hospitality

Daniel Mendelsohn's An Odyssey explores various cultural aspects that rub us wrong today. It seems overboard to kill all the men who courted his wife the 20 years he was gone. The boring early books of Telemachy set up the evolution of man through young adult hood in Telemachus to the life of the elderly in Laertes, with Odysseus as the hero. You can bring all your modern sentiments to viewing his life, some are astonished that Odysseus can pretend to be someone else when reunited with his wife. Agamemnon came home and was slaughtered by the his wife's lover Aegisthus. Odysseus is trying to avoid that fate, so he can't just walk in. He has to see if his wife's lover will kill him.

I was wondering why Telemachus couldn't just tell the kitchen to stop slaughtering and giving out wine, say we are out? That's what I'd do, but that must mean that hosting a guest is more sacred in those days than it is now.

I remember I was in the Amazonian rain-forest and we visited an inhabitant. He was very kind. The tour must give him a kickback for these visits, but it seemed very genuine. I sometimes wonder if these tribesmen are keys to our ancestral past. I've read Clan and the Cave Bear, and it's almost of form of science fiction except it's archaeology not technology oriented. Does this kindness to visitors tell us something about our ancestral past. It was a time when there was no smart phones, TV, video games, internet, iPads, e-mail, YouTube... I could go on and on. In those days it was an oral tradition, they didn't even really have books for the mass public, my favorite technology. A visitor must have been like the way I feel when I come upon a channel on YouTube that I like, or Netflix releases a season of a show I like. All the stories about all the people they know. And everyone is an oral story teller.

So Telemachus can't just dismiss them, and when he finally does try to do that. He says give me a ship and if I hear he's dead, I'll bury him and you can have my mother. Odysseus doesn't know everyone will kill him when he gets home like Agamemnon, and he hides to suss out the situation, to see if his wife has been faithful. Odysseus is a cunning man who like batman has the superpower of strategizing and self control.

I'm reading a graphic novel of Odyssey, and the above became clear to me. The more you get to know the story, the more complex it is, the more enjoyable it is.

Problem

Just back from the newfangled doohickey museum.

I did the 4th week quiz and got them all right, and somehow Coursera did not register it. I didn't take a screen shot of it. So I recommend now that everyone take a screen shot of their quiz results. I won't get credit for this course, but wait, I wasn't going to get credit for it anyway. I think that's the apathy that keeps Coursera from fixing the situation.

reading the signs

The stupid suitors don't notice the signs.

It's an appealing idea to "read the signs", not in the sneezing means someone said the truth sense, but in the sense that I've made mistakes and I wished I'd read the signs.

In leadership you need to go against the signs sometimes. In a way, you never know whether to read the signs or not. In the end, I think the "signs" are just things that make you think one way or another. Rationalizations are ad hock. But you have to make decisions somehow.

Crying

Men gain their independence by separating from their mother. All rituals of manhood have a kind of brutality, and you can't go running to your mother. Women are lucky, in my opinion, in that they can develop independence in relation with their mother.

Because of this, men block off their tender feelings to be courageous, so they can enter into the world independent. Nowadays, the independence of men, in modern society is a kind of obsolete mindset. Unfortunately, there are lots of manhood traps. The women at my work say that they like working with men, because there is less drama. Women's agression is often relational, because of the womanhood trap that you can't be openly angry, you must always be nurturing.

There are generalizations on gender from the United States of America. I've mostly been in the midwest and east coast, but I also visit New Mexico as well. The south tends to be more traditional, but I think the biggest differences in America are city versus rural. Traditional versus progressive is another factor. I have developed these generalizations as a teacher, social worker and psychotherapist for the past 25 years.

Then we come to the case of crying. I read a book on crying when I was a therapist, because I found myself going for the cry in sessions. When ever I cried along with the client it either built rapport or I was judged for not being manly.

My experience of crying is that it's a release. I feel better after it. I know people who feel like they have lost control by crying. They were perhaps criers as a child, and the family trained them away from that. What ever the case, I understand that crying can have many many meanings. I often feel like crying when I'm appreciated. I can cry when something is very meaningful.

Some people have commented in the forum that crying isn't really what a manly hero would do. Well, you can speculate what I think about that from the above.

Here is the video of the "screenside chat" that took place last Friday.

week 3 ended coursera course

Here is a drinking cup with Odysseus and Circe. The men have been turned into animals by magic, but Hermes gave Odysseus a potion which blocked Circe's magic.

We're supposed to finish the book and write a short paper this week. I'm on vacation in Santa Fe and didn't get a chance to see the live video because I was in the air, and the wifi on the plane wasn't so good for my sons, so I didn't get it for myself. I'll watch the video today. Again it took me 2 tries to get 100% on the quiz.

I think I'm drawn to the structuralist or functionalist paper. I like the idea of binaries. It's reminds me of the Buddha Dharma's insight into duality. The functionalism is interesting too, but it's hard to imagine what to write about besides Xenia, the Greek concept of hospitality, which I find fascinating. I'm enjoying the hospitality of my parents this week, so it's an interesting subject. Someone uploaded some texts that might help. My sons are going horseback riding so I'll have some time to work on the stuff and read.

I started reading The Mark of Athena on the side. It's the 7th book of 10 (the 10th one hasn't come out). These Rick Riordan books about ancient mythology are fun books, I think they're rivals to the Harry Potter books. The premis of the books is that half bloods inhabit the earth. Gods are still sleeping with mortals. The half blood children are attacked by forces that don't want them to exist, so if you survive long enough, people try to find them and take them to camp to train them to survive, and generally work the various missions of the gods and mortals. There are 5 books set with the Greek gods, and then the author turns them to the Roman gods and they interact with the same characters in the first books.

Beginning of second week

I got the Fagles edition of the Odyssey from the library. I read a third of the Shewring translation, but now the assignment is to read books 1-8, so I'm going to do that, and listen/watch the lectures.

When you hear about returning home from the Trojan War stories, and I thought it would be cool to pick an obscure character from the Illiad who isn't accounted for and give a return story for him. I guess there are the stories of Mary Renault and that wonderful retelling of the Illiad by Madeline Miller.

Then I thought about telling the story of Odysseus when he was with the Calypso for 10 years. "...the bewitching nymph, the lustrous goddess, held him back..." I wonder what that was like. She kept him in her "arching cavern," and, "forever trying to spellbind his heart with suave, seductive words." Yea, I've known a few women like that. I mean I wish. I guess I could lose 10 years pretty quickly that way.

I was reading Great Books by David Denby and he had a chapter on the Odyssey. He's a really good writer, and writes about the teacher and what it means for the teacher to tell the students that they are Telemachus.

Hospitality

David Denby said in Great Books, that he sat down and read the Odyssey in one sitting.

The only book I read in one day was The Hobbit, when I was a teenager over the summer when I was visiting my father. I woke up and read it, and fell asleep after I finished, one day.

I'm going to visit a friend who has a house on Long Island sound. I will pour a libation to Zeus, Poseidon, Buddha, Vishnu, Jesus, Mohammad, Zoroastrian, all my dead relatives, nature, all the gods and goddesses, all the things that capture the human mind, devine and mundane. I shall pour the libation onto the bluff above the sea to mark the glorious day.

I won't have to clasp the knees of my friend to get his hospitality.

It's funny who we think deserves hospitality. If you're poor, the wrong color, and have problems, people mostly like "tough love". We're so afraid that if we help people, then they won't help themselves, because somehow we have to rationalize the grave inequalities in our society. People always act like it's so obvious, it's easy to be a Mitt Romney and live off your accumulated wealth. Like he's earned his wealth. If work is so great, why does he not have to work, why is he exempt from the rule? Because he's so wise and frugal? Driving with a dog on the roof for a family vacation. I laugh when I think of the episode of New Girl, when Schmitt pretends to be a Romney. He's too Jewish. But I digress.

There is a feel in the Odyssey that Odysseus gets the hospitality he gets because he is part of the elite. King Alcinous does not ask him who he is until he's hosted him for quite a while, but he knows he's of noble bearing. What are the easy traits of nobility, that can't be copied by the common man?

I got to the place in my library book where I found the magnetic strip. I could return the book, then go back, remove the strip and walk out with the book. But I don't like to steal, doesn't feel right. I'll buy my own copy. I want to read this book to my sons. I wonder if I should read the Illiad first. I've never read it. On the one hand, it's the book before, the first book of civilization. On the other hand it's not as easy to read, supposedly.