a clockwork orange

I too think that Kubrick's understanding of psychopaths was limited.

Agreed.

I also think he was right to say that there was a level of denial as to the true nature of psychopaths, which he incorrectly attributed to all men/humanity, and therefore, the measures being taken to deal with these issues could not possibly be successful.

Right. A non-ponerized human being probably wouldn't have very many ponerized thoughts. But the psychopaths will do whatever they want, still.

But to
learn of perverse thoughts and become ponerized,

While i can understand your feelings on the subject, I find it nesseccary to observe our world in it's many aspects. Aren't some of the stories on SOTT pretty creepy and disgusting too? Israelis harvesting organs?? I could barely read that one. I'm not saying one should be forced to view such material.
 
JEEP said:
"Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage," says Kubrick, reaching for the iced water. "He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved--that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure."

Tigersoap said:
Interesting how Kubrick was very influential and his vision of mankind was skewed, seems to fit the need to make people despair about humanity as a whole through art...
I cannot agree with this opinion. My view is that what Kubrick posits was based on what he believed humanity to be. Kubrick did not know that humanity consists of pre-Adamic/OP and Adamic populations along with the failed OPs/psychopaths.

Excuse me Jeep but I am not sure I understand what you don't agree on ?
I was just wondering out loud if the works of Kubrick did not play for the pathocracy at some level, even if he was unware of it.

Just a note, Kubrick was truly fascinated by war in general and he should have filmed a Napoleon movie because he was really fond of such characters fwiw.
 
Tigersoap said:
Excuse me Jeep but I am not sure I understand what you don't agree on ?
I was just wondering out loud if the works of Kubrick did not play for the pathocracy at some level, even if he was unware of it.

Just a note, Kubrick was truly fascinated by war in general and he should have filmed a Napoleon movie because he was really fond of such characters fwiw.

Hi Tigersoap! I was responding to this:

...his vision of mankind was skewed...

Guess I bolded a little too much there. I was also thinking of this, which I failed to add to my post:

Patience said:
This sounds like the timeless schizoid declaration to me:

Quote
"Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage," says Kubrick, reaching for the iced water. "He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved--that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure."

This discussion is very much paralleling a similar discussion on the Session 30 January 2010 thread maybe starting with my post #207 and continuing with ensuing discussion of psychopathy, sociopathy, narcissism, and characteropathy. Excerpts:

The experience of people with such anomalies grows in the medium of the normal human world to which they belong by nature. Thus their different way of thinking, their emotional violence, and their egotism find relatively easy entry into other people's minds and are perceived within the categories of the everyday world. Such behavior on the part of persons with such character disorders traumatizes the minds and feelings of normal people, gradually diminishing the ability of the normal person to use their common sense. In spite of their resistance, victims of the characteropath become used to the rigid habits of pathological thinking and experiencing. If the victims are young people, the result is that the personality suffers abnormal development leading to its malformation.

Characteropaths and their victims thus represent pathological, ponerogenic factors which, by their covert activity, easily engender new phases in the eternal genesis of evil, opening the door to a later activation of other factors which thereupon take over the main role. [....]
_____________
The differentiation between APD (Antisocial Personality Disorder), sociopathy and psychopathy is vague and ambiguous. Most criminals match the APD criteria. Narcissism and psychopathy may also border on each other.
_____________
Dr.Lobaczewski refers to characteropathies as character disorders caused by brain tissue damage which play a role as pathological agents in the processes of the genesis of Evil.

[...]In societies with highly developed medical care, we find among the lower grades of elementary school (when tests can be applied), that 5 to 7 per cent of children have suffered brain tissue lesions which cause certain academic or behavioral difficulties. This percentage increases with age. Modern medical care has contributed to a quantitative decrease in such phenomena, but in certain relatively uncivilized countries and during historical times, indications of difficulties caused by such changes are and have been more frequent.

[...]Epilepsy and its many variations constitute the oldest known results of such lesions; it is observed in a relatively small number of persons suffering such damage. Researchers in these matters are more or less unanimous in believing that Julius Caesar, and then later Napoleon Bonaparte, had epileptic seizures.
[...]In most cases, however, epilepsy is an evident ailment, which limits its role as a ponerogenic factor.

In a much larger segment of the bearers of brain tissue damage, the negative deformation of their characters grows in the course of time. It takes on variegated mental pictures, depending upon the properties and localization of these changes, their time of origin, and also the life conditions of the individual after their occurrence. We will call such character disorders - characteropathies. Some characteropathies play an outstanding role as pathological agents in the processes of the genesis of evil.

Actually, I think I do agree that the works of Kubrick did play for the pathocracy at some level, even if he was unaware of it. I think his works may have been an honest effort to address what he was seeing as a perversion in humanity's character, but, because the viewing public had/has no knowledge of the effect of viewing this type of material without an underlying understanding of all the psychological factors involved (Kubrick didn't either), especially in terms of ponerology, these works did, in fact, have an unintentional ponerizing (sp?) effect. I'm not really familiar with Kubrick's works, so I could be wrong about his real intentions and/or his awareness. I never bothered to look into the whole Eyes Wide Shut thing either and don't know if that's relevant to this topic or not. Nonetheless, this is proving to be an interesting discussion.

Edit: sentence structure
 
I just want to add that most of Kubrick's works are highly critical of the PTB and portrays them as liars, inept, sexual deviants, hypocrites, psychopaths, etc. In 2001 they suppress the existence of "ET" (in their understanding) life and the presence of artifacts on the moon and in space, using a cover story. The subtext of the film also gives many indications that they murder or otherwise "take care" of individuals who gain too much awareness. In Dr. Strangelove he portrays the guys pulling the strings as inept Nazis (with a nod to Project Paperclip) who plan to save themselves in underground bases while the rest of the world dies in mutually assured destruction. The Shining has many subliminal references to the founding of America on the genocide of the natives, and that the current leaders share that legacy and mindset. In Eyes Wide Shut he shows that the nobility and leadership of Britain's [edit: should read Europe's] true nature is masked by their "noble" facade. In reality they engage in dehumanizing sex rituals and violence.

I've read several interviews with him and he struck me as a real genius, at least intellectually (he was also a chess master). He was very well read on "conspiracy theory", UFOs, history, and had some interesting ideas on ETs (hypothesizing that they were not in fact ET but that higher intelligences may have evolved to a more ethereal realm and would appear as "gods" to us). However, he very well may have been schizoidal. The quote of his above is pretty schizoidal, however, contrary to the typical schizoidal declaration, he did not believe in any type of authoritarian government. Not sure if he was actually a schizoid, or just someone that saw so much violence in human history and came to his conclusion without a real knowledge of psychopathy and its influence. Even if he didn't understand, his movies show the difference pretty clearly. Psychopaths are the instigators of interpersonal and mass evil, and the normal people get caught up in it, in large part against their will.
 
Thanks, Approaching Infinity, for your insights on Kubrick and his work. Most enlightening! I should probably watch 2001 again, this time with 'new eyes'!
 
Approaching Infinity said:
However, he very well may have been schizoidal. The quote of his above is pretty schizoidal, however, contrary to the typical schizoidal declaration, he did not believe in any type of authoritarian government. Not sure if he was actually a schizoid, or just someone that saw so much violence in human history and came to his conclusion without a real knowledge of psychopathy and its influence. Even if he didn't understand, his movies show the difference pretty clearly. Psychopaths are the instigators of interpersonal and mass evil, and the normal people get caught up in it, in large part against their will.

Thanks a lot Approching Infinity.

For the record I really like his cinematographic works (2001, eyes wide shut...) despite the ambivalent feelings I have about the man himself.

As he was quite secretive and isolated not much as transpired but what I've seen in a documentary about him, he could be very sweet and at the same time quite ruthless with his own family.
Obsessive is the word that comes to mind.
 
JEEP said:
Actually, I think I do agree that the works of Kubrick did play for the pathocracy at some level, even if he was unaware of it. I think his works may have been an honest effort to address what he was seeing as a perversion in humanity's character, but, because the viewing public had/has no knowledge of the effect of viewing this type of material without an underlying understanding of all the psychological factors involved (Kubrick didn't either), especially in terms of ponerology, these works did, in fact, have an unintentional ponerizing (sp?) effect.

Thanks for your explanation Jeep ;)
 
Brenda86 said:
I haven't read the book. It's been quite some time since I watched the movie, but I remember absolutely hating it, which makes me afraid to watch it again. My boyfriend has never seen it and went to pick it up at Blockbuster the other day, to which I replied, "Please don't." :/ :)

Me too. I tried watching it once with a couple of friends and when it got to the rape scene I was like ok- I'm done and walked away. And I tried to forget the movie because I hated it so much. I remember my friends saying how much of a 'genius' Kubric was after the movie and I could not disagree more with them lol
At the time, that movie really got to me as most movies do that have violence towards women.


Patience said:
Many high school kids idolize this movie, and for what reasons, I am not entirely sure. Maybe the hypocrisy of The State reminds them of their own parent's hypocrisies. I personally think this film is a good example for this thread:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=15878.0

I find that Clockwork Orange is also a good example of this thread because of the violence aspect- and how some people aren't as bothered by it than others.


But as AI has stated, Kubric's works have always shocked and raised heads about different aspects of humanity. He had an interesting view on things but as stated already, his knowledge of psychopathy was limited.

Approaching Infinity said:
I've read several interviews with him and he struck me as a real genius, at least intellectually (he was also a chess master). He was very well read on "conspiracy theory", UFOs, history, and had some interesting ideas on ETs (hypothesizing that they were not in fact ET but that higher intelligences may have evolved to a more ethereal realm and would appear as "gods" to us). However, he very well may have been schizoidal. The quote of his above is pretty schizoidal, however, contrary to the typical schizoidal declaration, he did not believe in any type of authoritarian government. Not sure if he was actually a schizoid, or just someone that saw so much violence in human history and came to his conclusion without a real knowledge of psychopathy and its influence. Even if he didn't understand, his movies show the difference pretty clearly. Psychopaths are the instigators of interpersonal and mass evil, and the normal people get caught up in it, in large part against their will.

I saw this video a long time a go about a theory that Kubric had a large part in helping the secret government fake the moon-landing. I never bought that theory, but it was pretty interesting to watch.
 
Deedlet said:
I saw this video a long time a go about a theory that Kubric had a large part in helping the secret government fake the moon-landing. I never bought that theory, but it was pretty interesting to watch.

Yeah, I've never really bought that one either. Though I did read that the US helped fund 2001 because they thought it would be good propaganda for the upcoming moon landings...
 
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