tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post5637657469737969182..comments2023-12-28T06:30:48.808-05:00Comments on The Rule of Reason: Our Zombie CultureUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-34588962410289557982013-01-05T23:29:49.971-05:002013-01-05T23:29:49.971-05:00Makes sense as well Ed that Wells would have Georg...Makes sense as well Ed that Wells would have George inadvertently kill Weena. <br /><br />I don't think that I'll be reading his book anytime soon.John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-87387238530317790772013-01-05T23:03:38.677-05:002013-01-05T23:03:38.677-05:00Thank you, Ed, for the additional info on the nove...Thank you, Ed, for the additional info on the novel.<br /><br />Yes, what man would want to go into the future or the past without a Bible? I mean, it's got everything man needs to guide his life, after all.<br /><br />I did some hitching many years ago. Got a ride with an elderly couple once in their pickup-with-camper-on-back. I sat between them in the front, and soon after we got going, he reached onto the dash and grabbed his mini Bible. He riffled the pages with the thumb of one hand, and asked his wife to say when. She did, and he stopped and started reading. Within moments, as he was reading, she was reciting it from memory out loud, me sitting between them. He said that that was how they decide what to do each day.<br /><br />So, like I said, with a Bible, one pretty much has all one needs. I can't even think of a reason for George to have taken another two books.<br /><br />I'm not certain, but I don't think that I've watched that movie since I first saw it in the 60s (and it impresses me that I've remembered it as well as I have). It was on TCM just a few days ago though and I recorded it so that I can watch it again, but I've not yet done so. <br /><br />I did have my TV on while recording, and, having remembered a few scenes from long ago, I watched a couple of minutes here and there, one in particular was that scene where George saves Weena. <br /><br />I hadn't remembered the dialog from when I first saw the movie and was rather shocked and disgusted by it when I heard it. That's why it came so readily to mind today. As a young boy, I saw a beautiful damsel in distress and a handsome hero saving her. And I saw something good in Weena, as I indicated previously.<br /><br />I'll have to look into Shoshana Milgram's essay. Thank you for mentioning it. It makes perfect sense that the Eloi would be lumpy and unattractive rather than as they were presented in the movie. That's what the welfare state creates while destroying all that beautiful and brilliant. You don't even have to look to science fiction to see the evidence. Just go shopping.John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-61905793327683769952013-01-05T22:30:07.569-05:002013-01-05T22:30:07.569-05:00John: A correction. In the novel, Weena perishes w...John: A correction. In the novel, Weena perishes when George accidentally starts a forest fire while fighting off the Morlocks. He found matches in a decaying museum and also camphor. Wells doesn't specify whether she was carried off by them or if she died in the fire. Incidentally, I used the "winged sphinx" of the Morlocks as a device in the second Hanrahan detective novel, "Presence of Mind." That's in the Wells novel, not in the movie. Edward Clinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12160209827969614964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-45883210604734676702013-01-05T20:26:29.288-05:002013-01-05T20:26:29.288-05:00John: What's not in the novel is the closing ...John: What's not in the novel is the closing scene of the movie, when Filby and the housekeeper (Mrs. Watchett) wonder which three books George took back to the future. That always intrigued me, but one of them had to have been the Bible (according to George Pal's lights). The novel goes on past that point, when after leaving Weena, he goes forward millions of years and watches the earth die and the sun become a red giant. All the movie shows is the disintegrating Morlock. Then he goes back in time to his own time, has the dinner with his friends, and then disappears again, no one knows in which direction. There's no indication that he returns to Weena. There were chapters of the novel that were never used with the published novel because the publisher thought they were too pessimistic. Shoshana Milgram had an essay in one of the Rand books, the one for "Anthem," about various kinds of literary dystopias. She discusses The Time Machine and makes several valid points, contradicting Wells's premise that the Eloi would have been beautiful, like "Dresden china dolls," saying that in such a society they'd be lumpy and unattractive.<br />Ed<br />Edward Clinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12160209827969614964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-45623538395386069172013-01-05T18:09:17.279-05:002013-01-05T18:09:17.279-05:00And it's sad, really, for moment to be charact...And it's sad, really, for moment to be characterized that way, because Weena was actually acting on something good within herself: her intelligence, independence and capacity to value. She saw that this man from somewhere in the past was of importance and she valued him, so she took a risk to warn him of the danger. Not a sacrifice at all. Yet self-sacrifice gets praised.<br /><br />And in a sense, it wasn't blind faith on her part to say, "I do not understand, but I believe you," but rather a form of trust in someone she knew to be of value, someone who knew more than her. The words say "faith," but I'm a bit more generous. She trusted George because she trusted her own self, to a degree, in evaluating him. But given his explicit views, a misguided trust.John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-79847942860601330352013-01-05T17:53:48.414-05:002013-01-05T17:53:48.414-05:00Yes, Ed, that's captures quite a bit: self-sac...Yes, Ed, that's captures quite a bit: self-sacrifice and faith in just a couple of lines.John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-15242618813350413382013-01-05T17:49:15.260-05:002013-01-05T17:49:15.260-05:00I typed that too hastily, so just to correct a cou...I typed that too hastily, so just to correct a couple of things in that quote.<br /><br />Should be: "I should like to try, if you'll let me." (not "I'd like..."), and "I do not understand, but I believe you." (not "I don't...").John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-38736939184665660882013-01-05T17:44:11.078-05:002013-01-05T17:44:11.078-05:00John: That's precisely the bit of dialogue th...John: That's precisely the bit of dialogue that alerted me to there being something awfully wrong about the ethics. Thanks for being so perceptive. Ed<br />Edward Clinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12160209827969614964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-81828756163038880842013-01-05T17:16:46.536-05:002013-01-05T17:16:46.536-05:00Ed, I knew nothing of Wells, but given your commen...Ed, I knew nothing of Wells, but given your comment on his being a socialist, perhaps the most telling dialog in that movie, which took place right after George (Taylor) has saved Weena (Mimieux) from one of the Morlocks:<br /><br />George: But you know Weena, you were safe inside your great house, and yet you came out into the night to warn me. The one characteristic which distinguished man from the animal kingdom was the spirit of self-sacrifice. And you have that quality. I think all your people have it really. They just need someone to reawaken it. I'd like to try if you'll let me. Will you? <br /><br />Weena: I don't understand, but I believe you.John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-64515225129362157302013-01-05T16:38:04.929-05:002013-01-05T16:38:04.929-05:00Ed, that's interesting. I think I saw it at th...Ed, that's interesting. I think I saw it at the time it first aired, and it had a memorable impact on me. It has always been there in my memory, in the back of my mind, a haunting memory with a question as to just how closely any people could come to approximating such a "society." Metaphorically, there's a lot there, and it often comes to mind, as it did in reading your article.<br /><br />Yes, there are many holes one could poke in the movie. Perhaps because I was so young, 6 or so, when I first saw it, the holes weren't apparent or important. <br /><br />Plus, Yvette Mimieux was perhaps the first love of my live. Such a beauty. And Rod Taylor, an early, manly hero.John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-31453382906441946922013-01-04T06:57:35.943-05:002013-01-04T06:57:35.943-05:00John Shepard: It's curious that you should br...John Shepard: It's curious that you should bring up the 1960 movie, "The Time Machine." This was the first movie that caused me to think about larger issues when I was a teenager. It was new when I saw it, and it had an influence on my thinking from that day onward. Of course, I can poke holes in its story line now, and do not accept the notion of "time travel" as a valid one. I read the novel shortly after seeing the movie, and was disappointed. Yet, the movie still means something to me as a kind of launching pad for future thinking. I still have the paperback that I bought in 1960, and have a DVD of the movie. The novel was the subject of "remakes" later on, none of them with the power of George Pal's production, which won an Oscar for its "special effects." When H.G. Wells introduced the notion of time travel in the late 19th century, it was a new form of "science fiction" which boosted his Fabian-Socialist career. And Wells was nothing if not a socialist. Edward Clinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12160209827969614964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-82367812840224357662013-01-04T00:47:42.258-05:002013-01-04T00:47:42.258-05:00Reminds me of the 1960's movie The Time Machin...Reminds me of the 1960's movie The Time Machine (I've not read the book), with the well-fed, ignorant, carefree and motivation-free Eloi - versus the Morlocks, the monsters who rule the Eloi, provide for them, and eventually eat them - the Elois being the "Zombies," the Morlocks being our "political elites."John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-61702099579550401822013-01-03T13:36:03.292-05:002013-01-03T13:36:03.292-05:00Revereridesagain: Good comment. By way of analogy...Revereridesagain: Good comment. By way of analogy, our political "elite" and the MSM comprise a singular "bokor" dedicated to allowing us to "survive" as their pet zombies in the pursuit of a "more perfect world" -- one, however, that is at least authoritarian, if not tyrannical. Our "bokor" wishes us all to be good, obedient, submissive, unquestioning zombies in the name of "responsible citizenship." Edward Clinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12160209827969614964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-42582154169544905552013-01-03T11:44:51.133-05:002013-01-03T11:44:51.133-05:00In the 1980s Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis theo...In the 1980s Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis theorized that creation of "zombies" has long been used as a tool of social control of targeted individuals in rural Haiti. A near-death state is created through induction of a neurotoxins and dissociative drugs. Following burial, the victim is disinterred by the "bokor", or sorceror, who then assumes control via hypnosis (and/or exploitation of pre-existing mental illness) abetted by entrenched superstitions that include belief in zombies as a "societal norm". <br /><br />While parts of Davis' theory are questionable, the irony in this process is that such "zombies" are not the dead returned to a semblance of life, but living men conned into believing that they have died and that their will is now under total control of the sorceror who "brought them back to life" and who alone can provide for their continued survival, such as it is.<br /><br />Which sounds a lot like the version of "zombies" with which the West has become infested.<br /> revereridesagainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13443013401059011056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-21135419217992183782013-01-02T16:50:18.140-05:002013-01-02T16:50:18.140-05:00"Art Lister": I read that remark somewhe..."Art Lister": I read that remark somewhere, made by someone at the NIH or CDC. And when one recalls the consciously destructive policies of especially the Obama gang, that remark fits. Edward Clinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12160209827969614964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-9705809364764501252013-01-02T16:26:04.123-05:002013-01-02T16:26:04.123-05:00Unfortunately, I don't think they are joking a...Unfortunately, I don't think they are joking at all. One of these health officials (either from the CDC or the NIH) remarked that what the human race really needs is a "good pandemic."Ilene Skeenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04409015958207848125noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200276.post-16908003999689668212013-01-02T14:32:30.992-05:002013-01-02T14:32:30.992-05:00I've had similar thoughts about people, but I&...I've had similar thoughts about people, but I've never expressed them so eloquently Ed. Thank you! <br /><br />A rational philosophy enables the individual to live as a human being. An irrational philosophy turns humans into drones who are eager and willing to act on orders.<br /><br />If wants to herd human beings, altruism is the means.John Shepardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16424458889560274756noreply@blogger.com