QUOTE(Abd @ Wed 23rd February 2011, 5:20pm)
I was going to write to him on his Talk page but realized that it might be misinterpreted. So I was glad to see his essay here.
And those who took the occasion to poke him, shame on you. Really. Enough is enough.
But when is enough, enough? That's ever the question. Ottava invited the vultures. He himself seems to realize that he did something to get himself chained to a rock many a time, foaming and saying egotistical and deliberately provocative things, and (behold) somebody always came along to eat his
liverlunch, whenever he did that. That's the way of things in the world. Stealing fire from the gods is a very trollish act.
Our autonomic nervous systems (that most primitive part of us) seem to dispose our emotions into three parts, which coincide generally with states of: [1] feed/fuck
[2] fight/flight
or [3] ignore.
. As the old scuba diver said to me about scuba, there are three basic kinds of stuff in the sea: 1) stuff you can eat, 2) stuff that can eat YOU, and 3) other. That's saying the same thing.
Our heros seem to come in the same three categories, also. There's the stardard Prometheus who is much like Milton's Satan, who rages and foams and suffers and is angry. That's the adrenergic approach to life-- flee, fight, fight, fight. Rage against the dying of the light. Mary Shelley had this Prometheus in mind when she wrote
Frankenstein's subtitle: (
Or, a Modern Prometheus). Here the scientist steals the fire of life from the gods and becomes locked in a battle of hatred with the monster he creates, then abandons (child abuse and neglect); after the monster kills his brother, his best friend, and finally his wife, he ends up pursuing it endlessly into the arctic in a long chase in the cold that reminds me of the center of Dante's Hell. Nothing BUT fight and flight and revenge and not being able to do anything, because one is trapped in the ice of one's own hatred. And Dr. Frankenstein finally dies doing it, though not without just-a-bit of self insight about freeing himself by helping the ship that rescues him (a non-selfish act in which he can lose himself from his obscession). The monster too, though morally superior, is caught up in the revenge-thing, and finally goes off to kill himself also.
I sometimes think that PB Shelley, right after his wife wrote
Frankenstein and he helped her edit it, wrote
Prometheus Unbound as a kind of answer to the hellish end of his wife's little gothic novel (which at the time he probably had no idea would eventually become far more famous than anything he would write). PB Shelley's Prometheus has all the positive emotions: faith, hope, charity, love. From the spirit of mankind, which seems also to be a kind of Ode to Joy, Jupiter is overthrown (like those Olympian gods we no longer believe in, in Star Trek), and Hercules is free to unbind Prometheus. A happier ending. And one that Ottava seems to see for himself, in the idea that if one just keeps the faith in positivity, you get pie in the sky when you die. And certainly not Dante's hell, or Prometheus' hell. This is the Jesus myth. Little lamb, who made thee?
But there is a third way that is neither eternally negative, or positive, but... other. Neutral. That is the way of the Buddha, which suggests that we are chained to the rock when we are under the unwilling control of any of our autonomic reponses, and any strong emotions at all. And that the only way to escape from the wheel, or the rock, is to care so little about yourself that you no longer are self-absorbed. When you become engrossed in a difficult problem, or in writing, or in someone else's problems, or any empathetic act, you lose your sense of your own self, and cease to exist, for a bit. And during that time, you are detached, and as truely free as you ever will be.
We've seen a version of that many times in SF. I think I first saw the "bound by your own emotion trap" in Star Trek's
The Empath, but you can see it re-done in Star Wars I when Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi fight Darth Maul (okay, nerd alert) and have to pass through a field in which they must suppress emotion to be "unchained." But the Buddha's insight is that this state can be prolonged to any extent you like (ha, you get to be a Vulcan), although you may ultimately pay for failing to take care of yourself when at at last you are forced to re-enter your own life again (that's the Wikipedia/volunteer conundrum, Nerd-o).
So-- philosphically what are we left with, in all of this? Well, nowhere-- if by "somewhere" you mean a place to stay! Nature gave us this nervous system we have, which picks between triune states of being, for a very good reason. It's the product of a half billion years of multicellular evolution, and one cannot simply pick one of three states and decide to live your life there, all the time. That's a recipe for disaster, as things are bound to go badly if you let yourself stay in ANY of the three primary emotional states for very long. Song-of-innocence Little Lamb will meet Tyger, Tyger in the Night of the real world, and probably doesn't get Pie in the Sky, but will become lunch. "I've found that evil usually triumphs, unless good is very, very careful" (Wisdom of Dr. McCoy). Thus, about all I personally can recommend, is more self-awareness about what you're doing, when you're doing it. Neither Prometheus/Satan or Jesus or Buddha have The Answer to how to live your life, if you want to get the most out of it (and retire with your 401k intact, someplace suitably tropical). You must listen to them all.
Ultimately, we're all animals, and there's no escaping that, till we die. At which point, we cease to exist (
sorry for raining on that parade, but if you don't believe that already, nothing I'm saying is going to change your mind). Personally it's enough for me that human beings will keep growing in power until ultimately we end up with godlike powers, and powers over our primary emotions as well. What we end up doing THEN, is an interesting question. What will be your "will" be, when you end up in control of your will? A man may do as he wills, but he cannot
will as he wills, says Schopenhauer (and Lawrence of Arabia, in that great film). But that's only NOW, not in the future when we can write our own source-code. That's mirrors and mirrors and mirrors. Those people in the future are in for interesting times.
So I only suggest (meanwhile) that people try to notice what "state" they're acting from, so that they don't miss anything, and aren't led ENTIRELY by their emotions, as animals and children are. Be human. Try to lose yourself sometimes in other people's problems, instead of your own. And don't forget to smell the roses.
Milton Roe
tl;dr? Well bugger off, then. If you're not interested, then obviously I wasn't writing for YOU.