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The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

charliechaplin.com

271–280 of 412 posts

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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more indicative of where one chooses to spend most of their time online.

It applies to HN too, the vast majority of comments probably don't have more than, at most, a few minutes of serious, focused, thinking behind them. And with how good LLMs nowadays, probably a numerical majority don't even contain anything worth noting.

I think it's insulting to say that human opinion or observation is worthless because a small program with a neat dataset can answer a lot of questions.

It's like saying that talking with friends about history and engineering is boring because wikipedia has the answers.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just occurred to me that anger is favored online because of a UX quirk. To build is complex; to destroy requires only a single bit! So the objects of our ire, those people, things and ideas we want gone from the world, those things that require only that we express our hatred and ill-will toward them, naturally become the most popular and shared content. As a corollary the people who are clearest and most concrete…

"To build is complex; to destroy requires only a single bit!" Love this.

Entropy. There are many more ways to destroy something than to create it.

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

#274
post #20

If you watch the news it should be clear that we feel too much and think too little. Everything is a rage fueled garbage contest.

But those awful feelings follow negative thoughts and ideas. The alternative would be awful feelings appearing out of nowhere.

They follow negative experiences. The thoughts and ideas mostly just serve to justify the feelings that are already there.

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

#276

"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…

Convince someone buying a new iPhone to buy last years model or half the GB of what they can afford.

That's the greed that's ingrained in all humans. "Humans take the perceived path of the most pleasure." is true in every human interaction I've witnessed or can think of.

We're all greedy by default. I think Agent Smith was right when he was talking to Morpheus, humanity is a virus that consumes all the resources in the local environment until they're depleted without thought for the greater good.

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

I honestly don't remember any controversy from those films, certainly not a cancellation.

Even doing some google searches for controversy surrounding those films reveals like 1 or 2 op eds talking about "should we really be laughing at this?". Nothing terribly extreme.

The only place I found any sort of mention of controversy was The Interview. But, by and large it looks like it was just a bad film that rogan decided it was reviewed poorly because of controversy (and not that it was unfunny). I've not seen the film though so can't really comment.

Can you point to some online mob around these films? Like a reddit witch hunt or otherwise?

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

#278
Dickens' "Ghost of Christmas Present" to Scrooge, visiting the Cratchit home:

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”

https://www.owleyes.org/text/christmas-carol/read/stave-thre...

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

#279

"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…

He very certainly meant this was economic greed as well.

Even the worst people in history somehow believed they were the good (or at least the needed) guys and they deserved their riches. Political power always was a vehicle to maintain, defend, multiply those riches. This is why in the best version of that spiel the royals would understand that their position/riches came with very real duties attached. Duties towards those who had it worse than them. But this was already a forgotten idea, even in Chaplins time.

As someone whow grew up around both poor and very rich (including very old-rich) people, I can assure you that the poor people would often share their last penny while the rich ones were mostly afraid that someone might be after their money. Greed is buying a Lamborghini when your neighbour/employee/sister/village starves. Even when you totally earned it using your superhuman work ethic.

Everybody wants to be the good guy in their own story, so everybody will come up with their own reasons why they deserve it (they worked harder than a single mom with three bone breaking jobs) and why doing a good thing is actually a bad thing ("they will waste it on drugs and alcohol"). If you care about your real true self lies like these are a danger to ever discovering it in your life. And you only get one of those.

In the end the question is very simple. Do you care primarily about yourself or do you more care about the people and nature around you? Everybody likes to say they do — and so they lie to themselves why buying that Lamborghini is actually a totally selfless act. But if you realize the world would be a worse place if everybody decided like you, you might be the baddy all along.

So if you want to stay rich you have to somehow get the fact that tou don't do what is needed into balance with your own image of a good person. Aa result you become that attavistic kind of rich person that believes being good is naive and a luxury (no pun intended) they cannot afford. People who want to make the world better are idiots, only you know the world as it truly functions (let's ignore the fact that you profit from that believe). This is a quite common stance among the rich and powerful. Everybody is out to get you. Your game is not doing meaningful things, it is doing things that look meaningful to other rich people. Things become very symbolic. Actually meaningful is naive and dangerous so it must be avoided. These people are rarely ever happy and in the short moments they are, it is because they fell for the lies of their own greatness. We grew up in a world that told us money buys us happiness. To a certain degree it can give us safety and freedom, but after that it comes at a mental price. Greedy people are people who are willing to pay that price, no questions asked. And there are many of them. Remember, you get only this life.

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

#280
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every ideology appeals to emotions—liberalism, democracy, fascism, communism, etc. This is why we seldom see academic professors, who deliver lectures on TV, winning elections based solely on their lectures. Ideologies aim to harness people's emotions to gain support. Democracy, fascism, and communism all possess underlying logic. By analyzing these ideologies dispassionately, without moral judgments, one can discern…

Every ideology appeals to emotions... I can't find the source right now, but someone said that believing in democracy is like believing in the metric system. And there's another (Churchill's?) one saying that it's the worst government system, except all the others. Not very exciting definitions, more like cynics' choice.

>..someone said that believing in democracy is like believing in the metric system..

I have no idea whatsoever the hidden meaning here.

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