On Thursday, 6 July 2023 at 13:50:29 UTC+1, Mandryka wrote:
> Try this one
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPXx1tk0ACs&ab_channel=BennyTheBouncer

I'm all for animation and the cartoon version of The Cunning Little Vixen is magical...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNWlTZTd2Ng&t=228s

But that version of Under Milkwood is SO un-Welsh. The faces look like Italian gangsters. Nothing at all like anything a Welsh person would recognise. And that's just a stupid and unnecessary mistake.

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 2:27:31 PM UTC+2, HT wrote:
> >
> In the 1920-30s Germans lamented the fact that there was no mystery anymore in their lives.

All of them?
Did some guy conduct street interviews, asking people about the mystery in their lives?
My guess is being defeated in WWI, Weimarish chaos, inflation and the economic downturn played a bigger role than 'mystery'.

On Thursday, 6 July 2023 at 13:27:31 UTC+1, HT wrote:

> In the 1920-30s Germans lamented the fact that there was no mystery anymore in their lives.
> Henk

Europe was in shock after the horrors of WW1. One result was surrealism. I guess that movement had its fair share of mystery, though that wasn't the primary objective.

Op donderdag 6 juli 2023 om 15:11:55 UTC+2 schreef Herman:
> On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 2:27:31 PM UTC+2, HT wrote:
> > >
> > In the 1920-30s Germans lamented the fact that there was no mystery anymore in their lives.
> All of them?
> Did some guy conduct street interviews, asking people about the mystery in their lives?
> My guess is being defeated in WWI, Weimarish chaos, inflation and the economic downturn played a bigger role than 'mystery

Quite aggressive, aren't we? Since when are 'Germans' all Germans? Where did I say that there weren't bigger problems in Germany?

Henk

Op donderdag 6 juli 2023 om 15:18:00 UTC+2 schreef Andy Evans:
> On Thursday, 6 July 2023 at 13:27:31 UTC+1, HT wrote:
>
> > In the 1920-30s Germans lamented the fact that there was no mystery anymore in their lives.
> > Henk
>
> Europe was in shock after the horrors of WW1. One result was surrealism. I guess that movement had its fair share of mystery, though that wasn't the primary objective.

The most interesting group was the so-called Georg-Kreis.

"Stefan George aimed at creating a mystical, anti-modernist society, distinguished by its aesthetic superiority and within the framework of clear hieriachies. He adopted the idea of an idealistic 'Secret Germany' (Geheimes Deutschland) conspiration, a vision of inner entity as coined by the cultural philosophers Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn. Geheimes Deutschland was also the title of a poem published in George's late work Das Neue Reich ("The New Empire") in 1928, in which he proclaimed a new form of an intellectual and spiritual aristocracy, to some extent obliged to Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man."

But there were more.

Henk

On 2023-07-06 6:56 a.m., Andy Evans wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 July 2023 at 13:50:29 UTC+1, Mandryka wrote:
>> Try this one
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPXx1tk0ACs&ab_channel=BennyTheBouncer
>
> I'm all for animation and the cartoon version of The Cunning Little Vixen is magical...
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNWlTZTd2Ng&t=228s
>
> But that version of Under Milkwood is SO un-Welsh. The faces look like Italian gangsters. Nothing at all like anything a Welsh person would recognise. And that's just a stupid and unnecessary mistake.

Did you see the movie version with Liz Taylor playing Rosie Probert?
I thought the production was awful. After all, it is meant for the radio.

On Thursday, 6 July 2023 at 15:30:28 UTC+1, Graham wrote:
> > But that version of Under Milkwood is SO un-Welsh. The faces look like Italian gangsters. Nothing at all like anything a Welsh person would recognise. And that's just a stupid and unnecessary mistake.
> Did you see the movie version with Liz Taylor playing Rosie Probert?
> I thought the production was awful. After all, it is meant for the radio.

Liz Taylor was an actress who did some good things, though she was never one I was interested in. She was dragged into a few things by Richard Burton, and presumably this was one of them. I remember they came to the Oxford Playhouse together to do a production while I was a student there. Lots of razzmatazz around them at the time. I was never a fan of Richard Burton myself though I liked him in Night of the Iguana. For me Anthony Hopkins was on another level. But the ladies were always soft on Burton.

Under Milkwood is so absolutely and totally Welsh through and through, down to every last detail. It makes fun of the Welsh unmercifully, yet in a way which also manages to celebrate the culture. Llareggub is after all "bugger all" backwards. It really has to be done with a Welsh cast, and not only that but with a production that avoids stereotyping the Welsh. Not always easy in a culture that gets pissed and tells tall stories.

One interesting detail my father told me was that the BBC in London were always trying to get Dylan Thomas to come up and do a radio show. They sent one of their staff down to Swansea to try and fetch him and after several days when he didn't return they sent another guy down to investigate. The chap they sent was so intoxicated with the atmosphere in Dylan's house and his enormous skill as a raconteur that he said that nothing would have dragged him away, not even losing his job. Dylan never went up to the BBC in London as far as I know. But hey, my father was no stranger to tall stories either.

Another interesting and frustrating detail is that when my uncle was a philosophy lecturer at Magdalen College in Oxford, Dylan Thomas visited him, since they knew each other from school, and asked if he could write some essays for him on philosophy. He did so and my uncle read and discussed them. Not being aware of Dylan's future importance at the time he threw the essays away. And the world lost........... who know what.

In article <727d3e8f-b0de-4d23-a6dd-bb71dd8faf4cn@googlegroups.com>,
HT <hvtuijl@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>But there were more.

Yes, various philosophers of the era discuss this disenchantment
as a theme.

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 4:51:18 AM UTC-7, Andy Evans wrote:
>
> Probably the biggest draw towards religions,
> apart from trying to explain the inexplicable,
> is the opportunity of an afterlife.

Classic Ponzi scheme. Religions
are Ponzi schemes. No more, no
less, and nothing else.

You do whatever you are told,
no matter how silly. You tell us
everything you do and think, and
apologize for it. You pay tithes.

In exchange, you will be rewarded
some time in the future, in some
way that is not specified and that
you do not control, or can accept,
or negotiate, or reject. Do I smell
a rat?

dk

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 1:41:34 PM UTC-7, Mandryka wrote:
> This is a special way of being afraid
> No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
> That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
> Created to pretend we never die,
> And specious stuff that says No rational being
> Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
> That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
> No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
> Nothing to love or link with,
> The anaesthetic from which none come round.

I'd rather take Springbank.

dk

On 7/6/2023 4:35 PM, Dan Koren wrote:
> On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 4:51:18 AM UTC-7, Andy Evans wrote:
>>
>> Probably the biggest draw towards religions,
>> apart from trying to explain the inexplicable,
>> is the opportunity of an afterlife.
>
> Classic Ponzi scheme. Religions
> are Ponzi schemes. No more, no
> less, and nothing else.
>
> You do whatever you are told,
> no matter how silly. You tell us
> everything you do and think, and
> apologize for it. You pay tithes.
>
> In exchange, you will be rewarded
> some time in the future, in some
> way that is not specified and that
> you do not control, or can accept,
> or negotiate, or reject. Do I smell
> a rat?
>
> dk
>
>

That certainly one way of looking at it.

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 1:41:34 PM UTC-7, Mandryka wrote:
> This is a special way of being afraid
> No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
> That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
> Created to pretend we never die,
> And specious stuff that says No rational being
> Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
> That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
> No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
> Nothing to love or link with,
> The anaesthetic from which none come round.

Come, O Death, brother of sleep?

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 1:35:18 PM UTC-7, Dan Koren wrote:
> On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 4:51:18 AM UTC-7, Andy Evans wrote:
> >
> > Probably the biggest draw towards religions,
> > apart from trying to explain the inexplicable,
> > is the opportunity of an afterlife.
> Classic Ponzi scheme. Religions
> are Ponzi schemes. No more, no
> less, and nothing else.
>
> You do whatever you are told,
> no matter how silly. You tell us
> everything you do and think, and
> apologize for it. You pay tithes.
>
> In exchange, you will be rewarded
> some time in the future, in some
> way that is not specified and that
> you do not control, or can accept,
> or negotiate, or reject. Do I smell
> a rat?
>
> dk
More to it, not just a scheme.

A religion that imposes costs /duties can confer an earthly payoff in the form of greater trust and cohesion within the group.

See Wade, The Faith Instinct.

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 5:20:08 PM UTC-7, number_six wrote:
> On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 1:35:18 PM UTC-7, Dan Koren wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 4:51:18 AM UTC-7, Andy Evans wrote:
> > >
> > > Probably the biggest draw towards religions,
> > > apart from trying to explain the inexplicable,
> > > is the opportunity of an afterlife.
> > Classic Ponzi scheme. Religions
> > are Ponzi schemes. No more, no
> > less, and nothing else.
> >
> > You do whatever you are told,
> > no matter how silly. You tell us
> > everything you do and think, and
> > apologize for it. You pay tithes.
> >
> > In exchange, you will be rewarded
> > some time in the future, in some
> > way that is not specified and that
> > you do not control, or can accept,
> > or negotiate, or reject. Do I smell
> > a rat?
>
> More to it, not just a scheme.

Then what is it?

> A religion that imposes costs /duties

Anything that IMPOSES anything is by
definition an invasion of people's rights
and privacy.

> can confer an earthly payoff in the form of
> greater trust and cohesion within the group.

It does not seem to have worked across
five thousand years of recorded history,
except perhaps in the sense of making
religions fight one another.

dk