Honored to be interviewed by author and recording/performing artist M. Lachi at Thoughtwards.

Here's an interview I did with Nix Whitikker.

"If any of your books was to be made into a film...."
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A poignant scene in The Chronicles of Riddick (one of the most awesomest films ever) has to do with the forced conversion of the people on Helion Prime. This is the scene (an extended scene with footage not seen in the film).

"We all began as something else." The Purifier says. Those words always stuck with me because it sounds like this is the human story of religion and culture. We all began as something else. So, is the statement an argument in favor of conservatism or progressivism? Should we fight to conserve and thus resist the command to shed the past so easily, or should we be willing to accept that our anchor is in the future and what we were is not what we are destined to be?

I love the fact that the Purifier answers this later in the film. Here's my blog on his atonement.

The ten commandments are often used to sketch out the parameters for Christian morality.  But they  seem to me to be secondarily about morality and more a statement about God and his relation to his creation.

Wikipedia has a great chart on the various numbering traditions of the ten commandments (numbering them is not as straightforward as it would seem).

The medieval Christian tradition divided the commandments into two tables. The first three (or four) on the first and the rest on the second. The division makes sense on the face of it. The second table is a set of clear moral and negatively phrased moral prescriptions, "thou shalt not." These have to do with one's relations to those in one's community.

The first table, on the other hand, focus on God. Then there's the fourth, which no one's quite sure where to place. Honoring father and mother would seem to be an easy fit for the second table, but there is something about honoring father and mother that seems to stand in proxy for honoring God.

(First Table)

1. I am the Lord thy God, you shall have no other God's before me (thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image)
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
3. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

(Second Table)
 
    4.   Honor thy father and thy mother.
    5.   Thou shalt not kill.
    6.   Thou shalt not commit adultery.
    7.   Thou shalt not steal.
   8.   Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
   9.   Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife
   10.  Thou shalt not covet t​hy neighbor's house, servants, animals, or anything else

Now, there is one approach to the ten commandments that would say that these commandments reflect a moral goodness inherent in existence and not even God would/could contradict them. Not that he would want to but that it would be contradictory to his nature. So it is always eternally wrong to steal or to murder or to commit adultery, just as it is always eternal wrong to have another god instead of God. 

Another approach, represented by a medieval, John Duns Scotus, says that while the first table of the commandments reflect prescriptions that are inherent to existence, the second doesn't. So God cannot truthfully say to not worship him or to take his name in vain. However, there is a world or an arrangement of things in which God could will that adultery is acceptable (of course then, it may not be called adultery). In this case, rightness and goodness are determined by God's will as opposed to the first case where rightness and goodness are established by God's nature.

With parallel worlds then, you can maintain a system of the Christian God with a moral system markedly different than we have in ours. The key would be that the first table of the law can't be violated and the other commandments have to be in harmony with them.

I recently did what I have never done before. I returned a Netflix movie before I was done watching it. What movie is this? You might ask. The Dying of the Light with Nicolas Cage. Well, you might say, this is not quality entertainment, and I would reply, I love movies and never said anything about "quality."  So why did I give up? 

One--lack of time.  
Two--I vas seriously bored and unentertained   Why? Because I knew how the movie was going to end. Huh? Why does that matter? You ask. We all know how movies are going to end.  This is true, which is why I needed to figure this out.

​Let's view the trailer first.

There you have it. I have to say that I'm a proud Nicolas Cage fan. Apparently among actors, he is regarded very highly (according to Wikipedia). So I am in good company.

Broad story--Nic Cage is a CIA guy who was tortured by a terrorist. The terrorist is presumed dead but Cage believes he is still alive. The terrorist guy, though, had a rare disease and is ailing and will soon die if he is still alive. Nic Cage (I know--his character) is also ailing from a mental disease caused by repeated trauma to the head--the torture session earlier. So you have these two old foes, who nature is killing, but Cage is bent on making sure nature does not subvert justice. So I think the unique angle here is that we don't have the sexy Tom Cruise mission impossible guy who is uber capable, but we have an ailing man who is deteriorating before our very eyes. We see the symptoms play out as the movie develops. 

So, over the course of three days, I labored, 20 minutes at a time, to watch this film. Finally, I said,  this is not going to happen. I had seen enough. I knew how it would end. With the help of his friends (one played by the remarkable Late Anton Yelchin) he would find this terrorist. There'd be some sort of confrontation and they both die but he gets the satisfaction of meting out justice. (I don't even have time to read the Wiki entry--that's valuable sandwich time.)  My question for me is, do I not want to see someone deteriorate before my very eyes? I don't know. Seeing all his "moments" was getting very old and I just could not bear forty more minutes of him losing his temper, or forgetting where he was, or mixing words, etc. Could this be my inability to address human frailty and come to grips with the existential fact of my demise? That could be it, except that one of my favorite movies (besides The Chronicles of Riddick) is Wit.

Here's the trailer for Wit ( I couldn't find a real good one so I went for this. The other ones I found were essentially five minute summaries of the entire movie!)
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Wit shows the progression of a devastating ovarian cancer on an English professor. She breaks the fourth wall and so we get these very funny, witty, and brilliant insights into the process. it does get heavy at the end and the viewer is not spared anything. You watch her deteriorate before your eyes and it is painful and hard to watch. From the start of Wit, it is clear that this will not be a happy ending, that we will not be spared the gruesomeness of being a "patient" of this sort, with all its attendant indignity. We know how it ends. 

So why would I like this and not Nic Cages' film? Wit is a mirror and Dying of the Light is a blurry facsimile of the human end. Wit engages because it reflects possible truth. Dying of the Light is tedious because there's no real payoff at the end. You don't learn anything at the end (I know. I haven't seen the end. . . . I have a right to my opinion, so back off!)

With Dying of the Light you learn . . . (haven't seen the end so I don't know what you learn). With Wit you learn about the inherent indignity of being a patient. You learn about the perspective of the patient. You learn about what becomes important the closer you are to death.

One irony, as the English professor wastes away, she wants less of John Dunn's poetry, a difficult metaphysical poet, and wants more simplicity and wants to express herself in the most basic of terms.  On the other hand, the film features a young resident who is a researcher and uninterested in clinical work. He was a former student of hers which creates an interesting and funny dynamic. But towards the end, her poetry class seems to have provided him the best paradigm for his work and you see the work of the Humanities cheating through and reframing his perspective.

That's payoff.

So in the words of Dylan Thomas

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Orland Gibbons (1583-1625) wrote this absolutely beautiful anthem on John the Baptist, one of my favorite figures in the New Testament. From time-to-time, I search youtube for recordings of the song. This is not the one I have on my iTunes, but I think this vocalist is phenomenal.

Gospel of John 1:19-23
This is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed and denied not, and said plainly, I am not the Christ.

And they asked him, What art thou then? (Art thou Elias? repeated x1) And he said, I am not. (Art thou the prophet? repeated x1) And he answered, No.

Then said they unto him, What art thou? that we may give an answer unto them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? And he said, I am the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, (Make straight the way of the Lord repeated x2)

Arrival, as advertised, is an intelligent first contact sci fi movie. I loved it until the end. They had me at hello and then it said goodbye and I was left very underwhelmed.

The film is an account a linguist, Louise Banks, contracted by the government to help communicate with aliens who have arrived in 12 different semi-ovoid ships. Each one in a different area around the world. She helps develop a way to understand their language but is under pressure by the military to answer the big question, "why are you here?" Part of the pressure comes from the fact that China and Russia, to some degree, have adopted a belligerent stance toward the aliens. Which means that an attack on one of the alien ships is a declaration of war between the aliens and humanity.

On a personal level, Louise is having "memories" about her daughter who died of an incurable disease and the fact that her husband left her because of their daughter's illness. We later find out that these are not memories but visions and that her husband is the physicist who she works with on this alien project. And I think the big lesson here is that even knowing the future pain, she choosing to marry him.

So, what's my issue? I was very much into her personal story as defining who she is and it looked like she was searching her mind for clues to crack the alien linguistic, cultural and behavioral code. I really loved the sci fi with the linguistics lessons and the political layer was a good touch. The problem was that it never all came together for me.  The aliens reveal that language is a powerful weapon that will save us? I think that was it. And they gave us the glossary or text book for their language which captures their unique sense of time. That is such a let down. We already know this from Harry Potter! Words are powerful.

Further still, we know this from Doctor Who, that words are powerful because they are timeless--the episode in which Shakespeare crafts the perfect words to expel and an evil force from the world.

So back to Arrival. Just when the movie called for a very interesting spin on the power of language, they pack up and depart! 

Then, to make matters worse, the film pivots exclusively to her realization that her visions of a child and husband are her future with the physicist guy. There is no resolution of anything for me. We don't see how language is powerful nor do we see how her personal story is an analogy or metaphor of the larger issue.

So here's my brilliant Director hat going on.

First, go with a different approach in the music. I was very underwhelmed by the music the first time she saw the ships from the helicopter. The music went downhill for me from there.

Next. Dr. Banks has this convenient ability of  being the special person who can dream the future. She happens to call the Chinese General's cell phone at the very last second and repeat his wife's words to him which leads to China standing down. 18 months later, we get world unity.

Rather, have China open fire at the ships, which triggers the same reaction from everyone else, so that they damage the alien ships. Then have ships list and appear defunct but clearly somewhat functional. and the aliens likely alive.  At this point, Dr. Banks can lead a worldwide movement to recognize the power of our words and the gift of the alien language as well as the gift of a new perception of time. This perception of time, being non linear, means that you can restore the ships to perfect health and this restoration would be done using the power of words--we all sing kumbaya or something.

So picture all humans singing and these ships reconstructing themselves off the power of the human song. Then in an twist, the aliens still want to continue meeting with us knowing that our attack on them is a fixture of time and cannot be evaded since time is non-linear. Thus, the past will always occur. Here, then, you can get the same lesson Louise teaches us--chose the beauty of the moment of over the fear of future pain because it is the present that matters.

Arrival--it's strengths are the beginning, great acting from Amy Adams, loved the linguistics, loved the bigness of the moment, loved the squid-like aliens, loved Forest Whitaker . . . did not love the end, was not impressed by the music, too much teasing and not enough fulfilling.

​All in all, definitely a must watch.

Inside Higher Ed has a story about U of St. Thomas in Houston which looks like it's forcing out its English and Philosophy faculty to make way for new STEM faculty. They say there's increased demand in the STEM fields and not enough demand in Humanities fields to justify the faculty distribution.

The usual reason given for these moves is financial. Liberal Arts don't seem to offer value, i.e., for what a university spends on the liberal arts, it doesn't see commensurate gain. This sort of reasoning is not new but it is gaining ground among Catholic universities. Catholics schools appeared to be the one bastion of the liberal arts since Catholicism was endemic to the Catholic mission. This meant every Catholic education would have a foundation of theology, philosophy, and courses like English and History.

What it all comes down to is measurement. How do we measure university success? If a university measures success in terms of employment rates then it stands to reason that you reapportion your resources to maximize student employment. 

The ancient Greeks were interesting in that it was not uncommon for what we consider professional tasks like engineering, architecture, etc, to be left to slaves or even foreigners so that the Greeks to could focus on what was really important--philosophy, mathematics, culture, etc.

As long our culture is driven by economic concerns and is framed in economic terms; as long as the contextual societal debates are about how to be a real capitalist or Smith versus Marx, then the liberal arts will lose. As long as value is measured in terms of economic output, then there's no where for the liberal arts to go. 

It is disappointing when Catholic schools inch toward or flat out run from the Catholic idea of education since Catholic education has the opportunity to be counter-cultural on this front in a good way. Catholic education can define value in its deep, comprehensive way and eschew the move to the economic frame of defining human lives.