Spiderman III and darkworking

[Theo77]

Has anyone seen this movie, that has also read Steve's articles on Darkworking? I wrote a little review of it in my blog

I thought it was interesting to See Peter Parker kind of having a darkworker trial. Ultimately, it reinforced my conclusion that "Good" and "evil" have too much subjectivity and ethnocentrism to be really considered absolute principles of reality.

I think there are a lot of parallels though. Peter Parker, seemed to experience Euphoria from venturing over to the dark side, then suffered from "darkworker syndrome"

Initially he became more attractive to the opposite sex, which reminded me of a tread on here about the same subject.

Its interesting that the movie seems biased toward choosing good as opposed to evil, but Good is also portrayed as being corny and dorky.

[yossarian]

To me the question revolves entirely around whether you're hurting others.

There is nothing evil about being a playboy unless while doing so you callously hurt other people.

I saw this movie last night and the entire consensus reality image of good and evil that it presents is typical and highly distorted, as far as i'm concerned. On every front there is inaccuracy.

If "good" is about helping others then it doesn't make sense to waste your time taking photos to make money. Spiderman could use his powers to easily feed himself and then devote more of his energy towards helping people. There is a consensus reality assumption that good people must neccessarily inflict suffering on themselves, when that is just ridiculous. Inflicting any kind of suffering has no point. The core of being "good" is caring about others, not hating yourself. A good person helps people at his own expense but that doesn't mean he actually inflicts needless suffering on himself.

If "evil" is about helping yourself, including at the expense of others, then none of the villains actually approach evil. The Sandman is thinking about his daughter while Goblin Jr. thinks of his father. These people aren't evil they are just screwed up unpolarized, and as we saw in the movie they all came to realise that. The weak often lash out in violence and so most criminals are not powerful, most as weak. This applies to the Spiderman3 villains since they are essentially petty criminals who come across superpowers for the sake of drama. I mean an all-powerful sand god has to rob an armored car? It's ridiculous. That man is not intelligent or powerful or evil he is just a typical stupid criminal with some screwed up mental patterns.

Most people are not polarized to either good or evil, their intentions waver back and forth hourly, and their behavior falls in the middle. This applies to the 3 villains.

The idea that "good" people must be dorky and unattractive is a huge misconception. Take a look at the Pick Up Artist community and the huge range of seduction specialists - they truly run the gamut from total selfishness to total selflessness. It's been said many times that confidence is attractive - and confidence in a "good" polarity is just as attractive as confidence in a "bad" polarity.

In my own life i've experienced both. I can unapologetically be a selfless "good guy" and through that be very attractive, or I can unapologetically be a conniving and selfish "evil guy" and that is also attractive.

What is unattractive is to be a confused guy trapped between the two - unsure of myself, inactive, weak, submissive.

It's the confidence and power that is attractive. Confidence and power is a natural result of polarization, and it doesn't matter which way you polarize. But most people simply don't polarize either way.

Polarizing to the Good gets just as much confidence and power as polarizing to the evil.

Are you gonna call Jesus unconfident, weak, anxious, powerless?

Are you gonna call Martin Luther King Jr. weak, timid, submissive?

Good is powerful, confident, active.
Evil is powerful, confident, active.
Consensus society is unpolarized, weak, timid, submissive.

Don't confuse True Good with consensus reality "good".

[Theo77]

I don't perceive, from my end anyway, that you have nailed down a distinction between what you call "true good" and consensus reality good. You mention Jesus, MLK jr, earlier you held up Ghandi as an example of a polarized lightworker.

Lets take Ghandi. Ok, so Ghandi represents True Good. Ghandi reprsented independance for India. I don't if that is "True" good. It was good for India. But I mean all countries have their interests, in terms of their country. You can look at countries, States, as individual actors in competition with one another for power.

So according to your perspective does that mean the British Empire represented "True evil"? Everything the British did was evil? The fact that people in India that speak English now, can be a force in Global commerce is evil? They would have been better equipped to thrive in the global economy had they never been colonized?

They would have been better off with this caste system and widows being burned alive and all that crap?

I think its all subjective.

I think rather than there being a "True good" and a "True evil" I think it is more likely that there are all these diverse forces competing with each other for supremacy and through that struggle good emerges and progress happens.

Its a dialectic type of thing. Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis.

There are polarities but I think these polarities are not constant and static but dynamic and they emerge differently depending on the situation.

[Love]

I saw the movie too, but I didn't think of Spidey as a darkworker until you pointed out the connection. But I think that at that moment he was a darkworker, he wasn't a very good darkworker. Darkworkers look out for themselves but need to appease others to the extent that it makes smooth waves for themselves. Spidey as darkworker seemed to pleasing himself and annoying MJ, which made him upset. I think a smooth darkworker would have been able to win MJ back while under the influence of the black stuff.

[Theo77]

Personally, Love,

I think this whole darkworker/lightworker thing is kind of an empty concept. It is useful, maybe in terms of kind of playing around, learning about yourself, expirimenting. It is a consensus reality. Steve picked up on certain elements from various sources, painted a picture for us. Others added their $.02 and this concept kind of emerged. Some kind of thought form, maybe.

I think each, lightworker and darkworker is probably a confluence of quite a few different polarities, combined into two neat little categories.

Yin and Yang are two polarities that are quite a bit more developed and I see elements of yin and yang in each. Light and dark, good and evil, don't seem to be completely analogous with Yin and Yang.

It think this lightworker, darkworker concept is tied more into Christian morality that has insinuated itself into society over the centuries and it was something that has developed gradually over time.

[Theo77]

So that doesn't mean, Love, that what you are saying is not true, its just that what a "smooth darkworker" would do is kind of a creation in your own mind. Its like a character in a book you are writing or somthing.

Its like a book we are all writing and can all edit like wikipedia.

What this movie did for me was help me to see this concept of good vs. evil more clearly for what I think it is.

[DaveTyler]

I think Lightworker vs Darkworker is bullshit.

Girls love badboys, thats kind of stereotypical to say, but theres truth to it.
But its all wrong, cause a badboy doesnt mean evil/dark, its more a self confident, not easy to pusharound, stands on his own feet, don't give a f what other people tell him to do. But he can still be as good and nice as you can possibly imagine.
He's just not a wussy.

A darkevil man like a serialkiller infact have to kill girls to get them, it kinda proves that dark/evil is just retarded concept.

Girls want a niceguy with a badguy additude, someone to make her feel safe, she don't want a EVIL guy. How could she feel safe with that?

[yossarian]

the very word "lightworker" is naturally going to be open to an infinite variety of interpretations

if you choose for that word to represent "consensus reality" then of course it's going to be a useless concept, since "consensus reality" is almost always inferior

personally i think there is a real thing good and evil but to find each thing you have to look closely at the intentions, attitude, actions, and effects of individuals.

To me Gandhi is not good because he fought for independance for India - in truth India would have become independant without him and the swaraj movement was around long before he. But he put his own mark on the movement, a non-violent mark, and through his civil disobedience he showed how to exert power non-violently. He showed that power does not only come from violence. He is "good" to me because of the life he led which was extremely loving, generous, joyous, kind, strong, powerful, important, and had very positive effects on the world.

The same goes for MLK Jr. The Civil Rights movement would have happened without him but he contributed his own style to it, which I think almost any human who looks closely at the man himself would agree that his life represents something very close to the concept of "goodness".

Likewise someone like Genghis Khan would be someone who represents a powerful selfish person. He is the epitome of successful selfishness.

So in the world there are certainly powerful and successful selfless people, and there are certainly powerful and successful selfish people. I look at these people and I label them as "good" and "evil" just to simplify things. If you disagree with my interpretation that is ok, of course, however if you want to criticise my interpretation you'll have to actually criticise MY interpretation, and not someone elses.

Personally I think the Spiderman3 interpretation is the consensus reality interpretation, and IMO it's a highly juvenile interpretation. I also think the Spiderman view of Good is juvenile, of course. Where Spiderman himself is full of hurt and vengeance and pride and stuff like that. To me he is certainly NOT an example of someone who is strongly selflessly polarized. I think you find better examples in reality than you do in fiction.