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WhyNotThink's avatar

Reply to Dan from the 29th

Sometimes watching clips where the director is there commenting, on why we did this and why we did that, is interesting. There is a lot to this craft.

Somebody spent millions of dollars to show you 90 minutes of excellent instructions in particular fields or in life in general? This is what I wonder about. How were these instructions woven into the plot and scenes? Every human situation (if it is judged at all), infers the values of that culture. If those values are my values, the story can have meaning for me. If those values are NOT my values, or even if I was raised with them but now have discarded them, (very consciously); that movie is rubbish for me.

Blundering values are the cause of all world conflict. No matter how skillful a movie is crafted, if it is based on stupidity, it is stupid. Even let's say, if 90% of society is stuck on resolving life through those values, they will never do it. Because it is those limited concepts that are the cause of everything they seek to resolve. Most movies are aimed at a wide audience, the wider the better to regain those millions of dollars. Therefore most movies (probably all of them), are aimed to try to make sense of a human mire. Of course they never do it, stuck in the same mire, but audiences applaud them for giving it a good try.

The net effect is that the audience is stuck ever deeper into the falsity of their life. (It is their life, so for them it is true and not false.) I learn nothing out of watching it.

If a movie, or any art form, theater or novel, can question my current values, it has promise. Even if I end up not accepting it, I have looked and questioned how I operate, and maybe I have opened a window of curiosity to look deeper into it on the next occasion.

Models of human behavior under various conditions are always tied to underlying beliefs. They have no general application outside of that belief structure. This is where all movies DO NOT relate to your life. People may communicate and interact in a stupid way. All it can do is to make you embarrassed about the base levels in your culture. It was my culture. Is it any more, can I reject it, or am I stuck in it? I think life moves on. You say thoughts, emotional reactions or behavioral scenarios are very limited and, usually, pretty much unchanging over our life.

That is not my experience at all.

Decoding behavior patterns for an adult is a categorization. It comes from obsolete past judgement points. Novelty comes only through discarding them, as best as possible and day by day. "Finding a spontaneous person ready to risk their status quo for the sake of becoming more human is a rare treat." He has discarded many categorizations.

You say a live-interaction is risky - the other person may do something unexpected, unwelcome, challenging or openly threatening your status quo. I have never met anyone who stepped out of decorum. I don't travel in hostile neighborhoods though. If anyone, it is me that asks uncomfortable questions. I don't demand any answers though.

It's a continuous negotiation of your own borderlines in order to make you more of yourself than a few minutes ago. That's well-said.

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Dan...'s avatar

“…contradictions are verbal constructs…”

What about non-verbal people? There is some communication between them and verbal people, but we don’t really know how it operates. Things are easily explainable once we drag non-verbal people into the verbal world, but this is violence - we simply impose our constraints on them.

If they are not verbal, do they experience contradictions? Contradictions of what?

What about non-verbal animals? We may start with dogs and cats, which we “think” we know (really?). How do they process contradictions?

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