TCWCFS

THE COPING WITH CALIGULA FILM SOCIETY

A Thought Experiment

Join me for a somewhat exotic thought experiment –

What if you had to live under a modern day Caligula?

I mean, a tyrant of such colossal spleen and volatility that his slightest whim could devastate a city or destroy thousands at one stroke. A monstrous ego without a sliver anywhere of potential remorse, or a thought for the concern for the survival or well-being of the people under his iron thumb. I mean, a delusional, seriously whacked out psychotic who is the absolute antithesis of all that is stable, peace loving, and decent.

And every day this beast comes up with new ways to undermine and subvert and thwart all that you struggle for, believe it, and hold precious and sacred and true.

You have no recourse. Night and day you are subjected to his most untethered whims. And he spits them up by the hour.

Can you imagine such a condition?

Well, that is only the first step in my scenario.

The next step asks what can – what should -- you do to cope.

Do you join a cabal of resistors who convince themselves that the society’s only salvation lies in assassinating the reborn Caligula?

Or do you retreat into your quiet life and seek sensible means of coping?

My scenario leads to a third step: a proposed coping strategy.

I call it the Coping-with-Caligula Film Society

It consists of resistors sharing films to stream that teach coping skills: films about decent people who found ways of keeping their heads and hearts together when faced with a regime of destruction and chaos. I have asked for contributing suggestions, what films would fit.

Here are suggestions so far:

Beautiful Dreamers

3/13/2025

Beautiful Dreamers (1990), the true story of a relationship between Dr. Maurice Bucke, a mystic seeker in the tail end of his life would write a classic of evolutionary speculation, Cosmic Consciousness (1901), but known in this film while running an asylum in the late 1800s and befriending a fellow high-seeking, renegade spirit, Walt Whitman.

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THE COPING WITH CALIGULA FILM SOCIETY

Beautiful Dreamers

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W. Kuhns

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