The Metaphysics of Inception (I know I am a bit late)

A strong emotion mates with the prototype of an idea, planting a seed that flowers into dimension upon dimension of logically constructed realities, all flowing out from the original source, growing into structures that take shape according to the nature of the idea in the face of environmental context. Ideas become cross-pollinated, ideas breed, ideas are produced by mankind and mankind is in term shaped by the ideas. Beautiful.

If I wasn't mistaken, Inception was a vivid, exquisitely constructed peephole into the machinery of evolution itself.

This notion of reality moves me very deeply for reasons I don't know. From this metaphysics, it wouldn't be too hard to draw parallels to Clinton's own philosophy (I think it's Clinton's) churned out in Funkadelic's "Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts," a song that brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.

Afterthought: Inception is less a declaration of concrete metaphysics, and more a meditation on the nature of reality and dreams, as I understand it. This metaphysics was more of an extraction from the narrative, an extraction that could be incorrect, as the director sees it. Ah, another instance of how ideas cross-pollinate. The complexity of this work lends to a multi-faced prism whose surfaces can split light in all different directions, lending a multitude of interpretations.

On Freedom

I've always wanted to believe in the ideal of free choice; that man is master of his own fate in the Great Scheme, and all that. But I continuously come up against evidence for the opposite in the real world.

Not that this is entirely discouraging. Allow me to explain.

Daily I come up against rigid minds; these are hardened, earthy things desperately clinging to the ideas that they were born into. They are closed to revision, incurious to intellectual exploration. They refuse to undertake the mixing of black and white in the noble mission of producing grays.

As time passes, these inflexible minds crystallize further, strengthening themselves against even the most compelling of revolutionary ideas.

Suddenly a snapshot is taken: each moment in the present seems as an instant in stasis; a static slice of our active, predetermined formation becomes visible.

The ignorant drip and freeze onto the frigid stalactites of tradition. The educated zig zag their way off of their theoretical starting points, each agent taking shape according to their prototypes.

We strive to act in accordance with what we really are, lest we break our back against our own predestined forms. But still we change. Or perhaps the environment changes and we stay the same, our shapes altering along with the scenery.

Considering everything, I still believe that it is important to uphold the free ideal; that we are all free agents in illusion. Even if all of this is predetermined and that we are what we were alway meant to be, and we never had control of our futures....it is still important to believe that we are acting as free agents. It dictates our final shape, the final form of our personal crystal. Even if we don't have control, the illusion of control still has the power to form works of beauty.

Furthering a Tired Genre: Horror

I've been meaning to write about Dead Space 2 for a while now, and I've finally finished absorbing it to such an extent where I feel I have a handle on why it has made such a deep impression on me.

I'm a big fan of the series, even more now that its world has been further fleshed out and expanded upon. It is blossoming into a horrible version of Mass Effect or to a lesser extent, Star Wars, where out there in the not too distant universe, horrible things pulse and grow in the darkness.

The entire game is a maddening roller coaster of terror after terror. In pre-release interviews, the developers talked about giving the player moments of triumph when the player feels in control. I think this happens sort of, but most of the time I had the impression that I was simply a miserable victim pinballing my way through a living nightmare.

I was at first uncertain about the bleak violence and gore aesthetic that surrounds the game, more so in this one, as the madness increases. But I started to realize something different about the horror genre in general (well, at least the well crafted, respectable horrors): a good horror piece does not glorify or even justify violence and gore, it presents it as part of the terrible nightmare that reality can present. A good horror piece allows you the very real sensation of what it is to be prey, what it is to strive in a completely hostile and insane environment. Horror's niche in creative art is to show us a perspective that we don't always experience, in this case, it brings us face to face with the reality that strange, hostile entities can grow in the dark corners of the universe, and sometimes we experience them.

Dead Space brings this experience to a higher level of vibrancy. And this is done with loads and loads of startling techniques.

Many have talked about the game's sound engineering and for good reason. The sounds in the game are brilliantly, universally, unsettling. The developers do an incredible job of undermining every potential source of safety and stability. I'm not just talking about the moans and bellows of monsters in distant cabins (and the sound travels with a strange, muffled, metallic sheen, as you would imagine sounds travel in a space station). I'm talking about the sounds of doors and elevators and appliances. Everything makes strange unsettling noises that make your stomach drop, and so you are reduced to darting from room to room in dread, wondering, good god, what is that noise?

And in between the bouts of horrible suspense and horrifying action are segments of even more heightened breathlessness, sections that are almost psychedelic in nature. A series of frantic events will abrubtly unravel at rapid fire in strange, tangential sequences, leaving you literally fighting for your life for indefinite periods of time, lending an even more unnerving edge to the story's pace.

Any sense of consistency is eroded as well. Often you are treated to visual tricks and fakes and soon you can't tell threats from shadows and vice versa. This destroys your ability to calculate and anticipate, key ingredients that dissolve in the true horror mood. The creatures themselves move hideously and grotesquely. Their appendages wave like spider's legs. Their movements switch erratically from slow to rapid. So much attention to detail in every facet of the experience. Every little touch is done in the demonic discipline of triggering our evolutionary fear and disgust responses.

Even the characters themselves are given an emotional edge that I haven't seen yet in a videogame. They react understandably adversely to a malevolent world that is quickly deteriorating. They exhibit real, tormented fear. Some of them undertake that agonizing struggle against madness. Most of them succumb, and you genuinely feel for them. Granted, the developers do add a new character that I really enjoy, a sort of anchor for sanity and hope. I won't say too much for fear of spoiling.

Does all this violence affect me negatively? Sometimes it does. But as I got used to it I felt less like a desensitized bloodluster and more like a sort of desperate cancer surgeon, diligently snipping away at nature's more malevolent anomalies.

Still, we have to back away and ask, "Is the experience of prey an experience we should artificially recreate for entertainment?" On that I am not sure, but generally want to believe this: that art and legend are simulation devices. These are artificial creations that allow us to safely experience a multitude of perspectives while contemplating and absorbing, maybe even being instructed in subconscious ways in the meantime. Horror plays into an old survival instinct, an instinct we would rather not have to use, but given the nature of reality, possibly have use for.

Good horror is honest in its depiction of the horrible. I think Dead Space is very honest. A fictional world is created that is believable, and a scourge is introduced into that world that given the conditions, events unfold exactly as they should, in all their terribleness. The protagonist is a likeable every day kind of guy who is forced inadvertently into a survival trip for the rest of his poor life. But he attacks every problem pragmatically and scientifically (he is an engineer) even as his peers are dropping around him like flies.

Dead Space is a never ending nightmare, but within that nightmare is modern (or eh, future) humanity attempting to solve cascading problems, even in the face of opposing forces of humanity itself, such as the church and corrupt government and corporate predators. Dead Space is very much a timeless horror.

Freedom!

Talking to some of my coworkers, a story begins to take shape of the inefficiency of this company.

Strange agendas, errant egos vying for dominance, a manipulation of human interests as opposed to an honest investigation of reality. The only way this business continues is by pure imitation. Ironic, given our proud, puffing proclamations of innovation and leadership.

We hemorrhage out money through inefficient processes as our moronic president loudly dismisses his workers as morons.

Strange, to imagine these insane ecosystems littered across the country, producing our wealth. In this light, The Office stands as a startlingly accurate portrait of the American office, though we can laugh along with it thanks to its incredible sense of humanity...something we can't do with a realistic assessment of a real office.

Ah, and this is that wonderful freedom we've been talking about! Yes, I'm free to leave any time, though no one is hiring. I can do whatever I want, though the only way to make a living is to subscribe to a system that I loathe. I could go where I want, though thanks to urban sprawl, I need a car and a lot of gasoline! As if I had a better idea of how to run things! "You try and build a civilization," someone could snap at me.

Maybe I am out of line, spewing judgements from a position of privilege. I enjoy all of the comforts of the civilization that I routinely disparage. I could be out in a jungle somewhere, fending for my life while fearing disease and disaster. But living all my life in modest comfort maybe it is my function to put some pressure on the brakes, along with a legion of peers and predecessors. I'm along for the ride in this modern, air conditioned vehicle of ours, but its gone wildly off course, so I and many others believe.

Am I lazy? Ungrateful? Would I mind working a farm? If it meant survival, I don't think I would. They call it honest labor because it directly produces results that you can assess. But the work I do, the ends I work towards, I no longer know what it means. I don't know where we are going.

This society is full of overworked pretensions. Old ideas echoing, dispersing, until they are all but gone.

I watched a couple of George Carlin specials tonight. I realized I love this man. Though he was absolutely nuts. He spent hours in agitation, pacing the stage in a hunched posture, spitting and yelling at a laughing audience that was implicated in most of his admonitions. His critiques were bitterly negative and violent, but in his violent rejection of this gluttonous system of ours, he revealed exactly what he wanted with great passion: something simply different.

When I see these glimpses of passion, I want it categorically spread through all of the land. Unfortunately in this time, thoughts like his rapidly gain ground in the people that already know what's going on and then disperse past that.

Oh well, to freedom, or at least the illusion of it. More on that later.