Always refreshing to hear your thoughts. I saw Oppenheimer last weekend, and watching it does indeed leave you with internal conflict. To your question about where do we find hope, I think we often find hope in the same place we find destruction--in the ripple effects of seemingly small actions and in our own desire to survive. "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Newton, I believe. Our world is living, breathing, changing every day in ways that none of us can fully perceive, full of the chaos of constant actions and reactions. Hope is the eventual biological reaction to destruction. When something difficult or destructive happens, we feel the loss, and we grieve. And when we survive grief, we realize that we made it through the destruction, through all the difficult emotions we felt. Hope is like a flame, in a way, except we're not always aware of it. Hope sustains us through grief because the only way you make it through grief is by believing, somewhere deep down, that things will get better and that you'll survive. Hope is why we survive--it's why we believe that we'll live to see another day. It's integral, at the very least, to our mental and emotional survival. People hope because they have to in order to survive the chaos and reactivity of life. And we make hope tangible when we act and react to the world around us. When we take actions that have positive reactions, we begin to feel confident, and we have more hope that the actions we take every day will result in positive effects. We hope when we smile at people. When we go for walks or make food or take showers. When we care for ourselves and for others. We hope when we feel the positive ripples of the small things we do every day. Of course, not everyone operates from that perspective. Many people act out of desperate, unmet needs, causing, perhaps, competing ripples. The world of actions and reactions is not static, so no one knows how all the effects of all the ripples will work out, but if humanity does survive, it will be because we took action on the hope that we would live to see another day. Thanks for sharing your nuanced and verbally precise notions.
I really appreciate your vulnerability, Sarah, including the observation that "we make hope tangible when we act and react to the world around us." Reminds me of Elizabeth Barrett's claim in "The Cry of the Children" (1843) that talk is cheap. Writing about children made to work long hours in factories and mines--by parents and bosses who show them little humanity and less affection--she cries, "Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, / O my brothers, what ye preach? / For God's possible is taught by His world's loving-- / And the children doubt of each." Action must follow words, or the words are less than meaningless.
I saw Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer over the summer and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have a hard time taking a particular side in the argument for nuclear weapons and power because both sides have very compelling arguments. I think that in the short term, dropping the two atomic bombs on the Japan in WWII was a good idea because it prevented the invasion of Japan which would have been much more costly. However, I don't think it was a good idea in the long run because the invention of the atomic bomb may spell the end of humanity.
Great video Paul! I had some thoughts about the film myself, would love your input/thoughts! There is an element of the film which I am still trying to piece together, and it is the idea of contradiction. Quantum physics is an excellent example of contradiction, one that Nolan makes use of from time to time in the film, and even the image of a Picasso earlier in the film reminds the viewer the disjointed nature of Oppenheimer himself. A complicated man, full of contractions. Perhaps the most charged scene that drives this theme home is Oppenheimer’s post Hiroshima speech, where the full range of complex and contradictory human emotions (euphoria, guilt, disgust, joy) are on full display. (By the way, I think this scene is the true emotional climax of the trinity test sequence…to me Nolan’s depiction of the explosion felt restrained, compartmentalized, so that the full effect of the bomb left something wanting. The later scene in the small auditorium seemed to be the “real” explosion as Oppenheimer comes to terms with what he has really done. Anyways, I’m having trouble landing the plane with this reading. What is Nolan trying to say here? The resolution evades me.
Always refreshing to hear your thoughts. I saw Oppenheimer last weekend, and watching it does indeed leave you with internal conflict. To your question about where do we find hope, I think we often find hope in the same place we find destruction--in the ripple effects of seemingly small actions and in our own desire to survive. "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Newton, I believe. Our world is living, breathing, changing every day in ways that none of us can fully perceive, full of the chaos of constant actions and reactions. Hope is the eventual biological reaction to destruction. When something difficult or destructive happens, we feel the loss, and we grieve. And when we survive grief, we realize that we made it through the destruction, through all the difficult emotions we felt. Hope is like a flame, in a way, except we're not always aware of it. Hope sustains us through grief because the only way you make it through grief is by believing, somewhere deep down, that things will get better and that you'll survive. Hope is why we survive--it's why we believe that we'll live to see another day. It's integral, at the very least, to our mental and emotional survival. People hope because they have to in order to survive the chaos and reactivity of life. And we make hope tangible when we act and react to the world around us. When we take actions that have positive reactions, we begin to feel confident, and we have more hope that the actions we take every day will result in positive effects. We hope when we smile at people. When we go for walks or make food or take showers. When we care for ourselves and for others. We hope when we feel the positive ripples of the small things we do every day.
Of course, not everyone operates from that perspective. Many people act out of desperate, unmet needs, causing, perhaps, competing ripples. The world of actions and reactions is not static, so no one knows how all the effects of all the ripples will work out, but if humanity does survive, it will be because we took action on the hope that we would live to see another day.
Thanks for sharing your nuanced and verbally precise notions.
I really appreciate your vulnerability, Sarah, including the observation that "we make hope tangible when we act and react to the world around us." Reminds me of Elizabeth Barrett's claim in "The Cry of the Children" (1843) that talk is cheap. Writing about children made to work long hours in factories and mines--by parents and bosses who show them little humanity and less affection--she cries, "Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, / O my brothers, what ye preach? / For God's possible is taught by His world's loving-- / And the children doubt of each." Action must follow words, or the words are less than meaningless.
I saw Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer over the summer and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have a hard time taking a particular side in the argument for nuclear weapons and power because both sides have very compelling arguments. I think that in the short term, dropping the two atomic bombs on the Japan in WWII was a good idea because it prevented the invasion of Japan which would have been much more costly. However, I don't think it was a good idea in the long run because the invention of the atomic bomb may spell the end of humanity.
Great video Paul! I had some thoughts about the film myself, would love your input/thoughts! There is an element of the film which I am still trying to piece together, and it is the idea of contradiction. Quantum physics is an excellent example of contradiction, one that Nolan makes use of from time to time in the film, and even the image of a Picasso earlier in the film reminds the viewer the disjointed nature of Oppenheimer himself. A complicated man, full of contractions. Perhaps the most charged scene that drives this theme home is Oppenheimer’s post Hiroshima speech, where the full range of complex and contradictory human emotions (euphoria, guilt, disgust, joy) are on full display. (By the way, I think this scene is the true emotional climax of the trinity test sequence…to me Nolan’s depiction of the explosion felt restrained, compartmentalized, so that the full effect of the bomb left something wanting. The later scene in the small auditorium seemed to be the “real” explosion as Oppenheimer comes to terms with what he has really done. Anyways, I’m having trouble landing the plane with this reading. What is Nolan trying to say here? The resolution evades me.