for love of country?

in her introduction, martha c. nussbaum says,

Most of us are brought up to believe that all human beings have equal worth. At least the world's major religions and most secular philosophies tell us so. But our emotions don't believe it. We mourn for those we know, not for those we don't know. And most of us feel deep emotions about America, emotions we don't feel about India, or Russia, or Rwanda. In and of itself, this narrowness of our emotional lives is probably acceptable and maybe even good. We need to build outward from meanings we understand, or else our moral life would be empty of urgency.

when we are not provoked, we are apathetic and despondent. nothing can be more true of myself than what nussbaum says about the united states. i sit idle, clueless, and compassion-less unless i find that i am in danger, some threat to my well-being.

case and example. the truth of the matter is, i am the biggest procrastinator in the world. i, however, like to call myself a "pressure writer", or better yet, a "clutch" writer. my basketball parallel would probably be robert horry. not kobe, not dwayne, not even steve nash. it's not that those superstars aren't clutch, but the fact is that i don't do anything in the first, second, third, or even the forth quarter. i still stand at the three point arch and score only two points, the only two that can win the game.

i'm not saying that i always win, but what i am saying is that i don't do anything till the very end.

what martha wrote about, however, has nothing to do with basketball or procrastinating, but it has everything to do with how America doesn't move an inch on most world issues until a great threat is posed on our precious soil or future aspirations. i'm not saying that i'm any better, or that i would make better decisions than bush, i would probably make the same, but what i am saying is that we need to make a change.

relient k says it best in their song down in flames

I'm part of the problem,
I confess,
But I gotta get this off my chest.

Let's extinguish the anguish
for which we're to blame,
and save the world
from going down in flames.

i'm sorry for sounding so apocalyptic, but we are all heading down a direction that doesn't look so good.

it took pearl harbor for the united states to get involved in world war two.
and it took september eleventh for us to join together to and be compassionate for each other.

nussbaum ends her intro,

Seeing how vulnerable our great country is, we can learn something about the vulnerability all human beings share, about what it is like for distant others to lose those they love to a disaster not of their own making, whether it is hunger or flood or ethnic cleansing.

weren't all men created equal? and if we were, how come we don't act like it?

there is, fortunately, a glimmer of hope.
Rousseau says, "Thus from our weakness our fragile happiness is born".

Or is it?

a societal critique slash film review : 300

after watching the film "300" the only thing that comes to mind is excessive. everything about the film was excessive; the slow motion, the screaming, and especially the killing. i know. i know. "300" is the story of the battle of thermopylae, where three hundred spartans stood up against the millions of the persian empire, i should have expected lots and lots of killing. ok, i accept that. but i feel like the film could have been much better; for instance the dialoge and the acting. nothing was new about this film. it felt like a was watching "gladiator" again, but with much more killing and cgi (computer generated imagery).

i'm not saying that i didn't enjoy the film. but that it didn't live up to its hype.

my friends and i went around town to find a theater that wasn't packed, and upon seeing a large crowd at a local theater, my friend james said, "i think there were three hundred people". bad joke. but his observation was interesting. it seemed like there were at least three hundred people at every theater we stopped by. why all the hype? was it the director zack snyder that drew the crowds in? i highly doubt that. the last notable film he directed was "dawn of the dead", which isn't consider much of a classic, yet alone a film itself. maybe it was fact that the film was based on frank miller's comics? maybe.

it could have been a myraid of things that created all of this hype, but one aspect of the film stands out, staring me right in the eye, it is the reason why i was so intrigued by the film. it wasn't the film itself, but it was the story it was based on. the battle of thermopylae. three hundred men facing certain death for the sake of liberty. the heroism. the valor and honor. i think thats the reason why people were so fascinated by the film.

all that the film represents is what our society is missing and longing for.

we no longer have heros in our society anymore. they all have died, or have been killed by us because we feared how they might effect the way we think. we admire king leonidas, and wish we could do the same thing in his situation. but we probably never will. how does president bush compare to king leonidas? yes leonidas is irrational, but isn't bush also confusing at times? the notion is self-sacrifce is lost in our generation in the mist of glorified selfishness. it is foolish to help anyone other than yourself. we justify this action by saying to ourselves, others probably wouldn't do the same for me, to hell with them. sympathy is now a sign of weakness.

what can be said of the three hundred that lost their lives in the battle of the millennium? remember us, they utter.

other than the fact that spartans were the best warriors of all time, what i've learned is that it is not possible to die for anything unless we're passionate about what we are dying for. DUH! right? pretty obvious. but heres the thing, today we are passionate about things that don't matter. celebrity gossip. fashion. mtv (laguna beach, next, and the real world). and vh1 (the fabulous life and the white rapper show). who's ever heard of someone dying for a pair of jeans? i'm sure there's someone out there who has, maybe for a pair of discount se7en jeans. the point is, isn't that absurd? substanceless and lost, we've lost all sense of value in our lives. the only things we've got to measure value are the zeros behind our bank statement. thats it. nothing else.

i'm overly generalizing, and i am most certainly involving myself in my gross categorisation. i maybe a hypocrite, but the fact remains that we are all part of a degenerate generation. we just can't help it.

as gruesome as it may have been, 300 captures all that i wish we could be.

in the end it's just a movie.

grade: b