The Constorium of Greater Minds

so i was surfing the apple trailer site earlier this morning and i came across a preview for a new film entitled Redacted by brian de palma from scarface fame. anyway, redacted looked interesting so i visited the official site and from there i found a link to a youtube clip of bill o’reilly ranting on about mark cuban (who financed part or all of the film) and in that video cuban mentions some documentary entitled loose change. so my curiosity piqued i searched for loose change in google and up comes this video. it’s 89 minutes long so you might not sit through it all as i did but i’d suggest sampling it at least partially but do watch it in its entirety if it interests you. now i don’t ascribe to the beliefs of this video, honestly, i don’t have any strong beliefs as to any explanation for the events in question – i simply know something happened and thousands of people lost their lives while at the same a reaction was set off that has influenced politics from the day in question on. i’m no conspiracy nut nor am i a political buff, however, i am an individual that values truth, knowledge and justice and as such found this alternative view on the events in question quite interesting. if you value seeing things from all angles before forming an opinion i suggest you check this out but take it for what it is and understand that today’s mediated news sources – even independent sources like this one are only valuable if viewed with an open mind and can be a dangerous thing when taken for truth by the ignorant.

take for example the title of this post. the words “tales of a scorched earth” evoke a negative and sinister feeling – a feeling that in the weak minded leads to an influence – this post and the ideas associated with it will be forever recalled as subversive and ominous by such an individual. and after watching the documentary discussed in the post for which they are the title they may take on an even different and more foreboding meaning.

without an open mind the reader won’t understand that this title is simply five words strung together to make a sentence, five words that before they were arranged by me had no meaning. now that they are strung together in a logical order they form a statement, an idea or the suggestion of an idea. yet, they still mean nothing.

have you ever seen a poster for a movie and on it is stamped a phrase such as on over 200 top ten lists? what does this mean – on over 200 top ten lists? are there even 200 reliable top ten lists out there and who determines what makes a reliable top ten list? the words are meaningless taken on their own. that’s my point – so much of what we base our entire lives upon are empty and hollow statements, thoughts, ideas, memories, etc., etc. just like the title of this post, just like the video loose change, just like the views and opinions of bill o’reilly, just like the statements of president bush, just like the statements of the presidential candidates, just like the ideas espoused by your professors, religious leaders and prophets.

nothing anyone says has any meaning for you until you internalize it and make it your own. now, for some people this happens instantaneously – he or she hears john stewart express an opinion on his television show and it is immediately theirs, they listen to rush limbaugh discuss his views on gay marriage and they instantly agree with him or perhaps they are instantly repulsed, they hear over and over that the country is in a recession or that things are worse in iraq than they have ever been or things are getting better in iraq and without one shred of evidence for or against they find themselves using other people’s opinions in a discussion with friends, or in a paper for class or explaining the idea to their children.

have you ever sat down and thought about why you are who you are – why you like rap music or why you hate rap music, why you love to watch football on sundays, why you went to university where you did, why you majored in what you did, why is your favorite colour navy blue, why is your best friend-your best friend, why do you like football and not american football, why do you enjoy french films and not mainstream films, why do you care about fashion, why does it not matter whats on the label of your t-shirt, why do love to travel, why are you content to live and die in the same small town your parents and their parents lived and will one day die in, why can you never feel settled in a new place, why do you have a love for all races, religions and creeds, why do you not have any black friends, why do you not have any white friends, why do you not have any asian friends, or muslim friends, why do you watch fox news, 60 minutes or the bbc, why do you prefer to stay away from the media altogether, why do you like to read books, why have you not read a book for pleasure since high school, why did you place the couch in your apartment the way you did and why don’t you move it to a different location, why do you find it hard to talk to strangers, why are you so good with new people, why do you let others whether friends, musicians, artists, politicians, news reporters, athletes, parents, religious figures, movie critics, neighbors, strangers, magazine articles, television shows and authors influence who you are?

we should all take an hour or so to sit down and think about what we think and why we do the things we do – even better, make it something we attempt to do at all times for the rest of our life. and the next time we find ourself agreeing with what that NPR talk show host has to say about abortion, or what the local news caster says about the housing market or when we find ourself disagreeing with what the president tells us about the war on terror or the situation with immigration ask: why do i agree or disagree with what i am hearing? what do i really know about what these people are saying to me, what do they really know about what they are saying, for that matter. how do these new facts, if true, factor into my view on this subject – how does my opinion relate to my other beliefs and how do all these opinion, beliefs, conjectures, feelings, thoughts, tendencies factor in to who i am and why i am who i am? how do i give value to something i read, hear or watch – how do those meaningless words on a movie poster or campaign sign take on a life of their own and how do i choose to let them affect me – do i choose at all?

it’s not easy to be a critical and discerning thinker, definitely not as easy as our elementary and high school teachers might have had us think. it’s one thing to look at a story from two sides and form an opinion it’s an entirely other matter to look at a story from two sides and then think about how your preformed ideas influence your view from either side – what if there are three sides? what if there is no side at all just a mottled landscape of ambiguity?

*tales of a scorched earth is simply the title of a smashing pumpkins song that i was listening to while i decided to share my stumbling-upon ‘loose change’…