Production I.G’s Kick-heart directed by Masaaki Yuasa.
A love story between two people that each have a secret to hide. One a pro-wrestler, the other a Nun. Losing never felt so good.
Watch the full film here.
Saturday Matinee: Kick-Heart
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Category Archives: Humor
The Four Pillars of Disaster Shamanism
By Gary Z McGee
Source: The Mind Unleashed
“We need shamans, and if society doesn’t provide them, the universe will.” ~Joe Lewels
In the article The Archetypal Path to Getting Your Shit Together, I wrote about the power of archetypes. A Disaster Shaman is an example of using an archetype to make the world a better place; to become the change we want to see in the world.
The Disaster Shaman recipe combines aspects of The Shadow with aspects of The Hero and then mixes in a little Trickster tomfoolery. The combination of these archetypes creates a particular flavor of nontraditional shamanism that spearheads healthy Cosmic Law through the heart of unhealthy lawfulness.
A Disaster Shaman is a force of nature first, a person second; sowing radical revolution in order to reap progressive evolution. Healthy balance is primary. Even if it comes at the expense of comfort and security. Disaster Shamanism (otherwise known as Apocalyptic Shamanism) is the interdependent shamanic response to apocalyptic times.
The primary tasks of a Disaster Shaman are as follows:
–Heal disaster situations through shamanic cosmology and ecopsychology.
–Listen to Universal Laws to discern the difference between healthy and unhealthy.
–Live moderately so that others may moderately live.
–Diagnose and heal Nature Deprivation.
–Transform weaponry into livingry.
–Bring “water” to the Wasteland.
The sub archetypes of the Disaster Shaman archetype are The New Hero, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, The Sacred Clown, and The New Oracle. The four pillars of Disaster Shamanism subsume these sub archetypes. Let’s break them down…
Hero-expiation (New Hero or Cosmic Hero):
“Our sole responsibility is to produce something smarter than we are; any problems beyond that are not ours to solve.” ~Ray Kurzweil
The average person is not heroic (courageous). Likewise, the average hero is not prestigious (provident). A New Hero, as opposed to a typical hero, is a hero with prestige. A New Hero has gone Meta with the concept of heroism itself.
The New Hero sub archetype is the first pillar of Disaster Shamanism. New heroism is gained through hero-expiation. Hero-expiation is the voluntary, wise, honorable, moral, and compassionate distribution of power so that power doesn’t get to the point that it corrupts.
It is through the wise distribution of power that a typical hero becomes a New-hero (cosmic hero, next-level hero) with skill, power, honor, and prestige, as opposed to just a typical hero with only skill and power.
Hero expiation is all about getting power over power. Whether one’s own power or the overreaching power of others. It’s about turning the tables on entrenched power by “counting coup” on it.
A Disaster Shaman as New Hero is a social leveling mechanism par excellence. They count coup on power through strategic humiliation (shaming) so that power never has the chance to become absolute.
When a New Hero comes to town, fear-filled blue pills are swapped with wisdom-filled red pills. The Disaster Shaman has come to set the record straight. To recondition the culture that has been conditioned into believing in competition over cooperation and narrow-minded one-upmanship over open-minded compassion. They teach that competition has always been secondary to cooperation; otherwise we wouldn’t have survived as a species (Darwin).
Eco-consciousness (Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse):
“Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Eco-consciousness is about uncontrolled order overcoming controlled chaos. Whether the culture (tribe) has become too obese, too greedy, too violent or some other unhealthy excess, the Disaster Shaman arrives to set the record straight; to plant a seed of overt moderation within the covert immoderation.
The Fifth Horseman is the one that cleans up after the original Four Horsemen (the Four Horsemen is a metaphor for anyone caught up (aware or not) in any kind of unsustainable, unhealthy, violent, immoral, or mass-destructive social system). The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse is an archetype representing rebirth and renewal in the face of conquest, war, famine, and death.
The Fifth Horseman is ruthless with her healing powers. Her name is Providence, Phoenix-like, she rises up from the ashes of war & decay to spread self-actualized love, open-mindedness, and progressive sustainability by digging up the decay and unsustainable residue of past and present civilizations and then using it all as compost in cultivating and growing a healthier more balanced future.
In that capacity she has devoted herself to planting gardens of eco-centric heroism in the humus of war, hate, close-mindedness and greed, and anything else left behind by the original four horsemen. She is dedicated to, as Buckminster Fuller said, transforming weaponry into livingry.
She subsumes the original four horsemen by teaching them that the new definition of right & wrong must be derived from the universal dictation of healthy & unhealthy rather than the human opinion of good & evil.
The Fifth Horseman is the Goddess of Recompense. She is the Verdant Force. She is the soft hammer of evolution. She has come to blur the false boundaries that have been erected between nature and the human soul.
She is Gaia. She is Lady Justice. She is the return of the Sacred Feminine. She is all of us, men and women, realizing that we are nature first and humans second, that we are soul first and ego second. She is weighing the worth of the human world with the Scales of Justice. With or without us, she will not fail to bring water to the wasteland.
High humor (Sacred Clown):
“What is a tragedy but a misunderstood comedy.” ~Shakespeare
Most of us are familiar with the prototypical clowns: red-nosed clowns, court jesters, and Tarot fools. But sacred clowns take clowning to a whole other level.
Almost all types of sacred clowns combine trickster spirit with shamanic wisdom to create a kind of sacred tomfoolery that keeps the zeitgeist in check. Their methods are unconventional and typically antithetical to the status quo, but extremely effective. They indirectly re-enforce societal customs by directly enforcing their own powerful sense of humor into the social dynamic.
The main function of a sacred clown is to deflate the ego of power by reminding those in power of their own fallibility, while also reminding those who are not in power that power has the potential to become corrupt if it’s not balanced with other forces, namely with humor. But sacred clowns don’t out-rightly derive things. They’re not comedians, per se. Though they can be. They are more like personified trickster gods, poking holes in things that people take too seriously.
Through acts of satire and showy displays of blasphemy, sacred clowns create a cultural dissonance born from their Crazy Wisdom, from which serious anxiety is free to collapse on itself into sincere laughter.
The high humor of Sacred Clowns leads to a higher courage and the audacity to speak truth to power. And they do so with silver-tongued proficiency. There exists no perceived construct of power that’s above their enlightened rebellion. No idol too golden. No high horse too high. No pedestal too revered. No “wizard” too disguised. No God too godly. No title too contrived.
Nothing is immune to the exactness of a Sacred Clown’s rebellion. It’s all merely procrastinating compost. It’s all just well-arranged armor waiting to rust. It’s all an illusion within a delusion. And the Sacred Clown has the enlightened sense of humor to reveal that absolute fact.
Lest we write our lives off to unhealthy stagnation and devolving inertia, we must become something that has the power to perpetually overcome itself. The sacred clown has this power. Paraphrasing William Blake, “If the fool (Sacred Clown) would persist in his folly, he would become wise (New Oracle).”
Self-overcoming (New Oracle):
“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” ~Lao Tzu
A Disaster Shaman is a New Oracle who has come to inform the old oracles that they have failed. The self-centered “culture” has been declared a wasteland, and the unhealthy surroundings dubbed unworthy for healthy humans attempting to evolve into a more robust species.
The New Oracle teaches this, above all: Pain should not be avoided at the expense of love. Love should be embraced at the risk of pain.
As such, a master with high humor is needed to resolve the disaster of the self; to usher in an eco-centric, as opposed to an ego-centric, perspective. This master lies dormant inside us all. It can only be found by having the out-of-mind experience of no-mind, in the courageous throes of self-overcoming. There, in the stillness, the master is meditating. The master is connected to the source of all things, his thousand-petalled lotus spinning like a galaxy above his head.
He is radiating inside of you, bursting with wisdom and nth-degree-questions. She pirouettes like Shakti. He foxtrots like Shiva. He/she is the all-dancing, all-laughing oracle of the primordial self, interconnected with all things. And it can only be found there in the silence, between inhale and exhale, between being and non-being, between mind and no-mind, between finitude and infinity.
After disaster, but just before mastery, the Disaster Shaman as New Oracle persistently self-actualizes toward enlightenment.
There, above thought, is the source of human creativity: the place where artists, poets, musicians, and even scientists have discovered the secrets of the universe. Like Leonard Cohen said, “You lose your grip, and then you slip into the masterpiece.”
The mind of Everything holds the heart of Nothingness; the void of Nothingness holds the core of Everything. The masterpiece is the working, self-overcoming, canvas of the New Oracle’s life. The New Oracle is forever in the process of seizing the moment in order to seize the day in order to seize the life.
In the end, the Disaster Shaman is a healthy response to our unhealthy times. Wielding the courage of the New Hero, brandishing the mettle of the Fifth Horseman, harnessing the humor of the Sacred Clown, and channeling the wisdom of the New Oracle, the Disaster Shaman is determined to tonalize an otherwise atonal world.
Saturday Matinee: Hi, Mom!
“Hi, Mom!” (1970) is a dark comedy directed by Brian De Palma and stars Robert De Niro. It’s a sequel to Greetings (1968) in which De Nero reprises his role of John Rubin who is now a voyeuristic filmmaker. John later falls in with a group of militant black activists leading to the film’s most memorable scene in which he participates in an experimental theater performance. The show is called “Be Black, Baby” and requires its white audience to don blackface and be subjected to an escalating series of abuses by black actors in whiteface until John arrives as a seemingly real NYPD officer and proceeds to put the white audience members under arrest. De Palma and De Niro’s next collaboration would be 17 years later for The Untouchables.
Saturday Matinee: Gregoire Moulin vs. Humanity
“Gregoire Moulin vs. Humanity” (2001) is a French romantic comedy starring and directed by the late Artus de Penguern. The film is a spoof of Amélie, which was released the same year and also featured Artus (who played the character Hipolito). While the world of Amélie was charming and magical, the world of Gregoire Moulin is cruel and twisted (though filmed in a similar visually striking manner). The films also play on the conventional romantic comedy plot structure in which two quirky characters find eachother against seemingly insurmountable odds.
To activate English subtitles, click the “CC” button in the lower left corner of the video window. Next, click the “Settings” icon next to it, choose “Subtitles/CC”, choose “Auto-Translate”, and then “English”.
Two for Tuesday
Saturday Matinee: Happiness
“Happiness” (1998) is a bleakly dark comedy written and directed by Todd Solondz. It follows the lives of three sisters and their respective problematic relationships. Joy (Jane Adams), is the youngest sister and is viewed by her family as the least successful by conventional standards. Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) is the middle sister who is a famous writer but remains unfulfilled. The oldest sister is Trish (Cynthia Stevens), an upper middle-class housewife whose family seems perfect on the surface. The film was best described by Roger Ebert who wrote in his review: “…the depraved are only seeking what we all seek, but with a lack of ordinary moral vision… In a film that looks into the abyss of human despair, there is the horrifying suggestion that these characters may not be grotesque exceptions, but may in fact be part of the mainstream of humanity…. It is not a film for most people. It is certainly for adults only. But it shows Todd Solondz as a filmmaker who deserves attention, who hears the unhappiness in the air and seeks its sources.”
Watch the full film here.
Fuck Happiness! Forget Feeling Good and Focus on Being Better
By Gary Z McGee
Source: The Mind Unleashed
“The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire.” ~Carl Jung
Fuck positivity. Fuck feelings. Fuck trying to make yourself feel good all the time. Focus instead on becoming a better version of yourself. Focus on action. Better yet, be proactive. It’s less about feeling positive and more about positive action. Even then, it’s less about being great and more about being better. Indeed. There’s more happiness in a spoonful of hard-earned self-improvement than in an ocean-full of self-affirmations.
Positivity is the opposite of motivation:
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” ~Edward Abbey
Here’s the thing: there’s nothing wrong with being happy. When you’re happy, be grateful. Soak it up. Absorb it. Balls to bones. Ovaries to marrow. But then let that shit go. Don’t remain in that state for too long or you’ll atrophy. You’ll stagnate. You’ll lose your focus. Other feelings and emotions have just as much to teach you (even more so, some might argue) as happiness does.
Everyone talks a big game about stretching their comfort zones, but when it really comes down to it most people remain in their comfortable, positive, warm, and happy comfort zones. We cling to them without even realizing it. We get so caught up in them that we lose sight of one of the most vital secrets of living finite lives in a seemingly infinite universe: take all things in moderation.
This includes, especially, positive emotions. Because positive emotions are more likely to hold you hostage than negative ones are. Whereas negative emotions are more likely to motivate you. I’m not saying be negative all the time. For negativity too should be taken in moderation. I’m saying use negative emotions to motivate you into positive action. Ask yourself: what’s more motivating “you’ve made it,” or “there’s no way you’ll make it.”
With “you’ve made it” there nothing more to do. There’s nowhere else to go. You’re done. You’re content. You’re comfort zone has reached its capacity. You’re stuck. You’ve succumbed to the Master’s Complex and forsaken Beginner’s Mind. With “there’s no way you’ll make it,”on the other hand, there’s a challenge. There’s an obstacle to overcome. There’s adventure to be had. You’re comfort zone has something to grow into and ultimately overcome. And then on to the next obstacle. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
Besides, when it really comes down to it, there is no such thing as “you’ve made it.” As long as you’re alive there is still more life to live. As Richard Bach said, “Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.”
Forget feel-good platitudes, focus on “what can I learn from this?” instead:
“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not —that one endures.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Ever heard the common cliché, “everything happens for a reason”? Well, fuck that shit! That’s just some sentimental placating bullshit people say to make them feel better about things happening.
Better to be honest with yourself. Better to get rid of the pacifying middleman with his pitiful reach-arounds and mawkish petting. Better to simply own up to the simple fact that shit happens. Good shit happens. Bad shit happens. Good shit happens to bad people. Bad shit happens to good people. Life is just one big shit show and some people get more shit than others.
Sometimes it really is just as simple as good/bad luck. Sometimes fate is out of our hands. And that’s okay. There’s more to being human than choice, there’s vicissitudes. There are unexpected changes that shit all over our choices. Things don’t happen for a reason. Things happen and then we give them a reason to ease our burden.
Which is fine if you wish to remain stuck in the safety of your comfort zone. But it’s disastrous if you wish to become a better, healthier version of yourself. Challenge all feel-good banalities with the self-empowering question: “What can I learn from this?” instead, and then watch as your comfort zone melts into your own progressive evolution.
Self-importance is a trap:
“Self-importance is a trap, because the moment we start to think that we actually matter is the moment when things start to go wrong. The truth is that you are supremely unimportant, and nothing matters. All of man’s striving is for nothing; all effort is wasted. To realize that everything is meaningless is tremendously liberating, since it then leaves us completely free to create our own lives and ignore the plans that others have for us.” ~Tom Hodgkinson
If self-importance is a trap, then self-improvement is the key to that trap. This is because the former is based on emotion and the latter is based on action. The former is lodged in positive emotion while the latter is engaged in positive action. Again, the action is the thing.
Feel-good emotions, positive affirmations, and idea’s like The Secret, only get you so far. They are akin to having a life jacket in turbulent water. Sure, your safe and secure from drowning. But without action, without swimming, that life jacket means fuck-all. If you don’t swim toward health and survival, you’re dead anyway. Appreciate the life jacket for what it is, but don’t just sit there glowing in your self-importance. Swim! Act! The positive act of swimming toward health, vitality, and survival, trumps the positive emotion of merely having a life jacket so that you don’t drown.
Same thing with happiness. It only gets you so far. Sometimes you just have to say fuck happiness. Fuck just floating here in a contented state. Fuck clinging to this safe and secure comfort zone that everyday constricts my becoming a better version of myself. This is the way comfort zones have been stretched since time immemorial. So swim! Courageously stretch your too-small comfort zone. Transform your life jacket into a life well lived.
The irony is that, in the long run, you’ll reap more happiness out of sowing a little painful and uncomfortable self-improvement than by remaining content in a state of “happy” and comfortable self-importance. And even if you don’t, at least you gave it a shot. At least you had the courage and the wherewithal to make your life better.
Transform negative emotions into positive action:
“Turn those negative emotions into action that will make you better instead of just feeling better about who you already are.” ~Elan Gale
It all comes down to this moment. Who are you right now? Sincerely ask yourself: do I want to improve myself or do I want to remain the same. There’s nothing inherently “wrong” with choosing either way. But there is something wrong with expecting self-improvement when you choose to remain the same. There is something wrong with expecting your comfort zone to miraculously stretch when you do absolutely nothing to encourage it to stretch. There issomething wrong with expecting your health to improve when you do fuck-all to help it improve.
This is where the rich minerals of negative emotion can be mined and harnessed to encourage the positive action needed to knock down the walls of reinforced positive emotions. If you honestly wish to remain the same, then, by all means, continue to bask in your contentedness and shower in your sentimental positive affirmations and armored happiness. There’s nobody to stop you. But if you really want to get down to brass tacks and utilize the positive action necessary to stretch your comfort zone and live life to the fullest, then tell yourself, “Fuck happiness (for now). It’s time to learn from my other emotions for a time.”
There is immense wisdom in sadness, anger, jealousy, and pain. Nearly all art was created by harnessing the vital power inherent in these sacred yet “negative” emotions. As Anais Nin surmised, “Great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” And so it is also with the art of life. So it goes with attempting to bring balance and harmony to life. True happiness, Eudaimonia-type happiness, is more about transforming bad shit into fodder for good shit, than it is about relishing in mediocre shit and suppressing the bad shit.
Suppressing the bad shit just creates shitty demons that haunt us in our comfort zones anyway. Better not to create the demons in the first place. Or, if they’re already there (which they probably are), embrace them. Engage them. Go full-frontal, vulnerable beast-mode on them. Meet them on their turf, and then dare to transform them into your ally. Now that’stransforming demons into diamonds. That’s the epitome of transforming negative emotion into positive action.
So yeah, fuck happiness! Especially if it’s handicapping you from striving toward Eudaimonia. And especially-especially if you are using it as a sentimental placation or an excuse to remain stuck. A life well-lived cannot be lived inside a safe and secure, yet tiny and ignorant, comfort zone. No matter how happy you are there. It can only be lived by daring yourself to stretch it, again and again. Even if that means Pain, Sadness, and Grief have to drag you through the brambles. There’s adventure at hand. There are new horizons to stretch into. So fuck your positive emotions. Focus instead on transforming your negative emotions into positive action.
Welcome to the World, 21st Century Child
Recently rediscovered this old clipping from a weekly published sometime in the 90s. Perhaps less satirical than originally intended as it hits closer to home today.
After the Crash 