@Sarzy, @lucky760:

To's output can be roughly divided into three categories:
- Straight Film Noir influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville, including his early Milkyway Image productions, his The Mission / Exiled / Vengeance sort-of-trilogy, etc, with a special mention for Election 1 & 2.
- Somewhat more 'commercial' ventures: Running Out Of Time, Full Time Killer, Drug wars, and Breaking News... Less edgy, but better production value.
- And his more 'out there' attempts, that are usually crime films with some surreal aspect: Running On Karma (Shaolin-monk-turned-stripper sees people's past incarnations, tries to reverse their karma), Throwdown (everyone is a secret Judo master), Mad Detective (schizo detective can see people's inner personality and dialogue with them)...

He sometimes misses the mark, but his films are usually worth their salt (this often extends to other Milkyway films he produces).

Breaking News, it turns out, is a minor To film. It's well directed (as you can see by yourselves), and it's definitely fun to watch, but ... it's just that his other films are better! My advice : start with PTU, Exiled, or Full Time Killer. Then if you like what you see, go for the rest.

And if you like Running On Karma, check out Wai Ka Fai, To's writer / Milkyway co-founder and sometimes-director. That guy is good.

And what you just said was relevant to anything other than your own narrow preconceived notions of what is or is not a worthwhile use of someone's time and property?

What I was doing was taking your initial argument and demonstrating the absurdity at it's core by extrapolating it's logical consequences. This is what one does when one has been taught to argue at a level beyond pre-school debating classes. I haven't just "read some Chomsky" I have spent my entire academic career studying Philosophy and linguistics/rhetoric.

Chomsky and I actually disagree on many things & frankly the fact you would choose him and not say Jacques Fresco, Jean Jacques Rousseau or Slavoj Zizek etc. with whom my beliefs have a much greater affinity suggest that you yourself have a paper thin grounding in the political and philosophical subjects you are trying to pull me up on. (and to be clear I don't fully agree with any of those people either, my political philosophy is based upon my own conclusions built up over years of study and consideration)


So lets be clear, generating $7000 of income is to you a pointless activity? (a point you have consistently refused to acknowledge as it undermines your entire argument). What about trying to entertain people? Are all attempts at comedy fruitless because they didn't make YOU laugh?

"Immature", "funny" and "necessary" are all highly subjective concepts.

Clearly YOU didn't find it funny, others (about 7 fucking million in fact!) did.

Clearly YOU thought the video creator lacked maturity, plenty of people would regard his sense of timing, context and dare I say it low level satire as indicative of a potentially very mature and cognicent individual. (not saying he is but the evidence supports either notion)

But most of all NOTHING in the universe is demonstrably necessary, not even the universe itself. The very concept of necessity or usefulness is entirely subjective in it's nature. We as humans invented it, nature has no such qualms, it simply exists and continues to do so (unless you wan't to bring God into this at which point my eyes will likely glaze over).

This did start as your observation regarding the "pointless" destruction of a phone, an observation I was suggesting had it's basis in little more than your own narrow preconceptions about what is and is not a laudable use of ones time and resources.

The point about other evils in the world was an (unsuccessful) attempt to point out the absurdity of getting your knickers in a twist about something so trivial it's almost funny. What you consider a serious problem on the global level specifically is less important than the simple fact that this dude smashing up a phone is utterly negligible by comparison to virtually anything one might care to mention. The best counter you have here far as I can see is to suggest that everything is pointless/subjective which would naturally be totally self defeating. (or to backtrack and redefine your position as one of mere distaste and aesthetic preference rather than an objective truth as you did)

Maybe your a Randist or an anarcho-capitalist or something. That's fine and while I might disagree with the premise of those positions their proponents would support my core notion just the same. i.e. getting angry and this dude smashing up his phone is by a country mile the most inconsequential and asinine point of contention in this whole discussion.


Also to be clear, I utterly reject the entire notion of the left/right wing paradigm and you're attempt to once again put my argument in a box of your own design (i.e. straw man again) is not going to work.

I'm not anti capitalist I'm anti Nepotism and Cronyism. My own ideas about how to fix the world involve both capitalist and socialist principles (along with replacing "democracy" with "meritocracy"). If you had enquired further rather than just generalising my suggestions into a straw man to support your own argument you may have had the opportunity to realise this and engage with the ideas intellectually (rather than as a reactionary).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Learn to think critically instead of dressing up your own prejudices as objective facts (and attacking the arguer instead of the argument itself).

Some might consider an inability to separate subjective preconceptions from objective facts a far greater sign of immaturity. One of the reasons children are considered immature is because they cannot tell or control where their own Ego stops and other peoples begin. (though naturally this is itself a subjective notion and should probably never be defined as an objective truth either)

I don't expect you to respond like a Harvard professor but please at least engage with the content of the argument rather than painting me into a box and trying to assassinate my character. I'm sure you're probably a reasonably intelligent person and I'm always happy to back down or take back arguments if I'm presented with a well thought out reason why I might be wrong etc.

The basic form of a social contract is the foundation for every state in the world. Every individual within the territory forfeits a set of rights and is imposed with a set of duties instead. That's a social contract as described in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Du contrat social".

Doesn't help much with regards to Anglo-Saxon capitalism, does it? Beyond its most basic definition, social contract means, in theory, a recalibration of metrics beyond mere profit, within a society. Whatever metrics one might think would reasonably map progress towards the ultimate goal: the pursuit of happiness.

A concrete example would be the political-economic system of Germany, 1948 onwards, the so-called "Soziale Marktwirtschaft", wherein capitalism is (or was) constrained by agreements to the benefit of the whole of society. Not any individual, not any group, all members of society. Manifestations of it would be the safety net in all its forms and shapes, the health system, the pension system, the rejection of military interventionalism, the preservation of nature, no tolerance for fascism, etc. All specific policies that have their origins in an understanding of what society agreed upon would be best for everyone. The extent is subject to constant political debate, but the underlying concept remains untouched.

So the claim that there is no such thing as a social contract strikes me as a continuation of Thatcher's insistence that there is, in fact, no society. I don't subscribe to that notion, and as far as I can tell, neither does continental Europe as a whole.

If people prefer a system without a "society" beyond the very basic neccessities of a functioning state, go ahead. Do your thing. Competition of ideas and whatnot.

But I'm going to stay a member of this society, thank you very much. And as such, I take the liberty of leaving this "discussion" again. Cheerio.

That was a nice football knee-slide. Tough to pull off on a basketball court! I guess unless you're wearing jeans.

Jean-Claude Van Damme Epic Volvo Trucks Commercial! has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

For those of us who never saw the original... *related=http://videosift.com/video/Jean-Claude-Van-Damme-Epic-Volvo-Trucks-Commercial

Volvo Van Damme Epic Splits Rob Ford Parody has been added as a related post - related requested by ant.

Jean-Claude Van Damme Epic Volvo Trucks Commercial! has been added as a related post - related requested by ant.

*commercial *fail *comedy *wtf

*relatedto=http://videosift.com/video/Volvo-Van-Damme-Epic-Splits-Rob-Ford-Parody and *relatedto=http://videosift.com/video/Jean-Claude-Van-Damme-Epic-Volvo-Trucks-Commercial

http://videosift.com/video/Jean-Claude-Van-Damme-Epic-Volvo-Trucks-Commercial

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/11/15/how-volvo-created-the-jean-claude-van-damme-video/

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This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by eric3579.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Jean-Claude-Van-Damme-Epic-Volvo-Trucks-Commercial

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by brycewi19. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

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