Great Books #2: Homer and the Invention of the Human

So together we've read the first half of the Iliad and today I gave you an assignment, right? So I have three questions for you guys about Achilles. The first question is, imagine yourself as Achilles.

How are you similar? What experience in your life is very similar to that of Achilles? And you said that it is almost a mirror to you, where you love playing soccer but one day you felt humiliated so you stopped playing soccer and that tore at your heart. Okay. And your phrase was pride, and that shows that by reading the Iliad, it gives you tremendous insight into yourself as well as the nature of the human heart, where arrogance and insecurity are two sides of the same coin, right? They're bundled together.

Okay. Another question is, imagine Achilles' childhood, and you said that Achilles when he was young was probably very rebellious, very imaginative, and that's true. Okay, he's always testing boundaries. He has a very vivid imagination. And then the last question is, imagine Achilles today. What would he be doing? Okay. And here the answer is very interesting. The answer is that he's probably trying to be an Olympic athlete. Okay. So the obvious answer would be he's trying to be a soldier because he loves war. But what you recognize is that no.

What Achilles really wants is to stand out and be admired by everyone. He wants to be famous. And so it makes more sense to be an Olympic athlete than it does to be a soldier. But you also recognize that being an Olympic athlete has a lot of restrictions because you need coaches, you need sponsors, you need to follow a certain regimen, and Achilles is a very independent-minded person and so he would rebel against all this authority, all the structure, all this conformity, and so he would probably fail in today's society. Okay.

So, the entire point of this exercise is to show you that what a great book does is excite your It helps your imagination peer deeply into your own human heart and see how complicated, how complex, how dark it is. It also allows you to imagine Achilles as a whole person. You don't know him. You've never met Achilles. And Achilles is honestly a fictional character. He never existed, but he's real to you. So that you're able to imagine his past, his childhood, and you're able to experience what he experienced.

What's even more powerful is that you're able to imagine Achilles into our world and see him as a living and breathing human being. So that's what a great book is. A great book is composed of characters that are real to you and make the world more real to you. They excite your imagination, which allows you to think much more deeply into yourself as well as more imaginatively understand the world around you. Okay. So now the question then is how does this happen? What are the mechanisms behind all this? Okay, so there was a very famous American literary critic named Harold Bloom.

He was at Yale. He actually taught at Yale when I was there. I studied English literature at Yale and I actually sat in on a class of his. Okay. But he is considered the most famous American literary critic. And here in his explanation for what a great book is, what is a great book? A great book is something that helps us become human.

So what he means by that is in a great book the characters are different because the characters are able to hear themselves speak. Okay. Hear yourself. Okay, those are his words. What does it mean to hear yourself speak? It means that as I'm speaking to you, there's also a part of me that steps back and analyzes what I say. Okay? It has to make sense to me. It has to make sense to you. And we call this Okay. To be human means to be conscious. But to be conscious is ultimately an act of imagination because while you're speaking, you have to step back.

Okay? We actually call this dissociation. You have to dissociate. Meaning basically that as you are speaking, as you are in this world, a part of you, almost like a ghost, steps away and observes the entire scene. And not only am I imagining myself speaking, but I'm also imagining what is happening inside your mind, your heart as I'm speaking, my effect on you. Okay? Right? So let's look at how this applies to the Iliad.

So, you have to give the girl back." And Agamemnon says, "Sure, I'll give her back, but now I want your girl in return." Okay. And it starts the main conflict of the Iliad. What's interesting is how conscious they are. Okay.

What's happening is that this is a war and in the war council the Greek generals get together and decide on and so as Agamemnon is speaking, if you observe his speech, he's doing three things at once. Right. The first and most important thing is that he's responding to Achilles, right? Achilles says you have to give the girl back and he says fine, I'll give the girl back, but in return I want your girl. So that's a response to Achilles. He feels as though Achilles made him lose face. So now he wants to make Achilles lose face as well.

Okay. But also what's important is that Agamemnon is considering how others are perceiving the interaction. Right? Why does Agamemnon require or demand Achilles' girlfriend? Because Agamemnon does not want to lose face amongst the others. Okay? So he recognizes that if he just says to Achilles, you know what, Achilles, you're right, he would lose face amongst the other generals. He would lose respect. And in this world, if no one respects you, you could get killed. Okay, these people are gangsters. So he recognizes that in order to save face, I must now demand something from Achilles to show that I am his superior.

Okay, he's so conscious of that as well. But also at the same time he's going to step back, okay, and he's going to be conscious of his own words to make sure that his words together make sense, that for him it is coherent. Okay. And so what he says to Achilles is, why am I doing this? Because I love my girlfriend. Okay. You stole from me what I, who I love, and therefore I must enact a vengeance on you. Okay. So you see how coherent all this is that he is saying to Achilles to ensure that you understand that I'm your superior, I'm going to take what you most prize.

And then he's thinking about the reaction of the others to make sure that they understand that he's still the top boss. But he's also in his head ensuring that what he says is coherent in itself, okay? That what he's doing has a rationale. The rationale is because I love her. Because you're stealing from me. My goodness, love. I love her more than my own wife, Clytemnestra. Okay. So you can see how coherent all this is, and this is amazing if you think about it, right? And this is what makes Agamemnon a real character to us. All right, but the other thing is that Achilles behaves the same way, okay? He is alive in the scene. He is listening to Agamemnon and his response is this: why are you stealing from me what is rightfully mine, Agamemnon? I came to Troy not because I hate the Trojans.

I have nothing against the Trojans. I came to Troy because you ordered me to come to Troy. And so I'm risking my life for you. You gain most of the treasure. You gain most of the profit from this war. I take a little bit and now you're stealing that little bit from me as well. Okay. So why is Achilles saying this? Achilles is saying this as a response to Agamemnon, but he's also saying this in order to win sympathy from the others as well, right? And he's also doing this because he's of who he is.

Okay? They're trying, it's a battle of world views. Okay? World view. What they're really trying to do is, through their speeches, they're trying to control reality. Okay? Through their speeches. They're trying to impose their reality on others. And that's why this is such a violent scene between the two. Okay. And then what happens, which is even more amazing, is that again Agamemnon hears Achilles speak and then what he does is that he responds to Achilles using his own memory and experience. Okay. And what he says to Achilles is, "Achilles, you say that you came here to fight for me.

But we all know that you are vain. You're a narcissist. You're an You came here to win glory for yourself. You're just using me as an excuse, as a pretext, in order to win glory on the shores of Troy. That's why you really came. So don't give me this crap about you making all these sacrifices for me. You can't make sacrifices for others because you're a selfish Okay? And then Achilles' response is, fine. If you do that, then I won't fight for you anymore. So you can see how real this is.

Okay? And again what's amazing is that this all comes in the mind of one person, Homer the poet. Okay. So imagine this, where as I'm speaking to you, I'm able to mentally lift off and observe the entire class, where not only am I hearing myself speak, okay? And I'm measuring and observing the effect of my words, but I'm also able to go into your mind one by one and think about how my words are changing your reality, how they're impacting your emotions, how they're impacting your memory, and think about their impact on you and how they will guide your behavior and actions tomorrow, 10 years from now.

Okay? But then what's even more amazing is that as this is happening, Nestor, right, Nestor, who is one of the older generals, he comes into this scene and he tries to reconcile Agamemnon and Achilles. Okay. So, not only do the two main characters have a life of their own, but the observers have a life of their own as well.

He's a hero. And Agamemnon is trying to get everyone to believe that Achilles is just a selfish Okay? And that's what leads them to behave the way they do, including suicidal behavior. Because remember, as you read, Hector and the Trojans are coming to burn down the ships of the Greeks. Okay? If they do that, every single Greek will be killed by the Trojans. And even at this point in time, both Agamemnon and Achilles refuse to give up their narrative. Okay? They insist they're right. So that when Odysseus comes to Achilles and begs Achilles, please come back and join us.

We'll give you all the money in the world. Agamemnon has promised his daughter to you. We'll give you all of Troy after we conquer Troy. And Achilles says, "No, no, no, no. I want the man to come and apologize. If he's not willing to come and apologize to me, then screw all of Okay. So, you can see how human and how real this is. And this is important for us because now we're able to step back and observe as well as others. We have greater imagination. We have greater empathy. We have greater curiosity.

Okay? And that's the power of a great book. And this is how the Iliad created the greatest civilization on earth in history, the Greek civilization. Okay. All right. So any questions before I move on about Okay. Now what I want to discuss is, how did Homer do this? Because this is a great mystery that has confused scholars for centuries. We all know the Iliad is one of the greatest books ever composed, but we don't know who Homer is and we don't know how he did this. There are some who speculated that Homer was many people.

Okay. So there's confusion as to who Homer is. The Greeks themselves called Homer the teacher and they considered him the father of their civilization. So we know that Homer was a real person but we know almost nothing about him. Okay. So what I'm going to do now is speculate as to how he was able to do all this. Okay. How was one human mind able to construct an entire universe with real people by All right. So to understand this let's discuss how identity, how personality, how consciousness is created.

Okay. So basically what happens is that we have experiences. Okay. And these experiences become short-term memory. And then what happens is that our brains will filter these memories into emotions. Okay, basically you will index your experiences according to their emotional strength or value. Okay, so happy, sad, angry, whatever. Okay. All right. So in other words, something really important for you to understand is that your memories are your emotions.

Memories that create emotions in you will come into you and help create your identity. But memories that have no emotions, you will never remember. You'll just throw them out. Okay? And then together these memories will create your Okay? And different combinations of these memories will create different identities. The reason why is that different memories are indexed to different locations. Okay? So your identity in a school will be different from your identity at home or your identity when you go to America. Okay? Because you need different identities to navigate the different landscapes.

Okay, does that make sense? And together this will create your world view. Your world view is just your identity, who you are, how you perceive the world, how you perceive yourself, and this helps you make decisions. This helps you navigate social relationships. And this determines how you behave. Okay. Does this make sense, right? Okay. All right. So this is basically the way that we understand how our personality develops. But there are sort of problems with this understanding. Okay. The first major problem with this is the sorting Okay.

Basically, why do we respond to different experiences with different emotions? It doesn't make sense. So, you can have the same but you can respond with different emotions. Okay? So, you might get a 50 on a test. Some of you will be really sad, but some of you will be really happy, like, "Wow, I thought I was going to get 10%." Now, I got 50%. Okay? All right. Some of you are glass half empty. Some of you are glass half full.

That determines how we perceive the world. But the question then is where does this personality come from? Why are some people optimistic? Why are some people pessimistic? And people are born like that. And your response could be, well, it's just genetic because both your parents are optimistic. So you're optimistic. Both your parents are pessimistic. Okay. Now you think about your parents and ask yourself, does your personality come from your parents? And the answer is it doesn't. Okay, the answer is that you're actually different from your parents.

I have three kids. I know this because all three of my kids are different from both my wife and myself. Okay. So the question is where does this personality come from? That's question number one. We don't know the answer. Question number two, which is more problematic, is okay, we know how this process works, but where are the memories stored inside the brain? Right, we know how this works psychologically, but the question then is where in the brain does this happen, and the answer is we don't know. We don't No, we know where in the brain breathing happens.

We know in the brain where language acquisition happens, but we don't know in the brain where memories are formed and stored and accessed. We don't know. That's really weird, guys.

Okay. All right. So, that's problem number two. Storage of memories. Okay. And then question number three is Okay. Or theory of mind. This is really theory, but it doesn't really help us explain how empathy works, right? It doesn't really help us understand how we're able to perceive the emotions of others. Now, you can say, well, it's because we have these different identities and so we just look at our own identity, but that doesn't really help us understand what's going on. Okay, so we have these three major problems created by modern psychology.

Okay, the first is where does our personality come from? Because our personality is our filter, right? Our personality determines how we perceive the world emotionally. Second problem is where does this all happen inside the brain? We don't know. And the third problem is empathy. Okay. How are we able to perceive into the emotions of All right. Okay. And we don't know. So I'm going to propose a theory to you today. Okay. Which goes back to last Okay, imagine this. Imagine that we are composed essentially of two selves. Okay, two selves.

There is the body and the body comes materially, right? Okay, we know that. We know that through evolution. But then our consciousness comes from our interactions with the universe. Okay, so our brain, it's not a storage facility. It's an antenna for the vibrations of the universe. Okay? And we call this consciousness.

And remember last class we discussed how this consciousness, the universe is conscious, right? And there are infinite to this consciousness. And this is where our memories are stored. So a very simple analogy is, think about the internet, right? You have a computer, you have a laptop and some memory is stored on the laptop but most of it is actually stored in the cloud, and how the computer works is by interacting with the internet, your computer becomes more conscious. Okay, does that make sense? Same thing here, where if you just use the human brain and just assume that everything comes from the human brain, nothing makes sense.

But if you assume that the human brain is merely an antenna to the universal consciousness, it makes a lot more sense. Okay. And not only that, but by imagination, by consciousness, we're able to implant ourselves into the universe. Okay? And different implant themselves in different wavelengths, different dimensions. Okay? Does that make sense? So the combination of your emotions now leads to a unique imprint in the universe.

And different personalities will obviously have the same imprint in the universe. And we call this archetypes. Archetypes. This is from Carl Jung, who is a Swiss psychologist. Okay. Carl Jung. The word he uses, archetypes. They're different personalities and they are accessing the same parts of the universe and so they behave the same. That's why certain people look alike. Okay. If you're an evil person, you have a certain look to your face, right? If you're a good person, you have a certain look to your face. Okay? If you're clever, you have a certain look.

Okay? So, archetypes. And so, what's happening is that what Homer is doing is that he's opened his mind to the universe and therefore he's able to access all archetypes. Okay? We all do this for empathy, but Homer's able to do this at a greater level than everyone else. Okay? And then he's able to transplant these archetypes into the world of the Iliad. And that's how he's able to create what he does. A word we have for these people is prophets, right? What are prophets? Prophets are those who bring the truth.

Different culture, different time, but the Iliad is able to speak directly to you as a Chinese person living in China in the 21st century. Not only that, but you're able to imagine Achilles as yourself.

So if we assume that the universe is conscious and it is infinite and eternal and there are archetypes that exist within this universe that Homer is able to draw on, then that makes sense now. Okay, this is both spaceless and timeless. This consciousness, right? Is this clear, you guys?

Because if this is not true, then you have to answer the question, how was Homer able to do this? Right? How was he able to construct characters like Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon that are so real that they feel alive to us? That they're so real that we can hear them speak to themselves. So real that they themselves can hear themselves speak to others.

Any questions? Ask a question. Make sure you understand this theory. Okay. This is actually a very complex theory. Yeah, Yeah, just speak.

So the word prophet doesn't actually mean someone who predicts the future. Okay. The word prophet actually means someone who speaks the Speaks truth. Okay. Because throughout most of human history, when you say someone's a prophet and he speaks truth, what you're really saying is that he's speaking the word of God, right? Because what is truth? Truth is the universe, which is God. So when you speak truth, you're speaking the universe. And what is the universe? The universe is past, present, and future all together. It is beyond space and beyond time.

So when you speak the truth, the truth is what has happened, what is happening now, and what will happen in the future. Okay? So the way that you test his words is see if it happens. Right? And a lot of this truth is this moral truth where if you do evil onto others, evil will come onto you. Okay? So the story of Achilles, right? Achilles is stuck in the situation where he wants Agamemnon to apologize so that he can go fight the Trojans. Agamemnon refuses to apologize.

So Achilles, what does he do? Well, he sacrifices Patroclus, right? It's the death of Patroclus that enables Achilles to go fight the Trojans. So he's done evil onto Patroclus. And because he's done that, evil will come onto Achilles.

So yeah, so we think prophets means speaking the future, but it's really speaking the truth. Okay. Because truth is eternal. If you do evil onto others, then evil will have to come onto you. So it's both a prediction as well as a moral judgment. Okay? Does that make sense? And so the prophet, the poet, the teacher, again the same idea, where why is the person a poet? Because how do you know it's truth? You know it's truth because it's beautiful. Because it speaks to you. Okay? Do you understand?

So when Homer is going around, because this is an illiterate culture, right? No, there's no writing going on. So what he's doing is he's going to different places, he's telling the story of the Iliad. He's speaking and as he's speaking it's like music to the listeners. It's beautiful. It's poetry but it's beautiful because it's also truthful. Okay. Because they feel as though Achilles is a real person with real emotions and then Achilles comes and helps them better understand themselves. Okay. So that's the poet. The teacher is like, okay, how do you understand yourself?

You understand yourself by understanding the Iliad. Okay, by understanding the motivations, the emotions of these individuals, you can better understand yourself. And once you do that, once you're able to hear yourself speak, once you're able to have more consciousness, then that gives birth to civilization. Okay? Because not only are you able to imagine but you're able to imagine with other people as well. So if you look at Greek culture, whether it's Plato, whether it's Thucydides, whether it's Aeschylus, okay, these are the greatest thinkers, greatest intellectuals of Greek civilization, they're all derivative of Homer. Okay, they're all operating within Homer's universe and working off that universe. Okay, but their applications are different. So for example Thucydides, what he does is that he writes in a very Homeric way in that his characters are always giving speeches.

The difference of course is that Thucydides is writing about real people, real events whereas Homer, he's just writing about people. He's singing about people of his imagination that are part of the Greek cultural landscape. Okay. Does that make sense?

Okay. All right. So in literature, prediction and truth are the same thing, right? If you're going to speak truth, you can predict the future, right? Because that's what truth is. Truth is eternal. Past, present, and future collide together. They converge on truth. All right. Any more questions?

Okay. So, we have up to book 16 for Friday. Okay.