Contact

I was delighted to receive recently a hardcover edition of Carl Sagan's novel Contact. I'm very fond of the movie for a variety of reasons, not least of which is Jodie Foster's fine acting in her portrayal of Ellie Arroway. Foster gives a very intelligent commentary on the DVD edition. Her acting seems all the more remarkable when one considers that she performed against nothing but a blue screen throughout her solo transit of the galaxy. I think it an astounding forensic tour de force.

Aside from the acting, however, Contact appeals to me principally because of the effectiveness with which it portrays the unfathomable vastness of space and time. And in doing so it serves to render as utterly pointless all the fears and hatreds which motivate so much of human behavior. On the fantastic shore of some impossible galactic place Ellie comes to realize how truly long all of this has been going on. That a cosmic drama has been unfolding long before and far beyond the ken of humankind. After such a realization it's hard to take governments and borders, with all the provincialism and limitations they represent, seriously. I was also deeply affected by the words of her "father", who tells her that "In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other." It's a statement I find true on both a macro- and a microcosmic level.

In reading the novel I've rediscovered that Carl Sagan represented the sort of individual who was far more prevalent at a time when it was easier to have hope. A reasonable and humane individual who could regard others and their beliefs without judgment, and who saw the promise of approaching ages. Such people have now been supplanted by ranting ideologues who now shout at us the many reasons we should live in fear and anxiety of everything and everyone around us. Through some perplexing rhetorical alchemy all those admirable qualities which such a man embodied are now intended to be regarded with derision: liberal, relativist, one-worlder. I never thought I would see the day when a liberal humanist would come to be regarded with contempt. As a young man I was taught that the United Nations was a noble experiment, one of the more promising institutions to come out of the hell of the Second World War. I was also taught that the war was in part the tragic result of the demise of the League of Nations.

Now we have a form of Newthink. The cultural idols of our youth have been supplanted by new ones. Gatherings of nations for the purpose of bringing order to the affairs of states are weak and corrupt. Unless they are "ours".Freedom fighters are ours. Theirs are terrorists. Or guerrillas, if we haven't yet made up our minds. Our heroes are the smiling tank commanders rolling triumphantly across the flat expanses of defenseless lands, much as they did in their Mark III's in September, 1939.

Ah, but I rant. Time to stop reading the editorial page, put down Le Monde, and try to enjoy life along the boulevard.

Yet, I sense rain in the air. It appears there may be a change in the weather coming on.