I went into this movie with some high expectations. I knew it was going to be good. But I didn’t expect it to be this good. Absolutely incredible.

If I had to sum it up in a phrase, I’d say that this isn’t a movie, its a whole experience. The 3D was absolutely incredible, the world so rich and fleshed out that I feel like over the course of those 3 hours I got to know this amazing place called Pandora.  As the movie takes you around this luscious, beautiful, stunningly (I’m running out of adjectives) incredibly rendered world, you feel as if you are there. I think I could watch it again and again just so I can be there again. Literally be there. It was like something from my dreams, a world I’ve always wanted to see but never could.  It takes “comes to life” to a whole new level.

I honestly hope more movies can be like this in the future, but for now this is insane. I don’t think I can find a single flaw. The actors were brilliant; they were so believable both as humans and as the Na’vi (the name of the natives).

And the plot. Its like the Matrix meets Princess Mononoke–if thats even possible.  A classic colonial story/Native American story with a strong Nature theme. Yet somehow the movie made it all feel so new and fresh. Even the predictable stuff seemed appropriate, like it couldn’t have been any other way–from first moment to last.

I want to see it again now. I want to be back on Pandora. Dammit, James Cameron, my only complaint is that you made this so real that I want to be there. I want to be a  Na’vi and I feel like its there, like I could be. Why isn’t this actually real? Thats my only complaint.

The themes and intricacies of this movie are too great for one showing. I think I’ll see it at least 3 times before it gets out of theaters. The world alone is enough to see it several times and still get more from it each time. But also the themes and the complexity of the story and its metaphors and parallels–I feel like they are creeping below the surface and I still haven’t even begun to touch on them. I’ll be seeing this again soon. Thank you James Cameron. Brilliant.

–No–That is not even dramatic enough. I have always had an obsession with forests and with living in a symbiosis between technology and nature. The two have simultaneously fascinated me. To pull them together this wonderfully…it is consuming.  If I could make anything exist right now it is this. I would live in this world, gladly. Gladly…

Check out these lyrics:

Ambulance, let me in
Don’t make me stay here
Ambulance, hold your breath
We’re running short on air
Breathe it in, resuscitate

At the edge
You see clearly
I was dead
Now I’m back to life
And love is a fragile thing
We all stand on a bridge
That’s been slowly burning down

Ambulance, take me back
To the house I was born in
Ambulance, finish it
Don’t wake me up again
Ambulance, resuscitate

At the edge
You see clearly
I was dead
Now I’m back to life
And love is a fragile thing
We all stand on a bridge
That’s been slowly burning

Breathe in, breathe out
Resuscitate
Blink if you’re hearing this
Are we clear
Set the charge, take the hit
Clear
Just one more time
Breathe in, breathe in
While there’s still time

We could be the heartbeat
And everything nine tenths collapsed
Would come back to life
We could be the breath of air
Pushed into the lungs of the dying
Can you feel a pulse
It’s been stopped for so long
Can you start it
Can you feel a pulse
It’s been stopped for so long
Let’s restart it
With a kick drum hit
With a thousand voices
With a single word
Live, live, live

When alone
You see clearly
I would know
Now I want to live and love
All these fragile things
We all stand on a bridge
That’s been slowly burning down

You can’t tell me those words aren’t existential in their basic function.  Now if you go on listen to this song, Resuscitation of a Dead Man by Thursday, you will really feel how this song contains a perfect example of anxiety, of Angst.  This is what I keep saying, over and over again. Post-hardcore music as a genre is a musical embodiment of existential dilemmas and the Angst inherent in existence. It is conflicted, it  struggles. The funny thing is…everyone popularly hates on the whole “emo” thing but it seems to me that these emo-kids are the ones who are really getting the picture. They see life for the absurdity it is and they struggle with it. If you really listen to their music that is what it is about, not the violence of the punks or the death-fare of the goths and heavy metal. Contrary to the popular assumption, most post-hardcore music (which is deemed emo) does NOT talk about kids breakin up with girlfirends–rather it talks about the absurdity and struggle of life–and it seeks after a way to get out of that.

Check out these other songs:

Only Medicine by Scary Kids Scaring Kids
Angela Baker and My Obsession with Fire by Senses Fail
A Goat in Sheep’s Rosary by From Autumn to Ashes
Deliverance! by From First to Last
Pretty much any other song by Thursday, esp Cross out the Eyes, I am the Killer, and Asleep in the Chapel
Capricorn by 30 Seconds to Mars (really their whole first, self-titled album)

Now go read some existentialism! Get some Camus or some Sartre and tell me that doesn’t line up! These guys probably don’t understand or know of their philosophical counterparts but nonetheless, I see this as evidence that as technology spreads it consumes our ability to avoid this Angst. Its coming!

Even though this is the third time through this book it still serves to provoke more troubling questions, which, I suppose, is how a good piece of literature ought to work. Yet the most fascinating thing about this book is the questions that it provokes about ideologies, lifestyles, and culture in relation to our technology and science.  I read this book when I was in my sophomore year of high school and I attribute it alone as the founding idea for my whole course of study, writing, and interest in the way we live in relation to our technology.  I suppose this is why our discussion about the separation of the “Two Cultures” seemed absurd to me; I have never really seen a divide between them. I would’ve gone into science (which I love) if I had not been so infatuated with the topics that this book so poignantly explores. The question that has bothered me since my first read through is a remarkably literary and philosophical question that is caught up in science and technology: how do we live in a world that is so radically different from all known human history and experience? How do we live in a world where humans have such incredible creative and destructive power?

Furthermore, what is the end of these endeavors? What does science and technology truly seek? This is part of Huxley’s genious: he clearly distinguishes two types of views that hold dangerous implications—they exist within the extremes. On one side, the desire for a perfect life, one full of endless comforts and constant happiness, is shown to be shallow and repressive of all that we love in life.  On the other side, remaining the same in a state of suffering and primitiveness is horrid and unpleasant.  Huxley tears us between these two worlds and doesn’t allow us the middle ground—but we know its there and so does Huxley.  This is the manifestation of the most important challenge in technological development; how does one improve life and the human condition while not losing the human?  When does augmentation become replacement, as it does with soma?

In this sense, progress—a true humab and technological progress—must come in the balance of these two sides. Progress must be advancing our technology as an augmentation of our human experience not merely a replacement.  In other words, relieving the human condition while not releasing the human. Of course, how does one do this in a society such as we have? This is a troubling question that runs deep through the novel.

There are a lot of people out there who see the world through the eyes one side or the other. There are Leninas who want their world to remain comfortable and stable.  And there are others who, like John, in response to this world we have created, shrink away in the sight of technology and seek refuge in the familiar and the old.   Each side lacks something; both leave us dissatisfied. I can definitely believe in the need of suffering, but I do not relish in the suffering that exists here.

The true task of technology, in light of such frustrating contradiction is to find a balance between the two. It is something that science cannot do with literature—BNW itself being proof. This is why I think the separation of the two in any sense is not only erroneous but tragically dangerous.  We need them to work together to help figure out decent answers to these questions, to feel out this middle ground, to build a world that is peaceful but not horribly empty, to infuse art and technological progress into a world that is both wonderful and endearing.  Brave New World is so utterly frustrating because it doesn’t do this and it leaves us aching for the need for it.  At least it has left me aching for the need for it, so badly that I’ll spend my whole life searching for answers to this enormous question: where is the Brave New World we are seeking? Can science still take us there, with the help of careful thought through philosophy and literature?

I think that perhaps the most frustrating and unsettling thing of all about this novel is that it makes it clear that we only really have three choices (two explicit, one implicit based on all I just said). Either we, one, remain in a state of horrible primitive suffering,  two, lose ourselves in our technology, effectively merging with it and losing ourselves in the process (becoming machines), or, three, we answer these incredibly difficult questions about how to reconcile the two.  There really is no other option; and it is unsettling to know that the third option is also the most difficult to grasp while the ones we fear are so easy—the first being all we’ve known in human history and the second being the course that a passive submerging into a technological world seems to slowly bring about.

What will take us down this third path and carry forward the power of human resilience? This is the question of the twenty first century and was, in many respects, the question of last century. The answers we came up with them were somewhat dissatisfying. Drugs, for instance, were a start—I can see why Huxley was fascinated by the psychedelic drugs. They were not soma but were an opportunity for a drug that enhanced human beings, bringing forth their most human qualities while allowing for a furthering of experience.  Still, the question still remains—drugs were obviously no solution.  We will and we must find ourselves asking this as technology moves forward, as danger levels rise from powerful new technologies, as the lines between man and machine continue to blur, as our lives transform more and more into the realm of dreams—how do we live in such a world?

And what do we do with those who shout, like the crowds at the end, “We want the whip!”  What is left for the rest of us if those people win out? Will those seeking the middle ground be lost between those shouting for the whip and those shouting for their right to suffer the whips of nature?  This is my greatest fear, elicited so strongly and desperately from this novel…what if the hope for a balance is thwarted by this basic struggle?

Rise Against writes some of the most incredible songs ever. Their latest album “Appeal to Reason” is just as good as any they’ve written. My favorite song of theirs is this one:

I think the words speak for themselves.

Wounded Soft Watch, 1974
By Salvidor Dali

Little wisps of people with wings and horses carrying a melting time through a drifting desert.  I want a full print of this one day…