So, I've had to change my "John Edwards for President" link to a "Barack Obama for President" link. I'm still not thrilled with the whole "bringing red and blue Americans together" idea (I would rather just transport the red voters to a colony on the far side of the moon), but overall an Obama presidency could do much to heal the damage done to the country by the current occupier of the White House.
I think that what America needs right now is a leader, first and foremost. Americans need a leader who can inspire, as well as someone with the right policies.
I'd love to vote for a woman for president, but not this one. (Though I would gladly vote for her in November should she get the nomination.)
Anyway. That's all the politics for the time being. Now back to our regularly scheduled poetry and mystical sh*t.
31 January 2008
15 January 2008
Literary Theory: An Illustrated Introduction
It occurred to me, while trapped yet again in a classroom listening to a discussion in which literature and religion are reduced to a display of mere power dynamics, that the Indian chakra system is a good way to analyze what's going on here.
Whatever else it is, this chakra system is a good model for understanding the human psyche. In the most common system, there are seven chakras, each pertaining to an aspect of the human psyche. The bottom one has to do with sheer survival instinct. Moving upward: the next one is related to sex, followed by power. The top three have to do with increasingly pure "spiritual" awareness. The middle one is the heart chakra, where the bottom three and the top three --- the instinctual and the spiritual --- meet. Everyone needs all the chakras working in order to live a complete life.
Here is a little diagram of the chakra system as it is thought to be arranged along the vertical axis of the human body.
Because contemporary literary theory focuses so obsessively on issues of sex and power, a person is left with this much of her/his humanity:
The yellow one is the power chakra. Good luck learning anything above this level in English classes these days. For some people, this seems to be all a human being is. Forget beauty, forget soul, forget meaning.
I for one am not satisfied with 3/7 of a life. Surely English departments, the custodians of so much great art that itself makes use of all 7 (or at least 5 or 6), can do better than this.
Whatever else it is, this chakra system is a good model for understanding the human psyche. In the most common system, there are seven chakras, each pertaining to an aspect of the human psyche. The bottom one has to do with sheer survival instinct. Moving upward: the next one is related to sex, followed by power. The top three have to do with increasingly pure "spiritual" awareness. The middle one is the heart chakra, where the bottom three and the top three --- the instinctual and the spiritual --- meet. Everyone needs all the chakras working in order to live a complete life.
Here is a little diagram of the chakra system as it is thought to be arranged along the vertical axis of the human body.
Because contemporary literary theory focuses so obsessively on issues of sex and power, a person is left with this much of her/his humanity:
The yellow one is the power chakra. Good luck learning anything above this level in English classes these days. For some people, this seems to be all a human being is. Forget beauty, forget soul, forget meaning.
I for one am not satisfied with 3/7 of a life. Surely English departments, the custodians of so much great art that itself makes use of all 7 (or at least 5 or 6), can do better than this.
13 January 2008
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