Bettering Ourselves

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I guess my point is that what you think you want and what you need as a person are rarely the same thing. You're usually too blind to know what you need as a person.

From what I remember of the Red Shoes, which I remember Martin Scorsese said was actually a horror story, it's about a girl who is obsessed (film) and in the story with the movie, it's vanity. In the film the girl is out of balance - she becomes obsessed with dance. But because she never addresses this imbalance, it becomes a tragedy. I think she dies in the end - it's been years so correct me if I'm wrong. So the Red Shoes is technically an incomplete character journey. I think towards the end she has a choice and she chooses her compulsion. In the story of the film world, that sealed her fate.

Films are merely a reflection of who we are. These concepts of storytelling were borne out of real life. They saw that people failed and that people succeeded - discovered out the reasons why - and attempted to define the human truth.

You just gave away the ending!! ! lol! And yes, there was certainly an imbalance (probably why I could relate to it so much!) and the ending was EXTREME.

The story is a modern version of an old fairy tale about a pair of magic shoes which, when worn, forced the wearer to dance until she dies of exhaustion.

Perhaps it's symbolic of an aspie obsession. I know I sometimes forget to sleep or eat when I'm in my more obsessed phases.

Okay I see where you're coming from now. If I had to quantify it - and keep in my mind this is coming from an Australian not an American so I'm not particularly interested in the party politics - I guess you could say it's a bit like that line from Barack Obama's innauguration speech - to choose our better history - our best selves in the service of a better community. When I heard that the first time, something sparked up inside me. How do we actually become better people and make this a better world? How do you start to make that tangible? I don't know if it will happen in a day, a week, a month, a century, but if we start today, it'll happen sooner than later because it's worth the struggle.

What you've just said - be interested in the world and try to understand other people's POV - that's the place where understanding comes from.

You've just thrown on a lightbulb for me - when you say - these things happen and we deal with it the best that we know how - are we actually learning? Are we falling victim to an endless cycle or are we understanding how to overcome? It is my hope that life can become about something more than just stumbling through the pitfalls. That it's about HOW you stumble and pick yourself up till you stumble no more. So if luck is a circumstance - that fate is conspiring against the individual - isn't meeting that challenge head on all the more important?

Stumbling is a vital part of learning. If you never stumble you never learn. It teaches you not to stumble.

It depends upon what you meet head on. If I see an avalanche coming I run. If a guy pulls a gun on me, I run. I handle what I can handle and try to learn to handle more without getting hurt. The main thing is being aware and staying healthy and in one piece.

Everyone has their own definition of "better". To bankers, huge bonuses are "better", but to everyone else, all the bankers being thrown into a volcano would be "better"

However, abolishing racism and other -isms would obviously be beneficial.

Well you're right - everyone does have their own definition of what would make their lives better. But I think that other word is important too - ourselves - and I don't just mean an individual, I mean the individuals AND society.

I'm glad you brought up the ism's! I think they said that in Dogma from memory (I'll try not to ruin that film's ending )

T H White said that whenever you give yourself to an extreme viewpoint, you are inches away from falling off the cliff i.e. losing your good judgment. People use -ism's and push them to an extreme -extremism. It's another form of an imagined boundary.

I'm not sure if you've seen the film a Beautiful Mind but John Nash developed a game theory which proved that if competitors compete for the same resource, their game strategy cancels each other out. But if their game strategy changes to take into account the strategy of their competitors and each plays according to the group interest, then an equilibrium is achived. It's a bit of paraphrasing, but his theorem is freely available.

There have been multiple attempts at the socialist experience over the last hundred or so years and a proportion have failed because the governing authority has shifted its priority from the group to its own interest.

Are people actually able to overcome their own self interest to instead pursue the groups?

Which group, what self interest? There are some pretty nasty groups in the world and anybody who doesn't keep an eye out for staying alive and in good shape won't last long.

Well by group I meant everybody - the entire world.

By self interest I meant the self-focused endeavours of every indvidual - including these scary smaller groups that you speak of - I can only guess at what you mean by that.

Ideologies rise and fall like the tides - it's the closed mindedness of extremism which affects judgment.

But people have curiousity too - they can imagine more than that - they can have an open mind.

Barbarism doesn't have to last forever. We can choose to overcome it. I myself have look and wondered about what the future is going to bring - will it be a world where men simply feed upon men? That's no future at all.

What can we do to prevent that tragedy? That's what I'm asking.

There are lots of major groups in the world that beat up, torture and kill their women for minor infractions of their traditional codes. How do you propose dealing with that?

I honestly don't know, but it's why I'm asking these questions. I'm not professing to have all the answers, not at all. But I've got alot of questions that are haunting me.

Do you have an ideas on this? How do make an agressor see that might does not dictate right?

There are no simple answers to these very difficult questions. To change a culture that has buried decency in a culture for centuries is a long and difficult and perhaps almost impossible task. I have no talent for dealing with people and most certainly do not want to lead anybody. I have no official diagnosis of being an Asperger person but I most certainly prefer to be alone and am ineffectual at persuading anybody of anything. I haven't the slightest chance of telling you how to change the world.

Well I'm not a leader nor do I wish to be. But this is a problem to me that I kind of want to figure out a practical solution for, then put it out there in the world and see if people bite. It might take me a lifetime and though I've just started, it's something I've always believed in and felt was important.

I can understand what you mean, I'm not trying to press you on it or anything. I'm just asking for ideas in general if people are interested and willing to share and discuss.

I think we have a better chance at peace in our own minds if we don't focus on controlling or influencing others at all. The greatest benefits IMO would be achieved if we each focus on controlling how we react to others. It seems to me a more realistic attempt because I doubt that most or any of us could affect a large population of people in bringing about peace. But I do think it is possible to create peace in our own minds - so that if someone harms us then we don't wish to harm them in return. That type of reaction doesn't come about easy - it requires training in our minds to not get angry when someone harms us. So IMO if we can achieve something like that then we are bettering ourselves.

There are situations where it is better to accept and live with damage and situations where one must fight back. Don't generalize.