Ontology - Tumblr Posts
Q. Why does Totoro attarct us?
I can say that Hayao's work is the recreation of premodern stories: myths and folktales. Non-humans is saying "we are the part of the world, too!" The ontology is different from the modern one.
Question. Why do we need this kind of stories when no one believes there would be big Totoros in forests? Entertainment? People like something strange? Enviromentalism? Hayao's talent? Or...
Other answers
1. Primimitive thought is still remained in this era. If what Levi=strauss pointed out in "Pensee Sauvage" is true, the similarity can be found between Myth and "popular" art ,too.
2. Modern ontology which separates subject and object has never succesed. That's what Bruno Latour said in "We have never been modern." Doubts about "modernity" has been expressed in different ways: Latour's "critical sociology" and different views of the world in fiction.
3. Totoro is just attractive. Have you touched his fur? It's soft and fluffy! And He saved me when I lost my way!
On “Jared Diamond in Conversation: Opportunity in Crisis”
In the article on July 13th, “Jared Diamond in Conversation: Opportunity in Crisis”, He claimed the COVID-19 crisis can be a good opportunity for humans to global problems.
One of his famous books, “Guns, germs, and steel” shows the microbe shaped human history. For example, germs brought by Europeans unwittingly became a major factor in conquering the American continent.
Even though he admitted the COVID problem is a disaster, it is not forever and the economy will be recover. Rather, he paid attention to other big problems like climate change, the exhaustion of essential world resources, or inequality around the world.
For him, this crisis can be a good opportunity because this crisis will give us world identity. The world has long suffered from a lack of world identity.
“There are grounds for optimism. COVID, for the first time, will have mobilized the world to face a global crisis, because COVID faces everybody. No country alone can protect itself against COVID, so for the first time in world history, the world is mobilized to solve, at a global level, a global problem.”
Because this problem cannot be solved on their own (nation), corporations are necessary.
if they just control COVID within their own frontiers, they are going to get re-infected, as has already happened with China, as has already happened with New Zealand. Not all of us have learned the lessons that COVID is teaching us, but COVID is a determined teacher and will keep at us until we have learned all that.
And he also emphasized the importance of leadership to make differences. He gave examples of Churchill and Lincoln. Both mobilized everybody by trying to unify their constituents.
“Abraham Lincoln was another good leader, who spoke to all Americans. In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln did not use the words north or south; (instead) he spoke to all Americans.”
I agree with the importance of corporation and leadership.
However, I think he is going too fast to form “us”. People in the world are rather competitive for this crisis, nation by nation. Actually, media and the Internet are showing not only that the COVID crisis is global, but also that it has been differently dealt within each nation. The numbers of victims, infection rates, and government policies have been compared. It is very visible that some are very successful to deal with it, others not. This competition can cause good results to the crisis, still. Certain ethnic groups and the infected people are blamed and hated as if they were the same as viruses.
And his every successful example of solving problems is humans versus humans within limited places. Decisions makers can learn lessons from Churchill in the wartime, but not easily in the pandemic.
One of the difficulties of “world identity” is conceptual, ontological. Even in his writings, He wrote global threads as “common enemies” against humans in another article, described COVID as a “determined teacher” which in this article. This is not just a matter of a metaphor.
Obviously, he wittingly urges humans to shape a better future in this opportunity. I agree with his opinion as suggestions to create opportunities, not as an analysis of the ongoing situations. “We” need international corporations and good leadership. And other concepts and expressions to make them possible.
Making Kin: An Interview with Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway has a Ph.D. in biology and described a philosopher, feminist theorist and etc. Her first notable work is 1985 “A Cyborg Manifesto”. She has waded into the lively debates surrounding the Anthropocene.
She argues that in the Anthropocene we require a new ethic and understanding of the human and its position; we must stop putting us beyond other species and realize that “no species, not even our own arrogant one pretending to be good individuals in so-called modern Western scripts, acts alone; assemblages of organic species and of abiotic actors make history, the evolutionary kind and the other kinds too.” (Haraway, Donna: “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantatonocene, Chthulucene:Make Kin” Environmental Humanities vol. 6, 2015, s.159-165)
Recent her slogan is “make kin, not babies.” This slogan means that we need to strive for the collective existence of living and non-living entities to replenish the vitality of the planet.
She answered the question about “Making kin” in the article, “Making Kin: An Interview with Donna Haraway”.
You’ve written about the notion of “making kin.” What does kinship mean to you?
Making kin seems to me the thing that we most need to be doing in a world that rips us apart from each other, in a world that has already more than seven and a half billion human beings with very unequal and unjust patterns of suffering and well-being. By kin, I mean those who have an enduring mutual, obligatory, non-optional, you-can’t-just-cast-that-away-when-it-gets-inconvenient, enduring relatedness that carries consequences. I have a cousin, the cousin has me; I have a dog, a dog has me.
I first started using the word “kin” when I was in college in a Shakespeare class because I realized that Shakespeare punned with “kin” and “kind.” Etymologically they’re very closely related. To be kind is to be kin, but kin is not kind. Kin is often quite the opposite of kind. It’s not necessarily to be biologically related but in some consequential way to belong in the same category with each other in such a way that has consequences. If I am kin with the human and more-than-human beings of the Monterey Bay area, then I have accountabilities and obligations and pleasures that are different than if I cared about another place. Nobody can be kin to everything, but our kin networks can be full of attachment sites. I feel like the need for the care across generations is urgent, and it cannot be just a humanist affair.
You may not always be able to solve the problem yourself. "Human", on the other hand, is a category that is too big for people to actually live. When a person have empathy with other, when she take care of other’s problem, certain kind of relationship or commonality is necessary to put oneself “in hers shoes” in many cases.
Haraway's’ suggestion, "making kin", is to make the relationship and to go beyond the limitation of birth and species.
Know Thyself
By Author Eli Kittim
“Through the study of books one seeks God;
by meditation one finds him.”
(Padre Pio)
According to the Greek writer and geographer, Pausanias, the ancient Greek aphorism “Know Thyself” (γνῶθι σεαυτόν) was a maxim inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Throughout the centuries, people have studied the physical and metaphysical world through science and philosophy. But how can a person study himself or herself? By turning inward! In the Phaedo, one of Plato’s famous dialogues, Socrates explains that the senses are incapable of informing us about the true nature of reality, and thus are not to be trusted. One needs to look beyond the senses in order to find meaning and clarity. Socrates says to Simmias:
“Did you ever reach them [truths] with any
bodily sense? – and I speak not of these
alone, but of absolute greatness, and
health, and strength, and, in short, of the
reality or true nature of everything. Is the
truth of them ever perceived through the
bodily organs? Or rather, is not the nearest
approach to the knowledge of their several
natures made by him who so orders his
intellectual vision as to have the most exact
conception of the essence of each thing he
considers?”
Later in the Phaedo, Socrates begins to expound on what we today would call “silent meditation.” Remember, this is not India. This is 5th to 4th century BCE Greece! Gautama Buddha happens to be Plato’s contemporary. Socrates begins to describe the practice of meditation as follows:
“He who has got rid, as far as he can, of
eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the
whole body, these being in his opinion
distracting elements when they associate
with the soul hinder her from acquiring truth
and knowledge – who, if not he, is likely to
attain to the knowledge of true being?”
Over 500 years later, the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus would also base his entire philosophy on meditative silence. So, given that Socrates (Plato’s teacher, who coined the phrase “Know Thyself”) lived in the 5th century BCE, it is difficult to say if this contemplative practice originated in the East or the West. Let’s not forget that Plato is deeply indebted to an older mystical philosopher named Pythagoras (6th century BCE), who was probably one of the first great and well-known mystics in the west!
Plotinus follows Socrates’ advice regarding the path to self-knowledge and the philosophy of Being. He insists that the soul must discard all form, image, and thought. It is through concentration, away from the sense world, that we reach the “One” (i.e. God). And the self discovers this when it is annihilated. In other words, a person loses his/her identity during the supreme mystical union with the “One.” it’s as if the person has been “ ‘seized’ by an elemental force and swept into liberation by mystical frenzy” (Thomas Merton). Plotinus says:
“shut your eyes . . . and wake
another way of seeing, which everyone has
but few use.”
The “awakening” in the presence of the “good” is a result that is accomplished by removing multiplicity through the process of negation (which later became known as apophatic theology). That is to say, there is a detachment from the many to the One. The disciple must proceed by way of negation. Rather than positing what the One is, the practitioner gets rid of all knowledge and begins by contemplating what the One is not. This practice has been alternatively called “silence” or “stillness.” It is a way of putting away all otherness and reaching an ineffable union with the One (or God). In the mysticism of Plotinus, the student must not chase after the good but wait quietly til it appears.
Unfortunately, since the time of the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, the contemplative aspect of the Platonic tradition is no longer discussed in modern academia. Plato is often taught as a cold, rational thinker whose insights are solely derived from discursive thought. However, Plotinus thought that he was simply clarifying Plato’s teachings. According to Wikipedia:
“Plotinus was not claiming to innovate with
the Enneads [his book], but to clarify
aspects of the works of Plato that he
considered misrepresented or
misunderstood. Plotinus
does not claim to be an innovator, but
rather a communicator of a tradition.
Plotinus referred to tradition as a way to
interpret Plato's intentions. Because the
teachings of Plato were for members of the
academy rather than the general public, it
was easy for outsiders to misunderstand
Plato's meaning.”
Plotinus lived in Alexandria, Egypt in the 3rd century CE. Over 150 years earlier, another Platonic philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, had done the same:
“Philo of Alexandria had written on some
form of ‘spiritual exercises’ involving
attention (prosoche) and concentration and
by the 3rd century Plotinus had developed
meditative techniques.”
(Wikipedia)
According to Plotinus, the One is not simply an intellectual concept but rather something that can actually be experienced; an existential experience where one goes far beyond all multiplicity. The individual eventually reaches a state of tabula rasa, a blank state where everything is deleted, so to speak, while the person merges with the One. The self is dissolved, completely absorbed into the One. But in order to reach this stage, “the Proficient’s will is set always and only inward” (Enneads I.4.11). This process eventually leads to ecstasy:
“The essentially devotional nature of
Plotinus' philosophy may be further
illustrated by his concept of attaining
ecstatic union with the One (henosis).
Porphyry relates that Plotinus attained such
a union four times during the years he knew
him. This may be related to enlightenment,
liberation, and other concepts of mystical
union common to many Eastern and
Western traditions.”
(Wiki)
In Greek, Henosis is the term for mystical "union.” In Platonism, and particularly in Neoplatonism, the aim of henosis is union with the ground of being or absolute reality: the source or the One (τὸ Ἕν):
“Henosis for Plotinus was defined in his
works as a reversing of the ontological
process of consciousness via meditation
. . . toward no thought . . . and no
division (dyad) within the individual (being).
Plotinus words his teachings to reconcile
not only Plato with Aristotle but also various
World religions that he had personal
contact with during his various travels.”
(Wiki)
Plotinus, and his successor Proclus, influenced many great philosophers and theologians, such as Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Barth, Bultmann, and others. Plotinus’ meditation is not unlike that described in Ps. 62.5, which reads: “For God alone my soul waits in silence.” According to Wikipedia, “Plotinus' final words were: ‘Try to raise the divine in yourselves to the divine in the all.’ “ Meditation, therefore, is the method by which we not only grasp the essence of true Being, in the Platonic sense, but also how we find the sure way of salvation, in the Biblical sense:
“Be still, and know that I am God!”
(Psalm 46.10)