I just re-watched "Close Encounters"

[Archae]

I was reminded again, of two facts:

The alien effects were terrific.

It was great in the beginning, and on the mountain.
But in the middle if was gawdawful :boring:

[RandomThoughts]

1. There are some common themes in those stories.

There was one movie about aliens, forget what it was called, I think it had Nicholas Cage in it.

At the end there was a scene where the children left but the parents stayed behind, what group would do that to a family? Only comparison I can think of would be Republicans splitting up immigrant families, and we all know that is wrong. Does anyone think that kind of lack of compassion would be a good model for aliens you would want to visit, or your children to grow up with?

And in Close Encounters. Heh, ever notice those initials. CEO3K. I wondered if that was a temporal lore reason for naming that film. many people think of aliens in temporal lore ideas. I don't, although I don't think it is aliens either.

But anyways, the idea of going to some place to find aliens, only a few actually made it to the mountain. The thing is what is the characteristic that got them there? An ability to perceive and understand? Or an ability to leave everyone else. Again why would aliens want people that would leave there families? It is also a problem I have with some of the New Testament. It does not seem to make sense that a chosen person would be only chosen if they also were willing to leave everyone in there family. Especially since somewhere in New Testament it says family will be with a person in heaven. Never figured that out. Although I have both left family, and stayed at different times.

So I ask, would I go on some trip on an alien space ship, sure why not, but not if not told about it, since that would be a superiority issue, and people with that issue usually have other issues. But would I run off to some place without knowing why, and having to give up stuff without explanation? That does not seem to make sense.

Maybe I am saying this. Many people get offers from things that are supernatural, but from my experiences there is a limited understanding of how that works, so how could someone make some commitment to something in afterlife or supernatural at all? Not only would it be uniformed consent, but it also would not make sense for either a person to agree to something without being able to understand or be explained what it is about, nor would it make sense for some positive thing to ask someone to make some agreement about some thing they only know about. Although I do agree with concepts of being able to agree and make commitments to concepts and ideas.

That is also why I don't make deals, it would be like a used car salesman selling you a car over the phone, and why I don't buy or sell anything either.

What was the topic again, oh yea aliens. There are so many delusions that can create metaphors for spiritual things, and many have some truth and some incomplete and even wrong parts. So maybe movies are parts of that with some mistakes.

On a side note, in my observations I have noticed different people have different levels of abilities to perceive things. I wonder if that was the concept that movie drew on. And if it was a perception level thing, why would that be thought of as a selection criteria unless someone thinks that perception ability makes a person better. That is my guess at the reason for parts of that film. Some form of thinking that being able to see mountains in potatoes means something. Maybe it is puzzle solving, really not sure. But thought alot about that.

There have been some interesting SciFi that likes the alien doctrine, and postulates such a thing is to keep intelligence from the population, assuming pattern matching is intelligence and not just different wiring. Many people think of it in terms of autism or schizoid type thought.

There are some great scifi stories, although despair oriented, that postulate ideas like that, and the name of the mountain that film uses gets me to wonder if the story was one of the ones meant to tell people one things while the author thinks another thing about existence and that story. There are many people that think some spiritual ideas are to get rid of bad people. That would match the idea of story told in different way then author thinks, but would be deceptive.

But anyways, lots to think on about that story.

[pokerfan]

2. That sounds like the Arthur C. Clarke novel, Childhood's End

There was one movie about aliens, forget what it was called, I think it had Nicholas Cage in it.

At the end there was a scene where the children left but the parents stayed behind...

[RandomThoughts]

3. There always seems to be people setting rules about who can and who can't

In that movie it was like that, and in many systems there seems to be arbitrary ideas of who is in and who is out. It is especially bad when groups self select their own members leading to ideology creep.

But stuff like that can be seen in many ways. It really doesn't make much sense. For the well being of people, especially children, they should be with there parents until grown up. That part of that movie was really bad.

I think groups that split up families like that have a basic error in thought. I can think of some examples, In Brave New World it was a policy to make society the family, maybe it is an extension of that concept. Hard to figure it, maybe it is a generational comment, not meant to say the parents can't go, but speaking like 40 years in the desert and saying a new generation does not have older generations issues.

It just seemed wrong, in the same way, CEO3K Dreyfus just left his family, and there was no real discussion about it, I thought that was odd. I understand deployments, and even sacrifice of people deployed, but that is different then what he did, he just went to the mountain, and his family, I don't think they were mentioned much after that.

There can be a difficulty of detachment from other people in some situations, where they really don't understand the same stuff, maybe that is the concept in that movie, where his adjustments to the concepts of the potatoes and such led him to a thought process that was different, and it was just compressed for a movie. But it seemed odd in that movie. Like he lost feeling when his event occurred, I don't think it should be like that. Although do understand that concept, it seems wrong.

Note that I don't believe in aliens, but do understand some metaphors of those movies.

[pokerfan]

5. Childhood's End

I haven't seen this film but in Childhood's End the aliens called The Overlords usher in a utopian age of prosperity. Freedom from war, crime, disease.

I don't know if one can spoil a sixty-year-old novel but spoiler warning nonetheless.

Human children born after the arrival of the Overlords begin displaying incredible mental powers. It is revealed that the Overlords serve another higher, non corporeal intelligence, the Overmind. The Overlords, like the adult humans, can not join the Overmind for whatever reason. Soon no more human children are being born and the human race is dying out. Adult humans are despairing and many are commuting suicide. For their own safety, the children are segregated on their own continent. Eventually the children leave the Earth to join the Overmind (a higher, more evolved plane of existance), the human race dies out and the Earth is destroyed.

Clarke seemed to saying, "OK, you want evolution? How about like this and then presents the next step in an utterly repulsive manner.

[gratuitous]

4. Hmmmm, Teri Garr

Sorry, what were we talking about again?

[applegrove]

6. I've never seen that film. I know I should but space aliens don't really excite me.

[XemaSab]

7. I hadn't seen that film in hella years

but I've seen in three times in the last 2 years.

It's a classic, classic film. It would probably wind up in my top 10.

[Pithlet]

8. There is a special place in my heart for that movie.

I remember my parents taking me to see that when it came out and I loved it. I was only about 5 years old or so. It's one of my first non-kiddie movie memories. That and Star Wars which I think came out that same year.