Haskell Moore: ..... No matter what you do it will never amount to anything more than a single drop in a limitless ocean.
Adam Ewing: What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?
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This instantly struck me as the central Kubrick theme of ASO, by ref
to what he said to Playboy re "beyond the infinite" [to use the crass
expression].
KUBRICK: I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 but
not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don't believe in
any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can
construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept
the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy
alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are
approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. Given
a planet in a stable orbit, not too hot and not too cold, and given a
few billion years of chance chemical reactions created by the
interaction of a sun's energy on the planet's chemicals, it's fairly
certain that life in one form or another will eventually emerge. It's
reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of
such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some
proportion of such life developing intelligence are high. Now, the sun
is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic
age, so it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the
universe not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man
but other billions where it is approximately equal and others still
where it is hundreds of thousands of millions of years in advance of
us. When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made
in a few millennia -- less than a microsecond in the chronology of the
universe -- can you imagine the evolutionary development that much
older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological
species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal
machine entities -- and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge
from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and
spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence
ungraspable by humans.
At what he calls the basic [Clarke] level the movie shows a "long"
advancement of man's "evolution" from ape to spaceman, and it seems most
subscribe to that level, especially with the sudden appearance of
Starchild like a Catholic Confession to "wipe the slate" of all the EVIL
we see.
But the Kubrick level says that was just "a single drop" and
logically there are "forms" out there [ie the God thing] that are so
advanced that we can not possibly understand them [kinda following
Darwin's attempt to explain the conception of time to the finite and
limited human mind].
However Kubrick is saying it is not all doom & gloom and we must
TRY to advance ourselves no matter how tiny that may be AND pass it on - hence the Zarathustra connection.
His quote is
"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent;
but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the
challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man
may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine
meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."
The break in the [eternal recurrence] chain during that one drop is
cleverly shown by Moonwatcher making an incredible scientific system [a
la Stonehenge] to predict solar eclipses AND passing it on to ape junior
[a la Ishango] and finally passing it on to man via the "mutating bone"
scene.
Then we see man get it totally wrong where a mission is concocted
based on fraudulent evidence and it is [maybe thankfully] not passed on
to any "space partners" and ends up a complete waste of space with good
old Dave "dying alone, 100 years ago".
But then Kubrick throws in the Starchild with a new burst of
Zarathustra to say "OK it was a huge stuff-up but at least America TRIED
to supply its own light - just that egos and politics got in the way."
