Since some have been complaining that I have "fouled" the other "Quote of the day" thread with numerous quotes from the great minds past and present, I thought it wise to create a new thread.
Please note:
1] only one quote per day
2] preferably somewhere in the general vicinity of philosophy
3] absolutely nothing from The Onion
I'll put it back in circulation. Then we can see which thread gets the most views from the bots.
Since some have been complaining that I have "fouled" the other "Quote of the day" thread with numerous quotes from the great minds past and present, I thought it wise to create a new thread.
Please note:
1] only one quote per day
2] preferably somewhere in the general vicinity of philosophy
3] absolutely nothing from The Onion
I'll put it back in circulation. Then we can see which thread gets the most views from the bots.
You are an idiot - I was already aware of that thread - why didn't you post your crap into that thread and leave this - BECAUSE you think view counts mean so much to your shallow pathetic vain brain.
Walker should relabel THIS thread to suit the crap that you are doing.
Come to think of it, here’s another thread, but this one is different than just quotes. Just as Truth is self-protected by the rules of Truth, the contributions to this other thread are self-protected by the Rule of Six.
The purpose is obviously to transcend the limitations of the frame.
Since some have been complaining that I have "fouled" the other "Quote of the day" thread with numerous quotes from the great minds past and present, I thought it wise to create a new thread.
Please note:
1] only one quote per day
2] preferably somewhere in the general vicinity of philosophy
3] absolutely nothing from The Onion
I'll put it back in circulation. Then we can see which thread gets the most views from the bots.
You are an idiot - I was already aware of that thread - why didn't you post your crap into that thread and leave this - BECAUSE you think view counts mean so much to your shallow pathetic vain brain.
Walker should relabel THIS thread to suit the crap that you are doing.
Just out of curiosity, how many others are as perplexed as I am that a forum derived from Philosophy Now magazine would attract "philosophers" like this?
iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2024 1:56 am
Just out of curiosity, how many others are as perplexed as I am that a forum derived from Philosophy Now magazine would attract "philosophers" like this?
Pfff. You think you do philosophy, when you can't even work out that the thread title:- "Quote of the day" is SINGULAR thus you posting LOADS of quotes every day should piss off into an appropriately named thread.
You are an illogical cockhead that may have read books by actual philosophers but you haven't got the reasoning skills to comprehend their arguments.
Another culture. Another time. But some things never change. The working class it seems is one of them. Men, another. And booze of course.
Praise God?
At times a volatile [and brutal] combination. This is the story of an exceptional [but hopelessly conservative] woman who beat the odds. Though barely at times.
To be very good at something you love and that others will pay for. That’s the ticket.
But how many countless lives have wasted away under the yoke of religious scruples. Either from the fear of damnation or in slavishly acting out one’s moral duty.
Maja [narrating]: A week before Mother met Father, she won a camera in a lottery. Father thought the camera should be his, as he’d bought the ticket. Mother said if he wanted to share it, he’d have to marry her. So they got married.
A camera. And then, eventually, that changes everything.
Sigge: Going out just as I get home?
Maria: Where else would we get money?
Sigge: I don’t want you cleaning for capitalist swine, you hear?
Maria: Where have you learned words like that?
Sigge: “Words like that”? It’s what I mean.
It's still years before the feminist movement, uh, changed the world?
Sigge: Well, Maria, your old man’s going to be home all day now. We’re on strike. We’re going to show those bosses what we’re worth.
Maria: What we’re worth?
Sigge: Quite right.
Maria: What are we worth…with no money?
She wasn't exactly a Marxist.
Maja [narrating]: Father wasn’t one for politics. But bringing a shipload of British strikebreakers to do his work was more than he could take.
That can do it.
Sebastian: Not everyone is endowed with the gift of seeing.
On the other hand, seeing what?
Sigge: How’s your confirmation coming along, Maja? Going well? Do you know the Commandments?
Maja: Every one of them, Father. Including this one: “Thou shalt not commit adultry”.
Nine out of ten then?
Maja: All you care about’s your pictures. And that Pedersen man.
[Maria slaps her]
Maria: I’m sorry. Maja…
Maja: And father just chases other women.
Them and the capitalist swine.
Sigge: Was that rabbit all you could find to cuckold me with?
Maria: You’re hardly particular yourself.
SIgge: That camera’s going to go.
Maria: You’re not to touch it.
Sigge: Oh, yes, I bloody am. Get it, now!
Maria: You’re not taking that camera!
Sigge [holding an iron over his head]: I’m going to kill you.
Maria: Do it! Put an end to everything!
Sigge: Behind my back!
Maria: Go on, do it!..You and your floozies.
[He slams the iron into the wall]
Maria: What a coward you are!
Uh, lucky for her?
Maria: I jumped off the table to get rid of the baby.
Friend: What on earth!
Maria: Sigge forced himself on me. I didn’t want to have that baby! My Erik. I tried to get rid of him. It’s my fault he got polio.
Though ultimately it's God's fault if He's actually around.
Maja [narrating]: Why Mother stayed with Father I’ve always found a mystery. Perhaps it was love.
Or perhaps it was coming face to face with raising 7 kids on her own.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” Albert Einstein
Always important to bring this one back.
You just wouldn't think it might be necessary here, right?
“Never memorize something that you can look up.” Albert Einstein
And these days that's everything.
“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.” Douglas Adams
Uh, click?
“Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.” Terry Pratchett
Let's change that.
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Niels Bohr
And, no, not just up in the theoretical clouds.
“I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.” Arthur C. Clarke
Solitude and the abyss. The existential hero and the hitman. What you take out of this is what you put into it: dasein. Me, I see a man pursued not by gangsters or the police but by death. Just like the rest of us. But with a very different narrative. One that, for example, does not allow those he kills the right to pursue their own.
But what does it mean to pass judgment on a behavior able to be rationalized? His moral perspective revolves around what suits him. If it’s something that facilitates the life he has chosen to live then it is justified. As long as he is willing to accept the consequences of those who dispute that.
"According to Rui Nogueira (author of the book “Melville on Melville” published in 1976), the caged bird shown as Jef Costello’s pet in “Le Samourai” was the only casualty of the fire that destroyed Melville’s studio in 1967. " IMDb
And that bird plays a crucial role in the film. Twice.
Le Samourai
Titlecard: There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai…unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle, perhaps. Bushido [Book of the Samurai]
Of course, the last Samurai was a Scientologist.
Bar Owner: Who are you?
Jef: Doesn’t matter.
Bar Owner: What do you want?
Jef: To kill you.
[shoots him]
No, really. That's what he does. Like that Scientologist in Collateral.
Jef: Why say you did not recognize me?
Valérie: Why kill Marty?
Jef: I was to be paid.
Valérie: What had he done to you?
Jef: Not a thing. I didn’t know him. I met him for the first and last time 24 hours ago.
Valérie: What sort of man are you?
Uh, a sociopath?
Jef [to Valerie]: You didn’t identify me for one of two reasons. Either you enjoyed playing with the police or you were told not to recognize me.
Let's think up a third reason.
Superintendant [to Jane]: I don’t like forcing the pace to extract confessions or get information. I’m very liberal, a great believer in the liberty of the individual… in people’s right to live as they choose. Provided that the way of life they choose harms no one else… and is contrary to neither law and order nor public decency.
I guess that doesn't include hitmen.
Superintendant [to Jane]: Have you ever thought how close girls like you are to being prostitutes?
Let's run this by Jef.
Gunman: Nothing to say?
Jef: Not to a man with a gun on me.
Gunman: Is that a principle?
Jef: A habit.
And practice makes perfect.
[Jef pulls a gun on Valerie, she just looks disappointed]
Valérie: Why Jeff?
Jef: I’ve been paid to.
Was he?
Detective [to Valerie]: If we hadn’t been here, you would be dead.
Superintendent [holding Jef’s gun, the bullets removed by Jef]: Wrong.
“I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” George McGovern
So was Nancy Kulp.
"...the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.” José Saramago
See, I told you.
“Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it.” James Baldwin
Anyone not loved here perishing?
“The connections we make in the course of a life--maybe that's what heaven is.” Fred Rogers
Though not necessarily in your neighborhood. And definitely not in mine.
“I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart. ” Mitch Albom
Of course, with your mom, it might have been different.
“Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Crash. The sound of racial stereotypes colliding in Los Angeles. And most other places too.
The point being that prejudice is ubiquitous. The most common hardly ever dressed up in a hood or plastered with swastikas. And it goes all the way up the chain of command. And it’s by no means whites versus everybody else. It permeates the entire human race. And that’s before we get to things like gender, age, disabilty, sexual orientation, ethnicity etc.
As a white male, I only know what I’ve seen in all these years. And this film merely scratches the surface. Why? Because you need to go deep down into the working class and the deep state if you want to see real stereotyping. In action, for example.
Crash
Graham: It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something. You don’t think that’s true?
Ria: Graham, I think we got rear-ended. I think we spun around twice. And somewhere in there, one of us lost our frame of reference. And I’m gonna go look for it.
I forget: does she find it?
Motorcycle Cop: Calm down, ma’am.
Kim Lee: I am calm.
Motorcycle Cop: I need to see your registration and insurance.
Kim Lee: Why? Not my fault! It’s her fault! She do this!
Ria [approaching]: My fault?
Motorcycle Cop: Ma’am, you really need to wait in your vehicle.
Kim Lee: Stop in the middle of street! Mexicans! No know how to drive! She blake too fast!
Ria: I “blake” too fast? I “blake” too fast? I’m sorry, you no see my “blake lights”?
Motorcycle Cop [to Ria]: Ma’am…
Ria [to Kim Lee]: See, I stop when I see long line of cars stop in front of me. Maybe you see over steering wheel, you “blake” too.
Motorcycle Cop [to Ria]: Ma’am…
Ria: Officer, can you please write down in your report how shocked I am to be hit by an Asian driver?
The urban jungle let's call it.
Gun Store Owner [to Farhad]: Yo, Osama! Plan a jihad on your own time. What do you want?
Farhad: Are you making insult at me?
Gun Store Owner: Am I making insult “at” you? Is that the closest you can come to English?
Farhad: Yes, I speak English! I am American citizen.
Gun Store Owner: Oh, God, here we go again.
Farhad: I have right like you. I have right to buy gun.
Gun Store Owner: Not in my store, you don’t! Andy, get him out of here now!
Dorri [to Farhad]: Go, wait in the car.
Farhad [to Gun Store Owner]: You are ignorant man!
Gun Store Owner: I’m ignorant. You’re liberating my country, and I’m flying 747s into your mud huts and incinerating your friends? Get the fuck out of my store!
Too close to call?
Next up: those bullets.
Anthony: Look around! You couldn’t find a whiter, safer or better lit part of this city. But this white woman sees two black guys, who look like UCLA students, strolling down the sidewalk and her reaction is blind fear. I mean, look at us! Are we dressed like gang-bangers? Huh? No. Do we look threatening? No. Fact, if anybody should be scared around here, it’s us: We’re the only two black faces surrounded by a sea of over-caffeinated white people, patrolled by the triggerhappy LAPD. So you tell me, why aren’t we scared?
Peter: Because we have guns?
Anthony: You could be right.
How scared would you be?
Jean: I would like the locks changed again in the morning. And you know what, you might mention that next time we’d appreciate it if they didn’t send a gang member…
Rick: A gang member?
Jean: Yes, yes.
Rick: What do you mean? That kid in there?
Jean: Yes. The guy in there with the shaved head, the pants around his ass, the prison tattoos.
Rick: Those are not prison tattoos.
Jean [Interrupting]: Oh really? And he’s not gonna go sell our key to one of his gang banger friends the moment he is out our door?
Well, it could happen, right?
Rick: Fuck! Why do these guys have to be black? I mean, why? No matter how we spin this thing, I’m either gonna lose the black vote or I’m gonna lose the law and order vote!
Karen: You know, I think you’re worrying too much. You have a lot of support in the black community.
Rick: All right. If we can’t duck this thing, we’re gonna have to neutralize it. What we need is a picture of me pinning a medal on a black man. Bruce? The firefighter - the one that saved the camp or something - Northridge… what’s his name?
Bruce: He’s Iraqi.
Rick: He’s Iraqi? Well, he looks black.
Bruce: He’s dark-skinned, sir, but he’s Iraqi, his name’s Saddam Hassif.
Rick: Saddam? His name’s Saddam? Oh, that’s real good, Bruce. Yeah, I’m gonna pin a medal on an Iraqi named Saddam. Give yourself a raise, will you?
Ryan [on phone]: I wanna talk to your supervisor…
Shaniqua: I am my supervisor!
Ryan: Yeah, what’s your name?
Shaniqua: Shaniqua Johnson.
Ryan: Shaniqua. Big fucking surprise that is!
This won't end well.
Christine: [to Cameron] Fuck you, Cameron!
[to Ryan]
Christine: And you, keep your filthy fuckin’ hands off me! Ow! You fucking pig!
Cameron: Christine, just stop talking.
Ryan [to Christine]: That’s quite a mouth you have.
[to Cameron]
Ryan: Course, you know that.
Christine: Fuck you! That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You thought you saw a white woman blowing a black man, and that just drove your little cracker ass crazy!
Cameron: Christine, shut your fuckin’ mouth!
Ryan: I’d listen to your husband, Ma’am. Put your legs open. Now, do you have any guns or knives or anything I might get stuck with?
Up "there" in other words.
Christine: What I need is a husband who will not just stand there while I am being molested!
Cameron: They were cops for God sakes! They had guns! Maybe I should’ve let them arrest your ass. Sooner or later you gotta find out what it is really like to be black.
Christine: Fuck you, man. Like you know. The closest you ever came to being black, Cameron, was watching The Cosby Show.
Cameron: At least I wasn’t watching it with the rest of the equestrian team.
Christine: You’re right, Cameron. I got a lot to learn 'cause I haven’t quite learned how to shuck and jive. Let me hear it again. Thank you, mister policeman. You sure is mighty kind to us poor black folk. You be sure to let me know next time you wanna finger-fuck my wife.
Cameron: How the fuck do you say something like that to me? You know, fuck you!
Christine: That’s good. A little anger. It’s a bit late, but it’s nice to see!
No, really, who won?
Anthony: You wanna listen to music of the oppressor, you go right ahead, man.
Peter: How in the lunacy of your mind is hip-hop music of the oppressor?
Anthony: Listen to it man. Nigga this, Nigga that. You think white people go around callin’ each other “honky” all day, man? “Hey, honky, how’s business?” “Going great, cracker, we’re diversifying!”
Good point?
Anthony: You have absolutely no idea where hip-hop music comes from, do you? See, back in the 60’s we had smart, articulate black men. Like Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton. These brothers were speaking out, and people were listening! Then the FBI said, “No, we can’t have that. I know, let’s give the niggers this music by a bunch of mumbling idiots and sooner or later, they’ll all copy it, and nobody will be able to understand a fucking word they say. End of problem.”
Close enough?
Lucien: You watch the Discovery Channel?
Anthony: Not a lot.
Peter: They got some good shit on that channel.
Lucien: Every night there is a show with somebody shining a little blue light and finding tiny specks of blood splattered on carpets and walls and ceiling fans, bathroom fixtures and special-edition plastic Burger King tray cups. The next thing they show is some stupid redneck in handcuffs who looks absolutely stunned that this is happening to him. Sometimes the redneck is actually WATCHING the Discovery Channel when they break in to arrest him. And he still can’t figure out how on earth they could’ve caught him!
[pauses]
Lucien: Psst. Do I look like I wanna be on the Discovery Channel?
Anthony: No.
Lucien: Then get the fuck outta my shop.
Graham [on the phone]: Mom, I can’t talk to you right now, okay? I’m having sex with a white woman.
[hangs up]
Graham: OK, where were we?
Ria: I was white, and you were about to jerk off in the shower.
Oops.
Ria: You want a lesson? I’ll give you a lesson. How 'bout a geography lesson? My father’s from Puerto Rico. My mother’s from El Salvador. Neither one of those is Mexico.
Graham: Ah. Well then I guess the big mystery is, who gathered all those remarkably different cultures together and taught them all how to park their cars on their lawns?
You tell me.
Fred: Cam, you got a second?
Cameron: Yeah, Fred, I just wanna grab some coffee.
Fred: Yeah. Listen. I think we need another take, buddy.
Cameron: That looked pretty terrific, man.
Fred: This is gonna sound strange, but is Jamal seeing a speech coach or something?
Cameron: What do you mean?
Fred: Have you noticed, uh… this is weird for a white guy to say, but have you noticed he’s talking a lot less black lately?
Cameron: No, I haven’t noticed that.
Fred: Really? Like in this scene, he was supposed to say, “Don’t be talkin’ 'bout that.” And he changed it to, “Don’t talk to me about that.”
Cameron: Wait a minute. You think because of that, the audience won’t recognize him as being a black man? Come on!
Fred: Is there a problem, Cam?
Cameron: Excuse me?
Fred: Is there a problem, Cam?
Cameron: No, we don’t have a problem.
Fred: I mean, 'cause all I’m saying is it’s not his character. Eddie’s supposed to be the smart one, not Jamal, right? You’re the expert here. But to me, it rings false.
Cameron: We’re gonna do it one more time.
Fred: Thanks, buddy.
Imagine Christine's reaction to that.
Ryan: You know what I can’t do? I can’t look at you without thinking about the five or six more qualified white men who didn’t get your job.
Shaniqua: It’s time for you to go.
Ryan: I’m saying this 'cause I’m hoping that I’m wrong about you. I’m hoping that someone like yourself, someone who may have been given a helping hand, might have a little compassion for someone in a similar situation.
Shaniqua: Carol, I need security in my office!
Ryan: You don’t like me, that’s fine. I’m a p****. My father doesn’t deserve to suffer like this. He was a janitor. He struggled his whole life. Saved enough to start his own company. Twenty-three employees, all of them black. Paid 'em equal wages when no one else was doing that. For years he worked side by side with those men, sweeping and carrying garbage. Then the city council decides to give minority-owned companies preference in city contracts. And overnight, my father loses everything. His business, his home, his wife. Everything! Not once does he blame your people. I’m not asking you to help me. I’m asking that you do this small thing for a man who lost everything so people like yourself could reap the benefits. And do you know what it’s gonna cost you? Nothing. Just a flick of your pen.
Shaniqua: Your father sounds like a good man. And if he’d come in here today, I probably would’ve approved this request. But he didn’t come in. You did. And for his sake, it’s a real shame. [to security] Get him the hell outta my office.
So, she turns Dad down because of the son?
Flanagan: Fucking black people, huh?
Graham: What did you just say?
Flanagan: I mean, I know all the sociological reasons why, per capita eight times more black men are incarcerated than white men… Schools are a disgrace, lack of opportunity, bias in the judicial system, all that stuff… But still… but still, it’s… it’s gotta get to you, I mean, on a gut level, as a black man. They just can’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar. Of course, you and I know that’s not the truth. But that’s the way it always plays, doesn’t it? And assholes like Lewis keep feeding the flames. It’s gotta get to you.
Anyone here it gets to? doesn't get to?
Flanagan: Actually, we were thinking of you until we saw that. It’s your brothers file. Twenty something years old and already three felonys. Three Strikes Law, the kid’s going away for life for stealing a car. Christ, that’s a shitty law. There’s a warrant in there. But still, he had every opportunity you had. Fucking black people, huh?
Graham: So, uh… all I need to do to make this disappear is to frame a potentially innocent man.
Flanagan: What are you? The fucking Defender of All Things White? We’re talking about a white that shot three black men and you’re arguing with me, that maybe we’re not being “fair” to him? You know, what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re right. Maybe Lewis did provoke this. Maybe he got exactly what was coming to him. Or, maybe, stoned or not, being a black man in the valley was enough to get him killed. There was no one there to see who shot first, so there is no way way to know. Which means, we could get this wrong. Maybe that’s what happened with your brother. Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe Lewis isn’t the only one who deserves the benefit of the doubt. You’re the one closest to all this. You need to tell us. What does your gut tell you?
Conklin is going down.
Lara: He doesn’t have it!
Elizabeth: [confused] He doesn’t have what?
Lara: I have it. He doesn’t have the impenetrable cloak!
Back to those "bullets".
Lucien: I’ll take the van.
Anthony: They’re chained to the van.
Lucien: So I’ll take them too.
Anthony: You wanna buy these Chinamen?
Lucien: Don’t be ignorant. They’re Thai or Cambodian. Entirely different kind of chinks.
Anthony: What the hell are you gonna do with 'em?
Lucien: Sell 'em. What you think? I’ll give you $500 apiece, and you can keep the van.
A bargain?
Jean: Do you want to hear something funny?
Maria: What’s that Mrs. Jean?
Jean: You’re the best friend I’ve got.
She might even have meant it at the time.
Anthony: Everybody out, man. You’re free to go. All right, come on. Come on now! This is America. Time is money. Chop, chop! Come on, y’all. Come on. That’s $40. Buy everybody chop suey. You understand? Dopey fucking Chinaman.
“No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.” Virginia Woolf
Let's just hope we steer clear of that here.
“Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!” Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Of course, that's still true.
“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?” Soren Kierkegaard
"I know! I'll take an existential leap of faith to God!!"
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Eric Hoffer
Here? Place your bets!
“Philosophy is common sense with big words.” James Madison
Up in the clouds as likely as not.
“If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.” Robert A. Heinlein
The DVD cover says it all. An ominous young man [a boy, really…Sweat Pea in the film] with a gun. He is blown up to gigantic proportions. He trods upon the city of Naples menacing everything in sight.
This is the scariest of worlds for most of us. One in which those who “run the place” are basically thugs making up the rules as they go along. And only up to a point is “the law” able to intervene. That is, the parts not already bought and paid for by the mobsters.
The only good thing is that most of the violence is internal. Different factions [clans] vying for power or control over one or another “enterprise”. But if they bump into you and you are not in one of the clans it is almost always best to reconfigure your own plans to be more in line with their plans.
And then there are all the ethnic factions.
And the “initiation”. Let’s just say it leaves a mark.
There is absolutely no attempt to glamourize or to romanticism the amoral thuggery that goes on here. There is not even really a code to abide by. And no matter how much you steel yourself for the violence, time after time it just jumps right off the screen at you. It’s, uh, jolting.
And, of course, this is a world populated almost entirely by men.
Gomorrah
Sweet Pea [to Marcos]: You really looked like Scarface. You were good.
A point of view, let's call it.
Giovanni [to Sweet Pea and Marcos]: I can’t be looking bad because of two snot-nosed kids. Next time I hear anything about you I’ll blow your heads off. If and when I decide you two are any good then you come work for me.
Not like the snot-nosed kids most of us are familiar with here.
Pasquale [to Maria]: Where was I? China? They were all bowing to me. “Master”. They called me “master”.
The fools?
Woman: Ciro, help me understand. I talked with my son this morning. He said, “Mom. pack my bag, I leaving. I’m joining the secessionists.”
Ciro: What did you say?
Woman: His mind is made up. He said, “We’ve got the strength and the numbers. We’ll win the war. The others are losers.”
Ciro: What war? A handful of idiots making war on us. You have to stop him. We’re on the right side.
Woman: Have you seen what is happening? There are killings everyday.
Next up: what war here?
Toto: When will we see each other again?
Simon: When you change sides.
Toto: Want to stay loyal, go ahead. You go your way and I go mine. But we can still have a pizza together with friends.
Simon: I’m telling you again: Friends turn into enemies.
Toto: We’ve known each other a long time. Why go with them?
Simon: Once we were brothers. Now we are enemies. If you don’t change sides, we might kill you. Or you might kill us. Because we’re at war. People are dying everyday.
Toto: You could have stayed with us.
Simon: What for? I’m better off on the other side.
[They kiss goodbye]
These kids are about 12 years old. Both already initiated.
Giovanni: Toto, are you with us or against us?
Toto: I’ll see what I can do.
Giovanni: No “I’ll see.” You’re either with us or against us. One or the other. And if you are against us you’re not leavin’ here. We can’t trust you.
Maria [his friend] is dead.
Ciro: You’ve known me for years. You know everything I’ve done. I’ve brought people their money, including your family. I did it because I was ordered to. War isn’t for me.
Mobster: But you’re in the middle of it, you know that.
Ciro: Yes.
Mobster: Well then?
Ciro: You tell me.
Mobster: Tell you what? Why’d you come here? To talk about what?
Ciro: I want to save myself.
Mobster: You’ll have to buy your life. I won’t just give it to you.
Like they never even heard of Immanuel Kant.
Ciro: What I did for them, I’ll do for you.
Mobster: No, we don’t need money-carriers. We have to score, kill people, and we need money. You’ve wasting your time. You’re more dead than alive.
Ciro: We were all brothers before.
Mobster: I don’t want to hear it! That was before! Then your friends started fucking around. Our relatives were good people and then BOOM! BOOM! They killed them. So don’t come asking to join our side. We have to score, kill, and we need money. Otherwise you die, because you’re in this war too. You bring the money and I kill the people.
Ciro [trapped]: I understand.
Not much to not understand sometimes.
Father: All these people have been saved by you and me.
Roberto: I’ve seen how you help them. You save a worker in Mestre and kill a family in Mondragone.
Father: That’s how it works. I didn’t make the rules. We solve problems created by others. I didn’t create chromium and asbestos. I didn’t dig up the mountains. That’s how it works.
Roberto: That’s how it works? Well, I won’t work that way.
[he turns and walks down the road]
Father: Go make pizzas then. You’re different.
No anchovies please.
Titlecard: In Europe the Camorra has killed more people than any other criminal organization. 4,000 deaths in the last 30 years. One every three days. Scampia is the largest open-air drug market in the world. Daily sales per clan run about 500,000 euros. If clan managed toxic waste were piled up, it would reach 47,900 feet. Mount Everest is only 29,000 feet high. Cancer rates have increased 20% in the poisoned areas. Profits from illegal activities are reinvested in legal activities worldwide. The Camorra has invested in the reconstruction of the Twin Towers.
“Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only 'pseudo problems,' because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the traditional problems of philosophy, of religion, or of ethics, are of this character. Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.” Percy Williams Bridgman
Pick one:
1] going all the way back to the Big Bang
2] going all the way back to God
“The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics.” Sam Harris
There he goes again. Arguing as though his frame of mind reflects the optimal assessment even though he was never free to opt to choose another one?
“...if there really is someday discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices - that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula - then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of that sort; for what is a man without desires, without freewill and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?” Fyodor Dostoevsky
Underground, say?
“There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse men for crucifying each other.” Clarence Darrow
Not here though, right?
“Take the Holocaust for example: Why did God allow Hitler to kill millions of innocent Jews? Because God didn't want to step on Hitler's toes and interfere with his free will? That's a pretty lame excuse. What about the free will of all those Jews who died? I'm pretty sure that getting gassed to death was obviously not their choice.
So, was the Holocaust part of God's great plan? Is that why he allowed it to happen? Is that why God didn't answer the prayers of all those Jews who begged him to make Hitler drop dead?
Why didn't God just make Hitler have a heart attack before he could start World War 2? Why didn't he simply prevent Hitler from being born? How could a God who is supposed to be all good all the time allow something like the Holocaust?
Or did God not just LET it happen? Maybe God MADE the Holocaust happen, because everything that happens, happens for a good reason? Are our minds simply too tiny, too inferior, to understand God's divine plan? Are we just too stupid to see the greater good that came out of the Holocaust?
If that were true, and everything that happens, including the Holocaust, is part of God's perfect plan, then that means that Hitler really wasn't a bad man at all. He was actually doing God's work. And if Hitler did exactly what he was supposed to do in God's great plan, then Hitler obviously didn't have free will, but was just God's puppet. So that means Hitler was a good guy. A man of God.
Sorry, but there is no religion in the world that could sell me on believing THAT bullshit.” Oliver Markus
Yo, Immanuel Can! Among others.
“Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills).” Albert Einstein
