RIFLE RANGE BOY

Reader discretion is advised. Thanks to JM for starting this conversation. They tell you that you are worthless, that you are flawed, and that you are the product of the original sin. You are a disgrace and living off God's Grace. God's Grace is the only one which is going to save us at the end of days. You are worthless, a sinner, a good for nothing. You who have nothing do not even have possession over your life. This soiled life is a total ownership of God. He has exclusive rights over you. You have no right to take it away. Even when one's dignity is lost, his existence may burden himself and those around him; nobody has the right to take it away. It is better that he suffers and makes others' lives a living hell. Life has to go on. God has plans for him, and these hiccups are part of his grander scheme of things. Our role is to be herded through and let Him do His mysterious work. We must be herded by the shepherd. It is not our position to ask whether the shepherd...

The Conformist (Il conformista, Italian; 1970) Director: Bernardo Bertolucci People are like sheep. They flock around each other, following their shepherd, not knowing that their shepherd has only one thing on their mind. That is, to protect the herd from the wolf, to fatten them and nicely line them up to the slaughter. The one thing that differentiates people from animals, their minds are so quickly malleable. With a bit of persuasion, they will bark, sing, bleat, dance or croak to the tune of their masters. Plato’s Cave Allegory, described in this movie, succinctly tells how we behave. In Plato’s original example, he told of prisoners who had never seen the outside world, tied by their hands to face a wall of the inside of a cave. From the silhouette that appears on the wall of human activity, of people playing and children eating ice cream, they imagine how the world is without ever setting foot outside their prisons. It is an imagined outside world that he imagines may be far from...