After the Future

And Maher's Two Cents

"Inception", "Solaris", and the Unconscious

In the past week I've watched both Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and Christopher Nolan's Inception.  Both in very different ways try to grapple with the question: What is the human unconscious? First, a little riff on that question, and then maybe I'll get around to the movies.

We all heard when we were children that that the human brain is underutilized, that we humans are using only a minuscule percentage of its potential. I remember when I first heard that as a kid I thought that if I could just figure out how to increase capacity a little I could get my math homework done more quickly--I thought about it in terms of IQ and quickness. Later I wondered what it would mean to have !00% utilization, and I believe now that there is no 100%, that the brain has no content that can be measured in terms of whether it is being well or underused.

It is, rather,  a mirror-like tool developed for human use so that Nature might become self-aware. But a mirror has no capacity of its own; it's empty and its value lies in its being in good working order: clear and clean rather than cracked, dirty, and distorting. Its content is completely dependent on what comes into view. And what comes into view is potentially limitless because it emerges out of the human unconscious, and the human unconscious is a fathomless, limitless sea of possibility.

So when people talk about how we humans use only a small capacity of our brains, I think they really mean to say that we humans are only conscious of a small percentage of reality, that most of reality is hidden from us--because it is unconscious. But the task is not to use more of the brain's capacity, but rather to find ways of bringing into view that which is now invisible because submerged in the limitless sea of unconsciousness. If we find ways to bring it out from where it is hidden, the brain as mirror will see it, remember it, and give the viewer something to think about. 

How Far We've Come since 1940

In greed and meanness, that is. This speech might be full of cliches, but it envisions  a cliche world I wouldn't mind to live in. Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator

We're All Pottervilleans; We Always Were

I'm up early this Christmas morning waiting for my sleep-deprived family to wake up and came across this article by Rich Cohen in Salon. He has a  somewhat different but I think intriguing angle on Capra's famous Christmas film. The idea that It's a Wonderful Life is sentimental swill is nonsense according to Cohen--the real story is about Dark America.

I do not think the hidden message vanishes when the movie goes Hollywood and happy. I believe the resolution of the darker movie is, in fact, still there, wrapped around the happy ending of the classic. Look again at the closing frames -- shots of Jimmy Stewart staring at his friends. In most, he's joyful. But in a few, he's terrified. As I said, this is a terrifying movie. An hour earlier George was ready to kill himself. He has now returned from a death experience. He was among the unborn, had crossed over like Dante's hero, had seen this world from beyond the veil. In those frames -- "The Night Journey of George Bailey" -- I don't think he's seeing the world that would exist had he never been born. I think he's seeing the world as it does exist, in his time and also in our own.

George had been living in Pottersville all along. He just didn't know it. Because he was seeing the world through his eyes -- not as it was, but as he was: honest and fair. But on "The Night Journey," George is nothing and nobody. When the angel took him out of his life, he took him out of his consciousness, out from behind his eyes. It was only then that he saw America. Bedford Falls was the fantasy. Pottersville is where we live. If you don't believe me, examine the dystopia of the Capra movie -- the nighttime world of neon bars and drunks and showgirl floozies. Does Bedford Falls feel more like the place you live, or does Pottersville? I live in a place that looks very much like Bedford Falls, but after 10 minutes in line at the bank or in the locker room where the squirts are changing for hockey I know I'm in Pottersville.

I'm betting this was as much the case in Capra's time as it is in our own. He loved America but was watching the triumph of Pottersville. That's why, in the last scene, George looks at his friends with terror. He's happy to be alive, but he's disillusioned, wised up in just the worst way. He finally knows the world as it really is, what his friends are capable of, the dark potential coiled in each of them. His wife is a spinster in Pottersville because, if she's not with George, she cannot be anything. She's just one of two characters who are, in fact, the same in both worlds, the other being Mr. Potter. Everyone else is two-faced, masked. Simply put, George has been cursed with knowledge, shown the truth of the world -- seen hidden things. It's the sort of vision that makes a person go insane.

Dems vs. the GOP

I assume you know which is which

Stewart v. Maddow

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."  [attributed to Karl Rove]

I don't know that it was so interesting  it required an hour, but Maddow's interview of Jon Stewart did focus on some issues that we've been discussing at ATF in the last several weeks. I'd like specifically to talk about the interview in the light of my posts last week, "Centrist Politics and Rhetorical Virtue" and "The Rhetorical Strategy of the Power Elites."

Maddow had a beef with Stewart insofar as he suggested during his sanity rally that there was an equivalency between what MSNBC does and what FOX does. Stewart defended that position using a weather/climate metaphor. The weather of specific stories might be fine, but the basic MSNBC climate was as partisan liberal as FOX is partisan conservative. As such, MSNBC is a part of the problem as much as FOX is. For Stewart, Left vs. Right, blue vs. red is the wrong argument. The real argument is corruption vs. non-corruption, extremists vs. normal people.

Stewart's Attempt to Restore Sanity

I think Stewart's rally is an admirable effort, and I appreciate what he's trying to do. I think his closing speech in the video above is well-wrought piece of demonstrative oratory designed to define the Aristotelian mean--that sane midpoint between the crazy extremes that we all recognize as the place where human decency and sanity live. And so he's right to affirm the basic decency of the majority of Americans and to point out how that decency is not reflected in most of the media narratives we see and hear week in and week out. But then there's really no need to restore sanity; this has been more about reminding us about what has always been true about most Americans.

That beings said, it must also be pointed out that such an affirmation doesn't move us forward because it misidentifies the problem. Lack of civility in our political discourse isn't the real issue, and to make it the focus is likely not to disturb even a little the media and power elites who are the cause of the real problems we face.

Yes, being civil is necessary for ordinary Americans to get through a week at work or on the commute home. But the whole idea that a return to civility would actually help us to get more done in Washington is just silly. The power elite in the country could care less about the attitudes and preferences of decent Americans. Con men look for decency in people because their decency makes them easy marks. Decent people assume most other people, even bad people, are like they are until irrefutable evidence proves otherwise. They stretch themselves to give people who persistently behave badly the benefit of the doubt, and predators know and take advantage of that. Well the predators are running things now. They're not necessarily our elected officials, but our elected officials are on their payroll.

Lack of civility, therefore, has almost nothing to do with our problems; the underlying architecture of wealth and power has almost everything to do with them. The conflict-oriented media narratives that continuously confront us are not meant to reflect reality, but to distract us from it. They are intentional choreography; the pundit dancers may not be aware of it, but the people who hire them are. These narratives are designed to provide faux stimulation that keeps the public focused on everything and anything except what really matters when it comes to the way power and money work in this society.

Do Stewart and most of the people at his rally understand that? Maybe, and it's ok if they just don't see these deeper issues as within their scope. I understand that, and in the meanwhile it's fine to reaffirm that most Americans are sane and decent. But it doesn't change anything; it doesn't channel the energy and decency in that crowd to get the decent things done that need to be done. The sanity agenda is toothless, and it's something that power and money elites see as just another distraction that keeps the focus away from them and their predations. They have no reason to fear decent people; but they would fear clear-thinking, motivated people who are getting organized to restructure the system that has given these elites a disproportionate share of the nation's power and wealth.

It's not Stewart's role to lead such a movement, so I'm not knocking him, but it would be nice if someone would emerge who had the credibility and political savvy to play such a role.

Quote of the Day: Frank Rich

We can’t afford to forget now that the single biggest legacy of the Iraq war at home was to codify the illusion that Americans can have it all at no cost. We willed ourselves to believe Paul Wolfowitz when he made the absurd prediction that Iraq’s oil wealth would foot America’s post-invasion bills. We were delighted to accept tax cuts, borrow other countries’ money, and run up the federal deficit long after the lure of a self-financing war was unmasked as a hoax. The cultural synergy between the heedless irresponsibility we practiced in Iraq and our economic collapse at home could not be more naked. The housing bubble, inflated by no-money-down mortgage holders on Main Street and high-risk gamblers on Wall Street, was fueled by the same greedy disregard for the laws of fiscal gravity that governed the fight-now-pay-later war. (Source)

Deficits don't matter for Republicans except when Democratss are in power.  They don't matter if funds are being spent to benefit cronies in defense or oil.  They only matter when the "little people' are benefiting, even if only marginally. Moral hazard is only for the peonage.

Superpowers: Invisibility vs. Flight

In this week's This American Life the theme is superpowers, and in Act One The Daily Show's John Hodgeman asks which superpower, if only one were possible, would we choose--Invisibility or Flight. The answers given by people he interviewed were, I thought, rather depressing.

One person talked about how she would choose Invisibility so that she could steal sweaters from Brooks Brothers, and another about how he would choose it so he could watch different beautiful women taking showers--but then changed his mind because he knew that was unacceptable. In the end he would choose Flight to prevent himself from using Invisibility as a Peeping Tom. He would not be able to control himself if he had Invisibility. Another person speculated that most people would choose Flight, but that they would be lying because they don't want to admit to all the sneaky ways they would use Invisibility. It's interesting how sneaky people assume everyone else is.

At the Movies with Spencer Tracy

I love TCM.  In the past week they've had some Spencer Tracy movies, and the two I watched were Judgment at Nurmeberg and Pat & Mike. There's something about Tracy, a kind of magnetism that he has that has hardly anything to do with his lumpy looks.  He's a mensch. He's the Walter Cronkite of film stars--the trustworthy, down-to-earth uncle to whom you turn when nobody else will give you a break. The guy who understands human frailty, and how everyone plays the angles, and is looking out for number one, but who also stands for a decency that the pressures of life might bend but can never break. 

Pat & Mike--the seventh of the nine movies Tracy and Hepburn made together--was Hepburn's favorite of the nine, and I can see why. While the plot is silly, the dialog, particularly for Tracy's part, was cleverly written and the chemistry between them is just so comfortable. You can see why the high-strung Hepburn would find a "home" with Tracy. He's the kind of guy that is so at home with himself he creates a home for everyone who is around him.  He's like a big tree in which all kinds of birds make their nests.

Remember When . . .

I'm still glad he won, but there sure doesn't seem to be much of a difference anymore.The difference between Hillary supporters is that with Obama we're getting what we know we would have got with Hillary.  With Obama there was still the outside chance that he could bring something different. Alas.

The "Lost" Sensibility

Heather Havrileski at Salon doesn't have it:

Damn you, "Lost"! We went and jumped on your bandwagon way back in the first season, got sucked into your endless jungley maze and suspenseful chords, and waited breathlessly for the next shoe to drop, over and over again. Remember when that was still fun? Remember? Henry Gale's googly-eyed provocations? Michael shooting Ana Lucia in the gut? The impenetrable, nostalgia-inducing mysteries of the Dharma Initiative? Thanks to the brilliant character studies of the first season (we ignored the dumb monsters), thanks to the genius twists and turns of the second and third seasons, we're doomed to do our penance as the whole tale unravels in a messy heap. . . .

Back then, like teenagers at a Baptist retreat, we thought the big, bad world would add up to something, that every confusing twist was laden with hidden meaning. Now we know better. Now we get up in the morning and put on our Sunday best and trudge off to church on the off-chance that the Lord Himself will appear and shine His glory on us in person. Now we watch because we were once "Lost" fans, and here it is the final season, and there are only a handful of episodes left. Even though the long-awaited answers we're looking for are offered in such blunt, unimaginative language that we feel like we're reading first drafts: "I'm a smoke monster." "You're going to have to kill the devil." "It's all meaningless if I have to force them to do anything." And if we wanted to waste six years in a Judeo-Christian allegory, we would've just followed a Jehovah's Witness home a long time ago. At least their Armageddon should be a little bit gripping and suspenseful. (5/8)

Neither does Laura Miller at Salon after watching the finale, and there are many others who felt the show was a "long con". But needless to say I disagree, and I think the difference lies in there being two fundamentally different postmodern sensibilities. Havrileski and Miller represent one, and the Lost writers represent the other. The first is one that with its arms folded and foot tapping, suspicious about everything, fears to be hoodwinked. The second is arms open with second naivete ready to embrace everything that has the slightest scent of truth. Count me in with the second group.

Lost was remarkable for its ability to be both complex and multilayered and yet to end with a theme that was simple, clear, resonant, and deeply human. It was a show that was full of ideas but was never just a head trip. In the end it was about the characters and their relationships, and it was about why those relationships matter and with meanings that might be described as having cosmic import.

More on 'Lost' and Dante's Island Down Under

About a month ago, I wrote a too long post about how Cuse's and Lindelof's Lost was an creative exercise in postmodern religious syncretism and mythopoesis, but leaning perhaps a little more heavily on retrieval themes from Dante and by extension Catholic iconography.  I think after watching the finale last night, that assessment holds up pretty well. I'm off on some things, but I think I caught the spirit of what they were trying to do. You can read the whole post if you want, but I think the most relevant grafs are here:

For Dante, Purgatory was an island in the southern hemisphere, unreachable by ordinary means. It was the antipode to Jerusalem, which was the the center of the northern hemisphere, the top half of the earth, which in Dante's imagination of it stretched east to west, from the Ganges to Gibraltar. Purgatory is a mountain on this island at the center of the bottom half of the earth. So the central axis of the earth is defined by the North Pole at Mt. Calvary, and by Mt. Purgatorio and the South Pole, and the summit of Mt. Purgatorio is Eden, from which Adam and Eve were banned. And between the two lies hell.

Thoughts on "Lost" and "The Divine Comedy"

[Ed. Note: for more recent thoughts on this theme after the series finale, see "More on Lost and Dante's Island Down Under".]

During seasons 1 and 2 of Carlton Cuse's and Damon Lindelof's Lost, I would put up the random post when a particular episode grabbed me, but it became clear after a while that the writers were operating at a level of complexity that made it futile, for me anyway, to try to grasp what they were trying to do. So I decided to go along for the ride and see where they wanted to take us. Well, we're in the final season, and there are six more hours to go, and because a clearer picture, more or less, is emerging, I'll be posting again about Lost as the series draws to a close.

The narrative has become extraordinarily convoluted, but I think in a good and interesting way. Nevertheless, it's hard to believe that in the six remaining hours all shall be made clear. We'll see. I'm more interested in the overarching narrative pattern than trying to parse out the show's many subthemes, and I think the pattern of that basic story is finally taking shape.  And in future posts I might talk more about some of the subthemes that interest me, but today I just want to talk about what I think, at this juncture anyway, that basic narrative pattern is.  I also want to think out loud a bit about what the possible significance of the series might be as a cultural event: I'd argue it's the most important and ambitious of several pop-cultural attempts to help us establish an imaginative beachhead in a postmodern, post-Einsteinian world. I'll get to that, but first let me ramble a bit by reflecting on some interesting connections I see between post-Newtonian Lost and Dante's Ptolemaic Divine Comedy:

Disease in Remission

For the life of me I don't know why anybody serious is obsessing so much about Sarah Palin this week. This piece by Sullivan is simply silly.  As if the future of the nation hinges on exposing what everybody with half a brain already knows.Honestly, who cares and why feed this media frenzy with a seriousness it simply does not deserve?

Palin represents a disease in the body politic, which for now, for all the fatuous attention it's getting, is in remission. It has no real power; it functions as a distraction. We need to monitor it, and we need to be careful about not creating the conditions that might trigger more serious symptoms to present acutely, but for now, there are just more important things to worry about than this airhead from Alaska and the 25% who think she's so wonderful. This is entertainment fodder for the media, not anything worth an erg of energy beyond that.