Thank You for all You've written. I look forward to Your "Divining the Machine" series, as I feel fairly sure I'll agree with most all.
In either event, I wonder if it has been precipitated by the supposed dominance of the left hemisphere of the brain over the right hemisphere. Are You familiar with Dr. Iain McGilchrist, M. Kingsnorth and/or anyone reading? He did 20 years of research and understood that, sure, both hemispheres do, indeed, perform virtually all the same functions as the other hemisphere. That's the conventional wisdom, which I gather still holds sway in a lotta places. Where Dr. McGilchrist varied in his analysis was that the two hemispheres weren't *physically* the same, and also that they didn't process information in a similar manner. Quite DISsimilar, according to his lights.
One hemisphere (left) pretty good at analyzing numbers and logic and *especially* reducing a whole into it's subordinate parts. The other (right) able to see the parts and the whole while simultaneously seeing, in the moment, their interdependencies and "lifeness" all of which the left-hemisphere is totally incapable of.
If anyone is interested his most accessible book is "The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning." $.99 and about an hour. Kindle only. He became somewhat famous for his 500-page book. And recently completed his 2000-page magnum opus. I need to reread those two in order to come close to fully understanding them. https://smile.amazon.com/Divided-Brain-Search-Meaning-ebook/dp/B008JE7I2M/ref=sr_1_6
Just thought I'd pass that along and HTH. And TYTY again, Sir Paul. :) On to reading what You "said" about The Machine.
TYTY as well, M de Ruijter. TY for tip to Steve Taylor's book. Very interesting. I put it on list. Embarrassed to find myself pleased that I'm in agreement with You and Prof. Foster. For excuse, I don't get out much and never ran across anyone who'd even *heard*-a the books.
I've listened to a few podcast interviews with McGilchrist and find him wonderfully engaging and insightful. I have the audiobook version of The Master and his Emissary and plan to get into it in the near future.
Thank you for your reference to McGilchrist’s work! I find the most interesting and compelling aspects of his research are in the realm of bicameral mentality. The concept of bicameral mentality was presented by Julian Jaynes, who proposed that consciousness as we know it arose from the breakdown of a division of the two hemispheres of the brain. He proposed that as recently as 3,000 years ago, prior to this 'joining' of the hemispheres, the brain operated with divided cognitive functions-part of the brain ‘spoke’ and the other part ‘obeyed.’ He uses supporting evidence from the Old Testament and classic works such as the Iliad to support the claim that in the past, self awareness and consciousness generally did not include cognitive processes such as introspection. In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more anthropomorphic than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences.
McGilchrist suggests that Jaynes’s hypothesis is the inverse of what happened, that we currently operate bicameral minds. In his reading of the theory, essentially the current brain is divided, whereas the prior state of the brain was in unity. McGilchrist’s concept supposes that in the past, humanity was in unity with a divine presence, perhaps that each person did not have their own “god” but was in contact with the voice of the divine, without the push and pull of our modern fractured inner turmoil. I find this to be a very compelling concept and am interested if others in the group have any thoughts regarding this.
Thank you all for being! This group is truly remarkable and fills me with hope on a daily basis. Paul, your writing is a great source of inspiration and I am truly grateful to you for your insights.
Thank You for Your reply. I may be likely to be the only one with thoughts on the matter. i think it's somewhat of a niche viewpoint. But *I* agree with You and McGilchrist, so there is that.
I've read the first four of the Divining the Machine series. And I would say the bicameral mind problem probably explains *why* the Machine came into being pretty well. (Was just a lucky guess.)
I wrote a paper for freshman English in '72, called "Science as Religion." I think the Science sect of the Atheist Religion is *especially* dangerous, because they are so left-hemisphere dominated. The left-hemisphere being so self-referential, it will not even entertain the idea that there are other Ways of thinking/feeling/intuiting, right?
If You're convinced reason is the *only* method of finding solutions then, voila, reason will come up with the solution to *every* problem You can possibly cogitate on. Also illustrates the harm of valuing quantity over quality, right? What used-ta be common knowledge has gotten thrown out with the bath water. But the idea that messy life has to be *controlled* to within an inch of it's life? It's as Sir Paul writes about in the series.
Sorry for blabbing. I enjoy reading to the point of neglecting chores too much.
I have McGilchrist’s book but have yet to dive deeply. I think these issues are fascinating, although I am very reluctant to situate god-experiences purely in the brain. This is why “proof” of spirituality never seems compelling to me when it is largely a subjective, in-the-head thing…or when it can be reduced to any particular mechanism. Still, it’s fascinating.
Thank you for the response Peter and also JT! Peter, I am in agreement with you that reducing spiritual experiences to the material of the brain is folly. The bicameral mentality theory was intriguing to me due to the space it left for analyzing the threefold human organism. I think that without internal unity we have not ears to hear nor eyes to see. Not to say that spiritual experiences exist within the brain, but perhaps that a brain divided is unable to properly experience anything, most of all the spiritual. I observe the individual as a microcosm for the larger whole we inhabit. I can see why dissecting bicameral theory could be viewed as a purely materialist exercise, and for many readers of the work it may well be. I see the bicameral perspective as a potential lens for viewing some of the discontinuity of our own human inner associations and the conflicting impulses of the three centers. I believe both Gurdjieff and Steiner discuss the threefold nature of man in a similar way – relating the physical body brain to the gut, the emotional brain to the heart and the brain of reason to the head. Pardon the vast oversimplification of these concepts, the work of Steiner is quite dear to me and his explanation of man’s inner workings, both spiritual and material, could fill a lifetime of study. Although I do not claim to be well versed in the biblical stories, I did find the aspect McGilchrist and Jaynes honed in on, regarding the reception of spiritual experiences by those in the Old Testament as well as the classics, fascinating and something I had not considered previously. How would a modern person react if they were in the Iliad? The ‘command’ voices of ancient times were structured by cultural norms to produce a seamlessly functioning society. If the physical, emotional, and mental bodies are not in conflict I imagine a sort of silence could exist for man, somewhat near to the concept of enlightenment. As things seem to stand at present, every individual is almost always a constant battleground of inner turmoil. The head rationalizing for the heart, the body overcompensating for the head, how often I find myself using the wrong center to try and solve a problem! I do believe there is something of interest embedded in the bicameral theory in the way it is understood by McGilchrist. Perhaps the fracturing of the hemispheres of the brain has exacerbated the rise of the Machine, as alluded to by JT the original poster that I responded to here. Thank you all for the stimulating conversation!
Thanks for your thoughtful reply as well! If spirituality cannot be fully reducible to the brain, it actually makes things more fascinating, implying an intertwining of “physical” and “non-physical” aspects of reality.
Thank You kindly for posting that link. Embarassingly, i don't watch many videos and think I've listened to mebbe one podcast or so. It's not so much the *time* as I'd first thought. With video I'm totally absorbed and podcasts never worked for me. WHen I read, I'm ruminating as I go along. Pretty slowly, to be frank.
I don't have a great memory for things, but I'm picking up *something* I guess by osmosis. Because my zeitgeist changes slowly, by what I read.
All that to say... TYTY again. That was very nice, M. Belden!
I have it on my shelf for months yet have still to start it (1400pages seems a daunting endeavour :-P). This new series may be a wonderful accompaniment with which to conclude each chapter though. And a kick in the arse to dig in!).
"Top Brain, Bottom Brain" Kosslyn, Miller, is a new take on the "hemispheric" theory of processing. The strongest theory now is grey vs white matter, which has varying degrees of "sidedness" in people. How interesting that Paul points out the downright Freudian compensatory nature of Batman (my parents were killed so I'll do anything except address the trauma), and the subject of brainedness comes up. Duality will just not die.
Mm yeah, agree. The "upshot" on pop-cog psych books and articles is always too boiled down to mean anything. Reading MRI doesn't really show any top/bottom intensities, except of brain stem of course. But the idea of grey/white seems critical: reflexive, fast processing vs. slower firing, comprising complicated networks; everything on a gradient, literally shades of grey. And a cumulative tendency that tells our kind of ancestral and personal history.
If I hadn't been at the keyboard for 14 hours, I'd learn a lot more than I am now. All I'm up to is that one-a the main differences between left/right hemisphere is right bigger percentage of white compared to left.
And I could be foggy on that, come-ta think on it. TY for taking time to reply.
Perhaps that explains why people in the US have taken it to even more of an extreme than, say, people in the UK... we drive on the right side of the road and use our right hand to shift gears, putting that left hemisphere to work pretty much 24/7 - LOL!!
Funny you should mention that. McGilchrist himself noted somewhere (podcast, in “The Matter with Things” ? - I no longer recall where) damage to the right hemisphere is much more debilitating so we North Americans do better in terms of brain damage from car crashes than those in the UK.
Funny I should see this today - earlier I watched a video about the drawing lesson that will "change your life." It includes tracing an image (I think that part was optional) and turning it upside down and then basically trying to reproduce it. This method is supposed to work because left-brained people experience a shift: left side is more analytical and when looking at an image, registers something as what it is (a drawing of a shoe, a bird, flowers, whatever) and the brain gets caught up in that rather than the lines and angles. Upside down, the brain is sort of "tricked" into seeing more of the lines rather than the whole object, and one can better sketch out the pieces of the whole. (I hope I've explained that sensibly.) It gets the right hemisphere more active.
Just to say I too hugely enjoyed "The Master and his Emissary" and am building up to reading McGilchrist's latest magnum opus. The "Scientific and Medical Network" led by David Lorimer has a four-part online series of discussions on "The Future of Intelligence" (starting next week) with McGilchrist as one of the panellists...organised jointly with the Centre for Christian Meditation.
It sounds like this book is far more spiritual, particularly the chapters on consciousness. Dr. Mcgilchrist is apparently coming to the belief that consciousness is not an emergent property of complex life, but is actually an intrinsic property of our universe. The quantum structure of the universe is non-deterministic, thus the theological concept of "free will" was likely baked into the cake at the Big Bang itself. That concept isn't new, but I'm interested to see how Mcgilchrist has extended it to the realm of consciousness.
While Iain still calls himself an atheist, if Rod's summary is correct, he appears to be embracing a theistic / enchantment model of the universe. Paul can probably relate to that very well with his own background. I would be curious what others here think once they read his book
Phew! Happens sometimes I'm completely smackgobbed. That was close to my limit on how long a video I can handle, but *so* well-worth it that it would-a been a serious loss to have missed. Couldn't be put more succinctly, and entertainingly.
IOW, TYTY bowing.
The one that happened to follow it was shorter, but also useful in a different Way. https://youtu.be/uOXbnr1EIeo That's how I *attempt* to meditate. Never seen it in words, and I never studied under a Teacher.
As far as him being an Atheist, I was just thinking as I was watching that he was most likely (or rather pretty certainly) a Catholic. I based that on his dissing the Protestant Reformation, from what I recall of the book. I'm still wondering how he could even *make* a claim to be an Atheist? Hmmmph. I completely misread those portions of the books.
It's been a while, but there's actually an academic philosophy that's based on the idea that consciousness is a property of the Cosmos. If time mebbe pursue it again...
(TYTY again, M. Villanueva. I'm pretty sure I recall You from another forum. Don't recall which, and ICBW, so there is that.) On to Rod Dreher in a few.
JT and Brian, thank you for mentioning the theory of panpsychism! This is used as the umbrella term for the current scientific discussion surrounding the idea that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of material. The reductionist scientific theories have all reached their breaking point in trying to ascertain the origin of consciousness, or to even begin to explain it. Unsurprisingly there are many scientists who are looking at this philosophy through a materialist lens, but there are others as well that are more open minded to the spiritual implications.
Rudolf Steiner did some very interesting investigation in this arena back in the early 20th century, known today as Spiritual Science. Steiner began with the study of Goethe’s scientific works and continued on to develop some methods for study that involved the intuitive ways of seeing and learning discussed by Gayle below. For any who are interested in these topics I believe you would find Steiner’s The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (also known as Philosophy of Freedom) an interesting read. There have been some interesting discussions about the emerging scientific idea of panpsychism in the Catholic community. This was recently shared with me:
As the author states, science is finally coming around to the understanding that religious people have known all along-mind is embedded in God’s creation. I look forward to watching the video shared above, thank you Brian!
JT, I very much look forward to hearing your thoughts on Philosophy of Freedom! Thank you again for all your insights. I am very glad to be a part of the stimulating conversation, and to have others to discuss these topics with.
I finally got to "The New Theism." I'd *heard*-a Nagel, but never read anything of him. I couldn't agree more that what "the New Atheists" have to say doesn't actually make much sense.
Especially as the idea that the laws of science, given enough time, will eventually be able to explain everything by laws of mathematics/physics. That, right *there* can only be accepted as an act of *faith,* right?
I got start on "Intuitive Think as a Spiritual Path." I dunno if it's beyond me, or I just hadn't slept very long today. Will attempt some more tomorrow. TY for tip.
My how time flies, Nikolina! I had made a note to come back to this, but never managed until now. I did finally finish Philosophy of Freedom. I dunno I understood more than a tenth part-a it. I copied some passages and had meant to review them and mebbe reread the book. Haven't done either.
If I've got a problem (and I'm not admitting I have any ;-), I get distracted too easily and don't follow-up like I should.
If I manage to get back on track, I'll try to come back and discuss this. I'll *promise* to do that (after I've done it ;-)... TYTY again.
Nikolina, I've never heard the term panpsychism, thanks.
McGilchrist in a summary interview I'm watching right now put his goal in very broad terms. He starts with physics, philosophy, and biology, obviously very far apart, and tries to bring them closer together by showing that their views of the world are far more similar than the individual practitioners realize. He wants to "reintroduce philosophy to science".
(finally) TY for tip to Rod Dreher's review. I heard name and knew he was famous, but that's about. Real *nice* to find he's a real person with a Substack to boot! Nice catch.
Dr. Iain McGilchrist's book, The Master and his Emissary was one of those jaw dropping aha moments when suddenly everything falls into place. I had been reading Philosophy of Mind basically from the Greeks which was the cradle of rational, conceptual logical thought via language. I read right up to the present where Language itself, has come to be regarded as mindedness itself. The 'Enlightenment' was the high point of such mind / rational / conceptual work. And indeed, arguably the source and birth of the Machine.
We are still in the grip of Plato and the Enlightenment, where rational conceptual constructions of the mind drive our understanding of the world out there. They represent the world, rather than actually being about 'being in the world' as we as humans (and the rest of creation!) know and experience it. They 'represent' a world structured in theories. This 'Really Real knowing' of the world, is still the dogma of science and the Machine. (Some scientists take a more pragmatic view, saying that theories are only mental constructs for getting successfully around the world, by way of finding predictions about the way the world operates. Their conceptual, theoretical 'objects' are not 'real'. We are dealing here in ideal worlds and models of worlds rather than that solid living world we inhabit. Yet, ask anyone if they believe in 'gravity'. They will say they do. But they have never seen it. They've only seen things falling down. There are other equally interesting theories about this phenomenon of falling. Newton himself thought the idea of gravity was a bit of 'occult' thinking and was never happy with it at all. But it served to make his theory work in practical terms.
Thinking in the Machine way means we don't look at the real world around us, which we learn about by sensing it and immersing ourselves in it.
You can see the impact of Machine thinking. It doesn't have to justify itself in terms of its impact on a solid living world. Its realities lie far beyond such trivial concerns. The cyber world is now its milieu. And it is a mistake, because as Dr. Iain says. The conceptually constructed world of language and system building, the intellect, of the left side brain, should be the emissary, not the Master. We can see where Left brain thinking leads us can't we. The Machine. And its total non empathic view of the natural world and the living things in it. Then we see the destruction of the natural world, because they don't see it, they don't live in it anymore... Go to Mars. Why not. More minerals to extract. A planet is a planet. The New World was/is of the Amazon is just there as 'useful' for the mining of its wealth, not its intrinsic and wonderful beauty as a living habitat that keeps things alive.
The older brain, the right side brain, with its 'knowing' being due to an empathic ability to understand 'the other' as well as we understand ourselves, integrates us into the living material world, where we are totally aware of our surroundings and others. For survival purposes. Probably. We are not looking in from the outside when we use right brain. We are part of the world and it is then that we see its great beauty and wonder at it, have mystical experiences caused by it, get out of our narrow ego driven selves. Egocentricity is a key value of left brain thinking.
But it is our original mind set and has been downgraded by Reason, the new boy on the block. This alternative traditional deep way of understanding the world, not by concepts and reason, but by an intelligence of feeling and emotion, and the senses, 'being in the world' trod a separate course in the history of philosophy. Knowing through empathising. The continental philosophical tradition has provided the alternate view of mindedness and consciousness. Think Existentialism or Heidegger, or even the Hume. The two approaches to understanding mind - not rational but sensory driven, have to my mind never been knitted together in any vaguely comfortable way. Two radically different understanding of the way we live in and understand the world. Then Iain came along. He talked about a prior more ancient consciousness that connected us to the natural world and people and other marvellous things, by way of empathic engagement. Then there was the other way that had held sway for too long, the scientific, conceptual way of the rational systematising mind where neat theories are more important than the muddle of reality that is the lived world. But it is the rationalist right side brain that leads straight to the Machine. What to do?
**Outstanding** thinking/feeling/intuiting, to me anyway. What to do? Dunno. I never heard-a the Stoics till a couple years ago, but found this useful. (And don't thin' i posted it here yet, I hope.)
Epictetus:
“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.”
“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
I dunno anything about outer effectiveness, but inner tranquility is a nice side-benefit.
If I properly grok this, and have read same elsewhen, the only thing one *can* do is take quasi-control of oneSelf. You may *influence* Your environment. Many spend bazillions to "control" it. But in the end, the only thing a clod can actually *change* is themselves, right?
It's not the only Way, and may not even be the *best* Way, but I change by reading. I don't always remember a lotta what I read, but some-a it sinks in. Over time, just sinks into the marrow of my bones. Sometimes creates habits, both good and bad varieties. Other times seems to dwell in "the dark side," which I presume is the subconscious. Mebbe not.
That's a poor way of saying same as You, M. Kenny. In everything there are always differences and samenesses, no matter where One looks, right? TY again.
I'm with you on the Stoics. Don't think I could sit naked in a barrel on the street all the time, but I get the main point being made in terms of the question, ' What does civilization really confer on us? What can we actually do without, from civilisation, and still live a rich internal life and a rich productive life?'
My constant frustration with McGilchrist is that he is trying to explain the "right brain" using the language of the "left brain." Even "Left/right brain" is a "left brain" construct.They are incommensurate languages! Artists, poets, singers, dancers, shamen, have always known you never get there that way.
I think he describes the right brain in terminology that does not fit the left brain. The right brain is intelligent emotionally, and is empathic, connecting with others and the natural world in a non cerebral, non logical, non conceptual, non system constructing way. It deals in intuitions, emotions, metaphor, sensory awareness, the unconscious. The ancient ways of the brain. The left brain uses language to construct conceptual models of the world. It uses logic and reason as the modes of understanding and engaging with the world. A Radically different way of being in the world that alienated one from the world rather than absorbing oneself into the world.
Me? I believe both-a what You've "said." I would say I *may* have noticed some left-brain thinking, more in "Master and Emissary" than last one (I forget what called, sorry). But not a *whole* lot and that's just me.
The problem I believe he faced was that trying to put anything in concrete language *is* more of a left-brain thing. But then I think he did what he talks about in the books, and finishes off those thoughts giving them another, final, pass with the right-hemisphere. That's what I got outta "The Master.." anyway.
*Seemed* that way to me but, of course, I could be completely hosed on all-a that.
The Master and his Emissary would necessarily be written using the left brain because he’s writing philosophy. It’s eminently cerebral and conceptual because it is written in language and presented rationally. Such ways of thinking about things are very useful for understanding. But this is not direct engagement with the physical world or with other people. Some people mistake this kind of thinking as engaging directly with the world . It is an enlightening but alienating way to engage. We observe the world rather than engage directly with it, to be in it, so to speak. We have been encouraged by Plato and other western philosophers to think that conceptual rational thinking is the Really Real, and far superior say , than direct engagement through the senses or imagination, with all that out there. Rational thought is powerful as it builds systems that can allow us to manipulate the world but that is the beginning of the Machine.
Yes, it feels something like that. Half way into Master & Emissary I felt like I needed to read a book that might explain schizophrenia. Seems like a strange approach (coming down I suppose from Plato & his gang) that is not sufficient to think about the world by stepping away from it into an imagined circle of thinking where there is both an “other-worldliness” and a “this-worldliness.” When I think/work in words or paint it’s more like knitting, the needles clicking away rapidly pushing the bundled threads right & left, over and under, back & forth seamlessly between frames of references that aren’t divided that way. It seem to be experienced as being one consciousness, not two.
I agree! But when I work in words , not doing philosophy, but writing creatively, I do feel that the process is distinctly different than thinking purely rationally. I use the way of metaphor and story to do that work. Reason/rational structures of thought aren't able for it. The experience of negotiating the real world cannot be done really in words. It is a felt presence, a felt understanding that is extremely difficult to reproduce in words. Fascinating stuff. The brain is a peculiar thing altogether!
Indeed Dr. McGilchrist is a godsend. I've read both the Master and his Emissary and the Matter with Things, and can say both, but mostly the first changed--in a way saved--my life. When finishing the first, I thought that this is one of the most important books I've ever read, then quickly corrected myself to say that this is the most important book I've ever read. The second is also brilliant, however there is less new ground, and more of a filling out. Yet, it should not be ignored. His theory, which you summarized well, is so far reaching it is truly a new point of thinking that reorganizes all former theories. Others were nearly there but he really is the one to finalize the thinking here. Cheerio
My 4 year old brother was jumping up and down on the sofa with the Batman music. He fell off, mom said "I'm Mr. Freeze, pssssssstttttt". and he didn't move for 15 minutes.
No one thought about our cars' exhaust, or much about the body counts on TV, We were trying to decide if Rachel Carson was right or not: verdict: we better be safe and assume she was.
We were like the villagers in Nietzsche's story, not seeing what was already arriving. The madman was right.
Thank you, Paul. I am so grateful for your insights. Thank you for looking back at people like Mumford and Ellul. Their wisdom has largely been forgotten.
Erich Fromm spoke of a death-urge embedded in western civilization. If he were still with us I believe he would say these photos of batman's progression that you display visually express this syndrome. He explained that the oral, anal and genital characters (he was trained by Freud) were features of the half alienated individual as the result of a half developed capitalism. Now (1968) we have the fully alienated individual as a result of a fully developed capitalism which he called 'the marketing character'. This type of individual commodifies everything, even the self and sees the world simply as a series of favorable exchanges. But here is where it gets interesting. He said there was a new and unique kind of necrophilia built-in to this character. Necrophilia is not any longer so much about a fascination with corpses - the marketing character turns their attention away from life and directs it toward machines. This forms the foundation of the urge to destroy life by replacing life and living beings with dead machines. This theory was laid out in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness in 1973. Fromm and Mumford had tremendous influence on each other. Fromm's description of this syndrome displays chilling resemblance to social media among other things. The mass confusion and hostility expressed in these times is what Fromm would identify as an example of 'malignant destructiveness'. And it is inextricably linked to The Machine.
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss these issues!
"I can see the current fight for civilization as a battle over how best to conquer death and free ourselves of our meat suits."
Well, yes, isn't it always so?
"Is it through a transhumanist resurrection of uploaded minds or is it the Christian view..."
Again, noting new. Recall the early Western Christian debate between Pelagius and Augustine over human perfectibility. Pelagius, if he adopted technology, would be a transhumanist with a Christian veneer. Augustine would have said that transhumanism would be a manifestation of the 'libido dominandi' and denied it any role in Christian salvation.
Agreed. We are now more deluded than the elites of Imperial Rome ever were, exactly via those mechanisms you name. Still, the same idealistic roots apply.
To 'lz': Please come back! I don't know why you thought ill of your own comments, there was nothing wrong with them. We all leave something out when we opine. Frankly, I never would have thought to post what I did without you! Please think about how we need one another!
Interesting stuff. There are a few other factors at play as regards the shifting versions of Batman over the decades. The 60s TV show took its cue from the Batman comics of the preceding decade or so, a time when the industry had to respond to a growing moral panic over perceived links to the content of comic books and juvenile delinquency and general bad behaviour. Rather than be policed by the government, comic companies created the Comics Code Authority which had strict guidelines about what a comic could and could not contain. Out went crime, horror, gangsters, graphic violence and allusions to sexuality and in came zany, cartoonish, adventures often involving ridiculous gadgets and excursions into outer space. The code endured until content creators started to chafe against it in the mid 1970s ( a period when the Batman comic started to head back to its noir roots) and ignore it completely by the mid 1980s. Had the code not been in place, and any menace contained inside a comic book's pages effectively jettisoned completely, we may have seen a darker incarnation in the original TV show which took its cue from the comics of the period. The arrival of Batman graphic novels (very much marketed at older teens and adults) in the 1980/90s by writers like Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison continued the trend, which started in the 70s, for much darker, violent and grittier stories which carried on through the 90s and 00s and which is very much the tone of Batman today. In that context the 60s Batman is an anomaly (the two Batman films made after Tim Burton's gothic versions were more cartoony but they were both critical and commercial disasters) and the default Batman is the dark, tortured, shadowy anti-hero. A grim, gritty Batman sells it would seem. Which as you rightly say probably says something about us and the times in which we live. As a side note I think it's fair to say that Gotham is often viewed as a proxy for New York city which endured a tumultuous time during the decade of the 1970s with spiralling crime rates, civil unrest, poor sanitation, blackouts and drug problems. About a million people left the city during that time and properties in the centre of town, that today are probably worth a fortune, lay empty or was occupied by punk musicians and artists taking advantage of the low rents. This idea of the city (New York especially) as some kind of modern hell very much fed into the Batman comics of that period and have remained a major feature of the printed and screen versions of the character ever since, as well as in the films of other people who grew up during that same time (Michael Mann, John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, David Fincher). William Blake got there first over two hundred years ago when he saw the same 'hell' in the dirt and poverty of industrial London. Over the last few years the storylines in the Batman comic books have featured squabbles over investment in the city's infrastructure, arguments about gentrification and rising living costs that are pushing ordinary people to the margins. Batman himself has lost his fortune, his vast house and his company and lives in a modest apartment. His butler Alfred is dead and the Batcave has been scaled down and relocated to deep within the sewerage system beneath the city. It's all a far cry from the day glo figure who carried a can of shark repellent spray and was given to dancing the 'Batusi'!
You absolutely could. But it's strange - Batman has an almost-unmatched longevity that includes different iterations (which Paul pointed out). His archetype lends itself to redefinition and reimagining in ways that many stock characters don't.
As to the characters you mentioned (cops and detectives): Batman has become more of a detective than a hero in this newest film, which is more noir-horror than any other Batman film so far.
Would that mean he's unlike other stock characters? The more incarnations I see of Batman, the more I think he's a foundational American (or Western) mythic figure.
I think this fixation on Superheroes is a sign of powerlessness. Perhaps of a kind that could only arise in a post-Christian consumer society. Superman and then an increasingly dark Batman is our version of the Messiah.
Luke Skywalker was that for me. As a young boy I would try to get objects from across the room via telekinesis. I was actually surprised when it didn't work. All of this stuff isn't good for us.
Apr 11, 2022·edited Apr 11, 2022Liked by Paul Kingsnorth
Or more concisely: Superman is the light side of the post-Christian substitute Messiah complex. Batman is the dark side. Batman is the implicit realization that all our secular substitutes for the Messiah (e.g. Superman, Batman, Neo, Luke Skywalker, etc) are failing and, in fact, have failed.
Superman is what American wants to be, but what if we (meaning Americans) wish to be him because he represents the mythic past of the pioneer? It's a halcyon and a half-truth, but his power is the unstoppable will of the individual, meant to be used on behalf of good and behalf of others. Meanwhile, Batman seems more a creation of the Cold War and its legacy: surveillance-based, technologically ingenious, attuned to fear, strategic, cold, and utterly pragmatic. We have more certainly been Batman than we've been that nostalgic Superman, even as we wish it weren't so. That's likely why we keep returning to Batman—we can reinvent him as often as we reinvent ourselves.
This is well said. Superman is sort of like "Shane" in the context of Westerns. An unequivocally good guy fighting an unambiguous bad guy. How quickly that changed, Clint Eastwood in Fist Full of Dollars, for example.
Superman always seems more Messiah-like to me, as Jack says above. Descends from the heavens, has unearthly powers, loves all humanity despite its brokenness, and literally saves the world. Batman on the other hand is mortal, flawed, tortured, but still basically on the side of good. I'd say this is why Batman has more appeal as times go on than Superman. None of us can really identify with Superman, but Batman is a different story.
More broadly though, I also think Jack is right to say that in an age with no spiritual succour or higher belief, commercialised superheroes fill a gap. But they can never really fill it.
I think that Superman represents the world as we wish it were, and Batman represents the world as we think - or fear - it is.
Considered in terms of crime-fighting, Superman never punishes the bad guys. He turns them over to the authorities for that. He is not a vigilante - rather, he makes “citizen arrests.” He upholds the law as created by an establishment that is entirely supported by the citizenry.
But while Batman for many years did much the same, the present day Batman is a lawless character. For Batman, the law does not work. It is incapable of dispensing justice, so Batman does it himself.
The recent movie, The Batman, contains a subtext in which this is recognized. He & The Riddler are both men who suffered childhood trauma that led them into becoming masked vigilantes, just with different criminal targets. The Riddler is crazy, and at the end, Batman seems to recognize that potential in himself.
My understanding of Superman may be out of date. I have the sense that he’s much more of a science fiction character these days. My sons never paid attention to Superman - but they still keep tabs on Batman, and make sure I’m up to date.
Superman is who I, as a Dutch boy, wanted to be. All I had to do was put on a red towel and I actually became Superman! Not much has changed, except that I call him Jesus now and find it much harder to put on his robe.
In the latest Batman movie, 'The Batman', there's no top-down reform; he stays away completely from life as Bruce Wayne. In fact he hardly opens his mouth as Bruce Wayne. Gotham City itself is a much more interesting character than Bruce Wayne in this offering. Having said that, the development of the criminals over time would make an interesting study. The Joker, from the flamboyant touch of Jack Nicholson to the much darker, mentally ill portrayal by Joaquin Phoenix shows a great evolution of his character. Gotham the TV show, where there is no Batman at all, hosts a very interesting suite of characters including The Riddler and The Penguin... Gotham survives without The Batman quite nicely there. Perhaps that's the decline - the darkness becomes more interesting than the goodness, or the dark aspect of the good is more prevalent than the light. No Bruce Wayne at all. Where do we go to from here?
I like the phrase you use—"he stays away completely from life as Bruce Wayne." Because the film does portray it as a choice, to forego public improvement for private vengeance. But it's also a choice that the film shows Batman overcoming in the end, as his purpose is restored and he chooses to work publicly as Batman during relief efforts. He even chooses to embrace hope, which is rare optimism for such a cynical character.
So that, maybe, is where we go from here: Batman choosing hope and likely choosing to add humanity-facing Bruce Wayne in the future.
Is it possible, in times of such sociopolitical turmoil and demonisation of the "other", that a deeper confrontation with the darkness within each of us could be exactly what we need? Perhaps it becomes easier to see the possibility for goodness within the easily demonized "other" when we acknowledge the possibility for evil within ourselves? The Phoenix Joker in particular explored this area so well I thought.
Where does the 2019 "Joker" played by Joaquin Phoenix come in when viewed through this lens? While not a Batman movie per se, it is a seriously important cultural exploration involving a Batman character. This film shook me to my bones and, quite surprisingly, won Phoenix an Oscar even though much of the messaging and symbolism ran so contrary to the myopic mythos of the identitarian orthodoxy imbibed throughout the Hollywood elite. Phoenix even called out cancel culture in his acceptance speech and made an appeal for more widespread forgiveness.
A more viscerally resonant cinematic exploration of the Jungian shadow and the making of the villain--an inverse hero's journey--I have yet to encounter.
The Batman as a film feels older than 2022 in its atmosphere of urban decay, as did The Joker from 2019. They have the feel of the 1970s-to-early-1980s: hopelessness and cynicism as the everlasting temptation for anyone attempting good, even in the tortured way that Batman attempts good in this film. But the film (spoilers?) ends on a note of hope, where Batman takes up relief efforts and public service of natural disaster victims, refusing to leave the city even as its outlook is grim and its streets are flooded. The film positions the new mayor as the chance for renewal (which depends on your politics as to its viability), but Batman matures from only rageful vengeance into a sense of duty to Gotham. His earlier "I'm vengeance" line is repeated back to him by one of the villains he has stopped, which is his realization of the abyss where he'd been working. He then decides to rise from it by service.
Did anyone else find a refreshing sort of hope in the film? For such a grim character, Batman can remain something of an optimist (as he does in The Batman).
No real hope, because Bruce didn’t do it. I would be interested in a movie (or comic) where the focus is Bruce. Batman cannot exercise moral responsibility that belongs to Bruce.
Ugh, I remember that original campy Batman show and didn't like it, though it was fashionable to watch amongst the middle schoolers, especially the boys. Instead, I was devouring LOTR and Sword at Sunset, poring through the appendices on Elvish history and also trying to teach myself Anglo-Saxon. As to the modern Batman films, I find them truly unappealing and I've never been able to watch one all the way through. I think we are going through a period of wallowing in the sewage of the soul, but I do wish we'd get over it. What's kind of interesting to me is our current fascination with super heroes and comic book characters in general. Maybe it's just a lack of imagination in filmmakers? Maybe a response to a gullible, emotionally immature population that has a prurient interest in true crime and is loath to look within?
I too had the die-cast Corgi Batmobile as a child. It was one of my favorite toys, and I have vivid memories of the little yellow plastic missiles you could shoot out of the rear facing tubes. I wish I knew what happened to it. I've also long been partial to pop-culture as a window on a culture's psyche. I believe it was British comics author Alan Moore who once said there was "truth in trash", referring to how the spontaneous movies and tv shows of certain eras represented unconscious upwellings of meaning. He pointed out how the 50s sci-fi flick "The Amazing Colossal Man", with its depiction of a giant American man grown too powerful and dangerous via science presented an image of a big diaper-clad baby stomping across the world stage. Scottish comics author Grant Morrison has also written extensively about the archetypal power of superheroes as myth and sociology (see their book "Supergods"). Others have pointed out how the novels of Philip K. Dick, often rushed out unpolished to make rent in the 60s and early 70s, also present a unique frame on our times and the unconscious forces below them, and have as a consequence become the basis for a lot of film making in recent decades (starting most famously with Blade Runner in the 80s).
We had one of those die cast cars as well. I write "we" because I have no recollection of particular ownership.
One day the toy was left out in the road, and we saw the kid from two doors down walk over to it and stomp on it, breaking pieces off. His dad had tried to make a go in politics, but mom was taken away one night when she couldn't stop screaming naked at the living room ceiling.
After 1993 I told my family that 'they' were going to hijack airliners and crash them into the Twin Towers. After it happened they asked how I knew. "Simple. I just applied the lessons of the playground to our world."
In a strange twist I think we've moved from idolizing the super hero to idoliterizing the super villain. From Suicide Squad, Venom and Hell Boy to the Harvey Dent of Joker we no longer have time for, even becoming somewhat repulsed by, the super hero while simultaneously telling ourselves that Harvey wasn't all bad you know. He had his redemptive qualities and was just pushed too far. Part of the animus, the moving spirit, is laziness. Part of it is envy. Much of it is greed, hubris and pride. All of it is that utmost human condition. The one spoken about by the greeks, the romans, the vedas and the hebrews. Tat Tvam Asi.
I've been recently enjoying Conner Habib's recent podcast interviews on esoteric Christianity / anthroposophy, starting at episode 181 https://www.patreon.com/posts/63528572
It ties in with some of the recent themes here, something along the lines of that one cannot find solutions to our modern problems by drawing from that same well of modernity that the problems come from. With it being in the spiritual or religious life that the answer to this can be found.
Referencing the comments on Dr. Lain McGilchrist. I follow author, Rod Dreher on his Rod Dreher Diary. He has written quite a lot about IMG and his left vs right brain studies. Very “heady” stuff, no pun intended! I certainly do not claim to understand most of it, but one aspect I was particularly intrigued by, was his study on how the brain views beauty and the connection to the beauty in nature. Dreher’s commentaries on the study are enlightening. You might consider looking it up.
I am an American, I take no offense to any of the Batman comments. I live on the coast and I too would love a can of that shark repellant, even for use when I am terra firme, ha! Mr. Kingsnorth, I have yet to find anything you say offensive nor contrary to many of my own beliefs. Thank you for all your critical thinking and being brave enough to express your beliefs.
I have a couple of thoughts about your Batman post. They are disjointed but I’ll throw them down anyhow. When I read this quote….
“Batman is the ultimate hero for the post-modern West. He’s an urban loner, he’s fighting for a better world, he’s driven by unresolved personal trauma, and his ideology and his identity are both fluid. On top of that, he’s a thwarted idealist, he has a love-hate relationship with authority, and he can never quite make up his mind whether Gotham is best cleaned up by thoroughgoing top-down reform or just by masking up and kicking the shit out of the baddies.”
I thought of Moses. Oddly enough it seems to work.
Secondly I wondered what transformation looks like. I think it looks like death. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the two when transformation is at its height. Whispers of Frankenstein. Our world is filled with zombies and zombies are corpses that are not alive but simply animated by some desperate virus.
I remember standing in an old growth forest on Vancouver Island in front of the fallen body of a 600 year old Sitka Spruce. I felt completely frustrated because I had no one to be angry with. The tree had fallen of its own accord, its time had come, and I wasn’t happy with it’s decision. There were trees standing tall all around it that were much older and they weren’t dead! Oh how I longed for this tree to live. Then I noticed that it was covered in dozens of varieties of moss and lichen. Delicate flowers rose up from them in groups and I could almost hear the excited chatter. Here and there a short bush clung to the log and afforded just enough shade on the flowers to keep them in full bloom. Dotted along the massive length of the dead tree were young Sitka spruce, reaching longingly for the heights. They reminded me of my teenagers at the time. Firmly rooted in their parents and yet sights set so high. I realized then that this Sitka had laid down his life for his friends. I also realized that I don’t have a very good understanding of death and probably also not of life. I believed, up until then, that there was a finality to death, but staring at that dead tree screamed at me that I was wrong and begged me to listen. There is a light and a dark side to everything.
Having said all this I realize that we still have to act in the world. We still need to make a judgement, draw a line and maybe even go so far as to take a side, mostly because that is all that is on offer. I also believe that even in doing this we can transcend it. We may find ourselves, as I certainly do, on a side. The feelings of frustration that I felt as I stared at the grand old fallen tree were replaced with sentiments of joy and gratitude, although the desire to see the tree live never went away. I understood at that moment that transformation looks like death and life and then death again and then life, and I had to hold these things in tension in order to see the higher order in it all.
I leave you with a thought provoking poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called Palingensis.
Coffee. One of the singular pleasures in life is this black gold. First thing in the morning....hot (almost to the point of burning your throat, but not quite)....black....bitter. By it self or with an equally bitter meal.
Thank You for all You've written. I look forward to Your "Divining the Machine" series, as I feel fairly sure I'll agree with most all.
In either event, I wonder if it has been precipitated by the supposed dominance of the left hemisphere of the brain over the right hemisphere. Are You familiar with Dr. Iain McGilchrist, M. Kingsnorth and/or anyone reading? He did 20 years of research and understood that, sure, both hemispheres do, indeed, perform virtually all the same functions as the other hemisphere. That's the conventional wisdom, which I gather still holds sway in a lotta places. Where Dr. McGilchrist varied in his analysis was that the two hemispheres weren't *physically* the same, and also that they didn't process information in a similar manner. Quite DISsimilar, according to his lights.
One hemisphere (left) pretty good at analyzing numbers and logic and *especially* reducing a whole into it's subordinate parts. The other (right) able to see the parts and the whole while simultaneously seeing, in the moment, their interdependencies and "lifeness" all of which the left-hemisphere is totally incapable of.
If anyone is interested his most accessible book is "The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning." $.99 and about an hour. Kindle only. He became somewhat famous for his 500-page book. And recently completed his 2000-page magnum opus. I need to reread those two in order to come close to fully understanding them. https://smile.amazon.com/Divided-Brain-Search-Meaning-ebook/dp/B008JE7I2M/ref=sr_1_6
Just thought I'd pass that along and HTH. And TYTY again, Sir Paul. :) On to reading what You "said" about The Machine.
TYTY as well, M de Ruijter. TY for tip to Steve Taylor's book. Very interesting. I put it on list. Embarrassed to find myself pleased that I'm in agreement with You and Prof. Foster. For excuse, I don't get out much and never ran across anyone who'd even *heard*-a the books.
I've listened to a few podcast interviews with McGilchrist and find him wonderfully engaging and insightful. I have the audiobook version of The Master and his Emissary and plan to get into it in the near future.
Thank You for Your reply. I enjoyed "The Master.." immensely. Had it in mind to reread for a while now. So many books, so little time. Nice problem.
"So many books, so little time" is a problem with which I'm all too familiar…
Thank you for your reference to McGilchrist’s work! I find the most interesting and compelling aspects of his research are in the realm of bicameral mentality. The concept of bicameral mentality was presented by Julian Jaynes, who proposed that consciousness as we know it arose from the breakdown of a division of the two hemispheres of the brain. He proposed that as recently as 3,000 years ago, prior to this 'joining' of the hemispheres, the brain operated with divided cognitive functions-part of the brain ‘spoke’ and the other part ‘obeyed.’ He uses supporting evidence from the Old Testament and classic works such as the Iliad to support the claim that in the past, self awareness and consciousness generally did not include cognitive processes such as introspection. In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more anthropomorphic than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences.
McGilchrist suggests that Jaynes’s hypothesis is the inverse of what happened, that we currently operate bicameral minds. In his reading of the theory, essentially the current brain is divided, whereas the prior state of the brain was in unity. McGilchrist’s concept supposes that in the past, humanity was in unity with a divine presence, perhaps that each person did not have their own “god” but was in contact with the voice of the divine, without the push and pull of our modern fractured inner turmoil. I find this to be a very compelling concept and am interested if others in the group have any thoughts regarding this.
Thank you all for being! This group is truly remarkable and fills me with hope on a daily basis. Paul, your writing is a great source of inspiration and I am truly grateful to you for your insights.
Thank You for Your reply. I may be likely to be the only one with thoughts on the matter. i think it's somewhat of a niche viewpoint. But *I* agree with You and McGilchrist, so there is that.
I've read the first four of the Divining the Machine series. And I would say the bicameral mind problem probably explains *why* the Machine came into being pretty well. (Was just a lucky guess.)
I wrote a paper for freshman English in '72, called "Science as Religion." I think the Science sect of the Atheist Religion is *especially* dangerous, because they are so left-hemisphere dominated. The left-hemisphere being so self-referential, it will not even entertain the idea that there are other Ways of thinking/feeling/intuiting, right?
If You're convinced reason is the *only* method of finding solutions then, voila, reason will come up with the solution to *every* problem You can possibly cogitate on. Also illustrates the harm of valuing quantity over quality, right? What used-ta be common knowledge has gotten thrown out with the bath water. But the idea that messy life has to be *controlled* to within an inch of it's life? It's as Sir Paul writes about in the series.
Sorry for blabbing. I enjoy reading to the point of neglecting chores too much.
TYTY again for Your reply, M. Nikolina!
I have McGilchrist’s book but have yet to dive deeply. I think these issues are fascinating, although I am very reluctant to situate god-experiences purely in the brain. This is why “proof” of spirituality never seems compelling to me when it is largely a subjective, in-the-head thing…or when it can be reduced to any particular mechanism. Still, it’s fascinating.
Thank you for the response Peter and also JT! Peter, I am in agreement with you that reducing spiritual experiences to the material of the brain is folly. The bicameral mentality theory was intriguing to me due to the space it left for analyzing the threefold human organism. I think that without internal unity we have not ears to hear nor eyes to see. Not to say that spiritual experiences exist within the brain, but perhaps that a brain divided is unable to properly experience anything, most of all the spiritual. I observe the individual as a microcosm for the larger whole we inhabit. I can see why dissecting bicameral theory could be viewed as a purely materialist exercise, and for many readers of the work it may well be. I see the bicameral perspective as a potential lens for viewing some of the discontinuity of our own human inner associations and the conflicting impulses of the three centers. I believe both Gurdjieff and Steiner discuss the threefold nature of man in a similar way – relating the physical body brain to the gut, the emotional brain to the heart and the brain of reason to the head. Pardon the vast oversimplification of these concepts, the work of Steiner is quite dear to me and his explanation of man’s inner workings, both spiritual and material, could fill a lifetime of study. Although I do not claim to be well versed in the biblical stories, I did find the aspect McGilchrist and Jaynes honed in on, regarding the reception of spiritual experiences by those in the Old Testament as well as the classics, fascinating and something I had not considered previously. How would a modern person react if they were in the Iliad? The ‘command’ voices of ancient times were structured by cultural norms to produce a seamlessly functioning society. If the physical, emotional, and mental bodies are not in conflict I imagine a sort of silence could exist for man, somewhat near to the concept of enlightenment. As things seem to stand at present, every individual is almost always a constant battleground of inner turmoil. The head rationalizing for the heart, the body overcompensating for the head, how often I find myself using the wrong center to try and solve a problem! I do believe there is something of interest embedded in the bicameral theory in the way it is understood by McGilchrist. Perhaps the fracturing of the hemispheres of the brain has exacerbated the rise of the Machine, as alluded to by JT the original poster that I responded to here. Thank you all for the stimulating conversation!
Thanks for your thoughtful reply as well! If spirituality cannot be fully reducible to the brain, it actually makes things more fascinating, implying an intertwining of “physical” and “non-physical” aspects of reality.
McGilchrist is putting out a series of videos discussing each chapter in his new book in turn. The video for Chapter 1 was released last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2ygDb2CozE&list=WL&index=17&t=63s.
Thank You kindly for posting that link. Embarassingly, i don't watch many videos and think I've listened to mebbe one podcast or so. It's not so much the *time* as I'd first thought. With video I'm totally absorbed and podcasts never worked for me. WHen I read, I'm ruminating as I go along. Pretty slowly, to be frank.
I don't have a great memory for things, but I'm picking up *something* I guess by osmosis. Because my zeitgeist changes slowly, by what I read.
All that to say... TYTY again. That was very nice, M. Belden!
I have it on my shelf for months yet have still to start it (1400pages seems a daunting endeavour :-P). This new series may be a wonderful accompaniment with which to conclude each chapter though. And a kick in the arse to dig in!).
"Top Brain, Bottom Brain" Kosslyn, Miller, is a new take on the "hemispheric" theory of processing. The strongest theory now is grey vs white matter, which has varying degrees of "sidedness" in people. How interesting that Paul points out the downright Freudian compensatory nature of Batman (my parents were killed so I'll do anything except address the trauma), and the subject of brainedness comes up. Duality will just not die.
I looked into top/bottom brain and didn't see much merit to it. ICBW, so there is that.
Sorry. May have implied i did a *thorough* investigation when I hadn't. Still could be write tho. (pun)
Mm yeah, agree. The "upshot" on pop-cog psych books and articles is always too boiled down to mean anything. Reading MRI doesn't really show any top/bottom intensities, except of brain stem of course. But the idea of grey/white seems critical: reflexive, fast processing vs. slower firing, comprising complicated networks; everything on a gradient, literally shades of grey. And a cumulative tendency that tells our kind of ancestral and personal history.
If I hadn't been at the keyboard for 14 hours, I'd learn a lot more than I am now. All I'm up to is that one-a the main differences between left/right hemisphere is right bigger percentage of white compared to left.
And I could be foggy on that, come-ta think on it. TY for taking time to reply.
Perhaps that explains why people in the US have taken it to even more of an extreme than, say, people in the UK... we drive on the right side of the road and use our right hand to shift gears, putting that left hemisphere to work pretty much 24/7 - LOL!!
Funny you should mention that. McGilchrist himself noted somewhere (podcast, in “The Matter with Things” ? - I no longer recall where) damage to the right hemisphere is much more debilitating so we North Americans do better in terms of brain damage from car crashes than those in the UK.
Funny I should see this today - earlier I watched a video about the drawing lesson that will "change your life." It includes tracing an image (I think that part was optional) and turning it upside down and then basically trying to reproduce it. This method is supposed to work because left-brained people experience a shift: left side is more analytical and when looking at an image, registers something as what it is (a drawing of a shoe, a bird, flowers, whatever) and the brain gets caught up in that rather than the lines and angles. Upside down, the brain is sort of "tricked" into seeing more of the lines rather than the whole object, and one can better sketch out the pieces of the whole. (I hope I've explained that sensibly.) It gets the right hemisphere more active.
My aunt gave me that book, "Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain", when I was eleven, and it had a huge influence on both my drawing and my brain.
Just to say I too hugely enjoyed "The Master and his Emissary" and am building up to reading McGilchrist's latest magnum opus. The "Scientific and Medical Network" led by David Lorimer has a four-part online series of discussions on "The Future of Intelligence" (starting next week) with McGilchrist as one of the panellists...organised jointly with the Centre for Christian Meditation.
There's a great 10 minute RSA Animate on Youtube of McGilchrist's talk on The Divided Brain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI
Master and Emissary was good but dense. I also felt he suffered from a problem of being a hammer looking for nails. Rod Dreher just finished McGilchrist's magnum opus (as you put it) The Matter with Things. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/iain-mcgilchrist-great-new-book-the-matter-with-things/ Based on Rod's review of a couple of the chapters, I'm putting it on hold from the library.
It sounds like this book is far more spiritual, particularly the chapters on consciousness. Dr. Mcgilchrist is apparently coming to the belief that consciousness is not an emergent property of complex life, but is actually an intrinsic property of our universe. The quantum structure of the universe is non-deterministic, thus the theological concept of "free will" was likely baked into the cake at the Big Bang itself. That concept isn't new, but I'm interested to see how Mcgilchrist has extended it to the realm of consciousness.
While Iain still calls himself an atheist, if Rod's summary is correct, he appears to be embracing a theistic / enchantment model of the universe. Paul can probably relate to that very well with his own background. I would be curious what others here think once they read his book
Phew! Happens sometimes I'm completely smackgobbed. That was close to my limit on how long a video I can handle, but *so* well-worth it that it would-a been a serious loss to have missed. Couldn't be put more succinctly, and entertainingly.
IOW, TYTY bowing.
The one that happened to follow it was shorter, but also useful in a different Way. https://youtu.be/uOXbnr1EIeo That's how I *attempt* to meditate. Never seen it in words, and I never studied under a Teacher.
As far as him being an Atheist, I was just thinking as I was watching that he was most likely (or rather pretty certainly) a Catholic. I based that on his dissing the Protestant Reformation, from what I recall of the book. I'm still wondering how he could even *make* a claim to be an Atheist? Hmmmph. I completely misread those portions of the books.
It's been a while, but there's actually an academic philosophy that's based on the idea that consciousness is a property of the Cosmos. If time mebbe pursue it again...
(TYTY again, M. Villanueva. I'm pretty sure I recall You from another forum. Don't recall which, and ICBW, so there is that.) On to Rod Dreher in a few.
JT and Brian, thank you for mentioning the theory of panpsychism! This is used as the umbrella term for the current scientific discussion surrounding the idea that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of material. The reductionist scientific theories have all reached their breaking point in trying to ascertain the origin of consciousness, or to even begin to explain it. Unsurprisingly there are many scientists who are looking at this philosophy through a materialist lens, but there are others as well that are more open minded to the spiritual implications.
Rudolf Steiner did some very interesting investigation in this arena back in the early 20th century, known today as Spiritual Science. Steiner began with the study of Goethe’s scientific works and continued on to develop some methods for study that involved the intuitive ways of seeing and learning discussed by Gayle below. For any who are interested in these topics I believe you would find Steiner’s The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (also known as Philosophy of Freedom) an interesting read. There have been some interesting discussions about the emerging scientific idea of panpsychism in the Catholic community. This was recently shared with me:
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2022/03/19/a-new-theism/?utm_source=The+Catholic+Thing+Daily&utm_campaign=a4cf793d97-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_07_01_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_769a14e16a-a4cf793d97-206529293
As the author states, science is finally coming around to the understanding that religious people have known all along-mind is embedded in God’s creation. I look forward to watching the video shared above, thank you Brian!
Ha! For once a step ahead-a You: Bought Philosophy of Freedom earlier this morning. TY for link.
JT, I very much look forward to hearing your thoughts on Philosophy of Freedom! Thank you again for all your insights. I am very glad to be a part of the stimulating conversation, and to have others to discuss these topics with.
Yeah, #metoo! Never would-a dreamt it possible, just a few days ago.
I finally got to "The New Theism." I'd *heard*-a Nagel, but never read anything of him. I couldn't agree more that what "the New Atheists" have to say doesn't actually make much sense.
Especially as the idea that the laws of science, given enough time, will eventually be able to explain everything by laws of mathematics/physics. That, right *there* can only be accepted as an act of *faith,* right?
I got start on "Intuitive Think as a Spiritual Path." I dunno if it's beyond me, or I just hadn't slept very long today. Will attempt some more tomorrow. TY for tip.
My how time flies, Nikolina! I had made a note to come back to this, but never managed until now. I did finally finish Philosophy of Freedom. I dunno I understood more than a tenth part-a it. I copied some passages and had meant to review them and mebbe reread the book. Haven't done either.
If I've got a problem (and I'm not admitting I have any ;-), I get distracted too easily and don't follow-up like I should.
If I manage to get back on track, I'll try to come back and discuss this. I'll *promise* to do that (after I've done it ;-)... TYTY again.
Nikolina, I've never heard the term panpsychism, thanks.
McGilchrist in a summary interview I'm watching right now put his goal in very broad terms. He starts with physics, philosophy, and biology, obviously very far apart, and tries to bring them closer together by showing that their views of the world are far more similar than the individual practitioners realize. He wants to "reintroduce philosophy to science".
(finally) TY for tip to Rod Dreher's review. I heard name and knew he was famous, but that's about. Real *nice* to find he's a real person with a Substack to boot! Nice catch.
Dr. Iain McGilchrist's book, The Master and his Emissary was one of those jaw dropping aha moments when suddenly everything falls into place. I had been reading Philosophy of Mind basically from the Greeks which was the cradle of rational, conceptual logical thought via language. I read right up to the present where Language itself, has come to be regarded as mindedness itself. The 'Enlightenment' was the high point of such mind / rational / conceptual work. And indeed, arguably the source and birth of the Machine.
We are still in the grip of Plato and the Enlightenment, where rational conceptual constructions of the mind drive our understanding of the world out there. They represent the world, rather than actually being about 'being in the world' as we as humans (and the rest of creation!) know and experience it. They 'represent' a world structured in theories. This 'Really Real knowing' of the world, is still the dogma of science and the Machine. (Some scientists take a more pragmatic view, saying that theories are only mental constructs for getting successfully around the world, by way of finding predictions about the way the world operates. Their conceptual, theoretical 'objects' are not 'real'. We are dealing here in ideal worlds and models of worlds rather than that solid living world we inhabit. Yet, ask anyone if they believe in 'gravity'. They will say they do. But they have never seen it. They've only seen things falling down. There are other equally interesting theories about this phenomenon of falling. Newton himself thought the idea of gravity was a bit of 'occult' thinking and was never happy with it at all. But it served to make his theory work in practical terms.
Thinking in the Machine way means we don't look at the real world around us, which we learn about by sensing it and immersing ourselves in it.
You can see the impact of Machine thinking. It doesn't have to justify itself in terms of its impact on a solid living world. Its realities lie far beyond such trivial concerns. The cyber world is now its milieu. And it is a mistake, because as Dr. Iain says. The conceptually constructed world of language and system building, the intellect, of the left side brain, should be the emissary, not the Master. We can see where Left brain thinking leads us can't we. The Machine. And its total non empathic view of the natural world and the living things in it. Then we see the destruction of the natural world, because they don't see it, they don't live in it anymore... Go to Mars. Why not. More minerals to extract. A planet is a planet. The New World was/is of the Amazon is just there as 'useful' for the mining of its wealth, not its intrinsic and wonderful beauty as a living habitat that keeps things alive.
The older brain, the right side brain, with its 'knowing' being due to an empathic ability to understand 'the other' as well as we understand ourselves, integrates us into the living material world, where we are totally aware of our surroundings and others. For survival purposes. Probably. We are not looking in from the outside when we use right brain. We are part of the world and it is then that we see its great beauty and wonder at it, have mystical experiences caused by it, get out of our narrow ego driven selves. Egocentricity is a key value of left brain thinking.
But it is our original mind set and has been downgraded by Reason, the new boy on the block. This alternative traditional deep way of understanding the world, not by concepts and reason, but by an intelligence of feeling and emotion, and the senses, 'being in the world' trod a separate course in the history of philosophy. Knowing through empathising. The continental philosophical tradition has provided the alternate view of mindedness and consciousness. Think Existentialism or Heidegger, or even the Hume. The two approaches to understanding mind - not rational but sensory driven, have to my mind never been knitted together in any vaguely comfortable way. Two radically different understanding of the way we live in and understand the world. Then Iain came along. He talked about a prior more ancient consciousness that connected us to the natural world and people and other marvellous things, by way of empathic engagement. Then there was the other way that had held sway for too long, the scientific, conceptual way of the rational systematising mind where neat theories are more important than the muddle of reality that is the lived world. But it is the rationalist right side brain that leads straight to the Machine. What to do?
**Outstanding** thinking/feeling/intuiting, to me anyway. What to do? Dunno. I never heard-a the Stoics till a couple years ago, but found this useful. (And don't thin' i posted it here yet, I hope.)
Epictetus:
“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.”
“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
I dunno anything about outer effectiveness, but inner tranquility is a nice side-benefit.
If I properly grok this, and have read same elsewhen, the only thing one *can* do is take quasi-control of oneSelf. You may *influence* Your environment. Many spend bazillions to "control" it. But in the end, the only thing a clod can actually *change* is themselves, right?
It's not the only Way, and may not even be the *best* Way, but I change by reading. I don't always remember a lotta what I read, but some-a it sinks in. Over time, just sinks into the marrow of my bones. Sometimes creates habits, both good and bad varieties. Other times seems to dwell in "the dark side," which I presume is the subconscious. Mebbe not.
That's a poor way of saying same as You, M. Kenny. In everything there are always differences and samenesses, no matter where One looks, right? TY again.
I'm with you on the Stoics. Don't think I could sit naked in a barrel on the street all the time, but I get the main point being made in terms of the question, ' What does civilization really confer on us? What can we actually do without, from civilisation, and still live a rich internal life and a rich productive life?'
My barrels at the dry cleaners, so I'm with You on that right now.
Sometimes I consider taking up the raw onion diet
Ewwww. Glad I never learnt much at *all* about the Stoics, if that's what they ate.
My constant frustration with McGilchrist is that he is trying to explain the "right brain" using the language of the "left brain." Even "Left/right brain" is a "left brain" construct.They are incommensurate languages! Artists, poets, singers, dancers, shamen, have always known you never get there that way.
I think he describes the right brain in terminology that does not fit the left brain. The right brain is intelligent emotionally, and is empathic, connecting with others and the natural world in a non cerebral, non logical, non conceptual, non system constructing way. It deals in intuitions, emotions, metaphor, sensory awareness, the unconscious. The ancient ways of the brain. The left brain uses language to construct conceptual models of the world. It uses logic and reason as the modes of understanding and engaging with the world. A Radically different way of being in the world that alienated one from the world rather than absorbing oneself into the world.
Thank You both for replies.
Me? I believe both-a what You've "said." I would say I *may* have noticed some left-brain thinking, more in "Master and Emissary" than last one (I forget what called, sorry). But not a *whole* lot and that's just me.
The problem I believe he faced was that trying to put anything in concrete language *is* more of a left-brain thing. But then I think he did what he talks about in the books, and finishes off those thoughts giving them another, final, pass with the right-hemisphere. That's what I got outta "The Master.." anyway.
*Seemed* that way to me but, of course, I could be completely hosed on all-a that.
Poetry or art for example, arise in the right brain .
Yah.
The Master and his Emissary would necessarily be written using the left brain because he’s writing philosophy. It’s eminently cerebral and conceptual because it is written in language and presented rationally. Such ways of thinking about things are very useful for understanding. But this is not direct engagement with the physical world or with other people. Some people mistake this kind of thinking as engaging directly with the world . It is an enlightening but alienating way to engage. We observe the world rather than engage directly with it, to be in it, so to speak. We have been encouraged by Plato and other western philosophers to think that conceptual rational thinking is the Really Real, and far superior say , than direct engagement through the senses or imagination, with all that out there. Rational thought is powerful as it builds systems that can allow us to manipulate the world but that is the beginning of the Machine.
TY, I understand.
Helpful perspective. Thanks.
The left brain and it’s conceptual system building in language and logic is the language of the machine.
Yah again. (I need to get back on that. It was fascinating! Ah well...)
Yes, it feels something like that. Half way into Master & Emissary I felt like I needed to read a book that might explain schizophrenia. Seems like a strange approach (coming down I suppose from Plato & his gang) that is not sufficient to think about the world by stepping away from it into an imagined circle of thinking where there is both an “other-worldliness” and a “this-worldliness.” When I think/work in words or paint it’s more like knitting, the needles clicking away rapidly pushing the bundled threads right & left, over and under, back & forth seamlessly between frames of references that aren’t divided that way. It seem to be experienced as being one consciousness, not two.
I agree! But when I work in words , not doing philosophy, but writing creatively, I do feel that the process is distinctly different than thinking purely rationally. I use the way of metaphor and story to do that work. Reason/rational structures of thought aren't able for it. The experience of negotiating the real world cannot be done really in words. It is a felt presence, a felt understanding that is extremely difficult to reproduce in words. Fascinating stuff. The brain is a peculiar thing altogether!
Yes…”a peculiar thing altogether” and voicing your phrase so much musical ‘mouth fun.’
Indeed Dr. McGilchrist is a godsend. I've read both the Master and his Emissary and the Matter with Things, and can say both, but mostly the first changed--in a way saved--my life. When finishing the first, I thought that this is one of the most important books I've ever read, then quickly corrected myself to say that this is the most important book I've ever read. The second is also brilliant, however there is less new ground, and more of a filling out. Yet, it should not be ignored. His theory, which you summarized well, is so far reaching it is truly a new point of thinking that reorganizes all former theories. Others were nearly there but he really is the one to finalize the thinking here. Cheerio
Totes agree.
Yeah, *totally* agree M. Douglas and Gayle. Regards from Ohio.
Ah, 1966.
My 4 year old brother was jumping up and down on the sofa with the Batman music. He fell off, mom said "I'm Mr. Freeze, pssssssstttttt". and he didn't move for 15 minutes.
No one thought about our cars' exhaust, or much about the body counts on TV, We were trying to decide if Rachel Carson was right or not: verdict: we better be safe and assume she was.
We were like the villagers in Nietzsche's story, not seeing what was already arriving. The madman was right.
Another view of those times: https://todaysmartyrs.org/index.php/movie-review-the-field-afar/
Thank you, Paul. I am so grateful for your insights. Thank you for looking back at people like Mumford and Ellul. Their wisdom has largely been forgotten.
Erich Fromm spoke of a death-urge embedded in western civilization. If he were still with us I believe he would say these photos of batman's progression that you display visually express this syndrome. He explained that the oral, anal and genital characters (he was trained by Freud) were features of the half alienated individual as the result of a half developed capitalism. Now (1968) we have the fully alienated individual as a result of a fully developed capitalism which he called 'the marketing character'. This type of individual commodifies everything, even the self and sees the world simply as a series of favorable exchanges. But here is where it gets interesting. He said there was a new and unique kind of necrophilia built-in to this character. Necrophilia is not any longer so much about a fascination with corpses - the marketing character turns their attention away from life and directs it toward machines. This forms the foundation of the urge to destroy life by replacing life and living beings with dead machines. This theory was laid out in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness in 1973. Fromm and Mumford had tremendous influence on each other. Fromm's description of this syndrome displays chilling resemblance to social media among other things. The mass confusion and hostility expressed in these times is what Fromm would identify as an example of 'malignant destructiveness'. And it is inextricably linked to The Machine.
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss these issues!
"I can see the current fight for civilization as a battle over how best to conquer death and free ourselves of our meat suits."
Well, yes, isn't it always so?
"Is it through a transhumanist resurrection of uploaded minds or is it the Christian view..."
Again, noting new. Recall the early Western Christian debate between Pelagius and Augustine over human perfectibility. Pelagius, if he adopted technology, would be a transhumanist with a Christian veneer. Augustine would have said that transhumanism would be a manifestation of the 'libido dominandi' and denied it any role in Christian salvation.
Agreed. We are now more deluded than the elites of Imperial Rome ever were, exactly via those mechanisms you name. Still, the same idealistic roots apply.
To 'lz': Please come back! I don't know why you thought ill of your own comments, there was nothing wrong with them. We all leave something out when we opine. Frankly, I never would have thought to post what I did without you! Please think about how we need one another!
Why is Batman 1966 wearing a suicide belt?
Interesting stuff. There are a few other factors at play as regards the shifting versions of Batman over the decades. The 60s TV show took its cue from the Batman comics of the preceding decade or so, a time when the industry had to respond to a growing moral panic over perceived links to the content of comic books and juvenile delinquency and general bad behaviour. Rather than be policed by the government, comic companies created the Comics Code Authority which had strict guidelines about what a comic could and could not contain. Out went crime, horror, gangsters, graphic violence and allusions to sexuality and in came zany, cartoonish, adventures often involving ridiculous gadgets and excursions into outer space. The code endured until content creators started to chafe against it in the mid 1970s ( a period when the Batman comic started to head back to its noir roots) and ignore it completely by the mid 1980s. Had the code not been in place, and any menace contained inside a comic book's pages effectively jettisoned completely, we may have seen a darker incarnation in the original TV show which took its cue from the comics of the period. The arrival of Batman graphic novels (very much marketed at older teens and adults) in the 1980/90s by writers like Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison continued the trend, which started in the 70s, for much darker, violent and grittier stories which carried on through the 90s and 00s and which is very much the tone of Batman today. In that context the 60s Batman is an anomaly (the two Batman films made after Tim Burton's gothic versions were more cartoony but they were both critical and commercial disasters) and the default Batman is the dark, tortured, shadowy anti-hero. A grim, gritty Batman sells it would seem. Which as you rightly say probably says something about us and the times in which we live. As a side note I think it's fair to say that Gotham is often viewed as a proxy for New York city which endured a tumultuous time during the decade of the 1970s with spiralling crime rates, civil unrest, poor sanitation, blackouts and drug problems. About a million people left the city during that time and properties in the centre of town, that today are probably worth a fortune, lay empty or was occupied by punk musicians and artists taking advantage of the low rents. This idea of the city (New York especially) as some kind of modern hell very much fed into the Batman comics of that period and have remained a major feature of the printed and screen versions of the character ever since, as well as in the films of other people who grew up during that same time (Michael Mann, John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, David Fincher). William Blake got there first over two hundred years ago when he saw the same 'hell' in the dirt and poverty of industrial London. Over the last few years the storylines in the Batman comic books have featured squabbles over investment in the city's infrastructure, arguments about gentrification and rising living costs that are pushing ordinary people to the margins. Batman himself has lost his fortune, his vast house and his company and lives in a modest apartment. His butler Alfred is dead and the Batcave has been scaled down and relocated to deep within the sewerage system beneath the city. It's all a far cry from the day glo figure who carried a can of shark repellent spray and was given to dancing the 'Batusi'!
I guess you could probably do the same sort of analysis with most stock TV characters: cops, detectives, sitcom characters, even cartoon characters.
You absolutely could. But it's strange - Batman has an almost-unmatched longevity that includes different iterations (which Paul pointed out). His archetype lends itself to redefinition and reimagining in ways that many stock characters don't.
As to the characters you mentioned (cops and detectives): Batman has become more of a detective than a hero in this newest film, which is more noir-horror than any other Batman film so far.
Yes, you make a good point: more than perhaps any other mass media persona, Batman has successfully reincarnated in various different eras.
Would that mean he's unlike other stock characters? The more incarnations I see of Batman, the more I think he's a foundational American (or Western) mythic figure.
'Superman is what America wants to be. Batman is what America is. Discuss.'
Maybe, but I've never known an American who wanted to be Superman. We want to be Batman. The rest of you will have to wait your turn.
When I was a kid there was a lot of us who wanted to be superman. Now it seems to be Batman, Spiderman and Boba Fett.
Does anybody really want to be Batman though? He's a very tortured soul. Except in 1966.
Personally I always wanted to be Christopher Reeve's Superman when I was young. It was a more innocent time ...
I think this fixation on Superheroes is a sign of powerlessness. Perhaps of a kind that could only arise in a post-Christian consumer society. Superman and then an increasingly dark Batman is our version of the Messiah.
Luke Skywalker was that for me. As a young boy I would try to get objects from across the room via telekinesis. I was actually surprised when it didn't work. All of this stuff isn't good for us.
Or more concisely: Superman is the light side of the post-Christian substitute Messiah complex. Batman is the dark side. Batman is the implicit realization that all our secular substitutes for the Messiah (e.g. Superman, Batman, Neo, Luke Skywalker, etc) are failing and, in fact, have failed.
Superman is a cop. Batman is a vigilante.
Perhaps this tracks the American unconscious assessment of our Foreign Policy.
Superman is what American wants to be, but what if we (meaning Americans) wish to be him because he represents the mythic past of the pioneer? It's a halcyon and a half-truth, but his power is the unstoppable will of the individual, meant to be used on behalf of good and behalf of others. Meanwhile, Batman seems more a creation of the Cold War and its legacy: surveillance-based, technologically ingenious, attuned to fear, strategic, cold, and utterly pragmatic. We have more certainly been Batman than we've been that nostalgic Superman, even as we wish it weren't so. That's likely why we keep returning to Batman—we can reinvent him as often as we reinvent ourselves.
This is well said. Superman is sort of like "Shane" in the context of Westerns. An unequivocally good guy fighting an unambiguous bad guy. How quickly that changed, Clint Eastwood in Fist Full of Dollars, for example.
Superman always seems more Messiah-like to me, as Jack says above. Descends from the heavens, has unearthly powers, loves all humanity despite its brokenness, and literally saves the world. Batman on the other hand is mortal, flawed, tortured, but still basically on the side of good. I'd say this is why Batman has more appeal as times go on than Superman. None of us can really identify with Superman, but Batman is a different story.
More broadly though, I also think Jack is right to say that in an age with no spiritual succour or higher belief, commercialised superheroes fill a gap. But they can never really fill it.
I think that Superman represents the world as we wish it were, and Batman represents the world as we think - or fear - it is.
Considered in terms of crime-fighting, Superman never punishes the bad guys. He turns them over to the authorities for that. He is not a vigilante - rather, he makes “citizen arrests.” He upholds the law as created by an establishment that is entirely supported by the citizenry.
But while Batman for many years did much the same, the present day Batman is a lawless character. For Batman, the law does not work. It is incapable of dispensing justice, so Batman does it himself.
The recent movie, The Batman, contains a subtext in which this is recognized. He & The Riddler are both men who suffered childhood trauma that led them into becoming masked vigilantes, just with different criminal targets. The Riddler is crazy, and at the end, Batman seems to recognize that potential in himself.
My understanding of Superman may be out of date. I have the sense that he’s much more of a science fiction character these days. My sons never paid attention to Superman - but they still keep tabs on Batman, and make sure I’m up to date.
Superman is who I, as a Dutch boy, wanted to be. All I had to do was put on a red towel and I actually became Superman! Not much has changed, except that I call him Jesus now and find it much harder to put on his robe.
In the latest Batman movie, 'The Batman', there's no top-down reform; he stays away completely from life as Bruce Wayne. In fact he hardly opens his mouth as Bruce Wayne. Gotham City itself is a much more interesting character than Bruce Wayne in this offering. Having said that, the development of the criminals over time would make an interesting study. The Joker, from the flamboyant touch of Jack Nicholson to the much darker, mentally ill portrayal by Joaquin Phoenix shows a great evolution of his character. Gotham the TV show, where there is no Batman at all, hosts a very interesting suite of characters including The Riddler and The Penguin... Gotham survives without The Batman quite nicely there. Perhaps that's the decline - the darkness becomes more interesting than the goodness, or the dark aspect of the good is more prevalent than the light. No Bruce Wayne at all. Where do we go to from here?
I like the phrase you use—"he stays away completely from life as Bruce Wayne." Because the film does portray it as a choice, to forego public improvement for private vengeance. But it's also a choice that the film shows Batman overcoming in the end, as his purpose is restored and he chooses to work publicly as Batman during relief efforts. He even chooses to embrace hope, which is rare optimism for such a cynical character.
So that, maybe, is where we go from here: Batman choosing hope and likely choosing to add humanity-facing Bruce Wayne in the future.
Is it possible, in times of such sociopolitical turmoil and demonisation of the "other", that a deeper confrontation with the darkness within each of us could be exactly what we need? Perhaps it becomes easier to see the possibility for goodness within the easily demonized "other" when we acknowledge the possibility for evil within ourselves? The Phoenix Joker in particular explored this area so well I thought.
I agree. Great point.
Glad it resonates.
"What we most need to find is where we least want to look" as Mr Jung would say.
And it usually finds us, particularly as we don't go looking for it!
Where does the 2019 "Joker" played by Joaquin Phoenix come in when viewed through this lens? While not a Batman movie per se, it is a seriously important cultural exploration involving a Batman character. This film shook me to my bones and, quite surprisingly, won Phoenix an Oscar even though much of the messaging and symbolism ran so contrary to the myopic mythos of the identitarian orthodoxy imbibed throughout the Hollywood elite. Phoenix even called out cancel culture in his acceptance speech and made an appeal for more widespread forgiveness.
For a beautiful insight into the symbology and disturbance of political narrative, see Jonathan Pageau's awesome analysis of the movie here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H74BbcTs6xs&t=150s
A more viscerally resonant cinematic exploration of the Jungian shadow and the making of the villain--an inverse hero's journey--I have yet to encounter.
The Batman as a film feels older than 2022 in its atmosphere of urban decay, as did The Joker from 2019. They have the feel of the 1970s-to-early-1980s: hopelessness and cynicism as the everlasting temptation for anyone attempting good, even in the tortured way that Batman attempts good in this film. But the film (spoilers?) ends on a note of hope, where Batman takes up relief efforts and public service of natural disaster victims, refusing to leave the city even as its outlook is grim and its streets are flooded. The film positions the new mayor as the chance for renewal (which depends on your politics as to its viability), but Batman matures from only rageful vengeance into a sense of duty to Gotham. His earlier "I'm vengeance" line is repeated back to him by one of the villains he has stopped, which is his realization of the abyss where he'd been working. He then decides to rise from it by service.
Did anyone else find a refreshing sort of hope in the film? For such a grim character, Batman can remain something of an optimist (as he does in The Batman).
No real hope, because Bruce didn’t do it. I would be interested in a movie (or comic) where the focus is Bruce. Batman cannot exercise moral responsibility that belongs to Bruce.
Ugh, I remember that original campy Batman show and didn't like it, though it was fashionable to watch amongst the middle schoolers, especially the boys. Instead, I was devouring LOTR and Sword at Sunset, poring through the appendices on Elvish history and also trying to teach myself Anglo-Saxon. As to the modern Batman films, I find them truly unappealing and I've never been able to watch one all the way through. I think we are going through a period of wallowing in the sewage of the soul, but I do wish we'd get over it. What's kind of interesting to me is our current fascination with super heroes and comic book characters in general. Maybe it's just a lack of imagination in filmmakers? Maybe a response to a gullible, emotionally immature population that has a prurient interest in true crime and is loath to look within?
We want someone to save us from ourselves and the huge mess we've made of pretty much everything.
They are the gods of a present day Olympus.
I too had the die-cast Corgi Batmobile as a child. It was one of my favorite toys, and I have vivid memories of the little yellow plastic missiles you could shoot out of the rear facing tubes. I wish I knew what happened to it. I've also long been partial to pop-culture as a window on a culture's psyche. I believe it was British comics author Alan Moore who once said there was "truth in trash", referring to how the spontaneous movies and tv shows of certain eras represented unconscious upwellings of meaning. He pointed out how the 50s sci-fi flick "The Amazing Colossal Man", with its depiction of a giant American man grown too powerful and dangerous via science presented an image of a big diaper-clad baby stomping across the world stage. Scottish comics author Grant Morrison has also written extensively about the archetypal power of superheroes as myth and sociology (see their book "Supergods"). Others have pointed out how the novels of Philip K. Dick, often rushed out unpolished to make rent in the 60s and early 70s, also present a unique frame on our times and the unconscious forces below them, and have as a consequence become the basis for a lot of film making in recent decades (starting most famously with Blade Runner in the 80s).
We had one of those die cast cars as well. I write "we" because I have no recollection of particular ownership.
One day the toy was left out in the road, and we saw the kid from two doors down walk over to it and stomp on it, breaking pieces off. His dad had tried to make a go in politics, but mom was taken away one night when she couldn't stop screaming naked at the living room ceiling.
After 1993 I told my family that 'they' were going to hijack airliners and crash them into the Twin Towers. After it happened they asked how I knew. "Simple. I just applied the lessons of the playground to our world."
In a strange twist I think we've moved from idolizing the super hero to idoliterizing the super villain. From Suicide Squad, Venom and Hell Boy to the Harvey Dent of Joker we no longer have time for, even becoming somewhat repulsed by, the super hero while simultaneously telling ourselves that Harvey wasn't all bad you know. He had his redemptive qualities and was just pushed too far. Part of the animus, the moving spirit, is laziness. Part of it is envy. Much of it is greed, hubris and pride. All of it is that utmost human condition. The one spoken about by the greeks, the romans, the vedas and the hebrews. Tat Tvam Asi.
I've been recently enjoying Conner Habib's recent podcast interviews on esoteric Christianity / anthroposophy, starting at episode 181 https://www.patreon.com/posts/63528572
It ties in with some of the recent themes here, something along the lines of that one cannot find solutions to our modern problems by drawing from that same well of modernity that the problems come from. With it being in the spiritual or religious life that the answer to this can be found.
Referencing the comments on Dr. Lain McGilchrist. I follow author, Rod Dreher on his Rod Dreher Diary. He has written quite a lot about IMG and his left vs right brain studies. Very “heady” stuff, no pun intended! I certainly do not claim to understand most of it, but one aspect I was particularly intrigued by, was his study on how the brain views beauty and the connection to the beauty in nature. Dreher’s commentaries on the study are enlightening. You might consider looking it up.
I am an American, I take no offense to any of the Batman comments. I live on the coast and I too would love a can of that shark repellant, even for use when I am terra firme, ha! Mr. Kingsnorth, I have yet to find anything you say offensive nor contrary to many of my own beliefs. Thank you for all your critical thinking and being brave enough to express your beliefs.
I have a couple of thoughts about your Batman post. They are disjointed but I’ll throw them down anyhow. When I read this quote….
“Batman is the ultimate hero for the post-modern West. He’s an urban loner, he’s fighting for a better world, he’s driven by unresolved personal trauma, and his ideology and his identity are both fluid. On top of that, he’s a thwarted idealist, he has a love-hate relationship with authority, and he can never quite make up his mind whether Gotham is best cleaned up by thoroughgoing top-down reform or just by masking up and kicking the shit out of the baddies.”
I thought of Moses. Oddly enough it seems to work.
Secondly I wondered what transformation looks like. I think it looks like death. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the two when transformation is at its height. Whispers of Frankenstein. Our world is filled with zombies and zombies are corpses that are not alive but simply animated by some desperate virus.
I remember standing in an old growth forest on Vancouver Island in front of the fallen body of a 600 year old Sitka Spruce. I felt completely frustrated because I had no one to be angry with. The tree had fallen of its own accord, its time had come, and I wasn’t happy with it’s decision. There were trees standing tall all around it that were much older and they weren’t dead! Oh how I longed for this tree to live. Then I noticed that it was covered in dozens of varieties of moss and lichen. Delicate flowers rose up from them in groups and I could almost hear the excited chatter. Here and there a short bush clung to the log and afforded just enough shade on the flowers to keep them in full bloom. Dotted along the massive length of the dead tree were young Sitka spruce, reaching longingly for the heights. They reminded me of my teenagers at the time. Firmly rooted in their parents and yet sights set so high. I realized then that this Sitka had laid down his life for his friends. I also realized that I don’t have a very good understanding of death and probably also not of life. I believed, up until then, that there was a finality to death, but staring at that dead tree screamed at me that I was wrong and begged me to listen. There is a light and a dark side to everything.
Having said all this I realize that we still have to act in the world. We still need to make a judgement, draw a line and maybe even go so far as to take a side, mostly because that is all that is on offer. I also believe that even in doing this we can transcend it. We may find ourselves, as I certainly do, on a side. The feelings of frustration that I felt as I stared at the grand old fallen tree were replaced with sentiments of joy and gratitude, although the desire to see the tree live never went away. I understood at that moment that transformation looks like death and life and then death again and then life, and I had to hold these things in tension in order to see the higher order in it all.
I leave you with a thought provoking poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called Palingensis.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1864/07/palingenesis/540312/
Coffee. One of the singular pleasures in life is this black gold. First thing in the morning....hot (almost to the point of burning your throat, but not quite)....black....bitter. By it self or with an equally bitter meal.