A Fitting Reward How closely the suicide bomber’s feat of bombing matches his hoped-for reward of virgins in Paradise.
Neither the bomb victims nor the virgins have any say in the matter. Like having or ‘banging’ virgins, the bombing is seen as an act of super-potency (the hero magically acquires the potency of his weapon), in which the others involved are completely depersonalised. For the super-potent hero the act of bombing leads to death just as the sexual act climaxes in the ecstatic ‘little death’ of orgasm. After the act, the bomb victims and the virgins are ‘spent’ – the bomb victims are dead or wounded and the virgins are ‘despoilt’ – they are not virgins any more. When SoF explores religion as a human creation, we must not be afraid to say that some religious beliefs are hideous.
Olympians Reinstated An Athens court has ordered that the worship of the gods of ancient Greece should be unbanned, the Guardian reported on 5th May 2006. It is now legal again in Greece to worship Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Athena and the rest of the gods on Mount Olympus.
Followers say they are ‘defending the genuine traditions, religion and ethos’ of the ancients by adhering to a pre-Christian polytheistic culture. In this appealing story, one wonders who is being more realist: the legislators who originally banned the worship of these gods or the worshippers who have reclaimed the right to worship them. Do they really think the gods sit on Mount Olympus? Will they go and see? On a more Sofish view, regarding these gods as creations of the poetic genius, it would indeed be a great shame to lose them. The Greek gods are a priceless part of our common human treasury, belonging not only to Greece but to Europe and further afield.
A Question of Focus At our North London SoF group our hospitable convenor Janet Seargeant was talking about how even our noblest feelings could be described entirely in terms of brain activity. In theory we could come up with a comprehensive, second-by-second biological account. But even if we did, that would not be all there was to our feelings. Likewise for ‘language goes all the way down’ or ‘everything is rhythm’. It is a question of focus.
Focus Some days I go about London in a prosodic trance, not listening to the meanings of what people are saying, just to the sounds and rhythms of their speech.
Oh! what bliss: ‘s’ is a groovy fricative, and that builder just called to his mate in trochaic tetrameter catalectic, might have said: ‘Pass the bucket will you now,’ but I wasn’t paying attention.
Now comes a true tetrameter, the full eight syllables, perhaps it was: ‘Got a tenner on the favourite.’ Later I remember today is the Cheltenham Cup.
Subliminally I must have absorbed more than his prosody. Oh! builder, in your jaunty yellow hard hat, balancing so graceful along that plank, who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake, when ‘thou thy worldly task hast done’ (trochaic tetrameter catalectic – Cymbeline), did you knock off early to watch the race in the pub with your companions? I never checked whether the favourite came in first.
I hope it did and won you a few quid.
That concentrated focus on prosody brings moments of sheer heaven but if I did it all the time (some people think I do it quite enough), without being anywhere aware that that’s not all that’s going on, I would be barmy.
Likewise you reductionist postmodernist, who say there’s nothing but language or brain scientist interested only in the brain’s activities, yes, everything can be considered under that one aspect, for yes, that’s your professional delight (oh no, not here we go again: that was an iambic pentameter), maybe even necessary to do your job – you too must have your wits about you not to fall off your plank – but if either of you seriously avers that’s ever all there is, if the one discounts the mortal body or the other ignores love and poetry, isn’t that blinkered vision also daft?