Socrates gets Tenure

I've been remiss in posting to this journal, despite the flurry of ideas - both new and backlogged from more than a year ago - that have inspired the muse. Work and an increasing cynicism with the university setting have taken their toll on me; not too long ago, I might have brushed this off as just a temporary setback, but it seems nowadays I grow more and more convinced that the ennui is a symptom of an underlying, pervasive, and integrally fatal flaw with the system itself.

So, as is my mind's wont when it finds itself pitted against a dilemma it cannot resolve, a character emerges from the depths of imagination, woven to "act out," if you will, an alternative reality that rebels against the current scheme. A satire with (I hope) all the trappings of Greek irony wrapped up in modern day humor. I'll spare you the pretentious introduction and get to the title of this piece - Socrates gets Tenure.

Yes, take our favorite Greek philosopher and transport him from the halls of Athens to those of any modern-day college (a liberal arts one for added irony), with all the trials and tribulations that face every newly minted professor traversing the bowels of the education system. Let the administration review his application for tenure, let them assign him classes, critique his research, let the true politics of this university that we speak of come to light when the philosopher whose work stands at the center of the School of Athens (having been a mentor to Plato) is only recognized as that curious old man with his outdated, idealistic concepts about teaching and dialogue.

With regards to the actual details of the story, I am unfortunately vague, although several scenes come sequentially to light. The first, a meeting of the administration to review his application - questions about his interests (too broad, they say, and current trends in philosophy steer away from such purist interpretations), his publications (all transcriptions by a single student? Not a journal to be printed in?), his qualifications for the job (certainly questionable, given he never officially received a degree - though it does take a...unique sort of man to face off against the highest politicians in Greece). Ultimately his application would have been unanimously rejected, if not for the university's need for funding of its philosophy department...parading a guest professor, who apparently achieved some fame in his home country, around campus when the solicitations went out would certainly be beneficial (not to mention bolstering their diversity agenda).

Besides which, Socrates never did name a salary figure.

Conditioning his entrance on his political clashes with the rhetoricians and the heads of state, the school quickly regrets its mistake. This old man, stolidly walking the grounds in his old robes and sandals, never once writing down his contemplations, who when asked why his entire PHIL100 class is sitting outside on the mall with bread and wine (Heaven forbid!) rather than studiously pursuing the curriculum, replied simply that they were "helping him with his research." But they are not graduate students! comes the response. If you needed an assistant, we could have easily procured several Ph.D candidates from within the department. And Socrates would proceed to question them on the merits of this ranking, or rather, the merits of teaching based on this ranking via some strange "degree" the university conjured. Isn't the meaning of a good life universal? What about love? If I were to seek the nature of Eros, I should most certainly question those who have experienced it firsthand. But they are not ready, the perplexed bureaucrat replies, it's just not done...though he cannot say why. And in the ensuing Gorgias, clarity shines down on who is truly the one who lies unprepared.

Of course, Socrates himself is not exempt from this clash of ideals. A visit to the Greek societies of today would be eye-opening, and I can see another Plato's Symposium coming of this (he is, after all, said to be able to hold his alcohol quite well). On the other hand, his political views would probably draw unwanted attention...the philosopher king, so imagined, must rub several groups on campus the wrong way. Obtuse assignments, refusal to grade; hah, his Pick-A-Prof profile must be a comedy in itself. But ultimately, I believe the students will warm to him - this creature of the ivory tower, yet apart from it - and find some commonality with Socrates that they could never achieve with the other professors, so intrinsically linked as they are to the intellectual hierarchy of the university.

Two characters come to mind at this point: one, a senior who majored in Undecided and minored in Getting a Job, would be particularly drawn to this unconventional man...and perhaps even become his Plato in the modern world, recording Socrates' exploits. Having spent his entire life doing what others told him would make him successful (but without ever knowing, or daring to voice what he truly cared for), he reaches his final semester and suddenly balks at departing. Not because he cares for the school, you see, but rather because remaining in stasis is the least difficult of the choices - retaking old classes, avoiding the final credits, sitting in a loophole of the bureaucracy so they can never quite force him out. Several semesters go by like this, with the university getting more and more irate, until he meets Socrates...and a profound change begins. I'll leave the details for another time. The other character I'd like to include is the solitary ancient Greek philosophy professor, a bit wearied by the system, discontent, unable quite to level with his colleagues the same way over research anymore, as narrow and abstract as it has become, when philosophy originally was about very much the entire world. He is the only one who recognizes Socrates for who he truly is - suspects, at first, but suspicions confirmed over time and deed. As he tries to mediate between our visitor from Athens and the administration, gradually he recognizes the futility of the entire arrangement.

In the end, as the title suggests, Socrates does indeed get tenure - after being denied again and again, nearly fired several times, it is ultimately an inane and utterly serendipitous, if you could call it that, side effect of his actions at the university that lead to his approval by the review board. (I haven't yet come up with a suitably ironic twist yet, though I've been mulling several possibilities). And what does he do then? Why, reject it, of course! As politely and impertinently as he always has in the dialogues rejected such offerings from above. It turns out another person was submitting that application for him, unaware, to prove a point that only he knew.

But now, he must return to Greece. A true philosopher, Socrates says, is not bound by the walls of a single institution - he, by his very nature, cannot exist in an institution. The knowledge he pursues cannot be discovered by simply wading among the insular books.

And that is why, though he has certainly enjoyed this dance with the paper trail here (tongue firmly in cheek), he must regretfully turn down the offer of a place within these ivory doors.

Multiple Universes and the Divine Chess Game

When I was young, I would lie awake at night with this irrational fear in my mind, that my room was in fact a tiny keyhole and some giant was slowly inserting a key to crush me. It wasn't really the crushing that disturbed me, though. It was the fact that I - my room - was so incomprehensibly small...as if I were falling into some dark pit. In fact, before picking up a single book on astrophysics, I wondered whether the entire world, hell, the entire universe was but a single cell of a vast being. No, not some sort of "God"; divinity beyond reach would have made the disorientation more bearable. Rather, I thought, what if that vast being...was one of many vast beings as sentient and human as myself?

Of course, now that I've come to read a bit about the multiverse theory and the expansion of space, I can put my qualms into something of a scientific context. The thing with theories, though, is that it leaves room open for debate...or, in my case, fantastical meanderings.

Hence, it was with a strange state of mind one day that I envisioned this snippet of an act. Sometimes, the images playing out in my mind precede any sort of reason, plot line, what have you, which the rational side can interpret. That's the fun of literary critics (even better, now that the author is dead). Well, let me lay out what I've seen of the scene so far, and you can tell me what it means.

A close-up of a chess board in what appears to be a long, dusty hall, the kind grandmaster chess players might compete in. It is the middle of a tournament, and the viewer sees an old man - or perhaps not old, but very worn in spirit - sitting at the chessboard, slowly contemplating the pieces as he considers his next move. The game moves ponderously forward, until suddenly, the double doors to the hall bang open to reveal another man, this one young and fierce, with eyes that blaze in frustrated anger. At the beginning I supposed the newcomer to be the old man's brother; that is how the conversation is portrayed. This young man goes up to the chessboard and slams his hands onto the table, obviously furious over something. He begins an argument which the two have had for many an eon - for his is the art of war, as was once his brother's, until happenstance led the latter to retreat from the battlefield into these meaningless games fought over a 8 x 8 chessboard. A brilliant tactician, laid to waste while the rest of the country (or perhaps, world) toils in the middle of war.

Well, the argument moves forward, as the younger man usurps what is believed to be the former competitor (we never see him) and proceeds to finish the game against the older. I have yet to pinpoint the exact flow of their debate, although small bits of dialogue do echo faintly in my mind. Nevertheless, it seems that all eyes are on them until the endgame, and finally, checkmate. One option here is for the older man to win, but passionlessly, as if finishing an eternal duty he has no more use for. Another is for the end to come to a standoff in the older man's eyes, until the argument peaks, and the younger checkmates him in either an unperceived move, or flouts the rules of chess altogether to win his mark. Nevertheless, he gets up in dead silence, says, "You...and the rest of the players!" (finishing on his previous climactic point), hand waving to one side -

And the camera pans out to show that this older man, whom we assumed to be the central grandmaster, is in fact one of an endless line of identical old men, all sitting on one side of the chessboard, the other seat empty.

What I thought to symbolize here (although my initial intention was for it to be two brothers of noble birth, embroiled in a war for their kingdom) upon seeing this is...some sort of cosmic interpretation of God. That is, God is the old man at the chessboard, and the younger one who plays the game against him is perhaps...the Devil? Or even Humanity? We see God, in fact, plays a ponderous chessgame against nobody, retreating from the real conflicts of the world. Or is it looking down upon? The real crux and the mindboggler that links back to my irrational fears in the first place, is the fact that God himself is but one of an infinite series of "divine" players, no more or less significant than they. We worship him only as such as he plays our particular board.

The idea of a single element being more easily related to than a group of elements can be seen in the way humanitarian efforts try to put a "human face" on suffering. That is, as the number of victims rises, paradoxically, we as humans move down in sympathy for the individual. A strange occurrence, eh? Perhaps personalization has an influence...or simply the fact that we do not have the capacity to divide our attentions that far and still retain the same level of empathy for the single element.

A Modern Day Cain

Most of the time, the creation of a narrative for me begins with a single, solid conception of a character or a powerful, climactic scene that plays out like a movie clip in front of my eyes. Certain lines, certain actions stand apart from the rest and evoke a kind of raw emotion alone, sealing their place in whichever fiction they happen to spring from within my head. Only later does the plot, setting, history coalesce - the beginning is always marked by an intense, solitary image.

However, this particular night, inspiration was sparked by something a little different. Checking through my news feeds, I came upon this unusual story about a man who was struck suddenly by amnesia and wandered the streets of Dallas for several days, before happy coincidence led to him being identified by a friend of his near the site where he was having his house built. What is more intriguing is that this was no ordinary amnesia - it is a rare condition called psychogenic fugue, which is a mysterious psychiatric illness that causes victims to abruptly lose all memory of themselves and their pasts. Sufferers are often afflicted with an urge to wander from place to place during the fugue state, lasting upwards of several days; their memory during their travels is, from what I gather, extremely hazy after they recover. Current medical science has little to say on it except that it is a very rare condition.

Now, things might end well and enough here, if it weren't for an unusual connection I made with another ancient narrative - helped along by two movies I remember quite vividly from the past. One is Pi, which stars a tormented mathematical genius who is afflicted with Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgias, or cluster headaches, in his quest for the ultimate universal number. The other is Collateral, about a cynical LA hitman who exemplifies the cold and distant life of the post-modern cityscape. I had initially thought Memento was present here as well, but upon reflection, believe that I made the connection from psychogenic fugue to anterograde amnesia separately, and without much thought (though it will affect my storyline theory later, as you'll see). Regardless, the former two share a single setting within a scene that stood out immediately in my mind. Both characters found themselves, at some point, sitting in a desolate subway train in the middle of the night. Max's was wrapped up in a headache-induced hallucination of his, scratched out in harsh black-and-white, while Vincent's reflected a more philosophical bent...or rather...socio-psychological. Early in the movie, he tells a taxi driver (also named Max, and the title protagonist of the movie) an anecdote about a man who passes away quietly on the subways of LA, and isn't discovered dead for nearly six hours. He rode that train around and around, beside fully living people, coming and going from their daily lives, too distant to even notice the corpse beside them. The line is worth quoting.

17 million people. This was a country, it would be the fifth biggest economy in the world. But nobody knows each other. Too impersonal. But that's just me...you know...(pause) I read about this guy. Gets on the MTA, here, and dies. Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices. This corpse doing laps around LA, people on and off, sitting next to him, nobody notices.

Source: IMSDB Collateral script

At the end of Collateral, we see Vincent shot dead in a standoff on that same bleak subway train he described...sitting there alone...as the tracks pass on beneath him.

Where does this lead us, you ask? Well, in an unusual twist of mental connection, I thought how appropriate the image of the aimlessly drifting amnesiac would be for a modern day Cain, banished from Eden to wander for all eternity in the land of Nod. In the traditional Biblical story, God banishes Cain to the Land of Nod after confronting him over the murder of his brother, Abel.

And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. (Genesis 4:16, King James Version)

Various interpretations of this statement exist, one of which was first used by Jonathan Swift in his A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation to associate Nod with sleep - that is, Cain was banished to eternal rest. A perhaps restless purgatory of the mind. Now then, putting all of this together, I ask a simple question:

What if Cain woke up?

And with that, the story's premise seems to coalesce. For if Cain awoke, gained self-awareness, much as the psychogenic fugue patient did after days of wandering, he could very well serve as a symbol of both the victim and the victimizer in present day society. It is as if an epilogue to Collateral, beginning with Cain regaining consciousness in the desolate, skeletal interior of an anonymous city metro. Here begins the character's personal journey through a disaffected, almost post-apocalyptic landscape - his own internal emptiness (for he does not remember the circumstances which led him to sleep) mirroring that of the modern-day spirit. Religious symbology would be crucial in painting a bright picture of the corruption today. One image that pops to mind is a contrast between the cheap, neon glow of a plastic cross in a store window at night, and the face of a televangelist broadcast again and again on all the available video monitors on the street. Both are artificial constructs, but the former perhaps holds a special significance for the family who owns it.

Details of his travels elude me as of yet, although the possibility of murder, even fratricide, being a central turning point would be appropriate. The mark that God placed on him (something I need to give more thought to in a modern context) is also an important recurring image. Cain watches his own sin being committed over and over in the streets of the city; his conscience revolts, but his memory refuses to cave. Similarly, a meeting with "Eve" might draw some clues to his reason for existence...I even ponder the inclusion of Ishmael as an influencing force, with its interpretation of the story of Genesis within a sociological context. Nevertheless, at the end, I see Cain coming full circle, lying on an abandoned playground's merry-go-round (that circular thing with metal bars as handholds shooting from the center) staring at the heavens which forsook him, with the realization of his true identity...and upon coming to terms, closes his eyes for one final, eternal sleep.