I had a thought while I was cleaning the kitchen, about the movie Date Night, which I watched about a year ago and thought was a mildly amusing but basically forgettable. In a throwaway moment near the beginning of the movie, Steve Carell and Tina Fey’s kids are protesting their nightly bath. Steve Carell rolls his eyes: bath time happens every night, he says, and yet they act like somehow this night’s going to be different.
Well, it turns out, I think, that the kids actually have it right. The problem with Steve Carell and Tina Fey’s life is exactly that they’ve given up protesting. Since bath time (or whatever you want to fill in for unpleasant and mundane necessities) happens every day, there’s no point in fighting it. But the movie is exactly about the need to pretend that each day is somehow radically different from the day before–in fact, I think you could argue that the kids are radical skeptics who refuse to take on faith that just because something happened the day before, or every day before, it will happen again.
So, there’s your link between Steve Carell, Tina Fey, and David Hume.
