Ray Wu's Blog

it never occurred to me that during the transition between Pagans and Christianity, where the Roman and the Christian God were accepted to be in some sort of co-existence.

Augustine says God allowed Rome to rise because of its discipline and order, even though it didn’t worship Him. How does this compare with Stoic or Epicurean ideas about fate, chance, or natural order?

commercialized surrealism, avant-garde devices that fascinated a small bohemian group, is now a direct pipeline to the occult, mass youth. Counterculture was popularized, updated, and mass-produced surrealism.

Variety described Flaming Creatures as a 58-minute montage of a trasvestite orgy.

Tomkins Mekas: “The public, which had been largely oblivious of the underground’s existence, assumed that ‘underground’ was synonymous with dirty pictures.” March 1964

Andy Warhol and the breakout of the underground as a political movement to general cinema. A sexual liberation seemed tolerable, maybe even fashionable.

Pop art and camp were contextually associated by opposition to the dominant, and so too were op art and sexual diversity. Vivian Gornick wrote in Village Voice, “Popular culture is now in the hands of the homosexuals. It is homosexual taste that determines largely style, story, and statement in painting, literature, dance…” She argues that camp was not, as Sontag (UW flashback) described it, “tender” but rather a “raging put-on of the middle classes”

The underground cinema was not the only early 1960s space for gat play, but it was one that endorsed and even rewarded resistance. It was a scene that “‘flew in the face’ of the prevailing representation of homosexuals in the 1950s as ‘isolated perverts,’ as subjects ‘gone awry'”–or at least the subjects gone awry were having fun going threre! Watching underground movies in New York City in the early 1960s was the beginning of a participation in a movemenet; it was building a community that would later erupt into a revoltuion.

linear diophantine equation: ax+by=c refer to the integer solutions

For Pharaoh, Moses’ freeing the Israelites affects the stability of the Egyptian state.

For Marcus Aurelius, the belief of Christians affects the stability of the Roman religion, and by extension, the Roman state.

Is Pharaoh choosing to do this, or is God intervening? Plague’s rule.

Burning bush and the parting of the Red Sea. Both of these are paradoxical images that reveal the divine power: God cannot be represented by anything natural.

Why did God choose the Israelites? Some arguments: He chose Abraham, not his descendants; or he chose them because they were appropriate (oppressed, ensalved).

Not the first monotheism attempt.

14th century BCE, there existed an attempt to worship Aten, the giver of life, as the sole superior god.

Is there a superior being?

Chosen People, exclusivity to be chosen, why does God re-choose

Exodus’s effect on African Americans in the US. Liberation theologians in Latin America use it. But also used to shape the Nationalist and Colonialist context.

Text used both to liberate and oppress.

Argue that political communities are shaped by narrative: us, shared identity

Narratives are presented by dominant groups; focus on oral history?

logos

Telos, the final purpose, end of something

studying of the actual ruler in CC

extend the ideas beyond the people of Polis

irrationality of man

Is Marcus Aurelius’ perspective skewed because of his position as the emperor?

On space and time: it seems completely impossible to live in the moment. Both democrats/liberals & conservatives/republicans today are citing things constantly from the past. I am citing from the past when I argue with my parents/friends/etc

Truth and reconciliation, for example, is an invocation of the past, and an attempt to not forget and to make amends.

The ruling of Roe v. Wade is a reversal of the past as well, but for a much different purpose.

If we truly lived in the moment, in the framework of today’s American society, there would be things that both sides of the aisle would like and dislike. Regardless, it would be next to impossible to shift our thinking of the passage of time.

“We must therefore study the means of securing happiness, since if we have it we have everything, but if we lack it we do everything in order to gain it.”

Here, Epicurus seems to indicate that the study of philosophy will lead to happiness. From my limited observation, I am doubtful.

“A life that is happy is better than one that is merely long.” in discussion of death

Epicurus claims that the anticipation of death is painful and that there should be no reason to fear death because there is nothing to fear in death. But his own argument about living happily presents a dilemma. What about the fear of not acquiring happiness or accomplishment before death?

“every pain is an evil, yet not every pain is of a nature to be avoided on all occasions.”

The truest happiness does not come from enjoyment of physical pleasures but from a simple life, freefrom anxiety, with the normal physical needs satisfied.

Panegyric: a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something

Lived as a critique of popular religion

Stoic belief and similarities with determinism: incompatible with the notions of moral responsibility

In connection with the modern belief that we are but a speck of dust in the universe.

Epictetus’s view differs slightly from the strict Stoic view of the ideal condition of a human being. He is more interested in explaining to people, not how they should understand an ideal condition, but how they can make their own condition somewhat better than it is.

He persuades them that they should set their sights lower, not expect to have certain desires satisfied, and live with the idea that such desires were not worth satisfying anyway. This sort of practical methodology might have stemmed from the fact that Epictetus was born into slavery.

“detach your aversion from everything not up to us”

A bit morbid in my opinion: “if you kiss your child or your wife, say that you are kissing a human being; for when it dies you will not be upset.”

“what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things.”

“Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen,and your life will go well.” not buying this one

crazy: “but if when things are set in front of you, you do not take them but despise them, then you will not only share a banquet with the gods but also be a ruler along with them.”

^I was in agreement with 15 until this was brought up. I do believe that you shouldn’t reach for things that have not yet arrived, nor hold on long after it has departed. But I certainly don’t agree with the idea that you should despise things offered to you.

18 brings up an interesting attitude towards bad omens that surely has to be controversial at the time.

25. “You were not invited to someone’s banquet? You did not give the host the price of the meal.”

29. “You must be one person, either good or bad.”

35. “When you do something that you determine is to be done, never try not to be seen doing it, even if most people are likely to think something bad about it. If you are not doing it rightly, avoid the act itself; if you are doing it rightly, why do you fear those who will criticize you wrongly?” <- very good advice, not confident in whether I can follow this fully.

37. “if you undertake some role beyond your capacity, you both disgrace yourself by taking it and also thereby neglect the role that you were unable to take.”

There is certainly some good advice here about how to process your emotions. Yet, there are tons of paragraphs that seem to emphasize the neglect or suppression of it. E.g. 50: “Abide by whatever task is set before you as if it were a law, and as if you would be committing sacrilege if you weren’t against it. But pay no attention to whatever anyone says about you, since that falls outside what is yours.