Review of The Day of the Triffids (1981)

I had been too young to watch this TV series when it was first out, and I was hoping the BBC would repeat it. It's been a long wait, but I wasn't disappointed now that I've finally got to see it. Clearly it's a bit dated, and this was never big budget Hollywood science fiction, but it still has a powerful frightening atmosphere, and it stays with you.

The novel was perhaps the first post-apocalyptic science fiction book I read, back when I was about 13, several years after the series was broadcast. I was gripped by it then, but this TV adaptation seemed different from my memories of the book.

First up, I was struck by how strong the Cold War themes were. There's the Soviet origin of the plants, but there's also an explicit guess that the lights and plague were accidentally deployed weapons of mass destruction. Bill paraphrased the quote about humanity walking a tightrope, too. I can't find it's origin, but I'm sure I've heard it before - that mutually assured destruction as a deterrent against war was like asking a someone to walk a tightrope for ever. They can do it for a bit, but they will eventually fall off - and that still sounds like a very good argument for subscribing to CND. I wonder if I hadn't notice this theme so strongly in the book because we were embedded in the Cold War at the time. We'd grown used to the threat and the idea that nuclear missiles with hideous overkill were targeted at major cities and military targets in the UK right in the present moment.

I also noticed that the ethical dilemmas were being played up far more than the survival and reconstruction themes I remember - emphasised by the drama dwelling on the immediate aftermath in London. It felt like the struggle between those with good intentions and nastier individuals was being made clear. It therefore reflected the intrinsic uncertainty as to whether humans are basically altruistic, charitable and cooperative or selfish and greedy, only thinking of their short term gratification of desires. There was also the unanswerable challenge of who should you help when there's so many in need and you're effort is clearly valuable but so insignificant. This seems just as valid for an individual supporting a charity in our present cruel and unjust world as for Wyndham's well constructed artificial thought experiment. The BBC drama was also surprisingly realistic in how, despite clearly being one of the well intentioned ones, Bill was often fighting his own frustration, despair and anger at the situation - perhaps again like any of us trying to follow our conscience.

I think I saw echoes of post-WWII Nazi-survivors' anxiety too, with ideas of eugenics through planned human breeding and military controlled societies popping up. I'd imagine these would be been very much in the consciousness of Wyndham as he was writing, and in the developers and audience of the TV series too. Luckily it's perhaps harder for us living in the West now to imagine living in under martial law or to think of state controlled population management as a realistic possibility. But I do wonder if we've lost a healthy suspicion of people in uniforms that this series helps to re-enforce.

I wondered if, in contrast to the major theme of nuclear-age post-apocalyptic nightmare, there's was also a minor theme of survivalist wish-fulfilment. There seemed to be a happy promise in a dream of starting over with human culture and civilisation. We would be happy and proud to think of ourselves laying down a new, simpler social order where only the best bits of our learning were carried forward into the re-population of an empty land. As well as all those who retreat into the wilderness to practice their bushcraft skills or hoard essential provisions as an insurance against civilisation's collapse, the pleasure in this dream seems part of the charm of arriving in a new Minecraft world too...

Finally, also on a lighter note, I thought this drama provides a kind of grim nostalgia for a lost Britain too. As well as all the smoking and the drab streets and pubs, there were old fashioned attitudes that seemed to slip past unremarked (but would hopefully be challenged today). I noticed especially the casual sexist gender stereotyping and a naturally assumed intellectualism or class arrogance. These may have been even stronger in Wyndam's 1951 than the progressive BBC of 1981, but perhaps it's a small sign we've been travelling in the right direction.

The Cave of Shadows, Seizing Truth

I've been listening to old podcasts of BBC Radio 4's religious debate program Beyond Belief, and I was struck by one from 9 January 2012 on mysticism (with Zoe Bran and Shaunaka Rishi Das and David Luke, experts on shamanism, Hinduism and psychology respectively).

It seems mystical insight can be defined by a set of experiences that are commonly reported together: a sense of timelessness; insight into a truer reality beyond that which we normally experience; the sense of self identity dissolving; an apprehension of the connectedness of all things; and a sense that everything's alive with a vital essence. Whilst traditionally these have been associated with religion, with the mystic believing they are coming into a divine presence, it seems more recently there's been a strong dissociation from a specific doctrine. Branches of the New Age and pagan or shamanic revival movements spring to mind, which some use as a license to read deeper insight into their experiences on psychoactive drugs (whilst others reject these as offering a way to reach genuine insights). But I'm also thinking of specific people including Eckhart Tolle and the individual interviewed on the programme. Tolle seems to avoid pinning his insights on one religion, and the interviewee categorically stated that his experience cut across religions.

I was also struck by the feature of mystical experience, which I'd associate with enlightenment too, that sounds like the classical allegory of the Cave of Shadows: reality is not as we normally perceive it; there is a 'higher' or truer nature of existence of which 'all this' is just a shadow. That view also fits with the Christian insight that's something like: now we see through a glass darkly, then we shall meet face to face.

I remain very sceptical that there's a literal deep truth in this insight. Using Occam's Razor, it's easier to explain this type of mystical experience, with its subjective force, as a trick of the mind - like a psychoactive trip. However... it seems also to point at something that's valuable, because it is so powerful to those who experience it, which is also cherished by their followers. It also does have a kind of literal truth to it in that the 'truest' description of reality is the scientific account of the properties of matter explaining what we experience. This says appearance, touch, scent etc are mostly about interactions in the uncertain world of electrons and photons. I really don't think that's what Plato, Buddha and the apostle Paul meant they'd realised though.

So for their enlightened insights, let's look to philosophy rather than the natural sciences. Thinking specifically of Descartes and Hume asking what they really knew to be true - just that there's an intangible empty point of consciousness that is me, which is the focal point of all these perceptions, memories, rational thoughts, emotions and dreams. Those cognitive artefacts are changeable, and unreliable. Yet they are the only access we have to the reality that's 'out there' (as that which is not 'me'). Still, we are justifiably confident in our naive internal models of reality. They allow us to interact and get by in the world and with others. We are also able to challenge, test and build on all those internally generated concepts to construct less naive models, which can then do more explanatory 'lifting' - enabling increasingly sophisticated technological advances and psychologically insightful artistic or social expressions.

So perhaps for those mystics and enlightened few, their subjective experience is another way to break out of the naive survival mode of thought and gain a more valuable 'direct access', which brings a new understanding of the relation between the self and the world, and the living connectedness of all things. The way such insight shakes the roots of sanity maybe a necessary price to pay. But it still seems to me something worth leaving oneself open to at least...

Journaling Changes

This is a new start for journaling, in a New Year, and the first topic I was thinking writing about is religious faith. I think my personal attitude about it may be changing, from that of strict 'fundamentalist' atheism to something very recognisable by the Quakers and Western Buddhists who I've spent time with, and I want to reflect on that.

I was thinking this morning of the Creed - I don't believe in a creator god at all, I don't believe Christ was a unique embodiment of an eternal divinity, nor that it is his death that promises redemption for all his followers. I don't believe in the virgin birth, the miracles or the resurrection. However... I do feel a cultural familiarity with Christianity and the gospel. I feel that to denounce my Christian upbringing (as an unquestioning child then an earnest teenager) would be to renounce a family member, to betray something others (especially a grandmother and an influential kind teacher and vicar's wife) trusted me with.

Now, Quakers may be just the place for people with that 'sitting on the fence' attitude, who want to hedge their bets. However, there's much more to Quakerism, I believe, than just saying "well, that patriarchal Hebrew and Popish stuff is a bit too hard for us to swallow whole, but there's some nice stories about lions and lambs which might have something in them." I doubt many see Quaker meetings as an undemanding, non-hypocritical way to play Pascal's gamble: "if I at least pray a bit to a vaguely defined god and it does all turn out to be literal truth, I'll save myself from an eternity of suffering." No, I think Quakerism is something much more affirmative, positive and valuable: we all have direct, personal access to a common divine 'thing' that's real. That 'light' gives us comfort, helping us to endure the hardships and to savour and cherish the everyday. It also gives us a moral compass and motivation, so we can see and are impelled to do that which makes the world a bit better - reducing violence, greed and inequality.

Quakers, and I think others of a similar spiritual outlook from all faiths, would stress that the divine is something naturally within everyone. That's aligns with my understanding of the Buddhist and Zen idea that we all have the capability of enlightenment within ourselves. Once you accept that, you treat others, even your 'enemies', with a respect that leads to tolerance, generosity and a preparedness to work through differences. Quakers and Buddhists would also both look to gathered silence or the calming of meditation as the way to access and recognise that light within.

So I'd recognise what people mean by the inner Buddha self, and perhaps that constant current compassionate presence of Christ, as being a way of describing or expressing that calm, reassuring, world-connected sense of something that worth cultivating within our hearts.

That does lead me to wonder whether relativism has to hold here, even if it's directly incompatible with science. I wonder if there's also necessarily an inner demon or Satan that we may have to deal with too. Also, I'd ask what it means for the doctrines of loss of self in Buddhism, translated I think into the defeat of the ego by New Age Western Buddhists or mystics like Alan Watts and possibly Eckhart Tolle.