>I wouldn't put on an electric blanket on for anything. First, I'd be worried I might get electrocuted. No, I don't trust technology. But I mean, the main thing, Wally, is that I think that kind of comfort just separates you from reality in a very direct way. What does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment where something as massive as the seasons or winter or cold, don't in any way affect us? I mean, were animals after all. I mean... what does that mean? I think that means that instead of living under the sun and the moon and the sky and the stars, we're living in a fantasy world of our own making.
From 'My Dinner with Andre.'
What do you think? What do you make of technology moving towards removing even the remotest discomfort for people who can access it?
This is gay, electric blankets are fucking great. I usually have to turn that shit off or I sweat, though. On the & Humanities part of this topic, I used to be an anti-technology, but I realized that efficiency/comfort is greater in the end. I may not live in times of “greatness”, but I do live a life of relative ease, and I’m okay with that.
Justin Clark
typical nature worship. not really that deep. the reason we've developed these sorts of comforts is because when you get down to it, base nature sucks and is horrifying for most of the living organisms who live within it
Asher Bell
Spoken like a man who has been raised in captivity and cant survive in the wild
Cameron Scott
the thing about removing yourself from discomfort you also remove yourself from the "basic process"
I think a main issue with adapting technology to convenience there's a lot of reasoning, nuance, and important lessons in doing without convenience, and just being safe and healthy.
Oliver Myers
I've never known someone to actually use an electric blanket. Do you use it all night? Wouldn't it be a fire hazard?
Brandon Green
I love these movies about intellectuals and their never ending thoughts on sexuality and the salvation sexual liberation brings what absilute shit they're always self-deluded new york elites who think that having enough money to cheat on your wife and read books about kant and schopanhauer makes you privy to some divine information wody allen was undoubtedly the best mental masturbator, but he clearly paved the way for much more self-indulgant dog shit to come
Joshua Brooks
I mean, one of the main components of My Dinner with Andre being that Andre is a pretentious fuck who does things like abandon his wife and kids to spend months in the Polish forest with a bunch of strangers doing artistic theater and compares himself to Albert Speer and complains about modern comforts being degenerative (while eating his fancy quail and having the money and time to fuck off to the Polish woods) while Wally stares at him with increasing incredulous looks until Andre occasionally lets him give his opinion, which is that Andre is being ridiculous about it all
Nolan Fisher
You missed the point of the movie...
Chase Moore
I live in nepa and used to use one all night. It felt like i was in Abraham's bosom... scrumptious sleep.
Anyway, i stopped using it b/c i am paranoid of em radiation.
Adam Clark
>they're always self-deluded (((new york elites))) ftfy, no need to thank me!
Noah Reyes
>Not sleeping by turning on the AC at full power, covering yourself head to toe under the bedsheets while listening to a soft beating heart ambient music to pretend you are still in the womb Pleb.
I do this unironically IRL. This is what I listen to go to sleep.
but I thought the point of the movie is that andre is essentially "the enlightened one" and wally just doesn't understand granted this was years ago so maybe i missed the irony
Isaac White
I don't trust technology because it is 'dumb' (as in it thoughtlessly interprets data) and fallible, which can lead to disaster if we rely too much on technology. Another reason is that it makes people dumb and lazy. Just look at all the drones out in public glued to their phones.
Henry Diaz
I suppose you can read the movie in many different ways!
Ialways felt like were meant to empathize more with Wally, who is just an average person who wants to enjoy life, accepts his responsibilities and doesn't abandon them, and doesn't see technology and modern technology (which Andre is happy to use when it suits him) as being inherently degenerate or dangerous on their own. I can't remember the quote now but his counterpoint to Andre's electric blanket speech is pretty sensible.
Also the waiter is constantly giving the side-eye to Andre, especially when he's talking about Albert Speer, although some people think we're meant to view the waiter as someone who probably lived in Europe at the time and is thinking "the fuck is this spoiled American talking about, traipsing off to the forest to sing songs and hold hands, and how he sees himself as Albert Speer?"
Christian Scott
Please tell me that dialogue was deliberately intended to be pretentious and stupid.
Sebastian Foster
>glued to their phones, talking to people, taking in information >as apposed to looking around at the same environment they see ever day
Ryan Murphy
Depends on how you take the film.
But, considering the quoted dialogue comes from a successful playwright who randomly decided to abandon his wife and kids to go fuck off to Europe and other international destinations so he do ridiculous things like can play with random people in the forest and try to mount theater productions in the Sahara desert, all the while lamenting how technology and modern life is an Orwellian design to make people into robots (while enjoying his expensive fish and quail in an expensive restaurant) I'd say you're meant to view him as being rather ridiculous.
Although I think there is some truth in a part of the dialogue that's not in the quote, namely that being cold can cause you to feel some sort of empathy for human beings, even unintentionally. If you're cold in your bedroom, you might think about people who are cold on the streets, or who don't have nice thick blankets, etc.
David James
But how is it a good thing to deliberately make yourself uncomfortable and miserable just so you can relate to other uncomfortable and miserable people? In the end both of you are still uncomfortable and miserable. There is no inherent virtue in being in a sad state.
Jaxon Cook
I don't think it's saying it's a good thing to deliberately make yourself uncomfortable, I think it's saying that some level of discomfort causes you to retain a connection with the world outside your personal sphere, whereas the immediate and total comfort brought by an electric blanket brings the comfort to a level where it's fantasy-like and where you're disconnected from any sort of natural state. Whether or not that disconnection is truly significant or meaningful or even negative is up for debate.
Wait, found the part in the dialogue that the OP quote doesn't have:
>If you don't have that electric blanket, and your apartment is cold, and you need to put on another blanket, or go into your closet and pike up coats, on top of the blankets you have, well--then you know it's cold. And that sets up a link of things. You have compassion--well, is the person next to you cold? Are there other people in the world who are cold? What a cold night! ... All sorts of things occur to you. Turn on that electric blanket, and it's like taking a tranquilizer. ... I think you enter the dream world again. What does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment where something as massive as the seasons, or winter, or cold, don't in any way affect us?
Cooper Peterson
I guess I just don't buy into the "you must be uncomfortable and disadvantaged to sympathize with less fortunate people" that leftists love rambling on about.
Daniel Turner
>I guess I just don't buy into the "you must be uncomfortable and disadvantaged to sympathize with less fortunate people" that leftists love rambling on about.
That's... not what the quote is saying or what I'm saying. But you do you.
Ryan Sanchez
It was exactly what it was saying.
Jason Bell
It wasn't saying that at all. But again, with your rant about leftists, you must see what you want to see.
Cameron Ward
Is this discussion the new "My Dinner with Andre?" Should I feel like I have to review this discussion between these two anons? It would feel so meta.
Connor Turner
Pretentious ramblings of a well-fed First-Worlder who has never lived in the shithole that is "natural existence" where your children die of smallpox, there's no toilet paper to wipe your ass, and your freezing to death because there's no way to generate enough warmth. Complaining that Humanity is making effective tools is always a moronic statement as thats our species natural adaption to a difficult to survive world. Do we say that ant's are "living in a fantasy" because they built an unnatural, artificial, ant-hill? Do we condemn the Shrike for learning to impale it's prey on spikes?
