The movie's depiction of Jesuits and Vatican was great!!!
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Professicchio — 13 years ago(June 09, 2012 06:34 PM)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha you seriously are a funny guy, man!
Do you know what's funny? You are relpying to my points by almost exactly repeating what I have said to you earlier but just twisting the wording a bit, so to make it look like they are your own original points and you are still contraddicting and not actually agreeing with me. It's just the icing on the cake that you had to conclude it all by saying "
It's a matter of waiting
" which it's not monstrously different from my "
just wait and see
" earlier, a bit redundant isn't it?
Do not worry I have seen that tactic before, in other contexts it's called "climbing on the mirrors", it's just that you are taking quite an admirable effort at it. You can use your "balance" as you wish, anyone's got its own scales to measure things.
You do carry on though still giving out gratuitous and pointless bits of historical information which neither I contested nor are at all relevant to this conversation: give it up please, seriously, again, truth aside, no one is impressed here.
On the subject I am not saying that academia is entirely useless but I have been breathing, eating and drinking Roman, Greek, Arab and Phoenician history and culture from the instant I was conceived as I was born right in the middle of it and I am direct descendant of what's left of them, that is a privilege that no historian can obtain by simple eruditon, no matter how many years you may spend reading books.
By the way it's
Edward Gibbon
the name of the guy who wrote
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
, not Gibson (you never know, you might want to use that information again in the future).
Apart from the that you are still coming up with the occasional cretinous assumptions like that I "
deny the possibility that Western civilization may help these civilizations improve themselves
", again this is crap that YOU are saying pal, not me, but just remember this while we are on the subject:
it works both ways in the helping department
! If you think that we only got to teach and not to learn from others regardless how "civilized" they are, wether be Chinese, Arabs or whatever, we are sure on another sure path towards BIG trouble, just sayin'.
Nevermind though you seem to be getting the point:
I hope the West will: it needs the jobs.
Nice to see how quickly you are learning to speak my language, I am not a bad teacher am I? You can never put down a good old story like that of "
The Ant and the Grasshopper
" (No need to tell who the ants are in this case do we?).
[But serioulsy that is a stupid signature phrase, I'd change it if i was you, Walpole was a great writer but not much of a philosopher, just sayin']. -
Eumenides_0 — 13 years ago(June 10, 2012 10:35 AM)
Your 'wait and see' isn't a particularly insightful statement, though, is it? It doesn't require a lot of intellect to say that we'll have to wait and see what will happen in China. Of course we will, the future can't be predicted, so we'll just have to wait for further developments.
On the subject I am not saying that academia is entirely useless but I have been breathing, eating and drinking Roman, Greek, Arab and Phoenician history and culture from the instant I was conceived as I was born right in the middle of it and I am direct descendant of what's left of them, that is a privilege that no historian can obtain by simple eruditon, no matter how many years you may spend reading books.
No, you're merely an Italian, from what I can gather from your film reviews. That hardly makes you an expert by birth on multicultarism and ancient civilizations. One learns about cultures from studying cultures, not from living in them. In fact, sometimes an emotional detachment from them actually helps to sharpen one's critical faculties. Being too involved in something makes one partial.
By the way it's Edward Gibbon the name of the guy who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, not Gibson (you never know, you might want to use that information again in the future).
Unfortunately it seems I won't have the opportunity of correcting you; you've made it clear you're too intelligent to rely on the the books of others. Alas, I'm merely an average person who enjoys educating himself through books. I wasn't born knowing everything, so I complement that deficiency by reading them, and I've also learned to back-up arguments by referring to authorities on topics. Obviously you're your own authority.
If you think that we only got to teach and not to learn from others regardless how "civilized" they are, wether be Chinese, Arabs or whatever, we are sure on another sure path towards BIG trouble, just sayin'.
But the West has never shied away from learning from other cultures. It adopted the Phoenician alphabet, Hindu numbers, mathematical notions from Babylonia and Egypt, the aforementioned rescue of Greek texts by Arabs, et cetera. I don't know the state of current education, but in my time there wasn't any conspiracy to pretend that these civilizations didn't contribute to the Western civilization. On the other hand, I see a hateful anti-West nowadays that denies anything good ever came out of the West.
The big trouble, as far as I can see it, is that we've reached a point where the West is blamed for so many evils that apparently it no longer has anything positive to offer the rest of the world. Tell, what can Europe learn from modern Islam? It's a genuine question: what great science, or new philosophical or spiritual ideas, or innovative approach to civil rights, or economic theories, does Islam have to offer the countries of Europe?
Nice to see how quickly you are learning to speak my language, I am not a bad teacher am I?
You haven't taught me anything, I'm afraid. I've long believed that one of the West's contradictions is that it's impoverishing itself by outsourcing jobs to totalitarian countries. It's one of the reasons Europe is currently in the middle of an austerity crisis, with no end in sight. It's only making Europe vulnerable to the rise of fanaticism and extremist politics. I hope the EU will see reason, but this too I doubt. We'll see.
And I like my signature and I'll keep it, if you don't mind.
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. -
Professicchio — 13 years ago(June 12, 2012 07:17 AM)
No, you're merely an Italian, from what I can gather from your film reviews. That hardly makes you an expert by birth on multicultarism and ancient civilizations. One learns about cultures from studying cultures, not from living in them. In fact, sometimes an emotional detachment from them actually helps to sharpen one's critical faculties. Being too involved in something makes one partial.
You are both right and wrong on that one: you are right about the emotional detachment but you are definitely wrong about "
One learns about cultures from studying cultures, not from living in them
", because what you learn by being part of something is far more than just emotional attachment, infact you can say that the two ways of learning, studying and living, can compensate each other but can never replace each other!
In a way I feel privileged because I have been able to do both, in separate ways, in completely distinct moments of my life. I have been an expact for almost two decades now and I can say I have learned a great deal about seeing the world "both ways" (sort of cliche somewhat), and do you want to know the funny side?
Talking about "emotional" detachment, I fell much more attached to my roots now that I have abandoned them, while before I simply hated it you could say (kind of explains why I left), ironic but not too uncomon among immigrants perhaps.
And I do not consider myself as merely an "Italian" for the simple reason that there is no such thing as a unified Italian culture (thank god, or we'll be just another averagely dull place like the rest of Europe. Just kidding, right), I consider myself a Mediterranean; there are places in Italy which I fell so out of place I might as well be on another planet, I was raised speaking a language that 99% of my "compatriots" do not speak and that is not uncommon around that cradle of civilization that is that sea.
But the West has never shied away from learning from other cultures. It adopted the Phoenician alphabet, Hindu numbers, mathematical notions from Babylonia and Egypt, the aforementioned rescue of Greek texts by Arabs, et cetera. I don't know the state of current education, but in my time there wasn't any conspiracy to pretend that these civilizations didn't contribute to the Western civilization. On the other hand, I see a hateful anti-West nowadays that denies anything good ever came out of the West..
Of course "
the West has never shied away from learning from other cultures
" because the West would simply NOT EXIST if it had not learned from other cultures for a start, but the problem I have with that reasoning, is not that it's wrong in itself (because it is not in a way) but it's the way it is perceived by most westerners as far as I have sadly experienced!
The way it's interpreted is that makes it look like the west being a "good and diligent student", tolerant and open towards other cultures, like that has always been the case. The reality is that knowledge did not came through peaceful reasoning and "democratic exchange" but by an history filled with aggression, warfare and conquer, it was not always the west who did it obviously but the fact that it came on top of it all big time that made all the difference.
Again that expression in the end is simply bollocks, and quite dangeruos bollocks too for the way it can be transformed in rethorical fascism, because it creates the overabused cliche of this perfect "west-east" duality that simply was never there to begin with: I do not consider myself neither a Westernern or an Easterner and I take offence on whoever wants to frame me in either. Ultimately it is nothing more than the worst form of racism: a racism that is diguised as something completely different! And I am not blaming you in any way, mind you, because I also in the end am guilty of using the same logic, unfortunately it seems to be the only way to get yourself understood these days.
The big trouble, as far as I can see it, is that we've reached a point where the West is blamed for so many evils that apparently it no longer has anything positive to offer the rest of the world. Tell, what can Europe learn from modern Islam? It's a genuine question: what great science, or new philosophical or spiritual ideas, or innovative approach to civil rights, or economic theories, does Islam have to offer the countries of Europe?
Again you are both right and wrong, VERY wrong. That overabused and tired logic you are expressing is only part of the truth, and half-truths are way more dangerous than complete lies, as the most brutal forms of ideological repression have learned to use to their advantage.
You are making again the same mistake you were doing before when you were speaking in regards of the Chinese, and that is you are being downright racist without even realizing it, and here I explain below.
From the way you have answered my point becomes transparent that you are making an arbitrary assimilation between two very distinctive realities: I a -
Eumenides_0 — 13 years ago(June 15, 2012 05:48 AM)
You're right, I've been very lazy and thoughtless in using Arab and Muslim interchangeably in these posts, and using the West as a monolithic culture. I did it mostly because it's easier, but I'm aware of the diversity of cultures within the West and the East.
Your comments on Islamic banks withstanding the financial meltdown are very interesting. I've looked that up and read some articles, and it seems to be true. Tighter regulation on greed is something I support, and it worries me leaders in Europe and the USA don't see the cliff the banks are driving us towards in their mad, unethical pursuit for profits. Of course in the West we're not oblivious to those problems, as daily protests demonstrate. Unfortunately, however, I fear our voices no longer reach our leaders. I wouldn't mind if the Islamic banking model were adopted in Europe, to see if it works. Perhaps it could change things for the better.
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. -
Hancock_the_Superb — 13 years ago(June 24, 2012 07:25 AM)
I don't see the "Christianity is older than Islam" as particularly valid, for two reasons:
- Islam in the Middle Ages remained comparatively tolerant (not to say accepting) of other religious, at least Abrahamic ones, within its borders. No question if it would be better for a 15th Century Jew to live in France or Ottoman Turkey. Being a comparatively "new" religion did not prevent them from being more liberal than Christian regimes in that past. Why should it be an excuse today?
- At the risk of stating the obvious: we live in the now. We can't wait hundreds of years for Islam to "evolve" to roughly the state of Christianity today. We have to deal with Islam as it is today. We can embrace the moderate elements and scale back our presence in the Middle East, but there will still be Wahabbist/Taliban types out there who won't be satisfied until they crush all signs of other religion within their borders. And yes, al-Qaeda types with their chimeric dreams of a reestablished caliphate will be around.
"Haven't they replaced you with a coin-operated machine yet?"
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Professicchio — 13 years ago(June 25, 2012 05:51 PM)
- Who cares? Why are you reducing this to a just a question of religious tolerance? And again another stupid argumentation that reduces the "Islam vs Christianity" field into an over-simplified issues of two alleged granitic blocks.
Do you really want to get serious about this argument? Than let's cut the religious crap and start looking at the reality at 360 degrees: the developement of countries all over the world has got as much to do with the nature of its religion (not too much) as it has to do with economical international policies, warfare, national identity, migrations, language, geographical position, international alliances, nature of the territory and the history of colonialism (both of the "classical" country-invading type and the more insidious behind-the-scenes scheming of the post WW2 era, so brillantly devised by people like H. Kissinger) and the list can go on and on.
Unless you want me to write a goddam book here on IMDb about how these things interact with each other you'll never understand anything of how certain religions/cultures have developed differently from others, are you willing to pay me for that? Than I might do it.
Comparing things like christianity and islam to each other is a lot more hard work than if they were like two brothers brought up in the same family in which the older is quiter and shy while the younger is difficult and aggressive, and even if it was so simple, would you just point the finger and call one the "bad apple" without looking into what their parents, relatives, school and all the rest are doing.
I don't excuse anything, I just understand that anything happens for a reason, and if you don't try to figure out that reason before you put your finger out and start pointing it at others, you will not solve anything and you might end up having that finger bitten. - Point n.1 partly answers your question but the problem is that, like most of others living on this hemisphere, you just simply do not understand that the evolving is happening as we type, and you just keep looking down, putting the fingers on the negative side of the others, without paying any attention to those among your ranks that are already probably screwing you from the behind.
No worries pal, I guarantee you will not have to wait hundreds of year to see a substantial evolution in most Islamic countries, though it might not happen during our lifetime; my money is on Iran becoming one of the most liberal countries in Asia (if not the earth) sometimes after the current regime fades or falls, and it will no doubt, but it won't be the only surprise of this century (major catastrophes aside).
But the real problem is not how these countries are developing, my real worry is how
OUR
countries are in risk of de-developing, thanks to things like bogus economical development (based now exclusively on random numbers, not substantial assets) that might as well be put into the hands of horoscope readers than economist, as it couldn't be worse anyway; read what I was saying to the previous poster above.
Oh, and great thanks also to those trillions they are spending on military enterprises that not only exasperate the situation in those countries with no benefit whatsoever for the invaders (there are exceptions obviously: all the warmongers disguised as legitimate corporates above all but let's not forget heroin dealers that now are back rolling in gold since the afghan invasion) but also gives religious extremists the perfect excuse to find new recruits; if before the invasion the "al-Qaeda types" where about half a dozen groups around the world now they might be ten times more, minus Osama Bin Laden though.
To be honest I don't think he was a real problem, I'm far more worried by the rest of his family, with all that petrol on their hands and cunning grasp of American assets, especially their balls.
"No but with the current economy they might do that soon, same to you also!"
- Who cares? Why are you reducing this to a just a question of religious tolerance? And again another stupid argumentation that reduces the "Islam vs Christianity" field into an over-simplified issues of two alleged granitic blocks.
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Eumenides_0 — 13 years ago(July 06, 2012 02:21 PM)
my money is on Iran becoming one of the most liberal countries in Asia (if not the earth) sometimes after the current regime fades or falls, and it will no doubt, but it won't be the only surprise of this century (major catastrophes aside).
That would certainly be good, but also quite surprising if it happened. What makes you think Iran will become the most liberal country in the world once the regime of the Ayatollahs is gone? Why is it more correct than predicting that it will just be swallowed by another regime? In matters like this, everything is always just an educated estimate, but I'd like to know more about your arguments in favour or Iran becoming a liberal country after the fall of the regime.
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. -
Professicchio — 13 years ago(August 23, 2012 08:20 AM)
Of course anything can happen as every single matter in the forecoming future will affect the outcome (especially if you consider the possibily of a Israel-Iran war, that might throw all the options high in the air), but I have solid arguments for my beliefs.
As far as I have experienced new generations Iranians, in their 20s or younger, are, far from idiotic western pre-assumptions, in very large numbers defiant towards traditional Islamic theocracy, both males and females: they are very cosmopolitan, love to party hard and drink alcohol (though not openly in their country, obviously, but they still do), listen to rock and rap music and engage in all sort activities that are not exactly in line with the Ayatollah's thinking, do you think this whole new generation will become "converted" once they get into positions of power? Me don't think very easily so.
As it is often the case with the irony of History, you need to get to one end first to end up right in the opposite end: just like World War 1 and 2 created the cement that prevented those countries responsible for those horrors to fight each other for the next 70 years now and 40 years of dictatorship under Franco built the rebel attitude that has now made Spain a beacon of European liberalism for more than 30 years. the list of examples goes on.
"Opposite attract each other" is not just a saying, it's true. -
tipsy_n2o — 12 years ago(December 30, 2013 03:44 PM)
It really is true that people see whatever they want to see. What I saw in the movie glorification of the Jesuits, yes, but also of their underlying philosophy of love and harmony. If someone watched the movie and became more tribalistic and antagonistic towards other cultures than they certainly did not get the message of the movie.
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al666940 — 10 years ago(January 09, 2016 03:29 PM)
Say what you want, but NOBODY can deny the fact that it is jesuits whom have sided with the poor to the point of fighting alongside them.
Right or wrong on their part, they cared enough to do that. Who else did (without using them as cannon fodder like communist strongmen like Chavez for their own empowerment) again?