alt Hacker NewsWatching the movie before kids: Wow, so gritty, so depressing, great worldbuilding, what will become of us?
Watching the movie after kids: My heart is outside of me bleeding on the floor and yet I am still alive and must watch myself suffer forever, this pain that I feel has no place inside me anymore and it burns darkly bright, is this the future my children will have?, what must I do to prevent this for them? I will prevent this for them, as firm as granite I will prevent this, I should have another child and love it and hold it and kiss it and wash it and clean it and smile at it in the warm dark and cozy places of our home and keep a garden with bright red tomatoes and fresh greens and I will feed these children and keep out the bad and the evil and teach them how to survive and love and care and never ever let that world I have just seen come to pass.
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The only answer I can arrive at is that we're all in this together. We need actual social media to reconnect.
I just had my first and need to give this a rewatch. I think this film, Oryx and Crake, and The Wire spurred me at that point in my life to become extremely involved in movement organizing. First around civic engagement then anti-racism then even further left efforts.
In the decade+ that I've been doing this, I don't think I've ever felt despondent or hopeless in spite of the horror/terror happening in the world. I think a lot about the 'what would you be doing if this were the time of a slave economy/indigenous genocide/segregation/etc' and it's something that I can answer proudly, honestly.
There's also a deep, abiding sense of satisfaction you can have if you don't hold yourself to the perfectionist idea that you must win at all times. It's healthier, much more so, to re-orient yourself in the long historical view, that liberation is a millenia+ long project, and all the work we do now is work that future generations won't have to. The opposing forces are so much better funded and entrenched so every small win is a monument to be cherished and all the battles too even if the war is lost.
Plus, doing this work, I'm picking up a lot of very useful skills and knowledge and critical frameworks. And all of this will be taught to my children who will do better than me and be kinder than me and make the world an even better place than I can.
No pressure, kids :)
"It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.
So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered."