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Recently, due to the heat and a bout of laziness, I have been consuming a lot of culture and entertainment. When these moods strike, I usually end up watching a film a day mixed into consuming a TV series on my watchlist over a period of a few days or completing a video game from my massive backlog. Over this past week, I watched Alex Garland’s CIVIL WAR, a film that captured the big screen zeitgeist for a short time. Over the past six months, I also played and completed TALOS PRINCIPLE 2, the sequel to what is the best puzzle game of all-time. So how do each of these pieces of entertainment rank?
Alex Garland is a writer. No matter the genre, Garland has likely contributed to it. Back in the late 1990s, he entered our zeitgeist as a novelist writing THE BEACH (The Leonardo DiCaprio film) and THE TESSERACT. He moved into film and wrote a few of the best science fiction movies screenplays of the late 2000s/early 2010s, SUNSHINE, NEVER LET ME GO, and DREDD. He also was a primary writer on a DEVIL MAY CRY video game and another original well-reviewed game, ENSLAVED: ODYSSEY OF THE WEST. Taking the next evolutionary step, Garland began directing films. His first film was the indie darling EX MACHINA followed up shortly after by my favorite sci fi movie of the past decade, ANNIHILATION. He moved into television and created the very good Hulu TV show DEVS. With such a diverse creative career, I was looking forward to watching his latest film CIVIL WAR. Unfortunately, this movie was an idea that needed to stay locked in his brain. While the movie has wonderful cinematography and solid acting (A shout out to Kirsten Dunst’s husband Jesse Plemons who has the best scene in the movie), the screenplay is its biggest flaw. Since the United States is divided in ways like it has never been in my lifetime, a little dose of reality to make the film relatable would have been a positive step. Nick Offerman playing the President as a Trumpian type leader just doesn’t work. The Texas/California alliance with their two-star flag would carry more weight if we had a better understanding as to why these two states rebelled. But the director goes out of his way not to make any political statements. The movie should be retitled, SCENES FROM A CIVIL WAR. This leads to its other biggest flaw, a story focusing on journalists reporting on the ongoing Civil War. They move from location to location engaging with people while trying to remain objective. The movie wants you to be horrified by the images inside of these vignettes. But the movie having an objective point of view sucks all the emotion and drama out of the film. When the movie begins its final battle in Washington DC, it had already lost my interest. So, the ending left me feeling cold. I don’t know what the purpose of this movie was supposed to be. But it feels like one giant misstep for Garland and A24. On the brighter side, I finished THE TALOS PRINCIPLE 2 over this past weekend. One of the most beautiful games graphically that has ever been loaded onto my screen, the Talos Principle 2 is primarily a puzzle game mixed into a science fiction atmosphere with large doses of philosophy thrown in. Taking place after the completion of the first game, where the ending delivers a twist that human beings are extinct and life continues on through immortal robots that were created by one of the last humans who wanted to give them access to all the knowledge and history of humanity so as not to repeat its mistakes, this game starts with your creation as the final robot in their futuristic utopia, the robot 1K or number 1000 (The peak number for the “perfect” society of New Jerusalem). When these robots discover an ancient megastructure, your task is to infiltrate this monument through completing puzzles in twelve different worlds which unlock access. The puzzles are incredible and creative. As a person who historically struggles with puzzles, my cheat rate on this game was low (Around 20% of them required me to check YouTube for a solution). The game pays off its large commitment (47 hours of playtime) with a wonderful ending and the potential release of another game. The video game industry has not had the best decade so far. But this game is in the elite tier. I highly recommend purchasing this game and encourage getting that grey matter operating inside of your head whether through the intricate and complicated puzzle solving or reading the philosophical writings. TALOS PRINCIPLE 2 is a fantastic game that should not be missed. Until next time!
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My continued fascination with late 19th Century writing continues. There was my review of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV last year. Shortly after was my blog speculating on whether human evolution has reached a new era here. There was my analysis about whether the economic system of feudalism has returned despite our evolution towards being more democratic and individualistic. Today, this blog will be a review of one of the most famous political manifestos ever written, GOD AND THE STATE, by Mikhail Bakunin. Before diving into the heart of this review, a little background on who Bakunin was.
Bakunin was born in the Tzer Oblast in Russia located northwest of Moscow into a wealthy family in 1814 that had over 500 serfs on it working his family’s land. A restless youth, he studied philosophy and wanted to become a mathematics teacher while often getting in trouble at school while also rejecting a military career. His wealth allowed him to travel all over Europe and read the great German philosophers which soon put him into Karl Marx and Pierre Joseph-Proudhon’s orbit. As society began to rebel against the engrained political systems in the mid-1800s including such famous events as the February 1848 French Revolution, the 1848 Prague uprising, and the 1849 Dresden uprising, Bakunin became obsessed with freedom movements for various ethnic groups including the Slavs who were mostly living under the thumb of the Austrian Hapsburgs. His rebellious stance towards these governments got him arrested, sentenced to death and eventually placed into solitary confinement in the famous Peter and Paul fortress prison in St. Petersburg, Russia. After escaping Russia through Japan and the United States during the Civil War, Bakunin became a prolific writer and one of the earliest promoters of the anarchist movement. Founding what would later be called collectivist anarchism, his writing would influence the International Workingmen’s Association and was key to the early Spanish anarchist movement of the 1930s. Bakunin did not agree with Marx and his ideas about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and after the First International was founded in 1864, Bakunin and Marx clashed over their contradictory views until Marx had Bakunin removed out of the organization in 1872. Now on his own, Bakunin wrote his most famous work, GOD AND THE STATE, before his death. After failing to initiate an anarchist revolution in Bologna in the 1870s, Bakunin died shortly after in 1876. His legacy is often linked with two individuals, Karl Marx, who founded communism which has plagued the Earth since the late 19th Century and can be directly blamed for over 100 million deaths due to its failed ideology. The other is Peter Kropotkin who followed Bakunin and converted his form of collectivist anarchism into anarcho-communism, a more controversial political ideology. GOD AND THE STATE coming in at a little over 100 pages is an interesting read. Unlike Kropotkin whose anarcho-communist ideology in practice would establish a new ruling order and Karl Marx’s ideology which did create powerful, oppressive states for the “greater good” that led to the most violent century in human history, Bakunin differed from both men by prioritizing human liberty and freedom above any institutional structure. He was one of the first to see governments and religion as dueling oppressive forces that have held the human race back for centuries. On God: “The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice.” “To worship a god is to degrade oneself, to kneel before an imaginary tyrant who demands obedience and submission.” On Marx’s Idea of Socialism and Communism: “Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality” On the State: “The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle — a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak — and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States — it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice. “The State is a prison, a cage that traps the human spirit and traps the mind.” The State is a tool of oppression, a weapon wielded by the ruling class to maintain their power and privilege.” But where Bakunin excels is understanding a new tool of oppression that has caused so much global harm in the 21st Century, a managerial society ruled by intellectual elites. Over 140 years ago, he foresaw the type of authoritarianism that would come out of this type of societal structure. “Human labor, in general, is still divided into two exclusive categories: the first—solely intellectual and managerial—includes the scientists, artists, engineers, inventors, accountants, educators, governmental officials, and their subordinate elites who enforce labor discipline The second group consists of the great mass of workers, people prevented from applying creative ideas or intelligence, who blindly and mechanically carry out the orders of the intellectual-managerial elite This economic and social division of labor has disastrous consequences for members of the privileged classes, the masses of the people, and for the prosperity, as well as the moral and intellectual development, of society as a whole.” This aspect of his writing is often overlooked. Bakunin saw the world changing from one with legacy systems of power like government and religion into a different type of world filled with intellectuals who would enforce the same oppressive systems onto the masses. Can we honestly argue that the world in existence today is not the reality that Bakunin was so concerned about? In conclusion, if you are interested in the ideas of anarchism and freedom, this manifesto is a good place to start. Bakunin is a smooth writer with clear, direct ideas. If you find the time, take the two hours required to read this important political manifesto. And once again, maybe human civilization was smarter in the late 19th Century? Maybe the technocracy that surrounds us has hindered our ability to critically think? An interesting question for a later debate. Until next time. |
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