November 2007

17:00 - 13/11/2007 - Sunshine

I watched the film Sunshine the other night and I feel compelled to note down just quite how evocative I found it. It's a very clever little film really and I heavily agree with certain aspects of it's message and feel. At times like this I always feel my writing skills are somewhat inadequate. I'm not sure I'm capable, without extreme amounts of effort and editing, of producing a well structured and eloquent summation of my thoughts, so I'm just going to make this apology and then jump right in and hope the result is at least understandable.

I'm not quite sure of how much of the backstory to outline either, especially because it's largely irrelevant to what I want to say. So I'm just going to say that to appreciate this little commentary you really have to have seen the film and I'll assume after this paragraph that you have. I'll quickly outline it in the remainder of this paragraph just in case you want to carry on reading even if you've not seen the film. Set 50 years in the future, a crew is sent on a mission to 'restart the sun' which - for no given reason - is dying much ahead of its time, and the future of the human race depends on the successful completion of their mission. This is the second (and last) such mission, the first having failed 7 years ago for an unknown reason. We enter the story just before the ship, suggestively named Icarus II (& for once in a film the subtleties of the name are apt to the story as well as the obvious) enters 'the Dead-Zone' where interference from the sun prevents communication with Earth.

I'm going to start presuming you've seen the film now (hence there will be spoilers although I do discuss the film very loosely for the most part), and make assertions which might seem lacking a justification if you've not seen the film. What made the film so evocative to me is that it is an epitome of the Atheistic worldview, more specifically a scientific (think particularly physics) one. All I really wish to do here is point out the particular parallels I noticed. The oppressive, claustrophobic and above all isolationist and lonely feel of the ship and it's crew being like a synonym for lack of a God. Although it's interesting that there is a constant almighty presence in the film, that of the awesomely powerful Sun. Another direct parallel I noticed was that towards the end of Cappa knowing he was going to die (on multiple levels - no where near enough oxygen to get home, going to fall into the Sun, and also being severely wounded!) epitomising the particularly intense mortality implied by an Atheistic worldview (what with there being no after-life) and yet having the motivation to struggle (and he really does struggle) on regardless to his goal. Along with these more direct parallels, I also noticed that throughout the film there is always a large amount of uncertainty in everything, even uncertainty in that what Cappa (when it comes down to it, the film is really all about him - although you wouldn't guess it from the first 30 minutes) does hold as his guiding principles (science and reason) to being enough to overcome the other uncertainties. In the end holding true does turn out to be enough, but that's what the film (/Director / Writer) wants say rather than it being a definite aspect of this worldview.

The film could be said to be largely about Hubris, that is defiance of God (or that there even is one) and striving for that which is unreachable (hence Icarus). It is interesting that Hubris has become synonymous to excessive pride or arrogance, which a Theist would certainly say the Atheistic world view is guilty of, yet this film (and Atheists) would not portray it as such, and in fact would say it a virtue, what with unlike the real Icarus, the mission succeeding, reaching that which was thought unreachable and literally saving the world. Another interesting thing is that I was having a theological discussion with Tom and he independently brought up exactly this belief in the control of our own destiny (or as he would put it, pretending to be God) as the most dangerous thing about the Atheistic worldview, and again I would put it is as a virtue and that believing that you are not the master of your own fate being potentially incredibly dangerous.

On a slightly less deep level, it's interesting the almost God like persona given to the Sun, and the reverence afford this to this almost incomprehensible power reminding me of 'Einstein's God'. Which is something like, that in the place of God, there is instead a deep respect for the beauty, complexity and power of nature, without ever giving it a will or personality. I also really liked film for the fact that the crew truly felt human, the hero, a physicist, really came across like one (a good one too, knowing when to say "I don't know" with respect to a problem - one of my main gripes with some physicists) and that during the whole mission it didn't cut back to Earth to show what they were saving like in other films of this nature, this always seems to give characters in other films unquestionable motivation even thought they aren't seeing the cut backs, whereas with Sunshine we feel the realityof being alone and far from home. I liked the morality aspects of the film and the complete 'gloss over' of the science, because it's not relevant to the story and this is when I think Sci-Fi is truly at it's best.

I'd also like to mention before I finish up, that it's said on many web forums that Pinbacker (the bad guy) is meant to represent fundamentalism and this maybe so, but I don't agree with quite such a harsh portrayal, although I can see that some might. However the fact that he's quite so insane allows me to put down parts of his behaviour purely to his insanity - which is not necessarily entirely due to his belief system, and presumably might allow Theistic viewers to do the same so they might be able to not write off what the rest of the film is trying to say because they object so strongly to this parallel.

So this film is really quite a spiritual one if you listen to what it's got to say, and for me sums up well many aspects of my own atheistic world view, even with all its isolation, claustrophobic feel, and bleak outlook, the film still manages to have a beauty about it, that when surrounded by all this negativity is all the more beautiful, that being one final parallel I'd like to draw (and yeah I know I used the word parallel a lot).

19:00 - 05/11/2007 - Into the fourth and final year...

A lot has happened since I last made an entry. Given that it's been over 2 months you'd expect this, so what I mean to say is that even more has happened than you might otherwise expect. Now most people that are likely to read this will probably already be aware of a lot of this, but I'm going to pretend that there's some sort of ficitous regular reader(s) of this blog who have no idea what happens to me other than what I write down. In short, I moved flat, broke my foot, got mugged and broke my jaw, recovered some. Also I've been without internet at the new house since we moved in, but that seems fairly inconsequential.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I joined a wadoryu karate club in Wandsworth on here before, but I did. The people seemed friendly and the training atmosphere, whilst obviously a little different from my original club, was much preferable to any of the other clubs I'd attempted to train with. Pair this with the fact it's only 30 minutes walk from my new flat and actually practices my style (more or less...) means that I decided I'd keep it up. Unfortunately after only a few weeks of training I managed, when sparring one of the instructors, to get my foot caught in between the mats on the floor whilst sliding backwards and fell over to quite a loud crack! I carried on sparring for around 10 minutes because it didn't hurt at first but the pain mounted to a point where I thought it probably wasn't wise to continue! After nearly crying in pain when walking to the bus stop I thought it'd probably be a good idea to go to A&E, and it turned out that I'd broken my fifth metatarsal (thankfully undisplaced), cue crutches and a half-cast.

Happily I was downgraded to a removable synthetic cast that just went around my foot and was walkable on. I kept that on for about a week and then just starting limping around in my nikes. First night out after breaking my foot Max, Emma and I got pretty heavily drunk out in fulham, and ended up walking back at gone 2am, and got mugged. I say mugged more accurately me and Max were attacked from behind without warning by six black hoodie wearing youths (not trying to be prejudiced here, just accurate) and had our phones and wallets taken. I got kicked in the head four or five times and ended up going to A&E again! Interestingly they didn't attack Emma, they just asked her for a bag twice and she said no twice (Kudos) and then they left her alone, strange set of morals there. Yeah so that's how I got a fractured jaw, which was annoying. The nurse told me I was special because 'I' had managed to facture it on just one side, which normally never happens ("it's like a polo, you can usually only break it in two places").

Not something I like to dwell on too much but in a way it was probably good that I was both very drunk and had a broken foot, because if I'd been just been a little drunk (and not had a broken foot) a good idea or not, presuming I would aware enough not to get attacked from behind, after 7 years of karate training I doubt I could stop myself from fighting back [people say (though the one's that say it specifically to me generally don't know I've got a black belt), that you'd think you'd fight back but when it came down to it you wouldn't really. Honestly though when someone throws a punch at me (generally playfully, but still) I don't think about blocking it, I just do] in which case given the numbers I'd have almost certainly either got beaten up worse or possibly stabbed. Of course if I hadn't been limping along and we hadn't been so drunk we'd quite possibly not have been attacked...

What was the most annoying thing is I lost all the numbers in my phone, I'd written down some a few months back but there are still a few that I'd got since or not written down that I had no other way to get in contact with. If you've not given me your number recently and I had it before (or you want me to have it) please text me it, thanks. Also lost my cards and my driving lisence photo-card, the latter meaning I can't really go out to clubs or spoons where they WILL ID you if you look under 30. I could take my passport if I really wanted to go but there's always the chance I'd lose it and honestly I prefer just having a few pints with mates in the pub, who thankfully don't ID me.

It's been almost 6 weeks since I broke my foot and 4 since I fractured my jaw and I've been operating normally for a couple of weeks now, which is nice. Foot's still tender occasionally and I can't start karate again until at least december, which is very annoying seeing as it takes at least 2 months out of possibly as low at 9 months I have to train at this particular club. Also the lack of exercise has been making me feel a little down too. Now that I don't have a bench in my room it's harder to motivate myself to do workouts too.

In good news, the previous tenants have finally disconnected the BT line that was in their name so we should be able to get the internet in the next couple of weeks, at which point I can finally download HL2: Episode 2, Portal and TFC2. Even better news was I decided to cash in my stowed 21st birthday present and my parents bought me a snowboard (a Burton Custom), boots and bindings. I can't wait to go boarding again, it's been a long time now. Me and my family were possibly going to go in the christmas break, but that looks unlikley now, and I'd rather spend christmas with my family than go on the imperial ski trip, so it'll probably have to be the easter break.

I kept somewhat of little journal on moving into the new flat, I might transcribe some of the less personal entries onto here once we have the internet set up (I'm uploading from uni at the moment if you were wondering), but then again knowing me I might not. On the mention of Uni, my courses and MSci project are actually actively interesting me (bit of a new experience at university) unfortunately they are also horrendously complex and the complete lack of any hardcore mathematical work for the last three years is showing, hopefully I'm going to be able to motivate myself to catch up and then keep up, still working on that. Perhaps the fact that at the moment I seem to most want to do a PhD after my degree, and I need to impress my MSci Project supervisor if I want a chance of getting a funded placement will prove to be sufficient.