18 Nov Beyond Politics
The day before we launched our recent kickstarter campaign for All The Rage, I wrote a blog post about Glenn Beck and his recent announcement concerning his struggle with chronic pain and auto-immune disease. A couple of days later I was shocked to see an incredibly mean spirited response to his announcement on a liberal video site called The Young Turks. This partisan response highlighted how anger gets in the way of empathy and communication.
A couple of weeks before that post I had reached out to Prince EA after I saw this 60 second clip about dealing with stress.
It resonated with so many of the themes in All The Rage that I reached out to him immediately to see if he would be willing to let me film an interview with him. I didn’t realize it at the time, but his recent videos had been getting 20-40 million views. Despite all that was going on with him, he got back to me within a day saying yes. He’s based in St. Louis, and our film Who Took Johnny plays at their film festival on Thursday, so I am going to fly out tomorrow to shoot with him. After I talked with him, I realized that I had seen several of his other videos, and they all have a deeply positive and spiritual message. This morning as I looked through his facebook page to get ready for the shoot, I was surprised to see that he had recently appeared on Glenn Beck’s show to talk about his videos. At the time, Mr. Beck had not yet talked publicly about his illness. There is nothing political about the discussion whatsoever, and there was no anger expressed. There was only empathy and love. This is what I want our film to feel like. Pain is not left or right. Illness is not left or right. Neither are cured by anger, but instead fed by it. I hope that Prince Ea can get my post to Mr. Beck, and perhaps we can go on his show to discuss it.
I look forward to shooting something special with Prince Ea that can both go in the film, and be used to spread the message of it.
Alana
Posted at 22:45h, 18 November“The problem is ourselves”
He’s Christian. That’s why Glenn Beck connected with him. The idea that we are sinners and personally responsible for problems and pain. Systems and political regimes won’t help what is the fundamental flaw, our fallen nature
Michael Galinsky
Posted at 04:01h, 19 NovemberI’m not sure that he’s speaking from a christian perspective here, I think he’s more directly referencing folks like Ram Dass and Eckhart Tolle who are referencing Eastern ideas. I think the idea of personal responsibility is more fluid than orthodox. In this sense responsibility means power- the power to change our response to a given situation.
Jim
Posted at 17:44h, 19 NovemberHis mum and step brother committed suicide – must be a helluva lot of repressed emotions (rage, sadness etc) in his unconscious. Would fit in with Sarno/TMS theory.
J