The real source of our troubles.....

D

Dangus

New member
I've been thinking a lot lately about what our real trouble is, and I've been looking back at some interesting films I have seen for some inspiration. Not all of Hollywood is liberal, a lot of it is suprisingly conservative, and some of it is just plain nuts :)

The films I brought to mind were Demolition Man, and Fight Club..

Warning: spoilers ahead if you haven't seen these films, go see them, then come back and read this, trust me, you will regret not seeing Fight Club prior to reading this...

Demolition Man, he wakes up, and the world has basically gone to hell, only hell is all tidy and overly neat and pretty oppresive. the ones who don't play the system's game hide out in the sewers. In the movie, the badguy is basically a blast from the past, and totally goes out of control on the present society, which has been stripped of all sense of agression and knowledge of how to fight. So then enters main character, also from past, and he brings agression back into the picture and saves the day. The neat little culture trying to be perfect has to be saved by the very things it tried so hard to get completely rid of, and was ultimately destroyed by it's arrogance.

Fight Club, on the other hand, is one of the best and most powerful movies I have ever seen. The message spoke to me loud and clear. The guy starts out, nicely manicured life, perfect job, perfect apartment, perfect creature comforts, etc. It isn't really so perfect after all though, and he starts going to all these support groups, just so he can taste humanity, something his life has stripped from him completely, he needs to break free of his insomnia, the tiredness of living a life in the pursuit of money. Something breaks the effect of the groups for him though, and he has to find some other way to feel human, to feel alive. So he starts the fight club, where men just come and beat on each other, simply for the pure primal sensation of it. The fight club is bring back agression, agression that had been sapped from these people for whatever reason, and they loved him for creating it. He went further though, he started to create an army. His army grew and grew, and got so he was feeling out of control. This all culminated with a huge discovery, a huge detail about his character, a big identity crisis. In the end, as he goes to blow up the financial institutions of the world, he confronts his alternate personality, because that personality, had become as much of an institution, as much oppression, as his job and life had been. Even his liberator became his oppressor.

What do these two movies show me about what's wrong with our world?

We are destroying agression, because fools think we don't need it anymore.

Our humanity is getting choked by our cushy lifestyles making us forget who we are.

We are having an identity crisis.

Even our best hopes for salvation often end up becoming ultimately unbearable themselves.

We are afaid of everything, we are a generation of fear. We are afraid to offend, we are afraid to harm, we are afraid to be harmed, we are just trembling with absolute terror of everything.

That we can be rich in many ways, but money or not, we are poor as long as we make
nothing of what we have.

These I feel really are out biggest problems. Those who ignored my above warning and read this without watching Fight Club first, shame on you, but still go watch it. It was absolutely like a glass of water to the face watching that movie and realizing how nuts it all was, but how true as well. When madness and reality have that much in common things are scary.

Why do they want to take away your guns? Because they are scared. Why do they want to put people in jail for longer and longer sentences when jail already isn't working. Because they are scared. Why are they angry about the death penalty, because they are scared. and why are they medicating every boy that shows any hint of maleness? Because they are scared that the boy will be too human, and humanity scares them.

They want a shrink-wrapped, disinfected sort of life, the kind that is sickningly perfect. They don't want to have to deal with things like free will, or rights, they just want to be invincible, and they think that the more laws they pass to further attack the basic humanity of people, the closer they will get to being 100% completely safe and secure. They are building a cultural great wall of china, a barrier to keep out all the nasty things, and just like China they ignore the mongols wandering their borders, getting ever more powerful, until one day they sweep in and destroy it all, and then they will say, "How did this happen, I didn't know it could happen to me, my life was supposed to be guaranteed perfect!!"

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The Alcove

I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
I think the problem is that we are watching too many movies, and not dealing with real life... :)

Entertainment, sports, and pseudonews/talkshows all distract us from the state of our country. We all love seeing people who are worse off than us. It reassures us and we SLEEP. Whether it be some child in Bangladesh starving, or a simple flood in the US, the message is the same: "Thank God that wasn't me". We SLEEP, and do not see a government that is turning us into subjects. We SLEEP and do not care if our rights are thrown away unconstitutionally in all aspects of life (1st amendment: biased reporting and propaganda, 2nd: denial of the individual's right to bear arms, etc.). We have given up our rights and citizen's responsibilities to comfort, DVD's, MP3's, an oversized couch and a six-pack of beer. I am ashamed of this nation and the sheep who now inhabit it.

I stand for the following: The right of every citizen to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I also stand for the right of personal property. The Government shall not infringe on our personal rights as delineated in the Bill of Rights. These rights are God given. The role of government is to provide defense of this nation, control interstate commerce and relations, and to provide assistance for the disabled. That is it. They are to provide a level playing field, and it us to each citizen of this country to find his own place, his own life, his own dream. They are not to be provided by the state. We SLEEP.
 
I think that to a certain degree, the government has fostered this "you are helpless, therefore we will protect you (at a price)". The price being individual freedom.

Notice that just about ANY Federal intrusion into our lives has been under the guise of "safety". The more "safety" laws they pass, the more control they have over you.

The first thing out of Schumer's mouth, when the first session of Congress opened this year was, "We are going to make things safer", and you sure as Hell knew what THAT meant.

The fact that "safety", especially "for the children", touches a Hot Button with the Soccer Moms indicates this is a great way to wrap the tentacles of the State around you, smiling all the while.

To these people, self reliance is a four-letter word, and they get a two-for-one payoff getting rid of the guns - a physical threat to them, and less self-reliant people.
 
I had a discussion with a retired guy working part-time in the walmart sporting goods section.....this guy believes we are way to soft, have it to easy, and need another war, of course he means the type like korea, ww2.....heck he might be right.....fubsy.
 
Don't be worried, war will find us soon enough. If Gore falls behind in the polls then Clinton will start whacking on Iraq and Saddam in October.

IMHO, people do have it too soft these days. At the bar this weekend there were some whiners who were complaining that the rich were getting richer...and believe me, not one of the whiners has ever suffered even one second of deprivation nor hunger in their lives. The dumb-@sses could afford to pay $3.50 for a pint of imported beer and were complaining about rich people...give me a break.

The solution to fixing America's problems is REPEALING WOMAN'S SUFFERAGE!
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
I think the problem is that we are watching too many movies, and not dealing with real life...
[/quote]

I am with Westtexas.

‘Popular’ culture is dictating the course of public discussion. When people gather around the water coolers, they don’t discuss the issues of the day – they discuss what was on TV last night, or in the movies over the weekend. Witness that our children’s heroes are not those that lead, or those that make. They are actors and entertainers. And, when we all show up for work on Monday, the first thing most of us will be asked is ‘did you see any good movies this weekend?’

Filmmakers say, that in order for their ‘magic’ to work, the audience needs to engage in the willing suspension of disbelief. Society is bombarded with their messages, from TV to movies to entertainment periodicals, to the extent that the willing suspension becomes the norm. The net affect of this; society is distracted from the important issues of the day. Those who had critical thinking skills find them atrophying, because they are not applicable to their daily mental input. And with a chronic suspension of disbelief, people have difficulty discerning what is real and what is make up.

A perfect recipe for brainwashing, if you ask me.

Marty
 
That's the brilliance of Fight Club, it gets in the face of that, gets in the face of the fact that we are living in an illusion, life motivated by weird things, and trading of simple hardships for complicated ones. Progress is good, but unchecked progress, or progress driven by carelessness is ultimately disasterous, and that's where we are right now. We've opened up the world in the internet. We can't just go online today and find someone at random and say "hey did you hear there's a party going on at Bob's house?" because they could be anywhere. What do we have left to discuss with the people we meet, the people who are increasingly strangers to us? I know so many people who have dozens of friends and don't even know their own next-door neighbors. We're so busy reaching out we just lose track of what's right next to us, sometimes of ourselves. People discuss movies, and people discuss TV, because those are some of the few things we have that we can find someone at random and say "Hey, did you hear the new Sarah McLachlan album?", and there's a chance they actually have. The true problem we have though, is that we've become professional spectators to our own world. We rely more and more heavily on these medias to provide us a common link, something to talk about, and inspiration for our lives, that we've forgotten that we're capable of creating things for ourselves, and we're capable of making a difference of our own.

I love the scene where Tyler grabs his hand and pours the lye on it, and makes him face it, saying how this is real life, this is what's here and now, as though saying, "life is sacrifice and hardship, face it" and then later in the movie, before he pulls the trigger, he says "look at me, my eyes are wide open". In the end, he takes control of his own destiny, and he does it with lucidity.

We have to face this, this is our pain, we have to look at it with eyes wide open. We cannot shake the bindings of the media culture we have become, so we have a choice, and that is to define those media, and to shape and control them to represent our needs and our wills.

We can attack senate bill after senate bill and not get anywhere, because the liberals are grabbing the real source of power; mindshare. Liberals are setting the agenda for us, and they are telling us "this is how the world is" and people believe them. Our only hope is to set the agendas ourselves. Writing media groups when you see things that offend you won't necessarily do it either, in fact it might make things worse.

We are becoming a culture scared to offend, with every little fringe group crying foul on every little thing, and a trend has started, where those in control nod assention and then simply continue their previous course of disregard.

Our option is to create our own sources of media, our own circles of information. We must provide content. Some of us have websites, and that's a good thing, and some of us rally, which is also good, but it would be nice to take over a more traditional style media outlet by way of converting fence sitters within. Competition is good, we can't say to these bolsheviks, "we don't want you to talk anymore" because that makes us just like them. Let them talk, prove that we are the true believers in freedom, and then counter thier arguments, counter thier lies, keep the fire burning in public view so that people can make their own decisions, there's simply too much "we can't let them say these things" kind of attitude on both sides. Why should we be so desperate as to cut off information to those we seek to enlighten?

Remember, we need to get in their faces too, and tell them "this is reality, wake up", not tell them, "here's what we want you to hear".

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The Alcove

I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
Hey, it's just movies. The REAL source of all our social problems is ADVERTISING. Follow me here:

1. You don't need to advertise to get people to buy things they need. They will buy them because they need them.

2. Advertising persuades people to either buy things they don't need (Sony Playstations instead of playing outside, bread machines when you have a working oven) or to pay more for useless features (paying $65 for some fashion-designer's name tag on a pair of $14 blue jeans).

3. People believe (because of advertsing) that they must have all this stuff, so they work themselves to a frazzle, and married couples both work. This leaves the kids with absentee parents. If the parents are around they're too tired for quality time.

4. "Stuff" replaces parenting. The kids are given TVs, Nintendos, all sorts of junk. They wind up spoiled.

5. Spoiled kids brought up without strong parental guidance think the world owes them everything and they don't care how they get it. They grow up to be unethical business people, influence-peddling politicians, crooks, theives, muggers, rapists and telemarketers.

6. Society goes to hell in a handbasket.
 
What David Scott is describing, perhaps unwittingly, is late capitalism. And yes, that is our problem, in many ways.
 
The ultimate question though is what do we do about it?

Communism sure as hell isn't the answer, and that's where we're headed. So what is?

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The Alcove

I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
haha, the low attendance of this topic is probably due to people actually taking my advice and not reading this prior to watching the film :)

Well anyway

*bump*

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The Alcove

I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
Demolition Man was a laughably inconsequential movie. Fight Club was at least interesting, but in the end was just an artful exhortation to purification through nihilistic punk/fascist violence. If that's the answer, it must have been a stupid question.

[This message has been edited by Cypselus (edited September 20, 2000).]
 
Bam Bam and David Scott drivin the spike.

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Sam I am, grn egs n packin

Nikita Khrushchev predicted confidently in a speech in Bucharest, Rumania on June 19, 1962 that: " The United States will eventually fly the Communist Red Flag...the American people will hoist it themselves."
 
Cypselus,

Don't you get it though? The movie shows how he flipped as a result of an environment that no longer encouraged humanity, and so Tyler was born, and Tyler started off ok, but in the end, the facist path he took was too much, and so he had to go. It showed how even our basic instincts have a limit to what is reasonable. He starts out too far entrenched in corporate modern live, then ends up too entrenched in this animalistic sort of facism, and that has to go as well. It's saying that, in order to fix things, we need to swing back towards being human again, but it's also giving a warning about the risks of going too far. The film is a masterpiece, it potrays this so well.

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The Alcove

I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
If putting a .45 in my mouth to destroy my facist alter ego is the solution... I think I'll pass!

(BTW, how the heck did he survive that?) :)

David Scott,

You neglected to mention the four (4) "I"'s
<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
<LI>Inflation
<LI>Interest (consumer debt, directly related to advertising. "Buy now. Pay later")
<LI>Insurance
<LI>Income Tax
</UL>

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John/az
"When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

See The Legacy of Gun Control film at: www.cphv.com

Do it for the children...

[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited September 21, 2000).]
 
From what I gather, he didn't really put it in his mouth, he just thought he was at the time because he was dellusional. It served to kill off Tyler though...

Anyway, it's symbolic, just like the whole movie, the idea is not to take it too literally, the whole movie is a message potrayed in a brutal fashion to shock the message into the minds of the viewer.

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The Alcove

I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
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