homage or the hero with a thousand faces

Quiet a few vocal critics have accused the continuance of the Star Wars saga of being too derivative—and yes (sans spoilers) it would have been more enthralling to have a bigger constellation of strange fellows in some Mos Eisley dive or Jabba’s throne room to wonder about. a musical number or to see all the characters to gather together at the end like in previous parting shots and wondering whether it was “no bigger than a womprat” did sort of draw me out of the experience, I think unfairly. The arc of each episode—maybe to exclusion of the exposition—faithfully follows the monomyth, that boon of New England scholar Joseph Campbell for innumerable tales past and present that resonate as something whole and satisfying with tribute to something universal.
That terms is borrowed from James Joyce’s writing—sourced with another handy moniker, the quark. Campbell crafted the study of comparative mythology following an unending infatuation with CG Jung and his idea of the collective unconscious and the archetype and unvetted released his comprehensive thesis, The Hero with 1000 Faces, in the 1940s and echoes in the best of contemporary story-telling, drawing from the cues of classic myth. Episode III, point for point, unfolds as a monomyth—wherein a reluctant hero (Luke Skywalker, moisture farmer) is visited by a celestial messenger (the droids and Obi Wan Kenobi) to present his mission and hone his skills and embarks on a quest to find his muse and divine lady (Princess Leia—but thirty-eight year old spoilers: really his sister) but finds himself in the proverbial belly of the whale, like Jonah or Pinocchio (the dianoga in the Death Star trash compactor) before being forced to confront his father. All the best stories seem to twist in this wind, whether classical mythology, founding tales or biblical previsioning—tapping into formulaic stories that ring as believable and upbuilding. The Parnassus and individual instalments—as myth is fluid and not fixed practise self-plagiarism with certain and popular troupe. The authoritative editions are those most successful and resonate with our own collective unconscious. The re-telling is more than a reboot.

indignation

Smacking very much of the ongoing coddling of minds and egos, Vox staffers present a rather sombre but rollicking look back at the year in phony outrage.
It’s deviously brilliant that none of us (me included) really has to choose our battles any longer and can unleash whatever venom, vitriol or hissy-fit at the world at large with little fear of consequence or aspersions being cast back at us. These reverse scandals are rather telling as anger, however tepid by day’s end once the media attention has been spent, seem to be the initial and unmediated reaction to upsetting our cushions of comfort and probably the feeling and response that we are best acquainted with—whether dispatched as an attack on our personal values or otherwise. The antithesis is true also, for as lightly as our fury is tugged so are our heart-strings with feelings of unanimity and accord.

point nemo

Mental Floss features an interesting article on a collection of the most remote human settlements. I always enjoy perusing such profiles of remote and lonely places and despite the forlorn familiarity, it’s always fun to learn more.
The list’s ostensibly top of the pole of inaccessibility is Tristan da Cunha—which is far closer to South Africa than the Island of Saint Helena, where Napoleon spent his exile, that it’s administratively coupled with—the British having bought the archipelago from Dutch Cape, first evicting a trio of American squatters who claimed the Refreshment Islands as their own, of Good Hope so the French might not use it as a staging platform for a rescue operation. Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the main village, was evacuated in the early 1960s when a volcanic eruption threatened to engulf the whole island, and when residents returned to find a city-limits sign installed on a path leading into town, I recall reading once, there was a minor clamour over this bureaucratic insistence, as no one happen there without great determination.

trivium and hoi polloi

I’ve really been enthralled with my latest podcast discovery in Doctor William Webb’s Heritage Podcast project (thanks to a hale and hearty recommendation by Sharyn Eastaugh, creator and hostess of The History of the Crusades, to get on board with the syllabus before the ambitious project gets too expansive to catch up on back episodes) and had a welcome reminder on the virtue of a Liberal Arts degree—not just one in name but one that’s true to original core curricula as it was expounded in ancient times.
With participatory democracy burgeoning and society becoming more hierarchical but also urban, leaders of the Polis recognised the need for a basic civics education requirement to attract and retain individuals with the ability to distinguish philosophy from sophistry and developed a three-pronged prospectus called the trivia—grammar (the basic rules of communication—stringing together λογος), rhetoric (the art of persuasion and articulacy and perhaps the training to wield it for one’s own ends) and logic (the faculty to soberly judge the validity and truth of argument and perhaps keenly peer beyond grandiloquence). Once the tradition of active and engaged citizens started to be supplanted by feudalism and the fealty of labourers and the political man became a subject, his affairs rarefied and to be managed by hereditary kings, as the Classical World came to an end, basic education was something seditious and there was no demand for an informed and potentially rebellious under-class. Of course, the institution of the Church—with its own vested interests in sustaining a community of inquisitive and engaged members—was the mainstay of continuing-education—augmenting the trivium with four additional disciplines: mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy.
Perhaps these subjects smack of something a bent a bit toward the practical and vocational, their coursework—as with the unfolding of word, language—however, can be expressed as the germination of number, leading to number in space, number in time and then with astronomy, number in time and space. Perhaps we’ve again entered a time when a liberal education (the motto of my alma mater—which evolved out of a preparatory school and is rather a singular beast in higher-education is a Latin malapropism “facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque”—I make free men from children by means of books and a balance) is something to be disdained as a superfluous luxury or even a liability when the plebiscite is expected to keep its collective head down and not stint the ceremony of elections with engagement and activism that goes beyond party-membership and reinforced believes. Being schooled in a little bit of logic seems especially vital now for countering the techniques in the media and politics that present the fallacious and specious as something incontrovertible, and something (regardless whether one becomes a charismatic or not—I think one can’t truly start believing his or her own deceits if discovered through honest means) for disabusing ourselves of our own biases. Despite the tenor of the age, there’s no excuse for letting one’s faculties atrophy. Don’t let it rest on the President’s desk. Q.E.D.

5x5

over-extended: the Swiss will vote to effectively ban banks from creating money by lending more than they have in reserve

noch einen koffer: chilling contingency plans to destroy East Berlin in the event the Cold War turned hot

superlatives: the top fifteen Colossal vignettes of the year

360°: Slate has a whole uplifting calendar of daily goodness for the past year

port-of-call: these giant, wanton cruise ships look like Star Destroyers trawling the canals of Venice

hey mister tally man

Via the inestimable The Browser comes a really fascinating piece on the supply chain logistics of the banana trade and the demands it manufactured to satisfy. Like the Egg Council, Juan Valdez and the California Raisins, who really can be bullies and not just advocates for farmers, Big Fruit created various banana republics in the process of perfecting its delivery techniques, inciting coups throughout Central America and even precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis and enduring tensions, all in the name of ripeness and minimal flecking.

The other aspect to this drama lies in the monoculture of the produce—at least as it’s presented to shoppers in the West. Whereas we might have an embarrassment of choice when it comes to apples and oranges, exotic bananas are all clones of one cultivar—threatened with extinction with the irreversible march of one fungal disease. The way bananas are marketed and grown make them especially susceptible to being wiped out by pandemics, and interestingly the type of banana consumed just one human generations had vastly different characteristics—fruitier and creamier and with a much slicker peel, and hence all those jokes about slipping on a discarded skin that seems physically impossible in the supermarkets of today.

æon of horus or top row, from left to right

Just before Christmas (Sun in first Capricorn and Moon in ninth Gemini, just a day’s breadth from the Soltice), the historic Boleskin Manor on the shores of Loch Ness, owned by mystic Aleister Crowley and subsequently bought by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame (for its connection with majick) was partially destroyed by a fire that had broken out in the vacant residence.
Crowley choose this spot for its particular geographic resonance (appearances of the Loch Ness Monster could be attributed to certain demons and familiars from his pantheon) with his philosophy of Thelema and his mission of occult outreach and made some major modifications to the house to these ends. Ostracised as a traitor and corrupter of youth, Crowley repaired to a commune in Cefalù—by Palermo, Sicily—to establish his church, an anti-monestary in this ancient Greek outpost, until being banished under the same suspicions by Mussolini. Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same was filmed on the grounds of Boleskin and the motto “do what thou willst” features prominently in the band’s discography, as well as enjoying other pop culture appearances. The Sicilian abbey is currently on the market, though in grave disrepair.