The Edgard Poe You Never Knew [Cynthia Chung RTF Lecture]

[theciakilledjfk]

As a person with lower back issues, it's painful just watching Cynthia hold that book.

[oldschoolska]

Actually beside fun, this is very interesting.

[oldschoolska]

Or even worse, what of my bumps... See, very fun.

[guillermocafe]

My elder brother, who was the family "polymath" insisted that there is only inductive & deductive reasoning. Now I understand he was, & probably still is, under a lifeong spell.

[jtzoltan]

This is an interesting lecture; I felt a tension throughout as I first waited for the reveal (which I correctly suspected) that the "peverse imp" was in fact the conscience (although I'm uncertain how it relates to the examples of rambling, procrastination and lingering on a precipice) and then finally waited for the tie-ing together of everything to Poe's critique of society and "the Poe you didn't know", which only came at last in the last couple of minutes!

I still want to hear more about it.. maybe I need to watch Mathew's preceding lecture to get a fuller picture. I also want some more on the significance of it as a third way of knowing beyond inductive and deductive reasoning. I think it means "some things we know because our conscience informs us through feelings, through ruminating on certain memories, fears, anxieties, thoughts, etc. by questions we might repress"... I wonder how closely it's related to intuition.

I'd like to know, again, how does it tie-in more broadly the the discourse of the Rising Tide Foundation? Is intuition and conscience imprinted on us by God in a sense? Is Poe speaking to how our society, the structures we find ourselves placed in provide reasons and doctrines to allow us to benefit ourselves and whatever harms we participate in, giving us rationalizations for doing so, while we ignore our inner conscience that tells us something is amiss? We might actually avoid seeking out lines of investigation, even that may be part of our duty of care, that might fully reveal that we do wrong and have established ourselves with respect and good remuneration in some industry/profession that does evil, even if well-disguised.

A good example of this... I recently found a YT channel of Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring who interviews people suffering from terrible long-term neurological injury from one or multiple psychiatric medicines they were put on. Many cases I've see, people were given these meds without any risk-benefit analysis, without explanation of the possible harms or side effects, without warnings of what not to do or take while on the meds. There are cases where they are given medicines of last resort to treat relatively minor disorders, given the much more dangerous of the medicines when a much safer alternative exists, or kept long-term on medicines for something that's most often transient. Anyway, Dr. Witt-Doerring and his wife (also a psychiatrist) speak about how both of them found in their residencies, it was not rare that the doctors they were shadowing would fail to notice that the particular manifestations of the so-called "worsening of the patients psychiatric symptoms" were actually a known side-effect of the meds they were given, and that the doctors increased the doses of said meds which very likely causing the worsening symptoms. If they tried to broach the subject with them, they were often pulled-rank on, repremanded, put in their place, etc. That's the tip of the ice burg with how these drugs can harm people, and it's not just benzos, but SSRIs, sleep meditations, antipsychotic drugs, ADHD meds, etc. they can produce very difficult to treat and long lasting problems in people, even for years after they discontinue them, yet the regulators, journals and many practioners seem to suppress this amd treat it like propaganda by conspiracy theorists... there's a lot of group-think.

[dezmondwhitney]

In the UK Poe has apparently been sidelined--out of mainstream awareness. At age 15, in school we read ''Murders On the Rue Morgue'' and that is it. Might some authors be hidden largely from the public and at the same time others strongly promoted even in C20th and C21st ? I do not know.

[dwebman]

Do you have a link to the previous lecture from Matthew on Poe?

[WmThomasSherman]

In stories like Tell-Tale Heart, Cask of the Amontillado, and Imp of the Perverse, I personally think Poe is rather ridiculing and making fun of the villain/criminal in his stories; that is the given character thinks they know better but is really a fool, and who evil (or "the devil") laughs at.