Star Wars Episode III

I watched part of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith the other day, as I was illegally... err, I mean, as I was legally backing up my friend's DVD of it. Not only is the final battle scene between Anakin and Obi-Wan which Dr. Ogden showed us in class a great allusion to Paradise Lost, and the notion of corruptio optimi est pessima, but there are so many others it's just not even fair! You don't even realize man...! Ahem, it's late, I'm not gonna be very academic here.

Ok, so about 15 min into the film Anakin is about to fight Count Dooku (ok, what kind of dumbass name is 'Dooku' anyway, geez George Lucas, get it together. don't get me started on 'Jar-Jar-Binks'...) and he says something to the effect, "I'm twice as powerful as last time we met/duelled with our cool lightsabres!" To this, the Count replies, "Ah, twice the pride, twice the fall.... young grasshopper!" And they fight, and it's cool, and yeah. I don't think I even need to explain that allusion, wow. So, further on, when the Jedi council dudes decide to make little Anakin an honorary member of their council, w/o elevating him to the prestigious (and wicked-cool) title of Jedi-Master, he's like totally pissed right off man. He looks like he's gonna go all angry-Sith-Lordish on their asses, but good ol' Obi-Wan calmes him down. Point is, his ambition and pride totally start to take over at this point, and it's all too easy for that scary emperor guy to corrupt him fully to the dark side. He doesn't use any force, it's all guile/deception. Oh yeah, and I really like how Emperor Palpatine used the idea of saving Padme's life by using the dark side to tempt and lure Anakin. He preyed on Anakin's love for Padme, the one thing that might have kept him on the light side of the force. I have to hand it to lil' Georgy on this one, he came up with some good stuff there, what with Anakin desperately trying to save his one love's life (he'd do anything, evil kill little jedi kids), but tragically he causes her death, because he goes down a path that she can't follow: the path to the dark side. So tragic... so beautiful.

ANYWAY... I hope that I have managed to shed some light on this subject. The chosen one, who would restore balance to the force (ultimately he does, through his son Luke, but that's another movie, err, episode I suppose), who had the greatest potential for good in him, conversely had the greatest potential for evil as well. And it was brilliant, simply brilliant to have the Emperor use Anakin's love for Padme to turn him. Yeah I don't know if I'm advocating the awesome power of love here, or just enjoying reading my own words as I type them. You decide. It's 5am.

huge load of....

Ok, first and foremost, Valentine's Day is huge load of smelly horse shit (metaphorically speaking, of course). Ahem... that wasn't very academic of me, oops.

Allow me to elaborate. As Mel was nice enough to look up the real origins of this now commercialized Hallmark-holiday (since the rest of us are far too apathetic to even care), she brings to our attention a very important point: no matter what the original context was surrounding St Valentine's Day, it has lost all of that original meaning as of present day. Celebrating something without knowing why is just something we humans like to do. Take the ancient Romans for example: they placed an enormous amount of stress on ritualistic sacrifices prior to and following any war campaign (they especially enjoyed sautéing animal intestines... yum). These strange practices were merely the remenants of old traditions of the Atruscan Kings who once ruled over Rome prior to the Republic. For the Atruscans, these rituals were highly religious practices, in honour of the Gods whom they worshipped. But the Romans were just carrying out the motions, not really knowing why. St Valentine's Day is no different--we are merely carrying out the motions because our social norms 'tell us' we should; it is utterly meaningless.

Now of course the commercialization of Valentine's Day has contributed to its wide-spread acceptance among different cultures, as well as serving to strengthen the ritualistic and fetishistic aspect of it. That's the beauty of commercialization--people (on a grand-scale) are easily persuaded into believing that they need certain things, when in fact these are 'false-needs' created by the culture industries with the sole purpose of providing satisfaction of these false-needs. They prey upon people's natural fetishistic tendency--that is, people's tendency to place value upon objects which they believe to be 'special', which they believe will make up for a certain lack which they feel in their lives. St Valentine's Day is no more than an exploitation of this fetishistic tendency by the culture industries. And I think it's pretty clear that they do this with the goal of making money--to gain power (not to make people feel good about themselves).

One could argue that this lack which people tend to feel and desire to make up for is a product of love (ie: they don't feel the love), and thus Valentine's Day is their attempt to attain that feeling of love. However, that still doesn't change the fact that Valentine's Day is an exploitation of people's 'appetites' (as Hobbes calls 'desires' appetites), not a representation of love, as we would like to believe.

Valentine's Day is there to placate those too weak to see that love doesn't exist

Saint Valentine's Day originated by celebrating the martyrdom of a priest who died for marrying soldiers in secret. How many people actually know that? I just had to look it up. And so what if, once upon a million years ago, people bought into the romantic celebration of something that can be reduced to an appetite- lust. Some of them have since come to their senses: Saint Valentine's day has been taken over by commercial industries like Hallmark and Hersheys. These savvy companies realized they could appeal to peoples' natural appetites through the romantic guise of love. This day is the one day of the year we sacrifice to keep the feeble-minded happy.

By the way, St Hobbes' Day does exist. It is every person's birthday--the celebration of the birth and life of the solitary individual and all that that implies. Is it just me, or do birthdays happen far more often than Feb 14th?

love doesn't make the world go round

There are signboards up in the WMC advertising that physiotherapy is available to students and faculty members in pain. Why? Not, as Milton enthusiasts might like to delude themselves, because love motivates people to selfless good deeds (and just how good is physiotherapy, really?). In reality, the people offering the “service” NEED and WANT your pain-inflicted bodies so that they may practice their skills and earn a dollar. It is necessity and the drive for self-preservation that motivates people to perform any vocation. Physiotherapists do not love you, nor do they care that they make you feel better. It is their JOB to reverse your ailments so that they may satisfy their clients and secure returning patients, you included.

On the nature of defense, isn’t it lucky that societies like the NRA still exist?! Here is a modern example of Hobbesian men and woman stubbornly clinging to their rights to arm themselves despite constitutional attempts to control firearms. These sturdy Americans refuse to relinquish their natural right to defend themselves from those who may jeopardize the rights or possessions of the former. Fear of the “other man” justifies the existence of the NRA. It is the right of any man to secure (by any means within his power) that which is his. The NRA stands for freedom to bear arms and protect oneself, not for love of the fellow man. Could you claim love for your fellow man as you foil his robbery attempt by pulling a gun on him?

A little on Paradise Lost

I really like what Bobby was touching on here with "Satan falling for us". The notion of immanence, God's transcendance of time and space such that He knows every that will ever be (omniscience), suggests that Satan's defiance and the ensuing war in Heaven, the corruption of man, etc--everything that follows in that causal chain of events is somehow part of God's great "plan". Now, taking for granted that God loves mankind and such, we can assume that this chain of events is the best possible fate for mankind. So then why do we even question any of this? Why did Milton feel the need to write an epic poem in an attempt to justify the ways of God to mankind? Satan tested out the water, and the water bit him in the ass. He then corrupts mankind, so mankind gets the boot out of Eden. BUT... we're given the gift of knowledge with that swift kick in the ass (kinda bitter-sweet really). Now the thing with free-will/freedom of choice, is that it works much better when you have knowledge to back up those choices (what's choice when you don't know the consequences?). And since God is omniscent, He must have known this too, thus He planned the whole thing with Satan corrupting us and all, so we would end up better off in the end.

Ok... am I missing anything here? There's gotta be more to this... I mean, it's a real nice idea--that everything is as it is because God is omniscient, transcends time and space, but most importantly because He Loves us, and therefore He has chosen/ordained the best possible fate for mankind through use of his omnipotent power. Love rules all, through God. What's left to question??

Please note, that I am neither arguing for nor against the existence of God, or any other religious beliefs. I am merely questioning, that given the premises behind Paradise Lost, how can anyone who follows Christian beliefs come to any other conclusion than what I have presented here?--That love is supreme. So now we are presented with a problem: if this is the case, then our debate does not rely upon polemics or validity of arguments, but rather upon religious disposition. Unless of course we are all atheists, this could be a problem. Someone, please tell me that I'm wrong, because I refuse to have our debate reduced to the subjectivity of individual religious beliefs!

John Wilmot, Against a Leviathan Figure

As Iain alluded to in his earlier post, as a group we did not reach a general consensus as to one predominant reading of John Wilmot's poem Upon Nothing. Personally, I found myself focussing on the religious aspect of the poem. The narrator begins by discussing the formation of the world from a "Primitive Nothing", from which "something strait begot" (5). He then refers to the creation of "Men, Beasts, Birds, Fire, Water, Air and Land" (12), while even more briefly mentioning man’s “undistinguish’d fall” (9). So far this is fairly typical Christian creation-story stuff—creation, man’s fall from paradise, etc. There is also reference to a “Rebel Light” (15), which I took to be Lucifer (the name literally means “Bright One”), and how him and his “Leagues combine, / To spoil thy [presumably God’s] peaceful Realm, and ruine all thy Line” (18). It is almost as though the speaker here is summarizing very briefly the biblical story of creation and Satan and his followers' expulsion from Heaven. As I recall, most of our group agreed upon this as an acceptable reading of the first half of this poem; it was during the latter half that we diverged.
I especially took notice to the eighth stanza:

Tho’ Mysteries are barr’d from Laick Eyes,
And the Divine alone, with
Warrant, pryes
Into thy Bosom where the truth in private lies;
(22-24)

I hate paraphrasing, but I missed this the first couple of times that I read the poem. The speaker here could be saying that only the “Divine”, God, possesses a warrant, or authorization, to see the secrets and private truths of mankind. More importantly, “Laick Eyes” are not permitted (I had to look up “Laick= Of or pertaining to a layman or the laity; non-clerical, secular, temporal”-OED). So the leader of state, or Leviathan figure, has no right or permission to pry into any person’s private life; God alone reserves that right. Further on, the speaker debases “Sacred Monarchs” (38), saying that they sit at council “With Persons highly thought at best for nothing fit” (39). Again, this implies that mankind should not be ruled by monarchical figures, as they are simply not fit for it. The following stanza calls them nothing more than “Fools in grave disguise” (43), with furs and gowns to make themselves look wiser. Moreover, the final stanza of the poem compares “Kings Promises” with “Whores Vows” (50). This debases Kings’ authority to the level of a common prostitute of the time, whose word is utterly meaningless.

One could easily write an entire essay analyzing each and every line of this poem, for there are so many subtle connotations behind Wilmot’s carefully chosen words. I have but glazed the surface with my own personal reading, in which I hope to have shown Wilmot’s alignment with the metaphysical poets, and his strong opposition to Hobbes’ notion of a Leviathan figure.

- Sean