Episteme

I've been succumbing to a subtle but powerful force, the movies, and I'm torn over whether to resist or give in.

Every time my boyfriend and I want to go out but we don't know where, I say, why not a movie? We ended up at the movies weekly, then twice a week. I almost always have at least three DVDs from Blockbuster sitting by the TV, which I watch in free moments. I went from the normal person who'd seen a couple of the latest titles to a veritable newspaper listing of current attractions, and my friends started making comments. Finally it got so serious that we decided to alternate who chooses what we do when we go out, but Blockbuster continued to empty our bank accounts. Since there is no immanent solution to my addiction, I thought I'd tap into the reservoir of images and impressions that I've been building up. One that I really liked recently is The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. You can check it out at http://www.thegoodshepherdmovie.com, and read on for what I thought about it.

You really have to be on your toes for The Good Shepherd, but if you like history, it's worth it. It takes place between World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis, following a young man, Edward Wilson (Damon), as he gets recruited as a spy and proceeds to give up the personal pleasures of his life in favor of his career and what is expected of him. It switches back and forth between the forties, fifties and sixties, and honestly if there is one problem with the movie I think that they take you back in time to explain a certain issue but don't always make it clear that they've made the switch. Many scenes are labeled with dates, but there are a lot that aren't.

Matt Damon plays an excellent Ivy Leaguer who always strives to make the right decisions but who seems to lose himself as he follows what others, society, asks of him. The movie isn't all about Wilson regretting that or even thinking about it, but by the end you realize he's sacrificed his life as an individual. He begins as a poetry-loving youth who falls in love with a deaf girl, but he makes decisions consciously, coldly, and accepts the results, as painful as they may be.

As a college kid at Yale he becomes a member of the Skull and Bones secret society, and you get an idea of how the old boys network starts out at a young age and lasts through life. It's great for them, but what about everybody else? It was interesting trying to explain to a Mexican person that much of American power is concentrated in these famous, moneyed universities, and when you're in, you're in. And while much wasn't explained explicitly about Wilson's father, it looks like both the intelligence community and the societies of power have a big dose of legacy. We know that about the schools, but I wonder if intelligence really works that way. It seems like without asking the fathers, they recruit the sons, who think they're dong it on their own. But if your dad is in the CIA, it seems like at some point you're going to figure out that something's up, so maybe it makes sense to keep it in the family.

I found this movie absolutely fascinating. The frustration of the time changes works itself out if you look closely at Alec Baldwin's makeup, not ideal but for me it helped. (He gets chubbier as time goes by. They even made Angelina look old). I really liked how they showed the formation of the CIA as coming out of the second world war, well right after it sequentially anyway, in the 1950's when Russia starts becoming an issue. You get a closeup of this vital 20 years in U.S. history when the country fights Germany in a real war, then starts building up its nukes in an imaginary one. While it's a side character who brings it up, the movie also deals with the ethics of torture and the idea of the military-industrial complex.

But it's also about the sacrifices we make to form our life story, our dedication to work versus family, the way earlier choices form our later lives and affect the ones we choose to be with. Wilson is formed by the social values of his time period in addition to his own character and values, but we see his son break out of that, like a bell tolling for a more open society to come.

Posted by Kim at 07:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Being in a beautiful place like Joshua Tree National Park ensured I took good pictures, not because I am especially handy with the camera but because it's hard to screw up photographing miles of beautiful landscape. From Feb. 19.

It was colder, harsher and more arresting than it looks.

Posted by Dawn at 09:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am the last one to tell a PhD from Cambridge that his lecture was "uncontroversial and banal" to use his own words, but that's exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to do this but I didn't, I just left early. I should have said as much or at least asked a question, but it was late on a Wednesday and well, I was thinking of other things. There you have it.

I suppose was so disappointed because I had a high expectations for Kwame Anthony Appiah. This lecture was going to answer some serious questions for me, clear up some major ambiguities and make sense of the world and why we face existential threats from fundamentalism. That's what I was expecting but it was fluff, a prolonged introduction to a much deeper conversation. He talked about the origins of cosmopolitanism, the first citizen of the world (Diogenes) and how we should strive for a universalistic world view but respect differences. Fair enough. But that's where it ended. Literally.

Another reason I took it all as a let down is because I rarely go to these types of events, not because I feel hopelessly snobbish and there really isn't anyone I know around here who is even interested in broaching topics of philosophy, but because they are supposed make me feel different at the end. Is that asking for too much? Looking to learned people for guidance and answers to the confusing world? Plus Dr. Appiah made the sort of time-filler jokes academics are stereotyped for in the public mind. You know, those smarmy jabs like, This philosophical notion has its roots in a German phrase (says phrase in German, long pause from non-German speaking audience) - Oh, I guess no one hear speaks German. Yes, it was that kind of night.

Posted by Dawn at 09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It might seem strange that I titled this entry newer, because it's like, "newer than what?" But the thing is that this day is newer than any other, and call me crazy but to me that is God. I mean the whole thing, the present, the ability to compare it to a past and future, the ugly, the beautiful, good, bad, young, old, now, then, everything. Today is all we have, all we can hope for, and it's what we should devote ourselves to. In my opinion, that is. But a very smart scholar named Joseph Campbell would agree - he said that you should think about what you would want to do if you had fifteen minutes to live, and then do that right now. That makes NOW kind of like GOD because it's the most important thing we have, the culmination of everything else, the sum total of all that has come before and the germ seed for all that is to come. It's the knife blade that is the present, it's the way forward that is the way inward that is nowhere and right here. Now, dear reader, you may say, this woman is brilliant, why doesn't she write self-help books? So I've decided to sum up my most portable, easily applied life theories into an easy list of bullet points. Please read on.

Number one. It's all in the numbers. Before you apply for a job, for example, estimate how many in a hundred will grant you an interview, then how many of those will hire you. If it's one in five and then one in 10, well just multiply the fractions, 1/5x1/10=1/50. So to get one job you have to apply for fifty. How do you think I got hired at my Cali job? (Actually I applied to 65.)

Number two. Don't attempt to control things that you can't control. It's based on folly, or the distortion of reality (yes, I'm talking about Erasmus' in Praise of Folly) and basically it's pointless because it's attempting to do the impossible. So sometimes you just have to accept reality. That's the stoic philosopher Epictetus, and then the "sometimes" part, well, that's quantum physics because actually you affect reality by being a part of it. So just try to balance all that stuff.

Number three. Have fun. Do the Joseph Cambell idea and if you would give your mom a hug in your last fifteen minutes, do it as soon as possible. I've thought of extending this a little, though, into like what would you do if you had another month left, or even a year. Would you change your job, try something new? Do it now! You'll probably make more money! Would you write a book, run a marathon, apologize for something terrible you did, or tell someone you love them? Go ahead! I like number three, but it's a hard one.

Ok, that is all for now. I know it's a lot to digest, so if your life problems aren't solved by the end of this post, please comment so that together we can come to a viable theory of the universe before we croak and crumble back into the mass of it all. In the meantime, do your best to love yourself.

Posted by Kim at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)