Exercise 1
The film Dumb & Dumber leaves me with a silly peaceful feeling. After all their adventures and misfortunes, Lloyd & Harry would prefer to be walking together along a lonely highway than be oil boys for a swimsuit competition. In the animated classic Jungle Book, the story leaves me with a feeling of peaceful inspiration knowing that Mogli has been adopted by a human family while Baloo and Bagheera launch into another rendition of the song “Bare Necessities.” For the ending of the book Way of the Peaceful Warrior there is a feeling of peaceful hope as Dan sees the death of his mentor Socrates as an ever expanding spirit unto all things. I suppose the emotion that my favorite stories evoke is a sense of peacefulness achieved through some kind of resolution. I guess it hasn’t really changed over time, and I still feel a sense of peaceful resolution from my favorite stories.
The way that these three stories feel similar to me is that they all created a sense of peace within the world by achieving a resolution of the struggle, conflict, or drama. They are similar in that Dumb & Dumber and Jungle Book both end with the two many characters walking away. In the case of Jungle Book, they are singing, and in Dumb and Dumber, they are playing an elaborate game of tag. In the story of Way of the Peaceful Warrior, the main character Dan is getting married and this too is a way of them walking down a long path together. They are all different in that the tone is unique given the circumstances and the method of resolution.
Here is a trailer for Dumb & Dumber as an Oscar worthy drama that I found interesting
Exercise 2
I imagine that if the characters Harry & Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber were to be placed into the world of Way of the Peaceful Warrior they would accelerate Dan’s spiritual growth by serving as adequate examples of “living in the moment”. I think Lloyd & Harry would really get on the nerves of the main character Dan, but they would embody the message of Socrates that life has three rules, “paradox, humor, and change.” They would probably cause a lot of confusion, and mishaps along the way too. They would no doubt try to recruit Dan into their hijinks adventure of returning Mary Swanson’s briefcase and end up creating a lot more levity against the backdrop of a more serious and angst ridden story.
Exercise 3
What if Ronald Frump made America a Fascist Dictatorship?
In a dystopian world, not unlike our own, Ronald Frump is a sitting U.S. president that has fallen into a love triangle with two autocratic dictators, Bladimir Flutin and King-John Urn.
In an effort to prove his love to both of them, he conspires to hack the upcoming election (goal), orders mail sorting machines and postal boxes to be dismantled (obstacle), on the eve of election night he rewrites the constitution (obstacle) in sharpie that the President shall serve unlimited terms and tweets it out as a new law (goal), as a result Twitter deletes his account and every other social media platform follows suit (obstacle), he loses the election by a mudslide, holds a press conference stating the election was a fraud (obstacle), and uses military force to remain in power (goal), invites right-wing militias to attack and declares a second civil war against American citizens that are storming the White House (obstacle), from the safety of the White House bunker, he forms an emergency military alliance with Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia (goal), nukes all the hurricanes (obstacle), drops plane loads of paper towels into the California forest fires (obstacle), mandates bleach vaccines as a treatment for COVID19 (goal), fast tracks a pop-up prison on the moon for his political opponents (obstacle), swaps all American flags with Confederate flags (goal), dynamites his face over all four presidents of Mt. Rushmore, (goal), strikes a deal with Satan and Thanos to become invincible (goal), raises Zombie Hitler from the dead and promotes him to Secretary of Defense (goal), loses Civil War II due to COVID19 and bleach vaccine related deaths (obstacle), gets indicted for treason and crimes against humanity (obstacle), gets extradited to the pop-up moon prison (obstacle), and lives for eternity without access to a hairstylist or makeup artist (obstacle).