#ketchupbeard

Professor Ralph Williams an undeniably amazing Professor of English Literature gives a lecture on the importance in western culture on the tradition of the Oresteia.

The understanding of morality and reasoning within in the actions we take in motives that drive us to react. Professor Ralph Williams looks to the philosophers of ancient Greece and the work of Aeschylus’s only surviving trilogy of Greek tragedy, The Oresteia. How can we differentiate and diplomatically try to avoid violence yet through what may be our destructive human nature, always try to acquire power through force and inequality and if we can ever stop wars etc. 

The stories/the plays of philosophers are often an allegory for the reasoning behind the universe and can be used as moral compasses through social and religious ideologies. The fact that the gods of the Greeks represent events that scientifically they can’t explain as their technology isn’t great enough so relate to it in the only way a person could. For instance the primal Greek goddess Gaia (or the earth), was said to be bedded by her husband/son Uranus as he was the primal god depicting the sky and so as night fell, the analogy of darkness covering the earth turned to Uranus laying with Gaia at night and this is found throughout the pantheon.

The Gods

I find it intensely interesting that Professor Williams brings up the stories from generations of gods - Primals to Titans to Olympians (first, second and third generations), to create a foundation and basis to the understanding of the struggle for power and how the young want to overthrow those in power as there is often a balance of inequality. The link between the struggles for power between gods and Oresteia, the almost poetic cycles of continuation through revenge (as state by Professor Williams), is where Kronos the most ambitious and youngest offspring of Uranus and Gaia wants power and Uranus will do anything to stop this. Professor Williams recounts that the balance of violence in males is through war and that through females it’s the threatening of her children and kin. So through the help of his mother, Kronos castrates his father and takes his power - he is then warned later by Uranus and Gaia that he would too have that happen so he does as his dad did and react with eating his children apart from Zeus who was hidden away from him. Zeus was approached by his grandmother to discuss a balance of power otherwise the same would yet befall him and seeing that there was an overgrowing rate of gods it would be easier to contest.  So as Williams says, at the compromise of his position and privileges, Zeus was able to keep order. 

Modern Times

So all this was essentially the discourse of balance, that the hunger for power and wants are only stopped by the needs of someone else and the issue passed back and forth. A cycle of revenge as Professor Williams directs it, how it can escalate and how do we stop it? That memory also has a part to play, how rivalries can be passed down to generations and that sometimes the powerful will always try to subvert health, wealth and knowledge from the younger or less powerful, to stop them from being overthrown. Questioning how do we stop violence, that people have a perception of justice on both sides and that society grows angrier with killing of more children/kin and that sometimes it can come back to haunt.

Oestria

Going back to the Oestria and these connections from Aeschylus about universal balance, that Queen Clytenmestra was justified in the killing of her husband King Agamemnon who was justified that he had sacrificed their daughter Ihphigenia (so that the storm would pass so he could go and claim victory at war), Orestes again, justified in his actions to kill his mother and her lover because of what they had done. The Allegory goes back and forth where the furies follow Orestes as he has killed one of their godly kin and seek vengeance, it only begins to shatter when Orestes seeks out Apollo who also shares his guilt (guided by Apollo to kill his mother), that it begins to form an answer. 

Apollo and The Furies in this instance serve as allegories to a priest upon execution and the guilt that haunts him. Apollo like a priest is can clear the conscience but not the punishment, just like a priest and so requests Orestes seek out Athena who creates a trial for him. In this and is interestingly put by Professor Williams is that the deed was done but the act is not the deed and in that, the act is not unjustified homicide. Athena denied The Furies on carrying out a personal revenge as she wanted to know why Orestes had taken these actions and was put before a jury with Athena as a casting vote due to a hung decision. Athena vows to set a law of court for the city, this is so that people are tried by others who don’t have personal bias or vendettas, so they cannot exact out a justified punishment. This like the Zeus puts a system of damage control and by that by hearing out the sides of both stories a compromise can be met and so that a solution can be realised. Athena was counted as both male and female in the balance of things. 

The closing speech where Professor Wlliams states that the answer is to not kill, surpress or exclude anger or furry at the wrong done, but to invite mediation  via rational conclusions and discussion. 

My Thoughts: Socially

On my viewing and reviewing of this video, the liberal ideology of Professor Ralph Williams through the Greek literature raises points that are immediately visible around me. I currently live in a country under a right wing government, where they are continually contributing via a class war, inequality on a major scale. That the power of those who are richest are deny those without their high society status, privileges and rights. The lack of distribution of wealth through lying of austerity, the destroying of health under the plan of dismantling the National Health Service in attempts to make it a privatised sector for fat cat friends and exclusion of knowledge where recently as of today, Tory MP’s have made it law that new university students will have to take out another expensive loan instead of a grant to supplement them, making the poorer students more in debt.The justification in this is by keeping the ‘proles’ stupid, sick and unwealthy that they will be able to keep all the power, but lets not forget that it isn’t just Conservative/Tory political agendas but the Prime Minister and other MP’s that control this who are supposed to represent their constituents. The targeting of youth via some of these changes including the punishment of those who are out of work is so that they’re suppressed.... sounding familiar? There will never be a perfection, only a balance to maintain this and without will cause violence and social unrest. So again, the question is.. how do we resolve this?

My Thoughts: Creatively (in context to Abyss Walker)

Human locomotion isn’t going too bad but the rig I want to use, I haven’t tried yet, but it’s pretty straight forward, although im in two minds whether to do a 2d animation too. Glad I can help!

Hiya, I still don’t mind helping in the animation department. If you can export your file so I can use it in maya, I’ll be able to help animate it :D.