I completely forgot that there was a boy mom in Great Divorce. 🤣 I absolutely loved this discussion. It hit all my favs from Miyazaki to Augustine and was just what I needed going into 2024. Brilliantly and beautifully articulated! Thinking about the concept of nature as both a state of peace for ourselves and it's dark twin as a state of complacency, it makes me think of Princess Mononoke and Ashitaka's decision to leave the forest. He had everything he personally wanted at the end of the movie; peace, beauty, love, etc. He'd seen the worst of humanity, but unlike San he didn't reject his humanness and chose to continue to have a role in the world, advocating for goodness. It's a bit like the idea of becoming a solitary monk on a hilltop vs the conviction to be an active participant in the world around us. A few of the folks in Great Divorce are so afterlife focused that they become similarly complacent. I think the concept of every beautiful thing having a dark side when it removes us from our connection with the rest of creation and becomes self serving is a really interesting concept to consider. "We long not for what we remember, but what we've never experienced at all, only sensed beneath reality's surface." - Miyazaki on rejecting the concept of nostalgia. It's so interesting how this quote is near identical to Lewis' ideas about the island and prim rose field in Pilgrim's Regress.
@margaretmiros1672 Жыл бұрын
You referred to nostalgia as it refers to fascism and communism, you didn't mention the twin grip of patriotism and nationalism, especially in the present monent in America.
@flashlitestriker402811 ай бұрын
What a keen thought! Thanks for sharing!
@SnuffalupagusRising10 ай бұрын
The idea that I got out of Great Divorce is that every concept has a dark twin - a heavenly and a worldly counterpart. So nostalgia or patriotism can be a positive, but nationalism can quickly become a false idol and a negative when manipulated by the wrong people. Miyazaki has a complicated outlook on Japanese nationalism for example. Joy Gresham had a complicated outlook with her own American identity as a Jewish woman. One way to think of it is fascism being nostalgia inverted to its darkest degree, which starts with a positive concept that feels temporarily joyful and neutral like patriotism, then becomes twisted, using this emotional grounding to entrance followers. Sort of like how love is a universally good concept, but can become toxic and manipulative.