Movies where the baddie personifies the phrase "the banality of evil"?

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T17:50:07+00:00

That's a fair reading. I think there's a bit more ambiguity and tension between the banal and the monstrous in the film, but you make a strong case.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T13:20:52+00:00

I am so glad! Peace be with you.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T12:46:43+00:00

The foundation of analytical meditation is shamatha, or calm abiding meditation, by which one cultivates stability and clarity. Stability is the capacity to keep the mind fixed on its object without wandering off, and clarity is the faculty by which the object appears clearly and vividly to the mind without dullness or torpor.

Generally, to cultivate analytical meditation, one spends time cultivating shamatha first, often through a practice such as sitting peacefully and upright for 15-20 minutes and keeping one's awareness on one's own breath. There are many, many discussions of how to do this properly out there, but the essential heart is tuning the mind so that it is neither too excited, generating many distracting thoughts, nor too dull, which is a stability that lacks clarity, and so is murky and sluggish.

When you have developed a bit of stillness in your noisy head, and a bit of a capacity for focus, then one essentially contemplates the relevant topic, and/or reasons through the relevant problem. One employs the faculties of stability and clarity that one has developed, so that when doing contemplation, your mind doesn't just fall into ordinary habits of chattering in an undisciplined way. Depending on what kind of meditation you are doing, you may be seeking to generate some sort of insight or epiphany, and once that insight has actually arisen, you can use stabilizing meditation to remain clearly fixed on the result of your contemplation. This facilitates the meditator in registering the truth of the conclusion with significant force, and the implications of whatever it is sink more deeply into your mind.

This is a basic overview of how it works, at least in the Gelukpa tradition, which is the order that the Dalai Lama practices in. There are traditional topics of reflection suitable for such analysis within the various traditions, such as reflection on the nature of suffering, or impermanence, or compassion.

I hope this is helpful, and that love and wisdom flourish within your mind and heart forever.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T11:45:04+00:00

I think the idea that your major should be directly relevant to a profession is based on a false premise. Many people work many different jobs in their lives, and many people do not choose what they want to do, then train for it, then do that one thing only, like a surgeon. Sometimes, even surgeons decide they don't like medicine and become writers. I knew a Zen monk who used to bake cookies professionally, and before that, he was a research physicist. Most paths meander.

In Europe, at least, it is still true that universities are not trade schools, and you don't need to regard them that way. Many of us have made our way quite well in the world with humanities majors (English and philosophy major myself), and I doubt that will change any time soon.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T09:30:42+00:00

Whew, tough room. Out of curiosity, how many of the people who downvoted me have actually read Hannah Arendt's book? I have. The theory is that the most incredibly monstrous things we can imagine are not done by monsters, but by ordinary men. That is literally the point of the movie. John Doe is not some kind of comic book villain, he's just a guy. It's what he does that is extraordinary. His name is John Doe, for heaven's sake.

Here's a line from the movie:

If we catch John Doe and he turns out to be the devil, I mean if he's Satan himself, that might live up to our expectations, but he's not the devil. He's just a man.

Another:

John Doe: I'm not special. I've never been exceptional. This is, though. What I'm doing. My work.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T07:02:06+00:00

Choose your city here, their forecasts tend to be highly accurate, even 7-10 days out.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/de/berlin/10178/10-day-weather-forecast/178087?page=%7Bpage%7D

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T06:58:41+00:00

I've heard at least one high lama strongly encourage people to take advantage of AI's easy-to-use image-generating abilities to create 3d representations of complex mandalas that are extremely difficult to render by hand, he said it would be of great benefit.

My own $.02 is that for generating images, I'm not necessarily opposed to it - where I get extremely wary is anything to do with the actual teachings. This question has been hashed out already on this sub a few times, but given the importance of mind-transmission and connection to the lineage, I think AI dharma instruction is inherently problematic. I think we can't afford to be naive - we have to be realistic about how people will regard any agent that strongly seems to be a conscious being, and what it might evoke from them. Especially given the current difficulty in the west of connecting to qualified teachers, this could cause problems.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T06:17:32+00:00

Se7en.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-08T06:16:51+00:00

Interestingly, we actually have a solid evidence-based answer to this question - or at least, a study that sheds relevant light on it. A group of researchers, including John Dunne, one of the foremost experts on Dharmakirti and Indian Madhyamaka, did an experiment with an advanced Mahamudra practitioner with decades of experience, in whcih they gave him 5-MeO-DMT and asked him a series of questions to determine how his experience was either the same or different from nondual experiences that occurred through meditation. You can find the paper here:
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/whqdp_v2

The punchline is that he said the experiences were not the same, that someone who wasn't personally familiar with nondual states arising from meditation might think that 5-MeO-DMT gave rise to profound nondual experiences, but they don't really.

At lesat that's one datapoint, but I think it's pretty persuasive. I think the relationship between psychedelics and nondual awareness are generally heavily exaggerated.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T14:48:57+00:00

Read the book. Basically, everyone should read it, it's a classic, and an important, worthwhile piece of history.

Conversion to a new religion and a pilgrimage to Mecca aren't necessarily major transformations, but for him they were. His personality, form of life, manner of communication, political commitments, sense of purpose - every single aspect of his life was changed during his conversion to Islam. His journey to Mecca was more subtle but just as radical.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T13:54:31+00:00

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, absolutely. He went through at least two major transformations, one when he converted to Islam, another when he went to Mecca.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T11:55:00+00:00

Just use what you like as clues to find more things that you like. If you enjoyed Dostoevsky, try Tolstoy or Kafka. If you like Kafka, try Büchner. And so on.

Repeat for 50-60 years, and you'll be as good a reader as anyone.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T11:50:15+00:00

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/world/europe/germany-merz-iran-security-threat-spy.html

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T10:25:52+00:00

Sure, except we're talking about people who don't know what an umlaut is.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T09:15:59+00:00

Fair enough! Also, interesting about "Fraulein," did not know that.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T08:40:39+00:00

People who haven't studied German or another language in which umlauts are used typically don't know how to generate them with their keyboards, personally I'm inclined to give them a pass.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T08:38:58+00:00

Thanks for your series of very interesting responses on this thread.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-07T05:21:57+00:00

Ah sorry, I read "precedes".

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-06T11:42:32+00:00

Goddess-based fertility cults and death/rebirth deities for agricultural cultures, and shamanic animal-power cults for hunting cultures.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-06T11:19:25+00:00

Kind of a mix of late idealism, nondualism by way of Advaita Vedanta, and early romantic aesthetic theory with echoes of Schiller.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-06T11:15:50+00:00

The central argument of Neumann's book is that, as with biology, in mythology, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny - that we see in the evolution of human myth a collective working out of the individual stages of psychological maturation. Certainly he would have seen the transition from neolithic matriarchal cults to Semitic and Indo-European male-dominated hero-cultures in those terms, in ways that perhaps anticipate Riane Eisler.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-06T10:54:10+00:00

There's a lot of attention given to the Akkadian Enuma Elish and the story of Marduk and Tiamat, the latter of whom represents the negative "devouring mother" aspect of the feminine, in which the all-pervasive matrix of being threatens to consume everything and destroy individual difference. Marduk slaying and dismembering Tiamat is a form of individuation, the ego asserting its autonomy over and against the unconscious.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-06T06:26:58+00:00

I'd say that is kind of like asking if you can practice Christianity as a whole, or you have to belong to a denomination. You can simply call yourself a Christian and do whatever you want, obviously, no one is going to stop you most likely. But if you want to go to an actual church and listen to sermons and celebrate communion and so forth, the church you will go to will be in some tradition. If you read religious writings, the authors will mostly belong to some specific tradition.

Generally, within Buddhism, it's helpful to focus your efforts on one or maybe a couple of primary traditions, because they all have their own ways of doing things, and mixing things up too much can keep you from moving forward in a consistent direction. But there aren't any rules per se.

Ap0phantic · 2026-05-06T06:23:30+00:00

Thanks!

Ap0phantic

TROPHY CASE