
“The World Is, of Course, Insane”: An Interview with Errol Morris - nkurz
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/the-world-is-of-course-insane-errol-morris-interview
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Nimitz14
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.

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killjoywashere
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.

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badrabbit
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.

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

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badrabbit
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?

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cerealbad
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.

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

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robbyt
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.

