ontologicalshock

The state of being forced to question one's worldview.

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"We cast our hearts in plaster, we imagined our bodies were fashioned from stone, but they chipped at the brick and the mortar, we found out that we're only layers of skin hiding bones. And our bones are like chains, old and rusted in the raid, they're going to snap when the weight shifts." -  Jordan Dreyer

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Break generational curses. Quit yelling at your kids before they go to bed and expect them to sleep well. Quit yelling at your kids in the morning, right after they wake up before school, and expect them to have a good day. You set the tone for your children. You set the tone for your voice that they will always remember in their heads. You become their inner voice, don't be their inner critic. Speak life, speak love. Speak bravery, kindness and hope. Speak wisdom and truth. Most of all, listen to your children. - Dez Bryant

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Guanine, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine

Gattaca is one of those movies I think will always be remembered fondly, and I don't get exactly why.

I love sci-fi, and I love the dystopian atmospheres some of those movies lay down for us, and how they can feel realistic yet very hard to grasp.

This 1997 underdog was always going to be a hard sell at the awards, especially with Titanic, As Good as It Gets or Good Will Hunting breathing down its neck, so it is no surprise that it went basically unnoticed.

The 1930's source material, the book A Brave New World, is an interesting piece of literature, especially when one realizes it was published 60+ years before, and the base concept is there, a society where newborns are genetically engineered for quality-enhancement purposes, natural childbirth therefore is considered inferior and the resulting adult individuals are forever stuck with lesser, blue-collar-esque jobs. A life sentence they cannot escape.

After a rewatch this week, I got the sense that Gattaca falls short on some aspects:

it is never convincing enough as the "future", it feels instead like an alternate reality. I love classic cars, but the production crew chose not to change anything other than the sound they made, hinting at some sort of alternate (sustainable?) fuel source, therefore we end up with a human race capable of genetically engineering human beings to the bone, but they still produce cars with 60's tech, for me, it was hard to make sense of it, which is a shame since "futuristic" movies tend to age very badly but Gattaca manages to curb that by not being too ambitious (well, the low 32M budget was also a factor I am sure). The clothing was also very "normal", sometimes we could mistake it for a 30's black and white movie about the mob... was that the point all along?

There is never enough background on the inner workings of that society. Just like in post-apocalyptic stories, I would have liked to understand more about what led to it, what led them to believe that this was the way to go, after all nowadays discrimination raises all kinds of serious issues, was it a peaceful transition after acquiring the necessary knowledge? All those "inferior" beings never tried to change things? At the end of the day I can digest wild ideas much more easily if the path to them feels at least logical, on the other hand if one just comes up with stuff, well, everything is possible if we turn off the logical switch;

although narrated movies always feel that little bit more special, this movie sometimes feels like it doesn't know how to capitalize on it, and thus the timing, and the frequency felt off to me;

one of the big reveals, even though I am not the best at figuring twists out, was played so casually that I felt almost nothing, which leads me to say that, to a certain extent, I think the movie lacked a bit more drama.

What did I like?

well, it's sci-fi, so it has interesting approaches to the reality the characters live in. The minimalistic aesthetic and the use of colour are very appealing and even beautiful at times. Good cinematography;

Hawke but especially Law deliver solid performances, Thurman though is bland, and uninteresting, I could not care less whatever could happen to her, I guess I can apologize her because she was playing the part of a true member of the elite... but then again, so was Law... maybe Law was not taking Soma, and she was... was that completely clear in the movie though? Was Soma even introduced as "a thing"? It is mentioned often in the book...;

the soundtrack, though slightly repetitive, is delicate and dramatic, it fits very well on the overall minimalistic aesthetic.

After the credits roll I recognize the potential, the thought-provoking, deeply philosophical ideas about how biological perfection can't hold a candle against will power and spirit, are all there, but with a modern budget, it would be world I would like to visit again, with a bit more heft and a little less minimalism.

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The Darkness of Helplessness

This September, Linkin Park announced a new chapter in their career, wounds have been licked, and sorrow is now a scar, it never goes away, but it does not prevent us from moving on, and they have.

The capture that headlines this post is from a tribute performance to Chris Cornell, Chester had just lost a close friend, someone he resounded so much with, and who took his own life just weeks before. There, after a sincere and heartfelt rendition only sadness and hopelessness could achieve, he struggled to finish the song 'One More Light' without breaking into tears, and by the end a broken man, not the artist, was on that stage.

There are little things in life as raw as when someone can no longer hold the facade and lets the vulnerability takeover, who knows what Chester was feeling, battling with depression for the most part of his life, fighting himself, and the addictions so common in the world of music, with overbooked calendars and the pressures of popularity and overwhelming mediatic exposure that never go away and leave little room for enjoying the simple things in life, nuisances like spending quality time with your family, seeing your kids grow, parenting them and bonding with other human beings who have the ability to hold your hand while you cross the darker paths.

The stuff that infuses life with meaning!

In the end, career pressures, fame and lack of proper support took the best of Chester. It's a shame.

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Not exactly a stranger to classical music, a sub-genre that is never too far from my ear drums are the classical pieces composed for cinema, one of my favourite things in life.

Hans Zimmer is up there, he has made some of the most outstanding pieces of musical delight I ever heard, but for Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, Max Richter produced something really special.

The film itself is a tour de force in all aspects. Amy Adams puts on a show that, although not exactly new to her, she does it like few do, but what really stands out for me is the artwork that takes shape before our eyes when breathtaking cinematography and music hold hands.

On some days it is very difficult to hold the tears in, they are part of the "On The Nature of Daylight" package in my opinion.

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Don't compromise your life by living in a space between a future that you are not willing to commit to and a past that no longer serves you.

T.K. Coleman (host of The Minimalists)

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I am perfectly fine with accepting that sometime around 2000 years ago, some men who walked this earth inspired whole movements based on hearsay and gossip about stuff they apparently did and said.

If they did say some of those things, well, no one knows, sorry, we have to believe the written accounts I guess. Did some of them walk on water or cured the ill? We must assume they did not for we have no evidence of that being physically possible to be performed from a human being and since we also have no evidence of the existence of any intelligent, non-human but anthropomorphically lookalike beings that can do such things, then by default, it does not correspond to the truth. Either it was 100% manufactured to ramp up their mystic level or, again, hearsay/gossip taken out of context and/or blown out of proportion and/or catastrophic misunderstandings.

It also happens so that the aforementioned movements were highly effective in explaining deep subjects that we still struggle with today, most notably our own existence but pretty fast the ones responsible for spreading the message quickly saw the huge potential of having ignorant minds getting told how things that surpass our understanding supposedly came to be, giving them some piece of mind by feeling less lost in their own consciousness.

What saddens me is that such ambiguously, nonsensical, outdated written fantasy that was born basically out of either bad intentions (controlling the herd for a purpose) or plain ignorance, still hold up today and even with all the scientific knowledge we add to our disposal every single day, young minds are still getting successfully impregnated with blind beliefs on the supernatural and even worse, hampering their short lives on this earth on those accounts.

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All the atoms of our bodies will be blown into space in the disintegration of the Solar System, to live on forever as mass or energy. That’s what we should be teaching our children, not fairy tales about angels and seeing grandma in heaven.

Carolyn Porco

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The universe is born. 13.8 billion years pass. 200 billion trillion stars are born. A band of murderous monkeys on a rock circling one of these stars says, “We must be the reason for all this.” Shortly after, the monkeys blow themselves up.

@HelloJessicaFox

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"For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess, I'm suddenly having a hard time leaving it.

Of course they say that every atom in our body was once a part of a star. Maybe I'm not leaving, maybe I'm going home."

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"In a godless and cynical age, it may be inevitable that people will seek to praise the self effacing, the altruistic and the pure in heart. But only a complete collapse of our critical faculties can explain the illusion that such a person is manifested in a shape of a demagogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers."

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"If people didn't invent gods I wouldn't have to deny them"

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"The God who created this Universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac."

[memesforatheists]

We bad.