Obscure films, experimental method...

Our friends Jaana and Nicola are the initiators of this new monthly event taking place in a West End Pub.  Jaana and Nicola take turns in choosing the film, so there is a personal recommendation, and a back ground story before the lights get dimmed. Discussion afterwards.

After two successful sessions, the next film will be: Capturing the Friedmans, "an instructive lesson about the elusiveness of facts," as one film critic put it.

All is well in a middle class family till the police knocks on the door, and father and son both are accused of a crime which they either committed, or didn't.  Difficult to tell.   The director had access to home videos shot by one of the sons. They display the family tensions during the trial, and seem to offer proof for both the guilty and the innocent.

Capturing the Friedmans was nominated for an Oscar in documentary category, and won a Grand Jury prize at Sundance.

To see a trailer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342172/

By invitation only.

Brain-washing and Human conditioning

Amy writes:

Hannah Arendt, who is a proper philosopher, said it in proper philosophical language: "This is why men, no matter what they do, are always conditioned beings.  Whatever enters the human world of its own accord or is drawn into it by human effort becomes part of the human condition"  (The Human Condition).

One might say that there is not much difference between 'human conditioning' and 'brain-washing'.  Except that 'brain-washing' is a derogative term and therefore attributes a negative moral value to what has no more to do with morality than the law of gravity.

But then we are conditioned by our judeo-christian culture to pass moral judgments whether or not morality is involved.   Do we not make of our all-powerful god an all-loving god?  Which is something of an oxymoron.  The Greeks did not have such problems, their gods being a rather nasty lot.  

Whether or not we approve of our upbringing we have to be brought up.  And let us not forget that our children will judge their upbringing just as we do ours,  i.e. according to the dictates of their generation!  For, if there is a 'conditioning' which may be qualified as 'brain-washing' it is that of the 'isms' of each generation.  I have known a fair number of them during my long life: marxism, freudism, feminism, atheism, multiculturalism, rights of man, climate change, etc. all of which is very honourable as long as it does not ossify into its 'ism'. 

My 'isms' being mainly determinism, relativism and scepticism.  Not very constructive, I confess.  But that's who I am.

Amy 

Public persona vs Private persona

Yesterday we discussed: Do we have a right to privacy? Is the right to privacy a thing of the past?  Can anybody still manage to keep a personal secret while the internet is capable of detecting every movement of everybody?

Community spirit can sometimes feel like a community prison while everybody is being watched by everybody else.  Martin said it's like living in a insular little village wherever you go you are being spied upon by your neighbours peeping out of windows behind their curtains.

As a Buddhist converted to Christianity, Suk had an extraordinary dream in which she was reincarnated as a "Hebrew" woman but not a Jew.  She related this dream to a friend in a private email.  But soon after her email was sent to one person, she immediately received hundreds of HATE mails accusing her of anti-Semitism.  She found it incomprehensible as she was only telling a innocent dream to her friend.  How does this email spread to so many strangers?

La démocratie, malgré ses imperfections, reste-t-elle le meilleur régime politique ?

Last Saturday's discussion repeated a subject that we have discussed before: La démocratie, malgré ses imperfections, reste-t-elle le meilleur régime politique ?  It was supposed to be a topical subject to tie in with the French Presidential Elections.  However the topic has been sidetracked to many other subjects.  As usual, lots of criticism of China and certain Islamic states. The conclusion is, predictably, the democracy is the best system in the world despite all its temporary glitches.

Brainwashing?

Amy writes:

At the end of Saturday's discussion about controlling others it was mentioned that we brainwash our children from the time of birth.  A flippant though fashionable remark not to be taken seriously.  Do we qualify the care with which we choose the food we give our children as gutwashing?  (Being French, according to my children I gave them too much salad and fruit and not enough Irish fries or English puddings.  Though now, while considering themselves as British, they feed their own children salads and fruit and I am the one who brings the pudding).  

I have tried since Saturday to make a joke by putting together the 2 metaphors of 'brainwashing' and 'throwing out the baby with the water of the bath'  Could not do it.  Would somebody cleverer?

Another idea while taking in my wet washing.  Should a mother not nurse her baby because he/she will absorb her ideas with her milk?  3 metaphors.

Amy

Islanders & God

Dear philosophers,

our conversation last Saturday centred on the subject of God.  Most of you would say, Come on! Not again! How many times have we approached the very same topic?   But the question is asked in a different way this time: How to describe God to a people on an island?  - sounds like a title for a creative writing course, that would trigger vivid imagination.  As explained by Paul, who proposed the question, it is inspired by a book he read: Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett.  The book is about an isolated tribe of Amazonian Indians (Hence the idea of an island) whose language Everett had learned in order to translate the bible for them.  At the end Everett concluded that these people had no need for a god.  In fact he lost his own faith - a proselytizer has become a proselyte himself.

Our friend Amy writes: 

I had a strange experience recently.  I watched the dvd of a film I had seen some 30 years ago, had much admired and had quoted frequently ever since: Jacques Tati's Playtime.  Well, none of these episodes of which I had such a vivid memory were in fact as I remembered them.  Slowly but surely my mind had twisted the images to make them fit my argument.

I observed the same kind of distortions at last Saturday café-philo.  The question was how to describe God to people who had no notion of him/her/it.  While I was moderately interested in the answer to such a question I was fascinated by the way it was interpreted.  The majority of comments were about religion,  conversion, domination, none of which had to do with the subject. 

I was brought up in a French protestant family in which religion was strictly confined to Sundays when my parents went to church and the children to Sunday school.  God was never mentioned during the week.  My atheism is in the image of my parents' religion: mild and tolerant.  I am always surprised by the strident atheism I keep encountering in G.B. (never in France, which does not mean it does not exist).  I can only wonder if such atheists have been force-fed religion in their childhood.

Amy

Lust for life



 Our dearest friend Céline passed away yesterday after her long and indefatigable battle with cancer.    Born in Tours, France in 1976, Céline came to London 10 years ago as a student.  After her completion of a degree in publishing at the London University of Arts, she embarked on a career in the prestigious French publishing house Hachette as a PA to the Manager Director.   Her keen intellectual interest also brought her to the Café Philo at the French Institute and she became a valuable friend to many of our café philosophers.  She had contributed many blog posts to this website and to our Forum:

Faut-il désobéir pour exister vraiment ?
La tolérance fait-elle progresser la paix?
Quelle est la question fondamentale?
La redistribution de la richesse est-elle possible?
Sommes-nous tous des philosophes?
Dilemme...
Marriage Vs Love
Le souvenir appartient-il au monde spirituel ou réel ?
L'Art, est-il la représentation de la folie?
 

Celine in Mexico 2005

 In addition to her intellectual interest, Celine enjoyed an active social life in the bustling London scene.   She appreciated West End theatres and cinemas, frequented numerous opera houses in London and in Paris.  She was a member of a Salsa dance club, as well as a rock-climbing club. A passionate animal lover, she participated in several campaigns devoted to the protection of wild life.  In her Facebook account, she listed the following animal rights groups that she was affiliated with:
Stop Sara Palin from kills polar bears, Help Teach Empathy for Animals! STOP Abuse Beatings Brutality Cruelty Fighting Suffering & Torture, Aidez les bonobos du Congo !, SAUVONS LES TORTUES MARINES DE POLYNESIE, Soutenir les femmes battues contre la violence conjugale, Contre les combats de chiens, Animal Testing is MURDER!, Help stop DOG-FIGHTING, causes.com, Turn Facebook Pink For 1 Week For Breast Cancer Awareness, STOP DANCING BEARS, Dolphin Massacre in Japan, Stop the Animal Abuse, Animals Skinned Alive! Help Stop Chinese Fur Farms!, SAVE SOUTH AFRICAS RHINO,

Celine’s cheerfulness and her optimistic outlook of life in spite of her terminal illness were an inspiration to us all.   I take this opportunity to invite you all to share your thoughts on our website.


Celine, Rest in Peace. 

French Revolution and today's world

We can see some interesting parallels between the situation today and the pre-Revolutionary France of the late 18^th century.  Join the debate at our Forum:

Conspiracy or just the natural course of event?

Do we need religion?



Man cannot live on bread alone

The question debated last Saturday (1 October) has been asked many times before. Jesus answered: “one must not live on bread alone, but on every word coming out of the mouth of God.”

We need religion like we need music, art, books, theatre, films and other creative and imaginative works. Religion is part of our spiritual world.

We need religion because religion teaches us what’s right what’s wrong and it acts like moral codes which form the basis of law and order for the maintenance of a cohesive society.

We need religion because our desire of adhering to a group of people helps us find our exclusive identity and destiny.

But we also have our doubts:

• Is religion a form of superstition as it appeals to the irrational part of our psyche?
• Is religion an impediment to the progress of science, since Creationist view conflicts with the Evolutionist theory?
• Does the concept of “sanctity of life” interfere with individual’s personal choice?
• Can different religions co-exist in harmony?
• Was religion the main source of human conflicts and genocides?
• Apart from main stream religions (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc) are these not also religions - the likes of Scientologist Church, Free Masonry, Mafia, Klu Klux Klan, Money Worshipping? 

Quote:
“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Course: History of Economic Thought

Everyone seems to be talking about the economy these days. But do they always make sense? Politicians, pundits, and business leaders, sound like they have lost the map. In a new course I will be teaching at the Mary Ward Centre this term  we will question the great thinkers of the past, from Aristotle to the Enlightenment, from the Bible and Islam to the modern economic theories of Liberalism, Socialism, and Keynesianism, and we will try to shed some light on perennial problems: What is money? Is charging interest moral? When is a price fair, and are price controls always detrimental? How much social inequality is tolerable? On these and other burning questions let’s find out what philosophers have to teach us. After all, it concerns us all, as workers, consumers, savers and citizens.

Christian