Let me try to make the point about this modern trap that is easy to fall into—and that society more generally has fallen into.

I mean, you can imagine being born into the world we live in, inheriting a kind of Enlightenment optimism, a Christian idealism—believing that the mind is inside a body, that there is one truth that reveals itself, and that getting to this objective truth should be our highest priority in life.

And you can imagine looking around you for people to inspire you in this pursuit. Who do you see? You see scientists, philosophers—what seem to be the highest-level people committed to finding the truth. And what do they say to do? We’ve got to study the objects out there and how they relate to each other. We’ve got to find the best way to know what these things are and how to manipulate them to our advantage. Because not only does this bring us closer to the truth—our ultimate goal—but it also produces technology that can do miraculous things and make people’s lives better, more efficient, more optimized. That’s what we’re told to focus on.

And you can imagine hearing all that and thinking: Yeah, I’m on board with that. The correct way for me to view my existence, if I want to live in reality, is the scientific way of looking at things. I’m going to work hard to remove my cultural biases, I’m going to make sure language doesn’t get in the way of that truth, I’m going to remove how history shades my way of thinking—and if only I can do all that fully, then one day I’ll be able to get out of Plato’s cave. I’ll be able to see the truth, not just the shadows on the wall.

But if Heidegger is right, then as spectators from the outside, we can see how this person is simplifying things—how they’re really just stuck in the allegory of the cave. They think they’re arriving at the truth, but we can predict the outcome of this single way of framing things: they’ll struggle with nihilism, because they’re trying to create meaning out of theoretical abstractions. They’ll live in confusion about subjectivity and consciousness, or free will and determinism, because they’re always committing a category error when trying to describe their being. They’ll see culture, language, and history as barriers to truth, rather than the very things that make their experience of being even possible.

This doesn’t mean we should abandon the concept of framing things as objective and subjective. What Heidegger is saying is that relying solely on this one framing is problematic and incomplete. Certain elements of being are described better—or worse—in different framings. And when you overuse one of these framings, you inevitably run into very predictable problems when that framing reaches its limitations.

So, if you live your entire life in the framing of subject and object, of course you’re left with a cold, disinterested universe filled with objects that you are always detached from.

And even if, based on that, you construct some theoretical framework, that system will always be rooted in the idea of being a subject in a world of objects—centered around manipulating those objects in ways that are useful or beneficial to you.

That’s why Nietzsche is, for Heidegger, the last great metaphysician—because his framework of the will to power is still based on the subject-object framing.

As long as our systems are based on this framing, they are ultimately corrupted by a technological viewpoint. We are always looking at people and things as if they are objects-at-hand—as if they are things to be understood, controlled, manipulated, and optimized for a particular outcome.

Dasein and the work in Being and Time is not the sole viewpoint Heidegger thinks we should use to look at the relation of being—it’s a reframing of what being is, meant to free people from seeing things only through a subject-object lens.

And nature is more complicated than having just a single framing.

~ Philosophize This! Epsiode: 214

It has a vibe to it — just this one schizo driving through the night in his taxi. Solid 7/10.

How, then, can you see the kind of beauty that a good soul has?

Go back into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that he makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop ‘working on your statue’ until the divine splendour of virtue shines in you, until you see ‘Self-Control enthroned on the holy seat’. […]

If you see that you have become this, at that moment you have become sight. […] Just open your eyes and see, for this alone is the eye that sees the great beauty. […]

For no eye has ever seen the sun without becoming sun-like, nor could a soul ever see Beauty without becoming beautiful. You must first actually become wholly god-like and wholly beautiful if you intend to see god and Beauty.

~ Plotinus, On Beauty

Women looses her son, takes in a homeless kid as a kind of replacement, they bang. 6/10.

Uncut version is 3 hours and 40 minutes long. It has some really cool shots—very cinematic overall. If you’re looking for atmosphere, this is it. I really liked the intro where they introduce the Minutemen. Also, the animated pirate comic short was great. I love when movies do creative stuff like that.

I also just really like when characters self-narrate. I liked it in Casino, and I liked it here too.

There’s a reference to Dr. Strangelove in here—the war room full of generals and Nixon is straight from Strangelove.

I also liked the non-linear storytelling. It kind of feels like a mix of noir and superheroes. It’s not super deep or anything, but it’s just a great story overall. Though maybe there is something deeper—like the idea that if you think everything is evil, you eventually become evil.

I really liked the ending too. Usually in superhero movies, villains fall into two categories: either evil just to be evil, or the utilitarian type who does something horrible for some “greater good.” The first kind usually ends with a message like “don’t be evil,” and the second with “the ends don’t justify the means.” This movie doesn’t pick either one, and I appreciated that. It didn’t try to create a neat ending just to keep the American public—or the lowest common denominator—happy. 8/10.