just another blog

just another blog
just another blog

24/07/2014

Thinking on my feet,not my navel.


Some thoughts for free. I am a person who has been diagnosed with bi-polar: specifically type 2 with schizoid effective disorder. This is just a label, but it is a label that brings with it a perspective on life. What the 2nd part of the diagnosis means, in actual affect, is that I suffer psychoses if I am not on the correct drug regime.  Most of what happens during a psychosis is no one else’s business but those close to me, unfortunately and my own misfortune. Here is where the free advice or the progressive thoughts are pertinent. (Speaking for myself, the distinction between these 2 simple terms is close to ineffable.)

As the 21st C progresses the brilliance of Charlie Chaplin, undisputed but not necessarily something I grasp, will recede. I remember him for this:

He made a film entitled “ The Great Dictator”, such knowledge is only a wiki away: not, however, the full importance of the film. While Chaplin had the best intentions in making “ T. G. D.” (Sic), with its wonderful final speech for love and humanity, freely available on youtube, he regretted making the film. Of course this was in light of the atrocities inflicted by the Nazis primarily on the Jewish people, regardless of their nationality, but on many others as well. Any person with thoughts that lead to feelings, or feelings that lead to thoughts ,would fight to stop this nightmare repeated.  With out the benefit of historical hindsight, Chaplin felt ashamed to have made light of something too grave to be fodder for comedy. At the time this was a sentient way to react.  We have had time to evaluate his brave attempt to take the piss out of a horrific regime, and to distinguish between Nazis and the proud German people. We should always thank Chaplin for his humane spirit, his love and the courage he showed to battle Hitler with his only weapon: art. 
Chaplin would never deny the rumour that he was Jewish; it was being used as an aspersion but he held true to  humanity. 


Hitler's fascism was not written on a blank page: antisemitism had a long and undistinguished history.  During the supposed enlightenment a good Jew was one who converted to Christianity. Ghettos did not start in 1940's Warsaw. The Dreyfuss affair occurred but a few decades before in that stylish home of racism: France. Eugenics, to stop inferiors breeding and build a cleaner more decent humanity,  (By cutting people's brains in half, or - give or take an inch, and by sterilisation.) was accepted good medicine in the US and elsewhere. The Freedom marches in Australia were decades away, as was the right of first nation people to be included on the census.( ...and on and on...)

   For "kicking against the pricks" in that environment   I say to the remains of Charlie Chaplin:

Bravo you  Quixotic bag of old bones and dust.

To be continued,  with some thought of continuity. Thankfully.


thankyou to the Joel family. I have not yet watched this video fully but it is freely available on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hC2vXjIsi0

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