- A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The one quality I appreciate most in a movie is creativity—and this movie has tons of it. The set and costume design alone are amazing, especially in the first half of the film, which I personally think is the best part. The second act slows down a bit, but it ends on a high note with the third. Some other noteworthy stuff:
- Half the time, I had no idea what the Droogs were saying.
- I loved the sped-up sex scene set to Beethoven.
- Also, this movie has a lot of boobies. I like.
- The music in general fits really well and has a timeless, iconic quality.
The central question the film poses is:
Can you be a good person if the only reason you don’t do wrong is because of punishment—or because you physically can’t?
The movie clearly leans toward saying that without choice, without the freedom to do wrong, being “good” becomes meaningless. Only through the contrast of being able to do evil and choosing not to, can goodness be considered praiseworthy or meaningful.
There’s an interesting parallel here to the movie No Country for Old Men, which asks:
Is virtue only worthwhile if it’s rewarded—or is its worth found in its very lack of reward?
Both films question the meaning of morality, whether vice or virtue, when it’s stripped of its existential context, i.e., the ability to choose freely.
- In No Country for Old Men, this stripping happens through cosmic indifference: bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people—seemingly at random. Virtue isn’t necessarily rewarded, and evil isn’t reliably punished. Yet people must still choose how to act.
- In A Clockwork Orange, the stripping happens through deterministic control: can we call someone the agent of their actions if they have no real choice? Or are they more like automatons? Vice is eliminated not by moral growth, but by stripping the agent of choice through psychological conditioning.
Even though the two movies come at the question from opposite angles, they ultimately arrive at the same conclusion: Virtue and vice, goodness and badness, only make sense in a context where both reward and punishment are uncertain, and where the agent of action has the freedom to choose otherwise.
Good movie. 7/10.
- Eric by Terry Pratchet
Part of the Discworld series, but it’s pretty standalone and can be read without knowing the other books. It’s one of the shortest works in the Discworld series. At first, I was a bit worried because I’d heard this was the worst book in the series—too weird and out there—but I actually found it hilarious. Maybe that says more about me than about the book.
It’s a whimsical story, very much focused on comedy, satirizing everything from classic wizard tropes to the concept of Christian hell.
Random side thought: why did the demon from the myth of Sisyphus sound like the fat girl from Derry Girls in the audiobook version? Maybe it’s because, both are irish.
Also, how the fuck does hell work? If you get promoted for being incompetent or doing something otherwise bad, does that mean all the top guys in hell are literally useless?
One of the funniest parts was this:
Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it.
This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
Also great:
It is hard to say whether the Luggage was happy or not. It had viciously attacked fourteen demons so far, and had three of them cornered in their own pit of boiling oil. Soon it would have to follow its master, but it didn’t have to rush.
- Description Intellect
Its [Intellect] blessedness is not acquired; rather, everything is in it eternally, and it is true eternity, which time imitates, moving around it along with Soul, dropping some things and picking up others.
For at the level of Soul, thoughts are always changing; now it thinks of Socrates, now of a horse – always some particular being – whereas Intellect just is everything.
It has, then, all Beings stable in it, and it alone is, and the ‘is’ is always, and the future is nothing to it – for it ‘is’ then, too – nor is here a past for it – for nothing in the intelligible world has passed away – but all Beings are set within it always inasmuch as they are identical and in a way pleased to be in this condition.
~ Enneads 5.1(10)§5.1.4
- La Haine (1995)
Black and white French movie. It has a real vibe to it, with some really cool shots and a streak of surrealism. I think the main theme is: “You’re in a really shitty situation right now, but you have the power to change it. In fact, if you don’t stop messing around, it’s going to end badly.”
It’s about having chances over and over again, but instead of taking them, one falls back into old, self-destructive patterns. 7/10.
One interpretation I liked.
- On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy
It starts with an introduction on why mysticism matters, countering its bad reputation as being anti-scientific. It then continues by going through numerous Christian mystical texts and interpreting their meanings. He ends by showing how the notion of mysticism can be transferred to aesthetics, particularly music—as can be seen with krautrock and punk.
The book is alright. For me personally, it’s too unstructured and not systematic enough. It’s more concerned with flowery language and interpretations. After finishing the book, you won’t come away with a clear metaphysical understanding of what mystics actually believed in. It’s more about feelings and vibes. But wanting to know exactly what the mystics meant is, according to the author, exactly the trap we fall into. When we try to look at the subjective objectively, we strip away the essence of subjectivity—that is, its very subjectivity. In other words, the subjective does not have an objective quality to it.
One of the most important aspect of the book for me was the argument for the mystical that he lays out. If there is an experience you can have—no strings attached—that brings the kind of ecstasy mystics describe, wouldn’t you want it? Most people would say yes. And then the question becomes: how do you access such experiences? Central to this is being open to these moments and not rationalizing them away. For example, imagine you’re on a hike and suddenly feel an enormous sense of wonder swelling up within you. Instead of suppressing it or reasoning it away, the idea is to surrender to it and remain open to the experience.