Hunter S. Thompson, Existentialist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Finding Meaning in Life

in Life, Literature, Philosophy | February 24th, 2015

hst

Image by Steve Ander­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

At first blush, Hunter S. Thomp­son might be the last per­son you would want to ask for advice. After all, his dai­ly rou­tine involved copi­ous amounts of cocaine, LSD and Chivas Regal. He once raked a neighbor’s house with gun­fire. And he once almost acci­den­tal­ly blew up John­ny Depp. Yet beneath his gonzo per­sona lay a man who thought deeply and often about the mean­ing of it all. He was some­one who spent a life­time star­ing into the abyss.

So in 1958, before he became a counter-cul­ture icon, before he even start­ed writ­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Thomp­son wrote a long let­ter about some of the big ques­tions in life to his friend, Hume Logan, who was in the throes of an exis­ten­tial cri­sis.

While the first cou­ple of para­graphs warns against the dan­gers of seek­ing advice, Hunter then expounds at length on some deep, and sur­pris­ing­ly lev­el-head­ed truths. Below are a few pearls of wis­dom:

  • Whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly at one time in our lives. So few peo­ple under­stand this!
  • You might also try some­thing called Being and Noth­ing­ness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and anoth­er lit­tle thing called Exis­ten­tial­ism: From Dos­toyevsky to Sartre. These are mere­ly sug­ges­tions. If you’re gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleep­ing dogs lie.)
  • To put our faith in tan­gi­ble goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. We do not strive to be fire­men, we do not strive to be bankers, nor police­men, nor doc­tors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.
  • Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to fol­low (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real pur­pose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.
  • Is it worth giv­ing up what I have to look for some­thing bet­ter? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that deci­sion but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward mak­ing the choice.

The let­ter was pub­lished in the 2013 book, Let­ters of Note. You can read it in its entire­ty below.

April 22, 1958
57 Per­ry Street
New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dan­ger­ous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies some­thing very close to ego­ma­nia. To pre­sume to point a man to the right and ulti­mate goal— to point with a trem­bling fin­ger in the RIGHT direc­tion is some­thing only a fool would take upon him­self.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sin­cer­i­ty in ask­ing my advice. I ask you though, in lis­ten­ing to what I say, to remem­ber that all advice can only be a prod­uct of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be dis­as­ter to anoth­er. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you spe­cif­ic advice, it would be too much like the blind lead­ing the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the ques­tion: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suf­fer the slings and arrows of out­ra­geous for­tune, or to take arms against a sea of trou­bles … ” (Shake­speare)

And indeed, that IS the ques­tion: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly at one time in our lives. So few peo­ple under­stand this! Think of any deci­sion you’ve ever made which had a bear­ing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been any­thing but a choice how­ev­er indi­rect— between the two things I’ve men­tioned: the float­ing or the swim­ming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is anoth­er ques­tion. It is unques­tion­ably bet­ter to enjoy the float­ing than to swim in uncer­tain­ty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a cas­tle in the stars, but a real and tan­gi­ble thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock can­dy moun­tain,” the entic­ing sug­ar-can­dy goal that has lit­tle taste and no sub­stance?

The answer— and, in a sense, the tragedy of life— is that we seek to under­stand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us cer­tain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a con­cept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you want­ed to be a fire­man. I feel rea­son­ably safe in say­ing that you no longer want to be a fire­man. Why? Because your per­spec­tive has changed. It’s not the fire­man who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reac­tions to expe­ri­ence. As your expe­ri­ences dif­fer and mul­ti­ply, you become a dif­fer­ent man, and hence your per­spec­tive changes. This goes on and on. Every reac­tion is a learn­ing process; every sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence alters your per­spec­tive.

So it would seem fool­ish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a dif­fer­ent angle every day? How could we ever hope to accom­plish any­thing oth­er than gal­lop­ing neu­ro­sis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tan­gi­ble goals, any­way. It would take reams of paper to devel­op this sub­ject to ful­fill­ment. God only knows how many books have been writ­ten on “the mean­ing of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many peo­ple have pon­dered the sub­ject. (I use the term “god only knows” pure­ly as an expres­sion.) There’s very lit­tle sense in my try­ing to give it up to you in the prover­bial nut­shell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions for reduc­ing the mean­ing of life to one or two para­graphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “exis­ten­tial­ism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try some­thing called Being and Noth­ing­ness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and anoth­er lit­tle thing called Exis­ten­tial­ism: From Dos­toyevsky to Sartre. These are mere­ly sug­ges­tions. If you’re gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleep­ing dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tan­gi­ble goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be fire­men, we do not strive to be bankers, nor police­men, nor doc­tors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t mis­un­der­stand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE fire­men, bankers, or doc­tors— but that we must make the goal con­form to the indi­vid­ual, rather than make the indi­vid­ual con­form to the goal. In every man, hered­i­ty and envi­ron­ment have com­bined to pro­duce a crea­ture of cer­tain abil­i­ties and desires— includ­ing a deeply ingrained need to func­tion in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE some­thing; he has to mat­ter.

As I see it then, the for­mu­la runs some­thing like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES func­tion at max­i­mum effi­cien­cy toward the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is ful­fill­ing a need (giv­ing him­self iden­ti­ty by func­tion­ing in a set pat­tern toward a set goal), he avoids frus­trat­ing his poten­tial (choos­ing a path which puts no lim­it on his self-devel­op­ment), and he avoids the ter­ror of see­ing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws clos­er to it (rather than bend­ing him­self to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to con­form to his own abil­i­ties and desires).

In short, he has not ded­i­cat­ed his life to reach­ing a pre-defined goal, but he has rather cho­sen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolute­ly sec­ondary: it is the func­tion­ing toward the goal which is impor­tant. And it seems almost ridicu­lous to say that a man MUST func­tion in a pat­tern of his own choos­ing; for to let anoth­er man define your own goals is to give up one of the most mean­ing­ful aspects of life— the defin­i­tive act of will which makes a man an indi­vid­ual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to fol­low (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real pur­pose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Nat­u­ral­ly, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row life, a ver­ti­cal rather than a hor­i­zon­tal exis­tence. So it isn’t any too dif­fi­cult to under­stand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who pro­cras­ti­nates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by cir­cum­stance.

So if you now num­ber your­self among the dis­en­chant­ed, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seri­ous­ly seek some­thing else. But beware of look­ing for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a liv­ing WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giv­ing up what I have to look for some­thing bet­ter? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that deci­sion but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward mak­ing the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writ­ing a book. I hope it’s not as con­fus­ing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of look­ing at things. I hap­pen to think that it’s pret­ty gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble, but you may not. Each of us has to cre­ate our own cre­do— this mere­ly hap­pens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my atten­tion. I’m not try­ing to send you out “on the road” in search of Val­hal­la, but mere­ly point­ing out that it is not nec­es­sary to accept the choic­es hand­ed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do some­thing he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means con­vince your­self that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of com­pa­ny.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,
Hunter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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What Makes Us Human?: Chomsky, Locke & Marx Introduced by New Animated Videos from the BBC

in Animation, Philosophy | February 20th, 2015

When Pla­to defined humans as two-legged ani­mals with­out feath­ers, I sus­pect he was only half seri­ous. Or if he was as humor­less as some sup­pose, his antag­o­nist Dio­genes the Cyn­ic cer­tain­ly picked up on the joke, point­ing out that the descrip­tion sounds pret­ty much like a plucked chick­en. The ancient back and forth illus­trates a ques­tion that has occu­pied philoso­phers for many thou­sands of years: what sep­a­rates humans from ani­mals? Is it a soul? Ratio­nal­i­ty? Tool-mak­ing? Most accounts, espe­cial­ly most mod­ern accounts, set­tle on one cru­cial difference—language. Although ani­mals can com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er per­fect­ly well, they do so with­out this amaz­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed fac­ul­ty we so often take for grant­ed.

In the ani­mat­ed video at the top, part of the BBC and Open University’s A His­to­ry of Ideas series, Gillian Ander­son, in her British rather than Amer­i­can accent, explains the well-known the­o­ry of lan­guage acqui­si­tion pro­posed by lin­guist Noam Chom­sky in the 60s. Chom­sky argued for what is known as a “uni­ver­sal gram­mar,” a kind of tem­plate in the struc­ture of the brain that allows every per­son of nor­mal abil­i­ty to learn their native lan­guage with rel­a­tive ease as a child. Chom­sky referred to these struc­tures as a “lan­guage acqui­si­tion device” that orga­nizes gram­mar and syn­tax inde­pen­dent­ly of expe­ri­ence or out­side stim­uli, of which we have pre­cious lit­tle in our for­ma­tive years. Doubt­less Chomsky’s the­o­ry would have per­suad­ed Pla­to, though prob­a­bly not the British empiri­cists of the 17th cen­tu­ry, who argued that the human mind has no innate ideas—that all of our abil­i­ties are learned.

Such was the argu­ment, much sim­pli­fied, of John Locke, physi­cian, philoso­pher, and polit­i­cal the­o­rist. In his far-rang­ing philo­soph­i­cal text An Essay Con­cern­ing Human Under­stand­ing and the more focused and digestible Some Thoughts Con­cern­ing Edu­ca­tion, Locke dis­cussed in depth his the­o­ries of human cog­ni­tion and iden­ti­ty, propos­ing not only that the mind could be writ­ten upon like a tab­u­la rasa—or “blank slate”—but that the key to human iden­ti­ty, that which makes us the same per­son from moment to moment, is mem­o­ry. We are—and are respon­si­ble for, Locke argued—what we remem­ber. Con­verse­ly, we are not respon­si­ble for what we don’t remem­ber. Locke’s the­o­ry presents us with some very thorny eth­i­cal prob­lems, which the video above most­ly avoids, but like Chomsky’s inter­ven­tion into debates about human vs. ani­mal intel­li­gence, Locke’s dis­cus­sion of the nature of human “per­son­hood” remains a time­ly con­cern, and an end­less­ly con­tentious one.

Oth­er videos in the series take on equal­ly con­tentious, and equal­ly time­ly, issues. Above, Ander­son briefly explains Karl Marx’s the­o­ry of the alien­ation of labor under an exploita­tive cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem, and below, she dis­cuss­es the role of cul­ture as a unique­ly human trait that ani­mals do not pos­sess. Each video address­es, in some small part, the ques­tion “What Makes Me Human?” and the series as a whole fol­lows quick­ly on the heels of A His­to­ry of Ideas’ pre­vi­ous set of Ander­son-nar­rat­ed ani­ma­tions on the ori­gins of the uni­verse: “How Did Every­thing Begin?”

Once again draw­ing on the skilled work of ani­ma­tor Andrew Park and scripts by inde­pen­dent philoso­pher Nigel War­bur­ton, this lat­est series of videos offers a num­ber of fas­ci­nat­ing appe­tiz­ers in the ways phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, and reli­gion have approached life’s biggest ques­tions. Like any starter course, how­ev­er, these are but a taste of the com­plex­i­ty and rich­ness on offer in West­ern philo­soph­i­cal his­to­ry. To become a true intel­lec­tu­al gour­mand, browse our menu of free phi­los­o­phy cours­es and dig in to the work of thinkers like Chom­sky, Locke, Marx, and so many more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

Down­load 130 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: Tools for Think­ing About Life, Death & Every­thing Between

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Free Online Course: Robert Thurman’s Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (Recorded at Columbia U)

in Philosophy, Religion | February 15th, 2015

Image by Won­der­lane, via Flickr Com­mons

Today you can be a fly on the wall at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, and lis­ten to Robert Thur­man’s lec­tures on “The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet.” Thur­man is, as his own web­site right­ly describes him, a “world­wide author­i­ty on reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” and an “elo­quent advo­cate of the rel­e­vance of Bud­dhist ideas to our dai­ly lives.”  A “lead­ing voice of the val­ue of rea­son, peace and com­pas­sion,” he was “named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influ­en­tial Amer­i­cans.” And, in case you’re won­der­ing, he’s also Uma Thur­man’s dad.

The audio above comes from a course taught by Prof. Thur­man at Colum­bia, and it’s based on his book The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet. The course “explores the philo­soph­i­cal thought of Indo-Tibetan Bud­dhism, both in the intel­lec­tu­al set­ting of ancient India and Tibet and in the con­text of the cur­rent glob­al phi­los­o­phy.” You will find the course added to our ever-grow­ing list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: There are 13 lec­tures in total, each run­ning almost two hours. The audio play­er above should stream through them all. The first 30 sec­onds are a lit­tle muf­fled, but then things improve. The lec­tures are host­ed by Archive.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bud­dhism 101: A Short Intro­duc­to­ry Lec­ture by Jorge Luis Borges

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks Phi­los­o­phy with a Bud­dhist Monk on Ger­man Tele­vi­sion (1963)

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es

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Joni Mitchell’s Application for a Tenure Track Philosophy Position

in Comedy, Philosophy | February 9th, 2015

joni philosophy

Image by Asy­lum Records (Bill­board page 2) [Pub­lic domain], via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Michael Stipe has a teach­ing gig at NYU. Lyn­da Bar­ry has one at UW-Madi­son. Sun Ra gave a clas­sic lec­ture at UC-Berke­ley. So why can’t we imag­ine Joni Mitchell land­ing a job at a uni­ver­si­ty too? That’s what Jedidi­ah Ander­son did, when he wrote a satir­i­cal piece over at McSweeney’s called “Joni Mitchell Applies for a Tenure Track Phi­los­o­phy Posi­tion.” It begins:

Dear Search Com­mit­tee:

I am apply­ing for the posi­tion of Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in Phi­los­o­phy. I am an advanced doc­tor­al can­di­date in Phi­los­o­phy (with minors in Urban Stud­ies and Eng­lish), and expect to defend my dis­ser­ta­tion in May, 2015.

My dis­ser­ta­tion, Both Sides Now applies a bilat­er­al, hylo­mor­phic analy­sis to the phe­nom­e­non that is described by the sig­ni­fi­er “clouds.” Hav­ing been con­sti­tut­ed in West­ern dis­course both pos­i­tive­ly as “rows and flows of angel hair,” “ice cream cas­tles in the air,” “feath­er canyons every­where,” and neg­a­tive­ly as objects that exist sole­ly to obscure the sun, express rain and snow, and hin­der the achieve­ment of var­i­ous goals, we can con­clude that after the appli­ca­tion of this bilat­er­al, hylo­mor­phic analy­sis that due to these con­tra­dic­to­ry “up” and “down” epis­te­molo­gies of cloud tropes, the real­i­ty of clouds is some­how still under­stud­ied, hav­ing been ignored in favor of their Pla­ton­ic form/sign, and that we real­ly don’t “know” clouds at all.

You can read the rest of her “appli­ca­tion” here and then spend the evening dream­ing about tak­ing Joni’s class­es on Pla­to, Exis­ten­tial­ism, and Urban Devel­op­ment. I know I will.

You can find more great Joni Mitchell mate­r­i­al below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Video of Joni Mitchell Per­form­ing in 1965 — Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

The Music, Art, and Life of Joni Mitchell Pre­sent­ed in a Superb 2003 Doc­u­men­tary

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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How Did Everything Begin?: Animations on the Origins of the Universe Narrated by X‑Files Star Gillian Anderson

in Philosophy, Religion, Science | January 23rd, 2015

Back in Novem­ber, we brought you the BBC series of short ani­mat­ed videos, A His­to­ry of Ideas. Pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UK’s Open Uni­ver­si­ty and nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er, these fun intro­duc­tions to such philoso­phers as Simone de Beau­voir and Edmund Burke, and such weighty philo­soph­i­cal top­ics as free will and the prob­lem of evil, make chal­leng­ing, abstract con­cepts acces­si­ble to non-philoso­phers. Now the series is back with a new chap­ter, “How Did Every­thing Begin?,” a sur­vey of sev­er­al the­o­ries of the ori­gins of the uni­verse, from Thomas Aquinas’ philo­soph­i­cal spec­u­la­tions, to Hin­du cos­mol­o­gy; and from the­olo­gian William Paley’s design argu­ment (below), and the the­o­ry of the Big Bang (above).

The two videos here present an inter­est­ing coun­ter­point between the ori­gin the­o­ries of astro­physics and the­ol­o­gy. Though cur­rent day intel­li­gent design pro­po­nents deny it, there is still much of William Paley’s argu­ment, at least in style, in their expla­na­tions of cre­ation. First pro­pound­ed in his 1802 work Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, the theologian’s famous watch­mak­er analogy—which he extend­ed to the design of the eye, and every­thing else—gave Charles Dar­win much to puz­zle over, though David Hume had sup­pos­ed­ly refut­ed Paley’s argu­ments 50 years ear­li­er. The Big Bang the­o­ry—a term cre­at­ed by its fore­most crit­ic Fred Hoyle as a pejorative—offers an entire­ly nat­u­ral­is­tic account of the universe’s ori­gins, one that pre­sup­pos­es no inher­ent pur­pose or design.

As with the pre­vi­ous videos, these are script­ed by for­mer Open Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and host of the Phi­los­o­phy Bites pod­cast, Nigel War­bur­ton. This time around the videos are nar­rat­ed by Gillian Ander­son, whose voice you may not imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize. Rather than sound­ing like Dana Scul­ly, her famous X‑Files char­ac­ter, Ander­son speaks in a British accent, which she slips into eas­i­ly, hav­ing lived in the UK for much of her child­hood and now again as an adult. (You may have seen Ander­son in many of the Eng­lish peri­od dra­mas she has appeared in, or in British crime dra­ma The Fall or Michael Winterbottom’s uproar­i­ous adap­ta­tion of Tris­tram Shandy.)

These fas­ci­nat­ing spec­u­la­tive theories—whether sci­en­tif­ic or mythological—are sure to appeal to fans of the X‑Files, who can per­haps begin to believe again, or remain skep­ti­cal, thanks to news that Ander­son may reteam with Chris Carter and David Duchovny for a reboot of the clas­sic sci-fi series.

Watch the remain­ing videos in the series below:

Thomas Aquinas and the First Mover Argu­ment

Hin­du Cre­ation Sto­ries

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es (130 in Total)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Criterion Collection

in Film, Philosophy | January 22nd, 2015

Slavoj Žižek – the world’s most famous Sloven­ian, the “Elvis of cul­tur­al the­o­ry” – read­i­ly admits that he’s a big fan of movies. After all, there are few bet­ter ide­o­log­i­cal deliv­ery sys­tems out there than cin­e­ma and Žižek is fas­ci­nat­ed with ide­ol­o­gy. In his doc­u­men­tary The Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy, he pars­es some beloved favorites in unex­pect­ed ways. So Taxi Dri­ver is not only an unof­fi­cial remake of The Searchers but also echoes America’s recent for­eign pol­i­cy blun­ders in the Mid­dle East? Okay. So Titan­ic has par­al­lels with the Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da movie The Fall of Berlin? Sure. Christo­pher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, at its heart, artic­u­lates some very cyn­i­cal notions of gov­ern­ment? Actu­al­ly, I sort of sus­pect­ed that one. Žižek’s ten­den­cy to make wild, sur­pris­ing rhetor­i­cal leaps and his pen­chant for drop­ping nods to pop cul­ture along­side ref­er­ences to Karl Marx and Jacques Lacan have turned him into that rarest of peo­ple – a celebri­ty philoso­pher.

Last fall, Žižek stopped by the office of The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion where he rat­tled off some of his favorite movies from its library. His com­men­tary is inci­sive, fas­ci­nat­ing, occa­sion­al­ly flip and often fun­ny. As it turns out, Žižek is not a fan of Milan Kun­dera; he is one of the very few peo­ple out there who prefers Rober­to Rossellini’s late films over his ear­ly Ital­ian Neo-Real­ist mas­ter­pieces like Rome, Open City; and he end­ed up being a per­son­al inspi­ra­tion for Ang Lee’s film, The Ice Storm. You can watch him talk in the video above. Below is the film list, along with some choice quotes.

  • Trou­ble in Par­adise (1932) – dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    “It’s the best cri­tique of Cap­i­tal­ism.”
  • Sweet Smell of Suc­cess (1957) – dir. Alexan­der Mack­endrick
    “It’s a nice depic­tion of the cor­rup­tion of the Amer­i­can press.”
  • Pic­nic at Hang­ing Rock (1975) – dir. Peter Weir
    “I sim­ply like ear­ly Peter Weir movies. … It’s like his ver­sion of Stalk­er.”
  • Mur­mur of the Heart (1971)- dir. Louis Malle
    “It’s one of those nice gen­tle French movies where you have incest. Por­trayed as a nice secret between moth­er and son. I like this.”

  • The Joke (1969) – dir. Jaromil Jireš
    “The Joke is the first nov­el by Milan Kun­dera and I think it’s his only good nov­el. After that it all goes down.”
  • The Ice Storm (1997) – dir. Ang Lee
    “I have a per­son­al attach­ment to this film. When James Schamus was writ­ing the sce­nario, he told me he was read­ing a book of mine and that my the­o­ret­i­cal book was inspi­ra­tion [sic]. So it’s per­son­al rea­son but I also loved the movie.”
  • Great Expec­ta­tions (1946) dir. David Lean
    “I am sim­ply a great fan of Dick­ens.”
  • Rossellini’s His­to­ry Films (Box Set) — The Age of the Medici (1973), Carte­sius (1974), Blaise Pas­cal (1972)
    “Rossellini’s his­to­ry films, I pre­fer them. These late, long bor­ing TV movies. I think that the so-called great Rosselli­nis, for exam­ple Ger­man Year Zero and so on, they no longer real­ly work. I think this is the Rosselli­ni to be reha­bil­i­tat­ed.”
  • City Lights (1931) – dir. Char­lie Chap­lin
    “What is there to say? This is one of the great­est movies of all times.”
  • Carl Theodor Drey­er Box Set — Day of Wrath (1943), Ordet (1955), Gertrud (1964)
    “It’s more out of my love for Den­mark. It’s nice to know already in the ‘20s and ‘30s, Den­mark was already a cin­e­mat­ic super­pow­er.
  • Y Tu Mamá Tam­bién (2002) – dir. Alfon­so Cuáron
    “This is for obvi­ous per­son­al rea­son. I do the com­ment. [He did the DVD Com­men­tary for the movie] Although, I must say that my favorite Cuáron is Chil­dren of Men.”
  • Antichrist (2009) – dir. Lars Von Tri­er
    “I will prob­a­bly not like it, but I like Von Tri­er. It is sim­ply a part of a duty.”

Žižek goes on to say that he often­times enjoys the DVD com­men­tary of a movie more than the actu­al film. “I am a cor­rupt­ed the­o­rist. Screw the movie. I like to learn all around the movie.”

And below you can watch Žižek’s take on John Carpenter’s over­looked gem, and left­ist para­ble, They Live!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

A Shirt­less Slavoj Žižek Explains the Pur­pose of Phi­los­o­phy from the Com­fort of His Bed

After a Tour of Slavoj Žižek’s Pad, You’ll Nev­er See Inte­ri­or Design in the Same Way

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Leo Tolstoy’s Masochistic Diary: I Am Guilty of “Sloth,” “Cowardice” & “Sissiness” (1851)

in Literature, Philosophy | January 21st, 2015

tolstoy1

1850 was a tough year for Leo Tol­stoy. It was a time when his future suc­cess­es were impos­si­ble to see while his past fail­ures were all too obvi­ous. A few years pri­or, he had been thrown out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kazan. His teach­ers wrote him off as “both unable and unwill­ing to learn.” There­after, he went into a spi­ral of dis­so­lu­tion, first in St. Peters­burg and then in Moscow, where he drank, caroused and racked up some seri­ous gam­bling debts.

Yet Tol­stoy had ambi­tions beyond being just anoth­er debauched scion of the upper class. He strug­gled to improve him­self. So he start­ed a jour­nal in 1847 while recov­er­ing in a hos­pi­tal ward from vene­re­al dis­ease. Influ­enced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the future author of War and Peace sought to use the diary as a tool for self-explo­ration. For the first few years, he was an inter­mit­tent diarist. Then, in 1850, he took this tool to new lac­er­at­ing lev­els. Part psy­chother­a­py, part lit­er­ary explo­ration, part inquiry into the lim­its of nar­ra­tive and part straight up masochism, Tol­stoy set out to account for his every action dur­ing the day in what he called the “Jour­nal of Dai­ly Occu­pa­tions.”

He divid­ed his page into two columns. In “The Future” col­umn, he list­ed the things he planned to do the next day. In “The Past” col­umn, he judges him­self (harsh­ly) on how well he fol­lowed through on those plans, label­ing each one of his fail­ures with the appro­pri­ate sin – sloth, avarice etc. There was no col­umn for “The Present.”

You can see a selec­tion from his jour­nal, cour­tesy of schol­ar Iri­na Paper­no, who wrote a nice piece on Tol­stoy’s diary over at Salon. The diary entries below date from March, 1851:

24. Arose some­what late and read, but did not have time to write. Poiret came, I fenced, and did not send him away (sloth and cow­ardice). Ivanov came, I spoke with him for too long (cow­ardice). Koloshin (Sergei) came to drink vod­ka, I did not escort him out (cow­ardice). At Ozerov’s argued about noth­ing (habit of argu­ing) and did not talk about what I should have talked about (cow­ardice). Did not go to Beklemishev’s (weak­ness of ener­gy). Dur­ing gym­nas­tics did not walk the rope (cow­ardice), and did not do one thing because it hurt (sissiness).—At Gorchakov’s lied (lying). Went to the Novotroit­sk tav­ern (lack of fierté). At home did not study Eng­lish (insuf­fi­cient firm­ness). At the Volkon­skys’ was unnat­ur­al and dis­tract­ed, and stayed until one in the morn­ing (dis­tract­ed­ness, desire to show off, and weak­ness of char­ac­ter).

25. [This is a plan for the next day, the 25th, writ­ten on the 24th—I.P.] From 10 to 11 yesterday’s diary and to read. From 11 to 12—gymnastics. From 12 to 1—English. Bek­lem­i­shev and Bey­er from 1 to 2. From 2 to 4—on horse­back. From 4 to 6—dinner. From 6 to 8—to read. From 8 to 10—to write.—To trans­late some­thing from a for­eign lan­guage into Russ­ian to devel­op mem­o­ry and style.—To write today with all the impres­sions and thoughts it gives rise to.—25. Awoke late out of sloth. Wrote my diary and did gym­nas­tics, hur­ry­ing. Did not study Eng­lish out of sloth. With Begichev and with Islavin was vain. At Beklemishev’s was cow­ard­ly and lack of fierté. On Tver Boule­vard want­ed to show off. I did not walk on foot to the Kaly­mazh­nyi Dvor (sissi­ness). Rode with a desire to show off. For the same rea­son rode to Ozerov’s.—Did not return to Kaly­mazh­nyi, thought­less­ness. At the Gor­chakovs’ dis­sem­bled and did not call things by their names, fool­ing myself. Went to L’vov’s out of insuf­fi­cient ener­gy and the habit of doing noth­ing. Sat around at home out of absent­mind­ed­ness and read Werther inat­ten­tive­ly, hur­ry­ing.

26 [This is a plan for the next day, the 26th, writ­ten on the 25th—I.P.] To get up at 5. Until 10—to write the his­to­ry of this day. From 10 to 12—fencing and to read. From 12 to 1—English, and if some­thing inter­feres, then in the evening. From 1 to 3—walking, until 4—gymnastics. From 4 to 6, dinner—to read and write.— (46:55).

Tolstoy’s regime of self-improve­ment wasn’t restrict­ed to this pun­ish­ing dai­ly account­ing of fail­ures. He also kept a “Jour­nal for Weak­ness­es,” which tal­lied up all of his moral fail­ures, arranged in columns for lazi­ness, inde­ci­sion, sen­su­al­i­ty etc., not to men­tion a series of note­books for rules: “Rules for life,” “Rules for devel­op­ing will,” and “Rules for play­ing cards in Moscow until Jan­u­ary 1.”

One gets the sense that there’s a real oppor­tu­ni­ty for a line of Tol­stoy­an self-help books. Six Pil­lars of Self-Fla­gel­la­tion, per­haps? 7 Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Moral Fail­ures? The Pow­er of Spir­i­tu­al Angst?

Read more about Tol­stoy’s jour­nal­ing over at Salon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find great works by Tol­stoy in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Ayn Rand Writes a Harsh Letter To Her 17-Year-Old Niece: “I Will Write You Off As a Rotten Person” (1949)

in Literature, Philosophy, Politics | January 20th, 2015

ayn-rand-social-security

Image via YouTube, 1959 inter­view with Mike Wal­lace

I recent­ly hap­pened upon the Mod­ern Library’s “100 Best Nov­els” list and noticed some­thing inter­est­ing. The list divides into two columns—the “Board’s List” on the left and “Reader’s List” on the right. The “Board’s List” con­tains in its top ten such expect­ed “great books” as Joyce’s Ulysses (#1) and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (#6). These are indeed wor­thy titles, but not the most acces­si­ble of books, to be sure, though Ulysses does appear at num­ber eleven on the “Reader’s List.” At the very top of that more pop­u­lar rank­ing, how­ev­er, is a book the literati could not find more wor­thy of con­tempt: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Just below it is Rand’s The Foun­tain­head, and at num­bers sev­en and eight, respec­tive­ly, her Anthem and We the Liv­ing. (Also in the top ten on the “Read­er’s List,” three nov­els by L. Ron Hub­bard.)

One obvi­ous take­away… mass­es of ordi­nary peo­ple real­ly like Ayn Rand. Which is odd, because Ayn Rand seemed to pos­i­tive­ly hate the mass­es of ordi­nary peo­ple. As Michael O’Donnell writes in Wash­ing­ton Month­ly, “Rand… lived a life of con­tempt: for peo­ple, for ideas, for gov­ern­ment, and for the very con­cept of human kind­ness.”

Per­haps her most sym­pa­thet­ic read­er, econ­o­mist Lud­wig von Mis­es, summed up the over­ar­ch­ing theme of her life’s work in one very tidy sen­tence: “You have the courage to tell the mass­es what no politi­cian told them: you are infe­ri­or and all the improve­ments in your con­di­tions which you sim­ply take for grant­ed you owe to the effort of men who are bet­ter than you.” This is appar­ent­ly a mes­sage that a great many peo­ple are eager to hear. (And if any fic­tion is “mes­sage dri­ven,” it is Rand’s.)

But imag­ine, if you will, that you are not a read­er of Ayn Rand, but a fam­i­ly mem­ber. Not by blood, but mar­riage, but con­nect­ed, nonethe­less. You are Ayn Rand’s niece—Rand’s hus­band Frank O’Connor’s sister’s daugh­ter, to be pre­cise. Your name is Con­nie Papurt, you are 17, and you have writ­ten Aun­tie Ayn to ask for $25 for a new dress. Have you done this sim­ply to be cheeky? You do know, Con­nie, how deeply your Aunt Ayn despis­es moochers, do you not? No matter—we have nei­ther Connie’s let­ter, nor a win­dow into her moti­va­tions. We do have, how­ev­er, Rand’s replies, plur­al, from May 22, 1949, then again—in response to Connie’s follow-up—from June 4 of that same year. The ini­tial request prompt­ed some earnest ser­mo­niz­ing from Rand on the val­ue of hard work, and of being a “self-respect­ing, self-sup­port­ing, respon­si­ble, cap­i­tal­is­tic per­son.” Etcetera.

Now, to Rand’s cred­it, the first reply let­ter con­tains some com­mon sense advice, and describes some sit­u­a­tions in which oth­er close con­nec­tions appar­ent­ly took advan­tage of her gen­eros­i­ty. She seems to have cause for leer­i­ness, as, grant­ed, do we all in these sit­u­a­tions. Bor­row­ing from fam­i­ly is very often a tricky busi­ness. As was her wont, how­ev­er, Rand seized upon the occa­sion not only to dis­pense wis­dom on per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, but also to mor­al­ize on the worth­less­ness of peo­ple who fail her test of char­ac­ter. As The Toast com­ments, the let­ter is “30% very good advice, 50% unnec­es­sary yelling, and 20% non­sense.” First, Rand lays out for Con­nie an install­ment plan:

           Here are my con­di­tions: If I send you the $25, I will give you a year to repay it. I will give you six months after your grad­u­a­tion to get set­tled in a job. Then, you will start repay­ing the mon­ey in install­ments: you will send me $5 on Jan­u­ary 15, 1950, and $4 on the 15th of every month after that; the last install­ment will be on June 15, 1950—and that will repay the total.

            Are you will­ing to do that?

Notice, Rand assess­es no interest—a kind­ness, indeed. And yet,

            I want you to under­stand right now that I will not accept any excuse—except a seri­ous ill­ness. If you become ill, then I will give you an exten­sion of time—but for no oth­er rea­son. If, when the debt becomes due, you tell me that you can’t pay me because you need­ed a new pair of shoes or a new coat or you gave the mon­ey to some­body in the fam­i­ly who need­ed it more than I do—then I will con­sid­er you as an embez­zler. No, I won’t send a police­man after you, but I will write you off as a rot­ten per­son and I will nev­er speak or write to you again.

Accord­ing to her 2012 obit­u­ary, Con­nie went on to became a local Cleve­land actress and nurse, a per­son “ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing the lives of oth­ers bet­ter.” Accord­ing to her aunt, she should have noth­ing bet­ter to do—for anyone—but to pay back her debt, should she wish to remain in the good graces of the great Objec­tivist. We do not know if Con­nie accept­ed the terms, but she appar­ent­ly wrote back in such a way as to leave quite an impres­sion on Rand, whose June 4 reply is “damn charm­ing!”

          I must tell you that I was very impressed with the intel­li­gent atti­tude of your let­ter. If you real­ly under­stood, all by your­self, that my long lec­ture to you was a sign of real inter­est on my part, much more so than if I had sent you a check with some hyp­o­crit­i­cal gush note, and if you under­stood that my let­ter was intend­ed to treat you as an equal—then you have just the kind of mind that can achieve any­thing you choose to achieve in life.

The let­ter goes on in very kind­ly, even sen­ti­men­tal, terms. In fact, it may con­vince you that O’Donnell is dead wrong to sin­gle out con­tempt as Rand’s defin­ing qual­i­ty. And yet, he argues, her biog­ra­phers show that “she hap­pi­ly accept­ed help from oth­ers while denounc­ing altru­is­tic kind­ness” (and those who accept it), espous­ing “an indi­vid­u­al­ism so extreme that it does not mere­ly ignore oth­ers, but actu­al­ly spits in their faces.” While Con­nie man­aged to escape her wrath, such as it was, most oth­ers, through their own fail­ings of true cap­i­tal­is­tic char­ac­ter or the cru­el­ty of cir­cum­stances beyond their con­trol, did not.

Read both of Rand’s let­ters here.

via The Toast

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

In Her Final Speech, Ayn Rand Denounces Ronald Rea­gan, the Moral Major­i­ty & Anti-Choicers (1981)

A Free Car­toon Biog­ra­phy of Ayn Rand: Her Life & Thought

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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