The Bourne Ultimatum** Possible Spoilers **

[Guest Xijkujn]

Hey, I didn't know what forum to post this in so I'm doing it here in the General Aesthetics section.

Is Jason Bourne in all 3 movies acting to advance his life and those he values?

The last movie, particularly near the end Bourne discovers he was the subject of an immoral CIA project and that he no longer wanted to serve the country and to do all that's necessary to save American lives (at his expense).

The ending was confusing, the flashbacks and where he was talking to that doctor guy seemed to suggest that the doctor may have coerced him, perhaps psychologically, to decide to serve..

Although, that was my interpretation, I'm still confused.

Overall I think it had a possible positive philosophical side to it, some of the quotes near the end I cannot remember, but my philosophical detector gave a few smiley faces.

Perhaps this is why the Bourne series was so god damn good.

[JMeganSnow]

The basic premise of the movies is more that he's trying to find out what the heck is going on. I found the movies enjoyable but not intellectually deep. They could have taken the opportunity to say a lot about the nature of "government secrets" and spy organizations and so forth, and they did not; they glossed it over with incredibly banal conversation bits "It gets easier!" and significant looks that connoted without denoting.

Btw, there's no such thing as "psychological" coercion. There is only physical coercion, which was evident in the movie. If someone is a.) preventing you from sleeping, b.) locking you in a tank of water and c.) demanding you kill someone, that's *physical* coercion.

[Guest Xijkujn]

It wasn't clear whether he consented to the water boarding. It seems like that was after the initial choice (due to the chronology of the Doctors conversation with him "You chose this".

Remember Bourne is a super killer, and waterboarding may have been to "toughin him up", the same applies to sleep.

A person who can take alot of stress is the ultimate super soldier because of their pain threshold and lack of fear to take to task.

And there is a form of psychological coercion, the most direct form is interpersonal hypnosis, for instance if you pretend you're a foreigner to a local and ask where a landmark is and get them to point directions, so long as you say "okay yeah""yep""alright" and stay affirmative as opposed to negative and get on the same page at the same voice levels -- you can instill such a confidence that you can ask for their car keys and cell phone and they'll give them to you and only realize it a minute later.

Edited September 17, 2007 by Xijkujn

[Tenure]

Just to back up what Xijkujn is saying, see this:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZohpDS2aMc

I would not consider this to be psychological coercion though - by definition. Coercion means the use of force or the threat of force, to get someone to do something. What this kind of 'hypnosis' involves is playing off of someones way of thinking and their voluntary decisions to get what you want. It's still wrong (I don't mean this kind of entertainment that Derren Brown does is wrong, I mean criminals doing it is wrong), in the same way that what scam artists do is wrong. They might very well have gotten you to volitionally buy their product, but they still manipulated you into doing it.