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Logoseros and Logotherapy
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Logoseros and Logotherapy When I first began corresponding with people through the internet, I used the nickname logoseros, drawing upon the Greek terms for language and erotic love. To me, what makes us human is our logos and our eros, our capacity for language and our capacity for erotic, imagination-inspired sex and romantic love. The world we live in is as world transformed by words and the imagination. Yes, we are live in nature, and I believe in the spell of a sensuous perception of this natural world (to borrow lines from the title of a book by David Abram). But we also live in words. We are not just governed or driven by an id, a pleasure principle, a libido, or a will to power. We are governed by meanings, values, ideals articulated in words and by our fantasies and dreams. We are governed, for instance, by a desire to live out and fulfill the meaning of words such as love, romance, justice, equality, liberty, and a more perfect union. For many, the guiding words of their lives are supplied by religious faith. In the beginning is the Word: the Word of some God, some sacred text, and our lives gain meaning and purpose as we put our faith in those words. The words of the sacred texts provide a script for enacting out our lives. The prophets and messiahs give us words to live by. We must make our acts correspond to those words. We must be followers or disciples of the Word or the words of the sacred text that have been given to us as a gift. My own faith does not lie in the words of any one sacred text, any one religion. In fact, I see no text as sacred, no divine word. I see all texts, all words as something we have created as humans even though we sometimes prefer to give a God credit for those words. We are responsible ourselves for selecting, choosing the words we want to govern us. We all must act in the world and follow some script. But we do have some freedom to select the script that we want to act out or follow in the drama of our lives, and I love the study of comparative religion to help me select the words, the scripts, for defining my values and goals in life. I see the crucial role of education as the attempt to give us logotherapy: to educate us in the knowledge of texts and languages so we can better articulate for ourselves or choose for ourselves the language we want to live by, the words we want to follow, the text we want to govern us. In this day and age, when many have lost faith in a divinity or the sacredness of religious texts, it is our obligation, our responsibility to select and define for ourselves the words we want to govern us or the text we wish to write, revise, follow. Our souls need to be guided by a logos. The care of the body has been given to medical doctors. The care of the soul has been given to whom? To parents, educators, doctors, ministers? Today, in the United States, what are the words that govern us and what words do we want to elect as the representatives of our values and ideals? Are we guided by the words of the Declaration the Constitution, the 'sacred' texts of Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr? Or are we being guided instead by the words of Madison Avenue and Hollywood, by the the images and words of the media and our popular culture. For me, we must search out and create for ourselves the words we want to live by. This is our responsibility. We must also make sure that the words we value most are being used to sanction actions that fulfill rather than betray the meaning of those terms. What crimes have been committed in the name of freedom, liberty, justice, God.! So I love the idea of logotherapy....of helping people, as a teacher, find a language or create for themselves a script, that will give their lives purpose, direction, meaning, significance. So much of this logotherapy is a dialectical inquiry: I ask people what words do they hold most significant and why and what books do they value the most and why? Just as the therapist is something of a minister trying to help people find governing words of value and script to follow for a higher purpose driven live, so too is the teacher as a logotherapist. Money, power, sex, love, God: These words are some of the most potent words in our vocabulary for defining what we desire. But what do we mean by each and how we can we develop a more rich, beautiful, complex language for explaining the many splendored thing that is sex?  |
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5/17/2010 5:50 pm |
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the field, but not to describe human character ~ Henry David Thoreau. Inteligencia=erotismo 
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5/17/2010 5:52 am |
I have a favorite classic children's book called "In the Rabbitgarden" by Leo Lionni. The father rabbit has to leave for a time, and he tells the two kid rabbits never to eat anything from the tree in the garden. The father leaves. A snake appears in the tree and offers the kids a fruit, and the kids eat it and play with the snake. A wolf appears and threatens the kid rabbits. The snake opens its mouth and the kids jump inside the snake and the snake scares away the wolf. The kids come back out of the snake, and when the father returns, he finds his kids safely playing with the snake. They tell the father what happened. The father says, OK, I guess I was wrong about not eating anything from that tree, and he too eats the fruit. My children loved that story, and so did I. We imbibe the words of our parents and our culture as we grow up like the milk we imbibe from a mother, and just as that milk helps to form the skeleton and body of a child, our words form the skeleton or framework of the way we see the world. But as we grow up, it is the responsibility of each of us to question and challenge the words we have been taught and define them for ourselves, and it is the purpose of education to foster such questioning. At the heart of Plato's dialogue is such a questioning of the meaning of words: What do we want to mean or what should we mean by words such as "the good" and "the beautiful" and "justice" and what is "love"? We should always be asking ourselves what is liberty and freedom and happiness and success or what do we want those words to mean in our own lives, for ourselves. We should not just trust what we are told. That is to accept dictation, tyranny. Democratic thinking is the thinking that tries to understand the meaning of words by checking and balancing ideas about those words through conversation and exchange in forums of debate and talk such as this Adult Dating zone blogworld. I have not seen "The Blind Side." On matters of race and gay rights, it is often quite wise not to listen our elders, as our grandparents--and even our parents--were raised in a different world, and, often, I'd say, their attitudes towards such things as interracial dating and marriage and gay rights are less progressive than that of a younger generation. On issues of race and gay rights, movie values such as those of the "Blind Side" can be more inspiring and wise than family values, and if a younger generation does think different than an older generation or grandparents on such an issue, it is part because of the influence of popular culture: our movies and music and entertainment. When I was a child, movies such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Blackboard Jungle" deeply affected by views about racial issues and prejudice and helped me challenge, in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, the opinions of my parents, who could be very racist and bigoted.
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5/16/2010 11:33 pm |
Beautiful. Yes, words have a power, which can be tapped into for good or ill, and I love the way you envision the beneficient use of words as using them to teach or guide us. Yes, I think language can be used as a way to help us map and find our way in the world, but we have to recognize that it is just a map, and sometimes we need to revise the map on the basis of what we've experienced or explored. I love it when you express your anger at the way adults use Godlike words to impose upon the minds of the young.... This is something that culture does in general. We have official words that are supposedly backed up by truth, science, nature, God, faith, and these words become dangerous if they are unquestioned or examine. Fear of such words is the beginning of wisdom. Or questioning of such words is the beginning of wisdom. We have had slavery justified in the name of liberty, and wars justified in the name of peace, and torture justified in the name of justice and national security. We have dirty wars called holy crusades and holy, beautiful sex acts called dirty and obscene. Your words inspire and guide and teach.
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5/16/2010 6:14 pm |
Thank you for giving such care and thought to my post. Once we start thinking about language and the power of words, it is hard to stop doing it, as the way we define and name things is so vital, so influential. I think it is so important that each of us try to develop our own understanding of words such as freedom and love rather than having their meanings dictated to us. I love it that you see how a richer, more complex, more nuanced language can help us see and feel things more wisely. Words can delude and mislead us as well as guide us, and we always have to be suspicious or distrustful of the power of words. When it comes to words about sex, I never like it when people talk about "nasty sex": I understand what they mean, but I want beautiful, joyous, magical, wonderful, primal sex not nasty sex or even dirty sex. I think sex should refresh and regenerate us and not make us feel dirty. Again, thanks for giving my post so much attention and care.
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