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Reviews, Reactions, and Recommendations

Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime by Elinor Batezat Sisulu (2005). In the minds of most people, Nelson Mandela is the name synonymous with the end of apartheid and beginning of South Africa's transition over the last decades. Yet societal change of this magnitude cannot be the feat of a single hero riding in like a knight in shining armor to save the day. There were many others whose dedication, sacrifice, and yeoman service pre-Mandela made all of it possible. In the foreword to this book, Mr. Mandela writes that if one life story were to be told about South Africa's liberation, "…that story would have to be Walter Sisulu's." Elinor Sisulu, daughter-in-law of Walter and Albertina, has told that story. [More of review.  One hour audio interview with the author, March, 2006. http://www.spiraldynamics.org/audio/Sisulu.mp3  67 minutes, 25mb .mp3]

Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media by David Edwards and David Cromwell (2006). London. Pluto Press. Journalist John Pilger calls this "The most important book about journalism I can remember." The authors also operate Media Lens, a critical thinking center based in the U.K. which challenges the mainstream media to speak truth rather than spin obediently on behalf of their corporate and governmental masters. This book is about the combined inability and refusal by much of the mainstream press, both print and broadcast, to ask the hard questions or challenge the powers that be on other than stock issues. For anyone interested in freedoms of speech and accuracy in reporting, this book is critical. For others who simply wonder why it so often seems 'the fix is in' where public information is concerned, Guardians is an eye-opening read. [More of review] 

Why We Fight, a film by Eugene Jarecki. This new documentary looks at American militancy over the last fifty years, culminating with the Iraq occupation. While the film doesn't offer any shocking revelations or analysis for those who have been following American foreign policy and especially the Iraq invasion and its rationales from anywhere besides atop the Bush/Blair bandwagon, it does consolidate a lot of information to which the 'mainstream' population is either oblivious or in deep denial. Thanks to Fox News (a.k.a. the Ministry of Propaganda) and other embedded media outlets who have covered truth with spin so very effectively, the ideas brought to screen by this film will be shocking and awful to far more Americans than ought be. More frightening, few will be open enough to grasp them. [Full review]

Samples of the 21^st Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, 3-part BBC presentation by Adam Curtis. [From the Amazon.com blurb:] "This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East and Neoconservatism in America, the parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today." More than the clash of fundamentalisms or religious True Believers (both Islamic and Christian), Curtis's documentary explores the outcomes of a scary-world perspective on social systems as DQ and ER impact each other. [More]

With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right, a film by Calvin Skaggs, David Van Taylor, and Ali Pomeroy with Lumier Productions. A study of how evangelicalism impacted American politics in the late 20^th century. This documentary explores the rise of the religious right and its steadily increasing influence on culture. Although not a new movement, the evangelicals have organized well and extended power from local governance right up to the Oval Office. The primary weakness of this analysis is a dearth of exploration of the small-town organizing and grass-roots efforts to gain dominance in municipalities and school boards, thence at the state level over a dedicated quarter-century of strategizing.  

Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, 2nd Edition, with Prof. Robert Sapolsky. The Teaching Company Course No. 1597 (24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture). Sapolsky, author of A Primate's Memoir, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, and The Trouble with Testosterone, delivers a brilliant overview of the brain in neurological and evolutionary terms. In the process, he ranges from neurons to hormones and human aggression. For those who prefer iPod to textbook, this audio course offers an accessible synopsis of many of Graves's Helix II elements.

Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are, by Frans De Waal (2005). New York. Riverhead Books. This is an incredibly informative work which bridges human nature to some other primates - chimpanzees and bonobos. Looking at our connections on the evolutionary trek, De Waal shows how Homo sapiens is something of a bipolar ape with traits of both the hippie-like bonobo and the fiercer warrior chimp. With sections on power, sex, violence, and kindness, the author compares the workings of human social groups with these other species', as well as the variabilities within them. The conclusions force us to reconsider many of our own behaviors and motivations, and explain much about levels of existence theory from an important new perspective. Moreover, this analysis suggests a new perspective on testosterone-driven politics and the chimp-like traits which seem to predominate in the mighty and 'manly' leaders whose chest thumping could end the world.

ENRON:  The Smartest Guys in the Room, a documentary film by Alex Gibney based on the book, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind. This is a fascinating study in how a newly-minted meme, latched to an entrenched ^vMeme and its privatization bugs, built fortunes and ruined lives. Review and comments.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo by Sean B. Carroll. Norton, New York, 2005. A wonderful trip into evolutionary developmental biology and how living systems form from common elements and then differentiate through codes and switches. Reinforces the Gravesian notion of basic themes which can be expressed in myriad ways. Additional comments posted to the SD group on Yahoo!

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life by Paul Ekman. Owl Books, New York, 2003. The title says it all. Non-verbal authority Ekman (with the help of his very expressive daughter) illustrates how we show emotions and what that can mean.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Viking, 2004. Geographer Diamond is also the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and simply a must read. 

Shadowback software for automatic backup of computer files to a variety of media, available from Warm and Fuzzy Logic

First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrington. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004. Essays exploring the depth of 'computer games' as story, literature, and virtual domains in the evolution of silicon space. Parts of the book: Cyberdrama, Ludology, Critical Simulation, Game Theories, Hypertexts & Interactives, The Pixel/The Line, Beyond Chat, and New Readings.

From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present by Jacques Barzun. HarperCollins, 2000. (Perennial paperback, 2001). An eclectic masterpiece of intellectual exploration across five hundred years of Western history - the trends, the forces, and the ideas that shape today - by a scholar among scholars.

Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature by Richard P. Bentall. Penguin, London. 2004. Explores psychopathology - 'madness' - as an aspect of human nature, even an adaptive mechanism with logic - rather than merely broken brains or chemical mistakes. Helps break from the clinical traps to alternatives on how to approach profound differences.

Derrida a film by Amy Ziering Kofman and Kirby Dick

“Jackie…do you have your keys?” called the woman from the kitchen. The man with the bushy gray hair bustled from the sun room toward the front door, grabbing a leather brief case on the way, and went off to work with a film crew in tow. She, the wife, is a respected psychoanalyst. He, the distracted man whose mission is challenging assumptions about reality’s givens, is Jacques Derrida.

Thus began a wonderful filmic journey into the personal side of this philosopher who has, for half a century, sought to deconstruct metaphysical certitude and introduce doubt to a world in quest of the easy answer and quick fix. Involvement and engagement in truth making, rather than reliance on external authorities or ultimate, irrevocable, preordained facts is empowering and also creates great responsibility. His intent is to deconstruct to as to build better, more comprehensively with awareness of the interplay of many complex parts.

Film makers Amy Ziering Kofman and Kirby Dick followed Derrida in France , the US , and South Africa to record his actions and reactions. From a hundred hours of video, they have compiled a portrait that juxtaposes conversation, lecture, and narrated selections from Derrida’s writing. He fought against separating himself from the whole context throughout, acknowledging the “recording devices” to his classes and pulling the film makers into the totality of his world despite their efforts to remain separate. Although it is not announced in the credits, Ziering Kofman’s voice is the narrator, not because she sounds particularly good or they couldn’t use an actor with recognizable voice, but to further explore the unavoidable interplay between film maker and subject.

In one amusing scene, the crew follows the Derridas out for dinner with a couple in their home in Paris . All appears normal until the hostess brings nine champagne glasses from the kitchen – four for the dinner party and five for the film crew who they, too, refused to ignore. Considerable footage from that evening was cut because the camera person kept unconsciously nodding yes or no to hospitable offers of food and wine.

The viewer joins him at home, in class, with friends, and at the creation of the second Derrida archive at UC Irvine. To see a scholar look at the gray boxes of his words occupying a full library shelf, a sight which would signal to many the end of a career, triggers many reactions. One word in particular, différance, the term coined to suggest a sign differs and also defers, was the heart of an amusing anecdote told by a colleague about a party held to celebrate the word’s inclusion in a scholarly dictionary. Derrida’s elderly mother, who was at the event, thoroughly lambasted her son for spelling such a simple French word with an a instead of an e.

The film doesn’t talk a lot about deconstructionism; the goal was to demonstrate it. Produced by Amy Ziering Kofman and directed by her and Kirby Dick, this is an up close and personal – as personal as he would allow – portrait of Jacques Derrida.

If Derrida plays at a festival or university near you, we recommend it highly. It’s still in theatrical release, so copies are only available to libraries and schools for another couple of months. Then the DVD will be available. Check www.derridathemovie.com for details.

Gangs of New York, a film by Martin Scorsese. Although occasionally weak in the screenplay and character departments and heavy on Scorsesian blood, this is still a "big movie" visual feast that turns squalor into dance. One scene in particular stands out from an SD perspective: a soliloquy which Bill 'The Butcher' Cutter (Daniel Day-Lewis) delivers to Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio). Bill, leader of the Nativist gang which fights the Irish immigrants, is wrapped in a worn American flag and sitting in a rocking chair as he describes C-P (Red) to Amsterdam who is in bed with The Butcher's former lover, Jenny Everdeane (an out-of-place Cameron Diaz). To him life is about honor, power, heroic status, dominance, fear and respect. It is a great moment.

Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them?, a scientific dialogue with the Dalai Lama and narrated by Daniel Goleman (author of Emotional Intelligence) One side of the coin.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker (highly recommended)

Land Without Evil by Matthew Pallamary

The Magic of the Metaphor by Nick Owen

Comments on entries in the 2001 Santa Barbara International Film Festival

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