Wouldn't be the first time, of course.
Good read:
Posted on 06/14/2023 7:57:05 PM PDT by bitt
Looks to be sad...
Thoughtful Post...Thank You.
I, too, am passionately pro-life, and have noticed that most “Dystopian” Sci-Fi, though often written and produced by “liberals”, (Orwell was a soialist, after all), carry a hidden Pro-Life message.
From “Brave New World” through “1984”, and even “Atlas Shrugged”, stress the struggle of the Individual against the Tyrannical System. The Value of Human Life isn’t as obvious in some of these, but we find ourselves rooting for the Protagonist instead of the Mob every time.
All the Good Guys strive against a System that doesn’t value LIFE.
In “Brave New World”, John the Savage prays to the Four Directions even in Death.
In “1984”, Winston’s final capitualtion to Big Brother is a tragedy, not a triumph.
And, in “Atlas Shrugged”, the Individual is valued so much that he (or she) has to go somewhere ELSE from society to be free.
Even in the pop movie “Logan’s Run”, the escapees have determined that Life has Value, even after 30. :-)
Thanks for telling us about “Never let me Go”. I’ll check it out.
Many years later he was unfrozen and returned to life but unfortunately, his soul which left his body, did not return and he became an unremorseful murderer.
“his soul which left his body, did not return and he became an unremorseful murderer.”
Interesting concept.
Democrats creating their next generation of slaves?
” Those “embryoids” showed the beginnings of a brain, heart and intestinal tract after about eight days of development.”
then it all went horribly wrong... sprouting of fangs, claws and unquenchable thirst for human blood
I think the Pro-Life community should adopt “Never Let Me Go” as one of our own and put it into our top five lists. Since it’s a Japanese movie, I think the film industry might demand that the filmmakers commit seppuku. Which might drive some of them our way.
With regard to “Never Let Me Go,” the filmmakers would probably plead ignorance. But when a film centers the question of the soul and dares to suggest that every individual soul has value, it is operationally pro-life.
The modern left is overwhelmingly atheist and materialist. It denies the existence of the soul. When you stop to think about it, that position should be anathema to creatives. The cognitive dissonance required by this falsification is staggering.
It’s no wonder so many on the left are mentally ill and reliant on drugs and alcohol to cope.
All these people need to do is open the door ... which is a universal truth for us all. But when people are willfully blind and living in an echo chamber custom built to fortify the lies, sometimes they need help to even see the door.
It is strange how some quite unexpected things stick in memory. Many years ago when I was in college, a professor assigned some reading from one of B.F. Skinner’s books. This was not my field, and I can’t recall the course. It was an undergraduate course, possibly in political philosophy with a professor who wanted to connect the dots to other academic silos touching on epistemology and questions of mind and consciousness. Democritus to B.F. Skinner isn’t a big jump. There’s nothing new under the sun, which is why people in any field should be grounded in the canon and at least conscious of adjacent fields of study that approach the same issues from different angles.
B.F. Skinner at the time was one of the towering figures of 20th century psychology. I’ve googled on him a few times over the years, and he still seems to be regarded as one of the landmark figures of that era in his field. His professional reputation has held up well, many years after his death.
Anyhow, B.F. Skinner was an atheist and was quite self-conscious and rigorous about it. He was a thoroughgoing materialist reductionist who held that our minds were simply calculating machines that had evolved to solve certain types of problems in ways that conferred survival value — a completely Darwinian approach to the problem of mind and consciousness.
To his credit, however, he acknowledged that this was disputed territory with serious arguments on the other side. He also acknowledged that it was incumbent on him to test his theory as rigorously as possible by challenging it with the strongest counterarguments he could devise.
As a short example for the purposes of the book at hand, he proposed a test. What about, for example, a highly regarded picture of something like a sunrise, a beautiful painting hanging in a museum and admired by all? Why would the purely materialist calculating machines in our skulls find value in this? Why would we even want to? And why would a mere calculating device bother to create such a thing?
He confessed that he found this a difficult question — which is exactly why he put it in his book. (This clearly marks him as a pre-modern, traditional liberal; the current lefties would generally cheat by evading the question entirely. I never met him or met anyone who studied with him, but I’ve always suspected that B.F. Skinner might have been a pretty good teacher, or at least a fair-minded one.) And he confessed that he was not satisfied with his answer, but it was the best he could think of at the time.
So why would we find value in the painting of a sunrise? Skinner proposed that the calculating machines in our skulls might have enough capacity for abstraction to see in it “a metaphorical adumbration of the idea of survival value.”
That phrase struck me at the time and has remained in memory ever since. (If someone knows his way around B.F. Skinner and can point me to the source, I would be grateful.) What a wonderful statement from one of the giants of rigorous, materialist reductionism in psychology. He adduced “metaphor.” And “adumbration.” And “idea.” He employs three intangible mentalist concepts to explain something that simply doesn’t fit a materialist worldview. He might as well have run up a white flag and said, “I don’t have a clue.”
I’d like to see someone work THAT into a movie. It would require some artful dialogue but the question could certainly be raised. I admire writers and directors who edge into this kind of territory and manage to do it well, but that’s another story.
I would love to see the writer, director and actors associated with “Never Let Me Go” asked about the pro-life implications of their movie. I read a lot of interviews and reviews but I’ve not seen the question raised. We need more conservative movie critics. The truth will out, but sometimes we need to help open people’s eyes.
Sphinx — “Never Let Me Go” is a perfect film to bring up in the context of AI, etc. The film addresses profound questions of what is means to be human, and the purpose of human lives.
It is obvious that “the government’s plan” was for the clones to be purely material — mechanical units that exist only to serve others. That is shown to be a monstrosity when the individual cloned children develop independent minds and emotional lives, and perceive their own condition. Human “material” by its nature develops human ideals. Humans exist for their own sake, not as resources for exploitation. Are the lives of the “clones” less human or valuable than natural born humans?
This book and film destroy Marxism and socialism. Those who funded and released the movie must have been blinded by the bathos.
Wouldn't be the first time, of course.
Good read:
The movie ‘The Island’ (2005) has a similar message as a subplot, IIRC. People raised for bodyparts, retroactive abortion :-(
I’ve not seen The Island. Do you recommend it? Always looking for suggestions, especially for films that I can add to my “undercover conservative” list.
Thanks for posting what you did.
I’m a sucker for dystopian end of the world novels, I order the movie on Amazon for .99 cents and it was really good.
I then ordered the book and I’m really looking forward to reading it.
The only sad part is, in this case art might be imitating real life.
Just pretend this is fiction and you have your dystopia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t564HRXeS6o
It’s like the elites of this world, read the all the great dystopian novels from years ago like 1984, Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, and Brave New World and said, that sounds like it’s possible with today’s technology and have set about to do it.
I don’t know how it’s all going to end but it won’t end well.
Meh. Maybe..... Overall rather sloppy and ‘Hollywood’, but that one bit was thought provoking. Some typical tropes- here’s this multi-billion dollar facility and there is a button that will destroy the whole thing, IIRC.
But underlying idea, as with GATTACA, thoughtful and worth considering.
You know it’s a good work of fiction when even the brightest people on the planet are still trying to wrap their heads around it 200 years later.
You made me think of the sequel to Blade Runner.... Blade Runner 2040. There is a scene where the clone maker played by Jared Leto cuts a freshly grown synthetic human woman from an artificial embryo. It’s newly born as an adult but essentially nothing but a body - no memory implants or AI uploaded to her brain. Says something about millions and billions of clones populating the universe... Then he slits her throat.
Sorry not much of a spoiler but a little bit of one. It’s not a major part of the movie and that character only has that one scene as I recall.
Interesting movie, I’ll have to see if I can find it on Roku. BTW, there was another movie in a similar vein called “Parts, The Clonus Horror” from 1979 that was a similar theme. It starred Tim Donnelly who played Chet in the old Jack Webb show, “Emergency.” It is a secret place where clones are made by the ultra rich, somewhere in Wisconsin IIRC, where they are made, “born,” kept and fed until their masters need an organ and off they go. The clones only know of the world inside the secret compound and when Donnelly escapes, he is amazed there is a whole world “out there.” Interesting film.
The search results seem to indicate it's available for reading on-line, but it's too soon after waking and to soon before time to leave for work to delve further.
Enjoy your day.
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