Author Topic: March MDC write-ups  (Read 29702 times)

zarodinu

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Re: March MDC write-ups
« Reply #80 on: January 25, 2010, 06:48:26 PM »
Didn't know you finally watched it.  Wow! That is a pretty epic review.

Tillsammans (Together) (2000)

So how could communes and ashrams seem so natural, so normal, so necessary to one generation only to then practically evaporate, leaving hardly a trace in the decades that followed. What, it was only a fad? The ideas wore out? Who's to blame? Reagan? The rise of the NFL? The defeat of Communism? How have the young gone about dropping out and rebelling since then? As per mumblecore? Or by scoring high on their SATs and leaving for college, only to return home after graduation to clear the stuffed animals off the bed and move back in until those darned lagging unemployment indicators turn around again? The communes were wiped out by the materialism of the 80s? They were simply impractical? These experiments in cooperative living - all failures? Reagan did turn off the community-action spigot in the first year of his reign; that didn't help, but it didn't surprise anybody, either. And how come we've got to live through yet another set of stupid wars without even getting a summer of love to go with them? It's an outrage.

Communes fail because they are an unnatural construction.  Free love failed because when free to do as they like most people still want to to marry and have children.   People couple as husband and wife not because some antiquated religious teaching tells them so, they do it because its natural.  Any triangle relationship results in people picking favorites and pulling them towards themselves while pushing the third away. 

Communist economics fail even on a small scale because people are fundamentally selfish.  They want to keep what they earned and to build a fence around it.  They resent sharing with others who don't work as hard.

The only places where true community exists is camaraderie between soldiers and in a religious commune.  Here fear of death or extreme religious conviction overcome natural selfishness and people can live together in true community.   

There is a cafe next to my house called the Mate Factor which is operated by a fundamentalist Christian cult, they live together share all property, raise their children together (though they still couple as husband and wife).  They seem genuinely happy with the arrangement though their mixture of hippie sensibilities and ultra fundamentalist Christianity is more than a bit odd.  I had a period of depression in my life where I almost joined them. 

The movie's lesson: let's all move to Sweden, where everyone, no matter how nutty he or she may sometimes seem (refer to my next review for an analysis of Elin Nordegren), is in fact way saner than Americans are, or at least way saner than my gun-toting, tea-bagging, Palin-lovin American neighbors next door. (But I'm only raggin on the G.O.P. because I'm frustrated trying to find a good big solid incorporated Republican commune with a good big solid commune president who would keep us focused not on the weak sisters in our group but on America, love it or leave it, goddamnit, and on the uranium-mining business that our commune would operate, and on the commune's goddamned bottom line.)

Thanks to Zarodinu for the dictate.

See the way I see it, the average Palin loving teabagger lives alot closer to that communal ideal than the average khaki wearing, tofu munching city liberal.  Rednecks live in large families, go to Churches which are a form of communal bonding, often educate their kids outside of the public school system, and are truly close to nature.  I would say that a Church is atleast in theory the conservative equivalent of a commune. 

Thanks for the review, one of the most interesting things I read on this forum.   
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joem18b

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Re: March MDC write-ups
« Reply #81 on: January 26, 2010, 01:01:00 AM »
Communes fail because they are an unnatural construction.  Free love failed because when free to do as they like most people still want to to marry and have children.   People couple as husband and wife not because some antiquated religious teaching tells them so, they do it because its natural.  Any triangle relationship results in people picking favorites and pulling them towards themselves while pushing the third away. 

Communist economics fail even on a small scale because people are fundamentally selfish.  They want to keep what they earned and to build a fence around it.  They resent sharing with others who don't work as hard.

The only places where true community exists is camaraderie between soldiers and in a religious commune.  Here fear of death or extreme religious conviction overcome natural selfishness and people can live together in true community.   

There is a cafe next to my house called the Mate Factor which is operated by a fundamentalist Christian cult, they live together share all property, raise their children together (though they still couple as husband and wife).  They seem genuinely happy with the arrangement though their mixture of hippie sensibilities and ultra fundamentalist Christianity is more than a bit odd.  I had a period of depression in my life where I almost joined them. 


See the way I see it, the average Palin loving teabagger lives alot closer to that communal ideal than the average khaki wearing, tofu munching city liberal.  Rednecks live in large families, go to Churches which are a form of communal bonding, often educate their kids outside of the public school system, and are truly close to nature.  I would say that a Church is at least in theory the conservative equivalent of a commune. 


Zarodinu, thanks for the thoughtful and thought-provoking response, and again for the movie recommendation.

oldkid

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Re: March MDC write-ups
« Reply #82 on: August 10, 2010, 09:51:41 PM »
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

 

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