Star Trek: into darkness (aside from the lens flare)

This review is also online at Science Fiction World.

Last night I saw the new Star Trek: Into Darkness, directed by J.J. Abrams.

First up: like its predecessor Star Trek (2009), this is not an intellectual film. If you're expecting existential questions like Star Trek: The Next Generation's 'The Measure of a Man', or even in-your-face allegories like Star Trek's 'A Private Little War', you're out of your Vulcan mind.

(For more on Star Trek and philosophy, see my old ABC column.)

For the most part, Into Darkness is a science-fiction action flick, and a rollicking one at that. The plot holes, the wink-wink-nudge-nudge in-jokes, the ludicrously gratuitous shot of Alice Eve in her underwear -- these moments are swept aside by a relentless story. (Well, perhaps not the lingerie shot. That really was superfluous.)

Abrams makes beautiful films, and Into Darkness is certainly stunning. It uses gorgeous scenery and sets to ramp up the action's intensity. The opening scenes, featuring a volcano, underwater shenanigans and bright white natives, are a good example of this.

The dialogue crackles. This scene, between Cumberbatch's John Harrison and Chris Pine's Jim Kirk is representative:

There are also some outstanding quips and emotional catharses, particularly between Kirk, Jachary Quinto's Spock and Uhura, played by Zoe Saldana.

While Abrams packs a lot of WHOAH into this film, each of the actors gets their moment to... act. Conversation is neatly balanced with action. Not as well as the Avengers, but well enough.

Pine displays more range as Kirk, Quinto gets to show nuance and ham in equal measure, and Simon Pegg's Scotty is consistently better than his Scots accent. Bruce Greenwood's Christopher Pike is compelling, and Karl Urban does another fine job as Leonard 'Bones' McCoy. (More laughs than drama, sadly. Less of the original series' Spock-Kirk-Bones triangle.)

Cumberbatch deserves special mention: he is a thrilling villain. In fact, the English actor owns every scene, visceral and cerebral as the story demands.

Does Into Darkness have a message? Well, not a didactic one. But it does have a strong emotional and philosophical theme: friendship.

I have written previously about the importance of friendship in Star Trek, and Into Darkness is no exception. What I said earlier still stands:

Friendship is at the heart of this, particularly the Captain and his Vulcan First Officer. Kirk and Spock might be very different young men, but they grow to rely on each other. Eventually, they're as close as friends can ever be - it is more love than simple camaraderie. Nietzsche once observed that the best friendship can be harsh, conflicted – not because of petty quarrels, but because genuine friends challenge one another. ‘It is not in how one soul approaches another,’ wrote Nietzsche in the second volume of Human, All-Too-Human, ‘but in how it distances itself that I recognise their affinity and relatedness.’ This is a lesson in the potency of friendship: not to make us the same, but to get the best out of our differences.

In this sequel, other characters are drawn into this tension, including Montgomery Scott. I can't be more specific without spoilers, but one dramatic showdown between Kirk and his Chief Engineer sets up a lovely 'bromance' reconciliation.

All in all, Into Darkness is a film about relationships; about friendship, trust and sacrifice. Between the firefights, fistfights and miscellaneous explosions, it has a sweetness to it: the willingness of grown-ups to be vulnerable, while retaining their signature bravery.

Watch long, and prosper.

We shouldn't ask the dying to keep living

I've a column with the ABC today, 'We shouldn't ask the dying to keep living'.

It's partly a reply to Giles Fraser, in The Guardian, arguing against euthanasia.  A sample:

Life has no intrinsic value. It is, instead, valued intrinsically. This is not a pedantic point. Intrinsic value suggests something 'in' life; some given worth, which transcends valuers. It is a particularly Christian idea, which has no basis in fact. There is no divinely given soul, with divinely given worth. We value life. At best, we do so for its own sake: life as an end, not a means. 

But when we do not value life, because we have lost, for good, any moments of joy or simple contentment, it has no intrinsic value. It is not a life with pain, confusion, stench and helplessness - it is these things. Life becomes detestable. "My problem," writes Fraser, "with euthanasia is not that it is a immoral way to die, but that it has its roots in a fearful way to live." I can only reply that, for the dying or gravely ill, this fear seems well-founded and irreversible.

(Photo: news.com.au)

Conscious computing: on distraction (and how to avoid it)

Earlier this year, I was on a panel with Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman, about happiness. Oliver has written a fine book on happiness and how not to bugger it up by being a Polyanna: The Antidote: happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking.

In The Antidote, Oliver combines erudition with witty prose and disarming honesty. He makes happiness plausible, without being glib or smug.

Oliver has recently written an excellent Guardian column on distraction, 'Conscious computing: how to take control of your life online'.

It's a well-informed take on distraction and its opposite -- which I see as freedom -- but it is also a very practical guide to avoiding the pitfalls of addiction and temporal profligacy. A sample, including quotes from Alex Pang and yours truly:

We can all agree that Facebook and smartphones aren't the first ever examples of "cognitive entanglement", Pang's term for the way we use technology as extensions of our own minds. Writing things in a notebook is entanglement; so is using a library or a landline or sending a postcard or a smoke signal. "Entanglement is nothing new or revolutionary," Pang writes. "It's what makes us human." The problem is not that we've suddenly started depending on technology, but that the technology we're depending on is poorly designed, too often focused on making money for its creators at its users' expense. Undoubtedly, we'll one day figure out how to handle cellphones and status updates without the accompanying distraction and compulsion. But that doesn't mean the distraction and compulsion aren't a problem right now – or that it might not be wise to find ways of adapting more rapidly. 

After all, distraction – as the Australian philosopher Damon Young points out in his book of that name – isn't just a minor irritant. It's a serious philosophical problem: what you focus on, hour by hour, day after day, ends up comprising your whole life. "To be diverted isn't simply to have too many stimuli but to be confused about what to attend to and why," Young writes. "Distraction is the very opposite of emancipation: failing to see what is worthwhile in life, and lacking the wherewithal to seek it." To recover from techno-distraction, "what's required is not Luddite extremism but a more ambitious relationship to our tools – one that promotes our liberty instead of weakening it."

See also my 'Steps to an undistracted life' for some very practical tips.

(Photo: Binguyen)

Commitment-phobia in relationships

I was back to my ABC Radio National 'Life Matters' gigs today, with our usual 'Modern Dilemmas' segment. You can listen to the program here.

Today's dilemma was sent in by Shannon, who's pregnant to a running-hot-and-cold sort of man; a man who cannot commit to dinner, let alone marriage and parenthood. He keeps inflating, then puncturing, her hopes. Shannon's question: how should she relate to him during the pregnancy?

The chat was hosted by Natasha Mitchell, and I was joined by Karen Brooks.  

(Photo: David Roseborough)

In praise of Wonder Woman

Sophia fights evil on the porch

I've a column in the Sydney Morning Herald today, 'Discovering kindness without mawkish humility'.

I'm celebrating Wonder Woman as a liberating character: a feminist superhero, invented and written by feminists in a conservative era. My daughter is (rightly) enamoured.  A sample:

The Amazon has been a rare pop culture feminist. This is why Gloria Steinem put her on the cover of the first stand-alone Ms. magazine in 1972. (“It’s been many years since I was a child,” Steinem said recently, “but I still always buy two bracelets.”) Diana has provided generations with a symbol, not only of modern women, but also of humanity more generally: independence without egotistic brutality, kindness without mawkish humility.

In stories like Greg Rucka’s Hiketeia or Christopher Moeller’s JLA: A League of One, Wonder Woman is tough, intelligent and righteous, but also wary of intimacy, often lonely, and ambivalent about freedom. She boldly contains multitudes.

Jogito ergo sum: the philosophy of running

A big-arsed ape after a sprint

I've a review of Mark Rowlands' excellent Running With the Pack in today's Australian: 'The meaning of life? Here's the rundown'.

Rowlands' book is an intelligent and very personal defence of the existential value of running: its capacity to realise the intrinsic value of life.

This argument works for many exercises and sports, but there is a primal vitality to running, which has to do with our physiology: we are, as Rowlands notes, "big-arsed apes".

(Some of us bigger than others.)

If you are a thinker and a jogger, this is a book for you. A sample:

Regular runners will recognise Rowlands's descriptions of torture and bliss, such as his hill sprint in Ireland: 

. . . the hard part is to keep going now, keep driving those legs as the lactic fire spreads outwards and is eventually replaced by a pervasive numb deadness . . . Finally the nausea . . . is replaced with warm triumph.

Running, Rowlands argues, is not joyful because it helps us win medals, catch the bus or avoid muggers. "Joy is the recognition that something is worth doing for its own sake." 

Of course running can be useful, keeping off the kilograms and keeping us a few steps ahead of depression's black dog. But ultimately, Rowlands points out, these victories over pain and decay are brief. We are, like all living things, doomed: to craving, pain and, sooner or later, annihilation. 

Running, by giving us a "whisper" of life lived for its own sake, not for the sake of survival or status, is a reminder of why it is still better to be alive than dead. In the meditative rhythm of left foot and right foot, breath in and breath out, we are neither chasing some end outside the run nor using the run as a means to simple pleasure. 

"Running is the embodied apprehension of intrinsic value in life," Rowlands writes. Children and animals comprehend this straightforwardly, but adults often need reminders: exercise, games and sports.

Philosophy in the Garden off to the UK

I'm chuffed to announce that Philosophy in the Garden will be published in the UK in the spring of 2014 by Rider, an imprint of Random House.

The book will also be available for English-speaking readers in Europe. Translations in Europe and Asia might follow -- stay tuned.

(And a big thank you to Benython and Sharon at Zeitgeist.)

In praise of epigrams and aphorisms

La Rochefoucauld: "People who are
conceited of their own merit take
pride in  being unfortunate, that
they themselves and others may think
them considerable enough to be the
envy and the mark of fortune."

My Canberra Times column ran today, 'In short, what we need is more wit'.

It was prompted by Tom Farber's excellent collection of epigrams, quips and wordplays, The End of My Wits, coming out on 25th June with Andrea Young Arts/El Leon Literary Arts.

I'm defending the humble epigram as a striking invitation to stop, read, think and feel. A sample:

There is a playfulness to aphorism, which continues from 17th-century France, to the modern German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, to contemporary epigrammatists such as Farber. 

Take this, from Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld: ''Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.'' Good fun. 

But a sportive phrase is not necessarily a throwaway one; brevity does not equal triviality. The simplicity of the phrases belie their intricacy and nuance. ''[To] connect the dots - to unpack meaning - the reader,'' writes Farber, ''would have to be alert, rethink or reread a line that had seemed to require only an instant.'' The aphorism or epigram can be an invitation to read carefully, think judiciously, and sympathise more courageously. 

Not everyone will take up this invitation, of course. No work of writing is a straightforward cure for anything, because the work of reading is itself part of the remedy. 

But in an era characterised by equal portions of information and narcissism, these small phrases are a chance to overcome our own pettiness; to give attention, intelligence and emotional maturity to someone's well-crafted words.

(Image: Théodore Chassériau, at Versailles)

Damon @ Sydney Writers' Festival

I'm happy to announce my gigs for this year's Sydney Writers' Festival. It's a packed show: thick with writerly talent. I'm chuffed to be part of it. My sessions are:

May 23rd, 4pm-5pm: 'The Garden: An Adventure in Ideas' (free lecture).
May 24th, 11.30am-12.30pm: 'Philosophy and Writing' (free panel).
May 24, 4pm-5pm: 'Deborah Levy: Swimming Home and Black Vodka' (free conversation).
May 26th, 11.30am-12.30pm: 'Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice' (ticketed panel: $20/$14).

It looks a busy but rewarding week. Writers and readers: see you there.

Gardening is child's play

I've a column in Fairfax's 'Life & Style' today, 'Gardening is child's play'.

I'm sketching some of the benefits of gardens and gardening, for kids. Here's a taste:

Gardens can also be introductions to risk. By definition, gardens are enclosed or cordoned off - there is always a boundary of some sort, if only a ditch or a line of stones. 

Because of this, they are relatively safe. But the 'relatively' is important, because the natural outdoors are not completely sterile. In the dirt, there are spiders and bull-ants. In the trees and flowers there are thorns, rough bark, heights to fall from. 

And then there is the climate itself: baking sun, chilling winds, saturating rain. The garden is an opportunity for our kids to take risks climbing the crepe myrtle or digging in the sandy dirt, but all within a secure area. 

This is important, because psychological development requires challenges, and the fears that go with them. The point is not to scare children witless, but to allow them to independently confront what's uncomfortable, frightening or simply unexpected; to learn, not only physical skills, but mental ones: mental habits of courage, consistency and caution.