Ok this one is a twofer, because it's been two subjects that have bugged me since day one of my life.
The first question, I will ask. But first context.
Just recently to prepare for the holidays, I started with my favourite past times. Watching Christmas Specials. Yes I know, the politically correct term is Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas and while I'm not Christian, I am not ignorant of other religious holidays either. From Hanukkah to Kwanzaa However let's face it folks. The only specials they show are ones centred around Christmas. Even that crappy Star Wars Holiday Special, which had their own fictional Wookie Holiday called "Life Day." counted as one. Hell I'm Pagan, I'm surprised no one ever did our version of Christmas Special. And they did try to make a Hanukkah themed movie. However that movie was 8 Crazy Nights and we all know how that went and much of why people fear making a decent Hanukkah based movie was that they'd be compared to Adam Sandler. Which is a legit fear. Hehe. But I ramble on.
Anywho, my favourite Christmas Special is the Bill Murray Richard Donner Classic Scrooged. Which is basically a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol. About a TV executive, Ironically doing his own version of a Christmas Carol; being visited by 3 Ghosts. One played by a popular comedic singer. One played by the ever crazy awesome actress Carol Kane. Finally, one that's a giant reaper with a TV for a face and Bill Murray's Zombified face displayed on it. This movie was one of the darkest, yet hilarious versions of the fable, but that aside, two things stuck out for me:
- This was one of the few adaptations where the Scrooge character, is reunited with his love interest. In this case Frank Cross, is reunited with Claire. Who is played by Marion Ravenwood herself, Karen Allen. Which I also kind of thought was missing in the original story, but he was an old man in those so aside from spending their last moments together, there wouldn't have been anything good storywise.
- While most Scrooges change their ways in an epic fashion. A personal favourite of mine being Jim Carrey's version acting nice in his Carrey way, with his maid freaking out because she thinks he's gone mad. The best thing about Scrooged, is the final speech at the end which can be viewed here: Scrooged Speech.
This speech wasn't just about Frank realizing what Christmas was all about, but he had the steel balls to call out everyone for getting into the Christmas spirit only once a year. For those that don't know what I mean, whether you celebrate the holiday or not. Christmas is often considered the one time of the year, where people are nicer. Spend more time with each other. Help each other and so on. Yet, when the holiday is over, everyone seems to go back to themselves. Now to give this movie credit, Frank isn't telling people go out and spend thousands of dollars to buy each other presents. He's telling people that even simple things like providing an old blanket to someone cold or giving a starving person a sandwich. Simple stuff, cheap to buy, you don't have to do it all the time, nor should it effect your schedule. Part of why Frank took so long to change his ways, was because he couldn't comprehend good deeds for the sake of them. To be honest I kind of agree, but I am interested into hear other viewpoints on this. Both those that celebrate or those that don't and simply know of the Holiday.
Why do you think people only get into the spirit of Christmas and the other Holidays only once a year?
Now for my next question again context:
If there's one thing we as a species have in common, is that we have the drive to succeed in life. Some succeed, some fail, that's life. However one thing I noticed is how difficult things get when times change.
Let's say for example the time period was the 1900s. No one cared what they did in in life so long as there was food on the table and a house to keep you warm. And the simplest way of doing that was simply getting a job. You work, you get paid, you put it to your stuff. However as 100 years go by and some people in those simple jobs, get more successful than others. Get them in a position where they become by that standard, rich. Something always happens. Rather than help others along the way, these type of people go out of their way to make life difficult for the rest of the populace. It gets more difficult to get a job, poverty outweighs even the working class and most successful people work round the clock to replace simple hands on jobs with automation. Without even remotely eliminating or changing the economy in a way that those that get canned are not at least financially compensated or stable enough to live out the rest of their lives. Then just when things can't get any worse, we are plagued with a lot of things that could potentially wipe us all out. From man made weapons to this current pandemic.
It wasn't until recently that I figured it out. The reason why is because they don't want everyone to be as successful as them. Why? Because someone conditioned them to believe the world is one big competition over who gets the most of what. Money, Land, Luxuries, you name it. When they get to a position they feel comfortable with and spot others getting into that same position, they panic. Because they think that person's success is a threat to theirs. So they resort to everything, lobbying new laws that benefit them and knock the rest of us down, turning people against each other using every ism and phobia in the book. Pretty much everything they can to keep us distracted and down. Before this kind of thinking happened, the world was plentiful. It could have provided us everything we needed, no matter how big the population increases. The one catch would be to work together. Which by all intents and purposes, should they have implimented that for monetary value would have made people a lot richer without having to get at everyone's throats.
So my question on that one is. Why the fuck are people so focused on being competitive with each other when the sanest thing would be to work together?