But What About You?

Never mind me - what about you?

I was going to post up some Shostakovich by Hauser, but his histrionics will have to wait till some future moment!

For today, we talk about you.

How is everybody? How are things with all of you, some of you, even just one of you...

Marceau and Sean Bean

Shostakovich's famous Waltz Number 2, of course, is that thing they play in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. It has been used a lot in movies, notably in many versions of Anna Karenina. Helluva long story, that. It deals with themes. Themes of this that and the other damn thing.

Garbo played Anna K. Sophie Marceau played Anna, too.

The whole thing is this long saga about, well, about - life.

Now how about your life?

Karenina is about social norms, religious faith, secularism, love, womanizing, children, relatives, oh god - it's about everything. Goes from Russia to Italy, back to Russia...

Like I said: this, that, and the other thing; 'damned' thing.

The ending is about Kostya Levin deciding that 'despite his newly accepted beliefs' (I'm quoting from Wiki, of course), 'he is human and will go on making mistakes.' And somehow, this makes his life 'meaningfully and truthfully oriented towards righteousness' (whatever that means; because I don't know what it means, do you?).

'Making mistakes...' What does that mean? If Jesus sent us all a hovering drone AI thing-y, that advised us when to buy Gamestop, and when to sell it, we could all have enough material wherewithal to help others who needed help (which is more than usually of the financial kind, anyway), keep Princess Ekaterina in silks, and have liveried footmen so that we could go hob-nob with the social set - and take a turn at the Second Waltz of Shostakovich.

Tolstoy wants us to recognize that we are 'human,' and Jesus has already made damn sure of it anyway. Except Tolstoy, the Russian, is going to go on and on and on interminably reminding us of the fact.

An umbrella for the future...

Klaus Schwab wants us to own nothing, and to be happy. I'm not sure if he wants us to 'remain human' or not, because we are rapidly moving to toward H++ (human plus android) - so we're really not going to be 'human' like what that meant in the past.

This idea of a robotic floating/flying advisor is not new - Athena had a 'mechanical' owl that she lent to various heroes from time to time in order for them to accomplish certain difficult things.

How difficult your own life is depends on how sensible you are - the more sensible you are, the more difficult it will be, and then 'the gods embrace men of sense...' and reveal themselves... ...and you will get to borrow their devices.

Next article, a lead into a hovering AI thing-y...