Found?

This AV Club article on the LOST finale is excellent, so much so that I don't feel the need to add a LOT of my own ramblings.  It aligns closely with my reactions, what worked and what didn't, and assessments of the series as a whole (flawed but still really enjoyable and good).

While, like Murray, I loved the episode up until a distinct hollow ring in the church scene, I was more aghast at the plot device than he was.  All along we were assured that the island wasn't purgatory...but we still got purgatory in the end.  It felt lazy.  I can see it, kinda; it illuminates why everybody's sideways lives seemed like wish fulfillment on the surface, except for where they still had all of the same problems.  But I don't think it did justice to the show's rich mythology and mystery.  Like BSG, it was a deux ex "whoops look at the time gotta go."  I did like what Murray said about the mysteries being more plot-drivers and mood-setters, and that's a helpful way to think about it.  Still, it felt like none of the crazy crap that happened on the island mattered, REALLY--they may as well have been guarding a hat from a rabbit, because Jesus told them to, and occasionally getting struck by lightning.  In both cases, I was frustrated that shows which derive tremendous energy from 1) good writing and rich characters (though BSG's writing was better); and 2) mystery and mythology, choose to content themselves with wrapping up only one of those things satisfactorily.  Though despite those frustrations, BSG remains about my all-time favorite show, and LOST one that I remember fondly.

It doesn't excuse lazy plotting, but maybe the nagging sense of LOST's questionable purpose works, insofar as the show has been a metaphor for the struggles and vagaries of life.  Good and evil are powerful but often inscrutable concepts, and none of us get a satisfactory explanation for why we are put here or why we die.  (Even if an episode called "What They Died For" doesn't satisfactorily explain just that.  Ji-Yeon's still an orphan, goddammit...oh hell.)

One last thought.  I wonder how long Hurley stayed at that job?  And I wonder what there was to protect the light from after Smokey was snuffed?  Cause the job seems...spectacularly boring.  Even with Ben around.  Maybe that's why Jacob crashed ships into the island--he needed some entertainment other than Magic Mommy Chess!

So LOST

Jack is our Shepherd?? DO NOT WANT. 
He maketh us to wake up in green jungles;
He leadeth us beside the woogy Jacob waters.
He restoreth my ire at lazy good/evil archetypes that explaineth all. 
He leadeth me in the paths of OMG, for fuck's sake!
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Smokey, 
I shall fear no plotholes; for LOST has still been a fun ride.
My cup runneth over;
Surely hangovers will follow me all the days of my life
If I actually take a shot every time Hurley says "dude."

Fill o' Philo

I'm looking forward to seeing the discussions unfold on Ned Resnikoff's new Philoblog.  Already he's posted and addressed some stuff I brought up, which is nice.  His stated goal is to make academic philosophy less obtuse for the smart but not formally trained.  I'm all for that.

I only have a few classes' worth of philosophy under my belt.  My professor freshman year told me I should major in it after reading my papers, but I never went for it.  Part of me wishes I had, even though my English/Creative Writing major was lovely.  I value art and language as ways to find and share truth in an intuitive way; in the left-brain corner, I also value rigorous thinking and dialogue.  So I am intrigued by philosophy, glancing sideways and picking up bits and pieces, sensing (worrying?) that I ought to know more about it if I want to play with the other smart kids.  But there's resistance too.  A sense that academic jargon gets in the way of good communication of ideas.  Uncertainty over how well certain theories really illuminate on-the-ground truths.  My own faith in the human animal learning about itself through the scientific method and building beliefs on facts (hence my question to Ned).

Still, even the self is an abstraction.  Perhaps it's only natural then, and worthwhile, to spend time further abstracting.

Babies v. Culture?

I was reading this article from a few weeks ago in The-The New York Times on the moral lives of babies; I recommend you do the same immediately if you have any curiosity about human nature.

The conclusions reported here make plenty of intuitive sense, evolutionarily speaking.  Of course baby brains aren't blank slates, because they can't learn or perceive specific things without the pre-wired ability to do so.  And of course we have an innate, evolutionarily derived capacity for empathy, even if it's primitive and in-group-focused, because we are social animals that survive best in groups.  Still, the relative sophistication of babies' understanding of social interactions, of not only good/bad but also just/unjust, is pretty darned neat.

But where it gets really interesting (and where I have a thought to add below) is page 6-7, discussing the implications for "higher" morality and society, and whether higher morality must have a divine source:

The notion at the core of any mature morality is that of impartiality. If you are asked to justify your actions, and you say, “Because I wanted to,” this is just an expression of selfish desire. But explanations like “It was my turn” or “It’s my fair share” are potentially moral, because they imply that anyone else in the same situation could have done the same.  

...The aspect of morality that we truly marvel at — its generality and universality — is the product of culture, not of biology. There is no need to posit divine intervention. A fully developed morality is the product of cultural development, of the accumulation of rational insight and hard-earned innovations. The morality we start off with is primitive, not merely in the obvious sense that it’s incomplete, but in the deeper sense that when individuals and societies aspire toward an enlightened morality — one in which all beings capable of reason and suffering are on an equal footing, where all people are equal — they are fighting with what children have from the get-go. The biologist Richard Dawkins was right, then, when he said at the start of his book The Selfish Gene, “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly toward a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.” 

...It is the insights of rational individuals that make a truly universal and unselfish morality something that our species can aspire to.

Well said, but I would go even further.  I don't think that higher morality is at war with our primitive moral sense.  I think it's a logical extension of it.  We wouldn't have the basis for culture in the first place without our innate ability to be fair and play well with others.  Yes yes, wars and genocides and etc., but through it all, our definition of "others" has shifted and expanded as our world has.  We have mapped our micro awareness that people should be nice onto our macro awareness that the world is full of people just like us.  And of course this predates globalization; the article notes the impartiality found in Confucius and early Christianity and on and on.  Humanity had already grown up quite a bit by then, and continues to grow, but nothing grows without seeds.  Of course we have conflicting impulses such as self-interest that get in the way of our highest morality.  But the one is no more innate than the other.  We're not at war with our baser selves; if anything, our baser selves are at war with themselves.

tl;dr of my first post

Say it with me, folks...GET OUT OF MY HEAD RANDALL

Squishy Logos

I am not Athena. That is, I did not spring fully formed from someone's head. This has been a difficult realization to come to. Not that I have parthenogenesis envy; sexual reproduction is ok by me (that's...what she said?). No; the issue is completeness. Writing as product makes writing as process nervous. Dionysus and Apollo exchange uneasy glances over the table. The written word, to say nothing of the published, carries authority, which implies finality.

And egads, that's nerve-wracking.

So this little corner of the Internets is my exercise in terror and desire. Terror of inadequacy and failure, desire to grow and contribute. At some point the latter needs to bop the former on the nose and start running for dear life.

I've always been concerned with truth, with finding the right words or ideas. But truth can be a tyrant sometimes. It can seem the exclusive domain of someone else. It can become as unobtainable as it is unimpeachable: in the beginning there was Logos, and it was Good, and that was It. But wisdom and reason, Athena's spheres, are not really fixed points. Wisdom gets in shape by stumbling around a bit first. It's actually pliable and permeable. Logos is squishy.

When someone asked me as a little girl what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say, "A writer, and an actress, and a singer!" As a student of opera performance, I'm working on the latter two. Opera is a kind of Olympian endeavor itself, the superhuman amplification of a human voice in service of the highest drama and most breathtaking music. It's awesome, which is why I'm pursuing it. But then there's that writers' voice. It's been quieter for a while, but it's started flailing its hand in the air to be called on, and it needs a little discipline and structure (or else more Adderall).

Thus, this collection of ephemera. Passing fancies, some longer and more thoughtful than others. Bits of stardust that might spiral into the shape of things to come, or might just sparkle prettily. You can expect to hear about language, music, culture, politics, memes, and little things that I think are neat. And in the course of telling you these things, squishily, with what words I have, I expect to be humbled, challenged, and wrong. I expect to look back on posts a year or two later and cringe. But I expect to have fun, and to carry on, and to contribute to the conversation.

So give me your hands, if we be friends, and I'll show you where the swimming pool is, and pinky swear that this will be a pretty good time.