Interview With Author Alexis karpouzos
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m philosopher and author, founder of the international center of learning, research and culture in Greece. I have studied philosophy, social sciences and psychoanalysis. I have published 8 books in English (1. Cosmology, philosophy and physics, 2. The self criticism of science, 3. Universal consciousness, 4. Non-duality, 5. The 4th dimension in art and science, 6. The dream of the universe. 7. The end of certainty, 8. An ocean of souls) and 15 books in Greek. I have also published many essays and articles in scientific magazines and newspapers.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
”The dream of the Universe” is the latest book. Is a philosophical essay. As i say in the preface of the book, inspiration is life itself and the awareness of connectivity. So, i think that I am part of nature, and nature is part of me. I am what I am in my communication and communion with all living things. I am an irreducible and coherent whole with the web of life on the planet. Nature, the human community and the universe is connected with the Cosmos. We recognize the deep truth that I am the other. This expresses the concept from contemporary physics of “entanglement”, which is a quantum phenomenon. All atoms, all cells are connected, deeply.” The friendship is the connection we feel for each other, wherever he is, other people, animals, plants, stars. I am part of society, and society is part of me. I am what I am in my communication and communion with my fellow humans.I am an irreducible and coherent whole with the community of humans on the planet. The separate identity I attach to other humans and other things is but a convenient convention that facilitates my interaction with them. My family and my community are just as much “me” as the organs of my body. My body and mind, my family and my community, are interacting and interpenetrating, variously prevalent elements in the network of relations that encompasses all things in nature and the human world. The whole gamut of concepts and ideas that separates my identity, or the identity of any person or community, from the identity of other persons and communities are manifestations of this convenient but arbitrary convention. There are only gradients distinguishing individuals from each other and from their environment and no real divisions and boundaries. There are no “others” in the world: We are all living systems and we are all part of each other. Attempting to maintain the system I know as “me” through ruthless competition with the system I know as “you” is a grave mistake: It could damage the integrity of the embracing whole that frames both your life and mine. I cannot preserve my own life and wholeness by damaging that whole, even if damaging a part of it seems to bring me short-term advantage. When I harm you, or anyone else around me, I harm myself. Collaboration, not competition, is the royal road to the wholeness that hallmarks healthy systems in the world. Collaboration calls for empathy and solidarity, and ultimately for love. I do not and cannot love myself if I do not love you and others around me: We are part of the same whole and so are part of each other.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
The usual, nothing special. I will always jot down things, little ideas. I may never go back to them. I may never see them again. But once they’re jotted down, they’re become sections of my imagination. Brainstorming can be a response to a half-formed thought i have hwhile riding the subway, or to a writing assignment like a prompt that kick-starts my writing one day. Either way, the writing process often looks very much like an iceberg: thinking about characters and plot, daydreaming about the world where my story is set takes up more time than most people realize. Some stories take years to coalesce.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
My favorite authors are, Walt Whitman , Ralph Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The books that have inspired me are ” The song of Myslef” of Walt Whitman, ” A season of hell” of Arthur Rimbaud, ”The waste land” of Thomas Eliot, ”Ulysses” of James Joyce, ”Crime and punishment” Fyodor Dostoevsky.
What are you working on now?
Ima working on my new book, the theme is post-ontological philosophy, the relationship between ancient metaphysics and new science. I use Pre-Socratics philosophy and generally the ancient Greek philosophy, as well as the pre-philosophical thinking of The Upanishads, the Vedas and Buddhism in India, of Lao Tzu, of Zen Buddhism and the Taoist tradition in China, of the Arab mystics and poets, with their metaphysical religiosity as the metaphysical basis for the interpretation and understanding of the world and existence. At the same time the ancient metaphysics is connect with Hegel’s dialectical ontology and with the modern thinking of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and others as the interpretive context for understanding the central problems of the technical and scientific world during his time. Novalis, Hölderlin, Rimbaud, Whitman, Eliot and others show the dreamy nature of existence, the transcendence of the empirical Cosmos.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I think the best method is to offer. Offer a free sample to customers to get them to try your product. Nothing shows confidence in your product like letting your customer sample it for free before buying. Additionally, a customer is more likely to buy something if they have just experienced its benefits.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Don’t give up, and don’t lose your stubborn belief that you have a story worth telling. I’ve had so many people tell me over so many years that I didn’t have the qualities needed to be a writer. All of my writer friends and I have one thing in common: We didn’t listen to the naysayers. We kept writing. And eventually we have all been published.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Do what you love — life is really short, if you don’t love the work you’re doing or isn’t leading to the work that you‘ll enjoy, then it’s not worth doing. Also, listen more, always seek to understand before having an opinion.
What are you reading now?
Now iam reading a comparative studies about the relationship between Dickens, Kafka, Camus and Orwell: A mutal interpretation, which brings together the unlikely pairing of the modernist Kafka with the most popular of all Victorian authors. Although this may strike us as a surprising comparison at first, these two ostensibly very different writers actually share a great deal: their comic approach to the absurdities of life (even the tragedies of life), their childlike way of viewing the world’s injustices, and – perhaps more importantly for The Trial – their skewering of the endless and nonsensical bureaucratic processes that fill the corridors of law.
Kafka finds humour in the most tragic and unpromising situations, such as the sinister arrest of a man who has apparently done nothing wrong, and his subsequent execution. In a sense, the English title by which Kafka’s novel is known, The Trial, conveys something of the double meaning of the original German title, Der Process: Josef K. is on trial for some unspecified crime, but Kafka’s novel exposes the absurd ways in which all life is a continual trial, ‘trying’ us by testing and challenging us, tempting us to commit things we shouldn’t and making us feel guilty even when we’re not sure precisely what we have done to feel such guilt.
All of this is tragic and hopeless, anticipating the dystopian futures of people like George Orwell but also the absurdist and existentialist writing of someone like Albert Camus, whose 1942 essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ is an important text about the absurdity of modern life.
For Camus, Sisyphus is the poster-boy for Absurdism, because he values life over death and wishes to enjoy his existence as much as possible, but is instead thwarted in his aims by being condemned to carry out a repetitive and pointless task. Such is the life of modern man: condemned to perform the same futile daily rituals every day, working without fulfilment, with no point or purpose to much of what he does. This might describe any of Kafka’s protagonists, whether Gregor Samsa of ‘The Metamorphosis’, Josef K. of The Trial, or K. from The Castle.
However, for Camus, there is something positive in Sisyphus’ condition, or rather his approach to his rather gloomy fate. When Sisyphus sees the stone rolling back down the hill and has to march back down after it, knowing he will have to begin the same process all over again, Camus suggests that Sisyphus would come to realise the absurd truth of his plight, and treat it with appropriate scorn. He has liberated his own mind by confronting the absurdity of his situation, and can view it with the appropriate contempt and good humour.
Although for many people Camus is all posing in overcoats and looking world-weary and miserable, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the grim comedy and stoicism that underscores his reading of the myth of Sisyphus. Similarly, many people who have never read Kafka believe that The Trial is a dark dystopian work, but that reveals only part of what the novel is about. It is also a comedy, albeit a bleak one: Kafka’s friends reported that he laughed out loud while reading from the novel when he was working on it. Although the plot of the novel is pessimistic overall, the smaller situations we find within it, such as the numerous seductions of Josef K. by the women in the novel, are treated comically, bordering almost on farce.
Although Kafka’s Josef K. is less amused by his hopeless situation, it would be a mistake to overlook the absurd humour of The Trial, which could easily be dramatised as a sort of black comedy in which the protagonist is similarly thwarted as he seeks to clear his name. And like Dickens’s Circumlocution Office from Little Dorrit or the never-ending court case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce from Bleak House, the individual is helpless against the faceless and hidden forces that work within the great beast that is the legal system.
But if Kafka has affinities with Dickens, he can also claim descent from Dostoevsky, whose influence on The Trial he readily acknowledged. Dostoevsky’s understanding of the psychology of crime, punishment, and guilt feeds into Josef K. in Kafka’s novel, as does the Hasidic Jewish tradition of examining the nature of guilt and judgment. Indeed, Kafka is often analysed as a deeply religious writer, even though the settings for his work are normally secular.
Here, the significance of the cathedral, and Josef K.’s final conversation with the priest, become apparent. Although the priest is powerless to save Josef K. from his fate on earth, he can provide a more metaphysical and spiritual context for his understanding of guilt and acceptance. (It is arguably of deeply symbolic importance that Josef K. had previously sought help from both a lawyer and an artist, neither of whom could ultimately help him; perhaps religion may succeed where law and art fail,
What’s next for you as a writer?
I want to continue writing and publishing books and especially young people to continue to be interested in what i write.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
I never know how to answer a question like this. Therec are so many amazing books.
”100 years of Solitude” of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The book follows the fortunes and misfortunes of The Buendia family through seven generations. It is not an easy book to read, but it is profoundly rewarding. It including topics such as: Intense romance. Civil war. Political injury. Globe-trotting adventures. And by showing the past, the present, and the future simultaneously. This book became one of the most famous examples of magical realism. For those of you who don’t know what magical realism is: It’s when supernatural events are described in a realistic and matter of fact tone, while the real events of human life and history reveal themselves to be a radical absurdity.
“Where no one would be able to decide for others how they die, where love would prove true, and happiness is possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have at and forever a second chance on earth.”
”Crime and Punishment” of Dostoevsky. Suffering is like a double-edged sword for Dostoevsky. It redeems or destroys depending on the circumstances. “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
Ulysses of James Joyce. What makes Ulysses, the innovative masterpiece that it is has more to do with Joyce’s conception of history and humanity than any other concept. The novel is one of the greatest masterpieces of modernist literature. But, Ulysses is also sometimes seen as so experimental that it is completely unreadable. Ulysses is endlessly inventive, and labyrinthine in its construction. The novel is both a mythical adventure of the every day and a stunning portrait of internal psychological processes–rendered through high art. Brilliant and sparkling, the novel is difficult to read but offers rewards tenfold the effort and attention that willing readers give it.
Author Websites and Profiles
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