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Jung On Synchronicity and the Paranormal (JoS&tP) is an important collection because it brings together in one short and well representative book, in Jung's own words, his interest in and experiences of the paranormal to a degree until now I'd read hints of but had never so plainly seen stated and elaborated. JoS&tP book goes far beyond what Jung included in his near-autobiographical, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. In MD&R there are included some paranormal activities, but my reading between its lines suggested to me that there was much more than was disclosed there. JoS&tP confirms that and then some.
In this anthology Roderick Main has done something quite interesting: even as Jung discloses a personal encounter with a ghost and other paranormal activities, including seances, Main provides linkages to some of the more under-discussed implications of quantum mechanics as they may apply to possible theories of paranormal experiences. Jung was very interested in the modern theories of physics because he saw a tangible theoretical and/or philosophical link between them and what his experiences with and ideas about paranormal experiences were leading him to think and theorize about psychology and the paranormal.
I particularly and thoroughly enjoyed the letters that were included, and not just because I love writing and reading 'heavy' philosophical letters too, but because Jung's informal writing is delightful to read. He relaxes his careful official persona, and expresses some of his unsupported speculations and ideas as to the nature of things inexplicable, such as the meaning of life, in ways always thoughtful, but frequently funny, too.
His face-to-face encounter with a haf-faced ghost in a British farm house is particularly interesting because my reading of the encounter entangled it to me in one of the most interesting and quite frankly bizarre synchronicity-petites I have ever experienced. (See egajd.blogspot.ca if you are curious.)
Despite this being about the 'airy fairy' concepts of synchronicity and ghosts, mediums and seances, Jung kept his writing and speculations and experiences 'real'. He doesn't leap to conclusions with his experiences, but allows them to challenge and question his pre-formulated beliefs about what may or may not be so-called reality. And in the process he challenges the validity of our ideological fixation on a rationalistic causal -- 'Descartian' science. Unlike much of western science, perhaps especially the behaviourists who dismiss as unreal that which falls outside the bounds that their theories delineate, Jung proves his stature as a real scientist by neither dismissing nor idealizing his paranormal experiences: they become simply a part of the chisel that Life provided him to chip away at our false ideas and thinking, even if it is stingy in providing additional clues.
On reflection I am not sure what I expected to read before I began reading JoS&tP, but it turned out to be a far, far better read than I'd anticipated. Perhaps it was the inclusion of so many letters and extracts from letters, which I'd not read before except in tiny citations.
Also, my prejudice regarding the word 'paranormal' lead me to anticipate something other than what Jung explored, which is a very scientific, coherent, and sound argument that our scientific foundation in causal biased rationalism is not just misguided, but inadequate to explain the full range of what happens within the so-called bounds of life.
I highly recommend this book. This is a solid five stars. (egajdbooks.blogspot.ca)
I enjoyed it, but it wasn't a great book. Good, and that's about it. The praises on the cover were at best overblown, at worst histrionic. (And it further confirmed my opinion that Oprah seems to like mostly good, but not truly great, books.)
When I'd finished the read I set aside the book without any additional thought. But by accident I discovered that an e.friend was reading it, and she had exactly the same reaction. And then I remembered that the friend who'd lent The Reader to me, had had the exact same reaction: 'It was okay,' he'd said with a somewhat dismissive shrug and dragged out emphasis on 'okay.'
And it was -- is -- okay. Reading it wasn't a waste my life, but didn't significantly affect it either.
To my surprise, the movie was in some ways superior to the book. Note, I saw the movie first, and so that may engender bias. However, normally I enjoy books far more than the movie covers because moving pictures do not convey, usually, complexity of thought, personality or feeling as vibrantly as can well-written words. However, my hat's off to Kate Winslet and the team behind the movie, because it actually surpassed what the book was able to convey.
My thought is that that is because the book, while good, isn't brilliant. I guess, after having my thoughts meander, what I am concluding is that The Reader is competent and that it does provokes some thought on the nature of duty and obligation and how they are as easily instruments of evil as they are of good. And the 'issue' of the sexual relationship between the older woman and the older boy was reasonably well written, as was its effect on his adult life. Reasonably well written, but it did not sing the body electric.
This book is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who have become ideologically fixated on empirical / behavioural science in the humanities. Not only is this a book for people interested in how language works, it is far more importantly a powerful book for those who have come to believe that much of what passes for science in the behaviour / humanistic fields has been plagued with a false science that has managed to turn empiricism into a mind numbing ideology. For many readers, NC:APO has the potential to be a transformational book in that it provides the solid analysis that supports making the leap from the flaccid so-called truths that behaviourism has provided us with to a resurgence of the scientific attitude of 18th & 19th century rationalism. That rationalism, unlike today's mask of rationalism, does not pretend that their philosophy can explain things beyond what it can.
Chomsky's argument applies to other fields, such as economics and psychology. For example, the behaviourist B.F. Skinner's is mentioned several times in unflattering terms. (In the book of his interviews with Mitsou Ronat Language and Responsibility, he goes so far as to say, paraphrased, that as far as he knows behaviourism has contributed nothing of meaningful scientific value.)
Empiricism, perhaps especially in fields like linguistics, economics and psychology, act as if all behaviours and characteristics of the human species and the individuals within it, can be explained by stimulus/response theories. The book begins with Leiber succinctly recapping the history of how Chomsky, with the ease of a knife cutting through water, revolutionized linguistics and proved irrevocably that empirical behaviourism is completely inadequate to explain not only the acquisition of language but also its comprehension. Leiber describes Chomsky's argument that, since the sentences of a language that can be created are infinite, that the behavioural linguistic practice of cataloguing them so as to fully describe a language is fruitless. Chomsky extends that argument by pointing out that most sentences that human's comprehend in their lives they will not have ever seen or heard before. He then convincingly argues that the rules of grammar allow for sentences to be constructed that are incomprehensible, whereas sentences are easily created that don't properly follow the rules of grammar but which can be perfectly comprehensible. All of these are extremely strong indictments of some of behaviourism's fundamental tenets of human understanding of language and understanding.
Chomsky's pragmatic rationalism may be most pointedly observed when he describes the real world experience that children learn language before they know the so-called rules of grammar. That repeatedly observed behaviour, from a behavioural model of language acquisition, would ostensibly be unheard of. Chomsky also observes with pragmatic rationalism, that children's language acquisition is largely independent of the oftentimes horrible language usage and training that parents provide. He also suggests with pragmatic rationalism that one might even be able to argue that in extreme cases the acquisition of language skills would appear to be independent of any significant language training because the training skills or environment are so poor that that the child's language acquisition would seem to occur despite their language training behaviour.
The final nail in the behaviourist's coffin, as it pertains to linguistics anyway, is that when the rationale of the behaviourists' practices were questioned vigorously, it was revealed that behavioural linguistic practices were largely preconfigured by the human behaviour and/or psychological bias and preconceptions of those formulating the 'science.'
Rationalistically, as opposed to empirically, Chomsky posits that there is something in the human being that promotes language acquisition independent of race and strict behaviourism. He called it universal grammar.
And this gave me one of the greatest of finds, discoveries, epiphanies, joys I have experienced from reading a book in long time: in exactly the same way, with a nearly identical conceptualization, Chomsky proposes a description of language that is nearly identical to the methods and rational behind Jung's formulation of the Collective Unconscious. YES! My intuitive prompt, from several years ago, that there was something similar in the philosophy of these two ostensibly disparate thinkers has been beautifully, elegantly, and delightfully affirmed. I wonder, is it just a coincidence that these two thinkers that I highly respect are both ignored or denigrated by our society's political and education leaders?
This commonality is even more strongly affirmed with the idea of a 'deep structure,' which Chomsky posits provides the fundamentals of language. Its description reminds me of Jung's descriptions of the common imagery and symbolism of myth, dreams as an expression of the collective unconscious. And when the problem of how to constrain a universal grammar to create only meaningful sentences was discussed, I am again reminded of Jung's theories about the problem of constraining (not Jung's word) the symbols to being meaningful. A very amusing formulation of that problem is the anecdote attributed to Sigmund Freud: sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.
I struggled to begin this review, so maybe I'll start by saying that this play is so good that as soon as I finished it the first time, I promptly re-reread it. [To see this review, complete with active links and images, Google 'egajdbooks waiting for godot'.]
My struggle was between being too glib: "This is a brilliant metaphor for the condition our human condition has conditioned us to unconditionally accept" -- to being too dismissive, such as was expressed by a co-worker who, upon learning I was reading Godot, said "I watched it on TV. It was great! A great play about nothing."
But despite an ostensible appearance that it is about nothing, nothing is further from the truth. WfG is definitely not about nothing. The metaphors are nearly endless, from the simple ones such as the too small boots pinching the feet -- constricted understanding hobbles psychological/emotional movement. Beckett even extends that to include putting on another's boots in the hopes of acquiring the ability to walk with less discomfort, metaphor for putting on another's ideas.
I haven't gone onto the web to search for the likely endless reams of ideas this play has generated. Nor do I want to do a review of the play, as such. Instead I would like to briefly concentrate the character Lucky. [Note: I will discuss this role in some detail, so if you want to be surprised by Lucky in the play, do not read on before reading the play.]
Lucky comes onto the stage with a noose around his neck carrying a collection of stuff. The end of the rope extends out of sight, off stage, making Pozzo, Lucky's master, initially invisible. (Is that the smallest of hints of Adam Smith's Invisible Glove?) Pozzo controls Lucky with the use of the noose, via jerks (Lucky has open sores from it), and with a whip and short, usually one word, commands such as the On! and Back! that introduce the pair. Later, Pozzo wants to put on display to Godot's waiters, Estragon and Vladimir, Lucky's intellectual prowess, his ability to think:
~~
POZZO: Stand back! (Vladimir and Estragon move away from Lucky. Pozzo jerks the rope. Lucky looks at Pozzo.) Think, pig! (Pause. Lucky begins to dance.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Forward! (Lucky advances.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Think!
(Silence.)
LUCKY: On the other hand with regard to--
~~
[I blogged this section more extensively as part of a peculiar fushigi. Google "egajd Godot, Ballet, Pocket Watch & Alice".]
This has particular resonance for me because of a recent employee motivational propaganda campaign I (and at least several thousands of others) were subjected to. It was comprised of a series of 3 or 4 posters and their electronic facsimile being festooned across the offices. The posters were comprised of two parts. The top half was a single word, a command: Sit, Stay, Say. The balance were terse reasons for obeying the command, for the first two, and what to say for the last one.
Less specifically, the extended thinking that Lucky expresses is, of course, a perfect metaphor for what passes for thinking through the news media and many official journals: a huge pile of impressive sounding phrases that at best hide the truth but at worst promulgate false truths and ideology. And all co-mingled with a curious obsession about sports. [I wonder if Beckett was influenced by some of George Orwell's pointed criticism of the media and much intellectual thought, such as he delineated in Homage to Catalonia? Wikipedia does not reference such a connection.]
But why does Lucky stay with the physically and verbally abusive Pozzo? He is, ostensibly, a free man. Pozzo even ascribes to him freedom. Well, the answer is an interesting one, and reminds me of the current batch of presidential candidates who blame the poor for being poor because if they didn't want to be poor they could work themselves out of it. Here's Pozzo's reasoning for Lucky's enslavement to him:
~~
POZZO: Ah! Why couldn't you say so before? Why he doesn't make himself comfortable? Let's try and get this clear. Has he not the right to? Certainly he has. It follows that he doesn't want to. There's reasoning for you. And why doesn't he want to? (Pause.) Gentlemen, the reason is this.
VLADIMIR: (to Estragon). Make a note of this.
POZZO: He wants to impress me, so that I'll keep him.
ESTRAGON: What?
POZZO: Perhaps I haven't got it quite right. He wants to mollify me, so that I'll give up the idea of parting with him. No, that's not exactly it either.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He wants to cod me, but he won't.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He imagines that when I see how well he carries I'll be tempted to keep him on in that capacity.
ESTRAGON: You've had enough of him?
POZZO: In reality he carries like a pig. It's not his job.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He imagines that when I see him indefatigable I'll regret my decision. Such is his miserable scheme. As though I were short of slaves! (All three look at Lucky.) Atlas, son of Jupiter! (Silence.) Well, that's that, I think. Anything else?
(Vaporizer.)
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: Remark that I might just as well have been in his shoes and he in mine. If chance had not willed otherwise. To each one his due.
VLADIMIR: You waagerrim?
POZZO: I beg your pardon?
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: I do. But instead of driving him away as I might have done, I mean instead of simply kicking him out on his arse, in the goodness of my heart I am bringing him to the fair, where I hope to get a good price for him. The truth is you can't drive such creatures away. The best thing would be to kill them.
(Lucky weeps.)
ESTRAGON: He's crying!
POZZO: Old dogs have more dignity. (He proffers his handkerchief to Estragon.) Comfort him, since you pity him. (Estragon hesitates.) Come on. (Estragon takes the handkerchief.) Wipe away his tears, he'll feel less forsaken.
(Estragon hesitates.)
VLADIMIR: Here, give it to me, I'll do it.
(Estragon refuses to give the handkerchief.)
(Childish gestures.)
POZZO: Make haste, before he stops. (Estragon approaches Lucky and makes to wipe his eyes. Lucky kicks him violently in the shins. Estragon drops the handkerchief, recoils, staggers about the stage howling with pain.) Hanky!
(Lucky puts down bag and basket, picks up handkerchief and gives it to Pozzo, goes back to his place, picks up bag and basket.)
ESTRAGON: Oh the swine! (He pulls up the leg of his trousers.) He's crippled me!
POZZO: I told you he didn't like strangers.
~~
Interesting. Lucky has enslaved himself in order to appease his master, to be liked enough to be seen as worthy by Pozzo.
So why did Lucky kick Estragon in the shins? As I have been thinking about this, it struck me that Lucky's behaviour corresponds exactly with those who have fully submitted to their lot in life. My first realization of this tickled out from Noam Chomsky's reference to the 'benevolence' expressed by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to 'his' workers in 1896:
These are the fruits of the fierce corporate campaign undertaken as soon as American workers finally won the right to organize in the mid-1930s, after long years of bitter struggle and violent repression unmatched in the industrial world. Perhaps we may even return to the days when the admired philanthropist Andrew Carnegie could preach the virtues of "honest, industrious, self-denying poverty" to the victims of the great depression of 1896, shortly after he had brutally crushed the steel workers union at Homestead, while announcing that the defeated workers had sent him a wire saying, "Kind master, tell us what you wish us to do and we will do it for you." It was because he knew "how sweet and happy and pure the home of honest poverty is" that Carnegie sympathized with the rich, he explained, meanwhile sharing their grim fate in his lavishly appointed mansions fn37 (37. Sexton, Patricia Cayo. The War on Labor and the Left Westview 1991, p83f.)
So a well-ordered society should run, according to the "vile maxim of the masters." (Year 501: The Conquest Continues, pg56-7).
Eventually, the people brutalized recognize the futility of fighting it, and so beat anyone who might offer them hope as being trouble makers or a threat to the status quo. Social critic and comic Bill Maher makes frequent reference to the American labourer who descries as a kind of evil the benefits European workers get in terms of time off, health, paternal benefits, etc. instead of struggling to achieve them for themselves.
Similarly, in the movie Guess Who's Coming for Dinner the parents actively dissuade the interracial couple because there would be trouble for the couple and their parents, too. Freedom roped off with fear.
Lucky is Estragon and Vladimir. Lucky is enslaved to Pozzo by choice -- more specifically having chosen willingly or not to accept the lack of choice -- not the rope. Estragon and Vladimir are enslaved to the hope of Godot providing them their direction in life.
The metaphors are obvious: we make our choices to remain as we are, whether we are societally successful or not, by accepting the situation we find ourselves in by submitting to choices others have made for us, then hoping that abandoning our Selves to those seen or unseen others will bring us succour.
The challenge, here, is twofold. The courage to see things exactly as they are within ourselves and in the society, and the wisdom to know what can and cannot be changed. I have no idea how either of these things are done.
This play is endlessly rich in meaning. I would now like to see it, and to produce an amateur production of it -- or perhaps a reading. Hmmmm.
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Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal (Princeton Paperbacks) by C Jung
GDuperreault, April 28, 2012
Jung On Synchronicity and the Paranormal (JoS&tP) is an important collection because it brings together in one short and well representative book, in Jung's own words, his interest in and experiences of the paranormal to a degree until now I'd read hints of but had never so plainly seen stated and elaborated. JoS&tP book goes far beyond what Jung included in his near-autobiographical, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. In MD&R there are included some paranormal activities, but my reading between its lines suggested to me that there was much more than was disclosed there. JoS&tP confirms that and then some.In this anthology Roderick Main has done something quite interesting: even as Jung discloses a personal encounter with a ghost and other paranormal activities, including seances, Main provides linkages to some of the more under-discussed implications of quantum mechanics as they may apply to possible theories of paranormal experiences. Jung was very interested in the modern theories of physics because he saw a tangible theoretical and/or philosophical link between them and what his experiences with and ideas about paranormal experiences were leading him to think and theorize about psychology and the paranormal.
I particularly and thoroughly enjoyed the letters that were included, and not just because I love writing and reading 'heavy' philosophical letters too, but because Jung's informal writing is delightful to read. He relaxes his careful official persona, and expresses some of his unsupported speculations and ideas as to the nature of things inexplicable, such as the meaning of life, in ways always thoughtful, but frequently funny, too.
His face-to-face encounter with a haf-faced ghost in a British farm house is particularly interesting because my reading of the encounter entangled it to me in one of the most interesting and quite frankly bizarre synchronicity-petites I have ever experienced. (See egajd.blogspot.ca if you are curious.)
Despite this being about the 'airy fairy' concepts of synchronicity and ghosts, mediums and seances, Jung kept his writing and speculations and experiences 'real'. He doesn't leap to conclusions with his experiences, but allows them to challenge and question his pre-formulated beliefs about what may or may not be so-called reality. And in the process he challenges the validity of our ideological fixation on a rationalistic causal -- 'Descartian' science. Unlike much of western science, perhaps especially the behaviourists who dismiss as unreal that which falls outside the bounds that their theories delineate, Jung proves his stature as a real scientist by neither dismissing nor idealizing his paranormal experiences: they become simply a part of the chisel that Life provided him to chip away at our false ideas and thinking, even if it is stingy in providing additional clues.
On reflection I am not sure what I expected to read before I began reading JoS&tP, but it turned out to be a far, far better read than I'd anticipated. Perhaps it was the inclusion of so many letters and extracts from letters, which I'd not read before except in tiny citations.
Also, my prejudice regarding the word 'paranormal' lead me to anticipate something other than what Jung explored, which is a very scientific, coherent, and sound argument that our scientific foundation in causal biased rationalism is not just misguided, but inadequate to explain the full range of what happens within the so-called bounds of life.
I highly recommend this book. This is a solid five stars. (egajdbooks.blogspot.ca)
The Reader (Vintage International) by Bernhard Schlink
GDuperreault, March 10, 2012
I enjoyed it, but it wasn't a great book. Good, and that's about it. The praises on the cover were at best overblown, at worst histrionic. (And it further confirmed my opinion that Oprah seems to like mostly good, but not truly great, books.)When I'd finished the read I set aside the book without any additional thought. But by accident I discovered that an e.friend was reading it, and she had exactly the same reaction. And then I remembered that the friend who'd lent The Reader to me, had had the exact same reaction: 'It was okay,' he'd said with a somewhat dismissive shrug and dragged out emphasis on 'okay.'
And it was -- is -- okay. Reading it wasn't a waste my life, but didn't significantly affect it either.
To my surprise, the movie was in some ways superior to the book. Note, I saw the movie first, and so that may engender bias. However, normally I enjoy books far more than the movie covers because moving pictures do not convey, usually, complexity of thought, personality or feeling as vibrantly as can well-written words. However, my hat's off to Kate Winslet and the team behind the movie, because it actually surpassed what the book was able to convey.
My thought is that that is because the book, while good, isn't brilliant. I guess, after having my thoughts meander, what I am concluding is that The Reader is competent and that it does provokes some thought on the nature of duty and obligation and how they are as easily instruments of evil as they are of good. And the 'issue' of the sexual relationship between the older woman and the older boy was reasonably well written, as was its effect on his adult life. Reasonably well written, but it did not sing the body electric.
Noam Chomsky by Justin Leiber
GDuperreault, March 4, 2012
This book is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who have become ideologically fixated on empirical / behavioural science in the humanities. Not only is this a book for people interested in how language works, it is far more importantly a powerful book for those who have come to believe that much of what passes for science in the behaviour / humanistic fields has been plagued with a false science that has managed to turn empiricism into a mind numbing ideology. For many readers, NC:APO has the potential to be a transformational book in that it provides the solid analysis that supports making the leap from the flaccid so-called truths that behaviourism has provided us with to a resurgence of the scientific attitude of 18th & 19th century rationalism. That rationalism, unlike today's mask of rationalism, does not pretend that their philosophy can explain things beyond what it can.Chomsky's argument applies to other fields, such as economics and psychology. For example, the behaviourist B.F. Skinner's is mentioned several times in unflattering terms. (In the book of his interviews with Mitsou Ronat Language and Responsibility, he goes so far as to say, paraphrased, that as far as he knows behaviourism has contributed nothing of meaningful scientific value.)
Empiricism, perhaps especially in fields like linguistics, economics and psychology, act as if all behaviours and characteristics of the human species and the individuals within it, can be explained by stimulus/response theories. The book begins with Leiber succinctly recapping the history of how Chomsky, with the ease of a knife cutting through water, revolutionized linguistics and proved irrevocably that empirical behaviourism is completely inadequate to explain not only the acquisition of language but also its comprehension. Leiber describes Chomsky's argument that, since the sentences of a language that can be created are infinite, that the behavioural linguistic practice of cataloguing them so as to fully describe a language is fruitless. Chomsky extends that argument by pointing out that most sentences that human's comprehend in their lives they will not have ever seen or heard before. He then convincingly argues that the rules of grammar allow for sentences to be constructed that are incomprehensible, whereas sentences are easily created that don't properly follow the rules of grammar but which can be perfectly comprehensible. All of these are extremely strong indictments of some of behaviourism's fundamental tenets of human understanding of language and understanding.
Chomsky's pragmatic rationalism may be most pointedly observed when he describes the real world experience that children learn language before they know the so-called rules of grammar. That repeatedly observed behaviour, from a behavioural model of language acquisition, would ostensibly be unheard of. Chomsky also observes with pragmatic rationalism, that children's language acquisition is largely independent of the oftentimes horrible language usage and training that parents provide. He also suggests with pragmatic rationalism that one might even be able to argue that in extreme cases the acquisition of language skills would appear to be independent of any significant language training because the training skills or environment are so poor that that the child's language acquisition would seem to occur despite their language training behaviour.
The final nail in the behaviourist's coffin, as it pertains to linguistics anyway, is that when the rationale of the behaviourists' practices were questioned vigorously, it was revealed that behavioural linguistic practices were largely preconfigured by the human behaviour and/or psychological bias and preconceptions of those formulating the 'science.'
Rationalistically, as opposed to empirically, Chomsky posits that there is something in the human being that promotes language acquisition independent of race and strict behaviourism. He called it universal grammar.
And this gave me one of the greatest of finds, discoveries, epiphanies, joys I have experienced from reading a book in long time: in exactly the same way, with a nearly identical conceptualization, Chomsky proposes a description of language that is nearly identical to the methods and rational behind Jung's formulation of the Collective Unconscious. YES! My intuitive prompt, from several years ago, that there was something similar in the philosophy of these two ostensibly disparate thinkers has been beautifully, elegantly, and delightfully affirmed. I wonder, is it just a coincidence that these two thinkers that I highly respect are both ignored or denigrated by our society's political and education leaders?
This commonality is even more strongly affirmed with the idea of a 'deep structure,' which Chomsky posits provides the fundamentals of language. Its description reminds me of Jung's descriptions of the common imagery and symbolism of myth, dreams as an expression of the collective unconscious. And when the problem of how to constrain a universal grammar to create only meaningful sentences was discussed, I am again reminded of Jung's theories about the problem of constraining (not Jung's word) the symbols to being meaningful. A very amusing formulation of that problem is the anecdote attributed to Sigmund Freud: sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.
This is a brilliant and very important book.
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
GDuperreault, December 12, 2011
I struggled to begin this review, so maybe I'll start by saying that this play is so good that as soon as I finished it the first time, I promptly re-reread it. [To see this review, complete with active links and images, Google 'egajdbooks waiting for godot'.]My struggle was between being too glib: "This is a brilliant metaphor for the condition our human condition has conditioned us to unconditionally accept" -- to being too dismissive, such as was expressed by a co-worker who, upon learning I was reading Godot, said "I watched it on TV. It was great! A great play about nothing."
But despite an ostensible appearance that it is about nothing, nothing is further from the truth. WfG is definitely not about nothing. The metaphors are nearly endless, from the simple ones such as the too small boots pinching the feet -- constricted understanding hobbles psychological/emotional movement. Beckett even extends that to include putting on another's boots in the hopes of acquiring the ability to walk with less discomfort, metaphor for putting on another's ideas.
I haven't gone onto the web to search for the likely endless reams of ideas this play has generated. Nor do I want to do a review of the play, as such. Instead I would like to briefly concentrate the character Lucky. [Note: I will discuss this role in some detail, so if you want to be surprised by Lucky in the play, do not read on before reading the play.]
Lucky comes onto the stage with a noose around his neck carrying a collection of stuff. The end of the rope extends out of sight, off stage, making Pozzo, Lucky's master, initially invisible. (Is that the smallest of hints of Adam Smith's Invisible Glove?) Pozzo controls Lucky with the use of the noose, via jerks (Lucky has open sores from it), and with a whip and short, usually one word, commands such as the On! and Back! that introduce the pair. Later, Pozzo wants to put on display to Godot's waiters, Estragon and Vladimir, Lucky's intellectual prowess, his ability to think:
~~
POZZO: Stand back! (Vladimir and Estragon move away from Lucky. Pozzo jerks the rope. Lucky looks at Pozzo.) Think, pig! (Pause. Lucky begins to dance.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Forward! (Lucky advances.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Think!
(Silence.)
LUCKY: On the other hand with regard to--
~~
[I blogged this section more extensively as part of a peculiar fushigi. Google "egajd Godot, Ballet, Pocket Watch & Alice".]
This has particular resonance for me because of a recent employee motivational propaganda campaign I (and at least several thousands of others) were subjected to. It was comprised of a series of 3 or 4 posters and their electronic facsimile being festooned across the offices. The posters were comprised of two parts. The top half was a single word, a command: Sit, Stay, Say. The balance were terse reasons for obeying the command, for the first two, and what to say for the last one.
Less specifically, the extended thinking that Lucky expresses is, of course, a perfect metaphor for what passes for thinking through the news media and many official journals: a huge pile of impressive sounding phrases that at best hide the truth but at worst promulgate false truths and ideology. And all co-mingled with a curious obsession about sports. [I wonder if Beckett was influenced by some of George Orwell's pointed criticism of the media and much intellectual thought, such as he delineated in Homage to Catalonia? Wikipedia does not reference such a connection.]
But why does Lucky stay with the physically and verbally abusive Pozzo? He is, ostensibly, a free man. Pozzo even ascribes to him freedom. Well, the answer is an interesting one, and reminds me of the current batch of presidential candidates who blame the poor for being poor because if they didn't want to be poor they could work themselves out of it. Here's Pozzo's reasoning for Lucky's enslavement to him:
~~
POZZO: Ah! Why couldn't you say so before? Why he doesn't make himself comfortable? Let's try and get this clear. Has he not the right to? Certainly he has. It follows that he doesn't want to. There's reasoning for you. And why doesn't he want to? (Pause.) Gentlemen, the reason is this.
VLADIMIR: (to Estragon). Make a note of this.
POZZO: He wants to impress me, so that I'll keep him.
ESTRAGON: What?
POZZO: Perhaps I haven't got it quite right. He wants to mollify me, so that I'll give up the idea of parting with him. No, that's not exactly it either.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He wants to cod me, but he won't.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He imagines that when I see how well he carries I'll be tempted to keep him on in that capacity.
ESTRAGON: You've had enough of him?
POZZO: In reality he carries like a pig. It's not his job.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He imagines that when I see him indefatigable I'll regret my decision. Such is his miserable scheme. As though I were short of slaves! (All three look at Lucky.) Atlas, son of Jupiter! (Silence.) Well, that's that, I think. Anything else?
(Vaporizer.)
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: Remark that I might just as well have been in his shoes and he in mine. If chance had not willed otherwise. To each one his due.
VLADIMIR: You waagerrim?
POZZO: I beg your pardon?
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: I do. But instead of driving him away as I might have done, I mean instead of simply kicking him out on his arse, in the goodness of my heart I am bringing him to the fair, where I hope to get a good price for him. The truth is you can't drive such creatures away. The best thing would be to kill them.
(Lucky weeps.)
ESTRAGON: He's crying!
POZZO: Old dogs have more dignity. (He proffers his handkerchief to Estragon.) Comfort him, since you pity him. (Estragon hesitates.) Come on. (Estragon takes the handkerchief.) Wipe away his tears, he'll feel less forsaken.
(Estragon hesitates.)
VLADIMIR: Here, give it to me, I'll do it.
(Estragon refuses to give the handkerchief.)
(Childish gestures.)
POZZO: Make haste, before he stops. (Estragon approaches Lucky and makes to wipe his eyes. Lucky kicks him violently in the shins. Estragon drops the handkerchief, recoils, staggers about the stage howling with pain.) Hanky!
(Lucky puts down bag and basket, picks up handkerchief and gives it to Pozzo, goes back to his place, picks up bag and basket.)
ESTRAGON: Oh the swine! (He pulls up the leg of his trousers.) He's crippled me!
POZZO: I told you he didn't like strangers.
~~
Interesting. Lucky has enslaved himself in order to appease his master, to be liked enough to be seen as worthy by Pozzo.
So why did Lucky kick Estragon in the shins? As I have been thinking about this, it struck me that Lucky's behaviour corresponds exactly with those who have fully submitted to their lot in life. My first realization of this tickled out from Noam Chomsky's reference to the 'benevolence' expressed by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to 'his' workers in 1896:
These are the fruits of the fierce corporate campaign undertaken as soon as American workers finally won the right to organize in the mid-1930s, after long years of bitter struggle and violent repression unmatched in the industrial world. Perhaps we may even return to the days when the admired philanthropist Andrew Carnegie could preach the virtues of "honest, industrious, self-denying poverty" to the victims of the great depression of 1896, shortly after he had brutally crushed the steel workers union at Homestead, while announcing that the defeated workers had sent him a wire saying, "Kind master, tell us what you wish us to do and we will do it for you." It was because he knew "how sweet and happy and pure the home of honest poverty is" that Carnegie sympathized with the rich, he explained, meanwhile sharing their grim fate in his lavishly appointed mansions fn37 (37. Sexton, Patricia Cayo. The War on Labor and the Left Westview 1991, p83f.)
So a well-ordered society should run, according to the "vile maxim of the masters." (Year 501: The Conquest Continues, pg56-7).
Eventually, the people brutalized recognize the futility of fighting it, and so beat anyone who might offer them hope as being trouble makers or a threat to the status quo. Social critic and comic Bill Maher makes frequent reference to the American labourer who descries as a kind of evil the benefits European workers get in terms of time off, health, paternal benefits, etc. instead of struggling to achieve them for themselves.
Similarly, in the movie Guess Who's Coming for Dinner the parents actively dissuade the interracial couple because there would be trouble for the couple and their parents, too. Freedom roped off with fear.
Lucky is Estragon and Vladimir. Lucky is enslaved to Pozzo by choice -- more specifically having chosen willingly or not to accept the lack of choice -- not the rope. Estragon and Vladimir are enslaved to the hope of Godot providing them their direction in life.
The metaphors are obvious: we make our choices to remain as we are, whether we are societally successful or not, by accepting the situation we find ourselves in by submitting to choices others have made for us, then hoping that abandoning our Selves to those seen or unseen others will bring us succour.
The challenge, here, is twofold. The courage to see things exactly as they are within ourselves and in the society, and the wisdom to know what can and cannot be changed. I have no idea how either of these things are done.
This play is endlessly rich in meaning. I would now like to see it, and to produce an amateur production of it -- or perhaps a reading. Hmmmm.
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Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
GDuperreault, December 2, 2011
A fascinating book EDITED by Carl Jung, who contributed the first chapter/essay, 'Approaching the Unconscious'. This was, in fact, Jung's last work before his death, written and edited with the explicit purpose of being accessible to the well read non-professional. He excellent describes the difference between symbols and signs, and why symbols are important. This book succeeds in expanding one's understanding of psychology, mythology, history, art, science, and human potential. This is an important book for anyone interested in exploring the meaning of being human. The many illustrations do an excellent job of reinforcing the legitimacy of the ideas presented. The other contributors are: Joseph L. Henderson - 'Ancient Myths and Modern Man'; Marie-Louise von Franz - 'The Process of Individuation' and 'Science and the Unconscious'; Aniela Jaffé - 'Symbolism in the Visual Arts'; Jolande Jacobi -'Symbolism in an Individual Analysis'.1-5 of 17next