Only one other person attempts the climb throughout the movie. The rope appears taught on one side and has slack on the climber's side. I infer the rope as a literal safety and a metaphorical inhibition. Who says I cannot perceive a plausible and contradictory inference to yours?
Actually two others do, that we see. Bruce, Talia and the unnamed prisoner attempt the climb. And we're told quite clearly that many have over the years.
No one says you can’t perceive a plausible and contradictory inference to mine. I certainly don’t believe I have. We don’t even disagree about the rope being both a literal safety device and having metaphorical significance.
I notice how you conveniently omit my evidence to support your argument and resort to an ad hominem attack. Well, allow me to retort. Your ignorance justifies calling my explanation stupid. You obviously fail to explore the synonymity between "the most powerful impulse of the spirit: The fear of death," the "power [that] can be yours," and the sympathetic nervous system.
I wasn’t making an ad hominem attack on your points. If I was, don’t you think I’d have made an actual statement about you or your points instead of just saying “That’s stupid”?
I was saying that the film’s viewpoint, the film’s presentation and take on the intersection of fear, death, failure and success, is stupid.
You quoted some other people’s statements. I assume that you did that to indicate “Here’s where the ideas came from”. I didn’t feel the need to address where it came from, because I don’t care where it came from. I care about whether the concept that is in the film is silly or not. I find it to be silly and flowery prose with no inherent meaning, and with no realistic psychological impact.
The idea that if you have no fear, you must then have fear to overcome fear that you didn’t have to begin with…is just dumb. There’s no logic to such a character progression. You bring up the survival instinct…but the survival instinct is called the survival instict for a reason.
But here, I’ll address your quotes:
"By dying to the desire to cling to life for fear of death, we are liberated from the fear of death. That is to say, if you can obtain a mental state of accepting that you have nothing tethering you to this earth or this life, then you've got nothing to lose, for if you possess no attachments in this world, then there is nothing that would cause you to live in fear of losing them" (John Little)
Bruce was supposed to FIND fear of death, though. How does this passage about being liberated from fear of it apply? Bruce doesn’t abandon the things tethering him to this Earth. And he did have something to lose.
"Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose. To accept defeat--to learn to die--is to be liberated from it. Once you accept, you are free to flow and harmonize" (Bruce Lee).
Bruce didn’t accept defeat, though. He very much wanted to succeed. If the idea is “Accept that you can fail before you start to attempt to succeed”, well of course. That’s an obvious, inherent part of anything you attempt. But it wasn't a part of life that the film neccessarily explored.
Do you even know how the sympathetic nervous system functions when you activate it and what hormone it produces? Do you know working out stimulates the sympathetic nervous system in the exact way as running from a pit bull? The SAS member Chris Ryan used determination to control the adrenaline coming from his sympathetic nervous system. He covered roughly forty miles per day for five days. He even remarked smelling like death through the ordeal. However, you simply cannot recognize the analogy between the anecdote, Bruce jumping without the rope, and the doctor's soliloquy.
Ok…all that stuff from other posters about you being pretentious and condescending?
You writing stuff like this is why they’re saying that kind of thing.
Yes, I know the basics of the human body and the human body under stress. The film doesn’t explore the sympathetic nervous system,. Nor does it explore the concept of adrenaline or any other hormone in any real way. The film explores the psychological impact of learning to feel fear again after not being afraid of death. I don’t think your examples exactly apply.
The Enlightenment philosophy heavily influences The Constitution and Declaration of Independence, documents that preserves our great country. Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War nearly 2,300 years ago, but the US military still applies its strategies in combat today. People still practice jeet kune do and apply its philosophies to daily living. Bruce Lee has been dead for thirty-nine years. Martin Luther King Jr. applied Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolence philosophy to awaken America's social conscience. King's work still remains in progress to this day. You are white, so I do not expect you to acknowledge any tangible results from nonwhite philosophies; they will always remain convoluted and nonsensical to you. Excuse me for refusing to adopt your ethnocentric myopia and covert bigotry that you project through your rebuttals. You are right. Philosophy is a bunch of mumbo jumbo that is not based on anything tangible.
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I never said that all philosophy is mumbo jumbo. I never even remotely implied it. I just find silly, in this particular film, the philosophy about someone with no fear of death having to gain fear of death to overcome one’s fear of death.
"It was obvious to the master from the start of the conversation that the professor was not so much interested in learning about Zen as he was in impressing the master with his own opinions and knowledge. As the Zen teacher explained, the learned man would frequently interrupt him with remarks like 'Oh, yes, we have that, too' and so on. Finally, the Zen teacher stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man. He poured the cup full, then kept pouring until the cup overflowed. 'Enough!' the learned man once more interrupted. 'The cup is overfull, no more will go in!' 'Indeed, I see,' answered the Zen teacher. 'Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. If you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?'"
I find you using quotes to imply that I have no wish to learn because I have my own opinions laughable.
And I find your comments about me being white, and about whites not acknowledging any tangible results from nonwhite philosophies to be rude and incredibly ignorant.
Stuff like this is why people keep calling your posts pretentious and condescending.
And if you waste my time again reading childish, quasi-racist nonsense like that…we won’t be discussing this film further.
