Friday, 15 July 2022

Post-mechanical (3)

 Conway's quote from M5 that the 'factual' (logical) is prone to the unreal ties-in quite nicely to Claude Levi Strauss's structuralism, such as in the Oedipus myth.

Or, to put it another way, the grotesque logic of comedy counters the unreality of 'fact'. Sophocles' cycle of plays, such as  Oedipus Rex, are tragedies. However, the fantastic fate of unknowingly marrying his own mother has a type of black comedy.

Levi-Strauss takes the original source which contains fantasy-elements such as dragons, and develops it structurally by easing out 2 motifs - family relations and the chthonic (underworld) - as outlined in

quora.com/how-does-levi-strauss-interpret-the-myth-of-oedipus

The chthonic elements are fantasy but, in terms of the myth, they are as real as the family relations since they relate to earth and the cycle of death with life.

In the myth there is no choice between chthonic and the family relations since both form the structure of the myth (according to Levi-Strauss.) It's a balance but nor a choice.

The reason is probably because the chthonic can be a fairly bizarre area of fungoid secretions and dog-headed gods that govern revival and therefore strength of living things (Proserpine or Persephone the Goddess of spring in Hades.)

Myths are balanced, they are not factually true. The logical fact would be that Oedipus is related to his wife, ie genetically. Genes are logical, but they do not contain the progressive bodily movements of living things that contribute to revival (on the earth or soil.

Myths are action-oriented and contain bodily movements (fights). The reality is not factual but fundamental (to reality.)

It's sort of like the sense of 'spirit and dirt' that was cited in What the F***?3. It's not the case of facts which have neither spirit nor dirt (psyche and the physical.) Myth is fecund, whereas modern reality is sterile.

Myths relate to the action-oriented area of breath, sight, blood that are associated with the cerebellum (hindbrain, see PM2). The future (of DNA and so on) as cited in What the F***?3, is associated with a state of mind (logic) as opposed to a movement of progressive events (past-present-future). 

Revival. In other words, the future as a state of mind is prone to unreality, in terms of psychic strength, physical fecundity, the movement of progressive events. The logic (ego) is too convincing for its own good.