Twilight, Religion and Democracy

This is in three parts with no part connected to the other.

Twilight

The twilight saga is currently the hit book and film franchise at the moment, well among teenage girls and a few other stragglers. It has become so big that I had to watch the film and get a summarisation of the books (Watching the film is one thing but I couldn't’t bring myself to reading the books.)

I don’t like being a hypocrite or unduly biased so I entered watching the Twilight film with an open mind.

My conclusion about the film as a film: I would give the film 1 out of 5 stars. The acting was woeful and many of the dramatic and important scenes I found myself laughing. This was due to how the dialogue and facial expressions of the actors was delivered and I honestly felt I was watching a satirical film of teenage films. I still find it hard to believe that it is a serious piece of work. An example of this is when Edward is in the forest with Bella and she asks him to show his true form. At this I got quite excited to see the depiction of the vampires. However I was let down big time, his skin shone, that was it, extremely disappointing to say the least. The voice-over was poor and the film essentially plot-less. There were two exciting moments the film pushed, the first was a baseball game which was a bore that not even Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole playing could save. The other was the climatic chase scene at the end that never got any tension going and played like a bad horror film with the usual mistakes characters make so everything falls in line. As a film it was woeful, actually I’m reconsidering that 1 star it might be too generous.

The themes of the film and presumably the book as well are quite astonishing and some are demeaning of women and their equal rights. The basic theme is that women can’t live without men as Bella points out that she has nothing to live for but Edward. Edward who doesn’t sleep spends his time following/stalking Bella everywhere as evident in him saying he watches her without her knowing and also his heroic act of saving Bella from a group of thugs just in time.

Moving on to keep this brief we shall move to the fourth book Breaking Dawn where the sickest thing I have ever heard of in a young adults book occurs. It is so bad that only one of the people I know who read the book defends it. This is of course “imprinting” by the character Jacob. Imprinting is where a werewolf involuntarily finds his soul mate. That concept is fine until Jacob imprints on a new born baby and waits until she is of age to consummate. So basically he falls in love with a child, I think that is called paedophilia.

I will leave it there without touching on the topics of teenage sex and teenage pregnancy which are promoted in the books through the actions of the characters. I also will watch New Moon film and the rest of the saga.

Religion

When all the different religions are taken into account it is hard to find a middle ground. So which one is right?

Well lets for the sake of this discussion assume that firstly there is a God and secondly that there is only one God. God is meant to be a Superior Being and therefore God would not be subjected to human emotion for if God was then he would not be superior. So we will assume then as a Being of some sort that It is rationale and takes all events and reason into account when judging. This raising the question why one should worship and pray to him? By demanding that people worship him then this is egotistical and not very superior. Would God not prefer that people not show their thanks by doing good deeds rather than spending their lives worshipping him and getting others to do so? In this case also then saying his name in vain and praying to him in a different way wouldn’t matter.

My conclusion to this differs heavily from organised religions. First off to be quite blunt God does not give a shit what religion one is, why would God differentiate? If he is an egotistical maniac all worship is good in his eyes. I don’t believe that God wants us to worship in the manner that we are told. Secondly I don’t believe in God as a Being of a sort. If he was he would be subject to the laws and other traits that make him not so superior to us. Instead God is pure light, a sort of positive energy. Does it not make more sense for people to do good deeds in their life and attract positive energy? I am not talking about being a goodie-two shoes angel but being helpful and looking out for people in general. What you do to others you get back, karma I suppose. I don’t know what happens when you die but surely if you’ve lead a good life then you’ll get some reward. That reward maybe that you led a good life, is that not enough? The whole notion of spending your life preaching and worshipping a God just seems a waste, you can achieve more by doing things that make an impact, that helps people on earth.

In the case that you disagree then there is nothing wrong with following your religion but what difference does it truly make to you if someone believes differently? As long as they are doing positive things in society then surely God wouldn’t mind?

Democracy

This came out of the news that David Cameron supports referendums in Britain in regards to Europe. I am not a conservative or support David Cameron but I believe he is right in this case. Recently Ireland voted yes to the Lisbon Treaty but for all the wrong reasons. It is not democratic to vote out of fear, which the Irish did, it is not democratic to hold a second referendum because you didn’t like the answer, which the Irish did, it is not democratic for government or political parties to take a side and promote it. The Lisbon Treaty should be solely voted by the people based upon the Treaty itself. For parties to say it is right for Ireland and Ireland will be removed from Europe is wrong and undemocratic.

From this to go broader in terms of democracy I concluded it doesn’t exist. In both the UK and Ireland for instance the Prime Minister/Taoiseach is not elected by the people but by politicians who were elected. The whole you vote for a politician because you want the party in power is ridiculous. One should vote for a politician because they like that politicians ideas as he may have different views from his party in some areas. So the US system is best where the President is elected by the people. This is good except the US system of electing is flawed. This is due to the electoral system in place which means a President can be elected without having the majority vote. This of course happened in 2000 with George Bush. That of course is not very democratic at all

Politicians purpose is to run the State in the interest of the people. I don’t think many would argue that they do. If they truly worked for the peoples interests then political parties would not be needed. This is because while people have a differing view they would compromise in the interest of the people because it is not about what they think is best but what is best for the people, therefore a middle ground should be achieved. Of course this won’t happen because politicians have ego’s like us all and that interferes with their duty and democracy is not served nor exists.

Maybe Plato’s Republic is best, to a degree at least.