Comments on: SERIOUS MEN

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:44:39 +0000

I guess the art of all this, is to avoid the ”toll” as much as possible. I,ll take another look.
Best,
Dave

By: mason mckibben

mason mckibben — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:04:41 +0000

They are not thrown around in the slightest. You are right to point to them. And you suggest little more than that we wrestle with them as best we can and that the struggle takes it toll on us. These are facts IMHO.

Cheers!
-mason

By: nick

nick — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:59:56 +0000

Such phrases always develop from figurative perception of a subject or a situation.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:16:50 +0000

Yes. I am a fan of the ''equal affection'' theory. Both phrases, i now see are tossed about with little regard to their portent. Dave

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:58:15 +0000

This all alluvial, you understand it. Probably, you cannot present as happens in another way. All experience, is necessary to draw only correct conclusions.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:42:16 +0000

Thanks for the comment.

By: mason mckibben

mason mckibben — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:12:03 +0000

Thanks for your note!
Forgot to mention it above, but the culture/civilisation site is very rich and i would say THE most important site for the planet to consider nowadays. Each without the other is terribly poor. I can’t even imagine religion without them!

Also of great value to me, at least, is the value of some “accepted framework” be it on the palate, in the mind or blocked out on the canvas. We need a place to return, to work and from which to depart. But there is always, to my mind, a modality or rhetoric or practice that maintains a sort of equal affection for culture and civilisation as well as for their particulars. I can’t say she precedes them, but without her it is likely the intermittent feuding will just get more damaging.

– mason

By: ghfdg

ghfdg — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:34:44 +0000

You should not touch the past generation, he probably had his own mission. I think everything is still to deal with modernity. The geniuses of the past worked a moral basis. You are trying to implement the connection to time? I think world order is done this already.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:20:54 +0000

The film is a must see. I think the presence of the Koreans in the film lends credibility to the Eastern philosophies, likely not by accident in this film’s case. Odd, because I don,t think there were many wealthy Koreans in Minnesota at that time. I caught a lot of fish in my net with this one; the feud between Culture and civilization as presented by Thomas Mann is quite revealing and even Werfel added some interesting insights. The perspective of Auden and G.K Chesterton would be interesting to study as well. With Chaplin, I think you will be occupied for some time. The article I cited by Tim Krieger on Kubrck this week was the product of 700 hours work. Imagine.Best,
Dave

By: mason mckibben

mason mckibben — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:46:53 +0000

Excellent as in excelling many previous categories of performance! Thanks Dave!

Now, towards tradition, without detachment or irony, in a post modern form with affection for and sympathy with the modern. O, for “an intimate and happy [and sustainable (or living) form]!” Great generally aesthetic description of Wagner’s sin. Again Deleuze & Guattari re painting; anticipating and generating sensation “for effects that bring down the house” – Auden is not compatible with or appropriate to seriousness in or of theory.

I must see the film! The mere attempt to seriously show a number of characters wrestling with modernity from various traditional postures is admirable. Since i began to flit about the Twitter scene at the turn of the year i have encountered a lot of zenlike and buddhist postures and some admixed with aesthetic, social, economic or political theory. The idea that Ego and ID – both representational values presented by and addressed in the “mind stuff” – are necessary to liberation is being felt and understood by many. I am enthusiastic!

This film is a must see ASAP, but i intend to view the Chaplin oeuvre before 2010 is done. May we all be at least so fortunate.

Best in 2010!
-mason

The sin of Wagner is leaving the laws of classical harmony and composing the ”modern” based on abstract theory, and sensation rather than aesthetic pleasure. Greater abstraction is seen by Werfel as the spirituality of Romanticism with Wagner being the link to modernism, to symbolism and finally to the limits of tonality.In A Serious Man, these same battles rage, with all the characters having vary degrees of committment to the ideas of modernity while trying to preserve tradition. Oddly, the only two characters who question the usefulness of their lives and of their existence is Gopnik’s troubled brother and the the old, almost eternal looking rabbi who in their own lonely way search for God among the details.