The Fifth Element

Been awhile since there has been a post here. Thought I'd change that today. Fool's day and all.

I have this weird thing going on right now because I’ve realized that most of the movies that resonate for me are, in one way or another, a story about the discovery of an all-powerful entity or device that is variously called anti-matter, the tesseract, zero point energy, the god particle, the holy grail, or the fifth element. 

And I have long felt that this secret lies within. Not in mega collective projects, but within our very own skins and minds. We contain that god particle in our selves - no giant machine is necessary unless you believe that a giant machine is necessary - then it is.

Faith is important here. That’s why the Church is important, because it demands faith in something unseen. Technology and movies have replaced the church in the faith business, because their burnt offerings are more “believable”. But it doesn’t remove the centrality of a collective faith as the engine behind it all. If Jesus replaced Zeus, and was then replaced by Science, they are still all birds of a feather - in that they are attempts to explain the inexplicable with absolutes. 

“Thus sayeth the Science!”

Science is a harsh god. It is devoid of empathy or pity to mortals. Or even miracles, unless you think on scales of millions of years. At least Zeus or Jesus was said to listen to prayers. But if your god is a machine then it can’t listen, can it? Oh but wait, now our machines can listen, so now god can listen too. We just need programmers.

It’s rather pathetic. We invent the gods we can believe in. We used to believe in Gods and Titans, and then it was heroes and sacrificial saviors, and now “god” is just cosmic machinery that is programmed by beta-tested belief systems from Hollywood.

It makes me wonder. is the entire universe a faith-based proposition? Do we need to believe in it for it to exist? And what happens when our belief ends? 

“The real world begins where your belief ends.”
-Phillip K. Dick