This is probably the most depressing film I have ever seen. What really made me upset about it was it seemed as if the message was: if you have made a mistake, do not even try to change, you will only make your life even worse. Not only did it seem to condemn technology, but it seemed to condemn trying to change. I got stuck in a cycle thinking about why do we even try if nothing improves, is there a purpose, there cannot be. For a little while, I was deep in a reverie of nihilism.
A couple of hours ago, John Green, one of my favorite contemporary authors and people, expressed this same emotion while telling the story of his time as a chaplain at a children's hospital. He saw children needlessly suffering and he was stuck in an abyss of nihilism, and the only way he could get out was through the help others.
"An Evening of Awesome" is a concert that was held at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the anniversary of John Green's incredible best-selling book The Fault in Our Stars. It is among my favorite books and I will probably do a post on it one day since it means so much to me.
John was accompanied on the stage by his brother, Hank, with whom he does a bi-weekly video blog called Vlogbrothers, the cast of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, fellow youtubers, the Mountain Goats, and Neil Gaimen, the God of fiction about Gods. John talked about the ideas of for him, the purpose of his life is collaborating with others and sharing the joy of life; I truly agree. Without the collaborations from other people I certainly would not be a very happy person. There would be no books for Scotty and I to discuss, no movies for my friends and I to laugh about, no Moby-Dick to allude to in English class, no Lizzie Bennet Diaries with which to obsess. My life would be a whole lot less beautiful without the songs of the Mountain Goats or the Beatles and it would be a whole lot less meaningful without the ideas of those who precede me. Without these collaborators of books, movies, music, plays, and ideas, the purpose of my life would reduce to survival and procreation.
That is the thing about humanity: unlike nearly all species, our lives are not reduced to our own survival and procreation, but instead we try to make discoveries, new ideas, or to improve life for the future. This is very prevalent in both the book and film musical, Les Miserables, which I will be discussing next time, as the main characters fight for, not what is good for them, but for what is right and for what would change the future for the better.
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