Weakness of Will

I am about to begin working on my 3rd Greek essay and thought I'd share some thoughts with you lot. I know some of you are philosophers and may appreciate my ramblings - to those of you who are not, you can always play along =p

"No man can know the better and be able to do it, but do the worst"

So basically, we can't do the wrong thing on purpose if we're capable of doing the right thing. I've been thinking about this for a few days now, trying to work out what my thoughts on it actually are. I have yet to actually do the reading, because I only just finished my Theaetetus essay this morning, where I concluded knowledge is not perception and that they are two very different things. I didn't quite work out what knowledge was, just that it was something special and a certain shape - it doesn't fit through the perception shaped holes in my understanding box. I realise that is probably a really confused analogy, but it helped me work it all out.

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent. What do you think, can people err knowingly?

I think (today) that it's all a very subjective subject. I might think that your actions are wrong but you may not agree, which would mean I guess that you're not erring knowingly. But are you erring at all? Let us think about an example so we can try to get our heads around it: smoking.

People smoke even though they know it is bad for them. They know they will lose years off their lives and that their insides are being destroyed. But they do it anyway. 
Why?

This makes me think it has to be something to do with instant gratification vs long term gratification. In the moment they feel better for it which seems worth the worse later on. It's a value scale - what's more important to me? What is it I want more, to live freely or live longer? Maybe.

I think we like our instant gratification, us humans. We respond to instinct to feed animal desires. Hunger for example - we get hungry, we eat. But sometimes we go on diets, do delay instant gratification for that long term goal of being skinny. So how does it all weigh up?

This is just an informal idea soup. I will read Plato and a bit of Aristotle and come up with my essay and let you know what conclusion I came to on the matter. Let me know what you think in general about whether or not we are weak willed. Do we do things even when we don't want to do them? What does that even mean?

Scrubs Without Braff

You must have noticed by now I waste a lot of time watching movies and series'… but hey it’s like research or something. I’m examining different kinds of writing… or something… Ok maybe I’m just an insomniac glued to her laptop, whatever.

So I am not a massive Scrubs fan – I mean, I like Scrubs but I’m not an avid watcher. It’s just one of those shows that’s always on tv and of the bunch it’s probably the best during those hours I spend wasting away. It is pretty funny and JD does make me smile, so when I found out the new season wasn’t going to have Zach Braff or many of the other stars I wasn’t too sure about it. The whole show is from JD’s head, how can you take JD away?

But I’ve been sat here watching a few episodes of season 9 and though I’ve not worked out names yet I am quite enjoying it. It actually feels like it’s a different show, it’s not really Scrubs anymore but that isn’t a bad thing. It’s not good, but it’s not bad; it just is.

Part of me feels like this should actually just be a different show, that they are just feeding off the ready made fan base. But I guess if you can do it, why not? I am actually enjoying it though, I like the idea of getting to be inside the heads of the characters. I actually think it’s a technique more things should use, but then I guess it wouldn’t be so special.

What do you think? Any Scrubs fans? Any script writers? Me and my mate are going to attempt writing a horror movie so every time we watch a movie we get to call it research – maybe that’s just an excuse.

Why a horror movie? Well, they are my favourite to watch. And I reckon I understand the rules of writing horror movies the best, because I understand the movies themselves the best. I always watch them. I can almost always work out what is going to happen, because they always follow the same rules. I want to try to break some of those rules, but work out how to make it a good movie at the same time. A lot of the time, movies that don’t follow the rules, fail. I don’t want to fail!

Also, script is so much harder to write than you’d think. I attempted once (way back when I was 15) and it was a pile of **** (I am not sure if I should swear or not in my blog, I swear a lot but I don’t want to offend anyone. Comment on that too and tell me what you think). You need dialogue in a script, I mean come on – no one really wants to watch a silent movie (unless it’s a short film) but at the same time dialogue can destroy a script. I think from what I’ve learnt in reading and research is that less is more.

Try not to give everything away with the dialogue

Say as little as possible – don’t spell things out

Use dialogue to develop the characters – the way they speak, what they speak about, who it is they are

Any thing you want to share with me is always welcome – we’re all here to learn! Well some people are here for entertainment or ‘cause they’re bored, but those people can just help me learn – ‘cause heck, I’m always learning. I’m a student of the world and even when I’m not officially wearing that Student Status badge I’m always going to be a student. We all are. As soon as you stop learning, you may as well be dead.

Sorry, I ended up on a bit of a tangent with this post…