Category Archives: Nihilism

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These days, anti-humanism is as thick as molasses among the intelligentsia. That includes an ongoing conversation in bioethics whether all things considered human extinction would be a fine thing because of the suffering that never coming into existence would avoid.

Example: A few months ago, Oxford professor Roger Crisp opined that we might not want to stop a huge asteroid from hitting the Earth. From Would extinction be so bad?:

Consider the huge amount of suffering that continuing existence will bring with it, not only for humans, and perhaps even for post-humans, but also for sentient non-humans, who vastly outnumber us and almost certainly would continue to do so. As far as humans alone are concerned, Hilary Greaves and Will MacAskill at the University of Oxfords Global Priorities Institute estimate that there could beone quadrillion(1015) people to come an estimate they describe as conservative.

These numbers, and the scale of suffering to be put into the balance alongside the good elements in individuals lives, are difficult to fathom and so large that its not obvious that you should deflect the asteroid. In fact, there seem to be some reasons to think you shouldnt.

Perhaps one reason we think extinction would be so bad is that we have failed to recognise just how awful extreme agony is. Nevertheless, we have enough evidence, and imaginative capacity, to say that it is not unreasonable to see the pain of an hour of torture as something that can never be counterbalanced by any amount of positive value. And if this view is correct, then it suggests that the best outcome would be the immediate extinction that follows from allowing an asteroid to hit our planet.

Crisp equivocates a bit at the end, writing, I am not claiming that extinction wouldbe good;only that, since itmight be, we should devote a lot more attention to thinking about the value of extinction than we have to date. Good grief. Is the issue really debatable?

Not to be outdone, writing in response to Crisp in the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog, University of Calgary professor Walter Glannon shrugs his big brain at the prospect of us being gone. From A world without us:

We cannot predict the sort of lives future people would have because we do not know the sort of world they would inhabit. But the circumstances described above make it difficult to be optimistic. Regardless of the hypothetical value or disvalue of these lives, possible people are not deprived of anything if they do not come into existence.

We have an obligation to collectively act to prevent or reduce the suffering that present and future humans will actually experience. This depends on controlling natural habitats, deforestation, carbon emissions and other processes. Future actual people have the same rights and interests in avoiding suffering as present actual people. The extent of suffering may provide a pro tanto reason to prevent them from existing. Even if there is no such reason, merely possible people do not have these rights and interests because they do not and will not exist. If we become extinct, then the world will go on without us and will be good or bad for no one.

Why do ivory-tower discussions like this matter? Because these nihilists are teaching the society leaders of tomorrow, those who will exert tremendous influence over future public policies and cultural attitudes. With our supposedly best minds suggesting that human extinction could be desirable, is it any wonder why so many of our young people seem to be despairing?

Moreover, the utter terror of suffering is pathological and leads directly to evil and/or terribly wrongheaded utilitarian policies such as eugenics and social Darwinism. It is also the moving force behind the euthanasia movement, which seeks to eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferer. Avoiding suffering is also the central philosophical core of the transhumanism quasi-religion, which seeks to create a corporeal immortality by instilling a new eugenics with very sharp teeth.

So, what should be our attitude toward suffering? It should not be utopian scheming. Nor, to be sure, should it be indifference. Rather, we have a human duty to mitigate each others suffering, to love and suffer with each other which is the root meaning of compassion. And we can harness our own suffering to grow and become better individuals.

In this regard, for my Humanize podcast, I recently interviewed the quadriplegic Christian evangelist and disability rights activists Joni Eareckson Tada, who unexpectedly took a deep dive into this very issue, and in a very intimate and personal way. Regardless of faith issues, her attitude toward and personal response to her own deep suffering is much healthier than the nihilism that has grown so dark within utilitarian bioethics that some dont reject the prospect of human extinction out of hand.

Read the rest here:

Bioethicists Okay Human Extinction to Eliminate Suffering - National Review

Djimon Hounsou as Shola and Ralph Fiennes as Oxford in The Kings Man.Courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

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The Kings Man

Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Written by Matthew Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek

Starring Ralph Fiennes, Harris Dickinson and Rhys Ifans

Classification R; 131 minutes

Opens in theatres Dec. 22

If you would like to spend your Christmas break Googling, Did Rasputin conspire to kill Archduke Ferdinand? and Woodrow Wilson sex tape and Ralph Fiennes Rhys Ifans wound-licking scene, then boy howdy, do I ever have the movie for you.

A tonally wild and historically, um, loose First World War thriller, The Kings Man arrives as a head-scratching mess of bewildering ambition and outrageous style. Fashioned as a prequel to director Matthew Vaughns Kingsman franchise, itself based on Mark Millars ultraviolent comic book, The Kings Man doesnt require knowledge of the previous two films to understand its central conceit: Only Britains ultrawealthy aristocrats, operating in secret, can bring peace and order to a world hobbled by psychopaths and bureaucrats.

Gemma Arterton as Polly in The Kings Man.Courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

Vaughns first entry, 2014s Kingsman: The Secret Service, embraced that distasteful premise with a self-aware perversity, producing a wild, reckless, gleefully juvenile blast of pop nihilism. It was hard to watch a scene of a dapper Colin Firth shooting Red State extremists in the head to the score of Lynyrd Skynyrds Freebird and not be impressed by Vaughns commitment to the bit. Matters went downhill, though, with 2017s Kingsman: The Golden Circle, a sequel hobbled by bigger, louder, stupider expectations.

The Kings Man rewinds things back in terms of timeline (it opens with the Second Boer War, and ends on the final days of the First World War), but continues to make the same mistakes as The Golden Circle, cramming in so much unnecessary stuff that the film crumbles in half. Indeed, Vaughn seems to have made two movies at the same time: a slick franchise-friendly prequel and a gnarly riff on Sam Mendes 1917, or maybe even Lewis Milestones All Quiet on the Western Front. It is never boring, but it is also never remotely consistent in its sensibilities and vision.

First, the good: Ralph Fiennes gets a lot of action-hero screen time as the Duke of Oxford, a super-rich pacifist who gets wrapped up in the First World War along with his teenage son Conrad (Harris Dickinson). While Fiennes must spit out dialogue crammed with exposition and this-is-the-theme-right-here monologues, the actor makes for a solid midlife butt-kicker in the Liam Neeson mould.

The Kings Man rewinds things in terms of timeline, but continues to make the same mistakes as The Golden Circle, cramming in so much unnecessary stuff that the film crumbles.Courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

Also impressive, in a completely different way: Rhys Ifans, who makes as many extreme acting choices as Grigori Rasputin. Ifans plays the infamous Russian mystic/instigator as a carnival barker gone mad, all clucks and bug-eyes. When Ifans and Fiennes meet midway through the film, for a scene that I can only describe as being balletically bonkers, The Kings Man feels genuinely, dangerously alive. (Bonus points, too, for Vaughn not succumbing to temptation by adding Boney M to the soundtrack.)

But then, in a jarring and depressing tonal shift, the film veers into dead-serious territory, with Conrad determined to head to the front lines of the war, and the Duke tasked with defusing a nefarious global conspiracy that might not go over too well with Scottish audiences. It is all too much and not enough, and by the time that Vaughn deploys his big third-act reveal which resulted in me actually whispering under my breath/inside my mask, Whos that again? youll have not only lost the plot, but also discovered another, better movie playing inside your own head.

Once the The Kings Man becomes available digitally, though, do yourself a favour and search for that Ifans Fiennes licking scene, which will surely be clipped and memed for the duration of both mens careers. It is the only taste of Vaughns film that you will require.

In the interest of consistency across all critics reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a Critics Pick designation across all coverage.

Continued here:

Review: The King's Man offers Ralph Fiennes his own kick-butt Liam Neeson moment, but also a big ol' migraine - The Globe and Mail

I turn 40 today, and I was planning to have a party. The Delta surge made me nervous about it. The arrival of Omicron made me cancel it.

The plan was to have an extended house party, with a couple dozen people popping by over the weekend. On the one hand, it would have been an unmasked, indoor eventthe kind in which the coronavirus, in all its incarnations, spreads most easily. On the other hand, everyone who was going to be there is fully vaccinated, and most of them, myself included, have been boosted. A month ago, I would have felt comfortable about that trade-off, especially if people got tested in the preceding days, as eight friends did when they came over for Thanksgiving.

Omicron didnt much shift the way I weighed my personal risk. Although the new variant can evade some of our immune defenses, early data suggest that boosted people are roughly as protected against Omicron infection as people with two vaccine doses are against Delta. That protection isnt foolproof, but even if immune systems cant block the virus from gaining an initial foothold, they should still be able to stop it from causing too much damage. If I got the virus on my birthday, Id expect to be knocked down for a time but okay by Christmasand Id expect the same to be true for everyone who was meant to come.

I dont know the odds that this would happen. But I know that said odds are rising with every passing day, given how quickly and easily Omicron is spreading, even among highly vaccinated populations. I know that many of my friends, like many vaccinated Americans, have been going out to restaurants, bars, gyms, and movie theaters. I know that Omicrons incubation periodthe gap between infection and symptomsseems unusually short, so that even people who tested negative a few days ago might still be infected and infectious. I know that even mild infections can lead to long COVID.

If someone got sick, I know others could too. A week later, many of my friends will spend Christmas with their own families. At best, a cluster of infections at the birthday party would derail those plans, creating days of anxious quarantine or isolation, and forcing the people I love to spend time away from their loved ones. At worst, people might unknowingly carry the virus to their respective families, which might include elderly, immunocompromised, unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, or otherwise vulnerable people. Being born eight days before Christmas creates almost the perfect conditions for one potential super-spreader event to set off many more.

My friends, of course, are adults who can make informed decisions about their own risks and their own loved ones risks. But the logic of personal responsibility goes only so far. Omicron is spreading so rapidly that if someone got infected at my party, my decision to host it could easily affect people who dont know me, and who had no say in the risks that I unwittingly imposed upon them. Omicron is unlikely to land me in the hospital, but it could send my guests grandparents or parents to one.

I also know the state of those hospitals. Over the past two years, especially while I was reporting a new article last month, hundreds of nurses, doctors, and other health-care workers have told me that they, and the system they work in, are utterly broken. Some have quit jobs or careers that they thought they would keep for life. Others spoke of a system in the midst of collapse, in which the dwindling workforce can no longer provide a normal level of care for its growing pool of patientsnot just COVID patients, but all patients. Several said that theyre struggling to hold on to empathy for people who are putting themselves at risk. Many cried on the phone during our interview. Many just sounded hollow.

I feel haunted by their words when I make decisions about the pandemic. When I stare out my window, the world looks normal, but I know through my reporting that it is not. This has already changed the way I behave, and not just to avoid getting COVID. Ive been trying to drive more carefully, in the knowledge that if I got into an accident, I wouldnt get the same care that I would have two years ago. I feel that the medical system in this country is at a tipping pointa fragile vase balanced so precariously on an edge that even a fly could knock it over. Omicron is a bullet. Its one that we can each choose whether to fire.

For many people, this will all sound like a lot of melodrama. Surely the odds are still low that anyone at the party would have Omicron at all, let alone that any resulting infections would be severe enough to bother a hospital? Even if that wasnt true, with people widely partying and traveling, surely canceling any one event would be an impossibly small drop in an impossibly large bucket?

I sympathize with those arguments. But Ive tried to take to heart the lesson I keep writing aboutthat the pandemic is a collective problem that cannot be solved if people (or governments) act in their own self-interest. Ive tried to consider how my actions cascade to affect those with less privilege, immune or otherwise. Instead of asking Whats my risk?, Ive tried to ask Whats my contribution to everyones risk? Ive done things that personally inconvenience me to avoid contributing to the much greater societal inconvenience of, say, a collapsed health-care system. I still mask indoors. I still eat outdoors at restaurants. I still avoid large gatherings. Im still writing articles that take a toll on my own resilience, to help our readers make sense of a crisis that I desperately want to never think about again. Ive tried to put we over me.

A birthday party is almost the antithesis of that ethican asymmetric gathering in which we celebrate me. I talked with my wife, Liz, and two of my colleagues about ways of mitigating the riskscould we ask people to do a rapid test just before coming?but, ultimately, simply canceling felt easier and safer. The growing number of anecdotes about outbreaks within boosted parties has only made me feel more confident about that choice. These decisions are hard. Plans and hopes have their own inertia, and canceling things is a pain. A birthday party isnt ultimately a big deal, but Im still sad about not seeing my friends, and a celebration would certainly have improved my fraying mental health. Those trade-offs, which weve been asked to make now for almost two years, have an erosive power as they add up.

Our Christmas will also be quiet. I dont know how to think about everyone elses. For two straight years, Americas leaders have largely punted the responsibility for controlling the pandemic to individuals, and now Omicron leaves said people with few options beyond boosting, masking, andthe one nobody wants to hearavoiding social gatherings. If people really hunker down over the next week, eschewing the kinds of exposures that they would have felt comfortable with a mere month ago, they might be in a more secure position to gather by Christmas. But as my colleague Ian Bogost has written, to have to wrangle with these choices again, just as the holiday season begins, feels like a cruel joke.

It is easy to despair, but we cannot afford the luxury of nihilism. Grim though the stories Ive written may be, I have tried to infuse every one with some hopewith the acknowledgment that a better future is at least possible, if not probable. And despite everything, I firmly believe that it is. Failed systems constrain us, but we still have agency, and our small choices matter immensely. The infectious nature of a virus means that a tiny bad decision can cause exponential harm, but also that a tiny wise decision can do exponential good.

This time last year, with effective vaccines and a new administration on the horizon, I tweeted that I was gently hopeful about being able to have a party. That wasnt to be. But canceling doesnt mean that I cant have a joyful weekend, or that I cant have a party again, or even a 40th-birthday party again. I can imagine reviving the idea if transmission falls back to a gentle simmer. The cost of waiting for such a moment feels low, and certainly much lower than the consequences of reckless impatience. And I know, despite the relentless nature of the past two years, that pandemics do eventually end.

Continue reading here:

I Canceled My Birthday Party Because of Omicron - The Atlantic

Service members nearing the end of their first enlistment face many daunting questions: How can I sham my way through those last few months? How long will I grow my hair once I get out? Should I grow an operator beard or a Tony Stark-style goatee? And of course, they have to decide if theyll even leave the military.

While many choose to make the military a career, sometimes folks need a little urging a gentle reminder that their branch of service actually wants them to stay around. Thats where reenlistment incentives come in. While a cash bonus is always a welcome offer, theyre few and far between, so the services sometimes take a more frugal approach by offering service members their choice of duty station, a sought after billet, or even just the chance to do something cool, like reenlist as someone detonates a bunch of explosives behind them.

But it looks like the Army is taking the approach of less is more to the extreme by offering soldiers a ride in a helicopter that many soldiers already get to ride in on a regular basis.

At Camp Buehring, Kuwait, soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Divisions Sustainment Brigade celebrated their next hitch with a ride on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. In the ceremony held this weekend and initially posted to the militarys photo and video database, the ten soldiers stood on the flight line, raised their right hand, took their oath, and headed into the sky.

With its twin rotors and weighing in at 50,000 pounds, the Chinook has been a workhorse of the military, ferrying around platoons for almost 50 years, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. But a ride on a workhorse isnt the most enticing reenlistment bonus, even if its top speed clocks in at almost 190 miles per hour. Add to it that the ubiquity of the Chinook makes this offer akin to a ride in a Humvee or a C-17 cargo plane, and that did not escape notice.

As a reward for re-enlisting you get to sit in the very back of one of the darkest and bleakest helicopters you can ride in, read one comment from the popular r/Army Reddit forum, where a photo of the reenlistment ceremony was shared Monday and quickly racked up nearly 200 comments.

Imagine thinking a ride in a Chinook is a reward, another user wrote.

Recruiting and retaining people is a constant challenge for the services, and one that is evolving as new missions arise and new generations become eligible for enlistment, and so the services sometimes get creative with their reenlistment offers. And despite what Marine Corps-related social media accounts have to say, a ride in a F/A-18 fighter jet is not one of them.

Across the military, there are roughly 1.3 million people serving on active duty. To maintain manpower levels, the services have to recruit and retain roughly 150,00 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and presumably, Guardians of the Space Force every year. In 2019, though, only a third of eligible youth met the requirements to enlist, whether due to a failure to meet height and weight requirements, mental health issues, prior criminal convictions, or lack of a high school degree. And for those considering reenlistment, there are constant considerations of another move or another deployment.

Thats to say nothing of the pull of the private sector, which may offer the prospect of higher pay and more consistent and reasonable work hours, all with the added benefit that no one is going to send you somewhere dangerous, or yell at you for not shaving your face every morning.

In response, the Army offers cash bonuses for certain fields: up to $50,000 for qualified aircraft maintainers or $40,000 for infantry squad leaders, for example. Other bonuses include the chance to attend a sought-after training course, like airborne school.

In 2021, the Army met its recruiting goals, with 496,490 soldiers on active duty. The branch has also been updating its reenlistment policies. Perks such as duty-station stabilization or short-term reenlistment extensions are being phased out, and in October the Army announced that it was shortening its Reenlistment Opportunity Window from 12 to 15 months.

Still, while the prospect of sitting down with a retention officer and serving another four years might make some people flee, its also made the colorful reenlistment ceremony a cherished tradition: Underwater, dressed up as an Imperial Stormtrooper, or going for a benign helicopter ride over Kuwait.

But one commenter perhaps speaking for everyone involved said, Another 3-6 years of depression, anxiety, and nihilism all for a ride in a shitty Chinook? Sign me the fuck up.

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If you reenlist, the US Army will let you ride in a helicopter most already get to ride in - Task & Purpose

Lukes Gospel contextualizes Jesus birth in its historical moment, mentioning in Chapter 2 that Caesar Augustus initiated the census which brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and that Quirinius was governor of Syria.

Chapter 3 situates the preaching of John the Baptist in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Anna and Caiaphas.

Why does Luke take the time to mention all of these names and places, most of which are remote and unfamiliar to us?

This narrative of figures and geography reinforces the truth that our Christian faith is historical and factual; Jesus Christ is an actual person who lived in a particular place, in a precise moment, in a specific context of human experience.

Contrast this historicity with the myths of ancient religions, which were ahistorical, not rooted in facts or events which could be chronicled and studied.

No record exists of the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses coming to earth and speaking and acting with human beings, of actually entering into world history.

Before the Incarnation of the Son of God in the birth of Christ, human history was on a profoundly wrong course, trapped in the throes of sin and death, ignorant of the God of Israel, locked in futility, and trapped in an existence separated from the Lord.

In His infinite mercy and saving love, the Father sends the Son on a rescue mission to earth, to free us from the power of the ancient curse, to transform us into His adopted children, to forgive our sins, and to offer us eternal life.

This Good News constitutes the essence of the Gospel, God breaking into time and space in order to reorient all of human history to Himself.

Through His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus Christ has unleashed the Kingdom of God into the timeline of world events, transforming the meaning of the human project and revealing the ultimate purpose and destiny of each person the Father created.

In the Book of Revelation, we see the Apocalypse, a word signifying an unveiling or an ultimate revealing.

At the end of human history, Christ definitively and permanently conquers the power of sin and death, pronounces judgment on every single soul, and hands the Kingdom over to His Father.

In the New Jerusalem of Heaven, we will love God perfectly, be joined in the Communion of Saints, and celebrate the Marriage of the Lamb, the ultimate consummation of the nuptials between Christ and the Church.

In this apocalyptic context and theological understanding, the Eucharist becomes our sacramental participation in this anticipated finalization of human history.

In the Mass, we offer our worship, praise, and thanks to God, we are joined to the Communion of Saints and we share in the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.

In the Mass, we enter into the vast beautiful world of the risen Christ and we already stand at historys end point the unveiling of the victory of the Lord over the tyranny of sin and death.

These truths, properly understood, reinforce the central importance and urgency of our regular and faithful participation in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, especially every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation.

In the Christmas event, God literally inserts Himself into human history, reordering, redeeming, and transforming it into an ultimate narrative of salvation, a drama of the interplay between grace and sin, as every human soul either responds to the impulses of conversion which the Lord offers or rejects such a divine invitation.

This reality signifies that the history of each one of us, the events of our lives, the moral decisions we make, the words we speak, our ultimate choice for God or for the false self, only find their ultimate meaning in Jesus Christ.

Shakespeares Macbeth famously pronounces that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In stark contrast to such dark nihilism, Christianity asserts that history is a tale told by God, full of love and mercy, signifying eternal life.

The astonishing Good News of this holy season is that, because of Jesus, our individual lives have ultimate and joyous purpose and that human history, even with its horrors and tragedies, is inexorably headed towards the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

Two thousand years ago, our Lord visited our planet and loves us so much that He chose to stay with us through the life and ministry of the Church, until the end of the world.

Go here to read the rest:

Jesus: History and fact Madison Catholic Herald - Catholic Herald

In our October 1992 issue, we featured an open letter from Eugene Rivers on The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Crack. RiversPastor of Dorchesters Azusa Christian Communitydescribed the unprecedented crisis now facing inner-city, African-American communities and challenged intellectuals to respond to that crisis with new forms of public engagement. He concluded this letter by calling for a series of discussions in Boston about the fate of the urban poor. The first such discussion took place on November 30th at the ARCO Forum at Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government. What follows is a transcript of part of the forum. The participantsalong with Riverswere Margaret Burnham, former Associate Justice at Boston Municipal Court and lecturer in Political Science at M.I.T; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B DuBois Professor of the Humanities and Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University; bell hooks, Visiting Professor in Womens Studies at City College of New York; Glenn Loury, Professor of Economics at Boston University; and Cornel West, Professor of Religion and Director of the Afro-American Studies Program at Princeton University. The discussion was moderated by Anthony Appiah, Professor of African-American Studies at Harvard and a member of the editorial board of the Boston Review.

Anthony Appiah: I would like to welcome you to this evenings forum on The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Crack. The forum was prompted by an open letter in the Boston Review by Reverend Eugene Rivers. To begin our discussion, then, Reverend Rivers will say a little bit about his letterwhat his point was in issuing the challenge he raised in it, and how he would like us to take up that challenge.

Eugene Rivers:I would like first to thank God for this opportunity to engage in a public discussion of some issues which are verypressingfor a growing number of African-American people who are suffering in our inner-cities. And I would like to thank Professor Gates, the DuBois Institute, and the African-American Studies department, and Anthony Appiah and Josh Cohen of theBoston Review, for the courage, sensitivity, and humanity implicit in sponsoring this forum.

The issues we will discuss this evening are very challenging. They speak to questions of class, race, identity, moral obligation, and the responsibility of intellectuals. We need to have a serious discussion that moves beyond ideological posturing, dysfunctional rhetoric, ugga-bugga nationalism, and Afro-centrism to talk about ways that those of us who have extraordinary class privilege can coordinate and use our resources to alleviate some of the irrational and unnecessary suffering of, in particular, people of African descent.

To my way of thinking, there are three elements in a program that might address the crisis in inner-city African-American communities, and these elements should frame our discussion of the responsibilities of intellectuals. First, there is the classic social-democratic idea of improving the circumstances of the Black community by creating a healthier economy, with tighter labor markets. The slogan for this strategy in the Clinton administration is rebuilding the infrastructurepour some concrete, build some bridges, roads, and tunnels. No question that this would be a good thing. If unemployment dropped to four percent, the Black community would benefit. But the magnitude of the benefits of such programs are uncertain, in part because of the depth of the crisis, and the destruction of the social infrastructure in inner-city neighborhoods.

Secondly, then, we need to target specific programs to deal with racial discrimination and exclusionin particular, affirmative action. We can debate precisely what that means, and I am sure that Professor Loury will assist us in sharpening our focus on that. But again these efforts will be of, at most, uncertain benefit for those who are in the worst shape, at the bottom of the social class ladder.

Lastbut for our purposes this evening, most importantwe need to think about efforts within inner-city communities themselves. They pose the challenge of how we rebuild the lives of defenseless women and children in the inner-cities, whose lives are being crushed, whose lives are now being overshadowed by the twin specters of nihilism and decay. This project might be called the reconstruction of civil society in the Black community. Whatever it is called, it is hard, slow work requiring patience and couragepatience because the damage it aims to repair runs very deep and the problems it seeks to cure resist easy remedy; courage because the work requires concerted action on the ground, not just distant exhortation and example. And the grounds on which it must proceed are very dangerous.

With those three basic, introductory general formulations, I would like to open the discussion up.

Appiah:Cornel, do you want to start us off?

Responsible, progressive intellectuals have to talk a moral and spiritual languagea language of love, joy, communion, support, effective bonds.

Cornel West:First, I want to thank Josh Cohen and others for having the vision and determination to bring us together, andespecially Eugene Rivers, who I met 22 years ago in the cafeteria at Leverett House. This is an ongoing conversation, and the issues he raises here are arresting and complex. To start with, I think we have to acknowledge the degree to which we live in a market civilization, which affects all of our values and sensibilities. That makes it so very difficult to talk about ways of life that can serve as countervailing forces against the market moralities and market mentalities that go into what I call the gangsterization of Americaespecially the gangsterization of Black America with territorial imperatives, with guns, with very little value on life and property. Black America is still a mirror of a larger American civilization. There are some real continuities between what happens on Wall Street, what we see in the White House, and what Ice Cube is talking about in The Predator, in his recent album which is already number one pop and rhythm and blues.

We need to start with that broader context in order to get at the specificity of the condition of the Black working poor and very poor. We must not get caught with just external explanations in terms of whats outside the Black community. Nor should we get caught in internal explanations in terms of Black behavior and Black people trying to reach for themselves as if that can be done without addressing the larger circumstances. We need a dialectic here to keep in mind just the balance. I am convinced that its so difficult to live a human and humane life in a market-driven civilization in general that the only way I can begin to talk about it is to begin with a very simple notion of nonmarket valueslove, care, service to others, kindness, those things that we have forgotten about. How do you give those notions life in a market civilization? Thats the challenge. To meet it, we need what I call a politics of conversionbecause we are going to have to turn these brothers and sisters around. Some turning of the soul.

Now of course, I come from the church. We have ways of turning people around, but we have our faults and our foibles toopatriarchalism, homophobiaso not enough turnaround is actually taking place in those churches. But there has to be some discourse about convincing persons to live a different kind of life. And its a moraldiscourse, its aspiritual discourse. But this discourse is very difficult and dangerous in American society. The right wing tends to have monopoly on itor, if not a monopoly, certainly a twist. A very powerful twist. But responsible, progressive intellectuals have to talk a moral and spiritual languagea language of love, joy, communion, support, effective bondsthose notions which are requisite of any human being coming to terms with the terrors and traumas of being human.

bell hooks:I think that we have to do more than talk. People look at us and say: they are up there talking about love and communion, but we dont really see that love and communion taking place amongthem. We dont really see them living the anti-bourgeois life that would actually be against market forces. Cornel and I talked at the Schomburg on Tuesday night, and I said to him there that I felt very alienated from other Black intellectuals precisely because I wonder how we can we talk about transforming the lives of Black under-class people and ourselves if we are not talking about being anti-capitalistthat Black self-determination is not the same as Black capitalism.

Black self-determination is not the same as Black capitalism.

Glenn Loury:As I look on the panel, it looks like I am probably the appointed defender of capitalism. But I venture out on that shaky ground not so much out of ideological conviction as pragmatism. We dont have an alternative model to capitalism in the world today. Thats just a fact. The cultural degradation abetted by the for-profit dynamic that makes everything a commodity and that infringes upon what should be sacred is an issue. The question is how one insulates and nurtures that sacred space against the infringement of this market pressure. And it seems to me that that is not just, or even mainly, a political question. Its a question that engages spiritual issues.

In the context of Gene Riverss provocative indictmenthis concern about the responsibility of the intellectual and especially the Black intellectual in the age of crackwe need to consider the issue of being in relationship with the persons of concern. This is not just a process of thinking or of organizing or of being engaged in activity. Its a question of being present, ofknowingsome of the people who are the object of the inquiry, of where you place yourself. In a Christian context, we are, after all, all sinners; we are, after all,all subject to these degrading forces of moral decay. We are all in some way vulnerable, and we are all, therefore, responsible to each other. I am especially moved to ask about the peculiar responsibility of Blacks. Gene asks about the responsibility of the Blackintellectual in the age of crack. Whats special about blackness in that context? I have the intuition that thereissomething special about blackness, but I am very uneasy with that intuition because it cuts against the universalistic principle that, as human beings, we all ought to be concerned about these things. But there is history, there are traditions here.

Finally, the other side of the Black intellectual is the intellectual side; as intellectuals, we have been virtually contemptuous of the spiritual, of the transcendent. We think that we can reduce all of these questions to dialectical analyses of certain social processes.

hooks: I dont feel that I have been that kind of intellectual, Glenn, and I dont want to be represented in that way. There are varying kinds of Black intellectuals. I ask you to make that acknowledgement because I feel that it does a disservice to those of us who have not been disassociated to erase what we have done and lump us in this category of Black intellectuals who have felt this disconnection. We keep reproducing this binary opposition thats not true for all of us.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:I want to respond to something Glenn said, and put a twist on it. One of the sad things for me is that such a large part of our community has become virtually contemptuous of the intellectual. I remember a survey in theWashington Post last summer that listed things inner-city Black kids considered whitegetting straight As, doing well at school, going to the Smithsonian. That was a horrible moment for me and for those of us who were raised to behere, to be in this room. Our community produced us. We are not an aberration of the tradition, we are what the tradition wanted us to be.

Let me come now to the responsibility of the African-American intellectual and of our generationparticularly those of us who were undergraduates in the late 60s when institutions such as Harvard decided to open up and train a new Black elite (all of that of course in quotation marks). Our responsibility is, in part, to produce new organizational structures where the kinds of analysis necessary for long-term change in the society can take place. If you look at the history of African-American intellectuals and examine the discourse even as early as Absolom Jones, there is always a sense of urgency that undergirds our rhetoric. Why? Because we had the most horrendous socio-political economic system on our backs and we needed to get it off yesterday. That sense of urgency has led to wonderful moments, heroic moments in our history, but it has at times also led to action based on a lack of adequate reflection. Its incumbent upon us, as urgent as these problems are, to do the analysis, to stop feeling guilty about being an intellectual and do the hard work that will lead to social transformation. Everything we do does not have to have a hand grenade effect to slay the dragon tomorrow. And I think thats a very, very difficult message to get through to our community and often to our students, and students in rooms like this.

Appiah: Is there a way of taking that and asking the question this waywhat responsibility do Black intellectuals have apart from as intellectuals?

We have got to believe, as intellectuals of varying political persuasions, that the example of our lives matters as much as our testimony in words and in public settings.

hooks: I tried to start with how we live our lives because I think that when you are in a classroom with a progressive affluent Black intellectual who is humiliating you, and who is using discourse in such a way that does not affirm you, you dont feel that this person is really about something. I believe deeply, from both my spiritual and political practice, that we are first and foremost an example by our lives. I thought really deeply about coming here precisely because when I think about the responsibility of intellectuals in the age of crack, I dont see myself as dealing with a community out there. I am thinking about my brother who is a crack addict. I talked to him last weekabout his electricity bill. What is my responsibility on the concrete level as an individual? How do I use my resources and how do I work with the larger community to deal with the question of crack and all the other genocidal forces in our lives? I think that we have got to believe, as intellectuals of varying political persuasions, that the example of our lives mattersas muchas our testimony in words and in public settings.

Margaret Burnham:I would like to speak to Skips point about the sense that the intellectual endeavor is disregarded and disrespected in the African-American community: bell has made a point before which I think is relevant here, that in point of fact there is a sense in the African-American community, and always has been the sense, that As are what you are to strive for. I dont think there has ever been any deviation from this notion that you need togetthe grade. The question is: what are you getting the grade for? Are you getting the grade so that you can then continue to engage in the intellectual endeavor, or are you getting it so that you can then go out and get a job, and earn a living? Theres a difference there, I think, in the perception that intellectual means, armchair intellectual means a sit-down-and-do-nothing-intellectual, as opposed to study, do well in school, and then move on out of the age of crack. And I think thats really an important distinction.

I also wanted to pick up the issue of the relations within our community, and the notion that we have seen a recent and devastating deterioration. That is true. But it is also true that our community, and especially our community when engaged in struggle, as was the case in the 60s and 70s, heightened the notion of the necessity for love and caring, for the importance of contact with and the sense of responsibility for one another. Something happened between that movement and all that evolved from itwhich is represented here and in this roomand the age of crack that we are now called upon to address. And, it seems to me, its that gulf that we need somehow to understandthe gulf between that historic moment and the current situation in which we have lost a sense of the import, the significance, and the primacy of those relationships.

One final point: we shouldnt leave without looking critically at the academy and the place of the academy either in supporting and facilitating our role as positive and effective persons within our community; or, on the other hand, making that endeavor more difficult.

Rivers:I would like to ask: to what extent has our old class segregation reproduced and exacerbated the anti-intellectualism that we decry? To what extent have we, by virtue ofremovingourselves from the community, actually fedintothe very thing we lament? Take the periodically sexy topic of anti-semitism. One of the things thats interesting to me about that concept as a force in our community is that it raises the question: to what extent have wecontributedto the negative social forces in our community by segregatingourselves, leaving a weak social groupdefenseless; left to their own devices they do all these negative things that wethenturn around and lecture them against as weensurethat they never get close to us. So, one part of this discussion has to do with our class identity, and how wedistanceourselves. We talk in theoretical terms about emancipating the poor, for the sake of humanity; just dont let the unwashed and the illiterate rub shoulders with me. I wouldnt want to be caught dead having to interface with them toreducethe negativism and the nihilism that produces these dysfunctional social patterns.

West: I think you have raised a number of issues that can be easily confused and conflated. The assumption at times, Gene, is that if the middle classof which the Black intellectuals are one specieswere to stay, that middle class could, in a messianic way, uplift and fundamentally transform the Black poor condition. I dont believe that.

Rivers:Not necessarily. But they could just have a conversation periodically.

West: They have conversations all the time. I think you have to raise the question: why did the middle class leave? They left because they had opportunities heretofore not available to them. And lets keep in mind that the majority of Black folk are very much like the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers: they are working-class people. They are not middle class, they are not so-called under class or working poor. They are like roc. They are hard working brothers and sisters on the edge of poverty, if the check doesnt show up on the 30thbut thats not middle class. And they are trying to get out. Why? because of the levelsof crime, thefearof crime, the combat zones and the existential wastelands. Thats why they leave, they are human beings. They want their children to havesomesense of walking the streets safely. Given that reality, though, brother, the question is: what can the middle class do? Especially a parvenu bourgeoisie, a newly arrived middle class.

Experts arent intellectuals. Some are. But most arent. Experts are something else. Thats something else, its very important.

Every middle class we know in human history becomes intoxicated with bourgeois-ness. Every one we know. The Black middle class has, too. You see, part of what we are talking about is the difficulty of being an intellectual in a business civilization. An intellectual has a profound dedication to the life of the mind, believes in a playfulness of the life of the mind, understands it requires discipline like a jazz musician. Thats serious discipline. You can do that anywhereinner-city, vanilla suburbs, wherever you go. But to be an intellectual, to cut against the grain of a business civilization, means that intellectuals actually surface precisely when they are expertslike here at the Kennedy School. But experts arent intellectuals. Some are. But most arent. Experts are something else. Thats something else, its very important. And Eugene might be asking us to beexperts. But thats something else, Gene. I am not against it. But thats something else than being intellectual.

But the other side of this thing iscelebrity, which is part of the commodification of academic star

Rivers:Have we been commodified?

West:Yes, we have been commodified. Theres no escape from commodification. So that unease has to be looked at clearly and cautiously

Appiah: Can I just have bell and then Glenn please?

hooks: One of my concerns in coming here tonight was precisely that my voice, as a Black female voice would be overshadowed by homosocial bonding among the men here. One of the things that Eugene evoked was women and children. Part of why I wish to see a greater voice from radical Black women intellectuals is that many of us experience our intellectuality, our stardom very differently. As I listen I feel more and more divorced from this discussion precisely because I feel that my sense of being an intellectual first comes out of being nurtured by Black women in Black institutionsthe church, the schooland so I am trying to suggest that we have something to learn from many voiceless Black women who have tried to keep alive the pursuit of intellectuality in diverse Black communities, among all classes. We need mechanisms to hear from those people, and to learn how they devote their resources to keeping that pursuit alive.

On this issue of resources: I recognize, Glenn, that I participate in capitalism. But Inever hear Black intellectualsprogressive, affluent, Black intellectuals, or conservativestalk about what we do with our money. A redistribution of resources begins fundamentally with: what am I willing to give up? If I am unwilling to give up some of my resources, then I dont believe that I am going to convince masses of other people that they should give up some of their resources, because we know capitalism is not going to end tomorrow, and that a lot of us Black folks are going to be more affluent. The question for me, then, is how do we share our resources within diverse Black communities? And I see that as a concrete question.

Part of why I wish to see a greater voice from radical Black women intellectuals is that many of us experience our intellectuality, our stardom very differently.

For me, dealing with addicts in the family raises a concrete question of co-dependency: to what extent do you share resources to enable or to allow people toredeem their lives? To me these are practical concrete questions, and I venture to say that many Black women are dealing with them. I tell my students all the time that Black folks who are crack addicted are not bleeding white people to death. It is the families that get bled. So if we want to look for a model of responsibility we need to look at productive models in those domestic contexts where people are trying to talk about how do you share resources effectively without further disenabling.

Loury:I dont have an answer to bells question, but I have accumulated several points that I want to make. I think you are wrong about commodification, Cornel. Commodification doesnt enter in everywhere. If that were true, then this demand for professionalization, and the conversion of everything into monetary currency would also penetrate into the church. We would have to understand what Eugene Rivers is doing in the Azusa ministry as an implementation of that kind of motive. The fact is that therearearenas of our lives into which those motives do not insinuate themselves. And we have to ask ourselves why thats so.

hooks:But what are those arenas?

West:Think of the sermons that these preachers sell every week.

Loury:I am not saying there are not preachers for sale, I am saying there are preachers who are not for sale. The point is that bell talks about what we do with our resources, and thats a very good question. Love is not just a feeling. It has to do with commitment, sacrifice, and knowing the other person. But what can the context be within which those resources are shared? What will provide the trust that resources that are made available will be appropriately used? We are so used to thinking in a political model in which we presume that the state will simply provide the required policy mechanisms. But in these communal contexts it seems to me that that trust has to be built from the ground up. It has to be manifest in the work of particular people, in particular places, whobuildinstitutions that dont now exist, that are, that have theintegrityto countenance that kind of activity.

One last point: I think this discussion is too abstract. I dont mean that to put anybodydown, but I mean, I think there is an answer to the question that somebody raised about things the middle-class can do. There are tens upon tens of thousands of children, for example, who are in foster care, who dont have homes. Now, you can talk about a tenuous middle class. But those people who are one pay-check away nevertheless have the capacity to nurture, support, and love these children. We ask ourselves as Black people, what are our responsibilities? Surely those responsibilities include seeing after those children. Where is the movement amongst our leaderspolitical and intellectualto create the institutional capacity for us to see that those children are looked after better than they are now? Thats not unfeasible. Thats not pie in the sky. Thats something that can actually happen, and again, it has to happen in particular places. It has to happen in Boston, in Mattapan, it has to happen because 20 people, and then 200, and then 2,000 determine that its going to happen someplace. Its not going to happen because Bill Clinton runs for president saying he would like to see it happen.

Gates: But Glennbefore I respond to bell and Margaretthere are attempts like Marion Wright Edelmans Childrens Defense Fund, which is a very, very important movement for us all, and which Cornel and I both belong to. That, it seems to me, is an attempt of the so-called new middle class to reach back, and to make bridges to the community that was left behind.

To Margaretyou ended by asking what happened to our community between say, 1960 and 1980? To be concrete, I have four statistics that I would like to share. In 1960, 24% of Black households were headed by women; in 1990 that number is 56%, and 55% of these women live in poverty. The percentage of births out of wedlock in the Black community in 1960 was 21.6%; in 1988 it is 63.7%. In 1960 19.9% of our children lived only with their mothers; in 1990 that number was 51.2%. In 1960, finally, two percent of our children had mothers who had never been married; in 1990 that number was 35%. If raising our children is the most important work of a society, its burdens now fall disproportionately on the much-demonized single mother.

Whats happened is that our community has been divided into two. We now have two Black communities, not one. We probably have more than that. Yet each of us tends to speak of the Black community as if blackness were a class. We have to decide if blackness really does constitute a class. We have to start with this issue, and recognize that the community we were children in no longer exists. There is a new Black communityor new Black communitiesout there, and if we are trying to put it back together then we have to recognize that reality and then talk about new solutions to new problems. That is, I think, the signal failure of our generation of Black intellectuals. More often than not we resort to romantic black nationalism or to some other way to assuage the guilt that we feel, and everybody in here knows what I am talking about, about leaving that other community behind.

I know lots of middle-class and upper-class Black people who are one pay check away from poverty because of accumulated debt in their lives.

hooks: I dont know what Skip is talking about. I am going to testify from the location that I inhabit. I dont feel like I have left that community behind. That community has been in my life every single day. I know lots of middle-class and upper-class Black people who are one pay check away from poverty because of accumulated debt in their lives. One of my sisters who was leading a very bourgeois life found herself homeless after she lost her job. I saw her spiral from her Mercedes, her BMW, her whole $400,000 life into homelessness in a matter of months. If we want to talk about why a Black middle class or upper middle class has to have different values, then we need to deal with our own materialism. We cannot talk about sharing resources that we dont have to share because of our own levels of greed. I mean I am interested in talking about what kind of values do we replace market values with and how do we do that?

West: I dont think the Black middle-class is any more greedy than any other middle class that existed, in fact, in some ways it is less so because we do have certain survivors guilt that we talked about before. I mean this is one of the reasons why I dont want to lose the dialectic we started off with in terms of whats internal to the Black community and whats external. We are living in a society that has certain obligations to its citizens. I dont care who they are. We have got a lumpen bourgeoisie, we have got a middle class thats never truly been a middle class even though it does have certain obligationsthough all wealth in the Black middle class is equivalent to the wealth of white workers. We have incomethats higher, not wealth, because we could not get houses because ofdiscrimination and keeping suburbs vanilla. It was federal policy that did that and we can tell the story about that. So I do not want to lose sight of the external. We cannot sit here and allow American society in its broad reaches to get off the hook here. The Black middle class is not a messianic middle class and it never will be. It is going to behave middle class. We are talking about a critical minority of Black middle-class folk who are willing to sacrifice themselves.

Rivers:What does that mean for us in this room, Cornel? To move the conversation along we need to bring it home personally, to what one does with ones own notions of greednot to call for the state to redistribute wealth when I am not personally willing to do it myself.

West:That analogy doesnt work. It doesnt work at allindividual Black middle-class person and the state and corporate America?

Rivers:I am not talking about equivalence in magnitude. I am saying that you cant tell somebody else that they should distribute their wealth, however they got it, while you are sitting on all kinds of disposable income and flying all around the world cooling out and letting Black people suffer. We cant make that argument anymore. What we have to do is talk about how we are, in this existential nightmare, morally obligated with our class privilege and our access and opportunity to alleviate the suffering of Black people. I cant talkwe cant talkabout white America and theirthing when we are sitting up here with Yellowstone Forest in our own eyes. Thats the issue that Glenn and bell are pushing us on. How do we talk about personal commitment?

West:We have been talking about both at the same time.

Rivers:I agree with that. But talking about white people is easy.

West:Not white people, but well-to-do white people, powerful white people, not working-class folk.

Rivers:Talking about rich white folk is easy.

West:We are not talking about them personally, we are talking about the wealth they have.

Rivers:I agree with that, Cornel. I am with you. All I am saying is: lets do something uncharacteristic and bring it home and talk about what we are going to do. We have got celebrities up here. How do we mobilize your celebrity status so that we can produce an infrastructure so that those who live on the ground, in the bush, working with Leroy and Rahim, have the kinds of resources they need. You do your thing. Thats cool. We have to have everybody everywhere. But we need an infrastructure that says that Rahim and Catrina and Rashida have resources coming to them. Thats where our celebrity intelligentsia can help. They have the access.

Appiah:Let me ask this question: why should Black intellectuals use their celebrity anymore than other Black celebrities, who on the whole have a great deal more celebrity than most intellectuals? What is the obligation over and above the obligation to act as an intellectual, to do the thinking that is necessary? Obviously we all have obligations as citizens, we all have obligations as members of churches or resistors of church membership in my case. But the idea of talking about the responsibilities of Black intellectuals is to talk about responsibilitiesspecificto people as intellectuals.

I feel deeply that Black intellectuals have to move outside the academy to share how we think and what we think about, and there are many ways to do that.

hooks:One of the resources that I feel I have, specific to intellectual experience, is critical thinking and critical consciousness. I think particularly because I came out of the working Black poor, I feel strongly the need to share that resource because I feel that what enabled me was that capacity to think critically and analytically and to act in relationship to my thoughts. So I think a lot about how that can be effectively shared beyond the academy with diverse Black communities, and it seems to me that one of the big issues as I think about us here is a question of literacy and the fact that so much of Black intellectual thought is shared in written discourse. In forms that are apart from a diversity of Black presence and experience, and it seems to me I would like us to have a space where we share what we concretely do. I think that one, I feel deeply that Black intellectuals have to move outside the academy to share how we think and what we think about, and there are many ways to do that. I know that people like Cornel and Eugene do that through the church. I myself try to go to cities and ask people, where do Black people hang out.

More here:

The Responsibility of Black Intellectuals - Boston Review

To find happiness in this world, live authentically.

Existentialism is a philosophical system that contends existence is the antecedent to essence. This means that there is no innate guiding principle for humanity. Rather, humans are just agglomerations of matter that just exist.

SpongeBob SquarePants is a childrens cartoon about the misadventures of anthropomorphic sponge and his fish friends in the fictional Bikini Bottom. Its early seasons are also pop cultures best representation of existential philosophy, in particular Jean-Paul Sartres existential nihilism.

The dynamic between SpongeBob, his best friend Patrick Star, and their next door neighbor Squidward Tentacles, communicates to viewers what Sartre was communicating to us. With the help of our friends, we have to find our own individual purposes and happiness within the universe.

In the episode SB-129, Squidward wants to play the clarinet, but he is pestered by SpongeBob and Patrick, who want him to go jellyfishing with them. In an attempt to escape from SpongeBob, Squidward accidentally locks himself in the Krusty Krab freezer and finds himself in the future.

Discerning that he needs to get back to his own time, Squidward finds a time machine. However, Squidward ends up breaking the time machine and enters a white void. Noticing that he is finally alone, Squidward starts to play his clarinet. However, he realizes in the void that he has no real purpose and desperately wants to get back to SpongeBob.

His wish is granted, and the time machine returns him to his present where he shows his affection to SpongeBob and Patrick.

The episode harkens to Sartres ontological teachings by explaining that there is no order to the universe. Rather, it is through our ability to connect with those around us that gives humankind its purpose.

In other words, Squidward needs the friendship of SpongeBob if he is to avert a crisis of nihilism.

While Sartre emphasizes the notion of community in his philosophy, he is by no means a conformist. The episode Squidville shows the dangers of conformity as the episode examines Sartres material ideas.

The episode starts with SpongeBob and Patrick acquiring leaf blowers, which they use to destroy Squidwards house. In a fit of rage, Squidward choses to move out of the neighborhood and into Squidville, a community of squids that are similar to Squidward in every way.

Initially, Squidward is enthralled to be living in a community where everyone is a carbon-copy of him. However, Squidward becomes depressed as time progresses with the monotony of his life in Squidville.

That is until he sees an unguarded leaf blower. Remembering SpongeBob and Patrick playing with their leaf blowers, Squidward reaches an epiphany and begins to tinker with the device.

In that moment, Squidward truly begins to appreciate SpongeBobs and by extension Sartres philosophy: to find happiness, be yourself.

What the episode is meant to show is that in seeking to find meaning in his life, Squidward pursued a destructive and inauthentic way of living as he was more concerned with what others thought of him.

In Squidville, Squidward does not actually have any friends he can relate to. Contrast this with SpongeBob who has Patrick. SpongeBob remains true to himself. Because of that, SpongeBob is able to build lifelong friendships and find happiness.

SpongeBob SquarePants is often criticized by people who cannot appreciate intelligent humor as being harmful. Yet, this is an unfair characterization of Nickelodeons flagship cartoon.

The show teaches children and adults that there is no authority within the universe that forces you to conform to the ideas and values of your peers. In other words, have fun and just be yourself.

Columns reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board, The Daily Iowan, or other organizations in which the author may be involved.

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Opinion | SpongeBob SquarePants as an exploration of Existentialism - UI The Daily Iowan

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Adult Swim'sRick and Morty has been one of the best shows of the pandemic era. Without ever referencing it, series creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland successfully captured the bleakness, detachment, and nihilism so many people are feeling. Just like Season 4 felt like a lot of broadsides against the Trump era, Season 5's intention of only having high-concept, disconnected adventures collapses into the most beautiful singularity wherein the entirety of Rick and Mortycanon collapse in on themselves and create something new. What a ride. And now, you can get it in your hot little hands as a Blu-Ray or DVD set or collectible steelbook just in time for holiday giving. But is it worth your entertainment dollars? Undoubtedly, yes.

Rick and Morty Season 5 Blu-Ray cover. Image courtesy [adult swim]The genius of Season 5 of Rick and Mortycame in its embrace of a new, yet ambitious, schedule. Embracing the production delays from the pandemic, the show decided to release two episodes a month, every month, for five months. And yet somehow, every single episode was a hit. Just. . . just look at these episodes:

"Mort Dinner Rick Andre""Mortyplicity""A Rickconvenient Mort""Rickdependence Spray""Amortycan Grickfitti""Rick & Morty's Thanksploitation Spectacular""Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion""Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort""Forgetting Sarick Mortshall""Rickmurai Jack"

"Rickmurai Jack" . . . it's been three months and I still can't quite wrap my head around what happened in its final minutes. My personal favorite episode "A Rickconvenient Mort" starts pulling the thread early and planting the seeds of a later split between Rick and Morty, but not before we explore more about toxic relationships. Plus, who doesn't love Alison Brie as Planetina?

But perhaps the greatest trick the show pulled in its Rick-like insistence all season long is that it doesn't like "canon" and interconnected storyline, yet somehow it provides a cohesive season-long rumination on toxic relationships and the need to walk away from the things that ultimately hurt us. It's brilliant.

So, yes, you get that metric ton of great Rick and Morty episodes. But what about the extras? You also get two videos of Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland doing a "B-storyline generator" which is pretty funny, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the difficulties of producing the show during the pandemic. But one of the best parts is this set has collected all of the behind-the-scenes videos that you'd normally have to scour YouTube for and offered them all here in one place alongside their associated episode.

It's insights like these from the writers and creators that provided needed context for so much of this. As writer Jeff Loveness explained in the above discussion of the season finale, "Evil Morty is this product of a fucked-up system. He is a Zoomer growing up in late-stage capitalism. And he realizes: this whole thing is bad. And he has to burn it downhe has to break the Central Finite Curvehe has to break the toxic relationship between Rick and Morty that Morty has been manufactured into."

And that is how the show became mandatory pandemic-era viewing. It's that undeniable nihilism that mixes with irrepressible Morty-like naivete and whimsy. And speaking of, the real question that I'm sure so many of you are asking is "Yeah, bro, but, like isn't physical media dead?"

And let's have a real frank discussion here, folks. In the world of the streaming wars, the only sure bet is a physical copy. Here's a quick challenge: where do you watch Season 5 of Rick and Morty right now on streaming? Hulu? HBOMax? Nope and nope. And with an unknown future where who knows where Rick and Morty and other [adult swim] content will stream, the best way to make sure you always have access to watch this content is to own it. Prefer to watch things digitally? Great. You get a free digital download code, too.

So forget that Snake Jazz box set you were thinking about gifting this holiday season and go grab a Season 5 Rick and Morty steelbook instead. Or treat yourself. You're an adult and you deserve nice things. Or you're a piece of shit and don't. I don't know. But this is worth getting.

Review by Andy Wilson

9.5/10

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics, most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Rick's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterization, his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. And... Ok I just can't anymore with this detached irony copypasta BS! This is good. Really really good. I know it's not cool to be sincere or to love something unironically, but this is great and you all should really own it.

Original post:

Rick and Morty: Why You Need to Pick Up Season 5's Blu-Ray Set - Bleeding Cool News

There are a lot of people out there who know what punk rock is but have no idea how to explain it to a novice or an outsider. It would seem simple enough to define it as three-chord teenage rebel music, but what about all those songs that have four or more chords? Or all the practitioners who are over 50 years old, never mind over 20? Then theres the matter of how few are actually in their teens

Yes, there are chainsaw guitars, but what about those tunes that might have some jangly elements? Or such guitarless, synth-heavy punk outfits as the Screamers? You can always speak of how fast it is, but are we talking speedy like the Ramones? Or ripping 275 BPM a la hardcore? You can discuss how musicianship is not central to the music, but how do you explain virtuosos such as New York Dolls and Heartbreakers drummer Jerry Nolan? Or Rancid bassist Matt Freeman, whose chops could put the fear of God into any jazz player? You can speak of the inherent anger and nihilism, but what of the joyous pop of the Undertones Teenage Kicks?

Perhaps any attempt to explain punk rock is akin to the remarks of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who when asked to define what is/isnt deemed obscene offered that he didnt know what it was, [b]ut I know it when I see it. Its ultimately down to a fiercely independent spirit and a sense of outsiderness. But it can take on many forms from there.

These 20 songs are selected to play to your friend who wants to know what punk is, as a starting point. Its not meant to be complete. Instead, think of it as some good examples for the uninitiated.

Many to this day would insist Australian firebrands the Saints 1976 debut single is The Ultimate Punk Record. Singer Chris Bailey, guitarist Ed Kuepper, bassist Kym Bradshaw and drummer Ivor Hay developed this speedy, angry racket unaware of the Ramones. But theres the manic eighth-note drums, the sawtoothed guitar and Baileys laconic snarl expressing pure disaffection: Livin in a world insane/They cut out some heart and some brain/Been filling it up with dirt/Yeah baby, dunno how it hurts/To be stranded on your own/Stranded far from home. If one record defines punk rock, its (Im) Stranded.

No one will ever agree who was the first punk band. The Stooges, fronted by fearless blowtorch exhibitionist Iggy Pop, could certainly claim the trophy (though the next two bands had a large part in the musics development). As Iggy And The Stooges, with whiplash guitarist James Williamson moving Ron Asheton to bass, they made music that perfected punk rock three years early. Everybody always tryin to tell me what to do, Pop snarls over Williamsons rampaging Gibson. Dont you try, dont you try to tell me what to do. Then he dived face-first into the third row.

Before the Stooges came the MC5. Formed in 1964, they represented 60s garage impulses mutating into something louder. They simultaneously discovered feedback-drenched English blast-rock a la the Who and the Yardbirds and the melodically and rhythmically radical free jazz of Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra. It created a driving sound as explosive as anything emanating from the neighborhood Ford automobile factory. This re-recording of 1968s A-Square 45s A-side disappointed those preferring the originals looser feel. But this straight-ahead rendition from second LP Back In The USA earns pride of place for directly linking Detroit 1969 to early Ramones in feel.

The shorthand on American glam renegades the New York Dolls: They invented the sound of punk rock and the look of the Sunset Strip in the 80s. But Mtley Cre hardly possessed Johnny Thunders slashing Gibson abuse or singer David Johansens gobs of attitude. Vietnamese Baby, alongside Iggy And The Stooges Search And Destroy, is likely the roots of punks obsession with insurrectionist politics, likening the unabating conflict in Southeast Asia to a sour love affair: Catch me your slaves, shot at/Every rifle on the way and I gotta/Show you more mustard gas than any girl ever seen

The pride of Forest Hills, Queens, the Ramones are the point where everything preceding punk coalesces and distills into a cohesive beast. They are what most point to as The Prototype Punk Band: loud, fast, aggressive, simple, irreverent, full of attitude. Oh, and black leather jackets. Other Ramones tunes such as Blitzkrieg Bop may be more recognizable. But Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and Tommys punk credentials are no more out on the table than on this 50s dance song parody opening the superb Rocket To Russia album. Johnnys guitar is especially in-your-face here.

In 1975, Dee Dee Ramone teamed up with Richard Hell, then in New York Dolls-offshoot the Heartbreakers, determined to write a better ode to drug misuse than Lou Reeds Velvet Underground-era dirge Heroin. The rocker they crafted made smack addiction sound as cheery as doing the Twist, pinned to a big, greasy R&B guitar riff. The Heartbreakers, centered around the Dolls junkie contingent of Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan, took Chinese Rocks after the Ramones rejected its negativity. The song practically screamed, sardonically, Arent we living such lovely lives? Which helped establish punks reputation for irony and sarcasm.

Punk was hardly exclusive to New York or England. By 1975, most cities across the globe had their own local Stooges/Dolls-style band, playing stripped-down/sped-up/aggressive 70s rock. Cleveland had the Dead Boys, led by Iggy-gone-slapstick vocalist Stiv Bators and metallic whiz-bang guitarist Cheetah Chrome. Sonic Reducer, from Chromes protopunk outfit Rocket From The Tombs, is every bit as potent a punk statement of intent as Blitzkrieg Bop: I dont need anyone/Dont need no mom and dad, Bators screams over Chromes four-chord firestorm. Dont need no pretty face/Dont need no human race. Nihilism was never so danceable.

Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock and lead snarler Johnny Rotten intended Pretty Vacant to poke fun of manager Malcolm McLarens obsession with Richard Hell. Blank Generation, anyone? Dont ask us to attend/Cause were not all there, Rotten sneers over a guitar hook Matlock claims was borrowed from Swedish pop perfectionists ABBAs SOS. Oh dont pretend cause I dont care/I dont believe illusions cause too much is real/So stop your cheap comment/Cause we know what we feel. No single Sex Pistols tune cant ignite a roomful of sweaty, pogoing punks like this one.

Is she really going out with him? wonders the Damneds cool-rockin vampire Dave Vanian, prior to Rat Scabies igniting a monstrous Gene Krupa-esque drumbeat. Punk was rock n rolls supposed destruction. Yet touches such as Vanians adlib half-inched from the Shangri-Las Leader Of The Pack proved punk musicians were rock fans in spite of themselves. The Damned were more honest about it than most. Englands first punk single was gloriously rock n roll. Leader Brian James created not only a deathless rock guitar riff in New Rose but a joyous celebration of punks emergence disguised as a love song.

The ultimate punk move ever? The Sex Pistols crosstown rivals the Clash writing a song detailing every way their major label violated their contractthen having the company release it as a single. They said wed be artistically free/When we signed that bit of paper, Joe Strummer barked over Mick Jones rampaging guitar figure. They meant, Lets make lots of money/And worry about it later! Reggae legend Lee Scratch Perry added a smoky density to the production, as Strummer wails against his oppressors: I dont trust you/So why should you trust me?

After initial singer Howard Devoto left Buzzcocks, Pete Shelley redesigned them into an outlet for his gender-nonspecific pop songs, filled with his wounded romanticism. Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldntve?), anyone? But Shelley and Devotos Buzzcocks Mk. 1 songs were arguably more definitively punk. Times Up, from Englands first independently released punk record Spiral Scratch, particularly sounds like Rotten growling several existentialist verses: And Ill be standing in the standing room/And Ill be smoking in the smoking room/And now Im dying in the living room/Im gonna forget what I came for here real soon.

Heres where hardcore enters the punk timeline. Orange Countys the Middle Class and Motrhead got there first. But D.C.s Bad Brains singer H.R., guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jenifer and drummer Earl Hudson are where hardcores sound, speed and ethos all coalesced and got a name. Their intensity sonically, spiritually, mentally whipped up audiences to a furious degree. It scared club owners, leading to Bad Brains bookings drying up. Undaunted, they played in NYC, boiling blood up there. The band responded with this tune: Ooh, ooh you cant afford/To close your doors/So soon no more.

Black Flag became the greatest hardcore band ever without breaking past Ramones speed they were midtempo, compared to Bad Brains. Rather, they were hardcore in the Oxford Dictionary sense: The most active, committed or strict members of a group or movement or highly committed in ones support for or dedication to something. That sonic/philosophical intensity scared the Los Angeles Police Department, who battled with the band and their fans constantly. Hence guitarist Greg Ginn writing anthems of defiance as ferocious as Rise Above: We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop us/Its no use!

Originally recorded by singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys in 1973, Wild In The Streets was a tough, nasty R&B rocker fairly similar to some of his friend Lou Reeds work, or that of rising New Jersey boy Bruce Springsteen. Brought eight years later by former Black Flag singer Keith Morris to his new hardcore band Circle Jerks, Wild In The Streets became a rampaging punk anthem. The band poured so much piled-up energy and desperation into Jeffreys song, it was unrecognizable.

D.C. hardcore became the most ferocious anywhere. It was partially due to Bad Brains abiding influence, minus their reggae side. Which also meant harDCore bands could play their instruments exceptionally well, if not with Bad Brains insane funk and jazz-derived chops. There was also a prevalent moral authority in the scene, stemming from Minor Threats rapid ascendance to D.C.s top dogs. Singer Ian MacKayes straightedge philosophy provided an example of sobriety and clear-thinking as an insurrectionist act. Filler decried the early 80s rise of the religious right: You call it religion/Youre full of shit!

By the mid-80s, hardcore became formulaic and rote. It had lost its excitement and the shock of the new, as scores of bands barely able to play their instruments played increasingly faster anti-Reagan rants nowhere near as clever as Dead Kennedys. Some of us longed for the old jacked-up rock n roll of punks first wave, or its predecessors. The Lazy Cowgirls moved to Los Angeles from Vincennes, Indiana, to kick punks rotting corpse awake, installing the Ramones drivetrain inside a chassis built from choice parts nicked from the Dolls and Stooges. Losen Your Mind is definitive Lazy Cowgirls.

Grunge was another answer to hardcore stasis. Instead of getting speedier until the musics a blur, why not slow down? Why not pile on so much fuzz and distortion, the music becomes the consistency of mud? Mudhoney issued grunges definitive opening volley in Touch Me Im Sick, their debut single and one of Sub Pop Records flagship releases. Dan Peters beat nine shades of tar out of his drum kit, as Steve Turner and Mark Arm back the latters yowling verse about the AIDS crisis: I wont live long/And Im full of rot/Gonna give you, girl/Everything I got.

Riot grrrl was the ultimate rebuke to hardcore, which got increasingly macho. The football players who may have previously beaten up punks shaved their heads, donned Black Flag T-shirts and turned the mosh pit into a bloodbath. Much retrograde sexism and homophobia came in with these meatheads, chasing away many of the women and LGBTQIA+ community initially involved in early punk. Riot grrrl reversed this trend, bringing women back to punks creative and political heart. Bikini Kill, led by the charismatic Kathleen Hanna, were the best of the bunch. Rebel Girl, featuring Joan Jett on guitar, was their most potent song.

Grunge, of course, decimated mainstream music and culture with Nirvanas massive commercial success. Suddenly, punk disaffection was everywhere. When grunges downbeat aesthetic grew too wearying, Green Days shiny, high-energy old-school punk a la Ramones or Generation X became the new sound. Ten years later, with George W. Bush war-drumming for a new conservatism, Green Day injected Clash-like leftist politics into the conversation. American Idiot became a radio and MTV monster while addressing some of the same things riot grrrl decried: Im not a part of a redneck agenda/Now everybody do the propaganda/And sing along to the age of paranoia.

Just prior to American Idiot, the White Stripes brought basic 60s garage bashing back to the pop charts. Jack White and former wife Meg White, being from Detroit, naturally had the MC5 and the Stooges in their blood. But there was also plenty of Ramones in there, beneath the layers of red-and-white fuzz. It was as obvious in their debut single Lets Shake Hands as on their 2002 breakthrough hit Fell In Love With A Girl. But Hands was a classic opening shot, clearly displaying every element that defined the White Stripes over time. It was classic punk rock, too.

Go here to see the original:

Beginner's guide to punk rock | Punk rock - Alternative Press

Genre movies have been Mikhail Reds preferred playground ever since the Filipino director was a teenager with a camcorder, self-producing zombie movies and using ketchup for blood.

His latest is Arisaka, a Western thriller premiering on Netflix today (December 9) and Reds latest step to realising a career-long vision: that of the intelligent genre piece as a vehicle for social commentary.

Arisaka stars Maja Salvador as embattled policewoman Mariano, part of a security escort for a vital witness testifying against Southern Luzon gangsters and their political backers. But the convoy is ambushed and the witness killed. Mariano survives and escapes into the same jungle where the Bataan Death March of 1942 took place. Hunted by crooked cops, Marianos hope of survival flags until shes taken in by a family from the local Aeta tribe.

Loosely based on the 2013 Atimonan massacre, in which 13 people were killed in a shootout in the Quezon province, Arisaka draws inspiration from the traditional Western and plays with revenge tropes, even as it takes a closer look at how indigenous communities routinely suffer social and economic marginalisation. The movies title is a reference to the Arisaka family of bolt-action rifles: standard issue guns for the Imperial Japanese Army in the Pacific theatre that later occupied the Philippines.

NME caught up with Red just as he was wrapping up shooting for HBOs fantasy series Halfworlds and knee-deep in post-production for Arisaka. Read on for a conversation about the tug-of-war between optimism and nihilism in Reds movies and how being a gamer influences his process.

Youve declared that you put so much of yourself into filmmaking that you get emotionally and physically exhausted. Have you since found ways to sustain your energy?

Making movies is exhausting and emotionally draining. You really need stamina. In my early years everything was just me but eventually projects got bigger and I learned to delegate. I see my job now as making sure everything is unified. Sometimes it gets tiring juggling so many projects but if your objectives and reasons are clear, that its not just for the sake of being called a filmmaker, then its OK.

HBOs Halfworlds was shot in the city while Arisaka was mostly in the province, but both were full-on productions during the 2020 pandemic. We assume there were plenty of challenges to your workflow?

Arisaka was my first experience with a full pandemic production bubble. Due to COVID, industry people have since been forced to accept a strict 12-hours filming rule. Its a grind, I must admit. When I started out I really couldnt estimate how long a scene would take to set-up and shoot. Oh, gunfights? Thosell be fast! But now, especially with Arisaka, I realised my energy doesnt hold up to week-long one-scene shoots.

Maja Salvador in Arisaka. Credit: Ten17P Studios

You have a specific method for crafting a films plot: you assemble a story out of real life events that might not be related.

Its years of news and story fragments and I archive them all in my mental trunk. Later on, I might meet an interesting person or see something where I might take the story and it gets pieced together. One day, after accumulating all these fragments, I may be in the shower and it all just snaps together. So its important to incubate and its always been a visual process to me. Im such a mess. Nothings written down and its all just floating in my head. Im the type that when the deadline comes its only then that I start to write anything down. Personally, I dont recommend this!

What was assembling those fragments like for Arisaka?

Part of Arisaka is how the heroine is going through repetitive phases of violence and historical oppression, like her characters own Via Dolorosa. A part of the film is about rebellion and insurrection and the Stations of the Cross illustrate benchmark events in her own survival story.

Theres a part of me thats very nihilistic and that it is always survival of the fittest Yet, I struggle with that because like [my] female heroes, something inside me says we can do better

The female heroes in your movies seem to be connected by a deep resentment. Emotions from repeating cruelty clash with the need to evolve beyond ones moral code to live. Theres that sentiment that such a change might break the violent cycle but you might not like what you become?

That is correct, especially with the question in Arisaka of how to free yourself from vicious patterns. In a sense, there are still invaders in our own ranks as Filipinos, so are we really free? But I always put a feminine, usually innocent character whose point of view is that we can co-exist, even as she is oppressed by the world.

Theres a part of me thats very nihilistic and that it is always survival of the fittest. Even in [Reds 2016 movie and breakout feature] Birdshot the world is very rapacious, hungry. Theres a recurring food chain motif in my movies and in order to survive a predatory world you must grow fangs. Yet, I struggle with that because like [my] female heroes, something inside me says we can do better.

Maja Salvador and Shella Mae Romulado in Arisaka. Credit: Ten17P Studios

Youve built a reputation on a diverse range of genre work. Are you motivated to hop through these tropes by something deeper, or just a fun-seeking impulse?

I do like switching genres and I hope my filmography feels diverse enough! I also feel you really have to look close at your patterns to realise what youre doing. It has something to do I think with how I am a longtime gamer. Like how I want to go through this story using another role-playing game build. I am always curious about other points of view.

As an avid gamer, does assembling a team with balanced skills to complete missions also figure in your directing?

Its made me conscious of filmmaking as an industry. In video games you have a main character thats optimal, but you also have a home-brewed build that you experiment with. I tend to do both in my films. I say: be aware of play style.

Arisaka is now streaming on Netflix

Read more here:

Director Mikhail Red on revenge-thriller Arisaka: To survive in a predatory world you must grow fangs - NME.com