Impressionistically reviewing his work, I hypothesize Kubrick preferred solutions borne of intellectual externalities, functioning on deeds which champion anthro-conquest, our doctrine of conquering nature. In 2001, that thesis is strongly bracketed; the savage weaponized femur turns to elegant spaceship, then alien superbeings thoughtfully gift a new improved human edition, the Star Child, as if questing the greatest externality--the infinite womb of space--will bring us blessings, improvement. Oh how far we've come!
Yet what we may need delivered instead, as Derrick Jensen suggests, is a Stone Age being, a relatively ambition-less "primitive" who consciously curtails violent growth so as to not accelerate world destruction.
If the gift is not a future science-fictiony offering from aliens and superbeings, then perhaps the blessing is something we already have: memory, the cushion of our soul. After all, the cultural act of forgetting is a kind of ignorance, a scourge of civilization failing to learn from itself.
Kubrick was fond of spoofing & juxtaposing cultural schizophrenias; a computer programed with human contradictions to kill those he's meant to protect, the manic ironies of war, civilization as a veneer for savagery, etc. I don't do justice summarizing his critiques of our world.
Here, we mischaracterize our humble beginnings, restyle nature to our own liking, disconnected as products of glorious Cartesian separations.
Cogito Ergo Sum, Kubrick?
Sunday, November 28
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