Planes,  Politics,  Thinking in Movie Clips,  Trains and Automobiles

Thinking in Movie Clips

In our technology laden world the mind is taught to think in new ways. For example, there was a substantial period of time in which I thought in status updates. It was not that I actually posted many, but my mind became conditioned to track my progress through the day in witty 40 or so character quips.

While this mental phase appears to have ceased, another has come to the fore. I now think in movie clips
(see an example here). A subject is greatly illuminated, and made far less serious, by ascribing a scene from a movie. For me, the movies my subconscious brings me are all eighties classics.

For those of you who share my present condition and are republicans, let me suggest a scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The scene contains all the necessary symbols for the perfect metaphor – one car is travelling the wrong way (the country, democrats), they ignore the famous warning, “you’re going the wrong way” (made by a very uncool looking republican), end up playing chicken with dual trucks (representing moral decline and the fiscal cliff) and come to a sticky end (loosing all that they have accumulated, escaping only with their lives).

Have you been thinking in movie clips lately? If so, what clips and what did they mean? 

Assistant Professor of Philosophy and History of Ideas at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and The College at Southeastern.