Would I have taken the money?

HELL YES! ----> Without even giving it a second thought

Looking over the comments placed below Danny White's newset blog post put a vast plethora of many thoughts and opinions into my mind. At first I was just gonna address Cassidy's and Bennett's coments, but once I saw that my response was over an entire page in length, I decided to dedicate an entire new post on the subject at hand...

Over the years, I believe that the American populace has been brainwashed by the Government-Media complex into thinking that finding money and keeping it somehow equates to you actually stealing the money. In all of these movies, the audience has been duped into believing that there is some kind of legitimacy to the false sense of "honor" placed upon individuals returning the riches... Hell, half the time they even say that these people shouldn't even be rewarded since they were only "doing the right thing" (which is always expected of our law-abiding citizens). But I say this, these are all LIES, LIES, LIES pushed into our heads and shoved down our throats in order to keep us in line like the docile little sheep they want us to be.

Why is it that the person who would return all of the money considered a “perfect” human being in our modern society? To me, his is far from perfect. In fact, he is a God-damn fool! Only the most submissive human beings on the planet would be too timid to take the money. Only a man hiding a slavish mentality of epic proportions would be pathetic enough to throw away the oppurtunity that fate has placed squarely in his place by going and returning the money to the "proper authorites." Call me an anarchist or a radical, but I do not believe that the police or the local government have any claim to the money that you stumbled upon by the grace of God.

I have been a witness to a very disturbing pattern as of late... It seems to me that for the most part, the majority of people become more pessimistic and more hopeless as they get older. Unlike fruits and fine wines, humans are things that rarely ever get better as they age. I myself, have seen the life-loathing lackluster eyes of many of my fellow High School students. I am close to 100% positive that they had a greater lust for for life when they were still enrolled in elementary school. What happened to that life-loving joy that we all felt as schoolchildren? Where has all the fearlessness gone? Just cause everyone around you becomes a cynical, self-loathing bastard doesn't mean that you should succumb down to their level! Keep in mind, that when people are failing at certain aspects of their lives, they lash out at the entire world and try extra hard to bring down the people around them - cause misery loves company.

In regards to Bennett's opinion on the matter:
Interestingly enough, I remember Bennett bringing up the subject of how horrible it would be to stumble upon a treasure trove of money back in Freshman-year Global History (I faintly remeber Danny White a few others of our professional film critics being in the same class at the time). To my amazement, after talking for a little less than ten minutes, Bennett convinced the entire class that discovering a huge fortune could be one of the worst things that could ever occur to a human being (ahhhh, the sheer power of eloquent rhetoric).

Bennett's whole thesis is this:
Well, if you guys want to play this game, then you have to play it right. Let's imagine a scenario where you find the plane while walking by yourself in the woods. Nobody but you knows you have the dough. You tell nobody, hide itin your attic, wait until the plane is found, quietly move away a few years after that, and figure out a way to launder the money. Even in that scenario, the chance for disaster is great. Meanwhile, that money in your attic is making your life miserable. Yes, that's right. Miserable. You cant spend it. You can't tell anyone about it. You can't even risk having your house broken into becuase then it would come out. You are a prisoner of that money.

Now, let's add a few things to our scenario. A half-wit brother and his drunken friend, neither one of whom will be able to stay quiet about this thing for a week, let alone the years necessary. No, my friends, you would take every dollar and turn it over to the police. Then you would go home and sleep soundly. If you don't, in a best case scenario you may get a good night's sleep sometime in the next decade, but probably never again.

Well my friends, I completely disagree with this philosophy. Bennett assumes that there are consequences for everything you do in life, almost as if life is a game that must be "played by the rules." Correct me if I'm wrong, but this thought pattern leads us to the logical conclusion that that life is fair - there is some kind of karma keeping everything & everyone on the same playing field.

My view of life is quite different from this... Blasphemous as it may sound to many of you post-modern humanists, I do NOT regard human life as something holy or special. I believe that we a just another species under the umbrella of a vast animal kingdom. The only thing that seperates homo sapiens from all other animals is the disparity is cognitive ability. So taking the assumption that we are nothing but animals, we must look towards nature to get a better understanding on how our lives unfold. Did that zebra "have it coming?" Did he deserve to get ripped apart by that predator solely because of the fact that he ate a little more than his cohorts that morning. Absolutely Not! In a dog-eat-dog world, there can't be any room for rules or morality.

Now back to the movie,
There is one line that sums up what the treasure trove represents (well at least to me and other light minded people). When arguing with the main character as to whether or not they should turn in the money, the simple yet good-hearted Redneck utters something along the lines of, "We have just stumbled upon the American dream." Since the "American Dream" has no specific definition, it's meaning and implication varies from person to person. Time and time again, the media keeps pushing the fallacy that if a person works hard, does what he is supposed to, is courteous to his fellow neighbors, and just basically "plays by the rules", his is guaranteed to see success and fame in his lifetime. But this is just on of the biggest falsehoods to ever be imposed on the human psyche (second only to many religions). To me, "The American Dream" is much more of a destination than a journey. When looking at this topic from a newly acquired existentialist perspective, all paths to success & fame are equally valid.

And Bennett, being the ultimate existentialist scholar out there, I am sure you will agree with a more existentialist approach to the American Dream ;-)