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This is a response to the Coen brothers newest movie. These are just some thoughts I had on the themes of the movie.

Anton is the marauding badass wantonly/arbitrarily/randomly destructive element in the world (or at least America, and at least as it is seen in the eyes of old men, or the older generation). A kind of unfathomably (at least for the old) cancerous element that the sheriff character describes as being kinda foreign and beyond him (I don’t remember the exact line). In a couple scenes he flips a coin to determine whether or not he will kill someone, just totally random.

There is a lot of talk of “principles”, and I guess the ‘old ways’, or some chivalrous idea like that. The sheriff says, “Once you stop hearing ’sir’ and ‘mam’, the rest is soon to follow”. We see this in the younger generations (younger than the sheriff) in Llewelyn and his wife and the like (who are portrayed as having a hearty trusting relationship, and a deep understanding of eachother), the man with the truck load of chickens who has a kind of “howdy stranger” helpful attitude, and the boy who gives Anton his shirt at the end (saying he doesn’t need the money: “Look mister, I don’t mind helping someone out”). But at the same time, Anton is described by Woody Harrelson’s character as also being “principled”.

The other theme I was thinking of, and this isn’t as explicit as the above, but when the sheriff is talking to his deputy, and they are piecing together what they find, Tommy Lee Jones’ character (the sheriff) always seems to be a step ahead of the deputy, and even though he is dealing with a very foreign element (this marauding badass), he almost seems to be teasing the details out of his deputy, like Socrates drawing the pythagorean theorem out of the slave boy in the Meno; it seems as if the sheriff is just acting dumb with the details about the head wound (with no exit wound and no bullet), and later describes the same air gun bolt contraption used to produce this wound in a story to Llewelyn’s wife, which is used to kill cattle (without the repercussions of using a gun).

Continuing with the story the sheriff told, about the man who wounded (or killed) himself shooting a cow with a gun (ricochet), this air gun bolt thing was a contraption that eliminated these possible repercussions. This is also the weapon the the marauding badass Anton is carrying around with him. But, as I said, Anton is also this random coin-flipping capricious and indiscriminate monster. So, that this character is also the one that is carrying this weapon that eliminates repercussions, this says what…? (I might come back to this question.)

Llewelyn had the chance to save his wife. He chose to hunt down and kill Anton. But he never had the opportunity for this challenge because he was killed by some other group (the Mexican gang involved, which didn’t really play a large part in the movie, so came off as another unforeseen element). In the same way, when Llewelyn’s wife is faced by Anton who has flipped a coin for her, she chooses not to participate saying, “the coin ain’t got no say, it’s just you”. After this Anton says, “I got here the same way the coin did”. Here Anton could be seen as identified with this randomness.

“I got here the same way the coin did”, but this could also be interpreted as referring to that same deterministic chain of events that brought everything to where it is now, likewise brought Anton and the coin to that same place, and in a way absolving him of any responsibility. Thus the kind of indecisiveness/passivity on Anton’s part from the fact that he flips a coin in these situations, as if it isn’t his decision at all.

This same indecisiveness is seen in the sheriff’s character after he retires at the end of the film, where he is thinking out loud as to what to do that day. He says, “I’ll go riding, waddaya think?” To which his wife responds, “I can’t plan your day”. In old age/retirement, one possibly loses the direction or function that their time has served. So how might Anton’s indecisiveness/submission to the random whim of the coin connect with this? (Considering that Anton is the unpredictable modern element that eludes the old man sheriff, and that the sheriff also seems to have an intuition about this marauder, as I talked about above; the two seem linked in some way.)

Well, the movie seems be explicitly about America in particular (there are a couple of lines that I can’t remember that made this obvious). Also, possibly about how the present state/culture/developments might appear to an older generation. But that isn’t it, because right after Anton’s coin flip with Llewelyn’s wife, as Anton is driving down the street, a car slams right into him (even though Anton had a green light). This seems to be the random element that Anton embodies coming back to bite him. And as Anton is sitting bleeding on the sidewalk, a boy comes up offering his shirt (not requiring the money offered, “I don’t mind helping someone out”).

And finally, the sheriff describes a dream he had of his father riding ahead to start a fire, “and I knew that whenever I got there, he’d be there.”

I’m wondering what it takes to overcome very strong taboos, and what is the experience once you’ve crossed them. I’m not going to get into how taboos are formed, and whether they are natural or social or whatever. The fact remains that we have taboos and people find a way past them. Zoophilia for modest example. Murder is taboo, rape seems even worse, I guess it is because murder isn’t necessarily painful, but rape victims presumably never forget (or get over) the pain. Pedophilia probably tops the list, and the reasons for that are obvious. Zoophilia, at least in the case portrayed in the movie Zoo (Dir: Robinson Devor), being on the receiving end of the act, is a little different. Rush Limbaugh is heard in the movie arguing, “how could a horse not consent?” How do you rape yourself with a horse? That came out wrong. Rather, how do you rape a horse into administering…you get the point. Enough of that. It doesn’t seem very clear.

These people who were involved in this situation in the movie, presumably they didn’t just stumble upon this one day and thought “oh what the hell” or something, except that one of the guys in the movie puts it that “for some reason it just happened one day”, but there is no way that that can be taken seriously. So, from whatever cause (and there must be a cause: trauma, bad genes, etc), these people had a desire for animals, and as one guy says “the horse is the biggest thing on the internet”. (I guess he is referring to the zoo circles that he frequents.) Finding that you have desires such as these, one can’t but know very well that this is seriously taboo. Presumably this taboo has some affect on the individuals, but obviously some people aren’t deterred by taboos. I’m assuming then that it is either a kind of compulsion (or a REALLY strong desire, and whether there is any difference I don’t claim to know) or that they just don’t give a shit somehow (sociopathic or something). Anyways, here is my thesis: there is degree of “taking the plunge” when you get into something like zoophilia; there is no going back.

A taboo as strong as the one that keeps us from having sexual intercourse with animals would have to require some considerable force or something to be overcome. Assuming that these people wrestled with this desire of theirs (as is talked about in the movie too), I’m thinking that there must be a discontinuous point where one just “takes the plunge”. Like I said, I don’t think this is something you just find your self doing one day; one doesn’t just fall into it. At this moment of taking the plunge, one would be transformed. And when I say “transformed” I mean in the sense of taking on a new role/avatar (as the guys in the movie all had). But not just taking on a name, but starting from year 1 and living an enchanted life from then on. By “enchanted”, I mean that your life would have a purpose and orientation, as in being reborn. There is a scene in the movie seen from the front seat of a cop car, and the gang of zoophiles walks across the street in front of this cop car, and one guy with a gesture halts this cop car without hesitation as they cross in front of it. This is a gang of like 8 people, and I’m thinking that part of the reason why he had the power to halt this cop car is that they have been having sex with horses. This is where the ass-pennies comes in.

These guys had a secret. And for some weird reason, secrets can be powerful. Even if the secret is that you have the nerve to withstand a horse. You would walk around knowing this fact (like knowing that everyone has handled your ass-pennies) and it would give you an edge.

Everyone has had this experience of cognitive dissonance where you feel a very deep emotional conflict, “what have I done!!!???” that must be repelled because it is so disturbing. With Zoo-people, I’m guessing it is magnitudes stronger. Once you have “taken the plunge” and this dissonance sets in, I’m thinking there aren’t too many ways of coping with this (unless you are a sociopath): one would be to cave in and try to find salvation in order to cope with what you have experienced, another would be to kind of throw caution to the wind and embrace (or try to out-run) this dissonance. The latter would be easier to do if you had a support group like these guys did.But at the same time it is a bubble, and this is why I said it may be something like “out-running” the eventual collapse of this bubble. This is what made me think of serial-killers. Serial-killers know that their time is limited and short work must be made of it. Like Bonny and Clyde, it would have to exhilirating, enchanting, etc. while it lasted. I’m not saying that it would be great fun to be on a killing spree, but that I’m guessing that for a serial killer the most enchanted and engaged time of their life. But once the CNN helicopter is hovering over your house and there is a cavalcade of cop cars coming down the road, you don’t feel so cool. That is when the enchantment ends. That is when the real dissonance begins (unless you are a sociopath).

Epistemology. Theory of knowldge. Ontology : epistemology :: what do we know? : how do we know it? Epistemology answer the question: what is knowledge? The traditional conception of knowledge says that one knows something if and only if they have justified true belief. Here is a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ that illustrates some of this:

Alice: And why haven’t you ever been jealous about me?!
Bill: Well, I don’t know Alice, maybe because you’re my wife! Maybe because you’re the mother of my child! And I know that you would never be unfaithful to me.
Alice: You are very very sure of yourself, aren’t you!
Bill: No. I’m sure of you.
Alice: (hysterical laughter)

His belief was: Alice would never be unfaithful to me. Was it true? Alice goes on to tell a story about how she saw a man while they were on vacation, and she says, “and I thought, if he wanted me, even if it was only for one night, I was ready to give up everything: you, Helena (daughter), my whole fucking future; everything.” She then goes on to say that, in fact, nothing happened; she didn’t do anything except entertain the idea. So his belief was true as well (so far, since she hadn’t been unfaithful up to that point). But was it justified? Did Bill really have good reason to believe this? Did he really know that she would never be unfaithful? This was the point of her story: to show him that he wasn’t justified in his knowledge; that he shouldn’t take her devotion to him for granted. Therefore, he wasn’t as sure as he thought he was. He wasn’t wrong either, since nothing happened on the night she was talking about.

And who knows, maybe the event had been exaggerated/romanticized in her mind. And who knows what people will say when they are feeling vengeful. And, yeah, it was pretty brash (to put it very mildly) of Bill to say something like that.

So there is an example unjustified true belief.

I had to reread Hume’s ‘Of abstract ideas’ a few times to get it, but I think I understand it now. First he says that it is absurd to think that we have an idea that represents all different shapes and sizes of, for example, ‘man’, because that would seem to require and infinite capacity in the mind. He then goes on to argue why it can’t also be the opposite: that our general ideas represent no particular degree of quantity and quality, and thus I suppose are just kind of blueprints with the appropriate ratio among these quantities/qualities.

Firstly, he talks about how you can’t separate the the particular degree from the quality/quantity you are dealing with. Hume says, “But ’tis evident at first sight, that the precise length of a line is not different nor distinguishable from the line itself; nor the precise degree of any quality from the quality.” So he basically just asserts that it is evident.

Secondly, he argues that since all experience is particular, all of our impressions are of particular things with particular degrees of quality/quantity. And according to his own definition of the principle by which our ideas come to be, “all ideas…are nothing but copies and representations of them (impressions), whatever is true of the one must be acknowledg’d concerning the other…An idea is a weaker impression; and as a strong impression must necessarily have a determinate quantity and quality, the case must be the same with its copy or representative.”

Thirdly, Hume seems to be making a very similar point to the second. Everything in nature is individual, therefore everything has a particular degree of all of its qualities/quantities. This is therefore absurd in ideas to have an object without degree (his second point), “since nothing of which we can form a clear and distinct idea is absurd and impossible.” I guess by the latter he means that since our ideas are of particular degree (of a once perceived impression of this degree), that whatever cobbled together idea of the imagination we come up with must not be impossible since it is composed of ideas of parcular degree. There is one sentence in this paragraph that I can’t quite decipher, “But to form the idea of an object, and to form an idea simply is the same thing; the reference of the idea to an object being an extraneous denomination, of which in itself it bears no mark or character.” After that he just goes on to say that just as it is absurd to say we have ideas that have quality but no precise degree, it is likewise equally absurd to say that the ideas have quality/quantity “that is not limited and confin’d.”

Hume’s first point seems arcane, and I’m not sure what the reasoning is behind this argument that degree and quality can’t be separated. The second depends on his own definition of terms, which seems to be a very weak reason. The third follows the second with his idea of this copying of impressions into ideas, and just extends the second argument to the case of unlimited degrees. Anyways, Hume’s point is that our images in the mind are only of particular objects, and that these are applied an universals/abstract ideas.

It seems to me that in order to find a resemblance among particulars, to the extent that I am able to form some general/abstract idea and identify further particulars of as to yet unencountered degree, would have to point to a faculty that isn’t recognizing particular degree, and is instead recognizing the form. Hume seems concerned with the particular idea, the idea that comes to mind, that when someone says ‘triangle’, the idea that I have is my abstract idea of ‘triangle’, and according to his own principles, it must be of an encountered particular.

In an episode of ‘The Philosopher’s Zone‘ called ‘Is it art?’ Alan Saunders talks to Arthur C. Danto about his theory of indiscernables. If you have two identical objects, but one of them is a work of art, and the other is an ordinary something-or-other, how can you tell which is which? He talks of an Andy Warhol show he’d seen, and begins by talking about a photo of Warhol in front of some duplicated shipping cartons:

You couldn’t have told from the photograph that these were anything except shipping cartons. Because until 1964 nobody saw them as anything else. And what Warhol had done had been to duplicate them. Now, my interest in this show – you’ve got two objects which are to all outward appearances indiscernable, but one is a piece of avant garde art and the other is just a utilitarian container. And I thought, well that raises the question of what is art in a very different form than had ever been raised before…What Warhol did was to put it in a different way: how, if you have two objects which look exactly alike (are, as I’ve put it, indiscernable), one being a work of art and the other one not. What’s the difference?

This idea of indiscernables struck me as similar some other ideas…

This is a quote from the end of ‘The Courtier and the Heretic’ by Matthew Stewart (speaking of the continental rationalistic reactions to the scientific revolution):

All begin with the conviction that there is some vital aspect of experience which escapes modern thought. All maintain that the purpose of life begins where modernity ends. All claim to discover the special and elusive meaning of existence through an analysis of the putative failures of modern thought. And all remain indissolubly attached to precisely that which they oppose. (311, Stewart)

And this is a quote from Simon Critchley’s ‘A Very Short Introduction to Continental Philosophy’ where he is describing the feeling one might have at a hypothetical end of science where everything has been explained, “…not an explanatory gap that might be closed by producing a better, more comprehensive theory, but more of a felt gap.” (6, Critchley)

A few other ideas along these lines that I don’t have quotes for offhand are: Aristotle and Kant’s ideas that there is a difference between someone just going through the motions, and someone performing an identical act out of earnest, appearance and reality, and another example being how to tell if someone is conscious or a zombie.

These examples seem to point to what could be a decent definition of philosophy. Danto says:

…I thought that it had the character of any classical philosophical question where you’ve got two things that can’t be told apart but are momentously different. Like in the beginning of Descartes’ Meditations Descartes says: well, what better evidence can I have than what the senses provide me with. And then he says: well, that would be true if only I knew I were sensing, because as a matter of fact, I’ve dreamt that I was having certain experiences and the dreams were very vivid and I would’ve had no idea that there was nothing in front of me, nothing being perceived until I woke up and realized that I’d been dreaming…

This brings up another idea: how do we account for the ability to have such a felt gap epistemologically? My theory is that philosophy is this: the intuition of a “felt gap”, and the elucidation of this. If it were more than just a “felt gap” then it would be empirically testable. So, some exception must be found between what was previously indistinguishable. This could be called a philosophical instinct of sorts.

I was just reading an article on bonobos from The New Yorker (that I found via aldaily) called ‘Swingers’, that I thought was going to dispell the idea that bonobos are the “hippy chimps” because, I guess, I’d like to think that monkeys are better than that, or rather, because I will only very grudgingly acknowledge the hippy ethic as sensible. Just kidding, no I really just like to hear about dispelled myths and broken dreams.

anyways, if you didn’t already know (and i didn’t, and do only from reading this article) that the bonobo (or at least the idea of the bonobo as peaceful, incessantly sexual, female dominated, etc. all that jazz) has caught (at least in the hippy circuit) on as kind-of rallying point against those more chimp-like tendencies that we would rather forget about (warlike, plotting, heirarchichal,etc.). i guess this is just something for people to identify with, to find an identity in, for justification and to get righteous about. the point is that i guess we should be more like bonobos, but why bonobos? it doesn’t follow necessarily that because bonobos behave in some way that therefore we should to. there doesn’t seem to be any necessary connection; we could just as well be talking about penguins. i guess it is just easier to identify with monkeys, wanting to reassure the bonobo species, lend a helping hand to the little fledgling humans, because we see promise in bonobos, encouraging them where our species may not have had the same encouragement, just a bunch of big scary dinosaurs.

in the article, primatologist Craig Stanford (who, i guess, is trying to expose this image of bonobos for what it is) says of bonobos in comparison with chimps and others, “Instead of saying, ‘These are variations on a theme,’ it became point-counterpoint.” it is easier to grasp this counter-point dichotomy, we are quick to make such distinctions. and really, when you take all of the species of primates/flowers/birds/etc. it does come down to ‘this one has this characteristic/feature, and this one does not’, a distinction is a distinction. there is just a difference at which level you are making it. if you are making it at a very general uninformed first-impression of sorts, then it can possibly become such blanket distinctions.

but really, the role already existed, and it was just a matter of time before we held someone/something up to idolize it. we were on the lookout, we see what we want to see sometimes, and the incongruencies with our ideal are rationalized away or conveniently resistant to memory.