Two Ravens
Recently, I received a spate of communications from various students who wanted to know more about epistemology. It was all very mysterious to me, since I thought that (at least for this season), all of them had finished dealing with that part of the syllabus.
I would have continued in that blissful state, except for one event. That was when one of them spilt the beans. She said, "Errrm, we were supposed to submit our drafts but some got carried away."
What got carried away? The students? The drafts? I didn't really resolve the answer to that question, since it became a confabulated mishmash of "the teacher took it away and didn't give it back" (how likely that is, I leave it to you to determine), "my classmates wrote one essay for each question" (I call that insanity), and "I spent all my holidays writing this 4000-word monster thingie, how could I be bothered with 1600 words?"
Well, when the 1600 words in question have as much weight as the 4000-word monster, perhaps priorities should be adjusted, no? A good way to adjust priorities is really to go back and look at an old literary project of mine that I've mentioned before. After reading Two Ravens in its entirety, you will probably have a better grasp of epistemology, confabulation, romance, theology and priorities than you had before.
Just a note of explanation: the two ravens of this project are Thought and Memory, or as the Norse sagas have it, Huginn and Muninn. In the invented mythology of this narrative, they are a pair of angels who are close friends and perhaps lovers. They did not disobey God but were too involved with humanity to listen to Him when Satan rebelled. For that, they were given a unique fate, which is alluded to in parts throughout the story. They also mix around with other powers that 'the Highest' allows to operate in Middle-Earth (or Midgard) and in general make comments about everything they see.
The second post was written on 11/11/2004 and, taking a cue from T S Eliot, was titled What the Thunder Said. You can find it here. The first post is of course Two Ravens 001, which is at the bottom of the blog page, and can be found here.
I would have continued in that blissful state, except for one event. That was when one of them spilt the beans. She said, "Errrm, we were supposed to submit our drafts but some got carried away."
What got carried away? The students? The drafts? I didn't really resolve the answer to that question, since it became a confabulated mishmash of "the teacher took it away and didn't give it back" (how likely that is, I leave it to you to determine), "my classmates wrote one essay for each question" (I call that insanity), and "I spent all my holidays writing this 4000-word monster thingie, how could I be bothered with 1600 words?"
Well, when the 1600 words in question have as much weight as the 4000-word monster, perhaps priorities should be adjusted, no? A good way to adjust priorities is really to go back and look at an old literary project of mine that I've mentioned before. After reading Two Ravens in its entirety, you will probably have a better grasp of epistemology, confabulation, romance, theology and priorities than you had before.
Just a note of explanation: the two ravens of this project are Thought and Memory, or as the Norse sagas have it, Huginn and Muninn. In the invented mythology of this narrative, they are a pair of angels who are close friends and perhaps lovers. They did not disobey God but were too involved with humanity to listen to Him when Satan rebelled. For that, they were given a unique fate, which is alluded to in parts throughout the story. They also mix around with other powers that 'the Highest' allows to operate in Middle-Earth (or Midgard) and in general make comments about everything they see.
The second post was written on 11/11/2004 and, taking a cue from T S Eliot, was titled What the Thunder Said. You can find it here. The first post is of course Two Ravens 001, which is at the bottom of the blog page, and can be found here.
Labels: Epistemology, Ravens, Students, Theology
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