“The World Is, of Course, Insane”: An Interview with Errol Morris

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/the-world-is-of-course-insane-errol-morris-interview

by nkurz • 7 years ago

67 12 7 years ago

Nimitz14• 7 years ago

That was very interesting!

I really sympathize with his goal of interviewing people with the intent of getting an unforced explanation for whatever the interviewee has or is supporting. Adversarial interviews are more entertaining for sure, but how beneficial are they really at getting the interviewee to open up and share their unfiltered opinions, get them to lay out their own narrative? (with the purpose of learning about their world view)

At the same time the only movie I've watched of his is Fog of War and I wasn't a fan, felt like it was a lot of nothing.

I guess there is no "right" approach to interviewing, it depends on the interviewee.

simtel20• 7 years ago

I would encourage you to watch _the thin blue line_. A lot of nothing resolves into a powerful indictment.

killjoywashere• 7 years ago

As a student of war, history, and leadership, The Fog of War is fascinating. It is a phenomenal contribution to the study of Vietnam in particular. The contrast between McNamara's eventual regret and Rumsfeld's unrepentance in The Unknown Known is stark.

cerealbad• 7 years ago

The meta-position that you can absorb multiple world views and hold them temporarily to assess their ontological narrative is ridiculous. It bleeds from the stone of Christian reformation theology and the rationalist enlightenment chisel chipping away at it for centuries to increase the flow. What has been en vogue for the past 100 years is to fuse east and west in order to sell universality without the baggage of the past to the largely indifferent emergent empires in the Eurasian continental landmass.

Morris is a propagandist, whitewashing colonial-imperialism for the sake of posterity and progeny. Call it the bigotry of low time preference towards civilizations, call it misguided mystic zionism compounded by centuries of guilt of identity and millennial discrimination, call it international capital. The American founders understood that use of power is the trap of all great power and worked to curtail the accumulation of it by maintaining the settler ethos in the American mind. Now it has been replaced by 'a nation of immigrants'.

With Asia we see the fraying of the American ideals, betrayed and exposed as an empty power grab at cultural hegemony, a molten liquid setting into a misshapen lump, waiting to be squeezed, chipped and remelted again. A world war will be necessarily fought over this anti-human humanist idea, since people are not liquid and can only be squeezed so hard before they crack and splinter.

21st century American can only be reasoned with from an equal position of power, and the madness that spreads top down from the entrenched political apparatus is fanatical in its devotion to self-serving narratives, which will lead to more and more erratic and unpredictable outcomes, until corruption and despotism rule the day.

China has always dealt with ideological theocracies with subversion and reasoned pragmatism, it survived the mongols and the japanese and it will survive the americans too. what survives of the extended western roman empire? likely the political monuments of worship too large to tear down and a few choice words of english.

PhasmaFelis• 7 years ago

How on Earth did you get from "I don't like this filmmaker" to "China is better than Ancient Rome"?

robbyt• 7 years ago

The filmmaker fuses east/west as a gimmick, China's ability to survive is more structured. Etc. Well written comment, but too bombastic for my taste. I give this comment 3/5 stars.

fungicide• 7 years ago

Where does he mention "Ancient Rome"?

dang• 7 years ago

Please stop posting ideological flamewar rants to HN. They're off topic here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

badrabbit2• 7 years ago

I started reading and got the reg wall again. So many good news sites but they can't expect everyone to create a dozen accounts just to read news and I will not use social media. I don't mind paying the price of a news paper provided I won't have to use a credit card or provide any trackable artifact.

Maybe a service that sells cards that have 24 hour expiry to access a large number of news sites would be great. I would pay $5/2days,$20/week personally. Simple business model with 10% going to the card maker/distributor and nothing more. Ever. You buy the cards at any store that sells a gift card (including gas stations and thelike). A 6 character alphanum code you can use with any number of sites! No logins,no accounts and everybody wins (except people that want to milk the surveillance cow).

I hope someone does it or I will need to start doing my homework on this.

nefitty• 7 years ago

This is a great idea. I think you should pursue it. Maybe run some preliminary user interviews.

lazerpants• 7 years ago

You could also just purchase the magazine with cash at a newsstand...

badrabbit2• 7 years ago

I don't want to.

You want me to buy 10 news papers in case I find an interesting article posted on some site like HN or reddit? Paper waste (just more trash for me even if I don't care a about the environment). Most papers publish articles daily or every few hours too. What if I want to read an article of a paper circulated in los angeles and I live in florida?

“The World Is, of Course, Insane”: An Interview with Errol Morris

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