http://www.futurestates.tv/episodes/plastic-bag
Also, see "Herzog on the obscenity of the jungle" for his take on the chaotic nature of the universe and the rain forest's "harmony of overwhelming and collective murder." He accepts and even embraces the grotesque underbelly of Nature, "but against his better judgement" he says. After mulling over the concept of the difference between killing and death from 'Northern Exposure' yesterday, I was tracing this fine line in my mind and trying to understand what it is about the dying part that is so irreconcilable. I came to a less-than-solid conclusion that perhaps the killing is how we are "animal" (semi-erotic acts of adrenaline, reflex, blood-thirst) and our age old dilemma with death is how we are "human." Now, I trip over my own argument here when I consider other species of animals such as elephants and otters that also mourn their dead--does this somehow make them "human" too? So really, I guess most put most simplistically, killing is instinctual and natural (and loved by Herzog) and contemplation of death is a symptom of consciousness, the ego's anxiety of its own inevitable destruction, and also natural. And I suppose then if you can peacefully accept your own death and loss of ego and not see it as a bad thing, this is also a way to morally reconcile hunting or killing (but beware of slippery slope to inter-species assassination, not necessarily that it is worse to kill a member of your own species than of another but that the latter serves a function and obeys the food chain). I'll stop fumbling over my thoughts now and let you indulge in this odd but dear German man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQyQnXrLb0
i watched the plastic bag video. and, admittedly, i teared up at the very end when Herzog's voiceover said something to the effect that he wished his maker had made him able to die. *sniff
ReplyDeletevery moving... and infuriating. next stop: "Wall-E"