Help me understand human nature

[ricketyclik]

Plot driven films not adapted from a novel/short story or historical account ? A list of your faves, please.

2001: A Space Odyssey (not a list I know, but just sprang to mind when I read the challenge).

[molly bloom]

2001: A Space Odyssey (not a list I know, but just sprang to mind when I read the challenge).

Not adapted ? Try Arthur C Clarke's 'The Sentinel'.

The Sentinel is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, famous for being expanded and modified into the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke actually expressed impatience with the common description of it as "the story on which 2001 is based." He was quoted as saying, it is like comparing "an acorn to the resulting oak-tree".

https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/The_Sentinel_(short_story).html

[molly bloom]

Sorry, what are you saying about these three, that they're character-driven? Hard to tell from the quote you responded to.

No, but the plots aren't half bad...

I was referring to this:

I don't see a lot of movies. Hazard of having small kids to watch

Children will watch these films with you. I should warn you that when Jenny Agutter sees her father step off the train at the end of 'The Railway Children' grown men have been know to get quite moist-eyed...

But, come to think of it, isn't basically every movie produced these days based on preexisting intellectual property?

Happily for my sanity I haven't had to watch that many films to be able to come to an exact figure or comparison. There's a big difference between say, 'Portrait Of A Lady' by Jane Campion and whatever that nonsense adapted from the Battleship game was called.

It's the difference between treating your audience or potential audience as thinking adults and not as rather unintelligent cats hopped up on maryjane cat biscuits just waiting for a laser light to twitch or a clockwork catnip mouse to start revolving.

[C0ckney]

I mean the two ill-judged reactions I've mentioned before: our withdrawal from mainstream culture and the formation of the Religious Right. But I was not alive at the time and may well have it all wrong. Feminism certainly had and has a good deal to do with sexual liberation, and atomization/the decline of the family strikes me as a natural consequence of sexual lib. But you also mentioned community structures, didn't you? What do you mean by that, and what caused it? I'm guessing the increased mobility of modern populations did some of it

i think it depends on how you view feminism. i would see it as starting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, demanding property rights, marriage reform, parenting rights and also the vote. you could certainty say that feminism had some influence on the sexual revolution and was itself influenced by it (although of course the sexual revolution had earlier antecedents - it not as if everyone was a chaste virgin until marriage and then bam the 1960s and free love, man), but for me its roots and its themes are far broader than sex.

i would say that atomisation has many causes, economic, social, cultural, and technological. with community structures as you say, mass transport, and mass communication have allowed people to live more individual lives. there have been cultural changes that both cause and reflect this. there is also an economic cause, people don't often need to live with several generations under one roof any more, people have the means to lead more independent lives, and many choose to do so, this being reflected in wider culture.

I assumed American culture was also a factor because I've heard that some European countries, and specifically the Netherlands, don't have the same problem with single parents despite an equally libertine notion of sexuality. Because, supposedly, countries like the NL have a stronger community ethos and there's much higher pressure to marry and settle down. But I get that from anecdotes by blog commenters. Was always too lazy to check it out, but a cursory check says France, at least, has the same problem. Again, I don't know what percentage are two-parent but not married, which is an important bit of data. Looks like it might be somewhat high in the States, at least.

the picture in europe is quite variable, and although one might say in general that the wealthier, protestant, northern europeaneuropean countries have a higher rate of out of wedlock births, compared to the poorer, catholic southern european countries, there are some exceptions. germany and spain have a very similar rate for example.

see figure 5 here for some worldwide figures.

looking at these it seems that religion doesn't have a lot to do with it. the US has a lower rate than strongly catholic countries in central and south america, as well as less god-fearing countries in europe, which suggests to me that other cultural and economic factors are responsible.

[Bereta_Eder]

AFAIK Denmark was the champion (don't know if that changed) of divorces.
Scandinavian countries used to have great supporting mechanisms for one parent families but most european countries do. (it's just that the social welfare in those countries is &^* very good).

[Elok]

I don't mean to imply that feminism was all about sex--but for the context of the present discussion, concerning marriage, we need only concern ourselves with the parts of feminism having to do with sex and sexual relationships. Voting rights, equal employment, discrimination, etc. are largely irrelevant, I should think. I always thought the important thing about the sexual revolution of the sixties was the invention of the pill; I don't know how that ties in to the sudden radicalization (can't think of a better word) that led to legalized abortion and all that.

Regardless, single-parent families are pure demographic poison and I don't see them as tenable in the long term. Even if the government steps in to provide extra financial support to make up for the lost breadwinner, kids still need the extra attention, and moms need the extra help, from a second parent. And if single-parent families continue to rise, the government's family-assisting resources will be under an ever-greater strain.

[Bereta_Eder]

On the matter of support, it's not that those countries (and those like them) have something specific for one parent families, it's just that their whole social welfare safetynet is pretty good.
The state actually forces the other parent to provide for his/her kids. That's what it's all about.
For example in Germany the state pays itself the alimony for the kid, and then demands it from the father (most times) or the parent who doesn't live with the kid.

Legislation is actually in place to make parents act like real parents and not d!cks. That doesn't put strain on the state itself. If a country has good social welfare net, it does so for all things.

Also I don't think that anyone "chooses" to be a single parent. The dream when one gets married is that he/she will have the other one as companion, supporter a co-walker/carrier of weights in life.

[ricketyclik]

Not adapted ? Try Arthur C Clarke's 'The Sentinel'.

https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/t...rt_story).html

Well whaddya know? I wasn't aware of that.

How about Christopher Nolan's body of work?

[Ben Kenobi]

For the other racial/ethnic groups in the region, 60% of Hispanic, 31% of white and 22% of Asian families were headed by single parents. Despite the fact that state and national rates were lower for all groups, what was more notable was the disparity between the region and the City of Rochester for most groups. In the city 70% of Hispanic, 53% of white, and 22% of Asian families were headed by single parents.

Those are pretty spectacular numbers that confirm what he's saying, Sava. He's off on the exact percentages, but the gist is correct.

[Ben Kenobi]

Regardless, single-parent families are pure demographic poison and I don't see them as tenable in the long term. Even if the government steps in to provide extra financial support to make up for the lost breadwinner, kids still need the extra attention, and moms need the extra help, from a second parent. And if single-parent families continue to rise, the government's family-assisting resources will be under an ever-greater strain.

The problem is that the families that are together are shouldering the load.

[Kidlicious]

On the matter of support, it's not that those countries (and those like them) have something specific for one parent families, it's just that their whole social welfare safetynet is pretty good.
The state actually forces the other parent to provide for his/her kids. That's what it's all about.
For example in Germany the state pays itself the alimony for the kid, and then demands it from the father (most times) or the parent who doesn't live with the kid.

Legislation is actually in place to make parents act like real parents and not d!cks. That doesn't put strain on the state itself. If a country has good social welfare net, it does so for all things.

Also I don't think that anyone "chooses" to be a single parent. The dream when one gets married is that he/she will have the other one as companion, supporter a co-walker/carrier of weights in life.

People get married but are not satisfied with marriage. So they divorce. Essentially they decide to be single parents.

[Kidlicious]

Feminists are just plainly against the nuclear family. They are against the police. They are against everything except liberation for women. They don't think we need family, police and everything that we do actually need for society to function.

[Kidlicious]

Yes, but postmodernism, or at least the postmodernism I encountered in college, is still grossly in error. I see no reason to be a "modern" or "postmodern" Christian. The Faith of the Fathers is sufficient.

I like this. I wish more people would think about what is sufficient, what do we need to maintain our way of life.

[Kidlicious]

The statistics of single-parenthood are skewed heavily by the black community where it's true of 90% of families; it's still nowhere close to the norm for other races.

We should look at what has happened to the black community and ask ourselves if we want the entire society to end up like that.

[Bereta_Eder]

The black community remains like it is because of your policies.
Your system is created so that it always has this undermenchen class. Coupled with the inherent racism of capitalism and, voila, that's what you got.
It will never go away.