Augustine wrote that Christians are ideally in the world but
not of it. The fallen world is not the Christian’s true home. For the 5000 (plus
crew) prospective colonists hibernating aboard a mammoth spaceship in the film,
Passengers (2016), the planet Earth
was presumably not their true home—or maybe that home was becoming climatically
rather untenable and the 5000 were lucky souls heading for a new, unspoiled
home. In any event, the film’s central paradigm can be characterized as “travel
to” and “end-point.” That is to say, means and end characterize this picture at
a basic level. The film is particularly interesting at this level in that so
much value is found to reside in the means even as the end is still held out as
being of great value.
For Aurora Lane, intentionally woken by Jim Preston with 89
more years to go on the trip, Earth had not been home in the sense that home is
where love has been found. For her, home was mobile—moving through space at
half light-speed—for she found love with Jim in spite of the fact that he had
deprived her of living to see the end-point, the colony-planet. In refusing
Jim’s new-found way of putting her back to sleep so she could wake again just
four months before the end of the voyage, Aurora must have realized that she
had found her home with Jim traveling through space. With plentiful food and
drink, and no need even of money, Aurora and Jim faced a downside only in the
possibility of encroaching loneliness. Headless waiters and a bottomless
bartender—all robots—could not be said to give rise to any viable sense of
community.
It is strange, therefore, that 89 years later, at the end of
the voyage, the awakened crew and passengers do not encounter any offspring
having been made out of Jim and Aurora’s love. The couple having realized that
they would not live to see the new world, would they not have naturally wanted
to have children who would have a chance of seeing the prospective paradise? It
seems to me that the screenwriter did not think out the consequences of the
couple’s decision far enough in this respect. The awakened passengers and crew
should have come upon both trees and the
grown children whose entire life had been in space.
In spite of having only each other, perhaps Aurora and Jim
relish the peace that can be so compromised in a community (imaging having an
apartment complex all to yourself!) and the freedom from the insecurity of want—two
assets that could only be found during the journey. The spectacular views of
space are also worthy (although it is difficult even to imagine a ship of such
material that could withstand such a close pass to a sun). Yet, even so, how
difficult it is for us—the audience—to understand why Aurora and Jim could
possibly come to prefer a life spent
entirely en route, on transportation.
We are so used to being goal-oriented, teleological beings that we miss the
sheer possibility that the journey itself might constitute a full life worth
living.
Abstractly stated, we are so used to relegating means to an
end as long at the end is viable that we have great trouble enjoying the means
apart from the end. As long as the end stands a chance of being realizable, we
cannot ignore it and thus fully rest content along the way.
The ability to reason
about means and ends is a virtue.[1]
Interestingly, virtuous actions “may be pursued ‘instrumentally’ but must be
done ‘for their own sake.’ . . . They must be ends in themselves. . . . Actions
truly expressive of the virtues are actions in which the means are prized at
least as much as the extrinsic ends to which they are directed. . . . The telos, the best life for human beings to
live, is an inclusive end constituted in large part by virtuous activity.”[2] In
other words, virtues are both means and ends. A person should value acting virtuously
for itself, rather than merely as a means to an end. While not a virtue-ethics
guy, Kant uses this characterization in Critique
of Practical Reason to claim that human beings should be valued as ends in
themselves, rather than merely as means to other ends (e.g., manipulated). Can
a boss ever push his use of his subordinates for his own ends sufficiently out
of his mind to value those people as ends in themselves—as having inherent
value?
The space voyage in the film is shown at first as only a
means to a distinctly different end, the colony. Yet by the story’s end, the
spaceship comes to be an end in itself too. Due to the length of the trip and
the appreciably shorter human lifespan, Jim and Aurora find value in the means not
as a means, but only as an end in itself.
Yet as human beings, could they ever come to disconnecting the spaceship
from awareness of its end? Could Jim and Aurora ever feel a sense of ease on
board without the sense that they have lost or given up the spaceship as a
means? For the remainder of their lives, the colony is ahead of them. Is it
even possible that two human beings could become oblivious to this fact?
Here on Earth, the Christmas season is so oriented to Christmas
Eve and Christmas Day that it is scarcely imaginable that the festive
atmosphere during the first three weeks of December could be chosen over
Christmas itself. I suspect that more adults like Aurora and Jim, being without
family, would prefer the season over the holiday itself—even opting out of it. Yet
can a person come to enjoy a Christmas show or attend a Christmas party without
having in mind the “not yetness” and the “betterness” of Christmas itself? What
if the experience with friends at the Christmas Party two weeks before the
actual holiday is better than the saccharine day itself? Can the experience
ever hope to get its due regard and esteem for its own sake even as it is
regarded as a means?
1. Joseph
J. Kotva, The Christian Case for Virtue
Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996): 24.
