Odysseus, Nausicaa, & Beauty’s Education

Odysseus, Nausicaa, & Beauty’s Education

Man is he who suffers, and Odysseus is the man “of twists and turns,” the builder and destroyer, the journeyer trying to reach his beloved homeland.  Here Ian and I discuss what draws this man forward at his nadir in Book VI of Homer’s sequel epic.   Beauty, sing to me of that man of twists and turns! He who washed up on shore, belched from the belly of the raging sea god. Wisdom roused young Nausicaa, who stood rooted to the ground, Odysseus’ welcome into the world.   This crusted roaming lion remembered her in a palm. Eternal sun shimmering through its leaves near the navel of the world Now the maw with guardian of Truth, the twinned virtue; He sung her praises, and she acknowledged his manifold sufferings, Counseled him to bear them silently.   He accompanied the retinue up to the haven,  And prayed, waiting in Wisdom’s grove For the right time.   Please join us for this discussion of “The Odyssey,” Book 6, and the discussion of beauty in Elaine Scarry’s wonderful exploration “On Beauty & Being Just.”   Chapters:    00:00 Introduction & Summary of Book 6 16:00 Ancient Soap 17:40 Prepossessing Beauty 26:21 Beauty & Pornography 31:45 Beauty & Truth 36:37 Beauty and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion 40:04 The Ugliness of Our Buildings 47:39 Ian’s Photography 51:50 Calling all Artists 54:25 A Humble, Loose Call to the God 1:02:41 Beauty and Being Wrong 1:08:43 Beauty and Nature 1:09:50 Beauty and Relationality 1:15:30 Beauty is an Ally of Truth 1:24:46 You Forgot What Beauty Is   Thank you for watching!  Please see below for more on us:   The Odyssey’s translations we used: https://a.co/d/04Ud8j0d [https://a.co/d/04Ud8j0d] https://a.co/d/0dd7Svhh [https://a.co/d/0dd7Svhh]   The full video episode: https://youtu.be/WsujhE2muTQ [https://youtu.be/WsujhE2muTQ]   The Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T]   The Episode Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIszqVpagDQ [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIszqVpagDQ]   For more in this podcast, please go to: Podbean: https://benomtad.podbean.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863 YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ X: https://x.com/Benomtad Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benomtad [https://www.facebook.com/benomtad]   About our guest: Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality.  He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness. You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com [http://www.thekindknife.com/] or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado   I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.   Sea Short Photo by Henrique Hanemann [https://unsplash.com/@hnr_q?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText] on Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/photos/ocean-waves-crashing-on-shore-during-daytime-Ha4Mrwo04C8?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText] Photo of Nausicaa by Leighton (1878), courtesy of picryl

Grimm's Fur-of-All-Kinds (Allerleirauh)

A dying queen demands that her husband remarry only someone as beautiful as she.  After the mourning period, his advisors scramble around to find a new monarch, but the king’s eye alights on his very own daughter.  She demands abstrusse wedding gifts, but they are manufactured.  In desperation, she flees with her dowry, including a fur made from all the kingdom’s animals, and hides in the forest.   What can come from an impossible promise to a dying monarch, and how does one redeem oneself from a horrific crime by one’s own father?  Ian and I summarize and then discuss this tale that begins in tragedy, runs through trauma, butts up against cruelty and envy, and culminates in the tearing away of an old wound.     00:00 Story Summary 08:04 This Story and Trauma 11:40 An Inability to Grieve 19:40 Why Did the Queen Demand Another Like Herself? 28:24 The Power of Images 35:25 Getting Lost in a Dying Wish 38:45 Three-Step Reveals 45:19 The Ripped Away Old Protective Persona 51:29 The Fur-of-All-Kinds 55:48 The King Rips off the Cloak 1:00:19 Only the King Recognizes Her 1:08:02 Working Mindfully for Personal Development 1:12:49 The Three Grand Balls   Thank you for watching!     A Summary of the Story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allerleirauh [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allerleirauh]   The Story’s Full Text: https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm065.html [https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm065.html]   The Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T]   For more in this podcast, please go to: Podbean: https://benomtad.podbean.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863 YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ X: https://x.com/Benomtad Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benomtad [https://www.facebook.com/benomtad]   About our guest: Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality.  He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness. You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com [http://www.thekindknife.com/] or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado   I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Banishing the Lion from Modern Thought (Clip)

Why do we like folktales and myths?  I think one reason is that they help us learn to pay attention to instinct.  It’s not that I don’t think rationality is important–it is a key to a wise life.  But following John Vervaeke, who sees rationality as much larger than propositional logic, and more how, when, and how much to be logical, I see rationality and being wise as a larger and more embodied process.   Killing one’s lion is “self-castrating,” as Ian says, and the rationalistic knee-jerk rejection of many ways of thinking is not even real science.   (From a discussion on the Brothers’ Grimm’s “The Twelve Huntsmen”)   Thank you for watching!  I love and have faith in dialogue.  Please leave a suggestion for new guests, topics, or this conversation.  How I can expand this Open Minded Thought and Discussion?  And if you’re interested, please check out the following:   The full video episode: https://youtu.be/-yZySp8Qshs?si=pDyETKJjS7546OZC [https://youtu.be/-yZySp8Qshs?si=pDyETKJjS7546OZC]   Audio episode: https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/on-the-brothers-grimms-the-twelve-huntsmen-the-guys-of-truth/ [https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/on-the-brothers-grimms-the-twelve-huntsmen-the-guys-of-truth/]   The Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T]   The Episode Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vr3DwaH1OZBg239-GJ7AE6x [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vr3DwaH1OZBg239-GJ7AE6x]   For more in this podcast, please go to: Podbean: https://benomtad.podbean.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863 YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ X: https://x.com/Benomtad Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benomtad [https://www.facebook.com/benomtad]   I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Save the Suffering Animals! Grimm's "The Hut in the Forest" Summary and Discussion

The Virtue of Beauty, the Beauty of Virtue: A king is cursed to live as an old man with his servant– now animal attendants–until they are saved by one with kindness for all life.  A poor woodcutter goes hungry while his three daughters get lost in the wood.  The birds of the forest bewilder them to save the kingdom from darkness.   Plot Synopsis of the Story:    A poor woodcutter, his wife, and three daughters live on the edge of the forest.  When the woodcutter goes out to work, he tells his wife for his eldest daughter to bring his dinner.  He strews a path of millet on the ground so that she can find him, but by dinner-time when she goes out with the soup the birds of the forest have eaten all the seeds up.    Lost, she sees a glimmer through the trees and finds a hut with all its windows lit up.  She calls to it, and a gravelly voices tells her to come in, where she finds an old man with a beard down to the floor at a table, and three animals around the stove: a hen, a cock, and a brindled cow.  She asks for food and shelter, and he asks the animals, who reply, “Duks.”  She makes dinner from the plentiful cupboard, and she and the old man eat.  She asks where she should sleep, and the animals reply in a jingle that she has had no thought for them and must find her own.  The man directs her upstairs to beds she should make; she does so and falls asleep without waiting for him, and he sends her through a trap door into the cellar.   The woodcutter comes home without his dinner, and the next day he sets out lentils, which are bigger and harder for the birds to pick up, but the birds get them anyway.  The middle daughter goes out with the soup, and the same thing happens.  Down to the cellar.   Then it was the third and last daughter’s turn.  Mother objects, but father says she’s always been the most caring and obedient, and she’ll come through, especially since he will strew the heaviest food–peas.  This time the wood-pigeons get it, but when the youngest comes into the hut, she caresses the animals, and when she makes dinner, she goes out and gets food and draught for the animals, and she eats what is leftover of the man’s dinner.  The jingle of the animals praises her, and she waits for the old man after making the beds, and she is not sent down to the cellar.     In the middle of the night, she is awoken by loud creaking and bursting sounds, but she falls asleep again, and wakes up in an ivory bed with a velvet canopy.  The man is now a handsome youth, and three servants come to do her bidding.  The man–a King cursed until a girl whose heart was full of love not only for mankind but for animals came and rescued them–orders the servants to get her parents for the wedding.  Her sisters, however, would be servants of charcoal-men deep in the woods until they learned to be kinder, and not let poor animals suffer.   Chapters:   00:00 “The Hut in the Forest” Summary 10:50 Like Beauty and the Beast 13:50 Love Breaks the Spell  20:50 The Hyperfocused Woodcutter 21:46 In the Fullness of Being 22:18 Why was the Prince Bewitched?   (From a discussion on “The Hut in the Forest”)   Thank you for watching!  Please see below for the full conversation:   The full video episode: https://youtu.be/_7PddDonuU0 [https://youtu.be/_7PddDonuU0]   The Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T]   The Episode Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVozxPpnLfIY [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVozxPpnLfIY]   For more in this podcast, please go to: Podbean: https://benomtad.podbean.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863 YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ X: https://x.com/Benomtad Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benomtad [https://www.facebook.com/benomtad]   About Our Guest: LL is a graduate of the Immaculate University of California, Davis.  She majored in psychology and has worked for years in the field of mental health.  She is currently getting training in accounting and loves almost all things weird: aliens, cryptids, ghosts, and sweet bovine love.   I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.   Thumbnail Background Illustration: Arthur Rackham

Emptiness Eating Itself (Clip)

In “Fight Club,” the protagonist tries to find meaning in life through filling his life with purchases.  But that doesn’t give him fullness–he feels dead.  So he goes to cancer support groups, and then group violence in fight clubs.   The zombie culture is a feverish emptiness eating itself.  It has no depth and builds nothing. Everything is seen as a commodity.   (From a discussion on “Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis,” Ch. 1)   Thank you for watching!  Please see below for the full conversation:   The full video episode: https://youtu.be/9Cab_C9YhNk?si=x5SDEOQlL0vAU1Iq [https://youtu.be/9Cab_C9YhNk?si=x5SDEOQlL0vAU1Iq]   Audio episode: https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/why-are-zombies-everywhere/ [https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/why-are-zombies-everywhere/]   The Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T]   The Episode Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqibKcegyTVC5o4oxLsO4Z7 [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqibKcegyTVC5o4oxLsO4Z7]   For more in this podcast, please go to: Podbean: https://benomtad.podbean.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863 YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ X: https://x.com/Benomtad Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benomtad [https://www.facebook.com/benomtad]   About our guest: Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality.  He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness. You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com [http://www.thekindknife.com/] or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado   Photo by Jose Rueda [https://unsplash.com/@notartistic?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText] on Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/photos/a-man-in-a-garment-with-a-woman-in-a-garment-WNGyP4zumE4?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText]   I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.