EPTToday I got to thinking about Chaplin's speech in 'The Great Dictator'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business: I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible: Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone, and the good Earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.”
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die. And the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers, don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate. Only the unloved hate. The unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers, don’t fight for slavery. Fight for liberty.
In the 17th chapter of St Luke it is written, “The kingdom of God is within man.” Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men. In you.
You the people have the power: the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let us use that power: Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie. They do not fulfill their promise. They never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.”
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die. And the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers, don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate. Only the unloved hate. The unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers, don’t fight for slavery. Fight for liberty.
In the 17th chapter of St Luke it is written, “The kingdom of God is within man.” Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men. In you.
You the people have the power: the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let us use that power: Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie. They do not fulfill their promise. They never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
I know that I'am going to come off as uninformed when my rambling below is read, but I would just like to put my thoughts "out there" for judgement and criticism. I also realise that I don't usually make much sense and that my analogies are more often than not improper, nevertheless, I'm here to learn, not to impress.
Chaplin's speech in 'The Great Dictator' should be, and probably is, one of the greatest speeches ever made in both film and 'real' life. The ideas that he has portrayed on humanity, the magnificent vignette that he has painted with his powerful words to convey his beliefs still remain relevant to this day.
Has the entire human race lost it's way? Has greed consumed our souls, poisoned our minds thoughts? What exactly is 'the way'? It seems that we, as an entire species were once 'pure' in a sense. Kindness and gentleness once flooded the world, but as time passed, as our greed - to be represented metaphorically here as a giant ball of fire in the sky - grew, our passion or lust for an abundance in everything in our lives burn more furiously in us, the flood has dried up. What now plagues us is an unbearable drought.
People claim that religion is a poison, but truly, what is it? In this context, a religion can be perceived as a very poorly run factory. Sometimes it can produce the same liquid that flooded the world before, but that very rarely happens without the factory injecting foreign chemicals in it that makes the consumer intolerant, ignorant, and hateful. The effects of the chemicals can sometimes be so overwhelming that the main product simply becomes useless.
However, all the talk about ''going back to how things were'' (not a quote) seems absurd. How reasonable or logical is it to adopt an 'archaic' lifestyle in such modern times? But upon further consideration of this rather radical idea, one realises that within it lies the blueprints or the infrastructure of a utopia - a modern one. When we view the world (humans), we realise that out shell has advanced with time. I'am hesitant to use the adjective 'adequately' in the previous statement. The same can not be said of our interior - our values and principals.
Hmm, it seems that I completely forgot to elaborate about the whole 'blueprint' thing. I guess what I'm trying to say is just that we have to start working on our values, but yet, our exterior should not decline. It should remain constant or best-case-scenario, improve.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/s0VjI.jpg)
The graph above is of course inaccurate because it leaves quite a few questions that begs to be answered. What exactly is the scale which is used to determine the y-axis? How viable is it to put 2 vastly different abstract ideas on a simple graph for comparism on similarly abstract factors? How should we view progress or advancement or quality without external factors or personal bias affecting or judgement?
That's all I was able to write, I began a paragraph that goes," War is a very 'deep' topic to write
about. It is very difficult to talk about just one aspect of it without going waist-deep in the topic." But I tore the page out because I felt like a complete idiot.
On an unrelated note, here's my favourite Allegro (Vivace?) I uploaded. Isn't the sea of violins that comes on just awesome?
