Inception and the genesis of our thoughts

I haven’t kept up with my idea of more frequent blog posts but better late than never. This is a blog entry which is part film review and part an exploration of a concept within that film. The film, which I have seen twice in order to try and absorb it, is Inception by Christopher Nolan.

The first thing to state is that the film is excellent; it’s an entertaining, engaging and thought-provoking film which is brilliantly shot and contains solid acting. I expect that most people will have heard of the film by now and it is receiving rave reviews. However, one word of caution – if you have been looking at the ratings on imdb.com (the internet movie database) you will note that it is currently ranked the 4th best film of all time by the users of the site. It was ranked 3rd best for a long time but I note it has dropped down to 4th. Over time I expect it will fall more than this but I have to say that I think it’s a slightly inflated rating. This puts it up there with The Shawshank Redemption and Godfather Part 1 and 2 as well as making it a better rated film that Schindler’s List and many other notably great films. At this stage it’s hard for me to say whether it’s a classic and I haven’t rated it yet on imdb.com. It would at least go into a shortlist of my top 50 favourite films but where it would end up I can’t say yet. In short though, if you haven’t seen it – go and see it at the cinema, it’s a brilliant cinematic experience.

Returning to the content of the film itself it’s a highly complex plotline which takes a difficult but fascinating concept and manages to make the complex ever more complicated; the story plumbs deeper into the subconscious distorting the concept of what is reality and what is not. This is a high budget film and it makes a wonderful change to see a summer blockbuster that challenges the viewer to think deeply and doesn’t dumb down to appeal to the perceived tastes of the mass market. I believe that one explanation of its high rating on review sites is down to its broad appeal; this is a psychologically puzzling film but it is also a special effects laden action film. Christopher Nolan has managed to keep the high quality of his screen-writing whilst also producing a highly exciting and action-packed film.

The idea of exploring the subconscious, and also of playing with the human perception of reality, is not new at all and can be seen in different forms in Nolan’s Memento and The Prestige. These ideas are also explored in other films like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and most films written by Charlie Kaufman, but I pick this as having the strongest parallels), Mulholland Drive and The Matrix, and that’s to name only a few that come straight to mind. Inception does provide a nice twist on this idea and it takes it into a very fascinating direction. The storyline is so complicated and I am unsure if it all makes sense when examined carefully; but I trust Nolan enough to believe that he thought deeply about the screenplay. I won’t write too much in case somebody reads this who hasn’t seen it yet, but for those who have I would ask you to consider carefully some aspects of the totems and the concept of limbo in particular (which seems to have been a plot device which was necessary to add more drama to the idea of death in a complexly layered dream, but of all the ideas explored in the film this seems the most vaguely conceptualized).

Manipulating our concept of reality and also exploring the genesis of our beliefs are subjects I have spent much time considering and this for me is the best part of Inception (which derives its name from the inception of an idea in the mind). In the film Leonardo DiCaprio’s character (Cobb) compares an idea to a resilient parasite and that once it has taken hold in the mind it can be extremely powerful and have massive consequences (I am paraphrasing and not quoting the script). This notion is one that interests me and one that I think is very true. In the film Cobb’s team are tasked with planting an idea so deeply in somebody’s subconscious that they believe it to be their own and they therefore shape their future choices around it; this is described in the film as very hard to achieve because we can identify the root cause of the idea in our mind and recognise it was planted there by someone else. I am not sure this is entirely true.

Many writers have explored in detail the possibility that some major ideas we embrace in our lives, in many cases in the form of strong beliefs that even shape a person’s character, are adopted when we are young due to the influence of our elders (primarily but by no means exclusively our parents and close family). Richard Dawkins has written on this matter with specific reference to people embracing their parent's religion, which likely has some implausible facets to its teaching, without questioning it when they are young. Even as a person grows older such an idea can become so deeply imbedded it cannot easily be changed. Furthermore I think that when challenged people would claim that their choice of religion, for example, was entirely their own idea and a free choice. Could it be possible in cases like these than an 'idea' has been implanted so deeply in somebody's mind that they now recognise it entirely as their own? Practically I am sure that people can recognise the impact of their early upbringing and what they were taught, but I think we often don't recognise how much we are absorbing from others rather than deciding for ourselves. I do not suggest that we cannot overcome this or change our beliefs as we grow older; this undoubtedly happens but in many cases it does not.

It should not be assumed that I place religious beliefs in this category alone. All kinds of ideas could fit into this category, for example political persuasion, attitudes to different social groups, or even a favourite sports team. I may be stretching what should be considered as a person’s idea rather than as a cultural identity of some sort but hopefully this stimulates you to consider this matter to some degree. How many of our ideas, deeply held beliefs or other aspects of our identity can be considered as something that we alone crafted and adopted? There are massive grey areas in this line of thinking and my intention is not to provide answers but to stimulate thought and conversation on the matter.

As I have written this I realise how massive this subject is and how much more I could write about. I have no clear conclusions to draw and there are many authors who have expressed this sentiment with more clarity and eloquence than I have managed. Nonetheless I think it is a fascinating area which I will certainly give more thought.

Many thanks for reading,

Dominic

Thoughts on truth.

I haven’t kept up with my idea of writing smaller and more regular post on here at all. I like doing it but I’m so busy with study that I never make the time.

Anyway here goes one off the top of my head whilst I’m thinking about it. It was celebrated Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s 100th birthday last week (or would have been if he hadn’t died in 1998). There were therefore quite a few articles circulating around about him. I knew of him due to ‘The Seven Samurai’ (which to my shame as a film fan I still haven’t seen) but I hadn’t heard of any of his other films directly. When reading an article about his work I was struck by the synopsis of a film called Rashomon. I sought it out and watched it last week.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it in its entirety although many elements of it were certainly outstanding. I liked the concept of the film very much and enjoyed the story. The main issue for me was probably trying to appreciate a Japanese film from the early 1950s as if it was just being shown for the first time – which of course is impossible. Many of the innovative ideas used by Kurosawa would not seem so to me because cinema has moved on since his time – and what’s more, many of my favourite directors have been influenced by Kurosawa so it is natural to be familiar with some of his techniques. Having said that, it was clear that the cinematography and editing were exemplary and they have stood the test of time.

What is best about the film is the idea behind the story. Put simply, four eyewitnesses describe the event of a rape and murder and all of them describe events quite differently. We don’t know who is telling the truth, nor do we know if any of them are deliberately misleading us or if they are recalling events to the best of their ability. In my mind the films asks us to question the nature of truth. What is truth? Is truth absolute or is it subjective?

Certainly when it comes to eyewitness accounts then we can explain anomalies by the imperfect nature of human memory and also by the propensity of those telling a story to be influenced by their past experience and unique understanding of the world. Perhaps we all see things very differently (although we can certainly tell if someone has been killed and by whom if we are watching at the time). However, when we are speaking, the audience that we have, the pressure we are under and the situation we are in will greatly affect what we actually say – whether this is done consciously or at some subconscious level. To get a really good idea of this I suggest you watch “Capturing The Friedmans”. It is a quite brilliant documentary, and although the subject matter may be tough going it is a wonderful film which makes you think about these issues in real detail (see more here - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342172/).

So where am I going in all this? Well, eyewitness accounts are perhaps more likely to get distorted than other kinds of ‘truths’. So the question can be posed more widely – is there such a thing as ultimate truth? For many people the basic tenets of their religion (whichever it may be) are the absolute truth. But again here we get into subjective truth again; if I speak to a devout Muslim he or she will give me one version of ‘ultimate truth’, but a devout Christian will tell me that this is false and will provide another ‘ultimate truth’. Both cannot be true, and as far as I can tell there is no independent arbiter of the veracity of these beliefs. We can extend this argument to contain hundreds of contradictory belief systems all of which are 100% ‘known’ to be true by its firm followers.

I cannot hold to any religious belief as ultimate truth - but I can take those religious teachings which inspire me and use them, I hope, to lead a better life and to draw strength from. So do I believe there is ultimate truth? Well I do think there are things that are as representative of the truth as it is possible to know as human beings. I have spoken in other blog posts about how the scientific method can help us to determine some things as true, and I hold to that strongly. Although, I would certainly not go as far as saying that science is ultimate truth. Those things I do know as true can be verified against observable evidence (or testable hypotheses). In this way we can have truth without certainty, any scientific fact has to be disprovable and thu is only 99.99999…% true. I have used this quote from Ashley Montagu previously but it sums up what I’m trying to say here:

“The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof”.

I want to remain as rational and logical about certain truths as possible, but please note that this doesn’t equate to being unemotional or uncreative. I try not to believe what I read in the papers, what I hear in the office, what I see on TV about the new ‘miracle health cure’, what I’m told by politicians or what is preached about in certain literature. I remain open to other people’s point of view and do not hold anybody’s beliefs against them, and I’m very happy to hear why people may disagree with me, but I am careful to evaluate the information I receive before readily adopting it into my worldview. I am training to become a scientist, but I am far from one yet so my understanding still needs much developing. I am willing to learn and to keep investigating my perception of ‘truth’ and I am sure I will continue to enjoy the journey.

I have no idea if any of this makes sense as I wrote it in one go without a planned structure. Anyway, I hope that if anybody does read this then you enjoy it. As always, I’m open to comments.

Thanks for reading – Dominic.

Global warming

I have left it some time since my last blog entry so I should start by saying happy New Year to anyone who might read this blog. I think I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to making time for writing on the blog because I tend to want hours to produce a polished and coherent article. However, this is a blog and not a piece of academic work so I’ll try and take a more relaxed attitude to blogging in 2010.

One thing that has been on my mind in the last few weeks has been the issue of climate change and global warming. In the UK we have had an extremely cold spell of weather which has caused heavy snowfalls, icy roads and travel chaos up and down the country. It’s rare, especially for those of us living in the south of England, to see such consistently cold weather and persistent snow on the ground. I have heard (or read on Facebook) several people making comments along the lines of “So this is global warming is it? I can’t see how the scientists can be telling us that the climate is warming when it’s been freezing cold and snowy for weeks”.

Perhaps this is quite a natural thing to think but I wanted to address it here because I believe that global warming is a huge problem and one that must be dealt with. It’s worth mentioning in advance that I am no scientific expert in this field, although I have studied some areas of climate change, and seen a great deal of robust scientific data, so I do feel able to discuss the topic.

What we should understand about climate change is that scientists look at average surface temperatures taken from monitoring stations in multitudes of locations across the globe. Each area provides data on the local mean (or average) surface temperature and all of these averages are then taken and collated to produce figures for the global mean surface temperature (GMST). I am not going to give references to all of those figures and sets of data here only to say that the measurements are reliable and accurate. Looking at the data it is certain that over the last century the temperature at the Earth’s surface has been warming (if not before).

The key thing to note here is that climate change is evaluated by looking at average (mean) temperatures going back over centuries of data. Isolated periods of unusually cold weather do certainly occur but that is of no direct impact to the question of whether the climate is warming. Furthermore, instances of cold weather in one region of the world may occur whilst other areas in the world see unusually hot weather; whilst people in the UK were shivering in the icy weather the residents of Melbourne in Australia were sweltering in a heat wave. During a year the weather fluctuates and we will see cold weather, hot weather, rainy weather, windy weather but none of these isolated occurrences tell us about the overall picture. That is why we need to look at the wider picture and the average temperatures globally compared to the averages in past years.

It is also very true that over the Earth’s long history the climate has experienced fluctuating high and low average temperatures. What scientists studying climate change do is to work out if the recent rises in GMST are to be expected (looking at the background of continuous climate change) or if the period of current warming is atypical. To do this they evaluate ancient temperature records which can be done through various methods (such as proportions of fossil pollen grains). The consensus is that the rate of warming we see across the globe today is unusually higher than seen in the past.

To go further into this I could now digress in to carbon dioxide levels but I was originally attempting to keep this blog relatively short - something which seems to be extremely difficult for me to achieve. As a budding biologist one of my main concerns regarding this level of warming, which is almost certainly thanks to anthropogenic activity, is the devastating environmental effects it is having. The Earth’s climate has always varied considerably due to natural causes and equally the extinction of species has always been a commonplace occurrence over the vastness of the Earth’s history. But events in recent times are not natural and since we can now understand the potential consequences it seems bizarre that we would choose not to act.

Those people who claim global warming is a huge conspiracy would do well to seek out and evaluate the scientific data for themselves. The scientific facts on this matter have no political or economical agenda; the data speaks for no organisation or pressure group but stands alone as pure factual data that we ignore at our peril. It may not be to the detriment of the current adult population if the trend of warming isn’t tackled but our children will surely suffer. What is more, the ecological and environmental consequences will not be easy to recover from and a great many species will be lost from this Earth never to evolve again.

As always, many thanks for reading.

Dominic (who, whilst writing this, realised that I too am not doing enough to make a small difference to the problems of global warming).