Thursday, May 26, 2011

Quips and Quotations

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

--Errol Morris

14 comments:

  1. or in the case of Reverend Camping he will just keep repeating over and over again.

    cheers, parsnip

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  2. @Leslie--You're welcome, Les, though I can't help but notice a trace of ironic futility in your comment.

    @angryparsnip--I don't think the good reverend is capable of irony, just futility.

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  3. Ha! You've got my number. I keep a plaque at my desk: "Learn From Yesterday" it commands. Yes. I will. Thanks.

    WV - rentlip. What I do when I can't think of anything original to say.

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  4. your so right...

    I wrote on someones (?) blog how I spent the day knowing that I was surly
    not one of the chosen ...and it fun !
    which has really nothing to do with with your post as I zoomed of on a tangent.

    cheers, parsnip

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  5. @Leslie--You're one person who doesn't need to rent a lip. Um, that didn't sound right. Let's try again. You're one person who doesn't have to worry about not being original.

    @parsnip--Tangents are welcome here

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  6. Looks like I (or, to be more precise, Errol Morris) made Cram Cake grin. Thanks for dropping by, CC.

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  7. Yes, I like this quote! I've been having trouble leaving comments lately.

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  8. and if you repeat it with a sense of ironic futility, that's better? than what? geez, i'm so confused.

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  9. @CramCake--You mean problems of a technical nature, i.e, Blogger won't record your comment? Or do you mean you just can't think of anything to say? If it's the latter, a smiley face is fine, though I do wonder about something. It should have been possible to make one of those smiley faces from the first moment the typerwriter was invented in the 19th century. So, how come no one ever thought of doing it until 21st century? And why only online? Something to ponder, I guess, though I'll probably be the only one who actually ponder it.

    @rraine-- I don't think the quote is meant to be "better" or "worse". Errol Morris' quote is an ironic twist on an earlier quote by George Santyana that read: "He who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it." A bit of background here. Earlier in the decade, Errol Morris won an Oscar for a documentary he did about former Secretary of Defense and "Architect of the Vietnam War" Robert McNamara. When he accepted the award at the height of the war in Iraq, he said, "It looks like we're about to fall in the rabbit hole again." In regards to the other quote, the one about forgetting the past, I suspect Morris was saying that if you're not one of the Powers To Be that decides whether to go to war or not, than remembering the past doesn't prevent you from re-living it, just that this time you get to re-live it with ironic futility. Now, if you feel ironic futility is simply an unbearable way to live, than I guess you're much better off FORGETTING the past. As for myself, in this particular instance, I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.

    I probably should have explained the context of the quote in the original post, but I enjoy reading the various interpretations.

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  10. gonna hold on to this one....jf

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In order to keep the hucksters, humbugs, scoundrels, psychos, morons, and last but not least, artificial intelligentsia at bay, I have decided to turn on comment moderation. On the plus side, I've gotten rid of the word verification.