The Tree of Life

I’ve been watching this video, and what I found interesting was when the narrator talks about how we are limited by the structures of our unconscious perception.

The narrator gives the example of walking down a street and taking in information around us and then forming that unconscious information into a conscious narrative about our experience. This is where I think it gets interesting in terms of cognitive functions. The narrator talks about how within a few weeks you’re unlikely to recall your experience of walking down a street. However, how we interpret that walk down the street would wildly differ depending on your cognitive function preferences. If you are a person who relies on kinaesthetic sensory functions like sight, smell, touch, hearing, in a few weeks you may recall something unusual you happened to notice on the street, a particular signpost or a piece of graffiti, the smell of a pub or stale beer in the air, you might overhear a conversation between a couple arguing. You might be a person who interprets the world through your values, so you might recall how that walk made you feel, because for example, you were going to meet a boyfriend or girlfriend in the knowledge that you had to have a difficult conversation, or you were nervous because you were on the way to a test. These are tangibles.

For an INTJ, the primary cognitive function is an unconscious perceiving one and then we try to make sense of that using extraverted thinking which is another abstract function. This differs from say, an ISTJ whose primary function entails them taking in information about their physical environment in a concrete literal fashion. As our primary function and secondary functions are abstract, in this instance we would likely have to rely on something triggering our inferior function, which is extraverted sensing, if we are to notice anything tangible at all in the environment. Then it would be down to the secondary abstract function, extraverted thinking, to interpret that information, and extraverted thinking being as it is, it isn’t inconceivable that the secondary function would disregard the information provided by the inferior function as being inconsequential and/or irrelevant. Thus, we may actually carry on walking down the street without effectively noting any specific details about this walk at all. Thus, even though it is likely that for the majority of the population they would be unlikely to particularly recall this walk a few weeks later, this is even more so the case for the INTJ. This is the problem we essentially run into as INTJ’s, when the secondary function doesn’t fully (if at all) engage with the inferior function, we may, for the most part essentially become disengaged from the physical world. We can be quick to disregard details and we are quick to shut out stimuli in the physical environment that may make us uncomfortable, so we can return to our thoughts and ideas, or our speculations about the future. Broadly speaking, the only time we would be likely to pay any sort of attention on this theoretical walk down the street is if introverted intuition was to register some kind of pattern, and even then we would be more concerned with deciphering the broader meaning of the pattern than the actual physical environment itself. Thus, you have the problem.

By the nature of our cognitive function stack, our relationship with the physical world can be an unhealthy one. As the INTJ is fundamentally operating at an unconscious level and the secondary function serves the primary function to provide interpretation, meaning and often for example, how that will impact upon the future, there isn’t a great deal of interest in what’s actually happening now. Generally, as a result, you will often find a lot of unhealthy behaviours in all of the intuitive dominant types, INFJ, ENFP and ENTP, such as smoking, drinking, drug use, poor diet, scattered appearance, this is by virtue of the fact that there is a separation between the dominant abstract function and the inferior sensory function which manages the persons interaction with the physical world or even the persons own physical body. You could in fact speculate that behaviours which by many types would be considered risky, unhealthy or even inappropriate might come about on some level due to a disconnect between the dominant abstract functions and the weak sensory function which manages the relationship with the physical world. This isn’t inconceivable, as for many intuitive dominant types, they may not even experience any sense of oneness with their own physical body. On a separate note, this relationship between cognitive functions and the relationship with the physical body and its various manifestations is one I would be interested to study. For example, I would theorise that the personality type most likely to experience transsexuality is the INFJ.

Although the extraverted intuitive has greater engagement and interest in the external world than the INTJ and INFJ, they will encounter similar problems in their actual relationship with the physical world again through the abstract nature of both their primary and secondary functions. For example, often ENFPs or ENTPs will have a certain clumsiness, although conversely that is through seeking meaning and understanding of the external world, which causes a detachment with the physical tangible experience, differing only from the INTJ or INFJ in the sense that for the INTJ or INFJ, their primary preoccupation is an introspective one. I would speculate that the reasons for risky and unhealthy behaviours in the intuitive introvert or the extraverted intuitive would be fundamentally diametrically opposite, although unerringly similar in terms of the manifestation.

Doctor Who – Season 11 – Ep 03 Review

Straight off the bat, I can honestly say that ‘Rosa’ manages to be, astonishingly, the most compelling, profound and yet disappointing episode of Doctor Who I can recall off the top of my head.

I can’t recall ever being so nervous before a particular episode as I was about this one. Doctor Who since its inception has had very few stories written by women. I haven’t fact checked myself here due to the hurried nature of writing this, but I believe ‘Rosa’ is the first to be written by a black woman, and also might be the first episode to have been written by a black person, full stop. I might be wrong about that, please correct me if I am. Regardless, with the scarcity of both black and female writers in the shows history, it was somewhat disappointing and unnerving to see Chris Chibnall taking a writing credit on this. A story about Rosa Parks and by virtue of that, racism,quite simply has to be unabashedly a black story and it should be the place of a ‘black’ story, and it is the place of a black person to tell it.

With that said, I am glad that this week we finally have a reason for Ryan and Yaz finally deliver an actual reason for being there and they have one of, if not, the deepest conversations in the history of Doctor Who on their respective experiences of racism. Conversely however, after two weeks of the reverse, where the sidekicks have done little beyond acting as functions to ask Jodie Whittaker to explain the plot, whilst Jodie Whittaker also carried the story, something akin to the opposite happens this week. The role The Doctor takes in this story is an uncomfortable one. Part of this is possibly down to Chibnall’s own characterisation of this Doctor where she takes a backseat and allows the story to build around her, whilst gradually taking control of the narrative, unlike say, the ‘heroic’ and charismatic Doctor played by David Tennant or Peter Capadi’s bolshy take on the character. The  limitation of the characterisation is shown pretty much from the off, when Ryan in trying to give a woman her glove back and is aggressively slapped in the face. The Doctor’s response here of ‘we don’t want any trouble’ just doesn’t cut it. It comes across as weak and actually as a form of moral cowardice. It’s certainly far removed from this:

From here, Rosa Parks fully enters the narrative, symbolically and literally as the seamstress who fixes things, as she takes the mantle and manages this particular incident. Thus, there’s actually little reason from here why this particular episode should even require The Doctor. As indicated by the title of the episode, Rosa, is the moral centre of the story – of course this being the role that is usually occupied by The Doctor.

The Doctor’s role in the narrative subsequently comes about through the ‘villain of the week,’ which is actually an awkward fit for an episode such as this. This is a story that actually work better without The Doctor or this weeks villain who is a neutered, time travelling, racist criminal dressed like the Fonz.

This episode would and actually does work far better in the style of Russell T Davies’ ‘Midnight,’ where the villain is the irrational fears and prejudices of ordinary people. The villain it goes without saying is actually far less interesting than say the man who hits Ryan, the cop, or actually even any of the onlookers who enable the real horror at the heart of this, through their silence.

‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’ – Martin Luther King Jr.

Now we get to the problem: The Doctor’s role in this unintentionally tells us something interesting about the nature of racism. The reason we ultimately know of people like Rosa Parks today, is because too many white people were moral cowards and were afraid to stand up and say when something was fundamentally and horrifically wrong in the first place.

Suffice to say, I am disappointed that what this story is ultimately about is small changes that might have a significant effect on the future. The message here fundamentally states that the people who are oppressed can’t be saved right now, but perhaps some time in the future, if they’re lucky. Further to this, they are going to endure hard and difficult lives. This views small acts of rebellion on the whole as worthwhile forms of individual action. This isn’t actually a trivial point, and in itself it’s a story worth telling. However, the problem we ultimately have here, is that by telling a historical story such as this in a mostly straight forward literal sense, it’s at odds with the whole point of a show like Doctor Who. The point being that you can put the Doctor into any story and tell a better one, the problem with this and the limitation of doing a historical story in this manner is, it doesn’t do that. It’s not like this is a completely straight forward, purely factual historical either, is it? If you’re going to insert sci-fi tropes such as time travelling racist villains trying to subvert the arc of history into the story of Rosa Parks, then I’m sure as fuck going to rip this episode apart on this same basis for fundamentally failing to use the same kind of tropes which are very much at its disposal, and failing to deliver a better story and a better message, at the end of it.

‘Rosa’ tells a story, a compelling one, but it actually doesn’t tell the kind of story that Doctor Who really should be telling. As a piece of compelling television this is a success, it’s absolutely brilliant. As a Doctor Who story it’s an absolute disaster. The story Doctor Who should be telling isn’t one where the Doctor and her sidekicks essentially sit idly by at the end as a woman achieves a small moral victory, then spends the rest of her life enduring difficulties and at best, just getting by. Again, the story of Rosa Parks is a story that SHOULD be told, but where this episode fails, and this is exclusively a failure in terms doing Rosa Parks as a Doctor Who story in this manner, is that Doctor Who SHOULD be about tearing down the very fucking fabric of a society like this and replacing it with a better one. The problem is that this is EXACTLY what the show does in pretty much every single episode, when it’s NOT dealing with real life historical figures/stories, but now we actually do have a story with real world significance, where the Doctor SHOULD be ripping this whole society apart and again, it’s far from being outside of the possibilities of the show, even in an episode about a historical figure, to demonstratively do this. Instead, what we end up with is what I’ve described above. Yes, achieving small victories is important, however, in a show where you can by definition tell any story you want, this is almost unforgivable. Watching The Doctor, the supposed moral centre of the series being complicit with racists in order to achieve a small moral victory, and then sitting idly by as a historical black woman is arrested and then just acknowledging that she spends the rest of her mortal life suffering abject difficulties can be nothing other than a failure.

There is some important symbolism to the meteor at the end, but this seems less important with regards to the proceeding point.

The Mythology of Doctor Who

Doctor Who – Season 11 – Ep 02 Review

The Fall of Woman – Season 11 – Ep 01 Review

‘Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
Under one mantle sheltered ‘neath the hedge
In gloaming courtship? And, O God! today
He only knows he holds her;—but what part
Can life now take? She cries in her locked heart,—
‘Leave me—I do not know you—go away!’ 

‘Found’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

It’s December 5th 2015, the story is Hell Bent, and Steven Moffat subverts the entire historical narrative of Doctor Who to being about a woman who steals a TARDIS from Gallifrey and runs away. This is also the moment the often derided Moffat era for all intents and purposes ends, (the functional end was actually a week prior on November 28th 2015) and it is also the final dance for the often (unfairly) disliked Clara Oswald. Contrary to widely held belief, with the end of Clara’s arc, this is where the Jodie Whittaker era of Doctor Who actually begins.

This is probably a somewhat unpopular idea, but I’ve always thought the idea of basically just creating a new character who is at the very least the equal of the Doctor (Say, Clara), who stands on her own merits and having her run around having her own adventures is a far more interesting, inspiring and appealing idea than the prospect of a female Doctor (certainly one being penned by Chibnall). Which is not remotely to say I was against the idea of a female Doctor in terms of its significance and what that represents in terms with of the broader picture, just that I’ve been less than the inspired by how I’ve always imagined the actual execution of it will work out in practice.

If we consider Heaven Sent as the functional end of the Moffat era of Doctor Who, which it undoubtedly is, the December 5th 2015 episode Hell Bent thus stands on its own merits, as it isn’t so much Doctor Who as ‘Clara Who’ which is actually a line Moffat even squeezes in. At this point, I couldn’t help but think that I would have actually much preferred Doctor Who just to end at this point and instead watch an entirely new show about Clara and Me, than sit through season 10 and beyond.

It’s October 7th 2018. It is the debut of Jodie Whittaker, and the dawn of the Chibnall era.  It is difficult to reconcile the notion that in story terms this takes place moments after the end of ‘Twice Upon a Time.’ Everything is wildly different. It’s a much darker and serious place. Quite literally, as Jodie Whittaker eventually falls through the roof of a train with no power, unscathed. She immediately sets about defining herself by what she does rather than the kind of person she would like to be. She is straight into general problem solving and doing Doctor stuff rather than narcissistic navel gazing over such matters as whether she is, ‘a good man.’ This is a welcome shift. What she does is her identity. Thus she describes the person who she is in functional terms, through how she feels, ‘Bit of adrenaline, dash of outrage, and a hint of panic.’ Or the brilliant, ‘Right now, I’m a stranger to myself. There’s echoes of who I was and a sort of call towards who I am. And I have to hold my nerve and trust all these new instincts. Shape myself towards them. I’ll be fine. In the end. Hopefully. I have to be. Because you guys need help. ‘Cause there’s one thing I’m certain of, when people need help, I never refuse. Right. This is going to be fun!’ and by her actions and intentions when she gives her big speech, ‘Sorting out fair play across the universe.’ She’s also more empathetic than any previous itineration of the character. In contrast to David Tennant’s ‘I’m sorry I’m so so sorry’ catchphrase, her apologies are actually focused on specific things, starting with the touching ‘I’m sorry you had to see that’ and her thanks to Grace for attending to it. Suffice to say, while there’s nothing that is particularly great yet there are plenty of nice little moments here.

Jodie Whittaker’s first scene in this is an interesting one actually. As mentioned, she crash lands in to the carriage of a train. What’s fascinating about this is how the story makes play of the furore about The Doctor being a woman. At the end of the last episode after the regeneration, the TARDIS rejects her, it doesn’t recognise her as The Doctor. The TARDIS is of course fundamentally at the heart of the show and the TARDIS and The Doctor are actually inextricably linked. At this point, and this is beautifully meta, the show does not accept her as being The Doctor. So following this, she crash lands in a train carriage. Symbolically of course, the dark train carriage is the belly of the whale.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell says this about the belly of the whale:

‘It’s the descent into the dark… that’s a standard motif of going into the whale’s belly and coming out again.

The whale represents the personification, you might say, of all that is in the unconscious… The creature (..) would be the dynamism of the unconscious, which is dangerous and powerful and has to be controlled by consciousness.

The first stage in the hero adventure, when he starts off on adventure, is leaving the realm of light, which he controls and knows about. and moving toward the threshold. And it’s at the threshold that the monster of the abyss comes to meet him. And then there are two or three results: one, the hero is cut to pieces and descends into the abyss in fragments, to be resurrected; or he may kill the dragon power, as Siegfried does when he kills the dragon. But then he tastes the dragon blood, that is to say, he has to assimilate that power. And when Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood, he hears the song of nature; he has transcended his humanity, you know, and reassociated himself with the powers of nature, which are the powers of our life, from which our mind removes us.’

Fundamentally, this is the first step towards her becoming The Doctor. Suffice to say, she handles it brilliantly. Of course in terms of the historical context of the show, The Doctor isn’t actually The Doctor until he/she has the TARDIS and secondly, faces the Daleks. I wouldn’t actually be surprised if the latter surface in the special at Christmas, a few days after the end of the season. Holding off on both in terms of the narrative isn’t actually a bad move.

This is undoubtedly Chibnall’s best Doctor Who story which comes as a relief. Again, it’s not amazing, the beginning has some frankly odd build up, the pacing gets a little bit weird in places, but in fairness to Chibnall, praise is due for holding a narrative such as this together with out completely fucking it up. Suffice to say, putting together a story in this manner without it completely falling apart is actually more complex than it appears. It does what it is supposed to do and builds up anticipation for the next episode. Curiously, there are very few nods to past episodes beyond the cursory mention of Capaldi, however I did like one unintentional nod back to the original series: Rather than seducing the companions and getting them on board the TARDIS (as a side note, presumably the TARDIS will just show up at the start of the next episode, as time travelling without it just kind of cheapens the whole point of that aspect of the show) with the subsequent arc being something akin to self-actualisation, here, in the style of the original series, we have Jodie Whittaker effectively kidnap her group of sidekicks. That actually has a surprising amount of potential.

It’s still fairly unclear where this is all going, but again, this episode achieved what it set out to do.

Also, bonus points for Tim Shaw and the music and theme at the end.

Three stars.

Chimera

Last night I dreamed of a woman I know being swallowed at the waist by a large serpent, possibly a Basilisk. She was dismembered and her legs and torso were separated. After gathering the legs which were ostensibly spat out by the creature, I then performed surgery to reconnect her legs to her upper body.

This was not the sort of dream I usually have. I’m unable to recall the rest of it. I’ve spent the morning pondering this and trying to understand it.

In Kundalini yoga, the raw, static energy that supports all life, is often depicted as a serpent. Why a serpent? Snakes has been revered (and feared) for millenia as a powerful representation of life force or universal energy.

As it flows up the spine, Kundalini boosts the remaining five chakras along the way before igniting the crown, or 7th, chakra. Physical, emotional, and psychological symptoms are common during the process of Kundalini awakening, like sweating, nausea, and increased energy…

When energy flows uninterrupted, like a snake winding up the the spine, the chakra circuit is complete. Only then is there potential for transcending the physical plane to reach Enlightenment.

The lower half of the body is the physical dimension. The chakras of Kundalini yoga actually tie fairly neatly with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, which people in the West are more likely to be aware of.

Further to this, the separation of the legs from the torso seems to be representative of one half ‘standing still’ or being cast adrift from the rest of the self, while the upper half represents the spiritual and conscious elements. Thus, the notion of ‘putting someone back together’ can also be read as one of completion: bringing together the physical and spiritual, or alternatively, as the coming together of the outward and the inward: by which the legs represent that which carries us out into the World, while the upper part represents the heart, the soul, the brain, the psyche – or if you like, the inner World.

As mentioned at the start, the serpent was a Basilisk, which is a form of mythological chimera or a hybrid. There can be a sexual aspect to the serpent, however, a chimera (in the traditional sense) is the coming together of two often diametrically opposed creatures.