Hey guys, I know that this was just for a class, but I have watched this video again and again, because it is so profound. You pick up on the book's themes perfectly, and you also use ample examples from other sources like Yeats to highlight the principle of infinite return. Battlestar Galactica has this theme as well. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for this video, and I hope that all the way back then, you got a good grade. It deserves it.
The animated music video from Los Campesinos (title: "You! Me! Dancing!") shows a very similar concept. Continuous cycles of global civilization being born, growing and advancing then destroying themselves followed by new global civilizations being born in the long lost rubble of the previous until they finally escape the permanently destroyed planet to find another habitable world where the cycle starts over.
The perceptiveness and breadth of this disturbing piece always blows me away. I especially like this line:
"When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye. Thus apocalypse ensues..."
Unfortunately, even with irrefutable proofs and evidences, mankind is quite too hard headed and unteachable. The only way for civilization to survive and continue to flourish is to build as many underground biospheres containing a replica of our technological civilizations, our libraries, laboratories, schools, machine tool shops, industrial complexes, public utilities, medical facilities and hospitals of all kinds. Secretly constructed and sealed from the world just days before a nuclear war.
We Russians knew that we had an ancient nuclear war about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago but unfortunately no accurate records were made of it or were made obscure during the centuries into myths and legends thus mankind is unable to recollect of what really did happened in the past, thus opening the cycle that history repeats itself. Most survivors will too busy trying to survive that they don't have time to create and preserve records for the future so as history will not repeat itself.
Wow. What a masterful and wide-ranging interpretation of a great book. Though I have thought long and hard about these subjects, this presentation really gets to the roots of things. Great work!
@lynnvinc: 100,000 years of psychotic climate is ridiculous beyond a shadow of a doubt, but yes, nuclear war could in fact, kill most of us, and throw Earth back into the Dark Ages for only god knows how long.
Great book. This time we're tipping ourselves into climate hysteresis that could last up to 100,000 years and kill a large portion of humanity and other life, like the end-Permian warming 251 mill yrs ago during which 95% of life on earth died, only we're pulling the trigger this time. And it's as if no one wants to end the party of proligacy, even if they could save money without lowering living standards thru energy/resource efficiency/conservation.
Excellent Video! A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of my favorite books of all time, and sadly one of the least read. I don't think the book is negative towards science at all, as some other posters have suggested, rather, it struck me more as a warning that science, devoid of any moral guidance, will eventually lead to our destruction. I'm glad to hear that someone else took away from this book a few of the same things that I did.
The Canticle is one of the greatest books ever written.. this video does NOT do it justice.... it is not a conflict between science and religion, just the opposite...the ending proves this. Why has the book never been filmed?
Agreed,I have read it once, can't now though, I just, can't read the unending horror, of man pulling himself up by the bootstraps, only to anilate himself again, this time only escaping to the stars. But wherever we go, we will still bring ourselves along. Even the "sequel" has no hope for it is not set in the fledgling homes of the remnant, but in the middle of the book. I cannot read it. There is no hope. but then we must live without hope.
The book is all about the tension between religion and science. The novel favors the learned monks though, in that they represent the medium between science and religion/ethics (in other words, scientific progress should be governed by ethics).
Excellent vid. I wonder why humans are able to sometimes exert an energetic stabilization effect in order to avert disaster (increasing disorder), and sometimes not. Perhaps once we've lived for a few hundred years with lucifer (atomic weapons) random chance will overcome the best efforts of the stabilizers and we'll all perish in the flame deluge.
@maleysnemesis: Maybe we should nuclear bombs to good use. How about mining asteroids, or blowing up incoming meteors? Instead we find them aimed at bases and cities..........Is humanity really worthy to wield such technology yet? Sometimes, I tend to think not.
"Sic transit mundus"
Zankjuyse 2 months ago
Hey guys, I know that this was just for a class, but I have watched this video again and again, because it is so profound. You pick up on the book's themes perfectly, and you also use ample examples from other sources like Yeats to highlight the principle of infinite return. Battlestar Galactica has this theme as well. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for this video, and I hope that all the way back then, you got a good grade. It deserves it.
fieldstonewall 3 months ago
This book is unreadable.
TornTech 5 months ago in playlist english 30 novel
what is the song at the beginning of this video?
I love it, but I don't remember its name or origin.
zcuttlefish 7 months ago
what is the song at the beginning of this video?
I love it, but I don't remember it's name or origin.
zcuttlefish 7 months ago
@zcuttlefish
Clint Mansell - Lux Æterna
the penultimate piece from the 2000 Darren Aronofsky film "Requiem for a Dream."
JackRussellTerrier2 5 months ago
The animated music video from Los Campesinos (title: "You! Me! Dancing!") shows a very similar concept. Continuous cycles of global civilization being born, growing and advancing then destroying themselves followed by new global civilizations being born in the long lost rubble of the previous until they finally escape the permanently destroyed planet to find another habitable world where the cycle starts over.
JackRussellTerrier2 9 months ago
" A canticle..." is one of books of my life - so I called my band St.Leibowitz - I recomend everybody to read this book !
...and also" St.Leibowitz and the wild horse woman".
TheAngelusSilesius 1 year ago
The perceptiveness and breadth of this disturbing piece always blows me away. I especially like this line:
"When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye. Thus apocalypse ensues..."
Qoheleth2v1 1 year ago
Unfortunately, even with irrefutable proofs and evidences, mankind is quite too hard headed and unteachable. The only way for civilization to survive and continue to flourish is to build as many underground biospheres containing a replica of our technological civilizations, our libraries, laboratories, schools, machine tool shops, industrial complexes, public utilities, medical facilities and hospitals of all kinds. Secretly constructed and sealed from the world just days before a nuclear war.
darthvader5300 1 year ago
We Russians knew that we had an ancient nuclear war about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago but unfortunately no accurate records were made of it or were made obscure during the centuries into myths and legends thus mankind is unable to recollect of what really did happened in the past, thus opening the cycle that history repeats itself. Most survivors will too busy trying to survive that they don't have time to create and preserve records for the future so as history will not repeat itself.
darthvader5300 1 year ago
This was excaptionally well written. Thank you.
bondgirl51 1 year ago
Wow. What a masterful and wide-ranging interpretation of a great book. Though I have thought long and hard about these subjects, this presentation really gets to the roots of things. Great work!
Qoheleth2v1 1 year ago
can somebody summarize this book for me ?
kevindurant35mvp 1 year ago
I read this and I love it. It is an eye opener!
wildhorselover24 1 year ago
Remember being asked about going into space; assigned to come to pass...If you go, you'll never come back. (fiat voluntus tua)
Ypipable 1 year ago
Suicide is not a verb. "we suicide"
Commit suicide is. 7:42 bothered me.
zakkmiester 1 year ago
spolier alert much !?!? D:
phoneboy1234 2 years ago
It's honest
Ypipable 2 years ago
i just got this book from my school library is it good, it sounds pretty good
Neptunion118 2 years ago
Impressive project here. I just finished the book. It is the best novel I've read since "1984."
johnshipe 2 years ago 2
Same here! I love this book.
iannerd97 2 years ago
It makes me cry.
Ypipable 2 years ago
@lynnvinc: 100,000 years of psychotic climate is ridiculous beyond a shadow of a doubt, but yes, nuclear war could in fact, kill most of us, and throw Earth back into the Dark Ages for only god knows how long.
SanFran90 3 years ago
I am in awe. good vid.
hellavadeal 3 years ago
Great book. This time we're tipping ourselves into climate hysteresis that could last up to 100,000 years and kill a large portion of humanity and other life, like the end-Permian warming 251 mill yrs ago during which 95% of life on earth died, only we're pulling the trigger this time. And it's as if no one wants to end the party of proligacy, even if they could save money without lowering living standards thru energy/resource efficiency/conservation.
We need novels and movies on that.
lynnvinc 3 years ago
Excellent Video! A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of my favorite books of all time, and sadly one of the least read. I don't think the book is negative towards science at all, as some other posters have suggested, rather, it struck me more as a warning that science, devoid of any moral guidance, will eventually lead to our destruction. I'm glad to hear that someone else took away from this book a few of the same things that I did.
Pertinax234 3 years ago
The Canticle is one of the greatest books ever written.. this video does NOT do it justice.... it is not a conflict between science and religion, just the opposite...the ending proves this. Why has the book never been filmed?
anisete46 3 years ago
loved the book.. this video doesn't do it justice...
anisete46 3 years ago
Canticle is the best least read book.
padseenoodle 4 years ago 11
Agreed,I have read it once, can't now though, I just, can't read the unending horror, of man pulling himself up by the bootstraps, only to anilate himself again, this time only escaping to the stars. But wherever we go, we will still bring ourselves along. Even the "sequel" has no hope for it is not set in the fledgling homes of the remnant, but in the middle of the book. I cannot read it. There is no hope. but then we must live without hope.
loperspest 4 years ago
I read that book once a year. I love it. It's my favorite. I wish they could make a decent movie out of it, with the wit and Latin...
Severian47 4 years ago
I forgot, I get it wrong all the time, but the name is LEIbowitz, like the german pronunciation of bei is (bye). Good vid.
Severian47 4 years ago 2
This video is very negative towards science. I can see what he means by all of it though.
Godlyspameater 4 years ago
The book is all about the tension between religion and science. The novel favors the learned monks though, in that they represent the medium between science and religion/ethics (in other words, scientific progress should be governed by ethics).
norcalrobbie2 4 years ago 7
@norcalrobbie2 the book is all about how we read it in our comfort garden.
Ypipable 1 year ago
Excellent vid. I wonder why humans are able to sometimes exert an energetic stabilization effect in order to avert disaster (increasing disorder), and sometimes not. Perhaps once we've lived for a few hundred years with lucifer (atomic weapons) random chance will overcome the best efforts of the stabilizers and we'll all perish in the flame deluge.
maleysnemesis 4 years ago
@maleysnemesis: Maybe we should nuclear bombs to good use. How about mining asteroids, or blowing up incoming meteors? Instead we find them aimed at bases and cities..........Is humanity really worthy to wield such technology yet? Sometimes, I tend to think not.
SanFran90 3 years ago
Fran, Or maybe we just need another adversary (other than our fellow men), whether simply percieved or otherwise
ie: the "dastardly plot" in Watchmen.
maleysnemesis 3 years ago