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Dale (Digital Doodles), Colleen (353 Haiku Review) and Marina discuss a few recently seen films.
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Show Notes:
:01 – Bumper
:04 – Intro Music – From Richard Einhorn’s “Voices of Light”
:43 – Introduction
1:21 – The Passion of Joan of Arc
9:07 – What Is It?: The Crispin Glover Experience
24:41 – Closing thoughts
25:18 – Outro Music – Delirium’s “Duende”
The Passion of Joan of Arc
– Colleen’s Review
– IMDb
– Criterion Edition
– Wiki
What Is it?
– Colleen’s Review
– Official Website
– IMDb
Other Stuff:
– Movie Club Podcast
Upcoming films Fucking Åmål and Heavenly Creatures
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Jeanne D'Arc is #21 on my all-time list and the best thing I have seen all year.
rot, you should stop listing your experiences.
I think I may have already had this debate with you, if not you someone else, but I entirely disagree. Now whether something is #21 or #22 that is not so important but it is important to keep a record of experiences on measure of their poignancy to oneself, while also appreciating that these ratings evolve over time, but if you keep it updated, as I do, then you always have some representation of what it is you as a human being respond to.
I believe there are things that can be learned through introspection, using aesthetic experiences as markers of something poignant. I keep a list because my memory is not the greatest so it keeps something in front of me to see patterns, to see associations between experiences, to uncover (or create) some awareness that I can then build upon.
Maybe you do not understand what it is that I feel is present in these experiences, I can never know… but I am convinced there is something transcendental, and the same push that compels some to religions compels me to probe this nascent point of being alive. I do not expect articulated answers to anything, but I do expect to learn through what is felt, that there is something like maturity to emotional/spiritual understanding.
I know to a nihilist what this sounds like… and if I ever get out of my present real estate purgatory that is sucking all thought from me… I would love to walk you down the line of reason which shows the fallacies of your opinions. I know it well, because I was a nihilist too. You believe there is nothing not out of any substantial argument, certainly not from uninhibited reasoning, but because you want to.
So rot, in that vein, where is Mike Leigh's NAKED on that list?
#19
"What Is It" sounds kind of awesome – as long as it isn't too lengthy. How long is the movie? Didn't notice if you said in the show.
It looks like, as you say, definitely an experience. But judging from the trailer, I'd have one thing to say to Mr Glover. You're not Lynch. Stop trying to be.
It's 82 minutes. A LONG 82 minutes.
He talked a little about Lynch during the Q&A but I think these two are on different wavelengths. Glover seems fascinated with the macabre more than anything else.
"You believe there is nothing not out of any substantial argument, certainly not from uninhibited reasoning, but because you want to."
There is nothing. If all life in the known universe ended today, it would not make a difference. All value is relative. The more you learn, the less you know. The acceptance of nothingness is the road to content emotions.
I was baiting you though. It was meant as a playful jab.
Because you seem to like what Nietzsche has to say:
"The monotonous canon runs thus: the young man must begin with a knowledge of culture, not even with a knowledge of life, still less with life and the living of it. This knowledge of culture is forced into the young mind in the form of historical knowledge; which means that his head is filled with an enormous mass of ideas taken second-hand from past times and peoples, not from immediate contact with life… Every man in this generation must subdue himself to pass the judgment on his own nature which he might pass more easily on his own time. We are without instruction, nay, we are too corrupt to live, to see and hear truly and simply, to understand what is near and natural to us. We have not yet laid even the foundations of culture for we are not ourselves convinced that we have a sincere life in us… Must life dominate knowledge, or knowledge life? Which of the two is the higher and decisive power? There is no doubt: life is the higher and dominating power, for the knowledge that annihlated life would be itself annhilated too… This is a parable for each one of us: he must organize the chaos in himself by ‘thinking himself back’ to his true needs’
– from Nietzsche’s ‘On the Use and Abuse of History’
preserving life is more important than preserving a thought.
next.
although there are no immutable truths, everything is fiction, but that does not lead directly to the negation of everything in some pouty teenager way, its not nothing and nothing matters… but rather we now have a blank canvas onto which we can do in sincerity what we have always been doing in secret, namely the aesthetic reinventing of the world to suit some particular end.
I quote now from James J Winchester:
"It is characteristic of philosophic thought to seek and value only truth, but Nietzsche separates himself from the tradition by placing value in that which is appropriate for the moment. Having rejected the notion of immutable truth, nietzsche is free to adapt and modify his doctrine to fit the context in which he writes.
The most revolutionary aspect of nietzsche’s thought was his belief that conceptual knowledge, once stripped of its pretensions to grasp truth, does not lose its allure or its usefulness… for nietzsche, the will to power represents a series of interpretations, and not objective knowledge. Nietzsche is convinced that we can never arrive at objective knowledge of the world. His view – radical at the time, but widely accepted today – is that even physics is not an explanation of the world, but an interpretation. Admitting that he will never arrive at definitive explanations and that his views will inevitably be partial and one-sided, does not stop nietzsche from offering interpretations of the world.”
—James j. Winchester “nietzsche’s aesthetic turn: reading Nietzsche after Heidegger, deleuze, derrida”. 1994, state university press. pg 69
also:
“the challenge that Nietzsche’s thought presents to us is to develop our own rich aesthetic vision conscious of the limits of our views and respectful of the views of others, in a world where necessity may be found in fictions.” Pg 5.
I agree with Nietzsche's Perspectivism, I disagree with his particular fiction about needing to be a superman.
I think you're confusing my statement of the absence of value, with me saying that Nietzsche is the man to obey. I could give a shit about Nietzsche, I don't consider his books guides or rules, but he did occasionally write things in a pleasing way that coincide with my own realizations of the world. If you're trying to convince me of the value of arbitrary knowledge, because Nietzsche has written that without life knowledge would not exist, you're being lazy and frankly, you've insulted me.
While I am in the quoting mood, thought I would put an end to the Signs alien water debate:
"There is something anthropocentric without a doubt in talking about liquid water… its curious in these arguments to find organisms who are made largely of liquid water saying that liquid water is central to the universe."
– a man who received twice NASA medals for exceptional Scientific achievement, author of Contact, Carl Sagan, in his highly readable book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: a personal view of the search for God, p. 56
ignore who said it and confront the logic of the statement, it seems pretty straightforward to me. ah but you are beyond reason too I suspect, all you have is this quasi-religious belief in nothingness. religious because you believe it on faith, otherwise you would sit at the table of reason and at least confront the lack of coherency of the opinion that you KNOW there is nothing.
here's the thing, I can say dragons exist and you can say there is nothing of value in the world, and both opinions are socially meaningless because they do not resign themselves to intellectual scrutiny. When you are willing to allow for obvious 'problems' in your opinion, such as that without life there is no proof of thought, so to allow a thought the authority to sacrifice the life that is thinking it, that is not just bad reasoning, its stupid.
There is a hierarchy that all ideology needs to acknowledge before it extinguishes itself, and thats that life must be preserved for it to have a place to reside.
now life may be objectively meaningless, but still be meaningful. Nietzsche figured that out after he destroyed everything, and people who do not fully understand what he is saying go for the easy summation that if there is no God, if there is no fixed morals, than anarchy follows, than suicide or abuses of power are to be tolerated or even encouraged. The fallacy of this sort of interpretation is that it fails to appreciate that it has ALWAYS been this way with human consciousness, and it didn't radically change with someone like Nietzsche uncovering the bullshit… meaning existed before and after him, and before and after someone disowns the notion of immutable truth.
we create fictions, and its a matter if you want them to be life-giving or life-taking. Its not a given that we must acknowledge the absence of value. It is someone weak and unimaginative who does that. The absence of value is the beginning not the end, and we can partake in the sort of doublethink we have partaken in, but now with one eye on the 'game' of it. We can now play out a kind of life we want… if all that we want is to peer into the abyss, then just fall into it.
There is no ultimate conclusion, either God or no God, value or no value, any such ultimate conclusion is itself the presumption of immutable truth.
I accept reality, untill proven otherwise. The hypothesis of the existence of the universe is one I live by. The absence of objetive values in the human mind, and the absence of value in the universe logically follows from what we know of either. The abolishment of arbitrary knowledge would hurt nobody. Life makes no sense, and has no purpose – to attribute value to it reaks of fear.
"When you are willing to allow for obvious ‘problems’ in your opinion, such as that without life there is no proof of thought, so to allow a thought the authority to sacrifice the life that is thinking it, that is not just bad reasoning, its stupid."
Do you attribute value to thought? I have argued that it is the only possible way to falsify the hypothesis of the meaningless existence – which at this point, is as true as gravity and the existence of the moon. That would make the seemingly most worthwhile endeavor out of all the arbitrary things you can do. I would rather you prove the existence of value and reason and die at 15, than you live untill you're 85 without doing it.
And let me say I acknowledge the inherent problems with accepting the hypothesis of the existence of the universe, but I quickly found it rather pointless to argue from any other perspective.
to falsify anything the way you are suggesting is to assume immutable truths that can be verified or falsified… but if everything is resigned to nothingness than how can there be immutable truths? So the ONLY truth is life is meaningless? wow thats convenient. Did you attain this knowledge via divine inspiration or did you reason it out?
here is an important distinction: one can say that there are no truths that we can verify, that nothing is verifiable, and use every reasonable argument and show the reasoning deconstructing itself… BUT that does not prove nor mean that there is no truths, or rather no structure, no underlying meaning, no value, only that we do not have access to understanding it. This is a huge point to consider, that any rational argument cannot confirm one way or the other what is True in reality, because reality is not confined by reason. This is an error in understanding fundamentally what one is doing when applying reason to an argument.
nihilism if properly articulated should be saying there is no meaning that we can prove, not that there is no meaning definitively. Such is its hubris. accepting that you know very little is the path to taking control of your life and resisting the safe confines of pat ideologies.
"nihilism if properly articulated should be saying there is no meaning that we can prove, not that there is no meaning definitively."
Yeah but I'm not much for muddling up the issue with qualifiers. I also proclaim to be an Atheist instead of an Agnostic, because sometimes, semantics are just that. You're an apologist, playing both sides, hiding behind apparent rationality, which somehow needs to be applied to this, but nothing else in life. Agnosticism is the way of the timid.
If you are saying that nihilism is wrong because it fails to disclose everything about everything and as such isn't worth believing in that's fine. I accept this.
"to falsify anything the way you are suggesting is to assume immutable truths that can be verified or falsified… but if everything is resigned to nothingness than how can there be immutable truths? So the ONLY truth is life is meaningless? wow thats convenient. Did you attain this knowledge via divine inspiration or did you reason it out?"
The idea of meaningless is directly linked with the idea that anything can turn out to be wrong. The possibility of the falsification of everything is exactly what naturally leads to the realization of the absence of value. I don't think this is that hard to wrap your head around, it seems to me obvious.
If we are to accept existence as we know it, we will also have to accept its meaninglessness. Anything else would be a delusion, spurred on by a need for happiness.
I think a less provocative statement that explains nihilism and how obvious it is would be this: Everything is relative.
It's a bit reassuring to know that Rot started out as an nihilist before reaching his current anti-rationalist perspective. I've never found nihilism to spring from atheism and materialism (in fact I find the charge that those things should go hand in hand sort of offensive and naive).
Hopefully as I grow older I'll be able to stay on the right side of reason and science. For humanity and against gods, magic and superstition.
there's two ways to read what rot wrote
1) seriously, and fall asleep halfway through
2) add the word "like" and "man" to everything and draw a ponytail on his icon, and laugh your head off.
(and I was referring to #15)
I can't help it. Certain ways of discussing philosophy, and for that matter, poetry, just give me awful Matrix sequel flashbacks
the qualifiers are kinda important, unless you just want to play with words arbitrarily…
everything is relative… you have a bad habit of aggrandizing statements to mean universal things… everything is relative from a uniquely human perspective in the pursuit of immutable truths. That is the most that our puny minds can intellibily suggest. Now when we were having the aliens/water debate you were constantly calling hubris to those who suggested that everything was made in the image of man… and here you go anthropocentricizing the 'meaning' of the universe. You have got to see how utterly contradictory that is?
Just because we can discern no truths or values in the world through reasoning does not in any way discredit the possibility that things do have a purpose beyond our comprehension. Neither can we forge a suitable dogma to follow that assumes what is made of this unknown because, much like many organized religions, you start to fill in the gaps of the universal with whatever passes for sense in your head, and soon you are telling everyone else to recognize this universal truth.
@Rusty
nihilism is a natural step from recognizing that the positivist zeal for reason is false, that there are no discernible immutable truths, at least rationally discernible. Usually around 19, 20, reading Nietzsche those who think too much on this can get swallowed by the immensity of the nothing that arrives from this pursuit of knowledge. The impulse to have universals carries over, and you replace the universal of order and structure with the universal of chaos.
Eventually any half-intelligent nihilist must recognize the glaring error in his presumption of knowledge and concede that if there is an external universe that reason alone cannot describe, its ‘value’ or ‘logic’ can and does supersede our abilities to measure, then it is just a matter of how you confront this mystery free of pre-ordained dogma, what fiction(s) you use to move yourself along towards some self-imposed goal.
Goon you go back to the happy world of Indy 4 and take your soma properly.
I could entitle this rant "why the Joker is Wrong" to bring this back to film.
"Just because we can discern no truths or values in the world through reasoning does not in any way discredit the possibility that things do have a purpose beyond our comprehension."
You somehow seem to have the idea that I am set on nihilism forever. I am very willing to be proven wrong. Like I have said many times, in order to get anything out of existence, I have to accept it in the way that I am capable of, and this acceptance can at this point in time lead nowhere other than to nihilism. I will definitely concede that my worldview is not definite.
And Goon, who's trolling now? While you may not find thoughts interesting, some of us do.
ask yourself what authenticates your worldview? If reason than understand its limitations and do not derive from it arguments conclusions that reason has no authority over. If faith, than be honest about it, and do not sneer at anyone else who relies on faith to conduct their lives. There should be humility and opportunity in the lack of discernible meaning, that we can all forge some personal meaning and co-exist without having to rely on assumptions of universal truth and the bullying that can come from these truths.
That said, we should assume that there will be people in the world who will nonetheless bully and impose their naive assumptions upon the rest of us. I do have a low opinion of human nature. In reality both boats in the Dark Knight would have blown up, I have no doubt.
The thing about the Prisoners dilema is that it is a system that by design it rewards immorality and punishes altruism. If you do "the right thing" you just die.
Definitely reason. I don't see why you would assume anything else? I think that your decision to define nihilism as a faith is where you confuse yourself, and where we have talked past eachother.
Existence is a fact untill proven otherwise. Everything is relative untill proven otherwise. Nothingness is the acceptance of existence as based on perception and evidence. I know you don't like to base anything on anything and rather seem like you've reached a higher level of consciousness where you realize that nothing our brains can do has any meaning, and the only thing worth caring about is life itself, but it makes little sense, since life is a perception as well. And also, not accepting your own perception of the universe gets you nowhere.
so in theory, Henrik, if I could show you that it is irrational to believe that through reason you can KNOW that life is meaningless, you will admit you are wrong, and accept the possibility that there could be meaning that you are incapable of understanding (at least analytically)?
I know I sound cocky here and people call me out on it but I have been obsessed with these sorts of questions for a decade and self-correcting along the way. This is a well-tred path for me, I have come to terms with the limits of reason and any uninhibited use of reason will come to the same conclusions. If you are seriously open-minded about this we can debate the issue.
and yes I believe nihilism is entirely based on faith with a bogus rational argument the same sort of bogus rational argument that says definitively there is order and meaning and outline doctrines to be followed. It is entirely a misuse of reason, a misunderstanding of what reason is and is capable of.