MovieChat Forums > Equilibrium (2002) Discussion > Awful concept, but there are days....

Awful concept, but there are days....


The idea of a society where no one feels is absolutely awful. What would be the sense of being alive?

With that being said, there have been days that I wish something like Prozium existed. Anyone else? Not like in the movie, but just when you are having one of those "once in a decade" awful days, where absolutely NOTHING is going right and you just wish you could disappear from said day.


The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of goose is geese. Why is the plural of moose not meese?

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WHY DO you think there is a drug trade? Everyone wants to escape reality, with emotion numbing drugs.

There are those who want to be high and happy all the time....

Life is a mixture of emotions.







http://myimpressionz.tk

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The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of goose is geese. Why is the plural of moose not meese?

Because Meece is the name of a place already and people would get confused, y'see...

As for the rest - Feelings mean anything that can be experienced via touch, smell, sight or any other sensory organ. Emotion is used to describe psychophysiological expressions, biological reactions, and mental states.

The society somehow figured out that feelings were the ultimate cause of bad things like war, so anything that caused feelings was outlawed and drugs brought in to eliminate the feeling response.

You still have emotions, but not feelings.
Not that the film seemed to do that much of a good job portraying it anyway...

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In the context of the film, they were speaking of emotion when using the word feeling. The word is interchangeable. When people say feelings, they are speaking of emotions. Prozium dulled emotions, or feelings, until they were nonexistent.

When someone asks, "Did I hurt your feelings?", they don't mean does it now feel different when you touch a hot cup of coffee. They are speaking of emotion, though I suspect you knew that.

Merriam Webster's #2 definition of feeling is "an emotional state or reaction."


The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of goose is geese. Why is the plural of moose not meese?

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You still have emotions, but not feelings.
Not that the film seemed to do that much of a good job portraying it anyway...


the previous poster is incorrect, in the movie they want to remove emotions (to make you rational i would guess, which is also fallacy). Why would you remove feeling of heat and hotness?

The fact that drugs remove feelings as a by-product of removing emotions is why people used them interchangeably.

Utimately, you do FEEL EMOTIONS



http://myimpressionz.tk

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Exactly. I think the person was a little too literal with the primary definition of feelings being physical, and not the secondary one of emotions. That seemed a little odd to me, as well.

And exactly again, you feel emotions.


The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of goose is geese. Why is the plural of moose not meese?

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They do explain something about the difference in the film, but I *really* don't want to watch it again just to cite the reference.

Basically, feeling in the context of anything you experience via a sensory organ, including the emotional state resulting in reaction, not the physical sensation primarily centred around touch.

Anything you see. Anything you hear. Any emotion that comes from seeing or hearing.

So art, music, books, films.... All that is being destroyed. Anything that is known to frequently produce an emotional high or low (EC-10 rating). Prozium just puts everyone onto a state of 'meh'. Clerics still smile and (IIRC) still speak of being proud. Those are emotions, but not this EC-10 they talk about.

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Okay. Nuff said.

The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of goose is geese. Why is the plural of moose not meese?

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Who IS that in your avatar pic, by the way?
Looks familiar...

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It's me. It was taken in early 1992 when I was 19.



The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of goose is geese. Why is the plural of moose not meese?

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You're not in a motorcycle Club, are you?

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Nope. I'd probably end up killing myself on a motorcycle.



The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of goose is geese. Why is the plural of moose not meese?

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Right, even suspicion is an emotional response.

What we got here is... failure to communicate!

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As is the pride Bale's character claims to 'feel'. I never said the film was flawless...

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I liked it!

What we got here is... failure to communicate!

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I liked the idea of all this, as it seemed to come from some classic sci-fi novel.
I just thought the whole execution was very... underdeveloped and ill-considered.

Oh, and Sean Bean dies, which always puts a downer on a film!!

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I think he has that in his contract!

What we got here is... failure to communicate!

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I do believe he has NOT done the above more often than in films where he actually has... There was an interview about it, where he comments on it and describes his favourite scene where he does... The extended version is just awesome!

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If one has bipolar disorder (and this one does), there are such things as mood stabilisers - also used in the treatment of epilepsy. They don't completely get rid of all emotion, but they can significantly flatten out the extreme highs and lows of the condition, so that the person can achieve some kind of stability of emotion. Same goes for lithium etc, and some antidepressants. Often, too many emotions and feelings (high or low), can be exhausting and miserable - and you wish for some kind of respite.

Actually, come to think of it - closest I've felt to the Prozium experience is Valium - really flattens out your mood and makes you feel one step removed from your emotions and numbs you out - so if you're having an awful day like the one you describe, it could come in handy. Horribly addictive though, and withdrawal is not fun.

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Oh, and I just had another thought... I know a guy with fairly severe autism (he will need full-time care for the rest of his life), who is unable to "feel" in the traditional sense. I asked him if he ever felt sad - "no". Then I asked him if he ever felt happy - "no". I guess the closest he gets to feeling is excitement/over-excitement/over-stimulation, and anger/tantruming. These are more like states related to his condition, though.

But nobody could say there is no sense to him being alive. He has a family who adores him, and countless friends, and hobbies/interests, and a one morning a week voluntary job where he is universally liked and of great help. He is really a lovely guy, and leads as full a life as many "able" and "feeling" people.

I know it's not quite the same as in the movie, where people's feelings are repressed against their will. But I just wanted to point out that it's possible to not feel and still live a valid life.

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With regard your post just before this one, my stepfather has bipolar disorder and is on a slew of meds (and thank God for that!) that help him remain on an even keel.

With regard to there being no sense in being alive, your friend still feels, just not in the sense that we know, nor even to the extent that we do. But your friend is different than what is going on in the film.

What is happening in the film is having no feeling at all. Nothing. It would give no sense of purpose other than propagation. Your friend can still feel, and I'm sure there are times when he has some type of feeling of joy in something, though probably different than what we would know as a feeling of joy, but with autism he wouldn't know or be able to explain any feeling, but that's not to say that he doesn't experience some type of feelings. He wouldn't be able to tell you he did because he can't comprehend them. And I would be willing to be that your friend definitely experiences one feeling to one extent or another, and that feeling is frustration. Most autistic people most definitely experience these feelings, yet they probably still couldn't tell you that they did because they don't understand and can't comprehend them.

Again, with regard to what is going on in the film, I don't see any reason to be alive. There is also one major problem with the film, though, and I don't know if you can call it a goof, or basically an impossibility to have a film where no one feels. People WERE feeling things in the film. Even people who were not supposed to be. Brandt talks about how he is going to make his career with Preston. That right there requires desire. Desire is a feeling. There are a slew of other examples that I can't think of right now as I haven't seen the film in a little while and don't remember a lot of precise things about it.

Think about making sure you get to work on time. Why is that important? Because you are supposed to be. But that, in itself, requires feeling. If they set their alarm to get up so they can be to work on time shows that they know that they NEED to be to work on time, which requires feeling.

Again, it would be impossible to make a film that has a society with people that truly have no feeling. If they truly had no feeling, they would basically lay around until they starved to death because they truly don't care. To care about anything is, by definition, feeling.



The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of goose is geese. Why is the plural of moose not meese?

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