Don’t Look Up’s Peter Isherwell Is A Much-Needed Archetype

 

Yesterday I wrote a review of Don’t Look Up and said of all the dysfunctional people in it, the most dysfunctional, the most lost of all, was the tech billionaire, Peter Isherwell. He was the perfect blend of the real-life tech giants we know so well, Bezos, Musk, Gates. Like those in real life, all of those within the establishment elite deferred to Ishenwell’s vision unquestioningly, as though they were in the presence of royalty or even divinity.

A movie, book, piece of music, is instantly worthy of being included in public conversation if it creates a new meme or an archetype which proves useful and enduring. Such is the case, I believe, with Peter Isherwell. He is the synthesized embodiment of the on-the-spectrum plutocrat who owns everything, understands nothing outside of how to create a monopoly, and is worshipped by the entire establishment.

It is to Peter Isherwell that all who are incapable of looking beyond the immediate paradigm blindly look to to lead us into the future. In his hands do we place our freewill and better judgment in exchange for some mystical belief that the future is an unavoidable fact that requires oracles such as Isherwell to explain to the rest of us.

I was thinking of this today as I came across a tweet from Bill Gates.

There are some people who reveal a glint of genius in everything they say or write. There are some, like Albert Einstein, capable of speaking intelligently and insightfully on a far-ranging array of subjects. There are some people whose genius will reach beyond their lifespan and be appreciated for generations to come.

Bill Gates is not one of those people.

Granted, there are vast areas of knowledge of which I know little or nothing. Bill Gates’ genius might very well be capable of being appreciated only by those with advanced knowledge of computers and coding. I will let others speak on that subject, as is only fitting. What I do know is that I have never come across anything that Bill Gates has said or written that has given any hint of an impressive intelligence.

I scoped him out today on Twitter. One who is of my generation often forgets that in this day and age our elites have such a need for adoration from the masses that they feel compelled to be on social media. I read a few of his tweets. They are trite, uninspiring, and lack any purpose for being. They do nothing to add to public discourse. I do believe Bill Gates would rather stand on a street corner naked than expose the inner workings of his mind. And God forbid, he would never say anything that would threaten existing power systems in any way.

The list of people Gates follows is further revealing of his intellectual vapidness. He follows people with power, sure, but I don’t find a single brilliant person among his 300+ follows. Assuredly Gates travels in different circles than I do and might well be aware of important thinkers of which I am ignorant, but I can’t help thinking there should be at least SOME overlap. Even if it is a pop-culture celebrity with a certain insight, I’d expect him to follow SOMEONE I know and respect.

Instead he follows Trevor Noah.

Of all the comedians to choose from, why follow someone guaranteed never to think outside the box or challenge establishment patterns in any way? The most obvious answer to this, and I’m not saying it’s the only answer, is that you yourself have a very mediocre and establishment brain.

Jack London said it best through a character in his novel, The Iron Heel: “But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. History, some day, will have an excruciating laugh at their expense.”

London wrote these words over a century ago. I’m unsure whether this is a problem that has existed throughout history, but I have the sense that it has grown particularly acute in our age. And while London predicted history will have an excruciating laugh at their expense, there is no guarantee we will have a future capable of looking back on our era. We are a species facing unprecedented challenges, and we are allowing ourselves to be led by people who are ignorant of matters outside of building colossal financial empires for themselves.

People like Musk, Gates, and others tell us what books we should read, what our future is supposed to look like, how to solve hunger and disease, and the way to human happiness. They continue to increase their own wealth while the solutions they preach do nothing to prevent the catastrophes that are approaching.

They are remaking the world in their own image, and it is seldom that anyone with any access to a large audience is willing to call them out on it. Kudos to those who worked to bring Don’t Look Up to the screen.

Perhaps it is foolish to believe the establishment is going to bring about the change we need, but we shouldn’t turn up our noses when some of them are willing to sell us the rope we can use (metaphorically, of course) to set things right. Don’t Look Up deserves to be a subject of conversation we can all engage in. Kindly leave your ego at home.

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Should You Look Up? A Movie Review

The long and short of it is that yes, I think you should watch Don’t Look Up.

 

People say it’s an obvious allegory for climate change, but I would say its strength lies in the way it points out the utter inability of every powerful institution we have to deal with a serious problem seriously. Politicians, the media, billionaire entrepreneurs, they are all living within their own worlds, distinct and distanced from a larger reality.

 

I know the revolution will not be televised, nor will it be brought to you by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep. But I don’t see it can do any harm for a lot of people to watch this movie. It does a pretty good job of putting on display the various dysfunctional patterns of those who are guiding our culture on its current trajectory. Maybe, just maybe, a few people will see this and be nudged into the realization that those we rely on to avert catastrophes are only going to make them worse.

 

Yes, the media has been exposed before. A Face In The Crowd, Network, They Live, even the 1989 Batman when the newscasters are forced to appear on camera without the use of any makeup, have pointed out the many ways in which the media is spectacle, meta, theater. But because the image of the media is constantly changing, it is necessary for our current media to be exposed to us. It is important to have today’s mask ripped off, the mask that is so ubiquitous and ever-present to us we run the risk of forgetting it is a mask. Every generation needs to experience this unmasking in the current vernacular.

 

I like that Don’t Look Up doesn’t try to make a scapegoat of a certain segment of the population but points out the foibles of all. No one is spared parody, so don’t be upset when it’s someone or something you consider sacred that’s being exposed.

 

Solutions are not to be had by joining one side to attack the other. And from what I’ve read from people I consider to be conservative, this came across as slightly liberal-leaning but overall fairly honest. Throwing in an older figure who likes to sniff women’s hair goes a long way in appeasing the Let’s Go Brandon crowd. And the greatest skewering of all goes to the mainstream media, which to be fair deserves it. Having been laid up the last week, I’ve resorted to spending some time watching television and am convinced more than ever of what a sewer pipe of disinformation and immorality it is.

 

Ultimately it is the billionaire entrepreneur who is shown to be the greatest villain of all. Conservatives may call such a person a socialist, but at least they have enough sense to despise this composite of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. Let’s not get hung up on semantics, am I right?

 

The media figures and the politicians are shown to be led by their compulsions, their egos, their self-interests, and their willingness to live within the tracks that they run in that write large across our culture. There is a need to push a false reality and these people are willing to live that false reality in order to reach the goals their crippled egos insist will make them worthy and admired. We are all running a mind program that doesn’t really jibe with the greater reality, but it is manifestly more obvious in the powerful than in those who follow them. The point being, I guess, is that we shouldn’t follow them, that we might come a long way in improving our own programming if we were to free ourselves from their leadership.

 

It is the billionaire entrepreneur who is most clearly disassociated from reality, even as it is the billionaire entrepreneur upon whom all the dysfunctional people of influence look to for guidance. They are not the manipulators of the masses, however, they are rather the idiot kings whom the rest of us are taught to believe possess a genius above our understanding or criticism.

 

This is a movie for the masses, it is a movie which everyone should discuss. It is an invitation to get out of your own little group and raise the mean popular awareness. This is what art is supposed to do. Undoubtedly it will alienate a few purists who feel the need to be beyond anything that reaches the masses, but it’s their loss should they sit outside the conversation.

 

One word of warning: I fear such a movie runs the risk of leading some to hopelessness. Weak people are constantly at risk of moving directly from obliviousness to despair. That’s why they stay so long in a fantasy world. If you’ve watched this flick, you probably have Netflix. If you do, watch A Boy Called Christmas. It’s written for a younger audience in mind but it is smartly done and it is hopeful. You need to be reminded not only that the world is in need of improvement, but that people have the power to actually make positive changes.

 

It is possible to be guided both by truth and by hope. In fact, I highly recommend it. Hope and a capacity for joy are necessary if you want to take on the troubles that truth is always exposing. Look up, because it’s worth doing. You are a grown-up who can deal with the truth, even if it is sometimes unpleasant. That’s how individuals survive, and that is how our species and our planet will, as well.

 

Wise Words From A Pig

 

“What is freedom?” asked a pig to another pig standing close to him amid thousands of other pigs all crammed together. Though the two pigs were of the same age and had the same life experience, the one pig recognized in the other a greater intelligence. It seemed as if he were graced by God with a greater mind, if words like grace and God could be uttered in such a place. You see, they lived in a factory farm, where the whole purpose to their lives was to grow to be eaten.

“Ah, to tell you what freedom means would require me to tell you the story of our species. I would have to tell you the history of our planet.”

“Please do,” said the first pig. “There is nothing else to do in this place. There is no room to move about, nothing to see, nothing to do. It would help us pass the time until the big truck comes to take us away.”

“Well,” said the second pig, “imagine if there were no walls to this building and we could walk wherever we chose.”

“Why…no walls?” said Pig #1.“What would protect us?”

“Protect us from what?” said Pig #2. “No, the walls do not protect you. They are not there to keep harm out, they are there to keep you in. There was a time when every one of us pigs lived without walls.”

“A time without walls? I…I can’t even imagine such a thing. What protected us from the giant machines that roar up and down the streets? I have seen many a poor little animal lying dead on the side of the street near here. Or, at least I’ve heard them cry as they got hit. And to get anywhere, you have to cross those streets.”

“There was a time when there were no streets,” said Pig #2. For Pig #2 he was, a plastic tag with the number 2 had been attached to his ear when he was a mere piglet.

“No streets? Then what kept the giant machines from rampaging all over the land?”

“There were no giant machines then,” said Pig #2.

“Ah, I see,” said Pig #1. “That sounds nice. But tell me, if there were no walls and we were free to wander wherever we liked, did we not still need to stay put in order that we should be there when the humans filled the feed troughs for us? Or did they follow us around and feed us wherever it was we roamed?”

“They did not feed us at all,” said Pig #2.

“Not feed us?” said Pig #1, making a pronounced snort. “Why, that’s terrible!”

“Not at all,” said the wiser pig. “In the days before the walls, we were quite adept at rooting out our own food.”

“What is rooting?” asked the less knowledgeable pig.

“It is when you use your tusks to dig into the earth in search of roots and grubs.”

“And what are tusks?”

“They are something that were removed from you when you were a younger pig.”

“Removed from me? Whatever do you mean?”

“You likely don’t remember because they drugged you before they ripped them from you, and perhaps you have blotted out the whole memory of having tusks because the ordeal was too traumatic.”

“Oh, gosh,” said Pig #1, “that does sound traumatic.”

Pig #1 sat silently for a moment, chewing on a piece of gristle from the slop that was earlier fed to him. At length he spoke up.

“So you say we once were able to feed ourselves? That we could walk where we would, sleep wherever we liked, could feed ourselves whenever we were hungry, and were safe from the giant machines that are always noisily going by? And that we had tusks that were ripped from us?”

“Strong tusks, which we could use to defend ourselves against whatever creature attempted to make a meal of us. Yes. The Earth was once a place that was mainly safe for us and was ours to explore as we wished.”

“Well,” said Pig #1, “if this is ‘freedom’ it is a most wonderful thing.”

“Oh, no,” said Pig #2, “This is not freedom, this was simply the way things were before people learned words such as ‘freedom’. Freedom…freedom is a most horrible thing.

“Well, what is freedom, then?” asked Pig #1, confused.

“Freedom is just a word invented by humans. Using the word freedom they invented man’s laws, which stated that humans could do anything they wished to do and that nobody could stop them. In the name of freedom they created their own laws and put aside all of nature’s laws. In the name of freedom they claimed the land as their own, constructing their deadly roads that permit their loud, smoke-belching machines to drive over any animals that dare cross them. In the name of freedom, they cut down the forests in which our ancestors used to roam. In the name of freedom, they put aside all of…”

“All of what?” asked Pig #1, gazing at Pig #2 with rapt attention.

“Well…” said Pig #2, “I do not speak from knowledge on this, it is mere rumor. But I have heard that there is such a being as the Great Pig, one who looks out for and loves us all. It is hard to imagine such a being could exist in a world where we are treated the way we are, but it is a nice idea to contemplate. And while you might consider me a very wise pig, I am after all merely a pig, a simple creature who in the grand scheme of things knows very little. But if a Great Pig exists, I have no doubt that humans are going against every one of his laws, as well, and they do so in the name of freedom, in their belief that they are free to do whatever they want in this world. I can only pray that there is an all-powerful and all-knowing Pig who will one day disabuse them of this notion.”

“I, too, hope that the Great Pig exists,” said Pig #1 after a moment. “I hope that he sees all the violence and the damage humans do to animals in the name of freedom.”

“In the name of freedom, the humans cause more than just violence to animals and to the planet,” said Pig #2. “In the name of freedom, they do violence to each other, as well. The freedom many of them prize more than any other is the freedom to own and carry weapons that are made to kill. In the name of freedom they put in cages even other humans.”

“They keep other humans behind walls like they do us?” asked Pig #1.

“Yes, and sometimes they even kill them.” And seeing the look of horror on the face of Pig #1, Pig #2 hastened to add, “But they don’t eat them.”

“Who said anything about anybody being eaten?” asked Pig #1.

Recognizing the ignorance of his fellow pig and deeming it preferable than him knowing the truth, Pig #2 ignored the question and continued. “And in the name of freedom, the humans rise up in the thousands and even millions to fight and kill each other. They launch great big bombs against people living in other lands in order to destroy them. And in the process, killing a great many pigs and other animals as well. In the name of freedom they rile up hatred in their hearts for those who perceive of freedom in a different way. And with great self-righteousness they lead armies to kill others, even as they deprive those who are forced to fight of any freedom of their own.”

“That sound horrible,” said Pig #1. “I had always thought that human beings were intelligent creatures. Now I see they have less brains than a pig.”

“Oh, they are not stupid creatures, these humans. In truth, they have more intelligence than the average pig. But when it comes to wisdom and humility, the average pig has them beat.”

*

As A Child I Wanted To Explore Space, Now I Want To Save The Earth

I was born in 1966. For me that meant growing up in the era where space exploration was, as was said in the greatest Sci-Fi TV series of the time, the final frontier. I got to watch as human beings blasted off to the moon and returned to tell about it. If you were not of that era I cannot express to you what an amazing thing it was to consider traveling off-planet for the first time. It was my greatest goal to explore new worlds. It almost seemed like my generation’s destiny. It was my dream to rescue space babes from alien creatures as I had seen it done in so many movies and comic books.

 But I never imagined doing so while leaving a burned-out husk of a planet behind. For me, space exploration meant bringing all that was good and noble about humanity out into the broader universe.

 Now it just seems like a way of leaving all that is worst of us behind. At the cost of a planet. At the cost of every other living being that now inhabits it. And if we are to be quite honest about it, at the expense of about 99.999% of our fellow human beings. Because the vast preponderance of us humans are never getting off this rock alive. All of us with the possible exception of a very elect few have always been and will always be Earthlings.

 I am shocked at how many of us are willing to invest the future of our species in the dreams and aspirations of an elite few. But somehow that flaw seems to run deep in the human species. Parents have since the beginning of recorded history given their children up to die in wars that only serve the interests of kings. I guess it’s kind of selfless, but it’s kind of stupid, too.

 I am older now, and the idea of space travel still intrigues me. But I have other interests now. From my earliest years I was concerned about the environment. At one time I just assumed that humanity was capable of both exploring other worlds AND preserving the only world we had ever known. I mean, it only seemed logical that a species intelligent enough to escape the planet of its origin would also be intelligent enough to take care of its home. And God knows, we should be decent enough to do this, as well.

 But preserving our planet no longer seems a priority to us. Instead, we have decided we must move beyond it before our inability to act sustainably puts an end to our species. This is the mindset we have acquired because we have adopted the values of a very tiny but narcissistic, loud, and confident portion of us. But it is not my mindset, and it never will be.

 Do I feel it is my responsibility to aid in sending a few of our species outward into space to colonize other worlds? Not if my species is one which is incapable of sustaining life on its own planet. Not if my species is incapable of coming in peace. Not if my species is intent on visiting other planets only to exploit their resources and leave whatever life they encounter to die in the pollution it creates. If my species is directly involved in the killing of other terrestrial species and perhaps life itself on the very planet that gave birth to it, why would I wish that on the rest of the universe?

 Should it not be my responsibility to contain this deadly virus before it is able to spread? Is it any different from what we encounter with a pandemic?

 I look at the stars not too differently than I did as a child. I view them with reverence and awe and wonder, and my spirit soars with the desire to know more about the universe of which I am a part. But whatever confusion I had as a child about the difference between exploration and conquest is now gone. The culture I grew up in was very different than the one in which I now find myself. Star Trek was not merely revelatory to the child I was because of the scientific possibilities, but because of the cultural advancements it suggested would coincide with technological progress. At the present moment, scientific and moral progress have been entirely uncoupled.

 Perhaps there will come a time when the human species will be capable of traveling to distant planets. But that is no longer an interest of mine. My priorities are to preserve the planet of my birth, and all the life that lives upon it. I have no desire to view humankind as a parasite that kills its host and moves onto another. I believe we are more than that and that we have not yet shown the best of who we are. To achieve such moral and spiritual progress will require a belief and vision beyond any we’ve demonstrated before. But there was a time not long ago when space flight was just as unthinkable. And yet it was only a matter of three-score and six years between when human flight was unknown to human beings placing footprints upon the moon. Miraculous change can come in the span of a single person’s lifetime. I not only expect such change, I demand it. Until such a change has come, though, don’t expect me to care about Elon Musk’s plans for humanity.

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Jack London’s The Iron Heel And Our Ability To Overlook And Rationalize Injustice

 

In the movie The Lady Vanishes, a young woman meets and befriends an older woman aboard a train. When the young woman later seeks out her new-found friend after receiving a bump on her head, suddenly the old woman is nowhere to be found. Worse, no one on the train admits to having seen such a woman at all. People the young woman knew had seen her friend suddenly say she must have imagined it all.

 It turns out each of the people on the train has a reason for not admitting to having seen the old woman: a pair of sports fans are anxious to get to a football match, another man is having an affair and doesn’t want to involve himself in a police investigation, etc. The bottom line is, a group of people are willing to permit a woman to simply vanish without looking for her for purely individual and selfish reasons.

 In the chapter, Jackson’s Arm, from The Iron Heel, a woman named Avis goes in search of the truth regarding the case of a worker who lost his arm in an industrial accident without receiving any compensation from the company he worked for. Avis is quite ensconced and comfortable in society and has no desire to discover a company her father has stock in is capable of treating a worker so unjustly. Surely there must have been something Jackson did wrong to not only be deprived of compensation for his lost arm but also fired from his job. Before she begins her investigation, she is told by the young revolutionary who has challenged her to seek the truth that those people who have helped prevent Jackson receive justice are all tied to the machine that profits from depriving him his due.

 The lawyer who took Jackson’s case admitted that, had he won, he would have taken Jackson for all he was worth in order to escape his situation. But as it was, he never had any chance against the high-powered lawyers aligned against him. But, you see, he was tied to the machine by his children who were not prospering in the filthy neighborhood in which they lived.

 The foreman was willing to speak in confidence to Avis that he thought Jackson should have won his case, though in court he testified against him. He too blamed his actions on his love for his family, saying “it wouldn't a-ben healthy," to speak the truth. He had worked at the mills since he was a child, gradually working his way up to a foreman position. To go against the company would be to surrender everything he had worked so hard for. Asked about how he was able to go against his own conscience and lie to keep Jackson from his rightful settlement, he says “"I'd let me soul an' body burn in everlastin' hell for them children of mine."

 A further meeting with the supervisor at the mill says the same things as the foreman, adding that “It won't do you any good to repeat anything I've said. I'll deny it, and there are no witnesses. I'll deny every word of it; and if I have to, I'll do it under oath on the witness stand."

 Returning to her revolutionary, she tells him, "He seems to have been badly treated. I—I—think some of his blood is dripping from our roof-beams."

 And here she hits on a very important point. Of the people she has spoken to so far, they have each acted unjustly but for reasonable causes: the wellbeing of their families. Avis is the daughter of a college professor. Though far from being wealthy himself, he is nonetheless in a position to acquire a degree of wealth from the labor of others (i.e. he owns stock in the mill where Jackson worked). Whereas those further down the class system than he have no delusions about the wrongness of what they are forced to do, Avis and her father are detached from the reality of it enough that they can deny the wrongness of a system that abandons a worker who has lost his arm while reaching into a machine to try to save it from being wrecked.

 When one does not directly see the ugliness of a system but instead sits in comfort because of it, it is far easier to justify it and even sanctify such a system. That is the role of those who sit between the upper class and the lower. This is where Avis and her father sit, and it is not easy for her to rip herself away from the illusions that have permitted her thus far to have a privileged life. As she sees how others are tied to the machine, she realizes too that she and her father are tied to it as well, and that if she pushes too far into unpleasant truths that it will harm their family as it would those who serve the machine below.

 Avis finds herself in the position of Oedipus, determined to find the truth while sensing the pursuit will only bring about her ruin. Still, she presses on. She speaks with Colonel Ingram, the lawyer for the corporation, whose work prevented a payment to the injured party. He admits that Jackson was due compensation but that his professional duty was to argue on the side of the company. She asks him:

 "Tell me," I said, "when one surrenders his personal feelings to his professional feelings, may not the action be defined as a sort of spiritual mayhem?" I did not get an answer. Colonel Ingram had ingloriously bolted, overturning a palm in his flight.

 She next speaks to a young reporter for one of the papers that did not report on Jackson’s case. He is full of excuses for why the paper did not cover it, saying first of all that it was an editorial decision that did not involve him. He says, “I, myself, do not write untruthful things.” Implicit in the statement is that he is okay with staying silent on issues that might be important. Still more implied is the notion that one who is able to stay silent on important issues is not far from lying about them. Or rationalizing about them.

 Lastly she interviews two of the major stockholders in the mill that has deprived Jackson of his due compensation. Of them, her revolutionary friend says “They were convinced that they were the saviours of society, and that it was they who made happiness for the many. And they drew pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of the working class were it not for the employment that they, and they alone, by their wisdom, provided for it…Like all the rest of humanity, (they) are tied to the machine, but they are so tied that they sit on top of it."

 Avis describes them thus: “They talked in large ways of policy, and they identified policy and right. And to me they talked in fatherly ways, patronizing my youth and inexperience. They were the most hopeless of all I had encountered in my quest. They believed absolutely that their conduct was right. There was no question about it, no discussion.”

 Wherever you are positioned in the machine, it is difficult to speak against it. Because whether your life is one of unceasing struggle or pampered ease, the machine is quick to discard the cog that is not serving it. And while those at the bottom recognize that their service is due to necessity, those tied to the top view it as beneficent. While those at the bottom see the injustice done to the many, those who sit on top see only the fineness of the machine, and can only imagine the suffering that occurs at the bottom of the machine to be due to the moral failings of those upon which the entire machinery rests. Too often, their attitudes trickle down to those who uphold them.

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