20 May 2005: Orbital Koan

Philosophy and Astronomy finals yesterday. I know I'm getting an A in Philosophy. Astronomy is right on the edge; my grade for the semester could end up being either an A or a B. A tough class because it was held once a week in three-hour sessions; The amount of expository lecture I can absorb in one sitting is considerably less that three hours' worth, especially when the lecture is delivered very rapidly, with no apparent pauses for breath, in a strong French accent. The teacher has announced that if any of us students drop by the classroom next Thursday evening, she'll tell us our final grades; I'll be taking her up on that. That's the last of my physical science requirements; I'll need to keep taking a pretty heavy courseload for my remaining 15 months of community college, but from here on out I get to choose any classes I want; I've taken all the required classes.

History final on Monday - Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. I did so well on the midterms, and on my big paper of the semester, that in order to get an A in the class I only need to score 54% or better on the final. My big History paper was on Cato the Elder, a choice I made partly because it dovetailed with recent past life work: one of my more interesting and resonant past incarnations, who lived in the Roman Empire two centuries after Cato, was greatly influenced by his lifelong admiration for Cato (an admiration which in my present incarnation I don't share at all - I think Cato was a vicious, mean-spirited, narrow-minded petty tyrant). The paper isn't worth reprinting here in its entirety, but for any fans of Ancient Roman history who might be interested, here's my concluding paragraph:

The aspect of Cato’s life’s work that he himself seems to have regarded as the most crucial was his self-appointed mission to preserve and further the old Roman values and virtues of his father and grandfather. In this, Cato ultimately failed. He was much admired for the way that he himself exemplified the virtues he espoused, but few of his admirers were interested in going so far as to actually emulate his relentlessly spartan lifestyle. Over the course of Cato’s long life, the Roman character changed a great deal – for the worse, in his view. As he became more and more a relic of a bygone age, he was more and more admired and applauded for his old-fashioned virtues, by the very people whom he was railing against for not following his example. The great irony of Cato’s life was that the affluence and security that his foreign policy helped to create for Rome was probably a primary cause of the increasing decadence, avarice, vice, and indolence that he so deplored.

Social Psychology final on Tuesday, and that's it for the semester. Then three weeks to catch up on the rest of my life, and then an intensive Summer term, six hours of classes a day. Critical Thinking (with my excellent Creative Writing teacher from last Summer) and Art History.

Philosophy proved to be my favorite class this semester. Favorite philosophers covered: Judith Butler and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Butler is still alive, and teaching right here in town at UC Berkeley. She writes about social roles as performance, which is very relevant to the current direction of my own work. A real mind-opener there: I never would have guessed that I'd have so many ideas in common with a liberal atheist Marxist-Feminist philosophy professor.

Wittgenstein was almost certainly Autistic (a little research confirmed that I'm not alone in thinking this - it's a popular theory these days, among people who are interested in that sort of thing). His understanding of the nature and workings of language is nearly identical to mine; his insights are all excellent examples of the sort of insights that Autism can generate (said insights, and their contribution to human enlightenment, probably being one of the major reasons that God created Autism, and one of the major reasons that the forces of Evil are so determined to eliminate or suppress it).

Favorite Wittgenstein quote:

"What Philosophy can't say is more important than what it can say."

And one of the best zen koans I've ever encountered:

Wittgenstein: Why is it natural for people to believe that the Sun goes round the Earth?

Student: Because it looks that way.

Wittgenstein: And how would it look if the Earth went round the Sun?