When I was a lad, say seventeen, I was much taken with Henry David Thoreau, who my 11th grade English teacher, Mrs. Johnson, had rather offhandedly introduced me to.
Of course, as the war in Vietnam progressed, I thought less about the Thoreau of "Walden" and more about "Civil Disobedience."
But Thoreau's initial appeal had been his musings about being a hermit, being alone out there at Walden Pond.
As an eight year old I had read "Robinson Crusoe" and been stirred by it, by the idea of being alone, by the notion of what it meant to have nobody but yourself with whom to spend your days. Then, as an adolescent, Mrs. Johnson pointed me toward Thoreau and another way of thinking about the value of other people.
And then I stumbled on to Sartre: I stayed up late to watch a TV play, "No Exit", in which the main point seemed to be, "Hell is other people." Coming after World War II and the hideous Nazis, it was easy to see where Sartre was coming from: the Third Reich was all about fellowship and the joy of a homogeneous tribe of Aryans, and in cleansing the Reichland of impurities; there were informers, racial theories and a thoroughly hideous society.
Now, of course, the idea of spending even a few minutes alone with your own thoughts sparks panic among the smart phone generation, who must connect to their social network poste haste, at any interval or lull in human contact.
What would Thoreau think?
It should be recognized, Thoreau left his hut on Walden Pond and he had dinner with his friend, Emerson, weekly, in the warmth of the Emerson household, so Thoreau was no hermit, cut off from all human contact. Thoreau was really talking about respite, not full isolation.
Which brings me to the movie, "Passengers," which I more or less saw recently, on the ferry from Key West to Fort Myers. It was a rough passage and I was focusing on the screen at the head of the cabin because it seemed to help the nausea.
There were two movies. "Passengers" was the first. "The Martian" was the second. Both movies were about stranded voyagers, faced with failures of their crafts and the technology on which the crafts depended, which seemed a poor choice for this particular sea journey, as the boat rose and fell and yawed and spray flashed by the cabin windows and the idea no doubt passed through a few reeling minds on board that these movies might be an harbinger of what awaited us out at sea on our journey north.
I could not hear the soundtrack above the weather and the motors, but there were subtitles and I could grasp the basic dilemma set forth by the film.
A spaceship, filled with 5,000 souls and some number of crew, was headed from Earth to another planet, "Homestead," a commercial venture, an unspoiled planet, fully explored, and set up for habitation, beckoned. The trip would take 120 years, so the passengers and crew had to be sustained in suspended animation, in hibernation, in "pods" which would automatically unfurl and awaken everyone a few months before arrival at Homestead. The spaceship itself was a luxury liner, a Queen Mary of space travel, with elaborate swimming pools and spas and eating places to accommodate the 5,000 lucky passengers.
As the movie opens, an asteroid or cluster of boulders collides with the space ship and explosions are seen to wreak havoc, but the vessel is not destroyed. You see the damage occurring on the outside and then, you are on the inside and the lights dim but then reopen. Then you see a man in a pod and the pod opens and various syringes inject him and a hologram appears before him telling him he's been asleep for 120 years, so it's natural to feel a little disoriented. And he is instructed to go to the main lecture hall for orientation lectures but he is confused because there is nobody else there.
Then he returns to the pod area and sees all the other people are still in their pods and he quickly understands his pod has opened prematurely (to say the least) after only 30 years into the journey, and he will spend the rest of his life alone, the only human being awake among the passengers.
His only companion, his man Friday, is a human looking robot who serves as a bartender.
Eventually, he wanders among the pods, where he discovers a hibernating Jennifer Lawrence, who he Googles and falls in love with, from her posts and writing.
Then, he is faced with the big decision: He can spend his life alone, or he can awaken his love, but if he does that, she too will be dead long before she can reach Homestead and her only life will be alone with him on the spaceship.
What to do? Sacrifice her happiness so he will not go mad, living in isolation, in solitude while she never knows the sacrifice he made, or awaken her and doom her to a life with him, alone on the spaceship.
The soul crushing effects of isolation from all human contact was effectively explored by Tom Hanks in "Cast Away" where he ultimately creates a surrogate human and we have to see how thoroughly degraded and rent asunder he has become and how great the need for human contact.
Rotten tomatoes was full of reviews which extolled the premise, the dilemma, but faulted the solutions executed in the movie.
One thing's for sure, there should be at least one, preferably several remakes of this tale. It's a tale which deserves many re-tellings and versions.
But for now we are left with the movie we have, made in 2016, of which I was totally unaware and would have remained so, were it not for the storm at sea and me on the ferry out of Key West.
I'm not sure I am in a position to comment on those solutions, given the circumstances under which I saw it, fighting off waves of nausea, unable to hear the score, missing long sequences while I considered whether it would be better to vomit into my paper bag (provided by a considerate staff) or simply keep watching.
A surreal experience in movie going.
But it made me wonder what I would have done.
I'm pretty sure, much as I appreciate time alone, I would not have been strong enough to resist awakening the sleeping beauty.
But would there be any way, ethically, to justify that?
None that I can see.
Which simply means, sometimes, to remain sane and human, you have to do the unethical thing.
Of course, as the war in Vietnam progressed, I thought less about the Thoreau of "Walden" and more about "Civil Disobedience."
But Thoreau's initial appeal had been his musings about being a hermit, being alone out there at Walden Pond.
As an eight year old I had read "Robinson Crusoe" and been stirred by it, by the idea of being alone, by the notion of what it meant to have nobody but yourself with whom to spend your days. Then, as an adolescent, Mrs. Johnson pointed me toward Thoreau and another way of thinking about the value of other people.
And then I stumbled on to Sartre: I stayed up late to watch a TV play, "No Exit", in which the main point seemed to be, "Hell is other people." Coming after World War II and the hideous Nazis, it was easy to see where Sartre was coming from: the Third Reich was all about fellowship and the joy of a homogeneous tribe of Aryans, and in cleansing the Reichland of impurities; there were informers, racial theories and a thoroughly hideous society.
Now, of course, the idea of spending even a few minutes alone with your own thoughts sparks panic among the smart phone generation, who must connect to their social network poste haste, at any interval or lull in human contact.
What would Thoreau think?
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
-- Walden
-- Walden
By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.
-- Journal
-- Journal
I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it.
-- Journal
-- Journal
I do not know if I am singular when I say that I believe there is no man with whom I can associate who will not, comparatively speaking, spoil my afternoon.
--- Journal
Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
-- Walden
-- Walden
The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks. -- Journal
Which brings me to the movie, "Passengers," which I more or less saw recently, on the ferry from Key West to Fort Myers. It was a rough passage and I was focusing on the screen at the head of the cabin because it seemed to help the nausea.
There were two movies. "Passengers" was the first. "The Martian" was the second. Both movies were about stranded voyagers, faced with failures of their crafts and the technology on which the crafts depended, which seemed a poor choice for this particular sea journey, as the boat rose and fell and yawed and spray flashed by the cabin windows and the idea no doubt passed through a few reeling minds on board that these movies might be an harbinger of what awaited us out at sea on our journey north.
I could not hear the soundtrack above the weather and the motors, but there were subtitles and I could grasp the basic dilemma set forth by the film.
A spaceship, filled with 5,000 souls and some number of crew, was headed from Earth to another planet, "Homestead," a commercial venture, an unspoiled planet, fully explored, and set up for habitation, beckoned. The trip would take 120 years, so the passengers and crew had to be sustained in suspended animation, in hibernation, in "pods" which would automatically unfurl and awaken everyone a few months before arrival at Homestead. The spaceship itself was a luxury liner, a Queen Mary of space travel, with elaborate swimming pools and spas and eating places to accommodate the 5,000 lucky passengers.
As the movie opens, an asteroid or cluster of boulders collides with the space ship and explosions are seen to wreak havoc, but the vessel is not destroyed. You see the damage occurring on the outside and then, you are on the inside and the lights dim but then reopen. Then you see a man in a pod and the pod opens and various syringes inject him and a hologram appears before him telling him he's been asleep for 120 years, so it's natural to feel a little disoriented. And he is instructed to go to the main lecture hall for orientation lectures but he is confused because there is nobody else there.
Then he returns to the pod area and sees all the other people are still in their pods and he quickly understands his pod has opened prematurely (to say the least) after only 30 years into the journey, and he will spend the rest of his life alone, the only human being awake among the passengers.
His only companion, his man Friday, is a human looking robot who serves as a bartender.
Eventually, he wanders among the pods, where he discovers a hibernating Jennifer Lawrence, who he Googles and falls in love with, from her posts and writing.
Then, he is faced with the big decision: He can spend his life alone, or he can awaken his love, but if he does that, she too will be dead long before she can reach Homestead and her only life will be alone with him on the spaceship.
What to do? Sacrifice her happiness so he will not go mad, living in isolation, in solitude while she never knows the sacrifice he made, or awaken her and doom her to a life with him, alone on the spaceship.
The soul crushing effects of isolation from all human contact was effectively explored by Tom Hanks in "Cast Away" where he ultimately creates a surrogate human and we have to see how thoroughly degraded and rent asunder he has become and how great the need for human contact.
Rotten tomatoes was full of reviews which extolled the premise, the dilemma, but faulted the solutions executed in the movie.
One thing's for sure, there should be at least one, preferably several remakes of this tale. It's a tale which deserves many re-tellings and versions.
But for now we are left with the movie we have, made in 2016, of which I was totally unaware and would have remained so, were it not for the storm at sea and me on the ferry out of Key West.
I'm not sure I am in a position to comment on those solutions, given the circumstances under which I saw it, fighting off waves of nausea, unable to hear the score, missing long sequences while I considered whether it would be better to vomit into my paper bag (provided by a considerate staff) or simply keep watching.
A surreal experience in movie going.
But it made me wonder what I would have done.
I'm pretty sure, much as I appreciate time alone, I would not have been strong enough to resist awakening the sleeping beauty.
But would there be any way, ethically, to justify that?
None that I can see.
Which simply means, sometimes, to remain sane and human, you have to do the unethical thing.
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