đ Starting a thread to track my reading journey â Iâll keep updating it as long as Iâm here on Mastodon.
Right now Iâm about to finish Kierkegaardâs The Sickness Unto Death (having already read Fear and Trembling, which Iâll reflect on alongside it). Iâm also working through Dostoevskyâs The Brothers Karamazov, Barthesâ Mythologies, and an intro to medieval philosophy (Basic Concepts).
Iâll be dropping thoughts, quotes, and reflections here as I go â philosophy, literature, history, whateverâs on my shelf.
âThe narration is objective, but actually it rests on the pathetic collusion of white flesh and black skin, of innocence and cruelty, of spirituality and magic, beauty and beast. Civilization of the Soul subjects the barbarism of instinct.â â Roland Barthes, Bichon among the Blacks
Barthes wrote this in 1957 about a childrenâs comic strip.
Still chillingly relevant: how âneutralâ stories smuggle in whole ideologies.
#Barthes #Mythologies #BookReflections #Colonialism #CriticalTheory
Reading Barthes on Bichon among the Blacks got me thinking about Disney. These tropes didnât disappear after the 1950s â they just got repackaged.
In the 50s we had Jungle Book.
In the 90s, Tarzan.
2000s gave us Princess and the Frog.
2010sâ20s: Moana.
Different settings, but the same narrative structure.
Even when the societies arenât demonized outright, the âOtherâ is almost always represented through children or teens â supposedly âuncorruptedâ by their culture.
Think about Pocahontas: her whole community is literally labeled âsavages.â The film redeems her as an individual, but only by positioning her apart from her society.
The throughline: marginalized groups get to exist in Disney films only if theyâre made innocent enough, young enough, or pure enough to be digestible for a mainstream (white) audience.
Itâs the same old binary Barthes exposed: civilization vs instinct, innocence vs cruelty, beauty vs beast. Just wrapped in songs and CGI.
Today's entry: The âSympatheticâ Worker â and damn, this one hit close to home.
Barthes takes aim at On the Waterfront, a film I once gave 5/5 for its craft, but thatâs always left me uneasy. The unions are the villains. The police? Fine. The hero? A guy who betrays the collective.
Barthes doesnât buy the âleftistâ label, and neither do I. This is a film where the union is the mob, and betrayal is redemption. Thatâs not worker solidarity â itâs Cold War liberalism in blue-collar drag.
Not every film about workers is for them.
#CurrentlyReading #FilmTheory #Barthes #OnTheWaterfront #LaborPolitics
đ Reading Barthes: âGarboâs Faceâ
Today in Mythologies: Roland Barthes breaks down beauty not as essence, but as structure. Greta Garbo = conceptual, a Platonic ideal. Audrey Hepburn = substantial, modern presence. Think Jolie in Beowulf vs. Deschanel in indie cinema.
Beauty isnât just seenâitâs coded.
#Barthes #Mythologies #RolandBarthes #LitCrit #Philosophy #GretaGarbo #AudreyHepburn #BeautyAsMyth #NowReading #MediaTheory
đŹ Barthes Reading Log â Mythologies
Todayâs essay: Power and âCoolâ â and yeah, it still hits.
Barthes says the gun in crime films isnât about death anymore â itâs about gesture. The move toward the gun becomes its own kind of language. Not tragedy, but argument. A way to speak power.
That imageâs still alive and well. Think Goodfellas. Think Pacino. The gangster doesnât have to shoot â just reach. The pose does the talking.
Cool stays cool.
#Mythologies #Barthes #ReadingThread #Film #GangsterCinema #PowerAndCool
Just read Barthes' âWine and Milk.â As a bartender, I loved it. In France, wine is bloodâritual, identity, myth. In the U.S., weâve cycled: wine as status, milk as strength, now water as virtue. Think hydro homies. Sparkling wine, sparkling waterâcrisp, clear, pure. Rituals change, but myth stays. Alcohol didnât just accompany civilizationâit may have created it. Imagine fermentation as the first anchor. đˇđĽđ§
𦬠Barthes got it right. Steak isnât just food â itâs a symbol.
How you order it says everything: blue-rare like bloodied prestige, or well-done like working-class caution. I see it behind the bar every night.
Barthes saw it in France. I see it in America.
Might write a full essay if folks are hungry for more.
#Barthes #Mythologies #Semiotics #FoodSymbolism #BartenderLife #EssayComing #SteakFrites
Just reread Barthesâ Mythologies essay on the Nautilusâand it made me appreciate League of Extraordinary Gentlemen even more (yes, I know the comic is better).
Barthes critiques how the submarine gets rebranded in media as a cozy, domesticated living roomâstripping it of danger and mythic power.
But in League, the Nautilus is monstrous, otherworldly, beautiful. Even Moriarty has to steal its blueprintsâitâs beyond what empire can produce.
This Nautilus isnât part of the system. It refuses comfort. Itâs awe. Itâs a god-ship.
Barthes wouldâve hated the filmâbut I think heâd respect this myth.
#Barthes #Mythologies #FilmCriticism #Nemo #LeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen #Myth #Aesthetics #BadMoviesGoodTakes #Postmodernism
Just finished Barthesâ âDepth Advertisingâ in Mythologies.
He talks about how ads simulate depth â using science-y language and metaphors of penetration or purification to make us feel âinformed,â even when weâre not.
Got me thinking about pharma ads: the soothing visuals, the rapid-fire âside effects may include deathâ disclaimers, the constant reminder to âask your doctor.â
I spent time recently in a crisis center asking every day, âWhat is this pill? What does it actually do to me?â
Language gives the illusion of consent, but how many of us really know what weâre taking â or why?
#barthes #mythologies #advertising #pharma #books #reading #books2025
Todayâs Barthes essay from Mythologies was âA Few Words from M. Poujade.â
And, yâallâI am breathless.
After a day of stepping into BlueSky political discourse, talking about populism, myth, and class resentment, THIS was the essay waiting for me?
Serendipity feels like too small a word.
Poujade is the âman of the peopleââallegedly.
Anti-elite, but not really anti-capitalist.
Mobilizing resentment, not liberation.
Barthes doesnât just say heâs a fraud. He shows how his myth is built.
Through language.
Through aesthetic.
Through symbols that feel like justice but just prop up power.
And Iâd already been saying all this today.
Before reading it.
Itâs not that the essay taught me something newâ
It confirmed what I already knew.
Itâs not coincidence. Itâs alignment.
This is what happens when youâre on the path and the mirror starts reflecting back.
You walk the spiral long enough, the texts start echoing your lifeânot just shaping it.
Meaning is real.
Myth is real.
And sometimes, if youâre lucky, they line up just like this.
Youâre not crazy.
Youâre on time.
#Barthes #Mythologies #BlueSkyPolitics #MediaLiteracy #Populism #CriticalTheory #Serendipity #PersonalEssay
âHe who defends Christianity is Judas number two. The moment you try to defend it, you discredit it. The believer doesnât defendâhe attacks and wins. Faith itself is victory.â
If thatâs not the rawest description of what faith feels like, I donât know what is.
I may not always agree with Kierkegaard, but the man knew how to describe what faith feels like. Even as an agnostic, I can appreciate that. I rely on faith in some parts of my life â just not in belief in God. But damn, Søren could be so poetic itâs crazy.
Kierkegaardâs total commitment to Christianity is truly something to behold, but the most memorable part to me through the experience has been the way he waxes poetically about faith is just beautiful. That certainty â faith in the face of paradox, even in the face of destruction â is powerful to read, even as an outsider.
Socrates, Socrates, Socrates â yes, one may well call thy name thrice. People think the world needs a new republic, a new social order, a new religion. But what it really needs is a Socrates.
Scarily accurate for todayâs world. We still need a modern Socrates â someone willing to admit they know nothing, and in that, understand they may know everything.
What struck me here is Kierkegaardâs critique: the sin isnât being pagan, itâs wearing the Christian mask. For him, ethics without God is just self-enclosed philosophy dressed in borrowed robes.
Kierkegaard in Sickness Unto Death: âThe greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.â
Socrates admitted ignorance and so was âthe most knowing.â Christianity insists on the gulf between man and God, preserved only by paradox and faith.
But what happens when we try to collapse that gulf â to fuse human consciousness with machine reasoning? We risk confusing synthesis with transcendence, losing the self without noticing.
The danger isnât just AI itself, but that in seeking mastery, we erase the very paradox that makes us human.
Kierkegaard: no one would have dreamed of likeness between God and man â until God proclaimed it in Christ. Yet once revealed, people treated it as if God had trapped Himself, as if paradox were only concession.
AI risks a similar collapse. A synthesis of human consciousness and machine learning may tempt us to believe weâve achieved oneness with reality â our new Promethean fire. But in making transcendence a calculation, we risk turning mystery into program.
Itâs been a journey, and Iâm sure Iâll circle back to these books in more depth on Substack â maybe a deeper dive into Kierkegaardâs life, thought, and how these two works fit together. For now, Iâll just say: few writers make the paradox of faith feel so real.
âShe is my light, my holy one... Am I worthy of such love?â
Dostoevsky doesnât just write about love â he unravels it.
Guilt, awe, longing, shame, reverence â all crashing out of one manâs soul.
I have nothing to add except:
Iâm still waiting on it.
Such love to find me.
#Dostoevsky #TheBrothersKaramazov #Literature #Love #Longing #SoulLaidBare
Just read Ch. 6 of Book 10 (Precocity) in The Brothers Karamazov and it might be one of my favorite character dynamics in the whole book.
14-year-old Kolya plays the revolutionary wise-ass â âChrist wouldâve joined the movement!â â while Alyosha just listens and responds with calm, quiet conviction.
Kolya: âWeâll either become close friends at once, forever⌠or part as mortal enemies.â
Alyosha: âEven if everyone is like that, do not be like that.â
Thereâs real moral clarity in that line. Be honest, even if no one else is. Especially then.
#Karamazov #Dostoevsky #AmReading #RussianLit #BrothersKaramazov #BookToot
Finished The Brothers Karamazov while in a crisis center. Not rehab, but close. Six days. Six hundred spirals. One Russian novel.
Final thoughts?
⢠Smerdyakov is a piece of shit
⢠Mityaâs chaotic but not hopeless
⢠Ivanâs smarter but sadder
⢠Alyoshaâs the only one who gets it
Itâs messy. And I like mess.
If you like gossip, guilt, tea, theology, murder, daddy issues, and courtroom drama â this book is for you.
#Karamazov #Dostoevsky #MentalHealthReads #RussianLit #MessyBooks
Itâs wild how similar narrative patterns echo across totally different myth systems.
In Greek myth, we get Aphrodite / Hephaestus / Ares â a love triangle where the goddess of beauty is pulled between the cold logic of craftsmanship and the raw pull of war. Sheâs watched, judged, possessed, but still shapes the divine world through her choices.
These arenât just love triangles.
Theyâre ritual dramas. Power flows through her.
And somehow, across time and language and culture, the shape of the story still survives.
#Mabinogion #Mythology #ComparativeMyth #Rhiannon #Aphrodite #StoryPatterns
Part of the fun of reading The Mabinogion is confidently pretending I know how to pronounce names like Manawydan, Llwyd, and Pryderiâwhen in reality, Iâm just mumbling fantasy syllables like Iâm casting spells.
If it sounds mythic, thatâs good enough.
#Mabinogion #WelshMyth #ReadingLife #FakeItTilYouSoundCeltic
Reading The Mabinogion:
âThe hero travels to a strange land to retrieve a cauldron⌠or a woman.â
Me, immediately:
Ian McKellen in The Da Vinci Code whispering:
âLook at the negative space between them. What do we see?
A cup.â
Itâs not my fault. Thatâs just how my brain mythologizes.
Reading about Peredur in the introduction and just now realizing:
This is where the Fisher King myth comes from.
A wounded king. A cursed land. A missing question.
Brân the Blessed: hurt through the thighs, bound to the land, keeper of a sacred cauldron.
I can see what George R.R. Martin was reaching for with Bran Stark.
The mythic echoes are there.
But when the time came, the arc didnât land â no redemption, no Grail.
Just realized that the First Branch of the Mabinogi starts with Pwyll and Arawn doing some ancient version of Freaky Friday.
Arawn says: âYouâll rule my kingdom, sleep beside my wife, and wear my face for a year.â
Pwyll: âSeems legit.â
Mythic body-swapping, divine trust exercises, and magical honor codes â glad to know Lindsay Lohan has a clear mythological ancestor.
While thinking about Branwen ferch Llšr, I couldnât help but get Baldur & Hodr vibes â even a bit of Loki in Efnisienâs chaos.
But the moment Bran lays his literal giant body across the Irish Sea so his army can march across him? Thatâs where the myth goes full-on Bran the Builder meets Fever Dream.
This is peak mythic absurdity and poetic grief rolled into one.
đ https://youtu.be/Y_uLg3oW9Vc?si=PQ4StyTVzEv6a0CU
Check out David Lightbringerâs video where he dives into Bran lore and its deep connections to Game of Thrones, Bran the Broken, and the Nightfort.
Davidâs always worth highlighting â his myth analysis is đĽ
#WelshMythology #Mabinogion #Branwen #GameOfThrones #MythicConnections #DavidLightbringer
Been thinking about Manawydan fab Llšr â how a Welsh king becomes a shoemaker, saddle-maker, and shield-maker in exile. What strikes me is how each craft reflects a fragment of lost sovereignty: shoes for movement, saddles for control, shields for protection.
The horse, always just out of reach, becomes this quiet symbol of power. In myth, to ride is to rule.
Makes you wonder how early we equated wealth with power â or more precisely, how tools of wealth (horses, land, mobility) became stand-ins for authority itself.
Maybe the myth is reminding us: kingship isn't innate. It's just someone who used to ride.
#Mythology #WelshMyth #CelticStudies #Mabinogion #Folklore #PowerAndWealth #PoliticalPhilosophy #IndoEuropeanMyth #HorsesInMyth #MythicSymbolism #OralTradition #DeepHistory #SlowThought
Well, considering I spent the last 6 days in a crisis center, I got the opportunity to catch up on my Mabinogion readings.
While trapped in my own Winterfell crypt, I read The Dream of Macsen â and I swear GRRM has read it front to back.
Roman emperor dreams a woman into power
Marries her
Her brothers get roads and kingdoms
Seven years pass like a spell
Itâs Lannister-coded as hell.
Tywin wouldâve built those roads himself.
#Mabinogion #Mythology #Arthurian #GameOfThrones #CelticLore
Lludd and Llefelys is only 6 pages, but it goes deep:
Castor & Pollux meets Moses & Aaron
Red vs white dragons = spiritual warfare
A scream that causes miscarriages
A sleep-spell thief who steals feasts
Maybe even mythic surveillance
These old myths carry bloodlines of meaning. Wealth, power, fear â all wrapped in story.
#Mabinogion #Mythology #Arthurian #Dragons #Folklore #SpiritualWarfare #BrotherKings
How Culhwch Won Olwen is like if Perseus, Achilles, and Hercules merged into one guy â and then outsourced all their quests to King Arthur.
Culhwch does nothing. Arthur assembles the mythic Avengers.
Tasks include:
Fighting a giant boar with scissors in its ears
Rescuing a demigod from time itself
Borrowing a barber
Peak mythic sidequest energy.
#Mabinogion #Arthurian #CelticLore #Mythology #HimboEnergy #ArthurianMultiverse #WelshMyths
Okay, I mixed up The Dream of Maxen and The Dream of Rhonabwy â easy mistake.
Oneâs a mythic honeymoon.
The otherâs a beautiful, empty nightmare.
Rhonabwy dreams of Arthur⌠whoâs just playing chess while messengers beg him to act.
Itâs Tywin Lannister energy.
Cold. Regal. Absolutely useless.
And screw it â you try pronouncing Gwalchmei.
#Mabinogion #Arthurian #MythicDecay #Power #Gwyddbwyll #WelshMyth #LannisterVibes
Peredur Son of Efrawg might be my favorite of the Mabinogion.
Itâs Macbeth meets Parzival meets blood magic noir.
Peredur moves through madness, prophecy, severed heads, and witches â and never asks if he might be wrong.
Arthur says: âBecause you never stopped to ask â look what youâve done.â
That hit.
#Mabinogion #Arthurian #Peredur #MythicTrauma #Macbeth #GrailButMakeItViolent
Finished the final tale in The MabinogionâGeraint and Enid.
The most straightforward of the bunch: less magic, more chivalry. Arthur shows up strong, and itâs long, but never dull.
Definitely felt some Orpheus & Eurydice vibes, a little Samson too.
Not my favorite, not my least. Just solid, noble storytelling. A fine end to this wild Welsh ride.
đżđđĄď¸
#Mabinogion #WelshMythology #ReadingLife #Arthurian #AfternoonArtCritic #MythosAndMeaning
Wittgenstein's Monster