[anna]

I listened to the whole talk—many thanks for sharing it.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Gilbert does a good job of covering the relationship between creativity and suffering, which is something I've been fascinated by for a long time.

A good example of this relationship is the hereditary stroke disorder CADASIL, of which Friedrich Nietzsche is the most well-documented historical case. It begins during middle age and can manifest in migraines and mood disorders before leading to strokes and dementia. I sometimes wonder if CADASIL was what enabled Nietzsche to develop his philosophy, much of which concerns how modern people should approach mental and physical anguish.

Another, more recent example is Jeff Mangum from Neutral Milk Hotel, a band known for their work in the nineties. Mangum read The Diary of Anne Frank, cried for days, and then wrote an entire album's worth of music based on his dreams of a Jewish family during the Holocaust. The result, entitled In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, is widely hailed by critics as among the greatest albums of that decade. Mangum had a nervous breakdown one year later.

Very interesting, thank you very much. I'm going to follow up on that album.

Interesting thing about vascular dementia is how a person is affected depends on what part of the brain is affected by the vascular anomalies and TIAs.

Something I've grown to accept is that the human spirit follows a somewhat normal distribution. The greater the highs, in other words, the greater the lows. More creative spirits tend to have a higher variance—that is, they are prone both to euphoria and to dysphoria. Nietzsche himself, in The Gay Science, writes:

I don't think, though, that our creativity condemns us to suffering. Gilbert was right in saying the attitude we take towards genius can either encourage or discourage its manifestation. Moreover, placing the "tortured genius" in historical context makes sense.

I'm sure somewhere there must be a list of famous creatives who had bipolar disorder, but I suspect many non-famous creatives would be rather familiar with it in their own lives - or perhaps with expressing and creating and living primarily within the depths of depression.

[ThirdTerm]

I finally purchased this book by taking advantage of a Black Friday coupon. Cambridge textbooks are usually overpriced and it costs $108 in the expensive hardback format.

This book is a magisterial global history of World War II. Beginning in 1937 with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Evan Mawdsley shows how the origins of World War II lay in a conflict between the old international order and the new and then traces the globalisation of the conflict as it swept through Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. His primary focus is on the war's military and strategic history though he also examines the political, economic, ideological, and cultural factors which influenced the course of events. The war's consequences are examined too, not only in terms of the defeat of the Axis but also the break-up of colonial empires and the beginning of the Cold War. Accessibly written and well-illustrated with maps and photographs, this compelling new account also includes short studies of the key figures, events and battles that shaped the war.
http://admin.cambridge.org/cn/academic/ ... 0521845922

[Frollein]

The experiments and his experiences with the politics of the scientific community are as interesting as his findings. The untapped potential of this stuff... mind-boggling.

Also downloaded some cheap Nietzsche stuff for Kindle.

[Potemkin]

:) Also downloaded some cheap Nietzsche stuff for Kindle.

Good choice, Frollein.

Fun fact: Foucault first 'found' himself as a philosopher after binge-reading Nietzsche while on a cruise ship. All of Foucault's radical questioning of the ideological and cultural foundations of Western society were basically just riffs on a few themes from Nietzsche.

Oh, and....

I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

[Frollein]

Do you think that Whitman came to the same conclusion as Becker, that the "body electric" is the soul?

His chapter on the interaction of the Earth's magnetic field with our body (and indeed the body of every creature on this planet) makes me think that we won't be able to colonize other planets, at least not without wreaking havoc with our nervous and endocrine systems.

[Potemkin]

Do you think that Whitman came to the same conclusion as Becker, that the "body electric" is the soul?

Whitman's point was more radical than that, Frollein - he was claiming that there can be no meaningful distinction between the body and the soul. We are not a physical body which is 'filled' with an immaterial soul as water fills a glass; rather, we are a material body which is animated by a complex nexus of electrical and magnetic and other forces. We are the body electric, irreducible and non-deterministic.

His chapter on the interaction of the Earth's magnetic field with our body (and indeed the body of every creature on this planet) makes me think that we won't be able to colonize other planets, at least not without wreaking havoc with our nervous and endocrine systems.

I agree. We are, after all, the end result of three billion years or more of the complex interaction and adaptation of living organisms to the material environment of the Earth; in fact, life itself has shaped the geology of the Earth itself in profound ways. To imagine that we can simply extract ourselves from that environment and plonk ourselves down in a completely alien environment and expect to thrive is an absurd fantasy. I can tell you right now: humans, at least in our present form, will never colonise Mars. Not now, not in a thousand years' time. One third the gravity of Earth, a thin atmosphere with no free oxygen, no magnetosphere, no oceans? Forget it, not going to happen. I mean, we can't even colonise Antarctica, ffs, and we're planning on colonising Mars? Ha!

[Frollein]

Whitman's point was more radical than that, Frollein - he was claiming that there can be no meaningful distinction between the body and the soul. We are not a physical body which is 'filled' with an immaterial soul as water fills a glass; rather, we are a material body which is animated by a complex nexus of electrical and magnetic and other forces. We are the body electric, irreducible and non-deterministic.

If I understood Becker right, he's not saying that (of course he's a scientist, so he's never making definitive statements ). He seems to think that the electromagnetic fields of the body are the result (or perhaps just the detectable manifestation) of another, morphogenetic field - pure information, which is made visible, embodied, by energy coursing through it. That morphogenetic field (L-field) could be understood as the soul. If so, it's not identical with the body, although the body is a manifestation of it. In Yoga, you have several bodies, of which the physical is but the crudest.

[recurnal]

The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Arendt—still.
The Sense of Style, by Pinker—still.

But I've picked up Marx's Capital Volume I, as well as Greene's The Elegant Universe.

And I've taken advantage of the permutational qualities of the number four to make a weekly reading schedule. (Four choose two is six, so reading from two books every day will take up six of seven days, provided I exhaust every combination of books. Sunday is my reading sabbath.) Stupid as that sounds, I am systematic by nature, and systematizing, in my view, doesn't mix as well with philosophy as it does with daily life. This is my logical catharsis.

[ThirdTerm]

This English translation of Herodotus is very accessible and modern. I have some experience in translating Greek texts and it wasn't an easy task. I would read this book at least twice before returning it to the public library.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

(Seriously, what a great cover)

The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. It's pretty good thus far, but interestingly I'm unsure who "Margarita" is (I'm only a third of the way through the book), and I don't want to spoil the novel by looking up characters.

[Potemkin]

The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. It's pretty good thus far, but interestingly I'm unsure who "Margarita" is (I'm only a third of the way through the book), and I don't want to spoil the novel by looking up characters.

If it helps, I can tell you that Margarita is based on Gretchen from Goethe's Faust (the 'Master' is Faust himself, of course).

[anna]

Last semester. I'm really looking forward to this class, although the other classes are going to be interesting as well, another is the psychology of prejudice and stereotypes, but I'm still waiting for that and two other texts to arrive.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

If it helps, I can tell you that Margarita is based on Gretchen from Goethe's Faust (the 'Master' is Faust himself, of course).

That did help.

Now reading Rendezvous with Rama. Clarke is not my go-to for scifi, but it's something I meant to read at some point.

[Potemkin]

Now reading Rendezvous with Rama. Clarke is not my go-to for scifi, but it's something I meant to read at some point.

I can also recommend The City and the Stars and Childhood's End, Bulaba.

[Decky]

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

I can also recommend The City and the Stars and Childhood's End, Bulaba.

Already on my list, but thanks.

[skinster]

Last few:

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

^ War and sex. I see, I see.

[Decky]

A very interesting observation Bulaba. [scribbles away in notebook]

[Frollein]

Now reading Rendezvous with Rama. Clarke is not my go-to for scifi, but it's something I meant to read at some point.

I read that as a child (my dad was a big science fiction fan and I read all his books in secret). I remember that I was so disappointed that

► Show Spoiler

they didn't find a single alien on that ship.

I never bothered to read the other Rama books after that.