ellauri069.html on line 485: To varying degrees, and woefully oversimplified, most of the novels pit a plucky heroine or poor, priapic, paranoid schnook against some vast, bureaucratic, merciless conspiracy.
ellauri072.html on line 477: What will happen when the age-old economy of scarcity gives way to the Age of Leisure? Professor Gabor, who won the 1971 Nobel Prize for physics offers a futuristic projection based on a static population and GNP, "classless, democratic, and uniformly rich." Fearful that total secruity "will create unbearable boredom and bring out the worst in Irrational Man," Gabor is anxious to retain "effort," "hardship," and the Protestant Ethic -- lest society dissolve in an orgy of anti-social, hedonistic nihilism (viz. the current drug explosion and the spoiled-brat students). To avoid such evils Gabor proposes that work and its attendant moral uplift be divorced from production and the service sector of the economy be vastly enlarged. But this is only the beginning -- enthusiastic about Social Engineering Gabor suggests using it to weed out potential misfits, trouble-makers and "power addicts"; supplementing I.Q. tests with E.Q. (Ethical Quotient) measurements; and modeling elementary and secondary education on the 19th century British public school which knew so well how to inculcate good citizenship, intellectual excellence and pride in achievement. The Third World, still wrestling with pre-industrial material want, is ignored -- since we can't afford any more industrial pollution presumably they will just have to adjust to their misery. Gabor's assessment of "the Nature of Man" shows a woefully naive Anglo-American ethnocentricity and complete ignorance of anthropology and his vision of post-industrial utopia operating on the moral axioms of the 19th century is as elitist as it is improbable.
ellauri097.html on line 471: In Romans 1:26, the New Testament says, “For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,” that is, different than what God intended. “And in the same way, also, men abandoned the natural function of the woman, and burned in their desire towards one another.” The translation used here is the New American Standard Bible because I think the NIV is woefully inadequate in the way it translates this passage from the Greek.
ellauri161.html on line 631: I’ve seen some people criticise Don’t Look Up for lacking subtlety. I’m not bothered by this. I don’t necessarily need or want the communications about climate change to be subtle. The issue itself certainly is not subtle. We are heading towards—and, again, already are in the midst of—unprecedented death and destruction. Our systems and rulers are not just woefully ill-equipped to deal with this or to prevent the worst of it, they are actively complicit in bringing it about. Those communities around the world that are the most vulnerable and that have had the least part to play in causing the crisis will be the ones to suffer the first and the worst. This isn’t subtle sh*t! This is horrifying, grotesque, psychologically debilitating stuff to ponder—if you even have the privilege to ponder in the first place! I don’t necessarily need subtlety here. Sometimes, to fight propaganda, you need to go loud and bold. But you still have to be effective. We are fighting an almightily powerful enemy. Competence is a necessary minimum. Regrettably, Don’t Look Up does not meet those standards. Its central metaphor doesn’t even make sense! Yes, capitalism is responding as dreadfully to climate change in real life as it does to the comet in the film—the key difference is that capitalism didn’t cause that comet to come hurtling out of the sky in the first place.
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