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Busted at Lumos 2006!
More Lumos Pictures and Morning Report
Lumos 2006 Class Notes - Friday
Can you see Merlin now?
A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words: John Granger ...
Pictures and Fun Stuff From the Night Before "Clas...
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Study Finds HP Has Positive Impact on Kids School ...
News from Lumos-bound Professor
R.A.B. and the Big Switcheroo


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Hogwarts, Hogwarts,
Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,
Teach us something please,
Whether we be old and bald,
Or young with scabby knees,
Our heads could do with filling,
With some interesting stuff,
For now they're bare
And full of air,
Dead flies and bits of fluff.
So teach us stuff worth knowing,
Bring back what we forgot,
Just do your best
We'll do the rest,
And learn until our brains all rot!



1: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
2: Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
3: There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
4: Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
5: Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
6: His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
7: The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
8: The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
9: The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
10: More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
11: Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.
12: Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.
13: Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
14: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Lumos 2006 Class Notes - Saturday - # 1

Ok, this has been a mental whirlwind ... some seriously packed speakers here, pretty exciting.
This is going to be sort of a "highlights" of the stuff I went to today. There is still a ton to unpack ... 5 talks to listen to on CD that I did not make it to, another one I thought of that I am going to hop over there and order or order by email (the one on the "trickster" type) ... or maybe I'll just read the paper - there is a CD of data that was included with the packet that has all of the papers that were presented by non-"headliner acts." Amazing. I would suggest going to the Lumos website and see what deal they have going on as far as paper publication or download publication; their official deal with the presenters is publication of the papers.

But for now, here are the highlights and we'll discuss more later (drop comments here about what interests you most and I'll be sure to dig especially for that in the CD of the papers).

The Byronic Hero and the Gothic Fathers of Snape

That is, Lord Byron's gothic hero. Pretty interesting. ... There are 3 types that influence Snape as Byron's gothic hero: The "noble outlaw" (Sirius Black), the "gothic villain" (Voldemort) and the Prometheus character (Dumbledore).

The gothic villain is usually mysterious and handsome (as is young Tom Riddle, a charmer) - the Byronic hero elevated to a level beyond the human condition to a level that would usually kill such a hero; Prometheus is not gothic at all - his main crime is being kind or merciful ("I trust Severus Snape completely.")

What interested me was the outlaw because that character contributes anti-social/solitude characteristics. Here Linday Ludvigsen (the presenter) noted the individualistic tendency of Slytherin house (vs the group identity exhibited in the other houses) in this development of Snape (influence of Black on a Slytherin). In the other 3 houses people hold each other accountable for how their actions affect the house standing as far as points especially. (In Slytherin they won't say "hey, that's wrong, don't do it and get us in trouble" they'll say "whatever you do is your business, just don't get caught).

It really interested me because of some concepts in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger that my housemate Dom and I have talked about. Heidegger is a controversial figure, and there are some real reasons for that (including having been a member of the Nazi party) -- and I am not claiming all of his philosophy to be sound. But if you're like Dom, you look for the elements in a philosophy that, even if they are in a flawed form, once carefully separated from the flaws, are redeemable. Thus he take MH's 2 terms Daseign and Dasmann. The first is an individual being. The second is maybe closest to "group identity." Dom puts it "it is the someone new to be." In other words, in the group identity the sum is more than the whole of its parts because each of the parts is now given over to a new dimension of identity, that is being "a member of this or that particular group."

I have always been cautious of the dasmann, the group identity, the "us" ... mainly because it usually seems to yield a them as an "excluded other." I have said in conversation that "the only safe dasmanns are those that are sacramentally-based, such as the mystical body of Christ in the Church, marriage and family (believing as a Catholic that marriage is a sacrament) etc. But this causes me to formulate a little more subtly because the dasmann of the houses is a good thing. As a Christian-Catholic interpreter I would say that, on the symbolic level, the houses, as institutions of a school of magic, can be "given" in the way the sacramental is. A lot of fine lines here: you can become wrongly prejudicial about even such divinely given dasmanns. Sometimes the reclusiveness of the Slytherin could be all right as a balance to an over-zealous group identity ... but not at Voldy's level (I think there is more meant to be a dynamic flow of give and take between individual identity and identity as part of a group ... and Voldy never had the other distinct thing, the trust thing of what Martin Buber talks about as the "I and Thou" relationship, which is not a group identity, but rather a relation to an other, but not an excluded other). Slytherin house did turn out more definitely dark wizards.

That was more than a highlight of my thoughts interwoven with the talk ... I'm going to go get some food and write more later.

I promise, there is a lot for of good stuff and fun stuff to come!

(NOTE: See Comment 1 for a content amendment by Merlin to this post)
posted by Merlin at 11:28 PM


Comments on "Lumos 2006 Class Notes - Saturday - # 1"

 

Blogger Merlin said ... (July 30, 2006 2:54 AM) : 

This is Merlin
I'm trying, when I am done with a post and it's been even a few hours in which somebody may have read it, not to make content ammendations, so somebody doesn't have to re-read to see if I added stuff (I had plenty of that editing that encyclopedia ... revision drafts sent in but no markings of what was ammended/revised so you have to read the whole thing side by side to see where the changes are, all the while mentally screaming "for goodness sake ... put the text you ammended in red or something!") ... I may correct spelling and grammar after more than a few hours but if it's content I try to stick it into a comment (just FYI)

So, There was one thing I was going to mention that I forget and then one bit of clarification.

First, my friend Dom's specific "Christianization" of Heidegger goes something like "Christ is my dasmann ... my new person to give myself over to being" ... and this works for the group thing as well because the Church is the mystical body of Christ, of which He is the head.

That brings me to my second point, clarification. (Especially in case there are any Heidegger students/scholars reading this). These terms as they actually work across the larger body of Heidegger's work obviously function on a broader level, incorporating many more aspects (such as ontology/metaphysics and epistemology) than just these "social" definitions I have given (and different interpretations on the other areas would certainly affect the interpretation on the social level)... These are just the definitions I use for what I take away from it (meaning Dom's Christianization of Heidegger ... I believ Heidegger was nominally a Christian, but he was also a member of the Nazi party, and a his philosophy is sometimes highly controversial).

What I like about it is that this application to a broader social context gives me hope. I tend to be too skeptical on social situations, skeptical of dasmanns and this type of thing helps somebody like me realize that "normal" or simply more broadly socially occuring "group mentalities" don't have to be bad as long as they don't go to the level of actualizing the creation of a wholistically excluded other (I say it like that because there are some areas where things are exclusive ... certain things are true of Christianity by definition, and if your thought falls outside this, I may not shun you but I couldn't reasonably call your thought "Christian," just by definition)

 

Blogger Pauli said ... (July 30, 2006 10:53 PM) : 

I was just checking out the wikipedia article on Heidegger to familiarize myself with the man. The section named Heidegger & Nazi Germany clarifies his somewhat complicated relationship with the party. He seems to have also had a "complicated" relationship with Christianity as well, but he is a great philosopher influencing deconstructionism, existentialism, etc. -- all the postmodern stuff -- so we're well to examine his categories and analyses while being wary of his viewpoints.

I guess I'm on the same page with Merlin on group mentalities or what I call "group-think" -- sometimes I would love to have a philosophical framework of sorts to help explain what irritates me about certain sub-groups of humanity.

One last thought: seems like ol' Marty H. was a little like Slughorn and had plenty of ambition -- maybe that's why he ended up joining the Nazi party, a little bit of security in those fearful times where he lived. Merlin had studied the man more, maybe he could weigh in on whether his formulations on "group-identity" may have been influenced by his reluctant joining of that particular group.

 

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