In addition to touching on the subject of taste and appetite, my last post The Number Games asked whether the nature of our ‘reality’ is such that our actions amount to cannibalism. Specifically, that if our reality is a product or reflection of thought then everything we do can be likened to feeding off our own mind. The most obvious symbolic representation of this peculiar form of Holy Communion is the Ouroborus, which depicts a snake or dragon eating its own tail. This highlights the circular or dialectical nature of our reality as a continuous cycle of creative destruction. It could be argued that this process of self-consumption (and the theme of death and rebirth it signifies) is the cosmic equivalent of the artist’s need to continually reinvent him/herself. Equally, it could be argued that these undertones of restlessness, dissatisfaction, and identity crisis are indicative of cosmological suicidal tendencies. With this in mind, let’s dispense with the tree hugging and plunge headlong into the dark side…
The first and most obvious point to make relates to the system of economic organisation that now spans the entire globe. It exists to make ‘profit’ and it can do so only by manufacturing more (and more varied) products and services and enticing us to consume them. Although the term is commonly understood to refer to the act of eating or drinking, the literal definition is ‘to destroy by wasting’. If we situate Planet Earth’s dominant economic model within the context of a cycle of creative destruction then the most pertinent question to ask is whether our collective obsession with consumerism has a hidden and far darker ‘cosmic’ purpose? Assume for a moment that the reality we experience is an eternal stage play in the mind of a cosmic artist called ‘god’: is our preoccupation with ‘wasting’ indicative of his/her/its desire for a fresh burst of artistic creativity?
Of course, rampant consumerism has been the target of ‘green’ activists for several decades now. Recycling is one ‘product’ of the ‘green movement’, but if the universe itself is predicated on recycling then what does the emergence of this practice represent exactly? Here, yet another ‘Marshall’ (this time, it’s Marshall Applewhite, leader of the notorious Heaven’s Gate cult) offers an opinion on the meaning of the term ‘recycling’. Are you prepared to transcend to the ‘next level’?
A less obvious but perhaps more relevant meaning of the term ‘consumption’ relates to disease (thanks Sam Harrington), specifically to tuberculosis, which literally lays waste to the body in the form of weight and blood loss. Is tuberculosis’ effect on the individual human body analogous to ‘Holy Communion’ and the symbolic consumption of a deity’s ‘body and blood’? Perhaps so, but it’s the disease’s association with the lungs that is most interesting, to me at least.
When people with active pulmonary TB cough, sneeze, speak, sing, or spit, they expel infectious aerosol droplets 0.5 to 5.0 Āµm in diameter. A single sneeze can release up to 40,000 droplets. Each one of these droplets may transmit the disease, since the infectious dose of tuberculosis is very small (the inhalation of fewer than 10 bacteria may cause an infection)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis#Mechanism
I’ve referred to Marshall McLuhan’s theories about the ‘global brain’ that encompasses the natural environment on many occasions. The content generated by this vast electronic brain has saturated the natural environment, flooding it with information and creating a digital ocean. This digital ocean can also be thought of as an ‘atmosphere’, just as the oceans of earth provide an ‘atmosphere’ for marine dwellers. Our reliance on information is such that this digital ‘atmosphere’ has become as essential to our survival as the physical atmosphere. McLuhan likened our situation to that of goldfish in a bowl, given that the digital ocean is as transparent as the air that surrounds us. We can’t see, touch, smell, or taste it, but our very existence tells us it’s there.
The ‘oxygen’ in this artificial environment is information transmitted as electromagnetic radiation. The devices we use to ‘harvest’ this information are ‘gills’ that filter the digital currents and waves and provide us with this life-giving resource. These electronic extensions of ourselves perform a role analogous to that of lungs: their central processors tune into specific frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum in order to separate the ‘wheat’ that is ‘information’ from the ‘chaff’ that is the natural background chatter of cosmic radiation. In this respect, their ‘atmosphere processing’ role is not unlike the theoretical ‘terraforming’ of science fiction.
One of the classic symptoms of tuberculosis is coughing and, as I’ve pointed out in my previous two posts, death and its counterpart the ‘coffin’ seems to play a significant role in our ‘reality’. In fact, the guy who lives underneath me does so much ‘coughing’ that I often wonder if he occupies a state somewhere between life and death. His name is Brian, so it seems only appropriate to delve into the Videodrome and ask for an opinion from his namesake, Brian O’Blivion.
Oblivion is the state of not being aware of what is happening around you, for example because you are asleep or unconscious.
Source: Collins English Dictionary
Oblivion as a state of unconsciousness is consistent with McLuhan’s goldfish simile. The goldfish (often derided for its poor memory) is unaware of the water or environment in which it swims, just as most humans seem oblivious to the digital ocean they now inhabit. Joseph Kosinski employed the term to good effect in the Tom Cruise film Oblivion, emphasising its meaning in relation to destruction and to being unaware of the nature of one’s surroundings. Cruise’s character Jack is troubled by flashbacks of erased memories of a pre-Apocalypse Earth. Yet he still accepts the paper-thin ‘alternate history’ presented to him by an invasive alien Artificial Intelligence. The story it offers him is an inversion of the ‘factual’ account presented at the film’s end, but contains just enough ‘truth’ to assuage his doubts. Hence Jack sleepwalks through the first half of the film and is literally oblivious to the true nature of his surroundings.
To be clear, there’s a sense in which this hidden ocean has always formed part of the ‘natural’ environment. Light itself is electromagnetic radiation and is as much a part of the environment as various forms of background radiation (visible and non-visible) emanating from the wider universe.
And I can watch TV
While I’m wrapped up in bed
And mother makes sure that I’m watered and fed
My best friend from school will come over and stare
At me in my bubble of germified air
Viewed from this perspective, it might be said that by learning to manipulate the basic currency of the universe (energy) our own man-made version has replicated this ‘universal ocean’ in miniature. In this respect, we’ve taken what McLuhan called the ‘pure information’ of the lightbulb (which he referred to as the only contentless medium) and transformed it into intelligible, structured data. A kind of ‘order out of chaos’ if you will.
Oblivion‘s plot is interesting for another reason: the alien A.I. invades Earth in order to convert the oceans into energy using gigantic fusion reactors. Jack patrols these ‘hydro-rigs’ in his bubbleship, and when we see them for the first time he reports that they’re “sucking up sea water”. Bearing in mind that the First Law of Thermodynamics states that the total amount of energy in a closed system can be neither created nor destroyed, there’s a sense in which this ‘theft’ of the oceans represents an analog to digital conversion process. The ‘analog’ ocean is transferred from the ‘solid state’ of matter to the ‘transcendent‘ state of energy, which is just another way of describing raw information. The word ‘sublimation‘ springs to mind and in turns reminds me of the term ‘subliminal’, something that exists beneath the threshold of consciousness.
Sublimation has also been used as a generic term to describe a solid-to-gas transition (sublimation) followed by a gas-to-solid transition (deposition).
Temperature plays a key role in sublimation processes, as it does when water inside a kettle reaches boiling point.
Once water hits the 100 degree threshold it becomes steam. In so doing it ‘translates’ from one environment to another, becoming part of the physical atmosphere that surrounds us. This, of course, is the basic physics behind the process of cloud formation. It represents the translation of ourselves (our ‘memories’) from the physical/analog environment of flesh-and-blood to the ethereal/digital environment of information as energy.
Kelvin is a measure of temperature, and Kris Kelvin is a character in Solaris, a film about a space station orbiting an alien planet whose single consciousness takes the form of a global ocean. The ocean scans the astronauts’ memories and presents them with ‘replicants’ of key figures in their lives. Ultimately, it presents them with a simulation of Earth itself.
As mentioned in Dreams of Empire, Oblivion and Solaris are mirror images. Both address the issue of alien contact, both contain a nuclear theme, and both male leads are physically and/or emotionally estranged from their wives, who are blasted into lonely orbit around a planet.
James Cameron’s The Abyss contains identical themes, but situates them in the ‘inner space’ of the ocean itself, replacing the space stations of Solaris and Oblivion with a deep sea research station. Here, too, the male lead (played by Ed Harris) is alienated from his wife (described as ‘Queen Bitch of the Universe’), but this time the man abandons the woman in a bid to save an alien species from nuclear destruction. In the extended version, we learn that the aliens were about to exterminate humanity, and relent only because of his continued love for his wife.
So, all three films address the subject of love, betrayal, separation, sacrifice, reconciliation, and catharsis under the watchful eye of an ‘alien’ presence that depicts itself as opaque yet transparent, indifferent yet concerned, hostile yet helpful, devious yet open, purposeful and purposeless. In short, a candle blowing in the wind that is impossible to define or pin down, an entity that reinvents itself according to the requirements of the script.
One of the most interesting and relevant scenes from the film is this one, in which Ed Harris’s character is kitted out in a spacesuit and obliged to breathe an oxygen-rich fluid instead of air. The experience of breathing liquid is likened to being inside The Matrix or womb.
We all breathed liquid for nine months, Bud. Your body will remember.
Oddly enough, one of the lead characters in the film is a Navy Seal named ‘Hiram Coffey‘, played by Michael Biehn of Terminator fame. Coffey creates the film’s nuclear threat after he develops a form of ‘Narcissus Narcosis‘, a.k.a. ‘Rapture of the Deep‘.
Narcosis while diving (also known as nitrogen narcosis, inert gas narcosis, raptures of the deep, Martini effect) is a reversible alteration in consciousness that occurs while diving at depth. It is caused by the anesthetic effect of certain gases at high pressure. The Greek word Ī½Ī±ĻĪŗĻĻĪ¹Ļ (narcosis) is derived from narke, “temporary decline or loss of senses and movement, numbness”, a term used by Homer and Hippocrates. Narcosis produces a state similar to drunkenness (alcohol intoxication), or nitrous oxide inhalation.
Biehn also appears in the film Tombstone as Doc Holliday’s would-be nemesis, Johnny Ringo.
I mention this only because Holliday suffered from tuberculosis and Val Kilmer’s depiction of him as an emaciated wreck brings this centre stage.
All well and good, but what of Tuberculosis? Well, pHugoPsychIsis and pHagocalypse appear to be contributing factors…
TB infection begins when the mycobacteria reach the pulmonary alveoli, where they invade and replicate within endosomes of alveolar macrophages. Macrophages identify the bacterium as foreign and attempt to eliminate it by phagocytosis. During this process, the bacterium is enveloped by the macrophage and stored temporarily in a membrane-bound vesicle called a phagosome. The phagosome then combines with a lysosome to create a phagolysosome. In the phagolysosome, the cell attempts to use reactive oxygen species and acid to kill the bacterium. However, M. tuberculosis has a thick, waxy mycolic acid capsule that protects it from these toxic substances. M. tuberculosis is able to reproduce inside the macrophage and will eventually kill the immune cell.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis#Pathogenesis
As digital fishes, our means of subsistence float about in the ‘atmosphere’ itself. Our digital gills collect and process oxygen automatically, as if by magic. We swim about with our mouths open wide to catch digital manna that seems to emanate from a mysterious benevolence sat atop a heavenly cloud. The immediacy and instant gratification on offer is totally at odds with our physical environment, an environment in which quarterpounders and milkshakes do not habitually float through the air like balloons as we walk down the street. Yet if this digital bounty originates from an ‘above’ that is also the ‘below’ then we have to consider that the sustenance we derive from it may also amount to a death sentence of sorts. In other words, just as the macrophage’s attempt to isolate and contain the TB bacterium facilitates its own death, our self-referential Holy Communion may sow the seeds of its own destructive recreation.
I try not to get too ‘sirius’ about these matters, although it’s interesting to think about them in relation to the ‘recycling’ movement. Is recycling to the natural environment as the macrophage is to the individual human body? If so, is it fated not to prevent ‘environmental disaster’ but to hasten or even ensure that ‘environmental disaster’ occurs? Or, more prosaically, is recycling the yin to excessive consumption’s yang? Can it be seen as a means by which to effect gradual, evolutionary environment change rather than a sudden, apocalyptic shift? Or is it merely symbolic of the very obvious recycling of themes, stories and tropes?
Given that space-time itself appears to be as fictional as the content we consume (hardly surprising as we can only learn about space-time by consuming content), there’s also a chicken-and-egg question to ask. Is the physical environment an analog manifestation of its digital sibling? Or is the digital a copy of the physical? Did the remodelling of a pre-existing digital ocean (the original primordial soup so to speak) into data structures patterned by constants and formulae actually create the apparent coherence we see ‘out there’ in the physical world? More to the point, if an action in the ‘now’ can manifest in the past or the future (or both) then what can our information consumption here in the present (be it based on current events or a digital retrieval of past events) tell us about the ‘future’?
Does our experience here in the ‘present’ (the retrieval/playback of our memories and experiences as a ‘story’ we call ‘reality’) provide insight into how the process of translating our lives from the analogue to digital world develops in the ‘future’?
These matters may be deeply and terribly significant, or they may have all the meaning and importance of the overwhelming urge to scratch my left testicle that’s just washed over me. Yet, like me, you too may find yourself weary of this current incarnation of Planet Earth, which seems to be running a pre-release version of Groundhog Day v0.05. How it’ll cope when the smart bots take over and relieve us of our current ‘hunter-gatherers of information’ role is anyone’s guess, but I suspect a firmware upgrade is in order.
Then again, is ‘oblivion’ preferable? I mean, if everyone gets ‘evacuated’ then how bad can it be?
They should have opted for that QVC digital gill upgrade (payable in 12 easy monthly instalments).
What remains of the old analogue world?
Final thought: I’ve just switched on the TV to hear this line from the film The Last Witch Hunter.
There is no going back, for there is nothing to go back to.
Some physicists believe that the total sum of all the positive and negative energy in the universe amounts to exactly zero. Maybe nothing is being created, nothing is being consumed, and nothing is being destroyed? No being, no nothingness, just a work of pure imagination?
Hugo's Probe 
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