The end of a local interview with master director and Canadian, David Cronenberg, turned to politics, and, stunningly, illustrates the intellectual and moral gulf between the the US and Europe over the imminent war against Iraq. It’s seriously suggested that Christian True Belief in an afterlife makes such people (Bush, the US) dangerous, because they, therefore, value this life less seriously than non-Believers! The superiority of Europe, because of her experience with many hugely abusive ideologies, somehow doesn’t include the explicitly atheist one, communism, which resulted in the greatest body counts of all—or else this false equivalence would be treated with all due skepticism instead of a readily inane embrace. Cronenberg winds up abjuring moral judgment in world politics—doesn’t he realize how judgmental he’s being? ------------------------------------------------ Pablo Kjolseth: Philosophy is referred to in your film "Videodrome" when someone tells Max, the protagonist, that "It (Videodrome) has something you don't have, Max, It has a philosophy - and that's what makes it dangerous." Clearly, many humans need a religion, just as much as some need philosophy, to cope with the everyday spectacles of life. For example, I read a piece on National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in the New Yorker that described how she didn't miss a beat when her mother died because her religious faith was absolute - meaning that there was no doubt in her mind that she would meet her mother in heaven. She is but one key player in current politics that seem to be dominated by similarly moralistically confident politicians. These are people who control the fate of hundreds of thousands of soldiers (not to mention untold numbers of civilians), and they have an absolute faith in an after-life and/or rapture. As a filmmaker who has addressed issues of revolt, terrorism, censorship, and warring factions between different ideological fronts, do you think philosophical movements, even "dangerous" ones, have any chance against the current religious movements? David Cronenberg: Wow! That's great, what you just said. Well... you have to be aware, and perhaps you are, that in Europe the Bush administration is looked upon with horror because of this moralizing. This is something that Europe went through many times with the wars before, each country feeling that it had a superior philosophy, if not religion, and using that as a rationale for committing the most hideous acts and atrocities against other human beings. Now they find the most powerful country in the world is run by people who have very much the same moralistic fervor. This is very disturbing. The idea that perhaps an administration secretly thinks that it doesn't matter if hundreds of thousands of American soldiers die because they'll all be seeing their mothers in heaven afterwards so what's the big deal? How do you separate that from Islamic fundamentalists who believe the same thing? Those very fundamentalists that we're supposedly in opposition to... The two start to merge together and one seems to be as dangerous as the other. Fortunately, I think there are countries in the world for who the realities of politics, or as they call it the "realpolitik," the sort of functional, down-to-earth, mundane not high-falutin', not religiously fueled version of politics, is the preferred mode of politics. In other words, it's groups of people trying to reason together, trying to find common ground, trying to make agreements, and they don't talk about "evil." Anybody who talks about "evil" on the stage of world politics is a very dangerous person. And I think Bush is a very dangerous person. [Full Interview at (the Colorado Daily, March 03, 2003):http://www.coloradodaily.com/display/inn_news/AUDIENCE/audience07.txt] ------------------------------- Final comment: this excerpt illustrates a current thesis of American thinkers on the right: Dennis Prager, Andrew Sullivan, and Classicist Victor Davis Hansen all insist that the current debate over the US war with Iraq pits three rival ideologies against each other: Islamism, secular (atheist)-welfare statist Europe, and the Judeo-Christian, free market US. [Hansen’s at http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson022803.asp] For once the left and the right agree on something! It’s the their interpretations of history, however, that clash.
Cronenberg hasn't made a good movie in the last 15 years. I guess I haven't either. I am not sure that views on an afterlife have anything to do with the value most individuals place on the current life. Most of my contemporaries have lost a family member and I honestly can draw no generalizations about grieving of individuals based on religious convictions. I think cultural considerations are much more significant.
It's (the first view) is a crude fallacy promulgated by unthinking atheists. I like to believe I'm a thinking atheist who (no longer--I did as a teenage), falls for such traps. But I think Cronenberg's example illustrates something of current "thinking" in Europe growing amidst the Iraq crisis, a continent much more secular, and much more prone to viewing American stereotypes such as Bush represents as genuine threats--! If they do a Cronenberg does, and think similarly, I think they should be ashamed. It's been said of our "PC" times that one of the few groups one can freely malign are Christians. I believe this is more true on America's coasts, but especially true in Europe. --Orson
