Monday, September 29, 2008
Bill Maher's Religulous **1/2 (2008)
Bill Maher's Religulous is directed by Larry Charles who directed "Borat." In terms of filmmaking and aesthetics, it's just fine. It's fast paced, funny and informative. Bill travels the world, talking to various religious representatives, about the contradictions, and unprovable aspects of their religion, in a humorous style. The subjects seem unclear as to what Maher's agenda is, and react to him at times as if they are being hijacked by Michael Moore. They were not told Bill Maher would be interviewing and what they would be talking about. They were not allowed inside The Vatican or anywhere in Salt Lake City.
We see the gamut of religulous; a rabbi who calls for the abolition of Israel, Muslims in a gay bar, an inventor of items to make observing the Jewish sabbath easier, a leader of a marajuana based religion (Raëlian Movement), truck driving ministry etc.
I didn't like it as much as others will. I'm a political person, who takes analysis seriously. Maher is saying religion is the main cause of tragic world events. He points to Bush's God wants everyone to have freedom to Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel statements. When Bush invaded Iraq or whatever statements come out of Iran, it's realpolitik that rules. The problem is capitalism and nationalism. I outgrew Christopher Hitchens.
In addition Bill Maher portrayed himself as agnostic, someone with no answers. It's disappointing he didn't have the nerve to say atheist.
Religulous Official Site
Renegade Eye
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45 comments:
Have you read any good Marxist critiques of religion since Marx?
In all likelihood this will be a fairly cheap shot at spoofing The Funny Hat Brigade and it's probably quite funny because Maher at his best is seriously funny.
But as an analysis ("Religion is the main cause of tragic world events") it's reductionist and incorrect. Any idea or ideology can be taken to illogical and intolerant extremes and be hijacked by anyone who's looking for an axe to grind. And that's what happens a lot with religion, see also the multiple, self-serving interpretations of any monotheistic faith. Religious belief provides as much social cohesion as it does social discord, like most other arguments humans engage in.
"In addition Bill Maher portrayed himself as agnostic, someone with no answers. It's disappointing he didn't have the nerve to say atheist."
Here I rather disagree with you. Agnosticism isn't some fence sitting position, some half-way house between belief and atheism; it's a logically defendable position in its own right and in my opinion the only really logical position: the acceptance we just don't know either way with any degree of certainty.
For all intents and purposes practical, on the Personal G-d, I count myself leaning so much towards non-belief that it's safe to call myself atheistic. But on the underlying First Cause problem (deism, rather than theism) I have to declare myself unknowing, as anyone without an agenda should. Intellectually, I prefer the idea of eternal existence of time and space, without beginning, end or cause (creator), but I accept that is as impossible to prove as the belief a supernatural entity brought about existence.
I must say I disagree with you here for once Ren, not on the movie but on the idea that money is the root of all evil rather than religion.
I'm in the Hitchens camp, in the sense that, all though it is not a black and white issue, religion does indeed poison everything.
Where I do agree is that we need better analysis on the matter.
Roll on a godless world.
I love it when liberals are willing to put their ignorance on full public display. First Maher playing the holier than thou "agnostic", then with "atheists" like Ren getting their "yuks" laughing at other's beliefs but completely unwilling to examine the crapulence inherent in their own (Nietzsche's "will to power" & "eternal recurrence").
Keep laughing boys. He who laughs last, will laugh best.
Maher is pretty weak, religion is a real soft target.
Part of this is the fault of contemporary art. Take a look at Manet's "The Dead Christ with Angels" versus Mantegna's work of the same name.
Manet's is a perfectly competent composition but Mantegna can get you on your damn knees.
We need artists with some balls. Religion isn't necessarily incompatible with the struggle despite what comrade Marx said.
Dumping on religion is just a naive way out of some complex class problems.
The only reason I want to see this movie is because I loved Borat and every episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that Larry Charles directed. He has a great feel for comedic pacing.
I do not like Bill Maher, who always goes for snide but ends up just smug. I will watch Religulous, but I'm not expecting much.
Enjoyed reading your thoughts on it, Renegade Eye.
Renegade, I agree with you about having difficulty with someone who says that religion is the "main cause of tragic world events".
I had the very same feeling while watching the Richard Dawkins documentary for Britain's Channel 4 called The Root of All Evil?. I was with Dawkins up until he put forth the idea that religion was the, well, root of all our current evil.
Since I am also a political person, I tend to see religion as a primitive form of politics which has been used for millenia to keep populations under control. From what I understand, even Leo Strauss held religion as useful for the same reason.
Still, the Dawkins documentary is worth a look when you have the time.
By the way, Richard Dawkins' website was recently banned in Turkey.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Dave: It's not a critique of religion, but an analysis, I'm told Kautsky's book on Christianity is good.
Gert: My gripe with Bill maher is not the concept of agnosticism. It's this:
* Atheist Premise
* Atheist Premise
* Agnostic Conclusion
I think he is an atheist without doubt. It's oppurtunism for him to say he doesn't know if God exists. He has zero belief.
Daniel Hoffmann-Gill: Countries make decisions on the basis of realpolitik. If the world is blown up, it won't be because of religion.
Religion can be a tool of oppression, and a way to divide people. Questions between nations are more than religion.
Hitch believes the US and UK military, are for enforcing secularism. Capitalism only opposes the expansion of Islam. US foreign policy is not to push secularism. He is deluded.
FJ: Make a movie against secularism.
Ducky: I like both works.
Lets get it straight about Marx and religion. Few know the full quote: Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
I didn't think Maher was being brave. Religion is an easy target these days.
Eli: Welcome to this blog.
The movie is a good time. I laughed quite hard. I learned things.
Mizgîn: That was what bothered me about Maher. Religion can be a factor, but these days it doesn't make sense to me.
I don't see any caliphate being built. I see real world problems, coming from states with borders, and are not called rogue.
Could that film make Turkey?
FJ: I don't see Ren laughing and you dpon't seem to know enough about anyone's beliefs here to make such vast generalisations, not sure where you got the 'will to power' stuff from. Are you on crack?
Ducky's Here: you and many others are swapping your own pet obsession with class war for the real problem of a religious war and the infringement of religion upon our lives and world politics. As I said before, it's not a case of either/or but or both playing a part, however, the role of religion in all of this seems to be not being given the due it deserves.
Ren: I disagree, we have a vast religious power in the US and a vast religious power in the Muslim world, both hold backward values that were generated in the Bronze Age. It doesn't bode well from where I am.
Thanks for the quote, It points to the realization that we need to think of religious folks as oppressed and not as fools to be ridiculed.That we face such extreme religiosity at this juncture points to OUR collective failure to organize and mobilize with OUR ideas.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.
...and what is happiness? No culture.
To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
...and what are our illusions? They are our humanity.
The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
...and the criticism of religion is naught but a critique of man that renders him "valueless" and something of no worth.
ps - Daniel, the day one of these bozo's understand half of what I know is the day I'll join the circus sideshow as the bearded lady.
ps - company of the silver duque, excepted.
My apologies, mr. ducky.
FJ: you take one badly thought out idea and then explode it beyond all belief.
Religion does not have a monopoly on culture, humanity or worth.
What faith are you? A Mormon?
I'm a Deist. Platonist, NOT neo-Platonist.
Nietzsche, "Gay Science"
115
The Four Errors. Man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw himself always imperfect; secondly, he attributed to himself imaginary qualities; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation to the animals and nature; fourthly, he always devised new tables of values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. When one has deducted the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity, humaneness, and "human dignity."
Those that would believe themselves to hold a monopoly on "truth" should understand it for what it is...
Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.
---
The criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
Nietzsche, WtP 1067...
And do you know what "the world" is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by "nothingness" as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a sphere that might be "empty" here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my "beyond good and evil," without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself--do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?-- This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!
The "illusion" is the only thing tieing Lessing's son to this earth. Undo the tie (re-legio), and the Ego dissolves into nothingness.
origin: to relig(āre) to tie, fasten (re- re- + ligāre to bind, tie
Religion may not have a monopoly on culture, humanity or worth, but without a "constant", every other culture and/or table of values is "temporaly" bound to Heraclitian Panta Rhei and the inevitable entropy inherent in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
...and it is man's quest for the "eternal possession of the good" that keeps man chasing Beauty, wherever he/she may find it.
Emerson, Conduct of Life (Beauty)
BEAUTY
Was never form and never face
So sweet to SEYD as only grace
Which did not slumber like a stone
But hovered gleaming and was gone.
Beauty chased he everywhere,
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air.
He smote the lake to feed his eye
With the beryl beam of the broken wave;
He flung in pebbles well to hear
The moment's music which they gave.
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone
From nodding pole and belting zone.
He heard a voice none else could hear
From centred and from errant sphere.
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme,
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime.
In dens of passion, and pits of wo,
He saw strong Eros struggling through,
To sun the dark and solve the curse,
And beam to the bounds of the universe.
While thus to love he gave his days
In loyal worship, scorning praise,
How spread their lures for him, in vain,
Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain!
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
To criticize all religions is easy, because everybody will agree with at least part of the movie.
But I bet Bill Maher would never dare to criticize Islam and only Islam. And if he did, he wouldn't survive it.
Sonia: But I bet Bill Maher would never dare to criticize Islam and only Islam.
He wouldn't even declare his obvious atheism. Van Gogh he is not.
Troutsky: Well said.
Daniel: I didn't know until I was at your blog, you just finished Hitch's book.
FJ: None of the other conservative bloggers I know, are as open as you, about theit worldview.
I see the world, in what is a religious term, and related to dialectics, as yin and yang. The world is in motion, changing all the time. Remember typewriters? Even religions change.
Very interesting post, Ren. There is always good micro-analysis at your site.
I am not a huge fan of Bill Maher. Among other things, he is often unabashedly sexist and arrogant. But he does get off some wry and witty observations from time to time, although that just might be due to the skill of his writers.
Yes, Ren, you see Nietzsche's Dionysian world of "will to power". Just understand that even this world has an underlying metaphysics that is just as ridiculous as the mythical illusions Maher pokes fun at. But I have yet to meet an "honest" nihilist. They're all buried in the graveyard.
Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
---
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Nietzsche, "Zarathustra"
THREE metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength.
What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.
What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.
Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one's pride? To exhibit one's folly in order to mock at one's wisdom?
Or is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph? To ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter?
Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?
Or is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of the deaf, who never hear thy requests?
Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one's hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us?
All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.
But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness.
Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.
What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? "Thou-shalt," is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, "I will."
"Thou-shalt," lieth in its path, sparkling with gold- a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, "Thou shalt!"
The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: "All the values of things- glitter on me.
All values have already been created, and all created values- do I represent. Verily, there shall be no 'I will' any more. Thus
speaketh the dragon.
My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?
To create new values- that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating- that can the might of the lion do.
To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion.
To assume the ride to new values- that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
As its holiest, it once loved "Thou-shalt": now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.
But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?
Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.
Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: its own will, willeth now the spirit; his own world winneth the world's outcast.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.-
Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow.
...and after you've completed an ennead of metamorphoses or so you'll stop shuttling back and forth between Amun Re and Mut and finally explore the temple of Kamutef and learn the mystery behind the design of the Great Ennead.
Have fun, Karnak!
FJ is talking to himself and block quoting.
Me smell troll.
At least me not smell.
btw - So, actor, have you done any Shakespeare, or do you just do that new age political crap that nobody wants to go see?
FJ: Daniel makes his living as a working actor; stage, screen and television.
Daniel: FJ on his own blog, replies to himself 20x over.
Maria: I'm sure you'd like Maher's movie.
I'm excited about the Nixon-Frost movie that is coming.
Ren: your comment regarding FJ's self-dialogue made me laugh out loud, thanks for thatm, I need laughs.
FJ: done it all man, had a blast doing Macbeth, not that Shakespeare is all that, some of his plays are dire, King Lear is my favourite.
As for work not selling, you must be confused as the show I'm in at the mo is sold out at our current venue.
Oh, I think I saw you in The Scottish Play... were you the dangly eyed guy? It was damn good!
...and that venue would seat more than fifty? LOL!
...and speaking of "dire", perhaps you should try doing Titus Andronicus... it makes the issue of "water boarding" pale into the realm of trivial nothingness by comparison.
Faux-tragedy is such a sleeper...
Zzzzzzz
FJ: I'm not sure why you're being such an asshat but the more you go on, the more you expose yourself as an idiot.
But in answer to your jealous little questions, yes the venue seats more than 50 (Warwick Arts Centre to be precise) and Titus Andronicus is alright but little more than a gore fest poorly held together script wise.
Not sure what faux-tragedy to refer to but clearly your knowledge of theatre is as limited as your knowledge of life.
All the best!
FJ: There is an implication in your statements, that a working actor has o like or agree with a show, before doing it.
It's not unusual for an actor to work with a Forest Whittaker one day, and a straight to video gorefest the other.
Also runs like an emotional gamut and almost dissolving.
Titus little more than a gore fest? Yes, actor, please tell us just who is exposing who to be an 'idiot'.
And Ren, he'd "better" agree with the work he performs, for in the imitation he puts his very soul at risk...
Plato, "Laws"
I have described the dances which are appropriate to noble bodies and generous souls. But it is necessary also to consider and know uncomely persons and thoughts, and those which are intended to produce laughter in comedy, and have a comic character in respect of style, song, and dance, and of the imitations which these afford. For serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man is really to have intelligence of either; but he cannot carry out both in action, if he is to have any degree of virtue. And for this very reason he should learn them both, in order that he may not in ignorance do or say anything which is ridiculous and out of place-- he should command slaves and hired strangers to imitate such things, but he should never take any serious interest in them himself, nor should any freeman or freewoman be discovered taking pains to learn them; and there should always be some element of novelty in the imitation. Let these then be laid down, both in law and in our discourse, as the regulations of laughable amusements which are generally called comedy. And, if any of the serious poets, as they are termed, who write tragedy, come to us and say-- 'O strangers, may we go to your city and country or may we not, and shall we bring with us our poetry--what is your will about these matters?'--how shall we answer the divine men? I think that our answer should be as follows: Best of strangers, we will say to them, we also according to our ability are tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest; for our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy. You are poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law can alone perfect, as our hope is. Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow you to erect your stage in the agora, or introduce the fair voices of your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our women and children, and the common people, about our institutions, in language other than our own, and very often the opposite of our own. For a state would be mad which gave you this licence, until the magistrates had determined whether your poetry might be recited, and was fit for publication or not. Wherefore, O ye sons and scions of the softer Muses, first of all show your songs to the magistrates, and let them compare them with our own, and if they are the same or better we will give you a chorus; but if not, then, my friends, we cannot. Let these, then, be the customs ordained by law about all dances and the teaching of them, and let matters relating to slaves be separated from those relating to masters, if you do not object.
CLEINIAS: We can have no hesitation in assenting when you put the matter thus.
Perhaps you and your acting friend should read Rousseau's "Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts".
Then perhaps the two of you would learn to discern the true elements of comedy and tragedy from poorly written and executed "imitations".
btw - Break a leg tonight, actor. But please, buy a ticket to go see Othello later this season. It might help offset some of the damage being done to you "taste" in art.
FJ: I'm glad you have learnt how to link to things, I'm also glad that you think you're somehow an expert on Shakespeare or on what opinions people should hold on the bard.
As for reading Rousseau...When you're an actor/writer or director with a decade of professional experience and of working in front of audiences then get back to me, until then, I can't take what you say very seriously.
Instead of books, get up in front of 500 people and they'll certainly guide you on what the correct elements of tragedy and comedy are, best to keep out of books and get into actuality my friend.
And I can assure you that my soul has never been at risk from acting, only my back. Of ocurse he helps to buy into what you're doing but it is by no means essential. And while we're talking this throughm, Plato isn't a source to be relied upon in the 21st century, old slave keeper that he was.
And I don't like Othello, I prefer to see theatre that isn't a walking period piece and brings something of the now to what we're all living through.
Take care.
Instead of books, get up in front of 500 people and they'll certainly guide you on what the correct elements of tragedy and comedy are, best to keep out of books and get into actuality my friend.
I'm a liberal, I can't help myself. Liber, Latin for book. Latin for free.
But wait... I thought that maybe YOU were the liberal? Apparently NOT. LOL!
Plato, "Ion"
SOCRATES: I often envy the profession of a rhapsode, Ion; for you have always to wear fine clothes, and to look as beautiful as you can is a part of your art. Then, again, you are obliged to be continually in the company of many good poets; and especially of Homer, who is the best and most
divine of them; and to understand him, and not merely learn his words by rote, is a thing greatly to be envied. And no man can be a rhapsode who does not understand the meaning of the poet. For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means? All this is greatly to be envied.
get into actuality my friend.
Yep... that's why I love to go to the theatre, to "get in touch w/my actuality" side.
FJ: I'm no liberal and I'm no block quoter...so it goes.
...and so it shows.
Thanks Renegade for pointing me to this. The collection of comments strike a cord with my post on Religulous.
I am saddened by the way the discussion thread here devolved, from intelligent discussion to name-calling and bickering.
As for the premise that"not religion but money and nationalism are the cause of peril"; I think all of these are manifestations of the same 'primordial' drive "power and survival". If we are evolutionarists, we cannot deny the "survival of the fittest" ideology that has been pushing us into murder in the name of God, in teh name of Freedom, in the name of Capital, in the name of Motherland.
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