Paper Summary:

The following paper examines how movies can be even more instructive than more obviously "serious" forms of education because they wrap their messages in linguistic texts that are easier for us to recognize and understand. Plato's Republic, Dead Poets Society and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest each tell us something about the often precarious (and sometimes non-existent) balance between individual rights and desires and the conformity required by society to maintain organization.

From the Paper:

"It is braver, although in many ways more difficult, to keep trying to change society for decades "to understand that the fight must be continued for year after year" than to surrender. The difficulty of the fight in the long run is also the message of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. These inmates, unlike the students, are not in the first blush of youth. They understand that life is a series of the same battle fought over and over, and that those who come closest to winning on at least a personal level are those willing to lose skirmishes and then to return to fight again.
To the extent that the gods have given us the power to be wise, Plato and Socrates would have told us, we must use it to discover the nature of the natural and social worlds. But we must keep always with us "like a mental Praetorian guard" a constant reminder that we are limited in what we can and do know. Plato and Socrates too, despite his enemies "accusations of impiety" knew that the wise person is the truly humble person, acceding omniscience, like omnipotence, to the gods alone even as he or she strains to see the world beyond the cave, and then to go forth to do whatever is humanly possible."

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