For Chuck (1942 - 2014)
(Originally posted December 30, 2012)
Chaplin: Final Speech From The Great Dictator (1940)
(Originally posted December 30, 2012)
Chaplin: Final Speech From The Great Dictator (1940)
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor. That's not my business.Even Dogs dream, man.
I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible -- Jew, gentile; black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in -- machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little; More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost...
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure!
Then, in the name of democracy, let's use that power; let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie!
They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness...
Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.
The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.
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my condolences
ReplyDeletesome quotes from mr g. relevant to chaplin's speech -
ouspensky was talking with gurdjieff about war in 1917, and g. expressed the following opinions:
‘The conversation began with my question: “Can war be stopped?” And G. answered: “Yes it can.” And yet I had been certain from previous talks that he would answer: “No, it cannot.
“But the whole thing is: How?” he said. “It is necessary to know a great deal in order to understand that. What is war? It is the result of planetary influences. Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each other; tension results. Have you noticed how, if a man passes quite close to you on a narrow pavement, you become all tense? The same tension takes place between planets. For them it lasts, perhaps, a second or two. But here, on the earth, people begin to slaughter one another, and they go on slaughtering for maybe for several years. It seems to them at the time that they hate one another; or that perhaps they have to slaughter each other for some exalted purpose; or that they must defend somebody or something and that it is a very noble thing to do; or something else of the same kind. They fail to realize to what extent they are mere pawns in the game. They think they signify something; they think they can move about as they like; they think they can decide to do this or that. But in reality all of their movements, all their actions, are the results of planetary influences. And they themselves signify literally nothing. Then the Moon plays a big part in this. But we will speak about the moon separately. Only it must be understood that neither Emperor Wilhelm, nor generals, nor ministers, not parliaments, signify anything. Everything that happens on a big scale is governed from outside, and governed either by accidental combinations of influences or by general cosmic laws.”’[Copyright P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, pp.23-24, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1950]
The final words spoken by Beelzebub in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man, by G.I. Gurdjieff:
The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ ... of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them.