Mental Slavery

Author: Ward Minnis

  • 3 stories

    A friend sent me a link to this wonderful speech by Steve Jobs. The best graduation speech you might ever hear. Particularly inspiring is his thoughts on death, “life’s greatest invention.” Reminds me of M. Scott Peck’s words in “The road less traveled” that “it is death that provides life with all its meaning.” Quite true. Thought I would share it here:

  • The Game of life

    tetris.gif Been playing a Tetris style game* a little bit recently, and it struck me what a nice metaphor it is for life.

    The game starts off slowly as you gradually get the hang of the falling pieces, fitting them into each other, while you try to make something solid out of it all. In essence the game says, ‘deal with this random-ness,’ which also seems to be one of life’s main messages. What makes the game such an apt metaphor is that you don’t really know what’s coming next, except for the very next brick. Life, of course, gives no such warning. This ‘not knowing’ makes the game both fun and frustrating as you could be waiting a long time for that ideal piece to complete the structure you started…

    “If only that long one would fall!”

    How many times has that happened to you? You wait and wait for something particular, something you always wanted to fit into a certain space in your life, all while you are still keeping up with what is relentlessly falling on top of you. Sometimes that special piece never comes, or as it happens, when you have finally given up on it ever appearing, then it decides to show up.

    The game speeds up the better you get at it, unlike life, which seems to follow its own capricious rhythm – which for me always seems to be at that breakneck, trying-to-kill-you pace. But you just have to deal with it, and get stuff done, taken care of, make it disappear, because if you don’t, stuff just piles up on top of you until you can’t take it anymore, have a nervous breakdown, and well, have to start the game over.

    If only it were as easy to start life over as it is the game. In some ways it is and in many ways it isn’t. Depends on how enslaved you are to the particular game you’re playing.

     

    * More correctly, I’m playing a Tetris-like game that came with my mobile phone, called QuadraPop, but it follows the same principle as Tetris and has essentially the same gameplay.

  • Horror of the Christ?

    Passion of the ChristHow would you define the film “the Passion of the Christ”? What genre would you place it in? Horror? Psychological Thriller? Documentary? This piece was written in 2004 when the film came out and the topic came up recently in a conversation I had with a film studies grad student. Thought I would share it here:

    “Horror! That ain’t no Horror movie! Thats Jesus Christ!!” Yes I know I blaspheme (not the first time either) but bear with me. Religious types usually have a problem with me when I make this comment, and I guess the conversation hinges on what “horror movie” means in the minds of most people. No other genre is as closely related to “the devil” as Horror, so for me to label the pre-eminent (and most successful) film about Jesus as a “Horror” film is just too much.

    I saw it twice, and i stand by my pronouncement that it is a Horror film. No other genre of movie has such a particular effect on you. I guess when I say horror, most people assume I mean “freddy kreuger”. Not so. This is as intelligent as any film you will ever find, yet its main purpose is to shock and jar you into a state of “damn.”

    This is one film reviewer’s take:

    I have to offer a concession to those critics who have been so offended by the graphic portrayals of violence and torture in this film. It is, in fact, incredibly offensive. I cannot deny this fact.

    I agree. See, Mel Gibson (the director) didn’t have to show all that he showed. Come now, do we really need to see the nail being pounded into the hand? No. But you show everything in a horror film, and Gibson gives it to you, with squirting blood no less. The whipping scene for me is the most difficult to watch. Once again Gibson spares no detail. Having seen it the second time, (Believe me when I say I didn’t want to go through it a second time.) I find myself questioning some of the directorial decisions. Does it really have to be THAT graphic? The answer is no if it were any other genre.

    Think of Schindlers List for a comparison. That could have easily become a horror film, yet it remained a heart-wrenching drama. (The black and white toned down the gore, and Spielberg just didn’t show you everything like Gibson did. Remember the only color in the film, the girl in the red jacket?) Even a descent into hell film like “the Pianist” was less painful than this was. But this was what Gibson wanted. He wants you to feel sick when you’re finished. These are classic Horror genre motivations.

    So I say again. Horror. Very well done. Well filmed. Well acted. Well directed. Beautiful cinematography. Great Set and Costume design. But a horror. And this doesn’t cheapen the film in my estimation. Just helps to classify it.

  • What’s on the Table

    “No option can be taken off the table” – Sen Hillary R. Clinton.
    “We need to keep all options on the table.” – John Edwards
    “we should take no option … off the table.” – Sen. Barack Obama
    “I will never take any option off the table.” – US Pres. George W. Bush

    Been hearing a lot recently about the US and Iran. Lots and lots of noise. The rhetoric is starting to build to a fever pitch. The war drums are beating so loud that my bones are rattling, shaking even. From the ‘liberal’ Democratic candidates all the way to the Cheneys and the Bushes who still control the power, one point has been made remarkably clear and with a chilling consistency: In these negotiations with Iran, and we are led to believe that someone somewhere is, in fact, negotiating, no option is to be taken off of the table.

    What are these people talking about? I would like to think that they mean regular ole military action. But any one who has the short-term memory of an advanced Alzheimer’s patient has to know that military action is always in the cards when it comes to dealing with the US. What I find disturbing is that in the buildup to Iraq II I don’t recall hearing this refrain and certainly not with this frequency. The regular code words for military action are ‘serious consequences’. And the US has been threatening Iran with serious consequences for a while. This sounds a lot different.

    No option should be taken off of the table.

    What other options are there? What is on this metaphorical table? One option sitting by the salt and pepper shaker collecting dust is diplomacy. But no one in this busy age really has the time for that, and besides, this is Iran. They can’t listen to reason anyway. Why waste breath when you can shoot bullets right?

    Air strikes are probably also sitting there on this table like a rabid and twitching black cat. Of course we call them ‘surgical strikes’ in this day and age.

    The C.I.A. is always available for that other option, you know the one that they pulled before in Iran, where they deposed their democratically elected leader and installed a puppet dictator. Ok, alright, so that was a while ago. And that agency is probably too busy planning birthday parties in Venezuela anyway. The general rule of thumb is that you don’t turn a situation into a world crisis and then run a covert operation. Even for the US, that doesn’t make sense.

    I would like to think that a ground force invasion is the final option on the table, but the troops, like the butter, are spread pretty thin. So what do they mean? What could they mean?

    Could they possibly mean a nuclear strike?

    Could this be the unspeakable ‘option’ that everyone says has to stay on the table? I would like to think that the world saw the nuclear bomb used in warfare for the first and last time in 1945. Surely they can’t be talking about that. Are they really that crazy?

    For the love of God man, take that ‘option’ off the table!

    Please.

  • What an empty seat told me

    I’m on a public transit bus in Ottawa that’s full to and beyond capacity. People are standing, the bus driver is making announcements that people should move further back. Oddly enough there are two vacant seats that the standing crowd must not see.

    I ask myself, ‘is it a coincidence that these two seats are next to black men?’ I happen to be one of those black men.

    Of course I could be reading too much into this, and the crowd of standing white people around me and the empty seat next to the other black man, maybe they just want to stretch their legs. Thing is, I bet if I were to ask them if they had even the slightest tinge of racism in them, I bet they would say ‘no, of course not.’

    Am I the racist for seeing it? Feeling it?

    The empty seat next to me says otherwise.

  • You have the Power

    Suzuki

    Been noticing these ads recently. David Suzuki, one of the greatest Canadians, levitating fluorescent light bulbs. Intoning the sage words: “You have the Power”! Indeed. In the TV ad he appears on “Bob’s” doorstep just stopping by to change his porch light.

    Mr. Miyagi

    I can’t help it, but I don’t see David Suzuki in these ads, I see Mr. Miyagi.

    (This isn’t, at least I believe, because I see all older asian people as looking alike either)

    Remember Mr. Miyagi? The guy from the Karate Kid? Mr. “Wax on, Wax off, Daniel San”? Suzuki has become the wise and enlightened side kick just like Mr. Miyagi. It’s the famous minority as sidekick role, we get to help the white folk get smarter and then they go on to make the really BIG difference in the world. Try to picture Al Gore, and his inconvenient truth, levitating that light bulb… can’t do it? Yeah. Al’s going to make real change…

    This leads me to think of Morgan Freeman, who has gotten quite the kick out of playing GOD in the recent “Almighty” series of comedies. While it’s nice to see a black man as God, somehow I don’t really see the role as all that different from his wise black sidekick role that he has perfected in movies like “The Shawshank Redemption”, “Million Dollar Baby” etc. In Western society, God is pretty much that wise sidekick, doling out the needed advice. He stays in his little box, gets out of the way, and lets the white man shine.

    Bruce Almighty
    Morgan Freeman / God the sidekick

    Hence I don’t see this black Hollywood God as anything to really cheer about. Same ole. Same ole. I don’t know if this line of thought portends worse news for those who believe in God, or for minorities and the fight for equality… Hmm… Maybe it just means that David Suzuki will play God in the next “Almighty” picture…

  • The Debt

    The DebtRead a cool book recently called “The Debt: What America owes to Blacks” by Randall Robinson.

    I had come to an intuitive understanding over the years about white privilege, but had difficulty articulating what it was that I really meant. I know that in the Bahamas, when my parents were growing up there were hotels that they could not go into because they were black.

    But generally you tend to buy into the notion that enough time has passed since then and gee whiz lookie! everything is alright now. This book helps to set it straight. You can’t deprive people for four hundred years and expect them to catch up in fifty, with no help, and more than a little help from the systems in place to keep them down. Very good and compelling reading that I recommend to you.

  • Hello world!

    Welcome to the new Mental Slavery dot com. This is only the beginning. Thing is, that it’s two in the morning and I don’t have the energy to fix it up more than this. But after 6 years of fiddling. I think its about time that I actually got this blog going. What do you think?