This video is really best viewed on Nebula, where I uploaded, as I always do, a unique cut of the video without a sponsored segment for a pure, ad-free experience. It also gives you instant access to exclusive content, and because a significant portion of your subscription goes directly to me, you're even supporting the channel too! Be sure to use my link for 40% off an annual subscription: nebula.tv/lsoo Watch my exclusive video "The One Death Scene that Haunts My Soul": nebula.tv/videos/lsoo-the-one-death-scene-that-haunts-my-soul
The materialists are clueless,in higher ages they were employed in sweeping the streets. In this material age they occupy the seats of power in all disciplines. Try to have a conversation with them on a higher level it is not going to work as they cannot comprehend and see all except matter and describe it in their favorite word: Woo.
I honestly don't understand how it happens, that you make videos which almost always seem to land squarely into a perspective of the current times that I am feeling and experiencing, but can't really articulate. And yet, you keep doing it! I am so grateful to you for how thoroughly and deeply and incredibly thoughtfully you make your videos!! I tell people about your channel and how meaningful your videos are, because I hope that others can benefit from all that you make, but also because I know that the more visits and views you get, the more you're able to make videos! Thank you so much for continuing to share your voice, and dig deeply into the core humanity and organismal experience of life itself, through the movies and shows that are willing to dig as deeply as you, into some semblance of of whatever core truth of existence we seek that continues to illude us. That Green mofo has NOTHING on you!! 😅
I had a great idea the other day. What if instead of ads they had to run useful beneficial tips or true facts about the product. It could show a product referencing the beneficial tip, but only if it was accredited. i.e. no world's greatest hotdog, but highest produced commercially sold hotdog. etc. if it couldn't be described as beneficial it would be classified as novelty and you would have to seek out goofy, cheap crap that shouldn't be purchased very often or by many people for any reason to the staggering waste produced by unwanted and unneeded items.
Ah jeez, my soulmate and love of my life tragically passed away from an accident less than two months ago. In the blink of an eye I went from having a life full of love, true acceptance, and belonging with another person and the prospect of spending a lifetime discovering the world with them, to having nothing. The prospect of being a father to children with this person was what transformed my entire mindset, she opened my eyes to what life could be and now she's gone. I didn't expect this video to hit so close to home, but whoo boy this activated the water works hardcore. The search for meaning in life and a reason to keep going after having experienced true love is so devastating-there was not a chance we weren't spending the rest of our lives together-I just dont know how to move forward. She always told me if anything happened I have to keep going, but she saved my life so many times and to have to live the rest of it without her is something that feels so cruel and I really don't know how to live with this feeling in my heart and soul. I miss you Habiba all I want is to be re-united with you no matter how long it takes, i'll love you forever. Beautiful,, amazing, captivating video. Touching on the very fabric of humanity in a very real way you hardly see on here.
Stay strong man. I can’t imagine the pain you are feeling, but that deep pain is life itself. The pain will fade and you’ll be able to look back on those memories as sacred. You two were privileged to have each other by the sounds of it. Take care and reach out to those around you.
The hope you are so eloquently describing in this wonderful essay is what Charles Eisenstein calls: "The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible."
Every circle begins with its end. 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind’s journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul’s fate revealed. In time, all points converge, hope’s strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe’s endless refrain, We must see all in nothingness... before we start again." 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ -- Diamond Dragons (book I)
@@InsanitysApex If it is true that the world is getting smaller and emptier, then there is nothing important to find outside of home. It's all the same. The internet is the same. Social Media is the same. Nothing to discover, the same stuff everywhere. There is no curiosity anymore.
@@heiker1351 yeah, so surprisingly every human being has many similarities and the world is not much different. So? Do you expect to find stereotypical ching-chongs and taco mexicans and allahu akbar arabs outside? Do you expect to find satyrs and centaurs and neverlands?
I spent some time in Sweden recently, and had my tiny kayak with me. Paddled around the island in the Baltic see that I stayed on. There was a tiny little island in its south, where there was some shade, so I paddled over there. Just before I made it to the shore, a deer slowly walked out of the shrubs. I stopped moving and let it pass. After it disappeared back into the woods, I turned back. Just felt wrong to interrupt the peace. It just wasn't my place. A few days later I went for a hike on "my" island and could see the small island just across the water. A motorboat was tied to the shore, loud party music blaring from mobile speakers and a boom box. It was that moment when I decided that some things should remain sacred in our world. Sacred not as in connection with any kind of religion or belief, but untouched by humans. I hope that I would have come to the same conclusion as Werner Herzog about the footage of that cave. This video really touched me. So thank you, Tom!
Ironically, I think that if we deliberately chose to leave some places "untouched by humanity" we probably still have a vision of how that looks. For example, if we decided that little island should remain untouched, what would we do if a meteorite struck it and everything started burning down? Stopping the fire means human intervention, but letting it burn destroys everything we value about that place. Would a burnt down rock with no life on it still remain "sacred"? Sacredness always feels conditional to human sensitivities and necessities.
This idea of the sacred being that which is “untouched by humans” seems to be itself an attitude that prevents human participation in the sacred no? Maybe I misunderstand
@@Lmaoh5150 untouched would not mean unseen, though. My idea is more about looking and truly seeing [edit: the thing] instead of touching, intervening and shaping things to our liking. Like one would look at the shadows of trees without trying to shape them.
This one made me cry. I wish that I possessed the eloquence to describe just how deeply I appreciate these penetrating, impeccably written and beautifully delivered essays. Soul food.
As a fellow 40-something year old man, this channel makes me cry all the time and I love it so much. His work--and the work of the filmmakers he discusses (esp. Terrence Malick)--feel sacred to me in my post-religious life, and I am so grateful.
Thank you for your willingness to publicly reject one of the stupidest gender norms imposed on people born with penises. Bonus points if you will also cry tears of joy or even mild sorrow publicly, regardless of the demographics of your immediate surroundings. Not only are you allowing yourself to be more fully human, you are helping to make space for other men to do the same. Much respect, internet stranger.
This was one of your best written scripts. 💙💙 The Painful Art Of Empathy was heartbreaking, almost too painful to get through, yet also beautiful to experience. This one, however, while having it's own moments of heartbreak, is truly inspirational. Thank you for the hard work you always put into your videos. ✌
@@sunilsolanki it's the one about The Last Of Us 2. I don't remember the proper title for it, but the Thumbnail title is "The Painful Art of Empathy". If you haven't already, just type that in with Like Stories of Old and it'll pop up. It's worth watching, for sure. 🙌
I watched this video three times today. I’m hopelessly addicted to UA-cam, scrolling for an embarrassing number of hours a day sometimes. I’ve never stumbled upon a video this profound. The way you describe the ever onward movement of the machine, with its bottomless - and maybe inevitable - need to demystify and thus apprehend everything into itself, and then the beautiful shift to juxtapose that with the sacred unknowable of the other, all while the score over the entire video matches the arc of your story, just wow. This video is a masterpiece, and in my humble opinion the clearest and most poignant exposition on our search for meaning that I have ever seen. Thank you for all your time and effort to share something so wonderful.
"No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith." R.A. Salvatore This quote from my favorite childhood author has followed me through my years.
Every circle begins with its end. 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind’s journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul’s fate revealed. In time, all points converge, hope’s strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe’s endless refrain, We must see all in nothingness... before we start again." 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ -- Diamond Dragons (book I)
But now other mysteries came in the place of older ones. We don’t have anymore answers today than we did 2500 years ago! We replaced old myths with new mysteries! Although yeah I’m not sure which world I would rather inhabit, let’s say on one side you have the Norse mythology and Valhalla and magic and gods who listen to you and all that or on the other side the poetic beauty of our real natural world as expressed by Carl Sagan and all of the infinite wonder and awe that goes into what we now know today. I think I prefer today but it’s hard to say. Life can still be magical today! Take mushrooms, write in your journal, manifest, be a powerful person, do cool shit, be in nature often!
And there may not be actual dragons 🐉 today but there are definitely metaphorical dragons we can still slay and if we do mushrooms or DMT or Ayahuasca we just may see a real one!
We must consider, the world has suffered enormously from those who call something sacred, holy, divine, and used this story to commit holy war, consider others non people or evil, and allow mass murder in its name. We rather need balance and wonder than prophets calling this sacred and that unholy or those calling everything stuff to be used or discarded. It's the mentality with which to live, not the story we choose.
I kinda don't get it. Or I used to get it but then lost it after reading up on how phone screens are actually built. Did you know that most smartphone screens in today's day and age are just liquid Crystals that then have electricity applied to them to then create the images you see on your screen. That might as well be magic.
The sacred and the unknown aren't lost. You yourself are the greatest unknown. Have you ever truly looked at your hand without thinking about it? Have you ever looked in the mirror without believing in a story about yourself? Have you ever touched a tree or stone or anything else without interpreting what's happening? If you can remain in the silence without force you might find a spark of the sacred, the true unknown, your true nature. Let that spark then guide you back again and again to the great silence. Let the silence consume you. Thanks again for another masterpiece! 🖤
I was listening to this while jogging, staring at the ground moving below me, focused on the next few steps. Every so often I would glance up into the distance to experience an illusion most people are probably familiar with. Everything far away seemed to be moving away from me. I won’t try to make a metaphor but it felt distinctly relevant to the message…
So, you feel it too. That trudge towards this inevitable downfall, and the desperate urge to wrap yourself around something, anything, anyone, in order to protect the very essence of what it is to be alive and love. It’s like an ache. Like we are bleeding. Some of us are thrashing in pain. Others are resigned to our own mortality. And some are struggling with the knowledge and contradiction in our heart; that need to keep going. I feel it too.
The Gore Verbinski Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is ironically, also a great example of a story about this. At World's End especially. The image of the dead Kraken, Jack and Barbossa's talk there, Beckett's relentless pursuit to paint every corner of the map and drain the world of its magic. The immaterial becoming immaterial.
This is why At World's End is the best of the trilogy. It has a depth to it that the first two movies do not. I wish LSOO would make a video on those themes in PotC
“Disenchantment” is the best word for what you’re talking about. It suggests the loss of, well, enchantment; loss of magic, mystification, wonder, awe, and so on. One of the only technics we have available to experience re-enchantment of our life-worlds are the “psychedelic” compounds and rituals.
@@SC-gw8np Absolutely. For me, personally, I need to take time to lose myself in the forest (whether on mushrooms or sober; doesn’t matter) as often as my schedule lets me. Too much time in Suburbia or the city tends to ravage my mental health.
Science and math tend to do that for me. A lot of people present it as “demystifying” and in some ways it is, but there’s a frontier in science, if not for humanity as a whole, then the individual. Math is a related, but separate topic.
It pretty well sums up that sinking feeling you get every time a film resurrects a dead actor or re-enacts a scene. It might give you a quick pop but like all tributes, you're celebrating something that is dead.
But we can assume that for kids of today, Jurassic World, Indiana Jones 5, Star Trek Discovery, The Acolyte, etc will be just as sacred for them as the originals were for us, can we not? Is it all just subjective perception or is there an objective difference of the content?
And I’m crying. I’ve been yearning for my childhood for the past few weeks. Not sure what triggered it, but it’s a very powerful, melancholy feeling. This video essay communicated my frustrations with adulthood and life as we know it. Thanks for this.
I highly recommend reading JRR Tolkiens ‘On Fairy Stories’, and as a follow up, listening to Tim Keller’s talk at Belhaven on the power of stories to provide meaning in a progressively meaningless world.
"Here, 2 hours can be occupied by a lifetime." One of the major things that makes movies so powerful for me too. So much to observe, feel and learn from.
Alberto Camus's existentialist thought made me find meaning in a world that just is.. not there because of some grand scheme but it just is and we have to find meaning. He doesn't belittle humans because they're a meaning finding machine in a inherently meaningless world but embraces it
Saying that the world is ‘inherently meaningless ‘ is giving meaning to the world. Then we go add another meaning because we don’t like the first one we have given it. Whether the world is meaningless or not is above my pay grade.
The purpose of life on earth is to secure the land from erosion by the demon sea. When the land is all washed a way life is over. Done. Incidentally was The Myth of Sysyphus inspired by Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box?
if u can watch this video without subjectively actually recognizing more than half of it is wrong or suspecting it... how can you define your 'innocence of youth' ???? just not thinking carefully mostly. w/e too much of these ... everyday everywhere all the time.
@@LoganChristianson I think the topic of the video opens up many lanes of experience of people and the individual of the 21st centruy. If you grew up pre 2000 you lived in a world where there was mystery in the future etc. which seems to many has been lost over the matureing of the informational revolution. In a similar way every child grows up an adult and realizes it can't go back behind the curtain of innocence. Thats some of the thoughts that came up. What do you think?
I feel that if we allow shareholders, CEO's, MBA's and the likes or authoritarians to slowly but ever so gradually turn us into cynical creatures like them, there indeed will be nothing sacred left. We need something that inspires and enables us to reach out, to make us genuinely connect. For that's where the sacred is, nowhere else.
Technology has trivialized connection between human societies and since we share no common culture money and finance have become the primary ways that societies measure and communicate value. One of the systemic effects of this is that things whose value can't be readily converted to monetary value end up being under-valued or ignored by society, specifically by people or firms whose main motivations are all monetary in nature, which can lead them to take actions that we see as negative when the real issue is that we value things other than money, but the systems in place don't account for anything but money.
Maybe I'm being overly idealistic, but I feel like most of the problems mentioned in this video can be explained by the capture of our world by the likes of the people you mention in your comment
This message hits me so profoundly, mostly due to the fact that I myself find many moments where I love to just exist and observe. As someone who wants to make deep, visceral, thematic films but hasn’t even produced full works or gotten exposed for anything really, I have this self deprecating, confused side of myself that wonders if my dreams are even substantial to exist in a world like this. Part of me has visions of just living out in a valley with a small community, away from the rat race and just be amongst them, not straining my mind. Yet the other side wants to ferociously grind towards my ambitions and dreams, no matter the sacrifices I have to make, because that’s where my goal lies. Perhaps I need to discover a balance, or perhaps I just need to make a choice, either way this video really made me feel seen. Thank you Thomas, all your videos are so insightful and mean a lot to me ❤️
Beautiful essay . I especially enjoyed the unique irony of shilling for nebula at the end by teasing me with a revelation about a particular unshowable death scene . Giving us such penetrating contemplations and then directing us to nebula . Simon Magus would truly be proud .
I would like you to know that your eloquent words, the majesty of the wordsmithery , the power of your delivery... Truly a balm for this twisted world. Thank you so very much for your videos.
It is almost uncanny how your beautiful essays slay through our hearts and souls with such artistry and humanity. I cannot even begin to imagine the hard work that goes into this. A billion thanks
Only 1/3 in but I'm shook. Your ability to weave these films and their themes together, while also presenting your own stript and insights, is top notch.
I think this is your best one yet, and that is saying A LOT. I truly love your channel, your deep dives into the numinous material in filmmaking is exceptional, your existential ruminations are inspiring, and your presentation is superb. Thanks for all your hard work, I hope it is as rewarding for you in making it as it is for us in experiencing it.
I have a 7 month old baby and one of the things that made me completely change my outlook on human beings, is seeing how he is a completely blank slate. We as parents will start filling that for him, we will give him the good and the bad biases and ideas. But in that natural state we are so simple and pure. I think the biggest tragedy of humanity is not death, it's the loss of innocence.
Boy do you have a lot to learn 😂 That child at 21 is going to be the same person that they were coming out of the womb. Watch carefully, respect their personhood, and you'll see it and thank me later.
Remember that the (sub)culture of your society will also fill him with its values and ideas. I think it's good to be exposed to stories that tell of other worlds. Through sci-fi, speculative fiction, fantasy and other works of art that dare to dream and explore other possibilities. Ursula Le Guin is my favorite author, she did that beautifully.
This is the first of your videos with which the algorithm has blessed me and I could not be more glad! So many thoughtfully chosen movies from so many movies that I know and love! Such an articulate encapsulation of our moment! If only there were resolution to the tension with which you leave us at the end! Only time will tell.
Movies and TV shows, science fiction most certainly, have been traditionally important in dramatizing boundaries. As well as all the consequences of disrespecting boundaries. Whether it's the Prime Directive in Star Trek or dangerous inventions like the A Bomb, it demands even more appreciation in a time when humanity is reaching a precipice. Thank you, Tom, for addressing this subject.
the magic of life can be reclaimed, I know because I've refound a lot of it in my life personally. I'm focusing on the trend continuing, and, god willing, it will
Not really one for commenting, but I wanted to reach out to you to say thank-you for making these videos. I am currently studying psychology in the Netherlands, and whenever I have a motivational dip I find myself naturally gravitating back towards your channel. Thank you for keeping me focused on the path. Ik kijk uit naar de volgende film.
“Too late did I love You! For behold, You were within, & I without, & there did I seek You; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty You made. You were with me, but I was not with You. Those things kept me far from You, which, unless they were in You, were not.” - Augustine of Hippo, whose feast is celebrated, fittingly, today.
We have no choice but to make the way forward meaningful and fulfilling, we can't go back so we have to have a future that is not so abrasive to the human spirit.
I think a lyric by Paul Simon best sums it up: "And so you see I have come to doubt All that I once held as true I stand alone without beliefs The only truth I know is you." Cathy's Song.
To me, this video reminded me of the "but tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther..." Of the "Great Gatsby", and the "Epilogue" of "Blood Meridian." I am in tears. Excellent video. Thank you.
this essay was deeply profound to me, of course, but also timely in an eerie manner. it hit home at a perfect time, when entropy was starting to make it claws feel sharper than the material into which it gouged. thank you for drawing attention to so many of the things that are worth keeping a bright mind open for. this absolutely rules. I will be watching it often.
I haven't watched this yet, I just wanted to mention that these videos always seem to get uploaded whenever I need them most; big thank you for the effort and love that goes into each and every one of these, they are incredible. ❤
Some of your greatest work! You articulate so sweetly that which plagues the soul for those who experience this life deeply and like a sensitive nerve ending on the face of this planet, grieve it.
I watched it on Nebula but came back to say: Your way of writing, speaking and editing always connects me to a part of myself which I can’t name and which I have only ever experienced in a similar fashion after being in a Buddhist monastery for two weeks. You make one feel closer to understanding the meaning of live on spiritual emotional level even though one wouldn’t be able to put it in rational words.
Just when I think I understand what he's trying to say in his video essays he branches off into further detail which leads me further astray from my initial thoughts leading me to have to rewind and rewatch. He's absolutely exceptional with his delivery and conceptually unmatched on UA-cam
I have not words to explain my greatfulness for your work. I don't know that I have ever been so moved to thought in a video ever before. You are a master.
I really appreciate that you didn’t focus on the idea of religion, and more on the ideas of wonder and “the sacred”. I’m not religious, as are several of my friends, and I’ve been told before that since I’m not religious I don’t have a purpose, or wonder, or am missing something fundamentally human. But my friends and I still have our wonders, our sacred rituals and special places that register the ideas you’ve discussed here, just as strongly.
@@rikiishitoru8885 Faith - complete trust in someone or something. Not synonymous with religion. You can use “Faith” in the context of religion - complete trust in someone or something - with the caveat, “without proof”. Faith for an Atheist might be faith in their partner, or their parents (again, complete trust), but it doesn’t NECESSARILY mean you don’t have proof for such faith…unlike religion.
@@Tennethums1 Adding the caveat assumes that proof is needed for belief. Equating faith with religion works just as well without that arbitrary addition you've conjured
After a very long time struggling with doubt, despair and melancholy, I think your video just helped me understand (or even remember) my passion, my so called purpose or even vocation. Time will tell.
This IS the biblical story of The Fall…humanity is asked to leave the Knowledge of Good and Evil alone, but they can’t help themselves, they take it, they claim it for themselves. Violating the one boundary, leaving nothing sacred. They are ashamed of what they’ve done, but there is no going back…
I love it when an aesthetically-obscure, yet etymologically-pragmatic new term drops into my lexicon. Hierophany. What a profound concept. That kicked some kind of gear in my internal philosophy. Gonna be turning it over for days.
Great video. I’m glad that more people are recognizing the need for re-enchantment. I love listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast and watching Jonathan Pageau’s channel, especially his Universal History series.
The assumption is that we cannot imagine meaning without the sacred, and that the sacred is something passed on and received -- not discovered. This is limiting, just as the assumption that stories based on knowledge is and can only be banal. Reason can be awesome. I remember the discovery of how something works, it could be anything! Curiosity rewarded is and can be meaningful. The old and passed on decays and stops being shared, making way for the new. Sometimes, the new is death.
Amazing. You hit the nail. I couldn’t watch movies or shows for a while, after noticing not in just movies and books but in just telling stories. what we choose to watch and believe. it happening now. ❤
This is one of your best videos yet🖤 I think it would benefit your viewers greatly if you included very small labels of the movies each scene is coming from. The label could be in the corner and would not detract at all from the video.
Thank you for the time you put in to make these videos. My enjoyment of them, sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightening, have been quite reflective of my own experience, synchronous beyond coincidence, and for that, I am grateful.,
Thank you, Tom, for this journey of reflection and insight, on a subject that sits at the core of our global unrest. There is no way back, as you rightly conclude. And the re-discovery, or re-definition of the missing Wonder and Sacredness of our human existence, may elude us forever. I hope not. And I hope we will collectively arrive at a new hierophany, long before we loose all means of cohesion. This essay sits at the top of your many, many thoughtful and generous creations. Thank you.
@@DsquareddysonWrong, at every level. If there is no "divine" to give our lives meaning -- nothing considered sacred because some Bronze Age goat-herder wrote that it was in some old book -- then we have the freedom to create meaning *for ourselves* . We define the sacred and we can focus that energy on what's actually true and real -- that human beings need *each other* more than we need dictates written down by people whose reality differed *profoundly* from our own.
I haven't visited for awhile now, and you've managed to find and dislodge yet another stone in my "civilized" heart, and bring me to tears once again. It seems we love and are fascinated by storytelling for the same reasons. It's good always to find that hearts of the same mind travel together. 💛
This video is Beautiful and very obviously transcends cinema but also reaches literature, culture, the spiritual, etc. I immediately sent this to friends and family. Thank you so very much for this profound analysis and mesmerizing piece of the grander potential for art in all its beauty.
It feels like that scientific knowledge has stripped the world of its mystery and magic. But if we're honest, couldn't we argue the opposite? Our ancestors had their magic and sacred rituals, but they also had simple explanations for everything. Their world was neatly explained by myths and stories that offered comforting answers. Today, while we no longer believe in those ancient stories because they don't align with our current understanding, but what we've discovered about the universe is far more mysterious and unsettling than anyone could have imagined. Despite all our scientific advancements, we still can't explain our deepest questions, asked for thousands of years. The great philosophical inquiries of the past are still largely unanswered and probably will remain unanswered for a long time if not forever. We're just a tiny speck on a small rock in an infinite universe, with no idea of why we're here or what it all means. Perhaps that's why we long for the sacred-because it offers us the answers we still crave in the face of an ever-expanding and enigmatic cosmos.
The irony is that scientific materialism is inherently predicated on there being immaterialistic patterns which govern the behavior of physical substances and forces. There's a reason science started within the church. The church saw natural revelation as an exploration of Heaven; the patterns of creation. Our great mistake is that we made a Faustian bargain with modernism and traded away all of our meaning for prosperity and efficiency which made us materially successful but spiritually dead. People are waking up to this now though; post-modernism opened up the potential for a return to meaning-making structures again.
@@brianj7281 people are "waking up" because there is a big plan of defounding education, we are seeing more kids becoming religious extremis (see the increase of content creator becoming Muslim) because we are becoming lazy, we want simple answear even thought we know the world is much more complicate, you talk about nothing, also, science didn't start with the Church, science was a thing created in various places at different times, we can argue that Gallieo (wich literally invented the Foundation of modern science, wich is the scientific method) didn't certainly worked with and for the Church... also, scientific development happened in religious enviroment because those where the place where knowledge was preserved, it is true that the exploration of nature to understand the higher plane of existence (aka paradise) was a prerogative of various religious entity, but we shouldn't forget that those entity also activly ignorend, modified, and critiqued data that contraddicted the scritpture in a way they where not interpretabile in any way. in any case, we are spiritual, or more precisely, we are inheritaly Faith oriented, because thats howour brain work, even thought we live in a scientistic society we still are very Faith based, we pose Faith in basically everything because we are in fact NOT expert in everything, its just that we have to accept that the grate meaning that we like to Think of is an antropocentrica View of our existence given by our evolutionary history
@@brianj7281 Any meaning obtained through superstition and faith is meaningless. Dragging society and culture back to a time where it was more divorced from reality is not the way forward.
@@Ammiragliosalvatorefortissimo if you think kids are becoming religious extremists simply because of less education, you are completely naive. Reminder that many of the 9/11 hijackers were Western educated Muslims. Despite the ultimate secular education, they still decided that crashing planes into buildings was far more important than anything the materialist world had to offer. The turn to religion is because secularism provides no narrative and no telos by which one can lead a meaningful life. Combined with the associated community, religion provides an individual a place to stand within a family of other believers who are also participating in the Heroic Narrative. Modernism and science cannot deduce morality or ethics. It provides no grand narrative outside of, at best, a telos of efficiency. If you dare say it's about "uncovering the mysteries of the Universe" you sound no different than a religious believer saying they uncover the mysteries of God. Efficiency doesn't motivate people to die for their beliefs but the calling of the Father does. In terms of science, yes natural philosophy has been around as long as humans have learned from and manipulated their surroundings but as you said, Galileo created modern science via deduction of the scientific method. Now you can try to argue that was outside of the church but the facts are what they are: he worked at a Catholic university, had the Pope as one of his patrons and was asked to argue heliocentrism to church leadership. The church didn't agree but there are many scientific hypotheses which aren't agreed upon which doesn't mean we think the disagreeing audience didn't believe in science. Einstein famously didn't believe in quantum mechanics ("God doesn't roll dice") but that doesn't make Einstein any less of a scientist. Also, in terms of fabricating and modifying data to meet results? That happens today within science all of the time which is why nearly every journal has a retractions and response section where criticism and accusation of incorrect methods can be argued of dubious results. So no, the church wasn't opposed to science. They may not have agreed with Galileo, but that doesn't mean they were any different from other science institutions. Yes we are all faith oriented because as you say, we don't know everything. We all have faith that science is correct as we rely on it to help us everyday as we examine the physical world. Even deeper, I have faith the scientific method itself, something I can't touch or see, is Real. Science cannot prove the scientific method so we accept it purely on faith and the results it produces. By that same token, many religious people have their lives positively changed by religion and accept a belief in God because of the results it produces. "But religion is harmful and hateful and kills people!!" How many tools of destruction and death have been developed using the scientific method? If you blame religion for some of the results it produces, you must do the same with science. My ultimate criticism of modernism (science) is that ultimately it provides no telos or eschatology. That's why "follow the science" was such a disingenuous phrase to use during the pandemic. Science has no direction and ultimately is a slave to the investigator. You can use science to prove how to keep someone alive the longest and use science to prove how to kill someone as quickly as possible. Combined with science's tendency to institutionalize and subvert truth claims when it interferes with power, proves to me that post-modernism's critique of it as being yet another power structure has merit. So if we know power structures are real no matter what and that human being require faith and meaning to operate, religion is the only psychotechnology we have to address it. Thank you for engaging.
I especially resonated with the part about how the wisdom is no longer linear and instead the cycle is circular. I have thought often how nice it would be to live in a time where things between generations aren’t being reinvented. So much in this video. I will need to watch again.
I am old enough to understand that this feeling has been around forever and is expressed in different ways. A little over a hundred years ago the world burned and men died in the millions. A generation later that death was dwarfed by another world war which introduced industrialized murder. A generation later saw the cultural destruction of western civilization in a seismic disruption of the status quo. During each of these times and more there was a melancholic despair for loss. But life finds a way
"Life finds a way". Really? I think life's struggling pretty bad from the intensification of the activities of the Industrial Death Machine as it continues it's warpath of destruction into the future. If we do not resist it then Life won't find a way, it will be destroyed.
That's what's truly different about our times. The west is being rapidly destroyed (from within, at the hands of sinister forces we're only just beginning to understand), marking the end of an age - the end of 500+ years of relative intellectual, cultural and material prosperity - and marking the beginning of a new age. And the outlook for this new age seems to be prettyyy grim, ngl
I’ve become averse to so much of the video essay format that I rarely click on them anymore. But this is far more than a mere essay. I appreciate the depth and consideration that went into this. You’ve pulled patterns together to create a sense of unity. Thank you.
I was thinking who to quote here in the comments to sound insightful, but then I said f*** it. All I wanted to say is that this was a very good watch. Made me think. Thank you.
No one owes us anything. Which means every meaningful moment with another person is a miracle. Being alive and having others to be changed by and to change, to be touched by and to touch, to calm us and to calm them. Imagine seeing a child come to be and not seeing the sacred?
Having a child - birthing one from my body! - is the most sacred thing I've done, for sure. The act itself, the way you re-experience the world with them and through them...I'm sad so many people choose not to experience it.
@@franug I can only imagine the profundity of what you experienced. I’m lucky enough to have a partner that can express a lot of what she’s lived. And she told me that being pregnant is, in many ways, a reflection of being a baby. The moments of helplessness, the moments of loss of independence, the overwhelming emotions, the fickle relationship to taste and touch and textures…they are all like a baby. She sees it as the brain getting ready to be kind to the new person coming.
It’s the cycle of a golden age eclipsed by Gothic Horror, which, when it collapses and loses hope, gives way to Cosmic Horror, which, when faced head-on, downspirals into Existential Horror.
I honestly don't understand how it happens, that you make videos which almost always seem to land squarely into a perspective of the current times that I am feeling and experiencing, but can't really articulate. And yet, you keep doing it! I am so grateful to you for how thoroughly and deeply and incredibly thoughtfully you make your videos!! I tell people about your channel and how meaningful your videos are, because I hope that others can benefit from all that you make, but also because I know that the more visits and views you get, the more you're able to make videos! Thank you so much for continuing to share your voice, and dig deeply into the core humanity and organismal experience of life itself, through the movies and shows that are willing to dig as deeply as you, into some semblance of of whatever core truth of existence we seek that continues to illude us. That Green mofo has NOTHING on you!! 😅
@@TKGoose Sure, sure...just be more careful next time. Identity theft is a real problem...as are people who can't infer context or additional meanings by reading between the lines. It's a common issue with people on the spectrum. "Context blindness" is how my cousin terms it.
It is very rare to watch a video where you can't allow your attention to stray even for seconds, because it would mean to lose valuable content. It's also very rare to watch a video in which you are immediately immersed in awe and fascination, eager for what's yet to come and knowing you won't be disappointed. This video is one of those.
I don't think there's a better representation of this concept than the first paragraph of H.P. Lovecraft's unfinished story 'Azathoth'. - "When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of spring’s flowering meads; when learning stripped earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward-looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone away forever, there was a man who travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled."
I love your work mate, its sticks in my mind always, your voice and the ambience of your editing, Its almost Mailck like. I lived on a peaceful protest camp and fought fracking, many of the days where awful and surreal, combatative where it should have been anything but, I discovered your work then, I think I first watched your work regarding Interstellar, that background soundtrack haunted me nightly. We didnt have electric, we had very little solar power so being able to get enough power to use a phone and watch your work was a privelege. Your work kept me going night after night. It was a tough time and your work was able to remove me from it nightly and bring me to a place of movies and your analysis was vital and very profound and met me in a place that made so much sense in an environment of confusion. We caged ourselves with freedom to para phrase you.
What you describe is closely related to the insightful analysis found in the multi-part video course (here on UA-cam) "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis", by John Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist and philosopher at the U of Toronto. He discusses among many other things the cognitive role of and possibilities for the sacred in the current, cartesian view of a continuous, physical universe, a view that assumes the non-existence of the metaphysical.
This video is really best viewed on Nebula, where I uploaded, as I always do, a unique cut of the video without a sponsored segment for a pure, ad-free experience. It also gives you instant access to exclusive content, and because a significant portion of your subscription goes directly to me, you're even supporting the channel too! Be sure to use my link for 40% off an annual subscription: nebula.tv/lsoo
Watch my exclusive video "The One Death Scene that Haunts My Soul": nebula.tv/videos/lsoo-the-one-death-scene-that-haunts-my-soul
Dangerous ideologies can arise at this time communism was defeated but now trans humanism is in the pipeline.
The materialists are clueless,in higher ages they were employed in sweeping the streets. In this material age they occupy the seats of power in all disciplines. Try to have a conversation with them on a higher level it is not going to work as they cannot comprehend and see all except matter and describe it in their favorite word: Woo.
For them all that is not matter, which they understand; matter is their god, all else is described by them as: Woo.
I honestly don't understand how it happens, that you make videos which almost always seem to land squarely into a perspective of the current times that I am feeling and experiencing, but can't really articulate. And yet, you keep doing it! I am so grateful to you for how thoroughly and deeply and incredibly thoughtfully you make your videos!!
I tell people about your channel and how meaningful your videos are, because I hope that others can benefit from all that you make, but also because I know that the more visits and views you get, the more you're able to make videos! Thank you so much for continuing to share your voice, and dig deeply into the core humanity and organismal experience of life itself, through the movies and shows that are willing to dig as deeply as you, into some semblance of of whatever core truth of existence we seek that continues to illude us.
That Green mofo has NOTHING on you!! 😅
There is no 'I' behind this dime-a-dozen counterfeit, only 'AI.' Go away.
The deafening Burger King ad interrupting you mid sentence only helps highlight your point.
Ad blockers are a wonderful thing.
I had a great idea the other day. What if instead of ads they had to run useful beneficial tips or true facts about the product. It could show a product referencing the beneficial tip, but only if it was accredited. i.e. no world's greatest hotdog, but highest produced commercially sold hotdog. etc. if it couldn't be described as beneficial it would be classified as novelty and you would have to seek out goofy, cheap crap that shouldn't be purchased very often or by many people for any reason to the staggering waste produced by unwanted and unneeded items.
Keep in mind that midroll ads only play if the youtuber puts them there.
Genuinely don't understand why a sane person would subject themselves to advertising.
Can the Whopper resist cheese or is lactose an inevitability?
Ah jeez, my soulmate and love of my life tragically passed away from an accident less than two months ago. In the blink of an eye I went from having a life full of love, true acceptance, and belonging with another person and the prospect of spending a lifetime discovering the world with them, to having nothing. The prospect of being a father to children with this person was what transformed my entire mindset, she opened my eyes to what life could be and now she's gone. I didn't expect this video to hit so close to home, but whoo boy this activated the water works hardcore. The search for meaning in life and a reason to keep going after having experienced true love is so devastating-there was not a chance we weren't spending the rest of our lives together-I just dont know how to move forward. She always told me if anything happened I have to keep going, but she saved my life so many times and to have to live the rest of it without her is something that feels so cruel and I really don't know how to live with this feeling in my heart and soul. I miss you Habiba all I want is to be re-united with you no matter how long it takes, i'll love you forever.
Beautiful,, amazing, captivating video. Touching on the very fabric of humanity in a very real way you hardly see on here.
Stay strong man. I can’t imagine the pain you are feeling, but that deep pain is life itself. The pain will fade and you’ll be able to look back on those memories as sacred. You two were privileged to have each other by the sounds of it. Take care and reach out to those around you.
Wow! I felt that deeply 😪
That must be very difficult, I'm sorry you're going through that.
I’m so sorry.
Peace with you, man.
You have the strength to move forward.
The hope you are so eloquently describing in this wonderful essay is what Charles Eisenstein calls: "The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible."
Every circle begins with its end.
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
"Before I start, I must see my end.
Destination known, my mind’s journey now begins.
Upon my chariot, heart and soul’s fate revealed.
In time, all points converge, hope’s strength resteeled.
But to earn final peace at the universe’s endless refrain,
We must see all in nothingness... before we start again."
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
-- Diamond Dragons (book I)
Charles Eisenstein, Zak Bush, Satish Kumar, beautiful minds that bridge a glimmer of heaven to earth through their words of wisdom.
#solarpunk
#thevenusproject
So does every rectangle, ellipse, triangle, etc. Nothing particularly profound about a circle in that regard.
"The world used to be a bigger place."-Hector Barbosa
""The world's the same size it always was...there's just...less in it."-Jack Sparrow
They are both right.
@@InsanitysApex If it is true that the world is getting smaller and emptier, then there is nothing important to find outside of home. It's all the same. The internet is the same. Social Media is the same. Nothing to discover, the same stuff everywhere. There is no curiosity anymore.
@@InsanitysApexwhat a tragedy not living up to your expectations. Some folks don't need to travel to live a full life.
@@heiker1351 yeah, so surprisingly every human being has many similarities and the world is not much different. So? Do you expect to find stereotypical ching-chongs and taco mexicans and allahu akbar arabs outside? Do you expect to find satyrs and centaurs and neverlands?
@@InsanitysApex That's just blatantly not true anymore with the conflicts forcing refugees around.
“It’s not the grail we want, but to journey towards
our longing. We want to find the tomb empty.” -Traci Brimhall, “Sans Terre”
beautiful quote
Nice quote, Double D
“The truth doesn’t require our participation in order to exist, bullshit does.” - Terrence Mckenna
Like the so called 'pandemic' few years ago?
Best comment of 2024
Fucking best comment of the century ❤❤❤❤
Without participation, how is it possible to know truth, or for that matter, anything exists?
Participation and observation are not the same thing
I spent some time in Sweden recently, and had my tiny kayak with me. Paddled around the island in the Baltic see that I stayed on. There was a tiny little island in its south, where there was some shade, so I paddled over there. Just before I made it to the shore, a deer slowly walked out of the shrubs. I stopped moving and let it pass. After it disappeared back into the woods, I turned back. Just felt wrong to interrupt the peace. It just wasn't my place. A few days later I went for a hike on "my" island and could see the small island just across the water. A motorboat was tied to the shore, loud party music blaring from mobile speakers and a boom box. It was that moment when I decided that some things should remain sacred in our world. Sacred not as in connection with any kind of religion or belief, but untouched by humans. I hope that I would have come to the same conclusion as Werner Herzog about the footage of that cave. This video really touched me. So thank you, Tom!
Those revelers whether aware or not, were recreating a ritual thousands of years old themselves.
Ironically, I think that if we deliberately chose to leave some places "untouched by humanity" we probably still have a vision of how that looks. For example, if we decided that little island should remain untouched, what would we do if a meteorite struck it and everything started burning down? Stopping the fire means human intervention, but letting it burn destroys everything we value about that place. Would a burnt down rock with no life on it still remain "sacred"?
Sacredness always feels conditional to human sensitivities and necessities.
This idea of the sacred being that which is “untouched by humans” seems to be itself an attitude that prevents human participation in the sacred no? Maybe I misunderstand
@@Lmaoh5150 untouched would not mean unseen, though. My idea is more about looking and truly seeing [edit: the thing] instead of touching, intervening and shaping things to our liking. Like one would look at the shadows of trees without trying to shape them.
@@BadNessie Ahhh I see. That makes more sense
This one made me cry. I wish that I possessed the eloquence to describe just how deeply I appreciate these penetrating, impeccably written and beautifully delivered essays. Soul food.
Titanic made me cry too 😂😂😂
There’s definitely something cathartic about being a 40-something year old man and having the freedom to shed some tears while enjoying your videos.
You’re not alone
As a fellow 40-something year old man, this channel makes me cry all the time and I love it so much. His work--and the work of the filmmakers he discusses (esp. Terrence Malick)--feel sacred to me in my post-religious life, and I am so grateful.
Thank you for your willingness to publicly reject one of the stupidest gender norms imposed on people born with penises. Bonus points if you will also cry tears of joy or even mild sorrow publicly, regardless of the demographics of your immediate surroundings. Not only are you allowing yourself to be more fully human, you are helping to make space for other men to do the same. Much respect, internet stranger.
Yup, 43, enjoy crying to these videos, lol :)
@@systemsandhowtodestroythem474 watch Good Omens; the end of the second season left me reduced to a quivering ball of snot
This was one of your best written scripts. 💙💙
The Painful Art Of Empathy was heartbreaking, almost too painful to get through, yet also beautiful to experience.
This one, however, while having it's own moments of heartbreak, is truly inspirational.
Thank you for the hard work you always put into your videos. ✌
I must agree. This is one of your greatest scripts. You write and argue beautifully.
Yeah videos like this is why I subscribe to their patreon, cuz no one else is doing this.
Your videos re-enchant the world.
🌏
Which one was that?? I might have missed it!
@@sunilsolanki it's the one about The Last Of Us 2. I don't remember the proper title for it, but the Thumbnail title is "The Painful Art of Empathy".
If you haven't already, just type that in with Like Stories of Old and it'll pop up. It's worth watching, for sure. 🙌
I watched this video three times today. I’m hopelessly addicted to UA-cam, scrolling for an embarrassing number of hours a day sometimes. I’ve never stumbled upon a video this profound. The way you describe the ever onward movement of the machine, with its bottomless - and maybe inevitable - need to demystify and thus apprehend everything into itself, and then the beautiful shift to juxtapose that with the sacred unknowable of the other, all while the score over the entire video matches the arc of your story, just wow. This video is a masterpiece, and in my humble opinion the clearest and most poignant exposition on our search for meaning that I have ever seen. Thank you for all your time and effort to share something so wonderful.
Wtf? lol
"No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith."
R.A. Salvatore
This quote from my favorite childhood author has followed me through my years.
Every circle begins with its end.
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
"Before I start, I must see my end.
Destination known, my mind’s journey now begins.
Upon my chariot, heart and soul’s fate revealed.
In time, all points converge, hope’s strength resteeled.
But to earn final peace at the universe’s endless refrain,
We must see all in nothingness... before we start again."
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
-- Diamond Dragons (book I)
But now other mysteries came in the place of older ones. We don’t have anymore answers today than we did 2500 years ago! We replaced old myths with new mysteries! Although yeah I’m not sure which world I would rather inhabit, let’s say on one side you have the Norse mythology and Valhalla and magic and gods who listen to you and all that or on the other side the poetic beauty of our real natural world as expressed by Carl Sagan and all of the infinite wonder and awe that goes into what we now know today. I think I prefer today but it’s hard to say. Life can still be magical today! Take mushrooms, write in your journal, manifest, be a powerful person, do cool shit, be in nature often!
And there may not be actual dragons 🐉 today but there are definitely metaphorical dragons we can still slay and if we do mushrooms or DMT or Ayahuasca we just may see a real one!
We must consider, the world has suffered enormously from those who call something sacred, holy, divine, and used this story to commit holy war, consider others non people or evil, and allow mass murder in its name. We rather need balance and wonder than prophets calling this sacred and that unholy or those calling everything stuff to be used or discarded. It's the mentality with which to live, not the story we choose.
I kinda don't get it. Or I used to get it but then lost it after reading up on how phone screens are actually built. Did you know that most smartphone screens in today's day and age are just liquid Crystals that then have electricity applied to them to then create the images you see on your screen.
That might as well be magic.
The sacred and the unknown aren't lost. You yourself are the greatest unknown. Have you ever truly looked at your hand without thinking about it? Have you ever looked in the mirror without believing in a story about yourself? Have you ever touched a tree or stone or anything else without interpreting what's happening? If you can remain in the silence without force you might find a spark of the sacred, the true unknown, your true nature. Let that spark then guide you back again and again to the great silence. Let the silence consume you.
Thanks again for another masterpiece!
🖤
well said =]
@@CYI3ERPUNK Thanks :)
on mushrooms
@@360.Tapestry You can tap into that with mushrooms, correct. But I'm talking about everyday consciousness.
The bomb is us. The bomb is Atom. And thus, we are Atom -- awaiting the day in which each of us gives birth to a trillion new lives.
I was listening to this while jogging, staring at the ground moving below me, focused on the next few steps. Every so often I would glance up into the distance to experience an illusion most people are probably familiar with. Everything far away seemed to be moving away from me. I won’t try to make a metaphor but it felt distinctly relevant to the message…
So, you feel it too. That trudge towards this inevitable downfall, and the desperate urge to wrap yourself around something, anything, anyone, in order to protect the very essence of what it is to be alive and love.
It’s like an ache. Like we are bleeding. Some of us are thrashing in pain. Others are resigned to our own mortality. And some are struggling with the knowledge and contradiction in our heart; that need to keep going.
I feel it too.
Knight of Resignation, a la Søren Kierkegaard.
I can't go 'full Stoic,' and would never want to. This is as close as we get.
I feel different, like we haven't even reached the golden age yet, were still in the dark ages.
People have “felt” this way for longer than recorded history. If any of them were right the world should have ended thousands of years ago.
The Gore Verbinski Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is ironically, also a great example of a story about this. At World's End especially. The image of the dead Kraken, Jack and Barbossa's talk there, Beckett's relentless pursuit to paint every corner of the map and drain the world of its magic. The immaterial becoming immaterial.
'..just less in it'
and just like Beckett, they refused to leave it be and desecrated the trilogy.
This is why At World's End is the best of the trilogy. It has a depth to it that the first two movies do not. I wish LSOO would make a video on those themes in PotC
Man, I love this channel.
Same
Same
💯
It's crazy to think he puts this amazing art together and just gives it out for free. Something truly rare these days.
Came to say the same thing.
“Disenchantment” is the best word for what you’re talking about. It suggests the loss of, well, enchantment; loss of magic, mystification, wonder, awe, and so on. One of the only technics we have available to experience re-enchantment of our life-worlds are the “psychedelic” compounds and rituals.
Yes, nice point. Spending time in nature without regard for time is another way to induce wonder and awe in oneself.😃
@@SC-gw8np Absolutely. For me, personally, I need to take time to lose myself in the forest (whether on mushrooms or sober; doesn’t matter) as often as my schedule lets me. Too much time in Suburbia or the city tends to ravage my mental health.
Science and math tend to do that for me. A lot of people present it as “demystifying” and in some ways it is, but there’s a frontier in science, if not for humanity as a whole, then the individual.
Math is a related, but separate topic.
You are right, taking shrooms or something like it will take you in a completely new and magical world that one cannot simply imagine!
"Desecration through veneration." Good golly, that's it. That's the time we live in.
It pretty well sums up that sinking feeling you get every time a film resurrects a dead actor or re-enacts a scene. It might give you a quick pop but like all tributes, you're celebrating something that is dead.
@@hogpsking33 “Man, at his most basic, is a bag of shit” General Georgi Zhukov
But we can assume that for kids of today, Jurassic World, Indiana Jones 5, Star Trek Discovery, The Acolyte, etc will be just as sacred for them as the originals were for us, can we not? Is it all just subjective perception or is there an objective difference of the content?
@@allocater2no cause everyone knows it's trash. It's a product. It's missing that special vibe.
@@lovecraftianguy9555 Will 10 year olds really notice that? Jurassic World makes money, so not even adults notice it apparently.
And I’m crying. I’ve been yearning for my childhood for the past few weeks. Not sure what triggered it, but it’s a very powerful, melancholy feeling. This video essay communicated my frustrations with adulthood and life as we know it. Thanks for this.
I highly recommend reading JRR Tolkiens ‘On Fairy Stories’, and as a follow up, listening to Tim Keller’s talk at Belhaven on the power of stories to provide meaning in a progressively meaningless world.
Thank you I'm going to do that.
Keller mentioned!
"Here, 2 hours can be occupied by a lifetime." One of the major things that makes movies so powerful for me too. So much to observe, feel and learn from.
This video ties in so well with your "King, Lover, Magician, Warrior" series, especially the Magician. Thank you LSOO
Was about to say!
Damn, "All nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.” you are one hell of a wordsmithe
Alberto Camus's existentialist thought made me find meaning in a world that just is.. not there because of some grand scheme but it just is and we have to find meaning. He doesn't belittle humans because they're a meaning finding machine in a inherently meaningless world but embraces it
Camus was a narcissist who didn't solve the labyrinth of meaning; only indulged himself in the excesses of abandoning it. Not accepting it.
Saying that the world is ‘inherently meaningless ‘ is giving meaning to the world. Then we go add another meaning because we don’t like the first one we have given it.
Whether the world is meaningless or not is above my pay grade.
The purpose of life on earth is to secure the land from erosion by the demon sea. When the land is all washed a way life is over. Done.
Incidentally was The Myth of Sysyphus inspired by Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box?
@@perambulate1 life in the sea is of no matter?
@@perambulate1 Team Magma forever!
This is the pressing truth of not being able of stepping back behind the innocence of youth
You can only do so by having children.
Expound upon what you mean. I don't follow what you're trying to say.
As an adult you have to confront everything directly yourself, without the innocence of childhood. (I believe this is what he meant)
if u can watch this video without subjectively actually recognizing more than half of it is wrong or suspecting it... how can you define your 'innocence of youth' ???? just not thinking carefully mostly. w/e too much of these ... everyday everywhere all the time.
@@LoganChristianson I think the topic of the video opens up many lanes of experience of people and the individual of the 21st centruy. If you grew up pre 2000 you lived in a world where there was mystery in the future etc. which seems to many has been lost over the matureing of the informational revolution. In a similar way every child grows up an adult and realizes it can't go back behind the curtain of innocence. Thats some of the thoughts that came up. What do you think?
I feel that if we allow shareholders, CEO's, MBA's and the likes or authoritarians to slowly but ever so gradually turn us into cynical creatures like them, there indeed will be nothing sacred left. We need something that inspires and enables us to reach out, to make us genuinely connect. For that's where the sacred is, nowhere else.
Indeed. Relations are all there are.
Technology has trivialized connection between human societies and since we share no common culture money and finance have become the primary ways that societies measure and communicate value. One of the systemic effects of this is that things whose value can't be readily converted to monetary value end up being under-valued or ignored by society, specifically by people or firms whose main motivations are all monetary in nature, which can lead them to take actions that we see as negative when the real issue is that we value things other than money, but the systems in place don't account for anything but money.
We will find that, but the search cannot start as long as those mentioned have a hold on human society.
Quit waiting for permission and stop participating
Maybe I'm being overly idealistic, but I feel like most of the problems mentioned in this video can be explained by the capture of our world by the likes of the people you mention in your comment
This message hits me so profoundly, mostly due to the fact that I myself find many moments where I love to just exist and observe. As someone who wants to make deep, visceral, thematic films but hasn’t even produced full works or gotten exposed for anything really, I have this self deprecating, confused side of myself that wonders if my dreams are even substantial to exist in a world like this. Part of me has visions of just living out in a valley with a small community, away from the rat race and just be amongst them, not straining my mind. Yet the other side wants to ferociously grind towards my ambitions and dreams, no matter the sacrifices I have to make, because that’s where my goal lies. Perhaps I need to discover a balance, or perhaps I just need to make a choice, either way this video really made me feel seen. Thank you Thomas, all your videos are so insightful and mean a lot to me ❤️
Beautiful essay . I especially enjoyed the unique irony of shilling for nebula at the end by teasing me with a revelation about a particular unshowable death scene . Giving us such penetrating contemplations and then directing us to nebula . Simon Magus would truly be proud .
I would like you to know that your eloquent words, the majesty of the wordsmithery , the power of your delivery... Truly a balm for this twisted world. Thank you so very much for your videos.
It is almost uncanny how your beautiful essays slay through our hearts and souls with such artistry and humanity. I cannot even begin to imagine the hard work that goes into this. A billion thanks
Only 1/3 in but I'm shook. Your ability to weave these films and their themes together, while also presenting your own stript and insights, is top notch.
I think this is your best one yet, and that is saying A LOT. I truly love your channel, your deep dives into the numinous material in filmmaking is exceptional, your existential ruminations are inspiring, and your presentation is superb. Thanks for all your hard work, I hope it is as rewarding for you in making it as it is for us in experiencing it.
I have a 7 month old baby and one of the things that made me completely change my outlook on human beings, is seeing how he is a completely blank slate. We as parents will start filling that for him, we will give him the good and the bad biases and ideas. But in that natural state we are so simple and pure. I think the biggest tragedy of humanity is not death, it's the loss of innocence.
Boy do you have a lot to learn 😂
That child at 21 is going to be the same person that they were coming out of the womb.
Watch carefully, respect their personhood, and you'll see it and thank me later.
Remember that the (sub)culture of your society will also fill him with its values and ideas. I think it's good to be exposed to stories that tell of other worlds. Through sci-fi, speculative fiction, fantasy and other works of art that dare to dream and explore other possibilities. Ursula Le Guin is my favorite author, she did that beautifully.
@@LongDefiantthis ^^
If you fear losing innocence, then don't read about behavioral genetics. Because wow, are you wrong.
@@ximono^this, and thank you _also_ for walking away from Omelas.
This is the first of your videos with which the algorithm has blessed me and I could not be more glad! So many thoughtfully chosen movies from so many movies that I know and love! Such an articulate encapsulation of our moment! If only there were resolution to the tension with which you leave us at the end! Only time will tell.
"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."
Movies and TV shows, science fiction most certainly, have been traditionally important in dramatizing boundaries. As well as all the consequences of disrespecting boundaries. Whether it's the Prime Directive in Star Trek or dangerous inventions like the A Bomb, it demands even more appreciation in a time when humanity is reaching a precipice. Thank you, Tom, for addressing this subject.
All of these are about the horror of knowing. That's an unexplored subgenre: the horror of knowing and being helpless to stop it.
Not just knowing. It's knowing without wisdom. Knowledge alone is an unstoppable force, it needs wisdom to moderate it.
trapped in the fabric of spacetime... surrender
That's the horror I live in, I know there's nothing I can do, I won't make it to my mid life crisis before the climate wipes us all out
@@Dexter037S4lol, you don't know shit.
Its not as unexplored a subgenre as you might think, what you described is at the core of cosmic horror such as the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
the magic of life can be reclaimed, I know because I've refound a lot of it in my life personally. I'm focusing on the trend continuing, and, god willing, it will
Always look forward to your new creations. Thank you.
Not really one for commenting, but I wanted to reach out to you to say thank-you for making these videos. I am currently studying psychology in the Netherlands, and whenever I have a motivational dip I find myself naturally gravitating back towards your channel. Thank you for keeping me focused on the path. Ik kijk uit naar de volgende film.
“Too late did I love You! For behold, You were within, & I without, & there did I seek You; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty You made. You were with me, but I was not with You. Those things kept me far from You, which, unless they were in You, were not.” - Augustine of Hippo, whose feast is celebrated, fittingly, today.
As a former atheist materialist slowly descending into nihilism, I can relate.
We have no choice but to make the way forward meaningful and fulfilling, we can't go back so we have to have a future that is not so abrasive to the human spirit.
I think a lyric by Paul Simon best sums it up:
"And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you."
Cathy's Song.
To me, this video reminded me of the "but tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther..." Of the "Great Gatsby", and the "Epilogue" of "Blood Meridian." I am in tears. Excellent video. Thank you.
You do a great service to all the world with your videos.
This was freaking beautiful and actually helped me realize ANOTHER reason for why I love cinema so much
Wow, fantastically written and beautifully human. Thank you for making this
this essay was deeply profound to me, of course, but also timely in an eerie manner. it hit home at a perfect time, when entropy was starting to make it claws feel sharper than the material into which it gouged. thank you for drawing attention to so many of the things that are worth keeping a bright mind open for. this absolutely rules. I will be watching it often.
I haven't watched this yet, I just wanted to mention that these videos always seem to get uploaded whenever I need them most; big thank you for the effort and love that goes into each and every one of these, they are incredible. ❤
Some of your greatest work! You articulate so sweetly that which plagues the soul for those who experience this life deeply and like a sensitive nerve ending on the face of this planet, grieve it.
One of my favorite channels ever. Cheers from Brazil
I watched it on Nebula but came back to say: Your way of writing, speaking and editing always connects me to a part of myself which I can’t name and which I have only ever experienced in a similar fashion after being in a Buddhist monastery for two weeks. You make one feel closer to understanding the meaning of live on spiritual emotional level even though one wouldn’t be able to put it in rational words.
This is exactly what I appreciate about your work! Excellent!
Just when I think I understand what he's trying to say in his video essays he branches off into further detail which leads me further astray from my initial thoughts leading me to have to rewind and rewatch. He's absolutely exceptional with his delivery and conceptually unmatched on UA-cam
The mention of Alien Romulus hits the nail on the head. If hit had no call backs, it would be a great movie that stands on its own
Great is a stretch so big my groin hurts only thinking about it.
I thought Romulus was terrible
Perhaps it is time to retire all the many franchises and enjoy the good films which we already have and let the rest go.
I have not words to explain my greatfulness for your work. I don't know that I have ever been so moved to thought in a video ever before. You are a master.
I really appreciate that you didn’t focus on the idea of religion, and more on the ideas of wonder and “the sacred”.
I’m not religious, as are several of my friends, and I’ve been told before that since I’m not religious I don’t have a purpose, or wonder, or am missing something fundamentally human. But my friends and I still have our wonders, our sacred rituals and special places that register the ideas you’ve discussed here, just as strongly.
Atheists will never know the wonder of having faith
@@rikiishitoru8885 Faith isn’t synonymous with religion. Stop trying to hijack it.
@@Tennethums1 Yes it is
@@rikiishitoru8885 Faith - complete trust in someone or something.
Not synonymous with religion.
You can use “Faith” in the context of religion - complete trust in someone or something - with the caveat, “without proof”.
Faith for an Atheist might be faith in their partner, or their parents (again, complete trust), but it doesn’t NECESSARILY mean you don’t have proof for such faith…unlike religion.
@@Tennethums1 Adding the caveat assumes that proof is needed for belief. Equating faith with religion works just as well without that arbitrary addition you've conjured
After a very long time struggling with doubt, despair and melancholy, I think your video just helped me understand (or even remember) my passion, my so called purpose or even vocation. Time will tell.
This IS the biblical story of The Fall…humanity is asked to leave the Knowledge of Good and Evil alone, but they can’t help themselves, they take it, they claim it for themselves. Violating the one boundary, leaving nothing sacred. They are ashamed of what they’ve done, but there is no going back…
Your videos always seem to find me exactly when I need them. Thank you.
My word. This is outstanding. 😳👏
This is a deeply profound and stunning creation and I thank you your time and effort in putting it all together.
I love it when an aesthetically-obscure, yet etymologically-pragmatic new term drops into my lexicon.
Hierophany. What a profound concept. That kicked some kind of gear in my internal philosophy. Gonna be turning it over for days.
Beautiful and profound. Watching this video was like finding your channel for the first time. A return to the source.
Great video. I’m glad that more people are recognizing the need for re-enchantment. I love listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast and watching Jonathan Pageau’s channel, especially his Universal History series.
This is absolutely wonderful. Just incredible; I loved every second of it and I'm right there with you. Bravo, sir.
The assumption is that we cannot imagine meaning without the sacred, and that the sacred is something passed on and received -- not discovered. This is limiting, just as the assumption that stories based on knowledge is and can only be banal. Reason can be awesome. I remember the discovery of how something works, it could be anything! Curiosity rewarded is and can be meaningful. The old and passed on decays and stops being shared, making way for the new. Sometimes, the new is death.
Amazing. You hit the nail. I couldn’t watch movies or shows for a while, after noticing not in just movies and books but in just telling stories. what we choose to watch and believe. it happening now. ❤
This is one of your best videos yet🖤 I think it would benefit your viewers greatly if you included very small labels of the movies each scene is coming from. The label could be in the corner and would not detract at all from the video.
Please do this!
That was a rollercoaster bud. I needed that. Thank you.
The movie…. “Network” is a truth in our time. Well done and enlightening
My dinner with Andre as well
Thank you for the time you put in to make these videos. My enjoyment of them, sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightening, have been quite reflective of my own experience, synchronous beyond coincidence, and for that, I am grateful.,
Thank you, Tom, for this journey of reflection and insight, on a subject that sits at the core of our global unrest. There is no way back, as you rightly conclude. And the re-discovery, or re-definition of the missing Wonder and Sacredness of our human existence, may elude us forever. I hope not. And I hope we will collectively arrive at a new hierophany, long before we loose all means of cohesion. This essay sits at the top of your many, many thoughtful and generous creations. Thank you.
Beautiful piece of work, thank you
Ironically, this might be the most meaningful video you've ever made. Bravo
If there is no Divine, then there is no meaning.
@@DsquareddysonWrong, at every level.
If there is no "divine" to give our lives meaning -- nothing considered sacred because some Bronze Age goat-herder wrote that it was in some old book -- then we have the freedom to create meaning *for ourselves* .
We define the sacred and we can focus that energy on what's actually true and real -- that human beings need *each other* more than we need dictates written down by people whose reality differed *profoundly* from our own.
I haven't visited for awhile now, and you've managed to find and dislodge yet another stone in my "civilized" heart, and bring me to tears once again. It seems we love and are fascinated by storytelling for the same reasons. It's good always to find that hearts of the same mind travel together. 💛
"We must move with the flow of the process."
This video is Beautiful and very obviously transcends cinema but also reaches literature, culture, the spiritual, etc. I immediately sent this to friends and family. Thank you so very much for this profound analysis and mesmerizing piece of the grander potential for art in all its beauty.
It feels like that scientific knowledge has stripped the world of its mystery and magic. But if we're honest, couldn't we argue the opposite? Our ancestors had their magic and sacred rituals, but they also had simple explanations for everything. Their world was neatly explained by myths and stories that offered comforting answers.
Today, while we no longer believe in those ancient stories because they don't align with our current understanding, but what we've discovered about the universe is far more mysterious and unsettling than anyone could have imagined. Despite all our scientific advancements, we still can't explain our deepest questions, asked for thousands of years. The great philosophical inquiries of the past are still largely unanswered and probably will remain unanswered for a long time if not forever.
We're just a tiny speck on a small rock in an infinite universe, with no idea of why we're here or what it all means. Perhaps that's why we long for the sacred-because it offers us the answers we still crave in the face of an ever-expanding and enigmatic cosmos.
The irony is that scientific materialism is inherently predicated on there being immaterialistic patterns which govern the behavior of physical substances and forces. There's a reason science started within the church. The church saw natural revelation as an exploration of Heaven; the patterns of creation. Our great mistake is that we made a Faustian bargain with modernism and traded away all of our meaning for prosperity and efficiency which made us materially successful but spiritually dead. People are waking up to this now though; post-modernism opened up the potential for a return to meaning-making structures again.
@@brianj7281 people are "waking up" because there is a big plan of defounding education, we are seeing more kids becoming religious extremis (see the increase of content creator becoming Muslim) because we are becoming lazy, we want simple answear even thought we know the world is much more complicate, you talk about nothing, also, science didn't start with the Church, science was a thing created in various places at different times, we can argue that Gallieo (wich literally invented the Foundation of modern science, wich is the scientific method) didn't certainly worked with and for the Church... also, scientific development happened in religious enviroment because those where the place where knowledge was preserved, it is true that the exploration of nature to understand the higher plane of existence (aka paradise) was a prerogative of various religious entity, but we shouldn't forget that those entity also activly ignorend, modified, and critiqued data that contraddicted the scritpture in a way they where not interpretabile in any way. in any case, we are spiritual, or more precisely, we are inheritaly Faith oriented, because thats howour brain work, even thought we live in a scientistic society we still are very Faith based, we pose Faith in basically everything because we are in fact NOT expert in everything, its just that we have to accept that the grate meaning that we like to Think of is an antropocentrica View of our existence given by our evolutionary history
@@brianj7281 Any meaning obtained through superstition and faith is meaningless. Dragging society and culture back to a time where it was more divorced from reality is not the way forward.
@@Ammiragliosalvatorefortissimo if you think kids are becoming religious extremists simply because of less education, you are completely naive. Reminder that many of the 9/11 hijackers were Western educated Muslims. Despite the ultimate secular education, they still decided that crashing planes into buildings was far more important than anything the materialist world had to offer. The turn to religion is because secularism provides no narrative and no telos by which one can lead a meaningful life. Combined with the associated community, religion provides an individual a place to stand within a family of other believers who are also participating in the Heroic Narrative. Modernism and science cannot deduce morality or ethics. It provides no grand narrative outside of, at best, a telos of efficiency. If you dare say it's about "uncovering the mysteries of the Universe" you sound no different than a religious believer saying they uncover the mysteries of God. Efficiency doesn't motivate people to die for their beliefs but the calling of the Father does.
In terms of science, yes natural philosophy has been around as long as humans have learned from and manipulated their surroundings but as you said, Galileo created modern science via deduction of the scientific method. Now you can try to argue that was outside of the church but the facts are what they are: he worked at a Catholic university, had the Pope as one of his patrons and was asked to argue heliocentrism to church leadership. The church didn't agree but there are many scientific hypotheses which aren't agreed upon which doesn't mean we think the disagreeing audience didn't believe in science. Einstein famously didn't believe in quantum mechanics ("God doesn't roll dice") but that doesn't make Einstein any less of a scientist. Also, in terms of fabricating and modifying data to meet results? That happens today within science all of the time which is why nearly every journal has a retractions and response section where criticism and accusation of incorrect methods can be argued of dubious results. So no, the church wasn't opposed to science. They may not have agreed with Galileo, but that doesn't mean they were any different from other science institutions.
Yes we are all faith oriented because as you say, we don't know everything. We all have faith that science is correct as we rely on it to help us everyday as we examine the physical world. Even deeper, I have faith the scientific method itself, something I can't touch or see, is Real. Science cannot prove the scientific method so we accept it purely on faith and the results it produces. By that same token, many religious people have their lives positively changed by religion and accept a belief in God because of the results it produces. "But religion is harmful and hateful and kills people!!" How many tools of destruction and death have been developed using the scientific method? If you blame religion for some of the results it produces, you must do the same with science.
My ultimate criticism of modernism (science) is that ultimately it provides no telos or eschatology. That's why "follow the science" was such a disingenuous phrase to use during the pandemic. Science has no direction and ultimately is a slave to the investigator. You can use science to prove how to keep someone alive the longest and use science to prove how to kill someone as quickly as possible. Combined with science's tendency to institutionalize and subvert truth claims when it interferes with power, proves to me that post-modernism's critique of it as being yet another power structure has merit. So if we know power structures are real no matter what and that human being require faith and meaning to operate, religion is the only psychotechnology we have to address it.
Thank you for engaging.
@@rhael42 propose a better system then. tell me how it is any different than the current modernist frame.
I especially resonated with the part about how the wisdom is no longer linear and instead the cycle is circular. I have thought often how nice it would be to live in a time where things between generations aren’t being reinvented. So much in this video. I will need to watch again.
I am old enough to understand that this feeling has been around forever and is expressed in different ways. A little over a hundred years ago the world burned and men died in the millions. A generation later that death was dwarfed by another world war which introduced industrialized murder. A generation later saw the cultural destruction of western civilization in a seismic disruption of the status quo. During each of these times and more there was a melancholic despair for loss. But life finds a way
Until it doesnt
"Life finds a way". Really? I think life's struggling pretty bad from the intensification of the activities of the Industrial Death Machine as it continues it's warpath of destruction into the future. If we do not resist it then Life won't find a way, it will be destroyed.
That's what's truly different about our times. The west is being rapidly destroyed (from within, at the hands of sinister forces we're only just beginning to understand), marking the end of an age - the end of 500+ years of relative intellectual, cultural and material prosperity - and marking the beginning of a new age. And the outlook for this new age seems to be prettyyy grim, ngl
I’ve become averse to so much of the video essay format that I rarely click on them anymore.
But this is far more than a mere essay. I appreciate the depth and consideration that went into this.
You’ve pulled patterns together to create a sense of unity. Thank you.
I was thinking who to quote here in the comments to sound insightful, but then I said f*** it.
All I wanted to say is that this was a very good watch. Made me think. Thank you.
No one owes us anything.
Which means every meaningful moment with another person is a miracle.
Being alive and having others to be changed by and to change, to be touched by and to touch, to calm us and to calm them.
Imagine seeing a child come to be and not seeing the sacred?
Having a child - birthing one from my body! - is the most sacred thing I've done, for sure. The act itself, the way you re-experience the world with them and through them...I'm sad so many people choose not to experience it.
@@franug
I can only imagine the profundity of what you experienced.
I’m lucky enough to have a partner that can express a lot of what she’s lived. And she told me that being pregnant is, in many ways, a reflection of being a baby.
The moments of helplessness, the moments of loss of independence, the overwhelming emotions, the fickle relationship to taste and touch and textures…they are all like a baby. She sees it as the brain getting ready to be kind to the new person coming.
It’s the cycle of a golden age eclipsed by Gothic Horror, which, when it collapses and loses hope, gives way to Cosmic Horror, which, when faced head-on, downspirals into Existential Horror.
I honestly don't understand how it happens, that you make videos which almost always seem to land squarely into a perspective of the current times that I am feeling and experiencing, but can't really articulate. And yet, you keep doing it! I am so grateful to you for how thoroughly and deeply and incredibly thoughtfully you make your videos!!
I tell people about your channel and how meaningful your videos are, because I hope that others can benefit from all that you make, but also because I know that the more visits and views you get, the more you're able to make videos! Thank you so much for continuing to share your voice, and dig deeply into the core humanity and organismal experience of life itself, through the movies and shows that are willing to dig as deeply as you, into some semblance of of whatever core truth of existence we seek that continues to illude us.
That Green mofo has NOTHING on you!! 😅
Personal connections with fellow human beings, is what I hold sacred.
As long as it's not reflected in public policy.
This is one of the most beautiful and important videos I've ever seen. Thank you.
One of the best videos Ive eatched in my life, Im only 26 lol, though I have watched alot of videos.
This explains how I have felt perfectly.
This is one of my favourites of your essays ❤
A haunting essay - well done.
One of your best essays to date. Thank you for sharing it.
"Nothing, at last, is sacred but the integrity of one's own mind" - Shaquille O'Neal
*Ralph Waldo Emerson*
@@TKGoose I don't need your full, real name.
@@mastpg and you don't have it.
@@TKGoose Sure, sure...just be more careful next time. Identity theft is a real problem...as are people who can't infer context or additional meanings by reading between the lines. It's a common issue with people on the spectrum. "Context blindness" is how my cousin terms it.
@@mastpg i appreciate the tip
It is very rare to watch a video where you can't allow your attention to stray even for seconds, because it would mean to lose valuable content. It's also very rare to watch a video in which you are immediately immersed in awe and fascination, eager for what's yet to come and knowing you won't be disappointed. This video is one of those.
I don't think there's a better representation of this concept than the first paragraph of H.P. Lovecraft's unfinished story 'Azathoth'.
-
"When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of spring’s flowering meads; when learning stripped earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward-looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone away forever, there was a man who travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled."
I love your work mate, its sticks in my mind always, your voice and the ambience of your editing, Its almost Mailck like.
I lived on a peaceful protest camp and fought fracking, many of the days where awful and surreal, combatative where it should have been anything but, I discovered your work then, I think I first watched your work regarding Interstellar, that background soundtrack haunted me nightly.
We didnt have electric, we had very little solar power so being able to get enough power to use a phone and watch your work was a privelege.
Your work kept me going night after night.
It was a tough time and your work was able to remove me from it nightly and bring me to a place of movies and your analysis was vital and very profound and met me in a place that made so much sense in an environment of confusion.
We caged ourselves with freedom to para phrase you.
What you describe is closely related to the insightful analysis found in the multi-part video course (here on UA-cam) "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis", by John Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist and philosopher at the U of Toronto. He discusses among many other things the cognitive role of and possibilities for the sacred in the current, cartesian view of a continuous, physical universe, a view that assumes the non-existence of the metaphysical.
This was beautiful. I had never seen your videos before, this is the first one I’ve watched. Thank you.