Author Topic: Wolf of Wall Street/ of Braunau am Inn Versus Steppenwolf (Mr H)  (Read 884 times)

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Holden

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Notice the similarity? Pop-Nietzsche seems to have triumphed .It seems only cruelty and domination can win in this harsh Darwinian world. Evil is sexy.War for money, sex, power. Nature red in tooth and claw.

The highest ideal of Darwinism is to be a Genghis Khan, Tucker Max, Don Juan, playboy, Fratboy, Hiphop gangsta, pick up artist.

The ideal of the Pop-Nietzsche represents a Weltanschauung & make no mistake its a powerful one.

And I can overcome it only if I embrace a Weltanschauung which is more profound,truer -

that of the Steppenwolf (Mr H)

« Last Edit: October 20, 2014, 11:08:04 am by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Nation of One

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I have to confess that I was more repulsed by the Wall Street Wolf than Brauna am Inn.  That CEO, although a fictional character, is a pig, an omnigort.  Most likely that was the intention of those who created that film ... to produce disgust and repulsion.  I can't see anyone actually identifying with that kind of mentality.

And yet, such a mindset might be the result of relentless advertizing.  I recently flew through a book I mentioned in another thread, Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos: Complexity Theory, Deleuze|Guattari and Psychoanalysis for a Climate Crisis by Joseph Dodds.  Looking over my notes, I could not help but think of this thread you started.

Quote from: Dodds
In our culture, thanks to relentless advertizing, possessions such as cars become a symbol of genital achievement.  So much so that Margaret Thatcher even claimed apparently, that a man who reaches 30 and finds himself on a bus must consider himself a failure.

This occurs when the "environment mother" is dealt with through the "equation of maturity (particularly masculine maturity) with the ability to dominate and exploit her."

Once cars become a cultural and psychological icon of maturity and "grown-up-ness", there is an equating of "realism" with consumerist acquisitions.  Any other approach is viewed as "idealistic," "immature," and "childish."  However, behind this devaluation "lies contempt for the mother: it is a deeply narcissistic version of maturity which turns away from the real relationship to the natural world."  (Randall 2005)

Quote from: Dodds
It is important to stress that it is not only men who feel this contempt.  Many women may also feel that "the mature and realistic position is to be too busy or important to worry about environmental concerns" leading to a relationship to the environment mother ... as troubled as their male counterparts."

Have you checked out Hesse's Steppenwolf?  The Steppenwolf wants to destroy the automobiles ... every last one of them.  What a contrast to the Wolf of Wall Street!   I imagine the Steppenwolf would throw bricks through the sleek TV sets advertizing "sexy" cars that the gorts worship.

Dodds is promoting what he calls ecopsychoanalysis.  Maybe he would be interested in gortology.

Consumptive appetites that have been stoked for decades by ubiquitous advertizing ... will now have to be reined in ... our central task ... as individuals and as a species, must be to make a transition away from fossil fuels - and to do this as peacefully, equitably, and intelligently as possible ... Psychologists [or gortologists?] should perhaps be gearing up to treat not only individuals but whole communities.  (Heinberg 2009)



My favorite excerpt from Hesse's Steppenwolf


Make an end at last of the fat and well dressed and perfumed plutocrats who used the machines to squeeze the fat from other men’s bodies, of them and their fiendishly purring automobiles.

Set factories afire at last!

Make a little room on the crippled earth!

Depopulate it so the grass may grow again, and woods, meadows, heather, stream and moor return to this world of dust and concrete.

The principal thing was clear. There was a war on, a violent, genuine and highly sympathetic war where there was no concern for Kaiser or Republic, for frontiers, flags, or colors and other equally decorative and theatrical matters, all nonsense at bottom; but a war in which every one who lacked air to breathe and no longer found life exactly pleasing gave empathetic expression to his displeasure and strove to prepare the way for a general destruction of this iron-cast civilization of ours.

In every eyes I saw the unconcealed spark of destruction and murder, and in mine too these wild red roses bloomed as rank and high, and sparkled as brightly. I joined the battle joyfully.

Or this …

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gustav. We have taken the liberty of shooting your chauffer. May we inquire whom we have the honor to address?”

The old man looked at us coolly and sadly out of his small gray eyes.
“I am the Attorney General Loering,” he said slowly.
“You have not only killed my poor chauffer, but me too, I fancy. Why did you shoot us?”

“For exceeding the speed limit.”

“We were not traveling at more than normal speed.”

“What was normal yesterday is no longer normal today, Mr. Attorney General. We are of the opinion that whatever speed a motorcar travels is too great. We are destroying all motorcars and all other machines also.”

“Your rifles too?”

“Their turn will come, granted we have the time.”

“And now, will you please get out, or let us carry you out, as the car is to be destroyed.”

“I prefer to be destroyed with it.”

“As you wish. But allow me to ask you one more question. You are a public prosecutor. i never could understand how a man could be a public prosecutor. You make your living by bringing other men, poor devils mostly, to trial and passing sentence on them. Isn’t that so?”

“It is. I do my duty. It was my office. Exactly as it is the office of the hangman to hang those I condemn to death. You too have assumed a like office. You kill people also.”

“Quite true. Only we do not kill for duty, but pleasure, or much more rather, from displeasure and despair of the world. For this reason we find a certain amusement in killing people. Has it never amused you?”

“You bore me. Be so kind as to do your work. Since the conception of duty is unknown to you -”

I agree with Gustav when he says, “I have no objection to this stupid congested world going to bits. I am glad to help and glad to perish with it.”


Let’s not forget this little conversation:

The young woman asks, “But what is to become of us?”

“Don’t know,” said Gustav. “My friend Harry is fond of pretty girls. He’ll look after you.”

“But the police and the soldiers will come and kill us.”

“There aren’t any police and such like any more. We can choose, Dora. Either we stay quietly up here and shoot down every car that tries to pass, or else we can take a car and drive off in it and let others shoot at us. It’s all the same which side we take. I’m for staying here.”



« Last Edit: April 22, 2022, 02:54:18 am by Mike E. Mic :: Hyper-Retarded Nuclear-Bum »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

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More Horror For Holden
« Reply #2 on: October 23, 2014, 08:30:56 am »
More Horror For Holden : Devils of Loudun

"Alcohol is but one of the many drugs employed by human beings as avenues of escape from the insulated self."  ~ Aldous Huxley (from the Epilogue of Devils of Loudun)

Is it uncanny that the very last pages of Devils of Loudun contain a "response" to Holden's question about what the speech from the Wolf of Wall Street has in common with Hitler's montage of speeches?  Crowd delirium.

Quote
Drugged by the mysterious poison which every excited herd secretes, they fall into a state of heightened suggestibility ... resembling that of a light hypnotic trance.  While in this state they will believe any nonsense that may be bawled at them, will act upon any command or exhortation, however senseless, mad or criminal. 

The final symptom of herd-intoxication is maniacal violence ... the revolutionary leader who hates the status quo has only one wish - to create a chaos on which, when he comes to power, he may impose a new kind of order.  When the revolutionary exploits men's urge to downward self-transcendence, he exploits it to the frantic and demoniac limit.  To men and women sick of their insulated selves and weary of the responsibilities which go with membership in a purposive human group, he offers exciting opportunities for "getting away from it all" in parades and demonstrations and public meetings.  The organs of the body politic are purposive groups.  The crowd is the social equivalent of cancer.  The poison it secretes depersonalizes its constituent members to the point where they start to behave with a savage violence, of which in this normal state, they would be completely incapable.  The revolutionary encourages his followers to manifest this last and worst symptom of herd-intoxication and then proceeds to direct their frenzy against his enemies, the holders of political, economic and religious power.

Meanwhile, new and previously undreamed of devices for exciting mobs have been invented.  There is the radio, which has enormously extended the range of the demagogue's raucous yelling.  There is the loudspeaker, amplifying and indefinitely reduplicating the heady music of class-hatred and militant nationalism.  There is the camera (of which it was once said that "it cannot lie") and its offspring, the movies and television; these three have made the objectification of tendentious fantasy absurdly easy. 

And finally there is that greatest of our social inventions, free, compulsory education.  Everyone now knows how to read and everyone consequently is at the mercy of the propagandists, governmental or commercial, who own the pulp factories, the linotype machines and the rotary presses.

Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs or criminals of so many.

Being in a crowd is the best known antidote to independent thought.  Hence the dictators' rooted objection to "mere psychology" and a private life.


Of course, you won't find the above excerpt in the cinematic adaptations of the text.  The following zootube clips are there just to entice you into contemplation ...





"What do you think, ladies and gentlemen?  I mean ... WOW ..."   :o

... if exposed long enough to the tom-toms and the singing, every one of our philosophers would end by capering and howling with the savages ...


"Intellectuals of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but your brains."   >:(
« Last Edit: October 23, 2014, 08:37:30 am by { } »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Uncanny indeed.As always,you have hit the nail on the head.I have been thinking about this very thing,that is, the connection between sex & horror.
Is sex not the beginning of all horror? The society likes to pretend that sex does not exist.Its swept under the rug & yet its all pervasive.
If we could find a way to kill the libido, then all the horrors would recede.

Its the libido which forces one to seek out others..& thats when the horror starts.Underneath it all there is just the DNA molecule driven to replicate itself innumerable times ,& it does not give a rap about the individual,so long as it gets to replicate.
Now,think of the incestuous rapist,the pe..phile -lets look at them clinically,shall we?

They do what they do.Can we condemn them?Well,yes,but only if you believe that they possess free will.
Both of us know,they don't have free will.They too are driven by the DNA molecule hell bent on replicating itself.And never mind if a child is scarred for life or a woman is left with a broken spirit.
Even the perpetrator of such so-called heinous crime is left to wallow in self pity & sorrow when he is no longer in the grip of the lust.He may end up in a prison & get raped himself,may end up becoming a drug addict to assuage his twisted soul,who knows.

And then?
And then the child born as the result of the incestuous **** may himself become a perpetrator  & it keeps going on & on & on..
This is a world where nothing is solved. Someone once told me time is a flat circle. Everything we've ever done or will do we're going do over and over and over again.




A movie based on a Ligotti story-Frolic(Is that a metaphor for sex?)



Thanks for the videos,here is something for you,you may have read it already though.I am reading Steppenwolf.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2014, 11:57:35 am by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.