No Country for Old Men - You Gotta Believe in Something

Welcome, fellow escapists! So where to this time? With summer around the corner; it’s only fair we stay in keeping with the desert theme. Off to yee-haw country!

Synopsis

In the unforgiving landscape of West Texas, desperate everyman Llewelyn Moss unleashes a ruthless cat-and-mouse game when he stumbles upon a drug deal gone awry and seizes a fortune, unknowingly unleashing a merciless, enigmatic assassin, Anton Chigurh, upon himself. As blood spills and bodies pile up, the world-weary Sheriff Ed Tom Bell desperately races to stop the carnage. In a world of shifting morals and relentless violence, fate and justice collide, leaving behind a haunting, brutal tale that makes you question how you look at life.

Review

I’ll admit that I have a huge Coen brothers and Javier Bardem bias, but this film is the reason. Each moment is beautifully crafted and superbly delivered by the veteran cast, while the masterful camera work brings the Texan desert to life as if it were a character in itself. Don’t take my word for it, just ask the Oscars committee.

And while some may find the ending unsatisfying; to them, I say:

You Gotta Believe in Something

I reiterate that the purpose of this endeavor is not to give answers but to ask questions. The goal is not to leave you in peace but in discomfort. Think of me as the fat little goblin who goes around loosening screws in your head. Shouldn’t be hard since that’s basically what I look like.

So…foundations. Your world view. Your lens and your guiding light. Does it flicker, or does it shine bright? Ok I promised my friends I would stop rapping, so no more.

Anyway, No Country For Old Men is a bona fide cinematic masterpiece, but it is so much more than that. It asks what is possibly the toughest question there is: What do you believe in? And that is what I’d like you to ask yourself. I want to start by breaking worldviews into 3 big picture buckets. Of course, systems of ideals are more on a spectrum than discreet buckets per se, but these form good points of reference regardless.

The White

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell - the rootin’ tootin’ Texan cowboy in the white hat, carrying out the word of God and law. This man is basically the answer to the question: “What if Sunday School was a person?”. Of course, we’re talking about Texan Sunday school, so there’s still guns involved. But largely, this is who your parents and teachers taught you to be in school. Be good, do good, follow the law, believe in God, and other cliches. What a snoozefest, am I right?

The Black

Anton Chigurh - Nietzsche’s wet dream. Good ol’ Freddy said, “God Is Dead.” and Anton replied, “Yes, indeed”. The only rule this man believes in is that there are no rules. Everything is chance and what we do doesn’t matter. He’s the darkness that lurks within all of us.

The Grey

Llewelyn Moss - Now he’s more the guy you probably learned to be somewhere in your youth or early adulthood. One who understands that there are practicalities to life and while there still must be a moral compass; an overarchingly strong one probably won’t get you too far. He’s the personification of “Shit Happens”.

Odds are you lie somewhere around Moss, leaning towards either side. Some towards Ed Tom and some towards Chigurh; you know who you are. But we are not here to evaluate your stance, just to break it down. As always, first, let’s talk about the need to have a worldview at all.

Don’t be an ass.

Imagine you’re a donkey (again, shouldn’t be a challenge) who is equally thirsty and hungry. 50 meters to your right lies a juicy pile of hay, and 50 meters to your left lies...another equally juicy pile of hay. Where do you go?

Named after 14th-century French philosopher Jean Buridan, Buridan’s Ass is the idea that an equally hungry and thirsty donkey stuck between equidistant stashes of food and water would ultimately starve due to indecision.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Wasn’t Buridan’s ass a paradox to support indeterminism, which was earlier posed by Persian philosopher Al-Ghazali, which in turn was a derivative of the works of Aristotle?” To that, I say: shut up, NERD.

While the thought experiment was indeed posed as a satire of Jean Buridan’s philosophy of moral determinism (the idea that all events are predetermined by existing causes); I believe the principle holds for our discussion too. Indifference is the enemy.

The key problem I see with not having a defined worldview (whatever it may be) is that you leave yourself vulnerable to a state of indecision which ultimately ossifies into indifference which in turn breeds complacency, which ultimately leads to a passive model of living. Without a set of ideals, you surrender yourself to the forces of randomness and the universe and before you know it, you’re in a place you don’t quite recognize after a journey you can’t quite recall. Sounds like Sunday morning in college, right? All that is left to do is the walk of shame.

There is a counterargument presented by Prof Michael Hauskeller of Exeter that Buridan’s ass would not starve as eventually one would make a choice even if the reason is unknown to them. I’ll confess that’s hard to argue with logically…so I’ll do it rhetorically. Not knowing your reason for something is as good as not having one.

So who do you want to be? Socrates or a complacent donkey? You decide.

Now that I have (hopefully) convinced you of the need to have a worldview, I want to talk about a few things to keep in mind when you’re going about forming one.

It ain’t so linear

We develop our ideals gradually through what we observe and experience. They emerge from making choices, observing the outcomes, drawing inferences, and applying them in the future. However, the third step is not as easy as it seems. Often, we tend to oversimplify the process, i.e., we assume that good outcomes imply good choices and vice versa. This can lead us to make serious mistakes by judging the results superficially. Before we learn from our experiences, we should analyze the reasons behind them.

Every dog has its day

You’re at The Bellagio, drink in hand, chips on the table - life is good. You get dealt a 17; the dealer turns over a King. “Fuck it, hit me.” you say, high on all the oxygen they’ve been pumping into the casino.

And BOOM; a 4.

You feel like a God. The smartest among these mere mortals around you. There’s no better feeling than being right; none more dangerous either. Hitting on 17 and getting a 4 does not make hitting on 17 the right decision. Do it every time, and you’ll be out a lot of money. A lot (trust me on this).

An extremely reductionist cause-and-effect outlook on life can oft result in erroneous ideals being solidified in our brains. The most common occurrence of this is seen in games of money like the stock market, where one chooses to ignore the data in favor of hunches. We all know how that ends. Accepting the role of luck and keeping our worldview impervious to it is, in my opinion, the secret to actually strong foundations.

Recognizing good luck is crucial, and just as important is ignoring bad luck.

There are Wolves

In the dark, stormy forest, two sworn enemies locked in a generations-old land dispute, meet face-to-face. As they prepare to confront each other, an unexpected bolt of lightning strikes, toppling a massive tree onto both men. Trapped and helpless, they are forced to confront their bitter animosity. Amidst the unforgiving wilderness, they ultimately find common ground, forging a newfound bond of friendship. But as they call out for rescue, fate intervenes with a cruel twist - a pack of wolves approaches, rendering their reconciliation tragically futile.

The above is a very short summary of a story - The Interlopers, by Saki (HH Munro). What a roller coaster, right? A good result does not always a good decision make. If you’re stuck under a tree in the middle of the forest, call out for help. If wolves end up eating you, bad luck. The other option was to starve to death. The concept of “Interlopers” is a trope often used in cinema and storytelling. They are simply characters (or events) that do not happen with any intention of affecting the main characters but end up doing so just the same.

There is a golden rule of storytelling: a coincidence to get your characters into trouble is interesting; a coincidence to get your characters out of trouble is cheating. A life well lived ends up being a good story so it’s only natural that sometimes bad things happen and it is not because you’re looking at the world the wrong way.

Accept bad luck; don’t depend on good luck.

I will not talk about “what” your worldview should be. That is neither the purpose of this piece nor is it my place to say. I simply wish to illustrate to you the need to have one and a couple of things to be mindful of while forming it. And I hope I have managed to do that.

So in conclusion, I just want to say: watch No Country for Old Men. It’s a good movie.

Until next time!