That's the first two of the four sentences. The third and fourth are "I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen. I want to live on in my apartment."
I wish I had his motivation, but I don't. How can you have it when you realise the truth? He is lucky that he is talented. But what about mediocre people like me?
@@curiousgeorge555 You're right. It's all very obvious, but hardly anyone ever stops to think about it. In this interview, Woody's words really stick because he's being slightly humourous about the absurdity of life. And I especially like the part when he says the world just flushes a big toilet and brings a new generation of people in. That exactly what happens. What worries me is that they are working on ways to make humans live longer!! I'm currently 36 years old and don't even know if I want to live to see 60 the way things are going.
I totally agree with Woody's assessment and have thought that way since my teens. For me, the only really useful thing to do with your life is to spend it trying to help and entertain your fellow beings get through it all. Woody has always managed to help me pass some time by capturing my attention for a short while. So have a lot of other people. Friends who spend time with me help. Musicians and artists who make you think and entertain you. Interactions with strangers are chances to make them feel better. We can all help each other through whatever this experience is if we try.
I'm glad you have your own ideas! I guess the answer to why is that I always appreciate it when my friends, neighbors and strangers are kind and polite to me. It makes me happy and I prefer to be happy if possible (though it's a hard state to maintain). Their efforts make me want to do the same for others. I realize that the world is a hard place and if I can make it a little more bearable for someone else with a tiny bit of effort, why not? I would be happy to hear your ideas if you would like to share them.
The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing Song by Frank Zappa Do what you wanna Do what you will Just don't mess up Your neighbor's thrill 'N when you pay the bill Kindly leave a little tip And help the next poor sucker On his one way trip Some take the bible (Aw gimme a half a dozen for the hotel room!)
@@WeAreYU That’s nice of you. I believe in a God by default. I believe everything is imagined without a single exception but I just tend to believe there’s a purpose. I don’t belong to any religion.
“It was in the reign of George III that the above-named personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”...the end note from barry lyndon, one of kubrik's masterpieces. it says it all.
I've thought about some of this when I was around 7 or 8 and it frightened me. But now at 76 I put it out of my mind and take joy from such things as watching the birds in my backyard drink and bathe, the hummingbirds feed and fight with each other, and watching our puppy develop so fast compared to us humans. They don't worry about the meaningless of life and theirs is so much shorter than ours. And I'm a scientist and very well versed in the fate of the universe. Btw, I learned a short time ago that Woody and I besides both attending PS 99 in Brooklyn (albeit 7 years apart), were bar mitzvahed at the same synagogue and must have sang our haftorahs from the same Torah. A lot of good that did. many s
@@jeremyfoster8726 Because they lack an intellectualized mind. Will is born into a creature BUT ego is the product of intellectualized mind. Dogs are what human could be if they didn't 'think' Intellectualization creates expertise to go to moon or get 6% rather 5% on your money. But it's also the cause of most sexual fetish, child molestation & death cult behavior see nuclear arms race in general & Ukraine specifically. Jeremy, jessie came off human. You came off rude, sign of over intellectualization :)
@@joseluiiiis Is Richard the original poster? He's gone down the 100 year toilet flush ala Woody's explanation? What happened to him? Amazing how quickly time flies....Woody gave this interview in 2014, now (2023) it's already been 9 years and so many have experienced the proverbial "toilet flush" in that time....
Ever since I was very young I was always terrified of death and no longer existing. Now as I've gotten older the fear has started to subside and when I was diagnosed with Cancer last year I no longer have any fear whatsoever of death. Its really weird its almost like an acceptance washes over you. Saying that I still want to live and enjoy life. 👍
I think that we all know how meaningless it all seems , but normally we try not to talk about it too much. Some people are more prone to dwell on these thoughts and some others apparently wouldn't care less, but they know. Woody Allen describes the big picture meticulously. These are the existential fears of a very talented mind. It took a lot of reading and a lot of internal debate to put it all so well. It is nice to read other people's comments and discover that they also reflect on that. Let's hope our flush arrives with delay.
@frederick steiner you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, hey doc, my brother's crazy! He thinks he's a chicken. Then the doc says, why don't you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that's how I feel about relationships. They're totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.”
In so far as what we consider the present moment actually occurs on a time delay and is instantly rendered past tense, there is no such thing as the present moment.
I don't want heaven because eternity is boring and scarier than death. I don't want hell because I don't like pain. I don't want reincarnation because I don't want to go over this meaningless life all over again. Nothingness is the most merciful and wonderful possibility.
Leslie C I don't think eternity is boring. If we are eternal, we will always live a moment at a time, and that's not boring. We always reinvent ourselves, we always find new stuff to be curious about. We are able to manipulate the physical world and always be entertained.
mmm ok, I didn't know about “all my children”. I've never seen it. Actually, I don't think we can really say if eternity would be boring or not. Yes, it's a weird concept, but yet I don't think any of our minds can really understand or encompass something that doesn't end. We cannot really know what it would be like, so it doesn't make sense to say: “oh, it would be boring”
Boring is simple a feeling of unexciting, lack of stimulation to the mind. Once you live through a certain age, your ability to get excited diminishes because you have experienced a lot of thing already. Any new thing is just incremental improvement of already existed things in the past. Young people get excited with Twitter, it reminds me of ICQ. Young people get excited with Facebock, it reminds me angelfire or geocities . My depression comes from not being able to experience happiness because happiness involves novelty, and I can't get excited about anything. I want to get the feeling the first time I played Street Fighter II on SNES, but I will never be able to rediscover that feeling and it depresses me.
Agree with Woody completely, what a brilliant piece of compressed wisdom. I wish all people, everywhere on this planet, could just get this idea into their heads... it all really is meaningless, the universe is indifferent, it's all over when you die - and all of this really isn't such a bad thing if we're willing to shed our fears and imagined self-importance.
@@eargasm1072 "It all is meaningless" is true if you don't see the Plan. BUT yes, it is indifferent it treats us Individually the same way most of us treat the cells of our body. The 'gift' was the experience! If you don't like the experience it will change in your next life, but don't expect the totality of the experience to change much. Religion has answers but unfortunately the wrong ones. As far as Woody, a pessimist with small man syndrome whose 'mind' gives him answers unfortunately the wrong ones. He intellectualizes his feelings of inadequacy to remove blame. Life is a struggle for every living creature in the material world. It generally comes down to are you a half full or half empty person. I think the choice was made for you by your initial circumstances, chemically, parental, socially. You are here to KNOW, not understand. When you know, you'll have 'realization' & break free of the endless wheel of life in the material realm & return home.
Dear Woody, life is a gift. One should not complain. One should be thankfull and do good. I am thankfull to be able to enjoy your films and the music of J. Hendrix. Less so Beethoven. Keep going.
Alvie has been an inspiration to me since early childhood. "It was something he read. Tell Dr. Flicker" .... "well, the universe is everything, and if the universe is expanding, eventually it will break apart and that will be the end of everything." "What is that your business!? He stopped doing his homework!" "What's the point?"
“I never thought I was doing anyone a favour by bringing children into the world. With people as cruel to each other as they are, it’s a terrible proposition. The best of lives are sad and tragic. The best of them. My general conclusion is that it’s not a nice thing to do. The world doesn’t need it. The kid doesn’t need it.'' --- Woody Allen
I think Woody Allen's philosophy of life is summed up by Billy Crystal in "Deconstructing Harry:" Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down, but in the end, the House always wins. Doesn't mean you didn't have fun.
Yeah... Thanks! Me, too. Not taking anything away from Woody, but my old hippy friends and I talked like this every night. It's kind of a DUH. If you're not dumb enough to buy into religion, you're pretty much faced with what seems like the obvious truth, and it sounds pretty close to the way he put it. Genius? Okay...whatever..
I love Woody Allen so much, he is right the arts makes life worth while and a meaningful trip as Freud said the artiste is the happiest of all humans because he or she exercise their demons through art. Woody Allen you are my muse, I adore you.
Here’s my take on the dilemma: Pinch yourself, hard. Does it hurt? Sure. Did it feel good? No. Want to do it again? Of course not. You realize you’re still going to die one day, right? Right. Do you want to be pinched from now till then? Of course not. The point is, regardless of where things are heading, we are here NOW, and NOW is what matters. We want more good/less bad. Everyone does. We won’t experience an ultimate “THE END” but we WILL experience THIS CHAPTER. This chapter is all we have, Woody.
You will experience an ultimate The End one day. It's sure. And even you deny, this awareness drives you unconsciously in certain way. I said unconsciously. No single second were and are you free of this awareness. This is the main misconception of you. So here we are: each chapter, each 'here and now' is under enormous pressure of the limitation and obscurity.
I think woody allen is precisely sugesting not dedicating yourself to these imposible questions, "you can´ta actually live your life like that", but instead we should try to make use of our time apreciating beauty in everything.
This mentality seems "smart" and intellectual but it's just pure depression . It's just something you have to go through and then keep walking. A sad realisation that after you surpass it , you are stronger , more stable and find what really gives you hapiness. That's life, that's the rules , it's your job to find something that make your life worth living.
Nightcrawler that's. Like telling an unfairly imprisoned person just be happy with your cell. Clearly we have the want and desire for more. Hence the quote of CS Lewis To give up on that insight just to "deal with it" for the sake of living is ugly to me. The fact that we have these desires as Lewis said is perplexing. Lewis a Christian, of course was saying these desires are in us becuase we are spiritual beings and this is not our home. I personally am a spiritualist but not constrained to to myopic views of religion. Even still. Lewis's statement resonates.
Man, I knew about this since I was 12 years old back in the 1970s. Since then, it's been an uphill battle to live the vision of what Woody says, doing art even after knowing the inevitable. Still, with this realistic horror comes happiness in the moment.
My son asked my his grandfather(my dad) how long we're dead for when we die. I kinda liked his response, he said that imagine if you had a mountain as high as an airplane flies in the sky and it was made out of a giant diamond which is extremely hard. Now imagine if every 10,000 years a really soft feather was brushed against the top of the diamond mountain just once. So every 10,000 years the feather brushes the top of the mountain until the mountain is worn down to the ground. Now that's a long time right(he says) Now imagine that the time it took to wear that mountain down is represented by 1 grain of sand. So a new diamond mountain is made each time until all the grains of sand on the earth are used up. He then said so you see that's a long time right? then he said well we're dead alot longer than that, so you better enjoy your life while you have it.
It's very simple:You try your best,with the skills that you've been born with--and that's it.Many struggles along the way,but to quit trying is the end of life--even before actual death.
I liked where he was going with the meaninglessness of everything, from small to large scale. And I immediately got that feeling of momentary inspiration, suddenly remembered why it is so important to me to have love in my life, to have music, to go on living - it's all in my head, it's all in my heart
My first experience of a woody Allen film was in the early 70s in a cinema in Birmingham. You could stay in the cinema all day if you wanted back then and watch the film's a and b 3 times over. Watching take the money and run etc. I had to watch his brilliant films over again. Being a Monty python fan amongst many other great comedians of the day. Mr Allen is one of the best. He like most comedians writers and musicians have obvious influences. He has a little of Bob hope and Groucho Marx in his comedy and mannerisms. There is nothing wrong with that. All the great composers were influenced by the guys that were before them. Listen to Beethoven and you will hear a little of Mozart and Haydn. All this aside he is a brilliant comedian and one of my Heros.
Yup. Did the same in high school with friends at a big, wide movie theater in Summit, New Jersey, a great place, now gone, sadly. (Remember seeing Tron there too). My GF at the time worked there, so she let us in free and we got free popcorn (against the rules, of course, but hey...). We watched one Woody Allen flick after another. I think the lineup was something like, Bananas, Take the Money and Run, Love and Death, Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex, and my favorites at that time: Sleeper, Play it Again Sam, and Annie Hall. This was around the time Manhattan was out in theaters, so it was not included as it was a fairly recent film. Had a great time, coming and going - as long as you had your ticket you could pop out for awhile and come back, no problem. The place was huge and not packed, so we moved around a lot to different seats to experience it different ways, with some girls flirting with us from a few rows back for awhile. Great times. No cellphones, no internet, no politics in conversation or in thought, and of course, no pandemic. Of course the world wasn't perfect then either, wars going on, as usual, people suffering, homeless, etc. The radio played music and we bought records and had stereos. We went to the theater to watch movies or caught old ones on TV. The rest of the time was ours. And we lived in fully. I have an exciting, enriching life now, but if I could, I'd go back, yes, I'd return to those days, in a New York minute, I would. Cheers from Tokyo.
Woody always admitted to Bob Hope being an influence. He loved "the road" movie series. UA-cam has a great clip of Woody hosting The Tonight Show in 71. Hope was the main guest, real fun to watch!
@@artlover1477 Funny you mention this, I just watched the episode in full. Amazing how awful the set was then compared with the Burbank comfy set. It's a great episode. Woody is clearly in awe of the great Bob Hope who gives him some loving jabs. Great stuff.
Huge Woody Allen fan, who grew up with a Jewish-Italian mom - double whammy- along with a healthy (unhealthy?) dose of personal existential dread. So what makes life worth living? Love. The Beatles got it right. The love you take is equal to the love you make.
This has been one of the great struggles of my life. You know, to reconcile with this. I used to be religious, so I believed in all sorts of absolutes. Life is no longer so simple for me. I guess he is right. I have to not give up on living, even despite this terrible truth. That isn't Chomsky, though. That's Woody Allen.
If been thinking about Existential and mortality stuff for some time now being in my late 50s and have never heard anything explained like this . Very interesting and helpful.
there has been talk recently (by some great thinkers and inventors) suggesting that the inevitable fate of the universe (and us) is not one of doom and gloom predetermined by dumb celestial forces that govern the cosmos but rather is determined by the exponentially ever growing intelligence that is starting to shape us and our world
It's not really a flush. It's more like a ship that slowly has its parts replaced bit by bit over the years and eventually every part is replaced even though it looks like the same ship.
Woody gets it. What he's saying is deep and unless you kinda get it, you won't know what he's talking about. In summary, he's saying "just be nice to each other".
All gone. Everybody gone. New group cycles through. All replacements. Then they're gone. Next cycle. Absolutely right. People don't want to believe that. Just like the animal world...as we are all the same.
as Nietszche said: 'art is the true task of life'. Within art there is beauty and that is for me the meaning of life; a child playing and laughing, a wave, a pretty woman, a cat licking his dog buddy, some classical music in a rainy morning while your hand holds a cup of smokey coffee...until our last day on this planet we have the obligation to look at every thing beautiful and enjoy it
That is my favorite quote from Shakespeare. I memorized Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow and recite in in certain situations. Woody Allen is a genius to me who coveyed the ideas of existentialism and made fun of these thoughts of The Absurd, Camus.
As a drug induced experience once taught me, we are all totally forgotten, as if we never existed at all. Even those who are remembered will be forgotten.
I'm not the biggest Woody Allen fan in the world, but this really makes me respect him. He speaks of our common predicament as intelligently and succinctly as I have ever heard. I especially like the way he talks at 3:28 about a fake Heaven and Hell nonsense. Seeing him talk like this makes it even more poignant, because he has the size and body English of a small person - very small. You don't see big guys coming up with stuff like this.
@@ozobborozzo398 Heh. The web is full of guys like you, jumping at any chance to talk trash. It took you nine years to find this comment. That's a lot of not having a life. As for Woody Allen, I'm glad I'm not him, but everyone who is alive has the opportunity to have a better side to themselves, and to hopefully have something to offer humanity. Even people who scour the Web for opportunities to trash talk.
Solomon said Vanity vanity all is vanity. Meaning all is empty, meaning this earthly life, but just like the Old Testament is the school teacher to the New Testament, we’re given a clear choice to believe or not to believe in God. and God will honor our choice.
His 100 year toilet flush model is wrong. The lives overlap, and people pass legacies and systems down to their children and fellow citizens. Families typically pass lifestyles, assetts and personal belief systems, and societies typically pass ideological frameworks and a vast wealth of infrastructure. Nobody just starts again from zero; even the caveman inherits fire, which totally changes how he lives his life. So there is a very strong sense in which we live on in our progeny. That Woody Allen thinks as he does, is a sign of a Western centric point of view, which has every person live for himself, and there is no underlying core belief system in the society, i.e. 'anything goes'. A Muslim or Indian Hindu would not speak in those terms.
People used to get such profound comfort and meaning from their immediate community that wherever you travelled to was just a bonus, somewhere to take your very pre-established, comfortable, self. Nowadays, everyone tends to look at everyone as if to say 'What are you looking FOR?‘ as if you're dead or unintellectual if you're happy and settled. I rarely meet true intellectuals any more. They're as brainwashed as anyone else that the real life is always somewhere else, that high virtues are always exclusively in somebody else remote and famous like Woody Allen. But also the young and beautiful from not especially well off families have been betrayed, their natural vigour and attractiveness now unfairly regarded as superficial merely because people have seen people who look like them in shampoo or insurance adverts. The internet has turned people who merely seemed quiet and dull and plain in to tinpot general psychotics living in a fantasy that the timid, unpractical, reality of themselves doesn't deserve to indulge in. Woody Allen was talking about the long game but that's because he hasn't attained all that he wanted from the short game. Ironically , the short game was ruined by 'can do anything , go anywhere' unglamourous people like him who broke up the rules that had served many well where you were in a pecking order so always found and relied on someone similar to you rather than inventing narratives about yourself and others. Life without structure enabling expectation in your own eyes and the eyes of others has far less meaning.
It seems natural for human beings to try to 'make things better than they seem' (to quote Van Morrison). Pessimists tend to strip that away, but that can be for a good reason. On reflection, reality is often much bleaker than I care to think.
I think the meaning of life is happiness. When I am happy I never question the meaning of life. I am just happy and that's it, it's enjoyable. One can only search for what is missing. So when I search for the meaning of life it means I am missing happiness, therefore looking for it. Look at small children. They are just happy. They enjoy life and don't question its meaning, because they have it. They are not on a search for it. I mean children that have the luck to live a normal life, because that's not the case with all of them. Those with bad lifes probably question the meaning of life too. So this is my simple conclusion. The meaning of life is happiness. And although happiness is impossible to be defined as each person finds it in their own special way, I think we all know what it is and it's kinda the same with everyone. Just that happiness :)
Alex Delarge Thank you for the heads up on Epicurus. Just checked him out and my interest was definitely drawn. Off to look for a documentary on him. Thanks again.
Children are happy because of naivety. The more you learn and are aware of the human condition..and the more empathy you have for the world at large, the more increasingly difficult to becomes retain happiness. Woody said in another interview that pleasures or happiness are like small Oasis in a vast gloom ridden desert. I often say this to Christians about heaven: if there is a heaven based on the notion of being a Christian and you get there but your loved ones don't make it.. How do you retain bliss knowing your loved ones are in hell? Does God give you a lobotomy? They can never answer this question of course.
Nah we are here for the reason bacteria is.....just as an accident attempting to replicate eternally.....no one cares if people are happy or not.....it doesn’t have any long lasting concecuence
Exactly. I teach young people every day. And I see it every day. Happiness in the smallest things. There's a saying here in Japan, translated roughly: 'Young girls will laugh at a pencil falling off a desk'. It's not a negative statement or judgement at all. It simply means they find humor and fun in everything, even the smallest thing. By the way, Japanese women have the longest lifespan for humans. Cheers from Tokyo!
Woody Allen is the best comedian ever, he got a unique sense of Humor. I wonder if he would have expressed his opinion like this at the begining of his career!!!!
It seems to me that once you fully realize the terrible truth, as Woody Allen does, the only answer is escape and denial. The artist can provide the escape. It doesn't require highfalutin artists to do that. Punch & Judy, Rachel Ryan, American Idol, whatever. But where do we find the needed denial? Denial is provided by religion, but bright and sharp individuals such as Woody require a more convincing form of denial than that. The other, more intelligent form of denial is to simply put the terrible truth out of one's mind. Get involved in a project. Get involved in a romance. Get involved in helping others. These things require goals and timelines. They are the sound and fury Shakespeare wrote about. But they are disciplined lines of sound and fury. Disciplined lines of sound and fury with long term goals that provide the beautiful and needed edifice of denial. No, it isn't all destruction and folly. I deny that. There is a castle here before me. And it calls to me. There is so much time ahead and so much to do! Can the artist help us think like that? Well, maybe, sort of. A good artist can inspire us to pursue projects. A good artist can give us a taste for romance. A good artist can move us to work to help others. Thing is now days there are artists who like to rub the hopelessness and futility of everything in our faces! Actually Woody has done that. But maybe we need to understand the true hopelessness of everything in order to understand what the best forms of escape and denial really are.
it's simple. doesn't matter, the "why?" of it all...you're here. Face it. The only real thing you have to decide is weather your glass is half full or half empty. done. Then live your life respectively.
For real. Live for the chemicals ur brain creates when u accomplish something. Live for a better relationship with self.. Life is long and hard and ultimately pointless... it’s a roller coaster ride but I can say I would rather have lived this rollercoaster ride then to have never experienced it
It doesn't happen all at once. For example, I find comfort in the fact that some of my elementary school teachers are now dead. Make me sit in the corner, will you Mrs. Stoddard? Now who's laughing?
I'm in complete agreement with what Allen is saying, with the exception of his artist-centric solution. Maybe it would be good to hear his definition of an artist. I would argue that a full emotion and spiritual (not religious) experience is it's own reward. There are "right actions" that simply feel good etc. There are ecstatic transcendent experiences that seem revelatory and create an expanded appreciation for one's existence/experience. Why must anything be eternal to matter?
Thanks for bringing this up Woody! Just when I was slowly climbing my way out of a funk, you bring me back down. Now I have to start all over again. So what's my purpose in life? Sadly, to try to fix the rest of my life because the first part was a miserable disaster. I need to go back in time, circa 1958, crawl back into my mother's womb and be born again because somehow, in some strange way, Jesus is not enough for me. Hmm, I've got issues folks. I've got deep issues. God help us!
Take some pressure off yourself and Life. See the miracle in the mundane: YOU are 65,000 miles from where you were an hour ago, while sitting in the same room. People worry too much about "What's in it for ME?" and "Why ain't I happier? .... Yeah, life's tough, but not 24/7/365 if you try to smooth out some rough edges. Get 2 cats out of a shelter. Give 'em cute names and they'll start to snuggle up and love you for all they're worth and you'll change the whole world! ...For them! And a little bit for you.. Sorry for the lecture. But I bet you're a kind person. Take it an hour at a time and show yourself some compassion and then share it! ...Check in with us?
I think it is necessary that we don't know. Life and uncertainty are almost the same thing, because there would be no life if everything was certain. If we are eternal and we knew it, we would leave everything for later. We wouldn't be that much touched about a child dying, we'd be just "oh, her soul is eternal anyway, this is just a period of agony". We wouldn't have dreams of great accomplishment, because you can always try that later. It would be always better to stay at home watching TV, leaver for later. And if we are not eternal, if we are purely attached to the physical body and die with it, than if we knew that for sure, it would be terribly depressing, everything would be pointless and meaningless. Therefore, I'm very grateful for the fact that we don't fucking know. This is just perfect: life is a wonderful gift and I don't know if it will end with my body or not. This seems to be the only possible way of doing great things. The best way to live fully and make the most of life is to accept and embrace this doubt, this uncertainty.
Alex Delarge yeah, I do agree there is this kinda behavior sometimes. Not all christians though. But when you believe 100% in eternity, it's inevitable that your behavior will change somehow.
We are here to gain Knowledge and to evolve spiritually within the Unknown. All Mr. Allen is speaking of encompasses material manifestation, nothing to do with you your Soul, the Real You.
There is meaning now. We can choose to meditate on bliss rather than emptiness. I think he is a great American artist. But his out look is his own. And my out look is my own. And anyone watching this video may choose their own perspective. I am agnostic, but all I need to be happy is a stroll down Broadway to see people walking about and living and existing. Woody says it himself in Deconstructing Harry. "To be alive is to be happy."
I don't know the meaning of life but the purpose of life is to share the experience with someone you love(and its a big plus if that person loves you back) and also to come up with at least one original thought.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve by not dying ~Woody Allen
That's the first two of the four sentences. The third and fourth are "I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen. I want to live on in my apartment."
@@boborrahood Don't forget, "I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
or banging my adolscent stepdaughter, yeah that's it, yeah that's normal
The answer he refuses is in Jesus Christ.
@@didactic318
To you, I'm an atheist.
To God, I'm the loyal opposition.
Woody Allen
Praise the interviewer for letting Woody speak this stream of thought uninterrupted.
this was oddly comforting. thanks Woody!
Woody once said (which I totally agree with) "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
"One must imagine Woody Allen happy." - Albert Camus
His work makes me 'happy.'
I think Camus had died when Woody Allen make movies so I don't think he said that.
@Existential Weirdo I don't understand what you said.Essays?
This comment made my day
I wish I had his motivation, but I don't. How can you have it when you realise the truth? He is lucky that he is talented. But what about mediocre people like me?
"The universe is expanding........What's the point?"
-- Alvi Singer
Congrats Pat......you caught it!
what is that your business?!
"What is that your business?"
-Alvi Singer's Mother
I'm into leather
@@kevdieg Nice! 😎
One of the most brilliant descriptions of the reality of life that I've ever heard.
But isn't it all so obvious? "Cept the part about no heaven. How does he know that there is no heaven? He doesn't.
@@curiousgeorge555 You're right. It's all very obvious, but hardly anyone ever stops to think about it. In this interview, Woody's words really stick because he's being slightly humourous about the absurdity of life. And I especially like the part when he says the world just flushes a big toilet and brings a new generation of people in. That exactly what happens. What worries me is that they are working on ways to make humans live longer!! I'm currently 36 years old and don't even know if I want to live to see 60 the way things are going.
I totally agree with Woody's assessment and have thought that way since my teens. For me, the only really useful thing to do with your life is to spend it trying to help and entertain your fellow beings get through it all. Woody has always managed to help me pass some time by capturing my attention for a short while. So have a lot of other people. Friends who spend time with me help. Musicians and artists who make you think and entertain you. Interactions with strangers are chances to make them feel better. We can all help each other through whatever this experience is if we try.
Yes. But why?
( Not trying to bring you down. I have my own ideas)
I'm glad you have your own ideas! I guess the answer to why is that I always appreciate it when my friends, neighbors and strangers are kind and polite to me. It makes me happy and I prefer to be happy if possible (though it's a hard state to maintain). Their efforts make me want to do the same for others. I realize that the world is a hard place and if I can make it a little more bearable for someone else with a tiny bit of effort, why not?
I would be happy to hear your ideas if you would like to share them.
The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing
Song by Frank Zappa
Do what you wanna
Do what you will
Just don't mess up
Your neighbor's thrill
'N when you pay the bill
Kindly leave a little tip
And help the next poor sucker
On his one way trip
Some take the bible
(Aw gimme a half a dozen for the hotel room!)
@@WeAreYU That’s nice of you. I believe in a God by default. I believe everything is imagined without a single exception but I just tend to believe there’s a purpose. I don’t belong to any religion.
Mortality, the great leveler. Woody knows the score.
“It was in the reign of George III that the above-named personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”...the end note from barry lyndon, one of kubrik's masterpieces. it says it all.
Yeah. How many kids did he diddle?
I've thought about some of this when I was around 7 or 8 and it frightened me. But now at 76 I put it out of my mind and take joy from such things as watching the birds in my backyard drink and bathe, the hummingbirds feed and fight with each other, and watching our puppy develop so fast compared to us humans. They don't worry about the meaningless of life and theirs is so much shorter than ours. And I'm a scientist and very well versed in the fate of the universe. Btw, I learned a short time ago that Woody and I besides both attending PS 99 in Brooklyn (albeit 7 years apart), were bar mitzvahed at the same synagogue and must have sang our haftorahs from the same Torah. A lot of good that did.
many s
those animals have no awareness of death. Hello?
Rest in peace Richard
@@jeremyfoster8726 Because they lack an intellectualized mind.
Will is born into a creature BUT ego is the product of intellectualized mind.
Dogs are what human could be if they didn't 'think' Intellectualization creates
expertise to go to moon or get 6% rather 5% on your money.
But it's also the cause of most sexual fetish, child molestation & death cult behavior
see nuclear arms race in general & Ukraine specifically.
Jeremy, jessie came off human. You came off rude, sign of over intellectualization :)
@@joseluiiiis Is Richard the original poster? He's gone down the 100 year toilet flush ala Woody's explanation? What happened to him? Amazing how quickly time flies....Woody gave this interview in 2014, now (2023) it's already been 9 years and so many have experienced the proverbial "toilet flush" in that time....
Ever since I was very young I was always terrified of death and no longer existing. Now as I've gotten older the fear has started to subside and when I was diagnosed with Cancer last year I no longer have any fear whatsoever of death. Its really weird its almost like an acceptance washes over you. Saying that I still want to live and enjoy life. 👍
I think that we all know how meaningless it all seems , but normally we try not to talk about it too much. Some people are more prone to dwell on these thoughts and some others apparently wouldn't care less, but they know. Woody Allen describes the big picture meticulously. These are the existential fears of a very talented mind. It took a lot of reading and a lot of internal debate to put it all so well. It is nice to read other people's comments and discover that they also reflect on that. Let's hope our flush arrives with delay.
Well said by Mr. Allen.
Just when you think you've heard it all woody Allen sums up existence whilst sipping coffee in two minutes.
Oh my god I love him so much I can't even
The true reason we cary on is we need the eggs
I prefer the bacon.
frederick steiner it is the last line of Woody Allen’s film called Annie Hall
What. ? Eggs 🥚 🍳 why eggs ??
I'm reminded of the old Groucho Marx joke, when he says, 'I wouldn't want to be part of a club, that would have me, as a member'. - Alvie.
@frederick steiner you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, hey doc, my brother's crazy! He thinks he's a chicken. Then the doc says, why don't you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that's how I feel about relationships. They're totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.”
The most important thing about life is the present moment
The most important thing about life is that it wil over.
In so far as what we consider the present moment actually occurs on a time delay and is instantly rendered past tense, there is no such thing as the present moment.
💯
@@JonathanAllen0379 shut up stupid
The present moment ultimately leads to the final moment lol
Woody Allen is a highly intelligent and intellectual individual!
And a chomo
I never realized how humorous and interesting woody Allen really is... I'd love to be able to carry a conversation with him..
I don't want heaven because eternity is boring and scarier than death.
I don't want hell because I don't like pain.
I don't want reincarnation because I don't want to go over this meaningless life all over again.
Nothingness is the most merciful and wonderful possibility.
Leslie C I don't think eternity is boring. If we are eternal, we will always live a moment at a time, and that's not boring. We always reinvent ourselves, we always find new stuff to be curious about. We are able to manipulate the physical world and always be entertained.
eternity is like a weekday morning soap opera, you think all my children is exciting?
Leslie C didn't understand what you mean at all
mmm ok, I didn't know about “all my children”. I've never seen it. Actually, I don't think we can really say if eternity would be boring or not. Yes, it's a weird concept, but yet I don't think any of our minds can really understand or encompass something that doesn't end. We cannot really know what it would be like, so it doesn't make sense to say: “oh, it would be boring”
Boring is simple a feeling of unexciting, lack of stimulation to the mind. Once you live through a certain age, your ability to get excited diminishes because you have experienced a lot of thing already. Any new thing is just incremental improvement of already existed things in the past. Young people get excited with Twitter, it reminds me of ICQ. Young people get excited with Facebock, it reminds me angelfire or geocities . My depression comes from not being able to experience happiness because happiness involves novelty, and I can't get excited about anything. I want to get the feeling the first time I played Street Fighter II on SNES, but I will never be able to rediscover that feeling and it depresses me.
Agree with Woody completely, what a brilliant piece of compressed wisdom. I wish all people, everywhere on this planet, could just get this idea into their heads... it all really is meaningless, the universe is indifferent, it's all over when you die - and all of this really isn't such a bad thing if we're willing to shed our fears and imagined self-importance.
We're here today, gone tomorrow!
@@eargasm1072 "It all is meaningless" is true if you don't see the Plan.
BUT yes, it is indifferent it treats us Individually the same way most of us treat the cells of
our body. The 'gift' was the experience! If you don't like the experience it will change in your next life, but don't expect the totality of the experience to change much.
Religion has answers but unfortunately the wrong ones.
As far as Woody, a pessimist with small man syndrome whose 'mind' gives him answers
unfortunately the wrong ones. He intellectualizes his feelings of inadequacy to remove blame.
Life is a struggle for every living creature in the material world.
It generally comes down to are you a half full or half empty person. I think the
choice was made for you by your initial circumstances, chemically, parental, socially.
You are here to KNOW, not understand. When you know, you'll have 'realization' & break
free of the endless wheel of life in the material realm & return home.
Dear Woody, life is a gift. One should not complain. One should be thankfull and do good. I am thankfull to be able to enjoy your films and the music of J. Hendrix. Less so Beethoven. Keep going.
Alvie has been an inspiration to me since early childhood. "It was something he read. Tell Dr. Flicker" .... "well, the universe is everything, and if the universe is expanding, eventually it will break apart and that will be the end of everything." "What is that your business!? He stopped doing his homework!" "What's the point?"
“I never thought I was doing anyone a favour by bringing children into the world. With people as cruel to each other as they are, it’s a terrible proposition. The best of lives are sad and tragic. The best of them. My general conclusion is that it’s not a nice thing to do. The world doesn’t need it. The kid doesn’t need it.''
--- Woody Allen
Well Woody is a kid toucher so yeah. Poor kids. That's all Woody knows. He's a chomo
As a philosopher he's a great film maker.
I think Woody Allen's philosophy of life is summed up by Billy Crystal in "Deconstructing Harry:" Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down, but in the end, the House always wins. Doesn't mean you didn't have fun.
Neither both.
lemorab1 good succinct explanation.
As a filmmaker, he's a great philosopher.
Yeah, and who are you?
I've always felt like this.
Yeah... Thanks! Me, too. Not taking anything away from Woody, but my old hippy friends and I talked like this every night. It's kind of a DUH. If you're not dumb enough to buy into religion, you're pretty much faced with what seems like the obvious truth, and it sounds pretty close to the way he put it. Genius? Okay...whatever..
not just artists. thank you Woody Allen for all of your contributions
I feel so inspired now. What a great uplifting interview. Thank you.
I love Woody Allen so much, he is right the arts makes life worth while and a meaningful trip as Freud said the artiste is the happiest of all humans because he or she exercise their demons through art. Woody Allen you are my muse, I adore you.
Here’s my take on the dilemma: Pinch yourself, hard. Does it hurt? Sure. Did it feel good? No. Want to do it again? Of course not. You realize you’re still going to die one day, right? Right. Do you want to be pinched from now till then? Of course not. The point is, regardless of where things are heading, we are here NOW, and NOW is what matters. We want more good/less bad. Everyone does. We won’t experience an ultimate “THE END” but we WILL experience THIS CHAPTER. This chapter is all we have, Woody.
Nice.
You will experience an ultimate The End one day. It's sure. And even you deny, this awareness drives you unconsciously in certain way. I said unconsciously. No single second were and are you free of this awareness. This is the main misconception of you. So here we are: each chapter, each 'here and now' is under enormous pressure of the limitation and obscurity.
hildenermusic What is it you want me to take away from what you've written? It's unclear what you are getting at.
i completely agree.
What if more good dosent mean anything? What if its all there already.? Then y should we go on?
Where’s it going? Nowhere. But what a ride. We were here.
If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only conclude I was not made for here.
-CS LEWIS
Well then whey did we end up here?? If we weren't made for this world, why do we have to put up with it?
also my question
I think woody allen is precisely sugesting not dedicating yourself to these imposible questions, "you can´ta actually live your life like that", but instead we should try to make use of our time apreciating beauty in everything.
This mentality seems "smart" and intellectual but it's just pure depression . It's just something you have to go through and then keep walking. A sad realisation that after you surpass it , you are stronger , more stable and find what really gives you hapiness.
That's life, that's the rules , it's your job to find something that make your life worth living.
Nightcrawler that's. Like telling an unfairly imprisoned person just be happy with your cell.
Clearly we have the want and desire for more.
Hence the quote of CS Lewis
To give up on that insight just to "deal with it" for the sake of living is ugly to me.
The fact that we have these desires as Lewis said is perplexing. Lewis a Christian, of course was saying these desires are in us becuase we are spiritual beings and this is not our home.
I personally am a spiritualist but not constrained to to myopic views of religion.
Even still. Lewis's statement resonates.
Things matter in life only because humans make things matter...but in the grand scheme of things Nothing Matters. - So Woody is right.
Man, I knew about this since I was 12 years old back in the 1970s. Since then, it's been an uphill battle to live the vision of what Woody says, doing art even after knowing the inevitable. Still, with this realistic horror comes happiness in the moment.
My son asked my his grandfather(my dad) how long we're dead for when we die. I kinda liked his response, he said that imagine if you had a mountain as high as an airplane flies in the sky and it was made out of a giant diamond which is extremely hard. Now imagine if every 10,000 years a really soft feather was brushed against the top of the diamond mountain just once. So every 10,000 years the feather brushes the top of the mountain until the mountain is worn down to the ground. Now that's a long time right(he says) Now imagine that the time it took to wear that mountain down is represented by 1 grain of sand. So a new diamond mountain is made each time until all the grains of sand on the earth are used up. He then said so you see that's a long time right? then he said well we're dead alot longer than that, so you better enjoy your life while you have it.
It's very simple:You try your best,with the skills that you've been born with--and that's it.Many struggles along the way,but to quit trying is the end of life--even before actual death.
I liked where he was going with the meaninglessness of everything, from small to large scale. And I immediately got that feeling of momentary inspiration, suddenly remembered why it is so important to me to have love in my life, to have music, to go on living - it's all in my head, it's all in my heart
My first experience of a woody Allen film was in the early 70s in a cinema in Birmingham. You could stay in the cinema all day if you wanted back then and watch the film's a and b 3 times over. Watching take the money and run etc. I had to watch his brilliant films over again. Being a Monty python fan amongst many other great comedians of the day. Mr Allen is one of the best. He like most comedians writers and musicians have obvious influences. He has a little of Bob hope and Groucho Marx in his comedy and mannerisms. There is nothing wrong with that. All the great composers were influenced by the guys that were before them. Listen to Beethoven and you will hear a little of Mozart and Haydn. All this aside he is a brilliant comedian and one of my Heros.
Yup. Did the same in high school with friends at a big, wide movie theater in Summit, New Jersey, a great place, now gone, sadly. (Remember seeing Tron there too).
My GF at the time worked there, so she let us in free and we got free popcorn (against the rules, of course, but hey...). We watched one Woody Allen flick after another. I think the lineup was something like, Bananas, Take the Money and Run, Love and Death, Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex, and my favorites at that time: Sleeper, Play it Again Sam, and Annie Hall. This was around the time Manhattan was out in theaters, so it was not included as it was a fairly recent film.
Had a great time, coming and going - as long as you had your ticket you could pop out for awhile and come back, no problem. The place was huge and not packed, so we moved around a lot to different seats to experience it different ways, with some girls flirting with us from a few rows back for awhile. Great times. No cellphones, no internet, no politics in conversation or in thought, and of course, no pandemic. Of course the world wasn't perfect then either, wars going on, as usual, people suffering, homeless, etc. The radio played music and we bought records and had stereos. We went to the theater to watch movies or caught old ones on TV. The rest of the time was ours. And we lived in fully.
I have an exciting, enriching life now, but if I could, I'd go back, yes, I'd return to those days, in a New York minute, I would.
Cheers from Tokyo.
Woody always admitted to Bob Hope being an influence. He loved "the road" movie series. UA-cam has a great clip of Woody hosting The Tonight Show in 71. Hope was the main guest, real fun to watch!
@@artlover1477 Funny you mention this, I just watched the episode in full. Amazing how awful the set was then compared with the Burbank comfy set. It's a great episode. Woody is clearly in awe of the great Bob Hope who gives him some loving jabs. Great stuff.
Ah, existentialism.
Huge Woody Allen fan, who grew up with a Jewish-Italian mom - double whammy- along with a healthy (unhealthy?) dose of personal existential dread. So what makes life worth living? Love. The Beatles got it right. The love you take is equal to the love you make.
This has been one of the great struggles of my life. You know, to reconcile with this. I used to be religious, so I believed in all sorts of absolutes. Life is no longer so simple for me.
I guess he is right. I have to not give up on living, even despite this terrible truth.
That isn't Chomsky, though. That's Woody Allen.
A very brilliant modern expression of Ecclesiastes
Whenever I lost myself in doing things I watch this video.
I don't have to go to sleep in order to find myself trapped inside of a nightmare. I only have to wake up.
Hell is already here
It's not nihilism. He even says at the end of the vid that the important thing is to affirm life, even in its tougher moments.
It is nihilistic, because there is no future in his view. It all ends. That is nihilism.
Stoicism
In his case he's a chomo.
When my mortality finally became a reality to me it triggered from within me an existential crisis that continues to this day.
same
If been thinking about Existential and mortality stuff for some time now being in my late 50s and have never heard anything explained like this . Very interesting and helpful.
Death renders life a temporary meaningless illusion and those of us unable to continue lying to themselves commit suicide.
there has been talk recently (by some great thinkers and inventors) suggesting that the inevitable fate of the universe (and us) is not one of doom and gloom predetermined by dumb celestial forces that govern the cosmos but rather is determined by the exponentially ever growing intelligence that is starting to shape us and our world
I think we are due for the 100-year flush, right about now.
David cawrowl oh !
It's not really a flush. It's more like a ship that slowly has its parts replaced bit by bit over the years and eventually every part is replaced even though it looks like the same ship.
Woody gets it. What he's saying is deep and unless you kinda get it, you won't know what he's talking about. In summary, he's saying "just be nice to each other".
Woody for a motivational speaker!
All gone. Everybody gone. New group cycles through. All replacements. Then they're gone. Next cycle. Absolutely right. People don't want to believe that. Just like the animal world...as we are all the same.
How do you suddenly do that, though? I'm currently at the "why bother" stage. I don't know how to get past it. Nothing feels important.
Woody is a philosopher and a great writer-director of cinematography.
as Nietszche said: 'art is the true task of life'. Within art there is beauty and that is for me the meaning of life; a child playing and laughing, a wave, a pretty woman, a cat licking his dog buddy, some classical music in a rainy morning while your hand holds a cup of smokey coffee...until our last day on this planet we have the obligation to look at every thing beautiful and enjoy it
That is my favorite quote from Shakespeare. I memorized Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow and recite in in certain situations. Woody Allen is a genius to me who coveyed the ideas of existentialism and made fun of these thoughts of The Absurd, Camus.
I could swear I saw this very same video with Spanish subtitles a few weeks ago. Now I can't seem to find it on UA-cam.
As a drug induced experience once taught me, we are all totally forgotten, as if we never existed at all. Even those who are remembered will be forgotten.
I'm not the biggest Woody Allen fan in the world, but this really makes me respect him. He speaks of our common predicament as intelligently and succinctly as I have ever heard. I especially like the way he talks at 3:28 about a fake Heaven and Hell nonsense. Seeing him talk like this makes it even more poignant, because he has the size and body English of a small person - very small. You don't see big guys coming up with stuff like this.
You respect a guy who married his own daughter... that says a lot about you
@@ozobborozzo398 Heh. The web is full of guys like you, jumping at any chance to talk trash. It took you nine years to find this comment. That's a lot of not having a life. As for Woody Allen, I'm glad I'm not him, but everyone who is alive has the opportunity to have a better side to themselves, and to hopefully have something to offer humanity. Even people who scour the Web for opportunities to trash talk.
@@ozobborozzo398 she is the adopted daughter of actress Mia Farrow and musician André Previn
@@ozobborozzo398He did NOT marry his daughter, she is the daughter of Andre Previn. Try again.
@@ozobborozzo398no he didn't bozo how about a little research
The history of humanity, explained perfectly.
Just as you get what you pay for, you end up what you believe.
Nietsche said that the only valid philosophical question is whether or not to go on living i agree.
That was Camus
"Nothing lasts forever, but the earth and sky - It slips away - and all your money won't another minute buy ..." (Dust in the Wind- Kansas)
Great insights on life. The big picture is that everything is transitory. Don't take yourself too seriously.
Solomon said Vanity vanity all is vanity. Meaning all is empty, meaning this earthly life, but just like the Old Testament is the school
teacher to the New Testament, we’re given a clear choice to believe or not to believe in God.
and God will honor our choice.
I wish woody Allen and William F Buckley would have been together more often. Their interviews of each other are phenomenal
Wtf is the description of the video talking about? Lol
That humans are entities with their own goals. Existentialism
His 100 year toilet flush model is wrong. The lives overlap, and people pass legacies and systems down to their children and fellow citizens. Families typically pass lifestyles, assetts and personal belief systems, and societies typically pass ideological frameworks and a vast wealth of infrastructure. Nobody just starts again from zero; even the caveman inherits fire, which totally changes how he lives his life. So there is a very strong sense in which we live on in our progeny.
That Woody Allen thinks as he does, is a sign of a Western centric point of view, which has every person live for himself, and there is no underlying core belief system in the society, i.e. 'anything goes'. A Muslim or Indian Hindu would not speak in those terms.
People used to get such profound comfort and meaning from their immediate community that wherever you travelled to was just a bonus, somewhere to take your very pre-established, comfortable, self. Nowadays, everyone tends to look at everyone as if to say 'What are you looking FOR?‘ as if you're dead or unintellectual if you're happy and settled. I rarely meet true intellectuals any more. They're as brainwashed as anyone else that the real life is always somewhere else, that high virtues are always exclusively in somebody else remote and famous like Woody Allen. But also the young and beautiful from not especially well off families have been betrayed, their natural vigour and attractiveness now unfairly regarded as superficial merely because people have seen people who look like them in shampoo or insurance adverts. The internet has turned people who merely seemed quiet and dull and plain in to tinpot general psychotics living in a fantasy that the timid, unpractical, reality of themselves doesn't deserve to indulge in. Woody Allen was talking about the long game but that's because he hasn't attained all that he wanted from the short game. Ironically , the short game was ruined by 'can do anything , go anywhere' unglamourous people like him who broke up the rules that had served many well where you were in a pecking order so always found and relied on someone similar to you rather than inventing narratives about yourself and others. Life without structure enabling expectation in your own eyes and the eyes of others has far less meaning.
All life is sorrowful... Follow your Bliss
I love Woody Allen. And I loved "Magic In the Moonlight".
What a cheery guy.
We love you, Woody!
In under 4 mins, he gave the gist of what philosophy talk abt. U find ur meaning in a meaningless world. Genius.
"it is the artist's job not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence"
Loooooove That Man!
+Dyhna Venne Me too.
I discovered Scoop in 2006 and loved it!
It seems natural for human beings to try to 'make things better than they seem' (to quote Van Morrison). Pessimists tend to strip that away, but that can be for a good reason. On reflection, reality is often much bleaker than I care to think.
Thank you for the comment. There was also another friend of mine that mentioned that confusion.
I think the meaning of life is happiness. When I am happy I never question the meaning of life. I am just happy and that's it, it's enjoyable. One can only search for what is missing. So when I search for the meaning of life it means I am missing happiness, therefore looking for it. Look at small children. They are just happy. They enjoy life and don't question its meaning, because they have it. They are not on a search for it. I mean children that have the luck to live a normal life, because that's not the case with all of them. Those with bad lifes probably question the meaning of life too. So this is my simple conclusion. The meaning of life is happiness. And although happiness is impossible to be defined as each person finds it in their own special way, I think we all know what it is and it's kinda the same with everyone. Just that happiness :)
Alex Delarge Thank you for the heads up on Epicurus. Just checked him out and my interest was definitely drawn. Off to look for a documentary on him. Thanks again.
Children are happy because of naivety.
The more you learn and are aware of the human condition..and the more empathy you have for the world at large, the more increasingly difficult to becomes retain happiness.
Woody said in another interview that pleasures or happiness are like small Oasis in a vast gloom ridden desert.
I often say this to Christians about heaven: if there is a heaven based on the notion of being a Christian and you get there but your loved ones don't make it.. How do you retain bliss knowing your loved ones are in hell?
Does God give you a lobotomy?
They can never answer this question of course.
Nah we are here for the reason bacteria is.....just as an accident attempting to replicate eternally.....no one cares if people are happy or not.....it doesn’t have any long lasting concecuence
Exactly. I teach young people every day. And I see it every day. Happiness in the smallest things. There's a saying here in Japan, translated roughly: 'Young girls will laugh at a pencil falling off a desk'. It's not a negative statement or judgement at all. It simply means they find humor and fun in everything, even the smallest thing.
By the way, Japanese women have the longest lifespan for humans.
Cheers from Tokyo!
The beauty of all things is only the greater for the bitter realisation of passing.
Woody Allen is the best comedian ever, he got a unique sense of Humor.
I wonder if he would have expressed his opinion like this at the begining of his career!!!!
It seems to me that once you fully realize the terrible truth, as Woody Allen does, the only answer is escape and denial. The artist can provide the escape. It doesn't require highfalutin artists to do that. Punch & Judy, Rachel Ryan, American Idol, whatever. But where do we find the needed denial? Denial is provided by religion, but bright and sharp individuals such as Woody require a more convincing form of denial than that. The other, more intelligent form of denial is to simply put the terrible truth out of one's mind. Get involved in a project. Get involved in a romance. Get involved in helping others. These things require goals and timelines. They are the sound and fury Shakespeare wrote about. But they are disciplined lines of sound and fury. Disciplined lines of sound and fury with long term goals that provide the beautiful and needed edifice of denial. No, it isn't all destruction and folly. I deny that. There is a castle here before me. And it calls to me. There is so much time ahead and so much to do! Can the artist help us think like that? Well, maybe, sort of. A good artist can inspire us to pursue projects. A good artist can give us a taste for romance. A good artist can move us to work to help others. Thing is now days there are artists who like to rub the hopelessness and futility of everything in our faces! Actually Woody has done that. But maybe we need to understand the true hopelessness of everything in order to understand what the best forms of escape and denial really are.
yowzephyr Very nice. It is rare to find an answer of such conviction that is also well thought out.
I delete all the messages like 'WTF' or just 'You are completely incoherent'. Reply with something on the topic if you have something to say.
The question is not, is there life after death. The question is, is there life before death?
it's simple. doesn't matter, the "why?" of it all...you're here. Face it. The only real thing you have to decide is weather your glass is half full or half empty. done. Then live your life respectively.
For real. Live for the chemicals ur brain creates when u accomplish something. Live for a better relationship with self.. Life is long and hard and ultimately pointless... it’s a roller coaster ride but I can say I would rather have lived this rollercoaster ride then to have never experienced it
It doesn't happen all at once. For example, I find comfort in the fact that some of my elementary school teachers are now dead. Make me sit in the corner, will you Mrs. Stoddard? Now who's laughing?
I'm with Woody. As a famous person named Bill once said, it's "Much ado about nothing."
Tough Assignment would be a good book or film title.
I'm in complete agreement with what Allen is saying, with the exception of his artist-centric solution. Maybe it would be good to hear his definition of an artist. I would argue that a full emotion and spiritual (not religious) experience is it's own reward. There are "right actions" that simply feel good etc. There are ecstatic transcendent experiences that seem revelatory and create an expanded appreciation for one's existence/experience. Why must anything be eternal to matter?
Thanks for bringing this up Woody! Just when I was slowly climbing my way out of a funk, you bring me back down. Now I have to start all over again.
So what's my purpose in life?
Sadly, to try to fix the rest of my life because the first part was a miserable disaster. I need to go back in time, circa 1958, crawl back into my mother's womb and be born again because somehow, in some strange way, Jesus is not enough for me.
Hmm, I've got issues folks. I've got deep issues. God help us!
Take some pressure off yourself and Life. See the miracle in the mundane: YOU are 65,000 miles from where you were an hour ago, while sitting in the same room. People worry too much about "What's in it for ME?" and "Why ain't I happier? .... Yeah, life's tough, but not 24/7/365 if you try to smooth out some rough edges. Get 2 cats out of a shelter. Give 'em cute names and they'll start to snuggle up and love you for all they're worth and you'll change the whole world! ...For them! And a little bit for you.. Sorry for the lecture. But I bet you're a kind person. Take it an hour at a time and show yourself some compassion and then share it! ...Check in with us?
UA-cam window "101 zen stories" just listen, don't expect anything, just float along........ trust me
I think it is necessary that we don't know. Life and uncertainty are almost the same thing, because there would be no life if everything was certain. If we are eternal and we knew it, we would leave everything for later. We wouldn't be that much touched about a child dying, we'd be just "oh, her soul is eternal anyway, this is just a period of agony". We wouldn't have dreams of great accomplishment, because you can always try that later. It would be always better to stay at home watching TV, leaver for later.
And if we are not eternal, if we are purely attached to the physical body and die with it, than if we knew that for sure, it would be terribly depressing, everything would be pointless and meaningless.
Therefore, I'm very grateful for the fact that we don't fucking know. This is just perfect: life is a wonderful gift and I don't know if it will end with my body or not. This seems to be the only possible way of doing great things.
The best way to live fully and make the most of life is to accept and embrace this doubt, this uncertainty.
Alex Delarge yeah, I do agree there is this kinda behavior sometimes. Not all christians though. But when you believe 100% in eternity, it's inevitable that your behavior will change somehow.
I totally agree with you. No knowing is the best way to live your life, otherwise it would be unbearable.
We are here to gain Knowledge and to evolve spiritually within the Unknown. All Mr. Allen is speaking of encompasses material manifestation, nothing to do with you your Soul, the Real You.
My favorite existentialists: Sartre, Viktor Frankl, Camus, Ortega, and Woody Allen!
This is exactly what I said to one of my friends the other day. I can't believe it. I am only 23 though.
And now you're 30
Scary how time passes 🧐
This is perfect.
There is meaning now. We can choose to meditate on bliss rather than emptiness. I think he is a great American artist. But his out look is his own. And my out look is my own. And anyone watching this video may choose their own perspective. I am agnostic, but all I need to be happy is a stroll down Broadway to see people walking about and living and existing. Woody says it himself in Deconstructing Harry. "To be alive is to be happy."
Very interesting and genuine thought
I would love to have a conversation with him while he's still alive
I don't know the meaning of life but the purpose of life is to share the experience with someone you love(and its a big plus if that person loves you back) and also to come up with at least one original thought.