Crew

You’re NOT Going in There.

Anjali

BILL MOYERS: 

Genesis 1: 

So God created Man in his own image, in the image of God He created Him, male and female he created them. 

Then God blessed them 

and God said to them, 

‘Be fruitful and multiply.’

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And now this is from a legend of 

the Bassari people of West Africa.  

“Unumbotte made a human being, 

its name was Man. 

Unumbotte next made all antelope, 

named Antelope. 

Unumbotte made a snake, 

named Snake. 

And Unumbotte said to them, 

‘The Earth has not yet been pounded. 

You must pound the ground smooth 

where you are sitting.’

 Unumbone gave them seeds 

of all kinds and said, 

‘Go plant these.'”

BILL MOYERS: 

And Genesis 1: 

“And God saw everything that he had made, 

and behold, it was very good.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And from the Upanishad: 

“Then he realised, I indeed am this creation, 

for I have poured it forth from myself. 

In that way he became this creation, 

and verily he who knows this becomes 

in this creation a creator.” 

That’s the clincher there. When you know this, then you’ve identified with the creative principle  yourself, which is the God-power in the world, which means in you. It’s beautiful.

BILL MOYERS: 

What do you think we’re looking for, 

when we subscribe to one of 

these theories of creation, 

What are we looking for?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, I think what we’re looking for is a way of experiencing The World 

in which we are living, 

that will open to us 

the transcendence 

that informs it, and at 

the same time informs 

ourselves within it. 

That’s what people want, that’s 

what The Soul asks for.

BILL MOYERS: 

You mean we’re looking for some accord with the mystery that informs all things, what you call that vast ground of silence which we all share?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes, but not only to find it, but to find it actually in our environment, in our world, to recognise it, to have some kind of instruction that will enable us to see the divine presence.

BILL MOYERS: 

In The World and in Us.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

In India, this wonderful Anjali, this greeting :

You know what that means?

BILL MOYERS: 

No.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s the greeting of prayer, isn’t it? 

That’s what we use for prayer. 

They greet you with that, that’s greeting the god that’s in you as you come in. 

These people are aware of the divine presence.

When you enter an Indian home as a guest, you are a visiting deity, and you feel it, by God, the way they treat you. 

It’s something in the way of a hospitality that you don’t get where you have simply one person and another person. 

It’s a recognition of the identity.

BILL MOYERS: 

But weren’t people who told these stories and believed them and acted on them asking far more simple questions, you know, who made the world, how was the world made, why was the world made? 

Aren’t these  the questions that these creation stories are trying to address?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

No. It’s through that answer that they see that the creator is present in the whole world. 

Do you see what I mean? 

This story that we’ve just read, 

“I see that I am this creation,” 

says the god. 

When you see that God says he is the creation 

and then you are a creature, well, the god is within you and the man you’re talking to, also. 

And so there’s that realization, 

two aspects of the one divinity.

BILL MOYERS: 

Accord again, harmony again.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Wonderful thing.

The Caravan of Courage

“There were to be two ABC TV movies starring the Ewoks. The first, Caravan of Courage : The Ewok Adventure, arrived in 1984. It was aimed at children, far more so than anything in the Star Wars universe thus far. But this was George Lucas: anything made for children had to be high quality, or as close as possible on a $2 million budget. After the disaster of the Star Wars Holiday Special, Lucas had learned his lesson. He kept a close eye on the production of Caravan of Courage and came up with the story behind it: A Family crash-lands on the moon of Endor, the parents and children are separated, and the Ewoks help reunite them. It was directed by the independent filmmaker who had lured Lucas to Marin in the first place, John Korty. 

Still, Caravan of Courage suffered from one major problem of the Holiday Special — a large portion was furry creatures burbling in a language all their own—so actor Burl Ives was recruited to do a folksy voice-over. The sequel came in 1985, and it was a much darker affair, called Battle for Endor. The parents, who have been reunited with their children at the end of the previous movie, are murdered—along with a whole forest full of Ewoks—by off-world marauders and an evil sorceress. As with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a darker movie than Raiders and one that Lucas says he intended as a direct metaphor for how he was feeling at the time, Battle for Endor reflects the darkness of Lucas’s postdivorce world—a Darkness that seemed to be annihilating the innocence of the Star Wars universe. 

“The divorce kind of destroyed me,” Lucas admitted years later. He began a rebound relationship with singer Linda Ronstadt, another feisty brunette; they broke up when Ronstadt declared she had no interest in getting married or having children. He experimented with new looks, switched from glasses to contacts, and even tried shaving his beard off. It was, as he said, a classic divorce situation.”

X

“If Deep Throat was a cheat code to the quest for Truth, 

X is a walkthrough written by somebody 

who doesn't want to share his secrets, doesn't like you, and 

might not even be playing the same game.

—The A.V. Club's Zack Handlen on the series' informants.

Handlen has also called X "the best of Mulder's informants",

 explaining that this is "because he's always pissed off, 

he's always reluctant to provide information, and 

you can't ever be sure what play he's really running".

 Series writer Frank Spotnitz has called X "the meanest, nastiest, 

most lethal killer on the planet".

Damascus

Call Me Ishmael.

“Damascus had not seemed a sheath for my sword, when I landed in Arabia : but its capture disclosed the exhaustion of my main springs of action. The strongest motive throughout had been a personal one, not mentioned here, but present to me, I think, every hour of these two years. Active pains and joys might fling up, like towers, among my days : but, refluent as air, this hidden urge re-formed, to be the persisting element of life, till near the end. It was dead, before we reached Damascus.

Next in force had been a pugnacious wish to Win The War : yoked to the conviction that without Arab help England could not pay the price of winning its Turkish sector. When Damascus fell, the eastern war—probably the whole war—drew to an end.

Then I was moved by curiosity. 'super flumina babylonis', read as a boy, had left me longing to feel myself the node of a national movement. We took Damascus, and I feared more than three arbitrary days would have quickened in me a root of authority.

There remained historical ambition, insubstantial as a motive by itself. I had dreamed, at the city school in Oxford, of hustling into form, while I lived, the new Asia which time was inexorably bringing upon us. Mecca was to lead to Damascus; Damascus to Anatolia, and afterwards to Bagdad; and then there was Yemen. Fantasies, these will seem, to such as are able to call my beginning an ordinary effort.”

The West

I like you, Lloyd — I always liked you.

You were always The Best of them.

Best goddamn bartender from 

Timbuktu to Portland, Maine.

Or Portland, Oregon, for that matter.


WORF: 

Shields and deflectors up, sir. 


(The barrier ripples like chain mail) 


PICARD: 

Reverse power, full stop. 


TORRES: 

Controls to full stop, sir. 

Now reading full stop, sir. 


(There's a flash of light, and 

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS appears, 

complete with breast plate and plumed hat) 


Q: 

Thou are notified that thy kind hath 

infiltrated the galaxy too far already. 

Thou art directed to return to thine 

own solar system immediately.

 
PICARD: That's quite a directive. Would you mind identifying what you are? 
Q: We call ourselves the Q. Or thou mayst call me that. It's all much the same thing. 
(The same force barrier stops two people exiting the turbolift) 


Q: 

I present myself to thee as a fellow ship captain, 

that thou mayst better understand me. 

Go back whence thou camest. 

(to Helmsman) Stay where thou art! 


(And the helmsman is frozen solid, phaser in hand) 


PICARD: 

Data, call medics. 


TROI: 

He's frozen. 


PICARD: 

He would not have injured you. 

Do you recognise this, the stun setting? 


Q: 

Knowing humans as thou dost, Captain, 

wouldst thou be captured helpless by them? 

Now, go back or thou shalt most certainly die.

Captain's log, supplementary. The frozen form of Lieutenant Torres has been rushed to sickbay. The question now is the incredible power of the Q being. Do we dare oppose it?

[Bridge]

Q: Captain, thy little centuries go by so rapidly. Perhaps thou will better understand this. 


(A flash of light and he is wearing 

a 20th century US military uniform, 

with a cigarette in his hand) 


Q: 

Actually, the issue at stake is patriotism. 

You must return to your world 

and put an end to the commies. 

All it takes is a few good men. 


PICARD: 

What? That nonsense is centuries behind us. 


Q: 

But you can't deny that you're still 

a dangerous, savage child race. 


PICARD: 

Most certainly I deny it. I agree we still were 

when humans wore costumes like that, 

four hundred years ago. 


Q: 

At which time you slaughtered millions in silly arguments 

about how to divide the resources of your little world. 

And four hundred years before that you were murdering 

each other in quarrels over tribal god-images. 

Since there are no indications 

that humans will ever change. 


PICARD: 

But even when we wore costumes like that 

we'd already started to make rapid progress. 


Q: 

Oh yeah? You want to review your rapid progress? 


(Flash, and a change into a padded suit)

 
Q: 

Rapid progress, to where humans learned 

to control their military with drugs. 


WORF: 

Sir, sickbay reports Lieutenant Torres's condition is better. 


Q: 

Oh, concern for one's fellow comrade. How touching. 


WORF: 

And now a personal request, sir. 

Permission to clean up the bridge. 


TASHA: 

Lieutenant Worf is right, sir. 

As Security Chief I can't just 

stand here and let
-

PICARD: 

Yes you can, Lieutenant Yar. 


Q: (taking a snort of something) 

Oh, better. And later, on finally reaching deep space, 

humans of course found enemies to fight out there too. 

And to broaden those struggles you again 

found allies for still more murdering. 

The same old story, all over again. 


PICARD: 

No. The same old story is the one we're meeting now. 

Self-righteous life forms who are eager not to learn 

but to prosecute, to judge anything 

they don't understand or 

can't tolerate. 


Q: 

What an interesting idea : 

Prosecute and judge. 

Suppose it turns out we understand 

you humans only too well. 


PICARD: 

We've no fear of what the true facts about us will reveal. 


Q: 

Facts about you? Splendid, splendid, Captain! 

You're a veritable fountain of good ideas. 

There are preparations to make, but when we next meet, 

Captain, we'll proceed exactly as you suggest. 


(A flash and he is gone)

“Truly art is a sort of subterfuge. But thank God for it, we can see through the subterfuge if we choose. Art has two great functions. First, it provides an emotional experience. And then, if we have the courage of our own feelings, it becomes a mine of practical Truth. We have had the feelings ad nauseam. But we've never dared dig the actual Truth out of them, the Truth that concerns us, whether it concerns our grandchildren or not.

The artist usually sets out—or used to—to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Now we know our business in these studies; 

saving the American tale from the American artist.

Let us look at this American artist first. 

How did he ever get to America, to start with? 

Why isn't he a European still, like his father before him?

Now listen to me, don't listen to him. He'll tell you the lie you expect. Which is partly your fault for expecting it.

He didn't come in search of freedom of worship. England had more freedom of worship in the year 1700 than America had. Won by Englishmen who wanted freedom, and so stopped at home and fought for it. And got it. Freedom of worship? Read the history of New England during the first century of its existence.

Freedom anyhow? The land of the free! This the land of the free! Why, if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that's my freedom. Free? Why I have never been in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countrymen. Because, as I say, they are free to lynch him the moment he shows he is not one of them.

No, no, if you're so fond of the truth about Queen Victoria, try a little about yourself.

Those Pilgrim Fathers and their successors never came here for freedom of worship. What did they set up when they got here? Freedom, would you call it?

They didn't come for freedom. Or if they did, they sadly went back on themselves.

All right then, what did they come for? For lots of reasons. Perhaps least of all in search of freedom of any sort : positive freedom, that is.

They came largely to get away — that most simple of motives. To get away. Away from what? In the long run, away from themselves. Away from everything. That's why most people have come to America, and still do come. To get away from everything they are and have been.

"Henceforth be masterless."

Which is all very well, but it isn't freedom. Rather the reverse. A hopeless sort of constraint. It is never freedom till you find something you really positively want to be. And people in America have always been shouting about the things they are not. Unless of course they are millionaires, made or in the making.

And after all there is a positive side to the movement. All that vast flood of human life that has flowed over the Atlantic in ships from Europe to America has not flowed over simply on a tide of revulsion from Europe and from the confinements of the European ways of life. This revulsion was, and still is, I believe, the prime motive in emigration. But there was some cause, even for the revulsion.

It seems as if at times man had a frenzy for getting away from any control of any sort. In Europe the old Christianity was the real master. The Church and the true aristocracy bore the responsibility for the working out of the Christian ideals: a little irregularly, maybe, but responsible nevertheless.

Mastery, kingship, fatherhood had their power destroyed at the time of the Renaissance.

And it was precisely at this moment that the great drift over the Atlantic started. What were men drifting away from? The old authority of Europe? Were they breaking the bonds of authority, and escaping to a new more absolute unrestrainedness? Maybe. But there was more to it.

Liberty is all very well, but men cannot live without masters. There is always a master. And men either live in glad obedience to the master they believe in, or they live in a frictional opposition to the master they wish to undermine. In America this frictional opposition has been the vital factor. It has given the Yankee his kick. Only the continual influx of more servile Europeans has provided America with an obedient labouring class. The true obedience never outlasting the first generation.

But there sits the old master, over in Europe. Like a parent. Somewhere deep in every American heart lies a rebellion against the old parenthood of Europe. Yet no American feels he has completely escaped its mastery. Hence the slow, smouldering patience of American opposition. The slow, smouldering, corrosive obedience to the old master Europe, the unwilling subject, the unremitting opposition.

Whatever else you are, be masterless.

"Ca Ca Caliban
Get a new master, be a new man."

Escaped slaves, we might say, people the republics of Liberia or Haiti. Liberia enough! Are we to look at America in the same way? A vast republic of escaped slaves. When you consider the hordes from eastern Europe, you might well say it: a vast republic of escaped slaves. But one dare not say this of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the great old body of idealist Americans, the modern Americans tortured with thought. A vast republic of escaped slaves. Look out, America! And a minority of earnest, self-tortured people.

The masterless.

"CaCa Caliban
Get a new master, be a new man."

What did the Pilgrim Fathers come for, then, when they came so gruesomely over the black sea? Oh, it was in a black spirit. A black revulsion from Europe, from the old authority of Europe, from kings and bishops and popes. And more. When you look into it, more. They were black, masterful men, they wanted something else. No kings, no bishops maybe. Even no God Almighty. But also, no more of this new "humanity" which followed the Renaissance. None of this new liberty which was to be so pretty in Europe. Something grimmer, by no means free-and-easy.

America has never been easy, and is not easy to-day. Americans have always been at a certain tension. Their liberty is a thing of sheer will, sheer tension: a liberty of THOU SHALT NOT. And it has been so from the first. The land of THOU SHALT NOT. Only the first commandment is: THOU SHALT NOT PRESUME TO BE A MASTER. Hence democracy.

"We are the masterless." That is what the American Eagle shrieks. It's a Hen-Eagle.

The Spaniards refused the post-Renaissance liberty of Europe. And the Spaniards filled most of America. The Yankees, too, refused, refused the post-Renaissance humanism of Europe. First and foremost, they hated masters. But under that, they hated the flowing ease of humour in Europe. At the bottom of the American soul was always a dark suspense, at the bottom of the Spanish-American soul the same. And this dark suspense hated and hates the old European spontaneity, watches it collapse with satisfaction.

Every continent has its own great spirit of place. Every people is polarized in some particular locality, which is home, the homeland. Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great reality. The Nile valley produced not only the corn, but the terrific religions of Egypt. China produces the Chinese, and will go on doing so. The Chinese in San Francisco will in time cease to be Chinese, for America is a great melting pot.

There was a tremendous polarity in Italy, in the city of Rome. And this seems to have died. For even places die. The Island of Great Britain had a wonderful terrestrial magnetism or polarity of its own, which made the British people. For the moment, this polarity seems to be breaking. Can England die? And what if England dies?

Men are less free than they imagine; ah, far lessfree. The freest are perhaps least free.

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believingcommunity, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.

Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes.

And there is getting down to the deepest self! It takes some diving.

Because the deepest self is way down, and the conscious self is an obstinate monkey. But of one thing we may be sure. If one wants to be free, one has to give up the illusion of doing what one likes, and seek what IT wishes done.

But before you can do what IT likes, you must first break the spell of the old mastery, the old IT.

Perhaps at the Renaissance, when kingship and fatherhood fell, Europe drifted into a very dangerous half-truth: of liberty and equality. Perhaps the men who went to America felt this, and so repudiated the old world altogether. Went one better than Europe. Liberty in America has meant so far the breaking away from all dominion. The true liberty will only begin when Americans discover IT, and proceed possibly to fulfill IT. IT being the deepest whole self of man, the self in its wholeness, not idealistic halfness.

That's why the Pilgrim Fathers came to America, then; and that's why we come. Driven by IT. We cannot see that invisible winds carry us, as they carry swarms of locusts, that invisible magnetism brings us as it brings the migrating birds to their unforeknown goal. But it is so. We are not the marvellous choosers and deciders we think we are. IT chooses for us, and decides for us. Unless of course we are just escaped slaves, vulgarly cocksure of our ready-made destiny. But if we are living people, in touch with the source, IT drives us and decides us. We are free only so long as we obey. When we run counter, and think we will do as we like, we just flee around like Orestes pursued by the Eumenides.

And still, when the great day begins, when Americans have at last discovered America and their own wholeness, still there will be the vast number of escaped slaves to reckon with, those who have no cocksure, ready-made destinies.

Which will win in America, the escaped slaves, or the new whole men?

The real American day hasn't begun yet. Or at least, not yet sunrise. So far it has been the false dawn. That is, in the progressive American consciousness there has been the one dominant desire, to do away with the old thing. Do away with masters, exalt the will of the people. The will of the people being nothing but a figment, the exalting doesn't count for much. So, in the name of the will of the people, get rid of masters. When you have got rid of masters, you are left with this mere phrase of the will of the people. Then you pause and bethink yourself, and try to recover your own wholeness.

So much for the conscious American motive, and for democracy over here. Democracy in America is just the tool with which the old mastery of Europe, the European spirit, is undermined. Europe destroyed, potentially, American democracy will evaporate. America will begin.

American consciousness has so far been a false dawn. The negative ideal of democracy. But underneath, and contrary to this open ideal, the first hints and revelations of IT. IT, the American whole soul.

You have got to pull the democratic and idealistic clothes oft American utterance, and see what you can of the dusky body of IT underneath.

"Henceforth be masterless."

Henceforth be mastered.

The Downward Spiral

Jordan Peterson: Autism

“….and The Cows didn’t like anything 

that wasn’t supposed to be there, basically,

 and they had a hell of a lot of difficulty

with trying to map it, properly —”

"Now here's.... 

Here's Something Interesting -- 

You can Think about this for a minute :

I went and saw an autistic woman speak, at one point; 

Her Name was Temple Grandin, she's really worth looking-up : -- Temple Grandin is a very interesting person; she [was] very seriously autistic, when she was a child, but Her Mother and her worked her out of it, so that she could be she's very functional she works as a professor I don't remember where it's in the Midwest somewhere now she's famous not only for being a highly functional autistic person who talks a fair bit about what it's like to be autistic but also for designing slaughterhouses across the United States and the reason she can do that as far as she's concerned is because she thinks she thinks like an animal thinks and so she doesn't and she's identified maybe at least part of what the core problem is with Autism.

So, the talk I heard her out was in Arizona and and it was a was a really entrancing talk; she so just showed some really interesting pictures of animals --

So, what she's done is she's redesigned slaughterhouses so that when the animals enter the slaughterhouse, they go in like a spiral basically they can't see what's around the corner and the walls are high so they're not distracted by anything outside so one of the things she showed for example was a bunch of cows going through a standard sequence of of gates essentially and off to the side there was a windmill spinning and the cows would stop because the windmill they didn't understand what the windmill was and they'd stop or showed other pictures where the cows were going down a pathway - and there was a coke can sitting in the middle of the pathway and the cows would all stop because they didn't know what to do with it or she had another picture of cows out in the middle of the field all surrounding a briefcase and they are all looking at the briefcase and the cows didn't like anything that shouldn't be there and had a hard time mapping it now she said here's a little exercise she did she said think of a church okay? 

So, maybe you think you imagine a child's drawing of a church a it's like your standard house like a pen tag Pentagon right which is basically how children draw the front of a house with a steeple on top and maybe a cross on top of it or something like that which actually isn't at church it's an icon of a church you think about how children draw is to Pentagon rectangle what is a trapezoid chimney almost always with smoke which is quite interesting it's I don't know where kids get that exactly but they almost always draw a chimney with smoke even though chimneys with smoke aren't that common anymore but anyways you know you can see what a child's picture of a house looks like in your imagination one of the things that you might want to think about is that is not a picture of a house at all right it's an iconic representation that's kind of like a hero glyph because no house looks like that and then you think about how a child will draw a person circle stick stick stick stick stick and you show it to someone to go that's a person it's like really it looks nothing like a person right it I mean you you immediately recognize it as a person but it looks nothing like a person well what Grandin said was that when she thinks of a church she has to think of a church she's seen she can't take the set of all churches and abstract out an iconic representation and use that to represent the set of all churches she has she gets fixated on a specific exemplar and she thinks that one of the problems with autistic people and they have a very difficult time developing language by the way is that they can't abstract out a generalized representation across a set of entities they can't abstract and then the end well and of course if you can't abstract and it's also very difficult to manipulate the abstractions you see very strange behavior with autistic children for example so they don't like people and that's because people don't stay in their perceptual boxes like a human being is a very difficult thing to perceive because we're always shifting around and moving and doing different things like we don't stay in our categorical box so autistic people have real trouble with other people but they also have trouble so for example if your autistic child gets accustomed to your kitchen let's say and you move a chair then then especially if they're severely autistic, they'll have an absolute fit about it, because -- You Think 'Kitchen, with chair-moves -- They Think, completely different place because they can't abstract the constancies across the different situations and represent them abstractly --

So I made this little diagram : 

I made this little diagram here to kind of give you a sense of what you might be doing when you're abstracting perceptually and so you could say think about something that's that complicated it's sort of my model of how complex the world is but the world is a lot more complex than that but the world is made out of everything is made out of littler things and those littler things are made out of littler things and so forth and those things are nested inside bigger things and so forth and where you perceive on that level of abstraction is somewhat arbitrary it has to be bounded by your by your goals that's the other thing is that your perceptual structures are determined by the goals that you have at hand I mean some of that that's not completely true because your perceptual systems also have limitations right there's things you can't see or hear even if you need to so there are limitations built in but within that set of limitations you're still trying to tune your perceptions to your motivated goals and that's also very useful to think about when you're trying to understand artificial intelligence because for human beings without goals there's no perception because there's no filtering mechanism that you can use to determine the level of resolution at which you perceive anyway so there's the there's a thing made of smaller things which are made out of smaller things and it's so it's kind of my iconic representation of the complexity of the world and then you could think well what is this how can you see this object and I think if you just look at it you can detect it's like a Necker cube you know those cubes that that are line drawings that you can see the front of an N it'll flip to the back have you seen those so this is kind of neck or cube-like or at least it is for me and that when I look at it my perceptions play around with it sometimes I focus on the kind of cross like shape in the middle and sometimes I can see these other lines and then sometimes I'll focus on that square and sometimes I can see the little dots there maybe one dot and my perceptions are going like this trying to fit a pattern to it and I can kind of detect that when you're watching it and so I would say well you have the options of perceiving this in its full complexity or you can simplify it essentially there's lots of ways you can simplify it but some of them are there so you take the complete complex thing you make a low-resolution representation of it so that's it's rough that's the rough area that all those dots occupy that's the rough area broken down to its four most fundamental quadrants that might be how you would look at it if this was a map of an orchard and you were trying to walk from south to north that would be a useful representation this combines this and this that's uh huh that's the highest level of resolution that you can perceive this object at that's lower resolution than the object itself

True, Real, Actual.

The Science and 

Illuminating & Edifying 

Discoveries of Etymology :

Being a speaking of

The True,

The Real &

The Actual.

etymology (n.)

late 14c., ethimolegia "facts of the origin and development of a word," from Old French etimologie, ethimologie (14c., Modern French étymologie), from Latin etymologia, from Greek etymologia "analysis of a word to find its true origin," properly "study of the true sense (of a word)," with -logia "study of, a speaking of" (see -logy) + etymon "true sense, original meaning," neuter of etymos "true, real, actual," related to eteos "true," which perhaps is cognate with Sanskrit satyah, Gothic sunjis, Old English soð "true," from a PIE *set- "be stable." Latinized by Cicero as veriloquium.

In classical times, with reference to meanings; later, to histories. Classical etymologists, Christian and pagan, based their explanations on allegory and guesswork, lacking historical records as well as the scientific method to analyse them, and the discipline fell into disrepute that lasted a millennium. Flaubert ["Dictionary of Received Ideas"] wrote that the general view was that etymology was "the easiest thing in the world with the help of Latin and a little ingenuity."

As a modern branch of linguistic science treating of the origin and evolution of words, from 1640s. As "an account of the particular history of a word" from mid-15c. 

Related: Etymological; etymologically.

As practised by Socrates in the Cratylus, etymology involves a claim about the underlying semantic content of the name, what it really means or indicates. This content is taken to have been put there by the ancient namegivers: giving an etymology is thus a matter of unwrapping or decoding a name to find the message the namegivers have placed inside. 

Rachel Barney, 

"Socrates Agonistes: The Case of the Cratylus Etymologies," 

in "Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy," vol. xvi, 1998

also from late 14c.

Origin and meaning of etymology

Entries linking to etymology

-logy 

word-forming element meaning "a speaking, discourse, treatise, doctrine, theory, science," from Greek -logia (often via French -logie or Medieval Latin -logia), from -log-, combining form of legein "to speak, tell;" thus, "the character or deportment of one who speaks or treats of (a certain subject);" from PIE root *leg- (1) "to collect, gather," with derivatives meaning "to speak (to 'pick out words')." Often via Medieval Latin -logia, French -logie. In philology "love of learning; love of words or discourse," apology, doxology, analogy, trilogy, etc., Greek logos "word, speech, statement, discourse" is directly concerned.

etymological (adj.)

1590s; see etymology + -ical. Related: Etymologically.

etymologicon

etymologist

etymologize

etymon

folk-etymology

See all related words (7) >

Trends of etymology

I suppose The Knife 

is absolutely necessary?

The Great God Pan

by Arthur Machen

---

Contents

CHAPTER I. THE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER II. MR. CLARKE’S MEMOIRS

CHAPTER III. THE CITY OF RESURRECTIONS

CHAPTER IV. THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET

CHAPTER V. THE LETTER OF ADVICE

CHAPTER VI. THE SUICIDES

CHAPTER VII. THE ENCOUNTER IN SOHO

CHAPTER VIII. THE FRAGMENTS

I
THE EXPERIMENT

“I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure you could spare the time.”

“I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very lively just now. But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is it absolutely safe?”

The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond’s house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend.

“Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it.”

“And there is no danger at any other stage?”

“None; absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give you my word. You are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal, and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do tonight.”

“I should like to believe it is all true.” Clarke knit his brows, and looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. “Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that your theory is not a phantasmagoria—a splendid vision, certainly, but a mere vision after all?”

Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.

“Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things—yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet—I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these ‘chases in Arras, dreams in a career,’ beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another’s eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.”

Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.

“It is wonderful indeed,” he said. “We are standing on the brink of a strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is absolutely necessary?”

“Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred. I don’t want to bother you with ‘shop,’ Clarke; I might give you a mass of technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave you as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read, casually, in out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides have been made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw a paragraph the other day about Digby’s theory, and Browne Faber’s discoveries. Theories and discoveries! Where they are standing now, I stood fifteen years ago, and I need not tell you that I have not been standing still for the last fifteen years. It will be enough if I say that five years ago I made the discovery that I alluded to when I said that ten years ago I reached the goal. After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping in the dark, after days and nights of disappointments and sometimes of despair, in which I used now and then to tremble and grow cold with the thought that perhaps there were others seeking for what I sought, at last, after so long, a pang of sudden joy thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey was at an end. By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the suggestion of a moment’s idle thought followed up upon familiar lines and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of sight, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans in which no ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath. You will think this all high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to be literal. And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at cannot be set forth in plain and lonely terms. For instance, this world of ours is pretty well girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought, with something less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to sunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places. Suppose that an electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that he and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought. As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I have done; you can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned. You may look in Browne Faber’s book, if you like, and you will find that to the present day men of science are unable to account for the presence, or to specify the functions of a certain group of nerve-cells in the brain. That group is, as it were, land to let, a mere waste place for fanciful theories. I am not in the position of Browne Faber and the specialists, I am perfectly instructed as to the possible functions of those nerve-centers in the scheme of things. With a touch I can bring them into play, with a touch, I say, I can set free the current, with a touch I can complete the communication between this world of sense and—we shall be able to finish the sentence later on. Yes, the knife is necessary; but think what that knife will effect. It will level utterly the solid wall of sense, and probably, for the first time since man was made, a spirit will gaze on a spirit-world. Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!”

“But you remember what you wrote to me? I thought it would be requisite that she—”

He whispered the rest into the doctor’s ear.

“Not at all, not at all. That is nonsense. I assure you. Indeed, it is better as it is; I am quite certain of that.”

“Consider the matter well, Raymond. It’s a great responsibility. Something might go wrong; you would be a miserable man for the rest of your days.”

“No, I think not, even if the worst happened. As you know, I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit. Come, it’s getting late; we had better go in.”

Dr. Raymond led the way into the house, through the hall, and down a long dark passage. He took a key from his pocket and opened a heavy door, and motioned Clarke into his laboratory. It had once been a billiard-room, and was lighted by a glass dome in the centre of the ceiling, whence there still shone a sad grey light on the figure of the doctor as he lit a lamp with a heavy shade and placed it on a table in the middle of the room.

Clarke looked about him. Scarcely a foot of wall remained bare; there were shelves all around laden with bottles and phials of all shapes and colours, and at one end stood a little Chippendale book-case. Raymond pointed to this.

“You see that parchment Oswald Crollius? He was one of the first to show me the way, though I don’t think he ever found it himself. That is a strange saying of his: ‘In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star.’”

There was not much furniture in the laboratory. The table in the centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs on which Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that was all, except an odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the room. Clarke looked at it, and raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, that is the chair,” said Raymond. “We may as well place it in position.” He got up and wheeled the chair to the light, and began raising and lowering it, letting down the seat, setting the back at various angles, and adjusting the foot-rest. It looked comfortable enough, and Clarke passed his hand over the soft green velvet, as the doctor manipulated the levers.

“Now, Clarke, make yourself quite comfortable. I have a couple hours’ work before me; I was obliged to leave certain matters to the last.”

Raymond went to the stone slab, and Clarke watched him drearily as he bent over a row of phials and lit the flame under the crucible. The doctor had a small hand-lamp, shaded as the larger one, on a ledge above his apparatus, and Clarke, who sat in the shadows, looked down at the great shadowy room, wondering at the bizarre effects of brilliant light and undefined darkness contrasting with one another. Soon he became conscious of an odd odour, at first the merest suggestion of odour, in the room, and as it grew more decided he felt surprised that he was not reminded of the chemist’s shop or the surgery. Clarke found himself idly endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and half conscious, he began to think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had spent roaming through the woods and meadows near his own home. It was a burning day at the beginning of August, the heat had dimmed the outlines of all things and all distances with a faint mist, and people who observed the thermometer spoke of an abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day of the fifties rose up again in Clarke’s imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad murmur of the summer.

“I hope the smell doesn’t annoy you, Clarke; there’s nothing unwholesome about it. It may make you a bit sleepy, that’s all.”

Clarke heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that Raymond was speaking to him, but for the life of him he could not rouse himself from his lethargy. He could only think of the lonely walk he had taken fifteen years ago; it was his last look at the fields and woods he had known since he was a child, and now it all stood out in brilliant light, as a picture, before him. Above all there came to his nostrils the scent of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of the woods, of cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by the sun’s heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were with arms stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fancies made him wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the wood, tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees; and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a path between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father’s house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry “Let us go hence,” and then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.

When Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring a few drops of some oily fluid into a green phial, which he stoppered tightly.

“You have been dozing,” he said; “the journey must have tired you out. It is done now. I am going to fetch Mary; I shall be back in ten minutes.”

Clarke lay back in his chair and wondered. It seemed as if he had but passed from one dream into another. He half expected to see the walls of the laboratory melt and disappear, and to awake in London, shuddering at his own sleeping fancies. But at last the door opened, and the doctor returned, and behind him came a girl of about seventeen, dressed all in white. She was so beautiful that Clarke did not wonder at what the doctor had written to him. She was blushing now over face and neck and arms, but Raymond seemed unmoved.

“Mary,” he said, “the time has come. You are quite free. Are you willing to trust yourself to me entirely?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Do you hear that, Clarke? You are my witness. Here is the chair, Mary. It is quite easy. Just sit in it and lean back. Are you ready?”

“Yes, dear, quite ready. Give me a kiss before you begin.”

The doctor stooped and kissed her mouth, kindly enough. “Now shut your eyes,” he said. The girl closed her eyelids, as if she were tired, and longed for sleep, and Raymond placed the green phial to her nostrils. Her face grew white, whiter than her dress; she struggled faintly, and then with the feeling of submission strong within her, crossed her arms upon her breast as a little child about to say her prayers. The bright light of the lamp fell full upon her, and Clarke watched changes fleeting over her face as the changes of the hills when the summer clouds float across the sun. And then she lay all white and still, and the doctor turned up one of her eyelids. She was quite unconscious. Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly sank back. Clarke saw him cutting away a circle, like a tonsure, from her hair, and the lamp was moved nearer. Raymond took a small glittering instrument from a little case, and Clarke turned away shudderingly. When he looked again the doctor was binding up the wound he had made.

“She will awake in five minutes.” Raymond was still perfectly cool. “There is nothing more to be done; we can only wait.”

The minutes passed slowly; they could hear a slow, heavy, ticking. There was an old clock in the passage. Clarke felt sick and faint; his knees shook beneath him, he could hardly stand.

Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenly did the colour that had vanished return to the girl’s cheeks, and suddenly her eyes opened. Clarke quailed before them. They shone with an awful light, looking far away, and a great wonder fell upon her face, and her hands stretched out as if to touch what was invisible; but in an instant the wonder faded, and gave place to the most awful terror. The muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within the house of flesh. It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, as she fell shrieking to the floor.

Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary’s bedside. She was lying wide-awake, rolling her head from side to side, and grinning vacantly.

“Yes,” said the doctor, still quite cool, “it is a great pity; she is a hopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she has seen the Great God Pan.”