Equals

The film, Equals (2015), presents a fictional story in which people in “the collective” are deemed healthy by the health and safety “police-state” as long as emotions are not detected. Being healthy is predicated on the assumption that emotion just gets in the way, not only of work, but in life more generally. To be sure, they can indeed be difficult for people who have suffered severe psychological and/or physical abuse, or have lost a loved one whether by a death or outright rejection. In the film, Silas voluntarily submits to a cure to the illness of having emotions coming through consciousness because he has been told that Nia, the woman whom he has fallen in love with, has just died. In a modification of Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, Silas does not commit suicide; instead, he gets the injection because the emotional pain of having lost his loved one is simply too much. Anyone who has fallen in love only to be rejected would be tempted to have emotion itself blocked rather than to go on feeling. As a testament to just how deep love is as an emotion, Silas still feels something for Nia even after the injection as the couple travel on a train to escape from the totalitarian collective. He reaches out to put one of his hands on one of hers. Deep inside, he is fighting the “cure.” In actuality, the cure is the disease, foisted by an authoritarian collective on individuals.

Silas and Nia both work in the educational-books department of the collective. At first, he pays her no more attention than he does to the other coworkers, but such equality is based on no one having access to emotion. Rather than being healthy, as the collective claims, such an equality is artificial because emotion is innately part of human nature. A person who refuses to feel emotion due to past emotional/physical abuse actually suffers from severe psychological problems because “stuffing” natural emotions is actually repression. The quip, “emotions have never worked out for me,” is a cop-out that actually makes matters worse, psychologically. Rather than making a person fit for a romantic relationship, such wholesale repression actually inhibits any genuine relationship. A retired psychiatrist once told me that if a person has reached the point of refusing to feel emotion, that person has severe emotional issues that need to be addressed in therapy. In the film, such pathology is considered to be healthy, but Silas and Nia rightly reject the collective’s version of reality, which, by the way, is said to be found by investigating outer rather than inner space. Hence the book department's writers write on astronomy, whether as nonfiction or fiction. 

The assumption that the answer to the question of ultimate reality is to be found far away in outer space is itself problematic because astronomy and ontology are two different fields of knowledge. Put another way, perception and empirical study are bounded and thus cannot capture raw reality itself.

To be sure, astronomical science can be used as an analogy for human dynamics, through neither one gets us to an answer concerning ultimate reality. Even as deeply meaningful as loving another person is, the emotional intensity cannot reach reality in the sense of Kant’s “things in themselves.” 

The emotionless equality of humans that is espoused by the collective as a sort of dogma can be understood as artificial by looking at the cosmic background radiation “photo,” which shows areas of greater and lesser heat—the outer edge of the Big Bang’s blast is not internally equal. Similarly, Silas begins to look at Mia more than he looks at his other coworkers. He even stares at times, which she notices. She in turn begins to look at him more. The quality of increasing inequality can be discerned from the film in the gradual process of falling in love.

First, Silas’s eyes are increasingly drawn to Mia. He notices her facial and eye expressions, which take on greater meaning and significant for him emotionally, whereas the nonverbal expressions of his other coworkers are no more significant, and so a new inequality is evident, which is entirely natural, just as the cosmic background radiation of the universe shows unequal temperatures.

Second, certain statements made by Mia take on added significance emotionally for Silas. Whereas he could easily forget something that another coworker may say to him, Mia’s ideas are as though etched or engraved in Silas’ mind.

Third is touch. When Silas and Mia touch hands, the significance emotionally is greater than were either to touch a hand of another coworker. Inequality thus emerges in terms of touch, and this inequality expands as the coupling process moves toward and includes sex, which with emotional intimacy can seem utterly superficial as not being close enough.

Fourth is a subtle feature that comes about when the process of falling in love is a fait accompli. Silas gets to the point of telling Mia that he does not want her to leave. The continued presence of the other person is being earnestly sought. She complies because she is falling for him. In fact, when he gets his transfer to work in a garden because seeing her everyday and yet not being able to be with her for fear of being taken to a mental hospital for electric shock “treatments” to block emotion and thus “restore” him to “health, she desperately comes to his apartment because she wants to be with him.

As long as presence is maintained, emotion is not a problem in a mutual coupling, but if the love is unrequited or  two who have naturally coupled are separated, emotional hurt can be unrelenting—so much so, that it may in fact be a mental illness.  If so, the autocacy in the filmcauses rather than treats mental illness by trying to detect and separate the couple.  The fact that Silas prefers to feel nothing permanently once he is misinformed that Mia has committed suicide in the mental hospital may suggest that he would agree. With respect to falling in love, emotion can be a boon or a bust in terms of quality of life. The sheer intensity of emotion either way suggests a heaven or hell dichotomy. The collective’s claim that “social bonds help to alleviate anxiety” and thus are not of value in their own right is based on the erroneous assumption that interpersonally-related emotion can only make life a living hell. A person who blocks one’s emotions especially interpersonally operates under the same assumption, and is accordingly severely impacted by the decision psychologically because not only because repression can cause or worsen mental illness, according to Freud and Nietzsche, but also because positive emotions are given up. Therefore, people who have been the victim of abuse when young should see a psychologist to face the emotional hurt so it can naturally dissipate rather than refuse to feel emotion and thus miss out on falling in love while feeling lived by the other person.

The message of the film is that emotion is innate in human nature, so efforts to block emotion in a human psyche are unhealthy and thus counter-productive, especially in terms of interpersonal relations. I read that China considers a particular religion to be a case of mental illness. In the film, the collective authority considers S.O.S., Switched On Syndrome, to be a “debilitating disease.” When emotions are “switched on” in a person’s consciousness, the collective views that person as sick, and even as a threat.  The “treatments” are based on inhibitors that dampen the onset of emotion. If allowed to manifest unfettered, emotion is assumed by the authorities to lead to chaos, so the prime value of the collective is order. Emotion itself results in chaos, and chaotic individuals mean a chaotic, destabilized collective. Even two people falling in love is situated in a political theory as a political threat. That Mia becomes pregnant is therefore a red flag that gets her dragged to the mental hospital for an abortion and electric shock treatment.  

Jonas, a friend to Silas who helps him by arranging for Mia’s escape from the Den (i.e., the mental hospital), observes, “You two were in love; that’s clear. According to the collective, coupling makes the disease worse. But the inhibitors keep people from being “who they really are.”  Referring to falling in love, Silas tells Mia, “The truth is right here,” rather than in outer space as the collective claims. This statement is not far from Augustine’s claim that God is love. That deity can manifest as unconditional love and as wrath; so too, emotion can be a boon or bust depending on how the coupling process goes. To extract emotion itself from a person’s consciousness is one-sided and deeply problematic, given how we humans are “hard-wired” by nature. To “switch off” emotion wholesale in one’s psyche is itself very unhealthy.

In terms of political theory, the autocratic collective’s authority is totalitarian in a way that goes beyond George Orwell’s novel, 1984, if ridding people of emotion is more invasive than controlling what people think. Preventing group-think, such as is evinced in the film when Silas and Mia agree that the collective is backward-wrong in what the authority considers to be health and disease, is one thing; severing emotion so people can’t even feel is arguably more severe. Silas and Mia would doubtlessly consent to considering coupling to be harmful medically but they would (and do) refuse not to feel the love they feel for each other. “Love is like oxygen,” Christian tells his new friends in the film, Moulin Rouge! A government regarding falling in love as making a disease more severe and then that same government going further by preempting the process of falling in love by forcing ardous separations is therefore incredibly invasive; it is like ridding an inhabited room of oxygen. Furthermore, viewing coupling as a threat that would lead to political instability makes Hobbes’ Leviathan look like an instance of limited sovereignty, as if Hobbes did not go far enough in devising his totalitarian political theory to stave off civil war. A totalitarian, autocratic government delving into psychology—politicalizing disease and mental health—is much more of a danger to humanity than is people falling in love.  

Enemy

Villeneuve’s film, Enemy (2013), is ostensibly about two men who look alike (they are played by the same actor). Jake Gyllenhaal plays both Adam and Anthony. That both characters have the same frontal scar in the same bodily location signals that the identity goes beyond the possibility that they are identical twins. The identity topic in philosophy of mind is thus salient in the film, and this has invited several commentators to delve deeply into psychological analysis to suggest that Adam is a figment of Anthony’s subconscious, or vice versa. The film does not make clear what exactly is real and what may be a character’s mental construction. Suffice it to say that the film is very difficult to comprehend. Even when Anthony’s wife appears to Adam/Anthony as a giant spider at the very end of the film, it is only conjecture to assume that the spider represents the heaviness of constraint in being in a relationship of commitment rather than anything goes—the latter being inconsistent with a real relationship. The film presents the viewers with intimations of philosophy of mind and more directly of relationship ethics; these two domains play off each other.

Anthony is a movie actor who has trouble being faithful sexually to his wife, Helen, who is pregnant. Having discovered that he and Adam look alike even down to the same scar, Anthony angrily demands that Adam turn over the clothes he is wearing and the keys of his car so Anthony can pick up Mary, Adam’s girlfriend, for a “romantic getaway,” meaning sex; this cherade is a way to have yet another affair. Adam hands over his suit and the car keys, and heads over to Anthony’s apartment and to Helen, who realizes that Adam rather than Anthony has turned up. She is happy to have Adam sexually and even to stay, which he can do because Anthony and Mary have just been killed in a car accident while fighting because Mary has discovered that the man she is with cannot possibly be Adam. Whereas Adam is meek and caring, Anthony is a sexual predator and, not coincidentally, emotionally disturbed in an aggressive way. Both women easily catch on to the switch a roo, and whereas Helen welcomes the substitution, Mary does not. 

It is the stark difference in the men’s psychology that keeps them from being identical as understood in the philosophy of mind sub-discipline, and that has invited commentators to propose that one of the two men is actually a mental projection of the other. The film may not provide enough fodder from which a definite conclusion regarding whether only one of the two men exist beyond being a projection, the sexual ethics of the two men are more straightforward, and yet even in this respect, some blurring is evident.

Neither Adam nor Anthony is very close emotionally to their significant other in spite of living together. Adam would rather grade papers than have sex with Mary one night even though she is drunk and horny, and Anthony almost ignores Helen, and, as mentioned above, he is oriented to the pursuit of other women, to the adrenaline of the chase as well as the sex. Men who are addicted to the high from the conquest for sex, and from sex itself tend to treat romantic relationships as if they were possible without ethical commitment even though the latter is essential for emotional trust and intimacy. Even responding to a plea of, “I need you now, emotionally,” with “I’m going to a bar to meet some friends” eviscerates emotional trust even though sex is not involved. Such selfishness and callousness render a person utterly unfit for a genuine relationship unless the person wants to change, because emotional commitment is requisite to any romantic relationship. A relationship without at least emotional trust is a contradiction in terms. Even so, I believe that such a person as Anthony can change, and from within; asking for help is not necessary, and, besides, love provides help without having to be asked.

When outside sex is added to the mix, the toxicity of the callousness is magnified in emotional terms. A person’s de facto, unstated priorities reflect whether commitment itself is valued or rejected. Take for instance a woman whose “sugar daddy” sets her up with a monthly allowance enables trips to Miami Beach from Mexico in exchange for her always “coming back to him” in Mexico. Prioritizing such a “trophy with sex” arrangement means deprioritizing possible love that is authentic in the sense of involving commitment and thus real love. Helen instantly senses that Adam is a man with which she can have these.

Wanting to have it both ways, such as Anthony plays out in staying with Helen while cheating on her—he would even misuse “I’m poly” as if that meant separate sex as an excuse for cheating—is easily detected by potential suitors who instinctively know when they have been deprioritized below even a lower good. The combination of an allowance and an open policy on outside sex is too tempting to a weak, avaricious psyche that is addicted to sex, but this does not mean that even a weak person cannot gradually gather will-power from within and leave the void of what is actually empty space. Faced with such an arrangement as befits a sexual addiction, using people, and an aversion to commitment and thus emotional intimacy, a real suitor has no choice but to walk away unless or until the “Anthony” turns himself around. 

Emotional intimacy does not necessarily mean instituting monogamy and thus a social conservative ideology. An "open relationship" sexually may be preferred, if, for instance, a significant age difference exists such that sexual drives differ in intensity, as long as no separate romantic connections go along with the separate sex and neither person is lying or feeling emotional pain.

In the film, it is clear that Helen has given up on Anthony, and yet she is pregnant with a baby with him. Were Adam not to have slipped in due to Anthony’s insistence on going off for the weekend to have sex with Mary, Helen would be in the living hell of being with a serial liar who is emotionally absent.

Can someone like Anthony turn around? Were he not killed in the crash with Mary near the end of the film, would he eventually get tired of the recurrent empty sex with other women and come to value and even crave Helen’s emotional/sexual affection? Do people who are trophies of “sugar daddies” eventually tire even in spite of the money and seek out a real relationship—meaning one that includes emotional commitment rather than lies? In the film, even Adam decides to cheat on Helen by taking the key that he has discovered to a stripper club that evening. Even Adam, who presumably has been faithful to his girlfriend, Mary, has absorbed a bit of Anthony.

Whether one of the two men is actually the alter-ego of the other—a mere figment in a divided psyche—the message of the film may be that emotional commitment requires maturity and the desire and will to take oneself as a being a promise-keeper rather than an exploiter and serial liar. The sheer divergence mentally between Adam and Anthony, even though neither is perfect nor could be expected to be, demonstrates the difference between sexual ethics as a challenge and alternatively as disvalued in favor of utter selfish disregard even in the face of another’s love. To say that the Adams of the world are pure whereas the Anthony’s are lost causes is too strict and thus not realistic. To say Adam is “good” and Anthony is “bad” is oversimplistic, and thus inaccurate. We are all human, all too human. In Anthony, there is something worthy of being loved, and in Adam, something that diminishes emotional intimacy. Adams may occasionally lapse (and be forgiven for being human), and a few Anthony’s may decide to shift from one world to another, especially if a soul-mate happens to be met. The fates of both Adam and Anthony are not written, and outside help is not required, should either or both men (or the same person) actively opt for emotional intimacy in a genuine relationship. Besides hinting at the identity problem in philosophy of mind, the medium of film is capable of projecting two alternative routes in terms of sexual ethics in the context of a higher good of which everyone is capable of attainment.

 

The Children Act

I contend that religion and science are two distinct and unique domains, and thus qualitatively different. It follows that they have their own distinctive criteria, which are rightly hegemonic in their respective domain. In other words, the criteria of religion should not be extended onto the domain of natural science, especially if in doing so the native criteria of science are eclipsed or overridden. Likewise, the criteria of science should not be superimposed into the domain of religion, especially if at the expense of the sui generis criteria of religion. The film, The Children Act (2017), demonstrates the problems entailed in imposing religious criteria onto medical science. An interesting question from having seen the film is whether any such hypertrophy of one domain’s criteria onto another domain inevitably incurs a narrowing of perspective and a corresponding warping of judgment.

The film’s narrative centers around Fiona Maye, a judge in Britain, and Adam Henry, a 17-year-old who has leukemia. From the standpoint of medical ethics and religion, the first half of the film is salient, whereas the second half centers around Adam’s infatuation for Fiona and her efforts to distance herself from him. The infatuation is likely a result of the fact that he has lost his religious grounding due to Judge Maye’s order that him be given a blood transfusion in violation of the dogma of the Jehovah Witness sect of Christianity. It is precisely that transfusion that is the legal/moral/religious issue that is presented in the film. If as I contend the medium of film is an excellent means of bringing to people matters of ethics and theology (and philosophy generally), then delving into the complex issue before the court in the film is warranted.

Adam’s parents have asked the court to stop the hospital from giving Adam a potentially life-saving blood-infusion, without which he would die (as the film’s end demonstrates). The parents’ lawyer presents the theological position of Jehovah’s Witnesses against blood transfusions. Genesis, Leviticus, and even Acts are cited as scriptural support, but no passages are cited before the court. The theological potential of the film would be strengthened were even a bit of exegesis presented to the judge (or she could be shown studying the matter at home, especially as her husband is away having an affair). The lawyer for the hospital points out in court that blood transfusions did not exist in ancient times, so we can infer that the relevant scriptural passages are at best indirect, being on blood itself as necessary for life. The hospital lawyer points out that if blood is tantamount to life itself, then the sect should be heartily in favor of blood transfusions to continue life.

Even though no reference to blood transfusion itself is in the Bible, the Jehovah Witness religious organization denounces the medical treatment as if God prohibits it. In court, Adam’s father says that he knows this, but in matters of religious, belief, and thus faith, rather than knowledge sans doubt applies. The notion that blood is or carries a person’s soul, which is implied in the sect’s position, conflates the material and spiritual, and in terms of domains, the biological and the religious. Conflating different domains can indeed lead to such astonishing claims that a person’s soul is in one’s blood. Typically, people dismiss such a claim without realizing that the underlying problem is a category mistake in terms of conflating two different domains or hyperextending one onto another.

Even were scripture to proscribe blood transfusions in particular and explicitly, rather than by an assumed inference from a passage on blood, such a prohibition would be of minor importance given the leitmotif of the gospels. In them, Jesus does not mention transfusions of blood; nor does he mention abortion or gay marriage, yet that hasn’t stopped some Christians from treating such ethical issues as foremost and as religious in nature. This is not to say that transfusions, abortions, and gay people marrying are ethical or unethical. Instead, my point is that from a religious standpoint generally and from the perspective of the New Testament, those issues are not particularly salient. Before the judge’s ruling, Adam is worried that his Church would disenfranchise him were he to get an infusion even if against his will! Even just to distance a member on the basis of an ethical issue that carries little or no distinctly religious importance, especially given the salient feature in the gospels of compassion where it is least convenient (i.e., to detractors, outsiders, and even enemies), incurs a bias in terms of perspective and judgment. Treating a minor factor as though everything hinges on it is to judge erroneously. To violate the theological principle of caritas seu benevolentia universalis (love as universal benevolence) under the rubric of Christianity and especially on a theologically minor issue incurs hypocrisy. The sick are to be cared for—this is very evident from the gospels. Magnifying some passages on blood (rather than more specifically on transfusions as if that practice were proscribed) such that the prohibition eclipses the main theological thrust of the gospels demonstrates a lack of good judgment (and common sense).

Because the transfusion would likely forestall Adam’s eventual death from the cancer means that, as Judge Maye declares from the bench, the Jehovah’s Witness organization was acting against rather than in line with Adam’s welfare. Something had gone very wrong in the governance of that organization. Adam’s welfare includes the happiness that continuing to live can make possible; a religious institution that is in favor of precluding a person’s future is likely making a category mistake underneath—in this case, extending religious criteria onto medical science at the expense of that domain’s own criteria.

As Fiona realizes when she visits Adam in hospital before her verdict, he is a lively, precious young man full of a lively spirit, which is shown in his sarcastic grin even more than in his blood. A person’s soul—isn’t it through a person’s eyes anyway? A person’s entire being is the “form” of one’s soul, as evinced especially in tone of voice and facial expressions as well as the language that one uses. The role of blood is biological, and thus of science, in human life, whereas the spiritual transcends the limits of human thought, perception, and emotion. The religious domain can thus be understood to be distinct from that of natural science.