On interpreting shit.

It seems like some people want to believe there is a correct way of interpreting the world. A correct way of thinking. Even though it is a matter of course that to a certain degree people need to think that there is a correct way of thinking in order to work together, it seems people are comforted by believing there is a correct way of thinking even when unnecessary. Or it may be they can never tell when it matters that there is a correct way of thinking or not. On the other hand, it might be true that it is unnecessary to believe there ever is a correct way of thinking, if one only acknowledges a convention. There is the conventional wisdom. I am going to apply this to books and movies, but you may be able to see that it can be applied almost universally. It has always bothered me when someone didn't like the movie version of a book or the book version of a movie. And it doesn't bother me that someone just doesn't like a book or movie, it bothers me that they don't like it simply by virtue of it not being how they want the book or movie to be. Books are expressions of art by authors. They are stories and things told to others through words on a page from a specific person. They have a right to say what ever the fuck they want. And they have a right to say it how they want, not how you want to hear it. If you don't like their story, and you want to hear a different one, write it yourself. Movies tend to be the result of a hundred different people trying to fight with each other on getting their version of their expression into the final product. Movies that are made after books, unless they are directed by their original author, are not the perfect vision of what happened in the book. They are what another person, several other people interpretted that book to say, plus how a lot of people would have prefered the story be told, plus stuff that nobody except them wanted. Now my bother has nothing to do with people who just honestly didn't like the book or the movie or the whatever. My bother is with people who decide that the movie sucks because it wasn't the true representation of the book. Books are a total-fucking-ly different experience from movies. They have a different pace and feel, they are each vague in different and good ways, and they each show different perceptions of events. They aren't supposed to be the same. Movies are not the high-tech upgrade to books. The first half of my bother was that some people expect unfair things from different kinds of works of art. The second half of my bother is that people seem to think that there is a correct way to interpret art. That bothers me sometimes because people are caused unnecessary turmoil because they don't agree with people who they think should have the most reliable true interpretation, or each other, but I am far more bothered by when people judge others as stupid and ignorant because their interpretation differs. It bothers me when people use the conventional wisdom on a work to prove that a person is either an idiot, or a drone because of their interpretation of the work. It is obvious they are just being opinionated if they have a unique perspective on something, and judge another person as stupid for having a different one, but if their perspective is the most popular perspective, or the perspective regarded as the correct one, then they possibly will succede in convincing both the person they are judging and those witnessing it, that that person actually is wrong. On an opinion. An interpretation. In all works of art, there is the opinion of the author, or many authors (and those opinions may not perfectly coincide), and the opinion of the people who interpret what the author says. And nobody is more right than anybody else. When the words are written down they are not imbued with the spirit of the author, making those words mean only what the author intended, they're just words that one person decided to write. And nobody has the ability to read those words and imbue them with the spirit of truth, they only have the ability to read them and interpret them from the limitations of their own perspective. And when it comes to other matters such as philosophy, and economics, and religion, and politics it doesn't matter if written words can mean anything, if you know what you want. It doesn't matter what Thomas Jefferson or Jesus or Martin Luther King or Hilter said exactly, it matters if you agree with what those people want to do and want to be done. It isn't really necessary for there to be a correct way to interpret peoples words, as long as you can still work together. If the things which matter can still be taken care of. On a less serious note... it may be that our politicians(american ones) are using words from an entirely different dictionary than the people who voted for them. And when they, in our language, promise to lower taxes or that we can win a war in a foreign country without enough troops to hold it, it just so happens that those sounds they are making, in their language, mean something totally different. And perhaps we should figure out what politicianese translates to in english before making decisions about what they are really going to do.

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