Okay, welcome back. For the first couple
weeks of class we have looked at the earliest expressions of human creativity
going all the way back to the Paleolithic era, our caveman ancestors,
and looking at the things that are not not just tools for physical survival but
were more on the symbolic creative level--the Truth and Beauty level--of
being human and so we looked at a variety of symbols that get repeated
over and over again and that are still used today in marketing and all kinds of
advertising logos. When we look back at the ancient use of these symbols we can
only really have sort of some broad outlines of what these things must have
meant and by looking at the uses of these symbols later in great civilizations
where we do have writing, when we study modern primitive tribes, the way they
associate symbol and ritual we're able to project back a little bit and get
some glimpse into the mental landscape of our earliest ancestors. But there's a
limit to the kind of detail and richness we can really understand from that.
Luckily, a few thousand years ago, some of our ancestors invented writing; and once
we have written records we are then able to preserve in detail the stories that
must have always been associated with these symbolic things and we can now examine
them more carefully. So, we're moving today from "SYMBOL" to what we're able to
get with a story, and that is "ALLEGORY." What is an allegory? Can you give me any examples of allegories you've
heard in your life? It's what...hmm? (indistinct student comment) ...is one big giant allegory so it's not just a story that has some exciting plot, the plot carries you somewhere else. So
what...so how do we describe the kind of deeper meaning that's underneath the
surface? (indistinct student comment) Okay, so the symbol means one thing on the surface literal level but
there's a deeper meaning underneath it. Okay allegories are symbolic stories. When you think of a...the Nursery Rhymes and children's tales that you
heard when you were young those fairy tales were examples of allegories. You
had simple animal-like characters that represented something on a deeper level.
How many of y'all know the story of the "Three Little Pigs"? Okay, so the three little
pigs: now even when you were a kid listening that when you were five years
old, did you really think these were literally about three porcines who
without opposable thumbs we're building houses out of sticks and bricks and
stuff? No, because you weren't a dense little kid--you already understood
instantly that there was something deeper, something symbolic, that was meant. So in the story of the three little pigs when the wolf comes along, what does the
wolf symbolize? ... Now there's always wolves in these stories, right?
They symbolize threats, adversity, anything that you...a challenge that you
have to rise to: why wolves so often? Because these are European fairy tales
and until fairly recently there were wolves, you know, that were still a danger
to people living in villages and so forth, so in these European tales it's
always the wolf. So the wolf is a symbol; but the story--what the pigs do, what they
build, how it turns out, what the plot does--that is the allegory, the symbolic
story, and through storytelling and the allegorical meanings conveyed in them
our ancestors communicated the most important and profound insights about
life; and they communicated these things through something that we call "MYTHOLOGY" Now the word 'mythology' today is
sometimes used in a derogatory way. People will refer to your, you know, your
idea or opinion about something, "Oh, that's just an old myth," or you know like "it's an old wives tale." You know you ought not to be so naive as
to believe such a simple thing because we've got science and fact
checkers and snopes.com and Google and you know you need to you
should go be able to go out and investigate and know things better. But
scholars take mythology very seriously. We teach courses in mythology here; we
have scholars who specialize in their career in the study of mythology. The word
mythology comes from the Greek word "MYTHOS." And 'mythos' means 'story' ...and there's nothing in the term that says whether it's a true story or a false story or
whether it's a simple story. They are simply stories and in a sense all ancient myths are true, or they have
truth in them. That's why they told the stories because there are valuable
truths that need to be conveyed the story the "Three Little Pigs" does not
record historical events, but doesn't it convey an important truth? What's the
truth of this story? ... Well literally the plot tells you: build
your house well. But how can you extrapolate and generalize from that?
What is the essential lesson we learn from the two pigs who build lousy houses
and the one that spends a lot longer building a good one? ... Exactly: Don't be lazy, okay, don't do some,
you know, half effort job. Put your work in in the beginning and then you'll be
secure when adversity comes along in the form of the wolf, or whatever. Right, so
the story of the three little pigs has truth--aren't you all gonna teach
your children to work hard and not be lazy? It's an important truth you're gonna
convey to them right? Okay, so the story has truth in it and all these stories do;
and the study of these stories and the truth they conveyed is a very central
part of studying the humanities and just really of understanding yourself. You
know we might think that in our modern world of science and technology and
logic and philosophy that we've moved beyond storytelling, but that's not
really the case. Writing and the ability to preserve these stories allows us to
peer back pretty far in time but when we think about our science and our
philosophy that only goes back about twenty five centuries. Our species has
been around for over 200 thousand years. So it's only the last two or three
percent of human history where we've had science and these ways of explaining
things. The vast majority of the time our species has been on this planet we have
communicated what we understood through stories; and we're just hardwired to
understand stories; we're hardwired to respond to them. That's what we hold on
to in our minds. Watch any politician trying to convince you to vote this way
or that way... all that stuff where he talks about ... this bill and this policy, these will do these things ... a lot of numbers
and data just washes over you; but then the politicians know: tell a story. Tell
an anecdote about some woman in Topeka, Kansas who's having trouble feeding her
children: she can't make enough money and that's why we've got to do this. Why do
politicians pepper their speeches with stories of real life people and what's
going on with them? Because it's engaging. You respond to that, you hold on to that.
Storytelling works, and we need to understand something about the nature of
stories really to understand ourselves. So today we're going to examine a story
that you read over the weekend: the Popol Vuh. The Popol Vuh is part of the
creation myths of the Mayan people. The Mayans are one of the more
sophisticated civilizations among the Native Americans in the New World. Not
all Native American cultures invented writing or built monumental architecture
or things like that but the Mayans did all this stuff. So their culture was as
sophisticated as the great civilizations of the Old World that we've talked about;
and their story, the Popol Vuh, is a very long sort of religious national
narrative of their people. It is the longest written--anything--from the New
World, in fact. What you read was just a little tiny piece of it that talks about
where the world came from. So what we're going to do--take notes very carefully on
this--we're going to analyze the plot of the story and see where the plot takes
us, down to the deeper levels of meaning. So, in the beginning the Mayan gods
create the world and the world is beautiful and they make all the trees and the
birds and the flowers and the ocean and the Sun; but then they decide that they
need some creatures on this world: and what is the purpose that the Mayan gods
have in mind for making creatures? What do they want from them? ... Yeah? They want to be worshipped ... and? And loved ... mm-hmm ... And one more thing? ... Anybody? ... Yeah? They wanted them to know their names
and communicate and worship them, and also appreciate the world that they've
built. Now we rarely stop and think about this, but why do you suppose
humanity has always assumed that the gods want us to worship them? Why do they
care? I mean if there really are gods up there, aren't they of such alien cosmic
level beings, don't they have like really more cosmic things to think about? Why do they care if we worship them? Do you make the insects that live in your backyard
worship you? No? Do you make all the worms line up on one side of the yard
and never on the other and build monumental architecture in your honor? No? That would be kind of weird, right? So, I mean ... we're probably further beneath the gods
than worms are beneath us: why do we assume they care? ... Because that's the only way we can relate to them? Here's a very long vocabulary word for you ... goes on and on and on ...it takes forever to write on the board: "ANTHROPOMORPHISM" -- anybody know that word, anthropomorphism? (indistinct student comment) That could in fact come up with in
Wikipedia "Krampus" ? Yeah, okay, I could see
where it might be applied there. Let's see if it's actually works for you.
First of all, don't be scared of big words like this. Big words are just a
bunch of little words ganging up to intimidate you. No reason to be afraid:
just break them down into their root words. We have anthropo - morph - ism. Do you know any other words that begin with 'anthropo'? Anthropology--what do
anthropologists study? ... No? ... Yes? Nope? Anthropologists study human origins. Anthropologists are the ones who dig up old bones and figure out the
evolutionary family tree and ... ...the human beginnings. This is
anthropology, so 'anthropo' means 'human'. Anthropology is the study of human origins. Now this one is easier: what does 'morph' mean? To 'change' ... what kind of change? (indistinct student comment) Right, well
I would assume... but what does ... a change of time? ... ... a change a position? What kind of
change? Change of body, a change of form. Okay, so morph means a change of form ... so 'human change of form.' Anthropomorphism is the word that describes the ancients'
habits of imagining their gods and other non-human things with human
characteristics. Whenever you're projecting human
characteristics on something that's not human you're anthropomorphizing this
thing. So think about the ancient Greeks who very famously made statues of
Zeus and Apollo with these perfect but human looking bodies. I mean Zeus is
really a God that wields lightning up there he's probably not limited by a
little mortal body like that, but you can't relate to such things and so they
gave them human form. There's a literary term
that's the equivalent of this: anybody know it? Personification, exactly, which
you use in a literature class. Personification in history, humanities,
culture, we call 'anthropomorphism.' So we anthropomorphize the gods: we project
human physical traits on them, more interestingly, character traits. And
just as you if you were to write a poem or build something in your garage that
you thought was cool you'd want other people to appreciate it and you'd want to
share it with others, so we imagine that the gods who made the world must have
wanted to share it and talk about it and, you know, find out how cool we
thought it was. So who knows what the gods really want but we project these
ideas on them. So, for whatever reason they decide that they want human beings
to worship them, to love them, and to appreciate the world that they made.
So they make the world of nature. Now it's time to make these creatures that
are going to fit their needs. And then what unfolds is several failed
attempts to make the right kinds of creatures and every one along the way,
they fall short in one way or another, and in all of these it's not just the
adventure story of how we got humans, it's really a lesson for you. The
cultural functions of these myths are not just to tell you where the world
came from, it's to give you instructions on proper and successful living today. So
each one of these teaches by way of negative example how not to be a good
human, and then you extrapolate what their problems were and then you avoid
those mistakes, okay? So first the gods make the animals ... all
the animals of the jungle. Now on the literal level of the plot what's wrong
with the animals? They can't speak ... and if they can't communicate they can't call
the gods names and pray to them and so they're not what the gods are looking
for. So what do the gods do with the animals, what is their fate? (indistinct student comment) No, they don't kill them... they kill each other. So the gods send the animals off to live in
the jungle where they kill and eat each other. So the ancient Mayans, looking at
how they lived in their civilization and looking at how animals live out in the
jungle noticed something distinctive about it: animals exist by killing and eating each other in this savage way and they lived
in a civilized way and this seems to be their defining characteristic, and as
they listen to all the animals and the different sounds they all make and the
seeming inability for any of them to talk to each other, they decided that was
the problem: they can't communicate and therefore they kill and eat each other. All right so that's the plot; but symbolically, the metaphor can be applied
to us: what lesson do we derive from the failure of the animals? ... (indistinct student comment) Well we might learn that but what lesson
do we learn that we should apply to our lives by seeing how the animals failed?
We gotta learn to communicate. WE must communicate; and if we don't learn to
communicate, what will happen to us? We'll end up killing and destroying each other--exactly, and think about it that makes a certain amount of sense.
Think about the last argument you had with your boyfriend or your girlfriend.
Didn't it all come down to an inability to see each other's point of view? You get
locked into your own position and you don't want to see how someone else is
looking at this. People make wars and fight with our neighbors and so forth
all coming down to a lack of communication. When we have wars
with other countries it's all about being unable to see other people's point
of view. So the Mayans, from the example of the
animals, took the lesson that communication--being able to communicate, to
see each other's point of view--is essential to successful and proper
living. So that's it for the animals. So the gods are going to try again. And then there's a series of attempts to make proper humans out of various materials,
and the material itself is symbolic. What this stuff is that the people are made of
is symbolic and then what happens with them is the symbolic story, the allegory.
So step one we're gonna make people out of mud. Now what is the literal
characteristic of mud? What is mud like? It's dirty, it's soft, it's squishy, it doesn't stand up well--so mud is soft and limp. And these mud men: how do they live their lives? (indistinct student comment) They can't stand, they talk gibberish, it
makes no sense. What do they do all day? Just lay around, right? So the gods aren't
too happy with them. So what do the gods do? They destroy them, and is it even
difficult to destroy them? No, a simple rainstorm just breaks them up and they
wash away, so these mud men are easily destroyed. Now at this point in your
reading guide I started asking you what did these things really symbolize: so
what did the mud men seem to symbolize? What kind of people ... do you know people
like these mud men? You went to high school with people I guess didn't you?
Who are these people? Lazy people! Exactly! These are the lazy slackers in the world. Are they in class right now, working on
their education, planning for their future? No. What are they doing right now
while you're here in school? Laying on the couch, alright, playing some video games until mom gets home, you know, they'll jump up and act like they were job hunting or
something today or doing their homework. You know they're not. They're
doing bong hits all day, you know that. Now what's gonna happen to these people
when you go to your ten-year high school reunion. (indistinct student comment) They're gonna ... they're not gonna
have changed ... they'll still be doing the same same thing, right? You will have had your
career, you'll be successful, you're what ... you'll have grown and
developed, and they're still gonna be stuck right where they were in high school,
right because they're not doing anything. We have a phrase today, a
colloquialism, that involves a piece of furniture and a tuber vegetable: what do
we call these people? "Couch Potatoes!" Exactly--what we call couch potatoes they
would have called Mudmen--means the exact same thing for them. All right,
so what do we take from this? Obviously, don't be a lazy slacker, and get busy
with your life. Be productive, do something with it.
These mudmen, with all the potential they had, just laid around and did nothing at
all--and that's simply not appropriate. You're not entitled to just squander all
of the potential and all the abilities you have doing nothing. There's something
wrong with that. Think about Leonardo da Vinci and all the great things he
accomplished: painting, technology, engineering, art... imagine if Leonardo da
Vinci, in the 15th century Italian Renaissance, had decided, "I don't want to
learn how to paint and build things ... that sounds hard. I live in Italy, we've got
good red wine here, I'm just gonna drink wine all day." Imagine if Leonardo Da Vinci
decided to be a wino! The world would have never had all the great things that
he invented and developed and all the other things he created that
bettered humanity. So we're simply not entitled to do this. We cannot waste our
talents and our potentials. The story doesn't tell you what you should do with
your life, but do something with it. You know, be ready for what's coming.
Alright, so they didn't work out so well. So the gods are gonna try again and
this time they decide to make something ... use a little more durable material ... and
they make men out of wood. Now is wood better than mud? It seems ... they're a little
bit better. They stand upright, they do things, are stronger--but what's the
problem with the Woodmen? They're described as being heartless,
lifeless, their faces have no expression. (student comment) Did it say they were ugly? (student comment) They're yellow and pale and dry so I guess they were not terribly attractive looking to
them either. Okay, but it's really ... what really matters here in an allegory is what
happens. So we get a description of these creatures but then what they do is what
matters, and you notice how the plot kind of slows down and gets more extensive at
this point? There's a lot more detail that suddenly comes in so these details
are likely pretty important. So what do the (wood) men do that the gods are not
happy with? They beat their animals. They beat and starve their animals. Okay so they rip off tree branches. They burn their cooking-pots ... and the
last thing? ... (indistinct student comment) They forgot the names of their gods. Okay,
so those are the details of the plot-- --these are the things that are gonna
cause trouble for them later; but what we need to do to take a meaningful lesson
out of this is extrapolate the characteristics that are being described.
Just like in a piece of literature, when you're reading a novel you get certain
ideas communicated through concrete details of plot--we have the same thing
going on here; and this is more teaching by negative example, proper and
successful ways of living. So what we need to do is extrapolate what they're
doing that's wrong, what characteristic the gods are not happy with, and then we
can figure out what the opposite is, which must be what the gods do want
us to do. So, they beat their animals: cute little puppy dogs and they beat them and
starve them. What kind of people would do such a thing, hmm? (student response)
Horrible people. Now, I need a more descriptive word. (student comment) Okay you might conclude that they have no soul because they do such a thing, but we need the adjective
that describes such a person. Heartless? Okay, so there's a metaphor for it: "to be
heartless" (student comment) "CRUEL" ...who said cruel? That's a good word.
They exhibit CRUELTY in their behavior. This is the hard part of writing essays,
by the way--figuring out what words to write down in your papers because a lot
of words kind of tell you what you're thinking about, or what you mean; but you
have to write for other people to read your essays and finding just the right
word that says exactly what you need it to say and need it to mean ... that's the tricky
part. So we've got to find the best words we
can: 'cruelty' perfectly describes somebody that would beat an innocent animal; and
if the gods don't like cruelty then what is it that they must want from us?
KINDNESS. So we learn through this negative example that we should act with
kindness in our lives. They burn their cooking-pots. Okay, so
they're careless--that's not bad. I mean, think about it some of you have probably just moved out of your parents house, right? graduated high school, started
college, living your own little apartment, got you a little Walmart cooking set and
everything, but your whole life, you know, mom and dad have been doing the cooking and now suddenly you have to learn to cook because you figure out that eating out
is not healthy and too expensive. So you go get your ramen noodles and your
macaroni and cheese, right, and you fill up some water and ... maybe you don't
know at first that you don't cook everything on high. There's other
settings on the dial but you don't know that, so there you are boiling your ramen
noodles, you maybe get distracted, you come back and all that macaroni is burnt
to the bottom and it's a miserable mess that takes days to scrape off, right? Okay,
so you made a mistake because you were ignorant of how to go about cooking this
food. That's okay, people make mistakes. It's alright to not know something at
first, but if a year from now you are still burning your ramen noodles on the
bottom of your cooking pot: what is your problem? (student chatter) I think the word is ... you're STUPID, is the problem, and that's not okay. It's okay, it's fine to be ignorant.
You can't know everything all at the beginning. You have to learn from your
mistakes; but people that refuse to learn from their mistakes, that make the same
mistake over and over again, that's STUPIDITY and the gods don't like you to
be stupid. So what do they want from you? (student comment) And how do you become smart? Okay, so we need a word that means
"someone who is able to learn from their mistakes." We need an adjective (student comment) Well hopefully it will lead to wisdom one day. (student comment) Okay well we
all have our whatever degrees of intelligence--it's how you use it that
matters. We know it resides in our brains. Well
what kind of a person, and what does it mean, to be the kind of person that
learns from their mistakes and improves? What do you have to be ... hmm ... THOUGHTFUL,
that's a good one. They want you to be thoughtful. If you just
think about what you're doing you can see the causes of your mistakes, improve
upon them, and not be stupid. They go running through the jungle ripping off
tree branches. These tree branches could be useful, right? What can you do with
tree branches? You can start a fire to cook your food, you can make weapons, make shelters out of them, thatch your roof with it. Okay, these tree branches have
all kinds of functions, and they just go run and ripping them off leave it on the
ground to rot. What kind of person does such a thing? They are being perhaps "inconsiderate" towards nature and their fellows, but somebody that just takes all
these valuable resources and squanders them.. They're what? They're WASTEFUL, exactly. And if the gods don't want you to be
wasteful ,what do they want you to be? RESOURCEFUL. Finally, they forget the names of their
gods. So what kind of a person is neglectful of their religious
responsibilities? --need a word for that. A word that means someone who's neglectful of their religious responsibilities. You might not know a word for this,
probably don't use it very often; but the best word to describe this is the word
IMPIOUS. Have any of you ever used the word 'impious' in a sentence before in
your life? No, it's not a word a high schooler is
going to use very often. The word PIOUS or PIETY means to be
"appropriate in your religious behavior," to be mindful of your religious
responsibilities, to remember and sacrifice to the gods or whatever it is
your gods want; so to be impious is to be lacking in this. You know the gods
don't want you to be impious, so obviously, what do they want you to be? PIOUS. And in fact that was the ultimate reason for making these creatures in the first
place. They're trying to make properly pious creatures who will appreciate the
world the gods created, and love and thank the gods for it, and worship them.
Alright, well these characters turn out to be an utter failure and did not meet
the gods' needs so the gods are going to destroy them with something classic in ancient mythology: they're going to send a flood, a cataclysmic flood. Almost every
ancient body of religious literature has got a flood story in it. They're probably
so common because civilizations tend to be built on rivers, we have a supply of
water, rivers flood occasionally and these are disastrous,
destructive events that tend to be remembered. So they send the flood and
the wood men are suffering, they're trying to escape, and are they getting any
help? No. What happened? These animals that can maybe swim them to safety are not
helping them, those cooking pots aren't helping them, why is nothing helping them?
Because they're mean, because these people suck, exactly, and so all the
things that they were cruel and hateful and violent towards now turn
on them and do not help them. I bet you all recognize the general lesson lying
behind that one, don't you? How do we express that lesson? Treat others the way
you want to be treated. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. How else can you express that same lesson? Any Eastern mystics in here? Have you ever
heard the phrase, "what goes around comes around"?
That's a Western expression of an idea called Karma, that the actions and the energy you put out into the world is what comes back to
you; so you put negative things out, negative things come back. So it comes
full circle on them and all the creatures they abused, none of them helps
them now and they are mostly utterly destroyed--but a few of them did survive.
According to the story, what became of the few survivors of the flood? They became
the monkeys. Now the strange thing about that is that we've already had the
origin of the animals explained. At the beginning of the story all the animals
of the jungle got created, so why is there a separate part of the story to
explain monkeys? What was significant about them that needed its own story? Yes
ma'am? (indistinct student comment) Exactly, because of all the creatures in
the jungle they noticed that the monkeys were the most similar to human beings.
They're basically shaped like us. We're not shaped like Jaguars or parrots or
anything. They're shaped like us, they can kind of imitate our behavior, they seem
almost like 'near-humans,' kind of failed humans, and of course modern
genetics and ... evolutionary theory bears this out. We
know that they're our closest ancestors in the animal world. The Mayans
understood this as well and they needed to explain not just where this other
animal came from but why it is that of all the animals they are so similar but
not quite like us. So this is a story that is called an ETIOLOGY. [New vocabulary word]. It's an important part of mythology: an etiology is an origin story
for some little weird detail of the world around you, the little oddities and
curiosities that just require some kind of an explanation, and when you find
these little things peppered in larger religious narratives that's what they are
called. Let me give you another example of one: the Mayans also tell the story
about how the parrots got their many colors. Well most birds have one, maybe
two, dominant colors on them--parrots are this like wildly colored creature, right?
Ever wonder how parrots got so colorful? What's the purpose of that? Well, the Mayans explain it to you: In the beginning the gods made all the birds
and all the birds were plain and just sort of pale and uncoloured. And the gods
thought, "well this is no good--the world should be more colourful." So the
gods created a rainbow and they invited all the birds to come up by species and
select a color of the rainbow to be their color. So the robins, they all chose
red, and the finches chose yellow, blue jays chose blue, obviously. You can
probably guess how the rest of the story is going to go, can't you? Who's the last
bird in line? Parrots. And when the parrot finally gets to the front of the line,
what's the problem? There's no more colors, they've all been distributed.
So there's the poor parrot with no colors of its own, so what do the other birds
decide to do? They each give a little bit of their own color and that's why the
parrot is multicolored. Okay, so that gives you a--for them--a literal
explanation for why parrots are unique in being so multicolored; but as long as
you're going to tell a story you might as well get some extra mileage out of it,
because the story also teaches an important lesson on how to live your
life. What value does it teach? The value of sharing, exactly. Why should we let one
go without when we all have plenty? If we all just donate a little of what we have
nobody has to go without and you're hardly gonna notice the little bit you
donated: the value of sharing. Isn't that something you're gonna teach your kids
one day? You oughta share. Okay well there's a
nice story to teach it with. Alright, so this is an etiology. Religious literature
is full of etiologies. Many of you may know Bible stories that
explain why there are rainbows in the sky or why snakes crawl on the ground
and don't have legs or why women have pain in childbirth.
These are all etiologies as well. Alright, so it's time now finally to make
some decent human beings. The ones made out of mud and wood didn't work, so the
gods finally figure out the right material to make them with: they're gonna
make them out of corn. Why corn? Why is that the right thing to make them
out of? (indistinct student comment) Right: it's the most abundant plant that
they had, it's their major staple, the major source of complex carbohydrates and so
forth, and in fact the ancients, possibly the Mayans or the ones before them, but
it was the Native Americans in South Central America who did not just
discover corn, they invented corn. Corn does not occur naturally, in nature,
it was created by grafting different grasses together until they started to
make kernels that were very large and edible. So they invented corn, inspired
by the wisdom of their gods--they are literally "the people of the corn"--not the
creepy movie but, you know. So they're made actually out of two parts of corn:
partly cornmeal which is their bodies and also, and here's the fun part,
corn liquor, which is their... what? Their energies and strengths. So they
thought people were made of corn meal and corn liquor. As my Kentucky kinfolk
would say we're made out of Johnny cakes and moonshine. Alright, well the
cornmeal, the body, that's the main crops that they grow; this corn liquor part...--now
most of y'all are probably underage actually, so you've never actually
experienced alcohol before, right?--okay. Then again maybe when you were 13 or 15
years old you snuck a little brandy or a little whiskey out of dad's cabinet,
probably got in a lot of trouble for that. I remember being at Thanksgiving dinner
when I was like 12 or 13 and all of my uncles are making White Russians. It
looked like vanilla milkshake to me I didn't know what it was. So, you know, I'm
drinking the stuff, it's delicious ... Suddenly, little George is about passed out.
And remember the very first time you ever had alcohol, the way you could feel
the warmth of it going through your body, kind of emanating out? Especially if it was
like brandy or whiskey or something? That weird and enlivening kind of feeling that it gives you when you're not used to it? Well the Mayans
recognized this as well and they concluded like all ancient peoples did
that alcohol was a gift from the gods, a blessed gift, that proves how much they
love us. So for the Mayans it's also
the very vital energies that animates you, gives you life. Okay, after reading
this part, did it remind you of any other religious literature where a basic, you
know, bread-like carbohydrate and an alcohol is used in some ceremonial,
sacramental way? Hmm? Communion--what's communion. (indistinct student comment) Wow what in the world does
that mean? Is Jesus a loaf of Wonder Bread? Is he pre-sliced for my
convenience? Well, when you go to communion
you're basically, ritually acting out the Last Supper, right? When you're taking the
bread and taking the wine it's like you've become one of the disciples of
Christ, as if you were at the Last Supper and enjoying the benefits of that
Association. But when Jesus said it originally at the
Last Supper, why did he use this weird language? What did he mean by saying, you know, the bread and wine ... do this in remembrance of me, what was he trying
to get them to remember? (indistinct student comment) Well that part comes later actually, at
the time he just wants them to remember all that important wisdom that he taught
them. What is the basic wisdom? If you look at all of the many sermons of Jesus,
what's the basic message in all of them? What are you ... how did he want you to live
your life? Pure? I don't know what that means. (indistinct student comment). Like how? If I don't know who he is, I'm gonna need some more descriptive words to tell me how to live. What are you a bunch of heathens or something? What's that? LOVING. The basic message is "Love God and love your neighbor," right? Be kind to your neighbor, be a loving person, don't be a
jerk like the Romans, right? That's basically it, all right? So when he says ...
when he's sitting at the Last Supper having his last meal with his disciples,
he wants him to remember the important message he gave and he equates himself
and his ministry with bread and wine...why are bread and wine important? It's what
they eat and drink everyday. Everybody eats bread and drinks wine in the
Mediterranean world so what he's saying is that this way of living, this message,
should be as basic to your life as food and water [I meant "wine"], as your basic nourishment, your spiritual nourishment, basically. It's interesting how two different
cultures on opposite sides of the globe that had no contact with each other both
come up with such similar ways of using metaphorical language in this way. And
Jesus was tapping into symbolism and imagery that was really much older than
his time: bread and wine has been a ceremonial thing in the Mediterranean
for thousands of years beforehand and it's just sort of common to take the
basic nourishments and equate them to larger more mystical things. In any case,
they make proper humans and they're what they're looking for. These folks,
they communicate, they're productive, they're kind and thoughtful, resourceful
and pious--they have all the characteristics that a good human ought
to have. And then there's this weird part in the story where the gods get a little
bit nervous about these creatures they've created, and what's the problem? (students chatter) They can see everything ... It says,
what do you think of the world? That they can see it all and and there's like no
limits to their vision and it makes the gods nervous; so what do they do about it?
(student chatter) They blow mist in their eyes, they cloud around their eyes so they can see
just a little bit what's in front of them, but not very far. Alright, this is
the most abstruse element of the whole story: that we had this vision and then
our eyes were misted. What is it that the ancient Mayans were trying to communicate that maybe they didn't have fancy philosophical terms for like we might
have today and so they're using this imagery to try to communicate it? What is
it about our lives, about human existence, that maybe is described in this way? Yes
ma'am? (indistinct student comment) Well, we do get this warning about this limitation built into us, yes. But what does it mean that you have this great potential vision but only a
certain amount around you can be seen? (indistinct student comment) Elaborate. (indistinct student comment) We don't quite see the big picture, okay.
Yeah, we're certainly clever rational beings. We should be able to but we often
don't, we don't have all the facts, we don't have all the evidence, we try to
make sense of the world based on what we know but we don't know everything.
Okay, that can be part of it. What else? How else are you limited in what
you can do and accomplish in your life? Despite what you can imagine what kind
of limitations are built in? (student answers) Your age: how long are you gonna live? (indistinct student comment) hmm? What's the
average human lifespan? 75 years or so, right? How many books can you get read in
75 years? ... You really think so? Go to the library, see how many millions of books
are there: what percentage of all the books ever written will you have time to
read in your life? (student answers) Five percent?! You really think you can read five percent
of the books ever written in a mere seventy five year lifespan? You will
not be able to read one one thousandth of one one thousandth of 1% of the books
ever written. Is that kind of depressing? Sometimes libraries depress me. I see
all these books that probably have wonderful things that would enrich me
and I do not have time to read them all. And choose carefully what you're gonna
read because ... there's all kinds of things-- every time you make a choice, something
else you're not going to get read. How many of you like to travel and plan to
travel and see the world one day. How many of you think you'll get to all
seven continents before you die ... even Antarctica? Maybe not that one. Yeah, I've been to three as well, but that's less than half and I'm, you know, not a young spring
chicken anymore! How many of you will get to 50 countries?
Read 10,000 books? How much can you get ... how many of you are gonna actually find
time to get trained and go scuba diving or parasailing or hang-gliding? Some of y'all at the beginning of class talked about how you want to go skydiving
one day, but a lot of you are gonna go to your grave without ever having
accomplished your dream of skydiving. You can imagine all of these things you
could do--only a small percentage will you ever get done. And your limited
lifetime also has something else that particularly is vexing to historians.
Just like I'm interested in the past, I'm interested in the future. I watch the
news and I see how civilization is unfolding but I'm only gonna get to
see another few decades. Do you think the United States of America will still be
here five hundred years from now? (Student, emphatically: "Yeah!") A thousand years from now? (Student: "No.") No? God y'all are really pessimistic. There's this is weird mood in your generation these days. I've been
asking that question for 20 years and people used to say "yeah, yeah, we'll still be
here!" Nowadays you're like, "Yeah, no." Ya'll are kind of depressed about the state of our country I think. Who knows? I don't know? I would love to be able to see a thousand
years in the future just to see how it all turns out, but I don't get to. All of
these things limit us and when we realize these ways that we are limited
from fulfilling everything we can imagine we could do, it creates a special
kind of suffering, an anguish, to become conscious of these limitations and it's
just part of the human condition. We imagine far more than we can ever
actually do or achieve, so maybe that's what they're talking about. Did anybody feel
yourself reminded of another religious story, also from the Bible, when you got
to that part about the mist in the eyes and God putting limitations on us? What
happens to Adam and Eve that's similar? (student answers) ...right, and they saw too much and they knew too much. Now when God throws them out of the
garden he also throws them out because he's worried that if he doesn't they
might then go and do what? (student answers) What's that other tree? ... Tree of Life. Exactly. They eat
from the Tree of Life and they become immortal ... there'll be no difference between humans and the God. So the ancient Hebrews, whose story this is, imagined that the main difference between gods and animals were
that animals don't have moral awareness they just live, you know, innocent and law
of the jungle, and that they die and God has moral awareness and is immortal. We
are these weird creatures that usurped part of what should have been just God's, by eating from that tree we weren't supposed to, and then we're thrown out before we
can complete that process. It's weird how on, again, opposite sides of the globe, cultures never knew each other, and both have this idea that maybe humans were a little more than the gods had bargained on. We're a little more
rambunctious, a little more dangerous, than they had really conceived at first,
and there's a need to put limitations on what we can do. Maybe a
reflection of how destructive we know we can be. In any case, the gods
finally have creatures just the way they want them. They have all the right
attributes and qualities and they've got a limitation built in so they don't get
a little bit out of hand. And so it's time for the first day; and notice how
the gods are trying to orchestrate all of this: the work of nature is like
this great work of art and the sun's gonna rise and everything's going to
come together and so they prepare all of it. They create some hotty corn wives for
our four corn men here and they wake up with beautiful corn wives beside them
and they witness the very first sunrise of the first day. The gods have brought it
all together. And when the first humans see the beauty of the world on the first
day: how do they react? (student responds) They dance--exactly. Words fail them, they
just break out into dancing, that most awesome of completely irrational things
that humans do. No function at all, but it always makes you feel joyous, doesn't it?
And that's how the Mayans imagined where the world came from. Did you like the
story? (Students: "yeah") It's a pretty nice story isn't it? Alright,
so what I want you to be able to think about is the difference between the
literal level of the plot and then the deeper symbolic and metaphorical levels
that the plot carries you to; and this should be a lesson you apply every time
you study any piece of literature. Remember, when you go to write an essay
on Moby Dick or Frankenstein or something, the last thing your professor
wants to read is you regurgitating the plot of the story. That is not what
writing an essay is about. You've got to get to where that plot takes you, okay?
