It Should Have Been So Sweet, Too

 

 Ace Rothstein: [voice-over] Before I ever ran a casino or got myself blown up, Ace Rothstein was a helluva handicapper, I can tell you that. I was so good that when I bet, I can change the odds for every bookmaker in the country. I'm serious. I had it down so cold that I was given paradise on earth. I was given one of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas to run: The Tangiers, by the only kind of guys that can get you that kind of money. Sixty-two million seven hundred thousand dollars. I don't know all the details.

Nicky Santoro: [voice-over] Matter of fact, nobody knew all the details. But it should have been perfect. I mean he had me, Nicky Santoro, his best friend watching his ass. And he had Ginger, the woman he loved on his arm. But in the end, we fucked it all up. It should have been so sweet, too. But it turned out to be the last time that street guys like us were ever given anything that fuckin' valuable again.

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Dear Kate,

"If the Mafia didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it," Roger Ebert noted in his opening line reviewing Scorsese's "Casino."

We were "given paradise on earth," but "in the end we fucked it all up."  If for once I could hear this, one of the first fundamental insights on humanity offered by the Bible, stated with such verve and elegance, I would have thought we could finally go somewhere with whatever beautiful invention turned tragic we were lamenting over.

Last night I finally watched "The Social Dilemma," which, as expected, is not telling us--me anyway, more than what we should know already.  It's a good introduction to the subject, especially if one has never thought about it much.

At the end the documentarians, the inquisitors, still couldn't get themselves to ask the most fundamental human questions, even though almost all the necessary pieces were there.  The interviewees, the inventors of social media, were already speaking in Biblical terms, however secularized: that the social media have created a utopia (heaven) that is simultaneously a dystopia (hell), that if there is no shared truth we could all appeal to and trust, there is no shared meaning, no togetherness at all.

I was thinking about the above "iconic" (a very social media adjective) lines from "Casino" when watching the documentary.  If the social media didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent them.  Human beings are too gloried and honored to stay disconnected, too perverse to remain together for long.  We can't stop building ourselves paradises, couldn't help fucking them up again and again either.

Some would insist the social media are still finally to blame, for they are no longer tools we use but using us as tools to advance their own causes, driven by (another culprit) the market principles.  But who coded their algorithms?  Who are the minds behind such "artificial intelligence," knowing how to exploit the artifacts of human intelligence?

Behind anything worthy of any human consideration there is always a Creator with a will, a mind, and purposes.  (And in all of Creation, what is not worthy of human consideration?)  It is perfectly fine to have questions about God: "Israel" means "to struggle with God."  But to say God has nothing to do with whatever we are struggling with is to forever going after red herrings, which, incidentally, are creatures too.

Yours, Alex