Imagination

Entertainment covers films, books and games. Works of fiction in various media that transport us from our world to virtual worlds of imagination.

Sense8

Sense8

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Sense8 is one of the best TV series that I’ve seen. All 12 episodes were released by Netflix at the same time and I saw them all over 3 days. It’s a science fiction story that has resonances with X-Men, Alphas and Heroes in that it centres around a group of people who are either the next step in human evolution or else a parallel development. At any rate we have 8 young people who were born at the same time and whose emphatic or telepathic connection has been triggered by the death of a psychic mother figure. Apart from the plot, which involves evading an evil nemesis who wants to control them, the story is about the relationships between the members of this group that is diverse in ethnicity and sexuality. They have the ability to be, psychically, in the same place as another group member or ‘sense8’ even though there are physically in different parts of the world. At times the story feels like a metaphor about and a meditation on connectedness and individuality. The theme of connectedness is not confined to the relationships between the ‘Sense8’s’; each Sense8 is dealing with a connection with a mother, father, lover, friend, family that defines his or her identity.

The series is beautifully filmed in locations across the world, including London. For all its emphasis on relationships, action is not neglected and there are enough fight and flight sequences to spice the story. These 12 episodes had the feel of an ‘origin’ story and I look forward to another series. Best thing though is the invitation that the story offers for us to think about our own connectedness with others and about our individuality.

The Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory

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I think ‘the big bang theory’, is hilarious and cute .. the last episode was particularly cute. It featured the guys pairing up for a scavenger hunt competition organised by Raj. Howard and Amy bonded in a way that would be worrying if it was a different kind of show but Penny and Sheldon stole the show as a kind of dynamic duo that might work as a detective show spin-off … ‘he was the nerdy genius professor, she was the sexy intuitive waitress .. together they fight crime.’

Some more interesting pairings can be generated here: http://paulm.com/toys/they_fight_crime.html and here: http://www.williamswriting.com/fantasy-protagonists-generator/

Prayer

Prayer

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Abwoon d’bwashmaya (Our Father which art in heaven)

Father-Mother of the Universe. Source of All that Is,

Nethqadash shmakh (Hallowed be thy name)

May we within our inner shrines of prayer and meditation honour the sacred resonance of your Name.

Teytey malkuthakh (Thy kingdom come)

May we come to live in full awareness of your Presence.

Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d’bwahmaya aph b’arha (Thy Will be done in earth, as it is in heaven)

May this realm of the physical become imbued with Consciousness and Light.

Hawvlan lachma d’sunqanan yaomana (Give us this day our daily bread)

May we receive that which we need so that Life and Light and Love persist and grow within us.

Wahboqlan khaubayn (wakhtahayn) aykanna daph khnan shbwoqan
l’khayyabayn (And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors)

May we be released from the guilt and shame that we suffer for past misdeeds even as we release others from our condemnation of their misdeeds.

Wela tahlan l’nesyuna
Ela patzan min bisha (And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil)

May we be led from worlds of delusion, darkness and despair to the paths of life and light and love.

Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l’ahlam almin.
Ameyn. (For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.)

Ground of our Being. The Particular and All. The Beginning, Middle and End. Sacred, Sacred, Sacred.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

I found this meditation on the Lord’s Prayer here. It is from Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus by Neil Douglas-Klotz.

I was inspired to do my own meditation/variant on the words:

Father-Mother of the Universe. Source of All that Is,
May we within our inner shrines of prayer and meditation honour the sacred resonance of your Name.
May we come to live in full awareness of your Presence.
May this realm of the physical become imbued with Consciousness and Light.
May we receive that which we need so that Life and Light and Love persist and grow within us.
May we be released from the guilt and shame and fear we suffer for past misdeeds even as we release our condemnation of others.
May we be led from worlds of delusion, darkness and despair to the paths of life and light and love.
Ground of our Being. The Particular and All. The Beginning, Middle and End. Sacred, Sacred, Sacred.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Elysium

Elysium

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The premise of Elysium is that in 2054 the megarich live on a space habitat far above the polluted and overpopulated Earth. The poor live in terrestrial megacities and are very oppressed by the corporation bosses a bit like the contrast that exists now between the rich in rich nations and the poor in poor nations but more so. The plot is that the main protagonist ‘Max’ played by Matt Damon is an ordinary guy who is very oppressed by the megarich bosses of the megacorps and their robot cops and administrators. Max steals a ‘magic key’, they call it ‘computer codes’ but I know a magic key when I see it. He fights his way to the magic city of Elysium and uses the key to change everything so that the robots start working for everyone and sharing the world’s resources fairly instead of keeping them for the selfish few. Max dies but his job is done the world is saved and everyone lives happily ever after.

That’s it, that’s the plot of Elysium. The sets are very pretty and I would liked the scenery a lot more than the very childish plot. Honestly anyone over twelve should be embarrassed to have come up with guff like this. Then there are the fights. Big, long, noisy and improbable fights have become a new staple of these ‘blockbuster’ films.

Disappointing after the hype. A good core idea wasted. Maybe it could be rebooted as a TV series.

Thoughts on Consciousness, Chi and Changing the World

Thoughts on Consciousness, Chi and Changing the World

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I found this video, by Graham Hancock, on the Red Ice Creations website.

Hancock writes:

I have received notification .. that my recent 18-minute TEDx video presentation, “The War on Consciousness” (YouTube) which has at time of writing received more than 132,000 views, is to be deleted from the TEDx website because what I say in that presentation allegedly “strays well beyond the realm of reasonable science”, and because I allegedly make “non-scientific and reckless” statements about psychotropic drugs. I am fighting these charges from TED’s Science Board which in my opinion are untrue and amount to nothing more than an ideologically driven attempt to censor my work. All the indications, however, are that my presentation will be deleted some time today…

…I don’t intend to allow this bizarre transgression of my freedom of speech on the part of an institution – TED – for which I once had the highest respect, to pass without a fight…” (paraphrased)

There is more to consciousness than we suppose and the failure to investigate it means that, as individuals, we confine ourselves to the surface levels of our reality, that we don’t live fully. Collectively we see each other superficially and at this level fear each other and become cruel to each other. I don’t advocate drugs but meditation, regular and deep can help. I understand this from experience though my meditation is patchy. What I find intriguing about the video is the thought that non-material, non-human entities exist within a realm of human consciousness beyond the physical brain.

Another video I saw today and uploaded to YouTube is about Chi. It presents evidence for the reality of Chi and also points to humans being more than is alleged by the materialist reductionist world view:

What links these two videos, on chi and on consciousness, is the pointing to a spiritual vastness or depth of us all. Modern life insulates us from the profound and technology increasing pulls us into a sort of digital dream where we disconnect from each other and ourselves:

For many of us work has long been that part of our lives where we feel alienated, disconnected from meaning:

Now we voluntarily disconnect from meaning or maybe accept the artificial, vicarious experiences of meaning provided by the digital media. These media vie with our real connections to friends, family and our environment for our attention and they have the advantage of being pain free. It’s a lot easier to play a computer game where I’m a conquering hero than to get up before dawn for a morning run. It’s easier to browse through Facebook than to attempt to learn a new still or do some chores or talk about how I feel with my partner or about how she feels. As we run away from reality we become less and less connected to the spiritual and more and more connected to the machine, whether this is the machine of the corporate state or the actual digital machines.

Sometimes it feels as though someone or something wants to keep us disconnected from our higher potentials. The health activist in the following video identifies the pineal gland as the part of the brain that is responsible for us having spiritual or metaphysical experiences and she argues that contaminants such as flouride suppress its functioning:

http://youtu.be/oM0ToA30OHg

If we were all functioning at a higher level then the world would change. There are people, institutions that would not want that kind of change and maybe they work to suppress rising consciousness. What if we accepted this as a reality or as a metaphor? What if we saw meaning in raising our level, maybe achieving just a little but aiming high, and encouraging others, everyone, to do the same? Could we, perhaps, change the world? For Good?

Questions, Quotes and Qualities

Questions, Quotes and Qualities

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The pic is from www.marcandangel.com. I’m posting it for two reasons; the first is to answer it myself and the second is to remind me to use the idea of questions, quotes and qualities illustrated by photos as part of the summer school projects this year.

Oh. To answer the question. I can’t identify a single thing I can do now that I couldn’t do last year. This means I haven’t developed, learned. This year has been a year of stagnation or false starts. There is a certain frustration .. and yet .. and yet there is also a sense of coming to terms with where I am, with my own strengths and weaknesses.

A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge. ~ Castaneda.

My weaknesses are real. Some I am very aware of, others not so much. These weaknesses stand in the way of my progress like an army, each one supporting the others. My challenge is to eliminate them all.

Marvel’s The Avengers

Marvel’s The Avengers

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I wrote on Rotten Tomatoes:

The Marvel Universe of superheroes exists on a plane of imagination populated with super powered mutants, Norse gods, aliens, impossibly competent warriors and super geniuses. It’s easy to dismiss the superhero genre as childish fantasy but the comics I grew up with and continued reading far into adulthood provided writers, artists and readers a platform for exploring even brainstorming ideas and relationships as significant as that of any other genre of fiction. The recent spate of superhero films have extended the universe from the comic books to the cinema with mixed results from the dire Green Lantern through the okay Captain America to the good X-Men First Class. Avengers however brings all the elements that distinguish good storytelling within this genre, grand spectacle, super science, iconic/archetypal heroes, relationship between characters and a very particular intensity. The hand of writer director Joss Whedon is evident in this film, not least in the smart ‘buffyesque’ humour that humanises the intensity. I enjoyed Avengers enormously. There’s more to it than meets the eye and a hell of a lot meets the eye.

Sandy and I saw the film on Monday (the 2D version, I hate 3D); she enjoyed the story and spectacle as a non-comics person while my appreciation of it was inseparable from years of being a fanboy. The genre has it’s history, conventions and high points that fans remember and that are referenced in the film. Among the high points of comics history is a sequence from a 1980’s Daredevil story by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli that features the Avengers and defines the relationship between the three central and most iconic characters:

 

As a fanboy I know that Whedon is referencing this relationship and iconography. The line “A soldier with a voice that could command a god … and does” is one of the coolest in comics history and defines Captain America as much more than a ‘super soldier’ but as a person who commands respect by presence, integrity and an intuitive grasp of strategy. Actor Chris Evans does not quite pull this off but it’s a big ask and he and the film make a good stab at it. Robert Downey makes the role of Tony Stark/Iron Man his own and while Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is a little light on godlike gravitas he looks great; the other actors give pretty much definitive renditions of the characters they play.

Eden Project Cornwall

Eden Project Cornwall

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Every year on my birthday Sandy and I go away for a few days. This year it was a short trip to Cornwall where we visited the very inspirational Eden Project, Plymouth and a couple of very scenic Cornish towns, Looe and Polpeero.

The Eden Project is a remarkable achievement, not just because it is spectacular in itself but because of the dedicated idealism that created it. It asks and attempts to answer the question, “How can we work together to build a better world?”.