Friday, October 20, 2006
World Trade Center
I've never much cared for the libertarian religion. I know my libertarian friends will probably balk at the use of the word "religion", but the disciples of Ayn Rand do indeed make a great number of spiritual assumptions whether they admit it or not. Watching Oliver Stone's World Trade Center made me think about how very false so many of those assumptions are.In case you have just returned from a lengthy vacation on the moon, the plot involves the true story of two New York cops trapped under the World Trade Center after 9/11.
It's hard to think of anything to say about this movie that hasn't already been said. Stone's decision to tell the 9/11 story from the micro, on-the-ground viewpoint was inspired. The performances are great. The special effects, wow. This is a solid movie. It will get an Oscar nomination and deserve it. Go see it.
With that out of the way, I'm going to do what drives my wife crazy about these reviews and focus on the negative, just for the hell of it.
Although this is a powerful movie, it deserves to be said that it derives a lot of its emotional power from fairly rudimentary cinematic manipulation. Ya got your 'band of brothers' quasi-military loyalty to comrades unto death. Ya got your guys doing the old "tell my wife I love her" dying message bit. And you've got lots of parental situations. That last one is the simplest trick to pull in a movie. We parents are sucker. Stick a scene in a movie with a guy and his kids and even the toughest he-man on earth will start tearing up. It doesn't take a lot of story-telling sophistocation to pull that off.
But despite the sometimes superficiality of the story-telling, the fact that it is a true story delivers a powerful message, and that's what got me thinking about libertarianism. Libertarian thought revolves around the notion of the "sovereign individual" whose connection to other humans is not intrinsic but only a function of explicit or implicit contract. I've heard libertarians argue that even motivations like parental love are merely matters of "choice".
Among the many problems with the "sovereign individual" assumption is the observed behaviour of people in disaster situations. In an emergency, most people will try to help each other. Even in the face of imminent physical danger and with no benefit to themselves, ordinary people will typically make superhuman efforts to save the lives of other members of their species.
This movie shows this phenomenon over and over again. At the end of the movie, a narration observes that these ordinary people who performed heroic acts did so instinctively, compelled by the simple feeling that what they did "just seemed like the right thing to do."
So, with all respect to my many libertarian friends, the whole notion of the disconnected "sovereign individual" is full of shit in my opinion. We all participate in a life that supersedes our individual lives. Human experience demonstrates this in a million ways.
Moving from one impolite topic to another, this movie also got me thinking about the political and tactical implications of terrorism. In the landmark third seasoner opener of Battlestar Galactica, a suicide bomber successfully slaughters hundreds of evil Cylons and traitorous human collaborators. When a Cylon official asks a human leader Laura Roslyn to condemn suicide bombing as a tactic, Roslyn just sneers. "It looks like we've finally found something that scares Cylons," she says.
I couldn't get that line out of my head as I watched the scenes in this movie where they flash around to terrified crowds of people all over the United States watching the events on TV. I couldn't help but think that there was an otherwise moderate Islamic leader somewhere in the world thinking "It looks like we've finally found something that scares Americans."
This doesn't bode well for the pursuit of the War on Terror. The fact is our enemies will never give up terror tactics. Why should they give up tactics that work, and that work so economically? On September 11, 2001, for the price of a few airline tickets, a small group of radicals brought the most powerful country in the world to its knees. If you sincerely believe that your enemy is fundamentally evil, why would you ever give up such tactics?
Further, as the history of Israel has proven, it is effectively impossible to eliminate terrorism. No matter how many security systems you impose, there will always be loopholes as long as there is any traffic of people or goods.
Therein lies the conumdrum of our times. What can we possibly do to prevent terrorism?
The answers are still very unclear and, I'm sure, will remain so for a long time. This movie, in its own sometimes-subtle, sometimes-blunt way, deserves kudos for making us think about those questions again.
posted by Mentok @ 3:29 PM,
5 Comments:
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At 7:44 PM,
said...
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Your position on Ayn Rand’s philosophy is misinformed. You attack Objectivism’s ethics on the grounds that it does not conform to what you claim to be the ideal in an emergency. Yet life is not an omnipresent emergency, and it would be unworkable to live one’s day-to-day life according to the morality depicted in “World Trade Center.”
Furthermore, you misstate Objectivism’s position on love. Ayn Rand argued live was primarily selfish—an expression of one’s highest values. If you maintain that your love is causeless and not an expression of what you hold most dear, speak for yourself, but leave Ayn Rand and her philosophy out of it. Perhaps if you actually read the works of Ayn Rand that are relevant to your claims, you would be in position to better comment on the efficacy of the ideas she presents. -
At 10:05 PM,
Mentok said...
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Ha! I knew calling objectivism a religion would smoke one of you out of the woodwork.
"Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."
- Ayn Rand
That's s pretty unequivocal statement, and one that's morally repugnant to every other spiritual system that has ever existed on this planet.
As I said, I have many dear old friends who are staunch libertarians. I admire their dedication to their ideals. Indeed, there is a great deal I admire about libertarian / objectivist thinking in the areas of economics and politics.
I wish they would stick to those things and stay out of metaphysical / ethical speculations.
If you ask me, objectivism is great as a rule of thumb but crappy as a philosophy. Further, it seems to me that dedicated objectivists too often act like cult fanatics. If you corner them about an aspect of life that doesn't fit their model, they just construe some convoluted logic to put a square peg in a round hole.
Quantum mechanics tells us that matter sometimes has the characteristics of particles and sometimes has the characteristics of wave patterns.
Human life is the same. Sometimes we are individuals. Sometimes we are part of a greater whole. To deny the value of either is to blind oneself to broader human nature. -
At 10:19 AM,
Tester said...
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Jack Galt sounds like he has no penis. or life.
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At 10:26 AM,
Mentok said...
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I would say on the contrary that Mr. Galt, whoever he is, is a committed idealist and deserves respect for that. I fully understand the appeal of the tidy logic of objectivism, but I disagree with many of its underlying assumptions.
In any case, as the old saying goes, I disagree with what Mr. Galt is saying but would fight to the death for his right to say it. If he's still around, I stand by my arguments but apologize if my tone was too inflammatory.
...And, Mr. Tester, please don't insult my guests. That's my job ;-) -
At 3:57 AM,
Suzan Abrams, email: suzanabrams@live.co.uk said...
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"...In an emergency, most people will try to help each other. Even in the face of imminent physical danger and with no benefit to themselves, ordinary people will typically make superhuman efforts to save the lives of other members of their species...
Hi Mentok, regarding the para above here:
In my view, it's a genius observation.
By the way, you'd be great for intelligent arguments and tough intellectual discussions.
