Reflections on The Road and the Properly Portrayed Father-Son Relationship

Much of the meaning that the viewer may extract from The Road is as a result of the absences and deadness that the movie gives off. In the post-apocalyptic planet that the father and his son go on living in, all growth has been arrested. The narrator says powerfully at the start that "soon every tree in the world will fall"; and if they don't fall, fires will consume them. There is also an glaring absence of human community, at least until the end: the few people who still exist no longer trust each other--instead they wander in packs (or in pairs in the case of the father-son), always on the alert--it's an eat or be eaten situation. Encountering this lack of life and absence of a political order makes one appreciate these things a lot more, and also makes us wary of the ugly potential of nuclear warfare (which though not revealed to be the apocalyptic cause, is the one we are familiar with and therefore, practically and for the sake of life itself, have to always be mindful of).
But the story's focus is undoubtedly the evolution of the father-son relationship, and unfortunately this was done poorly. Not only did the actors seem unfamiliar with each other (Mortgensen approaches the son more like a 'buddy' enrolled in a Big Brother program), but the director made cheap symbolic attempts to bring them together, which, by virtue of their appeal to the audience's keen sense of what a father and son relationship is supposed to be like, seemed forced. The father, for instance, lets his son take the first sip from a coke can he found on the ground. A nice gesture, and one that many of us would also do in the same situation. But the way he did it was really fake, especially considering the circumstances (alone in a barren landscape), and the fact that the director clearly planned the gesture out, and focused on it, and (this is conjectural but still) THOUGHT THAT SIMPLY BY INCLUDING IT IT WOULD CONVINCE THE AUDIENCE OF THE FATHER'S DEVOTION, sours the movie for me.
And there were several other purely symbolic and not-very-well-executed gestures done by the father to cement his relationship with his son. He bathes his son before they dine on canned goods found in a bomb shelter (the kid's probably 10 years old, some kids have pubic hair by then> strange, unnatural scene). He is hostile toward the other people they meet along 'the Road', and barks at his son when the son 'wants to keep' one of them, like you'd keep a lost puppy. This is strange and forced for a few reasons. First, its another instance of the director's emphasis on symbolic gestures. Second, we might ask: why wouldn't the father want the companionship of another person for safety? Yet we can hear the replies to this: they'd been together for so long that another person would only pose risks to their safety, they've proven they can handle the dangers. The two men the father rudely pushed aside were very clearly not dangerous, however (especially when Viggo takes the weapons!) and also in need of companionship.
All I wanted from this movie was a more natural, believable relationship between father and son, free of cheap symbolic gestures that (obviously) try to convince the reader of their closeness.

Nietzsche and the Ego

In his essay "On the Unity of Nietzsche's Philosophy", Ken Kierans notes that Nietzsche demolishes the notion of the will (i.e. a basis for action in the world, a connection between the earthly and heavenly realms, etc.) in the same way he abolishes God: neither have any basis in the world:
"Hence to posit the conscious ego as somehow "the standard and condition of life" -- as Christians do -- is the "fundamental mistake": "it is the erroneous perspective of a parte ad totum -- which is why all philosophers are instinctively trying to imagine a total consciousness, a consciousness involved in all life and will, in all that occurs, a ‘spirit,’ ‘God.’" (KK).
Kierans' point here is that Nietzsche is destroying any notions of will and God because neither conforms to the world--they are illusions, misrepresentations of our true, worldly situation. But what should be mentioned here is the point Ken Gemes makes in his essay that decries postmodern interpretations of Nietzsche's killing of the subject. Citing Ecce Homo, Gemes suggests that Nietzsche does not demolish these stable, cherished notions because they are false representations of our situation. Truth, it turns out, is a Christian virtue--and one that "a certain species cannot live without". No, it "is not error which horrifies me at this sight". Merely correcting this error, i.e. confronting the multiplicity of the subject, is hence not sufficient. Even though Nietzsche emphatically states throughout the Will to Power that the subject is a fiction, a substratum, a creation, a construction without any basis in reality, this cannot be final. Following the fall of the subject, the idea is not to relapse into a chaotic consciousness, one without center, one without direction. On the contrary, the idea is to make yourself--with the love of life, and the 'will to power', in full view.

Study Suggests Dangers Surround Adhering to Health Studies

A new study performed by the Institute for Human Health suggests that many health studies might not be as 'healthy' as they claim to be. The study revealed that adhering to just any study, like the recent Johns Hopkins study which made the connection between papaya fruit consumption and joint pain, causes increased paranoia and can lead to a weakened immune system, as well as susceptibility to other diseases and even decreased enjoyment. Roger Malestrom, co-ordinator of the study, notes that the latter effect was not known to primitive and even early modern man, who were not swarmed by health studies like we are today.
"It really is startling irony," continued Malestrom. "All people want from these studies is to improve their health or in some cases to appear informed at dinner parties with friends. Instead, they let the studies get the better of them--they brood, ruminate, and in some cases stew over them. And we at the Institute for Public Care know that all three of these things severely detract from human health."
--After this, Malestrom did a cartwheel and screamed Malestrom Slam! He then tried to grab Joe, our cameraman, into what looked like an aggressive line dance position. After some struggle, Joe threw Malestrom onto the ground, panting and smiling, eyes slits.--

"And that," he said finally, "is what we do here at the institute for Human Health. It's about exploding yourself into the world. I may have been given the name Malestrom, but I don't act like one. I'm an unpredictable bundle of whims and wills. Get used to it. Hehe, See ya later, boys."

Heidegger to Arendt

To appreciate the human world, you have to withdraw from it. And this is a transition is a movement that keeps going for those who are fond of both Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. From Arendt's perspective, Heidegger broke from the human world to what was, for him, most authentic--a relationship with one's existence, which entails contemplating one's own death, as well as the ontological boundaries that frame our (radically individuated) human experience.

What Arendt saw in Heidegger's thinking of his most intimate, individuated experience, his journey to the ontological core, was a tragic flee from the human world. For her, the world cannot simply be left on its own, it needs vigilant care. Her return to the world, which for her is nothing else but the human world, is influenced greatly by the holocaust and other political disasters of the last century, when human evil was on display. To sustain a polis, to ensure that it does not disappear or become distorted into a playing field for the will of a single man, is the work of many- and the work of the free mind.

what 'throwness' can teach us

To my knowledge, Heidegger coined the idea of throwness; that is, a state of being in which we become completely absorbed in the world, in such a way that all 'personal' possibilities disappear. We are born into a world -not- of our own making, yet we are permitted discovery of this crucial fact; and by discovering it, we can shape our orientation to the world, i.e. see throwness for what it is so as to emerge from it, and free ourselves from it.

To illustrate my point I will use an everyday example: A family sits around the television watching football playoffs. It's the final game of the year, and they've watched nearly every game, followed most newspaper stories involving players in the league, and talked about these things with like-minded friends and family. Towards the end of the game (nobody in the room has an allegiance to either of the teams, yet they sit watching the game, loyal to their sport) the father says "I'm just disappointed the season's over." Everybody agrees. That night, each member of the family goes to sleep deflated, nostalgic for what a great season it was. Two or three days will have to pass before anyone can even do yard work, or put their minds to anything, without feeling a tinge of sadness that there is no more football to be watched.

What can this example teach us?

A hole has been left in the world of the football family. They have relied on it to fill their lives and to take their minds off their everyday concerns (financial, political). When the season ends, only memories remain, and of course highlights on the television that bring the sport back to life momentarily. As a result, the hole needs to be filled, not unlike the hole that requires filling after a family member dies. The hole is smaller and will therefore be filled faster, but it is a hole nonetheless, and filling it takes time and energy, which further pushes them from their existential concerns. Of course, we are never without concern--so long as we exist, we project ourselves toward things (even when we find ourselves helpless or directionless, like the family after the season ends, we still press on through time towards something....death to be exact.)

But in this example, which is a case of becoming overly wrapped up in something that is not of your own making (this is an idea that will have to be fleshed out) we are able to detect how exactly it is that we are free--how we can, as Heidegger says, "choose ourselves and win ourselves."

It is hard to ignore the affirmative nature of this declaration. That is, I am tempted to equate Heidegger's declaration here to one we might hear from the keynote speaker at a high school graduation; something like "you have to find yourself in the world," or "don't be afraid to be yourself," etc. But to equate his message to these tired, commonplace suggestions would be to miss the point entirely (and unfortunately.)

Because Heidegger is talking on a more fundamental level, an ontological one. We are existents--our essence, if we can be said to have one at all, is to exist. To live and to die. But talking about it in these terms often covers over our essence. These terms are what Heidegger calls "present-at-hand," which I think is

Trauma

It has been called conservatism, has likely been diagnosed as a psychological condition, and is coarsely known as the inability to deal with change. Books have been written about it: one called 'who moved my cheese?' and a sequel called 'who moved my iceberg?', which tells of a colony of penguins forced to deal with significant alterations to their habitat and way of life. When an old house gets torn down to make room for a new one, when a car gets totaled an accident, when a pet dies, when a possession is sold--these are major incidents in the life of the person who cherished those objects.
It can be described in terms of trauma. TBC
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