Word: scyllas
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Brecht's vision is a bleak one. Man, it seems, must plough a course between the Scylla of nature and the Charybdis of conformity to the powers that be. Allegorically speaking, the hapless tutor must renounce his sexual desires for good if he is to continue tutoring young ladies. But while his self-mutilation debars him permanently from natural enjoyment, it earns him only the temporary approbation of the authorities, leaving him ultimately at their mercy. At the end of the play, the tutor doffs his persona and steps forward to explain, for those who might have missed...
...those terrible fumes were the arms of Scylla swooping down upon our noses, then the water was Charybdis, a horrifying whirlpool of slime, filth, and most dangerous of all, rapscallions on the shore waiting in ambush. There was no telling what would show up on a day's row. Once, we found a dead buck--it was unmarked so we speculated that it had fallen through some thin ice. Another time a man's body was found...
Intellectual Course. Since taking over the party leadership in 1967, Thorpe has tried to steer an intellectual course between the Scylla of Socialism and the Charybdis of Conservatism. The Liberals sided with the Tories in favoring entry into the European Common Market and in opposing further nationalization of industry. They backed Labor in favoring worker participation in companies and a rein on the profits of big business. If the party platform seemed a little vague, something both the major parties took pains to point out, that was at least in the Liberal tradition. Even when it was the dominant power...
Vizzard also states, "To stay in existence, for us, means a constant process of fine tuning to find and hold the middle ground between the two polarities of Responsibility and Freedom. These two opposites are the Scylla and Charybdis of democracy. To love one at the expense of the other is to fail, and to be doomed." Fair enough. But I fail to see how the depiction of sexual activity between consenting adults threatens our sense of Responsibility. Vizzard himself even comments, at the beginning of his book, "What kind of god would God be, who would create flesh...
...essential ideals, if not practices, of democracy is to protest the rights of minority groups to behave in ways inimical to the majority--providing such expression does not curtail the freedom of others. This is my version of democracy's Scylla and Charybdis: to determine if and when the freedom of one becomes the oppression of another. For example, I would not oppose the censorship of cinema clearly promoting and advocating rape (I expect civil libertarian purists would take issue with me on this.). But cinema depicting sex practices which do not involve coercion belongs, in my viewpoint...