Watchmen

Pretty surprised by the film Watchmen, and where it leaves you in the end. Without ruining it, there are some pretty deep questions and commentary in between all the blood, sex and bravado. Is humanity its own worst enemy, incapable of stabilizing and living in harmony with one another? For some reason, most of us still hold hope for goodness to keep evolving and spreading among us, yet history and current events are rife with evidence to the contrary.

The older I get the more I am coming up against the boundaries of the vision and values I have taken on in my life. It is not consistently "fun" to be banging up against ways of thinking and living that have seemed so solid over the years, but suddenly become more transparent and jello-like.

I had a great teacher who used to use talk about perception of reality with the analogy of thinking you know what the sun is when you've spent your whole existence living underwater. We know what is real from our perspective, but it is very difficult to really separate from our current structure of interpretation and posit that things may not be really be what they appear.

In the Watchmen, there was a battle of perception between superheroes. Both viewed humanity and life as something of value, however they strongly disagreed on how to best help humanity resolve some big issues like scarcity and conflict over resources. Is so called "evil" (war, conflict, cruelty) part of our nature and ultimately necessary for our survival? Or can we outsmart and outevolve our own human frailties? Heavy stuff!