Thanks for your email.
I agree wholeheartedly with your suggestion that film (maybe all art) is "not just intellectual and can powerfully and suggestively represent inchoate concepts before they can be articulated."
I also agree with your suggestion of caution though I can't help cringe a bit at the suggestion (perhaps accurate) that I'm subjecting Interstellar to a Procrustean Bed.
That said, I think humans have to make sense of things in terms of their experience, all the while pushing the envelope a bit but careful not to break it.
If I remember correctly, it was Chesterton who said that an open mind is like an open mouth: its purpose is to let something in, then close down on it and chew.
Chesterton also pointed out that humankind is in a constant muddle because it is fickle, whimsical and fashionable, always quick to forsake fidelity to a fixed set of moral aspirations.
In this regard, I have long thought America would have made more progress by now if -- instead of creating the fracturedness and fractiousness of the Rainbow Coalition -- we had stuck with Franklin's Four Freedoms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
We'll see how it turns out, but I'm guessing homo sapiens would have been better served by "following the money" instead of getting diverted by groin, uterus and what goes on in the bedroom.
Pax tecum
Alan
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 5:42 PM, CH wrote:
Be careful about fitting someone else's artistic vision into the Procrustean Bed of your philosophy!Part of the beauty if film as a medium is that it's not just intellectual, and can powerfully and suggestively represent inchoate concepts before they can be articulated. I welcome this fertile ground of the imagination and resist trying to infer and articulate a final philosophical position of "what he meant"...But I dare not disagree with you, because of your annoying habit of usually being right. Damn you.Speaks to the depth of vision of the film that it prompts such diverse conversations and passionate positions!
C
On Jan 10, 2015 3:28 PM, "Alan Archibald" <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear C,
I just realized why the end of the movie is schizoid - dividing its attention between the divine "them" and humankind as its own "God."I'm guessing that Nolan - or at least a significant part of him - wants to believe that humans are their own God but simply couldn't get his "universal plot" to work without "divine" intervention."John Ford, John Wayne, Aquinas and Theosis (Christian Divinization)"
http://paxonbothhouses.
blogspot.com/2012/12/more-on- theosis.html After my third viewing I am starting to see things both more clearly, and sometimes in a new (or brighter) light.I look forward to talking it over with you.Pax tecumAlanP.S. Here's the expanded version of an email I sent to Danny after he and I saw Interstellar. I composed it late last night for Maria.
Dear Maria,I'm so happy we got to see "Interstellar" together!Here is the reflection I wrote after seeing it with Danny.I sent you a carbon copy but want to be sure you have a "fresh" copy.I've also made a few additions to the text so that it's better than before.LoveDaddy man***Dear Daniel,Thanks for seeing "Interstellar" with Chuck and me.The movie's theological substrate reminded me of the following links.LoveDman
I can imagine.
And I cannot imagine.Cooper: You're a scientist, Brand.Brand: So listen to me when I say love isn't something that we invented. It's observable. Powerful. It has to mean something.Cooper: Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing...Brand: We love people who have died. Where's the social utility in that?Cooper: None.Brand: Maybe it means something more - something we can't yet understand. Maybe it's some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive.
"The Word was made Flesh"
The NoosphereTeilhard de Chardin's Vision
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJPaleontologist/CosmologistPope Francis: What Christianity Looks Like When Believers Realize "God Is Love"
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