The guardian has a ‘words that should be banned’ column. My nomination is ‘Democracy’. We don’t have a democracy in this country. We elect our leaders in a process that is a hollow reflection of democracy, but once given the mandate, they are let loose on the population unchecked until next election. The state of America is even worse, with huge social brainwashing projects running through the 50s and early 60s. Psychoanalysis, as driven by Anna Freud, was the art of perverting the course of human emotions - originally fired by concern at the way ordinary, ‘rational’ citizens would run the death camps and be capable of all manner of atrocities in WWII, a project was born in which social conditioning was used to make the Ego strong so that it could quell the Id, and then citizens would be able to act in a ‘rational’ way, free from self-destructive urges. Anna Freud adopted a family of young human ‘guinea-pigs’ to bring up in the model way. Meanwhile, commerce and the government realised that the techniques of psychoanalysis had applications elsewhere, like selling more cake mix or soap, and getting popular support for destroying small island states and taking over their banana production. By the late 50s, early 60s, the CIA was funding a program where LSD and ECT were used to erase peoples personalities and replace them with ideal, conflict-free emotional frameworks. In the end, they produced a bunch of bewildered individuals with no recollection of their past and the ability to repeat the phrase ‘I am calm and at ease with myself’. As for Freuds kids, one died of alcoholism and another committed suicide in Freud’s own house…
The X files has nothing on reality. Except for space aliens…
I can’t remember who it was that recommended I should see the movie Pi, but it was on TV the other night and I thought it was fantastic! This is not necessarily a recommendation as it is not a particularly easy movie to watch, but it does an amazing job of making number theory sexy and really drew me in anyway. The whole thing is shot in black & white, with stylish use of overexposure and hectic camerawork. The soundtrack gives you the heebie jeebies as motifs rather than melodies are repeated. The hero’s friend and mentor is a loveable old mathematician who seemingly once ‘got burned’ while looking for patterns in the digits of Pi, but brought himself back from the brink. The hero, meantime, is working on patterns in the stock market and we see him drive himself to the brink of insanity while his mentor tries to talk him down. The woman next door extends a hand of friendship and normality by bringing round samosas or performing other acts of nurture, but the hero symbolically rejects her. There is much that is unexplained in the middle of the film, I have a feeling there is a good deal of symbolism that was lost on me, but it held its own on the surrealism alone. I can’t really talk about what I thought of the end without giving it away so I won’t.