In episode 24 we take a whole lotta measurements, mix apples and oranges and oreos, and eventually have to flip a coin
Part 1 [01:58] - In which we flip a coin and come up with a new definition for AI
Part 2 [25:49] - In which we dabble a bit in astrology and alchemy, and end up tossing our moon rocks into a pond
Part 3 [32:41] - In which we say a few prayers, make a few comparisons, and see how music from the 60s measures up to music from the 80s
[eternal punishment for anyone who opens this podcast]
[I heard that]
[the following presentation is intended ONLY for immature audiences]
[you've read the curse?]
uh no, but I think you oughta know we tend to drop a few F-Bombs in this podcast...
[fuggedaboudit]
[good heavens what a terrible curse]
🎶 Anachronist 🎶
Hi there and welcome back to the Hansel and Gretel Code...
yeah, Grüß dich, y'all...
[ja, a, it's okay]
this here is episode 24
[come on yo, let’s do this]
IN OUR LAST EPISODE:
we watched a few home movies of Hansel as he set off on the Hero’s Journey and so there he was, little guy, picking up pebbles under the light of the moon...
[awww]
and then we learned that his true name is Intuition...
[interesting]
and oh yeah, we also found out that he’s got 2 other names
[what are they?]
[Jake! Elwood!]
[Curtis! Good to see you, man!]
[Buy you boys a drink?]
hey, I DID mention moonshine somewhere along the way, didn’t I?
[dad joke groans]
*🎶*🎶*
PART ONE [01:58]
Teil Eins: In which we flip a coin and come up with a new definition for AI
[all we need to do is make sure we keep talking]
[oh my god]
today we’re gonna get started examining Hansel’s uh, stones...
[you mean balls?]
uh, no... just those moon rocks he collected...
[alright, if you say so]
anyway, just so you know, those stones hold so much valuable information, it’s gonna be very hard for me to summarize... which means it’s gonna take us about 5 or 6 episodes to go through it all —
[wow...]
and while none of it’s all that complicated, it does get pretty busy...
[okay]
Alrighty then, let's get started with just the tiniest bit of elaboration. We don't need to go all Baroque. Not yet.
Remember the Big Picture, with Hansel doing his work by Moonlight?
[No!]
alright, well, let me just remind you which part of the story we’re dealing with by giving you the Grimms’ version of events:
Da schien der Mond ganz helle, und die weißen Kieselsteine, die vor dem Haus lagen, glänzten wie lauter Batzen.
Hänsel bückte sich und steckte so viel in sein Rocktäschlein, als nur hinein wollten.
The moon was shining brightly, and the white pebbles in front of the house were glistening like silver coins.
Hansel bent over and filled his jacket pockets with them, as many as would fit.
naturally, this tells us that it's nighttime.
[thank you very much captain obvious]
what I mean is it’s a Literal and logical conclusion, right?
[maybe]
OOOHHH...! relax, it’s not a trick question...
it’s nighttime... so by using your Intuition you also know that nighttime is something other than—or shall we say, in addition to—the time between sunset and sunrise.
[no, it’ not]
hey... hang on for a sec, okay... this is important... we’re not throwing away Logic here.
All I’m saying is that your Intuition knows there’s something more to this than meets the eye of Logic...
[this is repetitive]
I know... we’ve been over this before... so, let me put it this way: using your Intuition means looking at the other side of the coin represented by any set of literal, logical, empirical facts. and in this case, it metaphorically includes those silver coins the Grimms decided to throw into the mix...
using your intuition means looking at what our Culture considers the non-rational side of things... and by non-rational, our Culture tends to push the more pejorative term of irrational...but let’s not quibble... let's just go ahead and turn over this particular coin.
see, we're not getting rid of, or denying the Logical side of things, or the validity of Empirical Logic, but we ARE IGNORING it — even while we’re still holding onto it.
[what are you talking about?]
Well, I’m talking about the way real Intuition works. see, a true Intuitive will have no problem turning the coin back over and acknowledging Logic. funny enough, that's how you can tell when someone is either stuck in woo woo land or simply pretending to be Intuitive. For that crew, EVERYTHING always comes up tails.
[who cares?]
I get it... but I think it’s important to realize that so very few people actually understand what Intuition is and how it works... and not just in this Zeitgeist,
this fairytale was written a couple of centuries ago by someone who understood that most people were practically clueless about Intuition — and our fairytale author pretty much felt the same way about it as I do...
[are you kidding me?]
hey, I kid you not!
So what do we see on the Intuitive / Metaphoric / non-rational side of this nighttime coin that’s worth even a minute of anyone’s time and attention?
[well, I don’t know]
Well, instead of a single, sharply defined, logical definition of Night — which itself can get logarithmically complex... you know, if we were to bring in astrophysics and astronomy and get all scientific about it —
[please don’t do that]
yeah well, Intuition gives us a different kind of complexity... the kind of wild holographic complexity that’s sometimes represented by the craziest of 2-dimensional mind maps. In other words, Intuition gives us the kind of disparate, imaginative ideas that are typical of brainstorming... and THAT’S because brainstorming is actually an activity of Intuition...
[oh really?]
yup...! see, a mind map with Nighttime at the center would have all sorts of ideas going off in different crazy directions, but they’d all be connected in a kind of bizarre, intuitive web made by some drunken, metaphoric spider.
[oh, wow, man!]
well, it’s kinda like the way I keep going off in different directions when telling you about this story... and I know from personal experience that this way of presenting information would send an engineer up the tree...
[yeah, I know (chuckles)]
Granted, not all of those directions will prove to be valuable... because intuitive value actually depends on the context. And the intuitive side of any coin can only be cashed (so to speak) in its proper context... which is why you can ignore or throw out most of the ideas that come up in a brainstorming session... it’s not that they don’t have any intrinsic value... they just don’t fit the time, the place, the circumstances and the story you’re working with...
So one of those intuitive ideas concerning nighttime is that it can represent the Unconscious... And isn't this somewhat ironic, since we've already spoken about Forest and Sea as being symbolic of the Unconscious? Now we have another symbol for it: Night.
Logic is bound to ask which one is correct... because that’s a legitimate logical question...
Intuition, though, can hold all 3 possibilities simultaneously — and because it also holds onto Logic, it can legitimately understand that Forest and Sea are directions that don't need to be explored right here. They’re not incorrect, they simply don't hold the same value in this context.
So from this one small detail, we can intuitively surmise that Hansel is doing his work in the Unconscious of the whole person that’s represented by this family...
[who’s that?]
well, it’s really the Unconscious of anyone who is going through some sort of crisis and has rejected what Hansel and his sister represent — namely, two of the 4 cognitive Functions of Consciousness: Intuition and Feeling...
And, as I’ve already implied, this family, by splitting itself in half, is also symbolic of a Culture in crisis... a Culture that denigrates and despises the kind of people that might be associated with these siblings and those 2 Functions of Consciousness... and what I mean is: people that the Culture considers useless, impractical, irrational or even parasitic — and therefore expendable.
[don’t take it personally, it’s just my job]
And because we’re talking about the denigration of Intuition and Feeling, this is the sort of step-motherly attitude and behavior that practically defines modern Western society.
[ha, ha, ha... right...]
alright, well let's not push too hard in that direction... not right now... for now, let’s just think about our fairy tale family as an individual person.
see, right now we’re just following the thread of a story that is already at work within everyone’s Unconscious, and by doing that, we’re helping to bring its intuitive implications back into consciousness... that is, to everyone’s attention.
[it’s for the better]
it really is... So, I gotta admit, this isn’t all my idea...
[uh, excuse you]
it’s an understanding and an activity that was stimulated by my own reading of Jung...
[what a waste of time!]
the good news is that Jung’s entire oeuvre emphasized his original finding that something within us is constantly working to ensure our own Wholeness. And whaddya know, our intuitive reading of the story of Hansel and Gretel sees that very same thing happening.
Intuitively, each of the tiny metaphoric tidbits of symbolism and meaning we've so far collected are exactly the same as Hansel's tiny pebbles — and each of them provides some small bit of information we can use to get back to the Truth of our own Wholeness.
More than just identifying with (or despising) the various members of the Holzhacker family — who each represent various parts of our own human nature — we've actually been doing the very same things THEY’VE all been doing. Metaphorically, of course.
[oh is it metaphoric, I thought it was meta three... so that mean’s it’s even more expensive... oh my God... oh my God]
[ahem]
Remember that these 4 Characters represent the 4 cognitive Functions of Consciousness: Thinking, Feeling, Sensation and Intuition. And the very premise of the story: deliberately losing the 2 children in the forest amounts to a dissociation... metaphorically, this is someone denying the validity, the necessity and, practically, even the existence, of 2 of those Functions.
This decision to lose them in order not to have to feed them, is the crux of a serious matter because, metaphorically, it means not just paying them no mind / giving them no attention, but actively doing something to get rid of them. It represents an attempt to force them down into the Unconscious, i.e. to repress or forget all about them. But this is something we ALL do.
[no way]
Not maliciously. And, for the most part, not even consciously.
[I’m pretty drunk]
[ahem]
****
of course the lobotomy of Randle Patrick McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest might just be the most melodramatic example of someone trying to do it consciously...
****
Like 2 sides of our metaphoric coin, 2 of those Functions will always tend to be on one side, while the other 2 will naturally be on its opposite. And if face up corresponds to consciousness, and face down corresponds to unconsciousness, guess what...
[what?]
our Typology and personality preferences are more of a coin-flip than we might realize...
[now well that sounds like grade a bullshit]
yeah well, it makes no sense to divide a coin, as if it were an oreo, or even to insist on one side always being superior to and better than the other. But that’s how we roll. Especially under stress.
[shut up mate, you’re boring]
Of course, there are even advantages to this dissociative behavior. Like someone who loses their eyesight, and develops a much keener sense of hearing. More importantly, this is how Science and Technology evolved.
Removing the subjective Feeling Function and the predictive Intuitive Function from all empirical experimentation and observation amounted to blindfolding them and locking them away somewhere... but all in a good cause.
Unfortunately, we seem to have, um, lost sight of the disadvantages of this blindfold, not to mention of keeping them locked away. By denying our subjectivity, and the validity of Feeling and Emotion, not to mention the validity of Intuition, we’ve become more like the computers that Science and Technology have gifted us. But computers will always be better at Empirical, Logical functioning than humans precisely because they’re not influenced by Feeling and Intuition the way our brains are.
Of course, the example of Hal in 2001 Space Odyssey is meant to be a warning against the of hubris of Science since nothing goes into a computer except what we humans put there. And that’s why our unconscious feelings and intuitions are all eventually bound to sneak in.
In fact, come to think of it, AI could — and probably SHOULD — stand for Artificial Intuition... because I think that’s what it’s trying to do... make intuitive connections for us... AI does the brainstorming and then weeds out all the ideas that don’t fit the algorithms its über-logical programmers have tried to substitute for context...
hey, why else would you see an ad for birdseed on your Twitter feed right after you show off pictures of your pet canary...?
In any case, as I keep repeating, Hansel returning home with his sister is a basic metaphor for the reconciliation and re-collection of all 4 Functions of Consciousness: Thinking, Feeling, Sensation and Intuition. Acknowledging this metaphor, that the coin of our Personality has two sides, amounts to an act of reconciliation and recollection... And denying this for any reason is the basis of any and all cults of personality...
[fascinating]
From the point of view of Logic and the 5 Senses, i.e. our Thinking Function coupled with the Sensation Function (metaphorically represented by the combination of Father and Mother), this recollection not only can't remedy the situation of famine, but will actually make things worse. And, come to think of it, that’s a perfectly Logical, probably even correct, conclusion, isn't it?
[yeah]
Adding back those two extra mouths to feed (especially after it was hoped they would be eliminated) may be a legitimate moral duty for the parents, but it's also an objectively empirical, physical hardship. Keeping the children would actually mean that, given the likely continuation of the famine, the numbers just wouldn't add up.
[you got THAT right]
The moral standards of our own zeitgeist may not condone such a literal acting out of these selfish plans, but quite obviously, the economic standards embraced by our Culture (and I don’t just mean Western Culture — but the new Global economic standard) has adequate room for them.
[certainly!]
Hey, we all know what THAT means: Profits before people. and, if it’s good for business it’s good enough...
[alright, well, that’s good enough for me... it’s close enough]
Morals, of course, have nothing to do with Logic, even if our current culture practices it's own proprietary mixture of the two. But it's important to remember that child abandonment — even in times without the stress of famine — was considered far less problematic — morally, ethically and logically — in medieval times and earlier. In other words, context and zeitgeist influence the very measure of morality.
So are we mixing apples and oranges here?
[yup!]
well, you’re probably right... talking about coins and Functions and then diving back into the story with its famine and its pebbles must be pretty confusing... and mixing metaphors is definitely a problem...
but you see, the REAL problem is that we live within a society, culture and zeitgeist that doesn't recognize itself in the story of Hansel and Gretel.
[for good reason]
Yeah, well if you and I persevere in collecting these pebbles and examining them in this seemingly helter-skelter, intuitive manner, we might just shake something pretty valuable out of this work and accomplish a potentially healing recognition.
[sounds interesting]
So, it’s still too early for this sort of recognition, especially since we haven’t seen enough of her in action, but it’s more than likely that the Mother represents Sensation — that is, the conscious testimony of the 5 Senses...
[what?]
The Sensate function of Consciousness is concerned with physical comparison and physical measurement... it doesn’t make any judgements... it simply produces utterly objective, empirical data...
[that’s correct]
It’s basic job is to distinguish and measure things by virtue of the differences apparent to any or all the 5 senses. It compares and contrasts. We COULD say, it runs the department of weights and measures in our brain... although that’s still a bit simplistic — and NONE of these Functions are perfectly simple to understand or simplistic in nature..
As I said, it’s still too early to recognize her as the Sensate Function... In fact, just as they do in fairy tales, these 4 functions will very often show up in dreams... And I gotta tell you, whenever they do, it’s usually very difficult to identify exactly which Function is represented by which symbol... But if our hypothesis is correct, and this woman really DOES represent Sensation, it would mean the Father represents Logic and the Thinking Function...
Right now, one thing is perfectly clear: the Father represents the so-called Dominant Function... and we can say that because he’s the one who has the final say in the matter of the children. The Mother is, more obviously, the so-called Auxiliary Function... and we can say that because she does not have the power to enforce her will unilaterally. She has to persuade the Father to say yes to her plan...
This, of course, makes the children the Inferior coupling of Functions. Which of them represents the actual Inferior Function (which, in Jungian circles is otherwise known as the Shadow) may not be so very important to decide right now, although it's highly likely that it is the little girl who is the true Shadow because she’s the one who ultimately saves the day.
[I’m not a little girl!]
See this happens very often in fairytales... Shadow often shows up as a Dumb Hans or a Goose Girl... somebody like Cinderella who’s forced to do all the housework, and never allowed to dress up and meet the Prince... and that fairytale motif of the Shadow as hero or heroine is a clear reminder that reconciling with our own Shadow can produce very practical, even magical, miraculous results.
[nice]
[Johnny, is this true? ‘cause if it is...]
*🎶*🎶*
PART TWO [25:49]
Teil Zwei: In which we dabble a bit in astrology and alchemy, and end up tossing our moon rocks into a pond...
[sound of gagging / vomiting]
[not our cookies...!!! our stones...! you know... Kerplop!]
[gotcha]
Now let's get back to picking up on the details of these stones. What can we make of the connection between moonshine and these little white pebbles looking like silver coins?
[(giggles) i dunno]
Logically, of course, not a single damn thing beyond some operatic stage lighting. But as I've already said, once we get beyond the threshold of "Once upon a time..." Logic is no longer in the driver's seat...
Intuition is driving this bus, and the aim of Intuition is to see the metaphoric connections between things... especially when logic dictates that there aren’t any...
I always say that astrology is a set of training wheels for exercising your intuition, so let's start with the astrologically obvious. In astrology, the Moon is a symbol of Maternity... and, in the context of our story, the Moon might even refer to a more sympathetic mother than the seeming impostor the children’s old man is married to...
[pooh! ma che dici? Scemo!! OOOOH!!!]
[ahem]
The moon could symbolize a sort of kindly, celestial being or maybe even a spiritual mother, if not a kind of fairy godmother...
In Madame D’Aulnoy’s Finette Cendron, one of the stories that preceded Hansel and Gretel, the clever daughter goes to her god-mother for advice, and the god-mother gives her a spool of thread by which she can find her way back home.
In the Montanus story, the heroine that the step-mother is trying to get rid of — she also goes to her god-mother for advice and help.
So in both cases, we COULD say that the role of Hansel is pretty much filled by the god-mother. and in fact, astrology also connects the Moon with Intuition, so that makes a helluva lot of sense...
[you are hormonally confused]
Astrology also connects the Moon with the concept of the Feminine... and the Feminine is another aspect of Consciousness that sure as hell gets denigrated and deprecated in Western Culture... and let me tell you... the Feminine is something that the story of Hansel and Gretel — and the Hansel and Gretel Code — is gonna have PLENTY to say about...
In addition to astrology, we also have the testimony of alchemy... something we’ve already mentioned in Episode 23... remember...?
[No!]
right... well, along with astrology, alchemy is another, even more elaborate type of intuitive practice — and in alchemy the Moon is associated with Silver, Salt, and the color White.
In their glistening by moonlight it should be obvious that these pebbles are not so secretly connected to the moon and maternity... and then the Grimms doubled down on that symbolism by adding the business of the silver coins... and you gotta think, it’s almost as if they wanted to emphasize an intuitive connection to alchemy...
[bollocks, just bollocks]
in any case, symbolically and metaphorically Hansel’s moon rocks ARE connected to an awareness of astrologic and alchemical concepts.
This, of course, doesn't mean that in order to develop your intuition you need to concern yourself with such things as astrology and alchemy, but there comes a time when you might find them to be interesting... you know just the way a mathematician or physicist gets interested in puzzles and so-called brain-teasers.
[you have loosen your mind much]
The thing is, unless you DO understand more about astrology and alchemy, which is the context in which this metaphor makes so much sense, you’re not likely to know about or explore the possible connections... Curiously, though, even if you do, well, so what? This could still be a metaphoric dead end.
While we might want to congratulate ourselves for noting such a titillating little astrologic and alchemical connection between the moon and these pebbles, unless we do some more exploring and continue to flesh out the implications of these connections... esoteric and seemingly woowoo observations like this tell us absolutely nothing. And I mean NOTHING.
these little white pebbles are metaphoric gems, but taken like this, in isolation, that would be like dropping them in a pond, one pebble at a time. They’d give us nothing more than a minor ripple on the surface, and each pebble, along with its meaning, would simply disappear.
Fortunately, we've got a lotta pebbles here, so let's continue our little meditation of picking them up and dropping them in and see if we can't find some more substantial and satisfying meaning. Maybe we can turn this meditation into something more like Basho’s big splash of a haiku... I really like Allen Ginsberg's interpretation of Bashō.
furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
古池や蛙飛こむ水のをと
The old pond
A frog jumps in
Kerplop!
*🎶*🎶*
PART THREE [32:41]
Teil Drei: In which we say a few prayers, make a few comparisons, and see how music from the 60s measures up to music from the 80s... not!
[you know what I think, I’ve said this before but I think that anybody who disagrees with me is just a fucking bitch I mean, really]
[oh brother]
One meaningful connection worth noting between these pebbles, the moon and maternity is an obviously religious one. Specifically, the connection between these stones and the Catholic rosary.
[huh?]
The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on the Rosary tells us:
A certain Paul the Hermit, in the fourth century, had imposed upon himself the task of repeating three hundred prayers, according to a set form, every day.
To do this, he gathered up three hundred pebbles and threw one away as each prayer was finished.
(Palladius, Hist. Laus., xx; Butler, II, 63)
[that’s not funny]
Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?
[no sir!]
Well, you might have a point there, since it may just be a titilating little nothing... kinda like our astrologic and alchemical references... at least this time, it's closer to something that a few more people tend to be familiar with, viz. the rosary and Catholic prayer.
[so what?]
the source of this information in the Catholic Encyclopedia is the Lausiac History: a text we came across in the religion section of the library back in Episode 6... remember...?
[No!]
yeah, I didn’t think you would... anyway, Cuthbert Butler, who edited and commented on the Greek manuscripts of the Lausiac History, he notes this passage as the earliest known reference to the practice of what eventually became the rosary. Of course, prayer beads exist in many cultures, but this history of the so-called Desert Fathers gives Hansel’s pebbles a direct connection to the practice of counting prayers in Christianity.
[ooh]
the same entry in Catholic Encyclopedia tells us:
...among the Knights Templar, whose rule dates from about 1128, the knights who could not attend choir were required to say the Lord's Prayer 57 times in all and on the death of any of the brethren they had to say the Pater Noster a hundred times a day for a week.
To count these accurately there is every reason to believe that already in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a practice had come in of using pebbles, berries, or discs of bone threaded on a string.
[that’s not funny]
Of course, the Maternal connection doesn’t come into play at all until maybe the 15th century when Ave Maria’s got substituted for most of those Pater Nosters... but the connection between picking up stones and praying is unmistakeable...
[oh yeah]
As interesting as that sounds, it's still just as much of a dead end as astrology and alchemy, unless we can make the kind of interesting connections that Logic can really sink its teeth into.
For instance, that text, the Lausiac History, was written by a guy named Palladius around 420 CE, and it was part of a very popular book in the Middle Ages... one that would have been known to our author. And not just for whatever factual information it holds... Just paging through it, it’s obvious that it would have been read for entertainment, because with it’s um, "spiritual" emphasis on miraculous occurrences, it, like all hagiography — is practically the same thing as a book of fairytales.
But you see, getting Logic to appreciate and enjoy snippets like this requires an awful lot of digging and searching to find references like the Lausiac History, which I might add, I’m only able to read in translation AND thanks to the internet and archive.org...
so here’s the thing: I LOVE doing research like this... and I LOVE finding real, solid, facts... especially if they pass the academic sniff test...
[not everyone’s like that]
Yeah, I know... and I realize that you might consider my citing this text as tedious, redundant and maybe even a waste of time...
[yes sir!]
but you see, one of the under-appreciated pleasures of looking up references, especially for us metaphoric / intuitive minded types, lies in finding the comedy material in them. Sometimes, it’s right there on the surface... mostly though — especially with academic sorts of references — it’s a matter of reading pretty deeply between the lines in order to get the joke that academics would never want to acknowledge...
so, as I’ve said, I’ve already spent 11 years doing all the heavy lifting involved in research... and tried my best to organize that information into book form, all the while knowing that it would probably take me another 11 years to edit that book before I could put it out there in the world... and that is, without boring the crap out of anybody interested enough to try reading it... so that’s why I’m putting it out as a podcast...
editing all of this material for a podcast isn’t any easier than editing it for a book — in fact, it may even be harder — but I don’t have to wait 11 more years before I can share it... that said, I could really use the grace of your support in this endeavor...
[no, nope... forget it. forget it.]
which is why I signed up with that buy me a ko-fi outfit... you know, ko-fi.com... so if you want to throw some uh, bread crumbs my way, that would be awesome...
[absolutely not!]
but just talking up the show and spreading the word about it, well, that’s a much appreciated act of grace as well...
[oh my god! would you leave me alone!]
hey, even just visiting the website is another way to show your support... you know the drill:
[visit us on the web @ wwwww...]
betweenthelines.xyz
alrighty, so there’s obviously nothing comical in those portions of the Lausiac History that the Catholic Encyclopedia editors chose to include... and that’s why, whether or not you’re looking for comedy, you’re more likely to find some if you can find more of those original lines to read between. And find them, I did…
so, for understandable reasons, the Catholic Encyclopedia neglects to mention the fact that this Paul the Hermit guy is identified in the Palladius text as Paul the Simple... and I do mean he must have been a bit simple-minded...
[really?]
Paul was a rank and file member of that group of poverty loving Desert Fathers we met back in Episode 6, and the Lausiac History tells us that he ran out into the desert after catching his wife in flagrante with a neighbor...
[uh oh]
and while that sounds like the beginning of a joke, the really interesting part doesn’t come up until he gets himself settled in his desert cave...
See, while his claim to fame has mostly to do with the rosary business, his connection to Hansel and Gretel lies in the fact that he was reportedly "afflicted" because he’d heard of a neighboring virgin whose piety greatly exceeded his own.
I mean, the guy gets really bummed out by comparing himself to her, and so he complains to his confessor that this virgin lady — who, btw, may have been the first super-model saint — she not only outdoes him in prayer, by reciting 700 prayers a day, she also outdoes him in anorexia, er, I mean fasting, by eating only on weekends.
According to Palladius, Paul said:
And when I learned this I despaired of myself because I could not make more than 300.
[oh, and I suppose you think that’s funny, huh?]
Okay, so my objective is not to point out the silliness of his name, or even to mock the puerile logic of his complaint. Seriously, what seems most striking and relevant here is this "affliction" arising from the dubious, yet common practice of anyone bothering to compare themselves to someone who does what they do — only better(?)
You see, not only is this a problematic Projection on his part, but it's that pernicious little concept of "better" that constitutes a nearly universal problem. I mean, If someone outdoes you in the volume of anything, is that necessarily "better?" And should that necessarily make you "worse?"
well, obviously, it makes Paulie FEEL worse... So I ask you... More prayers, fewer prayers, more food, more fasting — what does ANY of this have to do with piety?
[I don’t know]
For better or for worse, just what IS this affliction our simpleton, er, I mean simple saint has fallen prey to?
[honestly, I have no clue]
We can understand that an unfavorable self-comparison is the immediate cause of his affliction, but what is the existential substance of that affliction?
[I don’t know mate]
He seems to be in pain because of some emotion he doesn't want to experience, but he doesn’t and probably can’t even name it.
[yes, yes, this is the most important part]
right... this is important for all of us: Whatever this emotion is, his confession tells us that it’s based on a fundamental activity of his Sensate Function...
remember... we’re talking Mrs. Holzhacker here...
Paul measured something and then used his less-than-sophisticated Thinking Function to abstract that measurement into meaning something that gave him a nasty nudge from his Feeling Function.
So which feeling is he having here...? Is he Sad, Mad, Glad or Scared? Is he Depressed, Angry, Happy or Anxious?
[so how should I know... who even cares?]
I gotta tell you, whatever the emotion is, he sure seems to be experiencing Envy. But isn't that one of the so-called Seven Deadly Sins?
[affirmative]
Where is Piety in all this?
[I don’t know!]
it seems to me that whatever his distress or affliction is, it amounts to the same sort of chronic poverty our Holzhacker family is known for... in other words, it’s a chronic shortage of Hansel and Gretel bread... meaning: divine grace... and it’s another clue to help us figure out what the religious abstraction known as divine grace might actually be...
so, what’s the point of measuring something if all it does is remind you how poor you are...? and is this how saints measure their piety and experience grace? By comparing themselves to other saints? Keeping score? I didn't know sainthood was a competition.
[why not?]
Competition seems to be hard-wired into us, but is it really the best use of any measuring stick to always have a carrot dangling from the end of it? even or maybe especially if that carrot is divine grace and sainthood... ?
[definitely!]
Maybe it's human nature to compare ourselves to some standard of our own choosing and to want the grace of an experience of success on reaching some particularly outstanding measurement. then again, is it truly innate?
[of course]
well, you may be right... because obsessively turning everything into a competition may be an expression of Typology... as I said objective measurement is characteristic of the Sensate Function of Consciousness... and it’s possible that people who are driven to compete may actually have the Sensate Function as their legitimate Dominant Function... but for the majority of us, whose Sensate Function isn’t Dominant, competition is more likely to be a learned behavior...
of course making objective measurement a priority is totally necessary in order to advance science and technology, but even in the purest science — or actually within the Psyche of the most objective and unbiased of scientists — the pairing of the Sensate Function with either Thinking or Feeling is how those measurements are judged... and how the idea of good or bad / right or wrong / better or worse gets attached to those objective measurements...
scientists or not, we very often mix up apples and oranges and then tie ourselves into knots — not with the measurements themselves — but with mistaken judgements about them... and what I mean is, our measurements don’t always fit the context we judge them within...
Take our guy, Paul, for example... he thinks that with his 300 pebbles a day he’s measuring his grace and sainthood and piety, and all along, he figured he was measuring up...
you know... he’s out there in the desert, and he’s got it going on, so, good for him... but then one fine day, he hears his first Madonna tune...
🎶 [like a virgin...] 🎶
[what?!]
sorry, I couldn’t help myself there...
[dad joke moans]
no, Paul hears about the, uh super-model virgin, and he starts measuring the difference between himself and her... and all of a sudden, his grace and piety and sainthood is no longer adding up... and he starts feeling like a loser...
so here’s the response the wise and pious confessor gave our poor, afflicted, simple Paul. It's actually pretty funny, but only in terms of irony:
The holy Macarius answered him: ‘I am now sixty years old; I make 100 set prayers and produce my food by my own work, and give the brethren the interviews that are their due, and my reason does not condemn me as having neglected my duty.
But if you say 300 and are condemned by your conscience, you are clearly not praying them with purity, or else you could pray more and do not.’
[what seems to be the problem?]
hello! Instead of seeing someone who’s got his numbers and his context all mixed up, the holy Macarius sees someone who doesn't measure up because he isn't working hard enough.
oh man... gimme a break...! just like a typical pedagogue (or maybe an evil performance coach), instead of offering constructive criticism, his solution to Paulie’s problem is to give him a good metaphoric thrashing with the ruler.
This exhortation to greater purity seems particularly awful because it is too much like telling someone to be healthy when they’re sick. and don’t get me started because this mention of conscience by an apparently trusted and esteemed authority brings us right back to Frau Holzhacker.
see, what Paul is really after is grace... he’s seriously hungry for it... and he doesn’t need anyone to tell him when he doesn’t have enough of it...
what he doesn’t understand is WHY he doesn’t have enough... and believe me, the holy Macarius hasn’t got a clue either...
I mean, really... is obtaining grace just a matter of will-power and effort?
it may not be wrong to say: perhaps... But either it’s there or it isn’t. Either there’s enough of it or there isn’t...
And if it's built on such a flimsy foundation as the number of prayers or calories somebody counts off every day, and if it crumbles at the first sign of a bad number, then it can't be the real deal.
[why the fuck not?]
See, this comparison business makes Paul just another spiritual Mr. Olympia wannabe who's nothing more than a runner-up in the prayer and fasting competition, and a very pedestrian loser in the race for grace... and what I mean is: the real McCoy something else that grace actually represents.
Grace cannot be a simple matter of competition and comparison, and yet it seems to be a neurotically perverse judgment common to most societies and cultures that human beings who take this route to grace—and fail at it—they’re either not doing enough of something supposedly good, or they’re doing too much of something supposedly bad.
[damn, that’s good shit! fuck!]
[ahem]
Of course, whatever those good or bad activities are... this kind of prescription amounts to a cruel and perverse joke... because even winners suffer from a subjective lack of grace.
hey, in the case of Hansel and Gretel, we’re gonna see the Little Brother and Sister eventually triumphing and finding grace beyond measure... but not because they know how to count or because they compare themselves to anybody...
Grace that’s based on comparison is short lived, at best... because in the long run that kind of reckoning is nothing but a narcissistic pyramid scheme... and to understand that all you’ve gotta do is remember how Arlo Guthrie once very insightfully put it...
...you always have a friend who says ‘Hey man, you ain't got it that bad. Look at that guy.’ And you look at that guy, and he's got it worse than you. And it makes you feel better that there's somebody that's got it worse than you.
But think of the last guy. For one minute, think of the last guy. Nobody's got it worse than that guy. Nobody in the whole world.
OUR NEXT EPISODE:
is pretty brief... it’s the prelude to something much more important as we visit a ladies boutique and come away with a few, um, urges... well, one in particular that will be named later... and maybe we’ll be listening to Herman’s Hermits with a new sort of appreciation...
[okay boomer]
alright, yeah, yeah... ha, ha...
it’s not ‘enery the 8th I’m talking about... it’s a new science that Hansel and Gretel introduces us to... and one that can make a huge difference in how we meet the challenges facing western culture...
alrighty then... ciao a tutti...
🎶 minced-words 🎶
***😆 keep listening for some more silly outtakes 😆 ***
got a question, or just want to say hi...?
*Chapter Titles read by Anna Jacobsen*
*Librivox recording of Hansel and Gretel read by Bob Neufeld*
Music Credits
*🎶*🎶* Bleeping Demo by Kevin MacLeod of filmmusic.io
🎶 Anachronist 🎶 by Kevin MacLeod and licensed under filmmusic.io/standard-license
🎶 minced-words 🎶 courtesy of deleted_user_4338788 and freesound.org
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kristo's awesome Peanut Gallery
(most, courtesy of freesound.org)
@00:00 "eternal punishment..." - Sir Joseph Whemple
@00:07 "podcast" courtesy of Audeption and freesound.org
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@00:10 "immature audiences..." courtesy of cognito perceptu and freesound.org
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@00:15 "You've read the curse...!" - Dr. Müller
@00:25 "fuggedaboudit!" - Tony Lasagna
@00:27 "Good heavens...!" - Sir Joseph Whemple
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PART 1 / Teil Eins @01:58
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@02:17 "oh my god" courtesy of MatteusNova and freesound.org
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@02:33 "...if you say so" - Anna Jacobsen
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@03:47 "...captain obvious" courtesy of cheesepuff and freesound.org
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@03:57 "maybe" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@04:18 "no. it's not." courtesy of ballOOnhead and freesound.org
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@15:30 "what?" courtesy of Roses1401 and freesound.org
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@22:15 "sounds interesting" courtesy of kurtless and freesound.org
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@22:36 "what...??" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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@25:42 "is this true...?" courtesy of Tim Kahn and Amy Gedgaudas and freesound.org
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@26:29 "(giggle) I don't know" courtesy of nfrae and freesound.org
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@27:33 "...Scemo!!!" - Annalisa Zucca
@27:36 "ahem" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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@28:36 "...hormonally confused" courtesy of SCICOFILMS.com and freesound.org
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@29:20 "No!" courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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@30:06 bollocks... courtesy of RoivasUGO and freesound.org
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@32:37 "kerplop" - Anna Jacobsen
@32:59 "you know what..." courtesy of Krystal Flores and freesound.org
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@28:44 "so what!" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@38:11 "yes sir!" courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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@39:41 "no, forget it...!" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@39:59 "absolutely not!" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@40:09 "oh my God...leave me alone!" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@40:19 "WWWs…" courtesy of WillFitch1 and freesound.org
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@41:14 "really...?" courtesy of juror2 and freesound.org
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@41:34 "uh oh!" courtesy of DWOBoyle and freesound.org
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@42:46 "oh, and I suppose you think that’s funny, huh..." courtesy of shawshank73
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@44:03 "I don't know" courtesy of kurtless and freesound.org
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@44:13 "I have no clue..." courtesy of Krystal Flores and freesound.org
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@44:26 "I don't know mate" courtesy of max_cristos and freesound.org
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@44:39 "...most important part!" courtesy of dobroide and freesound.org
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@45:35 "...who even cares?" courtesy of ballOOnhead and freesound.org
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@45:53 "affirmative" courtesy of bectec and freesound.org
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@45:58 "I don’t know!" courtesy of nuncaconci and freesound.org
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@46:53 "why not?" - Dayton Allen
@47:11 "definitely" courtesy of bectec and freesound.org
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@49:33 🎶 like a virgin... 🎶 - Madonna
@49:40 "what?" courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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@49:44 dad joke groans courtesy of TeamMasaka and freesound.org
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@50:58 "what seems to be the problem?" courtesy of AmeAngelofSin and freesound.org
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@52:55 "why the fuck not?" courtesy of cheesepuff and freesound.org
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@53:49 "...good shit!!" courtesy of canadianadam and freesound.org
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@53:53 "ahem" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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@55:07 🎶 the last guy — (The Pause of Mr. Claus) 🎶 - Arlo Guthrie
@55:50 "okay Boomer" - Chlöe Swarbrick
got a question, or just want to say hi...?
Episode 23 - He’s on a Mission from God / Episode 25 - Hello, Numen