North Koreans' cry

If North-Koreans' cry is not forged, then it is the cry of the slave, which can only give way to its sorrow along with with his master's sorrow. Simone Weil explains that in her essay about the Iliad.

"And what does it take to make the slave weep? The misfortune of his master, his opressor, despoiler, pillager, of the man who laid waste his town and killed his dear ones under his very eyes. This man suffers or dies; then the slave's tears comes. And really why not? This is for him the only occasion on which tears are permitted, are, indeed, required. A slave will always cry whenever he can do so with impunity - his situation keeps tears on tap for him.

She spoke, weeping, and the women groaned,

Using the pretext of Patroclus to bewail their own torments.

Since the slave has no licence to express anything except what is pleasing to his master, it follows that the only emotion that can touch or enliven him a little, that can reach him in the desolation of his life, is the emotion of love for his master. There is no place else to send the gift of love; all other outlets are barred, just as, with the horse in harness, bits, shafts, reins bar every way but one. And if, by some miracle, in the slave's breast a hope is born, the hope of becoming, some day, through somebody's influence, someone once again, how far won't these captives go to show love and thankfulness, even though these emotions are adressed to very mand who should, considering the very recent past, still reek with horror for them:

My husband, to whom my father and respected mother gave me,

I saw before the city transfixed by the sharp bronze.

My three brothers, cildren, with me, of a single mother,

So dear to me! They all met their fatal day.

But you did not allow me to weep, when swift Achilles

Slaughtered my husband and laid waste the city of Mines.

You promised me that I would be taken by divine Achilles,

For his legitimate wife, that he would carry me away in his ships,

To Pythia, where our marriage would be celebrated among the Myrmidons,

So without respite I mourn for you, you who have always been gentle.

To lose more than the slave does is impossible, for he loses his whole inner life. A fragment of it he may get back if he sees the possibility of changing his fate, but this is only his hope. Such is the empire of force (...)."

How british authors love orphans!

Atheism doesn't exist

Atheism doens't exist. People think they are atheists because they don't believe in God's representation they were lead to believe in. Or they revolt themselves against the difficulties that the belief in a Supreme Being may bring, once the faithful personal growth doens't come without a struggle. In extreme cases, of socialist revolutionaries rebelled against God's authority, and of satanism practioners, it not about a disbelief in the existence of God, but rather a disbelief in his person, like somebody may distrust another person.

The greatest concept man has ever conceived for the divine reality is that of a Father, as such amorous towards his children. But this is still a representation, suited only for the relationship man develops with God. For example, for an angel, to say that God is a Father won't make much sense, since he didn't have a progenitor. The image of a father he can only glimpse putting himself in the place of other beings, which is not the same as having lived it. God is much more than any representation we can make of him, he is that best reality we know exists.

But that doens't mean representations are not useful. Myths always open human mind with a range of experiential possibilities that mere, let us say, metaphysical acknowledgment might sterilize. Good philosophy -- as Plato knew well and Lao-Tsé better yet -- transits through logical intuition and phantasies. 

Old Boy and spirit, or lack of

There is no goodness in the movie Old Boy. Oh Dae-Su leaves its private jail after fifteen years and does nothing to help a man willing to commit suicide. He will have the opportunity to kill his tormentor, Woo-jin, but, because he would lose the chance to know why he was incarcerated, doesn't do that. His friend No Joo-hwan's death would be avoided if he had.

Woo-jin is the psycopath who jails Oh Dae-Su. He has killed his wife and supervised his daughter Mi-do's upbringing. He hypnotizes both in order to have them become, father and daughter, lovers. His loathsome plan fullfills itself: it is a revenge because Dae-Su had gossiped to the school where they had studied that Woo-jin and his sister, Lee Soo-ah, had had sex. Soo-ah commits suicide then, which is the occasion for Woo-jin to allow himself to become a psycopath.

Once everything happened, Dae-Su just wants to forget and resorts to the same expedient that had him fustigated: hypnosis.

These stories of extreme-grade manipulation remembers me of Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who lived in a nazi concentration camp and lost wife, parents, brother and friends, but left the place to love his fellow human beings. There is spirit beyond the "repugnant desires to moral which were imposed to us by nature" (Freud).

It seems real

Watching this scene from the movie Runaway Jury, referring to Gene Hackman's play, my father told me: "It seems real."

Fitch Gets Duped




Runaway Jury

— MOVIECLIPS.com