Heroes and Mystics 2026

While simultaneously writing two different essays on Star Trek, details in my brain would phase between projects and I would lose track of my thoughts quite easily. As I wrote for leadership on Star Trek IV; The Voyage Home and for you, on Star Trek: Voyager, similarities did emerge. The point I made about Captain (or in this case, rather, Admiral), was that while he was an attempt at writing a visionary, progressive leader, due to the predominant leadership studies of the time relying on Trait-based studies such as Great Man Theory, he ultimately struggled to realize that potential. Due to Implicit Leadership Theories, or rather, biases we have towards people in leadership, an audience's expectations of a leader must be fulfilled for them to buy in.  Star Trek has pushed these biased many time, to varying degrees of success. The Next Generation dipped it's toe in by making the Captain a foreigner, and Deep Space Nine took the plunge to put a black man in the Captain's chai...

  In one of our class discussions, we talked about how the primordial experience involves bodily reciprocity and the containment of the child in the womb as a sensation which we desire to return to, and for that reason when in distress we go to the “fetal position.” Upon exiting the womb, the infant almost immediately desires to be swaddled so as to feel the closeness of the prenatal relationship the baby has so quickly been required to exit; in this prenatal relationship, the mother and the baby act upon one another, the mother giving life to the infant through the food she offers and the baby giving to his mom the joy of child, which carries its own implications of happiness as the woman’s body is physiologically disposed for the intent of having children. In my opinion, that this experience is so deeply imprinted on the human person is an indication that even in the womb, every person is capable of experiencing something which will always impact their life, and thus from the m...

  In our discussion in part surrounding artifacts, we talked about the poetic and the prosaic as modes of language/communication. The poetic is the natural, creative sense of language that we inherently experience as the first, primordial sense, whereas the prosaic concerns the empirical and exact form of explanation or definition; the prosaic comes from our experience of language as it has been constructed and formally used. These modes of thought, as language itself is a method for solidifying thought, can be connected to the two main ways that we communicate in the written word, namely, prose and poetry. However, these distinctions do not necessarily correlate, and an example of such non-relationship can be found in the Hebrew Bible. Books like Psalms and the Song of Solomon may be characterized as “pure poetry,” but many interpretations of the creation account provided in Genesis lend it a poetic interpretation, even though in its text it is a prose piece. The structure of th...

 My current work on the Theater CNU production of Gypsy has brought me further reflection on my previous journal entry. I've recognized a fault in the proverb of "Do whatever you want," that while obvious, merits explanation.  Rose in Gypsy has allowed her self-determined meaning, her all-encompassing dream of stardom to become a selfish obsession rather than a selfless one. In fact, she harms a lot of people. People are quite harmed. The beauty of the Hero's Journey is that it leaves one stripped of ego and self importance; however, clearly this selflessness is not a prerequisite to the realization of self-determination. Straightforward focus on a goal without consideration for the means and collateral is not a very enlightened way to conduct one's self.  Let's take that magical plane back to reality for a moment. You and I will never again exist in a primordial state. We do not straddle the line between the living and dead and we will not be overcoming our i...

We spoke in class today about what gives life meaning in the absence of culturally constructed meaning. Or, at the very least, it was hinted at in discussion and gracefully ignored. However, I feel very strongly on the subject and feel obligated to address it.  In the only useful reading presented to me thus far by the Leadership curriculum, Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" directly addresses how people find meaning in life. It is his conclusion that meaning, though the ultimate motivator in how we lead our lives, is entirely self prescribed. It is something we discover in response to the social world and culture (including religion) around us. Therefore, within the framework of this course, wherein a strict dichotomy exists between primordial inherent existence and our culturally built context, there cannot be inherent meaning to life. If, as Frankl asserts, life-meaning is a cultural construct, there fundamentally cannot be some grand overarching meaning o...

As a math major who wants to enroll in the MAT program to become a teacher, one of my required courses that I am currently taking is elementary geometry from advanced viewpoints. While this name seems complicated, this course is about non-Euclidian geometry—looking at geometry without the knowledge of Euclid’s postulates; everything that is covered in this course is without using previous knowledge of what I learned in my high school geometry class. My professor emphasizes hands-on experimentation that promotes adaptive thinking, especially since I have to change the way I have been thinking about geometry: adjusting my primordial experiences by looking at geometric elements in vicarious methods. The biggest talking point in my class right now is straight lines. Naturally, our primordial experiences of a straight line might include the edge of a ruler, lines on the road, or simply the shortest distance between two points. Additionally, in order to connect two points with a straight lin...