Monthly Archives: September 2011

.. it matters, what you do at war

Here is the truth: It matters, what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective consciences and memories and souls, and the violence we deliver in the name of our nation is pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who we are. The soldiers who don’t die for us come home again. They bring with them the killers they became on our national behalf, and sit with their polluted memories and broken emotions in our homes and schools and temples. We may wish it were not so, but actions amounts to identity. We become what we do. You can tell yourself all the stories you want, but you can’t leave your actions over there. You can’t build a wall and expect to live on the other side of memory. All of that poison seeps back into our soil.

- Megan K. Stack, Every Man in this Village is a Liar (2010)

Terroren påvirker oss

Jeg spør hos Minerva om vi burde la spektakulære voldshandlinger påvirke oss så mye som de gjør:

Jeg finner det dypt urettferdig at enkeltmennesker kan skrive seg inn i historiebøkene ved å gjennomføre spektakulære voldshandlinger, at de kun ved å drepe kan dytte samfunnet i nye retninger. Jeg protesterer.

Vi burde ikke la det skje. Vi burde være så sikre på hvem vi er og hvor vi vil hen at slike hendelser treffer oss som en stein treffer vannet, og drukner i basisfaktorer.

Les resten hos Minerva.

Book roundup: David Runciman, Øystein Sørensen, Joe Scalzi

David Runciman - Political Hypocrisy

David Runciman – Political Hypocrisy (2008)

Hypocrisy, or mask-wearing, comes in many shades, and not only can some of them, (such as politeness and pseudonymity), be beneficial to society, anti-hypocrisy can do more harm than good. Honest anti-hypocrites can be dangerously ignorant about the nature of the game they want to “clean up”, and dishonest anti-hypocrites represent an even deeper level of hypocrisy than the form they attack. In politics, you’re better off with a competent and well-meaning hypocrite than with someone who gives the appearance of perfect integrity. Even democracy itself is essentially the idea of humanizing power by dressing it up in masks.

Recommended: Strongly, but not for everyone.  Read it if you like Orwell’s writings on language and thought, (which are referenced in the most interesting chapter of the book). Longer summary of this book coming up.

Øystein Sørensen – Drømmen om det fullkomne samfunn (2010)

Communism, fascism, nazism and islamism are four variations over the same theme of totalitarian utopianism.

Read: 45 pages.

Recommended: Only if this similarity is somehow news to you, and not really even then. This is an introductory book, written in a bored academic style.

Joe Scalzi – Zoe’s Tale (2008)

It’s time to have the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk with Joe Scalzi. I’m sure this is as good as his previous yarns, but I can’t be bothered to read it. Farewell, let’s be friends, and we’ll always have Frankfurt etc etc.

Read: 60 pages.

Recommended: Possibly. Lots of people like it. Good for them!

1950s movies marathon – part 55

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954, USA)

Man is not alone: Creatures from the dawn of time lurk in the lonely corners of the world, from whence they emerge to fondle our women, murder our native servants, .. and teach us valuable moral lessons about anti-speciesism?!  Watched it all before, and again now.  Earlier generations must has seen a Freudian message here.  Today, it seems more like political commentary.

Tobor the Great (1954, USA)

The Communist Party, for one, would like to turn the giant space robot into our new overlord.  This shouldn’t be too difficult, because the senile professor who built it gave it ESP abilities and a sense of self preservation. Watched: 32 minutes.  I like the intro music.

The Black Widow (1954, USA)

This movie wants to be All About Eve, and then it wants to be Hitchcock, and it’s neither.  Watched it all, but I’m not sure why.  I guess I haven’t filled my quota for stories about society people with claws.

Jail Bait (1954, USA, Wood)

“Jail bait” meant something less interesting in 1954: Anything in general that might land you in jail.  Watched: 11 minutes. Even Ed Wood made movies that were so bad that they were not any fun at all, and this is one of them.  The only thing that stands out as entertainingly bad is the guitar soundtrack, which was inspired by the zither music in The Third Man, but instead of building suspense it grinds you down like Chinese water torture.