The Prometheus Factor
We saw Prometheus the other night, and while it was enjoyable -- we saw it in IMAX 3D! Wow! -- I liked it less and less afterwards. I've always been a fan of the Alien series, particularly the first two, because even in all the alien creepiness there is a tremendously compelling aspect to the vibrant storytelling. I also just like good horror and sci-fi films.
The two things that frustrated me most were, one, it was really just a remake of the first Alien. Really, it was as if Ridley Scott said to himself, "What would Alien be like if I made it today?" He put in a few variations, used CGI a bit more (of course), but it really was exactly the same story. Same theme. Same motif. I even heard exactly the same music at times -- no, not similar music, but the exact same parts of the original Alien musical score. There was the gargantuan ship (Prometheus=Nostromo) and the scheming android (David=Ash) and the curmudgeonly crewmembers bickering over work and pay... I could probably list a bunch more. Sadly, it just wasn't very original story-wise and thus quite disappointing.
The other thing was all the alien encounters. It was just an overload of alien infesting. There was the alien in through the mouth, the alien in the eyeball, the alien possession turning a crew member into a crazed murderer, the alien caesarean birth, and of course the very gratuitous alien bursting from the gut. It was as if the filmmakers were all together at Denny's some late Saturday night planning it all out on the paper napkins and they said to one another, "Hey, how about this wild alien encounter?!" "Oh I've got one better, how about this one?!" No way, the CGI for this other one right here would just be great!" And they just put them all in. It really turned into kind of a mess.
Still, the whole feel of being threatened by alien encounters is a viscerally engaging dynamic, and I thought about that for a bit. I just found it interesting that our bodies have billions of microbes all over us and in us chomping on billions of other microbes all the time. We just don't notice it because of our size.
Then there are creatures our size, billions of those creatures even larger than each of us humans, that are all around us growing and eating and breeding like crazy. Yes, right here on the earth -- right outside our homes even. Yet we walk past them without a thought. They are the plant life all around us. We don't really pay attention because they do their "alien" thing so slowly.
I share this because there are other more profound ways we just don't get what's going around us. So many people presume they know just the way things are.
How much they may be mistaken.
Reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote I came across that meant a lot to me when I was going through some hard times. He gave an anecdote about what we think may be the way things are but aren't, and he added, "It is simply the leaping into imaginative activity of an idea which I would always have theoretically admitted -- the idea that I, or any mortal at any time, may be utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in."
Any mortal at any time may be utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in.
That kind of relates to real myth of Prometheus, which I'm sure was why the Prometheus filmmakers gave their movie that title. Prometheus wanted to help out man, give him fire, all that, but the gods got mad and chained him to the rock so the eagle could eat his liver, all that stuff. What are the gods doing for us, or against us? What'd you think? The Greeks were obsessed with this.
My ministry, as it is, is all about sharing what I see is really going on. Oh, yeah, a bazillion sources really try to share that, from the academic journal articles to the most elementary blogs. To echo Lewis, I'm not mad enough to think I've got all the what's-really-going-on stuff down myself. But I do think I've got something meaningful to say.
One of the pieces I just read was from the editors at Bloomberg, who made the very astute observation that "A Functional Congress Wouldn't Have to Depend on Ben Bernanke." But what is the key item there that people aren't getting?
First of all, the idea is that if Congress simply spent within its means, took its tax revenues and had the Treasury hold them until its simple, authorized, expected expenditures were dispersed, then there'd be no Federal Reserve. Instead Congress borrows like maniacs, "monetizes the debt," and causes all kinds of fiscal turmoil.
What's the key thing people don't get here?
It is that Congress is just borrowing up the gazotch because Congress is the American people. Congress only does precisely what the American people want. You might as well just substitute "American people" for the word "Congress" there. So yeah, we don't have a functional American people, we have a dysfunctional American people who are in complete denial about the situation they are really in.
It doesn't matter which end of the political spectrum you are on. If you are asking the federal government and federal banking system to work it out so you can keep getting your chunk of the value extraction gravy train then you are just as much the other-human-sacrificer as anyone else.
Look at the article. You could substitute a lot of other more telling terms for what the Bloomberg editors are saying. Instead of "short-term fiscal stimulus" you could more accurately call it "bursting stream of lies to keep people thinking they're worth anything." Instead of "long-term debt reduction" call it "tighter constraints for those on the altar ensuring more value hacking to benefit the best exploiters."
But when you are addicted to human sacrifice, as those living by the World must be, then this is simply standard procedure. It is just the way things are no matter how wretchedly awful it is all around. Gotta make sure we slather on the vanilla frosting of smiles and pithy platitudes about how wonderful we all are anyway. That's standard procedure too.
Should anyone actually truly know the mind of Christ and know of His economy, the one of His Kingdom, and how much He values by the measure of His shed blood, then they might just get it. They would emerge in the joy of knowing the situtation they are truly in.
But that's only if Christ is there, "a friend just beside him in the dark" as Lewis said in that passage.
Otherwise it may indeed be some alien worm creature about to rip your guts open.
The two things that frustrated me most were, one, it was really just a remake of the first Alien. Really, it was as if Ridley Scott said to himself, "What would Alien be like if I made it today?" He put in a few variations, used CGI a bit more (of course), but it really was exactly the same story. Same theme. Same motif. I even heard exactly the same music at times -- no, not similar music, but the exact same parts of the original Alien musical score. There was the gargantuan ship (Prometheus=Nostromo) and the scheming android (David=Ash) and the curmudgeonly crewmembers bickering over work and pay... I could probably list a bunch more. Sadly, it just wasn't very original story-wise and thus quite disappointing.
The other thing was all the alien encounters. It was just an overload of alien infesting. There was the alien in through the mouth, the alien in the eyeball, the alien possession turning a crew member into a crazed murderer, the alien caesarean birth, and of course the very gratuitous alien bursting from the gut. It was as if the filmmakers were all together at Denny's some late Saturday night planning it all out on the paper napkins and they said to one another, "Hey, how about this wild alien encounter?!" "Oh I've got one better, how about this one?!" No way, the CGI for this other one right here would just be great!" And they just put them all in. It really turned into kind of a mess.
Still, the whole feel of being threatened by alien encounters is a viscerally engaging dynamic, and I thought about that for a bit. I just found it interesting that our bodies have billions of microbes all over us and in us chomping on billions of other microbes all the time. We just don't notice it because of our size.
Then there are creatures our size, billions of those creatures even larger than each of us humans, that are all around us growing and eating and breeding like crazy. Yes, right here on the earth -- right outside our homes even. Yet we walk past them without a thought. They are the plant life all around us. We don't really pay attention because they do their "alien" thing so slowly.
I share this because there are other more profound ways we just don't get what's going around us. So many people presume they know just the way things are.
How much they may be mistaken.
Reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote I came across that meant a lot to me when I was going through some hard times. He gave an anecdote about what we think may be the way things are but aren't, and he added, "It is simply the leaping into imaginative activity of an idea which I would always have theoretically admitted -- the idea that I, or any mortal at any time, may be utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in."
Any mortal at any time may be utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in.
That kind of relates to real myth of Prometheus, which I'm sure was why the Prometheus filmmakers gave their movie that title. Prometheus wanted to help out man, give him fire, all that, but the gods got mad and chained him to the rock so the eagle could eat his liver, all that stuff. What are the gods doing for us, or against us? What'd you think? The Greeks were obsessed with this.
My ministry, as it is, is all about sharing what I see is really going on. Oh, yeah, a bazillion sources really try to share that, from the academic journal articles to the most elementary blogs. To echo Lewis, I'm not mad enough to think I've got all the what's-really-going-on stuff down myself. But I do think I've got something meaningful to say.
One of the pieces I just read was from the editors at Bloomberg, who made the very astute observation that "A Functional Congress Wouldn't Have to Depend on Ben Bernanke." But what is the key item there that people aren't getting?
First of all, the idea is that if Congress simply spent within its means, took its tax revenues and had the Treasury hold them until its simple, authorized, expected expenditures were dispersed, then there'd be no Federal Reserve. Instead Congress borrows like maniacs, "monetizes the debt," and causes all kinds of fiscal turmoil.
What's the key thing people don't get here?
It is that Congress is just borrowing up the gazotch because Congress is the American people. Congress only does precisely what the American people want. You might as well just substitute "American people" for the word "Congress" there. So yeah, we don't have a functional American people, we have a dysfunctional American people who are in complete denial about the situation they are really in.
It doesn't matter which end of the political spectrum you are on. If you are asking the federal government and federal banking system to work it out so you can keep getting your chunk of the value extraction gravy train then you are just as much the other-human-sacrificer as anyone else.
Look at the article. You could substitute a lot of other more telling terms for what the Bloomberg editors are saying. Instead of "short-term fiscal stimulus" you could more accurately call it "bursting stream of lies to keep people thinking they're worth anything." Instead of "long-term debt reduction" call it "tighter constraints for those on the altar ensuring more value hacking to benefit the best exploiters."
But when you are addicted to human sacrifice, as those living by the World must be, then this is simply standard procedure. It is just the way things are no matter how wretchedly awful it is all around. Gotta make sure we slather on the vanilla frosting of smiles and pithy platitudes about how wonderful we all are anyway. That's standard procedure too.
Should anyone actually truly know the mind of Christ and know of His economy, the one of His Kingdom, and how much He values by the measure of His shed blood, then they might just get it. They would emerge in the joy of knowing the situtation they are truly in.
But that's only if Christ is there, "a friend just beside him in the dark" as Lewis said in that passage.
Otherwise it may indeed be some alien worm creature about to rip your guts open.
Comments
Post a Comment