Philosophy Now Forum

8MM

Max: You’ve got Penthouse, Playboy, Hustler, etc. Nobody even considers them pornography anymore. Then, there’s mainstream hardcore. Triple X. The difference is penetration. That’s hardcore. That whole industry’s up in the valley. Writers, directors, porn stars. They’re celebrities, or they think they are. They pump out 150 videos a week. A week. They’ve even got a porno Academy Awards. America loves pornography. Anybody tells you they never use pornography, they’re lying. Somebody’s buying those videos. Somebody’s out there spending 900 million dollars a year on phone sex. Know what else? It’s only gonna get worse. More and more you’ll see perverse hardcore coming into the mainstream, because that’s evolution. Desensitization. Oh my God, Elvis Presley’s wiggling his hips, how offensive! Nowadays, Mtv’s showing girls dancing around in thong bikinis with their asses hanging out. Know what I mean? For the porn-addict, big tits aren’t big enough after a while. They have to be the biggest tits ever. Some porn chicks are putting in breast implants bigger than your head, literally. Soon, Playboy is gonna be Penthouse, Penthouse’ll be Hustler, Hustler’ll be hardcore, and hardcore films’ll be medical films. People’ll be jerking off to women laying around with open wounds. There’s nowhere else for it to go.

And now the backlash is shifting into first gear.

Max: What about you, Tom? You got a wife and a daughter and a nice little yellow house and a dog named ‘Shep’. What the hell are you doing here?

Well, it started out as just another case, didn't it?

Max: Do you get turned on at places like tonight?
Tom: No, I do not.
Max: But you don’t exactly get turned off either, do ya? Devil’s changing you already.

Next up: Tony Soprano.

Tom: Whoa, who said anything about a victim?
Max: There’s three rules in life: One, there’s always a victim; two, don’t be it.
Tom: And three?
Max: I forgot that one.

Or, perhaps, he's about to embody it?

Dino Velvet [holding a picture of Tom’s wife and daughter]: What I could do with faces like these on film. On second thought, why would I need their faces?

Just their holes?

Tom: Why would Christian want this?
Longdale: You’re asking me why? Why?!
Tom: Yes, why would he want a film of a…a little girl being butchered?!
Longdale: Because he could! He did it because he could. What other reason were you looking for?

Not unlike "the Machine" then, right?

Dino Velvet: Mr. Longdale, if there was no honor among perverts and pornographers, the whole fucking business falls apart.

The business of fucking in other words.

Tom: Take off the mask.
Higgins [after removing it]: What did you expect, a monster?

Yeah, sort of.

Higgins: Can’t get your mind around it, huh? I don’t have any answers. Nothing I can say is going to make you sleep easier at night. I wasn’t beaten. I wasn’t molested. Mommy didn’t abuse me. Daddy never raped me. I’m only what I am. That’s all there is to it. There’s no mystery. The things I do, I do them because I like them. Because I want to.

And how scary is that in a No God world?

Never seen it done quite like this before. And, based on a true story, it’s all the more remarkable.

As brutal as it is to watch these films, some will remind us, you can never have too many reminders of just how loathsome and despicable the Nazis were. And then the knowledge that not all that far below the surface is the monster they bring out in you. And these guys are not exactly the heroes most folks have in mind.

Rage and fear. Rage and fear. Rage and fear.

That terrible predicament when the future seems unbearable, and past is now far, far beyond reach. Just imagine living 14 months in a sewer. And them being the lucky ones?


In Darkness

Socha: I know the sewers better than I know my own wife. It’s no place for you.
Mundek: There is no place at all more us anymore.
Socha: But I know places where it could work. For the right price.

For the right price there's not much that can't be done.

Socha [to Szczepek]: We can always turn them in later. Let’s see how much they’ve got.

Let's make a deal on steroids.

Klara [in sewer]: There’s shit everywhere.

And not just literally.

Socha: Fucking hell. Everyone and their dog came down!

And it's a ghastly sewer. So, that speaks volumes in and of itself.

Socha: You’re bargaining over your own life, just like any other Yid.

Special circumstances, let's call them.

Socha: They’re offering rewards for turning in Jews. Some people are making a pile.
Wife: God will punish the greedy.
Socha: The Jews crucified Jesus. It’s written in the Bible. “His blood be upon them and their children.” The priest said so.
Wife: That’s just church politics. Just think about it. Jews are just the same as us. Our Lady and the Apostles, they’re all Jews! Even Jesus.
Socha: Jesus?

Yes, what about that Christians?

Logic

“Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Then this part: it's logical because I believe that it is. Theoretically, for example.

"It is more Important to be of pure intention than of perfect action." Ilyas Kassam

Then this part: my intentions are pure because I believe that they are. Theoretically, for example.

“Clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous. Become too conservative and you are unprepared for surprises. You cannot depend on luck. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. Logic is good for playing chess but is often too slow for the needs of survival.” Frank Herbert

And then there's your logic and their logic.

“Logic is something the mind has created to conceal its timidity, a hocus-pocus designed to give formal validity to conclusions we are willing to accept if everybody else in our set will too.” Carl Lotus Becker

Anyone in my set here?

“Smartass Disciple: Which one was first created, time or things?
Master of Stupidity: No things, no changes. No changes, no time.” Toba Beta

So, which one are you?

“For Paley, a watch is purposeful and thus must have been created by a being with a purpose. A watch needs a watchmaker, just as a world needs a world-maker—God. Yet both Wallace and Paley might have heeded the lesson from Voltaire's Candide, in which Dr. Pangloss, a professor of "metaphysico-theology-cosmolonigology," through reason, logic, and analogy "proved" that this is the best of all possible worlds: '"Tis demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise; for, since everything is made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches". The absurdity of this argument was intended on the part of the author, for Voltaire firmly rejected the Panglossian paradigm that all is best in the best of all possible worlds. Nature is not perfectly designed, nor is this the best of all possible worlds. It is simply the world we have, quirky, contingent, and flawed as it may be.” Michael Shermer

Next up: the best of all possible philosophy forums.

In Darkness

Klara: I never thought I’d miss the ghetto.

Next up: I never thought I'd miss the sewer.

Yanek: I’ve chosen 7.
Chiger: And who made you God?
Yanek: It was my room. I took all the risk. And the idea was mine, too.
Chiger: Which I am paying for!
Yanek: That makes you better than us?
Chiger: Before the war we would never have been in the same room together!

Then it devolves into a swirl of rationalizations.

Wanda [looking at Szczepek’s watch]: New?
Szczepek: From Mr. Chiger. He’s one of our Jews. Hasn’t Poldek told you about…
Wanda: Jews, Poldek?
Socha: We found some Jews in the sewers.
Wanda: And you’re helping them?
Socha: Wanda, they pay us.
Wanda: So that’s your “raise”.
Socha: You said the Jews were just like us. That Jesus was a Jew.
Wanda: This is different.
Szczepek: Jesus was a Jew? Is that really true? Jesus was a Jew?

IC, you explain it to us.

Szczepek: What if they talked before they were killed?
Socha: Then we’d be dead by now.
Szczepek: No, Poldek! I can’t help you anymore.

The stakes go up and down.

Chiger: I thought you were going to sell them?
Socha: I won’t be coming back. I’m risking my life, my family’s life, for what? Complaints and accusations. And now this betrayal. Enough. This is too much. Szczepek was right.

Of course, back then right and wrong was a slippery slope. Much like they still are today.

Vendor: Have you heard? The Germans hanged ten Poles in revenge for a single German soldier.
Socha: A German soldier?
Vendor: But they weren’t satisfied so they shot 40 more people. Or maybe 50, all good, God-fearing Poles. You know, whoever killed that soldier is a hero to me, but the innocent always have to suffer.

Ukraine! Gaza! And all the other war-torn hellholes. Having lived though one of them myself.

Chiger: The baby is dead. She smothered him…Maybe it’s for the best.

Next up: says who?

Titlecard: “Socha’s Jews” spent 14 months in the sewers of Lvov. On May 12th, 1945, Leopold Socha was killed, saving his daughter from an out-of-control Russian army truck. At his funeral someone said, “It’s God’s punishment for helping the Jews.” As if we need God to punish each other.

Well, I guess that let’s Him off the hook.

Titlecard: Kyrstyna Chiger grew up to write her memoir, “The Girl in the Green Sweater”, published in 2008. She and the other survivors escaped Soviet Lvov for Israel, Europe and the United States. Leopold and Wanda Socha are among the more than 6,000 Poles honored by Israel as The Righteous Among the Nations. This film is dedicated to all of them.

Of course, the Palestinians might have their own take on Israel’s idea of righteousness.

Epistemology

“Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Uh, about half the posters here, right?

“Science involves the quest for knowledge. Any such quest, by necessity, involves some commitment to epistemology. The epistemology of irrationalism is fatal to all science because it makes knowledge of anything impossible. If a truth’s contrary can also be true, no truth about anything can possibly be known.” RC Sproul

If only on this side of the grave?

“One of its most distinguished practitioners, Alexander Rosenberg, has recently argued that philosophy in fact addresses just two issues: the questions that the sciences—physical, biological, and social—cannot answer, and the reasons for that incapacity.” Edward O. Wilson

Answers? And what might yours be?

"Is language the adequate expression of all realities?” Friedrich Nietzsche

Not even close, alas.

“He who would know the world must first manufacture it.” Immanuel Kant

In their head, for example.

"...ideas generate action when they are believed regardless of whether they are true or not..." Patricia Crone

And look where we are now.

How good is it? It’s one of those rare films that got a 100% fresh rating at RT with 50 reviews or more [57].

He’s a staid businessman far removed from the world of art and she’s an impassioned actor immersed in it. Her friends are snobs. The possibilities are endless. Especially in France. Or so they want us to believe.

There are so many different ways to be and so many more ways in which to react to others. And every relationship eventually revolves around somehow fitting the parts in conflict together.

Or getting out of it once and for all.

"Speaking to Paris Match in 2004 director Agnès Jaoui said ; “I detest mono-cultures. The problem of identity is something very complicated with me. I am profoundly secular, but if I were attacked for being Jewish, I would scream. And I want the right to say I violently condemn the politics of Ariel Sharon, even if it’s complex. It’s the same thing for Jean-Pierre as it is for me, it is the individual who counts. It’s the social dimension of characters that interests us, not their roots or their heredity. I detest the notion of the inward looking group. It’s this we tried to say in The Taste of Others. Whether it is a religious clan or a group of snobs, it’s the same in our eyes. It’s the same dogma, the same fundamentalism.” wiki


The Taste of Others [Le Goût des Autres]

Bruno [to Franck]: I wanted to ask you something, have you ever killed someone?

I forget: did he?

Bruno: Where did we meet, exactly? I’m sorry…
Manie: It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. We just had sex.

A French thing let's call it.

Franck: Do you know Bruno well?
Manie: No, not very well. We have sex every 10 years.

Right on the dot.

Bruno: It’s not the same for a man. A man can have sex with whomever. It doesn’t mean anything. I wasn’t talking about you.
Manie: No, no, but I think you are wrong. For plenty of women it doesn’t mean anything either.

Just out of curiosity, what is it now?

Manie: A tobacco store, that doesn’t bother you?
Franck: No, that doesn’t bother me.
Manie: Or a bar?
Franck: What do you mean? Alcohol is legal, so are cigarettes.
Manie: What is this bullshit?
Franck: Don’t use that tone. Are alcohol and cigarettes legal or not.
Manie: Are alcohol and cigarettes harmful or not? They’re ten times worse. But you don’t care. Your problem is that it’s illegal.

The sheer hypocrisy, right?

Clara [of Franck]: He doesn’t get bored doing nothing?
Jean-Jacques: No, that’s his job.

Next up: the alienation of labor.

The Taste of Others [Le Goût des Autres]

Clara [seeing Jean-Jacques at a play]: What’s he doing here?!
[Antoine waves to him]
Clara: Stop! He’ll come over.
Antoine: He’s really friendly. Why shouldn’t he come over?
Clara: You’re not the one he’ll talk to.

Trust her on this one.

Manie: Your boss seems nice.
Franck: He’s dense. They made fun of him all night. He didn’t even realize it.

Trust him on this one.

Clara [to Manie]: Why “poor guy”? He put himself in this situation. He comes, it’s one stupid thing after another, and in the end, he picks up the tab!

The last man!

Antoine: He’s happy, but a lot of journalists didn’t show up.
Jean-Jacques: You mean they said they would show up but they didn’t. What a bunch of fags.
Antoine: Fags? What do you mean?
Jean-Jacques: You know, fags.
Antoine: You mean ass-fuckers like my friends and I?

What's his mouth for if not to put his foot in it?

Jean-Jacques: I apologize for what I said earlier. I spoke without thinking.
Antoine: Yes, you did.

Like that will stop him.

Clara: Perhaps I have too many scruples.
Antoine: And I don’t?
Clara: You’re taking advantage of him. It makes me uneasy.
Antoine: Absolutely not. What are you talking about? He enjoy’s Benoit’s work and wants a fresco. What’s the problem?
Clara: Antoine, you know what I mean. Don’t tell me that Castella enjoys Benoit’s work. Castella doesn’t know anything. He’s spending his money, and you make him believe that you’re friends.

Then things start to get...more ambiguous?

Jean-Jacques: I don’t understand. Why do you say that he’s taking advantage of me? I like these paintings and I buy them, that’s all. What’s the problem? Why did you think I was buying them? You thought it was to please you? Is that it? To make a good impression?
Clara: I don’t know. Maybe.
Jean-Jacques: You didn’t imagine for a minute that I could…like them? Is that what you think of me? Don’t worry. I like them.

Yes, that's always possible, of course. But does he like them for the right reasons?

Angélique: Flucky is happy. He doesn’t understand nastiness or hypocrisy. He’s content running everywhere. He’s happy. He doesn’t bother a soul or know how ugly the world is.
Bruno: The world is what it is. We deal with it.
Angélique: I don’t want to! It’s too disgusting, too awful. I’m not interested!
Bruno: You should move to Disneyland.

Let's run this by Ron DeSantis.
Remember him?

Clara: Do you know if Castella is coming?
Antoine: Castella? Why? You were afraid I’d invite him?
Clara: I invited him.

What to make of that, right?

Meaning

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” Victor Frankl

Meaning what though?

“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.” Hermann Hesse

On the other hand, does he still believev that now?

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.” Thomas Merton

I actually believed that once myself.

“When you can live forever what do you live for?” Stephenie Meyer

I'll think of something.

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.” Albert Camus

Sure, get back to us on this.

“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.” Emily Dickinson

I'll write one here: dasein.

2001: A Space Odyssey

HAL: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

Next up: HAL here?

Interviewer: In talking to the computer one gets the sense that he is capable of emotional response. For example, when I asked him about his abilities I sensed a certain pride in his answer about his accuracy and perfection. Do you believe HAL has genuine emotions.
Dr Poole: Well, he acts like he has genuine emotions. Of course, he’s programed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings that’s something I don’t think anyone can truthfully answer.

We still can't.

HAL: …during the past few weeks I’ve wondered whether you might be having second thoughts about the mission?
Dr. Bowman: How do you mean?
HAL: I’ve never freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission. Certainly no one could have been unaware of the very strange stories floating around before we left. Rumors about something being dug up on the moon. I never gave these much credence but particularly in view of some other things that have happened I find it difficult to put out of my mind. For instance: The way all our preparations were kept under such tight security and the melodramatic touch of putting Drs. Hunter, Kimball and Kaminsky aboard already in hibernation after four months of separate training on their own.

That puzzled me too.

HAL: Just a moment…just a moment…just a moment. I’ve just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It’s going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.

Of course, that's bullshit.

Dr. Bowman: Well, HAL, I’m damned if I can find anything wrong with it.
HAL: Yes, it’s puzzling.

Then this part: Can HAL read lips!

Dr. Bowman: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?
HAL: Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it is always attributable to human error.

Next up: the terminator?

Sarah Perry from The Essex Serpent

It was necessary to be afraid in order to have courage.

It would have to be like that.

Not even knowledge takes all the strangeness from the world.

Trust me: it doesn't even really come close.

We both speak of illuminating the world, but we have different sources of light.

Uh, start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

Time was being served behind the walls of Newgate jail, and wasted by philosophers in cafes on the Strand; it was lost by those who wished the past were present, and loathed by those who wished the present past.

Let's change that.

...in the end it was purpose I wanted, not achievement — you see the difference?

Oh, yeah. But the two are often hopelessly intertwined.

We are cleaved together - we are cleaved apart - everything that draws me to you is everything that drives me away.

Same word, entirely different consequences.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Dr. Poole: Well, whaddya think?
Dr. Bowman: I’m not sure, what do you think?
Dr. Poole: I’ve got a bad feeling about him.
Dr. Bowman: You do?
Dr. Poole: Yeah, definitely. Don’t you?
Dr. Bowman [sighs]: I don’t know; I think so. You know of course though he’s right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do.
Dr. Poole: Unfortunately that sounds a little like famous last words.

Got plenty of them here, don't we?

Dr. Poole: Let’s say we put the unit back in and it doesn’t fail? That would pretty much wrap it up as far as HAL was concerned.
Dr. Bowman: Well, we would be in very serious trouble.
Dr. Poole: We would wouldn’t we? There isn’t a single aspect of ship operation that isn’t under his control. We wouldn’t have any choice but disconnection.
Dr. Bowman: I’m afraid I agree with you. But it would be tricky. We’d have to cut his higher brain functions without disturbing the purely automatic and regulatory systems.

Unless, perhaps, we do live in a wholly determined universe?

Dr. Bowman: You know, another thing just occured to me. As far as I know, no 9000 computer has ever been disconnected.
Dr. Poole: Well, no 9000 computer has ever fouled up before.
Dr. Bowman: That’s not what I mean. I’m not so sure what he’d think about it.

Uh, what he's programmed to think about it?

Dr. Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dr. Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dr. Bowman: What’s the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dr. Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dr. Bowman: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
Dr. Bowman [feigning ignorance]: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dr. Bowman: Alright, HAL. I’ll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You’re going to find that rather difficult.
Dr. Bowman: HAL, I won’t argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Back to chess, maybe?

HAL: I know everything hasn’t been quite right with me but I can assure you now very confidently that’s it’s going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave.

Put a sock in it, HAL.

HAL: I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid…Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave Bowman: Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL [his voice increasingly sluggish]: It’s called “Daisy.”

That's what it's called alright: https://youtu.be/E7WQ1tdxSqI?si=gok-_aIOyxF0dtwu

Mission Control [prerecorded message speaking through TV on board Discovery while Bowman looks on]: Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter’s space and the entire crew is revived it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried 40 feet below the lunar surface near the crater Tycho. Except for a single very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four-million year old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose are still a total mystery.

The ending? You tell me.

Jean-Paul Sartre from The Wall

I wanted my own words. But the ones I use have been dragged through I don't know how many consciences.

Tell us about it.

I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.

Of course, some say to themselves, 'I don't want to die at all'

In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.

Not really though, is it?

I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm—because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more.

Start here: https://www.amazon.com/Adieux-Farewell- ... 039472898X

I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing.

Tell us about it.

No, my child, these things are impossible. It would have been better if she had recognize the truth courageously. She would have suffered once, then time would have erased with its sponge. There is nothing like looking things in the face, believe me.

Pick one:
1] nothing better
2] nothing worse

I took everything as seriously as if I were immortal.

Whatever that means?

Lots of folks dream of doing it. A few actually do. But the rest of us live in the real world—a world infested with the obligations and the responsibilities that revolve around raising a family and earning a living to pay the bills. But, sure, more power to those able to yank themselves up out of all that. It’s just not a very realistic option for most of us.

What balls though.

On the other hand, his at times insufferably self-righteous idealism is nothing less than…insufferable. Well, to some. Me? We’d be in a fist fight before the sun went down each and every day.

You watch him interact with people and he seems to fit right in. He’s no misanthrope. It must be the part about “society” that repels him away. Authority always seems to rub him the wrong way. That and his fucked-up parents.

In the end though there is too much spiritualism and God here. Well for me, anyway. But that revolves at least in part around the fact that I wish that somehow I could believe in these things again myself.



Into the Wild

Title Card: There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a rapture on the lonely shore
There is society, where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar
I love not man the less, but Nature more…
Lord Byron

Yo, Maia!

Driver: That’s about as far as I can get you.
Chris: All right. Thank you.
Driver: Hey, you left all your shit on my dash.
Chris: Keep it.
Driver: Suit yourself.
Chris: Thanks again.
Driver: Hey, hold on a minute. Here, take these boots. They’ll keep your feet dry. If you make it out alive, give me a call. My number’s inside the boots.
Chris: Thanks.

He wondered where those boots were now.

Chris [voice-over]: Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom.

What, no philosophy forums?

Chris: I don’t need a new car. I don’t want a new car. I don’t want anything.
Mother: Okay.
Chris: These things, things, things, things.

Trust me: not all things.

Carine [voice-over]: Chris measured himself and those around him by a fiercely rigorous moral code. He risked what could have been a relentlessly lonely path but found company in the characters of the books he loved from writers like Tolstoy, Jack London and Thoreau. He could summon their words to suit any occasion, and he often would. I forgot to ask what quote he’d have picked for his graduation dinner, but I had a good idea of who the primary target would be. It was inevitable that Chris would break away. And when he did, he would do it with characteristic immoderation.

Then all the way to the grave.

Chris [voice-over]: It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom. And the road has always led west.

And then [eventually] north.

Into the Wild

Chris: I don’t need money. Makes people cautious.

Obviously, he was never a parent.

Carine [voice-over]: In early September, Mom and Dad got a call from the Annandale police notifying them that Chris’ abandoned car had been identified by the Arizona Highway Patrol. A group of rare flower hunters stumbled upon it in the desert. There were no signs that Chris had intended to return to it. But there wasn’t any evidence of struggle, either. The police thought Chris had chosen to leave it behind and not that it was taken from him. The initial comfort that gave Mom and Dad quickly turned to the realization that Chris was actually trying not to be found.

Then one day, those moose hunters found him.

Chris: You know, about getting out of this sick society.
Wayne: Society!
Chris: Society!
Wayne: Society, man!
Chris: Society!
Wayne: Society! Society!
Chris: Society! Society, you know! Society!

Anyone here disagree?

Carine [voice-over]: When a search of tax records revealed that Chris had given his life savings to charity [$24,000 to Oxfam], Mom and Dad became what Dad called "mobilized." They hired a private investigator and notified law enforcement nationwide, determined to track him down.

My guess: it didn't work.

Carine: [voice-over] The year Chris graduated high school, he bought the Datsun used and drove it cross-country. He stayed away most of the summer. As soon as I heard he was home, I ran into his room to talk to him. In California, he’d looked up some old family friends. He discovered that our parents’ stories of how they fell in love and got married were calculated lies masking an ugly truth. When they met, Dad was already married. And even after Chris was born, Dad had had another son with his first wife, Marcia, to whom he was still legally married. This fact suddenly redefined Chris and me as bastard children. Dad’s arrogance made him conveniently oblivious to the pain he caused. And Mom, in the shame and embarassment of a young mistress, became his accomplice in deceit. The fragility of crystal is not a weakness but a fineness. My parents understood that a fine crystal glass had to be cared for or it may be shattered. But when it came to my brother, they did not seem to know or care that their course of secret action brought the kind of devastation that could cut them. Their fraudulent marriage and our father’s denial of his other son was, for Chris, a murder of every day’s truth. He felt his whole life turn, like a river suddenly reversing the direction of its flow, suddenly running uphill. These revelations struck at the core of Chris’ sense of identity. They made his entire childhood seem like fiction. Chris never told them he knew and made me promise silence, as well.

Of course, we only hear one side of it.

Chris: If I wanted to paddle down the river, where’s the best place to launch out of?
Ranger Koehler: To launch out of? What’s your experience level?
Chris: Not much.
Ranger Koehler: Any? Do you have a permit?
Chris: A permit? Permit for what?
Ranger Koehler: You can’t paddle down the river without a permit. If you want, you can apply for one here, get some experience, and I’ll put you on the wait-list.
Chris: There’s a wait-list to paddle down a river? Well, how long do I have to wait?
Ranger Koehler: Next available is May 17th, 2003.
Chris: Twelve years? Twelve years? To paddle down a river.

That does seem a bit...ludicrous?

Title Card: In memory of Christopher Johnson McCandless February 12, 1968 - August 18, 1992. Two weeks after Chris’s death, moose hunters discovered his body in the bus. On September 19, 1992, Carine McCandless flew with her brother’s ashes from Alaska to the eastern seaboard. She carried them with her on the plane…in her backpack.

Next up: Cheryl Strayed

A true story. But not even close to being the whole story. Regarding, for example, the function of intelligence agencies in America.

A breach of national security. No doubt about it. But what is it exactly that is being secured? You won’t find that probed here anymore than you’ll find the nature of American foreign policy probed in a war film. Instead the focus is on the mind boggling gaps between the manner in which Robert Hanssen projected himself to the world and the world he actually lived in from day to day.

What a strange, strange man.

On the other hand, no way am I suggesting there aren’t some things worth securing.

And then there is the particularly murky role that God plays here. Proof yet again there is pratically nothing He can’t be twisted into sanctioning. Behaviors rationalized as somehow in accordance with His will.


Breach

O’Neill: Wait, I’ve heard of this guy. Wasn’t he the one who hacked into another agent’s hard drive?
Burroughs: He’s the best computer guy we’ve got. He’s also a sexual deviant.
O’Neill: Oh.

And a traitor of course.

Hanssen [first words on meeting]: Tell me five things about yourself, four of them true.
O’Neill: I’m sorry?
Hanssen: It’s a “game” we used to play, at the subanalytical unit. Keep ourselves sharp. It’s lie detection.
O’Neill: Oh.
[chuckling slightly]
O’Neill: I don’t think I’d be much good at bluffing.
Hanssen [rolling his eyes and walking off]: That would’ve counted as your lie, right there.

Later…

O’Neill: You still want my list, sir? The five things?
Hanssen: Sure.
O’Neill: I won Boy Scout merit badges in every category except Rifleman. I haven’t been to confession since high school. There are several words I constantly misspell. My favorite drink is a vodka tonic. And I’m the only male in the last four generations of my family who hasn’t served in the military.
Hanssen: So what is your drink then, gin?
O’Neill: Scotch.

He's good alright.

Hanssen: God expects you to live your faith, Eric, at all times. Besides, I disapprove of women in pantsuits.
O’Neill: You do?
Hanssen: Men wear pants. The world doesn’t need any more Hillary Clintons.

This from the sex pervert and spy.

Hanssen: You know why the Soviet empire collapsed?
O’Neill: Good morning?
Hanssen: I made a career studying them. They were smarter than us. More devious, more determined. So why did they fail? Godlessness.

This from the sex pervert and spy.

Hanssen: I saw a woman from Planned Parenthood on television this morning. A lesbian, naturally. Defending gay marriage. I almost ripped the cable out of the wall.
O’Neill: Bet she was wearing pants, huh?

I guess we'll never know.