Just watched the documentary on Channel 4 about torture techniques in Guantanamo. Seven volunteers endured sub-Guantanamo techniques; only four lasted 48 hours to the end of the experiment.
The human mind is a very frail thing, in the end. There’s a kind of blindness in those who downplay what is happening at Guantanamo as to what it really means. We have misconceptions about how strong our mind is, how strict our moral code, how fiercely we can hold to our sense of self. Even when we know, rationally, that we are fragile, we still in our heart of hearts overrate ourselves. I know I do, despite four and a half years of psychology attacking all my assumptions.
It’s all very sad, and it demands change. The West has fallen so far; our failures are on display and those in power seem not to care.
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From the serious to the ridiculous: I bombed out completely in my Oscar predictions, scoring a measly 11 of 20. I suspect it hurt Marty more than me that Aviator didn’t score the top two. At least I got the four acting awards right; supporting is always a tough pick.
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Thanks for the kind words, everyone.
10 thoughts on “Stress Positions”
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re: Oscar’s.
Kate Winslett was robbed. But who ever said that the Academy Awards were about quality?
And has anyone else noticed that Morgan Freeman has only ever played one character for the last twenty years? Is he really acting?
Yeah, Morgan Freeman was MUCH better playing Dracula on The Electric Company.
On the up side, isn’t it amazing whats happening in Lebanon right now?!!
Feels like Uzbeckistan all over. A velvet revolution in the Midd East?
I’m holding my breath and hoping its going to be ok…
Morgue wrote: “The West has fallen so far.”
This begs the question Morgue. Fallen far from what? I know I sound like a broken recoed but perhaps it’s fallen far from the Judeo – Christian moral values that it was based on. Values like Freedom, Liberty, Justice, and Equality (I know it has never upheld these well, but at least we tried before).
Or perhaps we have fallen far from simple moral absolutes like the above, whetever they are based on? The post modern mind set that allows movies like “9 songs” to be defined as artistic slips into the realm of politics as well. What right have we got to censure the American government for what it does in Guantanamo bay? According to post moderism, we have no right. If the governemtn believes those politcs of power are appropriate then that is right for them.
I have to say that all the “bleeding heart post modern liberals” who start mouthing off at things like this, and then call me a conservative hypocrite for objecting to things like 9 Songs should bleedin’ eat the cake. If they want to have the right to assert dubious morality becasue it suits then to say that there are no moral truth claims in one arena, well the same standard applies in the other as well, otherwise they make their own postiion even more coherant than it already is.
Not that I am saying any of this about you Morgue. Just making the point that post modernists have to apply their rules consistently (though they rarely if ever do) and so can’t complain about things like Gauntanamo Bay, Iraq or the Israel/Palestien conflict.
To assert that these things are wrong implies some kind of moral truth value and that is entirely agains the post modern movement.
But enough ranting. I really am curious to know what you think the west has fallen from? It could easily be argued that whatever naughty things it is doing now it did much more of in the past and actually Guantanamo Bay, and the hype surrounding it, goes to show that this kind of stuff isn’t acceptable in today’s society, when it would have been a hundred or even 50 years ago.
That’s not very coherant I know. But I hope it’s coherant enought to make sense.
And I agree with Siobhan, what’s happening in Lebanon is extremely cool. My parents in law are missionaries there and they are sending some very interesting first hand accounts of things…
By the way – I meant The Ukraine, not Uzbeckistan(which I cant even spell Doh!)
Matt, I think you’re overlooking an important element: the ability of people to act against something without casting their relationship to that thing in terms of judgement or morality. One can see something terrible, something many people judge as evil or wrong, and accept it as a perfect part of the world, and say that God is good/great. And then act to stop that thing from continuing.
You may well ask where the motivation or impulse comes from for wanting to stop such a thing – and of course it can come from an absolute moral sense, or a relative one, or a creative centre, or where dreams come from, or anything else. My point is that it is not necessarily bound to anything either absolute or or even consistent.
Re: moral basis – I don’t accept the notion that the denial of a sourced absolute morality means the loss of all legitimate moral judgement. In the worldview of the ‘post-modernists’ (I guess you’re technically right but it feels an odd way to put it) morality is an argument – a constantly evolving conversation, with broad areas of large consensus and much dispute a the margins. This isn’t just a description of how morality works – it is a statement that this is how it should and must work. A morality can be asserted because that morality is already asserted. It is circular, but that isn’t problematic, because in this worldview morality is what people do not a code to which they are held (or, more precisely, a code is only ever an attempt to model actions).
(I’ve never thought this particular explanation through, mind, so feel free to challenge it/pick holes etc. I doubt I’ll cover all the bases or get the right expression first time out. I do trust the core that I’m trying to represent, though.)
re: Lebanon – it’s astonishingly cool. I don’t know much at all about Lebanon, so it’s quite an education as well. One can only assume Iraq’s US-led overthrow of Saddam has had an impact on things, and that’s great – the more good things that come out of that wicked action, the better. Of course, there are a lot of other things afoot in the middle east besides Iraq, and the example of the Ukraine to boot, so lets not be too enthusiastic about giving props to the neocon plan for Arabia…
re: what have we fallen from – what I was getting at, and it isn’t in the text so you would have had to read my mind to know, is not the actions of the governments (“states are not moral agents” – Chomsky) but the actions of the public. Particularly, the complacency shown by so many people in the face of the loss of civil liberties, state-sponsored violence and illegal incarceration, the undermining of the fourth estate, and in general the huge changes underway particularly in the USA, also well underway in the UK, and present in some form in many Western governments (even, if I have my facts straight, most of those that oppose the US).
We’re far, far closer to Orwell’s 1984 (that old bugaboo) than we were a decade ago. The difference is in how brazen those in power have become, and how open these changes are: everyone can see this is happening. This is what has happened – what is going on is now part of what we believe about ourselves.
We once demanded more.
(I’m not comparing us to the world of a century ago, by the way – institutionalised racism was a premise of society then, for one thing. The western world has grown a great deal, but in the past few years, though, it has tragically undermined its own mythology.)
coupla random points on above:
From what I remember considering this question in a uni course, I believe there is some kind of natural law inherent in our very humanity, and a consequent absolute morality. The alternative of moral relatavism inevitably leads to an acceptance of anything as moral, which I couldn’t accept. But I think we don’t know what that absolute moralityis, only that we are growing nearer and nearer tangentially to it as society develops. The “moral conversation” is a great description, but I think it is a conversation in search of the unfindable ideal.
Fall of the west – like Matt I’m not convinced there has been a fall, just a continuation of previous evils. The difference is the powers that be can no longer control information flow, or expect unconditional support of the populace, so other measures are needed to allow them to continue the same activities.
Aviator deserved to lose, beautiful picture and Leo was great but no theme, point, or heart. MDB had cliched story but stunning performances and nothing but heart. Just think was a lean year in terms of oscar-type movies(last year’s Mystic River or Lost in Translation would have been far more worthy). I did think Collateral was underrated.
And childhood reevaluation moment – Morgan Freeman was Dracula on Electric Co??