IDK seems like mostly crap, actually.
Smallpox and vitamins? Seriously?
Most other examples and allegories are similarly silly.

If we cant tell what is virtuous unless we stop looking how does Watts know what is virtuous? Is he not the one pulling a fish out of water to save it from drowning? How can he tell? How can anyone? Whatever. We cant lose if we stop running, right?

I sense some sort of allegory here ....

@ChaosEngine
agreed.
context matters and i think being a decent human being plays a large role in that dynamic.

people tend to attempt to break down complex ideas and/or ideologies into more easily digestible morsels.this "twitter speak",in my opinion,is largely responsible for the decay of human interactions.

we all are biased.
we all hold prejudices,and preconceptions based on our learned experiences.
which are subjective.

we see the world through the lens of our own subjectivity and even the most open minded and non-judgemental person,when trying to sympathize/empathize with another person, will use their own subjective understandings in order to understand that person.

this tactic,which we all employ,will almost always fall short of true understanding.

so we rely on words,metaphors,allegory etc etc in order to communicate fairly complex emotions and experiences.

what brendon o'neill is pointing out,is that when we start to restrict words as acceptable and unacceptable,we infantilize our interactions.

words are inert.
they are simply symbols representing a thing,action or emotion.
it is WE who apply the deeper meanings by way of our subjective lens.

i am not trying to make something simple complicated,but bear with me.
a rock will always be a rock,but a cunt has a totally different meaning here in the states than in britain.(love you brits,and cunt is a brilliant word).

the problems of culture,region,nationality or race all play a role in not only how we communicate but how that communication is received ...and interpreted.

so misunderstandings can happen quite easily,and then when we consider that the persons intent is by far the greatest metric to judge the veracity of the words being spoken,and just how difficult it is to discern that intent....this is where nuance and context play such a major role,but we need to have as many tools in our language box to express oftentimes very difficult concepts,multi-layered emotions and complicated ideologies.

and,unfortunately,there are attempts to legislate speech.

of course well intentioned,and reasonable sounding,but like any legislation dealing with the subjective nature of humans,has the possibility of abuse.

case in point:http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-criminalizing-pronoun-misuse/

a new canadian addendum to their human rights statute.on the surface this is a fairly benign addition to canadas already existing human rights laws,but there is the possibility of abuse.

a psychology professor from university of toronto was critical of this new addendum,and has created a flurry of controversy in regards to his criticism.

which you can check out here:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/301661-this-canadian-prof-defied-sjw-on-gender-pronouns-and-has-a

now he was protested,received death threats,there was even violence and a new internet star was born affectionately labeled "smugglypuff".

see:http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/smugglypuff

i agree that free speech cannot be viewed with an absolutist mindset.absolutist thinking leads to stagnation and a self-righteous fundamentalism,so we NEED the free flow of ideas...even BAD ideas..even offensive and racist..because this brings all those feelings/thoughts/ideologies into the market of ideas to be either absorbed or ridiculed and ultimately ostracized for the shit philosophy they represent.

i WANT to know who the racists are.
i want to know who is bigoted or prejudiced.
i want to know who is holding on to stupid ideas,or promoting fascism dressed up as nationalistic pride.

and the only way to shine a light on these horrendous and detrimental ideas is to allow those who hold them openly state who and what they are...so we can criticize/challenge and in some cases..ridicule.

we should be free to say whatever we wish,but we are not free from challenge or criticism.
we can say whatever pops into our pretty little head,but we are not free from consequences.
we are also not free from offense.

i know this is long,and i hope you stayed with me,and if you did,thanks man.i know i tend to ramble.

but we can use the banning of gorillaman as a small microcosm of what we are talking about here.

i felt that we,as a community,could take gorilla to task for his poor choice in verbiage "nigger prince" and i attempted to make the case by using his history,dark humor and bad taste to add context to his poor choice of wording.

bareboards felt it was a matter for the administrators to deal with.i am not saying her choice was wrong.just that we approached the problem from different perspectives.

now gorilla decided to become the human torch and flame out.which threw my approach right out the window.

but the point i am making in that case,is that bad ideas,bad philosophies,bigotry and racism will ALWAYS reveal themselves if we allow that process to ultimately expose bad ideas/shit person.

the free flow of ideas is the proverbial rope that ultimately hangs all shit ideas.

thanks for hanging kids.
love you all!

Clearly everything is The Matrix though. Don't believe me?

Hamlet = The Matrix
Dark City = The Matrix
The New Testament = The Matrix
Plato's Allegory of the Cave = The Matrix
When Harry Met Sally = The Matrix
The last Presidential election = Idiocracy
...
The Invisibles = The Matrix
I do not really exist, I am merely a construct meant to distract you from the truth of your existence... = The Matrix

I rest my case.

Great take on the Allegory of the Cave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

Also, isn't this just an allegory for a miscarriage? Better hidden meaning than Million Dollar Baby.

I can't believe somebody made a video to show how unfree Americans are (I merely presume that's what this video is about) by using American slaves as an allegory.
That's f*cked up...

more trolling from newtboy, just pushing buttons. It's a shame you cannot understand allegory. I'd have better luck explaining this to a 6th grader.

You need to grow up.

By the way, 'loose' is the opposite of 'tight'. 'Lose' is the opposite of 'win'.

Perhaps a simple education would serve you better.

I agree with you, but to me it would still be more interesting if the power of the one ring was manifested in some more concrete way.

I guess that in general Tolkien wasn't big on allegory, which is why he looked down on interpretations of his work where people assume that the ring is a symbol for "atomic energy", or "technology" or "industry" or whatever. So, from his point of view it is probably better to make the ring more abstract. But, I still think that personally, I get more out of viewing the one ring as sort of an allegory for "power" in general, and the corrupting influence of that power. So, even though I know that your interpretation is correct to what Tolkien had in mind, I like to read his books with my own spin on things in that way.

So in this allegory, the castle/town is America and the boulder is also America?

It would be more correct to consider religion one of many paths leading away from enlightenment than secularism as one leading toward it. That would usefully sidestep the sophistry involved in the rebranding of oppressive but secular ideologies as a special kind of religion. Secularists don't need to account for the actions of other secularists any more than people who aren't thieves need to answer for arsons committed by other non-thieves. Muslims, conversely, have signed up for a particular club with a particular set of club rules and practices; they are accountable.

Islam is a homogeneous whole, as much as a global movement can be. Its foundational text is intact and whole, not arbitrarily selected from masses of contradictory documents of dubious provenance. That text explicitly rejects the possibility of interpretation or allegory and there's an established, foolproof mechanism for resolving contradictions. It has a single author, really a single author rather than the fiction of the will of god being channelled through the accounts of various liars, a single founder, and a single exemplar.

The popular view of islam as "a religion that is as varied as any other in the world" is unarguably born from ignorance. It's about as variable as scientology, and substantially less reputable.

You do realize that it's simply a movie filled with comic book heroes, right?

This isn't some Upton Sinclair style expose of an industry. It's not an allegory of the politcal-corporate complex.

It's a friggin' super-hero comic book movie meant to entertain people in an air-conditioned theater when it's hot outside.

Perspective a bit.

Fuck this video. Repeat; FUCK THIS VIDEO.

This country needs less ignorance, not more. It pisses me off to no end, that a sizable chunk of this country somehow thinks that not raising the debt limit is a viable thing to do. This video does nothing but play into that.

All raising the "debt limit" does is allow the treasury to cover the money that congress has ALREADY spent.

An accurate allegory would be to compare the "debt limit" to paying your credit card bill at the end of the month, because, bitch, you already spent that money.
Not paying your credit card bill isn't going to help your finances, it IS going to ruin your credit.

You want lower debt, fine. Raise taxes or don't spend so much in spending authorizations. But not paying the debts you already agreed to? Fucking stupid.

Point of clarification, I know there is lots of evidence of localized flooding, I'm speaking of a lack of evidence for the Bible's description of a world wide flood.

Also, my understanding of the first five books were that they all come from 4 older documents, which were segmented into the Pentateuch... see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis for more. I haven't followed up with more recent hypothesis regarding the books, but I was under the impression the general idea, even if it isn't the the specific four books originally thought composed the books, with Genesis being a combo of all four, which stretch into 500 BCE. The Noah story itself is combined of the "Jahwist (YHWH) source and the Priestly (Elohim) source", and the Priestly would be after the exile, though the Jahwist would be well before the exile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_flood_narrative and it's link to flood myths overall). I know Wikipedia isn't the most reliable of sources, and without taking the time to vet the sources they quote, I'll go with the explanation given for the moment.

Also, I'm into seeing it. I'm sure it will be entertaining. Aronofsky alone makes it worth considering at the very least... Biblical epics (and semi Biblical movies such as Ben-Hur...) can make for great cinema. So count me in... Even when I was a Christian I started doubting the flood story as anything more than a parable or allegory, much like the Creation story, Jonah, Sodom's destruction and the rescue of Lot... and there are some good stories to tell... perhaps some exposure to other myths would be nice, but I think the Abramic stories are more familiar to more Americans and world wide audiences than say trying to make a movie about some Celtic god... or Nordic god (Thor doesn't count...)... most of which they'd butcher in Hollywood anyhow...