28 February 2007

Symposium - Alcibiades is influenced in his drunken speech by Dionysus.

• Frame - a story within a story withing a story etc...(A Matryoshka doll or a Russian nested doll is a set of dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside another. Its name is a diminutive form of a Russian female name "Matryona" which in turn came from Latin "Matrona". A set of Matryoshka dolls consists of a wooden figure which can be pulled apart to reveal another figure of the same sort inside. It has in turn another figure inside, and so on. )


• Irony - (Socratic Irony - uses ignorance as a pretense.) There is an awful lot of Plato in Plato's Socrates.
• The nature of love (EROS not Philia)
• Sophia - wisdom
• Philosophy is a combination of spiritual love and wisdom(love of wisdom); although it might be said that there is a connection to Eros in the search for knowledge.
• Rhetoric - erotic.
• Phaedrus discusses the idea that Eros was one of the very first gods.
• Plesanius loves to argue and does so by comparing Aphrodite Urania's Eros to the Eros of Aphrodite Pandemos(he is a lawyer). "Few people are unfamiliar with the phrase The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyer. Rueful, mocking, it often expresses the ordinary person's frustration with the arcana and complexity of law. Sometimes it's known known that the saying comes from one of Shakespeare's plays, but usually there's little awareness beyond that. This gap in knowledge has inspired a myth of "correction", where it is "explained" that this is line really intended as a praise of the lawyer's role.
  For example, one legal firm states:
  "The first thing we do," said the character in Shakespeare's Henry VI, is "kill all the lawyers." Contrary to popular belief, the proposal was not designed to restore sanity to commercial life. Rather, it was intended to eliminate those who might stand in the way of a contemplated revolution -- thus underscoring the important role that lawyers can play in society. " (They will do anything to explain themselves.)
• Eryximachus (Doctor) - discusses love as an illness and the corrections necessary to not partake in vulgar love. (This seems to me as though he had no knowledge of love, and wanted to flaunt his professional knowledge.)
• Aristophanes - *Test*(was supposed to go before Eryximachus, but developed a sudden case of the hiccups, which Eryximachus prescribed several cures.)*Test* A comic.
• Agathon - (tragedian) expressed the idea that love is beauty and youth. Felt incredibly wrong once Socrates gave his speech. Is in love with youth and external beauty, as he has both. (This kind of thwarts Socrates idea, but I think that Agathon had feelings for Socrates, and that Agathon wanted to view Eros as a portrait of himself.)
• Socrates - Started by saying that he knew nothing, and everything that he had learned about the subject of love came from the teachings of a sage elderly woman(Diotima). (Further reading - Raymond Carver)
• The Symposium expresses ideas concerning Homoerotic love as well as pedophilia.
• There were two roles involved in Grecian homosexual relationships: that of the lover (the older man who was infatuated with the younger boy), and the beloved (the young boy who was to resist the advances of the lover, and not enjoy any of the interactions between himself and the lover.) It was only acceptable for the lover to make the advances, and all that the beloved was to want out of the relationship was wisdom and almost like an apprenticeship to their lover.
• Erastes - one who loves
• Eromenos - recipient of love.
• In issue - having children.
• aesthetic - beauty.
• On the physical level Socrates is the lover and Alcibiades is the beloved.
• On the spiritual level their roles are reversed.
• There is an erotic connotation to the phrase "know thyself".(It is funny, I saw an episode of girls next door where the "brilliant" blondes were discussing this very topic.) In my defense, I walked into the room and the TV was on, and being the average American, I left it on because I was too lazy to change the channel.
• In the end, the woman that Dr. Sexon met on the airline said that she just wanted to appease him, which is a reference to the Tempest(Ceres & Proserpina or Demeter and Persephone).
• We are on rung one of the ladder of life.
• Dr. Sexon has not opened the package that Sarah (the woman on the plane) gave to him even though it has been 15 years. Once you open the package, it loses its possibilities/its mystery.
• When she reached up for her baggage in order to leave, Dr. Sexon saw a tattoo of numerals on her other (left) arm. So, she was lying about lying.

This is a hilarious blog that just shows how short sighted society has become. This just goes to show, just because we are supposed to be PC, that doesn't mean that everyone is. ( I don't know if this is even a real issue, and this is neither my blog nor my post, and in no way reflects my beliefs!!!!! I just thought it was hilariously stupid! What does this have to do with anything? What kind of people ask these questions? I feel very sorry for someone who is so insecure that they generalize such a large group of people into such a small box. The link is to the actual blog this came from.)

• Why are gay people turned on by wrestling?
• I think its more an idealism then a true admiration for many. It stems back to the belief that homosexuality flourished in ancient Greece, birth place of wrestling as we know it today. Evidence shows that Olympic games were a celebration of masculinity and many homosexuals, through a Dan Brownish perversion of history, see it as a celebration of homosexuality. I guess mainly because competitors wrestled nude. Regardless, fast forward to the birth of catch-as-catch can wrestling in the modern world.Much like boxing, wrestling went through a "beer and sausage" phase of gentleman wrestlers (i.e. out of shape Anglo-Saxons). Again a celebration of masculinity but because it was sans the Grecian ideal of muscular nude men in close quarters, it never was popular with the gay community. Over the century or so wrestlers have become leaner and more fit. Chiseled abs replacing beer guts, body hair being shaved or waxed off. Compare guys like the American Dream Dusty Rhodes to guys like Batista and you will see the difference (amazingly, Dusty has more or less, or more, of the same shape he has had since his heyday). As wrestlers appearance returns to the Grecian ideal, so do the homosexual undertones.
• Paul Halsall: Homosexual Eros in Early Greece (1986)