Category Archives: Mythology

Includes philosophy, science, religion, physics, metaphysics, and all kinds of speculative wankery.


Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind


I’ve recently finished reading the manga version in seven volumes of Nausicaa by Hayao Miyazaki. It’s drawn masterfully and one of the greatest stories I’ve read. Miyazaki can be a bit repetitive with his themes and characters (and personal loves, like flight & planes), but one never complains when it’s always up to this level of excellence.

I think the reason why I decided to pick it up is that in April/May I was on Evangelion’s rut and I read that Anno considered the last volume of Nausicaa as Miyazaki’s true masterpiece, and so I was curious not only because of that opinion, but because there’s the theme of how you give a really satisfying closure to these hugely “epic” stories. A climax that is a climax instead of a whimper, as the thing comes crushing down under its own weight.

when Nausicaa was being serialized in Animage Anno used to visit Miyazaki’s office and ask to see the part of Nausicaa currently in progress; Miyazaki wouldn’t let him, so he would go in and look at them when Miyazaki wasn’t there. Anno wished that Miyazaki would stop making anime and focus on the Nausicaa manga. Miyazaki struggled greatly with how to end the manga; now, Anno completely understands how Miyazaki felt. According to Anno, Evangelion ended up being a cross between Devilman and volume seven of the Nausicaa manga. At an “ideological” level, Anno had to arrive at the same answers. Nobi was deeply moved by the Nausicaa movie when she first saw it, but less impressed after reading volume 7 of the manga. The darkness of the manga is eliminated in the film. However, for Nobi, Anno goes in the opposite direction, and is a kind of “black Miyazaki.”

In a way, you could say that Evangelion is an active dialogue with Nausicaa, so Nausicaa also offers an interesting angle to interpret Evangelion. I always do care about these undercurrents that link different works, that’s the real soul of every creative process.

In any case the ending of Nausicaa is actually quite excellent. I found the very last page a little “cheesy” but the important aspect is that the whole last volume is a crescendo that does a number of things right. One is that there actually is that crescendo. I noticed a couple of aspects about it. The first is that there’s a sense of leaving things behind. As characters approach the apex of the story, they lose a lot of what they care about. This gives the ultimate journey a sense of inevitability. And the other aspect is that this sense of inevitability also hooks into a series of progressive revelations that “rewrite” the perception of the world. So the story rises toward its conclusion while it also sheds its mortal spoils. Every step forward manifests the impossibility of ever going back from where you started. This is both story and knowledge. Once you “know”, you can’t pretend you don’t. Life changes, pushes on.

On the other side, though, I think Miyazaki asks all the good questions, but the final answer is the wrong one. Without spoiling so much I’d say the explicit “message” of the manga is about the celebration of life over the controlled manipulations of men. This is essentially at the core of the last volume, with Nausicaa becomes like an “angel of darkness”. Which is obviously a shifting point of view.

Anno: Another [major influence] was the seventh volume of the Nausicaa manga.

Takekuma: That [volume] is incredible. It reversed all the values [that had been in place].

Anno: I felt like it was the same as what I [was doing]. After that I couldn’t help but make [the work into] Nausicaa, to treat the same themes as the seventh volume of Nausicaa.

Oizumi: Nausicaa was unable to live as one of the ancients.

Anno: She rejected coexistence [with them]. She bloodied her hands so that her own people would survive. That was good. This karmic punishment that required [her] to destroy [them] with the abhorred fire of the God Warriors – that was good (laughing). [Good] because the true views of Hayao Miyazaki were expressed, and there, at least, he took off his underwear [and showed himself naked]. In the manga he took off his underwear, and his penis was erect (laughing). I am hoping that he will do the same in Princess Mononoke.

My problem with Miyazaki’s final answer is that the work is presented as the conflict of human beings versus nature. In the end Nausicaa becomes a messenger from Nature itself. She speaks as a goddess (so the messianic undertones). The problem is that once again this brings up the conflict in Cartesian Dualism. Man versus nature. But the point is that human beings rise from that same nature. Scott Bakker put it in a great quote:

the terrifying prospect that they themselves are merely more nature, not nature + x

If we are merely more nature, then we are part of that cycle, not fighting it. Whereas in Miyazaki’s vision men and nature are on two different shores, facing each other. This is the explanatory gap in science and religion. Knowledge and experience. So a vision that is total instead of partial needs making the two into one. If human beings exist it is because Nature is staring at itself. This is an actual quote from Nausicaa (or Nietszche):

if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

But the actual point in Nausicaa is that “life is change” and it can’t be bridled. She literally destroys the gods and refuses their gifts. Even if built with the best intentions and out of idealism, those gods were still a fixed form that, being fixed and unchanging, was contrary to life. She takes down the gods even if accused that hers is a nihilistic perspective that will destroy all life (and it’s not just a threat). I guess one could say that men’s plan can be utterly delusional, but they can’t be considered “contrary” to life. That’s the big picture: either human beings are part of the flow of life and no different from every other life form, abiding to the rules of life, OR whatever “evil” that humans have embedded in them still has to come directly from Nature itself. In Nausicaa instead those are at opposite ends. Men’s plans defy the course of nature, and are to be defied in turn.

From the point of view of ethics it’s hard to see human beings as some kind of alien anti-Natural species. Is it ethical to grasp our power to bend Nature? Either we see human beings as part of the same Natural system, the bigger picture, and so everything in our power still sits within the domain of Nature, it’s Nature giving that power to us and we use it because we are in that system, OR we think “ethically”. Why this distinction? Because either Nature has its own laws and forms, and so, being immersed in it, those laws represent our domain, the dome that we cannot breach even if we wanted to. So we are system, and not anti-system, or extra-system. And so everything we can do is ethical already, because Nature is the law, and whatever we do still comes from Nature and is not distinguished from it. OR, again, “ethics” are not “natural” and are instead man-made. So we personally, subjectively judge. It becomes “choice”, and the responsibility that comes with that choice. We can’t anymore rely on something external that tells us what’s ethical or not, it’s simply our own arbitrary choice.

All this bringing back to the problem of Godel-defying reflexivity. The abyss that stares back at you while you stare at it. The maker is made, the observer is observed. Or: the rules are continuously redefined. The fundamental principles rewritten. A self-changing, adapting thing that is always in flux. But this again risks being just another optical illusions that sees itself as a whole just because it doesn’t perceive all the connections.

So I see all this as a problematic theme in Nausicaa because of the contradiction at the core. But this could also be somewhat addressed within the work itself: Nausicaa is seen as a kind of angel that appears at the right time. She has her mechanical “wings” and she exploits people’s delusions, but even if there’s (almost) nothing magical about her, metaphorically that role fits on her. She becomes just another natural force that appears to oppose what came before, and doing so she celebrates just that spontaneous self-correcting property of life and nature, without breaching the system. She is one life force that restores a balance.

Along all this there’s also the other perspective that is much simpler and more solid: parent/child relationship. In this case the emancipation is really part of life’s process. Parents devise the ideal way for their children to develop, moved by those hopes and idealistic desires about their children and their future. All product of “goodwill” but that can really turn for the worst in spite of it. There’s a moment where the child has to rebel about whatever pattern was imposed on himself, rightly so. You, thankfully, just can’t control this aspect of life.

So, Nausicaa deals with all this and more. It does it excellently for the most part, even if it falls a bit in that Cartesian Dualism explanatory inconsistency. I guess we wait for Scott Bakker to be radical about it.

Final Fantast XIII-2 – Too big ideas

As it happened last year, this summer I’m trying to finish the follow-up, Final Fantasy XIII-2. This time the developers tried to address some of the many issues blamed on the first part but sadly the result isn’t very good.

From my point of view it’s the design approach to be wrong. The individual parts of the game are well done, but they lack coherence. In particular there’s a really big disconnect between the story being told and the actual gameplay and the result is a very ugly mishmash of parts. The developers tried to improve the individual parts, but this made even worse the lack of cohesiveness. Too quaint gameplay and storytelling.

There is a series of four videos (at the moment) that makes fun of this sort of disconnect (sometimes technically called Lugoscababib Discobiscuits) back at FFXIII part 1 even if sometimes it is a bit long in the tooth:
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/12/15/final-fantasy-xiii-part-1/
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/12/31/final-fantasy-xiii-part-2/
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2013/04/20/final-fantasy-xiii-review-part-3/
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2013/05/16/final-fantasy-xiii-review-part-4/

The premise of the game is actually very good. The previous game ended with a cataclysmic event, and this sequel is built on the “gimmick” of being able to jump between time portals so that the game can show you everything that happened afterward, leaping around in time and place and focusing on the pivotal scenes. Once again, for me the appeal of this game is about the mythology and the way it pushes its absurd ideas and utterly convoluted plot.

There are two ideas that aren’t directly part of the game but they are somewhat suggested by it, as if they didn’t want to push them all the way to eleven. I wonder what kind of game would have come out if they had embraced them:

1- The two protagonists of this game, Serah and Noel, jump between time portals and locations to fix some time paradoxes harrowing the timeline. When a paradox is solved it “disappears”, but there’s the interesting side-effect that sometimes people get stuck in these paradoxes, and when they realize that they don’t “belong” to that time and place, like ghosts, they also disappear. I’ve not finished the game, but I’m fairly sure this particular idea won’t be pushed to its potential. It made me think of Donnie Darko. The point is: what I just described should apply well even to the two protagonists. There’s a goddess, Ethro, that, as in the first game, “plucks out” certain people and forces them to accomplish a task. Serah and Noel mission is abut jumping through the timeline to heal this paradox that had a number of repercussions. It should be consequent, as in Donnie Darko, that when the paradox is ultimately solved also the agents-of-god would disappear with it. It describes heroic sacrifice, that is made even more bittersweet because from the external point of view of “reality” no one perceives the problem, neither the heroism that fixed it. These are heroes forgotten, that never existed. An unheard story of sacrifice. As the “witness!” idea Erikson uses. Which is also the purpose of “art”.

2- The other crazy-idea-that-is-not-there is about a possible link between this sequel and FFXIII that would have baffled the mind: what if the nonsensical plot of the first game was actually caused and manipulated by the events in the sequel? What if the fal’Cie gods are man-made and created by the same paradoxes that Serah and Noel actually triggered? As if in FFXIII-2 we are not seeing a “sequel”, but actually the origin story that will cause FFXIII, whose truth will be revealed at the end of the game. This is not in the game, since time travel only happens in the world post cataclysmic event, but it would have been interesting if this sequel would have embraced the whole breadth of the timeline, as a way to look at FFXIII convoluted plot, with reinterpretations and new shocking revelations. Those gods behind the plot of the first game, would become themselves the time paradox. Like in LOST the paradox about the compass. The objects loses its origin point, becomes recursively self-contained. Richard gives the compass to Locke, telling him to give it back to him when he’ll see him again. Locke gives Richard the compass in the future, then Richard goes back in time and gives Locke the compass. Where is the compass coming from? The origin is lost. Similarly, FFXIII plot may be nonsensical because of a privation. Some missing piece that was erased because of a paradox, and now can’t be retrieved. It’s like a story that lost one half and is caught in a horrible, unsolvable lack of certainty.

All this is interesting because of how one idea mirrors the other, if you think about it. Look at patterns. In the first idea the “real” world loses the story. The paradox itself is excised so that everything “makes sense” linearly. The trace of that paradox is also erased. No one will ever know that story. Instead in the second idea the opposite happens, it’s the story that makes sense that is excised by the paradox, and what is left is a timeline that can’t be explained, because the essential part is lost, not accessible. Like a book missing the most important chapter. So the two patterns fold together into one.

The great postmodern uncertainty

On the bylines I’m 60 pages into “Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity” by dear David Foster Wallace. I mentioned the page I’m at because this is a math book, but at least I can say I made so far without major blocks.

In fact this book is excellent. It’s filled to the brim, line by line, with ideas you can spin in every way. It’s deeply connected with everything I write about in this blog and that’s why it should be read. It’s not a book for who is interested about math, it’s a book for who is interested about asking radical questions on pretty much everything. For example it’s interesting the whole deal with the D.B.P. (abbreviation that DFW uses for “Divine Brotherhood of Pythagoras”). They deal with math as with a religion and their “discoveries” (or creations) become the foundation of what we are today. And then the V.I.R. (Vicious Infinite Regress), that recursive hell of infinite regression/mise en abyme. I’m reading the book while thinking about a different context, the stuff I’ve written about recently, and in many cases I was anticipating what DFW would write next. Circling again and again around similar patterns.

To apeiron, the primordial Void, the genesis of the world. This is a book about the mythology of math, and it is exciting to read. Often mindblowing. DFW selective gaze gives you what exactly matters, what makes your life different. It makes the mind race.

Maybe I’ll go quote intensive at some point. Right now I only want to copy over one I pasted over to Bakker’s blog because it repeats what was defined as “the widening gap between knowledge and experience”, and DFW describes this well:

Obvious fact: Never before have there been so many gaping chasms between what the world seems to be and what science tells us it is. ‘Us’ meaning laymen. It’s like a million Copernican Revolutions all happening at the same time. As in for instance we ‘know,’ as high-school graduates and readers of Newsweek, that time is relative, that quantum particles can be both there and not, that space is curved, that colors do not inhere in objects themselves, that astronomic singularities have infinite density, that our love for our children is evolutionarily preprogrammed, that there is a blind spot in our vision that our brains automatically fill in. That our thoughts and feelings are really just chemical transfers in 2.8 pounds of electrified pâté. That we are mostly water, and water is mostly hydrogen, and hydrogen is flammable, and yet we are not flammable. We ‘know’ a near-infinity of truths that contradict our immediate commonsense experience of the world. And yet we have to live and function in the world. So we abstract, compartmentalize: there’s stuff we know and stuff we ‘know’. I ‘know’ my love for my child is a function of natural selection, but I know I love him, and I feel and act on what I know. Viewed objectively, the whole thing is deeply schizoid; yet the fact of the matter is that as subjective laymen we don’t often feel the conflict. Because of course our lives are 99.9% concretely operational, and we operate concretely on what we know, not on what we ‘know’.

Small addendum:
to apeiron is also the computational limit. This is linked to the idea of determinism and closed system. Here DFW talks of the relationship with god, as if math is the language of god, but it is interesting to think about this in systemic terms. There’s also this piece from Bakker and the speculation of math as the shadow projected by an unknown kernel.

And this:

The point being that the D.B.P.’s attempts to articulate the connections between mathematical reality and the physical world were part of the larger project of pre-Socratic philosophy, which was basically to give a rational, nonmythopoetic account of what was real and where it came from. Maybe even more important than the D.B.P., infinity-wise, is the protomystic Parmenides of Elea (c.515-? BCE), not only because his distinction between the “Way of Truth” and “Way of Seeming” framed the terms of Greek metaphysics and (again) influenced Plato, but because Parmenides’ #1 student and defender was the aforementioned Zeno, the most fiendishly clever and upsetting Greek philosopher ever (who can be seen actually kicking Socrates’ ass, argumentatively speaking, in Plato’s Parmenides).

Interesting on one side because that dichotomy is one I mentioned recently. And, more in general, because if we see math as the foundation of science, then it means we’re basically observing how the myth of reality, as we know it, came to be. The mythopoetic origin of science. The disguised gods we all worship in modern times.

DFW declares the ultimate “hope”:

Most of math’s definitions are built up out of other definitions; it’s the really root stuff that has to be defined from scratch. Hopefully, and for reasons that have already been discussed, that scratch will have something to do with the world we all really live in.

But in that interview he gave after the book was published he said:

Infinity was the great albatross for math. Really ever since calculus. Infinitesimals were horseshit, and everybody knew they were horseshit. But the limits thing used natural language stuff like ‘approaches,’ which math isn’t supposed to do. So it’s this great shell game. Weierstrass, Dedekind and Cantor close all those holes, and it’s beautiful, and at the same time they open what turns out to be a much worse one, and that’s Godel. . . .

After Godel, the idea that mathematics was not just a language of god but a language we could decode to understand the universe and understand everything, I mean, that doesn’t work any more. It’s part of the great postmodern uncertainty that we live in. Very few people know about it.

To me, that’s the fil rouge (main theme, common thread, guiding light) connecting everything. Godel paradox is fundamental in Bakker’s studies and theories about the brain, as it is for science and the way we conceive the universe. It’s the fundamental postmodern crisis we live in today. And it’s in the writer/creation relationship. Simulated worlds. The dreams and illusory worlds that you enter the moment you start sleeping and that the brain feeds you, barriers you can’t cross. All this is about the fundamental dualism, and Vicious Infinite Regress, due to the self-reliance and reflexivity, or “strange loops”. Explain one, and you’ve explained Everything.

to apeiron, is again the Greek term that defines the seed of chaos. Uncertainty. Uncertainty that encapsulates the world we live in today that was born from the seed planted by our Greek ancestors.

Anaximander (610-545 BCE), the first of the pre-Socratics to use the term in his metaphysics, basically defines it as “the unlimited substratum from which the world derived”.

Bremermann’s limit.

DFW again:

Note, please, that this lay ability to split our awareness and to ‘know’ things we cannot handle is distinctively modern. The ancient Greeks, for example, could not do it. Or wouldn’t.

The cartoon of religion

As many others, I also had a few exceptional teachers. One of them used to say that religions are “cartoons”. Yet often they can offer very good ideas. Not intrinsically bad. The real problem is that in modern times religions often offer models that are too juvenile and that can be replaced by better ideas. So if we get better models, why not?

I’ve mentioned Kabbalah a number of times, as well as my neutral stance toward it. I keep having an interest in it because it can offer many useful (and even “powerful”, with explanation powers) ideas. More often than not at least.

In the previous post I was underlining an universal pattern that applies to the general debate of literature, but not only. Openness is generally a good thing, positive for life in general.

Today I stumbled on a video about Kabbalah that explains this ideas of openness from their point of view. The basic (and maybe simplistic) thesis is that “Nature only knows how to progress through suffering”, but we can also choose to willingly go toward our destination, and so achieve that goal minimizing the suffering. Along with the maybe less directly believable idea that when you bring change to your personal life then this small change will also create a huge ripple through the whole world (a sort of inverse of “as below, so above”). In their view Kabbalah is the willing path that leads to evolution, minus the suffering.

It’s interesting what they say about the idea of “Jews”. You can take it literally or metaphorically. Metaphorically everyone is a “Jew” as long you share that Kabbalistic message and spread it. The “race” is only what you see if you look at the finger instead of the moon. But literally the idea is that Jews were “meant” to spread around the world, through a forced diaspora, so that they would then give the example of this connectedness and openness, so that the whole world would understand and willingly adopt it.

Since I come without prejudices, I believe that the core concept of Kabbalah, this idea of openness and connectedness, is a positive one. Not just in literature, but in all things.

So here’s the video where some of these ideas are explained in layman terms:
http://www.kabbalahblog.info/2013/07/how-to-develop-integral-thinking-jtimes-with-kabbalist-dr-michael-laitman/

P.S.
I should also point out that in all these lessons they put out, the specific aspect of “jewish mysticism” is almost completely absent. Mysticism means conscious experience of the spiritual realm, meaning that you access that type of dimension RIGHT NOW, in this physical life, instead of in some future spiritual incarnation. This idea is still present in modern Kabbalah, but certainly it’s not where they put the emphasis.

The real unreal

You’ve seen me before putting together the most disparate things, while keeping a straight face and a serious tone. So here’s a quote excised from a review of an anime about “magical girls”:

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of using animation – and paintings, and music, and words, and etc. – to paint not so much the reality of the world, but the essence of it. If we want to see what something truly looks like, we have pictures and video that can do that, but a Van Gogh still holds up because it shows the world as perceived through the artist’s mind. Enzo once referred to Shinkai Makoto’s work as “more real than real”, and it certainly is in the way he meant it, but to me that phrase has always most resonated when an artist deliberately paints the world not as it appears, but how it is. The truth behind it, not just the reality that we see.

If I manage to write a review of “A Dream of Wessex” by Christopher Priest you’ll see how I’m following a red line of mythological journey, across many mediums, cultures, religions, philosophies and so on. That quote is very pertinent.

The basis, or the structure, of this discussion is what I wrote in “The Throne of the Soul” recapitulation. But already in this quote here you should recognize the important element: Cartesian dualism. He describes two ideas, one is the world as “it appears”, and one is the world as it is revealed through “art”.

What’s interesting in that quote is how he makes the fundamental error of inverting the scheme. He makes the distinction between the reality of the world and its essence. And he turns the “more real than real” into the world as it appears and the “truth” behind it.

What is “art” if not “interpretation” of the real? In my partial analysis of Tolkien’s mythology I examined the part about how art is often seen as a god-like creation. The desire to be like the creator. Tolkien explains this as a natural instinct built into human beings. But this deliberate act of creation should be considered as artificial, not natural (or “true”). We do not take the world as it is, we take the world as we want it, reshaping it.

Where do human beings dwell? If “Reality” is out there, then it’s almost impossible for us to reach it. There’s a membrane we aren’t able to breach. Plato’s cave. But for us, living on “this other side”, reality is made of meaning. Of patterns, symbols. To live and understand reality we rebuild it in a form that makes sense to us. This produces an heightened sense of truth. It’s not “deeper”, it’s somewhat heightened. The “truth” behind the apparent reality reveals the truth of the human condition. Not universal truth, or objective, scientific truths, the world out there. It’s the world “in here”, the one you get caged in your head. The one you live in.

A writer, painter or musician, creates a world through a series of signs. This becomes a secondary, separate dimension. With its rules that must usually be consistent. Characters immersed in that world will have to shape their model of reality, interpret things happening around them. They might be poets, musicians, painters. In a delicious recursive self-reference.

All of this features prominently in Malazan, for example. The post-modern aspect is about the “awareness” of the context. Not of the “ceiling of the world”, meaning the boundaries of the artistic creation, but of the interplay of self-reference. Of the writer writing, of the context that contains the created world.

In Malazan this often creates a delicious, playful interplay filled with double-meaning. A scene can be entirely consistent with the level of plot and artistic “sealed” world. And yet it can still be “aware” of where it comes from. Of the “truth” behind the magical trick. Of the writer writing.

This is a scene from “The Bonehunters” that I bet Steven Erikson had lots of fun writing:

Things were not well. A little stretched, are you, Ammanas? I am not surprised. Cotillion could sympathize, and almost did. Momentarily, before reminding himself that Ammanas had invited most of the risks upon himself. And, by extension, upon me as well.

The paths ahead were narrow, twisted and treacherous. Requiring utmost caution with every measured step.

So be it. After all, we have done this before. And succeeded. Of course, far more was at stake this time. Too much, perhaps.

Cotillion set off for the broken grounds opposite him. Two thousand paces, and before him was a trail leading into a gully. Shadows roiled between the rough rock walls. Reluctant to part as he walked the track, they slid like seaweed in shallows around his legs.

So much in this realm had lost its rightful … place. Confusion triggered a seething tumult in pockets where shadows gathered.

I’ve mentioned before, and now is likely public knowledge, that both Ammanas and Cotillion are sometimes used by Erikson to play with this post-modern layer. On the explicit level that quote is consistent with characters and the world, but from my point of view it reads like playful meta-commentary on the writing itself, especially at that point of the overall series.

Maybe Ammanas and Cotillion “roles” are inverted, but this is the book where Erikson has to pick up all the threads he left behind after five volumes. It’s the first real “convergence” on the series as a whole. So, “a little stretched, are you” reads like something Erikson is telling himself, after all that came before and the monumental task still ahead. “The paths ahead were narrow, twisted and treacherous. Requiring utmost caution with every measured step.” This is again the description of where he’s at, writing the story. Meta-commentary on writing the series, self-reflection.

“Ammanas had invited most of the risks upon himself. And, by extension, upon me as well.” This is also the point in time when Esslemont started to publish his own side of the series. So again, it works as meta-commentary. On the sharing of ambitions, and risks.

“So much in this realm had lost its rightful… place.” This may be again about all the things that changed in the course of five volumes. Both in the story and outside it, I guess.

“So be it. After all, we have done this before. And succeeded. Of course, far more was at stake this time. Too much, perhaps.” And here the determination to do it regardless of risks. You definitely can’t hesitate when you’re about to start writing the sixth volume of a ten volumes planned series.

The Shadow realm itself, where Cotillion and Ammanas reside and “scheme”, has similar metaphoric qualities:

Emerging from Shadowkeep, he paused to study the landscape beyond. It was in the habit of changing at a moment’s notice, although not when one was actually looking, which, he supposed, was a saving grace.

It has this dream-like quality. A sort of WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is). Until things aren’t seen, they lurk in shadows, indistinct. Writing is the same. You put signs on a page. Until those signs aren’t written, nothing exists. And nothing else exists outside what is written. What You Write Is All There Is. The Observer makes reality. The realm of Shadows and Illusions. The illusion of creation.

But then again this treacherous landscape can also concretely refer to the writing itself. Something you are writing may be working well while you are at it. It seems clear, with all the details in your control. But when you are juggling so many different characters and plots, things have a tendency to slip out of control while “you’re not looking” and busy working on some other part. And so the struggle to keep it all together, as if “looking everywhere at the same time”.

“Confusion triggered a seething tumult in pockets where shadows gathered.” This seems describing almost a rebellious behavior of the realm. The moment your grasp slips, the shadows start swarming, threatening what was certain just before. The shape of things. As if you lower your guard, uncertainty devours everything. Including the writer self-doubt. It’s an hostile realm. Cotillion and Ammanas are “usurpers”.

Finally, earlier I saw this link about an interview with David foster Wallace. And in it there’s another link to a different chunk of the interview that I find particularly interesting. DFW also was obsessed about self-reference. This part:

Whereas Cantor, yeah, codifies the transfinite, but Cantor’s paradox is the first step into Godel’s incompleteness and self-reference. It’s at once this beautiful climax of the two hundred years before it and the first note of the funeral dirge for math as something that you can just, ‘You know what, we can explain the entire universe mathematically. All we have to do is come up with the right axioms and the right derivation rules.’ I mean, Cantor’s paradox starts the wheel of self-reference.

I don’t know if you know much about Godel’s incompleteness theorem. But in a lay sense, Godel is able to come up mathematically with a theorem that says, ‘I am not provable.’ And it’s a theorem, which means that math is either not consistent or it’s not complete, by definition. Packed in. He is the devil, for math.

Cantor’s paradox, that whole ‘If it’s not a member of the set, it is a member of the set,’ and then Russell’s paradox about twenty years later, those were the first two . . . You know, when you start coming on a really interesting theme in a piece of music, you usually hear it in echo notes that foreshadow it, those are the foreshadowings. And I don’t imagine Godel would have come up with the self-reference loop if it hadn’t been for Cantor and Russell. [Sotto voce] Whatever. You’re not interested.

“You know, when you start coming on a really interesting theme in a piece of music, you usually hear it in echo notes that foreshadow it, those are the foreshadowings.” That’s a nice description of what I’ve been doing, in my reads and this post too. I’m following this red string that links all these disparate things. It doesn’t matter from which angle you start, because everything leads to everything else.

[Sotto voce] Whatever. You’re not interested.

Prometheus: explained


Late to the party, but I’ve only seen this movie yesterday. I think that it’s honestly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen but online it seems the complaints are mostly directed toward the nonsensical plot, while I think instead the plot is more or less straightforward. It’s just a really bad movie. It’s bad as an action movie, visually is only average and doesn’t have a single memorable scene, it’s overflowing with cliches of every kind, and it’s utterly predictable up to its last frame. I just can’t find a single redeeming quality. It’s supposed to ask “big questions” but all its themes are shallow, juvenile and surpassed by average sci-fi. It’s Hollywood at its worst. Big budget spent with zero inspiration whatsoever and a screenplay entirely written by cutting & paste every other Hollywood script. Dull, stupid, naive and clumsy.

But none of these problems are really about “plot holes”, or the movie being too obscure and mysterious. Or complex. This is nothing more than juvenile sci-fi that doesn’t even have the qualities of the Golden Age. Pretentious without doing anything pretentious. That’s why I think that the plot is actually rather straightforward and makes sense. And that’s why I’ll explain some of its mythology, since I’m always interested in figuring out things. Even if in this case there aren’t any worthwhile mysteries to discover.

What’s the “black goo” substance?

That’s one of the most asked questions on the internet, and one I actually didn’t ask myself at all. For me it was so immediately obvious that I never considered it a “mystery” at all. The black goo liquid is just the vehicle of a mutation. Think of a syringe, and how it can contain a poison or a medicine. If you showed a movie to an alien who never saw a syringe and show him a scene where this syringe is used to kill someone, then the alien would naturally associate the idea of the syringe with that effect. But we know that the syringe is merely a tool that can hold different stuff. The black goo works on a similar principle: it’s just how these alien “Engineers” perform their mutations.

In the Prologue scene we see an Engineer, alone on a planet, drink black goo and suddenly collapse, falling in the water (not a coincidence, since life is symbol of the source of life). The black goo carries the mutation itself. In this case the body of the Engineer is first dissolved, and then used to rebuild a new form of life: human beings as we know them. It’s not even necessary to pinpoint if this was the specific case of Earth, what the Prologue shows us is the custom of these Engineers: seeding life on different planets according to their own plans.

The black goo that instead they find in the alien chamber, later in the movie, doesn’t obviously carry the exact same type of mutation agent. It’s the same tool/vehicle, but carrying a different effect. What happens there, and probably a sign of what happened during the “outbreak” that killed most Engineers, is that, as shown in the Prologue, the black goo becomes active when it gets in contact with the air. The room was isolated, but then is opened by these curious human explorers, the black goo activates and there’s a scene showing one of those tiny worms going right into a pool of black goo. Off screen it begins to transform into that bigger snake thing that will kill the two dudes later on. So the pattern is always: black goo + host = new species. This merely to explain logically why we have a difference of effects.

Why does David the android infect Shaw’s love interest (Charlie)?

This is an important plot point with lots of implications. The main (and only) true purpose of the Prometheus mission was to find a way to keep alive the decrepit old Wayland guy. The one who actually pays for the mission and is on the ship in incognito. Before the android starts to play with the black goo we have a scene showing him interacting with Wayland, so instructing the android what to do next. When David is then confronted by Charlize Theron he tells her they have to “try harder”.

Try harder simply means that Wayland cares nothing about secondary purposes, or even the good health of his crew. Like in EVERY OTHER Hollywood movie, we got the powerful rich guy who’s selfish and arrogant, and will do everything to obtain what he wants, even if he has to kill everyone else. That’s what we see. As far as he’s concerned the black goo may be well the elixir of eternal life, so why not test it on one of the crew, especially one who has outlasted his purpose?

That’s the main “plot” reason, but there are also stronger thematic implications. The first is obvious and about the dramatic tension. At that point of the movie we are meant to question the android behavior. Does he knows something we do not? Is he following some hidden agenda? Is he going out of control all HAL 9000 on the crew? All these are essentially dead ends, but they add that shallow ambiguity and mystery this movie aims to.

The second thematic implication is much more important. If you notice David asks Charlie’s “consent”. He explicitly asks how far he’s willingly to go in order to discover the truth about those who “created him” (the Engineers). Charlie’s answer is: “anything and everything”. That’s what David takes as consent. By giving him the black goo and infecting him with it, he gives him that “first contact” with his “maker”. A truth that could even kill him. But there’s an even more important exchange. David first asks why humans made androids (so replicating the pattern of creator/created, father/son, or Engineer/human being) and Charlie answers: “because we could”. David replies: “Can you imagine how disappointing it would be to hear the same thing from your creator?” This is just the most obvious foreshadowing, but it’s important to notice how every character always has that forced and annoying patronizing tone and constant sneer toward the android. For the whole length of the movie. When this happens in a Hollywood movie it’s because they really want to ram on that point.

Why does the awakened Engineer kill Wayland and almost destroys David?

Because once again simplistic THEMES take control of plot. This is a movie called Prometheus, showing a mission called Prometheus, that very openly plays with the Prometheus myth. The myth describes a typical “tabu”: the desire to be like god.

In the specific case of this movie, the tabu is “eternal life”. The ultimate desire of Wayland. So that scene with Wayland in front of the Engineer is a very obvious archetype of a man facing his god and DEMAND he gives him eternal life. Notice how Wayland is portrayed through the whole movie as the arrogant, selfish guy. His stance doesn’t change even when he faces his maker. He’s just there pretending his wish fulfilled.

Now you have to realize this is a movie made by human beings (Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof). Human beings have this tendency to take Big Unanswerable questions in fiction to try answer them. The typical solution is to make a perfectly legitimate question (why I have to die) into a tabu. An holier-than-thou. A sacred unanswerable thing. Being Holy means that you either accept it, or end up committing a SIN. It’s the typical non-answer. Holy means: righter than you. So if you oppose it, you automatically lose every right, authority or legitimation.

So what happens in fiction when a character demands eternal life? That he’s killed. It’s part of the archetypal script Prometheus is cut&pasted from. Also consider the non-irrelevant fact that, as seen in the Prologue, an Engineer is ready to sacrifice his own life to seed a planet with new life. This means they value evolution far more than personal preservation. Here we have instead Wayland pretending to be given immortality, a very selfish desire, and it’s very obvious that it’s considered by the Engineer the violation of everything he believes in.

Plot-wise the movie hammers on a particular point, in the way you realize it wants no-question-asked. There are two plot-points that are bluntly hammered by the movie. One is about establishing Charlize Theron as non-android (no one really asked until the movie did). The other is the out-of-the-blue revelation that the stone cylinders contain some sort of mass destruction weapon that was then meant to destroy life on earth.

Plot-wise, again, this means the Engineer really shouldn’t have any sympathy for human beings. But more in general it’s the theme of the android/human relationship that carries the action: the same way human beings show no respect or compassion or even consideration for David, throughout the movie, so happens when the pattern is repeated between humans/Engineer. The Engineer shows no compassion.

Why did the Engineers decide to destroy the human life that they themselves seeded in the first place?

This is one of the open ended questions. Those questions that the spectator should interpret his own way. More specifically, this is a question very obviously meant to be answered in a planned sequel.

Without a sequel, my interpretation is that the Engineers didn’t really want to destroy life. They just carry on their quirky experiments. If we accept the fact that the alien ship, carrying the xenomorph goo, was headed for Earth, the purpose here is likely about the experiment itself.

As a weapon of mass destruction the xenomorph aliens aren’t that efficient. You’d guess that aliens that can manipulate genetic code could wipe off a planet far more easily than sending down creatures in hand-to-hand combat. So if they wanted to use the black goo it means they wanted a genetic experiment. Like crossing the genetic code of those aliens with the one of humans, to obtain some hybrid. Or maybe even as a Darwin test, to see if human beings became good enough to survive an invasion: let’s see between humans and xenomorphs who deserves survival.

Btw, this whole deal of thematic depth about the origin of life seeded by aliens and relationship with god is obviously a very shallow and juvenile reproduction of what we have already seen in 2001: A Space Odissey. It’s that plot, made into a Bad Hollywood Movie, that doesn’t even add anything worthwhile to the Aliens mythos.

Btw part-2, Apocalypse, a character from the X-men comics, looks rather similar to the Engineers, and you could say he has their exact same agenda. Including reappearance through history to check on human evolution.

Was Charlize Theron’s character an android?

This could have two answers. If there’s a sequel, it’s possible that she was an android and so would reappear. The movie made clear she’s not one, but her death is a bit suspicious since we only see the ship falling and a whole lot of smoke. Maybe as an android and thanks to the sandy terrain she could survive the impact and play a role in a sequel.

Without a sequel instead it’s very clear she NOT an android. We see her shoving David against a wall, but this is not a test of strength. David has absolutely no reason to harm her, she’s Wayland’s daughter even if Wayland doesn’t have much regard for her. So the scene doesn’t really mean much. Still, it’s very possible that Ridley Scott has this kink for androids who pretend to be human, and so added some ambiguity simply because it’s what you expect from him.

Was that Acheron, the same planet of the first movie?

No.

Why in the classic Alien the alien things come off the egg shaped organic things, whereas in Prometheus the “eggs” are made of stone and contain black goo?

Because the stone cylinders are very obviously not “eggs”. What you see in Prometheus is how Engineers do their job of seeding life. We don’t know if they engineered the xenomorphs, or if they simply took inspiration and copied them, but the black goo is the artificial creation, that embeds with an host and mutates it. Whereas the “eggs” are how living xenomorphs reproduce. The Alien queen lays eggs, it doesn’t build stone cylinders, obviously.

Take the “Chicken or egg” dilemma. This is an obvious transposition. The Alien we know is the chicken, who then lays eggs to reproduce. But how did it come to be? Who laid the first egg? The answer here is: first come the Engineers, who do their job of breeding and crossing species through their “black goo” technology that they put into stone cylinders. So we have (1) stone cylinders -> (2) Alien -> (3) egg.

The layout in the Prometheus ship “mimics” the layout of the eggs simply because the Engineers pay homage to it. The same as they paint the murals. It’s just their xenomorph’s shrine.

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That’s pretty much everything worth commenting. As I said the movie is shallow and doesn’t even have some good themes. The most ridiculous thing, and where the movie drops the ball without ever picking it up again, is right at the beginning. It’s directly framed as creationist/evolutionist debate and instead of actually grasping that theme we’re given: “it’s what I choose to believe.”

That’s how you give the most idiotic answer in an idiotic movie. The real power of science, as everyone knows, is about going AGAINST your personal choice and desire. Otherwise we would still believe in the whole universe orbiting around Earth. We see Science as a tool to discover “Truth” exactly because it gives answers that aren’t subjective or that follow one own agenda or personal preference.

Yet it’s very obvious that this movie celebrates blind faith. By being a believer that main character is rewarded with survival. Everyone else dies, obviously because no one else had a necklace with a cross. Protected by god.

It’s not that I’m anti-religion. It’s how this movie uses religion in the shallowest way: it’s Plot Armor by way of religious power. That never enters the picture. You are just rewarded for blind faith in some arbitrary mythology.

This should tell you how simplistic and shallow this movie is.

P.S.
I should mention that all Alien movies after the second suck. Is just the Alien franchise being so bad? Nope. Dark Horse long ago published comics made as direct sequels to the second Alien movie, written by Mark Verheiden (who also worked on Battlestar Galactica), that are very good and answer pretty much all questions in the Aliens mythos, including the “space jockey”. Ridley Scott could have made an EXCELLENT movie if he just stuck to these much better stories, believe me.

“ALL THE ARTIFICIAL STARGATES HAVE BEEN NEUTRALIZED!”

I guess no amount of Science Fiction can surpass what certain people end up BELIEVING. I just bumped into this conference video. I don’t even remotely know what they talk about, but it sounds like “fun”. It’s as if they live in a different world. X-files by comparison is dull and unimaginative.

I enjoy mythology, so this stuff is at least interesting.