How The 9 Worst Contraterrene Fails Of All Time Could Have Been Prevented

1. "The Truman Program" is a profoundly troubling film. On the surface area, it deals with the worn out issue of the intermingling of life and the media. Examples for such incestuous relationships are plentiful: Ronald Reagan, the cinematic president was also a governmental motion picture star. In another movie ("The Philadelphia Experiment") a defrosted Rip Van Winkle exclaims upon seeing Reagan on tv (40 years after his forced hibernation started): "I know this person, he utilized to play Cowboys in the movies". Honest electronic cameras monitor the lives of web designers (site owners) practically 24 hours a day. The resulting images are constantly published on the Web and are offered to anybody with a computer system. The last decade saw a spate of movies, all worried about the confusion between life and the imitations of life, the media. The innovative "Capitan Fracasse", "Capricorn One", "Sliver", "Wag the Dog" and many lesser movies have all tried to tackle this (un)fortunate state of things and its ethical and useful ramifications. The blurring line in between life and its representation in the arts is arguably the primary theme of "The Truman Program". The hero, Truman, resides in a synthetic world, built especially for him. He was born and raised there. He knows no other place. Individuals around him-- unbeknownst to him-- are all actors. His life is kept an eye on by 5000 cameras and broadcast live to the world, 24 hours a day, every day. He is spontaneous and amusing since he is uninformed of the monstrosity of which he is the primary cogwheel. However Peter Dam, the film's director, takes this problem one step even more by committing a massive act of immorality on screen. Truman is lied to, cheated, denied of his ability to make choices, managed and controlled by sinister, half-mad Shylocks. As I stated, he is unknowingly the only spontaneous, non-scripted, "actor" in the on- going soaper of his own life. All the other figures in his life, including his parents, are actors. Numerous countless viewers and voyeurs plug in to take a peep, to intrude upon what Truman innocently and truthfully believes to be his personal privacy. They are revealed reacting to various significant or anti-climactic occasions in Truman's life. That we are the ethical equivalent of these viewers-voyeurs, accomplices to the exact same crimes, comes as a shocking awareness to us. We are (live) viewers and they are (celluloid) audiences. We both enjoy Truman's unintentional, non-consenting, exhibitionism. We understand the fact about Truman and so do they. Naturally, we remain in a fortunate ethical position due to the fact that we know it is a movie and they understand it is a piece of raw life that they are viewing. But moviegoers throughout Hollywood's history have voluntarily and insatiably took part in many "Truman Shows". The lives (real or cooked up) of the studio stars were completely exploited and integrated in their films. Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, James Cagney all were forced to spill their guts in cathartic acts of on cam repentance and not so symbolic embarrassment. "Truman Reveals" is the more typical phenomenon in the film market. Then there is the concern of the director of the movie as God and of God as the director of a film. The members of his team-- technical and non-technical alike-- comply with Christoff, the director, almost blindly. They suspend their better ethical judgement and succumb to his whims and to the harsh and repulsive elements of his pervasive dishonesty and sadism. The torturer loves his victims. They define him and instill his life with meaning. Caught in a

2. narrative, the motion picture states, people act immorally. (IN)famous psychological experiments support this assertion. Trainees were led to administer what they thought were "fatal" electric shocks to their colleagues or to treat them bestially in simulated prisons. They obeyed orders. So did all the ugly genocidal lawbreakers in history. The Director Weir asks: should God be allowed to be unethical or should he be bound by morality and principles? Should his decisions and actions be constrained by an over- riding code of right and incorrect? Should we follow his commandments blindly or should we work out judgement? If we do work out judgement are we then being unethical since God (and the Director Christoff) understand more (about the world, about us, the viewers and about Truman), understand much better, are omnipotent? Is the exercise of judgement the usurpation of magnificent powers and characteristics? Isn't this act of contumacy bound to lead us down the course of armageddon? It all come down to the concern of free option and free will versus the kindhearted determinism imposed by an omniscient and supreme being. What is better: to have the choice and be damned (nearly inevitably, as in the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden)-- or to succumb to the superior wisdom of a supreme being? An option always includes a problem. It is the conflict in between 2 comparable states, 2 weighty decisions whose results are equally desirable and two identically-preferable strategies. Where there is no such equivalence-- there is no choice, simply the pre-ordained (offered full understanding) workout of a choice or disposition. Bees do pass by to make honey. A fan of football does not choose to view a football game. He is inspired by a clear injustice between the options that he faces. He can check out a book or go to the game. His decision is clear and pre-determined by his predilection and by the inevitable and invariable execution of the principle of satisfaction. There is no choice here. It is all rather automated. However compare this to the choice some victims had to make in between 2 of their children in the face of Nazi brutality. Which kid to sentence to death-- which one to sentence to life? Now, this is a genuine choice. It includes clashing emotions of equivalent strength. One need to not confuse decisions, opportunities and choice. Decisions are the simple selection of courses of action. This selection can be the result of a choice or the result of a tendency (conscious, unconscious, or biological-genetic). Opportunities are existing states of the world, which permit a decision to be made and to affect the future state of the world. Options are our conscious experience of moral or other dilemmas. Christoff finds it unusual that Truman-- having discovered the truth-- firmly insists upon his right to choose, i.e., upon his right to experience issues. To the Director, dilemmas hurt, unnecessary, harmful, or at finest disruptive. His utopian world-- the one he built for Truman-- is choice-free and dilemma-free. Truman is set not in the sense that his spontaneity is snuffed out. Truman is wrong when, in one of the scenes, he keeps yelling: "Be careful, I am spontaneous". The Director and fat-cat capitalistic producers want him to be spontaneous, they desire him to make decisions. However they do not want him to choose. So they influence his preferences and predilections by offering him with an absolutely totalitarian, micro-controlled, repeated environment. Such an environment reduces the set of possible choices so that there is just one favourable or acceptable decision (outcome) at any junction. Truman does decide whether to stroll down a certain path or not. However when he does choose to stroll-- only one course is readily available to him. His world is constrained and restricted-- not his actions. In fact, Truman's only option in the movie leads to a perhaps unethical choice. He abandons ship. He abandons the whole job. He ruins a financial investment of billions of dollars, people's lives and careers. He turns his back on some of the stars who appear to really be mentally attached to him. He overlooks the good and pleasure that the show has brought to the lives of countless people (the audiences). He selfishly and vengefully disappears. He understands all this. By the time he makes his decision, he is completely notified. He knows that some people might commit suicide, go bankrupt, endure significant depressive episodes, do drugs. But this massive landscape of resulting destruction does not deter him. He prefers his narrow, personal, interest. He strolls. However Truman did not ask or pick to be put in his position. He discovered himself accountable for all these people without being sought advice from. There was no authorization or act of option involved. How can anybody be accountable for the well-being and lives of other people-- if he did not CHOOSE to be so responsible? Furthermore, Truman had the best moral right to think that these individuals mistreated him. Are we ethically

3. accountable and responsible for the well-being and lives of those who wrong us? True Christians are, for instance. Additionally, most of us, most of the time, discover ourselves in situations which we did not help mould by our choices. We are reluctantly cast into the world. We do not supply previous consent to being born. This basic choice is made for us, forced upon us. This pattern persists throughout our youth and teenage years: choices are made in other places by others and influence our lives exceptionally. As grownups we are the things-- often the victims-- of the choices of corrupt political leaders, mad researchers, megalomaniac media barons, gung-ho generals and demented artists. This world is not of our making and our capability to form and affect it is extremely restricted and rather illusory. We live in our own "Truman Program". Does this mean that we are not ethically accountable for others? We are ethically responsible even if we did pass by uhe circumstances and the specifications and characteristics of the universe that we occupy. The Swedish Count Wallenberg threatened his life (and lost it) smuggling hunted Jews out of Nazi occupied Europe. He did pass by, or assisted to shape Nazi Europe. It was the brainchild of the psychopathic Director Hitler. Having actually found himself an unwilling individual in Hitler's horror program, Wallenberg did not turn his back and pulled out. He remained within the bloody and dreadful set and did his finest. Truman should have done the same. Jesus said that he ought to have loved his enemies. He ought to have felt and shown duty towards his fellow people, even towards those who mistreated him greatly. But this might be an inhuman need. Such forgiveness and magnanimity are the reserve of God. And the reality that Truman's tormentors did not see themselves as such and thought that they were acting in his benefits which they were dealing with his every need-- does not discharge them from their criminal offenses. Truman ought to have kept a great balance in between his responsibility to the show, its developers and its viewers and his natural drive to get back at his tormentors. The source of the predicament (which resulted in his act of choosing) is that the 2 groups overlap. Truman discovered himself in the difficult position of being the sole guarantor of the well- being and lives of his tormentors. To put the concern in sharper relief: are we ethically obliged to conserve the life and livelihood of someone who considerably wronged us? Or is vengeance justified in such a case? A really troublesome figure in this regard is that of Truman's best and youth friend. They matured together, shared secrets, feelings and experiences. Yet he lies to Truman constantly and under the Director's directions. Everything he says is part of a script. It is this disinformation that convinces us that he is not Truman's real pal. A genuine good friend is expected, above all, to supply us with full and real details and, consequently, to improve our ability to pick. Truman's true love in the Show attempted to do it. She paid the cost: she was ousted from the program. But she attempted to provide Truman with a choice. It is not sufficient to say the ideal things and make the best moves. Inner drive and inspiration are needed and the willingness to take dangers (such as the risk of supplying Truman with complete info about his condition). All the actors who played Truman's moms and dads, loving better half, friends and associates, miserably failed on this score. It remains in this mimicry that the philosophical key to the whole film rests. A Paradise can not be fabricated. Captain Nemo's utopian underwater city was a genuine Paradise since everyone understood whatever about it. People were given an option (though an irreparable and irrevocable one). They picked to end up being lifetime members of the reclusive Captain's colony and to comply with its (extremely reasonable) rules. The Paradise came closest to extinction when a group of roaming survivors of a maritime accident were put behind bars in it against their expressed will. In the absence of option, no paradise can exist. In the absence of complete, timely and accurate information, no option can exist. Really, the accessibility of option is so vital that even when it is avoided by nature itself-- and not by the styles of more or less ominous or monomaniac people-- there can be no Utopia. In H.G. Wells' book "The Time Machine", the hero wanders off to the 3rd millennium only to come across a tranquil Utopia. Its members are never-ceasing, do not need to work, or believe in order to endure. Sophisticated devices take care of all their needs. No one prohibits them to make choices. There merely is no requirement to make them. So the Paradise is fake and undoubtedly ends terribly. Lastly, https://www.openlearning.com/u/demaris-

4. qk47b7/blog/13SituationsWhenYoullNeedToKnowAboutFtl/ the "Truman Show" encapsulates the most virulent attack on industrialism in a long time. Greedy, thoughtless cash makers in the form of billionaire tycoon-producers make use of Truman's life shamelessly and remorselessly in the ugliest display screen of human vices possible. The Director enjoys his control-mania. The producers indulge in their financial obsession. The audiences (on both sides of the silver screen) indulge in voyeurism. The actors vie and compete in the compulsive activity of enhancing their minor professions. It is a repulsive canvas of a disintegrating world. Possibly Christoff is right after al when he warns Truman about the real nature of the world. But Truman chooses. He selects the exit door leading to the outer darkness over the false sunshine in the Paradise that he leaves behind.