Ethics, myths, culture, sciences et al.

Photo Owen Egan • McGill Reporter
I met Margaret Somerville some years ago at her office at McGill University in Montreal. I was trying to do research on ethics and sciences for a radio program. She is the director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law. In 2004 she was awarded the first UNESCO's Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science.
I never finished up that research for I found myself asking more questions than answers could be given and being deeply puzzled by the subject matter, I gave up in that form. I started with some strong believes on ethics and found myself being faced with not one but many realities for which they were no clear-cut answers. I think in some ways it was the beginning of my "crisis".
She is the 2006 Massey lectures guest speaker, a week-long (6 -10 nov.) conference that is aired on CBC Radio One's program Ideas at the same time as it is published in book form. Her lecture series is called The Ethical Imagination and the first part "Going on the wallaby, searching for a shared ethics", where she explores the importance of stories, myths, poetry, imagination, moral intuition and the human spirit in finding a shared ethics for an interdependant world.
What is interesting as I was listening to her first lecture, is the comparison I could make with a reading I just had last night at the cabin, a review in 1988 by Tom Robbins in The Seattle Weekly concerning Joseph Campbell being interviewed by Bill Moyers. In fact, some time after, Margaret Somerville just refered to Joseph Campbell this way: Mythologists Joseph Campbell maintained that what is common to all humanity is this experience of awe and wonder, experiences that he would call religious and the resulting creation of myths that helps us gives our lives meaning and purpose, that is experiencing awe and wonder in creating myths are cause and effect. Myths allow us to communicate about intangible realities that cannot be communicated about in any other way. Myths are not literally true but they do not represent untrue lies of fantasies. There are metaphorically true and often they are the only way to communicate the truth they represent." There is an excerpt of her first lecture at the bottom of this article.
I am particularly interested in those subject matters. That is why I want to delve into those areas mainly by reading as much as possible, which has not been the case for a long time, too busy working to try to make a living. I changed that circuitry around and can now report I cut my needs to the bare bones in order to be able to do my research.
You can listen to the first of five conferences on the webpage devoted to the 2006 Massey Lectures.

My mother and I = a long connection

In September 1946, as she begins her grade 9
My mother and I have this interesting relationship. I consider she did her best for her children in the conditions she was in. The link I have been entertaining with my mom thoughout the years has to do with curiosity.
In our little town of not much happening, she had already read Victor Hugo and Georges Sand well before I was even born. She grew up in the city we have to say.
It is through her that during my childhood books were existing and have taken such an importance in my own adventure. There was and there still is a kind of electricity between the two of us.
She was stimulating inasmuch as she always proved interested by what I was thinking and doing: she was asking questions, which is enough to me. And we exchange constantly.
My father was newspapers and politics, my mother plasters and domestics. My father had a christic view, my mother a mystic one. There was spirituality in the air but in a rather subdued and sombre fashion.
My perigrination will bring me back to her on the short term, a few months at the most. I have to take care of her and maintain her in her home. It will be an occasion to give back what she generously contributed to.

At Chambord, Lac St-Jean, Quebec, summer 1962
Photoframe from an 8 mm movie