Reprinted on Time Network - Published on 2019.11.21
Personally, I should not watch this type of depressing film, but after watching it, I feel a sense of relief and relief for no reason. The grandeur, cruelty, and irrationality of the war set off the peace and happiness of the age I live in. The things I worry about and anxieties seem to be insignificant. People should cherish the peace, stability and active creation of this world.
If we have to compare the present world with the purgatory on earth 100 years ago, we can use this extremely simplified analogy: In war years, people experience great physical pain; in peacetime, we don’t talk about spiritual extremes. Great pain, at least empty and lost, has a tendency to evolve towards experiencing greater pain. In addition to the deafening artillery fire and the shocking corpses in the film, what impresses me deeply are the memories of the old British soldiers. You can imagine how those young lads were brainwashed by the collective will of imperialism back then. People happily joined the army and had unrealistic glorification fantasies about the war, as if they were as happy as going to a school outing. Under the baptism of unimaginable and unsightly front-line artillery bombardment, the brains of this group of young people stopped, and the growth of spiritual power stopped. Returning to town life after a terrifying nightmare, finds himself useless and completely disconnected from reality. Although he feels proud of his participation in the war, he seems to have forgotten the meaning of the war as if he had lost his memory. Hard to define. Humans are self-protective animals, and in order to survive, spiritual self-deception is understandable. But I can still glimpse through their trembling voices the role PTSD might have played in their long post-war life.
In contrast, this era is arguably the happiest, because people seem to have everything at their fingertips. With the internet and smartphones, entertainment and knowledge are just a few swipes away. It is precisely because of the unprecedented development of commercial society that the attributes of human beings are no longer the distinction between soldiers and civilians in wartime, but the distinction between consumers and producers, capitalists and workers. It is no longer the body that suffers, but the boundless curiosity and lack of attention of human beings. Recreational consumption and work production peaked at the same time. Subjective will is deprived of objective possession, and attention and will are divided by various products, which are the raw materials of capital society to assist the chain operation. The capital chain is like a giant python, no less than a tank weapon in the war years, which devours the last remaining value of people. The attributes of a person are more defined by the link in the business chain. People can no longer be called people, but a screw and a machine. We must remind ourselves that the embodiment of the value of life depends entirely on the capital in the business chain. To give up being possessed is to give up living. If it is a high-level vagabond who is out of touch with the commercial society, its meaning can be completely denied, because only as a consumer terminal in the commercial chain deprives it of its significance to human society, and only spending without earning will drain his last copper coin and lose consumption. If you lose your ability, you will automatically be classified as "inferior". Social animals can be recognized and treated like animals because they are at the bottom of the social structure. Then the high-level vagabonds will be floating even worse than animals, in the true sense of "inhuman" or "inanimate". In the future, it may be capitalists, intelligent machines, or commodity society itself who control the "people" as production materials. The development of the whole society depends on creation. Creating material or spiritual products can help to roll the snowball, make the story more round, and expand the universe from the most empty point at the beginning of the big bang to infinite complexity and sophistication, no matter what. Whether this snowball will be oversaturated and explode in the end, human beings have no choice, because the meaning of existence is change, and existence without change is meaningless, and moving forward is the only choice. Is the highly developed society really meaningful and valuable? Is this value for social development as a whole or for individuals? (Obviously it is not aimed at individuals. Perhaps after the new century, the most necessary thing for us to learn is to give up the fragile illusion of humanism and accept the inevitable replacement of the leading subject of social development.)
I really went too far (every time I write something, I end up with the meaninglessness of life, and I am simply disqualified from being brainwashed by nihilism). Maybe I want to talk about the meaninglessness or injustice of war (World War I may be unjust, but is there any war that is just? The word justice is only a relative position, and the essence of war cannot be just) Like a variant prophecy of modern society. People cannot think during the war, nor can they define the meaning of World War I after it is over. And one of the eternal doubts of life is that people don't know why they live, but everyone is trying to live/survive. After death, they may not know the meaning of existence in this life. Maybe I want too much. When I live in this era, I can only see the development and lack of this era. I can't imagine that compared with the past, the current life may already be considered bliss, or relative to the future, everything in the present is ridiculous and not worth mentioning. But human dissatisfaction and eternal unhappiness seem to be the norm, because human beings are limited by their own limitations in the long river of time and space, and cannot easily transcend the present moment like a savior.
Since people can only say or do something based on their own feelings, don’t stick to philosophical thinking and ask questions. Living in this body but always wanting to jump out of the body to look at yourself is undoubtedly asking for trouble. Live live, live and live. Don't be attached to the why, don't be attached to the purpose, and don't be attached to the present. Suppose you are above the four-dimensional space and time. You are welcome to accept the gains and losses. Maybe it is the way to get out of the predicament of survival in every era. Believe that all experiences are necessary, and everything will pass, feel it, embrace it, and let it go. Just like the British soldiers in the war, when they really have to go to the battlefield, don't look back, keep moving forward, and stab them with a bayonet when the enemy comes. Really feel the action, live in the moment. The accountability of individuals' moral conscience in a large system is sometimes just overthinking and futile.
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