Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic

I find more often than not people tend to contradict themselves on a regular basis.

Is that wrong? I really can't say I know.

If a person truly contradicts himself or herself, then I would definitely say that is wrong. But, sometimes it may look as if a person is operating in a contradictory manner, and yet they are not. It's almost always difficult to tell, and I don't mean to sound as if I have the right to tear someone down for their partialities. (We are all predisposed towards making mistakes after all.) At the very most, I will vigorously attack opinions that I understand as wrong, but I’ll try to not accuse people of them in definite ways.

In my example the puppy lover enjoyed seeing puppies on film while completely failing to recognize the hateful aspects of the movie he enjoyed. However once he had the contradicting aspects pointed out to him, he then had options with regard to how he would then respond to that information. Pretending the problems don't exist by completely ignoring them or rationalizing them away shouldn't be among his possible choices though.

I believe it is best to focus on the good and enjoy films in light of whatever we deem important. That means that there can be flaws, such as contradictions, but that we can then try to overlook them and enjoy what we see as long so the flaws do not destroy any parts of the film that are actually important to us. (Importance, I believe, is the key since that best describes particular points of view.) If the movies produced within our culture have progressed to the point where we then begin to expect a certain level of quality in certain areas, then those aspects are important to us. If a film is found to be lacking to one degree or another in that way then we will most likely express displeasure. However, there may be points of view that do not give that much importance to those same aspects, and in that case we can find honest disagreements. An individual with the latter point of view can then acknowledge the possibility for real flaws in something he or she may enjoy, but then clarify that those flaws are not actually found in anything important to his or her enjoyment and that the flaws can therefore be ignored in a sense.

Anyways, most of the greatest philosophers and artists in history have believed that there is structure and unchanging principles to be found in every possible kind of beauty, at least to some degree. I believe it is best that we are never arrogant enough to believe that beauty can only be found within our own subjective minds. We don't have the right to define everything for ourselves like that. At the very least we can say that some things are objective and that we should seek out truth whenever we can.