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The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

charliechaplin.com

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Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#261

Post by concordDance »

dang wrote: post #230
concordDance wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

For calibration purposes so i can get a better feel for the threshhold for "substantial", could you tell me whether the unsubstantive proportion is more like 1%, 10%, 50% or 90%?

(I'll understand completely if you don't have the time to reply though)

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#262

Post by throwaway171223 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #255
throwaway171223 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to claim democracy is broken because a voice of an educated person carries same weight than that of a high school dropout Is not logical. > fascism wasn't only a manipulation No successful ideology is only a manipulation. > Had fascism succeeded I doubt anyone really knows why, but the historical fact is that it didn't.

>Is not logical. How so? >No successful ideology is only a manipulation. Depends on how you define success. We can say "fascism didn't succeed" but it certainly didn't blow over as a trend. Not back then, and not now.

As a common meeting ground between Hobbes and Rousseau (and probably Locke, which I confess I have not read), anyone can hold and fire a gun. Considering the original context in whence Greek democracy flourished, I'd say that's a fair extrapolation to modern times.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#263

Post by johnnyanmac »

throwaway171223 wrote: post #262
johnnyanmac wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is not logical. How so? >No successful ideology is only a manipulation. Depends on how you define success. We can say "fascism didn't succeed" but it certainly didn't blow over as a trend. Not back then, and not now.

As a common meeting ground between Hobbes and Rousseau (and probably Locke, which I confess I have not read), anyone can hold and fire a gun. Considering the original context in whence Greek democracy flourished, I'd say that's a fair extrapolation to modern times.

> Considering the original context in whence Greek democracy flourished, I'd say that's a fair extrapolation to modern times.

I don't think so. Even "democracy" in the lens of 18th is century America is rife with various prejudice that shouldn't existing in a pure democracy. I wouldn't extrapolate anything accurately from millenia ago if it degregates in a matter of a few centuries.

It's very easy to protest "equal vote for each person" when the ruling body gets to define "person" (or more accurately, "citizen") in their own emotion way

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#264

Post by gedy »

fallingknife wrote: post #259
gedy wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon !== AWS, I think what's being referred to is smaller retailers, not other FAANGs. My brother's store is slowly folding, largely due specifically to Amazon selling cheaper than he can purchase wholesale.

So Amazon is a more efficient business model. Why should I drive to your brother's store when I can just order it right to my door on Amazon? They have done nothing wrong here.

I guess, though if "more efficient business model" means giant corporation can buy and sell in such huge quantities that smaller competitors can't even buy products for same, let alone add small margin for rent and employees, that seems unhealthy. There's no efficiencies they can even attempt at that point.

(Let alone the Amazon shoppers who waste their time demoing and trying products in store, then act like they've caught some scammer if it's a few dollars more than online.)

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#265

Post by kukkeliskuu »

givan wrote: post #90
qingcharles wrote: post #44

I always liked this version with music added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo I remember sharing a jail cell with a 19-year-old Mexican kid once and we were talking about the guards being assholes and he said "they're like machine men"; and I said "with machine minds and machine hearts?" and he was like "YES! You know it?!" -- it was a good moment, we spent the next few days trying to remember the whole s…

He is a machine, everything with him happens. He cannot stop the flow of his thoughts, he cannot control his imagination, his emotions, his attention. He lives in a subjective world of 'I love,' 'I do not love,' 'I like,' 'I do not like,' 'I want,' 'I do not want,' that is, of what he thinks he likes, of what he thinks he does not like, of what he thinks he wants, of what he thinks he does not want. He does not see t…

Wow, I immediately recognized the text. I am very positively surprised in seeing Gurdjieff referenced here.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#266

Post by AlexandrB »

chopete3 wrote: post #260
hermitcrab wrote: post #236

"Greed has poisoned men's souls" Greed used to considered a sin. Now it seems to be seen as a virtue by some. It's not enough to have a Ferrari - you need to have a whole garage full. It's not enough to have a yacht - it's got to be a super yacht.

I think he is not referring to an individuals greed, for example an actor buying a few Ferrari's to satisfy their desires or a business person buying a yatch. He is referring to political/country leaders greed. Only their greed can cause violence and bloodshed at the level he is talking about. Ambition and greed both refer to the intense desire to achieve success. Sucess includes money, power, or status. The differen…

I'm not sure there's a distinction here. Especially when personal greed often informs how one votes and what political causes one supports financially.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#267

Post by wongarsu »

lewhoo wrote: post #104
vpribish wrote: post #88

"Don't let your mind speak louder than your heart" - I think many have this so very wrong. Is support for fascism is a sensible, logical, well-thought-out policy? No, it's a heart-felt, emotional appeal to scared, proud, paranoid, crude, brutal people (who seem to be about half of our neighbors). surely the mindful decision is empathetic, constructive, and wise - not just base.

I don't think it's so simple. Support for fascism can seem sensible and logical if you let yourself think that between you and greatness stands a minority whose sole purpose is to prevent you from becoming great. You could argue it's not emotion but a calculation coming from struggle and an easy explanation for that struggle. Not every wrong assumption comes from emotion and we have the whole history of science to pr…

If you reduce fascism to "let's genocide everyone else", of course the ideology doesn't make sense. I would say the idea of fascism is more about doing what's best for the nation or people, guided by a strong centrally led state, and a belief that imperialism and war can be appropriate tools to further this goal. It's adjacent to ultranationalism (though it doesn't have to be about the nation).

For example to name the most well-known example, Hitler's goals were:

- unite the German people under one country

- more lebensraum (space to live) for said German people

- get rid of undesirables who hold the Germans back (Jews, disabled people, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc)

If you start from the axioms that the German people are the best and should be elevated and all other people don't deserve compassion, it's not hard to arrive at those goals by pure reason. Of course those are bad axioms from our point of view, but you can't reason yourself away from your axioms.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#268

Post by Kamq »

bee_rider wrote: post #190
vpribish wrote: post #88

"Don't let your mind speak louder than your heart" - I think many have this so very wrong. Is support for fascism is a sensible, logical, well-thought-out policy? No, it's a heart-felt, emotional appeal to scared, proud, paranoid, crude, brutal people (who seem to be about half of our neighbors). surely the mindful decision is empathetic, constructive, and wise - not just base.

I think the fascist sells the idea that our feelings of weakness can be hardened into solid, rational, scientific, truths. This almost seems like… a horrible promise to a wounded man, that he could be a machine-man, and that’s the best he could ever be, and that will give him strength. Maybe the fascist must appeal to mechanical-ism because his philosophy is fundamentally emotion-driven. The transparent, meritocratic…

> Maybe the fascist must appeal to mechanical-ism because his philosophy is fundamentally emotion-driven.

I don't feel like this is the case. Fundamentally all philosophy that has moral prescriptions is emotion-driven.

That is to say, this is the case in all philosophies that say that something "ought" (or "ought not") to be. To say that something "ought" to be a specific way, you can't just rationally and objectively look at the material world. That only tells you how things are, not how they ought to be. You have to cross Hume's Is/Ought gap at some point, and that can't be done objectively. Any philosophy that does this can be undermined by the average two year old asking "Why?" enough times.

You have to start with some fundamental moral assumptions in order to get an ought, and those are just absolutely dripping with emotion.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#269

Post by layer8 »

VinLucero wrote: post #21
questinthrow wrote: post #2

I'd wager it's more like we don't think at all and feel only anger. At least online that is.

I feel in my heart a deep sense of empathy after watching that. Like the quote from National Treasure, “People don’t talk like that anymore.” But the response from Nicolas Cage is, “But they feel it”. As I understand it, Hitler used an economic narrative to build his team of supporters and eventually, desperate times cause people to vote with their wallets. Does anyone else feel like the advent of modern online inter…

What was great about the early web was largely the parts that weren’t economically driven. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to build a better web with economics as the primary concern. It’s the drive for profits that fostered the bad aspects of the modern web in the first place.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#270

Post by zozbot234 »

cogman10 wrote: post #249
zozbot234 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I sincerely think you need to step out of your political circle, whatever it may be, and try to understand the "mob" you think would cancel this movie. Whoever you are consuming this take from is lying to you about the motivations of their opponents. You MIGHT find some isolated instance where someone objects to this movie. However, they'll be in an extreme minority. When you take a bit of time to understand when and…

> You MIGHT find some isolated instance where someone objects to this movie. However, they'll be in an extreme minority.

Really? Take a look at the reception of recent movies that are arguably comparable - The Dictator (Larry Charles, 2012), The Interview, Jojo Rabbit. All of which, to a greater or lesser extent, have been overshadowed by controversy about their portrayal of these topics, often including claims that the movie is either promoting hateful attitudes or "trivializing" and implicitly minimizing past atrocities by the vey act of portraying them via satire and ridicule. The contrast with how The Great Dictator was received historically could hardly be any clearer!

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