Word: deterministic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Original Sin. Perhaps this approach is needed in an age when the universe is seen as a determinist switchboard and man keeps getting a recorded announcement saying the nirvana he has dialed is not a working nirvana. But a little bit of evolution as theater goes a long way. The Hunting Hypothesis is essentially a restaging of one of Ardrey's basic themes: "Man is man, and not a chimpanzee, because for millions upon millions of evolving years we killed for a living." It is a perfectly plausible statement but one that is likely to annoy those who prefer...
...affair [Oct. 26]. Miss Davis is variously described as "brilliant," "cerebral," "rational," and we are told that she chose active membership in the Communist Party, U.S.A. because of her commitment to strict Marxist rationality. But her advocation of freedom in the "act of refusal" is not consistent with the determinist world view of dialectical materialism, which leads any good Communist ideologue to define freedom as the recognition of necessity and to dismiss any other notion as bourgeois sentiment. Nor did her flamboyant Afro coiffure lend itself to the proper image of an austere Communist. And her association with a spoiled...
Harpo's production of Oedipus makes a similar statement about the bogus exaltation of human tragedy to cathartic spectacle, wherein great men fall from pinnacles in the all-seeing determinist universe of the Fates. Director Laurence Senelick has chosen the Seneca version over the traditional Sophocles "to remove the play from the realms of both Freudian psychology and aloof neo-classicism." This may also mean that he has chosen a play which, because of its gore and violence, leads to a denial that there is anything more in suffering than suffering; a denial that tragedy can be uplifting in transcending...
This celebrated legatee of the Fabian Left tradition calls himself "a socialist but not a determinist" and confesses his "primary interest in power problems" He shed with relief the academic life to become a party professional after the War. "The Labour Party has been my life since 1957 (when Gaitskell died) I adore it. Before '57, I was in exile on the left wing of the party during the ascendancy of A?? and Gaitskell. For 19 years. I quarreled with the leadership...