Tomorrowland

Imagination is the key to creation. Imagination and consistency.

It is the clash of the empty page and the infinite possibilities of story.

I have just watched Tomorrowland, directed by Brad Bird and written by Damon Lindelof. I see that from wikipedia that as of June 5, 2015, Tomorrowland has grossed an estimated $71.4 million in North America and $70 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $141.4 million, against a budget of $190 million. By Hollywood standards then, perhaps a financial flop. It has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 49% and a metacritic score of 60%.

That's about right. Not because it deserves such a score, but because we are roughly 50% optimistic and 50% pessimistic. It is the core of reality. We are literally heading in two directions. We are the empty page and the mind full of ideas. We are also the eraser scrubbing out the ideas too.

Tomorrowland isn't so much a film, but an invitation from Damon Lindeof. To reach out and touch the pin for ourselves. To be a dreamer and an optimist.

I absolutely loved Lost, but I'm afraid at the time of the final season, I was one of those who were disappointed with the direction it was taking. I absolutely hated the finale. I just didn't get it.

I've always been a logical, science guy. I had my experience of religion, Catholism in Ireland. I was taught by the priests that parts of the Bible were literal, but obviously parts were metaphorical. Which parts were which wasn't clearly delineated. It just seemed like a bronze age superstition that had no place in a modern world.

But what does that leave?

It left a shallow materialism where most people judge their success with what they own and the sense that we were flickers in the wind. A sense of wonder of the vastness of the Universe and the accomplishments of a mammal that clawed its way to self awareness through sheer random mutation. A fortuitous accident that owed more to the uncaring promiscuity of an ever complex series of numbers that didn't really care what body they wore.

If you ever spend time on a psych ward a common tale you hear is that some patients believe that they are hearing messages in songs and films that are aimed at them.

They do receive these messages. They are called the subtext.

When we are well we shut ourselves from the subtext, because it is a hard message to process in the modern world.

The message is that we are all the same. That message is too difficult to live the sort of lives we need to.

John Nash's main contribution to modern culture was game theory, the zero sum game. How can you screw someone over when you know they are the same as you? You can't. So you simply refuse to see or hear that message. It is no surprise that Nash was a schizophrenic.

The subtext I see in the film is that there are others out there who know they live in a present which leads to a better future.

I mentioned in one of my other posts that I believe Auguste Comte missed a final stage. Not his fault. We are in that final stage. Already physics itself is a binary system, micro and macro. Quantum mechanics and Classical. Quantum computing should not be possible and yet there are scientists working on it.

The philosopher David Deutsch thinks that Quantum Computing will be the first collaboration in our Universe with a parallel Universe. I think human imagination got there first.

In the age of science, artists, writers, poets and dreamers are entertainers. In the age of information, they are magicians.

I now have a much deeper respect for the finale of Lost. If you think of reality as an infinity measuring itself against itself, then dividing by two, you can see the fortuitous accident as something else.

It is the information of equilibrium forcing itself backwards bit by bit. In the end it does all come to love and those we leave behind. Hell is Heaven without the ones we love.