Concussion – The Movie

Transcript

Welcome, beautiful thinkers!

I’d like to talk to you about this movie I saw on Netflix the other day, is called Concussion.

It’s based on an article called Brain Game, and is based on the story, the true story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, who is a fellow came from Africa to live in the United States.

And he is man who performs autopsies to discover what went wrong with people’s bodies and even to discover what went wrong with people’s lives. And it’s very interesting to see the level of care and detail that Dr. Omalu took.

And I imagine it’s slightly exaggerated for Hollywood, for the movie industry. But I think this is probably more or less what happened. So you can see in the movie, he has a sense of ritual, about his work.

So he takes the hand of the corpse and says, you know, “You’re my patient, I need your help, in order to find out what went wrong in your life. So please help me.”

So a very religious man, a church going man, looking for ways to include more purpose, more awareness in his life, training his job very seriously, which is something very, very special about this is like, some people might think that, okay, the corpse is on the table, the man is already dead.

This doesn’t require such, what’s the word, reverence. But Dr. Omalu sees this.

See, it says that there is potential for, for reverence and for ritual, and for beauty, in the process, taking true pride and care in his work is really touching.

If someone like that, an excellent man can take such pride and purpose in his work. Of course, the rest of us can take inspiration from that.

And the man has the courage to tell the truth.

So, in this movie, his wife points out that his last name Omalu, is actually short for Onyemalukwube, which means “he who knows, speaks”.This makes me wonder about when they call nominative determinism, which is the concept of that the person’s name can influence their actions in life.

And it’s kind of funny.

So for example, my name supposedly Kurt, actually means it’s related to Conrad. It’s like a shortened form of Conrad somehow. And supposedly, it means “patient council”.

And that’s what I tried to do in my coaching practice.

So it’s interesting how these things play out.

It’s like, makes you wonder about a fractal universe, or the superstitions that people used to have about how they would name their children.

Maybe these things are more reasonable than we might suspect, and you can read that article about nominative determinism on Wikipedia. It’s very interesting.

So this is a man who has the courage when he sees something wrong and the reason he sees something wrong is because he’s willing to take that care and purpose and extra personal touch into his work.

Take it so seriously, that he wants to see what actually went wrong.

Even though people say, hey, you know, maybe you shouldn’t do this, maybe you should let sleeping dogs lie. That’s the way to be respectful for the dead.

And he says, “No, the way to truly be respectful is to dig deeper to find out what really happened. It’s like, when people make the glib response, people used to do this a lot with 911. So what would happen, people would start to raise questions.

And actually the 911 truth movement in part, actually an important fundament of the 911 truth movement came from the families of the victims, because they wanted to know what was really going on.

And then you can see these old clips like from Bill O’Reilly, one of the victim’s family members would go on there and say, you know, “I want to ask these questions, I want to know what really happened”, this shouldn’t be some sort of inquiry.

And a railing would say, “Well, how dare you? How dare you. Try to find out what was going on. This is disrespectful, to your own family disrespectful for to the victims.”

It’s not true. If we want to show respect, then we must show respect for the truth. And that does mean asking questions, going into details. And that’s why Dr. Omalu, discovered the things he did, not only was he willing to discover them, he was willing to see it through, because he cared so much.

And I imagine he still cares. It’s still still alive, actually. He cares so much about people.

And this is also a kind of Fountainhead, Howard wrote type story. Maybe you’re familiar with familiar with the book by Ayn Rand, where she tries to describe the perfect man.

And of course, there are a lot of problems in her book, that she does put out this sketch of like, this person who could change the world. Who has a vision, has the care and respect for his work and is willing to see it through and willing to see where it goes, even though he puts his own reputation at risk.

Now, I mentioned in a previous episode, that movie Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks, which is another movie based on a true story, where this fellow cares so much about people and cares so much about a man who is imprisoned in the United States accused of being a Soviet spy.

Because Hanks or this character, or rather, this historical personage, James B. Donovan, sees the virtues of a man accused of a grave crime, he is willing to defend him and manages to save his life.

So I highly recommend these movies Concussion and Bridge of Spies.

Once again. We ask the question, “Can the virtues of one person make a difference in this world, when we stick to our guns, when we stick to our values?” And I say the answer is yes.