I sometimes fear that people might think that fascism arrives in fancy dress worn by grotesques and monsters as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis. Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, clear out the venal and the corrupt, remove anything you feel is unlike you…It doesn’t walk in saying, “Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.”
“But you haven’t rebutted my argument.”
“Which is what? That humanity is fundamentally base and needs to be controlled? That a democratic society with civil liberties is a society with social inequality and crime, whereas a police state, by silencing its dissidents, can guarantee a rough egalitarianism and public safety – so that a poet’s freedom to be subversive is invariably bought by the suffering of the poor? That the rule of the people too easily becomes the rule of the mob? That the centre of every human being is self-interest and even virtue is corrupt? That they are animals whose moral sense degenerates as soon as their bellies aren’t full? That idealism has killed as many as viciousness and there is no philosophy, however noble, that can’t be turned to depraved ends? That people will always fear, and as long as they fear they will hate?
“There is ample evidence for the truth of everything you’ve just said. History makes my case for me. Can you, in all intellectual honesty, deny it?”
“No.”
“Then why?” said Sabbath, genuinely puzzled. “You’re not stupid about these matters. You’re not starry-eyed, or basically impractical. You can see what reality is. Why don’t you accept it?”
The Doctor was sitting back in his chair, his clasped hands resting against his chest. “Because I prefer not to.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Because I don’t, won’t accept it. I don’t approve. Injustice is the rule, but I want justice. Suffering is the rule, but I want to end it. Despair accords with reality, but I insist on hope. I don’t accept it, because it is unacceptable. I say no.”
His character is basically a cynical loner who realises the importance of being part of a group and helping for the common good…compromising and sacrificing his own welfare for those of others. I had a list of about thirty five themes that I wanted to explore in the film, and giving up your own personal gratification for the good of others was one of them.
George Lucas on Han Solo (from The Annotated Screenplays)
Recently, my son said to me after seeing a ballet on television: ‘It’s beautiful, but I don’t like it.’ And I thought, Are many grown-ups capable of such a distinction? It’s beautiful, but I don’t like it. Usually, our grown-up thinking is more along the lines of: I don’t like it, so it’s not beautiful. What would it mean to separate those two impressions for art making and for art criticism?
“59. it’s beautiful, but I don’t like it” from
100 essays I don’t have time to write: on umbrellas and sword fights, parades and dogs, fire alarms, children, and theater,
As I get older I’m finding that a lot of the “intellectuals” I used to admire are actually just condescending and pretentious. And also realizing how much more important it is to be present, considerate, and empathetic because nobody really knows what they’re talking about and anyone who claims to know everything about anything is feeding you bs.
“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
The primary story is about fathers and sons. STAR WARS is about generations, about one generation having to try to improve on what the generation before it did. It is about one generation living with the mistakes that the previous generation made. The story is twofold: Why does somebody who starts out being good become bad? It also reflects the father’s journey, how he becomes bad and it follows the journey of the son who refuses to become bad and in the process redeems his father. A new generation needs to try to improve the world.
‘Actually, Mr. Vimes, I think we could,’ said Carrot. ‘And the army, too. I mean, I don’t see why we can’t. We could charge them with behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace, sir. I mean, that’s what warfare IS.’
Vimes’s face split in a manic grin. ‘I LIKE it.’
‘But in fairness our–that is, the Ankh-Morpork army–are also–’
‘Then you’d better arrest them, too,’ said Vimes. ‘Arrest the lot of ’em. Conspiracy to cause an affray,’ he started to count on his fingers, ‘going equipped to commit a crime, obstruction, threatening behavior, loitering with intent, loitering WITHIN tent, hah, traveling for the purposes of committing a crime, malicious lingering and carrying concealed weapons.’
Terry Pratchett, “Jingo”
(And the thing is, we laugh at this because the idea of Sam Vimes arresting two armies IS funny. But on top of being funny–and on top of Vimes trying to pile on the charges here with this list–Pratchett intended with this book above all else to characterize war as, in itself, a crime. In this case, a war started because of a lie and because of racial/ethnic/national prejudice. But we’re meant to be thinking about this. When is war NOT a crime, when you get down to what most people think crimes are? Why is killing people okay and legal when it’s war, for one thing? Why is it legal to loot places when you conquer them? Why isn’t it murder and theft? Well?)