It's the other way around. Only when we implement radical centrism will extraterrestrials be able to confirm the existence of civilization on earth!
Sent from my iPhone > On Nov 17, 2014, at 12:25, BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical > Centrist Community <[email protected]> wrote: > > Quick question: > What happens to Radical Centrism when extraterrestrial civilizations are > confirmed? > > Another quick question: > What happens to Radical Centrism when extraterrestrial civilizations contact > Earth? > > Just thought I'd ask. > > Billy > > > ================================= > > > > The Atlantic > Interstellar Isn't About Religion (and Also It Is Totally About Religion) > > Christopher Nolan is the latest filmmaker to avail himself of the spiritual > setting of space. > > Megan Garber Nov 12 2014, > Spoilers ahead. > > The website WikiHow offers 11 pieces of advice on "How to Avoid Uncomfortable > Conversations About Religion." These include "resist the urge to argue," > "state an assertive personal policy," and "redirect the conversation." Which > are useful tips—and also not too different from the actions you're supposed > to take should you, on the course of an otherwise pleasant hike, encounter a > bear. > > Avoid the religion talk. As a social commandment, it has become cliche for a > good reason: When religion is both plural and political, conversations about > it can indeed become "uncomfortable." And the discomfort can translate not > just to the conversation, one of the smallest mediums we have, but also to > one of the most massive: the Hollywood film. With a few exceptions, among > them Darren Aronofsky's Noah and Ridley Scott's upcoming Exodus: Gods and > Kings, major studios have avoided religion as a topic for its big-budget > films. After a period of brief investment in them, the Wall Street Journal > noted of Christian-themed genre movies, the industry's enthusiasm has "faded." > > That makes commercial sense: The movies that have the best chance of > succeeding at the box office, if not among critics, are the ones that appeal > to the widest possible audiences. A film that expressly deals with a > religion, be it Christianity or any other, is rare for the same basic reason > that WikiHow offers 11 different ways to extricate yourself from Godtalk: It > can be divisive. > > The problem is, though, that religion offers rich terrain for cinematic > exploration. It provides, on top of everything else, the same themes that > have inspired artistic creators for centuries: mythology, memory, mysticism. > So filmmakers have developed a canny way to talk about religion in movies > without actually, you know, talking about it—allowing themselves to explore > the biggest of life's questions and ideas while avoiding "Uncomfortable > Conversations." > > Their method involves a political safe space: space itself. > > Space epics, the ones that have ambition beyond classic action (Star Wars) > and adventure (Armageddon), concern themselves, almost by default, with > metaphysics, questioning the how and the why and the what ifs of the world > and the space beyond it. There's Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its > lauded ambiguities of spirituality and existentialism. There's Zemeckis' > Contact, whose Palmer Joss (played by one Matthew McConaughey) is essentially > an allegory of religious faith in the face of other approaches to the world. > There's Shyamalan's Signs (with Mel Gibson in the role of the allegory). > There's Scott's Prometheus. There's the "metaphysical head trip" that is > Cuarón's Gravity. These films treat space not just as a spectacular setting > for a story, but as a question to be answered. They deal with religion not > just as a human institution, but also as something broader and more > universal: a vehicle for human spirituality. > > The latest to explore the spiritual implications of space is Hollywood's > reigning philosopher-poet, Christopher Nolan, and his reigning > philosophy-film. While Interstellar, as one review put it, "never entirely > commits to the idea of a non-rational, uncanny world, it nevertheless has a > mystical strain, one that's unusually pronounced for a director whose > storytelling has the right-brained sensibility of an engineer, logician, or > accountant." Or, as Slate summed it up: "For the first time, Nolan’s universe > has a God, or something like one." > > That something is the "they," the mysterious creatures who communicate with > Earth-bound humans, and who help to rescue humanity from a planet that has > become, gradually and then suddenly, inhospitable. (Put another way: > Salvation requires humans to have faith in the power—and the benevolence—of a > being they can neither fully know nor fully understand.) "We used to look up > at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars," Matthew McConaughey's > NASA-recruited pilot, Cooper, laments early on in the movie. "Now we just > look down and worry about our place in the dirt." > > There's also a fallen angel in the person of Dr. Mann (yep, Dr. Mann). > Interstellar's plot hinges, both intermittently and overall, on > self-sacrifice, on characters willingly enduring death so that humanity as a > whole might live. It hinges, even more explicitly, on the tentative promise > of Cooper's return to Earth—what you might also refer to as a second coming. > It features a chosen one (Cooper's daughter, Murph) and a chosen people: > humanity as a species. There's a ponderous shot of Cooper, about to pilot his > space-colonists into a wormhole, with his eyes closed and his hands folded in > what is hard not to see as prayer. There is Hans Zimmer's booming soundtrack, > the most prominent instrument of which is the organ of London's Temple > Church. If you wanted to be Miltonian about it—Paradise Lost did take place > in an interplanetary setting quite similar to Interstellar's—there's also a > fallen angel in the person of Dr. Mann (yep, Dr. Mann), the brilliant > scientist who, it is repeated several times, represented "the best of us" > before he came to represent the worst. > > There's also a lot of talk of good and evil. There's a lot of talk of faith. > There's a lot of talk of love—love that is explicitly not romantic > (Interstellar is as asexual a blockbuster as you'll find), but that is, in > its best manifestation, selfless. > > None of which is to say that Interstellar is a Christian—or even a > religious—film. It is not, and this is the point. The "they" is not > necessarily a metaphysical being; Zimmer's organ was chosen, he has said, for > "its significance to science." Good and evil, faith and love—these ideas, of > course, extend far beyond religion. > > What it is to say, though, is that Interstellar, like so many space movies > before it, has adopted the themes of religious inquiry. The scope of space as > a setting—the story that takes place within the context of the universe > itself, across dimensions—has allowed Nolan, like so many filmmakers before > him, the permission of implication. Nolan has said that one of his primary > artistic influences is the postmodern author Jorge Luis Borges; you can, > indeed, read Interstellar, in the most generous interpretation, as you would > any complex piece of literature. As Stanley Kubrick once said of the film > that is the most obvious antecedent to Nolan's: > > You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical > meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has > succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell > out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to > pursue or else fear he's missed the point. > > Nolan is often accused of coldness when it comes to his characters; you could > also argue that the fleshed-out personality is almost beside the point when > your purpose is not just storytelling, but allegory. Nolan has, in his films > before Interstellar, been best known for characters who struggle in > introspective ways: with themselves, with partners, with the past and the > future. They treat existence, and consciousness, as matters of internal > opportunity and anxiety. > > With Interstellar, however, Nolan has taken that microcosmic perspective and > widened it to the dimension of the cosmic. The typically Nolanian > questions—what does it mean to be conscious/responsible/loving/human?—here > take on the heft of the human species as a whole. Interstellar is concerned > less with "man versus nature" than it is with "man versus human nature." > While the film has a marked admiration for science—it is science, in the end, > that helps humanity to rescue itself—it has just as much respect for wonder > and awe and what you might call, in the broadest and perhaps even the > narrowest sense, faith. Its villains are the characters who trust too much in > logic, without the ballast of something more transcendent. They are the ones > who choose physical survival over everything else—who prioritize living, you > could say, over life. > > "It has been said," Carl Sagan wrote in Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human > Future in Space, "that astronomy is a humbling and character-building > experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human > conceits than this distant image of our tiny world." We are saturated, now, > with images of space—not just from Hollywood, but from scientists. NASA > offers an astronomy picture of the day. There are multiple websites dedicated > to the sharing of "space porn." The images appeal not just because they are > pretty, but because they are, in the most literal sense, awesome. They > encourage us to think beyond ourselves, to question, to wonder. Sagan wasn't > just an astronomer, but a philosopher-astronomer. Just as Christopher > Nolan—and Stanley Kubrick, and Alfonso Cuarón—are philosopher-filmmakers. > Space, speaking to us in its vast silence, brings out the philosopher in us > all. > > -- > -- > Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community > <[email protected]> > Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism > Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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