Zizek is funny and a little insightful when he is talking about movies
He's not the only pop philosopher who really just wants to review movies
It is morning, and the sky is frozen. I began my waiting when the cold came, and now I must go to where I can become wholly living. I leave the downward dark where many others hide. I will go to a meeting which will make me all alive. I am bringing all of me, beneath every eye that is above me, to where life will meet me and all of me will be made living.
It is morning, and the sky is melting. The eyes above me are fleeing, because they will not live. A tiny life is touching me. I am carrying all of me, and it is a dead walking. I have always come to this meeting. Life is coming to meet me, life is coming to make so much of me into living things. I see it bleeding from the line across all things where I cannot reach. Life is coming! Life is coming for me to meet it!
It is morning, and the sky is stained. The eyes above me are washed away, and I am trying. I am squeezing, I am pushing, and I am falling between efforts. It is all of it heavy, and I am carrying some of me. The meeting will be above me, and this morning I will reach it. Life is erupting to me. I have so little left from our last meeting. All of me wants to live, and none of me will be beneath the rest.
It is morning, and the sky is fire! I am wide atop a thing more dead than any other, because it will be most alive in our meeting. I have come to the meeting, and all of me is waiting! Life is rising over me, life is here, life is striking all of me!
It is morning, and the sky is bulging. Where I was folded, I open. Where I was tightened, I loosen. Where I was sinking, I rise, and all of me is lightened, all of me is living! Life has come to meet me, life has come for me to steal away what it always gives! Now I am alive, now all of me is life-hungry, and I take enough for all of me! All things that are not me are taking life also, because life has come to meet me here on the rock which sits upon the death that reaches to the line across all things. With life I can see the rock that is pale, upon dust that is red, upon the safe dark that is beneath it where the cold hides from life's coming. I open myself, my teeth touch the life from above, and I balance it all, and this is the meeting that I came to.
It is morning, and the sky is touching me, and it comes with me. Now I do not carry me, and all of me is pulling itself. Life has come into where I am opened, because I came to this meeting.
Morning is ending, and I leave this living rock, and I am alive again!
I love that interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve I've encountered in a few places that sees God as ultimately afraid of what happens. He warns them that if they eat the apple from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will 'surely die.'" It isn't necessarily an order that is going to be disobeyed.
In this read, for God, good and evil are arbitrary things without consequence. He does not experience the consequences of these things. When Adam and Eve eat the apple, they now understand good and evil in ways that are real--they suffer, they see and feel what things are good and evil and come to know these ideas themselves. And god is scared, he's freaked out by these little non-omniscient things understanding something he doesn't, so he forces them out because they threaten his eden.
Yeah the bike lock fugitive one was the reveal for me too
I love garter snakes so much, this one was curious and friendly and slid right across my leg after telescoping a bit for me to take a photo.
Right, it's why introducing her early is so effective. Like most people, Harry wakes into a world order established by people like her, and if you literally only take her and the world at face value, she just seems like a proper lady, when she is actually a key player in the horror of it all
This is bringing out something that occurred to me the second time I played the game and met Joyce. She really is the liberal of the game.
When you meet Joyce early on, she is, at that stage of the game, one of the most directly helpful NPCs. She talks to you respectfully instead of (rightfully) calling you a pig, she makes jokes with you, she's even willing to discuss reality with you, and some of her most likeable lines come out during that little philosophy talk. She's got an education, and she clearly likes a deep conversation. She even shows that she has a little perspective on her position in the world, and she has some sympathy for the failed revolution and for the conditions that necessitated it. Wow what an intelligent and reasonable mature woman she is!
Try and ask her for money, though?
NOPE
I helped some desperate guy who had just gotten out of prison get an Uber to a family member's house two counties over today (he didn't have a phone or email to do it himself with)
It was a very small thing but helping strangers feels good as hell when most of your time is spent wandering around in an alienated bubble
Yes yes I bring up the slave revolts whenever I get asked this. Feels like a perfect comparison to me. Most libs will admit that they think slaves freeing themselves was justification for violence, and they did kill innocent people in more than one uprising.
The most common response I hear is that "this is different, Hamas is getting funding from the real bad guys who just want to attack Jews." During many of the slave revolts, there are records of voices claiming "this isn't an honest rebellion, they are the unwitting stooges of the French/Spanish who just want to attack Brits!"
Anti-intellectualism comes alongside alienation from others. It has to. Being an intellectual is essentially saying "I trust the findings of academics and will adopt their consensus." Nobody can learn about the whole span of the world, it's too much information. But when you are convinced that collaboration is weakness and compromise is failure, you have to keep the world in your head, and the only way to do that is to maintain a really simplified internal diorama from which your "truth" is derived.
Man I fucking feel for you guys in this thread. My parents are just well-meaning libs who immediately cave when I apply pressure. Like when JK Rowling was first getting onto her bullshit and I whipped out an "actually my friend is trans and you knew her pre-transition" it basically blew the transphobia out of them like a shotgun blast. I'd rent my parents out to you guys if I could so you could have a couple old academic libs to very lightly dunk on with the understanding that they are still trying to figure out a confusing world even in old age.
Edit: I should add that I empathize because growing up in the South, most of my friends had the parents you describe and I was pretty familiar with how unstable it made them feel at home.
I remember the first time I saw (and loved) There Will Be Blood I had an argument with a friend about it. He hated it and said he didn't understand who could enjoy a movie like that--"everyone was so shitty, who am.i supposed to root for?" I was kinda floored by that, because I remember thinking it was amazing and near-perfect. To me it was like a surgical diagram, delving much deeper than some trite ethical parable into the minds of the powerful and the power-seeking, and demonstrating the world they perpetuate.
Not saying I was right when I disagreed, but I realized we were watching movies for different reasons. I had my foot in the real world, enjoying media for how it interacts with it, while he was enjoying movies as something to utterly submit yourself to. If a movie doesn't have a good slot for him to sit in, he's homeless in it. In some ways he probably enjoyed media more than I do.
How about we do two things
Like how about we work less and we immediately and totally nationalize energy and agriculture haha just a thought haha (fireflies are going extinct haha)
So there's this documentary I saw many years ago called Onibus 147. Long story short, it's about a kid in Rio who held some people in a bus hostage. I think it was an incredible experience to watch it but it has been like a decade since I did. Still, for some reason it has never left my mind. I can't say it traumatized me or anything, but I was a different person after watching it. I'm not sure if I would have the political opinions I have today without watching this documentary.
Look, I just want to talk about this movie. If you are reading this thread and you've seen it jump in here and say something because it makes me really sad to think that the name Sandro Nascimento will someday be completely forgotten. Being exposed to the story of Nascimento and the way it ended was probably the first time I remember truly feeling anger at the good ol boys in blue, the first time I was able to truly conceive of what poverty means, the first sight I caught of the grinding, meat-splattered gears underneath the floorboards.
Maybe it's not even an amazing movie, maybe I shouldn't rewatch it and open that old wound, but right now it doesn't really matter because I can't find the god damn thing anywhere. If you know where it's uploaded or where it can be found let me know.
Man why do libertarians have to have a modicum of relevance and senatorial presence in America, they could just be like the political equivalent of village idiots who delight us with their harmless stupidity