Our profession and conscience

Owen 2022-04-20 09:01:12

I want to ask a question, between career and conscience, how should you choose?

In "War Photographer", a group of Indonesian thugs chased and killed a person of a different faction. Photographer Nachtway knelt down and begged the protectors to let the innocent man go, but the thugs still cut the poor man's throat. As the thugs raised their knives, Nachtway also raised the camera lens. It has been commented that Nachtway here embodies all the virtues of a journalist: conscience before and calm and professionalism after.

In other words, the profession of a journalist is a bit heartless—your death, my reporting, his misfortune, my reporting. However, there are still many so-called heartless professions in this world, especially on the eve of dawn when people are unpredictable, wind and rain are precarious, and black and white are reversed.

The film "Eavesdropping Storm" (also known as "Other People's Lives") seems to give us such a model, a secret policeman of the National Security Bureau can cover up "reactionary" state enemies because of "discovery of conscience".

Secret police HG XX/7 could have been an excellent surveillance expert, but one special surveillance operation was enough to turn his life around.

The ultimate reason for the failure is that he walked into the life of the monitored person, was moved by the spirit and even the life of the other party, and turned from a bystander to a participant. There are several notable signs: he walked into the monitored person's home many times, Trying to integrate into the home; he talks to the hostess in the bar, persuades the heroine not to betray her husband, sells the body for the sake of art, HG XX/7 gives his point of view to the events that were originally progressing objectively; he reports to his superiors, hoping that he Listening alone, I hope to monopolize the right to speak, and make myself the information controller of the entire operation, and all this is to change the direction of history.

Of course, the consequence of doing so is to ruin his own future step by step. When the article of the right-wing writer who was monitored was successfully published in the West German "Der Spiegel" weekly, the general secretary of East Germany was furious, and the bureaucracy's shirk of responsibility quickly made him It became a scapegoat, so that on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall, HG XX/7 was still doing the mechanical work of opening letters in the letter monitoring room of the National Security Bureau - waiting for inspection.

When the Berlin Wall was in place, people in the GDR always thought of the Federal Republic of Germany in the west, thinking that their country was not democratic, and that only Germany on the other side of the wall was the real Germany.

But what happens when the wall does come down?

Maybe we can recall the dialogue between the former East German art minister and right-wing writer Greyman at the end of the film: "You can write whatever you want now, isn't this the country of your dreams? But Greyman, the current Federal Republic of Germany is really Is it what you artists want? Is there anything else to write? People have no faith and no love, it's a free federal republic, but does it make sense?" ...

at the end of the story, the good guys HG XX/7 doing An ordinary newspaper delivery man drags a small car from street to street every day, leaving pieces of newsprint in each newspaper box, that's all, or, when he passes by a bookstore one day, Found the photo of the familiar figure and the "Praise of the Good Man" "For Myself" on the new bookshelf.

Betrayal of a career is not something everyone can do, and choosing a conscience is not as easy as one thinks.

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Extended Reading
  • Antonette 2022-04-24 07:01:03

    16.5.2 During the viewing, the mind is like a spring, and the heart is like a string. After viewing, I sigh and return to speechlessness. During the period of the ban, the deepest shock and the greatest gain were tied together, and I felt a lot of emotion. Before, I issued a strong order to myself after returning to the Internet. I want to write a long review that is worthy of my own impressions. I will find a time to summarize it at the end of the year.

  • Stone 2021-10-20 19:01:15

    Seeing the end, I still can’t help tears running

The Lives of Others quotes

  • Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: Madam?

    Christa-Maria Sieland: Go away. I want to be alone.

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: Madam Sieland?

    Christa-Maria Sieland: Do we know each other?

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: You don't know me, but I know you. Many people love you for who you are.

    Christa-Maria Sieland: Actors are never "who they are."

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: You are. I've seen you on stage. You were more who you are than you are now.

    Christa-Maria Sieland: So you know what I'm like.

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: I'm your audience.

    Christa-Maria Sieland: I have to go.

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: Where to?

    Christa-Maria Sieland: I'm meeting an old classmate. I...

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: You see? Just now, you weren't being yourself.

    Christa-Maria Sieland: No?

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: No.

    Christa-Maria Sieland: So you know her well, this Christa-Maria Sieland. What do you think - would she hurt someone who loves her above all else? Would she sell herself for art?

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: For art? You already have art. That'd be a bad deal. You are a great artist. Don't you know that?

    Christa-Maria Sieland: And you are a good man.

  • [Wiesler enters the elevator at his apartment building. A young boy with a ball joins him]

    Junge mit Ball: Are you really with the Stasi?

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: Do you even know what the Stasi is?

    Junge mit Ball: Yes. They're bad men who put people in prison, says my dad.

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: I see. What is the name of your...

    [pauses]

    Junge mit Ball: My what?

    Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: [thinks for a few more seconds] Ball. What's the name of your ball?

    Junge mit Ball: You're funny. Balls don't have names.