[Transcript]
Whether in a galaxy far far away like Star Wars, or in the very near, very possible future like Black Mirror, science fiction deals with issues that we face in the here and now. Issues like race, politics, and religion might be too hot to discuss directly for a lot of us, but fictional realities allow us to take a step back and talk about what ifs. So let’s explore today’s world by looking at stories about tomorrow.
My name is Shaun McMillan and this is the Best Class Ever.
American High School Required Readings
In many American high schools there are two science fiction books that students are required t o read. The first is 1984 by George Orwell and the second is Brave New World by Alduous Huxley. These books both imply that our current ethics and moral practices could lead to a very dangerous future.
1984
1984, which was written 36 years before in 1948, warned that we would no longer be watching television, but that televisions would start watching us. This of course was long before the internet, before smart phones, and before interactive media. The main difference between the future it imagined and the one we are living in, is the author thought that it would require a totalitarian regime to take our privacy away. Little did he know that we would far more easily give it up to social media tech companies for just a little convenience.
Brave New World
Brave New World warns us that in the future we might be able to eliminate suffering by disassociating sex from love and reproduction. In this utopian world, anyone can take a drug to be happy. Anyone can have sex with anyone else. And everyone can live in pleasure. All it will cost us is all of our deep meaningful thoughts expressed through high culture.
Here’s a great argument from the book between John the Savage who comes from our world, and the scientist of Brave New World,
“The Savage nodded, frowning. “You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ’tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them…But you don’t do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.”
“Isn’t there something in living dangerously?’
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
There’s a great deal in it,’ the Controller replied. ‘Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.’
What?’ questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
It’s one of the conditions of perfect health. That’s why we’ve made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory.’
V.P.S.?’
Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It’s the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconvenience.’
But I like the inconveniences.’
We don’t,’ said the Controller. ‘We prefer to do things comfortably.’
But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.’
In fact,’ said Mustapha Mond, ‘you’re claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer, the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.’ There was a long silence.
I claim them all,’ said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.”
People often wonder why God didn’t make the world perfect. And the author of Brave New World, Alduous Huxley, was well-known for his atheism, but his book showed that the first casualties of a nearly perfect utopian world earned freely without cost, without choice, would ultimately eliminate all art, beauty, and truth. Without suffering, there is no overcoming. When everything is free, nothing is earned. Nothing is admirable. There are no heroes without conflict, and no love without cost.
My favorite fictional stories often feature two different worlds colliding. Matrix is a virtual reality hiding us from the reality of a post apocalyptic world ruined by war with robots. Super hero mythology and stories about aliens are about the conflict between normal human beings on earth, and god-like heroes from the Heavens.
Angels & Ancient Civilizations
I also began studying some classic fictional stories about the spiritual world, most notably Dante’s Inferno, which is part of the Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost, another epic Christian poem by John Milton.
Dante’s Inferno
In the Divine Comedy, Dante had to climb through the 9 circles of Hell, the 9 levels of Purgatorio, and the 9 levels of Paradisio, all the way back in the 1300s. In fact, it is from this epic poem that the Catholics got most of their ideas about Purgatory. His world was filled with famous authors, and both Pagan heroes, and Pagan monsters from ancient classical poems.
The Sexy Satan of Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost, was John Milton’s attempt to rewrite the story of Adam & Eve from Genesis during the Renaissance 400 years ago. The protagonist or hero of his story is Lucifer, making this one of the first anti-hero epics. In fact, if you’ve ever seen Lucifer depicted as an intelligent well-spoken sexy guy, then that is not the devil from the Bible. That’s John Milton’s version.
Actual Angels
It’s interesting to know actually, that our modern contemporary ideas about angels might not actually come from the Bible. Angels that are cute, pretty, or NOT scary, most likely come from Pagan texts. For example, cute little baby Cherubs. That is NOT how they are described in the Bible. Here is an introduction to angels as Ezekiel saw Cherub angels and Serif angels in the first chapter of his book in the Bible,
As I looked, behold, a high wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing intermittently and a bright light around it, and in its midst something like gleaming metal in the midst of the fire. And within it there were figures resembling four living beings. And this was their appearance: they had human form. Each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight and their feet were like a calf’s hoof, and they sparkled like polished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides were human hands. As for the faces and wings of the four of them, their wings touched one another; their faces did not turn when they moved, each went straight forward. As for the form of their faces, each had a human face; all four had the face of a lion on the right and the face of a bull on the left, and all four had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. Their wings were spread out above; each had two touching another being, and two covering their bodies. And each went straight forward; wherever the spirit was about to go, they would go, without turning as they went. In the midst of the living beings there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving among the living beings. The fire was bright, and lightning was flashing from the fire. And the living beings ran back and forth like bolts of lightning.
Now as I looked at the living beings, behold, there was one wheel on the ground beside the living beings, for each of the four of them. The appearance of the wheels and their workmanship was like sparkling topaz, and all four of them had the same form, their appearance and workmanship being as if one wheel were within another. Whenever they moved, they moved in any of their four directions without turning as they moved.
Ezekiel 1: 4-17
All those wings, covered in eyeballs, in fiery lightning clouds, and wheels within wheels also covered in eyeballs. As an artist I find these cherubim and seraphim angels impossible to draw. But no matter how you imagine them they are pretty terrifying. Their movements defy all of the laws of physics that I know of, and I don’t understand how they can have so many wings covered in so many eyes, so many faces, and who move in four directions but never turn.
Aliens
Have you seen any good alien movies recently? Aliens, as far as I can tell, are basically angels for atheists. My brother, who leans more towards atheism or agnosticism once got angry with me for saying this. But comparing aliens to angels, and atheism to faith, helps us to take more critical insights into what we believe, whether we believe in God, in aliens, or neither.
He often wonders about ancient civilizations and how they were able to build such epic monuments. Some of our earliest depictions of angels come from their stone murals. We still aren’t sure how they built the wonders of the world, or by what wisdom they were able to align their architecture so perfectly with the stars. We only know that they built those monuments as a way to communicate with the heavens that they so admired. Perhaps we know as little about the past as we do about the future.
My Rant about Atheism
Atheists, or anti-theists often argue against believing in a higher power citing our ignorance as their evidence. But if you are a believer like I am, I find it comforting to know that atheists who profess to believe in nothing, are really a tiny minority of people when considering all the people who have lived throughout history. I call it a minority, because though not all ancient religions share the same beliefs, or believe in exactly the same Gods, they do all profess to believe in a higher intelligent power. Some superior intelligence to account for the order and stability of the world. For even scientists, who may not be religious, are inspired and find meaning in the order of the universe. By admiring its beauty and by deeply researching its implied realities they spend their lives worshipping or praising nature. At the very least they do believe in truth, and pursue it in ways that are noble and admirable. And even intelligent atheist philosophers like Nietsche and in more modern times, Sam Harris, who I’m a big fan of, know to fear Nihilism, the belief that there is no moral good or meaning in life to be found that we should aspire to. Before the 20th century arrived, Nietzche warned that the removal of God and religion from ethics is extremely dangerous, and could lead to extreme violence if we ourselves do not become at least as ethical as gods ourselves. Here is a quote from one of his books in which he famously said,
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
Frederick Nietsche
I find anti-theists, or atheists who are so angry about the rest of us having faith deeply contradictory for one simple reason. Atheism claims that it is logical to live without faith in a belief system, yet atheism itself is in fact a faith-based belief system built on basic assumptions or axioms just like all other beliefs and logic itself. It simply claims that every group from every time period, of every faith, was wrong, but that its belief is correct.
No matter how much knowledge and wisdom we acquire, the more we learn the more we are confronted with how much we do not know. It is just as King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 1:18,
Because in much wisdom there is much grief; and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.
Ecclesiastes 1:18
These stories about messengers from another world are ultimately about confronting the gap between what we now know and what we previously believed.
Film Recommendations
There is one film I would like to recommend before I finish today, and the name of this film is Arrival. It is what is called a first-contact film, meaning a film about making first contact with aliens. I won’t say much about it, except to say that is a fantastic puzzle about language that uses film making as a way to explore the relationship between the past and the future. I will also point out that it is directed by Denis Villeneuve, the same director of Blade Runner 2049 and the upcoming film we talked about last time, Dune. Blade Runner 2049, also very good, but a little long. Neither of these are action films, and they are both built on an unfolding mystery, so don’t watch them if you are sleepy. You’ll want to be on your A game when you watch these, or else you might be wondering what exactly happened or why. It is similar to watching a film by Christopher Nolan like Interstellar or Tenet.
To see trailers for these films or share your thoughts, feel free to pay me a visit at www.BestClassEver.org
