Cowboys and Aliens - A Metaphor, Addendum
After writing this post a few days ago, I thought about a couple of things I wanted to add. One is a critical part of the movie I neglected to point out was profoundly allegorical, and the other a striking example of the way World inhabitants catatonically stare at that light. (Spoiler alert again, just so you know.)
A week or so ago there appeared this piece in the Los Angeles Times by Meghan Daum titled "The Mythic Power of Zealots." She lights into Rick Santorum for having such "boneheaded" (her word) beliefs as protecting the lives of unborn children and the sanctity of marriage, and concludes (in so many words), "Zealots really don't have that much power after all -- well, we hope they don't but we'd better expose them like I am here before they do; it's a good thing us mainstream folk are vigilent enough to prevent it."
Ms. Daum gazes intently into that light because she believes she is the one who is above it all by being mainstream. Rick Santorum, he's the one who's the zealot and we'd better watch him carefully.
I could get into the issue of abortion and same-sex marriage, even the issue of how the Catholic Church exploits it all to begin with (Santorum is a declared Roman Catholic), but the point is how Daum's argument is self-defeating. My real question to Ms. Daum is:
"Are you zealous about your mainstream position?"
For you see, if she says she isn't, if she backs off and confesses that she isn't a zealot about anything, really, that she's open-minded and tolerant and all the rest of it, then she's admitting there is no reason we should listen to her at all. If she doesn't believe what she's saying about the danger of zealots, then why pay attention to her? She really has nothing to say.
On the other hand, if she does concede that she is a zealot after all, that she is a zealot against zealots, then why is she any better? It's like those who holler, "No haters!" Excuse me, but are you saying that you hate haters?
She may take a more sophisticated approach and say that she's only against zealots who believe x, y, or z. Then why doesn't she say that, and then we can argue the merits of each issue. Instead she wimps out and slinks into one of those typical refuges of a fool: "I'm just part of the mainstream."
She can't win. No matter what, she is the one saying boneheaded things. Either she doesn't see it and therefore just a toadying handmaiden, or she does see it and she then reveals herself not merely one of the harmless Cowboys and Aliens people gazing into the light...
She is an alien herself.
She is an alien in human clothing doing her duty to wrap them up in her splendidly rhetorical folly, and if she doesn't even know she's doing it, a huge powerful publication like the Times does. And if the Times doesn't,
Then powerful operatives making it all happen do.
So yeah, I don't think Meghan Daum really knows what's going on, how she's been played. It just sounds really good. Only those with the mind of Christ can see through it, see the rank humanist manipulation, and understand that it is reasonably designed to keep spiritually destitute people in line.
What people need is not these pundits, media, or General's officers to keep things looking and feeling good -- wow, that light in the movie did look really enchanting -- whoaaa...
What they need is Christ.
And that was the key part of the film that I totally forgot to mention.
The character played by Olivia Wilde was indeed a Christ figure. She dies in the film, interestingly being whacked so hard by an alien and its sharp claws that she loses too much blood. Later she comes back to life (she is some rival alien being and as such can do that kind of thing I guess) and in the film's climax she willingly gives her life to destroy the alien spacecraft and save the universe.
Again, World inhabitants are entranced by all the World nonsense, like "I'm not a zealot, really, I'm zealously not!" World operatives industriously work to keep them there, again for good reason -- World inhabitants ask them to do so because they need it so.
Unless they'd actually come to Christ -- who is life.
Real, authentic, rapturous, dying-to-self-and-living-to-love, resurrected life.
_
My latest home page piece addresses another bit of that foolishness coming from the mouth of someone intellectually basking in the light emitted from the General's ceiling lamp.
A week or so ago there appeared this piece in the Los Angeles Times by Meghan Daum titled "The Mythic Power of Zealots." She lights into Rick Santorum for having such "boneheaded" (her word) beliefs as protecting the lives of unborn children and the sanctity of marriage, and concludes (in so many words), "Zealots really don't have that much power after all -- well, we hope they don't but we'd better expose them like I am here before they do; it's a good thing us mainstream folk are vigilent enough to prevent it."
Ms. Daum gazes intently into that light because she believes she is the one who is above it all by being mainstream. Rick Santorum, he's the one who's the zealot and we'd better watch him carefully.
I could get into the issue of abortion and same-sex marriage, even the issue of how the Catholic Church exploits it all to begin with (Santorum is a declared Roman Catholic), but the point is how Daum's argument is self-defeating. My real question to Ms. Daum is:
"Are you zealous about your mainstream position?"
For you see, if she says she isn't, if she backs off and confesses that she isn't a zealot about anything, really, that she's open-minded and tolerant and all the rest of it, then she's admitting there is no reason we should listen to her at all. If she doesn't believe what she's saying about the danger of zealots, then why pay attention to her? She really has nothing to say.
On the other hand, if she does concede that she is a zealot after all, that she is a zealot against zealots, then why is she any better? It's like those who holler, "No haters!" Excuse me, but are you saying that you hate haters?
She may take a more sophisticated approach and say that she's only against zealots who believe x, y, or z. Then why doesn't she say that, and then we can argue the merits of each issue. Instead she wimps out and slinks into one of those typical refuges of a fool: "I'm just part of the mainstream."
She can't win. No matter what, she is the one saying boneheaded things. Either she doesn't see it and therefore just a toadying handmaiden, or she does see it and she then reveals herself not merely one of the harmless Cowboys and Aliens people gazing into the light...
She is an alien herself.
She is an alien in human clothing doing her duty to wrap them up in her splendidly rhetorical folly, and if she doesn't even know she's doing it, a huge powerful publication like the Times does. And if the Times doesn't,
Then powerful operatives making it all happen do.
So yeah, I don't think Meghan Daum really knows what's going on, how she's been played. It just sounds really good. Only those with the mind of Christ can see through it, see the rank humanist manipulation, and understand that it is reasonably designed to keep spiritually destitute people in line.
What people need is not these pundits, media, or General's officers to keep things looking and feeling good -- wow, that light in the movie did look really enchanting -- whoaaa...
What they need is Christ.
And that was the key part of the film that I totally forgot to mention.
The character played by Olivia Wilde was indeed a Christ figure. She dies in the film, interestingly being whacked so hard by an alien and its sharp claws that she loses too much blood. Later she comes back to life (she is some rival alien being and as such can do that kind of thing I guess) and in the film's climax she willingly gives her life to destroy the alien spacecraft and save the universe.
Again, World inhabitants are entranced by all the World nonsense, like "I'm not a zealot, really, I'm zealously not!" World operatives industriously work to keep them there, again for good reason -- World inhabitants ask them to do so because they need it so.
Unless they'd actually come to Christ -- who is life.
Real, authentic, rapturous, dying-to-self-and-living-to-love, resurrected life.
_
My latest home page piece addresses another bit of that foolishness coming from the mouth of someone intellectually basking in the light emitted from the General's ceiling lamp.
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