“Forget It Jake…It’s Chinatown”

At the end of one of Hollywood’s most perfect films, detective Jake Gittes is pulled away from the site of a horrible disaster, forced to realize that all of his skills, smarts, courage and cleverness mean nothing. He has totally, tragically misjudged the situation, and there is literally no way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. He has stumbled into a realm with its own rules, and he was egotistical enough to believe he could “solve” it. He was wrong. And genuine human horrors result.

Brilliant script by Robert Towne in collaboration with Roman Polanski. And if one wants to ask if these men knew this territory well, had stumbled into their own emotional labyrinths and used the horrors they found there to motivate and illuminate their own work, the way HP Lovecraft’s xenophobia powered Cthulhu…you might be onto something. Check their biographies and get back to me.

What’s important is avoiding such labyrinths ourselves…or at least be prepared to recognize and master the minotaur when it appears. Otherwise, we are faced with “the negation of the negation”…and are lost.

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Is it True? Is it Kind? Is it Useful?

These are the Three Gates, and if you use them on yourself, you will begin to understand others better. Sometimes MUCH better, enough to help the people around you heal their wounds.

For instance, over the last few days I’ve seen comments roughly stating: