during the 1950s and 60s in the United States, when a new consciousness was developing in the country and young people in particular were searching for ways to break beyond the conformist sensibilities of their parents’ generations.  The figure that many of these iconoclastic visionaries looked to in particular was a young poet with a checkered past and some rather strange ideas about artistic liberation—the 19^th century French bad-boy, Arthur Rimbaud.  

Born in 1854 in the small French town of Charleville, Rimbaud had already begun winning awards for his writing by the age of 13.  Attempting to flee the sterile conformism of his home life, he went to Paris and began a torrid affair with the poet Paul Verlaine, which ended badly for both of them.  In 1873, he wrote his most famous work, A Season in Hell (Une Saison en Enfer), which had an enormous impact on the direction of modern poetry.  By the age of 19, Rimbaud stopped writing poetry completely and left for Africa as a colonial tradesman.  In 1891 he developed a cancerous growth in his leg; the leg was amputated, but the cancer continued to spread, and he died at the age of 37.

In letters that Rimbaud wrote when he was still only a teenager, he outlined his vision for the true poet:

Right now, I’m beshitting myself as much as possible.  Why?  I want to be a poet, and I’m working to turn myself into a seer: you won’t understand at all, and it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to explain it to you.  It has to do with making your way towards the unknown by a derangement of all the senses. The suffering is tremendous, but one must bear up against it, to be born a poet, and I know that’s what I am.

The Poet makes himself into a seer by a long, involved and logical derangement of all the senses.  Every kind of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself; he exhausts every possible poison so that only one essence remains.  He undergoes unspeakable tortures that require complete faith and superhuman strength, rendering him the ultimate Invalid among men, the master criminal, the first among the damned—the supreme Savant!  For he arrives at the unknown!  For, unlike everyone else, he has developed  an already rich soul. He arrives at the unknown, and when, bewildered, he ends up losing his understanding of his visions, he has, at least, seen them!  It doesn’t matter if these leaps into the unknwn kill him: other awful workers will follow him; they’ll start at the horizons where the other has fallen.

As I mentioned, Rimbaud inspired many of his own contemporaries, but it was not until the 1950s, when he was “discovered” by Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Alan Ginsberg that Rimbaud’s vision truly began to take hold.

In particular Rimbaud’s view that true vision is attained by the artist though “a long…and systematic derangement of the senses” (dérèglement raisonné de tous les sens) would have an enormous role to play in the art, music, and culture of the Beats and the Counterculture.  For Rimbaud, this disorganization took the form of wild evenings drinking absinthe and smoking hashish to excess and engaging in outrageous behavior that scandalized Parisian society.  When the Beat writers encountered Rimbaud during their years at Columbia University they too attempted systematic derangement through excessive alcohol consumption, experimentation with narcotics, and anti-social forms of behavior (cohabitation, homosexual activity, the celebration of the criminal, the junkie, and in general all outcasts of society). 

Later in the 1960s, Rimbaud provided the inspiration for the founding members of the Counterculture, who saw LSD as a way of achieving Huxley’s cleansing of the doors of perception.  Individuals as diverse as Timothy Leary (a Harvard psychologist), Richard Alpert (later to become Hindu mystic Ram Dass), Huston Smith (theologian and author of The Religions of Man), and Andrew Weil (natural health guru) would unite to form the Harvard Psychadelic club, the aim of which was to use drugs like LSD to achieve personal and spiritual liberation. 

There’s no doubt that some of the greatest achievements of 1960s Counterculture—in particular the wild, psychedelic music of the period—were fueled by the use of LSD.  Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Greatful Dead, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane wrote some of their most original music while under the influence of the drug.  Unfortunately, LSD  proved to be a gateway drug that lead to the deaths of some of the brightest stars of the sixties music scene—most notably, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimmy Hendrix—and to serious rehab issues for many others. 

The heavy toll that drug use took on young people during the 1960s would make the lifestyles of the Counterculture—and to a lesser extent the Beat Generation—seem somehow illegitimate as a result.  But what exactly was the goal of those admittedly unconventional lifestyles?  It was nothing other than the desire to liberate oneself from the tyranny of conformism, to explore one’s deeper potential as a human being, and to allow one’s innate and unique creative potential to reveal itself as a result.  To the extent that human beings have fantastic selves buried within them, it seems evident that at least some members of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the Counterculture of the 1960s were extraordinarily successful in unleashing them and produced wild, uninhibited, often surrealistic creative work as a result.

Systematic derangement is certainly the key to breaking free of static, conformist, bourgeois notions of the self and is the catalyst for true creative inspiration.  But this derangement, if it is to be sustainable and non-destructive, must take a form other than chemical.  Hallucinogenic drugs may jolt the artist into perceiving the world around him in unconventional, spontaneous, and fluid ways, but the price he pays for such flashes of insight is often far too great—madness, debilitation, and ultimately premature death. 

So how does one engage in systematic derangement without damning his soul at the same time?  The answer lies in existential revolt.  The artist must constantly be in a state of resistance against all those social mechanisms that would confine his spirit.  He embrace the social outcast as his constant companion, he must spend his time in the dark places where the truly original minds lurk, he must pursue forbidden love, he must reject all static notions of the self, recognizing that he can be all things, that he is not limited by any essential nature.  Revolt enables the artist to become Rimbaud’s “first among the damned; the supreme Savant.”

Such revolt against the status quo is never easy and often comes at a sharp price.  But unlike chemical derangement, existential revolt offers the artist the possibility of transcendence without the total annihilation of the self.  In this sense, it is the only true solution to the modern crisis of spiritual banality that we all face. 

Ethics of Eating Meat

Can eating animals ever be morally justifiable?  Read the article on Ecoblog and let us know what you think.

Defending the First Science

I get seriously peeved when people slam the study of the humanities as being irrelevant or out-dated. I get even more upset when people mock my own discipline of philosophy and discourage students from majoring in it in preference for more “practical” subjects. Given how touchy I am about this topic, you can imagine how I reacted when I came upon a piece by Frank Bruni (an otherwise intelligent fellow) last week in the New York Times Sunday Review that all but told students that they were doomed to living in their parent's basement for the rest of their lives if they even considered a major in field like philosophy. Here the section of his article that really set me off:

According to an Associated Press analysis of data from 2011, 53.6 percent of college graduates under the age of 25 were unemployed or, if they were lucky, merely underemployed, which means they were in jobs for which their degrees weren’t necessary. Philosophy majors mull questions no more existential than the proper billowiness of the foamed milk atop a customer’s cappuccino. Anthropology majors contemplate the tribal behavior of the youngsters who shop at the Zara where they peddle skinny jeans.

I single out philosophy and anthropology because those are two fields — along with zoology, art history and humanities — whose majors are least likely to find jobs reflective of their education level, according to government projections quoted by the Associated Press. But how many college students are fully aware of that? How many reroute themselves into, say, teaching, accounting, nursing or computer science, where degree-relevant jobs are easier to find? Not nearly enough, judging from the angry, dispossessed troops of Occupy Wall Street.

Enraged, I whipped off a response to the Times that attempted to correct some of the mistakes that Mr. Bruni made in the article.  The article didn’t make it into the paper, but that’s the good news.  Apparently many people had the same reaction I did and there was a flood of objections to Bruni’s piece.  Here’s how I responded:

As someone who has spent much of his life promoting the humanities as a Professor of Philosophy at Molloy College on Long Island, I cannot help but be dismayed by Frank Bruni’s uninformed assault upon my discipline (“The Imperiled Promise of College”).  Mr. Bruni cities a report suggesting that philosophy and anthropology majors are “among the least likely to find jobs reflective of their educational level”  and then proceeds to make a snide insinuation that the best that philosophy graduates can hope for in life is a job at their local Starbucks.

What Mr. Bruni fails to realize is that while there is no specific career path for philosophy majors, the critical thinking and high-level communications skills provided by a philosophy degree at a reputable institution of higher education serves majors extremely well in whatever field they choose to enter—business, law, medicine, teaching, and government, and many others as well.   Perhaps that’s the reason why there has been a dramatic rise in the number of philosophy majors at some of the best colleges and universities all around the county.  At my own college, we’ve recently seen one of the largest increases in majors in the history of our institution and the vast majority of our graduates have gone on to rewarding careers where their philosophical training has proved to be an immense asset.   These students obviously know something that Mr. Bruni doesn’t. 

We keep hearing from business leaders that recent college graduates are ill-equipped to succeed in a highly competitive, global economy like the one in which we are living.  Perhaps the reason for this is that instead of promoting disciplines in the humanities, like philosophy, which train people in precisely the kinds of skills that we desperately need to reestablish our position as a leader in the world, we resort to simplistic stereotypes that serve only to discourage students from considering such majors.   That’s not only a loss for college students, but it’s a serious loss for our country as well. 

The Most Despicable Human Beings on the Planet

Who are the most despicable human beings on the planet?

Find out on Ecoblog! 

des·pi·ca·ble  [diˈspikəbəl] (adj):

1 - deserving to be despised.
2 - so worthless or obnoxious as to rouse moral indignation.
3 - really, really, really stinking rotten! [take my word for it: these folks really stink!]

The Greatest Film Ever Made

There are several different lists of the greatest films ever made (the American Film Institute's is the best known), and most of these lists consistently rank films like Citizen Kane, The Godfather, or Casablanca as the best film of all time. While I have absolutely no problem with any of these films, their selection is just a bit too predictable and safe for my liking. If I was asked to pick the great work of celluloid, I would have to go with something a bit more eclectic and interesting. For many years my own list included such questionable films as They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Lovers and Other Strangers, and The Apartment. Now I found a film that I think rightly deserves to be called THE GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME.

What is this cinematic masterpiece, you may be wondering? It's actually a film that didn't do very well when it first came out in 1998. In fact, many critics at the time panned it and most movie goers didn't even notice it. The film turned out to be a money loser for a pair of brothers whose previous films were often hailed as cinematic masterpieces. The general consensus was that the film was lightweight - fun, but lacking any sort of real depth.

Turns out that everyone at the time was completely wrong about this film. In fact, the first time I saw this movie, I didn't think very much of it at all. Sure I laughed at a few of the more obvious jokes, but the film left virtually no discernible impression on me. I barely thought about it at all until just recently when I was looking for something mindlessly diverting to watch and decided to rent it on Netflix. I was probably in a more expansive state of mind at the time, because the second time I watched this film I was absolutely enraptured by it. Every line was poetry to me, every performance in the film flawless, the cinematography breath-taking, the direction sublime.

So what is this film, you are probably itching to know by now? It's The Big Lebowski, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen, the creators of such outstanding films as Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and Raising Arizona. Fargo, released in 1996, was such a quirky, original film that it is hardly surprising that The Big Lebowski, which was made only two years later, would seem almost trivial in comparison. That is indeed unfortunate, because, while Fargo was brilliant in its portrayal of the banality of evil, The Big Lebowski is actually the ultimate existential film.

The premise of the movie is actually quite simple: Jeffrey Lebowski (aka "The Dude") is a total slacker, concerned only with bowling and getting stoned. His life is turned upside down when he is mistaken for another wealthy Lebowski (the "Big Lebowski" of the title), whose wife owes money to a local pornographer, Jackie Treehorn. Treehorn's thugs commit the ultimate act of desecration when they urinate on the Dude's favorite rug - a rug which "really tied the whole room together." Egged on by his moronic friend, Walter Sobchak, the Dude attempts to get the Big Lebowski to make restitution for his soiled rug. The rest of the film involves the Dude getting increasingly intertwined in the mystery concerning the possible kidnapping of Lebowski's trophy wife, Bunny, and the delivery of ransom money to the kidnappers.

The plot in this film is almost irrelevant, because the Cohen brothers' whole point is to capture the fundamental absurdity of the human condition. The Dude just wants to get through life as comfortably as possible, but life keeps throwing stumbling stones in his path. I believe that he represents the ultimate ideal of Buddhist enlightenment: the man who refuses to get caught up in vain, worldly desires and therefore is impervious to the effects of karma. The Dude is the Bodhisattva of ultimate wisdom and compassion.

The Dude can be contrasted with Donny, who is "out of his fucking element" (i.e., unconcerned with the Dharma) and, even more so with Walter, whose experiences in Vietnam cause him to mistakenly believe that he can control reality. The Dude is willing to follow Walter's advice, but every time he does so, he winds up making his own life much more difficult. At the end of the movie, we come to realize that there was no kidnapping of Lebowski's wife (i.e., life is fundamentally absurd), Donny is dead, the carpet is still soiled (the reality of human suffering), but "the Dude abides" anyway (he returns to his normal state of samadhi).

 

Alright, maybe I'm pushing it just a bit with my labored Buddhist interpretation of the film, but if nothing else, The Big Lebowski is a damn funny film, as the following bits of dialogue clearly demonstrate:

The Dude: Look, let me explain something to you. I'm not Mr. Lebowski. You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. That or His Dudeness... Duder... or El Duderino, if, you know, you're not into the whole brevity thing.

Maude Lebowski: What do you do for recreation?

The Dude: Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.

The Big Lebowski: What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski?

The Dude: Dude.

The Big Lebowski: Huh?

The Dude: Uhh... I don't know sir.

The Big Lebowski: Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost? Isn't that what makes a man?
The Dude: Hmmm... Sure, that and a pair of testicles.

The Dude: Walter, what is the point? Look, we all know who is at fault here, what the fuck are you talking about?
Walter Sobchak: Huh? No, what the fuck are you... I'm not... We're talking about unchecked aggression here, dude.
Donny: What the fuck is he talking about?
The Dude: My rug.
Walter Sobchak: Forget it, Donny, you're out of your element!
The Dude: Walter, the chinaman who peed on my rug, I can't go give him a bill, so what the fuck are you talking about?
Walter Sobchak: What the fuck are you talking about? The chinaman is not the issue here, Dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
The Dude: Walter, this isn't a guy who built the railroads here. This is a guy...
Walter Sobchak: What the fuck are you...?
The Dude: Walter, he peed on my rug!
Donny: He peed on the Dude's rug.
Walter Sobchak: Donny you're out of your element! Dude, the Chinaman is not the issue here!

Who but the Cohen Brothers could possibly come up with dialogue as nutty and absurd as this? Every minute of the film is punctuated by incredible dialogue like this, delivered perfectly by phenomenal actors like Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, and especially, John Turturro, who I believe deserved an Academy Award for his portrayal of The Jesus. Three or four minutes of screen time in total and Turturro creates one of the most memorable characters in film since Scarlett O'Hara. If that kind of performance doesn't merit an Academy Award, then I can't imagine what does!

You can keep all those trite, predictable films that typically are considered "masterpieces of cinema." When I want to watch a damn flawless piece of movie magic, it is going to be The Big Lebowski or nothing. The Dude abides, man.

Ostia Dialogue #7 (397 AD)

The following is a dialogue of the ancient Roman philosopher, Lucius Scatullus.  As you may recall, Lucius converted from paganism to Christianity around 397 AD at the urging of his saintly mother, Ramona.  After his conversion he left Rome, where he was serving as a teacher of rhetoric, in order to return to his native city of Carthage.  He was accompanied on this arduous trek by his mother and several young associates who saw in him the sort of brilliant luminary who could lead them to “out of the darkness of this life and into the celestial realms of pure ideas” (1.2).

In November 397, Lucius and his companions stopped at the port city of Ostia for several weeks to await the boat that would take them back to North Africa.  While they were in Ostia, Lucius began to instruct them in the discipline of philosophy, so that they might be prepared for their own entry into the “great mysteries of the sacred truth” (2.7). 

The following selection comes from the “Ostia Dialogues of Lucius Scatullus” (New York: Academica Press, 2012) and has been faithfully translated by the noted Latin scholar, Alcibiades J. Grunthaler.

Dialogue #7: On the Ontological Status of Beasts

When all were assembled in the lecture hall, I began the disputation.

“Is it preferable,” I asked, “to be a man or a beast?”

“A man,” they all responded in one voice.

“And why, pray, do you think that it is preferable to be a man?” I asked.

“Because man has been given the gift of reason by the Almighty, and therefore has dominion over all creation and over all the beasts of the land, sea, and sky,” said Confutatus, with great devotion. 

I could not help but be impressed by the depth of wisdom in one so young and the confidence in which he assented to the lofty propositions contained in Sacred Scripture. 

“And if man has dominion over creation, and over all the beasts contained therein,” I went on, “should he not be able to do as he wishes with these beasts provided that his actions do not violate the precepts of Sacred Scripture?”

“Without doubt,” they all assented.

“And so it follows that we may hunt the beast and eat the beast and use the beast to make our human lives more pleasant and comfortable, doesn’t it?  And that nothing man does to the beast of the land, sea, or sky can be considered sin, because God has given the beast to us to lord over and to dominate according to the dictates of our own reason?”

“That is true,” said my mother who most assuredly was a mother to all of us in her maternal wisdom.  “But man must behave towards the beast with propriety and decorum, as befits our status as the superior species, created by the Lord in his own image.”

All nodded their heads in approval at the perspicacity of one of her sex.

“But might man then also use parts of the beast to make jellied preserves and mocca lattes?” asked Maledictus.  “For it would seem that this too would be in keeping with the dictates of Sacred Scripture.”

“That would seem self-evidently true,” I replied. “For there is nothing in Sacred Scripture to indicate that God has any objection to tasty sweet preserves and frothy caffeinated beverages … provided of course that they are consumed at the right times, in the right quantities, and with a spirit of mind that resists the sensuous pleasures that such delights can give rise to in the human mind.”

“One must not consume such delights during Lent either,” rejoined mother, “for that sort of lascivious behavior is clearly forbidden on days of the Lord.”

“Your words are like balm to our aching minds, my mother,” I said. 

Then Licentius hesitatingly entered the discussion:  “But what if one wished to invite some beast of the field to May Fesitival as one’s guest, because the girl that one has been dating—unfaithful slut!—has seen fit to leave him for another?  Might one extend an offer of invitation to this beast of the field, so that he might have a dancing partner for such an event?”

The question posed was a truly perplexing one and would require all my skills as a teacher of rhetoric to resolve.  “What sort of beast did you have in mind to invite as a dance partner, Licentius?  For, as you are well aware, God has endowed certain beasts with greater potential for social intercourse than others.  The serpent, for instance, would make a particularly poor dance partner, for his feet have been constrained by God as a punishment for the sins his ancestor committed in Paradise.  The mongoose is a much better dancer, but God in his wisdom has seen fit to make him low to the ground, thus producing extreme lower back pains in anyone who would choose him for a dance partner.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a goat,” he replied.

“A goat?”

“Yes, a goat,” he said.  “For you see, I’ve always felt that God has created goats for more than just the occasional feast at Easter time or for yummy goat cheese to spread on crusty bread.  They are quite handsome creatures, are they not?  With that little tuft of hair under their chins and those wicked eyes…..Oh yes, how could one not find a goat appealing!”

“Even though the goat has the hoofs of Mephistopheles and the eyes of Beelzebub?”  I asked.  “In what way can that creature possibly be attractive to mortal man?”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of any long-term commitments,” he replied.  “Goats are just fun to be around that’s all, especially when they’ve had too much to drink.”

“I’m dating a raccoon named Daphne,” Maledictus blurted out, not wanting to seem uninformed about the topic under discussion.   “She’s sweet, but at times she pressures me into doing things that I’m sure are not sanctioned in Sacred Scripture.”

“What sort of things,” I asked, knowing full well that I really didn’t want to hear the answer.

“She’s into biting and scratching.”  He said.  “I don’t know why she can’t just cuddle like every other raccoon I know!  I’m beginning to dread going over to her hole, because I know how painful it is going to be.”

“Perhaps we are digressing somewhat from the topic of our disputation,” I said, the alarm in my voice evident for all to hear.  “I believe that these sorts of subjects are best left for the confessional.”

But just when I thought I had gotten the conversation back on track, my mother felt compelled to reveal her own personal forays into the realm of bestial familiarity, much to my dismay.   

“Before I married your father, Pompidorus,” she confessed with tears welling up in her aged eyes, “I was engaged to a spinney toed gecko named Morty.  Oh the wonderful times we had together.  Talk about a dancer! He could work me around the dance floor like no one else I’ve ever met.”

“Mother, please!” I pleaded, beginning to feel as though our philosophical discussion was once again getting far off track.

“And what a kisser!” she added.  “With a tongue like that, you could only imagine the possibilities for romantic encounters.   Oh, I loved him so dearly.  Why he even offered me his paw in the bonds of holy matrimony, but I like a fool turned him down.  Just imagine what I could be doing right now instead of listening to a bunch of philosophers prattle on endlessly about totally inconsequential topics!  Oh those steamy nights we had in MIlan!  Him in his new leathery skin and me in the exotic little negligee that he bought at some pagan shop in Rome. “

“Mother, I beg you!”

“Of course, then I wouldn’t have you for a son…but I might have had some daughters instead…little gecko girls to help me with the wash and catch flies for the dinner table.  And after a long day of laboring in the kitchen, I’d have those wanton nights to look forward to with Morty and his sticky tongue.   Oh, that amazing tongue…”

“I think that our discussion has progressed about as far as it can go for today,” I interjected, “for some topics are clearly beyond the rational abilities of man.” 

I closed my bible hastily and gathered up my scattered lecture notes.  “Tomorrow we’ll discuss the tripartite division of the soul according the teachings of the Platonists.”

And, as I walked as quickly as my legs could carry me towards the chapel, I heard my mother speaking in a whisper-like voice to my young colleagues.  “Platonists,” she said.  “I could tell you some things about the Platonists that would make your hair stand on end.   They pretend that they’re only interested in the world of the forms, but I can assure you that those dirty little buggers have other sorts of forms on their minds…”

       

Into the Abyss

 
the slide
into oblivion
begins
with a
single step—
ker-plop
and you are
completely
undone.

it's true, man; it's totally and absolutely true.
look it up in the king james bible,
and you'll find out for yourself.

o -
bliv -
i -
on -

it's closer than you can possibly imagine
in that kooky, krazy, screwed-up mind of yours.

o -
bliv -
i -
on -

that's the premium ticket,
that's the real deal,
that's the reality from which you sprang, baby,
and the place where you are destined to return.

o -
bliv -
i -
fuckin'
on -

try to deny it if you choose,
but there just no escaping it....

oblivion is your destiny.