Woody Allen - do you agree?

[Hermit]

I'm waiting for the point where that necessitates that any of your experiences are thus delusions.

Allen did not say that experiences are delusions. He is quoted as saying: "One must have one's delusions to live." and "the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself."

[kiki5711]

"I do feel that it is a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself."

he he I know the statement sounds depressing, but the reality of that statement is actually funny to me. I think it's good if you can list all the negative that you see in life and be able to laugh at it.

It really helps to understand him if you ever lived in New York. It's a trip and a half!

[Trolldor]

I'm waiting for the point where that necessitates that any of your experiences are thus delusions.

Allen did not say that experiences are delusions. He is quoted as saying: "One must have one's delusions to live." and "the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself."

Experiences encompass that.


Every part of the human condition is an experience. He is stating that part of it must be a delusion, consciously or subconsciously adopted, without giving reason as to why this is so or what those delusions might be.

Are we talking emotions? perceptions? specific events?
What must we lie to ourselves about?

[FBM]

You are born, you live, and when you die you fade in to obscurity like every other creature that has ever and will ever live.
...and?

I'm waiting for the point where that necessitates that any of your experiences are thus delusions.

You wouldn't know if they were ..so why worry about that .

Exactly. Like when you ask people to self-report whether or not they have superstitions. They eagerly report others' beliefs as superstitions, but what they believe is TRUE!!

If you have a delusion/illusion, you don't think it is one. Delusions would seem to be fueled by escapism; illusions by ignornace. I think I've cured myself of delusions (of course I think so, but I may discover more in the future), but since I don't understand the world around me perfectly (some of the information I think is right almost certainly will eventually be shown to be erroneous), then I almost certainly have some illusions in the sense of misunderstandings about the way things actually are.

[Hermit]

Every part of the human condition is an experience.

Kindly return to your seat in RDF's philosophy classroom. Lifegazer, Doug and other losers are anxious to see you rejoin.

[Trolldor]

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that the human brain only worked when You decided it did. Here I was thinking it was constantly taking in information.

[Epictetus]

"One must have one's delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and too clearly life does become unbearable because it's a pretty grim enterprise"

I agree with Woody Allen on this point. It reminds me of the sort of self-delusion commonly engaged in by certain religious enthusiasts who often echo the Rev. William Paley, when he said:

“It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence.”

It's a Panglossian malady for which, I'm afraid, there is no cure.

Myself, I tend to take a more pessimistic/realistic view of matters as articulated by, say, Charles Darwin or Mark Twain.

[Hermit]

"One must have one's delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and too clearly life does become unbearable because it's a pretty grim enterprise"

I agree with Woody Allen on this point. It reminds me of the sort of self-delusion commonly engaged in by certain religious enthusiasts who often echo the Rev. William Paley, when he said:

“It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence.”

It's a Panglossian malady for which, I'm afraid, there is no cure.

Myself, I tend to take a more pessimistic/realistic view of matters as articulated by, say, Charles Darwin or Mark Twain.

Surely, if you agree with Allen, everybody must have one's delusions to live, and neither Darwin nor Twain is exempt from that either.

[JimC]

I am a fan of his movies generally speaking. He has a new one out called ' You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger'...his obsession with death etc..

"One must have one's delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and too clearly life does become unbearable because it's a pretty grim enterprise," Allen says.

"This is my prospective and has always been my prospective on life - I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it.

"I do feel that it is a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself."

Do you agree?

It can feel like that, but I take the RD route, and say that the more I can decipher about tyhe nature of the Universe, the more my own travails become minor....

[Cunt]

I don't agree at all.

I was once given a book of anti-inspirational messages (given by a dear friend) and found them absolutely INSPIRING!

To recap, below is a poem which has always been uplifting to me. I have a tough time explaining why, but the shortest way I have ever heard it said was "when the fox gnaws, grin"

We are born, and we suffer until we go;
We live till we die, and that's all we know,
Neither what the purpose nor whose the game
To make us, break us, with pain and shame.
We are brought to a board where there's all we wish---
But the cook's gone mad and has fouled each dish;
We can plan and make; we can think and do---
But the prize is a husk, worm-eaten, too;
Our minds are a marvel, as all agree,
And our bodies as well, but the two don't gee,
So they live in a permanent tug of war,
To each the other a scab and a bore;
And we have two sexes, fashioned to mate
In the flesh so well, but their spirits hate,
So the joy of a body is no part
Of the soul's delight and dies in the heart
Of a gangrenous blight. Yet we plant the seed
For the force of our lust and callously breed
A brood to inherit our rotten lot
And to scorn and hate us, as why should they not
When we act the lunatic Judas goat
For the miserable get on whom we dote;
Though they are as silly and warped as we,
As doomed to despair and futility,
As bound to be robbed of whatever they crave,
As lucky in finally finding a grave.
But we blather to them what was blithered to us
And babble our praise of the barbarous,
So that they in turn can swindle their kith
With a pitiful, sniveling, coward's myth
Of the wisdom and plan behind it all;
"Sing praise and let the hosannas fall!"
Is the constant bellow of dupe to dupe,
The idiot maundering of the group,
All bleating their fables in coined belief---
But leave an adult to his knowledge and grief.

Anyone else feel uplifted?

[Tigger]

[Epictetus]

"One must have one's delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and too clearly life does become unbearable because it's a pretty grim enterprise"

I agree with Woody Allen on this point. It reminds me of the sort of self-delusion commonly engaged in by certain religious enthusiasts who often echo the Rev. William Paley, when he said:

“It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence.”

It's a Panglossian malady for which, I'm afraid, there is no cure.

Myself, I tend to take a more pessimistic/realistic view of matters as articulated by, say, Charles Darwin or Mark Twain.

Surely, if you agree with Allen, everybody must have one's delusions to live, and neither Darwin nor Twain is exempt from that either.

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year.

Darwin certainly didn't share the Panglossian optimism which assures us that this is "the best off all possible worlds", nor the naive belief in Providence as articulated by William Paley.

Incidentally, it was Nietzsche who called it an error to abandon oneself to "Providence": "In the great whirlpool of forces man stands with the conceit that this whirlpool is rational and has a rational aim: an error! The only rational thing we know is what little reason man has: he must exert it a lot, and it is always ruinous for him when he abandons himself, say, to "Providence."

[Ex~]

Perhaps my favorite quote of all time is from Woody Allen:

"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering -- and it's all over much too soon."

Of course, I have one problem with that quote: seeing as life is the longest thing you'll ever do, how could you suggest it's short? That being said, the human imagination is far more vast than the reality we are constrained to, for good reason.

[LaMont Cranston]

I like Woody Allen's early movies a lot better than the stuff he has done over the past 25 years or so. Movies like "Play It Again Sam," "Bananas," "Manhattan," "Annie Hall" and "Hannah and Her Sisters" had some very clever looks into relationships and other human foibles. It seems to me that he has taken himself much too seriously and is trying to out Fellini Felini.

Or, as Fielding Melish says in "Bananas," "It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham."

[colubridae]

I like Woody Allen's early movies a lot better than the stuff he has done over the past 25 years or so. Movies like "Play It Again Sam," "Bananas," "Manhattan," "Annie Hall" and "Hannah and Her Sisters" had some very clever looks into relationships and other human foibles. It seems to me that he has taken himself much too seriously and is trying to out Fellini Felini.

Or, as Fielding Melish says in "Bananas," "It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham."

I tried to out fellini felini once. I just looked a bit of a felllini.