The terms “homosexual” and “sexual orientation”

We need to be aware that the concepts “homosexual” and “sexual orientation” are modern, and perhaps Western.

I don’t feel that recognizing this has anything to do with essentialism versus social construction. One is not arguing the fact that people throughout history have been attracted to their own sex or the fact that this is not a conscious choice for them, but at least feels inborn. Instead it has to to with the linguistic and cultural concepts that different cultures offer, the patterns of behavior that can be referred to simply in a word or two, without complicated, esoteric explanations.

The Greeks and the Romans had different concepts for it than we do, and anyone “homosexual” in the modern sense must have had a difficult time explaining themselves — even to themselves.

Dynamic Screenwriting

Note: The series, Story Structure, that I’m currently reposting here, was originally posted in the discussion boards of a well-known website for screenwriters. I had a fairly rich life there, corresponding back and forth with other writers. One exchange happened with my very thoughtful friend Martin Collinson.

Martin wrote about the lack of dynamism in some screenplays, and his comments seemed to offer a way to break out of some of the cliché rules that so imprison screenwriters. One of these clichés is that movies are for pictures not words. (Yes, we obviously all know that already, but how many of you are really ready to go back to silent movies? — Or have the talent to make movies with the level of visual storytelling that King Vidor or Victor Seastrom did?)

Another cliché that they like to hound us with is that action advances movies, whereas words hold them back. The truth is that uninterrupted action gets boring soon — unless there’s story and character to give it meaning. Paradoxically it’s static.

So, even though we don’t want to make movies in which characters deliver speeches — how can we make them actually move?

One suggestion: what if words could be actions?

. . . every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite

A post in the ongoing series Poetry in the Arts.

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote about the “doors of perception.”

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

What does Blake mean when he says that if “the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite?”

Why is the world “infinite?” And if it is, what does perception have to do with it?

I’m not sure about what Blake thought, but I have my own personal theories.

Politics, the Polis, aloofness, and involvement

Parthenon, North Frieze

J. J. Pollitt’s The Art of Ancient Greece is a book that I’ve learned much from — and plan to write several entries about. I’m grateful to Pollitt.

In one place in this book, though, he makes some remarks about the relation of Greek philosophers to the political scene around them that I can’t agree with.

The Schools in the Academy and the Lyceum were private, voluntary associations, unsubsidized and unsupervised by the state. Within them political questions might often be examined and data about governmental institutions were collected, but such activities were engaged in primarily for the private satisfaction of the members of the schools, not as a service to society in general.

Reading William James

Although my response to William James uses my intellect, I don’t know if I can state the gist of it intellectually. Somehow, I seem to hear him speak very directly. His writing isn’t just words: there’s a voice.

Socrates — running his hand through Phaedo’s hair

Plato’s Phaedo is one of the hardest dialogues for me to understand. The way some commentators present it seems uncompromisingly, patronizingly self-righteous. Yet, I think there are more humanistic ways to understand it.

Herakleitos, 1

κόσμον τόνδε, τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων, οὔτε τις θεῶν οὐτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ’ ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα.The ordered world, common to all, was not made by a god or a man; rather, it always was — and it is and will be an ever-living fire, lighting by measures and going out by measures.

– Herakleitos of Ephesos

This is the first in a series of posts about the philosophy of Herakleitos the Ephesian — and later about other ancient Greek philosophers as well. I write them in order to work out certain ideas for myself.