How James Woods Helped Me Collect My Thoughts on Morality.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Except possibly for the truly insane, everybody basically thinks they are a generally good person. Even career criminals, mobsters and scoundrels justify to themselves that there is a good reason for what they do. They make excuses in their mind which amount to a desire to conform to some sort of "moral" code, twisted as it may be.
<font color="white"> . </font>
[This also] is right about suicide bombers. Else why would they give up their lives? Surely not just for the 72 virgins. They must have felt that what they were doing was morally right. And that includes the 911 hijackers. Same goes for most, if not all, Nazis. They almost certainly convinced themselves they were not evil. Likewise slaveowners.
<font color="white"> .</font>
I think everyone agrees that a truly crazy person is not evil any more than an animal is. Those not crazy [are]rather stupid or deluded. Now there may be a few sociopathic types that don't fit into this category but they are either non existent or rare enough to ignore. The fact is that most of those we call evil, upon closer examination really aren't. Probably including Hitler.

[/ QUOTE ]

David Sklansky has embarked on a campaign to illuminate minds here. I take this to be his own roundabout way of educating (and fast) a new breed of 2+2ers into advantage thinking (&amp; play). The poker champs of tomorrow are the ones who grasp the analytical methodoloy sampled freely around this li'l Science page by Sklansky.

I'm up more than $300 per hour in EV just by reading the stuff.

[fnord_too]

I don't hold the same interpretation of the OUATIA as you. Great movie, but:

De Niro is NOT a hit man, he is a bootlegger/mobster. IIRC he only kills one person in the film, the guy who killed the young member of his gang. (I could be mistaken here).

Woods was not asking De Niro to kill him because he felt he deserved it, he was asking because he knew he was going to be killed and, given that, decided that De Niro was really the only one with a right to kill him due to the way he screwed his friend over.

I think there are many reasons De Niro did not kill Woods, but I don't think the fact that he felt he was no better than Woods really played a part in the decision. De Niro at the end who has come to peace with himself after a life of tragedy and mistakes. I think he was really glad to see that his erstwhile best friend was in fact still alive, and had accomplished things he wanted to do with his life. As he said, some jobs they took and some they didn't; the jobs Woods was offering was not one they would touch. When he said he hoped the problems were really nothing, I believe he meant it sincerely.

I have now seen so many versions of this movie over the past two decades, I don't remeber which version all the scenes were in. Is the directors cut the first one where his childhood love tells him not to go through the door because he will see a ghost (Woods son)? That was a great scene.

You should start a "Sergio Leone is the greatest epic director of all time" thread in OOT, I would but you carry a lot more weight than I do.

To OP - sorry for the tangent, but that discussion, like so many, just dwindles to deffinitions. Discussing Leone's work is much more interesting.

[andyfox]

I had thought that when De Niro comes to see Woods at the end, he has been making his living as a hit man. Early on, he and Woods were indeed bootleggers/mobsters/partners. Woods has given De Niro a suitcase full of money, in his (Woods') mind, to give him back the money he stole from him when they were young, but as a down payment for a hit. On himself.

Your post is very thoughtful and a great take on the film. I too have seen many different versions of the film. There's a Leone exhibit currently at the Gene Autry museum here in Los Angeles. I hadn't realize Leone staged the great chariot scene in Ben Hur, he was an assistant director on the film.

I brought the film into this thread because of James Woods' performance in it, and its possible relationship to what he described to David and David's take on good and evil.

[meep_42]

Congratulations on learning cognitive dissonance. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

-d

[SomethingClever]

This really depends on your definition of evil.

If an evil person is the opposite of an altruist, then I imagine you're right... there are probably very few of those people roaming the Earth. Thankfully. (Of course, the opposite is probably true. True altruists [if that's a word] are quite rare as well).

But I don't think you can excuse the truly selfish, who will pursue their own goals at the expense of others. Maybe they're not purposefully trying to hurt anyone, but through their selfishness and denial they can really be devastating.

For example, a chemical tycoon who saves money by disposing of waste in an unsafe fashion.

He certainly wouldn't murder anyone, but he allows himself to be blinded by increasing profits while innocents surely suffer and die through his actions.

Evil? Yeah, I think it's close.

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]
There's a Leone exhibit currently at the Gene Autry museum here in Los Angeles. I hadn't realize Leone staged the great chariot scene in Ben Hur, he was an assistant director on the film.



[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, I didn't know that either.

I did not gather that De Niro had been a hit man in the interem (though certainly I gathered that was what the money was for). I think I have the director's cut on DVD, I'll have to carve out some time to watch it again. I just wish they would release Duck You Sucker on DVD, that is probably my fovorite film of his, but his least popular.

[Jim T]

[ QUOTE ]
So for example with slavery, some idiot on vacation in Africa gets the bright idea of bringing a black guy home with him in chains as a souvenir, and makes him a slave on his plantation. Now his company, Douchebag Cotton Co., can lower prices because they've got themselves some "free labor". From here it's quite clear how even something as horrible as slavery can be established as an institution - after Douchebag Cotton does it, then previously-respectable Acme Cotton joins in to compete, all the way on down the line until Mom and Pop Cotton feels they have to buy slaves or else they won't be able to feed their children (plus you get the ancillary idiocies like preachers searching for passages in the bible that they can make sound like a divine mandate to own slaves).

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny how you seem to be blaming white people for the institution of slavery ("...some idiot on vacation in Africa gets the bright idea..."). You seem to be sorely lacking in historical knowledge. You are aware that the very word "slave" is derived from the Slavs, a white people, right?

You mentioned the Bible, didn't you notice that the Ancient Egyptians (ie. Africans) owned massive numbers of slaves? This was a just a little bit prior to the Southern plantation owners.

Speaking of the Bible, I'd say that with quotes like:

[ QUOTE ]
When a slave owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner's property. (Exod. 21:20-21)

[/ QUOTE ]

it's not exactly difficult to make it "seem" like the Bible (ie. God's word) gives a mandate to own slaves. It does.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]

Funny how you seem to be blaming white people for the institution of slavery ("...some idiot on vacation in Africa gets the bright idea..."). You seem to be sorely lacking in historical knowledge. You are aware that the very word "slave" is derived from the Slavs, a white people, right?

You mentioned the Bible, didn't you notice that the Ancient Egyptians (ie. Africans) owned massive numbers of slaves? This was a just a little bit prior to the Southern plantation owners.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it was pretty obvious that I was referring specifically to slavery in America.

[Timer]

[ QUOTE ]
I hadn't realize Leone staged the great chariot scene in Ben Hur, he was an assistant director on the film.

[/ QUOTE ]

A stuntman died filming the chariot race scenes and that death is in the movie.

[siegfriedandroy]

I think I can still call them evil if they fly planes into 3 buildings and kill 3000 people. Likewise war atrocities where innocents are abused, killed, etc. I dont give a *uck how they justify it to themselves or what they believe, in reality, they are still truly 'evil', in my view. Come on, Mr. David. Dont you know it's evil to swindle sweet old grandmas at the 2/4 table who think their bottom pair is good and proceed to cap every street! jk Anyway, I do believe there is true 'evil' in the world, and that most who commit truly wicked crimes know that what they are doing is really wrong, despite whatever alibis/bs they can come up with. Perhaps some are so deluded to the point where they truly do not understand the immorality of their actions, but I'd say most probably do. I think Mr. Woods would also agree that their is truly 'evil' in the world. He's a good republican, isnt he!? jk- i am not a republican, fwiw anyway, if you dont know that flying an airplane into a building or killing 6 million jews or killing 60 million people w/o any semblance of a legitimate reason probably knows that they're not a saint. perhaps they have deluded themselves through false religion or through materialistic philosophy into believing that their acts are justified- but any 5 year old knows it's truly wrong to take human life. counterarg- 5 year old is conditioned; siegfried's first response after playing 12 hrs at the bike- let's do a lord of the rings and put a 5 year old on an island alone (somehow we will provide food/shelter, etc. w/ absoulely 0 human contact, and then transport him to the continent (whichever one you please) and somehow attempt to ascertain whether he believes that murder is wrong) again, ive been up all night at the f'n bike, where i saw some stripper who gave me a lap dance, told me we had a psychic connection, and some other stuff i can't repeat- 3 years ago, and then came home to prove this to my unbelieving friend by showing him her website. good run on sentence. man she looks faded now. anyway, i am married now, and truly believe that if i did anything w/ her now, or even thought inappropriately about her, that i would be sinning against God and my wife. and i 'know' that to be true, for whatever it's worth. sklansky, please dont take offense- you said you are turned off by Christians/religious folk who 'know' everything. honestly, in all truthfulness, i believe i know extremely little of what there is 'out there' to know, and i believe all of us are in that boat, and greatly overestimate our own intelligence/knowledge (from the most mentally deficient (well perhaps not them so much) to the greatest philosophers of all time)- so i guess im semi-agnostic in that respect.

anyway, sklank (i left out the y intentionally), im sorry if i incorrectly assumed that you were an atheist, if you really are not. Perhaps i made a false assumption, based on the general nature and character of your posts. But perhaps i should not apologize, since everything is probably an assumption to some degree. So what are you Mr. Sklank? And what is Mr. Woods? What are any of us? Why am i still awake and writing, when i could be sitting and engaging in stimulating conversation w/ some degenerate at the bike?

(sorry for the lack of paragraphs- i am too lazy. if you are still reading, you are surely not 'evil'. jk - you still are