"Suffering arises from craving; the only way to be fully liberated from suffering is to be fully liberated from craving; and the only way to be liberated from craving is to train the mind to experience reality as it is.”
I contest this idea. I claim that suffering arises from weakness against those forces that prohibit one from getting what they crave. Indeed, i do not say that one should crave less, but more, and to become strong enough so that one can't be prohibited!
It is liberation from suffering that we want, not from our desires. It was only because the real solution to this problem was so shocking that no philosopher would accept it. This is why Max only hung out with philosophers on occasion. He was a horribly simple brute force that smashed everything around him. If I may, the only thing I have absolute certainty of is what I want... and never has any argument stating that I should not get the thing I want presented itself with even a fraction of the same certainty.
The only thing that sucks, that can possibly suck (for everything else in the universe is meaningless or not my affair, anyway), is when somebody stops you from doin' whatchu want. That's it. And if and when somebody or something does stop you, you will suffer that and waste no time complaining about it and becoming a French existentialist as a result.
This whole buddhist doom and gloom life is pointless suffering is just wussy talk. That judgment can only be made from a position of weakness, a sentimentality felt only by those who have been stopped!
Now, suffering can come in the form of disease or natural disaster not involving the machinations of men. This is clear. But the 'craving causes suffering' is malarky. It's failing to acquire the craved thing that is suffering.
Quote of the day
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
It’s a bleak life. And it is about to get bleaker still. People pay him to communicate with the dead. He acts as a middleman between sweatshop owners and illegals who sell their knockoff junk. He’s about to become involved in an operation that involves human trafficking. He’s got two kids to raise alone and can barely keep the bills in line.
Then he finds out he has advanced prostate cancer and has only weeks to live.
This a world of immigrants – from China, from Senegal – interacting in a local economy that barely allows them to survive from day to day. A world where others are always making their lives miserable. And then [in order to make a living] they find themselves having to make the lives of others miserable too. Or they just take out their miseries on each other. Meanwhile to the rest of the population they are either invisible or a menace to be driven out. And all they really are are men and women struggling to survive, to raise their families, to have a better life. Everyone is trapped in “the system”. The “way things are”. Why? Because that is in the best interest of those own and operate it. But then from time to time you see them interacting in ways they wish it could always be. But there is ever some new calamity on the horizon and it never is.
And then they bring all the crap they have to endure “earning a living” home with them. There they take it out on their families. And then the families take it out on each other. Around and around in the same vicious circle. Though for some more than others.
Up to a point, we all live in a variation of that world. But we all don’t live in a struggling working class community in Barcelona. The part that Woody Allen somehow missed in Vicky, Christina. Ironically, Javier Bardem also starred in that.
There are people who will not like this movie simply because it tells them unpleasant things about the world we live in…things they would just as soon not be made aware of. This film got only a 64% fresh rating at RT. One critic laments that “Inarritu is stuck in a grim rut.” Hmm. Maybe it’s time for him to give us a musical comedy. On the other hand, it’s not like for every film like this one, there aren’t dozens more stuck in the McHollywood la la land rut.
Javier Bardem’s part in this film is the first time that a performance entirely in the Spanish Language has been nominated for an Academy Award Best Actor Oscar. IMDb
Biutiful
Marambra [to Uxbal]: At least I laugh…if I’m happy because I’m happy, if I’m depressed because I’m depressed. I love you. I love you I said.
Uxbal: Yeah. Me too.
Insert yawns here?
Ana: Dad! How do you spell “beautiful”?
Uxbal: Like that, like it sounds.
Next up: how do you spell cancer?
Uxbal: I’m not ready to leave. I’m afraid to leave the children on their own. I can’t.
Bea: You think you take care of the children? Don’t be naive, Uxbal. The universe takes care of them.
Uxbal: Yes, but the universe doesn’t pay the rent.
Someone cue the Pantheists among us.
Uxbal: Why is this happening to me? Is it a punishment?
Bea: You can give up, let yourself go…or grit your teeth and hang on like stupid people do.
Next up: hanging on here.
Uxbal: If you want to wear them out sewing shit 16 hours a day, exploiting them like…
Boss: Exploiting them?
Uxbal: Exploiting them, yes.
Boss: Do you know how much they earned in China? Fifty fucking cents a day. There are millions of Chinese who’d be willing to suck my dick every morning to be here.
Uxbal: In case you don’t remember, I was the one who negociated the pay for each worker. And by the conditions downstairs it’s clear they are not getting a fucking dime.
Political economy let's call it. And out of his own pocket though he pays for heaters to keep them warmer at night. But the heaters are defective. They emit carbon monoxide. It kills them all.
Marambra [weeping]: If I close my eyes then the thoughts start. They make me scared. I called you. I called you many times. I can’t give the children what they need. I’m so sorry I was cruel to Mateo. I’m doing what I can to survive. I really want to be faithful to you, but I also like to have some fun…like a whore.
Uxbal: Don’t say that, Marambra. Forgive me. I’ve never known what I should give you; I still don’t know. Something… I’ve never known. But we have hurt each other so much.
Next up: what we should give each other here.
Tito: It’s dangerous to trust a man who is hungry. And even more if his children are hungry.
You do get that, don't you?
Uxbal [to Ana about his father]: When he was 20, he fled Spain to avoid the death penalty but died two weeks later in Mexico, of pneumonia.
Ana: Did you love him very much?
Uxbal: I don’t know. I never knew him.
And my own rendition of that.
Uxbal: Look in my eyes. Look at my face. Remember me, please. Don’t forget me, Ana. Don’t forget me, my love, please.
Javier Bardem should have won the academy award for this scene alone.
Then he finds out he has advanced prostate cancer and has only weeks to live.
This a world of immigrants – from China, from Senegal – interacting in a local economy that barely allows them to survive from day to day. A world where others are always making their lives miserable. And then [in order to make a living] they find themselves having to make the lives of others miserable too. Or they just take out their miseries on each other. Meanwhile to the rest of the population they are either invisible or a menace to be driven out. And all they really are are men and women struggling to survive, to raise their families, to have a better life. Everyone is trapped in “the system”. The “way things are”. Why? Because that is in the best interest of those own and operate it. But then from time to time you see them interacting in ways they wish it could always be. But there is ever some new calamity on the horizon and it never is.
And then they bring all the crap they have to endure “earning a living” home with them. There they take it out on their families. And then the families take it out on each other. Around and around in the same vicious circle. Though for some more than others.
Up to a point, we all live in a variation of that world. But we all don’t live in a struggling working class community in Barcelona. The part that Woody Allen somehow missed in Vicky, Christina. Ironically, Javier Bardem also starred in that.
There are people who will not like this movie simply because it tells them unpleasant things about the world we live in…things they would just as soon not be made aware of. This film got only a 64% fresh rating at RT. One critic laments that “Inarritu is stuck in a grim rut.” Hmm. Maybe it’s time for him to give us a musical comedy. On the other hand, it’s not like for every film like this one, there aren’t dozens more stuck in the McHollywood la la land rut.
Javier Bardem’s part in this film is the first time that a performance entirely in the Spanish Language has been nominated for an Academy Award Best Actor Oscar. IMDb
Biutiful
Marambra [to Uxbal]: At least I laugh…if I’m happy because I’m happy, if I’m depressed because I’m depressed. I love you. I love you I said.
Uxbal: Yeah. Me too.
Insert yawns here?
Ana: Dad! How do you spell “beautiful”?
Uxbal: Like that, like it sounds.
Next up: how do you spell cancer?
Uxbal: I’m not ready to leave. I’m afraid to leave the children on their own. I can’t.
Bea: You think you take care of the children? Don’t be naive, Uxbal. The universe takes care of them.
Uxbal: Yes, but the universe doesn’t pay the rent.
Someone cue the Pantheists among us.
Uxbal: Why is this happening to me? Is it a punishment?
Bea: You can give up, let yourself go…or grit your teeth and hang on like stupid people do.
Next up: hanging on here.
Uxbal: If you want to wear them out sewing shit 16 hours a day, exploiting them like…
Boss: Exploiting them?
Uxbal: Exploiting them, yes.
Boss: Do you know how much they earned in China? Fifty fucking cents a day. There are millions of Chinese who’d be willing to suck my dick every morning to be here.
Uxbal: In case you don’t remember, I was the one who negociated the pay for each worker. And by the conditions downstairs it’s clear they are not getting a fucking dime.
Political economy let's call it. And out of his own pocket though he pays for heaters to keep them warmer at night. But the heaters are defective. They emit carbon monoxide. It kills them all.
Marambra [weeping]: If I close my eyes then the thoughts start. They make me scared. I called you. I called you many times. I can’t give the children what they need. I’m so sorry I was cruel to Mateo. I’m doing what I can to survive. I really want to be faithful to you, but I also like to have some fun…like a whore.
Uxbal: Don’t say that, Marambra. Forgive me. I’ve never known what I should give you; I still don’t know. Something… I’ve never known. But we have hurt each other so much.
Next up: what we should give each other here.
Tito: It’s dangerous to trust a man who is hungry. And even more if his children are hungry.
You do get that, don't you?
Uxbal [to Ana about his father]: When he was 20, he fled Spain to avoid the death penalty but died two weeks later in Mexico, of pneumonia.
Ana: Did you love him very much?
Uxbal: I don’t know. I never knew him.
And my own rendition of that.
Uxbal: Look in my eyes. Look at my face. Remember me, please. Don’t forget me, Ana. Don’t forget me, my love, please.
Javier Bardem should have won the academy award for this scene alone.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
R.D. Laing
Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.
You can say that again!
Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.
Tell us about it!
The term schizoid refers to an individual the totality of whose experience is split in two main ways: in the first place, there is a rent in his relation with his world and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself. Such a person is not able to experience himself 'together with' others or 'at home in' the world, but, on the contrary, he experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation; moreover, he does not experience himself as a complete person but rather as 'split' in various ways, perhaps as a mind more or less tenuously linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on.
A fractured and fragmented "I" may well be as far as you can take that.
The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man.
And, sure, from time to time, the normal woman.
A little girl of seventeen in a mental hospital told me she was terrified because the Atom Bomb was inside her. That is a delusion. The statesmen of the world who boast and threaten that they have Doomsday weapons are far more dangerous, and far more estranged from 'reality' than many of the people on whom the label 'psychotic' is fixed.
That's complete bullshit. But then all the way to the bank.
Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".
See, didn't I tell you?
Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.
You can say that again!
Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.
Tell us about it!
The term schizoid refers to an individual the totality of whose experience is split in two main ways: in the first place, there is a rent in his relation with his world and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself. Such a person is not able to experience himself 'together with' others or 'at home in' the world, but, on the contrary, he experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation; moreover, he does not experience himself as a complete person but rather as 'split' in various ways, perhaps as a mind more or less tenuously linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on.
A fractured and fragmented "I" may well be as far as you can take that.
The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man.
And, sure, from time to time, the normal woman.
A little girl of seventeen in a mental hospital told me she was terrified because the Atom Bomb was inside her. That is a delusion. The statesmen of the world who boast and threaten that they have Doomsday weapons are far more dangerous, and far more estranged from 'reality' than many of the people on whom the label 'psychotic' is fixed.
That's complete bullshit. But then all the way to the bank.
Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".
See, didn't I tell you?
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Why in the world do I like this movie so much? After all, “out in the world” there are no such things as vampires. And ordinarily I steer clear of films where the “suspense” and the “thrillls” revolve around things “supernatural”. Aside from those where the filmmaker’s tongue is crammed so far in his or her cheek it practically comes out the other side.
For instance, I have no interest in the Twilight type films. Or even the more campy renditions like True Blood. But this one is so well made it got me to thinking: that, if vampires were real, this is the world they would populate.
Or maybe it is more about the bullies. I have always detested them. I detested myself when I was one. And I detested those who bullied me. It’s just hardwired into my childhood. I saw kids bullied in the most unconscionable ways. It turned me around 100%. And who wouldn’t want someone like Eli around—either to stop others from bullying you. Or from bullying those you care about.
On the other hand, it’s not just bullies the vampires kill here. And few folks actually deserve to have all the blood sucked [or syphoned] out of them. Do they?
But these are two outsiders [each in their own way] who somehow make contact in a world where outsiders either have each other or they go it alone.
The title of the film (as well as the novel upon which it was based) refers to the fact that, according to myth, vampires must be invited in before they can enter someone’s home. IMDb
Let the Right One In [Låt Den Rätte Komma In]
Oskar [aloud to himself]: Squeal like a pig. Squeal. Squeal!
Actually, as I recall, he said it to...a tree?
Eli: I can’t be friends with you…just so you know.
Oskar: Why?
Eli: That’s just how it is.
We'll see about that.
Oskar: How old are you?
Eli: Twelve…about. How old are you?
Oskar: 12 years, eight months and nine days. What do you mean “about”?
A vampire things let's call it.
Eli: Oskar, listen. You have to fight back. You have never hit them back have you?
[Oskar shakes his head]
Eli: Start hitting back…now. Hard.
Oskar: There are three of them.
Eli: Then you have to hit even harder! Hit back harder than you dare. Then they’ll stop.
Trust me on this: Maybe they will and maybe they won’t.
Oskar: But what if they don’t…
Eli: Then I will help you.
Her "super powers" let's say.
Oskar: Eli, do I have chance with you?
Eli: With what?
Oskar: I mean…do you want to go steady?
Eli: Oskar, I’m not a girl.
Oskar: No? Do I still have a chance with you?
Eli: Can’t we just be like this?
Oskar [thinking about it]: Yes.
Good call.
Oskar: Are you a vampire?
Eli: I live off blood… Yes.
Oskar: Are you… dead?
Eli: No. Can’t you tell?
Oskar: But… Are you old?
Eli: I’m twelve. But I’ve been twelve for a long time.
No, really, how exactly does that work?
Jimmy [brandishing a switchblade knife]: Do you know who I am?
Oskar: Yes.
Jimmy: Good, then you get it. We’re going to have a little contest. You stay under water for three minutes. If you can do it, I’ll just nick you. But if you can’t, I’ll gouge one of your eyes out. An eye for an ear, okay?
Oskar: But that’s impossible.
Jimmy: That’s your problem. Three minutes.
Unless, of course...
For instance, I have no interest in the Twilight type films. Or even the more campy renditions like True Blood. But this one is so well made it got me to thinking: that, if vampires were real, this is the world they would populate.
Or maybe it is more about the bullies. I have always detested them. I detested myself when I was one. And I detested those who bullied me. It’s just hardwired into my childhood. I saw kids bullied in the most unconscionable ways. It turned me around 100%. And who wouldn’t want someone like Eli around—either to stop others from bullying you. Or from bullying those you care about.
On the other hand, it’s not just bullies the vampires kill here. And few folks actually deserve to have all the blood sucked [or syphoned] out of them. Do they?
But these are two outsiders [each in their own way] who somehow make contact in a world where outsiders either have each other or they go it alone.
The title of the film (as well as the novel upon which it was based) refers to the fact that, according to myth, vampires must be invited in before they can enter someone’s home. IMDb
Let the Right One In [Låt Den Rätte Komma In]
Oskar [aloud to himself]: Squeal like a pig. Squeal. Squeal!
Actually, as I recall, he said it to...a tree?
Eli: I can’t be friends with you…just so you know.
Oskar: Why?
Eli: That’s just how it is.
We'll see about that.
Oskar: How old are you?
Eli: Twelve…about. How old are you?
Oskar: 12 years, eight months and nine days. What do you mean “about”?
A vampire things let's call it.
Eli: Oskar, listen. You have to fight back. You have never hit them back have you?
[Oskar shakes his head]
Eli: Start hitting back…now. Hard.
Oskar: There are three of them.
Eli: Then you have to hit even harder! Hit back harder than you dare. Then they’ll stop.
Trust me on this: Maybe they will and maybe they won’t.
Oskar: But what if they don’t…
Eli: Then I will help you.
Her "super powers" let's say.
Oskar: Eli, do I have chance with you?
Eli: With what?
Oskar: I mean…do you want to go steady?
Eli: Oskar, I’m not a girl.
Oskar: No? Do I still have a chance with you?
Eli: Can’t we just be like this?
Oskar [thinking about it]: Yes.
Good call.
Oskar: Are you a vampire?
Eli: I live off blood… Yes.
Oskar: Are you… dead?
Eli: No. Can’t you tell?
Oskar: But… Are you old?
Eli: I’m twelve. But I’ve been twelve for a long time.
No, really, how exactly does that work?
Jimmy [brandishing a switchblade knife]: Do you know who I am?
Oskar: Yes.
Jimmy: Good, then you get it. We’re going to have a little contest. You stay under water for three minutes. If you can do it, I’ll just nick you. But if you can’t, I’ll gouge one of your eyes out. An eye for an ear, okay?
Oskar: But that’s impossible.
Jimmy: That’s your problem. Three minutes.
Unless, of course...
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Though the president never makes an appearance, this is described as a “thinly disguised” portrayal of the “special relationship” between Tony Blair and George Dubya Bush. More to the point, this is all about the enormous gaps that exist between what governments tell their citizens about the nature of its foreign policy and what actually motivates it instead. Here it is England and the United States. But it is more or less applicable to them all. The ofttimes egregious gap between what is “legal” and what is done being even wider still. Torture, rendition…stuff like that.
Obviously, this is what so many folks fantasize about with regard to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice: Hauling their asses before one or another court and charging them with war crimes. Crimes against humanity. Mass murder.
It gets you to wondering: Just how thinly disguised is it? Does it come closer to “the truth” than anyone realizes? I mean, was Tony Blair [or his wife] a creature of the CIA? And then there is this: Is what is true closer to the best or the worst of all possible worlds?
Or maybe this is just Polanski’s way of saying “fuck you” to the American government. In other words, whatever damage he may have caused with his pecker is nothing compared to the terrible things done in American wars with American bombs and missiles…with American black ops and secret prisons.
Of course for any number of folks here the ghostwriter’s book is just another commodity. Will it or will it not sell? Fuck the stuff that is actually written in it.
When Roman Polanski was arrested September 2009 in Switzerland, post-production was never put on hold. He saw every step of the film and made all artistic decisions. He finished editing the movie while in a Swiss prison. In December 2009 Polanski was released on bail but placed under house arrest, where he remained when this movie was released.
Largely because Roman Polanski could not set foot in the United States, filming took place in Germany made to look like Massachusetts.
Writer Robert Harris is a former BBC TV reporter and political columnist who actively supported Tony Blair until the Iraq War, which Harris felt was a mistake. Blair resigned June 26, 2007, spurring Harris to drop his other work to write The Ghost, which was published Sept. 26. Similarities between Blair and Adam Lang, Cherie Blair and Ruth Lang, Hatherton and Halliburton, etc., are clearly intentional. Mo Asumang appears briefly as a Condoleezza Rice look-a-like Secretary of State in a photo op with Lang. IMDb
The Ghost Writer
Ruth: Well? How bad is it?
The Ghost: Well, let’s just say it needs some work.
Ruth: How much work?
The Ghost: Well all the words are there, they’re just in the wrong order.
Of course, that happens here all the time.
The Ghost: I’d never guess you smoked.
Amelia: I only allow myself one. In times of great stress or contentment.
The Ghost: Which is this?
Amelia: Very funny.
Of course, these days you have to ask.
Adam: Are you saying I can’t leave the United States?
Sid: As your attorney I strongly advise you not to travel to any country that recognizes the jurisdiction of the Inernational Criminal Court.
Ruth: Well, just about every country in the world recognizes the ICC.
Sid: America doesn’t.
Ruth: Who else?
Josh: Iraq, China, North Korea, Indonesia, Israel.
The company you keep.
Ruth [to bodyguard]: Oh for God’s sake, if we meet any terrorists, I’ll text you.
They don't.
The Ghost: Did you ever want to be a proper politician in your own right?
Ruth: Of course, didn’t you want to be a proper writer?
Ouch, let's say.
Island Ferry Attendant: Single or return?
The Ghost: Return…I hope.
Too close to call.
From the Hatherthon [think miltitary industrial complex, think Halliburton] promo: “With $35 billion of funds at its disposal, the Hatherthon Group brings together a family of companies devoted to defense and security. And with unrivaled expertise in the Middle East, including the services of two former presidents, three Prime Ministers and two directors of the CIA, Hatherthon is proud to stand at the forefront of the struggle against terror.”
And if they all get filthy rich in the process then, surely, that’s just incidental.
The Ghost: I really don’t think this is a good idea.
Rycart: You have no choice.
The Ghost: Emmett must have told Lang I’ve been to see him.
Rycart: So what’s he going to do about it? Dump you in the ocean?
The Ghost: Well it happened before.
Rycart: Which means it can’t happen again. He can’t drown two ghost writers, for God’s sake. You’re not kittens.
Right, like kittens are a threat to anyone.
Adam: Whatever I did, I did because I believed it was right.
The Ghost: What, even supporting illegal kidnapping for torture?
Adam: Oh, for God’s sake, spare me the bleeding-heart bullshit! Do you know what I’d do if I was in power again? I’d have two queues at airports: one for flights where we’d done no background checks, infringed on no one’s civil bloody liberties, used no intelligence gained by torture. And on the other flight we’d do everything we possibly could to make it perfectly safe. And then we’d see which plane the Rycarts of this world would put their bloody kids on! And you can put that in the book!
There you go, right?
Obviously, this is what so many folks fantasize about with regard to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice: Hauling their asses before one or another court and charging them with war crimes. Crimes against humanity. Mass murder.
It gets you to wondering: Just how thinly disguised is it? Does it come closer to “the truth” than anyone realizes? I mean, was Tony Blair [or his wife] a creature of the CIA? And then there is this: Is what is true closer to the best or the worst of all possible worlds?
Or maybe this is just Polanski’s way of saying “fuck you” to the American government. In other words, whatever damage he may have caused with his pecker is nothing compared to the terrible things done in American wars with American bombs and missiles…with American black ops and secret prisons.
Of course for any number of folks here the ghostwriter’s book is just another commodity. Will it or will it not sell? Fuck the stuff that is actually written in it.
When Roman Polanski was arrested September 2009 in Switzerland, post-production was never put on hold. He saw every step of the film and made all artistic decisions. He finished editing the movie while in a Swiss prison. In December 2009 Polanski was released on bail but placed under house arrest, where he remained when this movie was released.
Largely because Roman Polanski could not set foot in the United States, filming took place in Germany made to look like Massachusetts.
Writer Robert Harris is a former BBC TV reporter and political columnist who actively supported Tony Blair until the Iraq War, which Harris felt was a mistake. Blair resigned June 26, 2007, spurring Harris to drop his other work to write The Ghost, which was published Sept. 26. Similarities between Blair and Adam Lang, Cherie Blair and Ruth Lang, Hatherton and Halliburton, etc., are clearly intentional. Mo Asumang appears briefly as a Condoleezza Rice look-a-like Secretary of State in a photo op with Lang. IMDb
The Ghost Writer
Ruth: Well? How bad is it?
The Ghost: Well, let’s just say it needs some work.
Ruth: How much work?
The Ghost: Well all the words are there, they’re just in the wrong order.
Of course, that happens here all the time.
The Ghost: I’d never guess you smoked.
Amelia: I only allow myself one. In times of great stress or contentment.
The Ghost: Which is this?
Amelia: Very funny.
Of course, these days you have to ask.
Adam: Are you saying I can’t leave the United States?
Sid: As your attorney I strongly advise you not to travel to any country that recognizes the jurisdiction of the Inernational Criminal Court.
Ruth: Well, just about every country in the world recognizes the ICC.
Sid: America doesn’t.
Ruth: Who else?
Josh: Iraq, China, North Korea, Indonesia, Israel.
The company you keep.
Ruth [to bodyguard]: Oh for God’s sake, if we meet any terrorists, I’ll text you.
They don't.
The Ghost: Did you ever want to be a proper politician in your own right?
Ruth: Of course, didn’t you want to be a proper writer?
Ouch, let's say.
Island Ferry Attendant: Single or return?
The Ghost: Return…I hope.
Too close to call.
From the Hatherthon [think miltitary industrial complex, think Halliburton] promo: “With $35 billion of funds at its disposal, the Hatherthon Group brings together a family of companies devoted to defense and security. And with unrivaled expertise in the Middle East, including the services of two former presidents, three Prime Ministers and two directors of the CIA, Hatherthon is proud to stand at the forefront of the struggle against terror.”
And if they all get filthy rich in the process then, surely, that’s just incidental.
The Ghost: I really don’t think this is a good idea.
Rycart: You have no choice.
The Ghost: Emmett must have told Lang I’ve been to see him.
Rycart: So what’s he going to do about it? Dump you in the ocean?
The Ghost: Well it happened before.
Rycart: Which means it can’t happen again. He can’t drown two ghost writers, for God’s sake. You’re not kittens.
Right, like kittens are a threat to anyone.
Adam: Whatever I did, I did because I believed it was right.
The Ghost: What, even supporting illegal kidnapping for torture?
Adam: Oh, for God’s sake, spare me the bleeding-heart bullshit! Do you know what I’d do if I was in power again? I’d have two queues at airports: one for flights where we’d done no background checks, infringed on no one’s civil bloody liberties, used no intelligence gained by torture. And on the other flight we’d do everything we possibly could to make it perfectly safe. And then we’d see which plane the Rycarts of this world would put their bloody kids on! And you can put that in the book!
There you go, right?
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
The grass is always greener on the other side. So apparently are the palm trees. And given where Noi resides that is never far removed from his mind. Some folks insist there is no such thing as too much snow. Let them live here for a while.
He is a very bright kid, but he is stuck in a world [a remote fjord in the North of Iceland] where the options are not very bright at all. So, he decides to become a loser instead. And is he ever good at it.
He wants more out of life. Or, okay, maybe he doesn’t. One thing for sure: He is not equipped to get it. See Noi. See Noi rob the bank. See Noi humiliated.
Then he meets Iris. But, as her Pop notes, he really doesn’t have anything to give her. Once she goes back to the big city, she won’t be all that enthralled with what he has to offer in their tiny little town out in the middle of nowhere. Only she never makes it back.
And that brings us to the end of the film. I can tell you this: I never saw it coming. But that’s the way it is: Out of the blue with little or no warning: fate?
Noi the Albino [Nói Albínói]
Alfre [after Nói hands in a blank test paper]: Are you handing it in like this?
Nói: Yes.
Alfre: And what mark do you think you’ll get for it?
Nói: Zero?
Alfre: No! You get zero point five for writing your name!
Nói: Really? That’s better than I expected.
We know what's coming.
Oskar: Listen to this: Either you get married or you don’t get married. You will regret both. Laugh at the stupidity of the world. You will regret it. Cry over it; you will also regret it. Either you laugh at the stupidity of the world, or you cry over it. You will regret both. Hang yourself. You will regret it. Don’t hang yourself. You will also regret it. Hang yourself or don’t hang yourself. You will regret both. Either you hang yourself or you don’t hang yourself. You will regret both. This, my dear gentlemen, is the core of all human wisdom.
Noi: What was that?
Oskar: Some fucking piece of bullshit. Kierkegaard…Kierkegaard = Graveyard. That’s a fitting name for such an idiot.
Any objections?
School psychiatrist: How often do you masturbate?
Noi: Is this a part of the test or just personal interest?
School psychiatrist: Yes, it is…a part of the test.
Noi: How often do you masturbate?
School psychiatrist: You are answering the questions, not me.
Noi: If you answer me, I’ll answer you.
Think Equus!
Next up: a Rubic's Cube of course.
Kiddi [to Noi, his son]: Just remember to use a condom. Unwanted children don’t let you know they’re coming.
[then it dawns on him how Noi might take that]
Kiddi: Ah, you know what I mean.
Alas, that's exactly what he means.
David: Noi is sort of here…
Teacher: Sort of here? Either you are here or not. As far as I can see, Noi is clearly not here.
David [pointing to a tape recorder]: He gave me this substitute. He was very busy and couldn’t be here this morning. But he didn’t want to miss anything so he told me to record the whole thing.
A bit too clever, let's say.
Diddi: Noi, bring the blood.
And Noi does exactly that. Sort of.
Noi: Press the button for Iceland.
Iris: It’s not an option. There is no Iceland.
Noi: Look at Iceland. It’s like a spitwad.
Iris: Want to run away?
Noi: Where to?
Iris: Press a button.
And then it's too late.
Kiddi [earnestly]: Noi, don’t throw your life away like I did.
Noi: I’ve been expelled from school.
Kiddi: For God’s sake don’t joke with me now, please. I’m trying to honest for once so please don’t joke with me.
Noi: I’m not joking. Those jerks just threw me out.
Well, one jerk in particular.
Noi: I have to go see Gylfi. The fortune teller.
Iris: Gylfi the Fortune Teller? What for?
Noi: My grandmother thinks he can see some future for me.
Iris: Come to me instead. I’ll tell you what he sees.
Noi: Can you also see people’s fortune?
Iris: Of course not. It’s just that all fortune tellers in the world always say the same thing.
Noi: And what is that?
Iris: That in the future they see a lot of money and a journey to exotic places, and a new person, that brings love and happiness.
Noi: Sounds good to me.
Iris: Its just what everybody wants to hear, idiot.
Noi: Sounds just like reality to me.
Iris: What do you mean?
Noi: This new person might as well be you, and we have talked about running away to exotic new places. Money is the only thing missing.
Iris: In your dreams.
Exactly: We’ve come full circle. Time to, uh, rob that bank.
Gylfi: There is nothing but death in this cup.
The irony abounds here.
Priest: Now, I don’t know where your belief lies… but I recommend that we say the Lord’s Prayer together.
Nói: I don’t think I know the Lord’s Prayer.
Priest: Do you know another prayer?
Nói: No.
Another "act of God" let's call it.
He is a very bright kid, but he is stuck in a world [a remote fjord in the North of Iceland] where the options are not very bright at all. So, he decides to become a loser instead. And is he ever good at it.
He wants more out of life. Or, okay, maybe he doesn’t. One thing for sure: He is not equipped to get it. See Noi. See Noi rob the bank. See Noi humiliated.
Then he meets Iris. But, as her Pop notes, he really doesn’t have anything to give her. Once she goes back to the big city, she won’t be all that enthralled with what he has to offer in their tiny little town out in the middle of nowhere. Only she never makes it back.
And that brings us to the end of the film. I can tell you this: I never saw it coming. But that’s the way it is: Out of the blue with little or no warning: fate?
Noi the Albino [Nói Albínói]
Alfre [after Nói hands in a blank test paper]: Are you handing it in like this?
Nói: Yes.
Alfre: And what mark do you think you’ll get for it?
Nói: Zero?
Alfre: No! You get zero point five for writing your name!
Nói: Really? That’s better than I expected.
We know what's coming.
Oskar: Listen to this: Either you get married or you don’t get married. You will regret both. Laugh at the stupidity of the world. You will regret it. Cry over it; you will also regret it. Either you laugh at the stupidity of the world, or you cry over it. You will regret both. Hang yourself. You will regret it. Don’t hang yourself. You will also regret it. Hang yourself or don’t hang yourself. You will regret both. Either you hang yourself or you don’t hang yourself. You will regret both. This, my dear gentlemen, is the core of all human wisdom.
Noi: What was that?
Oskar: Some fucking piece of bullshit. Kierkegaard…Kierkegaard = Graveyard. That’s a fitting name for such an idiot.
Any objections?
School psychiatrist: How often do you masturbate?
Noi: Is this a part of the test or just personal interest?
School psychiatrist: Yes, it is…a part of the test.
Noi: How often do you masturbate?
School psychiatrist: You are answering the questions, not me.
Noi: If you answer me, I’ll answer you.
Think Equus!
Next up: a Rubic's Cube of course.
Kiddi [to Noi, his son]: Just remember to use a condom. Unwanted children don’t let you know they’re coming.
[then it dawns on him how Noi might take that]
Kiddi: Ah, you know what I mean.
Alas, that's exactly what he means.
David: Noi is sort of here…
Teacher: Sort of here? Either you are here or not. As far as I can see, Noi is clearly not here.
David [pointing to a tape recorder]: He gave me this substitute. He was very busy and couldn’t be here this morning. But he didn’t want to miss anything so he told me to record the whole thing.
A bit too clever, let's say.
Diddi: Noi, bring the blood.
And Noi does exactly that. Sort of.
Noi: Press the button for Iceland.
Iris: It’s not an option. There is no Iceland.
Noi: Look at Iceland. It’s like a spitwad.
Iris: Want to run away?
Noi: Where to?
Iris: Press a button.
And then it's too late.
Kiddi [earnestly]: Noi, don’t throw your life away like I did.
Noi: I’ve been expelled from school.
Kiddi: For God’s sake don’t joke with me now, please. I’m trying to honest for once so please don’t joke with me.
Noi: I’m not joking. Those jerks just threw me out.
Well, one jerk in particular.
Noi: I have to go see Gylfi. The fortune teller.
Iris: Gylfi the Fortune Teller? What for?
Noi: My grandmother thinks he can see some future for me.
Iris: Come to me instead. I’ll tell you what he sees.
Noi: Can you also see people’s fortune?
Iris: Of course not. It’s just that all fortune tellers in the world always say the same thing.
Noi: And what is that?
Iris: That in the future they see a lot of money and a journey to exotic places, and a new person, that brings love and happiness.
Noi: Sounds good to me.
Iris: Its just what everybody wants to hear, idiot.
Noi: Sounds just like reality to me.
Iris: What do you mean?
Noi: This new person might as well be you, and we have talked about running away to exotic new places. Money is the only thing missing.
Iris: In your dreams.
Exactly: We’ve come full circle. Time to, uh, rob that bank.
Gylfi: There is nothing but death in this cup.
The irony abounds here.
Priest: Now, I don’t know where your belief lies… but I recommend that we say the Lord’s Prayer together.
Nói: I don’t think I know the Lord’s Prayer.
Priest: Do you know another prayer?
Nói: No.
Another "act of God" let's call it.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Art
“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.” Rick Riordan
Right, whatever the fuck that means.
“I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. Beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity.” Marilyn Monroe
Next up: what can't be manufactured here.
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” Albert Einstein
You tell me this time.
“One eye sees, the other feels.” Paul Klee
Actually, it's the other way around.
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” Ursula K. LeGuin
Kinda let's say.
“The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.” Lester Bangs
That's not even in the top ten for some artists.
“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.” Rick Riordan
Right, whatever the fuck that means.
“I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. Beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity.” Marilyn Monroe
Next up: what can't be manufactured here.
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” Albert Einstein
You tell me this time.
“One eye sees, the other feels.” Paul Klee
Actually, it's the other way around.
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” Ursula K. LeGuin
Kinda let's say.
“The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.” Lester Bangs
That's not even in the top ten for some artists.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Buried alive? Fuck that. Better to be eaten by sharks. Well, if you are me. That final scene from The Vanishing stayed with me for quite some time. Here it’s the whole goddamn movie.
And how often do you come across a film that takes place entirely inside a coffin. From beginning to end.
For starters, you only have so much oxygen. So the more you flick the bic the less there will be. But without it there is total darkness. And the more you panic [or struggle to get out] the more of the oxygen you are gulping down. But how in the hell do you not panic?
You can imagine your mind racing. Over and over and over and over again you explore every inch of the box. Looking for something, anything that might help to get you out.
Then he finds the cell phone. That opens up all sorts of possibilites. But who do you call…and how do you explain your predicament?
And yet through the conversations he has we learn stuff about the Iraqi conflict never readily available reading the New York Times or watching CNN.
Ryan Reynolds states that he suffered from claustrophobia towards the end of filming (much like the character he is playing). This was mainly due to the fact the coffin he was in was gradually filled with more and more sand as filming went on. He describes the last day of shooting as “unlike anything I experienced in my life, and I never ever want to experience that again.”
Ryan Reynolds is the only person we see in the flesh. All of the other performances are either voiceovers or recorded on his cell phone. The whole film is shot from the interior of the coffin. We never see the outside world. The film never repeats a single shot. These all make Buried one of the most minimalist films ever made. IMDb
Buried
Operater: Mr. Conroy, this is the 911 emergency from Youngstown, Ohio.
Paul: Ohio?
Operator: Yes, sir.
Paul: Forget it.
You can say that again.
Paul: Linda, call me back at the number on the screen. I’m buried in a box. I’m buried in a box.
You can say that again.
Jabir: American can breathe? No breathe?
Paul: No, I can’t breathe. Please get me out of here.
Jabir: Get out?
Paul: Yes, get me out. Please help.
Jabir: Soldier.
Paul: No, no I’m not a soldier. I’m a truck driver. Just a contractor.
Jabir: Contractor?
Paul: Yeah. A contractor. Not a soldier. I’m just a truck driver. That’s all.
Jabir: Blackwater.
Paul: No. Not for Blackwater. I’m not a security contractor. I’m just a truck driver. That’s all.
Jabir: You are American?
Paul Conroy: Yeah.
Jabir: Then you are soldier.
Just like all the folks in the Twin Towers. That’s how you rationalize these things.
Jabir: 9 PM., five million, money.
May as well be 5 trillion.
State department: Has contact been made with the kidnappers?
Paul: Yeah. The guy says he wants $5 million by 9:00 tonight.
State department: Okay, or else…?
Paul: Or else he’ll take me to SeaWorld. What the hell do you think, lady?!
Or else it is then
State department: We’ll do everything we can.
Paul: So you’ll pay them then?
State department: No. That we can’t do.
Paul: Wait. Wait. Why not?
State department: It’s the policy of the United States government to not negociate with terrorists.
Paul: Not the policy of the United States government?! Lady, come on! You’re sitting in an air conditioned office…You’re not stuck in a coffin, buried in the goddman desert!!
State department: I understand your frustration.
Paul: FRUSTRATION?! LADY, I’M GOING TO FUCKING DIE IN HERE!
No dice.
Paul: The government won’t pay you the money. They said they do not negociate with terrorist.
Jibar: Terrorist? I am terrorist?
Paul: Yeah. You’re a terrorist you son of a bitch.
Jibar: You terrified, so I am terrorist?
Yeah, what about that, Paul?
Paul: I am here to do a job. To make money. That’s it.
Jibar: I had a job until you come. Now my family have nothing.
Paul: That’s not my fault.
Jibar: 9/11 was not my fault, but you still here. Saddam was not my fault, but you still here.
Paul: I told you, I’m only here to work. To help rebuild.
Jibar: Rebuild what you destroyed.
Yeah, what about that, Paul?
Paul: I’m not a terrorist.
Ben: Neither are they?
Paul: How do you know?
Ben: If you’re family was homeless, starving…what would you do for them?
Paul: I wouldn’t kill someone.
Ben: How can you be sure?
Paul: What difference does it make?
Ben: They’re criminals, desparate ones at that. They don’t care about anything other than getting the money.
Paul [fiercely]: So pay them, just pay them!
Ben: Trust me, if that was an option, I would do that in a heartbeat.
Paul: How many others have there been?
Ben: Since I got here, dozens. Journalists, contractors, soldiers. Dozens have been taken. One of the only functioning businesses out there.
Paul: How many have you rescued.
[after pause]
Ben: Not many.
Less than zero wouldn't suprise me.
Dan: …your ransom video already has 47,000 hits on YouTube. Why the hell did you make it? Now your captors have no choice but to follow through!
Most of them were bots no doubt.
Paul [from CRT]: It’s important we keep this situation as contained as possible.
Dan: The “situation” is in a coffin! I think it’s pretty contained!
And then some.
Dan: I’m sorry, Paul. I’m so sorry.
Next!
And how often do you come across a film that takes place entirely inside a coffin. From beginning to end.
For starters, you only have so much oxygen. So the more you flick the bic the less there will be. But without it there is total darkness. And the more you panic [or struggle to get out] the more of the oxygen you are gulping down. But how in the hell do you not panic?
You can imagine your mind racing. Over and over and over and over again you explore every inch of the box. Looking for something, anything that might help to get you out.
Then he finds the cell phone. That opens up all sorts of possibilites. But who do you call…and how do you explain your predicament?
And yet through the conversations he has we learn stuff about the Iraqi conflict never readily available reading the New York Times or watching CNN.
Ryan Reynolds states that he suffered from claustrophobia towards the end of filming (much like the character he is playing). This was mainly due to the fact the coffin he was in was gradually filled with more and more sand as filming went on. He describes the last day of shooting as “unlike anything I experienced in my life, and I never ever want to experience that again.”
Ryan Reynolds is the only person we see in the flesh. All of the other performances are either voiceovers or recorded on his cell phone. The whole film is shot from the interior of the coffin. We never see the outside world. The film never repeats a single shot. These all make Buried one of the most minimalist films ever made. IMDb
Buried
Operater: Mr. Conroy, this is the 911 emergency from Youngstown, Ohio.
Paul: Ohio?
Operator: Yes, sir.
Paul: Forget it.
You can say that again.
Paul: Linda, call me back at the number on the screen. I’m buried in a box. I’m buried in a box.
You can say that again.
Jabir: American can breathe? No breathe?
Paul: No, I can’t breathe. Please get me out of here.
Jabir: Get out?
Paul: Yes, get me out. Please help.
Jabir: Soldier.
Paul: No, no I’m not a soldier. I’m a truck driver. Just a contractor.
Jabir: Contractor?
Paul: Yeah. A contractor. Not a soldier. I’m just a truck driver. That’s all.
Jabir: Blackwater.
Paul: No. Not for Blackwater. I’m not a security contractor. I’m just a truck driver. That’s all.
Jabir: You are American?
Paul Conroy: Yeah.
Jabir: Then you are soldier.
Just like all the folks in the Twin Towers. That’s how you rationalize these things.
Jabir: 9 PM., five million, money.
May as well be 5 trillion.
State department: Has contact been made with the kidnappers?
Paul: Yeah. The guy says he wants $5 million by 9:00 tonight.
State department: Okay, or else…?
Paul: Or else he’ll take me to SeaWorld. What the hell do you think, lady?!
Or else it is then
State department: We’ll do everything we can.
Paul: So you’ll pay them then?
State department: No. That we can’t do.
Paul: Wait. Wait. Why not?
State department: It’s the policy of the United States government to not negociate with terrorists.
Paul: Not the policy of the United States government?! Lady, come on! You’re sitting in an air conditioned office…You’re not stuck in a coffin, buried in the goddman desert!!
State department: I understand your frustration.
Paul: FRUSTRATION?! LADY, I’M GOING TO FUCKING DIE IN HERE!
No dice.
Paul: The government won’t pay you the money. They said they do not negociate with terrorist.
Jibar: Terrorist? I am terrorist?
Paul: Yeah. You’re a terrorist you son of a bitch.
Jibar: You terrified, so I am terrorist?
Yeah, what about that, Paul?
Paul: I am here to do a job. To make money. That’s it.
Jibar: I had a job until you come. Now my family have nothing.
Paul: That’s not my fault.
Jibar: 9/11 was not my fault, but you still here. Saddam was not my fault, but you still here.
Paul: I told you, I’m only here to work. To help rebuild.
Jibar: Rebuild what you destroyed.
Yeah, what about that, Paul?
Paul: I’m not a terrorist.
Ben: Neither are they?
Paul: How do you know?
Ben: If you’re family was homeless, starving…what would you do for them?
Paul: I wouldn’t kill someone.
Ben: How can you be sure?
Paul: What difference does it make?
Ben: They’re criminals, desparate ones at that. They don’t care about anything other than getting the money.
Paul [fiercely]: So pay them, just pay them!
Ben: Trust me, if that was an option, I would do that in a heartbeat.
Paul: How many others have there been?
Ben: Since I got here, dozens. Journalists, contractors, soldiers. Dozens have been taken. One of the only functioning businesses out there.
Paul: How many have you rescued.
[after pause]
Ben: Not many.
Less than zero wouldn't suprise me.
Dan: …your ransom video already has 47,000 hits on YouTube. Why the hell did you make it? Now your captors have no choice but to follow through!
Most of them were bots no doubt.
Paul [from CRT]: It’s important we keep this situation as contained as possible.
Dan: The “situation” is in a coffin! I think it’s pretty contained!
And then some.
Dan: I’m sorry, Paul. I’m so sorry.
Next!
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Thomas Nagel from Mind & Cosmos
The universe has become not only conscious and aware of itself but capable in some respects of choosing its path into the future--though all three, the consciousness, the knowledge, and the choice, are dispersed over a vast crowd of beings, acting both individually and collectively.
Another classic example of something being true because it comforts and consoles the one who believes it, he figured.
I believe the defenders of intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion. That world view is ripe for displacement....
Okay, so how do mere mortals go about liberating themselves from all of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
Of course: the unverse works in ways no less mysterious?!
In every area of thought we must rely ultimately on our judgments, tested by reflection, subject to correction by the counterarguments of others, modified by the imagination and by comparison with alternatives.
And that's just in regard to all of the One True Paths, isn't it?
Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.
Bullshit? Nagel sort of almost nearly demonstrates that the Christian God is the real deal? All the other Gods evolved into Him let's say?
I am drawn to a fourth alternative, natural teleology, or teleological bias, as an account of the existence of the biological possibilities on which natural selection can operate. I believe that teleology is a naturalistic alternative that is distinct from all three of the other candidate explanations: chance, creationism, and directionless physical law.
Theoretically, let's say.
This is a throwback to the Aristotelian conception of nature, banished from the scene at the birth of modern science. But I have been persuaded that the idea of teleological laws is coherent, and quite different from the idea of explanation of the intentions of a purposive being who produces the means to his ends by choice. In spite of the exclusion of teleology from contemporary science, it certainly shouldn't be ruled out a priori. Formally, the possibility of principles of change over time tending toward certain types of outcome is coherent, in a world in which the nonteleological laws are not fully deterministic.
I'm certainly not ruling it out of course. On the other hand...
https://youtu.be/iSZUh3yqg-0?si=jqNjDERYbf9dGjvs
Go ahead, fit yourself and your God and your moral philosophy into your own teleological account of the universe here.
The universe has become not only conscious and aware of itself but capable in some respects of choosing its path into the future--though all three, the consciousness, the knowledge, and the choice, are dispersed over a vast crowd of beings, acting both individually and collectively.
Another classic example of something being true because it comforts and consoles the one who believes it, he figured.
I believe the defenders of intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion. That world view is ripe for displacement....
Okay, so how do mere mortals go about liberating themselves from all of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
Of course: the unverse works in ways no less mysterious?!
In every area of thought we must rely ultimately on our judgments, tested by reflection, subject to correction by the counterarguments of others, modified by the imagination and by comparison with alternatives.
And that's just in regard to all of the One True Paths, isn't it?
Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.
Bullshit? Nagel sort of almost nearly demonstrates that the Christian God is the real deal? All the other Gods evolved into Him let's say?
I am drawn to a fourth alternative, natural teleology, or teleological bias, as an account of the existence of the biological possibilities on which natural selection can operate. I believe that teleology is a naturalistic alternative that is distinct from all three of the other candidate explanations: chance, creationism, and directionless physical law.
Theoretically, let's say.
This is a throwback to the Aristotelian conception of nature, banished from the scene at the birth of modern science. But I have been persuaded that the idea of teleological laws is coherent, and quite different from the idea of explanation of the intentions of a purposive being who produces the means to his ends by choice. In spite of the exclusion of teleology from contemporary science, it certainly shouldn't be ruled out a priori. Formally, the possibility of principles of change over time tending toward certain types of outcome is coherent, in a world in which the nonteleological laws are not fully deterministic.
I'm certainly not ruling it out of course. On the other hand...
https://youtu.be/iSZUh3yqg-0?si=jqNjDERYbf9dGjvs
Go ahead, fit yourself and your God and your moral philosophy into your own teleological account of the universe here.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Mentally and emotionally I have been to lots of strange, aberrant places. I’ve been neurotic [frequently], depressed, paranoid. I was once diagnosed as bi-polar. I have visited any number of folks who treat these things. I have been prescribed a number of medications. But in order to rid myself of these maladies never, ever have I felt the need to find [let alone serve] anyone or anything analogous to a “Master”—either spiritually or otherwise. So it is hard for me to really empathize with the folks who do. It’s simply a frame of mind I am not familiar with. Even as a Christian I never experienced my faith as in “service” to God. God was just an anchor I could attach “I” to.
Some note there is an [obvious] connection between this film and Scientology:
https://slate.com/culture/2012/09/the-m ... bbard.html
Personally, I can’t even begin to imagine a mind able to go along with something as preposterous as that sort of thing. Yet many, many do. And many of them are hardly lacking otherwise in intelligence. Go figure the places a human mind can – and will – go. At least when it comes to finding the “meaning of life”.
To me, embracing a “spiritual community” like this is sort of just like putting your life [willingly, willfully] into a straitjacket: A proper place for everthing and everything in its proper place. And for lots of folks that can be sublimely comforting.
Why else would someone allow himself to endure the sheer absurdity of “processing” into something like The Cause? Auditing in other words.
The Master
Freddie: What do you do?
Dodd: I do many, many things. I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.
Right, just like him.
Freddie: Well, I’m sorry if I got out of hand last night. It was cold and…
Dodd: Don’t apologize. You’re a scoundrel. And as a scientist and a connoisseur, I have no idea the contents of this remarkable potion. What’s in it?
Freddie: Secrets.
You audit mine and I'll audit yours.
Dodd: There’s a cycle, like life. Birth, excitement, growth, decay. Death. Now… now. How about this? Here comes, a large dragon. Teeth! Blood dripping! Red eyes! What do I got? A lasso. And I whip it up, I wrap it around its neck, and I wrestle! Wrestle! Wrestle him to the ground. I snap up, I say “Sit, dragon!” Dragon sits. I say “Stay!”, dragon stays. Now it’s got a leash on. Take it for a walk. And that’s what-where we’re at with it now. It stays on command. Next we’re gonna teach it to roll over and play dead.
Praise the Lord?
Dodd [from a recording]: Man is not an animal. We are not a part of the animal kingdom. We sit far above that crown, perched as spirits, not beasts. You are not ruled by your emotions. It is not only possible but easily achievable that we do away with all negative emotional impulses, and bring man back to his inherent state of perfect.
You know, "unless you're dumb enough to actually try it".
John More [the obligatory skeptic]: Some of this sounds quite like Hypnosis. Is it not?
Dodd: This is a process of dehypnotization, if you will. Man is asleep; this process wakes him from his slumber
John More: I still find it difficult to see the proof with regards to past lives that your movement claims.
Dodd: Would you care to submit yourself to processing? You’d look through the telescope, as my friend said.
John More: Perhaps another time. You’ve also said that these methods, cause methods can cure leukemia. According to your book…
Dodd: Some forms of Leukemia. In being able to access past lives we are able to treat illnesses that may have started back thousands even trillions of years
John More: Trillions?
Dodd: With a tee, sir.
John More [chuckles]: Earth is not understood to be more than a few billion years old.
Dodd: Well even the smartest of our current scientists can be fooled, yes?
John More: You can understand skepticism, Can you not?
Dodd: Yes, Oh yes yes. For without it we’d be positives and no negatives. Therefore zero charge, we must have it.
John More: Good science by definition allows for more than one opinion, doesn’t it?
Dodd: Which is why our gathering of data is so far-reaching.
John More: Otherwise you merely have the will of one man. Which is the basis of cult. Is it not?
Dodd: Tis, tis. And thankfully we are, all of us, working at breakneck speeds, in the unison towards capturing the mind’s fatal flaws and correcting it back to its inherent state of perfect. While righting civilization and eliminating war and poverty and therefore the atomic threat.
Jon More [chuckling]: Well, I find it difficult to comprehend, or more to the point believe, that you believe, sir, that time travel hypnosis therapy can bring world peace and cure cancer.
Let's synchronize our chuckles here.
John More: I belong to no club, and if you’re unwilling to allow any discussion…
Dodd: No, this isn’t a discussion, it’s a grilling! There’s nothing I can do for you, if your mind has been made up. You seem to know the answers to your questions, why do you ask?
John More: I’m sorry you’re unwilling to defend your beliefs in any kind of rational…
Dodd: If, if you already know the answers to your questions, then why ask PIG FUCK? We are not helpless. And we are on a journey that risks the dark. If you don’t mind, a good night to you.
Sic 'em, Freddie! Or Tom? Or John?
Peggy [reacting to More, to the skeptics]: And this is where we are at. At the lowest level. To have to explain ourselves, for what? For what we do, we have to grovel? The only way to defend ourselves is to attack. If we don’t do that we will lose every battle that we are engaged in. We will never dominate our environment the way we should unless we attack! And the city, city’s just noise. I know the city. I know its rotten secrets, its filthy lies and secrets. They… invited us here and welcomed us. Only to throw us down. And kick us out. It’s a grim joke.
Then the grim equivalent of that here, of course.
Peggy [to her husband while masterbating him]: You can do whatever you want…as long as I don’t find out. And as long as no one that I know knows about it. Other than that, stop with this idea. Put it back in its pants. It didn’t work for them and it’s not going to work for you. We have enough problems as it is. Can you come for me?
Dodd: Oh, yes.
Peggy: Okay, come for me. Come for me.
I wouldn't hesitate at all myself.
Val [to Freddie]: He’s making all of this up as he goes along. You don’t see that?
On the other hand, why would he want to?
Dodd [Lancaster and Freddie have been imprisoned in two separate cells, sharing a wall]: Your fear of capture and imprisonment is an implant from millions of years ago. This battle has been with you from before you know. This is not you.
Quell: SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Dodd: It’s not you.
Freddie: SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!
Dodd: It’s not you. You are asleep. Your spirit was free. Moving from body, to the next body. Free. Free for a moment. Then it was captured by an invader force, bent on turning you to the darkest way, you’ve been implanted with a push-pull mechanism that keeps you fearful of authority and destructive. We are in the middle of a battle that’s a trillion years in the making and it’s bigger than the both of us!
Freddie: You’re making this shit up! You make this shit up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!
So?
Peggy: This is difficult for you, listen.
[she begins reading Victorian pornography]
Peggy: “It’s really a damn shame to tease you so, my little whore, he laughed. So I will get the dildo out of my cabinet in the next room. He was scarcely gone many seconds before he returned and I felt his fingers opening the lips of my ****. Oh oh ah who is that? I screamed for my…”
Freddie: I don’t want to hear any of this.
Peggy: Just listen, no reaction.
[reading]
Peggy: “Kiss her, put your tongue in her mouth, my boy. Fuck, fuck, fuck away.”
Cue, among others, Keith Raniere?
Peggy [to Freddie]: The Cause is something you do for a billion years or not at all. It’s not a fashion.
[she turns to Dodd]
Peggy: This is pointless. He isn’t interested in getting better.
Of course, given billions of years, a lot can happen.
Dodd: Free winds and no tyranny for you, Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay no rent, free to go where you please. Then go, go to that landless latitude and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you’d be the first in the history of the world.
Define master?
Dodd: If you leave here, I don’t ever want to see you again. Or you can stay.
Freddie: Maybe in the next life.
Dodd: If you leave me now, in the next life you will be my sworn enemy. And I will show you no mercy.
Someone run this by IC.
Some note there is an [obvious] connection between this film and Scientology:
https://slate.com/culture/2012/09/the-m ... bbard.html
Personally, I can’t even begin to imagine a mind able to go along with something as preposterous as that sort of thing. Yet many, many do. And many of them are hardly lacking otherwise in intelligence. Go figure the places a human mind can – and will – go. At least when it comes to finding the “meaning of life”.
To me, embracing a “spiritual community” like this is sort of just like putting your life [willingly, willfully] into a straitjacket: A proper place for everthing and everything in its proper place. And for lots of folks that can be sublimely comforting.
Why else would someone allow himself to endure the sheer absurdity of “processing” into something like The Cause? Auditing in other words.
The Master
Freddie: What do you do?
Dodd: I do many, many things. I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.
Right, just like him.
Freddie: Well, I’m sorry if I got out of hand last night. It was cold and…
Dodd: Don’t apologize. You’re a scoundrel. And as a scientist and a connoisseur, I have no idea the contents of this remarkable potion. What’s in it?
Freddie: Secrets.
You audit mine and I'll audit yours.
Dodd: There’s a cycle, like life. Birth, excitement, growth, decay. Death. Now… now. How about this? Here comes, a large dragon. Teeth! Blood dripping! Red eyes! What do I got? A lasso. And I whip it up, I wrap it around its neck, and I wrestle! Wrestle! Wrestle him to the ground. I snap up, I say “Sit, dragon!” Dragon sits. I say “Stay!”, dragon stays. Now it’s got a leash on. Take it for a walk. And that’s what-where we’re at with it now. It stays on command. Next we’re gonna teach it to roll over and play dead.
Praise the Lord?
Dodd [from a recording]: Man is not an animal. We are not a part of the animal kingdom. We sit far above that crown, perched as spirits, not beasts. You are not ruled by your emotions. It is not only possible but easily achievable that we do away with all negative emotional impulses, and bring man back to his inherent state of perfect.
You know, "unless you're dumb enough to actually try it".
John More [the obligatory skeptic]: Some of this sounds quite like Hypnosis. Is it not?
Dodd: This is a process of dehypnotization, if you will. Man is asleep; this process wakes him from his slumber
John More: I still find it difficult to see the proof with regards to past lives that your movement claims.
Dodd: Would you care to submit yourself to processing? You’d look through the telescope, as my friend said.
John More: Perhaps another time. You’ve also said that these methods, cause methods can cure leukemia. According to your book…
Dodd: Some forms of Leukemia. In being able to access past lives we are able to treat illnesses that may have started back thousands even trillions of years
John More: Trillions?
Dodd: With a tee, sir.
John More [chuckles]: Earth is not understood to be more than a few billion years old.
Dodd: Well even the smartest of our current scientists can be fooled, yes?
John More: You can understand skepticism, Can you not?
Dodd: Yes, Oh yes yes. For without it we’d be positives and no negatives. Therefore zero charge, we must have it.
John More: Good science by definition allows for more than one opinion, doesn’t it?
Dodd: Which is why our gathering of data is so far-reaching.
John More: Otherwise you merely have the will of one man. Which is the basis of cult. Is it not?
Dodd: Tis, tis. And thankfully we are, all of us, working at breakneck speeds, in the unison towards capturing the mind’s fatal flaws and correcting it back to its inherent state of perfect. While righting civilization and eliminating war and poverty and therefore the atomic threat.
Jon More [chuckling]: Well, I find it difficult to comprehend, or more to the point believe, that you believe, sir, that time travel hypnosis therapy can bring world peace and cure cancer.
Let's synchronize our chuckles here.
John More: I belong to no club, and if you’re unwilling to allow any discussion…
Dodd: No, this isn’t a discussion, it’s a grilling! There’s nothing I can do for you, if your mind has been made up. You seem to know the answers to your questions, why do you ask?
John More: I’m sorry you’re unwilling to defend your beliefs in any kind of rational…
Dodd: If, if you already know the answers to your questions, then why ask PIG FUCK? We are not helpless. And we are on a journey that risks the dark. If you don’t mind, a good night to you.
Sic 'em, Freddie! Or Tom? Or John?
Peggy [reacting to More, to the skeptics]: And this is where we are at. At the lowest level. To have to explain ourselves, for what? For what we do, we have to grovel? The only way to defend ourselves is to attack. If we don’t do that we will lose every battle that we are engaged in. We will never dominate our environment the way we should unless we attack! And the city, city’s just noise. I know the city. I know its rotten secrets, its filthy lies and secrets. They… invited us here and welcomed us. Only to throw us down. And kick us out. It’s a grim joke.
Then the grim equivalent of that here, of course.
Peggy [to her husband while masterbating him]: You can do whatever you want…as long as I don’t find out. And as long as no one that I know knows about it. Other than that, stop with this idea. Put it back in its pants. It didn’t work for them and it’s not going to work for you. We have enough problems as it is. Can you come for me?
Dodd: Oh, yes.
Peggy: Okay, come for me. Come for me.
I wouldn't hesitate at all myself.
Val [to Freddie]: He’s making all of this up as he goes along. You don’t see that?
On the other hand, why would he want to?
Dodd [Lancaster and Freddie have been imprisoned in two separate cells, sharing a wall]: Your fear of capture and imprisonment is an implant from millions of years ago. This battle has been with you from before you know. This is not you.
Quell: SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Dodd: It’s not you.
Freddie: SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!
Dodd: It’s not you. You are asleep. Your spirit was free. Moving from body, to the next body. Free. Free for a moment. Then it was captured by an invader force, bent on turning you to the darkest way, you’ve been implanted with a push-pull mechanism that keeps you fearful of authority and destructive. We are in the middle of a battle that’s a trillion years in the making and it’s bigger than the both of us!
Freddie: You’re making this shit up! You make this shit up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!
So?
Peggy: This is difficult for you, listen.
[she begins reading Victorian pornography]
Peggy: “It’s really a damn shame to tease you so, my little whore, he laughed. So I will get the dildo out of my cabinet in the next room. He was scarcely gone many seconds before he returned and I felt his fingers opening the lips of my ****. Oh oh ah who is that? I screamed for my…”
Freddie: I don’t want to hear any of this.
Peggy: Just listen, no reaction.
[reading]
Peggy: “Kiss her, put your tongue in her mouth, my boy. Fuck, fuck, fuck away.”
Cue, among others, Keith Raniere?
Peggy [to Freddie]: The Cause is something you do for a billion years or not at all. It’s not a fashion.
[she turns to Dodd]
Peggy: This is pointless. He isn’t interested in getting better.
Of course, given billions of years, a lot can happen.
Dodd: Free winds and no tyranny for you, Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay no rent, free to go where you please. Then go, go to that landless latitude and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you’d be the first in the history of the world.
Define master?
Dodd: If you leave here, I don’t ever want to see you again. Or you can stay.
Freddie: Maybe in the next life.
Dodd: If you leave me now, in the next life you will be my sworn enemy. And I will show you no mercy.
Someone run this by IC.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Death
“I am only alive because I have not yet died.” Anthony Doerr
Hey, same here!
“When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.” Ray Bradbury
Just not literally, he suspected.
“I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Oblivion notwothstanding.
'Tell him,' the colonel said, smiling, 'that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.' Gabriel García Márquez
Let's pin down how profound that is.
“Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.” Tom Stoppard.
Or there abouts.
“How unhappy does one have to be before living seems worse than dying?” Deborah Curtis
One of us must know, right?
“I am only alive because I have not yet died.” Anthony Doerr
Hey, same here!
“When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.” Ray Bradbury
Just not literally, he suspected.
“I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Oblivion notwothstanding.
'Tell him,' the colonel said, smiling, 'that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.' Gabriel García Márquez
Let's pin down how profound that is.
“Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.” Tom Stoppard.
Or there abouts.
“How unhappy does one have to be before living seems worse than dying?” Deborah Curtis
One of us must know, right?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
I still like Ringo Starr’s rendition best. Asked if he was a mod or a rocker he said, “I’m a mocker.” To the best of my recollection.
More myths behind the music. Either reinforced or exposed. It’s all the same to me since I couldn’t care less what’s behind it. Only that it exists at all. And who would really want to live in a world without the music of folks like, say, David Bowie.
Or Iggy Pop. Or Kurt Cobain.
Glam rock? Okay, let’s make a buck on that! Kids have to go out and buy whole new sets of clothes, records, posters, gear. But it really did create an entirely new platform for folks to explore themselves sexually. To rethink gender norms. Gay, straight, bi, trans?
Yeah, I like boys, I like girls. They’re all great. There’s no difference is there, Mr BBC.
You listen to the music [at the time] and you think: This is going to change the world! And it doesn’t even change you. Not really. You just go on to the next “new wave”. It’s only a matter of either figuring or not figuring this out.
Look for money. It’s everywhere. And certainly explains the advent of punk and hardcore. That still doesn’t make the music here shit though.
Or maybe this is all just a remake of Citizen Kane.
Much of the dialog comes from Oscar Wilde’s writings.
The Curt Wild character is mainly inspired by David Bowie’s relationship with two American 1960’s underground rockers whose careers Bowie resurrected, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Iggy Pop hailed from Michigan and shared Wild’s long blond locks, while Reed underwent shock therapy for bisexuality as a teen and was rumored to have had an affair with Bowie before their falling out after Bowie produced Reed’s album Transformer.
Courtney Love considered supplying music to the film’s soundtrack, however after viewing a rough cut she withdrew, claiming that the character of Curt Wild too closely resembled her late husband Kurt Cobain both in character and physicality. The Wild/Cobain parallel later became a much-discussed point among critics, and while director Todd Haynes and actor Ewan McGregor have noted similarities between Cobain and Wild, both claim the resemblance was unintended. Haynes, for his part, notes that Cobain borrowed many style traits from Iggy Pop, who served as partial basis for the Wild character. IMDb
Velvet Goldmine
Title Card: Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume.
11 in other words.
Child’s voice: Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man that wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
How I wish he’d go away.
Let's keep him out of here, okay?
Teacher reading to class: “There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely a record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it has been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange, terrible figures that had passed along the stage of life, and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed that in some mysterious way, their lives had been his own…”
Let's make of that what we will.
Cecil [voiceover]: Brian despised the hypocrisy of the peace and love generation and felt his music spoke far more to its orphans and its outcasts. His revolution, he used to say, will be a sexual one. But in 1970, rock audiences bred on Credence Clearwater and the Beatles were not entirely sure what to make of this particular brand of revolt.
They're still not.
Mandy [voiceover]: It was New Year’s Eve 1969: the start of a new decade, and everywhere you went there was this sense of the future, the feeling in the air that anything was possible.
The year I got drafted.
Freddie: The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second duty is no one has yet found out.
Let's spill the beans, okay?
Mandy: It’s funny how beautiful people are when they’re walking out the door.
You tell me..
Mandy: Now, just because someone sees, you know, two naked people asleep in bed together, it doesn’t necessarily prove sex was involved. It does, however, make for a very strong case.
You could always ask them I suppose.
Malcolm: I don’t believe that there is much of a future to speak of.
Pearl: We’re in a bit of a decadent spiral, aren’t we?
Billy: Sinking fast.
Ray: Big Brother, baby, all the way.
Malcolm: Which is why we prefer impressions to ideas.
Billy: Situations to subjects.
Pearl: Brief flights to sustained ones.
Ray: Exceptions to types.
Pearl: And yourself?
Arthur: Well, I’m just looking for a room at the moment.
Let's suppose he finds one.
Mandy: You live in terror of not being misunderstood.
Fortunately, I've nailed that here.
More myths behind the music. Either reinforced or exposed. It’s all the same to me since I couldn’t care less what’s behind it. Only that it exists at all. And who would really want to live in a world without the music of folks like, say, David Bowie.
Or Iggy Pop. Or Kurt Cobain.
Glam rock? Okay, let’s make a buck on that! Kids have to go out and buy whole new sets of clothes, records, posters, gear. But it really did create an entirely new platform for folks to explore themselves sexually. To rethink gender norms. Gay, straight, bi, trans?
Yeah, I like boys, I like girls. They’re all great. There’s no difference is there, Mr BBC.
You listen to the music [at the time] and you think: This is going to change the world! And it doesn’t even change you. Not really. You just go on to the next “new wave”. It’s only a matter of either figuring or not figuring this out.
Look for money. It’s everywhere. And certainly explains the advent of punk and hardcore. That still doesn’t make the music here shit though.
Or maybe this is all just a remake of Citizen Kane.
Much of the dialog comes from Oscar Wilde’s writings.
The Curt Wild character is mainly inspired by David Bowie’s relationship with two American 1960’s underground rockers whose careers Bowie resurrected, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Iggy Pop hailed from Michigan and shared Wild’s long blond locks, while Reed underwent shock therapy for bisexuality as a teen and was rumored to have had an affair with Bowie before their falling out after Bowie produced Reed’s album Transformer.
Courtney Love considered supplying music to the film’s soundtrack, however after viewing a rough cut she withdrew, claiming that the character of Curt Wild too closely resembled her late husband Kurt Cobain both in character and physicality. The Wild/Cobain parallel later became a much-discussed point among critics, and while director Todd Haynes and actor Ewan McGregor have noted similarities between Cobain and Wild, both claim the resemblance was unintended. Haynes, for his part, notes that Cobain borrowed many style traits from Iggy Pop, who served as partial basis for the Wild character. IMDb
Velvet Goldmine
Title Card: Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume.
11 in other words.
Child’s voice: Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man that wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
How I wish he’d go away.
Let's keep him out of here, okay?
Teacher reading to class: “There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely a record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it has been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange, terrible figures that had passed along the stage of life, and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed that in some mysterious way, their lives had been his own…”
Let's make of that what we will.
Cecil [voiceover]: Brian despised the hypocrisy of the peace and love generation and felt his music spoke far more to its orphans and its outcasts. His revolution, he used to say, will be a sexual one. But in 1970, rock audiences bred on Credence Clearwater and the Beatles were not entirely sure what to make of this particular brand of revolt.
They're still not.
Mandy [voiceover]: It was New Year’s Eve 1969: the start of a new decade, and everywhere you went there was this sense of the future, the feeling in the air that anything was possible.
The year I got drafted.
Freddie: The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second duty is no one has yet found out.
Let's spill the beans, okay?
Mandy: It’s funny how beautiful people are when they’re walking out the door.
You tell me..
Mandy: Now, just because someone sees, you know, two naked people asleep in bed together, it doesn’t necessarily prove sex was involved. It does, however, make for a very strong case.
You could always ask them I suppose.
Malcolm: I don’t believe that there is much of a future to speak of.
Pearl: We’re in a bit of a decadent spiral, aren’t we?
Billy: Sinking fast.
Ray: Big Brother, baby, all the way.
Malcolm: Which is why we prefer impressions to ideas.
Billy: Situations to subjects.
Pearl: Brief flights to sustained ones.
Ray: Exceptions to types.
Pearl: And yourself?
Arthur: Well, I’m just looking for a room at the moment.
Let's suppose he finds one.
Mandy: You live in terror of not being misunderstood.
Fortunately, I've nailed that here.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Based on a true story.
Say that to some folks though and they will come at you with baseball bats. It seems this film sparked a “forur” among some regarding just how accurately Jackie Du Pre was portrayed. In particular within the community of folks who worked with her. And even within the family itself.
One chooses fame and fortune, the other domestic bliss. Or as much as one can choose these things. In order to truly excel at something like this [prodigy or not] you must be willing to sacrifice practically everything else. Your life revolves almost entirely around the practice it takes to become this good. Is it worth it? Jackie the star, Hilary the homemaker. And both in love with the same man. Though he is only married to one of them.
There is no way a two-hour movie can even begin to explore the complexities of the relationship between Jackie and Hilary. And then Jackie and Hilary and Kiffer. And you’ll just end up filling in the holes with your own prejudices anyway. Suffice it to say that the crux of the matter is not lust but love.
And then Jackie is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Of course, it must be all the worse when you have so much more to lose. What a terrible fucking disease.
As for the final scene – “I just wanted to tell you that everything is going to be all right” – what could possibly be more absurd?
An aside:
Life is most unfair to children. How so? Well, some have childhoods like these while others have childhoods like mine. And then some have childhoods like mine while others are slowly dying from starvation. In the end, what else is there but God's mysterious ways or shit happens.
Hilary and Jackie
Jackie [mid-recital]: Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, I have broken my A string.
[she leaves stage]
Jackie: At least it wasn’t my G string.
Maybe next time.
Jackie: You don’t have to marry him. Look, do you know what that is? That, my dear, is a Dutch cap. It’s a contraceptive.
Hilary: Is it really? Hmm. Where did you get it?
Jackie: Doc fitted me up. Oh, come on, Hils. Let’s get a flat together and go bonkers. We could have all the men we wanted to.
Hilary: I’m going to marry Kiffer. I love him. He loves me.
Jackie: He does not love you. He just wants to get into your knickers. You don’t have to get married every time you fancy a screw. That’s what these are for.
Hilary: I want to get married.
Jackie: Well, you can’t marry him. You can’t just leave me.
Hilary: I’m not leaving you. You’re not here anymore. You never will be again.
Jackie: Haven’t you heard? I’m giving up the cello.
Hilary: Oh, don’t be silly.
Jackie: I can do what I want.
Hilary: But you don’t know anything apart from the cello. I don’t know anything apart from the flute. We’re babies, Jacks.
And there it is: the turning point.
Hilary: Kiffer makes me feel special.
Jackie: That’s a big swizz, because the truth is…you’re not special.
Some, of course, will beg to differ.
Jackie: You know what I’m thinking now, don’t you, sis?
Hialry: Not really.
Jackie: Yes, you do.
Hilary: No, I don’t.
Jackie: I’ll tell you.
[Jackie gets up and walks over to Hilary, who is next to Kiffer…she bends over and whispers in Hilary’s ear]
Jackie: I want to sleep with Kiffer. You don’t mind, do you, sis? We always did say that we’d share everything, remember?
Kiffer: What? What is it?
Hilary: Nothing. I think we should all go to bed.
At the very least, let's say.
Hilary: We have to.
Kiffer: No, we don’t have to. Why would anyone have to?
Hilary: Because she’s my sister.
Kiffer: Yes, well, I think you’ll find that this is not the sort of thing that sisters normally ask one another.
Hilary: I’m sure it would just be the once.
Kiffer: Just the once, huh? Any particular position?
Hilary: She just needs proof.
Kiffer: Proof of what, for god’s sake?
Hilary: Proof that somebody loves her.
50 shades of bullshit?
Jackie [after sleeping with Kiffer]: I feel a million dollars this morning. That was exactly what the doctor ordered!
But then:
Hilary: Get off me Kiffer! She’ll hear us! She’ll never talk to me again now.
Kiffer: You’ve got to start saying no to her. The more you give her, the more she wants. You’ve got to start saying no to her.
So she does…
Hilary: I’ve given you everything. Ever since we were little, everything you’ve asked for I’ve said yes. Jackie, listen. Jackie…Jackie…Jackie…I’m sorry.
Where would you draw the line?
Jackie [a younger Jackie]: It’s just, um…it’s just the cello. Well, it’s silly, really. I just don’t want to be a cellist after all. Well, I never asked to be a cellist, you see? It’s all just a big cock-up. One day, I was just playing, and then the next day, I was booked up for the next 2 years. I hate the cello, if you want to know.
Though no more than she loves it, some suspect.
Hilary [to Jackie]: If you think being an ordinary person is any easier than being an extraordinary one, you’re wrong.
On the other hand, extraordinary at what?
Hilary [to Jackie]: If you didn’t have that cello to prop you up, you’d be nothing.
Back in time…
Jackie: Would you still love me if I couldn’t play?
Daniel: What?
Jackie: Would you still love me if I couldn’t play?
Daniel: You wouldn’t be you if you couldn’t play.
Jackie: No, I want to know.
Daniel: Our bodies sway to music
Oh, brightening glance
How can we know
The dancer from the dance?
You tell me.
Jackie: Don’t you wish sometimes that you couldn’t play, that you could just be ordinary?
Daniel: Like what? Live in the country? Making bread? Feeding chickens? Playing once a year with a bunch of amateurs?
Jackie: How dare you insult my sister like that.
Daniel: I wasn’t insulting her.
Jackie: Well, at least she chose her life. Not like you and me. We’re just trained freaks.
That’s when she just takes off. That’s when she returns to Hilary. To Kiffer. Both are musicians in turn. Both are trained and exceptional musicians. Just not stars.
Jackie [to Dame Margot]: Hilary keeps chickens. She used to be a musician, but now it’s all chickens and children, isn’t it?
Dame Margot: I would so like to have had children.
Jackie: Hilary’s got heaps of them. In fact, if you want to get yourself impregnated, you should ask her hubby. He’s extremely fertile, and if you ask her nicely, she’ll lend him to you.
Of course, that's just her own rendition.
Jackie [to her mother]: When…you play…everyone… loves you. When you stop…you’re alone.
Win/win, let's call it.
Daniel: I don’t understand what she wants. I think she’s in some sort of pain.
Rabbi: There are things you want to say. I can see that. But you cannot say them. We cannot understand them. But there is someone who hears your thoughts. Do not worry. God hears them all. He hears your every thought.
[Jackie then screams out in agony and rage]
I still hear her.
Say that to some folks though and they will come at you with baseball bats. It seems this film sparked a “forur” among some regarding just how accurately Jackie Du Pre was portrayed. In particular within the community of folks who worked with her. And even within the family itself.
One chooses fame and fortune, the other domestic bliss. Or as much as one can choose these things. In order to truly excel at something like this [prodigy or not] you must be willing to sacrifice practically everything else. Your life revolves almost entirely around the practice it takes to become this good. Is it worth it? Jackie the star, Hilary the homemaker. And both in love with the same man. Though he is only married to one of them.
There is no way a two-hour movie can even begin to explore the complexities of the relationship between Jackie and Hilary. And then Jackie and Hilary and Kiffer. And you’ll just end up filling in the holes with your own prejudices anyway. Suffice it to say that the crux of the matter is not lust but love.
And then Jackie is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Of course, it must be all the worse when you have so much more to lose. What a terrible fucking disease.
As for the final scene – “I just wanted to tell you that everything is going to be all right” – what could possibly be more absurd?
An aside:
Life is most unfair to children. How so? Well, some have childhoods like these while others have childhoods like mine. And then some have childhoods like mine while others are slowly dying from starvation. In the end, what else is there but God's mysterious ways or shit happens.
Hilary and Jackie
Jackie [mid-recital]: Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, I have broken my A string.
[she leaves stage]
Jackie: At least it wasn’t my G string.
Maybe next time.
Jackie: You don’t have to marry him. Look, do you know what that is? That, my dear, is a Dutch cap. It’s a contraceptive.
Hilary: Is it really? Hmm. Where did you get it?
Jackie: Doc fitted me up. Oh, come on, Hils. Let’s get a flat together and go bonkers. We could have all the men we wanted to.
Hilary: I’m going to marry Kiffer. I love him. He loves me.
Jackie: He does not love you. He just wants to get into your knickers. You don’t have to get married every time you fancy a screw. That’s what these are for.
Hilary: I want to get married.
Jackie: Well, you can’t marry him. You can’t just leave me.
Hilary: I’m not leaving you. You’re not here anymore. You never will be again.
Jackie: Haven’t you heard? I’m giving up the cello.
Hilary: Oh, don’t be silly.
Jackie: I can do what I want.
Hilary: But you don’t know anything apart from the cello. I don’t know anything apart from the flute. We’re babies, Jacks.
And there it is: the turning point.
Hilary: Kiffer makes me feel special.
Jackie: That’s a big swizz, because the truth is…you’re not special.
Some, of course, will beg to differ.
Jackie: You know what I’m thinking now, don’t you, sis?
Hialry: Not really.
Jackie: Yes, you do.
Hilary: No, I don’t.
Jackie: I’ll tell you.
[Jackie gets up and walks over to Hilary, who is next to Kiffer…she bends over and whispers in Hilary’s ear]
Jackie: I want to sleep with Kiffer. You don’t mind, do you, sis? We always did say that we’d share everything, remember?
Kiffer: What? What is it?
Hilary: Nothing. I think we should all go to bed.
At the very least, let's say.
Hilary: We have to.
Kiffer: No, we don’t have to. Why would anyone have to?
Hilary: Because she’s my sister.
Kiffer: Yes, well, I think you’ll find that this is not the sort of thing that sisters normally ask one another.
Hilary: I’m sure it would just be the once.
Kiffer: Just the once, huh? Any particular position?
Hilary: She just needs proof.
Kiffer: Proof of what, for god’s sake?
Hilary: Proof that somebody loves her.
50 shades of bullshit?
Jackie [after sleeping with Kiffer]: I feel a million dollars this morning. That was exactly what the doctor ordered!
But then:
Hilary: Get off me Kiffer! She’ll hear us! She’ll never talk to me again now.
Kiffer: You’ve got to start saying no to her. The more you give her, the more she wants. You’ve got to start saying no to her.
So she does…
Hilary: I’ve given you everything. Ever since we were little, everything you’ve asked for I’ve said yes. Jackie, listen. Jackie…Jackie…Jackie…I’m sorry.
Where would you draw the line?
Jackie [a younger Jackie]: It’s just, um…it’s just the cello. Well, it’s silly, really. I just don’t want to be a cellist after all. Well, I never asked to be a cellist, you see? It’s all just a big cock-up. One day, I was just playing, and then the next day, I was booked up for the next 2 years. I hate the cello, if you want to know.
Though no more than she loves it, some suspect.
Hilary [to Jackie]: If you think being an ordinary person is any easier than being an extraordinary one, you’re wrong.
On the other hand, extraordinary at what?
Hilary [to Jackie]: If you didn’t have that cello to prop you up, you’d be nothing.
Back in time…
Jackie: Would you still love me if I couldn’t play?
Daniel: What?
Jackie: Would you still love me if I couldn’t play?
Daniel: You wouldn’t be you if you couldn’t play.
Jackie: No, I want to know.
Daniel: Our bodies sway to music
Oh, brightening glance
How can we know
The dancer from the dance?
You tell me.
Jackie: Don’t you wish sometimes that you couldn’t play, that you could just be ordinary?
Daniel: Like what? Live in the country? Making bread? Feeding chickens? Playing once a year with a bunch of amateurs?
Jackie: How dare you insult my sister like that.
Daniel: I wasn’t insulting her.
Jackie: Well, at least she chose her life. Not like you and me. We’re just trained freaks.
That’s when she just takes off. That’s when she returns to Hilary. To Kiffer. Both are musicians in turn. Both are trained and exceptional musicians. Just not stars.
Jackie [to Dame Margot]: Hilary keeps chickens. She used to be a musician, but now it’s all chickens and children, isn’t it?
Dame Margot: I would so like to have had children.
Jackie: Hilary’s got heaps of them. In fact, if you want to get yourself impregnated, you should ask her hubby. He’s extremely fertile, and if you ask her nicely, she’ll lend him to you.
Of course, that's just her own rendition.
Jackie [to her mother]: When…you play…everyone… loves you. When you stop…you’re alone.
Win/win, let's call it.
Daniel: I don’t understand what she wants. I think she’s in some sort of pain.
Rabbi: There are things you want to say. I can see that. But you cannot say them. We cannot understand them. But there is someone who hears your thoughts. Do not worry. God hears them all. He hears your every thought.
[Jackie then screams out in agony and rage]
I still hear her.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Melissa Broder
I wake up scared and I'm scared all day. I'm scared of being scared. Scared of "losing it". Scared of not being able to function. Scared of being hospitalized. Scared that I am not okay. Scared of what life is and if I am wasting mine. Scared that I have no home - that even the place I call home has no bottom to it and I will just keep falling under and under and under.
Then it's under [the turtles] all the way down.
There aren’t many ways to find comfort in this world. We must take it where we can get it, even in the darkest, most disgusting places. Nobody asks to be born. No one signs a form that says, You have my permission to make me exist. Babies are born, because parents feel that they themselves are not enough. So, parents, never condemn us for trying to fill our existential holes, when we are but the fruit of your own vain attempts to fill yours. It’s your fault we’re here to deal with the void in the first place.
I'll never forgive myself that's for sure.
It seems weird to me that here we are, alive, not knowing why we are alive, and just going about our business, sort of ignoring that fact. How are we all not looking at each other all the time just like, Yo, what the fuck?
Not counting me, of course.
I, myself, had a very complicated relationship with emptiness, blankness, nothingness. Sometimes I wanted only to fill it, frightened that if I didn’t it would eat me alive or kill me. But sometimes I longed for total annihilation in it—a beautiful, silent erasure. A desire to be vanished.
The end, beautiful friend, the end.
I'm in love with you and you don't want anything to do with me so I think we can make this work: a love story.
Think Maia and, well, you, right?
I am a superficial woman of depth.
I'll take her.
I wake up scared and I'm scared all day. I'm scared of being scared. Scared of "losing it". Scared of not being able to function. Scared of being hospitalized. Scared that I am not okay. Scared of what life is and if I am wasting mine. Scared that I have no home - that even the place I call home has no bottom to it and I will just keep falling under and under and under.
Then it's under [the turtles] all the way down.
There aren’t many ways to find comfort in this world. We must take it where we can get it, even in the darkest, most disgusting places. Nobody asks to be born. No one signs a form that says, You have my permission to make me exist. Babies are born, because parents feel that they themselves are not enough. So, parents, never condemn us for trying to fill our existential holes, when we are but the fruit of your own vain attempts to fill yours. It’s your fault we’re here to deal with the void in the first place.
I'll never forgive myself that's for sure.
It seems weird to me that here we are, alive, not knowing why we are alive, and just going about our business, sort of ignoring that fact. How are we all not looking at each other all the time just like, Yo, what the fuck?
Not counting me, of course.
I, myself, had a very complicated relationship with emptiness, blankness, nothingness. Sometimes I wanted only to fill it, frightened that if I didn’t it would eat me alive or kill me. But sometimes I longed for total annihilation in it—a beautiful, silent erasure. A desire to be vanished.
The end, beautiful friend, the end.
I'm in love with you and you don't want anything to do with me so I think we can make this work: a love story.
Think Maia and, well, you, right?
I am a superficial woman of depth.
I'll take her.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Nothing is as it seems. So expect to be confused at times. For some, all the way to the end. The closest you come is in speculating on what might be true. And where could this possibly be more appropriate than in a prison for the criminally insane. On the other hand, how far is it really from the perspectives of all the rest of us? Of course in order to understand that you have to think like I do. So you don’t.
Well, do you?
One look at the place and you know this: some really, really creepy shit goes on. After all, if you are going to conduct experiments involving aberrant human behavior, who are these folks to protest? If you are.
But it has often been noted there is a correlation between insanity and high intelligence. And that certainly seems to make sense from my perspective. Besides, here you can never really be entirely certain if the patients are more or less dangerous than the staff. Or even which is which. Then the past gets all tangled up in the present and the island all tangled up in the war. But occasionally it is also intertwined in the actual historical paradigm shifts that have occurred in the field of psychiatric care. All the competing “schools” as it were.
Anyway, this takes place back in the 1950’s. The powers that be were ever intent on undermining the Commies. So, do I have to draw you a picture?
In other words: How paranoid do we really have to be about the government? Very. PBS once aired a documentary on the history of comic books in America. Comic books? Believe it or not, the government is written all over them.
To wit: Just because this guy is crazy doesn’t mean the stuff he believes is true is not true. It’s only a matter of degree.
So, anyway: At the end, who is fooling who?
One take on it: https://screenrant.com/shutter-island-m ... explained/
The quote “remember us for we too have lived, loved and laughed” seen on a plaque on the way to the mental institution is taken from Medfield’s Vine Lake Cemetery. A contest was held to come up with an quote to be used on a stone marker as a remembrance of those who died in the 1918 influenza epidemic known as the Spanish flu.
The title “Shutter Island” is an anagram of both “Truths and Lies” and “Truths / Denials”. IMDb
Shutter Island
Teddy [to the deputy warden]: You act like insanity is catching.
Though it certainly does seem that way here from time to time.
Dr. Cawley: Those paintings are quite accurate. Used to be the kind of patients we deal with here were shackled and left in their own filth. They were beaten, as if whipping them bloody would drive the psychosis out. We drove screws into their brains, we submerged them in ice water until they lost consciousness or…or even drowned.
Chuck: And now?
Dr. Cawley: We treat them. Try to heal, try to cure.
In other words, nothing much has changed at all.
Dr. Cawley [regarding Rachel]: We don’t know how she got out of her room. It was locked from the outside. And the only window’s barred. It’s as if she evaporated, straight through the walls.
Wink, wink.
Teddy: Seriously, Doctor, how is it possible that the truth never gets through to her? I mean, she’s in a mental institution, right? Seems like something you’d notice from time to time.
Dr. Cawley: Sanity’s not a choice, Marshall. You can’t just choose to get over it.
Like, say, the "serious philosophers" here?
Teddy: Anything unusual occur?
Nurse Marino: Define ‘unusual’.
Teddy: Excuse me?
Nurse Marino: This is a mental institution, Marshal. For the criminally insane. Usual isn’t a big part of our day.
Same here. Well, if you count philosophy.
Dr. Naehring: Men like you are my specialty, you know. Men of violence.
Chuck: Now, that’s a hell of an assumption to make.
Dr. Naehring: No assumption, no, not at all. You misunderstand me. I said, you are ‘men of violence’. I’m not accusing you of being violent men. That’s quite different.
New thread?
Teddy: You know, this place makes me wonder.
Chuck: Yeah, what’s that, boss?
Teddy: Which would be worse - to live as a monster? Or to die as a good man?
New thread?
Dr. Cawley: Do you know the state of the mental health field these days, gentlemen?
Teddy: No, not a clue, Doctor.
Dr. Cawley: War. The old school believes in surgical intervention. Psychosurgurery. Procedures like transorbital lobotomies. Some say the patients become reasonable, docile. Others say they become zombies.
Teddy: And the new school?
Dr. Cawley: Psychopharmacology. A new drug has just been approved called Thorazine which relaxes psychotic patients, you could say tames them.
You could say a few other things too.
Chuck: Everything about this place stinks of governments ops. What if they wanted you here?
Teddy: Bullshit!
Chuck: You were asking questions about it.
Teddy: Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!
Chuck: We came here for Rachel Solandes. Where’s one shred of evidence she even existed?
Teddy: There’s no way they could have known I’d be assigned to this case.
Chuck: What if while you were looking into them, they were looking into you?
Hint, hint.
Noyce [to Teddy]: This is a game. All of this is for you. You’re not investigating anything. You’re a fucking rat in a maze.
Tell me about it.
Rachel: You think I’m crazy. And if I say I’m not crazy? Well, that hardly helps, does it? That’s the Kafkaesque genius of it. People tell the world you’re crazy, and all your protests to the contrary just confirm what they’re saying.
Teddy: I’m not following you, sorry.
Rachel: Once you’re declared insane, then anything you do is called part of the insanity. Reasonal protests are denials. Valid protest, paranoia.
Next up: how that works here as well.
Rachel [to Teddy]: Fifty years from now, people will look back and say, “Here, at this place, is where it all began. The Nazis used the Jews, Soviets used prisoners in their own Gulags. And we...we tested patients on Shutter Island."
Sort of, let's say.
Warden: Did you enjoy God’s latest gift?
Teddy: What?
Warden: God’s gift. Your violence.
[Teddy looks at him blankly]
Warden: When I came downstairs in my home, and I saw that tree in my living room, it reached out for me…a divine hand. God loves violence.
Teddy: I… I hadn’t noticed.
Warden: Sure you have. Why else would there be so much of it? It’s in us. It’s what we are. We wage war, we burn sacrifices, and pillage and plunder and tear at the flesh of our brothers. And why? Because God gave us violence to wage in his honor.
Teddy: I thought God gave us moral order.
Warden: There’s no moral order as pure as this storm. There’s no moral order at all. There’s just this: can my violence conquer yours?
Teddy: I’m not violent.
Warden: You’re as violent as they come. I know this, because I’m as violent as they come. If the constraints of society were lifted, and I was all that stood between you and a meal, you would crack my skull with a rock and eat my meaty parts. Wouldn’t you?
Praise the Lord then!
Dr. Naehring: Did you know that the word ‘trauma’ comes from the Greek for ‘wound’? Hm? And what is the German word for ‘dream’? Traum. Ein Traum. Wounds can create monsters, and you, you are wounded, Marshal. And wouldn’t you agree, when you see a monster, you… you must stop it?
Teddy: Yeah… I agree.
[he injects him with a sedative]
Little did we know?
Teddy: If you ever loved me Dolores, please stop talking.
Let's run this by Andrew Laeddis.
Well, do you?
One look at the place and you know this: some really, really creepy shit goes on. After all, if you are going to conduct experiments involving aberrant human behavior, who are these folks to protest? If you are.
But it has often been noted there is a correlation between insanity and high intelligence. And that certainly seems to make sense from my perspective. Besides, here you can never really be entirely certain if the patients are more or less dangerous than the staff. Or even which is which. Then the past gets all tangled up in the present and the island all tangled up in the war. But occasionally it is also intertwined in the actual historical paradigm shifts that have occurred in the field of psychiatric care. All the competing “schools” as it were.
Anyway, this takes place back in the 1950’s. The powers that be were ever intent on undermining the Commies. So, do I have to draw you a picture?
In other words: How paranoid do we really have to be about the government? Very. PBS once aired a documentary on the history of comic books in America. Comic books? Believe it or not, the government is written all over them.
To wit: Just because this guy is crazy doesn’t mean the stuff he believes is true is not true. It’s only a matter of degree.
So, anyway: At the end, who is fooling who?
One take on it: https://screenrant.com/shutter-island-m ... explained/
The quote “remember us for we too have lived, loved and laughed” seen on a plaque on the way to the mental institution is taken from Medfield’s Vine Lake Cemetery. A contest was held to come up with an quote to be used on a stone marker as a remembrance of those who died in the 1918 influenza epidemic known as the Spanish flu.
The title “Shutter Island” is an anagram of both “Truths and Lies” and “Truths / Denials”. IMDb
Shutter Island
Teddy [to the deputy warden]: You act like insanity is catching.
Though it certainly does seem that way here from time to time.
Dr. Cawley: Those paintings are quite accurate. Used to be the kind of patients we deal with here were shackled and left in their own filth. They were beaten, as if whipping them bloody would drive the psychosis out. We drove screws into their brains, we submerged them in ice water until they lost consciousness or…or even drowned.
Chuck: And now?
Dr. Cawley: We treat them. Try to heal, try to cure.
In other words, nothing much has changed at all.
Dr. Cawley [regarding Rachel]: We don’t know how she got out of her room. It was locked from the outside. And the only window’s barred. It’s as if she evaporated, straight through the walls.
Wink, wink.
Teddy: Seriously, Doctor, how is it possible that the truth never gets through to her? I mean, she’s in a mental institution, right? Seems like something you’d notice from time to time.
Dr. Cawley: Sanity’s not a choice, Marshall. You can’t just choose to get over it.
Like, say, the "serious philosophers" here?
Teddy: Anything unusual occur?
Nurse Marino: Define ‘unusual’.
Teddy: Excuse me?
Nurse Marino: This is a mental institution, Marshal. For the criminally insane. Usual isn’t a big part of our day.
Same here. Well, if you count philosophy.
Dr. Naehring: Men like you are my specialty, you know. Men of violence.
Chuck: Now, that’s a hell of an assumption to make.
Dr. Naehring: No assumption, no, not at all. You misunderstand me. I said, you are ‘men of violence’. I’m not accusing you of being violent men. That’s quite different.
New thread?
Teddy: You know, this place makes me wonder.
Chuck: Yeah, what’s that, boss?
Teddy: Which would be worse - to live as a monster? Or to die as a good man?
New thread?
Dr. Cawley: Do you know the state of the mental health field these days, gentlemen?
Teddy: No, not a clue, Doctor.
Dr. Cawley: War. The old school believes in surgical intervention. Psychosurgurery. Procedures like transorbital lobotomies. Some say the patients become reasonable, docile. Others say they become zombies.
Teddy: And the new school?
Dr. Cawley: Psychopharmacology. A new drug has just been approved called Thorazine which relaxes psychotic patients, you could say tames them.
You could say a few other things too.
Chuck: Everything about this place stinks of governments ops. What if they wanted you here?
Teddy: Bullshit!
Chuck: You were asking questions about it.
Teddy: Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!
Chuck: We came here for Rachel Solandes. Where’s one shred of evidence she even existed?
Teddy: There’s no way they could have known I’d be assigned to this case.
Chuck: What if while you were looking into them, they were looking into you?
Hint, hint.
Noyce [to Teddy]: This is a game. All of this is for you. You’re not investigating anything. You’re a fucking rat in a maze.
Tell me about it.
Rachel: You think I’m crazy. And if I say I’m not crazy? Well, that hardly helps, does it? That’s the Kafkaesque genius of it. People tell the world you’re crazy, and all your protests to the contrary just confirm what they’re saying.
Teddy: I’m not following you, sorry.
Rachel: Once you’re declared insane, then anything you do is called part of the insanity. Reasonal protests are denials. Valid protest, paranoia.
Next up: how that works here as well.
Rachel [to Teddy]: Fifty years from now, people will look back and say, “Here, at this place, is where it all began. The Nazis used the Jews, Soviets used prisoners in their own Gulags. And we...we tested patients on Shutter Island."
Sort of, let's say.
Warden: Did you enjoy God’s latest gift?
Teddy: What?
Warden: God’s gift. Your violence.
[Teddy looks at him blankly]
Warden: When I came downstairs in my home, and I saw that tree in my living room, it reached out for me…a divine hand. God loves violence.
Teddy: I… I hadn’t noticed.
Warden: Sure you have. Why else would there be so much of it? It’s in us. It’s what we are. We wage war, we burn sacrifices, and pillage and plunder and tear at the flesh of our brothers. And why? Because God gave us violence to wage in his honor.
Teddy: I thought God gave us moral order.
Warden: There’s no moral order as pure as this storm. There’s no moral order at all. There’s just this: can my violence conquer yours?
Teddy: I’m not violent.
Warden: You’re as violent as they come. I know this, because I’m as violent as they come. If the constraints of society were lifted, and I was all that stood between you and a meal, you would crack my skull with a rock and eat my meaty parts. Wouldn’t you?
Praise the Lord then!
Dr. Naehring: Did you know that the word ‘trauma’ comes from the Greek for ‘wound’? Hm? And what is the German word for ‘dream’? Traum. Ein Traum. Wounds can create monsters, and you, you are wounded, Marshal. And wouldn’t you agree, when you see a monster, you… you must stop it?
Teddy: Yeah… I agree.
[he injects him with a sedative]
Little did we know?
Teddy: If you ever loved me Dolores, please stop talking.
Let's run this by Andrew Laeddis.