Philosophy discussion

Just thought I would post this so you all can get a bit more info on the status of this group.

It is pretty dead at the moment, and it's my fault. I imagined that I would have more free reading time, but that isn't the case. In May I graduate, though, and I intend to get more active once that happens. I have a whole shit load of stuff I want to read, and I would love if anyone would read it with me, so I will get this group up and running for that.

That being said, I might make a new group for this purpose (I'll be sure to keep members posted--however active you all are) that deals with my specific interests in philosophy (as well as the interests of the members who are active).

The reason for this new group would be that there is already a very active reading group called "Philosophy" on goodreads that just didn't pop up when I first searched for this topic, so it seems like it's worthless to compete. If you are interested, I would suggest joining them. However, I do have interests that are beyond what seems to be their scope, so I think it would still be interesting to have another group. I'll let you all know how this turns out in the future. It may come earlier than May, but that is the most obvious date.

In 1969 (age 19) I attended the annual National Comics Convention in New York City. 1969 was the 30th anniversary of the first Superman comic. Kirk Alyn was an honored guest as he was the first film Superman in serials of the mid-to-late forties. He was a member of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. At that time I had some vague mystical inclinations of an immature variety. Mr. Alyn talked to me very kindly—and in retrospect—very patiently about Vedanta. We corresponded briefly afterwards. I did not sustain a serious interest in Vedanta for many years after although the idea of telling and writing stories did seem to me an “otherworldly” vocation. By 1989, however, after years as a commercial writer and then as a high school teacher, I saw that in writing and teaching there was an ineffable “something” between readers, and then students. I renewed a now very serious interest in mysticism and Vedanta, which led me to Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood as philosophers first before I turned to their literary art. I was a philosopher first and came to literature somewhat through a side door. I have always believed that this was an important distinction that helped me to see literary art and then literary theory from a different perspective. This philosophical perspective also made it very difficult for me to see the modern literary theories as any more than derivative of the Perennial Philosophy. This is not necessarily to see fault with modern literary theory, but rather to see that these more recent theories are merely derivations with self-derived nomenclatures that only seem to give new importance to what had already been done before. T.S. Eliot said that once one had read the East that the West seemed to need to catch up with the East. In the perpetual continuum, every theory is a graduating event in the process of evolving consciousness. Each new generation finds a new way to say what has been said before. This is inevitable. One must learn the world through the influences of others and the medium for learning is language. One cannot create in a vacuum. One responds to the known (past knowledge) before one can create new derivations from the previously known and add new knowledge (understanding) to the old knowledge. Even if one responds to the known in diametrically opposed rebelliousness, this is a reaction, an opposition that needs to be reconciled.
As for comic books, at twelve (1962) I began reading Marvel Comics with the new breed of sensitive, angst-ridden superheroes who had frailties as a price to pay for their supernatural powers—Spiderman most of all. I loved them for I was certainly a sensitive adolescent with frailties. I saw me in them in a pattern that began with the primitive storyteller. We want to see ourselves through a commiseration with others whether real or fictional. Heroism and goodness were and remain key components of an inner quest for a Great Yearning, a desire for some form of transcendence that stories can provide. Over time stories evolve into philosophies that try to tell us intellectually what we have already learned from the stories intuitively. Stories as food for the mind are as necessary to life as food for the body. Today, as I write this on 21 July 2007, I have just returned from seeing Spiderman 3, a fairytale of heroes, goodness, loyalty, devotion, and villains redeemed with their dying wishes. The audience loved it and so did this 57 year-old child who feels no differently than he did in 1962. (Spiderman is a version of the earliest primitive parables that were often spiritual in their intentions. On 9 July 2004 Jeffrey Weiss’s article, “Spiderman’s Theme appears in Many Faiths” was syndicated in U.S. newspapers.) I have known since I was 12 that I yearned for something more than a mundane existence and that stories were a vicarious medium in trying to understand this. With comics I began. The comics caused the later encounter with Superman. I never was able to thank Mr. Alyn for his gift, as he left his body before his gift fully took hold of me. I thank him now.

David Garrett Izzo