Greek Gods, Parricide and Parenting

Hesiod’s Theogony isn’t very long, but it manages to encompass a hymn to the Muses, an account of the ancient Greek creation myth, a genealogy of dozens of deities, as well as tales of murder, war, love, rape, brute strength and political power. It also shows marvelous insight into human psychology.

In the introduction to the edition I have, translator Dorothea Wender raises an interesting point:

Hesiod has allowed his world of primitive gods and chaotic forces to remain primitive and chaotic. Particularly striking is the general pattern of an oedipal struggle between generations, with father attempting to destroy son, and mother assisting son to supplant father.

One such event is Kronos’s castration of Ouranos with a “long jagged sickle.” Kronos’s mother Gaia asked him to do this because Ouranos was hiding her children so they wouldn’t replace him as ruler. The second such event comes when Kronos begins eating his own children and Rhea secrets away Zeus, who later leads a rebellion.  The war ends with the banishment of the Titans to Tartarus and the ascension of Zeus as ruler of Olympus. Hesiod’s poem is centuries older than Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex, but already we see the ancients were aware of the Oedipus in every man. To crudely summarize Freud: He wants to sleep with his mother and kill his father.

The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn, by Giorgio Vasari and Christofano Gherardi

It strikes me that these parricidal myths are less a representation of the actual early childhood situation than they are a reflection of the nascent Subject’s fantasies and fears. In the world we usually take for reality, fathers do not normally kill their children, mothers do not conspire to defeat their husbands, and children know nothing of sex and murder. In the subterranean reality of the child’s psyche, however, nothing is desired more than the mother’s attentions, and nothing presents a greater threat to that than the father.

The young Subject is faced with a dilemma: regain his lost power by defeating and supplanting the father or regain it by allying with and emulating the father. Similar dynamics occur in girls and are sometimes called the Electra complex. How this childhood drama plays out--and the possibilities are endless--has formative effects on the individual that will last throughout life. The ancient Greeks knew nothing of psychoanalysis, but their myths show they were well aware of the human realities that underlie it.

As a father, I have witnessed these realities firsthand. My son loves me and I love him more than either of us will ever fully comprehend, so father-son bonds are not to be discounted, but a rivalry also exists. It is not uncommon for a small boy to want to marry Mommy, and his father is likely to playfully express disapproval of this idea. Many a father feels real jealousy, however, when his wife’s affections appear directed entirely at their child. Boys are thrilled to best (or be allowed to best) Daddy in a game or feat of strength. And at some point, Mommy begins to encourage her child to be more independent so she can return more of her attention to her husband and the rest of her life.

My family demonstrates all of this behavior, and we try to resolve the underlying tensions in positive ways. There are no perfect methods, but spending time together is a great way to allow these human mysteries to work themselves out. If I’d played dominoes with my son this morning, maybe he wouldn’t have rebelled so much when it came time to get him out the door for school!

Over the years psychoanalytic theory and a burgeoning literature on parenting have helped explain and address what goes on inside families, but as usual, the ancient Greeks did all this first. They did it their own way and in some ways, no doubt, they did it better. Theogony is myth not science, but that doesn’t stop it from being enlightening. 

Saturn Devouring His Son, by Francisco Goya

Also on ancient Greek literature:
Heracles' Hope in the Midst of Suffering
The Ancients' Guide to Love and Sex

Oh, the Blog Posts I’ll Never Write!

The Gleaming Sword has been going for roughly four years now, and the last couple years have been particularly productive, but I’ve decided it’s time for a break, or at least a significant slowdown, so I can focus on other projects. Nonetheless, I’ve had a number of ideas on the back burners for months now, and rather than leave them unvoiced, I thought I’d present them all together here in abbreviated form. They’re still only halfway thought out, researched and fact-checked, but here they are nonetheless.

Lana Del Rey: In Praise of No Context

This post was nearing completion when I decided to apply the brakes to my blogging.  The post was to discuss how encountering Lana Del Rey’s music without knowing anything about her personal life and how she is perceived by others enhanced my appreciation for her art. I was particularly excited about making a connection to the Kazuo Ishiguro novel Never Let Me Go (2005) and the character Kathy’s deeply subjective enjoyment of a cassette she purchases at school.

From the post that never was:

“Most people have probably had a similar experience: certain lyrics in a song will jump out, taking on a meaning for the listener that the artist never intended or one that is different from what others experience, but what criteria exist for calling wrong someone else’s innermost experience of  a work of art? The experience of art is a meeting of subject and object that is often better without third parties.”

The context-free experience of art is rapidly becoming scarce as we are constantly bombarded with minutiae about every topic imaginable, reading reviews on iTunes before downloading an album, looking up movies on IMDb even as we live-tweet them. Today, we come to art and entertainment through a haze of chatter, a cacophony of others’ voices, but we might be much happier tuning it out.

From Ultraviolence: 

 

 

Cecil the Lion and the Will to Power

I also intended to crank out a piece about the reaction to the news that a dentist from Minnesota had hunted and shot Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, but that was nixed early in inception. I found it interesting how every side of the issue illustrated Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power. Killing big game, raging against big-game hunters, pointing out the piety of those who decry big-game hunters, and blogging analysis of the debate (as I’m doing here) all serve to make the self feel superior to others. In Freudian terms, they all feed the ego.

So what could one say that wouldn’t be an expression of the will to power? Probably nothing. As I understand it from my days of heavy Nietzsche reading, the will to power underlies all, or nearly all, human behavior. Taking a clue from a maxim by La Rochefoucauld (previous post), Nietzsche pointed out that even saying “Thank you” is a way of raising oneself above the person who has done you a good turn.

From Daybreak:

“Even when he who strives after distinction makes and wants to make a joyful, elevating or cheering impression, he nonetheless enjoys this success not inasmuch as he has given joy to the next man or elevated or cheered him, but inasmuch as he has impressed himself on the soul of the other, changed its shape and ruled over it at his own sweet will.”

Why Reverse Racism Does Exist

The most potentially controversial of my plans was a post arguing that reverse racism does indeed exist, an opinion very unpopular in certain circles. The argument usually starts with redefinitions of words like racism and discrimination (usually to include power) that conveniently lead, through simple logic, to the conclusion that reverse racism does not even make sense, cannot exist, or is just a misnomer for what is in reality plain old racism. It's a bit of sleight-of-hand the likes of which is increasingly common among the perpetually outraged but which never fools their opponents.

My argument was to be philosophical. In the 20th Century, philosophers began to spend a great deal of time examining language, and one of their favorite preoccupations was regular, everyday speech, which functions in a staggering variety of ways. The reality is that people use the words “reverse racism” to point to behaviors and attitudes based on race that are perpetuated by members of a group that is usually seen as the oppressed against members of the group that is usually seen as the oppressor, and everyone who hears these words knows that. By that right, the phrase is legit and what it describes does happen.

You may find the existence of what is called “reverse discrimination” uncomfortable, you may find it to be negligible compared to the atrocities committed by the usual suspects, you may not like the phrase, you may hate the way it is used to combat any efforts calling for attention to race problems, and you may find it more economical to just call it “racism,” but you can’t just wish it away.

 

How an Atheist Can Enjoy Darren Aronofsky’s Noah

I refused to watch Ridley Scott’s Exodus, because as an atheist (previous post) I see a return of big-budget Biblical epics as exactly the kind of religion-stroking the world is better off without, but I was intrigued enough by Darren Aronofsky’s past films like The Fountain and Black Swan to check out Noah (2014), and I’m glad I did. I loved fantasy elements like the Watchers, savored the way it toyed with orthodoxy, admired Emma Watson’s performance, was moved by the human relationships, and was gripped by the plot. Scenes like the one in which Noah tries to kill Ila’s twins always used to leave me unmoved--I sensed screenwriters trying too hard to get a response from their audience--but now that I’m a father, I was like, “Oh no you don’t, motherfo!”

This is how we interact with stories. Aronofsky said he never intended Noah to be a traditional Biblical epic espousing an exclusively Judeo-Christian worldview, and his film did turn out to have much to offer aside from whatever lessons the religious may find in it. No doubt some atheists would adopt a harder stance, but many atheists such as myself remain open to inspiration--strictly humanist--from religious art.

 

Joseph Conrad’s Use of Irony in Heart of Darkness to Critique Colonialism

The meatiest of my planned projects, one which ill health derailed last spring, was a series of posts focusing on Joseph Conrad’s use of irony in Heart of Darkness (1899) to criticize colonialism. While Heart of Darkness is devoid of sermonizing, I noticed that Conrad often uses officious and grandiloquent language when describing functionaries of the British Empire, precisely when he means to scorn them. And his portrayal of the effects of colonialism on the colonialized is damning--whether the colonialization is military, commercial or in the name of civilization.

And is American imperialism any different? I don’t have a simple answer for that, but I intended to address the question via a look at Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, which sets Conrad’s novel against the Vietnam War, and also to examine colonialism as a racist endeavor. My primary text for this last topic would be a chapter from Darkwater (1920) by W.E.B. Du Bois. In  “The Souls of White Folk,” Du Bois presents a condemnation of white supremacy that I highly recommend reading:

“How many of us today fully realize the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe, which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow? Bluntly put, that theory is this: It is the duty of white Europe to divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe’s good.”

Possibly Fruitless Pursuits

A few other ideas were on burners even further back. I was hoping to continue exploring my idea of the thin graphite line, a conception of artists, writers and thinkers as a bulwark against barbarism, in light of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Another idea that may not have panned out was investigating des choses in Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme (2010) as examples of das Ding in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. A lighter post was to be a look at the variety of pop styles exhibited by Kylie Minogue’s discography from Light Years (2000) to Kiss Me Once (2014).

Alas, these posts will never come to full fruition. However, while The Gleaming Sword is slowing, I am still here. I welcome comments at the bottom of the page or through Twitter (my profile). Now I leave you--only temporarily!--with some music: