Serious Movie Discussion XLI

[theskza]

Fuckin Larkin tho....jeez.

I felt so bad for Magny. It looked like a HS fight.

 

[JSN]

God damn that was good! The whole card was sick, but the main event was so epic. You couldn't have written that more perfectly. It looked so much like the first fight but with Conor looking like a better, more conditioned version of the guy who beat up Diaz for 1 round before, and then when he gassed again, everyone had to be thinking the same thing, but for him to then catch a second wind and beat up Diaz in the 4th? Jeez Louise!

And it was competitive enough to demand the trilogy. Diaz was winning at the end again. Buttafuoco over here!

 

[BeardotheWeirdo]

I'm no Chomsky expert, but from what I know of him, he spent the 1940s and 1950s studying philosophy and linguistics, wrote essays and books developing his ideas of transformational grammar and the innate language faculty and all that, and then in the 1960s started to become politically active.

The main reason I don't like his Frankfurt crap is because it strikes me as a very different Chomsky than the one from his famous debate with Michel Foucault (which, if you haven't seen it, you'll surely find interesting):

Is anyone an expert on Chomsky? That would be a full time job.

You're right, and I wasn't even aware of that. I've never read any of his material on lingustics... but all of his political books are linguistics based, they show the way politicians and the media use language to manipulate people's minds. He explains linguistics on a more practical level. I imagine you prefer theory.

I hadn't seen that before... In fact the oldest Chomsky book I've read is The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (1983).

Here's an interview with Chomsky: https://chomsky.info/reader01/

QUESTION: For example, I am struck by how seldom you mention literature, culture, culture in the sense of a struggle to find alternative forms of life through artistic means; rarely a novel that has influenced you. Why is this so? Were there some works that did influence you?

CHOMSKY: Of course, there have been, but it is true that I rarely write about these matters. I am not writing about myself, and these matters don’t seem particularly pertinent to the topics I am addressing. There are things that I resonate to when I read, but I have a feeling that my feelings and attitudes were largely formed prior to reading literature. In fact, I’ve been always resistant consciously to allowing literature to influence my beliefs and attitudes with regard to society and history.

QUESTION: You once said, “It is not unlikely that literature will forever give far deeper insight into what is sometimes called ‘the full human person’ than any modes of scientific inquiry may hope to do.”

CHOMSKY: That’s perfectly true and I believe that. I would go on to say it’s not only unlikely, but it’s almost certain. But still, if I want to understand, let’s say, the nature of China and its revolution, I ought to be cautious about literary renditions. Look, there’s no question that as a child, when I read about China, this influenced my attitudes — Rickshaw Boy, for example. That had a powerful effect when I read it. It was so long ago I don’t remember a thing about it except the impact. And I don’t doubt that, for me, personally, like anybody, lots of my perceptions were heightened and attitudes changed by literature over a broad range — Hebrew literature, Russian literature, and so on. But ultimately, you have to face the world as it is on the basis of other sources of evidence that you can evaluate. Literature can heighten your imagination and insight and understanding, but it surely doesn’t provide the evidence that you need to draw conclusions and substantiate conclusions.

I suppose I'm like Noam in that sense, I find understanding through examples (which I apply to a broader scale), you seem to find it through theory and work your way forwards... I find it hard to conceptualize things If I take that route, I need a basic understanding before I can start from the beginning (and then adjust my understanding of a subject, as necessary)

His Linguistic theory came long before his political activism, but I assume they were related. I don't think his goals were primarily scientific in nature. He wanted people to understand how they think so they could start thinking for themselves, and stop relying on authority to think for them. Chomsky was raised by a Hebrew specialist that had to flee Russia in 1913... I find it hard to believe that he wasn't exposed to radical politics at a young age.

Here's Noam's views on Anarchy:

Noam Chomsky: Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics. Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency. It takes different forms at different times.

If we look at his views on Anarchy, it seems to me it appeals to him for the same reason science does. Anarchy could be described as the scientific approach to government. Chomsky wants the government to justify their decisions and beliefs, in a logical manner. He wants to apply scientific rigour to politics.

You could be right, I could be right, I don't know. Maybe Chomsky changed, maybe America changed and Chomsky just became more vocal...

Chomsky's first political essay came out in 1967, titled "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" in which he argues that "intellectual culture in the U.S. is largely subservient to power. He was particularly critical of social scientists and technocrats, whom he believed were providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the crimes of the state in regard to the Vietnam War". Did Noam change or did the change in America's policy make him speak out more? I think it's probably the latter.

After Kennedy was killed in 1963, the "new" USA emerged, and frankly (imo) it deserves all the criticism it gets, when it comes to foreign policy.

Theodor Adorno is the major figure. You'd like Dialectic of Enlightenment and you'd probably also like Minima Moralia.

I've got PDFs of them if you're interested:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fw6x3v777bq1dhj/1944 - Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer - Dialectic of Enlightenment.pdf?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/il264r8on3z90t2/1951 - Theodor Adorno - Minima Moralia.pdf?dl=0

However, in the interest of balance, you should also read Andrew Britton's trenchant critique of Adorno in his essay "Consuming Culture," which is included in the following anthology:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6iyk69zv0uv9w6j/2009 - Andrew Britton - Britton on Film.pdf?dl=0

I go after Britton in that first Seagal essay for his views on 1980s Hollywood, but in literally every other respect, he is fucking brilliant. And he had no patience for whiny pseudo-Marxists like Adorno.

I haven't had a chance to read that yet, but I find it hard to believe Noam would've been greatly influenced by their ideas, since the USA, and the way wars are fought have changed so much since 1944. Two years after the publishing of Dialectic of Enlightenment the Gehlen Org was founded. The USA was working with fascists and the SS... then the cold war and all of the USA's covert wars and operations started... Chomsky's dream of a government that's honest, that justify their actions was dead...the world's totally different now then it was in the 1940's and 50's.

I appreciate the links and I look forward to reading them...

 

[Ricky13]

These images were too fucking cool not to post.

 

[JSN]

RUP David Carridine

 

[Bullitt68]

Nice Kill Bill pics, @Ricky13. That had to have been the most fun of all of Tarantino's movies to shoot.

He explains linguistics on a more practical level. I imagine you prefer theory.

Actually, no. It took a number of years and a lot of effort for me to learn the language of academic theory. And I only did it out of necessity. I think the way academics approach art (especially movies, as that's what interests me most) is on the whole pretty stupid, but I can't just say that it's stupid. I have to be able to show how and why it's stupid. But to do that, I need to be able to speak the language.

On this front, I'm actually perfectly in sync with Chomsky:

http://www.mrbauld.com/chomsky1.html

The proponents of "theory" and "philosophy" have a very easy task if they want to make their case. Simply make known to me what was and remains a "secret" to me: I'll be happy to look. I've asked many times before, and still await an answer [...] Most of it seems to me gibberish. But if this is just another sign of my incapacity to recognize profundities, the course to follow is clear: just restate the results to me in plain words that I can understand, and show why they are different from, or better than, what others had been doing long before and and have continued to do since without three-syllable words, incoherent sentences, inflated rhetoric that (to me, at least) is largely meaningless, etc. [...] These are very easy requests to fulfill, if there is any basis to the claims put forth with such fervor and indignation. But instead of trying to provide an answer to this simple requests, the response is cries of anger: to raise these questions shows "elitism," "anti-intellectualism," and other crimes -- though apparently it is not "elitist" to stay within the self- and mutual-admiration societies of intellectuals who talk only to one another and (to my knowledge) don't enter into the kind of world in which I'd prefer to live. As for that world, I can reel off my speaking and writing schedule to illustrate what I mean, though I presume that most people in this discussion know, or can easily find out; and somehow I never find the "theoreticians" there, nor do I go to their conferences and parties. In short, we seem to inhabit quite different worlds, and I find it hard to see why mine is "elitist," not theirs. The opposite seems to be transparently the case, though I won't amplify.

When I first read this, I practically hugged my computer

I haven't had a chance to read that yet, but I find it hard to believe Noam would've been greatly influenced by their ideas [...] the world's totally different now then it was in the 1940's and 50's.

The line of thinking represented by just about everything you were saying about the media in our South Park discussion has its roots in Dialectic of Enlightenment, and the chapter on "the culture industry" in particular. You - and Chomsky, for that matter - may not reference the culture industry, but the way you've conceptualized the media is as the culture industry (the same could also be said for Marshall McLuhan).

Me, I prefer Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin to Adorno and Horkheimer

I appreciate the links and I look forward to reading them...

 

[Coolthulu]

This should be played before the start of every movie.

 

[chickenluver]

This guy on the right plays The Bride's husband-to-be no?

RUP David Carridine

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

I felt so bad for Magny. It looked like a HS fight.

Me too man. I'm a fan of Larkin's style, so it was good to see him get such an impressive win over a top guy...but i feel bad seeing Magny get run over after all the steady progress he's made. It looked like he didn't even belong in there, which is crazy considering his recent performances against guys like Kelvin and Lombard.

 

[Ricky13]

RUP David Carridine

He ain't dead meng. He's just decided to disappear and... you know, walk the earth, meet people... get into adventures.

This guy on the right plays The Bride's husband-to-be no?

LOL yeah that threw me too.

 

[BeardotheWeirdo]

Hey, since you've seen so many Italian movies, have you seen Day of the Owl with Franco Nero (just a year after Django) and Claudia Cardinale (at her most mesmerizing). It's one of the first Italian movies to explicitely deal with the mafia (even though the word mafia is never mentioned). I was suprised how great it was. Really taut crime film about a police colonel who tries to uprot the mafia only to realize how deeply embeded they are -- and with Cardinale as an impoverished yet proud housewife who is caught in the middle when her husband dissapears, getting threated like shit by the sexist society around her.

It's made by Damiano Damiani too -- right after A Bullet for the General -- so you know it's going to good!

I just finished watching it. Great recommendation, I loved it. Before I start I noticed Nero did mention the word "mafia"... once, and so did the informer Parinieddu .

Damiano Damiani is quickly turning into one of my favourite writer/directors. He digs a little deeper than most. Just takes things a few steps further than most would, in a genre that was already progressive to begin with. Claudia was great in it, I didn't know she could act that well, and Nero was quite good himself, the scene where he loses it after finding Parriniedu's body was subtle but convincing. Damiano does a great job of introducing the key players in an almost documentary type style. The same can be said for Confessions of a Police Captain, his other movie that's very similar to this.

Although it was slightly unrealistic to have the mafia Don's house directly across a small town square from the police Chief's office, but it added so much to the movie seeing them looking at each other, with their facial expressions displaying their changing moods, as the relations between the two went back and forth between distrust and hatred.

Luckily I found good subtitles because I fucking loved the script. Lines like "You're saying that you don't talk because the killers are still on the loose, but the killers are still on the loose because you won't talk" perfectly sum up the frustration Nero's character was feeling... but it also fails to account for the fact that the police don't protect the people that are willing to testify. Confessions just takes a look at things from a few more angles.

"What can you find very cheap here in Sicily, what can you find on the street corners and stalls? Honour"

The conversations between the informer and the captain "The real truth lies between a thousand lies, because the informer doesn't trust the carabinieri (police)... Betrayal is a way of living for me, this evening I betray the mafia, tomorrow the carbabinieri"

After Parrinieddu rats out Zecchinetta (the killer) and then goes to talk to Don Mariano (and realizes they're on him) he walks away from them and the church bells start ringing, tolling for him. That was really well done. Parrinieddu gave a great performance himself, they all did really.

The scene where Rosa (Claudia) has dinner with the mafia at the end was really powerful. Creepy, disturbing, and scary but in such a subtle way that you could easily miss it.

One of Don Mariano's associates waved the sign of the horns at Captain Bellodi (Franco Nero)I did a little research and found out the devil horns is like knocking on wood in Italy, or at least it used to be. It's used to ward off bad luck. So I think I was right in assuming his use of the word Owl in the name was a head-nod to the symbology behind the animal.

It's very similar to Damiano's later film Confessions of a Police Commissioner to the District Attorney (1971) The two films work together to tell the same story on a larger scale. They're like companion pieces. If you thought Day of the Owl was great then you'll definitely think Confessions is great as well. Franco's role is very similar but he had a few more years acting experience under his belt so he does a better job, and Martin Balsam puts in a great performance as well. It features an original soundtrack from Riz Ortolani that fully delivers.

The mafia scheme is pretty much the same, but instead of it being a road-building project, it's a new housing development so it's on a bigger scale, investment bankers, public zoning people, construction firms, and judges are involved. Day of the Owl is slightly dated now thanks to building codes, whereas the scam in Confessions still happens. The Canadian Prime Minister was busted in a very similar scheme 15 years ago, not that anything happened to him (who's going to arrest the Prime Minister?)

In Day of the Owl Franco Nero goes after the local mafia and their construction companies. In Confessions they take things a few steps further and explain the relationship between mafia, the builders, the politicians, the judges, the council members, the bankers, land developers. In short it's a much bigger scheme they're trying to expose. In Day of the Owl the scheme just involves a smaller branch of the mafia, they mention their ties to the government but that's it. This one actually explains the scheme in detail, as they search for evidence and witnesses. It also includes other aspects of the mafia/elite like the bribing and blackmailing of judges.

In Day of the Owl you have Nero working by himself basically, no one else on the force had his kind of determination and mental strength. In Confessions Nero and Balsam both play strong, smart characters, they bounce ideas off each other, and challenge each other philosophically. However Nero is still the young idealistic one, and Balsam is just frustrated, after a long career in the police force. Even as police captain he struggles to bring in the real crooks because they either out-rank him, or work with people who out-rank him, and because of the corrupt courts of course. I assume he covers that aspect in detail in his movie How to Kill A Judge which is next on Damiani watch-list.

Both movies take a different approach to the genre, they outline the crime right off the bat, so instead of focusing on the mystery of who did it, the mystery lies in how to stop those who you know did it, when you can't prove it and they run the entire system that you need to use against them? A brilliant approach which promotes understanding and provides practical useful knowledge to the viewer, while still providing suspense, tension and drama. That's why Confessions and A Bullet for the General are so high on my favourite movies list...Damiano is great at combining humanity and passion with real politics and suspense. Day of the Owl is really up there for me as well now too.

The ending of Confessions is very different from the ending to Day of the Owl, but it's just as realistic. I won't ruin it, but I strongly recommend you check it out one day. I guarantee you'll like it a lot. The ending to Day of the Owl was both brilliant and lacking at the same time... what happened to Nero? I guess it doesn't matter, they broke him. The message seemed to be "you can't out-smart sadistic people"... which is true, sort of... By the time he wrote Confessions of a Police Captain, his views had grown, it's just different. You'll have to watch it to find out what I mean

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066940/?ref_=rvi_tt

 

[europe1]

. Before I start I noticed Nero did mention the word "mafia"... once, and so did the informer Parinieddu .

Hehe. Maybe it's the version. I watched it in Italian with Swedish subtitles. I think I read that on it's IMDB trivia page or something.

Claudia was great in it, I didn't know she could act that well

Yeah I was really suprised too. She really brought a diffrent kind of energy and personality to that role than you otherwise see of her. Maybe she identified with the role, or something.

Although it was slightly unrealistic to have the mafia Don's house directly across a small town square from the police Chief's office,

I thought it was rather peculiar that the Don was played by the American actor Lee J. Cobb's. Usually Italian movies bring in an American as the star so to boost ticket sales abroad, but Cobb wasn't that kind of star and here he plays the bad guy. Nor was Cobb in an "Italian-phase" at this point or something. But Cobb was really good in it, so maybe Damiani just really thought he was right for the role or something.

"You're saying that you don't talk because the killers are still on the loose, but the killers are still on the loose because you won't talk" perfectly sum up the frustration Nero's character was feeling... but it also fails to account for the fact that the police don't protect the people that are willing to testify. Confessions just takes a look at things from a few more angles.

The scene where Rosa (Claudia) has dinner with the mafia at the end was really powerful. Creepy, disturbing, and scary but in such a subtle way that you could easily miss it.

Well I think this is indicitive of the main point about the movie.

The logic that your typical crime movie follows is "to kill the snake, cut off it's head". Meaning, if you take down the main bad guy, the rest of his organization will crumble alongside him. The nature of crime is inherently linked to the leader. It's a top-down dynamic. Crime steams from the doings of the of the head bad guy.

Day of the Owl takes the opposite approach. Imprisoning the Don does not end crime, or even serve to end the Don. He is out on the streets again at the end of the movie. The movie shows that the reason why organized crime exists and prospers is because the society around the mafia enables it's existence. Everyone (or at least the vast majority) at every station in society has some sort of link or relationship to the mafia that prevents them from doing harm towards it, such as testifying or snitching. The mafia is indindated to such an extreme level in society that society itself will help to protect it, even though the two are officially at odds with one another.

Organized crime is a structure embeded in society. Depossing individuals will not end it, because the structure around said individual will shore up for it's recovery or replacement. So the very existence of organized crime is enabled by the status quo of society.

That scene at the dinner underscores this. How can Claudia go against the mob when the mob is present in virtually every part of society. To go against the mob and to go against society are basically synonymous with one another. (my favorite scene btw, I agree that it was so subtle horrifying).

as the relations between the two went back and forth between distrust and hatred.

"What can you find very cheap here in Sicily, what can you find on the street corners and stalls? Honour"

I think the depiction of Honour is also rather interesting. By the end, Cobb and Nero actually respect one another. When Cobb sees that Nero has been replaced, his reaction is not positive. Despite the fact that both are diametrically opposed as the Don and the Police Captain.

I think this is because -- at some level -- Nero where the only characters with some sort of integrity and idealized principles, and Cobb realized and admired that.

Everyone else in the film has "honour", but what honour really means is just to be a two-faced liar that assumes and guards one's position in the societal hierarchy (which in turn helps profligate the existence of the mafia). It's not a good quality at all. Nero's attempt to smash said hierarchy earns him respect in Cobb's eyes, since he realizes that Nero is the only one acting earnestly and not just falling in line like everyone else.

It's very similar to Damiano's later film Confessions of a Police Commissioner to the District Attorney (1971)

Thanks for the tip. Damiano definitively had some of the auteur in him with exploring similar themes in diffrent films and all that.

 

[BeardotheWeirdo]

I'm no Chomsky expert, but from what I know of him, he spent the 1940s and 1950s studying philosophy and linguistics, wrote essays and books developing his ideas of transformational grammar and the innate language faculty and all that, and then in the 1960s started to become politically active.

The main reason I don't like his Frankfurt crap is because it strikes me as a very different Chomsky than the one from his famous debate with Michel Foucault (which, if you haven't seen it, you'll surely find interesting):





Theodor Adorno is the major figure. You'd like Dialectic of Enlightenment and you'd probably also like Minima Moralia.

I've got PDFs of them if you're interested:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fw6x3v777bq1dhj/1944 - Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer - Dialectic of Enlightenment.pdf?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/il264r8on3z90t2/1951 - Theodor Adorno - Minima Moralia.pdf?dl=0

However, in the interest of balance, you should also read Andrew Britton's trenchant critique of Adorno in his essay "Consuming Culture," which is included in the following anthology:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6iyk69zv0uv9w6j/2009 - Andrew Britton - Britton on Film.pdf?dl=0

I go after Britton in that first Seagal essay for his views on 1980s Hollywood, but in literally every other respect, he is fucking brilliant. And he had no patience for whiny pseudo-Marxists like Adorno.

I haven't had a chance to read those yet, but I noticed they were all commentary on fictional media. While I think I will find them interesting, I want to clarify when I said I learned a lot from Chomsky's critique of the media. I meant the news industry specifically. I can't think of too many instances where I've read of Chomsky critiquing film or literature.

He's probably mentioned the usage of terrorists and the military in movies... which is valid imo. Obviously movie's like Red Dawn have political motives that they're impressing on the nations youth. Movies like Rambo... I was 10 when America invaded Iraq in 1990, I remember thinking they were nuts, how did they think they could challenge the American & British military. It never even occurred to me that we were the ones attacking them... we were the good guys, every movie I'd ever seen couldn't be wrong, could they? But on the flipside you watch a documentary like Chuck Norris vs. Communism and American "propaganda" action movies helped to inspire a revolution, which toppled a fascist dictatorship... In some ways these movies are inspirational, in other ways they're brainwashing our youth and empowering a military machine which is slowly taking over the world, they have troops and military bases strategically placed all over the globe, any nation that gets out line can be nuked within hours... and they have the world's support (for the most part) Obviously it's a pipe-dream but it would be nice if all directors worldwide could unite and throw out their nationalist politics in favour of global politics.

The way I apply Chomsky's teachings to film, is simply as a way to gauge the writers social-political motivations through the language and ideas they use/promote.

Probably every nation that engages in film-making is guilty of having nationalist propaganda in their films, it's not unique to Hollywood by any means. Big film-makers join the social-elite of the country and their views are shaped by this culture. The owners of the big film studios all have political motivations. I have to imagine they work the same way as newspapers (but to a much lesser extent) where they promote directors that fit their political agenda... of course there's flaws in Capitalism because radicalism does have a market so the odd Michael Moore type gets through... hence the saying "a capitalist will sell you the noose you plan to hang him with, if he thinks he can make a buck off it"

Actually, no. It took a number of years and a lot of effort for me to learn the language of academic theory. And I only did it out of necessity. I think the way academics approach art (especially movies, as that's what interests me most) is on the whole pretty stupid, but I can't just say that it's stupid. I have to be able to show how and why it's stupid. But to do that, I need to be able to speak the language.

That would get to me as well. I also dislike how you can't show emotion as it equates to bias. The idea of a non-bias human (that hasn't lived under a rock his whole life) is laughable to me. We all have motives whether we realize them or not.

Capitalism has affected education, it's affected knowledge, it's affected language... let me explain, or attempt to: Education is the industry of knowledge and Knowledge has value. That knowledge can be disguised through language to protect it's value for those who are selling it. In capitalist society knowledge is disguised (through language) to keep it out of reach, for those who don't pay for schooling. Schooling/education is like bribing the elites for their ability to decode the knowledge for you... It also keeps the (potentially radical) lower class away from education (and therefore positions of influence)

Take the law (for example) it's written in a way that makes it mind-boggling to everyone who hasn't spent years in the field. That was done on purpose, those who make the laws like having that power and want to keep it. So the language of law is muddled with rhetoric to the point that it's become impossible to critique. How can you critique something that takes a lifetime to understand, and even if you (eventually) do it can't have much of an impact because few will understand your critique. So those who write the law maintain ultimate power, only they can understand what they're doing.

From our first day as students we're judged, graded, critiqued... all these things make us feel inferior, how can we critique our teachers if we don't understand what they're teaching us yet? How can I ever become smarter than my teacher, to be able to critique their teachings? if wisdom is knowledge plus experience than how can I can catch up, I can't until they're dead. The language and the breadth of the concepts are set to keep us inferior. If ideas were simplified than we could over-take our teachers, possibly. Do they teach us what we need to know or do they teach us more than we need to know, to make themselves look elite? And to draw out our money over longer courses. What teacher wants to be over-taken by their students? The curriculum is set to maintain the institutions dominance... possibly, much like your problem with academia, I can't prove that, it's just a theory.

All governments were founded by wealthy elite people in a language that few can understand. The entire educational system was founded by the government and wealthy men, all people with the goal of keeping the power structure the same... because they like their wealth. This affects the teachings of all school, colleges, and universities.

In Grade 2 a good friend of mine got promoted to the smart-kids class. I asked his teacher what the difference between the class she taught and my class was. She said "they don't teach the kids" they didn't have tests and set criteria to follow. They did projects that expanded their minds, we did projects that taught us to follow the rules... She said it's very hard to un-teach (un-program) people after they've learned things the wrong way, and everyone learns in their own way, therefore they don't teach them, they let the kids figure out their own ways of understanding... so they're teaching most of us the wrong way?... I've been skeptical of the education process ever since.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Capitalism has affected education, it's affected knowledge, it's affected language... let me explain, or attempt to: Education is the industry of knowledge and Knowledge has value. That knowledge can be disguised through language to protect it's value for those who are selling it. In capitalist society knowledge is disguised (through language) to keep it out of reach, for those who don't pay for schooling. Schooling/education is like bribing the elites for their ability to decode the knowledge for you... It also keeps the (potentially radical) lower class away from education (and therefore positions of influence)

Take the law (for example) it's written in a way that makes it mind-boggling to everyone who hasn't spent years in the field. That was done on purpose, those who make the laws like having that power and want to keep it. So the language of law is muddled with rhetoric to the point that it's become impossible to critique. How can you critique something that takes a lifetime to understand, and even if you (eventually) do it can't have much of an impact because few will understand your critique. So those who write the law maintain ultimate power, only they can understand what they're doing.

This kind of thought-process always sounds convincingly devious, but how would you distinguish between a discipline that has organically progressed to the point where a lifetime of education is needed to understand it vs. a discipline that has been actively obscured in order to discourage outside influence?

Any activity that grows in complexity over time will necessary become incomprehensible to any single person at some point. It's not ideal for those without the privilege to study for that long but it's also the case that most of the important parts of our lives are handled by specialists already.

 

[BeardotheWeirdo]

This kind of thought-process always sounds convincingly devious, but how would you distinguish between a discipline that has organically progressed to the point where a lifetime of education is needed to understand it vs. a discipline that has been actively obscured in order to discourage outside influence?

Any activity that grows in complexity over time will necessary become incomprehensible to any single person at some point. It's not ideal for those without the privilege to study for that long but it's also the case that most of the important parts of our lives are handled by specialists already.

That's where it get's tricky.

There are fields like Quantum physics where even the teachers are still students of the field. But as I recently found out, some fields like mathematics can be so overwhelming with information that the students are driven to madness, surely they're being taught more than they need to know.

I'm not trying to suggest that all institutes of higher learning are bastions of corruption but they're not above corruption and greed either. Everything must be taken with a grain of salt. There was a book in the library at my college called "The history of Terrorism", I took a quick gander at it, and they listed Mikhail Bakunin as the inventor of terrorism... any institution that has a book like that in their library doesn't deserve to be called a place of higher learning. Some highly questionable things are taught in Universities.

Perhaps the fields that require a lifetime of study require that much study because our level of understanding isn't there yet. You can study medicine for a lifetime but there are things about the brain and body that no one can teach, yet.

Subjects grow too complex because we analyze them on so many levels, then feel the need to share all the ways we've come to understand the situation. Is this the best way to teach, or is this the way that best strokes our ego's? Do people need to learn that much about the subject all at once, or could it be simplified? It depends on the subject I suppose.

I think Law is the most extreme example, by far. I don't think most fields are as purposefully complicated as that field is. It's just an interesting subject I've been thinking about. There are no books about the founding of the school system and why the curiculum was chosen. As far as I know there were no public debates. How do you learn to run a University, to set the curiculum... Surely one person started it and everyone has followed in their footsteps, how do we know that we can really trust the teachers?... It just leaves a lot of questions.

I did some studying and every college in Oxford was founded by a wealthy religious person... they all presumably had conservative values... they were forced to shape their curiculum around the church and governments teachings... that's the way society was at the time. Obviously they've evolved over time, but surely the government tries to influence those who run the institutions of higher learning... they have a lot at stake, they'd be foolish not to.

"Most of the important aspects of our lives are handled by specialists already"... there you go. What better way to maintain power than to convince everyone else that power is beyond their ability/knowledge, to make it seem so complicated that it's impossible to understand... That's what Scientoligists say also... How do you know you can trust the people who run Harvard, Yale etc. to not put their own political spins on things? Why wouldn't they?

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

I think Law is the most extreme example, by far. I don't think most fields are as purposefully complicated as that field is. It's just an interesting subject I've been thinking about. There are no books about the founding of the school system and why the curiculum was chosen. As far as I know there were no public debates. How do you learn to run a University, to set the curiculum... Surely one person started it and everyone has followed in their footsteps, how do we know that we can really trust the teachers?... It just leaves a lot of questions.

I did some studying and every college in Oxford was founded by a wealthy religious person... they all presumably had conservative values... they were forced to shape their curiculum around the church and governments teachings... that's the way society was at the time. Obviously they've evolved over time, but surely the government tries to influence those who run the institutions of higher learning... they have a lot at stake, they'd be foolish not to.

"Most of the important aspects of our lives are handled by specialists already"... there you go. What better way to maintain power than to convince everyone else that power is beyond their ability/knowledge, to make it seem so complicated that it's impossible to understand... That's what Scientoligists say also... How do you know you can trust the people who run Harvard, Yale etc. to not put their own political spins on things? Why wouldn't they?

I've had this thought process before, but passed through it quickly. There's certainly a sense in which it's probably correct - that is, there exists a realm of possibilities for how the institutions of education or mass media could be designed, and the present structures keep us from conceptualizing those alternatives. There's an interview Chomsky has somewhere about the political spectrum, and how the media narrows the spectrum by exposing consumers to a certain fraction of politically relevant material while viable positions exist outside that spectrum that are hidden in the dark. I'm sympathetic to that view. But the best institutions of higher education provide the fundamental tools that anyone with a base level of cognitive power can use to illuminate that darkness, which is why the conspiracy applies less to them. That's not to say universities don't have their own political agendas, or that their representatives don't have their own biases (professors by and large lean left, iirc, so much so that efforts are sprouting up to ideologically diversify certain faculties), but if those trends exist I find there are more parsimonious psychological explanations than a manipulative cabal of elites. The people at the top are also just people, after all, and intellectual scarcity still applies to them even if financial scarcity doesn't.

It's not necessarily a matter of convincing people that certain abilities and understandings are beyond their grasp than it is an acknowledgement of a basic fact in any sufficiently complicated society. People specialize and remain ignorant of the details surrounding the specializations of others, yet the system consistently functions. That's not to say the accountants couldn't also become doctors, or the engineers couldn't become liberal arts professors (ha!), but few people have the time or diversity of intelligence to tackle such tasks. Becoming infinitely knowledgeable is simply impractical when people have lives to live. It's impressive enough that an evolved ape can spend four somewhat productive years on game theory and other such topics as it is. But, importantly, should they choose to pursue those alternative goals the avenues are open to them, which is what separates the coercive society you're suggesting from the one I think we actually live in.

 

[EmpireShallFall]

I'm watching The Conjuring right now. It's pretty creepy imo. What did you guys think?

 

[BAM]

I'm watching The Conjuring right now. It's pretty creepy imo. What did you guys think?

I saw it a few weeks ago.

it follows a lot of the ghost horror tropes of the last 15 years, and is unoriginal, but despite that, is well done for what it is. The last 20 minutes or so are pretty intense, especially when they get the mother down in the basement.

it's better than it's contemporaries:- Insidious, Sinister, A Haunting in Connecticut, The Woman in Black, etc.

I've seen a bit of horror recently as well:- The Witch, Babadook and Crimson Peak. Crimson Peak was beautifully filmed, but it just fell flat and the ghost cgi was terrible. Babadook is more similar to The Conjuring in structure and tone and is pretty good.

The Witch was weird and had one of the better endings I can remember, pretty creepy. It's more unsettling than scary.

The other relatively recent one is It Follows, which might be the best of the bunch. It feels like an old school 80's horror.

 

[BAM]

Watching In the Heat of the Night for the first time right now. Been looking forward to this for about a decade.

 

[Ricky13]

I've had this thought process before, but passed through it quickly. There's certainly a sense in which it's probably correct - that is, there exists a realm of possibilities for how the institutions of education or mass media could be designed, and the present structures keep us from conceptualizing those alternatives. There's an interview Chomsky has somewhere about the political spectrum, and how the media narrows the spectrum by exposing consumers to a certain fraction of politically relevant material while viable positions exist outside that spectrum that are hidden in the dark. I'm sympathetic to that view. But the best institutions of higher education provide the fundamental tools that anyone with a base level of cognitive power can use to illuminate that darkness, which is why the conspiracy applies less to them. That's not to say universities don't have their own political agendas, or that their representatives don't have their own biases (professors by and large lean left, iirc, so much so that efforts are sprouting up to ideologically diversify certain faculties), but if those trends exist I find there are more parsimonious psychological explanations than a manipulative cabal of elites. The people at the top are also just people, after all, and intellectual scarcity still applies to them even if financial scarcity doesn't.

It's not necessarily a matter of convincing people that certain abilities and understandings are beyond their grasp than it is an acknowledgement of a basic fact in any sufficiently complicated society. People specialize and remain ignorant of the details surrounding the specializations of others, yet the system consistently functions. That's not to say the accountants couldn't also become doctors, or the engineers couldn't become liberal arts professors (ha!), but few people have the time or diversity of intelligence to tackle such tasks. Becoming infinitely knowledgeable is simply impractical when people have lives to live. It's impressive enough that an evolved ape can spend four somewhat productive years on game theory and other such topics as it is. But, importantly, should they choose to pursue those alternative goals the avenues are open to them, which is what separates the coercive society you're suggesting from the one I think we actually live in.

I hate how good you are at this. Fuck.