I will always listen carefully and with intention when anyone speaks of the relationship between film art and the written kinds.

On an unrelated topic: Any source claiming that Stoicism is really about Having A Positive Outlook is delusional, and not any kind of veracious Answer.

But that might be okay, if the Answer is not what you’re actually after, or if, as I surmise, you already have your answer and are instead after the delicious forbidden pleasure of indulging in a confirmation bias that comports with it.

This is the answer I theorize you already think you have, and a few variations on its central theme:

If (as any of these flavors suggest) you see yourself as being … redeemed, enlightened, emancipated … free? according to the arguments of the Answer, then you are (by virtue of that answer) philosophically permitted to live in what is here being called Positivity.

That is a most enviable place to be, from the perspective of chronic irredemption and perpetual inescapable enslavement.

Mainly I think because it is so attractive, perhaps engendering a genuine charisma, and facilitating an aura of contentment, success, and health.

Yet even so.

It will never be the path I walk, nor Be a Deal I am willing to make.

Progress, whether in terms Christian or Marxist or Capitalist or whatever …

It’s still a lie
(even if I have no problem admitting that it is a very pretty one)
(even if it was told to you long ago by a well-credentialed, doubtless well-intentioned spokesliar)
(even if it looks to have been a very Rewarding one, to have Adopted as a belief
and a haunting spiritual tune about the power of positive thinking, as sung by the noted rock monster Dale Carnegie, in the bargain)
(and even if its shaking really does bring all the girls, boys, et cetera to the existential Yard).

I prefer the truth as best as it can be ascertained by all too human means, even if that truth is not pretty and smooth and a good investment, but rather expensively nasty, brutish, anarchic, and short.

And yes, that must be, I fear, my final Answer.

Thank you for providing half of the context today, for the dark blessing of that intuition, and thanks to Rosencreutz, for the other half.

Maybe it is nihilism and maybe it isn’t.

Might I suggest instead
that it is the awkward position that results
from an actual and honest form of modernized …
stoicism, let’s call it
if you see what I am meaning
or if you don’t.

Either way. Splendid.

Onward, ChristDay Soldiers, to the death of metanarrative, the question of what to do about that or any death, and the relentless reality that considering every question has a sunk cost, in terms of the expenditure of conscious time, the one precious very limited resource whose value exceeds that of money even if you are, and you are

loaded. Keep moving on down the road sunshine to your best life
with your good and kind self, and I mean it unironically, admiringly, even covetously:

but my path has been twisted and diverges, in this winter wood, this mess of pottage and
I must needs hang that left alone at Albuquirkey
to get to the place where one sole wolf learns to go on living dare I say
Hunting
beneath
the sound
of hope

Regardless.

Beautiful ennit