My head hurts. I've just spent the last hour or so reading Xanga sites that my junior high kids have made . . . I am amazed at the sense of community they have. Other things about the Xanga experience that amaze me: the awesome "order from chaos" feel that I get from reading them, the true hypertextuality, the referentiality, the playfulness with language and design.

It's really interesting to read how these kids choose to define themselves, the way they experiment with language. HOWEVER, with that said . . . the crazy, mind-altering backgrounds kill me. WHEW.


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Graduate school -- I love it. I've spent waaaaaaaaaay too much time online looking for poetry ideas, though . . .

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One of the interesting things I've run across is an early 18th century Italian philosopher named Giambattista Vico. This from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism:

Vico turns the jurisprudential principle of the true and the certain into a metaphysics of history such that, as he holds in the New Science, it shows what providence has wrought in history (par. 342). The new critical art of the philosophical examination of philology shows, in Vico's view, that all nations follow a common pattern of development. This pattern shows the providential structure of human events. A further dimension to the new critical art is Vico's axiom that "doctrines must take their beginning from that of the matters of which they treat" (par. 314). He says that the first science to be learned must be mythology (par. 51) and that the "master key" to his new science is the discovery that the first humans thought in "poetic characters" or "imaginative universals" (universali fantastici) (par. 34). All nations begin in the same way by the power of the imagination (fantasia) to make the world intelligible in terms of gods. This age of gods gives way to a second age, in which fantasia is used to form social institutions and types of character or virtues in terms of heroes. Finally, these two ages, in which the world is ordered through the power of fantasia, decline into an age of rationality, in which the world is ordered in purely conceptual and logical terms and in which mental acting is finally dominated by what Vico calls a barbarism of reflection (barbarie della riflessione) (par. 1106).

This cycle of ages of gods, heroes, and humans repeats itself within the world of nations, forming what Vico calls ideal eternal history (storia ideale eterna) (par. 349). The world of nations is typified by the corsi and ricorsi of these three ages. From the standpoint of Vico's conception of the metaphysics of history, the divine attempts to reveal itself over and over again in human affairs, but history never takes on this sense of progress typical of eighteenth-century thought.


I love that idea of cyclical development -- gods to heroes to humans.

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Fascinating Satan stuff, from Wikipedia:

Where Satan does appear as an angel, he is clearly a member of God's court and plays the role of the Accuser, much like a prosecuting attorney for God. Such a view is found in the prologue to the Book of Job, where Satan appears, together with other celestial beings, before God, replying to the inquiry of God as to whence he had come, with the words: "From going to and fro on the earth and from walking in it" (Job 1:7). Both question and answer, as well as the dialogue which follows, characterize Satan as that member of the divine council who watches over human activity with the purpose of searching out men's sins and appearing as their accuser. He is, therefore, the celestial prosecutor (a type of lawyer), who sees only iniquity. For example, in Job 2:3-5, after Job passes Satan's first test, Satan requests that Job be tested even further.
It is evident from the prologue in Job that Satan has no power of independent action, but requires the permission of God, which he may not transgress. Satan works in opposition to God, though not entirely able to take action without consent. This view is also retained in Zech. 3:1-2, where Satan is described as the adversary of the high priest Joshua, and of the people of God whose representative the hierarch is; and he there opposes the "angel of the Lord," who bids him be silent in the name of God. In both of these passages Satan is a mere accuser who acts only according to the permission of the Lord.

In 1 Chron. 21:1 Satan appears as one who is able to provoke David to number (or take a census of) Israel. The Chronicler (third century B.C.) regards Satan here as a more independent agent, a view which is at first glance striking since it would seem the source where he drew his account (2 Sam. 24:1) speaks of God Himself as the one who moved David to take the census. But after a more careful survey is taken of the situation, it is apparent that the circumstances were similar to that of Job: Satan is free to issue temptation with God's consent. Although the older conception refers all events, whether good or bad, to God alone (1 Sam. 16:14; 1 Kings 22:22; Isa. 45:7; etc.), it is unlikely that the Chronicler, and perhaps even Zechariah, were influenced by Zoroastrianism, since Jewish monism strongly opposed Iranian dualism, especially in the case of the prophet.

I don't know what your feelings are about the idea of Satan, but it's an interesting thought.

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