Stephen Blackwood sits down with Mari Otsu, former student and now Fellow of Ralston College, for an introspective conversation about the lived wounds of cultural amnesia, materialism, and possessive ideologies, and the redemptive power of a humanistic education.
Mari shares her own journey through the disorienting ideologies of modern academia. She describes her years at NYU studying Art History, Psychology, French, and Global Liberal Studies as a time of deep spiritual forgetting, in which she was a longing soul caught in a materialist and politicized vision of the world. In her words, she felt she had lost sight of something sacred, something essential to the fullness of life.
The path back began, she explains, with therapy, classical painting at the Grand Central Atelier, and most profoundly her encounter with the living philosophical and literary community at Ralston College. In this luminous exchange, she reflects on how the great works of the tradition became guides to her own spiritual purification and ascent. The beauty of Plotinus’ vision of the soul, the consolation of Boethius’ philosophy, and Dante’s Divine Comedy served as a map for redemption and return.
Her story is both a diagnosis and an inspiration. Together, Dr Blackwood and Mari explore what lies at the heart of the meaning crisis afflicting so many today and how the study of the highest works of thought, art, and imagination can help us remember who we are and restore our souls.
