Later Life Learning Week One Humanity Challenged: Overview

 For the next ten weeks I will be highlighting on this site an overview of talks I will be presenting for Later Life Learning.

 “The most dramatic instances of directed behavior change and "mind control" are not      the consequence of exotic forms of influence, such as hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, or "brainwashing," but rather the systematic manipulation of the most mundane aspects of human nature over time in confining settings.” 

“Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their  basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.” 

― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

  "Forgiveness allows us to actually let us go of the pain in the memory. And if we let go  of the pain in the memory we can have the memory but it doesn't control us. I think it's the fact that when memory controls us, we are then puppets of the past."
 ― Alexandra Asseily, psychotherapist in Lebanon

“If torture is permitted, it's hard to imagine what isn't.”

― Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century

     George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Is Suddenly a Best-Seller

           By KIMIKO de FREYTAS-TAMURAJAN. 25, 2017 New York Times

When asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” why Mr. Spicer had said something that was provably false, Ms. Conway replied airily, “Don’t be so dramatic.”

Mr. Spicer, she said, “gave alternative facts.”

In the novel, the term “newspeak” refers to language in which independent thought, or “unorthodox” political ideas, have been eliminated. “Doublethink” is defined as “reality control.”

The Stanford Prison Experiment

“This film is a fascinating, revealing, upsetting experience. A movie about the real-life 1971 Stanford prison experiment could have been sadistic and unwatchable, but director Kyle Patrick Alvarez's clinical approach focuses on realism and psychological drama rather than on thrills. Alvarez doesn't try to professionally polish the prison setting; instead, it has a functional, homemade look that makes it feel more immediate. The way the characters wear their hair and clothes - and the way they carry themselves - contributes to what feels like an authentic period piece.”


Our humanity is challenged by the seductive drug of white supremacy  explored in an article in The Guardian

Heather Heyer killed in Charlottesville Virginia

The Visitor (2008) is a powerful, moving film about a lonely widower and college economics professor who undergoes an emotional rebirth when he befriends a pair of illegal immigrants, one of whom has recently been threatened with deportation by U.S. immigration authorities. One reviewer has said: “The best movies are those that understand the human condition and have a personal vision. The Visitor is one of those rare creations.”

A recommended film in which we may n  ot have the time to show a clip 

"It’s all about finding your own voice, he (Daniel) tells them. And when those individual voices come together — mystically, inexplicably, beyond any rational explanation of notes or time signatures — something close to rapture can occur. It happened to Daniel once before, for 58 seconds, when the lights went out and his orchestra kept on playing in the dark. You might suspect it’ll happen again. And when it does, you can be sure it’s a culmination of the film’s every pointed lesson: that loving matters more than judging, that true community blossoms in an atmosphere of honesty and trust.”

Another relevant film is the 2011 In a Better World. Set in modern day Denmark and what is likely South Sudan, In a Better World dramatizes the responses to acts of aggression, whether it is from a warlord, a schoolyard bully or a belligerent mechanic. What makes the film so exceptional is that it questions the inadequacy of passivity and vengeance. The film also illuminates the responses to grief and loss, and the process of healing.

Reviewer’s comment:

"An ethically ambitious, morally thoughtful–and deeply vexing–drama about the fragility of civil order and the menace of the lawless. A most deserving Oscar winner."

 

I highly recommend the novel by Edna O'Brien  The Little Red Chairs for its searching exploration of how the humanity of one of the central characters is severely damaged and how another finds the capacity to reclaim her own.

Stepping from the pages of Fredrik Backman's international best-selling novel, Ove is the quintessential angry old man next door. An isolated retiree with strict principles and a short fuse, who spends his days enforcing block association rules that only he cares about, and visiting his wife's grave, Ove has given up on life. Enter a boisterous young family next door who accidentally flattens Ove's mailbox while moving in and earning his special brand of ire. Yet from this inauspicious beginning an unlikely friendship forms and we come to understand Ove's past happiness and heartbreaks. What emerges is a heartwarming tale of unreliable first impressions and the gentle reminder that life is sweeter when it's shared

I also recommend the powerful documentary The Power of Forgiveness available at the Toronto Public Library

“It’s all about finding your own voice, he (Daniel) tells them. And when those individual voices come together — mystically, inexplicably, beyond any rational explanation of notes or time signatures — something close to rapture can occur. It happened to Daniel once before, for 58 seconds, when the lights went out and his orchestra kept on playing in the dark. You might suspect it’ll happen again. And when it does, you can be sure it’s a culmination of the film’s every pointed lesson: that loving matters more than judging, that true community blossoms in an atmosphere of honesty and trust.”

“It’s all about finding your own voice, he (Daniel) tells them. And when those individual voices come together — mystically, inexplicably, beyond any rational explanation of notes or time signatures — something close to rapture can occur. It happened to Daniel once before, for 58 seconds, when the lights went out and his orchestra kept on playing in the dark. You might suspect it’ll happen again. And when it does, you can be sure it’s a culmination of the film’s every pointed lesson: that loving matters more than judging, that true community blossoms in an atmosphere of honesty and trust.”