Heroes and Mystics 2026

 After class on both Thursday and Tuesday, I had some thoughts, theories, and observations about the Boy and the Heron. This blog will be mainly focused on the part from Tuesday. First, a few thoughts on the warawara and their journey. When they start to float up into the sky, they form almost double helixes. As a biology student, I found it fascinating that the souls dancing through the sky took on the shape of our DNA. Also, I related their unfortunate burning to the beginning of the movie. The warawara were being viciously attacked and eaten on their flight when Princess Himi appeared and shot fireworks through the flock of hungry birds. While the birds were driven off, many warawara were burned as well. Mahito was distraught, but he was reassured that it was for a purpose. Those few warawara had to die in order for the other souls to find life. This reminded me of Mahito's mother. In the beginning of the movie she was burned, but this tragedy has allowed Mahito's soul to de...

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...