There are two types of actors in this world, one is actors who play one role or one type of character for life, such as Jim Carrey, such as Stephen Chow, they play comedy for a lifetime, but we will not be bored; such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, we also enjoy watching action movies all our lives; for example, Ge You, Huang Bo and Xu Zheng, we still can't get tired of them playing small characters for a lifetime; we will not ask them to change their images and roles to challenge their acting skills , to encourage them to challenge different roles may be harming them.
Another type of actor is Xiao Lizi. Almost every movie of them makes us refreshing and shouting subversion. For example, Xiao Lizi, who has made countless movies, has different characters, some are subtle and subtle, some are rough and savage, some are serious and deep, some are enthusiastic, some are clean and shy, some are gloomy and perverse, etc. , and so on.
One thing that needs to be emphasized is that these two types of actors should not be put together to compare their acting skills, which is of no practical significance, because the key function of an actor is to play a good role and bring happiness to the audience. Doing this is a good actor, an actor that the audience likes.
However, I don’t think the second category of actors is suitable for China’s publicity environment, because many Chinese films like to promote their protagonists by putting starring actors on variety shows and other means, and most of the audiences of Chinese variety shows are children. I fell in love with Xiao Lizi, and there will be problems with going to his movies. If it is a movie like "Titanic", it will be fine, but if it is a movie like "The Wolf of Wall Street", it will be really harmful. Not too shallow, because it is too unsuitable for minors to watch.
1. Greed and Humanity
First of all, the word "wolf" in the name of the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" gave me the motivation to watch the movie. Because it reminds me of Chinese corporate culture.
In the past few years, many companies in China have been talking about wolf culture, which is about team spirit and the spirit of perseverance, courage, and perseverance until the goal is achieved. Therefore, wolf culture was once the cultural pursuit of corporate business battles in China.
So why do we prefer to use "wolf" to express this spirit? Couldn't the more ferocious beasts such as ligers and tigers not work? I think the main reason is that ligers and other beasts are mostly in forests and grasslands far away from humans, while wolves are the beasts that often harass humans, destroy production, and hunt cattle and sheep. saw their organization, brutality and destructiveness.
Some people say that wolves are the image representative of greed, which is entirely because wolves always compete with humans for livestock.
And the market is like a battlefield, it is an arena where the strong prey on the weak. The characteristics of the wolf have a necessary quality to win in any highly competitive human activities - aggressiveness and ruthlessness.
On the other hand, when people seek survival in harsh environments, they do need a kind of hard work and ruthlessness. It's like Brock who made a comeback for his family when it was difficult to survive the economic crisis in "Iron Fist Man"; it was like "When Happiness Knocks on the Door", in order to allow his children and himself to have a shelter. Chris, who gritted his teeth and was on the road to job hunting, all have a strong desire for survival and dignity. From this point of view, this wolf nature is not greed, but a kind of tenacity and unyielding, a kind of positive spirit.
However, the wolf nature we see in "The Wolf of Wall Street" is obviously different from the above two movies.
I remember reading in a book a long time ago that selfishness, greed, and indolence are the three major evils of human beings. And greed is directly linked to desire.
Many people believe that the first manifestation of Western society's emergence from the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance is the liberation of human nature, and the development of human society today is also due to the liberation of human nature and desire.
Desire is indeed a driving force, a driving force to liberate and promote human production and life, so what's wrong with greed? Why is it considered inferior by some great wise men? Even in Catholicism, greed and gluttony are listed as the seven deadly sins?
I think this may be due to the initial material scarcity, as well as the lack of production capacity and living standards. Just imagine, in ancient times, the productive forces were not developed enough, the material was relatively scarce, and the greedy people had a strong possessiveness. Their appearance meant competition for other people's production materials, food, clothing, housing, and transportation, and even gluttony became a distribution to others. The threat of amount is naturally a quality that is not accepted by mainstream morality.
Not to mention foreign countries, let alone ancient times, in China’s modern and contemporary times, the older generation has such memories. When guests come at home, there must be a lot of courtesy and hospitality. Because of the poor material in those days, it was necessary to treat guests. When there are not many food and drinks, it is necessary to control the chopsticks, and often children are not allowed to serve. There was an old man who told me an interesting story when he was young. Several neighbors and friends gathered together four dishes and a bottle of wine and just sat down. As a result, an uninvited guest came and sat down. After eating a little, he was fine. Every time the chopsticks were clamped sideways, the plate was almost empty in a few seconds, which made everyone angry and threw them away.
Therefore, in the eyes of the previous generation, a person's character can be clearly seen at the dinner table.
But looking at it now, isn't it a matter of material poverty? At that time, people thought it was a matter of moral quality. Thinking about it, it was normal. In those days, those dishes were all made with great difficulty. Isn’t gluttonous people plundering others?
Therefore, from this point of view, greed and material desire are both due to the relative scarcity of material. If, as described in the communist society, the productive forces are greatly developed and the material is extremely abundant, people will distribute according to their needs, and people will have what they want. Will the desire for material things still be that great?
It may be difficult for us to imagine what communism looks like, but now that the rich are the most materialistic people in the world, will their material desires still be so strong? Will they still be so greedy? Is it possible that if you have everything, you will no longer be so greedy?
"The Wolf of Wall Street" gave us the answer. When Belfort, played by Xiao Lizi, made a huge fortune through cheating, he and his pig friends and dog friends began to live a lavish life. In the past, it was often seen in books that the feudal ruling class did not care about the life or death of the people, and lived a life of being intoxicated with money and intoxicated, especially when referring to the ancient faint-hearted emperors. It can only be imagined. After all, we ordinary people do not have that kind of experience, and the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" allows us to truly see the luxury, corruption and depravity of the rich.
What do rich people need? How big are their desires? Is there an end to greed? These questions all involve the discussion of human nature, and "The Wolf of Wall Street" gives us this kind of impact and thinking.
What is human nature, I think from the perspective of selfishness, it is called human nature.
If a person's values are not based on self, but from the public interest or some kind of value pursuit of the human social community, then it is not called human nature, it is called a saint.
In Western society, there are very few people who can pursue this kind of life, and it seems that few Western movies and TV dramas reflect this kind of value. They don’t want to portray the image of a great man like the oriental saint. They prefer to portray flesh and blood, and we Ordinary people also have such and such faults and selfish desires. Even if he is a person with extraordinary achievements, he must have the shortcomings of ordinary people, and try not to create a perfect person.
In the West, perhaps only Socrates and Ye Su are the perfect people who sacrifice their ego for the public interest and the interests of all mankind, while in the East, in China, under the hypnosis of moral education of benevolence, righteousness, reason and faith, Although there are many sanctimonious hypocrites, there are indeed many true gentlemen who do not bow down to five buckets of rice, but they are obviously not within the Western value system. On the contrary, they will be considered untrue and contrary to human nature.
If a person becomes rich, he turns to pursue the improvement of spiritual realm, then he is the pursuit of the values and philosophy of the Eastern gentleman (of course, even the poor in the East can pursue the behavior of a gentleman who does not eat what they come), while in the West, it seems that he cares more about human nature the ultimate pursuit. Desire is an eternal topic that has little to do with rich or poor.
For example, Tom Cruise's "Eyes Wide Shut", such as "Sleeping Beauty", all show us the hidden corners of the rich people's lives. Desires do not distinguish between young and old, but age and age are the inescapable fate shared by rich and poor.
(This may be the difference between Eastern and Western cultures and values, or just the difference in artistic expression. However, I always think that the traditional culture of the East is more like an old man, showing calmness and sophistication, abstinence and indifference everywhere. Western contemporary culture is more like a young person, revealing youth hormones everywhere.)
Many people believe that if rich people grow up in a wealthy environment, they may be able to cultivate what some of our scholars call aristocratic temperament. It is from the bottom of the poor who struggled and worked hard, and it is often easier to be greedy and unable to extricate themselves from a life of luxury, because there is too much shortage when young.
And even if he was born in an emperor's family when he was young, wouldn't he want to live another five hundred years? In fact, it is not only five hundred years, I think, if any rich man can use money to prolong his life, he will buy it without hesitation. If he can live long, he will definitely pursue it without thinking. Look at the emperors of ancient China, why many believe in Taoism, a big reason is that they hope to find longevity. And the recent news that the wealthy on Wall Street are actively investing in life sciences to study life-extending technology, aren't they also fellows?
In "Time Planning Bureau", those rich people with extremely long lives may be cautious because of their long lives, and dare not touch any dangerous and exciting life, but any poor people who dare to laugh at rich people's cautious life, why don't they want to go What about having more life time?
This is human nature! As long as you don't deliberately suppress it, everyone has a certain humanity.
Therefore, the reason why greed is human nature is because greed is something that everyone has. Young and old, rich and poor, and greed has almost no end.
Conversely, we should not talk about greed and evil. For example, for a person who has been blind since childhood, if she prayed to God to give her three days of light, and God had to give her three days of light, she really did not want to have three days of light. Is it the fourth day? of course not. When I was a child, I once learned the text "The Story of the Goldfish and the Fisherman" in the textbook. At that time, I was filled with righteous indignation at the greed and cruelty of the fisherman's wife, but now that I think about it, this is hardly a moral issue, but just a human nature issue. Let you have a goldfish who can provide you with all possible opportunities, will you not be greedy? I don't think so, even eminent monks and great virtues will have the desire to pursue the supreme scriptures and meanings and realize the supreme Dharma.
Therefore, when we think deeply, we will find that greed is actually due to the contrast between people's desire and possession. If your desire is far lower than the degree of possession, then you will not care what you have in front of you, or even abandon your current material. In life, there are many monks like this; if your desire is far higher than the degree of possession, it will be difficult to satisfy, even if you have more, you will eventually be unhappy.
Therefore, a poor person living in a closed environment, who does not know the world outside, has no desire to pursue, may still be very happy. On the other hand, if a person has a lot in front of him, but he does not know how to cherish it, he turns around and pursues what he does not have. Things may be unhappy for life.
From this perspective, the degree of happiness may not depend on the degree of possession, but on the value of desire. The numerator of happiness is possession, and the denominator is desire. The greater the desire, the lower the happiness. Of course, if this is used to guide our personal self-cultivation and pursuit of realm, it has positive significance, but it must not be used in social governance, otherwise it will become a political model that suppresses human nature.
There is a recent sci-fi movie "Space Traveler". The audience can see a lot in it. The benevolent sees the benevolence, and the wise sees the wisdom, but the final ending clearly tells us: as long as we cherish the moment, there will always be happiness everywhere.
Perhaps the key to greed is what you see in front of your eyes, and what you see in the distance?
The heroine in "Space Traveler" had already resigned herself to her fate, and regarded this awakening as an accident, and developed a love affair with the male protagonist. However, when she knew that the male protagonist deliberately woke her up, she immediately changed her face and had a huge attitude. turn, unacceptable.
The film isn't really about morality, it's about human nature.
All the passengers on that spaceship obviously had good wishes to go to a new planet, but the people who were awakened by accident obviously lost this opportunity, and the bright future came to nothing, so is it meaningless now? Woolen cloth? The movie gives us the answer. People's views on the present and their understanding of life are actually just one thought. If you can't see through, there is only pain. If you see through, what kind of life is life, there is no difference, it's all one kind of person It's just a life experience that no one else has in the world. When you experience this kind of life that no one else chooses to the extreme, maybe you will become a legend in the eyes of others.
2. Values After
watching "The Wolf of Wall Street", the first impression is that the screenwriter and director have some wrong views, at least not in line with traditional Chinese moral values. People like Xiao Lizi who rely on cheating to obtain huge wealth, since the CIA has already He was caught, it was a happy thing, but when the plot and the picture changed, the detective was in a bad mood while sitting on the cheap subway, and Xiao Lizi became an orator selling sales skills and success.
Good people should be rewarded with good rewards, and bad people should be rewarded with bad rewards. Isn’t this just right?
If causation and retribution are opposite, will people still have moral and shameful self-restraint in their choices in life?
So, it's really not a movie that kids can watch casually. If there is no certain moral immunity, it is very likely that you will learn badly.
Daniel then thought about it, maybe, this is not a bad person in the Western value system. Or it is only a kind of transgression and violation, and he is still a good person after being punished accordingly. Or maybe it didn't want to convey any values, just telling the facts, after all, this movie is based on real people.
Values are sometimes difficult to say, because there are sometimes too many counter-examples in real life to prove the weakness of values.
From the point of view of the end of life or the long history of human beings, bad people are often more like successful people than good people. Good people are often lifted up by others in later generations, while bad people often "success" in the present.
Therefore, there are many "see-through" people who choose to pursue "self-realization", the highest life need, by any means.
This is a bit like Huan Wen in ancient China. He said, "If you can't be famous for a hundred generations, you will be left with a bad reputation for ten thousand years!" What kind of realm is this? ! In the traditional Chinese moral judgment system, this is naturally a big bastard, but in the Western value system, this may be a non-vernacular life experience theory.
And the end of the movie "Wolf" may convey these three views to everyone invisibly. Think about it, at least people lived a life in style, and they didn't spend it in prison, and they were still successful people when they turned around. Venerable Master, compared with the detective who caught him, whose life is more gorgeous and happy? Obviously it is the life of Xiao Lizi.
From this point of view, it is still difficult for me, at least for most Chinese people, to accept this kind of value.
Viewed in the traditional Confucian ideology, "The Wolf of Wall Street" is almost a movie that encourages greed and unscrupulous means. Chinese traditional Confucian culture pays attention to names before and after one's life. No matter how beautiful a person was at the time, if he is notorious after death, his life will be a failed and undesirable life, but "The Wolf of Wall Street" is obviously not like that. The values it embodies are more It is easy for us to choose the life we live in the present moment.
If this kind of film that destroys the three views is publicly shown in China, I don’t know if it will bring harm to many children. It is like the “Young and Dangerous” that was popular in the mainland. How many children like to fight in groups and kill people because of this?
When it comes to values, I once read an article saying that Chinese students were in a foreign class, and the teacher told a story that there was a couple in love, the woman worked on an island, and the man had to drive every night. The boat crossed the river to meet her. There was a man on the island who was in charge of the lighthouse. He also liked that woman, but he never dared to confess or pursue her. However, one day the river was high tide and the waves were rough, and the woman's lover's boat was halfway rowed. When it was difficult to come over in danger, the woman asked the tower watcher on the island for help. However, the tower watcher offered to let the woman sleep with him once, and the woman agreed to save the man she loved, and then the tower watcher fulfilled it when he succeeded. She kept her promise and saved the woman's lover. However, when her man was rescued, she found out that the woman had slept with the watchman, and left the woman in a fit of anger and no longer loved her.
In this story, students from the East and the West have significantly different value judgments. Chinese students all think that the man who sees the tower is a complete villain. The woman ignores her chastity and is too brainless, and agrees with the man's actions; while Western students think that A woman is right, it is pitiful and admirable to make such a big sacrifice to save her lover, and the tower watcher is also right, it is not too much to put forward some demands at risk of life to save people, and is a wise man who is good at seizing opportunities, He got what he wanted, and he fulfilled his promise to save her lover. The most hateful thing was the woman's lover. It was his incompetence that led to the subsequent series of stories, and he abandoned a woman who loved him so much. .
I was shocked when I read this story, I don't know if it's true or not, but if it's a true story, the morality, chastity and values of the East and the West are too different.
Whether it is right or wrong, the benevolent sees benevolence, the wise sees wisdom, let others comment.
However, China also has a value that is obviously different from that of the West, which is how to choose between collectivism and individualism. In the context of traditional Chinese morality, as well as in the language of modern school education and public media, collectivism and patriotism are actively advocated. Doctrine, each of us is a part of the country and the collective, contributing to the country and filling the color for the collective is the value pursuit of each of us, even when the individual and collective interests are opposed, we must have the courage to discard personal interests and take care of the whole. Collective interest.
But the Western language family seems to emphasize individualism more. They think that collectivism is a kind of thing that suppresses individual freedom.
I think that China used to be a mess for quite a few years. After being bullied by foreign powers for a hundred years, there was a new China. The unbearable past and lessons have made the generations of the new China attach great importance to patriotic education and collectivist education. They were originally the believers of communism, which made Chinese collectivism more and more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
In the West, it seems that the strong prey has always been the concept. Everyone is reluctant to give up themselves for the sake of the collective. Although Western Hollywood blockbusters also make more patriotic films, their core is often heroism and individualism, but they put stories together. Well told.
Sometimes we also find that in Hollywood sci-fi films, although the future society has been highly developed, there will still be slums and all kinds of human darkness.
In China's traditional communist education, the development of human society must be the common development of material civilization and spiritual civilization. In a future society with highly developed technology, how can human beings still have such low-level public goods? How could there still be slums, how could there be so many bad people?
These, deep-seated reasons, are actually due to the fact that the East and the West have too many different understandings of human society, human beings, and human nature.
I don't know if you have noticed that a movie clip of "The Wolf of Wall Street" actually appeared in the popular TV series "In the Name of the People" some time ago. I don't remember which one it was. I don't know if this was deliberately done by the director and screenwriter. After all, I think they may be trying to explain the differences between Eastern and Western cultures and values.
Third, the
future is very far in the future. If you want the kind of future life in sci-fi blockbusters, you can only experience it in film and television dramas. For each of us today, maybe only rich, only rich, You have more choices and more opportunities.
In fact, there is no standard for wealth, wealth is only a relative concept, and possession is also relative. Compared with before liberation, perhaps the landlord is not as prosperous as we are now as an ordinary family, and compared with the ancient times, perhaps the emperor is not as happy as we are now.
Therefore, wealth can only be compared in the same era, in the same space and in the same dimension.
There is a saying in China: The family has 10,000 taels of gold, but three meals a day, and the family has 10,000 acres of fertile land, but only sleeps on a three-foot-wide bed.
Our dimensions, the times we live in and the level of technology we are in determine what we can have and what we can enjoy.
Compared with the past, we are extremely rich, but compared with the future, we are poor.
In any case, we are still in an era of material scarcity, at least not a communist society based on distribution according to needs. The scarcity of material will inevitably lead to the emergence of desire and greed, which seems to be an inevitable end.
So, just convince yourself that you can either learn to enjoy what you have now, or go to the top and enjoy the life of the wolf of Wall Street.
However, is the life of "The Wolf of Wall Street" the pursuit and meaning of our life? Will material possessions bring spiritual satisfaction? If that's the case, why are you still taking drugs?
Did you feel a little scared seeing the scene where Xiao Lizi was so drunk that he almost died?
So, there is no end to greed, maybe it will kill you in the end.
people! Sometimes you really don't know what you want?
Perhaps, to put it simply: people, in fact, want anything they don't have! Maybe anything that has not been experienced has the urge to experience it. For example, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty who loved carpenters and market hawkers were born in the emperor's family. What they lacked was civilian life, but they were yearning for civilian life.
Life is imperfect, because there is only one life, and everyone has only one chance to choose at each intersection of life, so this is doomed to be imperfect. If someone really invents a time machine, so that each of us has the opportunity to go back to the past and re-choose things in the past, I believe that it will be the greatest invention in human history, and it will also drive human thought and philosophy once. leap.
I have always believed that the meaning of literature is that it allows each of us readers to have an experience of dialogue and communication with different lives. When we read a novel full of comedy, we may be in a good mood for many days; and if we After reading a tragic novel, we may not be able to pull out the gloomy emotions for a long time. Although we only read some words, the charm of these words is that they can make us immerse in them after reading them, and experience a life different from our own with joy or sorrow with the ups and downs of the characters in the novel. story.
In the same way, this is even more the case with TV shows and movies now, in which we experience different life stories of different people more intuitively.
Why is it said that people who read a lot of books will appear more calm and heavy? This is because they have a far deeper understanding of the human group and the meaning of life than ordinary people through reading various life stories. Experience, as the saying goes, once the sea was difficult, so they felt a little more heavy.
Similarly, even though they haven't read many books, people with rich experience will exude a sense of heaviness throughout their body, which is obviously due to their much richer life experience than the average person.
Therefore, in the final analysis, people's needs for culture are actually needs for different life experiences. It is precisely because each of us has only one life that is restricted by various factors such as birth, environment, and opportunities. Therefore, we are eager to experience all kinds of different lives.
Therefore, the cultural needs of human beings in the future must move towards "games", and only games can make us have a more realistic sense of experience. Although the current video games and online games are still very "low", they are enough to make many people fall into them and cannot extricate themselves. One day in the future, with the advancement of technologies such as virtual reality technology and life science, human beings will definitely Developing a more realistic and immersive game gives each of us the opportunity to experience a variety of lives more realistically.
I really can't tell what people's lives will be like at that level of technology, but many science fiction movies give us some room for imagination.
Sometimes I think: if one could stand in a black hole like "Interstellar" and see the multi-dimensional space described in the movies, if one could walk into a prophet like Neo in "The Matrix" If a person can have the opportunity to experience all kinds of life possibilities, maybe his greed will be reduced, maybe he will have a deeper understanding of human nature, maybe he will be able to If he has a deeper understanding of man and society, man and the world, man and the universe, he may become a real master, wise man and saint. However, that may be a realm that only Buddha can have.
I don’t know to what extent the future technology of mankind will eventually develop, but I am sure that one day, people will be able to experience all kinds of life possibilities in games and dreams as described in science fiction movies. I hope that day will be able to Appear as soon as possible. If that day comes, we will witness the re-understanding of the ultimate concept of "I", and will soon jump to another realm at the height of philosophy.
At that time, it may seem so naive and ridiculous to discuss greed again.
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