Naked, though, I gave up on. Dismal, dark people filled with despair and metaphysical pessimism.
The point I wanted to make about it, though, I have made many times: despair is the inevitable result of giving up in principle on the notion of individual moral growth, which is to say on the notion that individual pain can have meaning, and can be transcended.
Despair, then, and I am obviously developing a series of equivalencies, is a feature of egalitarianism, aka socialism. Heroin use is a product, in part, of socialism.
Pain has always been a feature of human existence, but not necessarily QUALITATIVE pain, which is a term I haven’t used in a while. By it, I intend primarily resentment and self pity. Thewliss’s character no doubt has suffered, but he can’t figure out how to do anything with it, and he feels relentless self pity, from which flows his contempt.
Some people consider misery deep. I don’t. Misery in the process of transmutation is deep. Completed misery is wisdom. Open ended, submissive misery is simply demonstrative of a lack of skill in being human, in doing the work that we are called on to do here. It is burying a talent (did you know this word entered the English language through that parable?) and waiting for the master to return.
I will add as a random factoid that it is highly interesting that Thewliss was cast as Lupin (Lupine: I assume everyone eventually catches that, but maybe not.), given his comment on being a werewolf. I suspect his role in this movie was what won him that role.
I will add as well that this post and my last post, on the fact that the British government–the power elite, the people who guard their nations commitment to the eradication of individual Goodness, and the notion of personal empowerment and development–countenances almost openly the widespread Muslim abuses of young girls, are related.
Thewliss is in despair because he does not believe in anything. Likewise, the only absolute value of Socialists is conformity. Rape, murder, torture, misogyny, racism, elitism: none of these are wrong, when done by people not within the group. Self evidently, you cannot even claim egalitarianism is an absolute value for them. They tolerate the intolerant constantly. No: conformity is the only absolute, which is to say an eager abandonment of the notion of individual conscience, which is to say the notion of individual moral growth, and the following necessary conclusion that people and peoples can be found at differing stages on this path.
Only sloppy, cowardly thinking permits the continuance of such darkness. But continue it does.