[HN Gopher] The real lesson of The Truman Show
___________________________________________________________________
The real lesson of The Truman Show
Author : ecliptik
Score : 86 points
Date : 2023-06-21 08:38 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| reportgunner wrote:
| I feel the need to mention Dark City (1998)[0] here. It's like a
| noir sci fi truman show.
|
| [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/
| helf wrote:
| [dead]
| lordfrito wrote:
| I second the recommendation on Dark City.
|
| When I first saw The Matrix I said to myself, they stole all
| the ideas in this film from Dark City.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| I watched Dark City years after watching The Matrix (on
| opening in the cinema) and I enjoyed it very much, have
| watched it multiple times over the years.
|
| Here is Dark City's director Alex Proyas: "Alex Proyas on:
| The Matrix copying Dark City"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxjsetVIRM
|
| And this is a juxtaposition of some scenes with background
| music: "The Matrix vs. Dark City."
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moW17YHl6B8
|
| This is Mr. Hand [Richard O'Brien] talking in "Memories of
| Shell Beach":
|
| > It was a very _groovy_ movie, you see?
|
| > I remember saying to Rufus Sewell [who played the
| protagonist], I said, you know, it actually, truthfully, it
| really doesn't matter, does it, whether it's a box-office
| success because we're going to get paid as actors anyway,
| sorry Alex [Proyas] but this is true, we're gonna get paid as
| actors anyway and isn't it nice to be part of something which
| is groovy?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrK4U6PEu94&t=1029s
| lordfrito wrote:
| Thanks for the links. Wow didn't realize there was a
| producer in common between the two films. Stinks that Dark
| City didn't get enough credit at the time.
| rkachowski wrote:
| iirc the matrix literally reused the same sets and backdrops
| from the production of dark city
| anthk wrote:
| I was about to say that. I love the German expresionist
| aesthetics from that film.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Anyone who liked _The Truman Show_ should watch _Abre Los Ojos_
| (aka "Open Your Eyes _), and which was later remade in to the
| inferior_ Vanilla Sky*.
| NaN1352 wrote:
| Awakening from delusion is appparently not worth it ...
|
| Jed McKenna's interpretation of the movie :
|
| https://youtu.be/4V1E91GHCF8
| diego_moita wrote:
| I feel uncomfortable when people like this movie, as if someone
| discovered my secret pleasure.
|
| When this movie premiered it felt like an epiphany, a revelation,
| but almost everyone I knew hated it. Jim Carrey fans didn't like
| because it wasn't slapstick enough. High brown movies fans didn't
| like because it had Jim Carrey on it.
|
| But it became one of my dearest "cult" movies. There is so much
| on it: mass manipulation, lies, religion, politics, the whole
| stupidity of reality TV, the fake happiness of consumerism, the
| lack of any authenticity in mass media, ...
|
| I hope it doesn't become like Monty Python's "The Holly Grail": a
| brilliant movie that gets reduced to a collection of quotations
| and cliches.
| acumenical wrote:
| > But Truman is not the story's true everyman. The people who
| watch The Truman Show are.
|
| I'm by no means a movie buff but I thought this was kind of
| obvious.
| tgv wrote:
| It's more of a "I have found another analogy" than "the real
| lesson", but the point stands.
| justdep wrote:
| To move around the paywall
|
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2F...
| andai wrote:
| https://archive.ph/9g5kS
| grudg3 wrote:
| Thank you, this site is great
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The Jury Duty (2023) TV series is like a real life Truman show.
| If they really did what they said (Jury Service, but everyone,
| including the Judge and clerks is an actor except the main
| "star") then I feel really bad for him. The reveal episode is
| cringe. I just hope he is really an actor too.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| I thought it was handled about as best as it possibly could be,
| and he reacted fairly well. What really sold me was his podcast
| appearances afterwards, which I'd highly recommend checking
| out.
|
| It was definitely real.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| Sounds like The Joe Schmoe Show (2003).
| [deleted]
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| [dead]
| mav88 wrote:
| >And then there's the audience: massive, constant, mistaking
| exploitation for fandom. As Truman struggles to escape--the
| island, the show, and the life that has been imposed on him--he
| commandeers a boat. The producers create a storm. He falls off
| the vessel, struggling in the water, gasping for breath. He could
| die, before their eyes. The audience at the Truman Bar is rapt.
| "I got two to one he doesn't make it," someone shouts. "Hey, I
| want a piece of that!" yells another. The exchange is 25 years
| old. It hasn't aged a bit.
|
| This comment completely ignores the ending where is clear that
| EVERYBODY watching him is happy, nay, ecstatic, that he escaped.
| It's part of the reason why the ending is so uplifting. It turns
| out that his fandom across the globe with their How Does It End?
| t-shirts really were rooting for him all along, just like us in
| the audience.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I see it differently: while I agree that the audience is on
| Truman's side, they only care about him as much as they would
| care about (say) whether Ross and Rachel end up together.
|
| I take the final shot (two guys looking at the now-dead channel
| and saying "I wonder what else is on") as a sign that the
| audience will go back to their lives without even questioning
| what they just saw, with Truman being just another sacrifice in
| the altar of the TV gods.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Or perhaps despite our wish that our existential travail be
| officially registered somewhere by some big Other, one's life
| "as a movie", our "walking through that door" is ultimately
| our own and our own in such a way that won't be registered
| with some sort of social registration.
| mav88 wrote:
| Oh I agree. The euphoria doesn't last. People need to get on
| with their lives. None of us have any personal connection to
| these people nor could we influence their lives even if we
| tried. It's TV. Switch off or change the channel.
| Pamar wrote:
| Ross and Rachel get together?!
|
| Thanks for totally spoiling it for me :(...
| eska wrote:
| I don't see any new idea in this article. It's more of a plot
| summary to begin with.
| cheekibreeki2 wrote:
| I don't see anything because it's paywalled.
| andai wrote:
| https://archive.ph/9g5kS
|
| Works every time!
| bitwize wrote:
| One of my favorite games is _Space Channel 5_. On the surface it
| seems rather cutesy, inspired by 1960s space-age aesthetics like
| from _The Jetsons_ and _Barbarella_. But narratively it 's
| considerably darker. See, (spoiler warning) it turns out that the
| orchestrator of the alien invasion main character Ulala is
| documenting is the head of her own network, who staged the
| invasion in order to boost ratings for his network. It was
| actually a biting commentary on popular Japanese television of
| the period, as well as news and media in general; the turn of the
| millennium is when shows like _Susunu! Denpa Shonen_ (which
| famously locked a man naked in an apartment and forced him to
| acquire everything he needed including food and clothing as
| prizes in magazine sweepstakes, ultimately awarding him nothing
| for his trials) were on the air, and incredibly popular.
|
| So the future of _The Truman Show_ was playing out in Japan, in
| real time, at right around the same time.
| [deleted]
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I don't really pay attention to social media much but apparently
| there are families in my country that put their entire lives on
| YouTube and have a million subscribers.
|
| No idea why anyone would watch that but I'm sure I'm the weirdo.
| ksey3 wrote:
| Our abilities to pay attention are limited. Not so our
| abilities to receive it - Michael Goldharber
|
| The Attention Economy accidentally came into being taking
| advantage of the inequality above without anyone knowing about
| the inequality itself.
|
| People have a need for attention. Advertisers have a need for
| attention for their products. The platforms had a need for cash
| to keep all their freebies running (search, chat, video,
| social, email, streaming etc) and make sense/filter down
| exploding Information the internet produced.
|
| These 3 needs accidentally came together, with no one having
| any clue about Goldharbers inequality and we get the absurdity
| that currently exists.
|
| The original problem being solved - how to handle the info
| explosion was forgotten. Everyone got side tracked into how to
| capture attention. And then they got rich.
|
| The question today is knowing much more abt the inequality and
| still facing the ever increasing Info overload problem, how do
| we build better less exploitative systems?
| xeonmc wrote:
| So basically...attention is all you need?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| One theory I've had re: inequality and peoples feelings
| towards it now vs 10/20/30 years ago (its been fairly stable
| since 1992 in 40-41 range) is that its a social media
| phenomenon.
|
| Previously, I didn't know any of my friends (or their
| friends) flew private jets or stayed in $1000/night resorts
| regularly. Someone in town might have a nicer house or nicer
| car, but I didn't see them (or their kids) flaunting or
| humblebragging on social media about where they did spend
| their money.
|
| Unironically it's probably much worse with kids because they
| don't have the social mores & filter to understand what they
| shouldn't be posting.
|
| There's a lot of "stealth wealth" that has lost it's stealth
| out there due to this.
| mavhc wrote:
| No one I know does that, apparently I know better people
| than average
| andai wrote:
| Who is being exploited?
| nologic01 wrote:
| > how do we build better less exploitative systems?
|
| Its a black hole from which there is no escape. The only
| mechanism accepted by society is monetary profit and there is
| no way a less exploitative system will be more profitable.
| wil421 wrote:
| I banned YouTube kids from all devices because of the kids
| shows. These unhappy looking Eastern European kids finally put
| me past the edge, they looked like they didn't want to be there
| at all. They have millions of views and are likely making much
| more than me but it looks very shallow.
| m000 wrote:
| Archive link: https://archive.is/9g5kS
| [deleted]
| hi41 wrote:
| I was really moved by this movie. Based on his previous movies, I
| didn't think of Jim Carrey as a good actor. But this movie
| changed that.
|
| Everyone watching this movie will relate to the movie's plot as
| it speaks to the existential questions that arise in every human.
| We can imagine the reality tv boss as God. Our own experience of
| thrownness feels like God is playing with us just as the reality
| tv boss is playing with Truman.
|
| In the ending sequence, I wept when the tiny boat reaches the end
| of horizon and hits the blue sky wall. The utter devastation
| Truman experiences when he realizes he has been played all his
| life.
|
| I was deeply impacted by this movie.
| canadianfella wrote:
| thrownness?
| hi41 wrote:
| It's as if you wake one day and suddenly find yourself in the
| midst of things without anyone asking you whether you
| actually wanted it. You don't choose your epoch, parents or
| the nation or the religion you are into. You find yourself
| "thrown". I meant it like that.
| asimovfan wrote:
| Heidegger's term i think, based on the english translation of
| "being and time" (Sein und Zeit), our state of having found
| ourselves like this.
| glimshe wrote:
| The ending of Truman Show is often considered one of the
| greatest moments in the history of cinema. It's a really great
| sequence that also stayed with me since then. I was never too
| much into Carrey acting on comedic roles, but I really like his
| dramatic ones.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I was never too much into Carrey acting on comedic roles,
| but I really like his dramatic ones.
|
| I enjoy dumb movies toe but, like you, I prefer him in the
| "not totally dumb" movies.
|
| _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ is a movie I like a
| lot too.
| NovaDudely wrote:
| Definitely up there as one of the greatest endings, the
| melancholy it represents is just so on point. Another similar
| film like that would be 'Being John Malkovich', - a film that
| was utter perfect all the way til the end.
|
| The thing I absolutely love about the end is that what
| happens after is completely left open. Did he find peace or
| was it disappointment at the horrors of what was outside the
| dome? We will never know, it is just something you have to
| wonder and accept. It is not for us to know, it is but the
| feeling a dream you can never grasp like the clouds behind a
| distant mountain.
| zelos wrote:
| I rewatched it the other day and it is a great ending. My
| first thought was that they could have cut to black when
| Truman walks through the door, but actually having the last
| line as "what else is on?" is perfect IMHO.
| jansan wrote:
| Before watching the Truman Show I actively avoided Jim Carrey
| movies because I really disliked his over the top acting. Just
| like in your case, this movie completely changed my view of Jim
| Carrey, even the performances in previous movies that I had
| disliked so much. I may even call this my favorite movie of all
| time.
|
| Btw, Jim Carrey has never won an Academy Award, and neither has
| The Truman Show, which is quite a shame.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind comes to mind, as well.
| dspillett wrote:
| Man on the Moon too.
|
| Also not a fan of his variety of slap-stick & such, he's
| good at it but it just isn't something that works for me
| from other performers either, but give him a slightly more
| dramatic role where he isn't just being Jim Carrey Jim-
| Carrey-ing like Jim Carrey, and you can see he has a
| talent.
|
| (not that I object to his other stuff existing - different
| strokes for different folks!)
| jiggawatts wrote:
| For me the equivalent was seeing Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk
| Love. I was channel surfing and this came up randomly. It was
| absolutely captivating, and was easily the best portrayal of
| mental illness I had ever seen in cinema.
|
| Adam Sandler! That goofy idiot that plays in low-budget
| comedies that won't even make you laugh once!
|
| Someone on Reddit explained that Sandler is a _true genius_
| because he doesn 't work too hard, does "fun" low-stress
| movies, and takes his friends along to "assist" in beautiful
| tropical locations. All probably as a tax write off.
|
| Brilliant.
|
| Score of 7.5 on IMDB is not too shabby!
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/
| superhuzza wrote:
| Adam Sandler also delivers a stunning performance in Uncut
| Gems - any preconceptions of him disappear as he plays the
| role of a greedy, jaded gambling addict so well. He clearly
| knows how to act, just chooses the low-stress comedy route
| most of the time.
| [deleted]
| vidarh wrote:
| I love Sandler's movies exactly because you know exactly
| what you get. He's found a formula that works well enough,
| and has largely stuck to it. He's one of a handful of
| actors I can go "I'm in the mood for a X movie" about and
| not care much which movie it is. They're a genre in
| themselves.
|
| Sure, I know I will groan at how dumb various things are,
| but that's part of the expectation.
|
| Carey is _similar_ but less so. His span is wider. That
| hits both ways, Carey at his best have more brilliant
| performances than Sandler, but it also means that you can
| be in the mood for Carey, but not Mask and Ace Ventura
| stupidly over-expressive Carey, for example, so it 's
| harder to just semi-randomly pick one of his movies based
| on a mood.
| basch wrote:
| It undersells what he's doing a little bit to say it's
| just a formula. He's still trying to be experimental,
| it's just that, in his risk taking the riskier he makes
| things the worse they tend to be. His Hubie Halloween
| accent is a good example. "What if I spent an entire
| movie talking like this in this silly voice" is one of
| his gags, and more often than not it doesn't work, but he
| still tries new voices.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's a few actors that just fit in a niche like that.
| I'm thinking Steven Segal, who's been playing the same
| role in the same film for decades now. But his movies are
| sold and played on TV all the time, there's definitely an
| audience for his brand of... whatever he's selling.
| interlinked wrote:
| He's a fine actor. He just happens to look and act like the
| middle aged guy next door so he gets overlooked.
| mattmanser wrote:
| He is great in Uncut Gems too.
|
| (That movie is absolutely great, but it is a hard watch. I
| don't regret watching it, but I would never watch it
| again).
| lordfrito wrote:
| Carrey was absolutely amazing as Count Olaf in A Series of
| Unfortunate Events. Sure it was just a kids movie, but there
| was something _really_ sinister in his performance. Really
| amplified the sense of true powerlessness that the kids had in
| their lives, what a terrifying world to live in as a child.
|
| I think Carrey is seriously underrated as an actor.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| This resembles my feelings towards Tom Cruise. I always thought
| of him as an action star and nothing more (well, a Scientology-
| kook as well, but that detracted further). But his performance
| in Magnolia was so convincing to me that I started seeing his
| acting skills in a different light.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| From reports of people who know Tom Cruise, Magnolia was Tom
| Cruise playing Tom Cruise, which is why he was so convincing
| in that role.
| breezerbottles wrote:
| I felt the same way about Tom Cruise until I saw Collateral,
| which quickly become my favorite movies of his and possibly
| one of my favorite movies of all time.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| He is a good actor, no doubt there. He can be darn funny too,
| check ie his stint in Tropic Thunder.
|
| That doesn't change the fact he has some very deep internal
| issues/fears that Scientology has managed to hook on very
| tight and kept their grip so effectively. It fucked up his
| marriages and is a stain on his brand/legacy that literally
| everybody knows about but respectfully act like they don't
| see it. Almost a bit like Truman show :)
| alexilliamson wrote:
| That Magnolia performance is a standout among fantastic
| performances. What a great movie.
| zambal wrote:
| Just like the Truman Show movie, I have always felt it's a
| bit underappreciated. So many great performances in that
| beautifully shot movie and such an emotional roller
| coaster. Although in many aspects a totally different type
| of movie, I think Uncut Gems was the first one since I
| watched Magnolia that touched me in similar ways. And just
| like with these other movies, it really changed my view of
| Adam Sandler.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Just in case you haven't seen it:
|
| The director of Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson) actually
| cast Sandler in a dramatic role a couple of years later
| (Punch-Drunk Love) that was also received very well.
| Might be worth checking out if you liked Magnolia (I
| loved that movie).
| jdalgetty wrote:
| Punch drunk love is an amazing film.
| peteradio wrote:
| Philip Seymour Hoffman is in that film and is great.
| wesapien wrote:
| Amazing Score/Soundtrack by Jon Brion too. If you like
| that then try Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I
| Heart Huckabees for their Score/Soundtrack.
| zambal wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion, never seen the movie!
| andrewstuart wrote:
| >>> In the ending sequence, I wept when the tiny boat reaches
| the end of horizon and hits the blue sky wall. The utter
| devastation Truman experiences when he realizes he has been
| played all his life.
|
| I guess no need to see that movie now.
|
| Thanks for that.
| switch007 wrote:
| You've avoided the spoiler for 25 years? That's impressive!
| grudg3 wrote:
| I think it's acceptable to discuss endings on a 25 year old
| movie.
| 5thaccount wrote:
| [dead]
| alpaca128 wrote:
| A single spoiler can't really ruin the experience of that
| movie imho. Also the age of the movie aside, if you expect
| comments about a movie's story don't contain any information
| about that story that's on you.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| It's not even a spoiler. There is no great plot reveal at
| the end, it's already established in the first 10 minutes
| that Truman is living a fake life inside a giant dome.
| Sure, the post above gives away some of the specifics of
| _how_ the character experiences the denouement. But hardly
| a spoiler. And, as others have said, you can 't expect
| perfect secrecy to be maintained in discussions of a 25
| year old film.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| acqq wrote:
| The texts like this say sometimes more about the author than the
| object of the text: IMO the author completely missed the deeper
| levels about the individual living soaked in lies, but
| recognizing them and, in his case, literally sailing "to the end
| of the world" to escape. The author wrote from the spectator
| perspective, not from the person's escaping.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I found the religious themes interesting. There's the famous
| Problem of Evil in religion.
|
| "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not
| omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
| Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"
|
| I've actually used the movie when arguing about religion, because
| it makes for an interesting parallel. Christof plays the role of
| a mostly benevolent, power limited God.
|
| And he does his best (of course not perfect) attempt to give
| Truman a good life. And Truman at the start seems quite happy and
| positive, until things start falling apart because Christof isn't
| powerful enough to keep up the illusion.
|
| It's very interesting to me that people give the Christian god a
| pass for doing a worse job than Christof does in the movie.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| If a parent locks up their small child and isolates them from
| society, so that the child never has the opportunity to tell a
| lie or steal another child's toy, you could say that parent has
| willingly used their power to prevent evil, within the little
| world that they have created. A benevolent parent, one could
| say, according to the definition you have supplied.
|
| For some reason, as a society, we tend to prefer parents who
| lovingly grant their children freedom to make mistakes, and
| present them with appropriate consequences after the fact.
| Growth and authentic love only come from a situation where we
| have the freedom to reject those values. A truly benevolent,
| omnipotent God would not _force_ the people he created to obey
| him (i.e. to do good, because God _is_ love), he would allow
| them the freedom to choose good, which necessarily grants them
| the freedom to choose the opposite.
| dale_glass wrote:
| God isn't comparable to a parent. Parents are limited and
| imperfect, God is not.
|
| If parents were unlimited in their abilities, granting
| children freedom to make mistakes would be completely
| unnecessary.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Look at the problem statement. "Omnipotent", "omniscient"...
| things that parents are not.
|
| Parents are just humans and are just at the mercy of the
| world. Unlike God. God made the rules and could have created
| a completely _different_ world which doesn't have the
| limitations that this one has. Meanwhile parents have to work
| with what they were _given_.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| The answer is that good and evil are just human perspectives.
| His plan is beyond our understanding and is neither good nor
| evil.
| lucianbr wrote:
| I'm not sure what the meaning of "I believe god exists and he
| has a plan" is, if the plan is beyond our understanding. What
| do people actually believe? Sure, the words will be "I
| believe in god", but what are the consequences of this
| belief?
|
| If anything can happen inside this incomprehensible plan,
| what is different from there being no plan? If you don't
| believe anything concrete about the plan, if there is nothing
| that is impossible because it would be against the plan, then
| isn't everything just as it would be if there was no plan and
| no god?
| anthk wrote:
| That's how Lovecraft started. And before,
| Nietzche/Shopenhauer. More than "god", it's the absurd of the
| universe, and existential terror. There's no God, and we are
| like ants for the vast and huge universe. We should grow up
| from Gods beings created from the Neolithic (the Abrahamics
| religions are just metaphors on cults around Sun and grain
| harvesting), and to create something else akin to modern
| urban cities and not old villages around the primary sector
| for economics.
|
| For instance, transhumanism. No, we don't need to create a
| religion, but set a good chunk of facts and laws to govern
| ourselves. The American and French revolutions were a good
| step on that against the Old Regime around the mentioned
| Neolithic.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Yes, that's a common answer.
|
| One issue is that it lets go of benevolence. Which works but
| raises the question of why we'd want to worship such an
| entity, and what does morality even mean anymore if it's
| supposedly based on an entity whose reasoning is inscrutable.
|
| There's also that power removes excuses. Eg, Christof resorts
| to methods like "killing" Truman's father because it's all he
| can do to maintain the illusion. But if Christof had a whole
| planet to work with that'd instantly stop being a morally
| grey thing and just be plain evil. An actual god effectively
| has no excuses, because there are no limits forcing any kind
| of compromise.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| The question also sneaks in the presupposition that
| suffering is anathema, or that suffering is never
| acceptable or worthwhile. Anyone who has been a part of a
| sports team (especially one that was successful) can attest
| to the fact that short-term suffering and sacrifice can
| lead to long-term success or joy.
|
| There are many episodes in my life that were horribly
| difficult while I was going through them, but later on, I
| see how they have changed the course of my life and have
| benefited me deeply, in a way I couldn't foresee while
| going through the struggle.
|
| The "problem of evil" also assumes that a world filled with
| automatons with no choice to do anything except submit to
| God's will is somehow superior to a world where anyone can
| choose to follow the Way of Life while surrounded by those
| who either haven't chosen yet, or have made the choice not
| to walk that path.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Suffering _is_ an anathema, and only acceptable when
| necessary because no better ways are available. Deities
| can 't avail themselves of such methods.
|
| Eg, sawing somebody's leg off without anesthesia was the
| best we had before anesthetics. Today it'd be outright
| barbaric outside of extenuating circumstances like
| anesthetics being unavailable in some sort of emergency.
|
| Whenever we get to the point where we can fully and
| painlessly fix up somebody's leg by using some sort of
| scifi device, then cutting it off even with modern
| anesthetics will become morally unacceptable as well.
|
| The more ability, the less justifiable suffering becomes.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is
| anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or
| pain or discomfort increases one's resilience. Soldiers
| are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much
| more as a result. Athletes train this way as well. Also,
| what about parenting? Telling your child to pull the
| weeds feels like an enormous burden of suffering when you
| are the 12-year-old child who has to go out in the summer
| sun to pull weeds, but for the parent, the view is quite
| different. The garden produces food for the family, and
| the child learns to do things they don't want to do or
| don't like to do.
|
| Your statement "Suffering is anathema..." is
| Enlightenment thinking that has had a devastating effect
| on the physical and mental health of the cultures that
| have adopted it.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is
| anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or
| pain or discomfort increases one's resilience.
|
| Resilience is only necessary if there's some purpose to
| it.
|
| > Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can
| accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way
| as well.
|
| Right, as a means to an end, for lack of a better
| solution. If we could accomplish those goals without
| suffering, we would. Suffering is a last resort, not good
| in itself. It's a compromise. An all-powerful entity
| doesn't need any, thus loses any justification to resort
| to it.
| krupan wrote:
| Sounds like we need to define "suffering"
|
| For example, if everything was known and easy, wouldn't
| we be completely bored? Is boredom not also suffering?
| prometheus76 wrote:
| I'm pretty much thinking of the definition from the 1913
| edition of Websters: "Suf"fer*ing, n. The bearing of
| pain, inconvenience, or loss; pain endured; distress,
| loss, or injury incurred; as, sufferings by pain or
| sorrow; sufferings by want or by wrongs."
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Answer heard from a philosophy podcast.
|
| "God has nothing to do with good or bad in our life. When it
| made us in his image, it means he gave us the opportunity to
| know what is good/bad and the liberty to choose between it.
| That's the pure definition of freedom. If he chooses everything
| for us, we're not free. "
|
| Truman wasn't free until he choose to do something "bad" and
| left.
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| > I found the religious themes interesting. There's the famous
| Problem of Evil in religion. "Is God willing to prevent evil,
| but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not
| willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing?
| Then from whence comes evil?"
|
| These questions don't make sense. I am not claiming to be a
| believer etc., but if God exists then eventually you end up
| with your maker, right? So given an eternity of whatever is
| after this life, what does experiencing something bad or evil
| even matter then.
|
| The existence of God implies a number of things about human
| nature and existence, and that's regardless of whether one
| accepts or rejects God. Per my understanding, humanity defines
| itself by defining what is not- what we say is evil or immoral
| or wrong, etc. I think the problem is that religion
| (historically) has been confounded by politics.
|
| Tbh I don't think humans can do religion correctly, so society
| as a whole should be secular.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _...if God exists then eventually you end up with your
| maker, right?_
|
| Not necessarily. As Luke 18:25 notes, "it is easier for a
| camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man
| to enter the kingdom of God".
| greedo wrote:
| I've always preferred Sting's version:
|
| "Better to be poor than a fat man in the eye of a needle."
| ggm wrote:
| I always wondered how much the 1959 PKD book "Time Out Of Joint"
| about the man living in a fantasy world winning prizes which turn
| out to be intuitive defences in a space war influenced this
| story.
|
| So much Philp K Dick has turned up in movies.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Thanks for the reference! Sounds like it may be the influence
| for a couple of other classics too (Ender's Game comes to
| mind).
|
| I am shamefully behind on the PKD library...
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