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Werner Herzog on beer, yoga and what he would ask God
- CrankyBear 3y agoGreat article and interview with a great artist.
- dvh 3y agoWerner Herzog on penguins: https://youtu.be/mnTU_hJoByA https://youtu.be/mnTU_hJoByA
- sdfghswe 3y ago> If you had a question you could ask God, what would it be? > I wouldn’t ask God, but in general: why is there existence, rather than nothingness? It’s the biggest of all questions and it’s not my question. It was posed 2,500 years ago by Greek philosophers. It’s the question of questions and, of course, there’s no answer.
- bicx 3y agoIf you could ask God, then maybe there is an answer though. Play the game, Werner!
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoGod answered this already. "So others can know me" Knowing and being known by God is life changing.
- tomrod 3y agoDidn't realize "god" was purely ego.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoYep; We are God. It says so in the bible: he's made in our image. (some dumb copy editor just mixed up the order a couple thousand years ago and they've been misprinting since)
- tomrod 3y agoA non-traditional blasphemy I can get behind! We are god and are in constant effort to create it where it lacks. Or better expressed: we are the universe experiencing itself.
- oh_sigh 3y agoSeems a bit egotistical
- ARandomerDude 3y agoDoes it? If you were omniscient and knew definitively that you were goodness itself, wouldn’t it be loving to share yourself with others?
- oh_sigh 3y agoNot really sure how "goodness itself" can exist when only one thing exists in the universe?
- keepamovin 3y agoIn truth a being like that would probably be beyond ego. It’s just a human projection onto them to make it easy for us to talk about that we think in those terms. so in a sense it’s us being egotistical by projecting our perspective onto God to talk about It, and by assuming that God has ego. I think in a sense, God is beyond all our concepts of morality and everything, so They are unknowable unfathomable. The great mystery. Man In Sky could be read as the ultimate human ego trip, and we keep repeating it with anthropocentric distortions about UFOs and so on. This is just one perspective. The concept in reality it’s probably so big that it’s going to be impossible for us humans to agree, natural for there to be disagreements and, even when there’s apparent disagreements, still contained within the totality of whatever it is that God is. In fact, I think it's even egotistical of us to believe that we can think our way through the concept of God, that we can even talk about it. In a sense, I think there's validity to the approach of some traditions that say that God can't even be talked about, can't even be named. A stance that reflects the required humility. Again, this is just another perspective of an infinite concept. I'm not saying I'm right about this. I'm just theorizing and speaking from my experience and ideas. Of course, there will be disagreements. And I think it's natural for there to be. What's unnatural and stupid, I think, is to persecute each other over any disagreements that we have of a concept that is seemingly so large as it could contain all these things without contradiction. So, please be kind to each other in your talks about God.
- ryanklee 3y agoYeah, well he did a shitty job of accomplishing his goal, then.
- mistermann 3y agoMaybe it's a team effort - even instant ramen requires some effort from the end user.
- ryanklee 3y agoYeah, blame the user.
- mistermann 3y agoI am simply making an observation about the nature of causality, don't blame me for what you overlay upon it.
- ryanklee 3y agoNot blaming you. Pointing out it's dubious to say God's not responsible for his own failures.
- mistermann 3y agoBut here you're declaring yourself to being correct rather than wondering if you are. Faith comes in many forms, because it is fundamental to consciousness and culture.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ryanklee 3y agoIt's not clear what assertions you are referring to.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoThe question seems a bit confused as posed. On the one hand, asking God "why is there something rather than nothing?" is odd if one is looking for the cause, rather than the reason or motive. If you're asking God, then you're addressing the Cause! But why does God create the universe? If God is perfect, then He has no need to create, thus it must be a free act. It must have been for the sake of those created. If you're asking why there is existence, first, existence does exist, as existence "is" existence, and second, God is Existence Itself (Ipsum Esse Substitens) by which everything is, so again, if you're addressing God, you are already addressing the Act of Existence Himself!
- stcredzero 3y agoIf God is perfect, then He has no need to create For various values of God, perfect, He, and need, which are debatable ad astra/ad nauseum. if you're addressing God What are the chances someone is not literally addressing the literal God, but is rather posing the question using that language poetically, with zero belief in an actual God? I'd say that’s clearly nonzero.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoAs a cure for boredom.
- lapetitejort 3y agoGod's answer: I'm just an intern running simulations for my professor. I have seventeen other simulations with minor tweaks running concurrently. I am also living in a simulator, ironically created by myself in the parent universe. We are testing whether it's simulations all the way down and up.
- imchillyb 3y agoChapter 1, Verse 4: > 1) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2) The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3) Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4) God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5) God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. He felt like it, and saw that the light was good. Something, light, is better than nothing, darkness. 'It was good,' I believe is the answer to that question.
- awb 3y agoThe question of “Why is there something rather than nothing” encompasses a curiosity about the existence of God. Your answer starts after the existence of God, so it doesn’t answer the original question.
- imchillyb 3y agoThe question was 'why is there something rather than nothing.' I believe: '...it was good...' is the answer. Why was it good? Because, at first there was nothing. Then, there was something, light, and _that_ was good, not the nothing. The question I believe you wish to ask, without asking, is: "God, why do you exist?" That's not this question though.
- awb 3y ago“It was good”, addresses the post-creation impact of the something vs. nothing (decision, instance, etc.), but it doesn’t answer the question of why there is something vs. nothing, which is asking about the origins of existence and isn’t concerned with the impact. I don’t mean to ask "God, why do you exist?" because “Why is there something instead of nothing?” encompasses that possibility without necessitating it.
- mistermann 3y agoThe fact that the potential (allegedly) existed in the first place seems rather good to me.
- asah 3y agoas a progammer, I gotta believe we can do better! I'll start. What is a method to permanently relieve mass human suffering, that has practical step-by-step instructions, achievable with modern technology, would be widely believable and easily fundable.
- awb 3y agoThe definition of suffering is unique and relative to each person. Some might consider boredom suffering while some consider it a necessary path towards creativity. Your idealistic question gets into philosophical territory when you consider what it means to be human without suffering, or wether some forms of suffering can be good. In other words, your question starts from a premise that might not be shared by others. Whereas, “why is there something instead of nothing” is a widely shared curiosity.
- noonething 3y agoSo then, what is a method to permanently relieve mass human suffering relative to each human, that has practical step-by-step instructions, achievable with modern technology, would be widely believable and easily fundable?
- awb 3y agoSure, but it’s possible that these relatively needs will in all likelihood conflict. So a valid answer might be “you can’t”.
- thereisnospork 3y ago... Step 1: Assemble H-Bomb Step 2: Boom Step 3: Relief (?)
- tehnub 3y agoThe reason the universe was made, as I understand it, was to answer Man's last question: Can entropy ever be reversed? and God answered by demonstration.
- dsign 3y agoHe answered it: > For Herzog, the problem is that there are always more ideas than time to accomplish them. “I name at least 10 projects, there are 20 more behind that,” The universe is our playground, and "God is against all".
- alienicecream 3y agoIt's a stupid question, there was no beginning. You cannot get something from nothing, so there was never nothing.
- westernpopular 3y agoNobody ever talked about beginnings. The question is, even if the universe always was, why does it exist? It wouldn't be impossible for there to be nothing and never have been anything.
- alienicecream 3y agoIt's an abstraction. If there was no beginning there was never the possibility of nothing. Just because you can conceive of a question doesn't mean it is valid.
- avrionov 3y agoWerner Herzog on chicken is the all time best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMo4WlBmGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMo4WlBmGM
- Rendello 3y ago"You can only get some French out of me with a gun pointed at my head" a few seconds later "It actually happened to me when I was taken prisoner in Africa …" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pY-0JfEdLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pY-0JfEdLY
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoApparently he's been shot at multiple times
- imbnwa 3y ago"... I regret it, I shouldn't have done it"
- bookaway 3y agoThere's something to be said for Herzog's intuition that his words may outlast his films. If you haven't read it yet, read A Guide For the Perplexed, which is basically him talking about stuff (mostly films) in his own words. But the films become catalysts for his random musings, he can't help but dish out great throwaway lines about the wonders and meaning of existence no matter what he talks about. It's one of my favorite books on this side of the century. [0] https://archive.org/details/wernerherzogguid0000herz https://archive.org/details/wernerherzogguid0000herz
- sph 3y agoWhat frightens me the most is that chicken and birds in general are literal dinosaurs, with millions of years of evolutions compared to sauropods. Imagine what life on Earth might have been with massive predators with claws and teeth, with the intelligence of a prehistoric, unintelligent chicken. Somehow I doubt T-Rexes had the intelligence of a crow.
- 4ndrewl 3y agoI would listen to Herzog reading his grocery list.
- jjulius 3y agoThis[0] is about the closest you'll get. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YW-5Flkiuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YW-5Flkiuw
- brudgers 3y agoI would watch him eat his shoe.
- grouseway 3y agoAn AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj ŽIžek https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33437296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33437296
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoCan anyone care to explain why Werner Herzog is famous? I just heard about him.
- Exoristos 3y agoHe's been world-famous since the '70s. He's just a much-appreciated German film auteur. Although he's gotten pretty big in Hollywood, too, since the 2000s.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- awb 3y agoHe’s produced some popular documentaries with a distinctive narration and storytelling style. Grizzly Man is one of his more famous movies.
- atombender 3y agoHerzog is easily one of the greatest filmmakers alive today. He was at the forefront of the German New Wave of the 1970s, and has continued to produce great films throughout the following decades. Many of his best films are documentaries, but he frequently blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction, such as by giving his documentary subjects scripted lines or by using non-actors in his movies; he calls his approach to art the pursuit of "ecstatic truths". Among the general public, his most well-known film is undoubtedly Grizzly Man, which is a very good film, but he has made many that are just as good. My favorite of his is Lessons of Darkness, which is a kind of audiovisual poem showing the destructiveness of humankind through images. The film opens with a quote from Blaise Pascal, which was in fact invented by Herzog himself [1]. Herzog is also a very, very good writer (and he somewhat paradoxically prefers, according to this interview, to be remembered as a writer rather than as a filmmaker). His non-fiction books Conquest of the Useless is great, and Of Walking on Ice is supposed to be wonderful. He just came out with his first novel, The Twilight World, as well as the autobiography mentioned in the article. For a taste, one chapter of the autobiography was published in The New Yorker [2] recently. [1] https://www.bu.edu/arion/files/2010/03/Herzog.pdf https://www.bu.edu/arion/files/2010/03/Herzog.pdf [2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/the-mysteries-of-pittsburgh https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/the-mysteries-...
- 666__666 3y ago[dead]
- jgalt212 3y agoI'm a bit of an Antarctica nerd, but Encounters at the Edge of the World had great eye candy and great interviews. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounters_at_the_End_of_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounters_at_the_End_of_the_W...
- salty_biscuits 3y agoObligatory link to nihilist penguins https://youtu.be/mnTU_hJoByA?si=z33TYGpYggzAJz7- https://youtu.be/mnTU_hJoByA?si=z33TYGpYggzAJz7-
- havaloc 3y agoNot a good look for Teams in this interview. "So, as we struggle to resolve our IT issues, it’s a little stressful, but I’m also struggling to suppress a laugh. Eventually, Herzog decides it’s a problem with the Teams video-call platform we are using: he delivers this information like he’s been prophesising this disaster for years but no one’s heeded him. “I’ve had it a dozen times before, it’s very, very frustrating,” he says. “And I keep predicting that if we do not do Zoom, we will lose the conversation. I hang up now. Five minutes later – turns out he’s right! – we catch up again on the Herzog-endorsed Zoom."
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- throwaway892238 3y ago[flagged]
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- dumbfounder 3y agoBrilliant read. “ And secondly, what is not really much in the debate is that there seems to be evidence that we will disappear as a species. Probably fairly soon. And we should look into that as well.” Can someone look into this please?
- BudaDude 3y agoI mean,shrug look around
- tangue 3y agoAs a side note Herzog advocating for Zoom instead of Teams is l’heure last thing I expected to read
- dmitrybrant 3y agoI literally just met Werner Herzog on a flight to Chicago the other day. He was flying coach, like a boss.
- copperx 3y agoI envy you greatly.
- jasfi 3y agoHis take on yoga is... unhealthy.
- zubairq 3y agoInteresting read !
- brodouevencode 3y agoLove this guy. His cameo on Parks and Recreation was priceless.
- schainks 3y agoMy first exposure to Herzog was Grizzly Man, and this scene always stood out: https://youtu.be/wUf0QFFi2Mk https://youtu.be/wUf0QFFi2Mk