At 9:51 AM -0400 02/11/2000, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
>T.Sands wrote:
>>To relate this idea to the spiritual, or emotional realm, is a quick leap of
>>faith. Feelings of depression, or "heaviness," or anxiety come from
>>displaced energy.
>>
>Have to ask a physician. But feelings of depression, or "heaviness", or
>anxiety come from electromagnetic forces rather than gravitational
>forces.
Right, actually, often from the impact upon electrical activity by the
presence of or scarcity of neurochemicals like serotonin (though that's
complicated and I'm leaving out lots -- and Bob could certainly update us
on this better than I could anyway). I'm leery about the idea that
something like "heaviness" comes exclusively from a mystical "going against
gravity" . . . sometimes it's just that your serotonin reuptake is too
efficient, or was made to be so through a period of stress or extended
depression. Neo-humoral models seem to be at least a little more valid than
astrological models in terms of health and wellness, if you're gonna go
back 600 years for models, since they discuss levels of chemicals in
reflection of environment and experience and internal state. :)
I think the thinking out of gravity is interesting, and thoughtful -- and
when you mentioned the gravity of the whole universe, I was thinking about
the idea of God the clockmaker, and hearing Brandenburg Concerto #1 in my
head -- but I basically think that you're carrying the metaphor too far
(like is like is like and thus is like -- technically the fallacy known as
False Analogy or Overextended Analogy). But . . .
Even beyond literal appropriateness of this metaphor, I think there are
other possibilities that present themselves just as readily. Your binary of
free will and gravity sounds a lot like karma and dharma, for example, and
is articulated very beautifully but also more convincingly (because of the
greater appropriateness of the metaphor, in my opinion) in the pull between
genetic-determinist thinking and apparent free will in a book like Egan's
_Teranesia_. But gravity-as-dharma seems to me to conflict (or maybe even
contradict with) with gravity-as-love.
Also, since space travel is for so many of us a symbol of a quest-like
journey, I'd note that it's just as possible that for Campbell gravity
could have represented the quotidian, or what Eliade calls "the profane".
Isn't one of the of major things of the Hero-Quest to leave the familiar
world of home, to "set set keel to breakers and set forth on the godly sea"
(to wax Homeric, though I guess Tom Orley does the same), or even more
often, to set out alone on the quest, as do Sir Gawain and Gilgamesh and
Christ in death and Arjuna at the end of the Mahabharata in seeking Nirvana
and Orpheus in seeking Eurydice, and in so many other tales? To me, this
would be the necessity to fight gravity -- the gravity of, say, easy
companionship, easily unexamined life . . . perhaps what Jung calls
Collective Consciousness -- in favour of something deeper, for greatness or
meaning or whatever. The fight for escape velocity, always followed by
either a sacrificial death or the return to kith and kin, into the well of
gravity and the wellspring of community, renewed. Just as an example of a
contrapuntal perspective available within the whole Campbellian framework,
and using the metaphorical framework you've set up, letting alone more
serious literal interpretations. :)
HOWEVER, what's interesting (to me, possibly to you in retrospect) is the
way that the metaphor "heaviness" is applied to being "down" or "depressed"
(and think about that last word, even it too is a metaphor). While these
*are* just metaphors, yes, it's interesting how they come about. I've not
seen any studies comparing spatial metaphors for depression and elation,
but I wonder if they'd use the same set as we do in English. (Hey you
Multilinguals! Especially non-Euros! Care to help?)
In any case, if you're interested in this kind of cross-modal associative
stuff and want an interesting read, Richard Cytowic's _The Man Who Tasted
Shapes_ was where I ran across the notion of a hardwired (brain-structure)
predisposition to perceive the world in certain ways and metaphorize
experience and the self in terms of that kind of perception.
Interesting post, in any case.
Gord
