The Aryan Couple

The matter of group-identity is salient in the film, The Aryan Couple (2004), which actually centers around two couples: Joseph and Rachel Krauzenberg, and Hans and Ingrid Vassman. The Krauzenbergs contract with Himmler, the man whom in Nazi Germany was tasked with riding the Reich of its Jewish population, to exchange the Krauzenbergs’ asset-rich and sprawling conglomerate for safe passage of the entire Krauzenberg family out of Germany to Palestine instead of being sent to a concentration camp. Joseph and Rachel are Germans, and yet, quite artificially, they refer to Germans in the third person, and to themselves as Jews. It is precisely this error that I submit may have contributed historically to the ostracism of the Jews in Germany even before Hitler’s rise to power, hence contributing to setting the stage for a final, horrific solution. Film can thus be used to widen people’s thinking on historical and political events, and thus play a deeper role than merely to entertain.

Joseph Krauzenberg is a good man; he is good to his employees and, moreover, is very empathetic as seen in his facial expressions, especially his eyes, which Martin Landau uses expertly to do a significant amount of his acting in the role of the rich industrialist whose assets Himmler is so motivated to get. “Even Hitler cannot override my orders,” he brags at one point regarding his guarantee of safe passage. Himmler’s concern is rather than Eichmann might ignore that order and send the entire Krauzenberg family, which includes extended relatives, to Auschwitz.

In spite of the appearance of orders being valued by Nazi officials, that many were essentially thugs accounts for the fact that a significant abuse of discretion even in violation of orders was not uncommon. In fact, Eichmann was convicted in a court in Israel in 1961 because he had violated an order by Himmler in sending many Jews in Hungary on a march to a camp in Poland; Eichmann’s defense that he was just following orders thus blew up in his face.

So, in the film, Himmler even orders Eichmann to coffee after the dinner at the Krauzenbergs’ art-filled mansion so to assure the couple that Eichmann would indeed be following Himmler’s order of safe passage. Cleverly, Joseph Krauzenberg negotiated with Himmler a clause that gold would be transferred to Himmler only once the Krauzenberg family has set foot on Swiss soil; otherwise, it would be very naïve to think that the Nazis would allow the Krauzenbergs to fly to Switzerland once Joseph and Rachel have signed the contract. Even the other couple in the film, Hans and Ingrid Vassman, the two remaining household servants of the Krauzenbergs, fear remaining in Germany after the dinner in which Himmler is a guest. The Vassmans are actually Jews even though Rachel believes them to be Aryans. It is precisely the dialogue between that couple and Rachel that can reveal so much about the salience of group-identities in Europe.

Even though Rachel tells Hans and Ingrid that she feels that they have shown love to the elder couple, Rachel maintains a mental wall between herself and the two Aryans until Ingrid tells Rachel and Joseph that she and Hans are actually Jewish and want to go to Palestine with the Krauzenberg family. At once, Rachel literally embraces Ingrid. That both couples are German is ignored especially by the Krauzenbergs, who incessantly refer to Germans as if they were another tribe. Rachel refers to the Vassmans both as Aryans and as Germans, which is strange because Joseph and Rachel are also German. In this mix, nationality, cultural identity, and even religion are conflated as if, for example, a cultural identity excludes a nationality. Making such vagrant category mistakes can be accounted for by ideology, and even as a manifestation of passive aggression. Rachel even makes light of one of her own category mistakes by referring to Hans as her “little Nazi,” as if “German” and “Nazi” were synonymous and, moreover, both mutually exclusive with “Jewish.” It would have been strange to find a Jewish Nazi, but I contend that Jews born and raised in Germany were Germans.

When I was a student at Yale, a woman I dated said once that she was a Jew who happened to be an American. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, so she did not just happen to be an American. Her subordination of her nationality struck me as artificial. I would never say I’m a Midwesterner who happens to be an American even though I identify culturally as a Midwesterner. Were I to go around referring to Americans in the third persons, my compatriots would rightly take offence. I’m not one of you, I would be saying, in effect, even though I am. My passive aggression—a virtual slap in the face—would be palpable. Similarly, Germans who happened to be Jews in the first half of the twentieth century but referred to Germans in a way that excluded themselves even while they remained in Germany would not exactly be making friends and influencing people on the street. In fact, other Germans would rightly take offence. In short, the arbitrary decision to manifest passive aggression can trigger anger and even ostracism in people who resent the arbitrary self-exclusion from being a compatriot.

In the film, Rachel’s mentality belies her statement to Hans and Ingrid, “You’re Germans and I’m a Jew, but above all we’re all human.” Earlier, Rachel distinguished Aryans from Jews; unlike the German-Jewish mutually exclusive distinction, Aryan and Jew are indeed mutually exclusive terms because they are on the same dimension, or category, whereas German and Jew pertain to different categories and are thus not mutually exclusive. Were a Hispanic person, or a Catholic person, born, raised and still living in Chicago, Illinois to refer to Americans in the third person would sound strange to an American; we would even wonder if such a person were not of sound mind, and yet in the film, Rachel’s category mistakes are accepted by the other characters as if normal rather than as manifestations of passive aggression. The lesson is perhaps that when we act out in passive aggression, we should not be completely surprised when other people cease at the very least to be polite to us. From the standpoint of us all being human beings, the group-identities that we foist on each other as virtual walls of separation are artificial at best. Accordingly, such identities are best (and most accurately) viewed in relative terms rather than being absolutes. The change in Rachel’s feelings and behavior toward the Vassman couple once she is informed that they are Jewish rather than Aryan is so palpable that Rachel’s earlier claim, “we are all human,” rings hollow. 

The German philosopher, Schopenhauer, claimed that we are all of the One, and thus we should be compassionate to everyone rather than, as per Cicero’s ethic, show concentric concern first for friends and family, and then, to a lessor degree, to people further out. That Rachel felt love from the Vassmans should be enough for her and Joseph to help the Vassmans to join the family in Switzerland; being of the same group-identity should not matter, and that it does rings of sheer artifice. So much hatred has spewed through history as a result of people treating group-identity as an absolute. The genocides in Nazi Germany and, nearly a century later, in Gaza, speak to how horrible human beings can be because “group-identity” qua absolute can so easily lead to the perception that people outside one’s own group is subhuman and thus can be tortured and killed in even the most grievous ways.

Mary

The film, Mary (2024), is pregnant with intimations of the theological implications of her unborn and then newly born son, Jesus. That story is of course well-known grace á the Gospels, and the theology of agape love associated with that faith narrative is at least available through the writings of Paul and many later Christian theologians. What we know of Mary is much less, given that her role in the Gospels is not central even though the heavy title, Mother of God, has been applied to her without of course implying that she is the source of God. The film, like the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church has done, endeavors to “evolve the myth” by adding to Mary’s story even though the additions are not meant to be taken as seriously as, for example, the Catholic doctrine that Mary is assumed bodily into heaven. The movie comes closest to the magisterium in suggesting that Mary’s birth is miraculous; the magisterium holds that Mary is born without sin, and that Jesus inherited this because of the Incarnation (i.e. God, rather than Joseph, impregnates Mary). Suffice it to say that the perception of myth as static is the exception rather than rule; it is natural for the human mind to work with myths such that they can evolve rather than take them as given in a final form or extent. This is not to say that we should focus on the faith narratives as if they were ends in themselves and thus unalterable; rather, as the film demonstrates, religious transcendence is of greater value.

I contend that the film does a bad job of adding events to Mary’s life—filling in gaps, as it were—but the film does a good job of evolving her spirituality, or spiritual strength, and an even better job at intimating the nature of religious or spiritual transcendence. The failure, I suspect, have more to do with wanting to titillate audiences with fight scenes and even special effects, such as when Mary and Joseph ride a horse through a wall of fire to escape a fight scene. As there is no hint if a miracle, the entire scene adds nothing theologically and thus it can be easily tossed. Similarly, killing off Mary’s father in yet another fight scene adds nothing theologically and can thus be written off as another appeasement to keep movie-goers entertained by action and drama. Mary’s years spent growing up in the Temple scrubbing floors and presumably being educated are more useful, however, because her stint there cements Mary’s association with religion, which in turn helps support her as a major, though not the central, character in the Gospels. In this way, the film can be considered to serve as a foundation, or basement, for the Gospel narratives, which of course focus on Jesus, the Christ-Messiah.

The principal ways in which the film evolves the story by providing background to the Gospels are subtle and few. The first does not even involve any lines. Mary’s spiritual strength can be seen literally in how she maintains eye-contact when she comes face to face with Herod. He is the one who looks away; she does not. The implication stated by one of Herod’s guards is that Mary has “special powers,” and is thus a threat. The assumption is antiquated in the modern world; we would say Mary has fortitude. More than once in the film, she does not cave into the demon who is trying to tempt her. Her spiritual—not just ethical!—strength is evinced in her standing up to evil entities, human and otherwise. This hints at Jesus’s line to Pontius Pilote, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” Mary has that same faith, so there is a spiritual connection between mother and son. Considering all the antagonists facing Mary in the film, her faith that her role in the saga by which love will conquer the world by means of her son will succeed is truly amazing.

That faith is explicitly thought by Mary as the last line in the film. “But in the end, love will save the world.” Love will prevail. That may sound strange to people living in 2024, given the horrendous and large-scale aggression that were still being unleashed by certain governments, which of course are comprised of human beings with power. Mary’s faith may seem woefully or downright utopian. In the film, Mary believes that her faith that love will save the world has a lot to do with the fact that she chose her son just as God chose Mary to bear Jesus, and she would make the same choice even in that last scene after hearing a prophesy in the Temple from an old man. Holding baby Jesus in his hands, the man tells Mary and Joseph, “This child is destined to cause the fall and rise of many in Israel, and he will be opposed, and the sword will pierce your soul, Mary, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Even in spite of this future, Mary says, in effect, bring it on; the goal is worth it.

Parsing the prophet’s statement can provide us with the theological meat of the film. The haughty will be brought low by Jesus’s preachments and example of self-less, humble love, whereas the presumed lowly yet humble Hebrews of pure hearts will no longer be presumed to be sick or sinful (or both). It is easy to grasp that the sword refers to Mary watching Jesus’s excruciating death on a cross and having to mourn the death of a son; it is more difficult to understand what is meant by the sword that will pierce Mary’s soul being necessary “so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Christians watching the film may expect something like, “so that many will be saved.” Revealing the thoughts of many people whose thoughts were presumably hidden is a curious expression. Is the revealing of the thoughts of many part of, or necessary for, love to save the world? At its conclusion, the film raises an interesting puzzle that, in pertaining to the future, presumably has to do with the content of the Gospel narratives, including Jesus’s preachments and life. In the Gospels, does he or his actions facilitate the revealing of the thoughts of people? What thoughts, and of whom?

It is perhaps in the nature of religious truth that it is not in a film’s action scenes, but like the breeze that passed by Ezekiel on the mountain—a breeze that eludes the grasp of our finite fingers. Distinctly religious transcendence is not exhausted within the limits of human cognition, perception, or sensibility (emotion), so wrote Pseudo-Dionysius in the sixth century. The film is perhaps most of value in affording us an experiential glimpse of such transcendence as we try innately to figure out the prophesy.

The Irishman

Although Scorsese’s 2019 film, The Irishman, is a fictional crime story, it is based on Charles Brandt’s book, I Heard You Paint Houses, which incorporates interviews that the lead character, Frank Sheeran, who was in real life a close friend of James Hoffa of the Teamsters labor union, gave. Even so, viewers should not make the assumption that Scorsese’s intent was to represent contestable explanations of historical events, such as the disappearance of Hoffa. Similarly, it cannot be assumed that the actual writers of the four Christian Gospel faith-narratives intended to write historical accounts; in fact, it is perfectly legitimate to adapt historical events in making theological points. In making The Irishman, Scorsese no doubt wanted to present viewers with a problematic sketch of how weak the human conscience can be in certain individuals. In his book on Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill begins by lamenting that no progress had been made over thousands of years by ethicist philosophers on the phenomenon of human morality. Scorsese’s film supports Mill’s point.

Scorsese brought out the big guns to act the main characters, and his arduous efforts to bring Joe Pesci out of retirement to play Russell Bufalino arguably made the film what it is. To be sure, Robert De Niro as Frank Sheeran and Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa also paid off, but the verbal and non-verbal subtlety that Pesci brought to his character provide not only that character, but also the film itself with depth. This is exemplified by Russell’s way of telling Sheeran that the mob had lost patience with Hoffa to the extent that not even pressuring the latter to retire on his Teamsters’ pension would be enough. It never pays to make enemies, especially if they are mobsters. Especially revealing, though not in terms of a historical fact, is the scene in which Pesci has his character lean forward in a chair to whisper to Sheeran, who is skeptical that the mob could kill a man with as much of a public persona as Hoffa: “We didn’t like a president. So, we can not like a head of a (labor) union.” The first sentence intimates what the real-life mistress of President Johnson revealed in a local television interview when she was too old to care about retaliation from anyone—the mob or the U.S. Government: The Giovanni crime-family of Chicago played a role in the assassination of President Kennedy. Pesci delivered the line so well that viewers can easily grasp that the mob could have kept such a secret, and that such a role could indeed have been the case, historically. Sometimes subtly reveals more than simply stating a historical fact can. Supporting the mentality intimated by how Pesci delivered the line is the way in which Sheeran’s conscience, or, rather, lack thereof, is presented.

Although both Russell and Frank lament the unspoken decision that the higher-up mob bosses had made that Hoffa would not be long for this world, Frank, in spite of being a close friend of Hoffa—even socializing his family with Hoffa’s—not only kills Hoffa but calls the widow to express his sorrow and to comfort her. At the end of the film, Frank asks a priest, “What kind of person makes such a call?” Even Sheeran himself is stunned by his own behavior, and he is mystified as to why he feels absolutely no guilt. Evidently, it is not as though he has any ability to will himself to have a conscience, so it could be that he is mentally ill, and this enabled him to transition so easily from killing combatants in World War II in Europe to being a hitman in New York.

A sociopathic mental illness in which a person has no conscience, is a counter-example that qualifies the typical assumption that anyone can will oneself to behave ethically. To an appreciable degree, human society is predicated on the assumption that people can will themselves not to harm other people because doing so would be wrong. Whether by reasoning, moral sentiment, or a traditional cultural norm that is unquestionably followed, a person is typically assumed to be able to be a moral agent, but this is not always the case. To the extent that human society depends on the assumption and it has holes, police action is necessary, even though it typically catches criminals rather than prevents sociopaths from harming innocent victims. Therefore, there is still a hole, in terms of how a city can protect its residents. In other words, do we rely too much on the typical assumption that people are moral agents, at least that everyone can be one?

Wall-E

In the film, Wall-E (2008), a robot “falls in love” with another, whose anthropomorphic pronoun is she/her rather than it as is fitting for a machine. As a robot does not have genitalia, neither the masculine or feminine single pronoun applies, and because a robot is an entity, the plural pronouns also do not apply. Word-games aside, the more substantive and interesting matter of whether a robot, and even AI (i.e., machine learning), can (or could potentially) understand the phenomenological experience of falling in love, and, whether yes or no, be able beyond mere prediction to match couples who would fall in love were they to meet. A college course on these questions, especially with relevant films including Wall-E and The Matrix being assigned, would be incredibly popular and capable of tremendous mind-stretching. 

The full essay is at "AI on Falling in Love."

A Fortunate Man

Religion plays a prominent role in the film, Lykke-Per, or A Fortunate Man (2018). On the surface, Peter Sidenius, a young engineer, must navigate around an old, entrenched government bureaucrat to secure approval for his ambitious renewable-energy project. The two men clash, which reflects more general tension that exists everywhere between progressives and conservatives regarding economic, social, religious, and political change. Although pride may be the ruin of Peter and his project, the role played by religion is much greater than pride manifesting as arrogance, if indeed it is arrogant to stand up to abuse of power, whether by a government bureaucrat or one’s own father.

Peter’s dad is a Christian pastor whose meanness to Peter belies any claim to know God’s judgment as well as to have an authentic Christian faith. Kierkegaard’s chastisement of the Lutheran clerical hierarchy in Copenhagen in the nineteenth century by emphasizing the need and primacy of subjective, inner piety resonates in this film. In fact, Peter’s angry reaction to his dad’s meanness when Peter is leaving home to go to college is similar the reaction that Kierkegaard must have had to hardened clergy in his day. Peter’s father begins by saying that although he gave money to Eybert, Peter’s older brother, when he left home, “you will get no money.” Adding insult to injury, the malevolent father gives Peter a watch that Peter’s grandfather had given Peter’s father. The “strings” attached to the watch that undo the giving spirit that runs throughout the Gospels is his dad’s hope that the watch will “sooth your hardened heart and open your stubborn mind.” Just in case Peter misses the point, his dad notifies his son that he is on the “road to perdition.” Peter is right, of course, in calling out his dad for his “cold intolerance” and “false piety.” That his dad demands an apology without having apologized for insulting Peter and then slaps his son’s face hard reveals the Christian minister’s abject hypocrisy, which we know has been longstanding because Peter says that he felt “like a homeless stranger” growing up in his dad’s house. Faith without love is worse than naught. Interestingly, after being slapped, Peter tells his dad, a Christian minister, to hit him properly. It is as if Jesus were saying to the Roman guard who scourging Jesus, lash me again—this time do it properly. In retrospect, Peter’s line anticipates his integrity and spiritual nature that come out as the narrative evolves.

Peter can be excused from rejecting his dad’s deity even though Peter has no idea that the Jesus in the Gospels would reject the hypocritical piety of the judgmental and hateful pastor. “Get behind me, Satan,” Jesus would likely say to Peter’s dad, and to Peter himself, Jesus would likely advise, “kick the dust off your sandals” and don’t look back. Peter has no idea that the Jesus in the Gospels is innocent and yet willingly suffers by judgmental and hateful men who are like Peter’s dad.

Following the death of Peter’s dad, Peter’s mother less harsh though just as judgmental when she meets with Peter, as if she, like her husband, were omniscient and thus entitled to judge their son’s soul. She presumes that her son has rejected God, when in actuality Peter has rejected his parents’ conception of God, and for good reason. His mother, unlike his father, however, grasps from the Gospels the value of humility and selfless love, and she is clever enough to urge Peter to be humble and selflessly love other people rather than demand that he recite the Nicene Creed. I suspect that his mother’s softer message of humility and selfless love is what enables Peter in grieving the death of his parents to face and reject his own sin of pride.

Peter asks the Christian pastor who officiates at the funeral of Peter’s mother for forgiveness for having hurt so many people. In the humbly asking the pastor for forgiveness, Peter accepts and values the Christian message underlying the Incarnation in the Gospels, where God’s selfless, or self-emptying love (agape), is in God becoming lowly flesh in order, again in selfless love, to redeem humanity from itself, and especially its pride. In other words, Peter does not need to make a profession of faith by reciting the Nicene Creed. In fact, that pastor, who associated with Peter’s dad when he was alive, abandons Peter by walking away rather than comforts the young, grieving son who is literally on his knees begging for forgiveness from God through the pastor. “You can cry more if you want to,” the callous cleric says as he turns to walk away as Peter is still kneeling. That pastor does not absolve Peter, or even say that God forgives him. But this is not necessary, for God is present not in that pastor, but, instead, in Peter’s change of heart that is triggered by his grieving. To be sure, Peter may go too far in his embrace of institutional Christianity, for he deeply hurts Jakobe Salomon, his fiancée, by breaking off their engagement because she is Jewish and he now views himself as officially Christian. Perhaps in grieving his parents, Peter internalizes some of their judgmentalism, which, along with omniscience, is associated in the film with institutional religion.

The irony may be that Peter, who dies a few years later from cancer even though he is younger than 45 or so, may go to heaven whereas both of his parents are likely in hell, but, lest I fall into the trap of presumed omniscience like Peter’s parents, I must remind myself: who am I to judge those characters? I can only stand perplexed as to the staying power of the stubborn presumed rectitude of Peter’s parents while I admire Peter’s willingness to confront himself spiritually to the point of willingly putting himself in a vulnerable position, literally and figuratively, that reveals the hurtful hardness of heart of yet another Christian pastor besides Peter’s dad.

 

Confucius (Kongzi) said, "A cap made of hemp is prescribed by the rites, but nowadays people use silk. This is frugal, and I follow the majority. To bow before ascending the stairs is prescribed by the rites, but nowadays people bow after ascending. This is arrogant, and, though it goes against the majority, I continue to bow before asccending."  The Analects 9.3 

 

Don’t Look Up

The film, Don’t Look Up, is a most interesting film not only for how it relates science to political economy, but also in that images of wildlife—Nature, as it were—are interspersed throughout the movie, and it is Nature, rather than our circumscribed, petty, and yet economically successful species, that continues on after a large comet hits Earth and our species is wiped out. In fact, that impact-event in the movie cancels out the one that really happened 66 million years ago by returning dinosaurs to dominance. The last scene in the movie shows some of the political and economic elite waking up in their spaceship and landing on Earth more than 200,000 years in the future only to be eaten by dinosaurs that look "cute." two of those stupid people had been in charge both in the White House and in business before the comet hits, whereas the two principal astronomer-scientists who warn of the coming comet are repeatedly relegated and dismissed by the political and economic elite until the president realizes how she can use them politically—albeit just until the political winds turn again and comet-denial is more useful politically to the president. Does this sound familiar?

For a species to have reached such plenty economically as ordinary people could live better than medieval kings had in Europe and yet be so petty and reckless, essentially squandering what the species had built up, with indifference even to an upcoming cataclysmic event, is what the astronomer-protagonist in the film is left marveling at just before his life, along with those of friends and family sitting around his dinner table, is instantly ended. “We really tried,” he says. I suspect that climate-activists may be saying the same thing regarding the abject refusal of enough of our species and its power-brokers to take combatting carbon-emissions seriously enough.

“Most social life seems a conspiracy to discourage us from thinking” about “what, if anything, can we do about death—now, while we are still alive?”[1] Even so, “there is a rare type [of person] for whom death is present every moment, putting his grim question mark to every aspect of life, and that person cannot rest without some answers.”[2] So it is that in the Katha Upanishad, Nachiketa beseeches Yama, the king of death, to answer his burning question on whether there is an afterlife. “When a person dies, there arises this doubt: ‘He still exists,’ say some; ‘he does not,’ say others. I want you to teach me the truth. This is my third” wish.[3] Although the answer is beyond the reach of human cognition and perception, Yama reveals that the essence of a person, one’s essential self, or atman, survives the death of the body. Nachiketa’s undaunted urge to know the truth anyway points back to how much thoughts of death are part of life. That Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is based on the assumption that the instinct for self-preservation is primary in human beings is yet another indication of how important it is to us to put off our own death for as long as possible.

So it is a “red flag” in the film, an indictment on human nature, that so very few people are thinking about the prospect of their own death even though the two scientists and then even the U.S. president have announced on television that a comet is hurling through space, heading directly at Earth in what is known as an extinction event. Initially, two television hosts dismiss the two astronomers who had calculated that the comet would hit Earth and be of such magnitude that our species would go extinct; those journalists are more interested in the romantic life of a young singer. Not even the U.S. President, or her chief of staff, are much interested, at least until after the midterms, for their party could lose control of both chambers of Congress. It is only when the political calculation changes that the White House decides to make a public announcement. This prudence is short-lived, however, as the president calls for the space shuttle to abort its mission to bomb the comet into a new trajectory that would miss the planet. An Elon-Musk-type, new-age CEO of a cell-phone company has so much influence on the president, no doubt from having made donations to her campaign, that she heeds his direction to abort the in-progress space-shuttle mission to bomb the comet to divert it from hitting Earth, and instead send risky, untested drilling machines to land on the comet in order to blow it into pieces, which would then presumably fall harmlessly to the Pacific Ocean to be harvested by the U.S. navy so tech companies using computer chips could profit wildly. The CEO is a businessman, even though he angrily rebuffs the astronomy professor for pointing out, “You are a businessman,” who thus has absolutely no formal education in astrophysics and spacecraft technology upon which to make the judgment to abort the mission that would probably have diverted the comet. Instead, his idea is to send untested drillers to land on the comet to dig holes in which to place bombs so the comet would blow up into profitable chunks. The astronomy professor is correct when he calls out the cell-phone techie, but the president sides with the latter nonetheless.

Regarding just how pathetic the president, her immature chief of staff, and the techie businessman are, at the end of the movie, the professor turns down the president’s offer to join her, the businessman and other elite personalities on a spacecraft that returns to Earth when it is again habitable. You enjoy your (obnoxious) chief of staff; I’m all set here, he tells the finally contrite president by phone. Faced with an imminent extinction event, the level-headed astronomer makes the judgment that it is better to die with friends and family then go on living with superficial comet-deniers for whom already having a lot of power and wealth, respectively, is not enough, and other people are to be used in line with power-aggrandizement and higher profits.

Science fiction is an excellent genre for bringing up contemporary controversies without setting off alarm-bells and thus having one’s message blocked by the opposition. The allusions to President Trump and Hilary Clinton, and the tech titan Elon Musk are hardly subtle. That the film was released in 2021 means that the relationship between the president and the techie CEO are not based on the later relationship between President Trump and Elon Musk. Instead, the president character is, I submit, based on Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. The president in the film is engaged in “comet-denial” as a political slogan similar to how Trump was engaged in climate-change-denial during his first term, is a woman like Hilary Clinton in subsuming everything, even the destruction of the species, under political calculation, and easily forgetting to save her chief of staff in the end, perhaps as the Clintons left Brent Forster in their wake before Bill Clinton was president. The political-calculating, selfish president in the film is herself an indictment on American democracy, for presumably she was elected. At a certain point in the film, people need only look up to see the comet for themselves to realize that the U.S. president was lying. The comet in the movie, like climate change in our world, is real, and it is the political and economic elite that in both the film and real life drop the ball, even though the respective stakes are both huge. Of course, in both cases, the American people are to blame too.

It is strange, in watching the movie, how indifferent people generally are to even the possibility that they could die in a bit over six months. Even after Ivy League experts ironically favored by the White House confirm the calculations of the astronomy professor, the president decides to play political games rather than take the first possible opportunity to divert the comet. Then she decides to do the bidding of her techie billionaire donor and “turn lemons into lemonade” by recklessly (in terms of rocket technology) helping him to profit from the comet once it has been pulverized and felled to the ground. Lemonade cannot be made if the lemons are handled recklessly rather than rendered usable. Just before dies, the astronomy professor remarks on the species to his friends and family, “We had everything.” The implication is: and yet we blew it, because some powerful people in business and government wanted more. Even though the techie billionaire had developed a very advanced and financially lucrative cell phone, it is as if that man perceived himself as not having enough, and thus as needing more.

The desire for more is a good definition of greed. Even given declining marginal utility, there seems to be no base limit of wealth that is enough in terms of a person not risking even everything to profit more.  A rational person might realize that pushing the comet out of the way of Earth should be priority number 1, and that NASA and other space agencies around the world should be entrusted with that task, or else all current wealth could be lost, as you can’t spend it when you’re dead. It is as some powerful people in the business and political American elites dismissed even the 99.97% chance that the comet would smack into the Earth because greed and power-aggrandizement are instinctual urges that lie by distorting both cognition and perception. We “modern” humans may be so used to being so narrowly self-interested in accumulating money and power that we regard the indifference shown in the film to a catastrophic event to be surreal or even as too incredulous to even be believed in a film!

Even though the movie ramps up the explosive and sudden climax to keep viewers titillated in movie theatres, the same dynamic of indifference and denial applies as our species stews unabatedly in a hotter and hotter climate that one day may be very difficult or even impossible for our species to continue to live on Earth. This prospect having become realistic when the film was made, and definitely in June, 2025, when both parts of the E.U. and U.S. suffered from long heat-waves, should be enough to make resisting coal and other business interests and their captured politicians by making climate a high political and economic priority, but alas, too many people are like the people in the movie, who are taken in by the comet-deniers and profiteers, as if the masses of people were consisting of Nietzsche’s herd animals that are oblivious as they are being taken to the slaughter house. Presuming that we could just move to Mars or the Moon, and that we could even profit by doing so is the sort of thinking that does not work out in the movie, so the lesson is that it is reckless for us to deny climate-change and postpone cuts in fossil-fuel emissions under the assumption that we will be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat just in time when the time comes to pay the bill as species. To be sure, whereas the comet hitting Earth is a sudden event, the baleful effects of climate-change are gradual, yet accumulating, and thus human nature is less well-equipped to take immediate action rather than putting it off. Even so, the denial for partisan advantage and the proclivity of managers in companies to compartmentalize at the expense even potentially of the survival of the species even within a few generations are the same. Perhaps Nietzsche was correct in claiming that ideas are really instinctual urges, and reasoning is the tussling of contending urges—the most powerful of which reaches consciousness. Rather than being a check on passions, reason is itself a manifestation of instincts. The lesson of the film is that there is no guarantee that the instinctual urge that dominates others is in line with self-preservation and even the medium-term (and even short-term) survival of the species.

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1. Introduction to Katha Upanishad, in The Upanishads, trans. Eknath Easwaran (Petaluma, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1987).
2. Ibid.
3. Katha Upanishad, 1.1.20, in The Upanishads, trans. Eknath Easwaran (Petaluma, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1987).

Mickey 17

Ethical, theological, and political issues are salient in the film, Mickey 17 (2025), which is about Mickey Barnes, a character who is repeatedly cloned on a space-ship and on a distant planet. The one-way trip alone takes over four years, during which time Mickey is tasked with dangerous tasks because when he dies, another clone is simply made. A mistake is made when the 18^th clone of Mickey is made even though the 17^th is still alive; they are “multiples,” which is a crime for a theological reason. I contend that reason is erroneous, as is the political, ethical, and theological regime that undergirds clones being expendable. 

In a flashback to back on Earth, a man who represents an evangelical Christian perspective urges lawmakers to criminalize multiples even on other planets because a soul cannot have two bodies. Such a claim turns the soul into something imaginary—an abstraction only. In the movie, that no two clones of a person have the same personality suggests that they do not have the same soul. They make different choices and can even have different values, as when Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 are at odds on whether to kill Timo, a pilot who had been in business with the original Mickey. Both clones have the memories of the original Mickey, yet the two clones have very different attitudes towards Timo. Mickey 18 is more aggressive than Mickey 17, and yet the former decides in the end to sacrifice his life to kill Kenneth Marshall, an autocrat who fixes elections by the Assembly in order to stay in power on the mission. Furthermore, that Kai Katz prefers Mickey 17 romantically while Nasha is really turned on sexually by Mickey 18, and even that Nasha wants both clones for herself as a three-some sexually implies that the two clones are different people. In effect, they are identical twins, and even such twins do not share the same soul. Although not clones by any means, my brothers and I could not be more different from each other. That the clones of Mickey differ suggests that the cloning “printing” doesn’t replicate the DNA exactly. That Mickey 18 is so different than Mickey 17 immediately after being “printed” means that the differences cannot be due to environmental factors. Therefore, the theological argument that two clones should not be alive simultaneously because they share the same soul fails.

The argument that multiples is against the “natural order” also fails because cloning itself is not natural. So if multiples are objectionable theologically for this reason, then cloning should be illegal not only on Earth, but also on colonies on other planets. Furthermore, the argument used that human cloning is a sin, but it can be sued by humans on spacecrafts and on other planets is a non-starter, for a sin is a sin, no matter where it is being committed.  The argument seems to be that if the sin takes place far away from the rest of us, and if the sin has unintentional beneficial consequences, which Augustine claimed of sin in general (for otherwise, our species would have self-destructed), then consequentialism trumps the duty not to sin. In the utilitarian ethical principle of the greatest pleasure to the most people, the suffering of the clones of Mickey can be said to be ethical because the clones’ dangerous tasks make it possible for everyone on the ship to survive. That the same rationale could ethically justify the Nazi’s concentration camps and eastward expansion strongly suggests that utilitarianism fails if the distribution of suffering is concentrated within a collective.

Just as the ethics of cloning for use in dangerous tasks is ultimately answered by blowing up the cloning machine at the end of the film, so too is organized religion eschewed. It is very significant that Kenneth Marshall accidently lets out the secret that the company behind the mission is in fact a church, and that the point of the colony is to create “the one and only pure colony planet,” meaning that the human inhabitants are genetically pure.

The religious auspices make use of political autocracy disguised as democracy. It is no accident that at one point, Kenneth and the audience of his show give each other the Nazi raised-arm salute. Kenneth’s religious hypocrisy extends to his willingness to have the clones suffer even apart from in performing dangerous tasks, such as breathing in a virus in the planet’s air so a vaccine could be made so everyone could venture outside without dying. The callousness of the “church, I mean company,” towards suffering is matched by Kenneth’s willingness to subvert elections to keep himself in power on the planet. That political resistance develops suggests that it is a natural consequence of unchecked power being exercised on a captive population that cannot leave. In the end, Mickey 18 blows himself up because Kenneth would also die. Kenneth had strapped bombs to Mickey 18 with impunity, even though the Assembly was in theory democratic rather than autocratic. It is significant that after Kenneth, legitimate trials began and even Nasha, whom Kenneth unilaterally declared to be a criminal, is elected to the Assembly.

The republic wins in the end, whereas the church and its prelate/dictator are discredited. Although in this respect the film has a happy ending, for the good guys win in the climax, what the film says about the hostility and even aggression that is in human nature even under the auspices of religion is a severe indictment of the species. This indictment is perhaps most revealed in the severe suffering that many of the Mikey clones must endure on the orders of other humans.

Empirically, the Milgrim experiment at Yale in 1968 found that 40 percent of the people in the study thought they were giving severe electric shocks on other people even though those people had been screaming at the previous level of shock, and just for being wrong in answering questions! Ironically, at the same university nearly 60 years later, and fifteen years after I had finished my studies there, two police departments, one under a city government and the other under the non-profit Yale Corporation, plus Yale’s proto-police security guards, kept up constant and overlapping “presence” on and around campus; in fact, by 2025, Yale’s police unit had accepted the FBI’s invitation to Yale to participate in counter-terrorism tactics used on students. The risk of autocratic passive-aggression even just to intimidate by an overwhelming “presence” as a deterrent was real where the film was screened (and where the director, Bong Joon Ho, would speak on May 5, 2025). The tactic itself evinces not only a very negative assumption about the human nature of Yalies (and local residents), but also reveals the sordid nature of those people using the tactics. In fact, the “overkill” in “presence,” which compromised the otherwise relaxed atmosphere on a college campus, can itself be viewed as hostile and autocratic, not to mention disrespectful of students and academia more generally. Turning around, and, as I had to do quite unexpectedly, having to walk off a sidewalk on campus while talking with students and faculty because a Yale police car was driving on the sidewalk on a weekday morning with red and blue lights on, and even headlights blaring, even though the car was only on a patrol, is at the very least uncomfortable and definitely antithetical to an academic atmosphere, where shows of the threat of might does not make right.

Yale security and police stationed outside of the classroom building where the film was screened.

With lights glaring, a Yale police presence "screens" outside after the screening of the film.

More yellow, blue, and red lit-up stationary "patrols" nearby after the film on April 19, 2025

It is interesting, in terms of the theological-political nexus in the film, that Yale was founded by Christian Calvinist ministers who had been at Harvard but would not tolerate the Unitarians having any influence. The dichotomy of the elect (saved) and the rest of humanity in Calvinism can easily result in repression of the latter, as if the rest of us were sub-human and thus needing to be constantly watched (which is a form of passive aggression). In the film, clones are viewed as such by the elite of the “church,” who are not bothered by their respective consciences for inflicting much suffering on the Mickeys even beyond that which results from the dangerous tasks for the good of the whole. Whether in the fictional film or on the ground at Yale, where the movie was screened and the director would soon thereafter give a talk, power without being checked can easily be used by human nature in very unethical and anti-spiritual ways.

The question from the movie is not whether each clone has his own soul, for in choosing to sacrifice his life, even Mickey 18 has a good soul, but, rather, whether Kenneth and his wife have souls, and even whether their “church” is at all religious or spiritual rather than a basis for autocracy being used to conduct medical experiments on clones and construct a genetically pure colony, although presumably with an underclass of servants who obviously would not be treated well, as they would not be among a Calvinist elect.