Odysseus and Odin (Office Hours 70)

[00:00:00]What is the relationship between Odysius and Odin? Hello and welcome to office hours where we dive into your fantastic questions and Ian has brought another one. Ian writes, "You describe Odysius as having a particular mind that separates him from his men and is the reason why he is able to return home.

[00:00:23]The term you use is noose, which describes his adaptive understanding of people and as the faculty that holds his memory of home. This theme reminds me of Odin's ravens hugan and munin where hugan or huger represents thought or mind while moon or muna represents memory. Both Otto Ron and Miguel Serrano place extraordinary emphasis on remembrance as the means of preserving one's orientation and identity in a world of illusion and forgetfulness.

[00:00:55]We can see this concern in the poetic eta grimness small 20 where Odin says, "I fear hugan that he may not yet return. Uh yet I fear more for moonin."

[00:01:06]Do you think Odin's greater concern for moonin memory suggests that memory is ultimately more fundamental than thought? It seems we may lose our mind and can still recover, but if we lose our memory of home, there is no return back from our journey. Do you think this is the deeper reason Odysius succeeds while his men ultimately fail?

[00:01:31]I mean, this is why I love the Odyssey and a lot of these mythic stories so much. there there's not just deep overlay and and while these stories date back to the 9th century BC and detail things from the 11th or 12th century BC um they draw forward themes that we see popping up in other places from protoindo-uropean mythology elsewhere which points to thematic origins far beyond the 12th century BC back to like you know 3,500 BC maybe maybe further you know this is this is deep deep stuff um that we're talking about here um and there are in this particular question and and the similarities between Odin and Odysius in uh their mind and their mental capacities and the components of this mind there are theory of mind embed ideas embedded in the the imagery that is being used to describe this.

[00:02:40]So um let me start with the the basics with Odysius um and the qualities of NOS that are uh that are present. We can break it down into two components to sort of match Odin's ravens. Um there is the mental connection aspect of nose which includes recognition like Odicius's ability to see um other people and to understand them to perceive when someone is a god perhaps or um to be aware of his un of his own not knowing. That's um that's an aspect of recognition um related but not quite identical is understanding um understanding [clears throat] other people and and perhaps related to this understanding himself. Perhaps Odicius is a protoscratic figure in this self understanding um which is also a part of mental connection. Mental connection is not just connection with other people. It's connection with yourself across the hemispheres.

[00:03:48]consciousness.

[00:03:49]Conscious is literally if you if you go into the etmology, it means like self-communication.

[00:03:55]It it is connection with yourself and and stitching together a whole out of the parts of you.

[00:04:05]Um and finally, I would put remembering in the mental connection part. Uh it is Odicius's as Ian points out is his memory of home that maintains that strong connection with Penelopey and Tmicus and Lertes and Ithaca in general and so forth. Um and that's of course different than recognition or understanding, but it's all but they're all tied together in this theme of mental connection.

[00:04:33]But also aside from mental connection, there's a skill component of NOS uh which allows Odysius to appeal to people and in some cases to use people in an instrumental manner. Um this is thematically connected to his craftsmanship, his ability to make beds and boats and Trojan horses and um to to design cutting strategys and and things like that. But uh it's not that that skill as a carpenter is not the same as his skill as a rhetoric. Although his skill in both of those signify a quality of mind. So all of these dimensions are implied in or connected with or maybe contained by this idea of nose. Um and we can think of the mental connection aspect as being like uh moonin a memory and the skill aspect thought as being like hugan right the the ravens they go and they go together as a pair although we can separate them conceptually and this leads us to Odin fearing the loss of his memory and there's there's another question there about like why is he worried about them not coming back [laughter] there's a sort divine madness connection connected to uh Odin in general, an ecstatic um intoxication that is not the same as drunkenness uh connected with Odin that we see in Dianisis in the Greek tradition uh although that's more explicitly wine um but we see with the poets in general this is Socrates charge they are not wise but are rather inspired D they are filled with an intoxicating spirit um that leads them to say these things and of course the divine madness is what is connected with poetry in the Norse tradition. So there's a lot of interesting parallels there with the loss of mind and memory.

[00:06:45]Uh Odysius is of course himself not a poet. He's the subject of poetry but he is a skilled rhetoric.

[00:06:53]Um, but I think it is worth dwelling for a moment on the connections between Odysius and Odin that extend beyond their mental dimensions. They are, for instance, and in no particular order, they are both wandering kings in disguise.

[00:07:15]The king in disguise is a very interesting um archetype that I have actually been independently exploring.

[00:07:22]Um apart from all this there's there's a a project in the works that will hopefully come to fruition sometime next next year relating to this um but they are both wandering kings in disguise and and archetypal exemplars of that archetype. by no means the only one. You can point to Gilgamesh in some ways. You can point to Richard the Linheart in uh the Robin Hood stories after he comes back from the Crusades. He's in, you know, there's lots of examples of kings in disguise.

[00:07:55]Um but Odysius and Odin are sort of um archetypal roots of that and the sort of sources of that. Uh both Odicius and Odin are famous for their suffering. They suffer much and um this suffering seems to be connected with wisdom and excelling in language skills. Poetry in Odin's case, Odysius, it's it's his ability to tell stories and speak and and so forth. Um, neither of them are straightforward honest truth tellers. They do speak truths, but they also tell untruths occasionally. They both variously lie when it is necessary.

[00:08:52]And they variously inspire, reward, and kill men.

[00:08:57]um sort of an odd one. They both have unusual boar connections if you go into uh you know some of the um some some of the animal encounters they have. Um but maybe most importantly and most interestingly both of them seem to bear a very unusual relation to the underworld. Uh Odin is of course a psychop and Odin is or Odysius is a is a pilgrim to the underworld. He goes to the underworld to converse with the dead with Tyreseius in particular um the as a a traveler back and forth between these worlds.

[00:09:41]Now of course I don't mean to make a onetoone comparison. There are also differences. Um you know one is divine, the other is not. Uh there are other animal connections involved. Of course, Odin is is very connected with um wolves. Uh there's a great book uh by Chris Kershaw called the oneeyed god that talks talks about this. Um there are differences in outcomes which we'll get to. Odin is sort of doomed whereas Odysius sort of succeeds. Um for Odicius death is sort of the desired outcome whereas for Odin it's this tragic thing. Um they have differences in their families and differences in their stories. Um but there is nonetheless a similarity in character and a similarity in some of their archetypal features that might warrant further analysis that might that might motivate a uh an inspired investigator to do some digging into the language. um and possibly a common protoindo-uropean archetypal origin to both.

[00:10:53]But that's an aside to the question, is memory more fundamental than thought?

[00:11:01]Um the short answer is yes. It's it's true for Odysius. Um and it's true for Odin, as he himself tells us. Uh and but we can support what is told to us by myth which as Tom Bingch recently pointed out is um myth is not true because it happened. Myth is true because it is always happening which is different. Uh and I think this aspect of myth conveys a truth that is always happening. Memory is always more important than than thought. Um and we can understand this uh by thinking about logic as as a sort of starting point. Um logic for those of you who don't know is the art of coherence. Basically what statements are tautologically true which is to say logically true within a given set of axiomatic constraints. Logic is simply this it's not the art it's a science really of if we have these initial axioms these assumptions then there are certain rules that other statements follow from from these from these initial axioms. If you don't have those initial pre-logical axioms, you can't do logic and logic can't get you to those axioms. So following this analogy, doing the logic is equivalent to thought. It's equivalent to thinking.

[00:12:52]It's the application, the synthesis of what you know to new circumstances. How do I act? what what's my strategy? What am I going to do u based on what I know?

[00:13:05]But you can't do that without the axioms. And you can't think in the same way without some initial clay to work with. And your memory, what you have experienced and what you remember from that memory is that clay.

[00:13:21]That is the axioms.

[00:13:23]You can have memory without thought and you can you know at least function thoughtlessly uh with memory but but thought without thought I mean but you can't think without memory. Thought without memory contra Emanuel Kant has a priori notions of of logic. It's a non-starter.

[00:13:48]You can't think without memory. Um so the the short answer is yes. Uh thought memory is more fundamental than thought.

[00:13:59]The long answer is also yes. Um there is in addition to the functionality of the one of the of the one versus the other. Um there's a an intrinsic versus exttrinsic distinction.

[00:14:14]um the connections we have with other people, the the memories we have, they can be instrumental, but they also have an intrinsic value. They're they're they're good for themselves. Um our connections to other people are valuable for their own sake and not just as tools to accomplish some other ends, although we can also do that. Um, instrumentality which is to say thought is not like that. Instrumentality has exttrinsic value. It is a means to some other end. Not just definitionally, which it also is, but experientially. We don't experience um instrumentality in that way except maybe in a very nichian sense of like feeling our own power increase which which is real too but even that is desirable even in niche's own telling in the hopes that we might harm our enemies and benefit our friends. Nothing makes you feel more powerful than being able to help someone you like. It's it's a wonderful feeling. It's it's one of the best feelings of power out there. Um and if you can't connect with other people, oh, what's the point of all that power?

[00:15:37]You know, it it almost doesn't even feel real if you can't connect with other people in that way. So I think even aside from the the logical the analogy of logic um the intrinsic value of memory versus the exttrinsic value of thought makes memory more fundamental not just at a uh neurological and functional level but at a value level at a as a as a matter of priority.

[00:16:08]Um cuz you know without that what what's even the value of getting home.

[00:16:14]Um now the one asterisk here that makes this interesting and and maybe which separates Odicius from Odin is the question of forgetting.

[00:16:30]Is forgetting some things necessary for perhaps the remembrance of others or for moving on or for accomplishing other things? Very possibly. Very possibly. Um there is an idea of the value of forgetfulness present in the character of Odysius. And we see this really at the end of the story where um you know after Odicius has slain the suitors, the suitor's parents are um quite upset obviously because their sons just got killed. uh and they band together and all the parents all the fathers of the 108 suitors um rally together and they're going to go fight Odysius and Odysius and Tmicus and Lertes and like a few other people are about to fight a much larger crowd. Um, not all of the suitors parents showed up though because they had a conversation and many of them thought we are better off forgetting.

[00:17:37]We are better off forgetting what Odicius did to our sons. And the word for forgetting in this case uh if I'm not mistaken, if I'm remembering it correctly is amnestia.

[00:17:55]The the prefix ah as in not as in like atheist or um you know altha and uh ness which is like memory and amnestia is of course where we get the word amnesty from. We're your crime is being forgotten in a formal ritualistic dare we say magical manner. That's what amnesty is. Um so some of the suitor's parents and I believe it was like 50/50 um voted in favor of amnesty for Odysius.

[00:18:35]Um, Odysius himself has to let go of and forget many aspects of his warrior identity, even including his name. um sort of in the uh in the cave of Polyphimis, the Cyclops, the the the hulking manifestation of heroism. Uh which promises immortalization of your name, of your story, adding your story to his collection of many stories. Um but he's going to kill you. He's going to suck your head off and uh throw your lifeless body to the ground. and it's pretty pretty gory stuff. Um, and Odysius becomes nobody in the face of that. It's it's a very clever joke and pun, but and uh a clever trick, but it is also very symbolically heavy. Um, and it's a forgetfulness. And as one of my friends um there's a military special forces guy who who found a lot of value in the story of Odysius said of his own homecoming, you have to forget a lot of your military identity in coming home and returning to civilian life. And what happens to Odysius is he's stripped away of his name. He's stripped away of all the loot he got from Troy. He's stripped away of his men, his boats, even his clothes. He washes up on the shores of the fashions naked and just completely uh stripped away of his martial identity and he has to reconstruct this. He has to in some ways reconstruct his memory and that is actually a profound uh point about the nature of memory itself. If you read about the psychology of memory a lot of memory theory is memory is not like a file system where you just file things away and then you pull them out when you need them. It is the act of pulling retrieving memories is a lot more reconstructive than it is retrieving and that's a a very it's a very concerning thing I think for people who put a lot of epistemic value in their memories. It's it's it's really unnerving just how easy it is to manipulate memories. It's but it's like one of the first things you learn in like a psychology 101 class and you read these people like Lee Stroel talking about the the veracity and and the gold standard of uh you know eyewitness testimony in court trials. You're like that is the opposite of the truth.

[00:21:36]People's memories are terrible.

[00:21:42]But reconstructed as they are, we still can't operate without them. We still can't operate without um without those those initial axioms. We can't operate without moon and you know we we're lost without him.

[00:22:02]So, um, what we see to return to forgetting a little bit in Odysius in in his will to forgetfulness of his own identity and in the the people of Ithaca, his the amnesty that he eventually um achieves with the help of Athena. We have a kind of will to peace that is achieved by selective forgetfulness.

[00:22:29]this amnesty um and this over that this success in peace is achieved by Odysius's own overcoming of heroism.

[00:22:43]That is not Odin. Odin does not overcome heroism. He is the leader of the dead in the Wild Hunt. He is the leader of the heroes who are called the einheriar in um Norse mythology. And Odin himself ultimately succumbs in the great battle.

[00:23:02]He has a glorious death um to the great wolf in Ragnarok in the end of the cycle which is of course the beginning of the next cycle. Um and this this goes on endlessly. There is no there's no end to the ring. There's no end to the cycle and uh there's no end to the blood feud in the Odinic world. It never ends as Achilles says in in Troy Brad Pitt. When does it end? It never ends. Um and maybe memory is the difference.

[00:23:37]Maybe memory is the difference between Odin who never forgets and because he doesn't forget and refuses to forget the the cycle will repeat which is ironically the opposite of how many people think about it. Many people think uh those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it. But maybe uh remembering is itself the thing that gets keeps us locked in the in the cycles of reciprocal violence and the yearning for glory. The remembrance of past heroes causes us to want to compete with them and outdo them in their own standard. Um, so it's complicated and they both um, you know, it's not as if there isn't something to the idea of remembering the past so we can learn from it.

[00:24:33]But at the same time, perhaps remembering the past and focusing upon it also causes us to repeat it as well.

[00:24:41]And in fact, a limited degree and a selective kind of forgetfulness, if such a forgetfulness is possible, um is what allows us to change our course to escape the trap of heroic blood feuds um and to achieve peace and civilization even at the cost of some violence along the way. So, it's a it's a fantastic question and a an extraordinarily interesting uh connection between the these two grand and mysterious mythological characters. Um I hope I hope other people do who are who are more linguistically and um archaeologically versed than I am do look into this more because it is a fascinating connection.

[00:25:35]I know it can be tempting to be like, "Oh, they both start with OD. Therefore, there must be some etmological connection."

[00:25:42]Very likely not. Um, Odin means something like the ecstatic one uh or the the instigator or the inspire.

[00:25:49]Odysius, we don't really know what Odysius's name means. It doesn't seem to be a Greek name, which is intriguing.

[00:25:58]Um, the general working consensus theory is that it means something like the hated one, but we actually don't know that for sure. That's that's just a working hypothesis and it could come from something else and they might both derive from some common root perhaps um but very likely not. So anyways, thank you so much Ian for the extraordinarily good question. Um, which is not just mythology but also theory of mind and values in in in thought, memory, forgetfulness. Um, there's value in both. There's value in memory.

[00:26:36]There's necessity in memory um because we can't do anything without memory. But too much memory can also trap us. So, we have to we have to um walk that line between uh I'm going to overuse this so much, but the line between Caribus and Sila navigating that that that uh asymmetrical middle point between two extremes of we could think of Kuribdus as forgetfulness, you know, just complete oblivion. Um, whereas Sila is just the, you know, that pointed reminder of the loss along the way or something like that. I'm I'm stretching this on too long. Thank you so much for listening and take