Pulp Fiction and morality

I was just watching Pulp Fiction last night - a simply superb film and one of the most rewatchable I think there is.

I was washing up during a part of it: where Marcellus gets raped (which is one of the funniest moments in cinema :-) and Butch returns to sort things out. Through the stylised posing with japanese blades it is a moment of kindness toward Marcellus. There is a good morality which runs through the film.

But while washing up I took a kitchen knife and held it to my finger to examine what this meant in reality. What if I did just decide to slice my finger off? Thoughts like this can drive you mad, and if you have OCD they can seem to get very dangerous, and if you are depressed you might just think it is a good idea to harm oneself. But with a strong enough mind to fight off the distrortions that arise it is actually a situation like oil and water. A knife belongs no where near my finger, and to cut my finger off is (while possible in the imagination) makes no more sense than rain falling upwards. There are many delusions swirling in the mind (I mentioned a few at the start of the paragraph) which cloud the issue but in reality the two simply don't fit together.

Looking again at Pulp Fiction one can see the illusions that it has created. The gangster world of people set against one another, polarised in a sequence of mexican style stand offs (the hallmark of Tarentino), the violence and style with which they interact a pantomime of carefully crafted illusions. It is believeable world, one that we enjoy being part of - the result of two centuries of American culture and before that European input.

But, in reality, it is absolute fantasy. Every single part of it could never be real. Yes people may carry guns and shoot one another - but the reality is not what we see in Pulp Fiction. This then turns to the press in the UK at the moment and moral panic about youth violence.

It is an extraordinary world we like in where filmic illusions are played out by people in reality. In true reality our relationship with all things is one of non-violence. A stone cannot commit violence against another stone, an arm cannot commit violence against another arm. It is our interpretation of the events that makes it violence or non-violence. The youths stabbing one another I doubt sees this - they have believed that worlds like Pulp Fiction or that manufactured by 2Pac (who believed it himself) are real. But looking slowly and carefully it is like crafting a ducks head onto an orange: it only works in make believe.

We criticise the kids but the politicians are equally at fault. The recent spate of wars are simply no different from youth crime: why the press sanctions one and not the other is another illusion. But, I must be careful not to let such thoughts sour my relationship with the people in the press or the politicians.

So finally I saw it clearly. Good and Evil has always been a Christian struggle for me between the nobility of the good and the temptations of the evil, yet they say that the Enlightened are beyond good and evil. Plato would agree that evil is not a struggle against temptation, so much as a struggl;e against ignorance. It is not selfish men or the tyranny of evil which beset the righteous man, but simply illusion. When we are fooled by illusion then we develop wishes and desires which have no reality, and then we commit evil. But with mind freed from mistaken seeing then reality is just that and what we do in accordance with reality is only good. That is what Goodness is, no more and no less than Reality.

This kind of fits with my analysis of Law (previous blogs). Scientific and Religious law share the common feature that you cannot break these Laws: they are Laws of reality - they represent how things are they are the truth. They are the word of God.

Legal law however is quite different. It is a measure: a ruler: It is logos. We are judged by the law to be on one side or the other. It is not that we could not break the law - it doesn't govern action like this - it simply decides where our actions have fallen according to a standard. The standard being a complex amalgam of religious, cultural and procedural rules.

In reality if I stab someone then sadly for me the consequences are already under way. Such an action doesn't happen by accident and I must have a profound cloud of illusion about me to have performed such an action, a cloud which this action will have fuelled. I can expect a life of hostility, confusion, anger, hatred, loss and pain simply from this action. The legal system is only there to catch me with its scales and to help me from spiralling further into illusion.

Its a simple understanding. Good and Evil are thoughts belonging to us the illusioned. I think this was good and that was bad as I reflect upon my confused actions in life. But what I call Good now will when I am purer and wiser become simple the natural and obvious course. Often people call this process habit, it is more: it is the seeing things truthfully and our being straightforward and honest.