This is where my film fanatic status shines. Random rants about films I love, hate, don’t understand and anything else that pops up. I do not plan on writing reviews at this point. Although if I find that people are actually reading and commenting I would love to swap recommendations.
For now, this will just be my half of all those cinephile conversations I will probably never have (or have had while the other persons eyes glazed over). Stuff that fascinated me about certain films or genres etc.
I hope you find and enjoy my digital message in a bottle my fellow filmaholics.
Ah the bravado of youth; gung ho antics that border on a death wish. As we were driving through the National park on our way to Bundeena, where we were planning to camp the night, there were many sick of living antics to partake in or observe. A bong was liberally being passed around and everyone was taking a hit. This included the driver who had the passenger light it for him. Pulling a cone and driving at the same time, such dexterity. Beers were also being drunk; again the driver was not missing out on this. Our driver was Ron and I am certain that the same shenanigans where happening in the other car that was in front of us being driven by Mitco. We were all young and invincible.
As we crossed the low river pass and began heading up a winding road, Mitco must have decided things were a little bit too easy for his liking so he switched off his headlights; in the middle of the night! He was now driving with only our headlights to see anything up ahead. The idea was that he had driven this road so many times he knew it off by heart. I don’t know how Mitco’s passengers reacted, but in our car it was a barrel of laughs.
Ron, our driver, must have had a sudden rush of blood to the head because he decided to switch his headlights off also. Now we were totally in the dark! We were now driving up a winding road with a steep cliff to one side and no light other than the scant brightness of the moon. I remember shining a torch out the front windscreen trying to illuminate the way. I also remember laughing my head off; this was hilarious; for some reason the lethal seriousness of this situation never dawned on any of us. We either had total confidence in our driver’s memory and prowess or we were out and out imbeciles. Looking back I would say it was a little of both with a heavy leaning to the latter.
Finally the headlights came back on and we were all ok; and a little bit closer to our destination. To this day I often wonder if that incident had actually happened. I am dumbstruck by the sheer insanity of it. How long the lights were out I can never be really sure; but I am positive it was at least over two minutes; which may not sound like a lot, but remember where we were. This was not a straight line down a darkened street. It was up a winding road with a deadly steep cliff to one side; and it could have been longer than two minutes for all I know.
Two drunk and stoned drivers taking their passengers on a treacherous test of courage and expertise, on hindsight, was nothing short of suicidal stupidity and I thank whoever is in charge of things for letting us get out of that one alive.
I’m sure that hunter-gatherers had rudimentary ways of ‘saving for a rainy day’. They certainly would have tried to find ways to survive during extended periods of scarcity. With the extra food sources resulting in surplus supply, they would have experimented and improved on their preservation skills. Thus, their ability to ‘weather the storm’ improved markedly.
I’m sure there were a few tubbies who over-indulged, but they would have been the odd ones. The need for each person to pull their own weight (pun intended) meant that there was little tolerance for people who considered themselves superior who could just laze about consuming (I think we can all see that time is long gone).
I have no doubt there were leaders and certain specialists who were held in high esteem, but the hierarchy was basically flat. Like the beginning of so many wonderous enterprises the vast majority was invested and enthusiastic about its success. When I say invested I mean truly devoted; like their fucken lives depended on it! It would have been a dubious optimist who believed the tribe could survive carrying dead weight.
Of course there would have been assholes. They were human after all. There’s always a few deadshits in the bunch. The point I am making is that these guys/gals had to be extremely cunning about it. Being a drain on the collective was not just a faux pas; it was a dead-set fucking liability. Getting fired from your job here meant you’re out on your arse! Not on the street, there was no street. Off into the wilderness you go sunshine, good luck and good riddance!
I love how I am writing this stuff in a way that seems as if I am sure about any of this.
Anyway, everyone was pulling together like good little communists. They all toiled and shared in the rewards. As time passed and their expertise grew, so too did their reserves. This was an unforgiving environment though, and no doubt plenty perished. Nevertheless, enough didn’t and they continued to learn and pass on the knowledge (you get my spiel by now).
There must have come a point in time when the most successful tribes became so efficient and confident in their farming prowess that the shifty ones started getting ideas regarding their effort to remuneration ratios.
This is the point in my theory where the percentage of shirkers begins to increase relative to cooperators. Unfortunately, that is not the worst of it. This is where I imagine the exploiter becomes a natural member of the group.
Before this time of relative comfort and plenty the best a selfish so and so could get away with was idleness. Now, with the seemingly assured stockpile it was possible to not only slack off and still eat; it was possible to grow fat from the efforts of the group.
Just like a common problem with most hippy communes some members were a little more interested in the free-love and the drugs rather than being productive members of the collective. Except for the free-love, the drugs and the hippy thing this analogy works perfectly. Oh, and the part about growing fat. Okay I probably should have used the alternative lifestyle bit to describe shirkers.
The leeches I am talking about now are not content with just having their fill and loafing. These bastards are scheming on how to gain control of the fruits of everyone’s labour, therefore gaining power and influence in the group.
New tasks would be created to best deal with this new resource: preservation, storage, protection and rationing to name a few. These jobs would be performed by the very first civil servants. Duties not directly linked to producing substantial value to the group, but necessary just the same. Yes, most of those bullshit public service jobs were essential once upon a time; that’s a discussion for later.
People occupying these positions got an inside view of the prehistoric balance sheets and the cunning ones would have quickly worked out the very first version of cooking the books. I expect most of them dipped their fingers in now and then. The really devious ones went all in and wrangled their way to holding the metaphorical keys to the storeroom.
I do not know where the motor bike came from, but I do know that nobody owned it; thus the severe hammering it was receiving that afternoon up in Tempe tip. By the time I got there the boys had worked out a makeshift race track on which they were competing for the fastest time. I had one go and my inability to change gears properly put me out of contention, so my unco ass was deemed to be the timekeeper.
There was a huge mound of broken up concrete slabs, almost the height of the roof of a regular house in some spots. The tensioning wires were jutting out in all directions like murderous spikes placed there to impale unsuspecting victims. Due to that fact the finish line was placed about 50 metres before the mountain of death. The boys weren’t totally crazy.
However they weren’t totally brainy either. You see there was a serious fault with the bike that everyone just kind of accepted: The rear brakes did not work and the accelerator cable sometimes got stuck; re-read that again if you like, I will wait. With no helmet or safety gear to speak of, what could possibly go wrong?
Basically the boys were racing on a bike that if it malfunctioned you would be trying to slow down with only your front brakes while the accelerator continued to propel you forward in a filthy rubbish dump surrounded by objects that could potentially maim or kill you; not to mention death mountain that was a mere fifty meters away from the chosen finish line.
One by one they would race down to the end of the makeshift track, do a 180 and head back as fast as possible. These guys really were super competitive. There was a thin patch of dirt that resembled a bridge over a tiny ravine and this was chosen as the finish line. Once a rider passed this point I hit stop on the watch and the ‘race’ was over.
About five guys had gone and it was pretty close. I have no idea who was leading though after all these years. This was when our friend Secko appeared on the scene and asked what was going on. After hearing the rules and the ‘safety’ instructions young Secko was more than keen to have a go.
With everyone perched on and around Death Mountain to watch, Secko took off at full speed down along the track. He knew which speed he had to beat and he seemed determined to do it. On the turn he was looking good and he flew back towards us like a man possessed.
He crossed the bridge finish line and showed no signs of slowing down. He had won, but he was heading directly toward Death Mountain. I was certain he had spotted a gap and was going for it; but to my horror as I jumped down and moved to get a better look, there was no gap, just the mounds of broken up cement with the deadly spikes of tension wires poking out everywhere.
Obviously the accelerator cable had stuck and in his panic he could not remember to lightly apply the front brakes, he was probably gripping the rear brakes with all his might to no avail. The look on his face was sheer terror. All we could do was watch and wait.
He slammed into death mountain full force, but fortunately the front tyre rolled up a fair way rather than stopping dead; that would have cushioned the blow at least a little bit. He slammed forward into the handle bars and his legs wrapped around them; his balls must have been crushed. Somehow he held on to the handle bars and did not fly off the bike which could have ended with him being impaled on any one of those tension wires. I did not see where he hit his head, but he did somewhere.
He bounced back from the mountain and hurled the bike to one side screaming like a madman.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Ron promptly announced “that’s it call an ambulance!”
Mitco motioned for Ron to keep quiet.
He was walking in circles feeling himself all over trying to find where he had been injured. Everyone slowly moved closer to him. I remember Mitco telling us to underplay any injuries we saw because we didn’t want him freaking out. We wanted him to be able to walk out of the tip and get help then. If he freaked out we may have to carry him kicking and screaming.
As we got closer his main concern was his balls. He pulled out a crushed packet of cigarettes from his pants and screamed “my balls! I crushed my balls!”
He didn’t look too bad considering what had just happened. However his mouth was a bloody mess and good old Jonno couldn’t help but be the bearer of bad news.
“Oooh shit look at your mouth” he cried.
Secko put his hand to his mouth and after feeling his broken teeth and seeing the blood proceeded to flip out.
“Oh shit man, my dad is gunna kill me! I just got these teeth fixed! Oh Shit man! Shit! Shit!”
Thanks Jonno. Luckily Secko was still able to walk himself out of the tip and we didn’t have to carry him. He was inconsolable as he limped down the hill towards his house. I don’t know what happened to the bike.
I knew it was not going to help, but I felt it my duty to inform Secko that he had in fact won the ‘race’ by 1 second. I don’t think it cheered him up much.
We got him home and I believe he had no permanent injuries; very lucky indeed. Yet another example of the dumb things young men do.
Our ever-inventive ancestors have significantly increased their chances of survival at this stage and that usually has a predictable outcome: population growth. The difference this time is that the extra sources of sustenance result in the tribe being able to accommodate more ankle biters. They also have the advantage of keeping these pint-sized assets and utilizing them as they grow, thus allowing the tribe to increase their members. Where once too large a group became a burden due to scarcity and instability, it is now a little more tenable.
I’m not talking about Shangri-La here. Of course, times were still very tough, but these were tough people. They had to be tenacious and resourceful just to stay alive! These weren’t people who were going to need to learn how to budget their resources to accommodate the extra offspring. They weren’t thinking “okay if we tighten our belts a bit, we might be able to cater for a few more”. They were already taking only what they needed to survive; maybe stashing a little to make it through a bad winter or some other kind of famine. Our ancestors didn’t need to count calories or worry about obesity.
So, my unscholarly conjecture is that the extra nourishment automatically got utilized by members who may have earlier been sent on their way and new babies whose mothers could supply more milk. I have no references to back this up, but it’s my way of creating a bridge between hunter gatherers and farmers.
I’m sure there is much more to the story, and I am certain that there were many stages in between these two stages of our development. There would have been an extremely long period where the two co-existed and interacted. Not as distinct as Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans, but still different and, without realising, progressing in distinctly separate ways somewhat like their own distant ancestors.
While not becoming completely extinct, the hunter gatherer numbers would be slowly, and relentlessly decimated whilst the farmers would continue to advance their powers of production and population growth to the almost unsustainable sum we have at present.
There are still a few remnants of our displaced predecessors. A few exotic populations who somehow managed to keep from getting completely engulfed by the tidal wave of human progress. Nomadic tribes in the Asia and Africa, the few remaining isolated populations in the Amazon or remote islands around the globe who unrelentingly embrace their way of life.
I really want to avoid having this whole exercise becoming a massive bummer, but I think we all know the writing is on the wall. These last remaining links to a time where humans were part of nature are only safe so long as there are no profits to be found by ‘relocating’ them. As soon as the dollar signs appear these extremely vulnerable ‘obstacles’ will be removed.
Viewing it from this perspective the tragedy is that much more palpable. I am only really becoming aware of this familial homicide as I write this. Moving on to the next phase suddenly feels like a movie where the opening scene lets you know things will end badly and then the story proper begins where we are introduced to our doomed characters and all their hopes and aspirations.
But on we must go, painful as it may be. We must watch as our forebears overtake and ultimately usurp our other forbears. And where did this divergence begin? According to my theory, it was a thing called surplus.
One evening after consuming a large amount of beers down at Jonno’s house, we decided to take the festivities up onto the roof. John, Mick and I took a couple of beers each and climbed up the flimsy ladder at the back of the house onto the slated roof.
I don’t know how long we sat there sipping beers and staring at the stars; viewing various sights of Tempe that we had never seen from such an angle. I do not recall what we talked about or whose bright idea it was to do the stupid thing.
All I remember is holding onto a couple of roof tiles near my butt and spinning my body in a clockwise direction. With my head spinning fast I got that old familiar feeling of being a child and just spinning on the spot. Only trouble here being that I was up on a roof and very drunk.
I am not sure if I was the first to try it, or how long I was doing it for, but I lost my grip and was flung forward off my butt and straight ahead with nothing else to grab hold of. My drunken mates could only watch in shock as I seemed to be hurtling off the roof.
Do you believe in miracles?
Lucky for me there was a chimney halfway down the slope of the roof directly in my path. Luck only for me because had it happened to any of the others they would not have had said chimney to save them. I slammed into the chimney and it hurt. I spun myself around and looked up at my mates with my back leaning against the chimney. I don’t think the seriousness of the situation had really hit me. What if I fell over backwards? No chimney on that side.
John and Mick were glaring at me wide-eyed with mouths agape. Finally Jonno started laughing and said through giggles “if that chimney wasn’t there you would be dead”. We all laughed and then decided to get down off the roof to continue our drinking on solid ground.
So, the ever-resourceful humans found another way to improve their living conditions. I have no idea how many generations it took to make a go of this botanic enterprise, but eventually it became a thing. These stone-age scientists worked out what to plant, where to plant it and the best times to do it.
I believe they were still on the move for a long time, so they probably had plots of plants at various stages along their migration path. I’m really going full throttle into conjecture here. Did they also build booby traps to prevent theft? Okay let’s stay on track.
Eventually this new discovery would have led to less need for vegetation gathering missions. The main reason for venturing out now was for hunting or fishing. The hunters still had a full-time job. Gathering was now only a part-time gig. These tribes were now Hunter Gatherer/Farmers!
I understand that the concept of a job did not exist and that it is common knowledge that these groups had plenty of down time, but please just take the ride with me. Remember this is just some dude piecing together 52 years of ‘what the fuck is this all about?’. I guess the easy explanation is laziness, and feel free to label me that. However, I never set out to write an academically rigid thesis. But I digress…
Specialist gatherers were now at that point DVD rental businesses were when streaming became a thing. Still viable but losing necessity fast. Things moved much slower back then (BC. not early 2000s) so it would have been a very slow decline in relevance. I don’t think tradie gatherers had to hastily retrain to avoid redundancy. Growing necessary plants simply became part of the skillset. Like a mechanic learning to cooperate with all the computer bullshit in cars these days. I’m stopping, I’m stopping.
They probably still had to remain mobile to keep up with the game they hunted and relocate to land more appropriate to the changing seasons. Nevertheless, they had begun laying down roots. Temporary ones but the seeds of a homebase were being planted.
Countless generations had honed the hunting process. These people’s ancestors had worked out the best way to hunt using their numbers and cunning. I’m sure they must have had pets, such as dogs by this stage. Sometime during this epoch another bright spark figured out that certain animals could be easily kept around and treated like pets. Once they were nice and plump… BAM! Dinner is served.
I just had a slightly off-putting thought: There must have been many times when times got really hard and food was scarce. It is pretty much a surety that a lot of those ‘pet’ dogs suddenly became meat. I’ll stop there for now.
I do not know how my mates obtained the Go-kart, but it was there and nobody seemed to own it. My mates had hauled it up the steep dirt hill into the local tip and were taking turns joyriding. Since nobody actually owned it the guys were not bothering too much about being gentle with the machine. Basically they thrashed the hell out of it. Flying over bumps and swinging tight 360 turns. The poor leisure vehicle took one hell of a hammering. There was no helmet in sight, nor was there any safety equipment; I don’t even recall if it had a seat-belt. I was next after Jeff and I was imagining the crazy shit I would get up to.
Unfortunately the go-kart couldn’t handle the relentless rough treatment and it gave up the ghost. The weekend mechanics stared at it; tapped this and twisted that. “It’s fucked” was the unanimous decision.
So Jeff and I missed out; tough luck that.
As they pushed the cart toward the large hill that lead down to the exit of the tip, a conversation started regarding who would do the honours of riding the cart down the dirt decline. I, being the smallest, was chosen to take the final ride down the dirty slope. It seemed simple enough.
I jumped in the seat and the guys slowly pushed me toward the dip. It started out simple enough; I just rolled down the hill. However, no motor meant no power and that meant precious little control of the vehicle on the very loose dirt as it glided down the steep slant. I quickly spun into a sideways position as the speed of my decline increased.
Then the seriousness of this bad decision began to sink in. The go-kart began to tip over sideways down the hill. I had no chance of jumping out and all I could do was hold the (now useless) steering wheel and pray for a miracle. The go-kart had no roll cage and I was not wearing a helmet (obviously). Maybe the seat would protect my head if I ducked down far enough (fat chance there as it only reached my middle back). It seemed like I was destined to be crushed into the dirt with the go kart on top of me and to suffer whatever injuries that entailed. As the arc of the go carts’ tip began to reach its pinnacle I remember being terrified and just trying to convince myself that I would be ok somehow; despite the fact that all evidence pointed toward me getting very seriously injured.
Do you believe in miracles?
Somehow, I will never know, the back tire got caught in a dug-out trench running down one side of the hill. The go-kart tipped to almost 45 degrees and just stopped dead, with its wheel trapped in that godsend of a groove.
I crawled out and looked at the pale faces of my friends who understood that I had just been saved from a very serious injury or even death. I don’t remember anybody actually saying anything; just a lot of nervous laughter as they dragged the cart out of my lifesaving groove and proceeded to slowly walk the cart down the rest of the way.
I remember Jonno was the only one who was willing to bring up the subject as he spouted “you almost died”. I was still in too much shock to respond and nobody else would discuss my near death experience until later in the day when sufficient marijuana and beer had been consumed.
Ultimately it was agreed that it was a very bad decision and I should never have been placed in that predicament. It was also argued, just like Jules and Vincent did in Pulp Fiction, whether or not it was a ‘miracle’ or ‘a freak occurrence’. Personally I didn’t care; I was just extremely glad that I walked away from what could have been death or serious injury. It wasn’t the first and it wasn’t the last.
We’ll skip the primordial soup and jump ahead a few eons. I reckon we can bypass the evolution stage, and the debate for that matter. Let’s kick-off with the original human beings wandering the landscape looking for and trying not to become food. Shit! Can you imagine the treacherous learning curve for those people? Especially before they got together and figured out how to communicate.
I imagine the first few generations didn’t last too long at all. We always hear about the gazillion to one chance that life exists at all; but the odds that an unskilled and unarmed human could survive long enough to find a mate and then pop out a munchkin must be just as astronomical!
Despite constant peril somehow our ancestors managed to produce enough offspring to launch a bona fide species. After countless bouts of fatal trial and error, combined with a capacity to pass information on to the next hapless human test subject, they managed to compile enough knowledge to shift the odds of survival a little more onto the positive side.
These primitive pioneers managed to survive thanks to a combination of ingenuity and communication (opposable thumbs probably helped too). This relatively puny creature with practically no natural weaponry, no great speed, no flight or great climbing ability, no feathers or fur, practically no hair (it’s as if they were not meant to make it!), no innate camouflage…holy fuck! It truly is miraculous!
They endured and they learned. Eat this, don’t eat that. Stay well clear of those; if you hear this you better move your ass! They created tools and weapons. They fabricated clothing to keep warm. And fire! You little beauty! Did they make it or discover it? Google that, we haven’t got time.
At this small tribal stage, I surmise that things were pretty egalitarian. No place for fat cats in this environment. Working together was the only way to survive. A group with no cohesion or too much dead weight would have slim to no chance of making it. There wouldn’t have been much tolerance for selfishness or greed.
Now between tribes…I can see trouble brewing there. Like most trouble we humans seem to generate, it arises from too many of us. As we got better assimilated to the environment, we went from mere survival to flourishing of a sort.
While hardly a population explosion, our numbers increased markedly. A nomadic tribe could only function up to a certain amount of people; the logistics just weren’t suited for mass procreation. Thus, it meant that the number of tribes, rather than the tribes themselves began to increase.
While a few adventurous mobs would venture further into the unknown, a lot wouldn’t, and things started to get a bit crowded. I’m not talking Mumbai or Shanghai; hell, folks from Mogo would feel lonely in this setting!
Be that as it may tribes would have been crossing paths more often after a millennium or two. Some would be strangers which means distrust and fear; others might be familiar, lessening suspicion, but they were human after all. The grass is always greener as they say…Envy breeds anger and anger breeds…
I highly doubt these vulnerable groups would risk casualties through open warfare. Sneaky shit would definitely be on the cards though. This larceny might even escalate to abduction, which created hostility and ended in violence. As I said, they were human after all, and we much too often find a way to bring about the exact things we were trying to avoid.
So this went on for a few million years and somewhere along the way one of those clever souls figured out the connection between the edible plants and seeds. Hello! We can actually ensure that there are plenty of the good plants. Things are looking up…
However you believe this circus got started, we’re in it and we’re stuck. There’s only one way out and that seems very final as far as we know. To most of us the human condition is the most important game in town, and we can only ever really experience it subjectively through our own body and mind. We see other people. We relate to them to widely varying degrees. We interact and often compete with them. We are individuals thrown into an interconnecting network of individuals trying to survive and hoping to thrive.
We exist as one small part of a seemingly unfathomable system. However you frame it to make some sense for yourself, you’re in it with the rest of us until you cross that line into nothingness, paradise or any other idea you may have regarding when the lights go out.
Okay, that’s kind of heavy, but don’t worry I do not intend to go too far down the existential rabbit hole. My focus here is on the way we behave as individuals, groups and populations on this place we call Earth. Psychology, sociology, economics, philosophy will probably be the main lenses I will be looking through.
Whatever framework you use attempting to comprehend this thing we are in, it is infinitely complex and like us or not we are all in here with you. We don’t have to agree, but if we want to flourish, we need to deal with each other. This could be cooperative, competitive or even hostile; this dynamic, like many others, we have little to no control over.
I have no intention of making this thing some kind of try hard PhD. I will do my best to avoid overcomplication and I am in no way planning on doing any extensive research. This is just my personal take on what I have learned over 50 odd years on this treadmill we call life and work.
For a large percentage of us the two are inseparable. Living in this world is expensive and for the overwhelming majority of us the only way we can pay our dues is through work. This can be anything from slavery, through all the tiers of manual toil to earn a crust, up to the high achievers and those rare lucky souls who actually love their work.
I will begin with my ideas of how this shit kicked off and what has led us to the situation we find ourselves in today. From hunter gatherers to simple farmers, those times are gone and barring an apocalypse they aren’t coming back.
In the end we are left with just ourselves. All together on or in whatever this place is. With so much conflicting interpretations and no way to be certain, all we can do is make our educated guesses and roll the dice. We can only be sure that no one knows for sure. Of course, there are stronger and weaker arguments and there are always secrets, but total comprehension of exactly what we are standing in is beyond our grasp.
Once again, let me remind you this will hardly be a scholarly enterprise. While I might quote a professor or philosopher here and there; I am just as likely to quote a comedian, song lyrics or a movie (also The Simpsons and South Park will certainly pop up). I will use what I have to try and create an understanding.
Ultimately I am just one infinitesimal cog in this sublime existence ruminating on what might be going on. Finding the absolute truth is not the purpose here; the contemplation is the goal.
Please feel free to participate in the comments. Agreement is certainly not compulsory, but I would greatly appreciate politeness and respect.
MINDLESS MUSINGS 