and it's got all the woody allen quotes you'd expect. why'd it tell the story that way, symposium style? to show that he's remembered? i bet that's it. it ennobles him. this is, insistently, the tale of a man unforgotten. he has a sandwich named after him!
you know, assuming you've got enough energy at the end of the day, shouldn't people be judged for what they believe against what they do? and i mean believe, because that's the essential thing. if someone believes the world, external to their own interests as a person, would be better off if they did this, and they believe it COMPLETELY (even if this is hitler running concentration camps, although, happily, the world at large doesn't tend to inspire that kind of thinking) and they act on that belief, then that is a super terrific person. like, the worst fucking person has got to be the one who believes with a lot of excuses, that they feel themselves alone, that they're just this one person in this big world and what can you do. we really need more people with a messianic complex. except that you've got to start these people off with curiosity. what kind of blows this whole idea, that it would make the world better, is that it wouldn't at all value self doubt. and you've got to value that, listening to other people and generally being curious. because according to this, the saints would be the most stalwart fools. i started thinking about this in terms of people who know, who believe and then don't do anything with that belief, and that's a super rotten thing, but i guess you have to mingle this overheated idea of mine with a responsibility to be curious, and that kind of sinks the whole thing because the great shelter for do-nothing nabobs like me who love talking and believing and nothing else is the great mystery of the world and you can get terribly confused if your curiosity is sufficiently eclectic, especially in its politics. but really, imagine if what was thought was acted on, if my beliefs about spreading the wealth made me make this greenwhich village townhouse into a homeless shelter. i guess the problem is that acting means acting in this world and everything starts to seem so complicated. makes me think of the peter weiss play about the french revolution and the asylum and marat's speech about how the ideology was terrific until one man wanted to keep his house and another his wife and another his dog and finally nothing budged.
you know, assuming you've got enough energy at the end of the day, shouldn't people be judged for what they believe against what they do? and i mean believe, because that's the essential thing. if someone believes the world, external to their own interests as a person, would be better off if they did this, and they believe it COMPLETELY (even if this is hitler running concentration camps, although, happily, the world at large doesn't tend to inspire that kind of thinking) and they act on that belief, then that is a super terrific person. like, the worst fucking person has got to be the one who believes with a lot of excuses, that they feel themselves alone, that they're just this one person in this big world and what can you do. we really need more people with a messianic complex. except that you've got to start these people off with curiosity. what kind of blows this whole idea, that it would make the world better, is that it wouldn't at all value self doubt. and you've got to value that, listening to other people and generally being curious. because according to this, the saints would be the most stalwart fools. i started thinking about this in terms of people who know, who believe and then don't do anything with that belief, and that's a super rotten thing, but i guess you have to mingle this overheated idea of mine with a responsibility to be curious, and that kind of sinks the whole thing because the great shelter for do-nothing nabobs like me who love talking and believing and nothing else is the great mystery of the world and you can get terribly confused if your curiosity is sufficiently eclectic, especially in its politics. but really, imagine if what was thought was acted on, if my beliefs about spreading the wealth made me make this greenwhich village townhouse into a homeless shelter. i guess the problem is that acting means acting in this world and everything starts to seem so complicated. makes me think of the peter weiss play about the french revolution and the asylum and marat's speech about how the ideology was terrific until one man wanted to keep his house and another his wife and another his dog and finally nothing budged.
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