Paradox: The Way of the Peaceful Warrior

DOI

10.2991/icelaic-15.2016.186How to use a DOI?

Keywords

peaceful warrior; paradox; philosophical thinking

Abstract

The American movie Peaceful Warrior is adapted from the very first book entitled Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, a former world champion athlete, university coach, martial arts instructor and college professor. His twelve previous best-sellers have inspired millions of readers in twenty-nine languages. The script selected, paradoxically, only ten pages of the original. As such, it received mixed reviews. It relates a story about Dan, the protagonist, a university student favored by god, enjoys all the essential elements: a rich family, handsome looks, good grades, girls’ Mr Right, a master of rings, and high intelligence coveted by many. So, he enjoys a wonderful life, manifests a temperament of wildness and self-pride. Out of expectation, his psyche is a barren field of desolation and emptiness, suffering from restlessness. He roams over the streets at midnight on one occasion, until he encountered an senior, weird but agile and wise old man of 96 years old - Socrotes - who renders service at 24-hour gas station. From then on, they become student-teacher relationship. Soc instructs Dan systemically, and teaches him by doing practical lessons. The central concept of his philosophy is this: one must live entirely in the present moment. At no time is “nothing going on”. there is an appropriate time existing for fighting and another for abstaining from violence. Dan learned to appreciate every moment, increased his gymnastic prowess and control himself. He also learned that service is the most noble action possible. This paper attempts to analyze the paradoxical elements form the following three dimensions: 1. Paradox haunts our entire life, even the title is nothing but a paradox, no more, no less. 2. The process from book to movie translation constitutes a more or less paradox. 3. A sample collection of paradoxical sayings in the book//movie.

Copyright

© 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Fengjuan Wu
AU  - Zhengshun Han
PY  - 2015/11
DA  - 2015/11
TI  - Paradox: The Way of the Peaceful Warrior
BT  - Proceedings of the 2015 2nd International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Intercultural Communication
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 718
EP  - 720
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icelaic-15.2016.186
DO  - 10.2991/icelaic-15.2016.186
ID  - Wu2015/11
ER  -