The Timeless Clouds

In his play, Clouds, Aristophanes presents the ideas of the Superior and Inferior arguments. These arguments represent the old Athenian way of education and the new Athenian way of education, as taught by the sophists. The play criticizes these ways of thinking, making the Inferior Argument out to be a corrupting and negative influence, and the Superior Argument out to be a blind fool. The point Aristophanes was trying to make, was that neither of these arguments was the correct way of educating the youth of Athens at the time.

This idea that Aristophanes presents in his play, is a timeless theme. The idea of new (liberal) ways of doing things, is almost always seen by society to be immoral at first, whereas the old (conservative) ways of doing things, are sometimes seen to be foolish and ingrained in society for no other reason than tradition. While the play itself does not suggest that the Inferior Argument's (liberal) ways of education hold any unseen virtues, it does show that the Superior Argument's (conservative) ways are also not entirely correct.

We can look at any point in history and see the clash of new ideas with society. During the Civil War, which was fought over the idea that slavery was unjust, or the Women’s rights movement, which was fought over the idea that women should have all the rights that men do, or anytime before or after these examples, we will find ideas and concepts that we could relate to the Superior and Inferior arguments.

Even today, we can look at ideas that only until recently, and even to this day in some cases, were seen to be corrupt and immoral, just look at homosexuality. This idea was regarded a majority of the population to be obscene until only fairly recently, even to this day, there are many people who will argue that acting on homosexual impulses goes against the laws of nature, or the will of God. We could also look at the idea of sex outside of marriage, while there are also many other reasons to not have sex outside of marriage, such as STD’s, the immorality of the act was what had prevented the act from being widespread in society for many centuries. It was not until only recently that these ideals (Superior Arguments) were challenged by new ways of thinking (Inferior Arguments) during the sexual revolution during the 1960-80’s.

Aristophanes seemed to present Socrates in a rather bad light in his play, but what was his real intent behind his satirical representation? Looking at the play’s surface, one might think that he was merely insulting Socrates, but Socrates himself is said to have “Characterized Aristophanes as not attacking him, but a generic intellectual or sophist of his own invention.” (Quote on page 86 of the book) Socrates did not see Aristophanes as insulting him, so perhaps his representing Socrates was not an attack on Socrates or the Sophist way of thinking in particular, but the conventional idea that all new, or ‘Inferior’ ways of thinking are immoral, and that the traditional, or ‘Superior’ ways of thinking are always perfect. If this was indeed the thought process behind Aristophanes’ Clouds, than I for one, think the man was a genius.

Identity in the Borderlands

In her book Borderlands, Gloria Anzaldua describes a remarkable struggle in discerning self identity. She describes the ostracism faced at coming out as a lesbian, as well as the hardships she needed to face in society for her choice of language.

In chapter four of the book, she introduces the Coatlicue State. She named this state after the Aztec Goddess of life and death, Coatlicue. She compares the many contradictions found in Coatlicue to her own difficulties and contradictions faced in uncovering her own self identity, and she claims that this Coatlicue State is a period that all Chicana's undergo.

I found her description of Coatlicue to be very interesting in that it can be applied to almost any conflict in  identifiying ones self. Like the Goddess Coatlicue, an Identity crisis is usually accompanied by a seeming contradiction in our sense of self. Anzaldua was torn between speaking English and Spanish, identifying as Mexican or Latino, Homosexual or Heterosexual, the Goddess Coatlicue is torn between Life and Death.

These ideas are prevalent in Anzaldua's poem, To Live in the Borderlands. This poem provides a perfect description of how an identity crisis can affect one's life, with both external and internal conflicts. In lines five-six of the poem, she says "While carrying all five races on your back, not knowing which side to turn to, to run;" This line shows how Anzaldua considered herself a member of many different races, yet at the same time, she did not know which one she belonged to. In lines eleven and twelve she says "That denying the Angelo inside you is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black." These lines show that Anzaldua feels that we should embrace all parts of our ethnic identity, not just certain parts of it. She believes we should be proud of our heritage.

The remainder of the poem describes how one should incorporate all aspects of your heritage into your identity by:
"Putting Chile in your Borsch"
"Being both man and woman"
"Speaking Tex-Mex with a Brooklyn Accent"
The poem also goes on to explain that sometimes, you may need to fight in order to get society to accept your identity- "You are the battleground... the mill with the razor white teeth wants to shred off your olive red skin".

Her last stanza in especially powerful-
"To survive the borderlands,
you must live sin fronteras,
be a crossroads."

This stanza summarizes the solution she arrived at in identifying oneself. We should not live as 'just' Mexican, or 'just' White, but embrace both, and be a 'crossroads' for the two cultures to meet together. She shows that even though the way we identify ourselves might not be preferred by society, but that it should not stop us from being who we are.

Dr. Freud

I found Sigmund Freud’s Intro to Psycho-Analysis to be very interesting, not so much on a level of accuracy, but more on a historical level. His ideas are the first of his kind to be thought of, and while a lot of them are not accurate, they were the first step towards psychology as we know it today.

One of the examples of Freud’s inaccuracies is the sexuality of an infant. I find the idea of a newborn child getting a sexual thrill from suckling its mother’s breast to be not only repulsive, but also incorrect. There are plenty of other reasons for why a baby will seek out milk from its mother, many of which are far more logical than sex. For example, without a mother's milk, the baby would not survive because it would not have sustenance, and it would die. Looking at Freud's theory from a strictly evolutionary standpoint, it would be far more suitable for the baby to want food than for it to want sex, as an infant is not even at the proper stage of 'self awareness' to be capable of performing a sexual act, the only thing the child should be concerned with at that point in its life is staying alive. Again, this is looking at it from an evolutionary perspective.

Freud also mentions the topics of young girls being envious of young boys’ penises, and how boys will become terrified of losing their penis at the sight of another human being who does not have one. Sure, girls might be curious as to what the small organ protruding from a young boy's body is, and she may even wonder why she does not have one, but this hardly qualifies as envy; the most one could conclude from this is that the young girl is curious. One thing that I think would be interesting to hear Freud talk about is the transsexual community, how would he explain a child's lack of desire for a penis? Not only would the child not be afraid to lose it, but the child may even desire to. His theory seems to be based on the idea that every child wants a penis, which does not seem very well founded in my opinion.

Freud makes a lot of claims throughout his book, a majority of which are based on badly supported evidence. For example, he performs numerous analyses on people who he claims are 'ill', but nowhere that I read did I see a mention of any control group. I have taken statistics classes before, and I know from experience that having a control group is crucial in performing any experiment. For example, I could feed cake to children throughout their childhood, and then when the child is fully grown, I could claim that cake cause children to grow, however, one thing I forgot to do is test this theory by raising a group of children without feeding them any cake, which, if I had done, I would have seen that cake has no effect on the overall growth of a child. Freud makes a lot of claims in his book, but he has no well founded evidence to back it up with, even he admits on a few occasions that some of his ideas are a bit mucky. If he thought his ideas were a bit ill-founded, then why would he start advocating them as Gospel truth instead of first trying to find proof?

Again though, I read this book not as a psychology book, but more as a historical piece, so I was not expecting a lot of his theories to be necessarily correct.