Oblivion is the summer’s first big sci fi blockbuster that opened to mixed reivews. Many movigoers and critics are expressing confusion and bewilderment, not understanding the plot. Others are calling it dull and uneventful, yet my conclusion is that they missed the film’s point. While there are some legitimate questions as to plot points here and there, the narrative itself is not flawed overall in my estimation. The key to understanding Oblivion is twofold: conspiracy theory and esoterism. To be more precise, gnosticism and Platonism.
While ”gnosis” arises often in JaysAnalysis reviews, there’s a reason why: it is a theme really and truly prevalent in so many Hollywood productions. The reasons for this are manifold, but in the big picture, “Hollywood is an extension of gnosticism,” as one director put it. Considering the Oblivion director’s previous work (Joseph Kosinski) with Tron Legacy, we can be assured that the themes are intentional, since they are the same in that work. I have done an analysis of Tron Legacy here.
As a refresher, since JaysAnalysis has gained a larger audience over the last few months, gnosticism refers to the numerous heterodox, extra-eclessial Christian groups of the first three to four centuries. Gnosticism encompasses a wide variety of sects with varying influences, ranging from Greek pantheism, polytheism, Platonism, far Eastern mysticism and various Christian texts. One common thread in gnosticism, however, is the rejection of the God of Moses and the Jewish prophets as the “demiurge.” In this view, the creator God is actually the devil because, it is believed, He has made man flawed and imposed death. In this view, theology is reversed and man’s goal is salvation through gnosis or knowledge, leading to escape from this plane of existence. Plato comes to mind here, with the famous dictum that the body is a prison. Read more of this post
All aboard! Here’s your passport to republican utopia!
By: Jay
For a long time I’ve held back on my actual thoughts on things, but nowadays I could care less. The actual operation of the entire society has become so absurd, backward, and irrational that it is now comical. For those aware, it is quite evident there is a long term plan to re-engineer and reorganize the western world in particular. The modern world is under the delusion that it has been freed from the prison of “superstition” and “dogma”: Altar and throne have been overthrown and now the “New Man” can arise from the ash heap of millennia of “dark ages” and oppression. Modernity has given us medicine and personal computers, right? Indeed, so onwards towards the great utopia! But is this so? Why do the day-to-day lives of those of use in modernity seem like everything but the great utopia? The previous millennia has seen a multitude of millenialist demagogues hellbent on establishing the “Great Society,” yet the he awakening public is becoming aware of the sense that modern utopia is really another form of enslavement, as even Zbigniew Brzezinski has noted on multiple occasions.
But what if the uprising of the masses is not really a good thing? Mass uprisings bring forth the reordering of society under a new hierarchy: not the elimination of hierarchy. Marshalling of the masses for political means has ever been the tool of petty tyrants, demagogues and gainsayers, as well as powerful larger interests. To understand the gigantic farce of the modern world’s beliefs about itself, it is to the ancient world that we must turn. This is a point you will almost never hear mentioned, so grab your pen and paper and get ready for notes. Following upon the French Revolution, most of the western world supposedly rejected monarchy and religion in favor of Enlightenment Republicanism. Obviously this doesn’t mean Sarah Palin and George Bush. By “republicanism” is meant the idea of a republic, and the idea of a republic cannot be divorced from Plato, and an analysis of the Republic should be given, but before that, the stream (or sewer) of millennial sects and movements must be explained.
Prior to the French Revolutionary Jacobins and so-called “illuminists,” came the medieval heretical sects of the Bogomils and Cathari that represented the most significant challenges to papal power. While never an organized front, the sectarians were able to wrest various sections of Europe from Roman primacy, while the compliment in the East could be seen as Islam, representing similarly a gnostic challenge to the Imperial Orthodoxy of Byzantium (such is the origin of Bogomilism, which birthed the western gnostic movements).
Also concurrent with these movements were the Catholic orders that had similar trends, like the Franciscans and pseduo-millennialists like Joachim of Fiore. The Joachimites and some Franciscans foresaw an era of mass pouring out of “the Spirit,” ushering in a “golden age” of humanity living righteously. In fact, Benedict XVI has even written concerning these connections in Joachim as follows:
“Ratzinger dug deep in his research. And he discovered that in Bonaventure, there is a strong connection with the vision of Joachim of Fiore, the Franciscan who had prophesied the imminent advent of a third age after those of the Father and the Son, an age of the Spirit, with a renewed and entirely “spiritual” Church, poor, reconciled with Greeks and Jews, in a world restored to peace.”
I think there is a clear conduit from this to modern revolutionary movements. The Thomas Muntzer rebellion should also be mentioned as important currents of modern socialism, inasmuch as Muntzer attempted to practice perfect and total communism. It is also important that these centers of rebellion were France, Germania and Hungary: future centers of radical communism and “illuminism.” Renaissance humanism and the Reformation gave birth to the revolutionary movements of Illuminism and socialism, yet there are two crucial factors seldom mentioned in treatments of this subject that undergird all these trends: Plato and millennialism. Read more of this post
