The Hunger Games - Reflections

I saw the film today with my mother.

The same questions arose after I watched V for Vendetta.

Will people see the similarities? Do people understand that these films are a critique of our political world? Do they wonder about the implications of how we understand ourselves as a species, that we are capable of such brutality? That we can imagine brutality much worse, not just as individuals - the serial killer is easy to right off - but as state-sanctioned activity.

Heidegger called it The They, Das Man, also sometimes translated as The One. One doesn't do this and one doesn't do that. They say you shouldn't eat too many eggs. They say you should eat some though...

"The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self (das Man-selbst), which we distinguish from the authentic Self - that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way [eigens ergriffenen]. As they-self, the particular Dasein has been dispersed into the "they", and must first find itself... If Dasein is familiar with itself as they-self, this means at the same time that the "they" itself prescribes that way of interpreting the world and Being-in-the-world which lies closest. Dasein is for the sake of the "they" in an everyday manner, and the "they" itself Articulates the referential context of significance... If Dasein discovers the world in its own way [eigens] and brings it close, if it discloses to itself its own authentic Being, then this discovery of the world and this disclosure of Dasein are always accomplished as a clearing-away of concealments and obscurities, as a breaking up of the disguises with which Dasein bars its own way." (Being and Time/Sein und Seit, p. 129 of the original text.)

sigh. oh Heidegger, I love it when you do me like you do.

{p.s. if anyone is actually reading this and hasn't read Heidegger before it's important to know that he made up a lot of words, and he made them up in German, so it was sort of tricky to translate. So when he says things like "Being-in-the-world," it has a very specific meaning. Dasein is the most important word in this paragraph, and it's the word he made up for Human Being. Sein, in German, means being, Da means there. Being there. It takes him a long time to explain why, and it includes a long critique of Western Philosophy starting with Descartes who tried to say that "I think there for I am" means that "I" can see "myself" objectively, or in other words, my mind (the part that thinks) can be separate from the part that is existing, and the place in which it is existing. Here is one of my favorite moments from his critique: "The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself." swoon.} (ibid. p.12)

The "They" in Western Philosophy, The "Not-Self" in the world of Human Design, Havel, if I remember correctly, describes it simply as Ideology in The Power of the Powerless. Ideology, he says, is a "specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them." (see link)

Havel's example is probably the easiest to relate to. It's a shop keeper, a greengrocer, who places a sign in his window everyday. The sign reads "Workers of the World Unite!" and demonstrates his allegiance to the communist party. No human being, he says, would hang a sign in his shop window that said "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient," even if this were more true than the sign that he does hang, because it would humiliate him. The ideology, Havel says, allows the greengrocer to say, "Well what's wrong will the workers of the world uniting?" and thus deceive himself. It allows him to keep in place the "disguises with which [he] bars his own way."

We participate in these events - the Hunger games, the Lottery, the National and Local Elections, knowing full well that we do not agree with what our government is doing with the money, or the power. We have all kinds of excuses, we have all kinds of disguises. And because of those little lies we tell ourselves, everything continues exactly as it has, Guantanamo, Iraq, who's next?

What I appreciate about Havel is that he describes it (the They, the Not-Self) in a way that is so easy to relate to, while illuminating it's political implications. What I like about Heidegger is that he is so detailed. What I like about Human Design is that instead of focusing on the political implications, it focuses on the personal, which is where all political power lays anyway. The personal transformation is something we each do for ourselves, and this is the only way it can be, no matter which of these systems you look at. I guess with Human Design I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the practical information that is available is invaluable, it directs the mind to the answer it has been seeking. But on the other hand, by doing so, the individual is easily caught up in the answer, which, as both Heidegger and Ra point out, is not the point. "The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself."

What worries me about movies like The Hunger Games is that they allow us to feel like we are participating in something that resonates with our own feelings of oppression, but without actually asking us to transform the roots of that oppression. In the Hunger Games, President Snow, played by Donald Sutherland, is talking with Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) about how the main character is doing in the game. "Hope," he says, "is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained." I worry that films like the Hunger Games give us just that, enough hope to be contained. People walk out of the theater feeling identified with the triumph of the main character, with just enough hope to continue living the life they've been regretting all along, but not enough to get them to examine how they're contributing to the disguises that are barring their own way - political and personal, because they are, of course, the same thing.

oh that was fun. I love it when Heidegger and Havel get to come out with reference to pop-culture. sooo fun.