Everybody Worships
I’ve watched many movies.
But I’ve missed out on a lot, too.
So many so that I’m listing a to-do list on a public Google Sheets:
In 2019, I’ve read 32 books according to Goodreads:
So, it would seem plausible that I’ll find a couple of hours each week to watch one new (old) film.
Today, the actor, writer, director Peter Fonda passed away (1940–2019):
A memorable movie I watched as a kid tuning into Turner Classic Movies (TCM) was Easy Rider (1969).
Originally premiering at the Festival de Cannes, the film probably should’ve won the Palme d’Or.
The dialogue exchange between Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper is still legendary:
George Hanson: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.
Billy: Man, everybody got chicken, that’s what happened. Hey, we can’t even get into like, a second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel, you dig? They think we’re gonna cut their throat or somethin’. They’re scared, man.
George Hanson: They’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ‘em.
Billy: Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.
George Hanson: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about.
George Hanson: Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what’s it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.
Billy: Well, it don’t make ’em runnin’ scared.
George Hanson: No, it makes ’em dangerous.
Coincidentally, Peter Fonda was born the same year his father, Henry Fonda, starred in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), an excellent adaption of the novel by John Steinbeck:
Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then…
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark — I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look — wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build — I’ll be there, too.
This month, Outside magazine had an article on peak wellness, which borrowed an excerpt from David Foster Wallace’s famous commencement speech from 2005:
“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.”
I spend almost every minute awake learning about tech, finance, and whatever falls in between the two.
After a week of avoiding pointless public banter, Michael Batnick may have blogged the perfect summary:
“If you’re one of the people who rely on anecdotal sentiment to navigate the market, listen to me very closely — stop it. Stop it right now.
Myles Udland put it perfectly when he said, ‘The more accurate formulation of ‘No one knows anything’ is ‘Everyone knows everything.’’ Everybody knows everything is the new nobody knows nothing.
In ten minutes, you can learn most of what took a lifetime for Darwin to discover. You have to be careful trying to infer something from everything because, in today’s world, it is virtually impossible to separate the signal from the noise.”
Life can and should be long and plentiful if we make the right wellness decisions.
Maybe next week, people will spend more time bein’ and less time talkin’.
