Week 5 - It's Always Black, White, and Everything in Between.

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” - Adam Smith.

  "The crow wished everything was black...the owl that everything was white." - William Blake.

Bill Hicks tells a joke about how he’s in a cab with a sign “Please don’t smoke, Christ is our unseen guest,” to which he quips, ‘so that explains the extra 30c on the meter…’

Religious thought has so interminably corrupted the idea of morality that it is impossible to use the word. In this sense, it’s governed by a cosmic carrot and stick approach; the ‘unseen guest’ will reward you for doing what he/she/it/they prescribes, and punishing you for disobedience. This is not useful.

Jesus knew what was really going on, by the way, but the game of Chinese whispers that the religions have played (after they killed him) has warped this into oblivion. It’s about surviving, and about empathy.

Mirror neurons were discovered in 1992 by a team of scientists headed by Giacomo Rizzolatti. These are neurons that fire in the brain of an observer of an event, in exactly the same manner as those neurons that trigger in the participant in the event. It is the biological mechanism that proves human beings to be naturally driven from our very core by empathy. This core drive is confused by secondary drives, beginning with religion as a means to try and explain it – take Kingdom of Heaven (2005), for instance. Guy and Reynald want war in the name of God. Balian, Salah ad-Din and Baldwin I want peace, love, and unity, in the name of peace, love and unity. At the end of the inevitable seige of Jerusalem, Balian surveys the fields of the dead. "If this is the Kingdom of Heaven, then let God do with it what He wills."

Steven Weinberg (1999) contends: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. "

If we then look at the case of Game of Thrones’ (2012) Stannis Baratheon, in the series' War of Five Kings, he was the legitimate heir to the throne, and the best one, in my opinion, for the job. He says “a good act does not erase a bad act – nor a bad the good,” to Ser Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight. Davos was a long-time smuggler who sneaked in a ship full of onions past the blockade to save a besieged and starving Stannis, who knighted Davos for saving him, and cut the last joint of every finger on his left hand off for years of illegal smuggling. You’d think Stannis a good man, until he murdered his own brother, Renly, for his own gain…not long after he found faith in R’hllor, the Lord of Light. I still think him a comparatively good man. Look to your sins, Lord Renly, for the night is dark and full of terrors.

It isn’t a matter of who’s right or wrong, because this is a false dichotomy; rather it matters who is right and who is left. Thankfully, then, humans are biologically wired to care about each other. This is what empathy is and the foundation for all morality. Plato didn’t know this, and science only has for 20 years. That’s not yet long enough for the ideas to sink in, but we’ll get there, slowly. Culture has always evolved thus, and religion is just an expression of culture that is, thankfully, becoming a smaller and smaller voice in the world. Empathy is the true unseen guest, the invisible hand, the core drive of every human being, and the wellspring of all morality. That’s the true message of Jesus, who was himself against religion: Be like me, because you are like me; you just don’t know it yet.

References:

Benioff, D & Weiss, D. B. (Show Creators), & Martin, G. R. (Book Author). (2012). Game of Thrones Season Two [T.V. Series]. Home Box Office.

Hicks, B. (Creator & Performer). (1996). In Memory of The Dark Poet [DVD Anthology]. Lightbulb Studio.

Rizzolatti, G. & Craighero, L. (2004). Mirror neuron: a neurological approach to empathy. Retrieved from [http://www.robotcub.net/misc/review2/06_Rizzolatti_Craighero.pdf]

Scott, R. (Director) & Monahan, W. (Writer). (2005). Kingdom of Heaven. 20th Century Fox and Scott Free Productions.

Smith A (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments (ed. 1976). Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Weinberg, S. (1999). At an Address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C.

Pictures obtained from:
http://azizaizmargari.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/black-and-white/
http://tumblr.com
http://www.empathiceducation.com/mirrorneurons.php

Week 2 - Is this the real life, or is it just fantasy?

"Open your eyes, look up to the skies, and see." - Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' 

Reality. Something we've never quite got our heads around. Some of us think we have it figured out. There are others who can't deal with it and go crazy. Or maybe it's the "insane" ones who have it figured, and the priests and scientists who are mad. What is reality?

One film I can't get enough of is Christopher Nolan's Inception. It tackles this concept with the perfect blend of conceptual vagueness, engaging complexity, and relentless hints of multi-faceted and infinite ambiguity (Johnson 2012) that are the closest to representing the best justice we can do to this topic.

For simplicity's sake, reality is 'existing.' Existing is like a rollercoaster at a theme park. It has twists, turns, thrills, chills, highs and lows, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's fun, for a while. But in the end it is just a ride. There is no inherent meaning, no blood on the wall, nothing outside what we can perceive. As Morpheus famously says in The Matrix (1999), "If real is just what we can see, taste, smell, and touch, then real is just electrical signals as interpreted by the brain." And there is no more accurate way to measure reality, to know that it is real.

This is the best we can do, but this is the real beauty of existing - our perceptions actually shape and create our reality. There really is only one moment, one continuum of creation, expressing itself subjectively in all the ways it possibly can - infinitely. Space, time, and physicality are our perceptions of them.

I remember a train trip my brother and I took. There was a man behind us engaged in a lively conversation with somebody named Roland, who neither my brother nor I could see. My brother murmured, "he's insane, there's nobody there!"

Very much as the caretaker in Yusuf's basement said of his dreaming charges, "who are you to tell them otherwise?" I remarked to my brother, "how do you know that Roland isn't real, and we're the crazy ones for our inability to see him?"

What you see and feel when you look at a painting will be very different from what I see and feel. I could use any number of adjectives to describe reality, but it can only come down to this: Reality is eternal, a gem of infinite beauty and facets, which we all appreciate in our own way according to our choices.

There are therefore only four laws in the entire universe.

1. You exist. As Descartes put it, 'Cogito, ergo sum.' - I think therefore I exist.

2. What you put out is what you get back. Whatever else this reality is, it is definitely causal. Credit to The Matrix's Merovingian for reminding us all. The continuum of creation that is reality is a consequence of the choices that the participant makes.

3. The one is all, and all are one. If you exist, then you are relationally attached to everything else.

4. There are no rules, except for the first three.

The reason you can't will a million dollars into your bank account is that you perceive it is a more preferable choice for you not to do what you need to do to get the money (Robinson 2009). In effect, you signed up for the specific way these rules meshed together on planet earth, and if you want something more than you want what you currently have, then you'd make it so.

Perceiving is believing. Believing is seeing, not the other way around. Let's stop blaming God, the government, the 'system,' our pasts, our weaknesses, etc. for what we have. For what we are. For all we can taste, smell, touch, see, hear, and love.

These are truly the things that matter the most. The faculties of our belief, the tools with which we craft and create and perfect our dreams, right now. Especially the last one - it is the pinnacle of existing, the sublime idea that makes reality reality. It is what Cobb risked everything for (Johnson 2012), what his journey was always about. As much as I hate Saviors, it is what made Neo sacrifice himself. It is, I believe, what makes the world go round. And who are you to tell me otherwise?

References

Descartes, R. (2003). Selections from Principles of Philosophy. [Project Gutenberg E-book version]. Retrieved from <http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1455678>

Johnson, K. J. (Ed.). (2012). Inception and Philosophy: Because it's Never Just a Dream. John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.

Robinson, K. (2009). The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. Viking Penguin, New York.

Wachowski, A. & Wachowski, L. (Directors & Writers). (1999). The Matrix [DVD Movie]. Warner Brothers.

Zizek, S. (1999). The Matrix, or Two Sides of Perversion. Philosophy Today, 43. <http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/the-matrix-or-two-sides-of-perversion/>

Pictures obtained from:
http://www.moviefanatic.com/gallery/ellen-page-as-ariadne/
http://www.crystalinks.com/Inception.html 
http://youcantgettherefromhere-theresa.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/public-eye-roller-coaster.html
http://tribework.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/intoxicated-in-your-love.html
http://www.maxisciences.com/cosmos/wallpaper

Welcome

Hello and welcome to FilMind - Fill Your Mind.

This is a film discussion blog set up for my QUT Movies and Popular Culture studies class.

There will be several posts for the purposes of assessment within this unit, but I hope also that you, dear reader, enjoy what you find here!

Don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comments below, and check out my other blog:

mymacrohistory.blogspot.com

Have fun!