Interstellar

I actually went to see Interstellar some weeks back and thoroughly enjoyed.  I've advised everyone who's asked me about it to go and see it... with a big box of tissues in hand.

So I had heard nothing of the critics explosion.

Apparently Scientist Dr Adam Rutherford said on twitter:

"It hates humans. That we have not enough faith in engineering or exploration. That NASA is a secret?"

Um, did you actually watch the rest of the film?  The Earth in Interstellar is killing humans by starvation and NASA was disbanded when it refused the governments demands to cut the population by dropping missiles from orbit on the population centres.  By the time that the Government realises at the answers to the problem does not reside on Earth everyone is that short on resources that if the public knew that NASA had reformed to try and find us a new planet, there would be mass riots over the 'waste of resources'.  I'm an Autistic and even I know that in the face of starvation people take the short term solution over the long term 'possible' fix.

As for the whole 'thought-crime' episode at Murphy's school suggesting that "liberals have destroyed America's pioneering spirit", well as far as I can see that is a load of nonsense.  Far from the teachers and by extension the state, being 'liberal', they and it, are instead are trying to force people to give up their dreams of a better future so that they will accept their 'duty' as the caretaker generation.  Is that not the opposite of liberal?


I also take umbrage with Adam Rutherford's observation of:

"It shows no faith that humankind is capable of looking after itself without the help of fifth-dimensional charity workers.  Plus the fact that in conclusion, seven billion people must die for the species to live."

Again, did he actually watch the film?  The conclusion that the Earth bound population has to die for the species to survive is only the conclusion of Michael Caine's character, Professor Brand, a character who has given up hope in his own life work.  It is not the conclusion of Brand's own daughter Amelia, Murphy and Murphy's father Cooper (Matthew McConaughey).

They do not give up, not even when Cooper has to sacrifice himself to the pull of a black hole to give Amelia the chance to go on.  The bit of the film that had me crying the most was that moment when Cooper is in the middle of the Black Hole, in the constructed world the mysterious 'Them' have created and he despairs of finding away of sending the knowledge he now has back in time to Murphy so she can save the seven billion people.  The second bit that really made me cry was when he realises that it was him that set his own feet to the path he had taken, using gravity to reach through the fourth dimension, time.  That was one of the most uplifting moments in the whole film for me - "It was us, it was always us."

That quote "it was us" also for me made believe that the mysterious 'Them', the so called 'fifth-dimensional charity workers' of Dr Adam Rutherford's point of view, aren't so strange foreign alien species, they are us.  'Them' is what the human race evolves into, give it's second chance on it's new world, stripped of war and bathed in the light of a Black Hole.

In that way, Professor Brand does give a gift to the human race, despite nearly leaving behind seven billion people - "Every rivet that they strike could have been a bullet.  We have done a marvellous thing for the human race."

Faced with its death, the human race finally manages to cast off its instinct for violent and start working together as a whole, as a unit.  They pass through the Worm Hole a different people to those that were on Earth and step towards a future, where mankind can finally let itself evolve into the responsible adults we are meant to be.

Why do people hate this idea?  That out of opposition can come beauty?  Why do we forget the beauty of the poppy of Flanders Field?  Why do we run from trying something new until forced to?  Why can't we take climate change and the disappearance of coal and oil turn them into the rocket ship that takes us to our new world?

Why can't we just for once tell our governments to go shove their war and their greed and reach across the fences ourselves to put a stop to the fighting?  I believe it happened once, on top of the Berlin Wall, so why not again?

Why not?  Actually that's the wrong question.  It's already happening.  There are villages in sub-Sahara Africa who, though they are the poorest of the poor, have heard that the best way to stop the growth of the Sahara is to plant a band of trees all along the edge of it and instead of waiting for the governments to do it, are out there planting the trees.

There are people who are researching how to create electricity from the body heat of humans and there are people who are working on cladding the roofs and walls of buildings in our cities to suck up the carbon dioxide we are creating.

There are people every where who are turning off the car and walking/biking to work.

So the real question isn't why not?  It's why not more?  Because we are afraid of the night, the dark, the unknown?

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night."

Maybe some young men and women, should rage at the dying of the light.