Week 5 Post 4

The ironic theme in the movie Flame On is that we really don't know what our best and worst traits are. The narrator says, "We don't know what is our best or worst qualities, we simply know the varying reactions we get at different times. Including, our own reactions to it and our reactions can dramatically change over time. What could have been seen as a horrible sin at one time could be nothing but a past time at a different time.

The film uses the example of homosexuality. While it was viewed as horrible 150 years ago, it has now come to be more accepted. During ancient times, homosexuality was a common thing. It was not rare to find a tutor having a love affair with his student. In ancient Sparta, it was common for friends in battle to be lovers. There is a part of the movie 300 where two men are fighting back to back and killing off Persian after Persian, each one protecting the back of the other. In the real ancient Sparta, those two men were probably lovers. The video says that our education system is based on ideas put forth by Socrates, who was a homosexual. But the real purpose of this video is to show us how little we really know of ourselves. We do not know what our best and worst qualities are.