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Philosophy 1: Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel

Didn't Alan Watts advocate some kind of piracy of his books? Don't know where I got that notion. He's probably considered a pop philosopher.
 
burd said:
Didn't Alan Watts advocate some kind of piracy of his books? Don't know where I got that notion. He's probably considered a pop philosopher.
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Maybe you're thinking of Abbie Hoffman?

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Watts was a popularizer of Buddhism and I think he would have been proud to be called that.
 
“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.”

-Woody Guthrie, on his song “California”
 
It all becomes clear now.

"Be like The Rock." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4:49
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This is better than 83% of the papers I graded at Stanford:

The Rundown & Walking Tall (2004):

If one of your friends were to use the bathroom, and you switched the movie from one of these to the other about 85% of people wouldn't be able to tell the difference, so we'll group these two together.

In both films The Rock plays a loose cannon tough guy who doesn't play by the rules. Now admittedly this goes against the Stoic principle of remaining calm and not being a slave to one's anger. However, I think the lesson that Marcus expected us to take from these films is the Rocks ability to remain unwavering and collected under pressure.

In the Rundown The Rock sneaks into a Brazilian mining town, like a spy, to rescue Stiffler and in Walking Tall he fights another man with a goddamn axe. If sneaking into an enemy camp, or fighting with an axe don't qualify as situations that require some level of serenity - frankly I don't know what does.

At the end of Scorpion King (2002) - which almost made the list - The Rock's love interest tells him that she foresees a period of peace and prosperity coming that would not last forever. What could be more stoic advice then to appreciate the good times, but to understand that they are just as temporary as everything else.

The Tooth Fairy (2010)

In this 2010 classic The Rock plays the Tooth Fairy after stealing a dollar from his girlfriend's daughter that was meant for the Tooth Fairy. While this film may have been slammed by critics for being "unacceptably dull" it's likely that they just didn't get the nuance beyond this screenplay.

Life is difficult, however turning into the Tooth Fairy overnight is a tall order even for someone as tall as the Rock. Throughout the course of the film Dwayne attempts to take short cuts, and is accused by his Tooth Fairy boss that he has an inability to be optimistic which is his biggest flaw.

**Spoilers**

It's only when he accepts his responsibility for his own actions and embraces his roll as a Rock that stands unmoved amongst the raging fairies that he's able to get his life back in order for the sake of his new family.

Marcus, whose arguably largest failing, was the behavior of his son Commodus, likely was referencing the Tooth Fairy as a means for rectifying his own mistakes.




Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

What would you do if you were transported into the avatar of your favorite video game character? This is the existential question that Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle wrestles with WWE style.

3 lives is all the cast has at their disposal, yet they are faced with life threatening circumstances at ever turn. Whether it's poisonous snakes, hungry hungry hippos, or Kevin Hart's napoleon complex, the cast is put in harms way at nearly every moment of the film's run time.

Being stuck in an alien environment with people, and facing as much danger as they do would be enough to make anyone question their involvement. Yet the Rock, in true Dwayne Johnson fashion, puts the team on his insanely proportioned back and delivers textbook leadership, cunning, and an example for how we too can live up to Stoic Principles.

Sure, the team helped, and he even enlisted a Jonas brother who turned out to be a creepy version of Tom Hank's son, but none of it would have happened if The Rock didn't take Marcus advice and act like a rock.

Conclusion:

From Moana to Hobbs & Shaw there are no shortage of examples we can select to illustrate why The Rock was Marcus' choice for carrying the Stoic torch for future generations. Whether it's the mob, super soldiers, giant gorillas, or an earthquake like in San Andreas the Rock remains a Rock when the waters get rough. Beating on, as a boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
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"God made The Rock so large; can God still lift The Rock" seems the next assignment.


(Bonus for mentions of St. Thomas Aquinas and "Red Notice".)
 
MissThundercat said:
What should I read first?

"No Exit" by Sartre or "The Stranger" by Camus?
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I recommend watching No Exit. There's at least one decent version on YouTube. Warning: it's infuriating, it's supposed to be.

The Stranger is certainly worth reading and it's very accessible. Also one of the greatest first paragraphs in literary history.

Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know.
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Reading Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, Part 1. He's talking (Ch. 5 Pt II) about the difference between natural and social facts, and our historical evolution in our distinguishing between them, which he calls "critical dualism." I enjoyed these passages:

Critical dualism merely asserts that norms and normative laws can be made and changed by man, more especially by a decision or convention to observe them or to alter them, and that it is therefore man who is morally responsible for them; not perhaps for the norms which he find to exist in society when he first begins to reflect upon them, but for the norms which he is prepared to tolerate once he has found out that he can do something to alter them. Norms are man-made in the sense that we must blame nobody but ourselves for them; neither nature, nor God. It is our business to improve them as much as we can, if we find that they are objectionable.

...

Nature consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral nor immoral. It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who in this way introduce morals into the natural world, in spite of the fact that we are part of this world. We are products of nature, but nature has made us together with our powering of altering the world, of foreseeing and planning for the future, and of making far-reaching decisions for which we are morally responsible. Yet responsibility, decisions, enter the world of nature only with us.
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MissThundercat said:
I've been reading Simone de Beauvoir.

I'm having trouble picturing her and Sartre as a couple.
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So did she. But Simone was sapiosexual, as most intelligent women are.

And he actually was a Slayer, somehow. "He was only 5 foot 3 but girls could not resist his stare." He only liked getting them off, though. He didn't want his peepee anywhere near the vagina dentata.

 
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