A Green State of Mind

There is very important lessons to be taken from the film “Solaris” which deals with the relationship between the other, exploration, desire, and understanding culture.

The 1972 film “Solaris” by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky is a visually stunning film that was an adaptation of a science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. It is an example of a science fiction film, in the same general spirit as “2001: A Space Odyssey”, that deals with ideas rather than being an elaborate action movie. Beyond the wonderful cinematography, there is the presentation of a very interesting set of philosophical ideas that moves the plot forward. A psychologist is assigned to visit a space station orbiting the planet Solaris whose surface is a mysterious ocean of some kind of liquid. Strange occurrences have been going on with the crew of the space station, including cases of hallucinations. When the psychologist arrives at the space station, he finds one of the three remaining scientists has committed suicide and the other two are reluctant to talk about what is going on. Shortly afterward he finds his wife, who herself committed suicide some time ago, in his quarters. The psychologist discovers that the planet, or some alien force on the surface, has been able to tap into the minds of the visitors and project incarnations of their unconscious as living beings on the space station. If these beings die or are killed, they return shortly afterward with no memory of their disposal. The rest of the movie is the psychologist and the crew dealing with this phenomenon, as the artificial wife begins to believe that she is more and more real, while trying to understand what the alien force wants through this manifestation process. The attempt at understanding what is going on leads to some conclusions about how humans encounter what is different from them, while the emotional conflict between the psychologist and the image of his dead wife illustrates related issues concerning desire and how humans express that desire.

Read the rest of this entry »

Despite its negative connotations, anarchism can provide a non-anarchist political movement with many ideas based upon its practices and theoretical speculations throughout the decades.

The twentieth century has been the manifestation of various lines of thought that began in the nineteenth century. Before the sudden event of the Bolshevik Revolution, there was, to a limited degree, a public discussion of socialism, communism, and anarchism. It would be very common for socialists, communists, and anarchists to have meetings and public speaking venues. They were viewed as real alternatives. As a point of clarification, the difference between socialism and communism can be defined in a specific way. Socialists are Marxists that enter into power through elections while communists are Marxists who enter into power through revolution. Socialism made some electoral gains in the United States in the early twentieth century and in Europe as well later on. Communism became relegated to one side of an ideological warfare during the Cold War, and was easily caricatured. However, socialism became limited as only reformers within a democratic structure and communism reconstituted the centralization of power that was supposedly overthrown by revolution. In both cases, real systematic change was restricted. The anarchist tradition used a different approach which emphasized creating the new world in the shell of the old. In other words, real change was enacted through immanent structures that expressed both freedom and equality in a substantial way that was also local and voluntary. Unfortunately, anarchism as a movement that could effectively achieve the overall goals of socialism and communism was strongly misinterpreted as rooted in violence and a push to create absolute chaos. It can be very helpful, and very productive, for any political movement committed to social, economic, and ecological justice to understand the anarchist vision as a template. This process may need to ignore the term anarchism itself in order to look at its traits clearly and impartially.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following is part two of a series that explores various current economic aspects in a way that illustrates the possibility for new alternatives rather than mapping out detailed new plans.

A binary opposition is the subsumption of reality between contradictions. The world is defined by two terms set against each other which excludes other perspectives. There is also the appearance of these two terms in a direct relationship with each other. This appearance reinforces the exclusion. It is important to realize that these two terms are perspectives on reality and these perspectives can not contain all of reality. There is always a surplus of reality. Therefore, instead of a binary opposition there needs to be a parallax. A parallax originally comes from astronomy, where a change in the perspective on a heavenly body looks like a change in the heavenly body itself. A parallax can be a more accurate way to understand contradictions. It can be applied toward the various contradictions that emerge in economics and other areas. The use of the parallax can also further the understanding of the political and the economic.

Read the rest of this entry »