Random Thoughts While Reading and Listening (6-10)

Random Thoughts 6: Deaths of American Film Actors During Filming and the Inhuman Tendencies of Man-Made Secondary Societies
Yusheng

Ancient Chinese poems from the Book of Songs could be sung, accompanied by dance and ritual performances, thus forming a form of performance art. Confucius summarized the three hundred poems of the Book of Songs with the phrase “pure thoughts, free from evil.” Ancient Greek tragedy, including the works of Shakespeare, is a way for playwrights to portray the tragic nature of artificial secondary social life from the perspective of society as a whole. Aristotle pointed out that tragedy has a cathartic function, helping audiences to cope more maturely with similar emotional journeys in real life. Both ancient Chinese and Western works followed a path of pleasing and catering to the audience.

Modern art aims to express the personal feelings of free individuals in a second-tier society, without caring whether it pleases or panders to the audience. Viewers come not to be pleased or pandered, but out of curiosity or even a desire for stimulation. Classical works are beneficial to the physical health of viewers, even enhancing the immune system, while some modern works are harmful to their mental and physical well-being. These highly stimulating works, such as those involving murder, are particularly detrimental to the physical and mental health of the actors. Online sources list twelve American film actors who died during filming since the 1950s.

Among them, four died from drug overdose (1, 4, 5, 12), and three died from heart disease (2, 8, 9), one of whom died from myocardial infarction after alcohol abuse (9). Five died from accidents (3, 6, 7, 10, 11), three of whom died from accidents during filming, and two of whom died from personal accidents during filming: one in a car accident and the other from drowning. In short, the lives of American film actors themselves have become dramatic, and this dramatization is not classical drama, but highly stimulating modern drama.

The first case occurred in 1956 (9), and seven more occurred in the twenty-four years following the beginning of the 1990s, compared to only five in the preceding decades. The incidence of this type of death is on the rise.

There would be far fewer such deaths in China because China is influenced by its original social traditions, and even amidst global trends, Chinese works tend to be relatively more peaceful.

The following are the twelve film actors who died during filming:

1 Heath Ledger

Australian actor Heath Ledger, after a successful collaboration with director Ang Lee, starred in Christopher Nolan’s final Batman film, *The Dark Knight*. During filming, he revealed that the horror of his villainous role, the Joker, forced him to take prescription medication. He also stated that he was often so immersed in the character that his daily life was disrupted, and he suffered from insomnia. In 2013, Ledger’s father released his obsessive *Joker Diary*, a diary he kept while studying the role. Ledger won three Best Supporting Actor awards for *The Dark Knight*—an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA—but his performance was also described as “making a deal with the devil for the role.”

After completing *The Dark Knight*, Ledger joined the cast of *The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus*. In January 2008, when the film, which tells the story of a deal between a human and the devil, was one-third complete, Ledger was found dead in his SoHo apartment by his nanny. The autopsy report showed that the 28-year-old Ledger died from an overdose of painkillers, sleeping pills, and other prescription medications.

Afterwards, director Terry Gilliam made minor adjustments to the script and invited three of Ledger’s close friends—Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin J. Farrell—to film Ledger’s remaining scenes. The end credits read: “A film made by Heath Ledger and his friends.”

2 John Candy

Comedian John Candy, who portrayed many endearing, overweight characters on the big screen, died of a heart attack on March 4, 1994, the night he finished filming his final scene for *Wagons East*. He had left the set to prepare a celebratory pasta meal for his assistants and co-stars, only to be found dead the following morning.

This wild western comedy was released that summer. In the film, Candy plays a drunken train conductor who begs two businessmen for a job. Although some people consider it the pinnacle of Candy’s acting career, many others say that the film caused this prolific actor to pass away at the age of 43.

3 Natalie Wood

On November 29, 1981, 43-year-old American actress Natalie Wood tragically drowned while on a boat with her husband Robert Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken.

Wood had starred in films such as *Rebel Without a Cause* and *Splendor in the Grass*. During the filming of *Brainstorm*, while co-starring with her, the couple invited him on Thanksgiving night for a yacht trip from the Southern California coast. The following morning, Wood’s body was found floating in the sea, near a lifeboat. It was determined that Wood had accidentally fallen into the water from the self-propelled lifeboat.
The film managed to stay afloat and was released after her death, but failed to attract audiences. Director Douglas Trumbull subsequently retired from acting and turned to filmmaking; last year, he admitted that his decision was directly related to Wood’s death. The yacht’s captain only revealed in 2011 that the couple had argued that night and that Wagner and Walken had attempted to cover up Wood’s death, leading to a reopening of the case by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department 30 years later. A new medical examiner’s report stated that Wood had injuries before falling into the sea, but no conclusion was reached.

4. Marilyn Monroe

The iconic star Marilyn Monroe, after three marriages, was rumored to have had affairs with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. She died on August 5, 1962, leaving behind the unfinished film “Something’s Got to Give”.

This comedy, directed by George Cukor, was plagued by conflicts from the very beginning of filming. Marilyn Monroe was initially fired, but was brought back to the set after Dean Martin, one of the lead actors, insisted that he would only work with Monroe. However, she was soon found dead in her Brentwood, California home, from a barbiturate overdose. Whether her death was suicide or induced remains inconclusive.

After Marilyn Monroe’s death, “The Twins” had to come to an end, and some scenes were included in the 2001 documentary “Marilyn: The Final Days”.

5. River Phoenix

The late River Phoenix, brother of actor Joaquin Phoenix, rose to fame after starring in *Stand by Me* (1986). In 1993, while filming *Dark Blood*, the 23-year-old died on Halloween night from a drug overdose. Reports indicate that he convulsed on the sidewalk after leaving a Hollywood nightclub, attracting onlookers, and was taken to the hospital but died. An autopsy revealed the presence of cocaine, morphine, marijuana, tranquilizers, and cold medicine in his system.

In *Black Blood*, Rivers played a widower living near a desert nuclear test site who develops an affair with a Hollywood couple while helping them fix their car. The film was later cancelled. His role in *Interview with the Vampire*, co-starring Tom Cruise, was taken over by Christian Slater, who donated his entire salary to a foundation established in honor of Rivers.

6 Paul Manz

For Paul Mantz, aerobatic flight was a natural calling. This legendary pilot once performed stunts above a train full of high-ranking military officers, nearly getting expelled from the U.S. Military Flight School.

In a 1932 film, he piloted a biplane through a warehouse barely larger than its fuselage. His stunts also appeared in many other films, including *For Whom the Bell Tolls*.

On July 8, 1965, the retired Mantz returned to filming stunt scenes for “The Flight of the Phoenix,” but died when his plane crashed into a mountain while flying over the Arizona desert. Because filming was nearing completion, the producers used another plane to shoot the remaining close-up shots, and the film was released that year.

7. Vic Morrow

American actor Vic Morrow, known for his tough-guy roles in TV series like *Combat!* and B-movies, tragically died in July 1982 at the age of 53, along with two child actors, in an accident on the set of *Twilight Zone: The Movie*. The scene involved the use of both a helicopter and pyrotechnics; the fatal explosion of the pyrotechnics severed the helicopter’s tail section. It was later discovered that the director had illegally hired the two child actors to evade California laws prohibiting children from working at night or in potentially dangerous environments such as those involving helicopters or explosives.

Although the producers were sued for this, the film was still released the following June, but it was a box office flop, believed to be related to the controversy sparked by the accident.

8 Oliver Reed

British actor Oliver Reed was as famous for his love of alcohol and parties as he was for his acting. On May 2, 1999, at the age of 61, he died of a heart attack in a bar in Malta, unable to complete filming for the movie “Gladiator”.

Reports indicate that he arm-wrestled with several Royal Navy sailors and drank large amounts of rum, beer, whiskey, and brandy. Most of his scenes were already completed, but director Ridley Scott had to use digital technology to simulate Reed’s face, costing approximately $3 million. The film grossed $187 million in North America the following year and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, marking a milestone in Reed’s 60-film career.

9. Bella Lugosi

Born in 1882, the renowned Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi emigrated to the United States in 1920. He is best known for his role as Count Dracula in horror films. Unfortunately, Lugosi struggled with drug addiction, divorced four times, and was hospitalized for depression a year before his death. His career was also marked by significant alcoholism before his passing.
On August 16, 1956, at the age of 73, he died of a heart attack while filming *Plan 9 from Outer Space*. The director had his family masseur perform the final scenes, despite the fact that the two men did not resemble each other in appearance or voice. The film is considered one of Lugosi’s worst performances. At his burial, his family dressed his body in a black cloak in remembrance of his most famous vampire role.

10 Brandon Lee

On March 31, 1993, Brandon Lee, the 28-year-old son of martial arts star Bruce Lee, was tragically killed when he was shot in the abdomen by a .44 caliber prop pistol during the filming of a shooting scene in the movie *The Crow*. The gun had been loaded for a close-up shot of the bullet, but the bullet was forgotten, leading to the accident. Although there were rumors in the industry that his death scene was actually included in the film, the footage was actually cut during editing.

11 Paul Walker

On November 30, 2013, during the Thanksgiving holiday, popular actor Paul Walker was involved in a car accident in Valencia, Santa Clarita, California. His sports car caught fire, and he died at the age of 40. The crew of *Fast and Furious 7*, in which he played a major role, halted filming amidst shock and grief. In April of this year, filming resumed in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, with Walker’s two brothers invited to help film the scenes behind him. Walker’s face will be digitally superimposed. The film’s release has been postponed to April 2015.

12 Philip Seymour Hoffman

Finally, we must mention the recent shocking tragedy: in February of this year, 46-year-old Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died suddenly in his Manhattan apartment from a drug overdose. However, he had just finished filming the teen fantasy adventure film *The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1*, in which he played the villain Plutarch Heavensbee. The film’s producers subsequently stated that Hoffman’s passing would not affect the film’s release in November of this year.

Reflection 7: The culture of accumulating wealth has reached its limit.

Read with thought in order to broaden your horizons;

Read and reflect to expand the application of the polar society theory!

Yusheng

Abnormal weather events are frequently reported around the world, including droughts, floods, extreme heat, cold, and storms. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) once said that if everyone lived like the developed United States, we would need five Earths; one Earth would be far from enough. Yet, Americans are not happy; suicide rates rose sharply in the last century. Conversely, those who are poor but self-sufficient live happy and fulfilling lives. This clearly demonstrates that the dominant Western culture in the world today is driven by the pursuit of wealth and economic power, not by the well-being of its people.

VOA reporter: Schlein, Geneva, May 15, 2007: A new report indicates that the world has ample available energy and technology to mitigate climate change. However, the World Wildlife Fund, the organization that published the report, warns that critical decisions must be made in the next five years to avoid irreversible damage.

We can live a much better life with less wealth! Using the current powerful media system to call on people to change their lifestyle and promote simplicity and nature is more effective than any other measure in stopping further global warming.
　

A grassroots movement, known as the New Age Movement, seeks a new self and a new way of life. The New Age Movement is a decentralized social phenomenon that originated in Western social and religious movements of the 1970s and 80s. It encompasses a wide range of areas, including spirituality, mysticism, alternative therapies, and incorporates elements from various world religions as well as environmentalism. It adopts a more eclectic and personalized approach to cultivating spirituality, rejecting mainstream ideas. Terms such as self-spirituality, new spirituality, and mind-body-spirit all refer to New Age thought. “Cultural Creativity” and “New Paradigm” are also terms used within the New Age Movement.

Reflection 8: Rapidly increasing wealth and knowledge are not accompanied by an increase in human happiness.

Read with thought in order to broaden your horizons;

Read and reflect to expand the application of two-polar society theory!

Yusheng

In recent years, I have said to audiences on many occasions in public: In the contemporary world, there are only two things that are growing at such a rate: doubling every one or two decades, almost like a rocket soaring into the sky. These are the rapidly growing wealth and knowledge.

Wealth is the money in our pockets, but it’s also the various man-made products accumulated around the world: houses, railways, goods in shops and warehouses, everyday household items, and of course, weapons used for farming and killing, atomic bombs, and intangible electrical energy. In my rural hometown in Hebei in the 1950s, there was a saying: our village had so many trees that if you stood outside the village, you would only see crops and trees, not any non-natural man-made structures. Today, we are faced with countless high-rise buildings, vehicles, and cables. It takes five or six hours to travel from Beijing to my home by car, and during those five or six hours, we are accompanied by the scenery of rural Hebei flashing past the car window. Over the past few decades, what was once an endless expanse of green with occasional small farmhouses has gradually transformed into continuous rows of buildings, factories, highways, railways, cables, etc., with natural greenery becoming merely an embellishment. This is the true landscape of the world’s rapidly growing wealth.

Similarly, our knowledge is also rapidly increasing day and night, though it tends to be more intangible due to advancements in knowledge storage technology, from bamboo slips and book pages to today’s electronic storage on CDs and computers. If you visit the shelves of various magazines in a large city library, which are delivered monthly, you’ll feel the continuous flow of new human knowledge through those magazines. Not to mention the millions of online e-magazines and the information uploaded by hundreds of millions of people on blogs, Facebook, and other platforms.

This is what’s called the knowledge explosion and wealth explosion. People worry about population explosion, but the wealth explosion is far more terrifying. A large population won’t crush the earth, but the accumulation of wealth has that power. We warn children and the elderly not to go outside because of the so-called smog that pollutes the air. That smog isn’t human excrement, but rather the excrement of wealth. This shows that wealth is toxic, while the population is not. Vehicles like cars, airplanes, and various boilers constantly emit toxic waste, and other production processes like railways and construction produce toxic fecal matter. Human excrement and fecal matter are not toxic and can even be considered fashionable organic fertilizer, in contrast to chemical fertilizers.

Does wealth that produces toxic waste bring happiness? Quite the opposite. Many studies have found that the accumulation of wealth culture alienates and enslaves humanity, making people less happy. This is because society and culture, because of thought and consciousness, constantly urge humanity to produce more wealth. If humans were like birds in the trees and wild beasts on the grasslands, living leisurely all day long, then today’s Earth would still resemble the rural areas of northern China in the 1950s: boundless green nature dotted with a few farmhouses.

Darwin’s theory errs in failing to elucidate the driving force of natural competition among organisms: animals live to enjoy life, not to compete for survival as Darwin describes. If you capture a wild bird and cage it, no matter how much you like it or how much food and drink you provide, generally speaking, the bird will neither eat nor drink until it dies. The reason is simple: the caged environment violates the bird’s nature; life is no longer an enjoyment for it, and it loses its motivation to live. Humans, however, can spend decades in prison because they endure present suffering for the hope of release, while animals do not have such long-term hope. Even if the person in prison has no hope of release, it doesn’t matter. Psychologists say: having hope in life is important, but the likelihood of that hope being realized is not. Religion cheaply distributes this hope that will not be fulfilled in this lifetime. The driving force behind the doubling of knowledge and wealth in the world every one or two decades is precisely this seemingly plausible but ultimately unrealistic hope. As a result, humanity struggles day and night, making their lives extremely painful, polluting the environment, and pushing their children and grandchildren’s lives into hell.

Psychologists say that the bird in the cage that neither ate nor drank suffered from depression, a condition often associated with suicide in humans. The encouragement of religious afterlife and heaven, along with the widespread availability of various self-help psychological therapies, are powerful antidotes to human depression, enabling us to strive joyfully year after year and live our lives without succumbing to depression and committing suicide like that bird lacking human knowledge.

Nevertheless, the incidence of depression in humans today is so high: 6.7% of the American population suffers from depression each year; 16.5% of Americans will experience depression once or more in their lifetime. What a scene it would be if all those suffering from depression committed suicide like that caged bird! What would the world be like if there were more people suffering from depression without the popularization of religion and psychological knowledge? At least one possibility is that humanity would not have the capacity for such an explosive growth in wealth and knowledge, and thus would not face the ecological crisis, or even the two world wars would have been impossible. More likely, if humanity lived as the Taoist ideal dictates, directing genius towards self-enjoyment and creation rather than wealth accumulation, the development of the material world might have been slightly slower, but humanity would not face the current global problems.

But one conclusion is absolutely certain, leaving no room for hesitation: the various problems facing the world today are problems created by Western-style secondary societies, problems that cannot be artificially manipulated; problems stemming from the continuous revolutions and wars in Europe since the Renaissance, which propelled the world into this modernized world with guns and cannons, not problems arising from humanity’s original traditional path. If the world had followed a development path like that of Confucianism and Taoism, which idealized a primitive society, there would be no global predicament as we see it today, and humanity wouldn’t be so foolishly exerting itself, causing immense suffering and leading humanity into an ecological crisis.

Reflection 9: Rapidly increasing wealth and knowledge are not accompanied by an increase in human happiness.

Random Thoughts 10: Reading Two Articles by Chen Yun
Reading with reflection in order to broaden one’s horizons;

Read and reflect to expand the application of the polar society theory!

January 25, 2013: Read Chen Yun’s “Music, Time, and Human Existence: A Modern Understanding of Confucianism’s ‘Success Through Music'”.

(http://www.confucius2000.com/confucius/drjcyldxdlj.htm)

For people in the original society, time was an eternal melody, like the Yangtze River, flowing endlessly, with the surging waves of the times and the gentle murmur of individual streams, tinkling in the human heart; space was a three-dimensional painting, with the charm of the universe, the silent beauty of heaven and earth, and the tender warmth of humanity.

2013/01/26

Read Chen Yun’s “The Turning Point of Language and the Liberation of Man in the Modern Context” (http://www.confucius2000.com/admin/list.asp?id=1709)

Mr. Chen’s original text begins by saying:

Modern thought has entered an era known as the “linguistic turn,” in which not only does language constitute the core issue of philosophy, but the secrets of the world and reality are also believed to ultimately lie within the secrets of language. Wittgenstein asserted: “All philosophy is linguistic critique.”

Modern people have finally come to realize that for thousands of years, humanity has used language and concepts to construct reality, and simultaneously, to construct artificial secondary societies and humanity itself. Mr. Chen, reviewing human history, says that initially, humanity viewed language as an entity, just like other things; for primitive people, the illusion constructed by language was as important as reality. Later, humanity realized that language was merely a tool. In Mr. Chen’s words, the relationship between words and reality has undergone a process from unity to separation. For modern people, reality, through the role of language and culture, possesses at least three levels: the thing itself, the thing as referred to by language, and the words that describe that thing.

For example, the concept of a tree. First, a tree is the tree that exists in nature; second, it is the tree that humans perceive. Most people may not realize the difference between these two, assuming they are the same. In fact, there is a fundamental difference. When we hear “tree,” we think of the trees in parks or in front of our houses, and that the wood can be cut down to make furniture. On the other hand, earthworms and other creatures in the grass under a tree see the tree above them as the sky. Clearly, the “tree” we refer to is not the same as the tree in nature. As for the third type, as a word or concept itself, it is extremely important because humans can connect countless words and concepts to create literary works such as novels, plays, and poems. People can become completely absorbed in a captivating novel, identifying with characters like Baoyu and Daiyu. If they see their books being burned, they might throw themselves into the flames, exclaiming, “You’re burning my Baoyu to death!”

These devoted readers are nothing compared to the sheer number of people who are captivated by novels. But if these millions of people transform the fictional world of novels into reality, turning most of the world’s population into fanatics, then it will be a disaster. This has happened repeatedly throughout the five or six thousand years of human civilization, which is what Mr. Chen emphasized: “The liberation of language” has become the most fundamental form of human liberation.

By re-examining Mr. Chen’s thesis from the perspectives of primary and secondary societies, we can see that genetic coding and the classification of artificial societies make Mr. Chen’s arguments clearer and more visible, much like focusing something in the shadows under a bright light. This also allows the parts that Mr. Chen neglected to show in his article to be presented to the reader more clearly.