Conventional Vs Speculative

Dr. Sexton struck a chord with me the other day in class when he made a comment somewhere along the lines of "conventional" wisdom being not very deep and even obvious, where "speculative" wisdom on the other hand is much more interrogative, and important, and worth your time. Now before I continue, I would like to say that Dr. Sexton did later reconfigure his stance slightly, that conventional wisdom is not entirely trivial. And on this, I would like to elaborate:

What we have defined as "conventional" wisdom in class, I tend to value much more then the "speculative" wisdom that has been praised in our class discussions. The interrogative, question asking, type wisdom, in my eyes, stems from a very childish curiosity and has no real value. It takes no wisdom at all to ask a question, only a misunderstanding. Like when you are attempting to explain something to a child and after every answer you provide the child responds with "why?" and they cycle never ends. The child wants you to explain every detail and is never satisfied. By the logic we've established, this child must be some sort of "Wisdom God" simply because of the questions they never stop asking. Now, before you get ahead of me, I'm not saying that "conventional" wisdom has the answers to everything, but it does have an answer, or view, or opinion. To continue with the theme of my previous two posts, lets look at Theodicy for example. Which has more wisdom: Asking the question "why do bad things happen to good people?" or the discussion and attempt at explaining the question? In my opinion, it's the ladder. But apparently I'm vastly outnumbered by my classmates.

Theodicy in Job

For more information on the Talmud Click Here.

For more information on Epicureanism Click Here.

For more information on Theodicy Click Here.

In our discussion of Job thus far we've talked about the difference between the "Sunday school version" of Job, essentially consisting of the very beginning and very end of the book, where Job has things taken away from him, still praises God, then has even more things returned to him. And this version of Job tends to be a cop-out answer to the question of Theodicy, see more above. So, essentially the message you get with this answer is either that God is showing how loyal you are to him, or, in a more pessimistic interpretation, that God is simply screwing with you. Neither of these I feel are valid answers to the question. Rather then repeat myself on my personal opinion on this question I'll simply refer you to my previous post "The Slave."

The Slave

First off, I must admit that I am very bad at finding the 'deep' meaning behind stories/novels. I just don't make connections between characters and events to historical people/events/other texts. And likewise, I didn't really get a lot of the "This person represents this person" until I read up on some analysis of The Slave. To me, what I find most interesting in books is the questions they raise, or the thoughts they spark, as apposed to the actual text itself. This probably seems like blasphemy to all you English majors (I'm a Math major just FYI), but it's how I prefer to interpret texts. And thusly, I continue:

As others have mentioned, the title of the book raises an interesting topic. Jacob sees himself as a slave, both in the literal sense and the metaphorical sense. The question raised the first of these is rather uneventful, and I will discuss it in the brief statement: "Yes, Jacob was literally a slave." Now, on to more eventful topics. Was Jacob a slave to God? to predestination? What does it even mean to be a slave in this sense? To me, this discussion naturally leads to a discussion of free will. Free will naturally seems to contradict the idea of predestination, yet somehow we try to hold onto both at the same time. It's nice to think of ourselves as 'in control' of our lives and to know that every decision we make is completely ours; it gives us a sense of power and responsibility for our own lives. But, when push comes to shove and things don't go our way it's a lot easier to say "It's just God's plan" or "That's how it was meant to be" as apposed to "I made a poor choice."

In the Christian way of thinking, or the one I'm more familiar with since there is no one "Christian way" of thinking, free will is an absolute. God does not force anybody to ever do anything. Instead God uses the power of suggestion and controlling circumstance to shape the world. I realize I'm getting borderline "faith language" here, so I'll try to bring it all back together. Jacob's feelings of not being in control are natural feelings that anybody would have when things don't go their way. This seems like kind of a cop-out answer but, to me at least, it makes the most sense. God didn't "do" this to you; the bad things happen because of the choices you and the people around you make.

This thought chain lead me to a topic we've beaten to death in class: The topic of bad things happening to "good" people. And seeing as the metaphorical horse is already dead, I'll take a swing or two at it myself. I'll avoid the easy answer we all know and have discussed many times in class for the sake of making this argument more interesting. Why do bad things happen to you even if you've been "good?" Because what happens to you isn't solely based on your actions and behavior. No matter how isolated we are or become what happens to us is still effected by other people. Now, I'll briefly touch on the flip side of this before returning to how this relates to The Slave. Why do good things happen to bad people? Going off my earlier discussion of the people around you effecting what happens to you, being a 'bad person' will naturally give you an advantage. Being a "bad" person usually somehow manifests itself in the taking advantage of or using "good" people for a personal gain. And therefore if a "bad" person is surrounded by "good" people, the "bad" can leech off the "good" in order to improve their lives and therefore worsen the lives of the "good." I hope all that made sense.

So, how does all that relate to The Slave? Well, like I said earlier, it's what the story makes you think about, not the story itself that is really interesting. But, to appease the English Analysis Gods, I shall attempt to relate this back to the novel. Jacob doesn't feel he is being treated justly. Is this God's fault? Jacob's fault? The people around him's fault? or perhaps more likely, A bizarre integration of all three.

The Hero of Tradition

Here is an interesting site I found about the 22 points of a Hero. It has quite a few classic 'hero's and the points they score if you continue to look through the pages - as well as a complete list of the 22 points.

The Hero of Tradition

I also feel it is important to note that Maria's parents names are Robert and Nancy.

Anywho, as far as the 22 Points of a Hero are concerned, I feel it is a very interesting idea; that most 'Hero's fit into this pattern. This kind of falls into that same idea that there are only twelve of or so stories in the world, they are just told in different ways. Both ideas, however, I tend to not give too much credit too. Granted, it's kind of an interesting concept/idea but I do question its legitimacy. Many of the 22 points seem to be very broad or 'stretchable' and others tend to be typical of most stories. For instance, that little is known about their childhood. Well, frankly, I don't care about most hero's childhoods. Perhaps you could get a few cute stories about childhood interaction, but such things are so trivial next to actual hero stories. And as far as bending the points to fit a person, I could twist some facts and interpretation around to make myself fit a few of those points.

Perhaps the best use of this information is to help us to go against it. When we tell or write hero stories of our own perhaps we should try to avoid as many of these points as possible.

Jacob's Angel

I know it can be debated if Jacob actually wrestles with an angle, or god, or just some crazy guy off the street, but for the purposes of this entry lets just stick with the assumption that Jacob wrestled with an angel, or some other sort of divine presence at least.

One aspect I really liked about this story was the 'non-stereotypical' angel that Jacob wrestles. So many of the popular biblical stories leave you with the impression that all angels do is appear to deliver messages to people in a soft gentle voice before slowly fading away. Which, if you think about it, doesn't make for a very good story at all. Jacob's angel on the other hand, gives you a real story. This angel, in a sense, also has a message to deliver. It just manifests itself as more of a test. And to top off the strangeness of this story, instead of leaving with a message of hope or of warning, the angel instead breaks Jacob's hip bone and then leaves. I don't know about you, but the first time I heard this story it made me not want to run into any angels anytime soon.

We talked a bit about this angel being both good and bad. It is out of the ordinary, but, strictly non-theologically speaking, this is one of the few exciting angel stories in the Bible. Where as most angel stories have the angel appearing then giving his message or doing his good dead then leaving, Jacob's angel actually adds some depth to the plot and makes for a much more interesting story.