The Walter Benjamin Labyrinth Game

"Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know." ~Walter Benjamin

From my youth I have been fascinated by labyrinths. Perhaps this is what later led me to take an interest in the writings of Jorge Luis Borges after my first encounter with his story The Garden of Forking Paths, as did many other readers and writers who have encountered his brilliance.

When I first discovered the World Wide Web in 1994 it became apparent to me that in a certain sense it was like a gigantic, ever-expanding labyrinth. Most people look at pages upon pages of information, in visual form. But what I saw was a network of rooms, each hyperlinked to other rooms.

When I designed my first website in 1995 I constructed it along those lines, as a network of connected rooms. I mapped it out much like the board game Clue where there were hidden passages to take you from one corner to the other. Online, you do not see those passages, you only see the rooms.

For the fun of it, and to illustrate my idea, I built a labyrinth of sorts on my website. The way it worked was that you enter where it says "Enter" and that links to a next room and a next. It was a fairly simple construct, with occasional places along the journey to make a decision between one link or another. Hard to believe that this was twenty years ago. You can still visit it here.

This week I decided to use this labyrinth concept to make a game for readers of this blog. I call it The Walter Benjamin Labyrinth Game because of Michael J. Gilmour's The Gospel According To Bob Dylan, which I reviewed the other day.

Gilmour opens the preface of his book with the quote at the top of the page, which is intriguing in and of itself, an interesting start-point. Then for four pages he presents his premise that Walter Benjamin, a German philospher and essayist who died in 1940, and Bob Dylan have a lot in common. The theme is returned to in several places along the way and in greater depth around page 100.

All this led me to seek to learn more about Walter Benjamin.

My guess is that many you are unfamiliar with Walter Benjamin, so I thought a link to his Wikipedia page would be interesting. But as I considered this the idea emerged to turn this blog entry into another labyrinth, to make a game and see where it goes.

The game goes like this. Beginning at the Walter Benjamin Wikipedia page, find the correct "door" to the next "room" in this immense labyrinth. When you click on the Walter Benjamin hotlink below it will open another tab and you can return here to retrieve your next clue while working your way through over there. Work your way through the "labyrinth" by retrieving a new clue each time the next page opens.

After a day or so I will share a comment regarding the last clue, which also has to do with Borges, and labyrinths.  Have fun.

Walter Benjamin Hotlink

Clues
1. Major 19th century French poet. (Wait for the re-direct.)

2. His muse and onetime mistress. (There is a picture of her on the page.)

3. Her longtime lover was a Belgian tycoon

4. People who died the year he died.

5. The Royal Naval Officer whose last name begins with the letter A.

6. The ship he joined in 1804 had 38 guns.

7. In 1866 the Admiralty sold this ship for $2000 to this company....

8. ..that was founded by....

9. The country in South America where the man helped develop transportation systems.

10. The largest city in this country is....

11. This city formed a partner city relationship with what other city in 1997?

12. What famous author from this city is pictured on this page?

13. Where was he buried?

And your bonus question: What does this burial place have to do with Jorge Luis Borges? If you can answer that one, you're pretty darn good.

* * * *

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Celebrate it. Happy Pi Day!

A Pair of Mazes for You

The notion of labyrinths traces back to ancient mythology, but recurs throughout history. In essence, a labyrinth is a maze, a puzzle, a complicated route that leads to, or conceals, something.

Many writers have made reference to labyrinths in their work. Jorge Luis Borges was fascinated by the idea of labyrinths, which appear repeatedly in his short stories. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose was inspired by Borges in this fascination.

From ancient and medieval times to the present, labyrinths have had their appeal, as real structures to be built or as an idea. The mind itself is said to be a labyrinth. Numerous characters in literature, from Cervantes' Don Quixote onward, have become lost in the labyrinthine worlds of their imaginations.

One of Andre Gide's most fascinating works is his story Theseus, about the Athenian hero who navigated the labyrinth in Crete to slay the half-man, half-bull Minotaur aided by Ariadne's thread. It is an entertaining read, with unexpected twists, and comes with my highest recommendation.

Of course my first encounter with the Internet was somewhat akin to the notion of a labyrinth. If one considers each page a room, from which one must exit to enter another room, you can imagine the whole world wide web as a labyrinthine universe. You can lose yourself in it forever.

Based on this concept I created a small html-labyrinth when I built my personal website seventeen years ago. The Entrance is at the bottom of the page.

A question for you: If the Internet is a Labyrinth, then where is the Minotaur?

Finally, here below is a Maze that I drew this weekend as we sat around drawing together as a family. I must have spent hundreds of hours drawing mazes like this in my youth. It’s not as much fun though if you can’t get others to play the game… so take a minute to download this image and print it. Begin at the word START and see if you can reach the Red Dot at the END. Enjoy!

Download JPEG of maze, then Print.

EdNote: Except for the last paragraph and some minor editing along the way, this blog entry is a re-post of my blog entry of January 8, 2008. The maze is new.

Nietzsche’s Concept of Eternal Recurrence

"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

“Do you remember what you told me once? That every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.” ~ Tom Cruise as David Aames, Vanilla Sky

Some people consider Friedrich Nietzsche one of the most exciting philosophers of all time. Certainly his ideas have been influential and his writing dramatic. And whatever your take on his point of view, the themes he addresses are provoking enough to give us something to gnaw on and make us think. And in the end, to some extent, maybe that was all he intended in a world where people generally just went about their business and accepted the values of the culture they were immersed in.

The quote above addresses one of his original constructs, the idea of life being an eternal recurrence. Christian teaching is not alone in giving weight to the decisions of this life by indicating their significance with regard to eternal outcomes. Nietzsche, on the other hand, chooses to suggest our decisions in this life have weight because how we choose to live today will be replayed over and over again unto eternity.

It’s a very unusual perspective in some respects, a variant on reincarnation, which also has us returning indefinitely, but in differing capacities. Scholars have argued whether the idea is meant as a serious conjecture or a concept to make us more thoughtful about our behavior here and now.

I would suggest that Nietzsche’s sole intent with this concept of eternal recurrence was to get us plugged in to the significance of our acts. His was a brilliant mind, but as far as I am aware he does not offer a supporting argument for the notion proposed. It is a certainty that he understood that even if we ourselves were recurring, our circumstances would not be, for times change, culture changes, history is unfolding all around us.

This theme of eternal recurrence is echoed in Cameron Crowe’s film Vanilla Sky. Once one grasps the film’s premise, the viewer is like Theseus following Ariadne’s thread to find his way through the labyrinth. In the film, David Aames is unaware that he is experiencing this “eternal recurrence”, but only knows that something is terribly wrong. The climactic scene on the rooftop brings a number of historically significant philosophical questions to the surface.

Of Nietzsche, we know that his ideas went on to influence innumerable existential philosophers and lay the groundwork for postmodern explorers. He lived passionately, a philosopher whose roots were less grounded in reason (the dominant theme of the Rennaissance and modern rationalism) and drawn more from the Dionysian, the experiential and the irrational.

While living in Italy, Nietzsche had a nervous breakdown while witnessing a man beating a horse. Embracing the horse, whose suffering was more than he could bear, Nietzsche fell apart and spent the last ten years of his life in a broken state.

Nietzsche’s writings are challenging to put your mind around in part because he did not believe it necessary to have a systematic, rational viewpoint. More than once he declares his distrust of systematizers. In this regard he may have foreshadowed the postmodernists who do not find it necessary to be altogether consistent in their own views. He may have even suggested that atttempts to be consistent are a waste of time.

What matters, he asserted, is not getting everything figured out, but experiencing our lives as fully as possible and becoming all we’re meant to be. “The present moment is all, so let us make the best use of it and of ourselves.” With that I would agree; the truth is true wherever it is found.

The two photos on this page are of the house where Nietzche lived in Turin, at via Carlo Albierto 6, when he had his nervous breakdown and of the plaque stating that Nietzsche lived there. In 1861Turin was the first capital of united Italy. The capital later moved to Florence and ultimately to Rome.

I painted the portrait featuring Nietzsche’s famous mustache, above right, this past weekend.

Borges and I, Redux

This morning I woke with a pleasant inbox surprise. The following email from a visitor to my website and ultimately my Labyrinth. How sweet these fellow travellers can be when they tumble into our lives.

Hi there,
I don't ordinarily "write" anything that isn't technical and academic, but I spent the last two months reading Borges and it affected me. I found your site/labyrinth and thought I'd share my (very) short piece of prose/verse with you, because I think it's up your alley and I don't know anyone who would actually appreciate it.
If you like it, please let me know and feel free to post it on your site. If you have comments on it, I'd be glad for the feedback. It's a work in progress.
In any event, thanks for just taking a look.
R. J.

I replied:
"A very fine little piece indeed. It really snaps one to attention. Thank you for sharing. And yes, I will share it on my blogspot, recognizing your authorship of course. Can you briefly tell me a little more about yourself? Or should we keep that ambiguous."

He replied thusly....

For public consumption, the forking paths of ambiguity are probably fine... Google will tell anyone that I'm either a physicist, a budding economist, or an 18 yr. old kid w/ a myspace page (or none of the above). The alternative is a short bio, and that really doesn't seem appropriate (as it would be longer than my little contribution ;) )

For you, I'm actually _____ . I study and teach _________ (I have my classes read "Of Exactitude in Science" on day one), and play a lot of chess. I'm glad you enjoyed the writing and thank you for reading. I'd be happy to return the favor some time.
R. J.

Here is the wonderful gem which Mr. Briggs presented to me.

Borges and I, Redux

I know why I am not Borges.

Maybe it’s obvious, but I had to discover it for myself once. Looking at my eyes in the mirror, focusing on the reflection of myself looking in the mirror at the reflection of myself infinitely, going always down and always inward, that’s where I saw him.

Because I saw him in my reflection, I know I am not him.

Because in the moment that the ideal becomes real, it slips out of raw experience into the persistent and necessary imperfection of perception and memory that are all we know.

And the insistent division between them that dances between us, which draws me into writing this and you into reading it, seductively suggests a voice you have not heard that leads you into a labyrinth of swords and knives, gauchos and tigers, mortality and the infinite, the absolute oneness and the constant separation from it, save for the defining moments of life that forever defy description, indelible but usually forgotten, lost forever perhaps because they can exist only in the singular sense of now, outside of what we “know”, beyond the place and time I need to tell you who I think I am not.

But one can never be too sure--better look again.

RJB, 2009


Ennyman's Note: If you wish to read the original Borges and I, here's the place you can check it out. Be sure to follow up with the lustrous Of Exactitude In Science.

Labyrinths

The notion of labyrinths traces back to ancient mythology, but is found throughout history. In essence, a labyrinth is a maze, a puzzle, a complicated route that leads to, or conceals, something.

Many writers have made reference to labyrinths in their work. Jorge Luis Borges was fascinated by the idea of labyrinths, which appear repeatedly in his short stories. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose was inspired by Borges in this fascination.

From ancient and medieval times to the present, labyrinths have had their appeal, as real structures to be built or as an idea. The mind itself is said to be a labyrinth. Numerous characters in literature, from Cervantes' Don Quixote onward, have become lost in the labyrinthine worlds of their imaginations.

One of Andre Gide's most fascinating works is his story Theseus, about the Athenian hero who navigated the labyrinth in Crete to slay the half-man, half-bull Minotaur aided by Ariadne's thread. It is an entertaining read, with unexpected twists, and comes with my highest recommendation.

Of course my first encounter with the Internet was somewhat akin to the notion of a labyrinth. If one considers each page a room, from which one must exit to enter another room, you can imagine the whole world wide web as a labyrinthine universe. You can lose yourself in it forever.

It was based on this concept that I created a small labyrinth when I first started building my personal website thirteen years ago. And if the Internet is a Labyrinth, then where is the Minotaur?

A Link to my LABYRINTH