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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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 Posted - 04/29/2008 : 10:23:15
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quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
maybe he just didn't care if he lived or died.
I wouldn't quite put it like this, but I think the crux of it is probably right. I think he was prepared to die, and not prepared to compromise in order to survive. This doesn't make him mentally ill, though, just extreme and stubborn. |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 04/29/2008 : 14:26:42
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GHcool 
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 04/29/2008 : 22:03:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
maybe he just didn't care if he lived or died.
I wouldn't quite put it like this, but I think the crux of it is probably right. I think he was prepared to die, and not prepared to compromise in order to survive. This doesn't make him mentally ill, though, just extreme and stubborn.
Whether he was suicidal or not is subject to debate, but he was clearly severely depressed and felt that he couldn't fit in with his family (who weren't the greatest, but certainly not the worst) or with society in general. That's mental illness. |
Edited by - GHcool on 04/29/2008 22:04:11 |
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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 04/29/2008 : 22:18:06
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quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
Whether he was suicidal or not is subject to debate, but he was clearly severely depressed and felt that he couldn't fit in with his family (who weren't the greatest, but certainly not the worst) or with society in general. That's mental illness.
Hmm ... or the sign of an artist, sometimes a genius, a visionary ... or indeed, a loony, a fundamentalist or cultist blah-blah-blah
These are really complex matters. Human behaviour cannot be reduced to generalities, however much we want to understand - whether in a Readers Digest type reducto ad absurdum or any lay-person's simplistic analysis. We can only get hints of the quintessence of others by what we know of what they did/achieved/wrote. Even then we may be totally off the mark. I think one of Penn's achievements with the film is that he exposes many of the ambiguities of this clearly troubled young person.
I remember when I was his age I was POSITIVE I had the insight to figure out what was wrong with the world and that it was not only possible for me to change it for the better, it was inevitable I would. Hah! I can remember the passion of my convictions. If I'm lucky these days, I can recapture some of it, filtered through the decades of experience, of success and failure.
The capacity to be child-like is a gift. Child-like is not childish.
Here endeth the lesson. 
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 00:43:32
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quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
Whether he was suicidal or not is subject to debate, but he was clearly severely depressed and felt that he couldn't fit in with his family (who weren't the greatest, but certainly not the worst) or with society in general. That's mental illness.
Hmm ... or the sign of an artist, sometimes a genius, a visionary ... or indeed, a loony, a fundamentalist or cultist blah-blah-blah
To that, I would say that artistry, genius, looniness, fundamentalism, cultism, and mental illness are not mutually exclusive and may not all apply in this specific case. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 02:45:39
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quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
Whether he was suicidal or not is subject to debate, but he was clearly severely depressed and felt that he couldn't fit in with his family (who weren't the greatest, but certainly not the worst) or with society in general. That's mental illness.
I think it's a stretch to say he was even depressed, especially in the real mental illness sense, i.e. unaccountably depressed. It's not the same as being unhappy with specific things for logical reasons. One does not have to be mentally ill even to consciously commit suicide, let alone just risk death. |
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Into The Wild
