Sunday, May 13, 2007

deserted cities thoughts

I watched "28 Weeks Later" yesterday. As its prequel, it features amazing takes of these post-apocalyptic, deserted, abandoned cities. Vanilla Sky's scene where Tom Cruise finds himself alone in the middle of Times Square also comes to mind. I find these scenes terribly appealing.

When I was younger and more rebellious, I liked those because they represented a start from scratch, a new chance to do things "right". Today my beliefs in "right" or "wrong" are less radical, and I see that having everyone else killed is likely not a best bet. Still, the empty streets have a deep impact on me. I figured why: it's about humanity.

Have you ever wondered what is humanity's goal, what is it we really care about as species? It's survival. And being all alone on the remains of the civilization is all about that. The survivors carry the immense responsibility of keeping mankind alive. They carry not only the genes, but also part of the knowledge we accumulated over thousands of years. If left alone, would you be able to help rebuild the planet? Would you truthfully teach our past history and myths? Would you build bridges or electricity generators? Would you cook, sew, medicate, repair, create, govern? Which values would you choose, which culture would you create?

These thoughts appeal to my innermost humanity, they make me feel responsible for and part of a greater entity. Each of us carry all the human generations in ourselves, and that's what should guide us and keep us together. "Humanity" is the ultimate moral value.

2 comments:

hermann said...

To me is just a zombie movie. When I want to have deep thoughts about the human kind usually I watch Top Gun.

Moon Majumdar said...

Have you seen the "Children of Men" yet? If you can distill this much philosohpy from a zombie movie I can't even guess what you'll think of a movie designed to raise questions about humanity.